Don't go Chasing Waterfalls

Disclaimer: I’m not 100% sure what’s happening at the moment (read: I have absolutely no idea what’s going on).

River In Kisakata - near the base of Chokai

Over the past week or so teachers, members of the board of education and various other seemingly important people have been visiting schools to observe lessons.

I have now had this sprung on me two or three times. The first case was a simple 5 minute pop in. a couple of people hovered for 5 minutes and then once we made sure they were out of ear shot – the class went back to normal.

On Friday (21^st October) however, an all staff meeting was called in the library – this included teachers from the primary school and myself as well as it turns out. The meeting was a simple introduction and run down (from what I could understand) and after 15 minutes everyone was pottering back to the staffroom. However on my return I was informed that H-Sensei was looking for me. As it turns out we were presenting a full 50 minute class for all 37 of the first graders (normally the class are split in half) in front of about 10 observers, for which I had 5 minutes to mentally prepare myself.

In my humble opinion, the class went well. However we (myself, H-sensei and S-sensei) then had to sit through a meeting, the point of which was for the observers to dissect the lesson and rip it to shreds, or so it seemed. After having to sit through that I can understand why the teachers had been so nervous about it. I had heard that the ALTs from Honjo had the chance to visit each other’s schools with their JTE’s to watch each other’s lessons, so I’m now just praying that I won’t have to deal with one of the Honjo lads sniggering at the back of one of my classes.

The Interrogation…sorry review went on for an hour and a half, the last 30 minutes of which consisted of the main/important looking observer talking…a lot….

This meeting was entirely in Japanese so my the end of it my eyes were taking a while to uncross themselves after each blink, which were gradually getting longer and longer.

It had been a prompt 6am start so that I could call both Nana and Nany to wish them a happy birthday before I got ready for school (even now that NZ is in daylight savings with a 4 hour time difference it’s reassuringly easy to catch up with people back home) so I was very much ready for a fat-pants and cup of tea kind of an evening.

Saturday (22^nd October)

With All Hallows Eve drawing near, I had finally decided what I was going to dress up as for the ALT’s Halloween party. Unfortunately the brilliant epiphany meant a trip to Daiso followed by hours spent stitching fake leaves and multiple stab wounds.

Issue no.2 arose when I realised just how seasonal Japanese attire really is. Trying to find a tshirt in October? Good luck buddy. It’s autumn. Nobody shows there arms anymore. Failing to find a plain green tshirt or dress that didn’t have ‘Engrish’ all over it, I scrounged a dress that had a green lining, which meant I could cut out the outer layer to decrease the poofyness, turn it inside out so that the green lining was on the outside, and proceed to sew the mountain of fake autumn leaves for my ‘autumn colours’ dress… maybe cat ears and whiskers would have been easier.

View from Chokai

After scrounging the shops I met up with Liam who introduced me to his local coffee shop. It had been months since I’d sat down somewhere that wasn’t my own flat to have a coffee, so the fact that we had a stunning view of Chokai while doing so was a very welcome change.

Full of caffeine we headed south to Kisakata to check out the autumn colours around Mt. Chokai. The first stop was a walk along a stream, followed by following random roads up Chokai until the sun started setting and I realised that shorts season was definitely over (I had been rather optimistic – read stubborn, that morning). Google informed us that we had somehow got ourselves an hour away from Konoura, this was not overly concerning until we were driving down a dark mountain road and Liam’s phone suddenly chimed in with ‘GPS signal lost’.

Without further incident we made it into Akita city for drinks and to watch the All Blacks maul the Wallabies.

Braving the landslide

The next day Liam and I drove down into Yamagata prefecture to check out the 12 falls in Sakata. The river tumbles down a rock face, where it pools in several places before continuing down, creating 12 falls. Now that I am researching into the area I have found a website that states that the area is closed due to a land slide as of March 2016…Needless to say we were completely unaware of this.

