Roadside friends

Because I work at a zillion different places I have to drive a lot. I get so used to the roads that I sometimes find myself at my destination without actually knowing how I got there - my brain just seems to guide me there while I am thinking about other things. There is one road in particular that I have to go on at least twice a day and sometimes up to six times a day so I am usually in autopilot mode. The other day there were roadworks on this road (something very common around here near the end of the financial year... gotta use up the budget or lose it!) and I was stopped beside these little friends on the side of the road. I must have driven past them a zillion times, but have never seen them before. I managed to whip out and get a photo of them in all their winter glory and with their selection of drinks opened and even poured into their glasses... if you look closely at the closeup photo you will see the glass of beer. I can imagine that if this was in New Zealand the local teenagers would be there in a flash ready to empty the glass!
Perhaps I will try opening my eyes a little more and maybe I'll discover a few more little friends around the place.

Breakfast

I teach one class that follows a textbook and this week we were studying about asking for different things at breakfast when you are at a home stay. First I started by getting them to say anything that came to mind when I said the word "breakfast" and they came up with the standard Japanese answers - rice, miso soup, egg roll, fish, toast, milk etc. I then showed them the typical words that came up when I googled American breakfasts - donuts, waffles, pancakes, toast, cereal, bacon, fried eggs etc. We talked a bit about how most people in in New Zealand just get their own breakfast as opposed to the Japanese way of the mother getting up early and making breakfast for everyone. We talked about the fact that a lot of breakfast foods in America and New Zealand are sweet compared to salty Japanese pickles, fish etc.
The next day my son proved that he is not really Japanese and has a good dose of kiwi blood in him when he ate his piece of toast (that he had made for himself) covered in strawberry jam and then decided he was still hungry and needed some dessert... for breakfast. So he chose to eat an entire pavlova. Granted it was a small pavlova, but he ate the whole thing and no one in our family thought it was a particularly strange thing to do. Perhaps my husband also has more kiwi blood in him that I thought!

An anxious couple of days

Over the weekend we had about 3 phone calls from different divisions of the prefectural office and the city office to check exactly how many chickens we have and that they are all okay. The reason for all this is because there have been quite a few new outbreaks of bird flu at chicken farms in a neighbouring prefecture, Miyazaki. We reassured them that all our chickens were all running around in their covered area (I have been very good about not letting them out lately) and laying beautiful eggs in large quantities each day.
And then yesterday we came home from a day away to discover that one of our very happy, healthy chickens had rolled over and...... died.... We did all the right things and rang the officials, my husband packed it into a double bag and took it to the town office only to be told to just put it somewhere and wait for a day. If another chicken died within 24 hours then we would need to get them checked, but if not we could just put it out with the "burnable" rubbish this morning as chances of it having died from bird flu would be very low. So we have been checking the chickens every half an hour or so and having visions of people in space suits coming in, TV cameras taking over the lawn and having all our neighbours' chicken farms shut down because our chickens had been the first in Oita prefecture to be infected with the dreaded bird flu.
Fortunately the remaining 21 chickens appear to be completely fine and rewarded us with 17 eggs today so we have our fingers crossed that the combination of freezing temperatures and old age were the cause of our first ever chicken death. I just wish the timing had been a little different! We haven't bothered to tell my parents-in-law about the incident as it is likely to just confirm that our "free range" ways are not good and they are likely to mention it to the neighbours who are likely to relay the story to others in the area who will change the story into something that it is not and we will end up with people in spacesuits at our backdoor and TV reporters camped on the lawn. I rewarded the remaining 21 chickens for being happy and healthy by making them a huge pot of hot porridge, which they scoffed down this morning.
Here's hoping I don't have a "spoke too soon" moment in the next week or so.....

Gaining strength

Two posts in one night... I hope it doesn't mean I am coming down with the flu!
A few weeks ago it was an absolutely freezing day so my husband decided to go to our town's waterfall to see if it was frozen and take a few photos. Unfortunately for him it wasn't frozen, but he did find the local karate club.... in the waterfall..... making themselves strong. From what I have heard this is quite a common thing for martial arts groups to do here in Japan - there is even a special word for it "Kangeiko" or "mid-winter training". Different clubs will go to the ocean, into lakes or rivers in the winter and test their staying power and prove that they are mentally strong. I personally think they are crazy and would be more than happy to just skip it and roast marshmallows on the fire ready for their return, but I'm sure it must be very character building.....

