A Trip Round The Islands - Shiraishi

Shiraishi Island is one of those places that’s great not for any intrinsic qualities, but because of the fun times you have there. The beach isn’t especially pretty and the hikes, whilst enjoyable enough, are not particularly spectacular in my opinion. There’s only one bar. The beach isn’t all that clean.

But this was the second time we’d visited the island and we had a supremely awesome weekend. The first occasion that we came to Shiraishi was last August for a “group bonding” day. It was fun to hang out with the other JETs and we did a pretty but painfully hot walk up to the island’s observatory. This time, we decided to take it easy and spend as much time as possible on the beach.

I’m not really a beach person-I enjoy reading in the sun for about an hour, but anything more tends to get a little dull. However, Shiraishi has a friendly bar on the beach run by a Japan Times journalist and her husband. The bar keeps things moving along nicely with reasonably priced cocktails, offers of food and by making a bonfire to keep people out there until late at night.

I really wanted to swim but there were loads of jellyfish on the first day. I’d never seen jellyfish in the wild before, so it was pretty cool. I did get to jetski for the first time which was amazing, though I had my eyes shut for most of it and almost crushed the chest cavity of the guy who took me out. Never take me out on a fast moving vehicle. I will crush your chest by mistake.

Back at the International Villa, we bumped into the other guests and one couple offered to cook dinner for everyone else staying there. We were incredibly grateful for this and had one of the most delicious, enjoyable meals since arriving in Japan. They wouldn’t even let me wash up, no matter how much I insisted. Gyoza, duck, salad, crackers and all sorts of nice things. The guy next to me kept trying to get me drunk on shochu and semi-succeeded. If this kind of thing didn’t happen so often I’d have been blown away by it. This type of kindness is one of the main reasons why I’d recommend Japan so enthusiastically as a place to live.

School feels like a slog at the moment. There are 2 months left and I’m not sure I want to be teaching my (increasingly rowdy) students for the rest of my time in Japan. But I do usually enjoy the lessons once they get going.

I also completed my first week of running and found some beautiful Okayama countryside. I just need to cut out the huge slabs of cheese that I’ve been consuming and I’ll be fine. Mmm. Cheese.

A Quiet Thursday Night

I like going to see movies in Japan. It’s comforting to do something that is such a regular part of my routine back in the UK. I’m a member of the British Film Institute and will usually see at least one movie a week if I can, either at the National Film Theatre or the Soho Curzon (depending on how much money I have at the time). Since coming to Japan, my visits have become much less frequent. We have an arthouse cinema in Okayama which shows the occasional offbeat foreign film. Meanwhile, the larger cinema chains will show major US films, particularly the action/superhero ones. At the same time, we don’t get everything. Many of my friends in Okayama are annoyed that our prefecture will not be showing The Muppets movie. Having seen and enjoyed it, I think they’re right to be disappointed.

So last night I headed to the local shopping centre/mall with some friends to see The Descendants. Now I’m a great fan of the film Sideways, which is by the same director. I love Paul Giamatti, the California countryside looked beautiful, I felt great empathy with the characters and it was very funny indeed.

The Descendants has many of the same ingredients, a similar style and some strong performances. But it isn’t quite as good. At times it’s quite affecting as it shows people’s imperfections and a family dealing with the grief process. At times it’s also lightly funny in a small smile rather than David Cameron-Rebekka Brooks LOL TORIES=NUMBER 1!!! way. Great soundtrack too.

But it’s not really smart enough or funny enough to really make it for me. For a start, the plot is quite predictable, especially if you’ve seen any of Alexander Payne’s other movies. Then there’s the family dynamic which starts off chaotic but then has everything seemingly resolved a couple of scenes later. The older daughter appears to become a responsible adult over a time period of about three days.

As for George Clooney-as always he’s charming and competent. I didn’t believe in his character for a moment because he was, after all, George Clooney, but he did a decent job. I think they might have been better going with somebody less good-looking and maybe even less sympathetic. Jack Nicholson would have been great (Yeah-I know I’m not exactly sticking my neck out here as Jack Nicholson is almost always great), or even Bill Murray.