We arrived at the carpark to find the road blocked off, being the good law abiding gaijin that we are, we promptly shuffled around the ‘danger do not enter’ sign. A few metres down the road it became quite apparent as to why it had been cordoned off. Half the bloody hill side had completely covered the road. This was no problem for those on foot…

The 12 falls

The track grew more and more overgrown (this makes sense now I know that it hasn’t been used for 7 months) and there were various mentions of how it resembled the landscape of a zombie apocalypse…

Descending the worn steps into the valley to a suspension bridge where we were met with the second roped off section of the day (may I remind everyone that I survived to tell the tale). This took us to the other side of the river which hadn’t fared well in the weather, the third barrier jump (or shimmy between the bars in my case) was due to a small land slide that had taken a tree out.

When we finally got far enough up the path (if you could call it that), covered in biddy-bits and spider webs – the view was well worth it.

The roped off bridge

A Temple in Sakata, the vertical staircase was ever
so slightly daunting

Autumn in Aomori

 Akita Prefecture is renowned for having the highest level of English in regards to proficiency tests. And with this power, comes great responsibility – in the form of a speaking test. This week I helped one of my JTE’s test the third year students. We went through the type of questions that they would be asked (ie. Handed it to them on a silver platter) and despaired when some refused to pay attention and resultantly ballsed up their test.

The students were awarded a 1 for a correct answer, 2 for answering with some grammatical errors and a 3 if they completely stuffed it up or couldn’t answer.

Ropeway over the Autumn colours of the Hakkoda mountains

The first level involved the assessor holding up a flash card with an image on it and the students having to identify the object in English (building, chair, speech etc). For the second level they had to answer questions such as: how long have you lived in Akita (we covered that if they answered `Since~` they had to state a specific year, and if they used `for~` they were to use for ~years – though this seemed to fly over a lot of heads…), ‘Have you ever been to Sapporo?’ etc.

The third level involved the students studying a small paragraph for 20 seconds before using the text to answer questions: ‘where do people often run’ (apparently ‘where’ and ‘when’ are easily confused…) ‘How many soccer balls are there in the picture?’ and ‘what is the boy going to do?’ ‘He is wash the hands’…. It was frustrating watching some of the students second guess their grammar without being able to help them, though most of them did quite well.

Wednesday was the usual visit to the primary school, although this week I ventured to the gym at lunch time to watch the kids charging around and somehow got myself roped into a game of tag with some 4th graders. They call it oni (ogre, demon) so one person starts off being the oni and tags another who also becomes one. We had been playing with 2 onis to begin with until the kids decided I ran too fast and that I would be an oni by myself. Fortunately this meant I only had to catch one kid and then let him do the work while I had a breather. Unfortunately the kids then decided that they would all be onis and then promptly started counting down from 10 while I hightailed it away.

This exercise taught me two things: 

1. Running in ballet flats that already have a toe in the hole is not advisable (I spent that evening sewing the hole up infront of an episode of Big Bang Theory.

2. I am still fully capable of outrunning a 9 year old.

As a kid I have memories of mum explaining to my sister and I that when you’re talking to someone on the phone you need to give verbal confirmation because the person at the other end can’t see you nodding your head. My 23 year old self could do with a refresher course in phone etiquette as I have now started bowing to people on the phone, which is not only completely useless, but also looks really bloody stupid (especially when you do it in the staff room and other people are there to witness).

Friday was a skip out of school – bags in car, to Honjo to pick up Liam and then on to Akita city where we met a very bundled up Cari in her apartment (the Starks had it right: winter is coming) and headed on to the train station, stopping along the way so that Cari could ring Mengkin to inform him that she’d completely forgotten about him, that we’d already left, and that he should start running.

We graced an October fest beer festival (complete with a classy jazz guitar/double bass/vocal arrangement) where Josh met us for a couple of brews as the heavens opened on the marques.

Saturday was game day – we started the drive up to Lake Towada. The trip would normally have been about 3 hours but we at Josh’s recommendation we took a slightly longer route through the Hachimantai gorge as all the autumn colours were starting to come out in the trees.

 Here the trees don’t just turn brown and die, they put on a spectacular swan song of yellows, oranges and reds before succumbing to the harsh winters. We were all in agreement that even if we had just spent the whole day driving – it would have been worth it for a day trip – the scenery was absolutely stunning.

