Day Twenty-Seven

Today promised ever so much.

After my day of rest, I sprung out of bed at 5 in the morning to beat the sun to the sunrise. I raced down to the riverbank to see if I could catch the fishermen I missed yesterday at their work.

I was a bit early, so I wound up padding around town having a look at things while everyone was still asleep. There were a few rice farmers up and at it, and a couple of people walking dogs, or riding bikes, but it was still the early sleepy hours of the morning, where you don't speak - you just exchange glances with people that pass you by, as though to say "Oh, you're awake too."

After seeing some of the town, I headed back to Lindsay's to wait for news on today's field trip. I really wanted to see inside a Japanese school, and she was at work asking if it'd be okay to take me around. I caught a message from her almost immediately saying that not only would it be okay, but she was on her way to pick me up right away! I ate an apple yogurt and cleaned my lens.

Lindsay knocked, and we hopped into her friend Serena's car to check out some schools! Serena is also a JET, and the only other native english speaker in Lindsay's town. This makes for a lonely existence, as the only other English speaking person is a Japanese teacher who'd lived a year in Australia, so while her English is good, it's not always up to stimulating conversation level.

Katakana reads: Se-ri-na

Serena's from the US, and makes an interesting counterpart to Lindsay. Where Lindsay is full of blinding enthusiasm, Serena is blase, but amused. Where Lindsay is ready to speak to a student, but can't find the words, Serena is ready, but not eager to respond on her behalf. But Serena is full of joy when she gets a student to reply in English, or to approach of his/her own accord, or when they'll open up about something moderately personal. She's very interesting. Between the two of them, I got an excellent tour, as we climbed 300 feet of steps to a school at the top of a hill (which incedentally, is an evac point in case of flooding).

It's summer, so school's not in at the moment, and I of course imagined that meant it was to be more of a tour of the facilities...but that's not the case in Japan. In summer, you join a club - well, all year you're part of clubs, but they continue in the summer, and it's mandatory - and you arrive at school every day...sometimes even saturdays...and participate in your club to the best of your ability. If you join baseball, and it's 42 degrees out...you play baseball in full uniform all day as hard as you can. It's just what you do.

Kids who aren't part of clubs (for example, maybe they're too young for them) tend to head to school anyway, because there's not really anything to do in town. They'll hang out with each other, hang out with the kids before and after their clubs, and even hang out with the teachers. It seems very peer-to-peer in the summer months, which I found pretty interesting.

All the kids had a chuckle at me, I assumed because I was a foreigner. I found out later that for a lot of the kids, I was the first white male they'd ever seen in the flesh. This is a really, really small town, and Lindsay and Serena are the only two foreigners most of these kids have ever dealt with. There aren't really any non-Japanese males in their lives. So apparently I was of some interest. This made a lot of kids quite shy, and made some of the braver ones a little inquisitive. Unfortunately, I tended to get the same questions over and over.

One thing that confuses me a lot is the way gossip is treated here. All small towns are full of it, but Japanese culture has some odd rules. There are work parties Lindsay and Serena attend, called Enkais. There's also a ni-enkai (read: afterparty) and even sometimes, san-enkai (read: after-afterparty). Things can get pretty out of hand at the san-enkais, in details I won't go into here, but apparently, even though you're with everyone you work with - it's never talked about. If something goes on at the after-afterparty, and the teachers, the principal, and everyone in between sees it go down...no one will ever say a thing. And yet - every single student, every teacher, and even complete strangers would approach Lindsay in the street to ask if I was her boyfriend, or husband - which seems the complete opposite of that attitude. There's an awful saying in Japan - "Girls are like Christmas cake...you wouldn't want Christmas cake after the 25th." There's tremendous pressure to be married before 25, happy wedding, happy life. But it creates a tremendous amount of tension, anxiety, and really subjugates the whole female gender by feeding them one pressing concern. It's really horrible. And that's what I believe creates this unique strain of gossip...inquiring into someone's relationship status isn't rude, because it's presented almost as an inquiry into your safety or well-being. Like asking if you're better after you've had a cold. It's a little frightening, and makes for a lot of awkwardness.

