Embedded Files
Fall is coming!
The evenings are starting to get darker earlier already and the temperature is finally dropping below 30 during the day (without the humidex) on occasion. The Japanese school children have returned to school, and many of my fellow students have gone home for their school years if they were summer students, and many new classes have started up. There are still 9 of us in my class but that is much smaller than the 21 when Jesse and I were both taking lessons. (And the one guy that everyone disliked because he was rude and disruptive finally left! Hurrah!)
My last week of class is next week and it will be busy! Monday is a holiday, but Tuesday is the final unit test and review, Wednesday is our final exam (with written and oral portions), and Thursday some students from Tokyo university will be coming by to be conversation partners for us. But the school is also running many other activities I am choosing to participate in which are more focused on pure fun.
Field trip!
My school organized a field trip to an adventure farm in Nagotoro last week. It was quite the day! First we piled onto 4 gloriously efficient coach busses for a short 2 hour trip. The busses all arrived on time (of course) and lined up one after the other, and all had magnetic stickers with the numbers 1, 2, 3, or 4, on the front, back, and door, and they always pulled up in order. The stickers seem like such a small and simple thing, but having been stressed as a teacher trying to get my students onto the correct bus, I really appreciated the forethought.
When we arrived at the farm, the first thing we did was go fishing. We walked a short ways down a hill to the stream in the photo to the right. Most of the flow was diverted around, but some went through these shallow gravel pens with 10-15 fish each.
Each pen had a green basket for the caught fish, and our instructions were "10-12 people per pen" and "put the fish in the basket". It wasn't very deep, only a couple inches, but still nice and refreshing to stand in on a hot day. It was difficult to catch the fish though! I am not used to touching, let alone grabbing a live fish, so I slowly worked up the courage to go from watching, to touching, to finally grabbing the fish. I expect they were also getting quite tired by the end, as they were much faster at first. I did catch 3 fish, but I wasn't holding them tightly enough so I didn't get any in the basket and they all wriggled out of my hands.
As we were wrapping up, the employees were already gutting the fish on a table under the tent. By then it was lunch time, so we walked back up the steep hill to the main part of the farm for a BBQ under the grape arbours. (see the photo on the left below)
Lunch was delicious! I ate with the other 3 members of my class who were on the trip as well. One from France, one from Taiwan, and another from Hong Kong. It made for quite the linguistic mix! I was the only native English speaker, although my classmate from Hong Kong is also quite good in English and it is the best shared language for all 4 of us. The Frenchman's English is quite poor, so I often clarified things for him by switching to French, and the other two did the same in Chinese.
Most of the barbeque was standard fare (green pepper, squash, onions, carrots, eggplant, bean sprouts, and pork) along with rice of course, but we were also served the fish we had caught. Already cooked thankfully, but still pretty whole! It was certainly a new experience to eat from a whole fish, although my classmate from Hong Kong was quite practiced and helped the rest of us out with tips. It was delicious!
After lunch we moved to another grape arbour and there we were allowed to pick and eat the grapes. Unfortunately we couldn't bring any home, but they were tasty and I ate quite a lot. (If only there had been some cheese to go with it too!)
After lunch was another short bus ride up the river to a launch. Since we were such a large group, half drove further up river and rode the first section, before trading places with the remaining students. With the help of the busses everyone ended up in Nagatoro once more and we had a short bit of time to explore the town before leaving.
The boats were flat bottomed, with rows of seats along each side and large spaces at the front and back for our guides to stand. They steered the boat with a rudder, and bamboo poles to punt along. Overall I found it quite a calm ride, although we did go through some minor rapids. There were lots of dragonflies flying above the river, and we were unbothered by bugs which was nice.
The most frustrating thing about not knowing enough Japanese is I couldn't ask the guides anything about the boats, wildlife, or landscape!
Calligraphy
The field trip is a once-a-term event, but there are smaller workshops that are run more often which I have signed up for. The first of the most recent options was a calligraphy workshop. There is an entire artform (with competitions!) dedicated to beautifully writing the Japanese characters from all 3 alphabets. We had a brief lesson on how to hold the brush and how to do some basic strokes, before we were let loose to practice. Unsurprisingly, Shingae Wakana-Sensei made it look effortless but the consistency and proportionality is hard!
We were told to bring a couple characters that we wanted to write, and after some practice we would write our choice on a decorative board to take home. I chose to do the character "忍" which is pronounced "shinobu". It can mean "stealth, to conceal, or to hide oneself", it is 1/2 of the kanji for "ninja", and it is the name of the woman I met at the ramen shop. I still send her the occasional message on Line with updates on what I'm doing and she responds in kind. (We both make liberal use of Google Translate!)
The small characters on the left hand side are, from top to bottom, my first name in Katagana: "ma-ru-re-na".
Painting
The next workshop was painting a wind chime. I have seen a number of these wind chimes around, although most often on houses or businesses as some apartment buildings don't allow them because the noise can be incessant. Some Japanese folk associate the sound with a refreshing feeling, since the tinkling heralds a breeze on sweltering summer days. If the design is not incorporated as coloured glass directly into the dome, it is painted on the inside afterwards to protect it from the elements. It took some getting used to painting on the inside, and working out how to paint near the rim. I chose to paint flowers on mine, while a friend from class did a dark sky, moon, stars, and tiny astronaut on hers. Another participant painted his to look like Pikachu!
This is my windchime, held up to our window
Restaurant service
The mentality around what is expected as good service is different in many subtle ways here, that Jesse and I continue to observe, ponder, and discuss amongst ourselves (and occasionally with other foreigners as the opportunities arise), but I wanted to share two specific anecdotes from last week. See, we go out to eat much more often here since food is so cheap, very tasty, and it feels like every block has at least 1 restaurant. But twice in one day I was brought part of my meal, before the rest.
At lunch I went to a gyoza (aka dumpling) restaurant and ordered a meal set with 6 dumplings. When the server brought me my tray, it had all the side dishes except there were only 4 dumplings. Before I had even really noticed, she explained that she would bring the other 2 when they were ready.
Then for supper that same day, I went to a burger place nearby that Jesse and I have been to a few times. Each time we get a burger and side, and all the food comes out at once. But this time my burger came, and the server again explained that he would bring the fries along shortly when they were ready. And when they were ready I noticed he emerged from the kitchen with 3 orders of fries for various tables.
So now I'm left pondering, what would have happened in Canada? It's the first time that I remember something like this happening in either country, although I think I am paying extra note as it happened twice in one day. Thoughts?
The next post is here: Sept 16-23
Google Sites
Report abuse