Ode to Nan

Life has been what you could say a little busy lately. As usual I promise to update the goings on very soon, but in the meantime my daughter has started for me! As soon as we got home from taking my Mum to the train this morning she asked if she could write on her blog. The result is here. It is totally unedited and unprompted by me - there may be a bit of imagination needed with the spelling, but I'm sure you will get the message. We loved having you here Nan! I'll be back in the blogging world soon....

Fish and Chips

My mother arrived last night and we ate at a "family restaurant" on the way back from Fukuoka. Then tonight we had her first home-cooked meal at our house ..... fish and chips! My mother-in-law offered to give us some of the shark that they had filleted and I would have to say that it definitely tasted like good old Kiwi fish and chips - just what you want to feed your mother when she arrives in Japan from New Zealand! Perhaps I won't be saying no next time I am offered some - just trying to find someone who is willing to fillet it for us! I did go a little fancier than chips though with hedgehog potatoes and some fresh salad. Here's hoping the meals become a little more Japanese over the next 3 weeks.....

Best gift yet

I have been given some wonderful gifts in the past, but today's really takes the cake. One of the mothers from the kindergarten rang me all excited to say that her father had caught a shark and she had seen on TV that New Zealanders eat shark all the time in the form of fish and chips so she would bring it to me. I had visions of a tray of lovely white meat that I could put in a delicious beer batter and serve with some delicious oven baked chips. A taste of home - yippee! And then she opened her boot and ..... there were 3 large WHOLE hammerhead sharks (the pictures don't do them justice!) lying there. All for me. She was so excited - telling me that in Japan they usually just throw them away..... I can see why! Considering I have never even filleted a "normal" fish and considering my mother is arriving tomorrow and I haven't even gotten around to getting sheets onto her bed the thought of trying to fillet a whole, large hammerhead shark was too much for me so I have just spent the last hour trying to off-load them on the unsuspecting neighbours. The last one has been delivered and now all I need to do is get rid of the smell from the car. I guess the fish and chips will need to wait till we make it back to New Zealand next time!

Garden surprises

This year I am trying my best to keep the weeds under control mainly because last year I saw a few too many poisonous snakes in my garden under piles of weeds. Today I had a few spare hours so I attacked one area - making sure I jabbed the ground to check for any movement before pulling out the weeds. Fortunately no snakes jumped out, but I almost jumped out of my skin when this lovely BIG bullfrog that had been hibernating in the soil literally jumped out at me. I was glad there were no old ladies passing by at the time as I screamed a little too loudly considering it was just a frog! I really like the cute little green frogs that appear everywhere at this time of year, but am not so sure about these ones.....

Trip away

This weekend we had a date with Nathan and Megan to go camping. I had managed to convince the in-laws that they would be able to cope without us for the annual rice seed planting conveyor belt so we were all set... the only problem was that the weather forecast was for rain, rain and more rain. I was determined to go though so managed to find us a cabin to stay in on top of the biggest caves in Japan - Akiyoshido. We started the trip by walking underneath the ocean between Kyushu and Honshu islands - well actually Megan, Nathan and the kids did - I drove through a different tunnel and then met them on the other side! Next were the caves and then games, games and more games while we listened to the torrential rain all night. Thoughts of perhaps venturing to a castle town nearby, or even as far as Hiroshima were thrown out the window in the morning when the rain was still coming down and the thought of spending more time than absolutely necessary with the kids in the car meant we came home early and had a very lazy afternoon! Unfortunately my camera's batteries weren't charged so I don't have many photos... I'm sure if you check on Megan and Nathan's blog in the next few days they will have some good cave photos up. A good outing for a very rainy day!
The chickens seem to have grown a few more centimeters in the 2 days we were away and are now getting lots of their feathers, starting to perch and a few are even getting their combs. Of course they are also eating more, making more noise and making more poos! I can see yet another change of house will be necessary in the next few weeks.

Spring visitors

Spring has almost been and gone... unfortunately one of the joys of the countryside of Japan in this season is the appearance of these beautiful beasts. There are some years when we see virtually none, and then others when you come home and open the doors to let some fresh air inside and you discover a huge one like this on the INSIDE of the screen door.... yuck, yuck and more yuck! The children have been warned to check their shoes before putting them on each day and chances of me sleeping on the sofa in the very near future are very slim as this was discovered on the door by the sofa! For anyone unfamiliar with these beasts they are centipedes and their bite is not at all pleasant... as I found out one year when I pulled on my trousers that I had been drying outside and was unpleasantly surprised!