Apart from that, all my student interactions were quite cool. Most of them were pretty enthused, and liked to talk about what they were doing at school in the summer months. In the lunchroom, we stumbled in to an amazing scene that really reminded me kids are the same everywhere.

Slumped over, facefirst on a desk was a man I learned from Lindsay is a teacher, and the basketball coach. The kids were all stuffing their faces with school lunch, and pointing and laughing maniacally at the sleeping instructor. As we approached, we realized this was because they'd managed to cover his entire back in little orange stickers. It was just hilarious. He woke up as we were there, and sluggishly tried to brush off his back as best he could. He explained he'd been up 'till all hours of the night watching Olympic Judo, and didn't sleep much as a result. This just made the kids laugh harder. It was a wonderful caricature of a scene I was really excited to get to witness. It's just how I'd imagined it.

Another wonderful thing happened while we were at school. We went upstairs to check out music club, and the students were all just warming up with a new piece they were working on. The teacher told us they'd been at it about 45 minutes, and weren't due to try playing it together for at least a few hours more. Since we were there, however...they were going to give it a try anyway. Ever accommodating.

Considering they had almost no experience with this piece, and most were reading as they went, it was a pretty unbelievable performance. It really blew me away. It was equal parts Japanese traditional melody and marching band blare, and I liked it right away. The discipline and the effort of these people never ceases to amaze me, nor does their eagerness to please. It's totally unparalleled, an integral part of their cultural identity, and something they can safely call their own.

We toured around two schools that afternoon, since apparently there's literally nothing for the JETs to do in the summer months, and the folks who do have things to do don't bother to dole it out. It's odd. We spoke a little bit at the second school to the only other English speaker in town, and heard a bit about what it was like staying sane during the summer.

Tsuno's three English speakers

We checked out a basketball practice in action, and saw the girls volleyball team warming up as well. I sat Lindsay down in a classroom to ask her a few questions about what Canada means to her, now that she's lived away from it for an entire year.

It was a really nice perspective to get, and fit in with the whole "What makes a good ambassador to Canada" question rather nicely.

After school, we headed back to Lindsay's place, only to be ambushed by a bunch of the youngins from the preschool and early early middle school - they were waiting outside Lindsay's apartment for her to return so she would come out and play.

We hung out outside Lindsay's house, skipping rope and trying to chat with these spry young kids. They didn't have much English, and I certainly don't have much Japanese, so mostly it was actions, gestures, and insistent pointing. I took a few photos, and then this girl started making demands.

Mostly by saying "Chk-chhshhh" (her best camera shutter sound) and then pointing at herself, or at her friend, or her brother. She eventually demanded that she take a photo of me.

She was a pretty cool kid.

After we'd sufficiently played, we decided to head up a different mountain, complete with waterfall, ancient japanese footbridge, and other amazing scenery.

At the top of this mountain is something I hadn't seen much of in Japan....Cows!

Again, as we crested the entrance to the sky, the clouds rolled in, only this time we wound up inside stormclouds. Dark and grey, everything was covered in a thick fog, and in spite of it being a reasonably sunny day, visibility was down to maybe 60 feet. We approached the mountaintop where the topography suddenly changed, and made things all the more surreal. Walking in the dead, flat silence through the thick, gray fog of a cloudbank, out of the dense forest and onto a sparse, rocky plain...it was like leaving for another world. The silence was deafening...I felt like I could hear each cow breathing.

They were curious about us, but erred on the side of caution, taking a few steps away as I approached with my camera through the gloom. They were all done up in traditional style, with a ring through the nose and a rope 'round the ears, to make them easy to handle for the farmers. Once they realized I was just there to have a look...they relaxed.