New Laying Spot

I've decided that the escapee chicken is actually very smart. She still insists on escaping each day to lay her egg and is onto her 4th different spot now (well the 4th one that I have found anyway...). We had a patch of really cold, windy, snowy weather for a while and during that time she discovered the bike shed and took it over as her daily laying spot. The first time I discovered her in there it was because she had actually rung the bell on the bike to alert us that she had finished. She now strolls up to the deck door when she has finished laying and "asks" us to let her back into the chicken house. I'm hoping she will keep using her new nest for a while yet... it is clean, dry and easy to find!

For Mum

Just a couple of photos for Mum... to show that not only do I chop a lot of the wood we use, but that I am also usually the chief stacker! I must admit I used to be fairly hopeless at it, but as the years go by I am starting to be a master stacker. At least it always looks good until it starts to dry out and move around a bit and then eventually fall over! Judging by how we have been racing through our supply in the last few weeks I think we are going to have to do another 2 or 3 loads (or more...) as big as this one ready for next year..... not that I am complaining... I wouldn't give up my spot by our fire for any kerosene heater or air-conditioner heater in the world!

The good and bad...

Living in another country always makes you aware of "differences" and you find yourself weighing up what things are "good" or "bad" all the time. This week a couple of things happened that showed both the good and bad about life here at the same time.
The first was that my daughter got sick. She was not ultra sick - just a sore throat, but with the "influenza" season in full blast here I made her stay home from school. It was her first sick day from school since she started almost 4 years ago. She was not impressed! Anyway, back to the good and bad... one of the possible reasons that she got sick is that the classrooms at school are so freezing.... and the corridors are even worse. I won't even start about the gymnasium where they still do P.E. in shorts and t-shirts. The teacher took great pleasure telling me that they had the "stove" on all day in the classroom and it still only got up to 11 degrees - I repeat INSIDE the classroom, a MAXIMUM of 11 degrees. As a result of the day off I discovered one great thing that they do here at our school - I have no idea if they do it at other schools or not, but when my son came home he handed my daughter a big envelope which one of the children had written all the things they had done that day, all the things they would be doing the next day and then there were messages from each child to Emily telling her to get well etc. as well as a message from the teacher. Of course there was also homework inside the envelope, but if you ignore that I was really impressed with the effort that was taken to keep sick kids up to date. Apparently they do it every day for any student who is away and often the teacher will take it to the child's house if they have no siblings at school. I have absolutely no idea if anything like this is done in New Zealand, so it may not actually be a "difference" as such.

The second good/bad thing happened to my son. For anyone who has ever been to Japan you will you know how wonderful Mr. Toto is. He is the king of toilets and although most people are usually a bit scared to try out many of the buttons on the warm-seated, technological wonders in the beginning, after a few months most people succumb, push the odd button or two and never look back! My son has recently discovered one of the buttons - the bottom wash one! He takes after both his New Zealand and Japanese grandfather and takes a book with him to the toilet while he takes his time to completely cleanse out his system. In an attempt to speed up the process a little my husband showed him how to use the bum washer. The other day he tried it by himself for the first time. He had the door locked. He was calling for help. Unfortunately my husband had shown him the on button, but not the off button so my son was sitting helplessly on the toilet with water gushing up to clean his bits, unable to reach the lock on the door to let us in to help him and starting to get a little worried! Fortunately we were able to tell him which button to push and I don't think he was scared of the marvelous buttons for life....
I have millions of posts that I am behind on again... maybe tomorrow!

Tempting Fate

The whole world seems to be dealing with natural disasters at the moment - extreme temperatures, flooding, huge snowfalls, earthquakes etc. and we have been warned that this year is going to be a very cold winter... only so far we have come off very lightly at our house. I know it is still early, but so far we have only had one relatively small snowfall - which resulted in one relatively small snowman that lasted all of about one afternoon. I don't have any snow tyres on my car yet so I am hoping that the promised wicked winter never actually arrives and that we can keep a lot of our wood supply for next year...
Now that I've written this I'm sure that from tomorrow the heavens will open and we will be snowed in for the next week - at least it would be a good excuse not to go back to work!

Piano concert - again....

My son decided to stop learning the piano near the end of last year (mainly because he didn't want to take part in the piano concert...) so this year we only had to concentrate on my daughter's performance. Our piano teacher only has about 10 students so it is never too long and it gives the students a goal to work towards. For family members (and anyone else who is interested...) here is a video of her latest piece. Better late than never.... For anyone who checked this earlier - my original upload didn't work. Here are two new videos - I hope! It is scary when your children start wearing your clothes.....

