Where should I start????

Sorry for being "off the air" for a couple of weeks. For those who didn't know, I was showing a group of 10 New Zealanders some parts of Japan that normal "tourists" can't access - as well as a few that were teeming with tourists! The things we did are too numerous to write about here, but all in all I think we had a pretty good 10 days - it was fun for me to show them around and as always I was reminded of the kindness of all the people here in Japan. We had some wonderful host families who looked after them for 4 nights and then there were so many other great people who helped to make the trip possible. If anyone is reading this blog that helped out - thank you!
Temples, shrines, schools, scarecrows, Buddhas, food, food and more food, trains, buses, ferries, museums, rice harvesting, Samurai houses, steps, steps and more steps, meditation, hospitals, green tea, stone carvings, Japanese lunch boxes, hot springs, atomic bomb memorials, floating shrines, futons, early mornings, gardens, geisha, revolving sushi, a bit of "Grandad time" and much much more. We even managed to meet Prince Charles and Camilla! That's right, I managed to convince him to come to Nara at exactly the same time we were visiting and even though we didn't get to shake their hands we did get a wave - pity my picture is out of focus!

All in all a fun 10 days then back to work today.... I'm looking forward to the long weekend this weekend!

Weekend update

Another weekend has disappeared! I was woken on Sunday morning by my husband's uncle who decided he was going to make me a fence for the top garden. After being quoted thousands of dollars by another company I jumped at the chance to use some free materials that he had lying around work and the end result is that we now have a fence! It is a bit taller than I had originally imagined, but it means I will be able to grow some tall things against it without having them grow all over the street - like they have been until now! Another job ticked off the list.

The next job for the weekend was to dig up some more sweet potatoes and the kids kept demanding I make them sticky cake things with them so I became somewhat of an expert. I grew purple and orange ones this year so they look very "pretty"... if you like sticky sweet potato cakes!

While I was doing all that my daughter had a morning at school making an "eco bag". A special calligraphy teacher came and they were encouraged to write their favorite Chinese character on the bags. I sent my husband along in my place.... drawing pictures and writing Japanese is not exactly one of my strong points!

Rice harvesting also started yesterday, but I forgot to take any photos.... maybe tomorrow!

International Relations

Anyone who read this entry's title and who also reads Katy's blog don't get excited... I am not talking about the same international relations that she does! Our international relations were a lot less exciting, but interesting all the same. Last night we had a group of 4 people come to stay who are studying the Japanese movement called "one product, one village" which is where each town supposedly works together to produce one product (like mandarins, mushrooms, beef etc.) really well. It is working in some areas, but not so well in others as they are discovering.
Anyway, the group that stayed with us included a mayor from the Philippines, and city workers from Laos, Thailand and Indonesia. Although they didn't arrive till after 7pm and left before 8am it was still interesting to talk with them about the differences between their countries and Japan - although the children had a bit of a hard time understanding their English....
Everything seems to be calculated in terms of Dad's trip here at the moment - so in those terms this was the last group of guests before he arrives next week. Right now I'm off to do some kindy teaching and then to a different kindergarten for meetings all afternoon.... the last before Dad comes!

Break?

Today started with me taking my son to kindergarten and being mobbed by two of the teachers and having to sing a solo version of "We wish you a merry Christmas" and "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" (I think they want to sing them at the end of year production) ..... Now anyone who knows me well knows that I don't sing - especially unaccompanied and especially not in front of people. But, this being Japan I found my self doing it and getting a round of applause for my efforts - a different kind of way to build up your ego and start the day!
After that I headed to my "real job" - which I don't actually do that often now - facilitating an outdoor education program. Today was a lot of fun with an international group from a local university. I think there were about 13 different nationalities in the group of 30 - making it very interesting when they started doing the climbing wall and everyone was yelling words of support to each other in many different languages. We discovered what means "go for it" in one language means "milk" in another...... I'm not sure how encouraged someone would be if they heard someone shouting "milk, milk, milk" at them while they were half way up the wall! I joined them for a delicious barbecue afterwards so it was a nice break in some ways.
Back to teaching at school tomorrow... the three worst classes in the school crammed into one morning. I can hardly wait!

We survived!

