Halloween!

What a brilliant Halloween! Well what can you expect when you get a group of JETs from all over the world dressed up and squeezed into a few apartments with drinks all round?! Honestly one of the best Halloweens I’ve ever had. Ok, when I first turned up and got a few ‘kawaiis’ for my costume, I was a bit miffed. My costume was not supposed to be cute but freaky! Ah well, I soon adapted to this new ‘creepy kawaii’ look and had a wicked time not only pre-drinking at the Naruto apartments, but also after heading into town to Ingrid’s Halloween party. I am a little ashamed to admit it, but the combination of a group of gaijin dressed up, plus a little alcohol in the system; I had a rather good time stumbling around the city trying to freak the locals out. I think it was a success, though not in the way I wanted – they were freaked out but not by my costume but by the very drunk gaijin that happened to be strolling in their direction. Ah well, I had a good time. To top the night off there was a competition at Ingrid’s for the different types of costumes at the party. I am happy to say that I won the prize for scariest outfit! (Hooray, the kawaii look had gone apparently) so very happy with that. All in all it was an awesome night and I look forward to doing it all again next year.

Halloween at my Eikaiwa

So, on a cold Thursday night, a few days before Halloween, meeting up with a group of Japanese who don’t understand much English, what do you do?! Carve pumpkins of course! Yes yes I know, how is carving pumpkins helpful to an English speaking class?! In answer to that, well... it’s not. BUT if you want the full flavour of cultural exchange, I think the carving pumpkin tradition translates pretty well. Basically I bought 8 pumpkins for the evening (brought to the class very expertly in my suitcase – pumpkins are apparently really heavy, who would have thought?!) so 4 pumpkins for each class, making for the perfect competition setting. After giving a few pointers at the beginning – such as ‘cut off the top and scoop out the middle BEFORE cutting the face (yes, people tried this!) I just sat back and watched the chaos commence. Actually, although being really funny to watch as people flinched away from the knife threatening to take their eyes out, the result was some quite good looking pumpkins. Overall, expensive night yes but well worth it.

Class 1 Winners!

Class 2 Winners!

Rafting =D

So whilst standing on the river bank, listening to my instructor go through the safety briefing, I suddenly came to the realisation that “I’ve never wanted to go rafting before... why the hell am I here?!” However, by this point it had gone way past the eleventh hour, my ¥10,000 had been paid, I was all wetsuited up, and I was stood with a paddle in my hand. Put that together with being a Jenkinson and I could hardly back out now. So without much fuss, though with a lot of trepidation, I climbed into the raft ready for the off... and then straight away got cramp in my leg... this was definitely going to be an interesting day.

So what can I say about rafting? You voluntarily sit at the edge of an inflatable raft, careering down a white water river with nothing to hold onto but your paddle and your breakfast in your stomach, and above all this you are supposed to be having fun. Sounds crazy right?! But after less than a couple of minutes and our first uneventful encounter with some rapids, the fear soon left to be replaced by nervous excitement as you begged your instructor to go through the worst part of the rapids possible – even when he gave you the choice to go the easier way! Needless to say I am fully converted and would go as far to say that I really enjoy rafting – despite the fear and occasions of your life flashing before your eyes (plus a lot of water) the adrenaline rush of pounding your way through sprays and whirlpools of white water compensates for everything else and you can’t help but to come out on the other side smiling.

