the Shape of the Island

This is the actual shape of the island we visited yesterday.  It's not so much a bean shape with claws after all.  But here you can see the nice path along the side and top, and that's where we want to bike some sunny day.

Rainy day on Sakushima

Hello!  I decided to forego the continual catching-up of the "update" series of posts.  I've skipped the past two weeks and went straight on to today, which is Sunday.  We don't always make it to church, as it is quite far away.  The journey to the church in Nagoya requires quite a lot of time, energy, and money, and so, the odd weekend, we try to go somewhere local that we haven't seen yet.  Today we visited a small island off the coast of Nishio, called Sakushima.  Shima is the Japanese word for island ('Jima' is a variant of the same word, as in 'Iwo Jima').  

Anyway, i've gone and dumped a bunch of photos onto this post, and i have no idea how it will appear when i post it, so sorry about the mess!  

We somehow got in touch with a couple of good-hearted, Japanese ladies who speak good English, and who were willing to show us around the island.  The ferry ride cost around 8 bucks and took 20 minutes.  It was a rainy day, so we were bundled up and carrying umbrellas.  (The island is the shape of a bean, sort of, with pointy claws making a nice little bay.)  







The ladies know this couple who live on the island (Shin and Kyoko), and we walked up to their house first.  We took some time at first to look around the house, which looked a bit junky from the outside, but turned out to be a beautiful artists' lodge.  It is full of homemade items, from doors and drawers and interiors, to paintings on the wall.  Kyoko loves cats, and she gave Mandy a few prints of her cat paintings.  They cook over fire in their kitchen and grow their own food.  Shin (shown playing guitar), writes music and performed a couple of songs for us.  They had really interesting furniture, mostly homemade, like the ultra low table, which had a fire pit underneath that is meant to keep the people warm.  Under the middle of the table is a separate fire pit that is meant to keep the food warm, like an element.  It's very smart and aesthetically pleasing.  They were very nice people, and as they spoke very little English, we had a chance to practise our smattering of Japanese.  

We walked down to the beach (which took about 4 minutes), and there was this cube thing that is actually a rest house.  It's a simple cube, like on that "celebrity squares" game show, but you can sleep in them or just take a rest.  It seems like a landmark too, a kind of symbol for the island (they even put it on the cover of the island map).  We found some nice rocks and shells and took a few as souvenirs.

Their house looked pretty old and run-down on the outside, but inside it was very cozy and comfortable.  There was a big spider hanging above our heads as we came in the door, but they said that the spiders are harmless and actually are handy at keeping the bug population down.  They also told us about huge centipedes the length of a butter knife and as thick as a thumb, that sometimes get into the house, and they bite really hard and cause terrible pain and a lot of swelling.  Kyoko has been bitten a few times and said that usually the pain lasts for a week.  

We saw a part of Japan that few foreigners get to see, and it was a great time, despite the rain.  I think that the more we look around this area, the more amazing things we'll see.  

There were ostriches wandering around outside a restaurant, a very strange goat tied under some trees, and many large, yellow and black spiders everywhere, webbing up every opening in the trees.  We found some sugarcane too, and Shin said that he is planning to grow sugarcane to make his own sugar.  He already boils sea water and collects the salt for their food.  The two ladies we were with told us that 'naturalist' people are quite rare in Japan.   They were kind, relaxed, and generous, and we plan to visit them again.  

Walking around the island reminded me a little of Thetis Island, where my parents went to Capernwray.  It's quiet, with few cars, and there is an island atmosphere that you don't feel on the mainland, and even though Japan is an island (so is every land mass, i suppose), there is an entirely different feel to little ones.  The buildings are mostly black because of the weather coating they put on, to protect against salty rain and winds.  

There's a nice quiet road around the north side of the island, and next time we'll rent a couple of bikes and tour around, hopefully on a sunny day.  

Halloween in Hekinan is Hilarious

This is Moika (Mo-ee-ka).  Mandy teaches her as well, and says that this girl is quite nice.  

I don't have photos of my students yet. 

First we had about three parties at the  various schools over the span of a week and a half.  It is strange to have to dress up now and then over the course of two weeks for halloween, and then not even get to go door to door for free candies.  It's sooo anticlimactic!  Dressing up is fun and all, but...candies!

Then a couple of co-workers decided to have a halloween shin-dig at their apartment on October 31st.  

We played Twister.  

Obviously, i am the bat there, and Mandy is in the yellow scarf.  I think she's a canary, but i'm pretty sure she's just keeping warm.

