Glorious Sunday!

What a fantastic day yesterday!! Sure, we stayed home and watched television but after Saturday it was the most wondrously lazy day and definitely a godsend. Ok, let's back it up a week and head first to the Bon dance and take it from there.

Every city, possibly every town, in Japan apparently holds a bon dance. O Bon is a period of time, similar to the Mexican day of the Dead, when ancestors and loved ones can return to this world for a short period. People travel all over Japan to return to their home town or the place of their parents. Each area celebrates differently but in general there is a lot of visiting graves and temples. At the end of O Bon (the O is a prefix that means revered or honoured) candles are lit and set to float out to sea guiding the souls back to 'heaven'. In the Japanese belief system 'heaven' is not above us but across the sea which is kinda cool. And then, as a final celebration, the Bon dance is held. This is a much more upbeat celebration with thousands of people dressing up in Yakatas and other outfits and dancing the regions specific Bon dance. We were lucky enough to be invited and stumbled our way through the basic steps all dressed up in our borrowed Yukatas. It was a delightful night and one we wont readily forget. We also got the chance to meet some great people through the international club as well!

The following weekend we had a really lovely couple from Germany stay with us. I was working both days but they were incredible guests and it was a complete delight to have them. They are from Karlsuhre in Germany. I'd never heard of it which was actually a little embarrassing because it turns out that both the father of the modern automobile, Karl Benz, and the inventor of the bicycle, Karl von Drais, were both from there.

Anyway, I came own with some weird fever or allergy thing on Saturday which made my day at work a living hell and then basically came home and curled up in a ball (drinking my beery medicine) until I fell asleep. I slept until 10 something in the morning and was 100% on Sunday. No idea what the disease or reaction was but Sunday was spent in cautionary recuperation mode and was thoroughly enjoyed. The guys headed off at the beginning of the day on their huge trip back down to the south and by the end of the day the world had returned to its rosy pink and we began planning for our grand Mexican even in a couple of weeks!

Cheers to all!!

robin

From the Port festival onward!

There is so much to see and do there is barely time to blog!

So, what have we been up to since two weeks ago....well, let me tell you.

My last week of work before the holidays flew by and in no time I was getting excited about the upcoming time off. Travel can be expensive here and in the end we decided to hang around for our first holidays. We don't really speak enough Japanese to go out exploring by ourselves so we thought it would be much better to stay at home and focus on learning some basic phrases and do a short over night couchsurfing trip to visit a friend in her families farm. But before all that excitement got under way we had to get through the Kushiro Port Festival!!

The Port festival is the largest festival of Kushiro and runs for three days. On Friday evening they have a grand opening parade with giant ships on wheels dragged in circles through the city. It is pretty crazy once it gets going as they go pretty fast but it takes a while to get up and going.

 A while all the participants would be drinking as well but one of the boats over turned going round a corner and hit someone (they are ok but it was serious at the time) and ever since they have banned contestants from drinking. Some of my students were pretty disappointed about that but I guess the safety issue isn't one we can just ignore for the sake of a rollicking good time. By luck I finally got a chance to meet some of the other teachers in town. As it turns out there are like five or six but that evening I met up with three of them and a couple of interchange language students Diana has. It started off as a pretty crazy time.

We had a beer while watching the boats then we hit the beer garden (a month long mini festival for summer where you can head to the park in the afternoons and drink outside) and when that closed hit one of the Izakaya's we like (Izakaya is like a drinking house that also serves food.

This one was the first one we went to in Kushiro and we have been back a few times and as it turned out two of the teachers new the dude as well! Small town. We then hit the food stalls and gamin tents where we tried the house of horror (not scary) and the archery (I failed horribly...think I must have been pretty drunk by then...or at least thats my excuse) and various other ways of spending money and smiling.

 After that we headed to Karaoke!! Which was the second place in one night where you pay x and then its all you can drink for a certain time (nomhide). This was bad for my health but due to my honour as an Australian (and Diana's as a Mexican) and the fact that these were new people we both struggled through valiantly. The worst thing was of course that I had work the next day and Diana had her first class. Luckily we pulled up ok and powered through the day!! We are getting older, yes that's undeniable, but we're not dead yet!