Tama River Dam

We stopped at the Tama river Dam….and a bridge that I can’t remember the name of (though I do remember that between the architecture and the incline the tunnels that we had to drive through looked more like hydro slides).

The winding roads rung very similar to those at home, it was gorgeous driving through the mountains and watching the foliage turn from green to oranges and yellows as we climbed in altitude, and then after driving through trees, we came up over the ridge and were presented with an absolutely stunning view of Lake Towada – Honshu’s largest crater lake that straddles Akita and Aomori prefectures and occupies the caldera of a still-active volcano (I’m glad I read that after we visited…)

Oirase Gorge walk

Once checked into the hostel we headed out to Oirase gorge to walk along the river side (along with the 2 tour buses worth of tourists…). I’m just going to dump photos otherwise I’m going to end up repeating “it was gorgeous” way too many times.

Next was the essential trip to the nearest supermarket (a 40 minute drive away) to stock up on booze and snacks.

We kind of messed up. Because by the time we got back to the town where we were staying it was 5.30, pitch black and everything was shut.

On spotting a shrine gate I decided to go on a little wander to check it out, the path led past the komainu (lion dogs) guarding the entrance and through the trees….and through the trees…and more trees….Liam had caught up by this stage and after we had been walking for a few minutes with our phone lights we decided that this was beginning to look a little too much like the start of a horror movie and remembered that there had been a couple of beer attacks in Akita…We bailed and walked briskly back.

Lake Towada

The Liam and Josh managed to scrounge some spuds and hotdogs from one place that was still doing takeaways and Cari and I opted to indulge in the MOUNTAIN of instant noodles that was in the hostel (we now realise why they had so much stocked up).

The hotel on the corner had an onsen that we decided to check out – after gawking over the indoor waterfall and a traditional looking Japanese house complete with tatami floors that had been built inside the hotel as a restaurant (got the feeling that we wouldn’t be scoring any 200yen packet ramen there…)

The onsen had an outdoor section which was a relief after the rather toasty interior. Nothing quite like sitting in the cool night air in a hot spring, chatting with a mate that you really haven’t known for that long- butt naked.

The evening consisted of many card games, and much drinking. Needless to say, we were all feeling a little spent the next day.

Jigokunuma Pond

The sulfuric fumes of Jigoku pond didn’t do much to settle our stomachs but the view was quite lovely.

The main mission of the day was to get the gondola up to the hakkoda mountains. It when we had to stand in line for and hour waiting for tickets that the hangovers really hit…

The ropeway took you up and over the autumn colours aaaaaaand it was absolutely gorgeous… Once at the top we talked through to the wetlands.

And what trip wouldn’t be complete without a little bit of history?

In 1902 a group of Japanese Imperial Army soldiers were caught in a blizzard on the mountain, the single ascent resulted in 199 which made the incident the worst mountaineering disaster in modern history. So of course all of the locals love to tell you how the mountain is haunted – there have been two films made about the incident in 1977 (Mount Hakkoda) and more recently in 2014 (Mt. Hakkoda)

Aomori Snow Monsters. Photo from:
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2015/12/15/sho-shibata-captures-the-
snow-monsters-of-northern-japan/

So along with the ghosts of soliders, the mountain is also home to the Aomori snow monsters. Thanks to the brisk climate, a phenomenon known as “soft rime” occurs when moisture from fog instantly freezes on trees, resulting in Hakkoda’s winter zombieland…

*insert name here*

We stopped at another big ass bridge (that I have also forgotten the name of) as the autumn colours just don’t seem to get old. Cari and Josh were staying an extra night at Towada but Liam and I headed home that afternoon as in time for school the next day. We stopped at the lookout over the lake to take some final snaps before starting the drive back to Yuri (I believe this is the correct term for the area that encompasses both Yurihonjo and Nikaho).

Fun fact: my car talks to me

Fun fact: most of the time I have to idea what its saying

Fun fact: that night it informed me that I had been driving for 2 hours and “won’t you take a break?”

Another week done and dusted.

