Kizuna

My internal clock is in shambles.

The increasingly longevity of gaps between snow flurries and weather that hasn’t dropped below zero in a few weeks, suggests that spring (though taking it’s sweet ass time about it) is on the way. Hailing from the southern hemisphere, to me this means it must be September. However school is preparing to wrap up for the year which means it’s December…It’s only March (and to prove my point I just typed ‘April’).

The Road to Fukushima

After a tipsy conversation at a bar in Omagari, Liam, Drew, Priscilla and I decided to embark on a road trip down to Fukushima. At long last Lorde had dropped her new single ‘Green light’ on Friday morning, so it was with this on loop in my head (intermittently interrupted my Mo’s ‘Final song’) that we embarked on the 5 hour drive to the Abukuma caves in Fukushima.

Once we had passed through what was effectively the lobby of the cave, we left the hordes of fairy lights and tacky (sorry I mean cute) decorations behind. The pathways of limestone varied from tunnels that forced us to crawl on the damp rock, to caverns whose ceilings soared above our heads with chandeliers of stalactites strung over every inch.

Abukuma Caves Fukushima

The spacious carpark made the attraction look like it had been prepared for swarms of visitors, there were about 5 cars including ours. As Tohoku has a comparatively small population to the rest of Japan, there is less demand for land so abandoned buildings (and waterparks – Iwaki) will be left to tumble down of their own accord. This made it difficult for us to determine how much of our dilapidated surroundings was part of the inaka charm, and how much was due to the area being abandoned, avoided and accompanied by warning signs on every travel website since March 2011.

All was not lost
We managed to find a Nepalese restaurant and Irish pub.

The following day took us through more of the Fukushima countryside, the rice fields remained a brown gold (rather than the pure white of the snow covered ones in Akita) and scenery ringing of spring until we reached the Ouchijiku village which was still clinging to the last chills of winter. Shogunate restrictions during the Edo period (AD 1603-1868) required travellers to complete long journeys on foot, as a result many post towns, such as Ouchijiku, were established along trade routes to house travellers.

Ouchijiku

The restored houses hold an array of shops and gift stores and guide visitors up the path towards a hill at the rear of the village that looks down over the thatched and (while we were there) snow covered roofs.

Back in the car (if their anything that’s going to test your friendship it’s being cooped up in a Honda fit for the best part of a weekend), we continued to the Tamagoyu onsen. Tamagoyu is one of a cluster of hotsprings that make up Takayu onsen village on the foot of Mt Azuma. The name roughly translates as ‘Egg Hot spring’ which, we were disappointed to learn, has less to do with the sulphuric smell, rather your skin is as smooth as a boiled egg afterwards (though one would argue this logic on approaching the area…)

Smooth and smelling slightly of sulphur we watched as the scenery grew whiter and greyer, and the temperature dropped steadily as we drew closer to an Akita that was still in the grips of winter.

The following week was spent in a flurry of preparation for graduation, and of snow that was falling delicately on the morning that the Third graders would walk out of school for the final time.

The ceremony was held on Saturday (11^th March) and some genius put the clueless gaijin (ie, yours truly) at the front corner of the teachers block – the most visible place to witness my failing to bow each and every single time it was required.

Graduation pictures decorating
the school

After each student was presented with their graduation folders, Freckles (as always names have been changed) made a speech on behalf of the graduates. The quiet sniffing began and intermittent wiping of cheeks amongst the female students. They then assembled on a stage to sing their graduation song, followed by the junior classes standing to join in the next song, graduates and juniors facing each other.

The Third graders were then each presented with a bouquet of two tulips as they walked between the blocks junior students, turned to face the doors and walked out of the hall for the last time.

Unfortunately for me, my seat was right next to the point where the students turned to face the hall doors and corridor. I am endearingly naming this spot ‘the breaking point’ because if a student was going to break – this is where it would happen.