Another great aspect of going down the river in this way is that you get to look at the surroundings in a way that is not really possible when walking along the side of the river. Not only do you get to look differently, you also get to interact differently as well. As part of our trip, there were a couple of opportunities where we could jump off quite high cliffs into the waters below (calm waters I should hasten to add – we’re not suicidal). The first jump was quite small. Now I’m not an expert in judging heights... in fact, I suck at judging anything like height, distance, amount etc, so this is a large guestimate, however, this jump was at least 20ft high (I try and measure against me and I’m pretty sure this was more than 4 times taller!). Anyway, I was very boring and did a simple jump into the water (I say simple – I pulled out some S Club moves mid-jump), others were braver with the best jump coming from Broc who casually pulled off a somersault into the water! The funniest moment of this jump came in the form of Bella, who had sat at the top of the jump watching everyone else go but not being able to muster up the courage to go herself. At the end there was just Bella and our guide Mark left at the top. Reassured by Mark, Bella agreed that they would jump at the same time. So holding onto Bella’s hand, Mark counted down.... “Three, two, one, go...” Mark went, Bella went to go, then stopped. However, at this point Mark had already gone, and as he was holding onto Bella’s hand, she had nowhere else to go but down with him. Actually, down on top of him, but that’s just picking at details. Anyway a fully shook-up Bella and a slightly confused Mark arose from the water to many a cheer all around. So this was the first jump.

Can't remember which  jump this is, but you get the point!

The second came after lunch and was much higher, therefore much more exciting than the first. Actually it was so much higher that we were seriously told that this time we could not pull off any stunts we wanted – there would be no somersaults from Broc as, if anything went wrong, we would seriously injure ourselves! No pressure then hey?! There was no doubt in my mind that I would do this jump at the beginning of the trip, however, being injured in the second half of the day knocked my confidence slightly – I didn’t really want to submerge myself in water from a height when I had a chunk taken out of my head... oh wait – I skipped that part in the story. I will explain more later on. (mwahaha, now you have to keep reading to find out what happened!) Anyway, although slightly nervous, I was determined to get my monies/excitement worth and so headed up the steep rocks (possibly 50ft, potentially more) and made it to the top where a countdown was given and the jumper plummeted to the water below! Actually, the hardest thing about this jump was the climb up to it – sheer rocks do not make for a leisurely stroll in the afternoon and the knowledge that one false move would have us falling to a lot of pain certainly kept us on our toes. I think the worst thing about jumps like this is that they’re over too quickly. By the time your brain has realised you have just jumped off a 50ft cliff, you have already hit the water safely (hopefully), therefore, after surfacing from the water after my first jump with some pain to the head and a bruised feeling ankle (both past injuries) I couldn’t really refuse another chance to jump again. So I did just that! And this one felt 10 times better. When I came to the surface I was even complimented on the elegance of the jump which I realised afterwards was all due to my trampolining training. After all, how many other times have I had to keep balanced whilst falling quickly through the air?!?!

So I bet you want to know about my injury right?! Well even if you don’t I’m going to tell you anyway! When going rafting there is always an element of risk involved. You know full well that something could happen and you could hurt yourself, I was included in this knowledge. However, throughout the whole day, apparently the most dangerous thing in the trip came in the form of my instructor Mark – a lovely Australian who enjoyed giving us the full rafting experience; crashing into rocks and the like. Ok let me set the scene. There were about 20 of us JETs on this trip split between three rafts. In the afternoon, one thing led to another and we all ended up invading one of the rafts – obviously for a perfect photo opportunity. 

After the photos were taken, everyone began to return to their own rafts. Sam (being in my raft and already in the water) began to swim to the side of our raft to be helped up. Bella and I however were still in the other raft and came to the conclusion that there was no need for us to get wet by getting in the water, we would simply scramble onto our raft that was next to the one we were on. This is where it went wrong. Picture the scene, Sam on the side of the raft trying to get on, and me at the end of the raft trying to crawl over. I don’t know how it happened, but in the process of pulling Sam onto the raft, my instructor’s paddle went from leaning in the middle of the raft to swiftly coming up to meet my face (the metal pole I should add – not the actual paddle bit)! Ow. I remember it in slow motion. When you get hit in the head, you have that few seconds while it takes your brain to unjumble itself and to work out what happened. In this (I will call) ‘Ow’ period, I reached up to my head with my other had to see if I was hurt – when I pulled my hand away, it was covered in blood. This let my brain know that no, I don’t think I am ok, now what. I simply reached out, tapped my instructor on the shoulder and waited for him to help. To be fair now, the memory of the look on his face is priceless. One of complete, “holy shit!” – actually I think his words were more along the lines of, “Oh my god, what happened?!” but you know the saying, a picture paints a thousand words, to me his face just said two. We all know that water makes blood looks 10 times worse, so when you have been cut on the head in the middle of the river, I can only imagine is an impressive sight. 

