One month in!

It has been another couple of great weeks. I’ll start with a quick rundown of activities, with photos then I might try and give a few opinions about some of my personal observations. First and foremost, Diana and I are well. Our time here is fantastic so far and the people are treating us with kindness and patience. These last two weeks have been pretty busy.

Diana has been working on the upcoming event and her course. CIE has been helping her develop a curriculum for her Spanish classes and they have gone shopping for decorations for the grand Mexican Independence day event. I have been working on the menu and trying to help a little with some ideas now and again but really Diana and CIE are doing the majority. It looks like it will be a grand affair!

The week before last was very intense. I had some really long days in there and it was pretty tiring but it was a good week. Work has had its ups and downs but I am getting there bit by bit. I am constantly terrified I will scare students away through some error or oversight but as I get more familiar with my students I am starting to relax back into the role. The students, like in the past, have been a great source of support, information and motivation for our own situation. I think learning from the people and in turn imparting something of my experiences in life is what I love most about teaching and traveling.

So that’s the basics on day to day life…as for fun…

Last weekend we had a welcoming party!! It was pretty fun. We both drank too much and ended up in a Karaoke bar singing horribly. It was pretty hilarious though I can’t really remember the end that well, maybe it was something I ate hehe. It was such a great night but our complete lack of Japanese is really starting to affect us. We ate grilled fish, drank sake and learned quite a few words from one of my student’s daughters.  The real challenge though, aside from the language was the next morning.

I had organized, at 5am, to go fishing with a different student….what pain. At 4 30, and I have no idea how we managed to wake up as the alarm didn’t go off, we stumbled down to the street and piled into his car. It was a fabulous trip. I mentioned Tsurui Mura last blog and posted a couple of photos but this time we got to walk through that jungle of green and down into the real nature.

Knee deep in crystal clear water we simply bait casted for these little fishlings. I think they are some type of trout but can’t be sure and for a short period you are allowed to fish for the tiny little dudes. It is fun, easy and the bait was maggots. I caught twenty of the little dudes and my gracious host caught 15, though I have to admit the majority of his were considerably larger than most of mine.

 Before I move onto the eating I think it might be worth mentioning a few little bits and pieces. As we were driving we nearly hit a giant Bambi. I know technically I should call it a deer but you should have seen it! It was almost that yellow brown, straight out of Disney, with those stereo typical brown dotted stripes and everything. It must have been Bambi’s parent before she or he died or something. It was still very cool, though for our host it was like an Australian seeing a Kangaroo in the bush. ‘Bloody deer, geez they can be a bugger! They’ll jump straight out in front of you if you’re not careful’ (not even close to a literal translation!).

Another note on the wildlife, aside from the very serious outfit; waders, hat, scarf and bait box, we were also equipped with a whistle. This small device was used frequently as we wandered through the bush and Diana had to ask….’what’s the whistle for?’ I had a feeling and wasn’t too surprised when our host found the English word for bear. Diana wasn’t particularly amused hehehe. From what I understood, the chances of seeing a bear here were pretty low but it never hurt to reduce the chances a little further, it sounded like sound reasoning to me though I don’t know how assured Diana was.

We went, via all the look outs around the marsh (AWESOME), back to our hosts house to fry up some of the bigger fish and eat them. We were a bit nervous and awkward at their house but they were so kind and patient it was great. The fish was delicious as well. I am quickly learning to not only eat a lot of fish but to quite enjoy it. The rest of the weekend was just recovering and household stuff.

 This weekend is turning out to be even MORE scandalous. Last night we headed to the ‘Fog Festival’. After the shrine festival, very cool but kinda quiet, we weren’t expecting a huge affair but we were very very surprised. The area was full to over fllowing, the bands were great and the laser show was fantastic. We have another welcome party tonight and then we might return to see if there is anything left at the festival! It should be yet another amazing weekend and technically my ‘weekend’ doesn’t start until Sunday! Yes!!

 As for insights and observations...they'll have to wait...things to do!!

Wow!!!!

So, what a weekend...
This weekend there were school festivals, a shinto festival, a concert (with my dentist), a couch surfer and a trip to Akan. It's amazing how much we managed to fit in. I have decided, without a doubt, that Kushiro was an absolutely fantastic place to have chosen.
First I'll just briefly mention the festival. It was a shame, not a lot of people came, but it was still a fantastic experience. There was a team of about 10 or 15 kids drumming right next to my school on Saturday on the way to work. They were awesome too! I didn't have the camera with me but over the course of my classes, and it was a pretty long day, we had heaps of floats and the really heavy shrine all coming past the school. It was really cool to see.

After I finished work I met up with Diana and our couchsurfer from Israel to go and see my dentist sing in Spanish. He lived for 18 years in Brazil, loves to sing, and taught himself 'La Malagueña' which is a cool song written and composed by two Mexicans about a a woman from Malaga. It wasn't too bad and some of the other acts were pretty impressive. It was a really formal, slightly weird event but all in all it was great.

