Monday 28th
November
Budgeting in this country
has been become substantially easier since I have figured out (or rather been
shown how to) use my bank book. If my skim reading of my previous posts is
incorrect and I have in fact rambled about this before – feel free to skip this
next section.
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| Haiku poet Matsuo Basho - Kanmanji Temple |
With a lack of internet
banking (or anything that mildly resembles the 21st century)
figuring out where all your money went the previous month can be a bit of a
mission sometimes. To set up an automatic payment you must physically go into
the bank and fill out a paper form (complete with about 4 hanko stamps, unless you wish to pay you’re your bills manually
each month which requires wither a trip to the bank (which is not open outside
of schools hours) or at a combini. Plane tickets purchased online can also be
paid for at combinis if you aren’t in possession of a credit card so there are
some silver linings to the whole debacle.
To get a rundown of your
transactions to insert your bankbook into a slot at the ATM and it prints it
all out for you (and is clever enough to turn the pages). It’s a huge relief
when you realise that your phone bills have been being paid as you have
received zilch contact/acknowledgement of payment since you set everything up
in August…
With idea the deposits
and withdrawals now all that is left to do is track down the mountain of
receipts that you’ve hoarded for the last 30~31 days and try to remember how
much that nomihoudai was that you didn’t
get a receipt for.
Wednesday 30th
November
Nearly a month after the
safe return of the students that visited Oklahoma, a past exchange meeting was
held to hear stories and see photos of what the 20 or so kids had gotten up to
while over there. It was rather nostalgic seeing photos of the Golden gate
bridge and Pier 39 (after we’d made it through the first 10 slides which went
along the lines of ‘this is the students at the conference centre before they
got on the bus. This is the students on the bus on the way to Akita Airport/at
Akita airport/on the plane to Haneda/at Haneda/on the bus to Narita/at
Narita/on the plane to San Francisco…it makes you realise what a big deal this
is for some kids who have never left the country before). There was also an
unfortunate slide where English pronunciation proved too similar and the
resultant caption read as: Shawnee City Town Hole.
Thursday 1st
December
It feels like just last
week that I was haphazardly throwing up a November display for the English
noticeboard. As December had finally rocked around my inner child could be
unleashed. As I was putting up the display and had a few teachers stop to chat,
I learnt very quickly that ‘Christmas in Summer’ means ‘Surfing Santa’. I even
had one teacher that seemed confused and disappointed when he realised that I didn’t
have a picture of Santa on a surfboard, I refrained from telling him that it
was because it’s tacky and I don’t like it.
Probably similar to the
way that a lot of westerners are under the impression that Japanese eat nothing
but sushi, people here can be quite attached to stereotypes, and obsessed with
seasons. As soon as autumn hits, it’s straight into the autumn wardrobe,
regardless of the fact that the temperature on the 1st of September
is exactly the same as that of the 31st August (ie. Stupid hot and
humid), It’s into the long sleeves and tights. I made the foolish mistake of
wearing short sleeves on the first day of winter – ignoring the fact that it
was almost 10 degrees warmer than some of the weather we’d been having and it
was nearly 24 degrees in the staff room. I received many a comment of ‘you’re
wearing short sleeves!` and ‘Aren’t you cold?’ The dress code seems to revolve
more around the season than the actual temperature, with no regard for how warm
it is inside with the heaters going.
Friday 2nd
December
Friday night saw a trip
into Akita city planned. This took longer than expected to get under way as
when Liam went to fill up his car, the flap to the fuel cap wouldn’t open. A
trip to a garage later and we were heading back to swap the temporary car that
they had lent him for mine, before racing back to the garage so that Liam could
pick up his house key which was still attached to his car keys…
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| Mt. Chokai with a generous layer of snow |
An hour later we were
finally on our way to Akita city. The trip saw my pizza craving satisfied – an occurrence
that will probably not be repeated too soon as I had forgotten how expensive
pizzas are here. A large pizza from Pizza hut will cost you $30~$40 and a small
around $20~$30. For a gourmet pizza at a restaurant I can understand that kind
of pricing – for a chain takeaway joint, not so much.
We did catch a glimpse
into the kitchen of the establishment and saw the enormous wall sized map of
Akita city that the employees used to locate houses for deliveries (I would
imagine that they’d now use GPS back home).
We then headed to an
enormous 2nd hand goods warehouse that had everything from UFO
machines to guitars, to weird anime porn…we may have ventured into the r18 section
to have a nosey…My previous convictions that I had come to a bizarre country
were heavily reinforced.
Saturday 3rd
December
When I had finally caught
up on all the crate day snapchat stories from home and managed to get myself
into some clothes, I headed into Honjo to meet Cari and Liam for a coffee.
Sitting inside the coffee shop amongst the tree and Christmas lights it felt
very cosy looking out the window to see Chokai with a hearty layer of snow on
it.
The gaijin (Cari, Liam,
Andrew, Priscilla, Isabel, Bex) then descended on my humble abode to pile the
futons and blankets into my lounge before we headed to Anmol for a curry
dinner.
On our return it was all
hands on deck to set up the nest of futons before we cracked the beers and had ‘Clueless’
going in the background. The ever-tardy Dave was greeted by a Smirnoff Ice in
the genkan when he decided to grace us with his presence and we settled in for
a round of Kings cup and ‘never have I ever’ before figuring out how an earth
we were going to comfortably fit 8 sleeping bodies in my flat.
Sunday 4th
December
There’s nothing like a
morning trip to the seaside to blow the cobwebs away. We spent a while charging
and cartwheeling around the beach at Konoura before making a run to the
supermarket to pick up the required components of a pancake breakfast.
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| On one of the 99 islands |
I can almost guarantee
that that is probably the most gaijin that have ever been in my supermarket at
one time. Three of my 2nd graders walked in as we were paying and
the check-out lady had a wee chuckle at my frantic gestures and scolding as I
told the lads NOT to go and teach my students bad words.
With seven of us it didn’t
take long to clean up the carnage from the night before – de-nest my lounge and
prepare it for breakfast while in the kitchen the dishes were attacked, tea and
coffee was made and Isabel Priscilla and Bex took on cooking duty.
We subjected ourselves to
‘The Room’ as the pancakes, eggs and bacon were churned out. I feel the 3.5
rating on IMDB was a little generous. But apparently it was one of those things
that you had to see (if it was just to see how bad the movie really was).
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| Kanmanji |
That afternoon Isabel,
Bex and I went for a drive into Kisakata, and after google maps decided to take
us down a precarious rice paddy road, made it to Kanmanji Temple and the 99
Islands. The Islands were created when Chokai erupted and spat out chucks that
landed in the bay and started growing trees. Over the years the sea receded
(whether due to earthquake or not I forget) and what is left now is an array of
islands in amongst rice paddies. We spent the best part of 2 hours meandering
through the allotments and clambering up the islands, experiencing another ‘I’m
in Japan’ moment.
The drive home saw our
cravings get the better of us and we returned to mine to smash our a dinner of Kiritanpo in my electric cooking pot
(which I was ecstatic to discover actually worked). With another week done and
dusted, Christmas is creeping closer, and this time next week I will be
documenting the adventures of Aunty Lorraine and Sarah who arrive in Akita on
Thursday night.