 After we got through the days work Diana got dressed for her fist outing in a Yukata! One of my students gave Diana a Yukata (this is a summer Kimono) and On Saturday there is a famous parade called the peoples dance. All (or lots of) the women of Kushiro gather together in their Yukatas and dance a simple but elegant dance down the main street of Kushiro. We couldn't actually join the dance itself but we still went out in the Yukata, got some photos and enjoyed the festival.

 After a quick change into something more comfortable we met up with Maiko and her mum (we met her at the dentist and she works for Hokkaido newspaper) for a quick chat. They live near us and they took us wandering around the stalls in the festival and we learnt about Oden (special soul food you eat during festivals) and a cool minced fish snack that Diana loved. It was great to meet some more local people here in Kushiro!

On Sunday we bravely stepped forth once again to check out the final day of the festival. We were hoping to catch the grand marching bad event but for some reason it never happened. Nevertheless there was more than we had hoped on display. There were dancing dragons, school kids, taiko (japanese drums), break dance style groups, baton twirling dancers and so much more. It was very cool! We headed back on Sunday, exhausted, but incredibly fulfilled and glad that we had made it to all three days of Kushiro's port festival!

 The first few days of study at home were, well, ok. We mostly realized that we were miles and miles behind the eight ball and that it would take a lot and a lot of work to get anywhere at all. We tried establishing some form of study regime with targeted goal and the like but we are a little unreliable and kept failing to meet them. Still, we got somewhere and by the time it cam to organizing our weekend we felt like we had some basics down and that maybe we could reach the goals we kept talking about.

 We got up early on Saturday and headed to the FM Kushiro festival down on Harutori lake. The walk there took nearly an hour but it reminded me of how gorgeous it was down around the lake so was well worth it. We also passed another random festival that we had heard nothing about and still dont know what it was but  it looked cool. The Kushiro FM festival was up and going when we arrived.

We said hit to Sato, one of the presenters we had met when we did the interview, and went exploring the stalls. By pure chance we bumped into Maiko there in a Yukata with her friend. They were supporting a local group who sell deer meat so we ate deer chops and deer meat deep fried snacky things. It was very cool to find them there but as we had a train to catch we had to get going. On our way out a guy dressed up as a Marimo (the weird balls of moss that grow in lake Akan) insisted, in Japanese, that we try out the bicycles (bicycle was one of the few words we had studied so that was lucky). As it turned out they were electric power asisted bikes and they were pretty darn impressive. We had a couple of laps and made a dash for the train.

 Ayako, a fellow couchsurfer, greeted us at the train station of Shibecha. To get there we had to go through pretty much the length of the marsh. It was stunning!! We kept having to slow down and blast the trains whistle to get deer and other wildlife off the tracks. Shibecha itself is a very small town. Ayako says that maybe only 5000 people live there but its a very large area so it is often that you don't see many people. We were to be staying well out of town though, maybe 6 or 7km.

The dairy farm itself was beautiful and Ayako's  mum has a pretty great little vegie patch going too. Though the trip was short it was absolutely fantastic. We mad rice balls for the BBQ, ate vast quantities of meat, Nato for breakfast and then hiked around lake Akan and learnt about some of the local wild foods! It was such a wonderful trip and the family were just so generous and giving.

Our Japanese was woeful, we were much more under prepared than we had thought but the family were so patient and helped us out heaps!! I think we learnt more Japanese in the short time with them than we have so far in this trip, I just hope we can remember it all! On Sunday Ayako spent the day showing us places near her house. We went hiking in Lake Mashu, a lake that is completely fed from ran and snow, no inlet what so ever and at one point had a clarity of 40 meters!! Our guide, with five years in Australia and a major in eco tourism, was an absolute delight. I could go on for hours about the trip with Ayako and her family but I don't want to gush too much so I will just leave you with some photos below and the idea that it was FANTASTIC!!!!