We may need to invest in some kind of repellent before various members of my family arrive at the start of next month....

Atari mae

There is a Japanese phrase that I have difficulty translating appropriately into English. It is "atari mae" and most dictionaries translate it loosely as "ordinary, reasonable or obvious". I think it is slightly different and the latest group of boys we had to stay had me thinking a lot about "atari mae". In general they were really nice, but some of their assumptions got me to thinking about what kind of family they have been brought up in. For example...

• they thought it was "atari mae" that I didn't eat. I am usually worried that there is not enough food so I generally wait till they have finished and then eat anything that is leftover. Most groups comment and ask if I want some, but this group never even noticed, let alone worried about it. I know that for a lot of Japanese families this is very normal - often the wife cooks at least twice a day to feed the children and then the husband whenever he gets home and often just "snacks" in between, but for us mealtimes are a family time.
  
• they thought it was "atari mae" that they could eat a meal fully prepared by me (usually they are meant to cook together, but I took pity on them one night) and not even think of saying thank you.
  
• they thought it was "atari mae" that if they chose to stay awake till 2am that they should be allowed to sleep till late and not have to work most of the day because they were too tired... unfortunately for them I am a little too strict to allow that!
• they thought it was "atari mae" that we would spend 3 days with them - thinking of things to do, feeding them, entertaining them (my husband even took the day off on Friday to help out) and that there was no real need to thank us. Yes, we are paid for them to come and stay, but it is still a lot of work.

I could go on a bit more, but I've been summoned to go and help put the first swarm of bees for the year into our new hive. Here's hoping they stay this year.
Having said all the above about the boys we did have some good times - more bamboo digging, fishing, planting sweet potatoes and of course wood cutting! Only one more group to go before my mother comes to visit..... here's hoping they have been taught the word "thank you" before they arrive.

New Classes

One of the reasons I haven't been updating my blog as much as I should be is that from April I started teaching 11 different English classes - some continuations from last year, but mostly completely new classes. I always seem to spend far too much time preparing and then doing something completely different during the classes....
The standard reaction from new children when I start teaching them is "why do you have blue eyes?". My standard response is "why do you have brown eyes?" - to which they look at me as if I am from Mars.
This year I have had two new reactions - the first was from a kindergarten child who stared at me with huge eyes and said "WOW - you have such a tiny face, and such a BIG body!". Honesty is great for the self esteem.... The second was from another kindergarten child who commented on my blue eyes and then proceeded to ask me if I could actually see out of blue eyes.... I guess internationalisation hasn't fully hit the countryside here!
On a completely different note, the chicks are all still growing at an amazing rate and my children are enjoying playing with them every day. We also just had a phone call asking if we want a goat.... can't wait to start a petting zoo!

New friend

Yet again I have fallen off the blogging wagon, and yet again I don't have time to catch up properly before I go to work this afternoon, but I do have some very valid excuses.... come back again soon and hopefully I will have gotten around to writing about them!
Just to give you a small taste though... today I went and picked up my new little friends. This is not a great photo as it was taken just as they were put into their new home, but we now have 12 tiny little chicks cheeping away in our living room (well that is where they are now, but I'm sure my husband will ask for them to be shifted after he gets home from work!). I'm not really a "cute" person, but these chicks are REALLY cute! They hatched this morning (not from our hens) and are slowly adapting to their new environment. I have absolutely no confidence in my ability to raise them till they are big enough to be put out in their outside hen house, but hopefully there will still be a few left when it is time to say goodbye to our older chickens. They seem to be eating okay - now I just need to get them drinking... and perhaps sleeping.

Monster Asparagus

One of the great things about writing a blog is that it becomes an instant reference point for checking when I did things in previous years etc. Today is a great example.... I have been picking some absolutely massive asparagus from my asparagus patch in the tunnel house. The biggest one I picked today was 4cm in diameter... it's worth getting a ruler out to see just how big this is, but if you don't have one just believe me that it is pretty big for a piece of asparagus! I had assumed that such huge asparagus would be far too tough to eat, but surprisingly it is tender... raw is absolutely divine.
I was trying to remember when I planted the asparagus and then I remembered that I had probably written about it on the blog and voila... end of April 2008. Reading back over the entry makes me appreciate even more the size and wonderful flavour of this asparagus that I raised from seed! If you want a reminder, click here... Asparagus Bed number 2 If you want a taste come and visit soon - definitely great to pick and munch on the way back to the house.