I paused, sitting on the ground, done photographing cows, and tried to absorb where I was, being inside of a cloud. It's something you always wonder as a kid, how fluffy will they be? Can I touch them? Would I pass right through, or could I wring out rain like water from a damp cloth? Would it be cold? Could I wrap myself in it like a coarse blanket?

It's more like being inside a damp cave with soft walls...walls you can never reach. They're perpetually just out of range, as though the cave moves with you as you pass between the clouds' borders. It's quiet, but there's constant motion all around you, as the walls and ceiling rush silently from one side to the other. It's damp, like you could taste the air, but the rain is happening someplace far, far away.

It was really neat.

We came down the mountain and out of the clouds, and for the second time in as many days, I returned to earth. We got ourselves a little lost driving down the mountain, but we weren't really in a hurry. We listened to music, drove around, watched the moon come up over the edge of the mountains, as we wound and twisted our way back into Tsuno.

Tomorrow, I would visit the youngest of them all - the preschoolers. Lindsay's turn at the preschool was slated to be tomorrow, so I got some sleep, ready to deal with the relentless energy of tiny children first thing in the morning.

Dreams...some you have, and some you live.

-Jeff

Day Twenty-Six

Today was a recovery day. Finally knowing where I was going to get to sleep for the next few days, having access to a kitchen with a stove and a fridge, being able to do laundry...it was just the sort of break I needed. Lindsay's vacation had ended, and she was immediately back to work. Here I was in Kochi, sort of left to my own devices.

I was pretty exhausted, having carted myself all around Tokyo, then Kanazawa, and then spending the whole day yesterday on trains, trains, and trains, I was ready for a break. I did a bunch of laundry, wrote some blog entries, and watched the Japanese coverage of the Olympics.

This was a pretty interesting thing. The NHK (which is like the Japanese CBC) has exclusive rights to the Olympics here in Japan. What that means is, they control all the stories of Olympic success. In Canada, we tend to focus on lifestyle stories. If someone had to overcome some great adversity, or had to defeat a long-time friend in order to advance, had help from their mom or was mentored by a former olympic great - it doesn't matter which country the athlete comes from. We'll cover it. In the states, the coverage is about heroes. If there's someone who's going to become a legend, break an unreal record, or someone who keeps going undefeated, they'll cover it. Regardless of where they're from. In Japan, they focus on...Japanese athletes. That's it.

We watched a swimming race, and it was just an early qualifier. The Japanese girl who was competing came in dead last, and was eliminated from contention. Immediately, the NHK was there to interview her. Now, you're not allowed to cry in Japan. It's not permitted really...it's too great a show of emotion, which is only allowed if you've completed an enormous accomplishment. Win the gold, you can cry in front of your country, and you will be celebrated. Come in last, and you'd better not shed a tear, because that would not be proper. This poor, poor swimmer is trying desperately to hold back her tears, meanwhile she's being put these absolutely brutal questions. "Why do you think you failed?"

Merciless.

The time difference doesn't help either. All that means is that highlights such as the 8th place swimming loss will be replayed all throughout the day. It's not a success, or really something to celebrate, but because it's the home team, it will be watched. Granted, Michael Phelps was the exception to this rule, and he received some coverage as well. But he's the only one.

I didn't really know where to go from there...I did my laundry, hung it up all over the apartment, burnt some toast in the fish-cooker, and drank a cold Yebisu beer. It was a nice day off from all the heavy vacationing. I didn't even really go outside until much later in the day...I sort of wanted Lindsay to colour my first impression of the town. I'd heard so much about it through her, and I didn't want to start off my experience by coming to my own conclusions...which is slightly odd, because normally that's all I want to do. I waited.

My clothes dried in the humid air at a snail's pace, and the olympics moved from swimming, to badminton, to judo. Eventually I heard a bit of a commotion, and Lindsay came home from work. She of course had designs on me experiencing her town in Kochi.

