I have been getting very restless lately and it’s not just the result of forsaking cigarettes or turning 30 next week. I have a real urge to do more travelling and am researching like crazy to decide where to go. February looks as if it will be busy with a trip to either Tokyo, Kyushu, Kyoto or Nagano. As you can see, I’m very decisive. I also want to see a bit more of Okayama, so we may go to an old village called Hittoji for my birthday. It looks really pretty, has a huge cauldron bath and a wild west themed restaurant that does duck nabe (a kind of stew/hotpot). What more could you want?
Most excitingly, I am heading up north for the Yuki Matsuri or “Snow Festival” in Sapporo. We had a brief snowstorm yesterday, but that merely whet my appetite for more of the cold stuff. All the teachers I work with keep saying how much they dislike snow. I don’t really understand this, as to me, snow remains an exciting treat. I want to know if kids are allowed to have snowball fights in Japan. I suspect not. I suspect that they act very seriously and treat it as an inconvenience rather than something to be celebrated. But maybe the enjoyment of rare snow is universal and the kids can’t help themselves?
I have had some really strange conversations about the weather since it turned cold, back in November. One common question has been “Is it colder in the UK than it is in Japan?” There is a common implication that the weather in Okayama is better and more comfortable than anywhere else, both in Japan and in the rest of the world. However cold it gets, it is always said to be much colder in Kyoto, even when there is clear evidence to the contrary. My usual response is “they’re about the same”. But if I’m in a slightly irritable mood, I will say “well they are about the same but we usually have central heating indoors”. I realize that sounds smug-that’s not quite how I usually phrase it.
Elementary school students have to wear shorts for the whole of winter. They run through the streets in groups in order to keep warm (they all walk to school-which is awesome, by the way). I once asked a teacher if she ever felt bad that they were so cold and she replied “Yes, but they are very genki (lively and healthy) so they are okay.” Similarly, all the girls at my school wear skirts with long socks but no tights. This means that they are constantly freezing and they often enter the classroom with a blanket wrapped around their blue legs. The response to this was “They don’t feel the cold”. I think from the above, I sound like I’m going around telling people that they are doing things wrong, but it really isn’t like that-I’m usually really careful to avoid anything that sounds like “this makes no sense to me” or “In Britain, things are better because…”. I don’t even think those things as there is so much here that is better than in the UK. However, this is something that I just can’t get my head around.
Many of my students thought that Britain had large amounts of snow, Japanese Alps-scale mountains and was deeply humid in summer. Three or four times, well educated adults have told me, with a sense of pride, that Japan has four seasons, as if the concept of seasons is something that is unique to Japan. In some ways this reflects the Japanese obsession with seasonality and doing specific things at particular times of year. I feel like the changing of seasons is something that is really celebrated here. The weather forecasts will show, for example, how the wave of of cherry blossoms have spread up Japan from south to north. So at any time during the spring, you will know where to go in order to find the most beautiful cherry blossoms. A similar process occurs for the beautiful autumn leaves that you get here. There are commonly agreed places which are good to go for the maple leaves in autumn or for cherry blossom in spring. I love that people actually make time to do this stuff and design outdoor spaces with such attention to detail.
Which reminds me. I am visiting Korakuen with my English group at the weekend. Sometimes I forget that I am a proper responsible adult who is entrusted to take kids on school outings. And then I am happy that I get paid (yes paid!) to go to a beautiful garden with some of the nicest kids you would ever meet and to walk around chatting for a couple of hours. I’m actually very lucky.
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