Japanese restaurants

Today was the first day in a string of public holidays here and I spent most of it in the garden. By 5:30pm my back was dying and I realised there was absolutely nothing in the house that I could whip up for tea in a short time (we had already had pasta for lunch...) so we decided to go out for tea as a special treat for me more than anyone. I have a love-hate relationship with Japanese restaurants. I love the fact that they are usually very child-friendly, but hate the way that the majority of Japanese children behave in restaurants. I love the speed at which most food comes after it is ordered, but hate the way that you don't feel like you can sit and chat for a couple of hours over your meal. I love picture menus and plastic food outside restaurants - it makes ordering so much easier when you can't read the menus. But, the one thing I hate the most about Japanese restaurants (apart from the smoking.... I won't even start on that!) is that the majority of the smaller restaurants have a television set that they have turned on very loud and in a position where every table in the restaurant can see it. We don't watch TV very much in our house (well not while the kids are awake) and it is ALWAYS turned off at mealtimes as that is one of the few times we all sit down and actually have time to talk together as a family. For me going out for a meal is another chance to all talk together, but in Japan the loud TV turns it into a very different experience. Tonight we continued to shock the locals by firstly turning the TV down and then shocked them even further by turning it off completely..... fortunately there were no other customers in the restaurant at the time to complain. I'm sure the locals will soon see us coming and hide the remote before we arrive!
Yesterday after I wrote the blog entry about the wild boars my husband informed me that he had actually taken a photo of them with his mobile phone. So, just to prove that there were actually wild boars in the trap here is a photo!

Coming out of hibernation

It has been a while since I have sat at the computer and done anything other than work. There are so many things that I have wanted to post about lately, but as I was commenting to my mother today - I seem to be only motivated by "deadlines" and recently have so many things that have to be done that I give up before I even try to get them done and go and sit on the deck and read my book instead! I promise I'll post about my overseas visitors and other events here very soon, but in the meantime..... here are a couple of photos from Sunday. I have no idea why, but I decided on Saturday night that I really wanted to take the kids up our mountain again so the three of us (my husband wasn't so keen...) set off and somehow managed to be at the top of the mountain eating our lunch by 9:30am! It was one of those absolutely amazing days with no clouds and after the recent days and days of rain it was an amazing feeling to be standing on top of the world and looking out over our little valley.
We almost didn't make it though as when we were walking up the road to the mountain track we heard the sound of wild boars screeching and chains rattling. After a quick phone call home to check that it was actually safe to keep going we discovered that not one, but three wild boars had been caught in a trap right beside the road and were doing their best to bash their way out of it. Wild boars are a big problem around here - they get into the rice fields and roll around in the mud destroying all the crops. They eat every single pumpkin, chestnut, potato and basically any other vegetable they can get their snouts on. As I keep trying to explain to my children - the boars are not bad, it is the people who have taken away their natural environment and food supplies. Most people in our area put up big fences to stop them getting in, but they are not usually very successful. The city we live in gives 10,000 yen to people for every wild boar they can catch and there are now businesses which are trying to utilize the meat. The neighbour who had caught 3 boars in one trap was therefore pretty happy with his haul for the morning. We were even happier that they had been "disposed" of before we came back down the mountain! Unfortunately I was too scared to take photos.... this is what they looked like though... only there were three of them in a small space... okay so maybe they were a little smaller than this, but not much!

Getting ready

Tomorrow I am going to Fukuoka to spend a day doing "kids" things before beginning a 10-day logistical nightmare! My father is bringing another group of 6 people from New Zealand for a tour of rural Japan so I will be showing them around here for 6 days then taking them to Hiroshima and Kyoto for 4 nights. I am really looking forward to it. My step-Mum is coming this time too and it will be great to see her back here in Japan after far too long an absence. If it was just the tour I would be in my element - I like organising places to eat, places to go, places to stay, little envelopes of money etc. The biggest problem is going to be working out where my children need to be and when (school starts again on Thursday), who is g0ing to pick them up, who is going to make their lunches for the school outings while I am away etc. Fortunately I have a great husband and parents-in-law who are used to me asking many favours!