Despite the tell-tale sniffs of teachers around me and red eyed students walking past, I managed to keep myself together until bloody Hey came along. The class clown, and student who had made a point to greet me with a cheery ‘Kia Ora!’ (as well as saying ‘nice to meet you’ every time we bumped into each other at school….) I had a bit of a soft spot for this kid. It made it all the more wrenching when he walked up to the breaking point, his desperation to keep it together written all over his face, turned, and crumbled. That was my own breaking point.

The teachers and junior students waited outside of the school to applaud the Thrid graders as they walked out. Graduates and current students exchanged gifts and letters and Hey gave a second grader one of his tulips – skux.

Sunday 12^th March

Bright and early I picked up a very delicate Liam (who had been to his staffs graduation dinner/drinks the night before) and headed into the hills of Ouchi for the Nagasaka Inari Shrine Bonten Hono Festival (長坂稲荷神社梵天まつり). At the local shrine, teams gathered with their Jellyfish-esque totem poles, were hyped up by a drummer, then went charging into the temple with their poles proceeding to bang them against the ceiling while others in their group stood on the steps trying to prevent other teams from entering. Bear in mind that these men had probably been going hard on the sake since 6am.

The peaceful snow covered grove was pierce with yelling, chanting and shrieks as hard rice cakes were lobbed into the gr

ound as part of what seemed to be a Japanese version of a lolly scramble.

I delivered a very pale Liam back to his abode where he could resume being horizontal for the remainder of the day.

Making the most of our day off (everyone had had graduation on Saturday which meant Monday was a holiday), Dave, Drew, Josh and myself drove north to Iwate for a day skiing at Appi.

Jumps were attempted, gondolas were ridden and tumbles were taken and beaten, battered and exhausted after a decent day in the powder we trudged home.

Surviving the Sub Zero

The past few weeks have been wick with teasings of spring when the snow is all but gone and the sky stays blue for more than 20 minutes, only to be stomped on when you wake up to a white out the next morning.

Takeuchi Festival

I have become accustomed to being told that I have ‘no seasons’ when the teachers notice (which they never fail to do) me sitting in the staffroom in short sleeves, despite the fact that the room about 5 degrees warmer than a Wellington summer. They maintain the fact that it’s below zero outside.

The New Year has come with enough snow for the students at the primary school to go charging out to the hill by the baseball field at lunch time to go for a slide on their toboggans. An exercise which required some of the younger ones to get a helping push, I personally had no qualms in volunteering for this.

Kamakura Festival - Yokote

The snow was not such a welcome constituent during the annual memorial march for Shirase Nobu. The entire school walked through Konoura, stopping at Shirase’s grave where the temple bell was rung, through to the memorial park where a short service was held. The snow blew over us in hail like clumps and with everyone one huddled like penguins I can imagine it looked just like Antarctica which seemed appropriate for the occasion.

The annual Influenza epidemic saw mornings packed with calls home to parents to come and collect their contagious children. Determined to prove that I had a boss gaijin immune system I was the only person in the entire school that was not wearing a facemask. There was a foreboding sense of doom when you walked into a class room to see multiple empty desks amongst a sea of masked (tired looking) faces. Thank god I survived because I don’t know how well I would have handled the inevitable passive aggressive ‘I told you so’ comments if I had gotten sick. I get the feeling that the caretaker now thinks I’m some sort of invincible super human.

Omatsugawa Dam

After a boozy night out in Omagari (which we have endearingly dubbed ‘Omags’) Andrew, Dave, Liam and myself embarked on a hung-over mission to Kitakami for a leisurely explore. Along the way we stopped at Omatsugawa dam to throw a few snow balls and convince Dave it would be a good idea to thrown himself at a wall of snow. Once in Kitakami we realized that we had no idea what was there or what we wanted to do. The trip being Liam’s idea the responsibility was handed to him. We ended up driving 3 hours to go to a Lawson then admit defeat and return to Akita.

To its credit – Tohoku does know how to keep you occupied during the frigid season.