The chap with the red horns is Jordan, from Japanese class.  The girl in the Inuit hood is Jacey, the host, from Idaho.  She lives with the witch sitting to the right of Mandy, and her name is Tilly (from Guernsay, Britain).  To the right of Tilly is Orie, an ACC school manager, and her friend is standing in the foreground.  The guy with the beer and the  thumbs up is Kenji, a really good guy who teaches at ACC, but who wants to find work in Tokyo.  

At Nishio's Halloween party, Mandy was in charge of painting on kids.  They loved it!

Mandy was a cat!  

Mostly, they wanted to be painted on their hands, but a few wanted face painting.  These two are actually her own students.

This is Yuto.  He is another student of Mandy's.  She says the devil costume is entirely appropriate.  

How did all y'alls spend the halloween?  Any good hauls of candies?  The candies here are a little disappointing.  

Jacey got a huge bag of candy corn, and i managed to snag a few.  It reminded me of my grandma Peters, who usually seemed to have them on hand.  Pure tooth rot, but delicious!

A Month of Updates part four

This is actually a retrospective already.  When we first trekked out to Nishio on our bikes, we (or i, really) thought that we were going at the right time to catch a Noh play that i had received tickets for from a student of mine.  However, we found that there were no people about, so i took a closer look at the tickets.  Despite all the kanji, i was able to determine that we were in the right place, but 2 weeks early.

We looked around anyway, and saw Nishio castle, a small example of a rebuilt  classical fortress.  Most of the traditional buildings have been 

in wars or accidentally burned down.  Or maybe arsonists were the culprits!

I like the layered, curvy roof.  

Nearby the castle, we saw a quaint, cozy looking building, so we went in for a closer examination.  We were greeted by a nice man named Shige, who spoke to us in english and informed us that the building is a tea house that was brought to Nishio from Kyoto about 40 years ago.  It's a beautiful classical building.  

We tried 3 types of local green tea.  

Nishio is famous for its matcha tea powder.  You know that fad going on at Booster Juice?  Well the powder that feeds the fad likely comes from the Nishio area, unless they found a way to chemically produce it...

Outside the building is a lovely 'Zen' garden, with a stone river that has been raked to look a bit like a current flow, and some nice trees.  There are a few cherry trees, and in spring they will spill forth with beautiful bright blossoms.  We'll have to try and get some pictures of the cherry blossoms in april.  

Mandy was pointing at something here.  Maybe it was the castle.  The castle was off in that direction somewhere.  But i can't be sure what she was pointing at exactly.  Sorry.

The floors are called 'tatami' mats, and we have them in our apartment too.  We have them in our bedroom and in the living room.  The rest of the apartment is hardwood.  

Tatami mats are nice and they give the real Japanese feel to the place, but they can get infested with tiny bugs that bite.  We had to get a special spray thing that you inject 
into the mats to kill the little buggers. Now they're gone, thankfully.  

Right now, i have a sore throat and Mandy's knitting us some mittens, because it's getting a bit chilly here these days!  Can you believe it?  November and already it's chilly.

A Month of Updates part 3

We were going to bike out to Nishio anyway, but our plans were enhanced after a random phone call from Greg, our British friend, who told us he got lost after trying to find a shortcut to Hekinan from Nishio and ended up at some wacky horse festival, and that we should really come check it out.  He told us that some guy just got trampled, and from how it sounded i thought that Greg was right in the fray.  

So he met us at the bridge and led us to this festival, and then he left.  I don't know where he went off to.   

But we wandered around the area, which was a shrine and its surrounding buildings.  There was a barnyard smell of horses, and i was surprised to realize that they didn't smell the uh...nice horse smell.  They smelled really rank.  Anyway, the violent activities seemed to have died down, and there was music playing in front of the shrine, and people buying food, watching other people, and some people seemed to be waiting for something more to happen. 

We soon saw kids dressed in kimonos and gathering on a stage, so we watched and took photos.  They began dancing and there were people on stage playing drums and flutes.  The really weird thing was that these other guys nearby were playing different tunes on their drums and flutes at the same time.  It was a cacophony for a while, and sort of tainted the performance of gracefully dancing children on stage.  We wondered why they couldn't just play one after the other.  But we don't speak japanese, so we couldn't ask.

So this was a festival, i suppose.  I'm not sure what it was for, specifically.  It was really beautiful, and after a while, the horse men were back in the arena, whipping this horse to run around in circles while they tried, one at a time, to grab onto its neck and run as far as they could with it.  Again, we wondered what this was for, but as this is a "western" tendency, we tried to put it aside and just enjoy it.  