Anyway, I need to do a zillion things before we leave tomorrow, but one of them was to clear out the photos on the camera. In doing so I discovered so many blog entries that I took photos for, but never quite had time to write about. I won't guarantee that I will ever get around to doing them all, but here is one... a little late, but better than never!
This is a photo of my husband trying to work out which teachers have changed at our children's school. The whole system at the end of the school year frustrates me intensely! For anyone who doesn't know here is a brief rundown of what happened here this year.
The children finished school on Friday March 26th at 11:30am. It is the end of the school year so next year they will become 2nd and 4th graders. The same afternoon the teachers were told by the board of education who would be staying and who would be shifting to other schools.
The following day the newspaper printed which teachers would be changing - only in such a stupid way it was impossible to actually work out who was leaving and who was coming. Eventually enough ringing around among the parents confirmed that 6 of the 11 staff would be changing this year.
On Tuesday the 30th all the children were expected to go back to school to farewell the teachers who were leaving - the parents were expected to have prepared flowers, messages etc. before then too. This was the last day for those teachers at that school. That's right folks - they were told on the afternoon of the 26th that they would be changing and their final day before moving to a completely new school was the 30th - nothing like time to clear out your desk and prepare yourself mentally for moving from a school of 50 children to one of 600 children an hour drive away! The new school term starts on the 8th so the teachers basically have just over one week to find their new school, get acquainted with it, decide which grade they will be teaching (no real specialist teachers here so this year they may be teaching 1st grade and next year 6th grade) and then get prepared for the kids to come back. No wonder they need to use textbooks for every subject...
I really don't understand the logic of all this. Why can't they tell them earlier and give them time to prepare etc.? This would also mean on the final day of school the children could say goodbye properly and not have to go back to school in the spring holidays to say goodbye. Some things I will never understand....

Japanese wedding

To be honest I am not a huge fan of weddings. I think that often the huge amount of money spent could be used to help start a really wonderful life rather than on just a few hours... but I won't get into that! On Saturday I went to a friend's wedding and actually enjoyed it. It was a couple who had met through an outdoor education training program that I ran a long time ago and there were enough people there that I knew to keep me entertained during all the dress changes etc.
For anyone not familiar with Japanese wedding ceremonies they all generally proceed in the same way - first they have a ceremony in a chapel - in a traditional white wedding dress. These friends included their families in the ceremony by getting the two fathers to get up early in the morning to go to a sacred place, get bottles of water which they brought back and combined in the ceremony and then the couple drank to symbolise the joining of the two families.
After the chapel comes the reception where food, drink and speeches start the ceremony. In general there are usually only a few friends and mainly only relatives and work related people at the reception, but it was great to see lots and lots of friends at this one. The bride usually changes at least twice during the two hour
reception and therefore has very little time to sit down and actually enjoy it, but at this wedding she only changed once and therefore could at least sit down for a few minutes to enjoy the speeches, videos and skits by friends.
The highlight for me was definitely the cake. As you can see they chose a climbing wall with the bride belaying the groom up the wall!

Shopping mistakes

I have to go to a wedding tomorrow, so I decided to bite the bullet and go and buy some new clothes to wear to it this morning. For anyone who doesn't know me... I love trackpants. I love to wear the same clothes day after day and don't care if anyone notices. I have no interest in fashion and am somewhat happy that the standard dress code to anything here is black...
But today I was determined to be brave and go and buy something a little more appropriate than trackpants for the wedding. My first mistake was to get to the shopping center at 9:55am. Of course... still closed! So I lined up with the other 20 or so people waiting and made my second mistake of the day... going in to the shopping center at 10am as the doors opened for the day. I have to be in the right mood for shopping and entering a mall at 10am to be greeted by every shop assistant standing outside their shop bowing at you and saying "welcome" just doesn't put me in the right mood. In fact it makes me self conscious and I tend to avoid going into the shops until the shop assistants have gone back safely behind their counters and have stopped bowing.
Mistake number three - trying to find a skirt. I don't know about other countries, but Japan seems to be overrun with tops, dresses and a few pairs of trousers thrown in for good luck, but very few skirts - and even fewer skirts which go below the knee! So I gave up on the skirt and tried to find a top that would go with one of my skirts..... found one that looked really great in the shop... brought it home and I think they must have had one of those trick mirrors in the changing room! It is absolutely disgusting and will probably be used as a cleaning rag!
Mistake number ... I've already lost count...... trying yet again to buy a pair of shoes. I finally found the "big shoe" section where they had a total of 4 pairs of shoes that would have fit me - just. In the end I bought a pair that had no backs on them so I could fit them.... only to get them home and realise that they are absolutely disgusting! Unfortunately they are also very uncomfortable so I can't even use them as gardening shoes.
All in all a terrible day at the shops! I came home, tried on the clothes I already have and figured they will be perfect - wouldn't want to take the spotlight away from the bride! My only successful shopping item of the day was my new sparkly reversible bag - which I think will be claimed by my bag-crazy daughter before I get to take it out the door tomorrow!