New Year

I have definitely lived here too long.... After spending 11 New Years in this little valley I think I have perfected most things. I don't have to ask what day the mochi (rice cake) making is on, I can roll the mochi into perfect rounds, I don't blink twice when my father-in-law wanders around with tissues stuck up his nose, and I enjoy digging into a freshly made bright green, sticky rice cake filled with sweet beans almost as much as the children do!
I also know which meals we will be expected to spend at the in-laws and exactly what we will be eating each time. I know that I am responsible for the potato salad on the first night and for cutting up the vegetables for the "barbeque" style fry up on the second night. I know that I am responsible for washing the dishes while my husband sits in the heated table drinking beer and talking with his uncle. I know that it is pointless asking to have the TV turned off during any second of our time there and having the volume turned down when my father-in-law is going increasingly deaf is also a losing battle. I know that we will start eating dinner at 4:45pm each night, despite the fact that no one is actually hungry. I know that we need to take plenty of warm clothes and torches for the cold, 100m walk home each evening. I know that we are expected to be at the in-laws for breakfast of vegetable and mochi soup on New Year's day and that the children will be given envelopes of money which I can no longer steal off them and discreetly deposit in their bank accounts.
Knowing all these things doesn't make New Year in our family any more exciting, but having experienced EXACTLY the same thing for 11 years does make it predictable and therefore relatively relaxing. I'm not going to try and change it. In my mind Christmas is for the children and New Year is for the older generation here in Japan - lots of traditions, not so much excitement! I hope you all had a good New Year with the occasional surprise thrown in!

Christmas 2010

This year we had a really relaxed Christmas. We spent the morning doing the Christmas stockings and presents and playing around and then we headed to our friend's house in the afternoon. I THINK (my memory is not exactly great...) that it is the first year in about 10 years that we haven't had "Christmas Dinner" at our house. We have been so lucky in that we have always had family or friends come to visit over this time, but this year one of our friends kindly offered their house for us to share Christmas at. It was a great afternoon/evening/night where 3 "international" families got together, all brought different parts of the dinner and just generally had a great time chatting and eating till we burst. I'm sure it wasn't as relaxing for Kayo and Steve as it was for us, but I had a great time. Thank you! It was made better by the fact that they had a spare room where we could stay so both Tom and I could have a few glasses of wine and not have to worry about how we were going to get home!
I know that for a lot of international couples living in Japan Christmas is a time where the "foreign" member of the family starts to get homesick and wishes they were home with their family as the Japanese Christmas is just not the same as "home". I agree it is not the same, but it is what you make it and for me I really enjoy the special time we make it here. The kids are still fully into Santa and the build up to Christmas starts in about October for my son. Children definitely make Christmas for me. Of course I wouldn't protest to a warm New Zealand Christmas in the near future, but for now I am happy sitting by the fire reading books and relaxing with great company and delicious food.

Oops

I'm not quite sure why I haven't written lately - not a lack of things to write about... just lack of motivation really (gosh how many times have I written that in the past!). The fact that the memory card on my camera is full is probably a good enough reason to do a bit of a catch up. I'll try to add a few entries at once - but I prefer to break them into topics etc. so you may want to scroll a bit to see if there is anything new.... or perhaps I will lose focus and only post this one! It is school holidays here at the moment so I find myself fighting with the children over access to the computer when we are not out braving the cold playing "park golf" or going bowling etc.
Anyway, first catch up - the rogue chicken! The same chicken has still been escaping each day to lay her egg then happily going back inside as soon as she has done so. I know where she is getting out, but as she is the only one who does it I'm not going to stop her. After I stole her huge pile of eggs she started laying somewhere different. Fortunately I discovered her next spot under the flax bush on the first day and my daughter found her latest "nest" a few days ago -on top of the nesting boxes... outside the actual chicken house! I managed to get a very short video of her popping out her egg this afternoon. For your viewing pleasure - a chicken's bottom! Aren't you glad I'm back in the blogging world again?

Discovery

Fact: We have 22 chickens
Fact: Chickens lay a maximum of 1 egg a day (in 99.9% of cases anyway)
Fact: I collected 26 eggs today.....

It seems that the escapee chicken has still been escaping every day and has found a new place to lay. It had stopped laying in its rubbish pile, but I had presumed that it had actually started laying in the nesting boxes as I couldn't find any little piles of eggs anywhere - at least not until today! It appears that the lemon grass plant is preferable to the rubbish pile and I collected 11 eggs from her little stash today. Here's hoping that me removing them doesn't encourage her to find a different spot to lay - I don't have the time or energy for hide and seek right now!

