Matt took all the photos in this update. I forgot my camera for the party and I still haven’t forgiven myself.

As teachers in the English Language Centre at Junten, it fell to us to organize the annual Halloween party. The problem was that English volunteers have been doing it for years, and it’s generally seen as the event that sets the trend for the rest of the year. Good Halloween Party means a good set of volunteers. So it was definitely on.

The first thing to worry about was costumes. I have no problem here in admitting that Matt well and truly outdid me here. I simply lopped the bottom off a Futon cover, drew a stupid face on it and proudly exclaimed “I’m a ghost!“ to anyone who would listen. Matt however constructed what can only be described as a masterpiece of cardboard and women’s stockings.

It may not look that terrifying here, but when the lights were down and 12 orange eyes are moving towards you it’s pretty scary. Anyway, we decided on a few activities for the students. Apple bobbing was a new concept to them, and to start with there were complaints that it wasn’t hygenic and so forth but eventually quite a lot of the kids were having a go, which was a huge suprise. I really was expecting kids shuffling awkwardly around whilst Matt and I underlined their theory that England is full of lunatics, but the kids seemed pretty happy to have a go at all the games. Furthermore, after the game was finished the kids asked us if they could eat the apples. Because fresh fruit is obscenely expensive here (aside from bananas), apples are actually a real treat for Japanese kids. Giving them apples was like giving them a British child 500g of sickeningly sweet chocolate. I guess we just can’t help but be the nicest people in the world ever.

The next game was a competition for pairs of students to wrap each other entirely in toilet paper.

Needless to say this game was incredibly popular. Afterwards we had about 3 rolls of toilet roll left, so the students tried to wrap as many people as they could together with it, including Matt, myself and Barney, the American teacher. Eventually there were about 20 students wrapped together. Nakahara-Sensei took a few photos so I will try to get them posted up here when I can get them off his camera. Needless to say if and when I get married, whoever my best man is will proudly show the photos of me wrapped to two 16 year old Japanese girls. (It is important to note that for some reason Japanese toilet roll is stronger than most metals, and in one roll of the stuff you get about sixy miles of paper.)

The next game was the spider’s web. Take some wool, wrap it around a part of yourself, then throw it to someone else, who does the same. Again, the majority of people in the room at some point got drawn into the game.

Again, for some reason Japanese wool is designed to survive nuclear strikes, so getting out afterwards took some doing.

We also did some trick or treating (read; Japanese kids shout “Trick or Treato!” and we throw sweets at them) and a good old singalong to The Timewarp, The Monster Mash and other veritable classics.

The most important quote of the day came from one of the top year students Yuki, who lived in Hawaii for a long time and thus has fantastic English.

Mike: So is this better than last year’s party?

Yuki: I’d say it’s about five times better.

Mike: Only five?

Yuki: Well OK, more like six times better.

That’s right. Six times better. If any of the old Junten volunteers are reading this our Halloween party was six times better. Better luck next time!

Dinner was over. We were tired, confused and a little nauseated from eating something that was alive ten minutes ago. Infact, if it's ok with you guys, we'd really just like to head to bed now.

No chance. It was time to go and watch the youth of Atami practicing their traditional drumming (Wodaiku) in time for their festival. For some reason practice took part in a warehouse used to store rice. The idea is there's one guy with a huge drum and lots of kids hitting little drums in time. From the standpoint of a spectator it looks fantastic, especially towards the end when they get faster and faster. If someone makes a mistake, their Japanese "I've let the entire team down" sense goes into overdrive and they stop in disgust, even if the mistake wasn't actually noticeable. Still, generally the kids didn't make many mistakes.

What you can't see were the three other teenagers playing traditional wooden flutes to accompany the drummers. Now I can understand that it's age old tradition and the children are proud of their heritage and so on and so forth, but seriously guys get those flutes fixed. They sound like recorders being played underwater through a really loud speaker. Not only that, the song was practiced about six times while we were there, it's about 4 minutes long, and throughout most of the song it's the same melody repeated over and over. Needless to say I have developed an irrational hatred of flutes.

Anyway, as I said, to the audience it looks like the drumming is pretty simple. This common misconception can be removed by having a go at it. It's really, really hard. When you're standing next to other people who are in time it becomes painfully obvious you're out of time.

The girl standing next to me in the final picture tried her hardest to keep me in time, singing a little tune for me to keep in time to. It's not just keeping in time, either. You have to lift your left drumstick up high on the 9th beat of every section of the tune. But if you raised it up too far, too quickly or hit the drum too loudly you're doing it wrong. Imagine threading a needle whilst riding a motorbike. Now imagine doing it with drumsticks and giggling Japanese teenagers. It's not easy.

