Japan Is Doomed

After being woke up by the builders again, we were overjoyed to see that it had snowed pretty hard overnight, covering Toya in a new fresh blanket of snow. After waiting for the house to warm up, I pulled on some boots and went for a walk down by Lake Toya.

Before I went, I took some photos of the "street" that the Hokkaido volunteers live on. The first picture shows the house itself, the second shows the rest of the road.

As you can probably imagine, this is somewhat different to what I'm used to by now. The house itself is bigger than our flat in Oji, but it's still somewhat cramped when we're all staying in it together. I dread to think how cramped we're going to be when we get back to Tokyo!

The Lake itself is about five minutes walk from the house, first by a road encased in snow and ice, then a path hidden under snowdrifts. There exists a set walk around the entire Lake, although it's around 28km so I think I'll pass this time.

On the third picture of the set above, you can just about see a traditional Japanese shrine in the far distance. If it hadn't been so cold I would have walked to it, although it was around 1.30pm, and it gets dark here at about 4pm so I wouldn't have been able to dawdle along, which is something I like doing on walks.

Along the shore of the lake (do lakes have shores?) there are various statues. Everything from a little girl carved out of stone in deep thought to three what look like metal trees.

I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea what any of these statues represent. I'll try to ask a local if I get the chance, but unless someone with some prior knowledge can tell me, I guess they'll always be a mystery to me.

At this point the temperature was dropping and so were my spirits, as the snow was too deep to walk through quickly, so getting anywhere was hard work. Plus the general tiredness due to lack of sleep means we're all pretty fragile at the moment. This evening we're going out with a few of the locals we met at the Christmas party. Which reminds me, I should write about the Christmas party. Keep your eyes peeled for that one.

I'll leave you with one photograph I am really proud of. It is of a large black granite stone slab, on which is written something I can't read. When I replace the picture of the castle at the top of this blog I may well use this photo as the basis for it.

The next update shall be about snowboarding! Hurrah!

Travel

Monday 18th December

It was a cold and unforgiving Tokyo morning that saw Mike and Matt trapsing onto the packed Tokyo subway with large bags. It was the start of a long and pretty boring journey, so I won't bore you with the details. Here's a couple of interesting tidbits I picked up along the way;

• Japanese planes were not designed for people who are around 6" tall.
• The further north you go, the more snow there is. Thus, the further north we went the more excited we got. Snow!
• It goes dark at about 5-6pm in Hokkaido, a full hour before Tokyo.

I told you it was dull. When we arrived we were pretty tired, so we had a quick simple meal then it was time for bed. A nice, long sleep…right?

Tuesday 19th December

The first thought that crossed my fragile mind was Why the hell am I awake at 7.30am? Toya (more info here) is probably one of the quietest places in Japan, or at least it's a hell of a lot quieter than a suburb of Tokyo. Or it would be if there weren't building works going on right outside our razor-thin walls. Add to that the fact that I'm sleeping at the road-end of the house and you've got a not-happy Mike. Plus, we have a window that fills the room with unwanted light when the sun rises at some horrible hour, without any curtains or blinds. Urgh.

Matt and I did very little today, other than having a brief walk around the lake. The two Hokkaido volunteers (Nate and Rolf) were working today but we were in no position to move. At all.

In the evening we played drinking games with vodka then cooking sake, which should not be drunk. I proved this by throwing up everywhere. There, I wrote it in my blog. Never again.

Wednesday 20th December

Woken up by the builders again. I spent today cleaning up the house after I "decorated" it yesterday evening. Whoops.

Thursday 21st December

Builders again. Today was Nate's birthday! But not all was well because Nate and Rolf both came down with what we think was the same thing Matt had a week ago.

We accompanied Nate to the Toya kindergarten where we played with the kids and played a few games, too. At this point I had lost my camera's battery (which I have now found) so I didn't get any photos. But what I did compile was a list of desires that all 3-5 year old Japanese children have;

• I want to hit a foreigner with a large football.
• I want to hit a foreigner with a large football again.
• I want to run over a foreigner's foot with a small plastic cart.
• I want to climb a large foreigner and claim the summit for Japan.
• I wonder what I could do with this large football? Wait, I know…

All in all they were great fun, even if Nate was a little ill to be able to appreciate it.

In the evening we went to the Toya Christmas Party. Everyone here was so excited to meet the Tokyo volunteers as we ate a delicious selection of buffet food. Buffet Food, by the way, is not the same rushed affair that it is in England. The food was all freshly made and provided by various members of the community.

We played a large game of pass-parcels-around-a-circle except we were never told to bring a present so we ended up "giving" big selection packs of snacks. Whoops. I won various Japanese sweets and cakes. Matt won some "Learn English" toilet paper. I'm secretly jeleous.

