Cherry Blossom. Go.

What a week it’s been. Having returned from a stressful UK trip and simultaneously having had to consider an early break of contract and return home, it was reassuring to find that I can still have great times in Japan. Despite all the bad things going on back in England at the moment, it’s possible to go out and forget it all.

Making my own Joanna Newsom/Florence album cover. Maybe that's not a good thing.

In the space of two weeks, the climate, appearance and atmosphere of Okayama City have changed beyond recognition. The yellow fields have gone. The lush green shoots are rising and the landscape is returning to the beauty that was so overwhelming when we arrived back in August. I am convinced that I will never live somewhere as gorgeous as this ever again.

It’s comfortably warm too. This kind of comfortable short-sleeves weather has been pretty rare during our time in Japan. Meanwhile, the cherry blossoms are out. We are now at the end of a 10 day period during which the Okayama landscape turns pink. Traditionally, you are supposed to sit outside under the cherry blossoms and act with wild abandon. I was happy to do that.

It began with night time drinking. Aided and abetted by a Britfriend, we set up camp at sunset by the river. Elderly Japanese people kept walking past and each time I expected a glance of disapproval at the booze and fags. But instead, people seemed really happy that we were enjoying the blossom in the traditional way. No-one seemed censorious about the level of noise or anything like that. It was, and this is rare for Japan, relaxed.

It was great to spend a whole weekend together after some time apart whilst I was in the UK.

K and I hadn’t seen much of each other for the past couple of weeks as I’d been a)Out of the country and then b)Busy with odd bits and bobs. So we made time this weekend to spend some “quality” time in and around Okayama City. It was fun to spend lazy mornings together and to wander in the sunshine. We also went to see The Artist, which I like as much as you’d expect, knowing how pretentious I am. It was actually my second time seeing it and I enjoyed it just as much as the first time. Again, there’s a period of 15 minutes in the middle where it drags slightly but otherwise, it’s a treat and as light as chiffon cake. It was interesting to observe the Japanese audience as some of the cultural references are quite obscure to Japanese culture and it helps if you can lip-read English. But it seemed to go down really well and there were lots of laughs, especially at anything involving the dog. I love the scene where he comes across the pile of his auctioned-off possessions and whips the sheets off in a dramatic Dorian Gray-like fury.

Monday is my first lesson in about 6 weeks. There, in a nutshell, is the main problem with the JET programme in Okayama. But I am really looking forward to it. I love the teaching here. When it goes well it’s so satisfying and I get a warm feeling from watching my students improve. There are a million irritations to being an ALT. That’s for another post. But I get to be a teacher and that’s really something.

But then that's why I came here in the first place...

It’s been a funny month. I haven’t updated for a while. That’s because I had to fly back to the UK at short notice and they weren’t the kind of circumstances where I could post an offbeat observation on Japanese crisps or other equally fascinating topics.

London felt different. Being away for such a long time really made me appreciate its good points. Japanese cities tend to be beautiful at night but less appealing in the daytime. For once, I really appreciated what a pretty city London is. There is a sense of history that you don’t feel in many Japanese cities where the buildings often feel transient-like they will all be knocked down and rebuilt in 20 years time.

British people look really unhealthy. I’m not sure why I haven’t noticed that until now. In Japan I’ve been surrounded by super-skinny people and many of my older colleagues are surprisingly fit for their age. My vice principle, who’s in his fifties, outpaced both me and Kelly when we went hiking with him. But on touchdown at Heathrow, it was noticeable just how unwell people looked. In saying that, I think Brits look unhealthy compared to almost all other nationalities, not just the Japanese.

I realised that I’d really been missing pretentious art scene stuff. So I did a whirlwind tour of the Mondrian-Nicholson exhibition at the Courtald and the Picasso in Britain exhibition at the Tate. Both were great, but especially the former which gave me a whole new range of pretentious things to say in conversation about Nicholson. Not that I’d do that, right?

I’m back in Japan now. Outside of my school, I have barely seen any cherry blossom yet. That needs to be rectified. K Chan and I are thinking about visiting Kyoto at the weekend, but so is everyone else in Japan so we’ll see if that actually comes together. I’ve actually got it into my head that too much is made out of the cherry blossom and that I don’t especially like it-but I have no basis on which to think this. It could just be that my brain is just wanting to be automatically contrary. I need to get down to Kyoto/Korakuen and decide for myself.

Apropos of nothing, here's a link to my favourite live Pulp-clip. This song always makes me want to be a house-husband.

Here's to being bloody awkward

It’s warming up. Spring is here. On my journey to work I go across a thin pedestrian bridge over the Asahi river. A month ago, the grass on the river bank was patched with yellow and black. The yellow was caused by the months of cold and lack of rain. The black was from where the turf had been burnt away in its annual maintenance. Meanwhile, the rice fields consisted of mud with little lumps of brown at intermittent intervals.

It won’t be long before the cherry blossoms start to open and people are sitting out on the grass drinking sake. Not quite hipsters with BBQs on London Fields, but nonetheless a relatively relaxed way to enjoy pretty outdoor Japan. What I am most looking forward to is being able to interact with the parks and gardens that often feel more decorative than functional.

It looks as if we are going to head south to the island of Yakushima next week. This is a truly budget-breaking trip, but the pressure of our forthcoming departure is pushing us to stretch ourselves in terms of what we are willing to break the bank for. Travelling has become an increasingly important part of my life here as the satisfaction I get from the job has slowly decreased.

You know when you watch a TV series and it just infiltrates your head completely? Well I’ve been watching a lot of Curb Your Enthusiasm lately and the effect of this is that I increasingly find myself thinking “This is a Larry situation”. In Curb Your Enthusiasm, you sometimes get the impression that a whole episode has basically been built around one idea (e.g. Larry has to use a toilet at someone’s house, but the toilet doesn’t have a lock or Larry phones in an obituary to the newspaper but they make an embarrassing misprint). From that idea, 28 minutes of awkwardness is derived, with 25 minutes of awkward grimacing and 3 minutes of laughing out loud at the end when everything comes together.

Well anyway, our friend is staying with us at the moment and was sleeping at the foot of our bed this morning. I had to get out of bed before both K and her friend who didn’t need to wake up until much later. So I needed to get up, wash, get dressed, get my things together and leave without waking or disturbing anyone, preferably without turning the lights on. My attempts to do this increasingly felt like a Larry David routine as I conspicuously struggled to dress myself in the darkness, tripped over people and eventually had to wake the friend up in order to retrieve something from a cupboard, whilst being berated by a clearly irritated K-chan. The whole time, I was imagining that trumpet background music in the background as I awkwardly fumbled my way to the front door.

Finally, I’ve discovered that Okayama’s 24 hour Mcdonalds, across the road from the station is the equivalent of London’s Bar Italia (*hums the Pulp song*). At 6.30 in the morning it is basically full of casualties and people who have clearly stayed up all night and can’t go home yet. This made me happy as I shuffled my way through the muzak-playing mall under the station and got laughed at by my students for not having enough money on my ICOCA card.