All I managed after that was to point to his paddle when he asked me what happened and then sit on the side of the raft with my eyes closed to stop a) the spinning and b) the blood from getting in my eye. I also calmly asked if he had a first aid kit, and when he confirmed he did I casually said “That’s alright then.” And then proceeded to say nothing for the next few minutes while he sorted me out! So yeah, at the time it wasn’t great, but now I look on it as quite a funny story especially watching the looks on people’s faces when they ask “What happened?” and I reply, “My instructor hit me on the head with his paddle.” All it took was a trip to the doctors and a few butterfly stitches and its well on its way to mend.

Anyway, fantastic day all round and great company, as always, provided by the lovely JETs. In my mother’s words, “I’m soooo lucky”! =)

Hiroshima Sake Festival + Playing the tourist

So another three day weekend (I can’t even remember the last time I had a full week at school!) equalling another perfect opportunity to do something fun outside of Tokushima. The target for this weekend: Hiroshima and the sake festival.

 So before you read any further let me make your reading a bit more accurate. Sake is not pronounced sayk as it looks like it is spelt, nor is it pronounced sah-key, it is infact pronounced sah-kay. Get it? Got it? Good. I shall continue...

Let me just say after my experience this weekend, I no longer dread hostels! It was like no hostel I’ve ever been in before. For a start, you had to take your shoes off at the front door! Now in any other country (especially England) I’m pretty sure my shoes would be gone by the time I came back for them. However, I had no such problem with my shoes in this hostel as everyone’s shoes were neatly lined up by the front door ready and waiting for the correct owner to step into them when they came to leave. The ‘no shoes’ rule in the hostel made for a remarkably clean hostel with carpets that weren’t completely ruined and falling apart which you wouldn’t touch with bare skin if someone paid you. Also the showers were powerful and warm, despite how many people had been in before you. They were also individual with a large space to change afterwards to avoid the awkward changing in your shared dorm! I don’t know whether this hostel is comprable with other hostels around Japan, but I would be more than happy to go back and spend another night in this one if ever I went back to Hiroshima.

So the ultimate reason for heading to Hiroshima this weekend was to attend the Sake Matsuri (Festival). This basically entailed paying a covering fee of ¥1800 to get your own sake cup and a programme listing all the available sakes in the arena. And there were a lot. The sake had come from prefectures all over Japan and each area had at least 10 different sake types to try – usually more. Now I don’t like sake but I couldn’t really refuse this opportunity to give it a good go right? So, 1 cup down... ‘wow, that was disgusting, maybe I should have another’... 2^nd cup down... ‘nope, that was just as bad. Try one more?’... 3^rd cup down... ‘Yup, I definitely don’t like sake and now I feel pretty sick!’. I would just like to point out now that sake is not like other alcohol where the more you drink the better it tastes. For me, sake tastes just as bad whether it is the 3^rd or 30^th cup (not that I got that far, don’t worry!). However, it did seem a shame to pay so much money to have only 3 cups of sake, so I thought I’d just have a quick break before attempting any more cups. Whilst I was waiting at the side, watching my fellow JETs consume more and more sake without me, I was also aware of the other rather drunk Japanese people surrounding me. One such drunkard decided, with his very limited English to come and speak to me – awkward! And not one of my friends came to rescue me. However, whilst being chatted up by this 50 year old man, he did introduce me to the first sake I have tried and actually liked! Well done drunken man! This also gave me an excuse to leave him, as I said I would go and get my tomodachi (friends) and introduced them to B hyaku san ban (103). Tasty stuff. After that, whilst trying a few different sakes in between, I knew that I had one that I could fall back on in the end. Total count at the end of the night: 16. Slightly less than most people and a lot less than some, managing to drink 50+!!!! I don’t feel bad however, as it wasn’t me throwing up for the rest of the evening, nor feeling terrible the next day. This was another positive I got out of the day – as we started at around 3 and finished at about 8, I was able to get rather merry and yet sober up in time for bed, therefore forgo my hangover the next day! Awesome. Note to self: Always drink alcohol in the afternoon, it’s good for you! =P