We all survived Sunday! I was up at 4:45am to make the lunch and breakfast for the guests who had stayed on Saturday night. By 7:40 I was out of the house to take my daughter to school then back the other direction to take my son to kindergarten (he was doing marching at a different sports day) then back to school again in time for the opening speeches etc. at the school sports day at 8:30am. By then I thought I had done enough for the whole day, but no... I still had to participate in the "catch the ball in the basket" game, the "eat the marshmallow from a tray of flour game" as well as hold the goal tape, feed the kids (and grandmother) lunch and get back home in time to teach some English.... In the middle of it my husband arrived back after successfully completing his 100km walk (they left at 2pm and he finished at about 6:15am so you can do the maths...). He did a great job, but spent the rest of the day shaking and sleeping. I think he is still a bit sore today, but definitely on the mend!
My son got to meet all his new classmates for next year - a total of 7 boys and 3 girls will be in his class. He is the big one at the back that is not wearing the bright orange shorts....
For anyone who doesn't know what a Japanese sports day is like please check last year's blog entry: Sports Day 2007
Trev & Gill - the number of people who asked me if you were here again this year was too difficult to keep track of! You definitely made an impression..... and were missed by us this year.

After the sports day the preparations for my daughter's birthday party began - fortunately I am not very good at throwing things away so I had plenty of Halloween decorations that I made about 10 years ago to stick around the place and a few really big pumpkins in the garden to use for decorations. My daughter wanted a number 8 cake, which made life simple. Apart from number 1 I think number 8 has to be the easiest cake possible. She had a really good day, but was pretty zonked by the end of it. I must admit I was also in bed by 8:30pm, which meant I had to get up early this morning to prepare for today's classes. Roll on November!

100km journey

This afternoon my husband set out on a journey - a 100km journey - a 100km journey on foot - a nonstop 100km journey - a nonstop 100km journey on foot through the night.
Fortunately he is not alone. In fact there are over 2,500 people participating in this annual event which sees them walk all the way from Yukuhashi to Beppu - a total of 100km (bet you didn't guess that!). He has wanted to do it for a few years now, but has always had work on that day. So today he finally managed to do it (well actually he is still walking right now so I guess I can only say that he has finally managed to start it). He is equipped with every kind of thing imaginable to help him in his quest - little containers with separators for chunks of sugar, origami salt holders, fancy water bags, very stylish Lycra clothing etc. Here's hoping it all aids him enough to get him to the finish line.
Tonight we also have some more guests - a really nice family from Germany. Again they are hiking and biking - too much energy for me!
Tomorrow is going to be a huge day.... sports day in one place, marching in a different place, English lesson - oh and of course I get to make the stupid lunch box all over again... at the same time as making the guests' breakfast! If I'm still alive by tomorrow night I'll tell you how it went. If I'm not still alive you can blame it on the door .....

The forbidden door

This morning I walked out our kitchen door directly on to the deck, walked across the lawn, through the new hole in the hedge, down the new steps and put the compost in the compost bin - all in my pajamas. It felt great! Now that might sound a little strange to some of you, but I have been married now for almost 10 years and this is the first time I have been able to do this. In fact, it was the first time in more than 10 years that the kitchen door has been opened. Why? Because Japanese people tend to be very superstitious and even if it means a lot of inconvenience that tend to believe what fortune tellers etc. tell them. This was the case with my husband too - after his first marriage ended he took the plans of his house to a fortune teller and they told him that the failure of his marriage was because the placement of 2 doors within the house was incorrect. One is a door in the kitchen and one is a door that leads directly from the bathroom outside. For the first few years I decided to go along with this and didn't even open the window in the door in the kitchen (40 degrees outside in summer... imagine the kitchen with limited ventilation!), but last night I had had enough and decided to ask yet again if I could remove all the things from in front of the door (it had become a convenient place to dump anything and everything that wouldn't fit in the cupboards) and make it possible to go directly from the kitchen outside. I don't know if my husband just wasn't listening properly or if he has started to question the original fortune teller, but I was given permission to do so and spent till about midnight rearranging things - the result.... a much lighter, much bigger kitchen. I'm hoping that another result is not that the world will end tomorrow.... if it does, I apologize - it was my fault, I opened the door.......

Garden reform part 1

When we came back from New Zealand in March I decided I was sick of waiting for things to be done so I brought back some money that I made from a building investment and made a list of the things that I wanted to get done this year.

1. Curtains for the cottage - tick
2. Deck for the cottage - tick
3. Table for the "dining room" - tick
4. Fence for the top garden - not quite
5. Chickens - maybe next century
6. Pizza oven - see "chickens"
7. Redo front garden - now underway!

I had visions of reshaping the front garden myself, but I know I will never find the time to do it so I have ended up getting a company in to do it and build me some stairs down to my big vegetable garden at the same time. They started today and although they remind me a bit of a small family of gnomes (you have to be here to imagine it...) they are doing a good job and it should all be finished in a couple of days. Hopefully more progress photos tomorrow!

What a waste!