Rest for the Wicked

Wednesday 5^th October

Trying to teach 6 year olds the English Alphabet – never has a task been so painful and adorable at the same time. After a tone deaf rendition of the alphabet song, courtesy of yours truly, the teacher held up pictures of animals for the kids to yell (loudly) the English word and then what letter they thought it started with. Apparently Lion starts with G, M and R. Dog on the other hand started with just about every letter of the alphabet except D.

On Thursday I had a lovely surprise in the form of a very heavy and full package from home (I’m technically an adult but still have no idea how mum manages to get everything to fit into those bloody boxes…).

Friday 7^th October.

The dreaded English proficiency test. I was asked to supervise one of the third grade classes – which meant sitting there for 40 minutes while the kids struggled through the written section, and then pressing play on the tape recorder for the listening section. At the end of the CD were instructions on how to collect up the papers, in Japanese…So I stood there mentally confirming that no, I hadn’t understood a thing the tape had said, before apologising to the kids and saying my Japanese was crap and subsequently following a student’s instrucitons – I figure if anything it’ll make the kids feel better about their English ability…

The rest of the day consisted of Nabekko which turned out to be a very welcome trip to the beach for a school picnic. The students split up into groups to cook meals which ranged from okonomiyaki and yakisoba, to french fries and pizza. The teachers cooked up a pot of kiritanpo. Wandering around the groups of students was great not only for entertainment value – but also for getting fed. I scored small helpings of okonomiyaki and yakisoba, freuit salad and the biggest toasted marshmallow I have ever seen.

Once the cooking was done the students commenced what is apparently the tradition of sliding down the grass bank on slabs of cardboard, blankets, or in one kids case – on their stomachs. There were multiple hilarious collisions and flailing limbs and shrieks my inner child was desperate to go and join in.

On the walk back to school I got into a conversation with S-sensei and a couple of students about sports etc, one of the kids asked why kendo wasn’t an Olympic sport, S-sensei explained that it might be because in Kendo, if you celebrate scoring a point or victory – the point will be reverted. I asked if this was a case of showing respect to your opponent, and felt like a total boss when I casually dropped in utte kansha, uttarete kansha (be humble when both hitting the enemy, and being hit by the enemy) a phrase which I had picked up from Atsu’s English speech and managed to use in the correct context!

Saturday 8^th October

An early start and a coffee and we were off to Sendai for the day – It’s quite handy when people decide they want to get out of Honjo for the day and offer to take you along. There had been what looked like a rice spillage along part of the road, and the grains were being flurried around in the wind. With the knowledge that in Japanese, raw rice is kome Liam quipped that in the years to come they would talk about this as the day of the great komekaze….

City of Trees or City of Fog?

Once in Sendai the entertainment continued, we were strolling through the shopping arcade and saw what I initially thought to be an incredibly ugly dog – and turned out to be a pig. Someone was taking their effing pig for a walk. It only got better when a dog wearing dungarees stopped to sniff said pig.

We spent the day wandering through the arcades, stopping to listen to a couple of the a cappella  performances that were going on – including an impressive if heavily accented rendition of Adele’s rolling in the deep “deres a fuuyuur stuurting in my huuurt” ….

We went up to an observation deck and got to see just how quickly the fog rolled over the city. A stop at the lindt shop for a coffee and then it was back on the road home – only to pull up right behind a car that had flipped on the motorway.

Sunday 9^th October

 After the immense amount of driving (or in my case – being driven) around on Saturday Sunday called for a lazier start. I ventured into Honjo to discover the delights that Daiso, the 100 yen store held (the amount of self-control required in that place is immense). I then met up with Liam and we headed into the city to meet with Briana and Jan, who are also ALT’s, for shopping and dinner followed by gracing a Japanese Arcade with our presence.

Monday 10^th October

One of Liam’s friends Hiroki had suggested that we go and check out the Akita International University’s cultural festival since everyone had the day off (I do love the copious amount of public holidays we’ve been having recently). There were food stores galore and we also got treated to a bizarre beauty-esque pageant, although I was a lot more excited about the rabbit wearing sunglasses (it’s been a weekend for strange sights that’s for sure).

The campus was amazing and the library made me miss being a student and studying (kind of….).

This has been a case of hashing out a post before I forget everything I did so I do apologise for the poor penmanship.