Ok so as well as drinking sake (and other things beside) there was also time to squeeze in a little bit of culture and sightseeing into the mix. After all, we were there three days. So on Sunday we went to an absolutely beautiful garden fairly near to the hostel. The focus of this garden was the giant pond in the middle full of koi and turtles, with countless paths criss-crossing and weaving around the outside. There was also a large stone bridge in the middle named the rainbow bridge that was definitely a centrepiece to the garden. I have always been a fan of the tranquillity and peacefulness of Japanese gardens (Americans aside) and this garden was of no exception, excelling in producing fantastic landscapes no matter which way you were facing. Anyway, it has fully made me decide that when I marry my rich husband I will get him to build me my own (possibly on a smaller scale) Japanese garden.

 After spending a little time in the garden, it was time to move on and explore the island of Miyajima. The island was a 10 minute ferry ride and attention was kept throughout by the impressive image of the massive torii (gate) forefronting the island. This gate is so impressive as at low tide you can go up to the massive structure, placing money at the base of the pillars (which like a good tourist I did!) However, when the tide came back in, the gate base was surrounded by water making it for a striking site with the structure steadfast but floating in the middle of the water. Another famous aspect of the island was the tame deer residents, constantly after whatever you have to eat, but at the same time being placid enough for you to go and pet them if you so wish (which I did!) It was a really strange sight just watching so many deer casually stride past you as you are walking along the street. So in Miyajima, there was not a lot to do but wwe still managed to spend hours exploring the island. Whilst others decided to go an check out the temples, Broc, Bella, Todd and myself decided to keep climbing up the side of the mountain to see how far it went. Turns out, very far, and I was practically dying by the time we go half way  up – that’s right, half way, I refused to go up the 1.7km to the summit. But from where we were anyway the view was fantastic, seeing the torii in the far distance made me realise how far I could walk before I died! It really was a magnificant place – great views and things to see everywhere, and despite the near-death, definitely worth a climb! Before leaving, there was just time to see the largest rice spoon in the world before we headed back to the ferry. This spoon was a beast! Tucked away amongst the omiyage/souvenir shops all of a sudden this spoon looms out of a building at you. I don’t know the point of it, but I certainly see that it’s impressive.

So on Monday, as the bus wasn’t leaving until 18:10, there was still more time for a bit more sight-seeing. And seeing as we are in Hiroshima, what is the most obvious thing to go and see and learn about? After walking around the city, especially once exploring the peace park, it is impossible to imagine such destruction and utter annihilation occurred in Hiroshima. Who knew that such beautiful surroundings could be grown out of nothing but ash and flames? However, it has been transformed (although still keeping old things like the trams through the city) and I believe the Japanese people should feel proud of such a place that they have recovered. Apart from all the shrines and monuments depicting the lives that were lost by the bomb, the most obvious feature of the area is that of the A-bomb dome – only foundations and framework left of what was once a magnificent green-domed western style building. The skeleton of the building now is an eerie but important reminder of the disaster caused by the bomb. The museum dedicated to the Hiroshima bomb was also very well presented, providing for me information that I had never thought, nor heard about before. Although arguably biased (can you blame them?!), it did strongly depict the horrific waste of innocent civillian lives in the city, whether foreign or Japanese, and the stories of survivors and their deceased family members, with viewable clothes and items, was enough to really hit home the devastation that the bomb caused, and certainly made one subdued and humble when faced with the awful reality of the situation. 

 

So quite a mixture of Japanese/Hiroshima culture this weekend, but definitely a memorable and enjoyable one. Needless to say though, after getting home last night at just gone 11, school today was a bit of a struggle in the ‘staying awake’ department!