I know you have all been holding your breath... did I get up early and make the lunch box? Did it rain? Was the sports day postponed? The answer to all the above was... yes! The worst possible scenario happened - I decided the rain may not be bad enough to cancel the sports day so got up before 5am and started making the silly lunch box. Then at 6am the phone went and... that's right the sports day was postponed till next week. AAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH! It meant there was plenty for breakfast and lunch and I managed to use some of it for dinner too - for the guests that we had to stay. Another really nice couple doing the hike and bike - this time from Maryland, America. I guess looking at it in a positive light it means I have had a practice run for next week!

Today my daughter had a day off school (in lieu of going on Saturday) so we went to do some extra research on the town of Yufuin. I will take my father's group there at the end of the month so I wanted to make sure I didn't get them too lost! One of the problems with Japanese travel is that in order to see some of the best places you really have to be able to read some Japanese. Today we went to a great hot spring bath that proves the point. When you get in the gate you are given a map in Japanese, instructions in Japanese and let loose in a beautiful area to find your way to the hot spring that suits you best. There are private baths for those who are a little shy or wonderful, big open air baths with wonderful views of the mountain for those who don't mind baring their bits to the rest of the world. There is even a mixed bath for the very brave, but we didn't quite make it there! Of course the problem is which door should you go in? The signs in the pictures show whether it is the female or male bath..... I guess it is lucky that I will be there to help out with this group!

Carp feeding was the highlight of the outing for my daughter. You can never have enough food to satisfy them! You can work out whether I am talking about the carp or my daughter....

What would you do?

Today was my daughter's eighth birthday. We celebrated with make your own sushi and a pretty poor excuse for a cake. Not that she was complaining... in fact she had no idea I had made it so her eyes just about burst out of her head when she saw the candles. Today she had to go to school (yes I know it is Saturday, but they needed to prepare for the sports day) so she got a hand made lunch, with a surprise birthday card in it. The joys of having children! We are having her party on the 13th, hence the pretty poor effort today!
Right now I am in a very big dilemma. Tomorrow is the big school sports day (for anyone new to the blog please check out last year's here: Sports Day 2007). Despite the fact that we all went this afternoon to help put up the tents the weather forecast has changed significantly and there is now a 100% chance of reasonably heavy rain from the morning - according to one weather station and a 90% chance of rain from the afternoon according to another. If the first one is correct then the chance of the sports day being postponed is pretty high. If the second one is correct then the chances of it being postponed are pretty low. So... do I wake up at 5am to make the stupid lunch box, or do I take my chances and sleep till 7am then if it is actually on race to the convenience store, buy 5 lunch boxes and take all the bits out of them and put them in one of my own boxes and pretend I was up all morning making it? It doesn't help that there are guests staying tomorrow night too, so I should be getting organised for them too. I think I'll have another cup of tea and ignore everything for a bit - avoidance is a great thing!

Peace and Tears

Over the weekend we had another group of junior high school girls come to stay. Although I thought my eardrums were going to explode the first few minutes after they arrived (they were shown into the cottage....) they soon calmed down and ended up being the best group of students we have had yet. I think it helped that my children weren't at school all day so they could play with them too. As well as the normal pizza making, muffin making, pavlova making, rotary hoeing, potato planting etc. we also managed to do some real "autumn" activities. There are plenty of chestnuts lying around at the moment to collect and of course peeling them always adds another half hour or so to the experience. It is peanut pulling time too so they did all that for me as well as carving themselves a pumpkin... not quite Halloween, but they really enjoyed it anyway. I have no idea how many photos they took, but they are all the same.... peace sign with different backgrounds!
We said goodbye to them on Sunday morning and they were all in tears... I was too tired to go that far, but it was definitely a nice group to have.
On Sunday afternoon we went to a friend's one year old party and discovered another use for peanuts.... peanut butter gets chewing gum out of hair!

Christmas is coming

Today felt like the first day in a long time that I didn't have to go to work and that I didn't have any children at home. To celebrate I finally got around to making this year's Christmas cake. For any of the Japanese readers... you are not misunderstanding the English - Christmas cakes in New Zealand are not simply sweet sponge cakes filled with piles of cream and decorated with strawberries, they are actually very heavy (mine is about 2.5kg) fruit cakes. 1.5kg of dried fruit, raisins etc., 6 eggs etc. are all mixed together and baked for about 3 and a half hours. For the best flavour they are supposed to be made well in advance, with some people making them as early as a year in advance. I figure 3 months is better than nothing... Roll on Christmas so we can eat it! And yes... after 12 years living here I did finally treat myself to a proper cake mixer this year. Heaven!

On Tuesday while I was at work our deck was also completed. It looks pretty good and just needs one more coat of paint - that will have to wait for a few more days though as another group of giggly junior high school girls will arrive tomorrow for 2 nights. Fun, fun, fun!