It reminded me very strongly of A Serious Man, one of the Coen Brothers’ greatest films and maybe the one that deals best with disappointment and family breakdown. Unfortunately, Clooney isn’t really in the same league as Michael Stuhlbarg, but nobody is, really. Clooney’s actually made a whole series of so-so films now. I really disliked Up In The Air and this is a much better movie, but that’s not a fair comparison maybe. All in all, one for a Sunday night on DVD maybe. But hey, we have limited opportunities here and it was fun to invade the multiplex and practice Japanese with the subtitles.

Afterwards we wandered to Ario Mall for churros and were then predictably chucked out by the security guard. So we sat outside the mall, feeling a bit like teenagers. I enjoyed that.

I'm Gonna Miss This Place

Yesterday I received a letter from my BoE that made me tremble slightly. “Dear ALTs, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all of you for your contribution to the promotion of English education and international understanding in our prefecture…you should decide the date of your departure…obtain an estimate for your plane ticket home…to your departure airport….”

Yes. It’s time to book my flight home. I’m getting out of Okayama on the first or second of August. I will be flying back to Heathrow Airport where I will laugh at my home country’s woefully inadequate immigration procedures for the Olympics. I will then have a few days to get my affairs in order, pick up the Daisycat from our friend and get my things out of storage. On 7^th August, I will return to my UK job working 9 to 5 for the British government.

The new JETs are now starting to get their placement information. I remember when I received my letter this time last year-“Okayama Prefecture”. I had absolutely no idea where it was and went on a google-blitz, dragging up amusing youtube videos and unreliable Wikipedia pages saying that it was famous for its rural character and sunshine. “Famous” being a word that is greatly over-used in Japan when describing tourist destinations.

I have been so lucky to live in this beautiful part of Japan. To get Okayama City was a lucky break. I’ve had access to the city life that I can’t do without, whilst being surrounded by rice fields and some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve seen. Meanwhile, the shinkansen station is a 5 minute journey away, making travel around Japan straightforward and easy. It’s possible that I would have been delighted with any placement, but I still feel like this is a very special place. I’d love to live in Tokyo for a year or two. But if I were to stay in Japan long term, I’d be content to live somewhere as friendly, relaxed and pretty as Okayama. I am madly jealous of all the people who will come here for the first time. Flying into Okayama Airport, drifting and rising over the lush, green hills below us was an experience I will never forget.

K Chan and I are agonizing over where to go for our final Big Trip In Japan. At the moment it’s between Tokyo and Okinawa. We haven’t been to the latter before, but it’s more expensive and there’s a lot that I still want to do in Tokyo. On the other hand, the idea of a few days at the end on a tropical island is very tempting.

Stomping Through The Rain

You’re not always aware of how much you’ve missed people until you see them again after a long time apart. Two good friends of mine came to visit me in Okayama yesterday and it was such a dramatically awesome day that I’m faintly dreading my return home to an empty apartment tonight.

It’s starting to heat up. Rainy season is just around the corner and it won’t be long until I’m wearing shorts on a regular basis. I really hate the way that shorts look on me. There has never been a tall person who looked good in shorts-it’s a karma thing to make up for our being able to see the stage at gigs. But anyway, shorts will be worn and sweat will be wiped. I’m even thinking that I might invest in one of those towels that old Japanese men sling round their neck all day in the staff room. I think they’re very becoming.

Meanwhile, this month is all about islands. Rabbit island last week, Shiraishi island this weekend and Naoshima the following weekend. Shiraishi is a reasonably pretty sunbathing spot in the Seto Inland Sea. We’re looking forward to some chilled reading time and a balmy evening stay at the International Villa there. Fingers crossed that the rainy season holds off for another weekend.

It will be our third visit to Naoshima, one of my favourite places in Japan. I have fond memories of wandering the island in torrential rain and being hugely impressed by the Tadao Ando architecture and random bits of art. But this time we are camping in a yurt by the beach. Hopefully there’ll be sunshine, relaxed times and tasty picnics. In practice, it may not turn out that way.