Having a three day week sure puts you in holiday mode.

Akita International University Library

Internal Clock Nightmare

This week has been about as good for my internal clock as tile floors are to iphones. A jumble of shortened days (which bear no benefit other than classes being 40 minutes as we are still expected to stay until 4.15 – 4.30 to feign dedication to your role….-)

This Spider's body was about the width of my thumb

On Wednesday I was invited to join the 2^nd graders for lunch at my primary school. The kids were having a “curry party”. The class prior to lunch consisted of a series of vegetable related quizzes and skits in which the kids grew from seeds into eggplants, pumpkins etc (yes it was absolutely adorable), then for lunch we were served curry that the kids had made themselves, from vegetables that they had grown themselves. I can’t say that I’ve ever eaten curry that has instant coffee as one of the ingredients…

Saturday was crunch time. Everyone was at school to prep for the school festival. Unless you were me, in which case you were there at school to make an appearance and make it look like you were using your time constructively. We got fed Bento for lunch, which was fortunate as I left the sushi I had bought in the fridge, just when I think I can decipher the school notices efficiently.

Konoura Harbour

The vice principal asked if I wasn’t going home after lunch, so I took that as a solid invitation and spent the rest of my now free afternoon wandering around Konoura. I made it to the waterfront and decided to take a zigzag route back. It skipped my mind that no streets in rural Japan are straight, meaning that there is often no “logical” direction to take. This was fine until I heard “Kuroi-sensei!” behind me and realised that I now had a group of my primary school kids in tow. I bowled on, determined not to admit to them that I had no idea where I was going and praying that I wouldn’t hit a dead end which would force me to double back and admit to them that I was lost.

Determined not to treat a Saturday evening like a school night, Liam and I drove to Akita city for a change of scenery. We wandered around the city for a while before getting a Taiwanese feast for less than $12nz.

Sunday – School festival. You could tell it was going to be a big day as someone had gone around and left little bottles of energy drink on all of the teachers’ desks. Come lunchtime everyone had two sitting there.

The students performed songs for the morning section, a break for lunch, followed by the afternoon performances. I performed a comedy skit with Su-sensei, small issues when the pin mic decided to pop off of my dress midsentence but the vice principal had said (and this is as close a translation as I can get) that it was ok if we crashed and burned. Regardless I was relieved that it didn’t pop off again during my haka (yes you read right).

We were treated to numerous dance performances – where the 3^rd graders took it upon themselves to gate crash each other’s dances, rather entertaining when a pre-growth-spurt bespectacled second grader joined the 3^rd grade girls on stage for a number that was evidently a verse longer than he had anticipated.

The favourite would have to have been the 3^rd grade boys’ performance of Psy’s Gangnam style.

After the festivities had wrapped up the teachers headed to a local yakiniku restaurant in Nikaho for celebrations. These evenings have turned out to be really good for getting a chance to chat to teachers that you normally wouldn’t at school. One of the teachers had only discovered that week that I had basic conversation level Japanese so was very keen to have a chat, and of course once he was a couple of beers in, the pocket English started coming out.

Yuzawa Gorge

As we had spent all weekend at school everyone got Monday and Tuesday off.

Except muggins.

Who had to go and teach 5 year olds at the Kindergarten how sing “itsy bitsy spider”.

By Tuesday Liam and Dave had recovered from their hangovers so we bowled over to Dave’s place, and sat in his car for 15 minutes trying to figure out what we were going to do with the day.

We drove to Yuzawa to visit the Oyasukyo Daifundō a geothermal gorge with a river running through and steam and hot water erupting from the walls. The smell was nowhere near as strong as Rotorua, but it was definitely there.

We wandered around Yuzawa town for a while before finding a Korean restaurant for a late lunch. The chatty waitress/chef sprinkled us with questions and offered us a service, which explained was kimchi fish stomach lining – after Dave had already eaten some.

It is currently rice harvesting season, so driving through more rural areas you can watch the rice paddies progressing from full and golden, to paddies that where the rice has been tied into bunches ready for cutting, to bare paddocks. And even in this day and day you are able to observe wee baachans and jiichans cutting the rice by hand.