So Lindsay's town is called Tsuno-cho (cho meaning town) and it's about 3500 people. She'd seen some of the locals out fishing in the river, so we hurried out to see if we could catch some photos of them in action with their waders on and their 30 foot poles. Sadly, we arrived just as they were packing up, but we caught one or two quick shots.

On the walk back to Lindsay's place, we ran into some of the littlest kids in town - she teaches at middle school, high school, and also kindergarten. The kindergarten is right next to her apartment...literally within fifteen feet...and so sometimes she's ambushed by the babies on her way home. This time, we got to do the ambushing, having spotted them from across the road.

They all were quite happy to wave to us from afar, but much more shy and reserved when we went and approached them. They loosened up after a few words from Lindsay, and let us take a few photos.

Lindsday and I piled in the car so she could show me what it was that really tied her heart to this town. First we stopped at a little viewing spot by the roadside, where she'd told me was her favourite spot in the whole village.

Reminds her of the "Great Valley" from The Land Before Time. I could see that. We cruised around the "downtown" of Tsuno a little bit, before heading up the side of a mountain in order to see some of the windmills up at the top.

After close to an hour of twists and turns, and an exciting tanuki sighting, we arrived...in the clouds.

Digression: A Tanuki is a real thing...I thought they were a Japanese myth for most of my life, because they figure strongly in Japanese mythology and culture, but I learned this year that they are a real thing! Anyone who's played the original Mario game for NES remembers the Tanuki suit, a bear-looking suit with a raccoon tail. These animals are native to Japan, and the name Tanuki essentially means "Raccoon-Dog", and that's what they are. They just look like odd Raccoons. I didn't get to see it very well as it scurried across the road, but it was pretty neat. They're very funny and odd elements of mythology too...they have hats to protect against bad weather, a sake bottle that represents virtue, oversized testicles that for some reason represent financial luck, and a promissory note that represents trust, or confidence. There are statues of them in lots of places, the same way you see that lucky cat with the coin everywhere you go.

Anyway: The sky. It was an amazing place to visit. I couldn't believe it was even possible, but looking up, and seeing the clouds crash into the side of the mountaintop like so many waves, was surreal enough...but actually arriving at the top, and stepping out into the clouds.....I didn't even know what to say.

It was like something out of a fantasy novel, but I assure you...this is a real place that actually exists in real life.

There was even a small shrine at the mountaintop where people go to take small offerings in order to wish for success, good luck, prosperity, and a good future. They might toss a five yen, or fifty yen coin (they're lucky, after all) next to this small marker in the sky, and let their wish fly. There was quite a stack, and it was quite an effort to surmount this goliath of the earth, and further effort still to get to the shrine itself. Otherwise it's left to a lucky toss to get the coin where it needs to be...and I suppose that's sort of in the spirit of the wishing after all.

The big windmills paid us no mind, and went on turning at their own pace, as the clouds pushed past in a hurry to make the sunset. They really filled out the mountaintop, and looked like they were having a conference of their own...I felt like a bug must feel, landing on a human leg at some important meeting.

In spite of Lindsay's urging, I kept us up at the mountaintop for quite a long time. Lindsay was trying to hustle us down the mountain 'cause we had plans to visit a friend of hers, and we wanted to head to an onsen on the way...and good on her, 'cause when my camera's in my hands, the hardest thing to keep is a schedule. She finally peeled me away from the world up in the sky, windmill giants turning, red sun seeping through pink and purple clouds, and so many forgotten wishes, and we headed down into the dusk of the eastern face of the mountain.

We headed to a nearby Onsen, which for those who don't know, is a Japanese hot spring. This was another dream realized, because there's nothing romanticized more in Japanese media than the meditative value of the hot spring. The feudal lord visits the onsen to ruminate on going to war. The samurai visits the onsen to prepare his mind for battle, or for suicide. The martial arts master takes his hotheaded student to the onsen to cool his nerves, and the young adolescent goes to the onsen to determine just how he's going to ask out that girl he likes.