Autumn equinox

Everybody who has a blog about Japan is currently writing about the autumn equinox, which was yesterday. Here it is celebrated as a public holiday and is another time of the year when people clean and visit their graves. In our area it is also a time when the community gets together to pray for a good rice harvest (praying that the typhoons stay away.....). We have a tiny community center across the road from us and on this day one person from each household is supposed to go and take part in the festivities. Traditionally the men sat around and ate and drank while the woman rushed around cleaning, cooking and serving all the food before cleaning everything up while the men went up the hill to pray at the small shrine. Things have changed a bit now though and although the women are still responsible for the cleaning (oops... I had to work all day yesterday so couldn't help) the food is now supplied by the local restaurant and the trip up the mountain to the shrine consists of everyone sitting on their knees facing the general direction of the shrine and praying (most members of my community are too old to make it up the hill).
One thing that hasn't changed is the seating arrangements.... in Japan the people furthest from the kitchen are always the most important people (ie the oldest) and then the people get younger as you head towards the kitchen - of course all the men are before the women no matter what their age.....
Although the numbers participating in this ritual are decreasing each year as households die out, it is nice to see it continuing in a more modern form. I wonder when they will bring in the cleaning company too......

Busy day

Does anybody else have days where things are just so busy, but go so smoothly that at the end of it all you have a great sense of accomplishment? Today was one of those days for me. It started with the main event - a cooking classroom for 11 people. They were all people who had collected "stamps" by shopping at shops in Usa and they were cashing in their stamps to come and participate in a herb and NZ baking morning. Fortunately they paid me in cash, not stamps! It was a lot of fun and as well as the ooing and aaing over simple things like cheap cheese graters, can openers and garlic presses we managed to make 5 different things in 2 hours..... herbed french bread, herbed potato salad, basil pesto, citrus slice and pumpkin muffins. They went home laden with fresh basil, lemon grass and lemon verbena and seemed to have a great day.
30 minutes after they left a friend came over with her 2 children and we drunk copious quantities of coffee while the children raced around outside. Then 5 minutes after they left my English student arrived for her weekly lessons. Needless to say we went to the convenience store for tea tonight!
Tomorrow I'm off to KitaKyushu for the day to do a team building program for a group of ladies.... I can hardly wait!

Non event

One thing about living in Japan that is different from New Zealand is the weather forecasts. There is a "famous" story about my husband going to New Zealand for the first time and staring out the window at a beautiful blue sky at 3pm and asking where the rain was. Apparently he had seen on the forecast that it was due to rain at 3pm.... Of course for those who live in New Zealand you will know that forecasting there is never that accurate. However in Japan it is often very accurate - down to the minute in some cases. One thing they haven't managed to perfect though is the forecasting of typhoons. It is currently typhoon season here and we were due to be hit by a really bad one last night. This meant that I had to tidy up everything that could possibly be blown away outside in preparation. Phone lists were handed out at school to inform us of who we had to ring in the case of school being cancelled etc. and then.... the typhoon took off on a completely different route and missed us completely. We hardly even got a thimble full of rain. I guess at least the garden area was tidied up a bit and the almost completed deck managed to get its first layer of paint. Nothing like being forced into action!

Futagoji

When you go to a place more than once you notice new things each time. Today I went back to a temple called "Futagoji" to study it a little more before I take my father's group on a tour there in October. It is a really peaceful temple set in wonderful grounds with little surprises around each corner. The priest there is always willing to answer any stupid questions I might have and today I came up with yet another silly question... is there any significance to the frog statues that appear in different places around the temple grounds? There is a big stone frog outside the main temple entrance that people have stuffed money into and if you look carefully at the last picture here you will see there are some silly frogs having a shoulder ride on the left etc. To me they don't quite fit with the seriousness of the place, but I wanted to know why they were there. The answer..... the person who made all the other statues liked frogs and threw them in as a bonus. In other words no meaning at all - sometimes trying to put meaning to everything we see is not necessary!
One thing I find a little frustrating at the temples and shrines here is that each place seems to have their own explanation for things. Today the priest I was talking to came up with a good explanation for this - he said that it is easier to think in terms of a department store. The overall concept is the same everywhere, based on the basic concepts that were brought over from India and China many years ago, but that all of the individual temples are like the speciality stores within the department store. They each have their own take on things and adapt them to suit their own "customers", environment etc. No relation to frogs, but a reasonable explanation all the same!
I almost forgot to add that it poured on the last day of our deck making so we have an almost finished deck! I think the finishing touches should be made this weekend. Fingers crossed the approaching typhoon doesn't blow it over before then.