Inspired by my recent ill health, I went out for a run on Monday and I’m probably going to do the same again tonight. It felt good to explore the area round my house and the surprised faces of the elementary school children at a gaijin running directly towards them made me giggle. I cut a fairly ludicrous figure when I run, but that’s part of my supposed charm I guess.

With Your Incessant Talking

Rabbit, rabbit, rab­­bit. If you can’t make a Chas n Dave reference after visiting an island populated almost entirely by rabbits, then what’s the point of having a blog at all?

As well as having some of the most beautiful and interesting tourist attractions in the world, Japan also has some of the tackiest. Recreations of European cities, The Island Where The Fictional Momotoro Slayed A Fictional Demon complete with ACTUAL DEMONS, Dejima, anything that involves a “local specialty” etc.  I’ve taken great pleasure in visiting some of these less worthy destinations. They are sometimes quite charming, with a bit of luck involve figurine recreations of past events and you can usually buy a funny gift or two.

Okunoshima or “Bunny Island” sits somewhere on the borderline between “tacky destination” and being a genuine place of interest.

During the Sino-Japanese war, the government began using the island to research and manufacture chemical weapons. These weapons were used during the following decades to obviously tragic effect. The island was removed from maps of Japan and the work was hushed up. Apparently, train conductors would draw the curtains of carriages as they passed the island so that it could not be seen by passengers. Not sure how effective that would have been. The manufacturing processes were primitive. Many workers and residents of the island became ill, suffered or died as a result of the work.

Industrial Remains

At the end of WW2, the factories were closed and the chemicals destroyed. Rabbits were introduced to the island. They multiplied prodigiously (tame joke avoided) and nowadays the island is known primarily for the large population of tame rabbits who you can feed, pet and generally make a fuss of. My students love the place and quite a few of their “What I did during Golden Week?” presentations involved a trip to the island.

The journey over was pretty painless and we saw rabbits almost as soon as we stepped off the boat. I had a steady supply of carrots that I used to basically buy cuddles. I also had a stick that I carried round with me for a hilarious metaphor-based joke. That didn’t actually happen. I liked how many different types of rabbits we came across. They were all shapes and sizes, ranging from mangy and wild looking to Disney-cute.

Bunny Party!

I’ll maybe admit that I did get a bit bored of the rabbits after a while. But the island itself was quite pretty. We did a pleasant hike up and around the centre of the island. We even saw Japan’s Tallest Pylon (official). It really was very tall!

Japan's tallest pylon!

We also checked out a museum about gas production on the island. Japan’s issues about openly discussing its own history are too complex for me to cover adequately here. But in the 1980s, a museum was opened on the island to show the history of the chemical production. Like the Hiroshima Peace Museum, it has a strong anti-war bias. And like the Peace Museum it is not merely inward looking. In addition to illustrating how gas was made on the island, the museum looks at the effect of the gas in war and makes strong statements against its use, with some unpleasant pictures of its effects during the Iran-Iraq war.

I’ve seen so many museums about war-not just in Japan but in the UK of course, where my favourite museum remains the Imperial War Museum. Japan’s museums on the subject vary tremendously-I have still not visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine and seen the “alternative” viewpoints about the war there. The war is a subject that I avoid as much as possible with my friends here. But anyway, this particular museum was very impressive for its thoroughness and outward perspective.

Now then. Here are some cute pictures of rabbits:

The mysterious and enigmatic K Chan tempts a rabbit.

Unwell Ramblings

Apologies for the lack of updates recently but I’ve been a little under the weather. Last week I started to feel a little strange during my special needs school visit and I haven’t been able to shake it off since. Nothing too serious, but enough to put a dampener on things.

I’m really excited for next week because two of my oldest friends are coming to visit. I haven’t seen them for ages and, well, I miss them. So it will be great to catch up and amuse ourselves with embarrassing teenage memories of kissing the wrong people and suchlike. Also, it will be good to show some friends around my patch as I haven’t really been able to do that yet. Doubtless this will take in yet another trip to the beautiful Korakuen. I must have been there 8 or 9 times now. I always enjoy it but each time I go am irritated that I never bought myself an annual pass as I:d have saved about 20 quid by now.