Onsen are divided by gender of course, and everything's public so there's no modesty and no secrets. You check your bathing suit at the door, wash in the public bath, and then you can sit outdoors in the hotspring, and look at the stars. They're highly popular in the winter, because there can be snow on the ground, and you can sit in naturally ground-fed water and watch the flakes sizzle into vapour on the top of the water in front of you.

Even in the summer, I was highly relaxed. I mostly had the place to myself, and the two guys that were there kept their distance from the strange westerner. It was just great, out in the mountains there's very little light pollution and so there's a plethora of stars. There's also silence. Silence is precious, and anyone who lives in the city or in the suburbs will know how hard the quiet hits you whenever you're up at the cottage, or out of town. It's so sudden, and so strong...to quote a favourite film of mine...it wakes you up in the middle of the night, it's so quiet. It's just amazing, and that compounded with the heat, and the feeling of weightlessness in the water...it was highly, highly rejuvenating after a long stretch of extensive travel.

•        •        •

After the Onsen, we were heavily relaxed. We were also late. So we meandered at top speed across the parking lot into the car, to hurry off to Lindsay's friends place to watch a well-heralded bad film: Bird-demic!

In Yusuhara, the neighbouring town, we met up with Lindsay's friend and fellow JET Kavita who settled us into her living room, with a giant electric frying pan so we could watch footage and make stir fry at the same time. We put together a good spread, as we watched a movie that is easily the worst film ever made...on par with "Alien Apocalypse" and well worse than "The Room". It was a lot of fun, as all of us were expecting the terribleness and we were laughing heartily as we tore the film apart. Dinner was delicious, the company was awesome, and the film was just excellent-ly bad.

It had gotten quite late by the end of the film, and Kavita had things to do early, just as Lindsay had to get up to work, so we headed back to Tsuno-cho and after a brief Olympic update, headed off to bed.

It was an excellent introduction to a very different Japan. I'd seen two small towns, living conditions at home, some of the local scenery and a wee glimpse at the locals. I was excited to get into the heads of some of the kids, some of the teachers, and have a look inside one of the local schools in rural Japan. I'd imagined myself attending one of these all my life...and I couldn't wait to finally step inside, exhale my preconceptions and inhale the summer air.

-Jeff

Day Twenty-Five

Lindsay loves Kochi but like anyone, she has a few pet peeves about her town. The biggest one, is Anpanman.

Anpanman is a superhero whose head is made out of bread. "Pan" is the Japanese word for bread (taken from the French "Pain") so "Anpan" is bread with red bean paste filling. He helps kids feel better by giving them pieces of his head to eat - this is pretty weird because A) Wouldn't he run out of his own head? and B) That's weird! Giving children parts of you to put in their mouths is a weird thing to do!!! Name one other superhero who encourages people to eat him...

EDIT: I have since learned that Uncle Jam, a kind baker and the Gepetto to Anpanman's Pinnochio, consistently bakes him new heads. This only makes it weirder.

Anpanman's arch nemesis is Baikinman, a bacteria (because what else is going to fight bread) and he's not doing a great job, because Anpanman is everywhere. The show has been on television since 1988...and is in the guiness book of world records for most characters in a TV show...with a staggering 1768.  He originated in Kochi, and damn Kochi is proud of creating Anpanman. So much so, that when we changed trains in Maibara, we discovered our seats were in the Anpanman car. 

There are theme everythings here in Japan. Theme cafes, theme restaurants, theme pachinko parlors, and even theme trains. They really go all out too. Anpanman and friends are all over the exterior of the car, all over the ceiling and walls inside, and behind every fold-down tray is a picture of one of the characters. The one behind my tray was a baker...I don't want to imagine what  his relationship with Anpanman must be like (Stop, I created you!). 

The most hilarious part, is that Anpanman himself does the announcements on the train - no emotionless Japanese robot girl like on the subway, or from a GPS, but an animated and excited Anpanman, telling you about the train, the emergency exits, where we were going to stop, etcetera. 