Books

March is the "end of the year" here in Japan and as such all of my kindergarten and after school classes are coming to an end and it is time to start revising everything we have done all year. This year I decided to put all the books I have read to the classes during the year into a basket and get 2 students to choose which books they enjoyed the most and re-read them to the class each week. It has been a great reinforcement time for me in terms of the importance of books in classes.
I try to read at least one picture each week to all the classes I teach. Usually the books will coincide with the "theme" for that lesson, but as the year progresses often they are just books that I enjoy and have no particular relevance to anything that we are doing. It helps having a huge bookshelf full of books that my children enjoy to choose from! I am guessing that the children I am reading them to probably understand less than 10% of what I am saying. Do I care that they don't understand? Not in the least. Do they care that they don't understand? Not in the least!
I find that one of the huge problems in classes of all ages here is the lack of concentration skills. I also find that most Japanese people don't even try to understand what anyone is saying to them in English - regardless of their age. They tune out right from the beginning. I believe that the huge difference between being a great English speaker is not how well you can pronounce things, but how willing you are to give things a try and giving things a try also means at least attempting to listen to what people are saying to you and taking cues such as body language, tone of voice etc. to fill in the gaps between what you understand and what you don't. I have no formal training in teaching English, but I do know that reading books to young classes is the best thing I have discovered. Of course there are ways to read books and ways to read books, but my way of doing it seems to work and if I forget to read a book each class I always get complaints at the end. My class of 32 five year olds today sat through a story that lasted more than 5 minutes. - interacting with me as I was reading it, but most of all "listening" The changes in the class have been considerable in other areas ... I think as a result of the book reading time.
If anyone is interested in reading books to younger classes (I read them right up till at least 6th grade) I have compiled a list of all the books I read this year to my youngest classes(up to grade 2). I have uploaded it onto Amazon - but of course you can get the books in other places too. If you do order them through Amazon just make sure you check which edition you are buying - some are much smaller or more expensive than others! Of course there are many other books I use, but these are the ones I used this year in 2 particular classes. Click on the links below if you are interested.

Books for teaching in Japan 1
Books for teaching in Japan 2

If I had to pick my favorite 10 books for teaching .... I would have to choose these ones... this week anyway! I would love to hear what books other people really like using. Also if anyone is having trouble with reading books to classes let me know - there are some great ways to make books more interesting to Japanese classes and also bring in important daily language.

Thank you!

I'm sure I have written about this before, but just in case I haven't... When I first got married I was a little shocked by the attitude of some of my female adult English conversation students. I used to teach them at our house and the minute my husband got home from work they would start to get nervous and kept looking at me and asking if I needed to rush off and get his dinner. I would laugh and point out that if he was hungry he knew where the fridge was. My Japanese sister-in-law works at the bank and often doesn't get home till after 10pm. Her husband gets home at about 5:30pm but is still waiting when she gets home for her to cook him his dinner. If I am home all day and my husband is working then I think it is my job to cook dinner. If we are both working or both at home all day and I think it should be a joint effort or that perhaps he should take a turn. As a result Saturdays in our house are my day off from cooking. My husband makes both lunch and dinner (most weeks...) and I love having the break. The meals are not always well balanced and not always the most delicious meals in the world. Curry and fried rice (not together!) are continuing themes. But I don't have to think about what to make, I don't have to stand in the kitchen (apart from to show him where things are) and the children get to see and help their father in the kitchen.
There has been a programme on TV lately about "kiwi husbands" and how wonderful they are. I say it is all in the education....my husband helps with the dishes, irons his own shirts, looks after the children whenever I am away, cooks on Saturdays and any other days I am home late etc. Perhaps I really am a good teacher!

Multiplying

Firstly - Anchan you made me laugh with your comment about the rat on the stairs. I also looked at the photo when I uploaded it and immediately raced to the stairs to check whether the rat was still there. It turned out to be a ball of wool....
I have decided that short daffodils are definitely the way to go... about 5 years ago I bought 15 small daffodil bulbs. Over the years I have divided them occasionally and last year I remembered to take photos of where the main ones were clustered and really spread them out... or at least I thought I did! They just keep multiplying and multiplying and multiplying! It is a bit hard to see in the photos, but they are now dotted all around the garden which is great at this time of the year when the spring colours are only really just beginning to appear. The chickens are doing a great job of weeding and fertilising the garden in the evenings which may be helping their productivity.
My seed planting is also well underway this year - now all I need is for the rain to stop so I can prepare the ground to actually plant them in.