Finally, we went to the only pub in Toya with a few of the partygoers, and had a great time chatting about inane things you only talk about when you're sleep-deprived and hungry.

I miss the community that this place has that Tokyo and my hometown of Sheffield just don't have. I grew up in the country, in a village with a similar community spirit to the one in Toya. There's none of that in Tokyo.

Travel

Continuing from yesterday’s post about the Christmas Party. The next challenge was the “Dress someone like a Christmas tree” challenge. Unfortunately there was no “Think of good names for the challenges” challenge…

The students broke off into groups of 4-5 and began their task of destroying Christmas decorations decorating each other. The results range from really bad to even worse, but in the end we gave the first place to the girl who wrapped her head in tinsel. Inspired Christmas decorations or the world’s worst safety helmet? You decide!

The results are rather surprising since the students helped us to decorate the room and the real Christmas tree and the results were rather impressive. Maybe the Japanese ability to decorate disappears under exciting conditions?

The real question now is what could possibly top all this? Unwrapping a huge present painfully slowly and winning a pretty crappy prize (A British keyring. Actually quite a nice prize for a Japanese student. Matt provided it, he’d kill me if I took credit for it!) sure is fun, as is ripping paper and wrapping each other in Tinsel. What could possibly top it all?

Well, whilst Matt taught the students The Twelve Days Of Christmas, I went off to undergo an amazing transformation!

Merry Christmas indeed! Yes, Mike Claus made an appearance at the end of the party. For some weird reason the Japanese teacher who helped me get into the atrocity told me I should stuff my trousers so that’s why I have thunder thighs in this picture. I can’t believe I’m posting in on the Internet! After a short build up from Matt and Barney, (the American teacher I work with) I burst in and gave sweets to everyone, before I answered a few questions from the students about Christmas and so forth.

Overall the party was a great time. I have to say now, and I shall write it in bold font otherwise I will get in trouble, that this was down to Matt and his amazing planning! Between us we have put on two great parties now, and we have an Easter party to think of next year. For now though, I’m happy just to know that somewhere, someone is looking at a picture of me dressed as Santa with towels stuffed in my trousers.

Gap Year, Teaching in Japan

We have been here for about 24 hours now. We are staying with the two volunteers in their flat next to Toya Lake. They are working in a small village doing all sorts of things, such as schoolteaching, nursery care and working in a hopsital. The saddest thing is they are working on Christmas Day. The good news? They're coming down to Tokyo with us for a 16 day cross Tokyo party! Woohoo!

Hokkaido itself is absoloutly freezing. It goes dark here at about 5 pm, and it snows for days at a time. Matt and I went down to the lake and took a few photos of our extasy at experiencing things you just can't find in Tokyo - quiet, nature and, most excitingly of all, the ability to swing your arms in your house without hitting all four walls and your neighbours too.

Over the next few days we will be seeing what they get up to. There's not really that much to do here, but we may be able to go snowmobiling one day, and it's just nice to get out of the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. I think this quite literally the quietest and most remote place I've ever seen in my life.

Anyway, I have to go now. We are going to the only bar in the entire place. I'll update about Hokkaido sometime next week when I've got a better idea of the whole place. I'll finish the update about the Christmas party as well.

Travel

It’s Christmas time! Woohoo! That means it’s overly organised, very short and regimented party time!

The first thing we did for our Christmas extravaganza was to coat the entire English Language Centre in a fine layer of cheap Christmas decorations. But I like to think we did a good job. We got a Christmas Tree and a Christmas wreath and so forth.

From 1~3pm the place was alive with students. We didn’t get nearly as many people as we did for the Halloween Party, but we did have a decent turnout. Probably around fourty or fifty students turned up. The first game we played involved a large parcel with somewhere near a million layers of wrapping around a tiny present. We all sat in a circle and took turns to roll a dice. Upon rolling a six, the player would run into the centre of the circle and put on goggles, reindeer horns, socks on their hands, a flashing red nose and a scarf, and attempt to open the present before someone else rolled a six. I took a lot of photos during this game, so forgive my lack of commentary.

I don’t have a name for this game so I guess you guys can suggest one for it in the comments or something.

After that it was time for the ripping Christmas Trees challenge. The idea was to put a piece of green paper behind your back and rip it into the shape of a Christmast tree. Needless to say, we had good ones…

…and of course, we had some hilareously bad ones…

However, we felt it wasn’t Christmassy enough to just have the children make Christmas trees out of Christmas. Oh no, we wanted them to become Christmas trees. I’ll talk about that in the second part of this update. As for now, enjoy the fact I’m writing anything at all! Woohoo!

Gap Year, Teaching in Japan