Lindsay hates Anpanman. 

But we got through the trainride without incident and arrived in Kochi.

I'd been griping throughout most of the trip that I wished I'd had a way to bring my tripod with me. All across Canada i'd been shooting with my giant video tripod, with excellent results, but it was far too big to take on the plane. I'd had a tiny blacks photo tripod at home, but opted against taking it, thinking it'd be too much for the plane as well. I regretted it ever since, spouting things like "I'd kill a thousand men for my tripod right now!!!"

Anyway, Lindsay had taken my comments to heart and gotten in touch with a photographer friend of hers, who was kind enough to lend me his tripod. A tiny little photography style tripod, but with fluid head and light years ahead of having no tripod at all. We stopped by his apartment and picked it up, before heading over to Kochi's open-air market.

All the farmers collect in the streets in a huge row of tent-like structures to sell veggies, fruits, and...beetles. The kids love 'em. 

We went from there into the indoor market nearby, where they had a Studio Ghibli store, and an NHK store, where I saw this guy:

I love Domo-kun! He's like Japan's Alf, he's brown, furry, lovable, and he eats cats. We also saw something I'd heard about, but hadn't seen yet.

This is a store where you can buy the school uniform of any school in the prefecture, boys and girls. You would think this would be for the students of said schools. But it's not. This is for the same people that buy out of the used-panties vending machines (something else i'd heard of, but not yet seen). I'll leave the rest up to you. 

We left the market after stopping for a bite at a vegetarian place (a rarity) and headed for Kochi castle. 

Kochi castle was pretty neat - Ryoma, a famous Samurai is from Kochi (Anpanman's not their only claim to fame) and this was where he hung out.

It's a very cool traditional style multi-level pagoda, with huge and narrow stairs leading from one level to the next. 

I am too tall for Japan. I smash my head on everything and sometimes pipes are too low over stairways, so I need to walk on the wrong side of the stairs. The cars just accommodate me, and every doorway is out for blood. Many castle entranceways are built with intentionally low ceilings to prevent the enemy from using swords or spears, so with the addition of the tripod to my backpack (which was slightly taller than me) I was just a disaster in Kochi castle. Maneuvering up those stairs would be hard enough, but add an inch or so in the tripod on my backpack and every motion was super-awkward. I'm not even that tall!

It was pretty gorgeous though - and amazingly well-preserved. That's another cool thing about Japan. They have things that are upwards of eight-hundred years old to contribute to their history and culture. They had a surcoat on display that Ryoma actually wore. Sentences on museum displays start with things like "In the year 1185". Canada wasn't even a twinkle in the British eye in 1185! We're so young compared to these other countries, it's no wonder we have an identity crisis. We're just the teenage country in the midst of coming-of-age, trying to find ourselves in a largely adult world, with only our brash older sibling to the south to give us any indication if we're doing it right. They're not the older sibling whose footsteps you'd necessarily want to follow in, anyway.

Lindsay called some of her fellow JETs from the Kochi area (seeing as she was back home from vacation now) and we all went into downtown to see The Dark Knight Rises. It was neat to meet Lindsay's friends, and it was the largest number of English speakers i'd seen in one spot since arriving. They have a pretty good community, all these small-towners, and Kochi city is sort of the centre of everywhere they hail from. We were worried that due to scheduling, I wasn't going to get to meet anybody, but it worked out nicely after all.

After the movie (on which I won't comment) one of Lindsay's friends gave us a lift over to Susaki, where Lindsay's car was parked. We drove up into the mountains in the dark, leaving me to imagine the scenery until tomorrow. We quietly hauled our baggage into Lindsay's apartment (she shares a wall with one of her schools' principals) and promptly fell asleep. It was a long, long day of travelling and Lindsay had to go back to work in the morning. I was planning on sleeping in, doing laundry, and catching up on writing the ol' blog. It was nice to know I was going to be able to sleep in the same place for a few days. 

New town to explore! But first, to rest up.