Once we had failed miserably to uphold the honor of Atami's ancestors, we were finally granted our wish of sleep. First though, we went back to the onsen to get naked just one more time, just in case we didn't get third degree burns the first time. Again, I decided not to take my camera as I quite enjoy not being in jail.

Finally then we hit the hay, and it was the softest, nicest hay I've ever hit. The futons we've had provided by the school are thin, old and a bit horrible. These ones were about three times as thick, and also really fresh. It was the best night's sleep I think I've had so far in my time in Japan. If futons weren't so expensive I would seriously consider buying one as it was so refreshing to sleep until my alarm went off, rather than waking up at 2am, 3am, 3.05am, 6am and 7am.

We were due to leave Atami the next day at about midday. First however we had to get through a traditional breakfast.

That's right. At 8.30am I ate fish, deep fried eggs mixed with incredibly strong sauce, chestnuts and something called Umeboshi, which is incredibly bitter and sour plum. It was the heaviest breakfast I've ever eaten and afterwards I didn't feel like eating for about three weeks afterwards.

Once that was over we were taken up the hillside to try to catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji. Sadly the clouds were out in force and we couldn't get a great shot of it, but this is what we ended up with;

After we came back down from the viewing point it was time to head back to Tokyo, with absoloutly no doubt that we would be returning to Atami again this year. It's such a different place to Tokyo, it feels like a different country. If you ever come to Japan get out of Tokyo at least once. There's a world of difference between Tokyo and the rest of Japan.

This weekend we were lucky enough to be part of a language exchange to Atami, a small city in Shizuoka Prefecture, about an hour from Japan by bullet train. The name Atami literally translates to “Hot Ocean”, a reference to the many hot springs (onsen) that are scattered throughout the town. There’s about 40,000 people living in Atami, and a lot of rich Japanese own holiday homes out here. After you’ve seen some of my photos you’ll realize why. This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,

The first place we visited when we arrived in Atami was a museum that used to be someone’s house a long time ago. Stepping into it was like stepping into every Western stereotype of the traditional Japanese home; tatami mats, paper doors, nice clean wood and so on. Apparently it was some guy’s house, and when he died it became a ryokan (Japanese B&B), before being turned into a museum. It’s kinda odd because it’s supposed to be a mix of Japanese tradition and a English Tudor house.

As you can see, it was a really lovely place. Infact, the only real problem with it was that it was not built for six foot tourists to visit. However my really-low-door detector has been finely honed over the last month and I think I got through the whole place without head butting something ferociously. Maybe Zidane should visit Japan sometime.

This house had pretty much anything a tourist could want. The garden was amazing, there were various presentations and maps around the place with a few interesting facts and so on.

After the ryokan, we headed towards the shoreline of Atami. Sadly this is Japan and as a result most of the beach has been plastered in concrete, but it was still nice being able to breathe air that hadn’t been through three motorbikes before reaching me.

The third photo here was taken from The Top Of Atami, an incredibly posh restaurant on the 16th floor of a tower block near the coast. It should be noted that Atami is famous for it’s fantastic seafood, and having tried it whilst under the influence of altitude sickness I can confirm the reason it’s famous for this is because the salmon we ate had probably been caught about thirty seconds before we ate it.

I’d like to end this post with a few more photos. The rest are available via the Flickr link below.

More photos are available on Flickr.

In the next update, I teach about 100 kids how to sing Heads, Shoulders Knees And Toes, I embarrass myself by trying the traditional drumming of Atami, and I manage to take a few photos of Mt. Fuji. Stay tuned!

This morning, the site’s template ate itself and I had to reinstall it, but I lost the header graphic. I thought this was a good opportunity to do a new one. It’s the same sort of thing – black and white image of a Japanese castle, but I think the new one is a bit clearer.

I’ve tried to restore the rest of the site as best I could, and although I lost my big list of music it was really more for me to show off with than anything else. I’m going to use Flickr a lot more than I have been, too. Daf talked me into that one. :)

Other than that my main goal is to update more regularly – I am going to try to get in at least one update a week and ideally I will try to do one every couple of days.

In other rather interesting news today, Matt and I were featured in the Yomuri Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest national newspapers. When I say featured, I actually mean a tiny little picture of us was at the back of the newspaper. Still, here’s a picture I took on my cellphone of the lucky event. I’ll scan in the page itself when I get the chance at school.

This was on about page six hundred and fifty of the newspaper. We have absoloutly no idea what they’re saying about us.