The best present ever

Today I went to school again... I went yesterday for an afternoon/evening of PTA stuff, but today was a little different. Today it was my son's class's turn to do a presentation in front of the whole school for 10 minutes in the morning. There are 12 children in the class (the biggest in the school!). They are all 7 or 8 years old. I had no real idea what the presentation was going to be about, but I knew it was something to do with Peace and that they had been practicing for weeks. It turned out that December 7th was the day in 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in America and World War 2 took a different turn when America declared war on Japan. I had no idea. In fact I really know nothing about the war. My generation in New Zealand seems to know that there was a war, but it hasn't really effected us personally (probably a huge over-generalization, but...).
This morning my son's class (who are usually pretty out of control) stood in front of the school and in their loudest voices told us a story of a family who died in the war. They sang a wonderful song about how we should all stand together in peace and make the world a great one. They stood in unison and asked us all to never consider war ever again. My son is continually telling me that war is bad and he knows why. I'm sure there are people who would disagree with me and say that Japan teaches the history of the war etc. in a biased way, but from all the presentations I have seen this is not the case. The teachers at our school do not point fingers. They talk about the lead up to the war and the things which Japan did to escalate it. They talk more about how we can prevent it in the future than anything else. However the children are the ones who really get the point across. Their presentation this morning should have been shown worldwide and perhaps a few more people might listen.
The presentation also got me thinking a bit more about Christmas. Every year I feel obliged to get presents under the tree for my family etc. Living far away from them I have no idea what they want or need so most things are pretty random. I'm not saying that my gifts aren't appreciated, but I do often feel like it is an obligation rather than a heart-felt gift. Having spent the last few days trying to literally clean out our house (I think I've taken out 6 big bags of rubbish already) I have been conscious of how worthless a lot of the junk we accumulate is and how precious the things are that have really been given from the heart.
One of the teachers commented after the presentation today that the biggest gift the children can give us is the gift of peace. I totally agree and I think the biggest gift that adults can give children is the capacity to bring peace to their own little piece of the world. So.... this morning I made a decision. I'm not going to send any Christmas presents to New Zealand this year. Sorry! Instead I am going to send gifts at a time when I think they are necessary and important. Please feel free to do the same! And in the meantime I am going to give my family the gift of raising my children, their great-grandchildren, grandchildren, niece and nephew in a way in which they can hopefully bring as much happiness and peace to my family's lives as possible in the future.
I realize this is all a bit deep for a Wednesday morning - don't worry, I'll be back with the normal chicken news in the very near future!

Back to the land of the living

I'm back! I haven't actually been away anywhere in particular, just not quite in a space where I was able to sit at the computer. As well as normal work I had a few extra programs - including one speech I had to do yesterday for over 200 people, for one and a half hours.... I was almost grateful when a few of the old men fell asleep in the 12th row! Actually it went pretty well in the end - I always enjoy the chance to discuss the Japanese education system and some of its faults - just a shame I have to do it in Japanese!
As well as this I had a great idea a couple of weeks ago to make an advent calendar for some of my family.... out of different shaped origami boxes/envelopes. The main problem was that I decided to do it quite late in November... which meant it had to be finished very quickly in order to get to New Zealand before December 1st. Another problem was that we needed to make 3 sets of not only the boxes/envelopes, but also 3 sets of all the contents as well. If you are good at maths that calculates out to 72 boxes/envelopes and 72 things to go in them - some bought, but lots handmade too. The children worked really hard with me and we managed to get it all done, boxed up and sent in time for it to arrive before the 1st. In fact in the end I think we had a few days to spare. Fortunately customs didn't insist on opening every single envelope... it may have taken them a few hours! As much as I would have loved to make a set for all my different family members and friends three was our limit this year, so apologies to anyone who hasn't received one. Maybe next year......

Coming of "half" age ceremony

In Japan there are zillions of ceremonies and one of the biggest ones is for people who have turned twenty and are therefore "adults". Today there was a ceremony at school for all the children in my daughter's class (all 11 of them....) celebrating the fact that they are now half way towards that big turning point in their lives. There was a ceremony where they received a certificate from the principal, endured her long speech about the fact that they would be able to vote when they turned 20 and would therefore be responsible for everything in the world. There was singing, a message from each child to their parents, a message to the children from the parents and small gifts all around. I personally am not particularly excited by all these ceremonies, but the children wanted to do it and spent hours practicing, decorating the room etc. It wasn't as bad as it could have been and the bonus of having a potluck lunch (actually not very "potluck" as one of the mothers insisted on having a meeting at school one night to organise who would bring what....) was worth the effort of going to school on a Sunday! This ceremony is not one that is "officially" recognised, but is just something that one of the teachers started at this school a few years ago. Here's hoping the next ten years prove to be a little less challenging than the first ten! Hope is a wonderful if not always realistic thing!