I was at my special needs school again today and it reminded me of what I meant to say in my last post. Going to the special needs schools has been in many ways a happy experience. But it has also been a little depressing and saddening at times. Many of the students will lead very limited lives in which there will be constant boundaries on what they are able to do. You get a huge outpouring of happiness from them. But speaking to the teachers, they tend to focus on the long term. One teacher commented that she finds it sad because so many of the students will grow up frustrated and irritated by the things they are unable to do. She also said that she finds it difficult knowing that a fair number of the students she teaches may not live that long. Dipping into the school is fine and the nature of my visits means that the students are generally happy because they are pleased to see me. But in many of the ways that matter, they can sometimes be deeply unhappy. When I think about my own circumstances and the things in my life that make me happy-the truth is that many of those things won’t be open to these kids as they develop into adults. It’s desperately sad, when you think about the reality of it.

I’m trying hard not to generalize too much here and I know the above does go slightly against the grain of what we are encouraged to think about disabled/differently abled people having as much potential for achievement and happiness as anyone else, so I hope I don’t sound like an arse in the above paragraph.

In other news, I’m heading to a rabbit-filled island on Sunday. It used to be a research and manufacturing centre for chemical weapons-now it is marketed like a petting zoo. Japan is strange sometimes.

Why don't you like Justin Bieber? Look at him.

Yesterday I was at one of my special needs schools. Of all the unexpected things that I’ve done here, this is the furthest outside my comfort zone. As I’ve said before, teaching was not the reason I came to Japan. It was merely the means by which I could live abroad and see an interesting country. I’d never spent any sustained time around special needs kids and I didn’t know what to expect really.

This particular school is massive. It has elementary, junior and senior high kids. It has the biggest staff room I have seen since arriving here-it’s like an aircraft hangar. There are often as many staff members as students in the lessons, particularly where the students require a lot of help and attention.

In some of the lessons, I have been introducing myself with my well worn self introduction materials that I have probably used about 30 or 40 times now. I’ve had to change them in order to keep it interesting for myself and I recently added AKB48 to my list of “Dislikes”, not because I especially dislike them but just because it always gets a reaction and I enjoy that. Previously, I used Justin Bieber for this purpose but sometimes younger students wouldn’t know who he was. In saying that, one of my students at my base school is always coming up to me with pictures of Justin Bieber and thrusting them under my face with a “why don’t you like him. Look at him Ben-senseii! Look at him!”

We also played some games in which I had to sing. I can’t sing. Not at all. I was okay at singing when I was very little but ever since my voice broke it’s been a fairly dreadful noise. But it was fun. None of the students or teachers could sing either and it was all about just trying to be enthusiastic and not being “above” it or letting on that you’re tired/embarrassed/whatever. I think they appreciate that. So much of being an ALT in Japan is about just doing exactly what you’re told to do but doing it with the right attitude and going out of your way to please people (whilst at the same time not showing too much initiative). In the end, people on youtube/forums/whatever go on and on about what this job is really about but I don’t think it’s all that different to any job back home. Regardless of your level of ability, just being professional, co-operative and calm goes 80% of the way to doing the job well. There’s a 20% which is natural teaching ability which, frankly, I don’t have. But there are other ways you can make up for this and if you are self-critical you can definitely improve over time, like in any job.

Anyway, it was a pleasure to play games with friendly kids all day. I’m really going to miss these random, testing experiences that I come across on a regular basis in my Japan life. I’m constantly having to stretch myself and that’s a really healthy thing. The other thing that I like about the special needs school is that it’s in a really beautiful part of Okayama and surrounded by the greenest rice fields and hills that you’ve ever seen. Every time I go there I get a huge buzz just from looking out the window.

In case it isn’t obvious from the above and from recent posts, I’m starting to freak out about leaving.