The men were in teams and i think it was a contest.  I'll try to get a video of it on here.  

A Month of Updates part two

Ok!  This is a street near our apartment in Hekinan.  The sun was setting so nicely, and so i thought i'd see how our little camera handles the sun.  It made me wonder whether it's safe to look at a photograph of the sun.  Maybe you should put on some shades before you go staring at this picture.  If you go across this street and keep going for a minute or two on your bike, you'll come to our place. Stop by if you like!  The candy cane posts do herald a barber shop, just like back home.

One sunday, we were driving home from church in Handa when we saw this jolly bike gang rumbling along. We were lucky enough to share a stop light with them, and they saw Mandy and decided to put on a little show for her.  They revved the surprisingly loud engines and posed for a picture. There are many such bike gangs, but they mostly just make a lot of noise and are quite harmless.  Honestly, they sometimes coast along the street going jogging speed, but they rev the engine like they're trying to scare off some wildebeests or grizzlies or some horrible thing.  

Walking back to the car from church, Mandy saw some cute little flowers, and, as is her custom, went to pet them and get some tactile information about them.  Then i pointed out to her that she was awfully brave, putting her finger so close to a large stick bug! Fortunately, the bug was busy feasting on a freshly killed moth.  It was one of those sickeningly fascinating things to watch, but eventually we let it eat in peace.  The camouflage really works!

This is a view i have looked at several times as i approach our front door. It's the view from our front balcony, and i really enjoy the pale light of the city and the bright star and the silhouettes.  The photo doesn't do this scene justice, sadly, but you get the idea.  

There's quite a lot of light pollution around here, but on a clear night, i can still get a good look at stars. Orion leans a little more onto his back here, which maybe is just my 

imagination.  

Today my throat is a little sore, and Mandy's too, so we're drinking a lot of echinacea tea and trying to go to sleep early.  It's really hard though because internet provides things like watching the roughriders beat the argonauts in the fourth quarter (what were the argos' coaches thinking?!  A punt fake?  Seriously.) and blogging.  Hearing the CFL on TSN music reminds me of home almost a bit too much.  Sometimes i really miss certain things.  Like my bike.

But mostly i miss people!  People who know us and can share our language.  If you want to appreciate being able to communicate with people the in your neighborhood, just come to Japan for a while. 

Oyasumi nasai!  (Which means goodnight)

A Month of Updates part one

Ah, sorry about the photos.  i don't know how to arrange them properly yet, and it's too late in the night to try anymore.  just so you know, the bottom one here is the "before" shot.  

So then, after a month of waiting, we finally have internet access, and so we begin to catch up with photos and updates.  Since we last posted, we have done a lot of work on our apartment.  This photo is (hopefully obviously) a "before" shot. Mandy made me take down the poster.  

This was after the previous tenants had done like, 12 hours of cleaning in there.  However, there had been about 8 years' worth of little piggies living in here before them, so we were not too surprised to find a pretty substantial layer of dusty, sticky grime all over EVERYTHING.  It took a long time to scrub it all clean.  I think we did a pretty decent job though.  

After all the scrubbing and purchasing of nice-but-not-too-nice furnishings, we are quite pleased with the place.  We had heard that Japanese apartments can be cramped, but ours is spacious, especially for two of us.  We have an entry hallway, off which is the front room, which is almost entirely empty and which i use for stretching in the mornings.  

Mandy has set up a table in there too for painting on.  She already has done a nice painting of some flowers she got. Also off the entry hallway is the laundry/washing room, off which is the shower/bathing room.  Everything has its own little room.  The last little room off the entry hallway is the going to the bathroom room.  It's also the secondary library.  

THEN we enter the kitchen, which is what you see in the above photo.  It is large, and includes the dining area, which sits in the light that comes in through the balcony windows/sliding door.  Off the kitchen is our bedroom, and off the dining area is the living room, which also has balcony windows and sliding door.  

Every room in this last group open up to each other, or close off by sliding doors.  It's nice to be able to open it all up or close it all up depending on how much light you want in the room, or how much fresh air, or how much heat you want to preserve.  We have no central heating, so we're learning to be smart about using our resources. 

As i said, it's late, so we're going to sleep.  We just skyped with Mandy's brother, Jamison, in Montreal, and we would welcome any skype calls from anyone!  the skype name is participaction.  Just remember the 15 or so hour time difference.  Intense!