Bag collection

The other day I was watching a disgusting programme on TV with my daughter about celebrities and their collections of stupidly priced shoes, bags, jewelery etc. Most of their outfits cost more than our house! I was trying to explain to my daughter how utterly unnecessary it was to have 650 bags or 900 hats - especially at the prices they were charging when she kindly pointed out that I have quite a collection of bags too - most of them completely full on my bedroom floor! Just to prove her right the photo shows all the bags I am currently using - most are bags that I was given or have inherited and all of them are used every week.
I teach at a total of 8 different schools and kindergartens - with up to 5 different classes at each place. I also do quite a lot of one-off teaching or recreation programmes. When I first started teaching "privately" I took the easy way out and basically did all the same lessons at all the places I was teaching each week. Although it made preparation easy, one whole week of the same lessons soon led me to complete boredom! Now I have taken it to the opposite extreme and I am doing completely different topics at basically all the places I teach at - hence the need for so many bags! There are my basic bags for different schools. There are my "special" bags for current topics - currently one is full of vehicles that I use for teaching transportation, another is full of different shaped objects for teaching shapes and the big barn at the back is full of animals for a unit on animals. And of course there is my "magic" handbag which seems to be able to produce anything necessary at any given time. My biggest problem is always trying to work out which bag I used last and therefore which bag currently holds my diary to tell me which bag I need next!
Megan - at least Yamaura can't complain that I am ever without a bag....

Christmas come early?

All the shops here have already got their Christmas displays out and the cake shops are already taking orders for the cream filled christmas cakes, but I have thing about bringing anything "Christmassy" out before December the first. However yesterday we broke the rule when we started to decorate our piano with cedar branches..... it looks pretty Christmassy, but it is actually to deal with a mousey problem we discovered yesterday. The piano tuner came to tune the piano and discovered a couple of mouse nests inside the piano. Apparently it is not actually that unusual for this to happen and they usually get into the piano from the small space by the pedals - hence the spiky cedar branches which are supposed to discourage them. We also discovered that the felt cover that goes over the keys was not in fact hacked with scissors by the children (which I scolded them loudly for last week), but was actually ferreted away by the mouse.... I did apologize for my assumption.... Now we just have to catch the little friend before our guests arrive tomorrow night - I can just imagine a tiny field mouse racing across the room as we sit down to dinner!

Tateishi Gaku

Today was the "main event" for the senior school in terms of their traditional dance. They had to perform at a local event at a shrine near the school. They did their "dance" then led a procession of men in tight-fitting clothing carrying weird things. I'd love to be able to tell you what it was all about, but unfortunately the children were given no history or information about the event and all of the other parents and teachers I asked about couldn't enlighten me either! Perhaps by the time my son dances here for the last time (we have another 4 years...) I will be able to inform you a little more!

Location

I've been thinking about a question Kevin asked me in a comment he left on my blog last week. His question was "How far are you from the neighbors? Or from your own fields? Don't your chickens mess with your and your neighbors' crops?"

When I first read his question I thought - we live in the countryside so of course we don't have any neighbours for our chickens to bother. And then I thought a little harder and realised that we are in a bit of a unique situation here in the middle of the Japanese countryside. For anyone coming from New Zealand your image of countryside is probably one house, 10km of farm land, another house, another 10km of farm land etc. Houses are built to get maximum sunshine or a good view. Here in Japan things are a little different. All land that is vaguely flat was traditionally used for rice farming and houses were built in the cold bases of the mountains etc. that were too difficult to farm. This resulted in little clusters of houses in mainly cold areas and then vast areas of rice fields. The typical distance between houses in the countryside is probably around 5 meters. The first photo is of the "space" between my parents-in-law's house and their neighbour. The second is of one of the little "clusters" of houses near our house. Not exactly spacious!
Fortunately my husband had the foresight to build a house in a different kind of location before I met him. Our house is built on a rice field with no houses directly next to it. It is built to catch as much sun as possible and has a big grassy area for the children to play on. We are slowly taking over a few of the rice fields for gardening purposes. The chickens have one old small rice field, I have a big rice field for my garden and I have another tiny rice field for my herb and fruit garden. The chickens run free around our lawn and the herb, fruit and flower gardens. There is a steep set of stairs down to the vegetable garden which the chickens haven't discovered yet. Their only other exit is onto the road - which they very occasionally stray onto. There is a small river directly in front of our house so we can never be "built out". I know that countryside is not for everyone, but I personally think we have an ideal location! Now if there was a small cafe on one of our other rice fields it would be perfect......