Nara

Knowing that my parents are coming to Japan next year, Hitomi kindly offered to take me to Nara to do a reccee for their visit. Along with Nikko and Kyoto, Nara is generally considered one of the unmissable stops on even the most whirlwindy trips to Japan. For various reasons, but primarily being a bit "templed out", I skipped it on my tour last year, so it was great to get the chance to go, and even better to go with locals. We were accompanied by Satou Sensei, one of the teachers from another local school, who was a nice guy, if someone nervous of me.

Just a not-so-quick interjection to explain that last comment...

Most of us in the UK are totally chilled around foreigners, and have a "we're all the same" attitude - we know that everyone worries about money, partners, kids, jobs etc., and that although underlying beliefs and cultures may be different, that the similarities between different races create a much stronger bond than the differences cause repulsion. However, the Japanese have been brought up for many generations (I suspect since they first had contact with Westerners) to believe that they are different from the rest of humankind. Not just physically, but mentally too. And seemingly not in a "nurture" kind of way, but in "nature". It's a subject which anyone who has lived here could spend many, many hours speaking about, and within Japan it even has its own genre of literature - nihonjinron. It is compounded by the fact that there are barely any foreigners here, so we are a novelty at the best of times. Anyhow, I won't say much more, but the result of this problem (yes, I do believe it is a problem) is that people often behave, err, strangely around us.

The usual manifestations tend to take one of two routes - utter rudeness and hostility, and odd shyness-induced behavior with a huge sprinkling of curiosity. It was the latter that Satou-san exhibited, and took the form of my being watched constantly, followed like a puppy, having things I said repeated back to me, being commented on and touched inappropriately, and general awkwardness. Nothing bad or malicious at all, but did get a bit tiring at times!

Anyhow, we made for a happy threesome and had a great days sightseeing, walking, eating and sitting in a car! We started off at Todaiji Temple, where the world's largest wooden building (which itself is only two-thirds of the size of the original) houses Japan's largest brass Buddah statue (the second largest being the one I saw at Kamakura last year).

There was also this creepy-looking Buddah statue, face made evil by years of rain:

Next up it was onto a hill-top temple, which involved passing along some traditional streets:

The temple had lots of brass lanterns hanging from the roof, as well as good views over Nara. Sadly it was cloudy and raining so they weren't as appreciated as they may have been.

Finally it was time to stop for a nice hot bowl of noodles! I had green tea soba with mushrooms.

And pudding was warabimochi - mochi made from bracken starch and covered in kinako - sweetened ground soyabeans.

There are tame deer everywhere in Nara, and you could stop and stroke them and feed them special rice crackers. Hitomi got some funny photos of me being attacked by a horde of them as a result of having a handful of crackers, which I will post at a later date. The shops and public loos have to keep their doors shut to stop them wandering in, and you have to be careful they don't eat your coat!

After a nice walk through the park, we went to Kasuga Taisha, a famous shinto shrine. It is famous for its lanterns, of which I got a few good shots:

The ginko (ginna) leaves turn a lovely shade of yellow, and I managed to get this shot of the leaves, the red shrine and a deer before we got back in the car to make our way home.

We stopped for dinner on the way back, at an American grill-style restaurant called Bronco Billy's. I had a mixed set of steak, hamburger and chicken and it was deeeelicious. Served with rice, soup and unlimited salad. Yum yum. After that it was straight to bed with me - was exhausted after the walking and the fact that the day before I was the only adult in karate class, so had a killer hardcore session running around with the kids :)

Owari

Owari means "finish" or "end". It's what the Japanese teacher says in class when I say "ok, it's time to finish for today", and it's what I'm saying now, since I have finished my classes for the term. I still feel like I'm a long way from jumping on my plane, even though Virgin says it's "2 days, 22 hrs, 3 mins until your next flight with us".

There's a lot to be done - putting a load of washing in before karate tonight, training, packing tomorrow morning, a trip into Nagoya for some errands on Saturday, meeting up with friends for dinner in the evening, cleaning the flat and packing on Sunday morning, then taking the Shinkansen to Tokyo in the afternoon. I'm spending the night with Meredith, who I haven't seen since we were in Narita all those months ago, then getting up early on Monday for the flight. Phew!

I cannot wait to get home - so excited to see my parents and sisters again, and then to spend New Years Eve and early January with my friends. The only downside to it all is that I am so busy I've had to start a diary to keep track of what I'm supposed to be doing (yes, at 31 I still don't keep a diary, despite several half-assed attempts), what with uni visits, lunches, family events and general partying, life is looking hectic! Although of course it will be the best kind of hectic - the type filled with great people and good times :)

Yoshi-kun says "no"

Am sitting in the staff room on the computer, having finished classes for the day. I have slowly befriended Yoshi-kun, the most autistic of the autistic kids in the himawari class, and now he comes and sits by me when I'm on the computer, occasionally saying things in English (his vocabulary is amazing). His teacher just tried to evict him from the staff room, and he refused to go, saying "no, no". Being the ever-helpful type, I sat here and giggled as he gave up trying to get Yoshi to stand, and just wheeled him out on his wheelie chair.

What if...

Been really busy recently - Christmas shopping, packing, seeing friends and sights, tidying, organising and getting ready for the last week of work before I go home for Christmas (obligatory "yay"!). However, I have still found a few minutes to ponder the impending release of the Google phone.