We ate out afterward and went to a restaurant we went to in the first week of our arrival. I should mention here that this weekend was not a good example of an economic weekend...but it was worth it. It's a little place that does fusion food. Spanish, Italian and Japanese. The setting is really traditional but the food is just plain cool. The photo below is of Mozzarella sushi!

The next day (That's Sunday) we headed to 'the festival'. As it turned out Saturday was pretty much the festival and Sunday was just like a few small little events and as it was raining basically no one turned up...which was kinda sad. Nevertheless we got to learn some flower arranging which was awesome, we got invited to a tea ceremony and we watched three awesome traditional dances! Though we were pretty much the only spectators it was still an amazing day and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

And then there was the Akan tour!! Ok, so it was a paid tour where you just get on a bus and stop and all the specified places and take the same photos but it was still AWESOME!! You should see the scenery here. Even before we got into the marsh land or arrived at the first lake my mind was blown by just how amazingly beautiful the countryside is around here. wild flowers and gorgeous trees. Steep rocky outcroppings and rolling lush green meadows. One of the first places we stopped at was called Tsurui Mura, which in Anui means the place where the cranes stay. There were tancho cranes there. These birds are amazing. I mean I know they are the town emblem and all but I had never imagined how huge and glorious they are. They stand at about 1 and a half meters tall and a wing span of over 2meters!! Very cool bird. We couldn't stay long but that was cool. The next stop was lake Kushiro. Its in a bowl of a valley, wouldn't be surprised if we are talking volcano here, the mountain to the right of the image definitely was at some point (I guess it could be some form of sinkhole type feature but I have most of my money on volcano). That was very cool and there were cool squirrels there too, about three or four inches tall. So cool!
From there it was off to something rather mountain. It translates to sulfur mountain and basically looks like modor hahaha. Seriously. Steam billowing up from the arid rocky ground and vivid stains of acrid yellow with the constant smell of sulfur. There were patches of bubbling water coming up out of the ground too. I tried to not think too hard about how far down the molten rock had to be....
Finally we got to Lake Akan. There was soooo much to see and do there but we only had two hours so we hired a boat and headed out to the infamous morimo's. They are balls of Algae that live on the bottom of the lake, kinda cool. But the whole place is just a marvel. Up in the mountains, completely un touched...stupidly beautiful. I could have posted like four hundred thousand photos but I have restrained myself. Diana and I are VERY excited about exploring more of Hokkaido and look forward to really pushing our Japanese in the near future to make it all possible. We are in the process of organizing a home stay at a farm to practice our Japanese and get our hands back into the soil....oh and our beans have just come up. It has been a great weekend!!

There is still more to say about the weekend. We went and checked a place for our big independence day event (Mexican), we have the radio interview tomorrow and we started up an online social international group...it's been awesome and crazy but mostly awesome. Look forward to updating more soon.
ciao world

Kushiro

It’s not what I had imagined and continues to surprise. We arrived here on the last day of June. The town center was quiet, quieter than we had guessed. We ate out and found the restaurants all but empty. The businesses were closed and the streets were quiet. One of the first things people invariably told us was the sad story of a city quietly disappearing. They would speak of before, of when there was motion and life. There is no business left they tell me. No one comes to the center anymore; they all stay in the suburbs. Those first few days showed us how true this appeared to be and we spoke of how it was strange that so many little restaurants could withstand such a quiet economy. But it was simply that our eyes had not yet grown accustomed to the light of Kushiro and we were missing a lot of the picture.

Over the next two weeks we saw a lot more movement. A lot quieter than perhaps it had once been but still there. Perhaps it had been the hour of our arrival or maybe it was simply the fact that we went out very early for dinner. We returned one week later, to the same kind man who served us our first meal, alone, in his little restaurant to find it completely full. There were tables full of laughter and the grill was never empty. Our kind host barely found time for more than a smile between grilling the yakitori and coordinating between his cook and the waitress. So there is still much life here, it is just that it took us a few days to find it. We have eaten whole squid fried in front of us and deliciously fresh raw Tuna and Saury (I still don’t know which fish that is but it’s the local speciality). We have had the pleasure of experiencing the generosity and patience of the people here as they patiently wait for us to search for a single word and then try and work out what it is we are trying to ask. Kushiro has slowly and quietly begun to unfold itself before us and we are revelling in our little daily discoveries. It speaks volumes of the wondrous times that lay ahead of us here.

The people seem to garden a lot. In our wandering we regularly pass little rows of peas and lettuces or greenhouses with basil and tomato. It is inspiring to see the pride people take in their gardens and even in the streets in front of where they live. Our area has fallen a little since apparently no one lives here anymore but it is still spotlessly clean. I have so much more to say but I think I will wait until after the festival. This weekend we have the shrine festival, various school festivals and we are going to fit in a day trip to Akan, a famous local lake and hot spring area. We are also going to see my dentist sing a Mexican song in a local Japanese café which will be a treat and somewhere in there I think I have a full day’s work. I will pepper the next post with an array of random images to tantalize you all with the wonders of Kushiro but until then, stay well.