Now, I know bugger all about the mobile phone industry - how it works and just what would be required to give it a catastrophically damaging kick up the arse - but it occurs to me that Google are probably in a good position to do just that. What if (looking at the UK only) they partner with someone like BTOpenZone to offer good wifi coverage, then supplement this by partnering (or buying) someone like 3, who have a very good 3G network.

With VOIP as the default call option, call costs would be 0, thus meaning that they could offer the handset for sale either at a flat-rate, or a cheap monthly rate, or some variation thereof with the obligatory support from ads. This would surely result in people leaving their current providers in droves. Hmm. Very curious to see what happens - maybe I'll find myself not wanting to use the iPhone by the time I get back to the UK.

For now, however, it's back to your regular geek-free programming...

Best parcel EVAR

This photo shows the contents of the best parcel I've ever received. I recently posted a Facebook status, jokingly reminding people that it was my birthday and that they should send Kettle Chips, chocolate Hob Nobs, trashy magazines and my favourite cake - carrot cake from Pret - to me here in Japan. I didn't imagine anyone would ever oblige my yearnings for junk food from my home country, but how wrong I was! My awesome little sister sent me the above, all safely ensconced up in bubble wrap, and it arrived, to my great surprise and joy, on Monday. How cool is that?! The carrot cake, which is supposed to be kept refrigerated, was still in tip-top shape and I ate it for my breakfast yesterday. A parcel certainly couldn't get much better than this! Thanks Ali! :)

Birthday shenanigans

The weekend ended up being a bit of a social whirlwind, full of food, booze and all-round busy-ness. On Friday I was thinking about going to karate, but felt tired so decided to skive. Instead I went for sushi with Hitomi and Satou Sensei. Satou-San teaches at a nearby school, and since the three of us are going sightseeing to Nara next weekend, he wanted to meet me first. We had a great dinner of kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi. Yum.

On Saturday I met seven friends and went to MokuMoku for vast amounts of food and ice-cream. As always, it was excellent. Afterwards a few of us went on to the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, which was running an exhibition called "Japan, a self-portrait, 1945-1964". It was a huge collection of photos taken by Japanese photographers, documenting life in Japan from WW2 until the mid-sixties. It was amazing to see the conditions Japan reverted to after the war - many people were living in abject poverty, especially in the countryside, and having recently visited Cambodia made me notice a lot of similarities in living conditions! It also documented the rapid rise in Japan's fortunes, and the accompanying introduction of American customs and day-to-day items, thanks to the occupation. We were lucky enough to be accosted by a middle-aged Japanese man who spoke excellent English (and wasn't weird - always a result!) who told us the back-stories of some of the shots. There was an older man there too, who had obviously lived through the period, with whom he spoke to and translated the conversation back to us. Fascinating.

After that we grabbed a very light dinner and headed home, as I had to be up early the next day for the JLPT test the next morning. It went pretty well - a few tricky questions, but I'd done a lot of past papers so I'm not worried about failing.

Not sure if I mentioned my karate grading too. I suspect not, as I've been a bit slack compared to my normal blogging pace. Well, it went... OK. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. I have a lot of stuff to work on still. Trying not to dwell on the fact it didn't go as well as I wanted to - don't want to get trapped in a cycle of negative thinking, so just continuing training as normal.

Anyhow, I ended up meeting some new people at the JLPT test. My apartment-block mate Martin did it, and some of his friends were also having a second attempt. There was a guy called Doug, who I've vaguely met before but always thought was a bit weird as a result of seeing him inhaling cigarettes and drinking coffee outside the convenience store near school, and doing it in a way that suggested he might spontanouesly combust whilst doing so. Turns out he's just shy and comes across as a bit nervous. I met his fiance, an Australian, who was cool, and another guy from England (yay). We all went for a drink afterwards, which of course turned into several, and ended up going for a curry afterwards. We were also joined by Yumi and Takeshi, both Japanese. They were awesome, especially Yumi, who also loves food and is a bit crazy! Nice to spend some time with a few locals, especially as the pub is always the best place to practise your Japanese ;)

As you can imagine, not being used to the Evil Booze, Monday was tough. Ended up missing karate, cooking a weeks supply of soup and getting an early night. Have put myself on a new diet - banana and satsumas for breakfast, soup for dinner. Need to reduce the size of my big gaijin arse in order to increase it again with cheese and wine over the summer holidays.

This week is the last at this school, and for the last two days of this week I'm only doing Christmas classes. The main activities involve making cards and snowflakes, the latter of which will be stuck all over the windows of the English classroom :) Only 10 or so more days until the end of term, and then two more till I fly home for Christmas - woo!

Kyushoku - Wednesday 9th December

Been a while since I last posted one of my awesome school lunches, and since today's was one of my favourites, I thought I'd share it with you:

I just looked back at the last kyushoku, and it's similar, but nevermind - it's so good it deserves to go up twice.

Clockwise from top left:

• wantan suupu (wonton soup)
• yogureto (yoghurt)
• gyunyu
• bibinba (bibimbap rice)
• ika iri negu yaki (cuttlefish and onion grill)

Rating: 5/5

To see previous lunches, click the tag on the right.