Though not strictly a winter festival, Setsubun does provide an enjoyable distraction from the fact that your feet have spent most of the past 2 months in snow boots. A bunch of us invaded Liam’s flat for the festivities. His friends Yuka and Mai prepared Ehomaki, a sushi roll which is to be consumed in one sitting, which out being removed from your mouth, while facing a particular direction (I believe this year it was North East?). This would have been more successful had there not been numerous bouts of giggles during consumption.

 The main event consists of some poor soul donning a demon mask (Dave and ‘the newbie’ – ie myself- were volunteered for this honour) and having beans thrown at them while the phrase ‘bad luck out, good luck in!’ is shouted. Needless to say there was a fair amount of carnage in the form of scattered peanuts (which we used as a more affordable alternative to beans) following this exercise, so Dave and I took it upon ourselves to clean up…to put it simply Liam now has a peanut in every single one of his shirt pockets and will be finding them all over his apartment until he moves out.

Takeuchi Festival

Even more violent that the peanut brandishing antics of Setsubun, was the Misato Takeuchi festival. This event consists of 2 groups of grown sake’d up helmet donning men bashing each other with bamboo poles. Full stop. The front lines turn into something of a rugby scrum while the guys further back continue to whack people with 20 foot long poles. Before the final round a bonfire is lit which adds to the chaos and atmosphere.

A more sedate activity is the Kamakura festival in Yokote. Igloos with a width of 1.5 metres and height of 2 metres are constructed along footpaths and in parks for passerbys to enter (after removing their shoes) and sit around a brazier while consuming amazake and rice cakes. At the rear of each of the kamakura is a makeshift shrine dedicated to the water deity (suijinsama). Along the river bank were hundreds of tiny Kamakura about a foot tall, each with a candle inside.

Last Saturday a couple of ladies from my English conversation group roped the Nikaho ALTs into a cooking exchange at the Kisakata community centre. Please not – for a person with effectively zero culinary skills, finding a recipe that has ingredients that can be found in Akita (I had to drive for nearly 90 minutes to find golden syrup), is cost effective, does not require hours of prep time or refrigeration and does not require an oven, is quite a mission. After trawling through recipe after recipe I finally settled on fettuccine salad and Hedgehog slice. Unable to find icing sugar I made the executive decision to use grated chocolate as a topping for the slice, this nearly turned to custard when the bloody granddads kept nibbling away at the chocolate bars while watching the women cook pasta.

Kamakura

One thing this winter has been brilliant for is skiing. After a rather leisurely day at our local ski field Yashima, when I didn’t fall over once, I decided that if I didn’t fall over at Geto Kogen in Iwate- I wasn’t trying hard enough. What I hadn’t anticipated was that Dave, Cari and I would take a wrong turn and attempt a completely un-groomed path that would see all three of us going over simultaneously.

After a few hours of throwing ourselves around in the snow we retired to the onsite onsen, my favourite thus far is probably Tsuru no Yu in Tazawa but this one definitely came in a close second. The outdoor hotspring was effectively a toasty infinity pool that looked out over snow covered mountains, the image framed by icicles hanging from the veranda.

The end of the winter holiday with Henry brought with it an abrupt plummet from the honeymoon phase of JET. The little things that annoy you accumulate and the realization that you are now well and truly sick of rice but are not even half way through your stay hits hard.

Mini Kamakura

Amongst the cold and icy roads, I had to experience one of my best friend’s 21^st birthday through snapchat updates and instagram posts. While I am grateful that technology allowed this to happen (and I have a wonderful boy in my life that kept me updated) it was hard not being there.

By the way Jodi you are gorgeous and I miss you heaps x

Here’s hoping that spring will chase some of those winter blues away. The temperature is forecasted to hit double digits this week, and on the weekend it was so sunny that I actually wound down my car windows driving back from the cooking exchange. Dreams of beaches, swimming and being able to wear shorts again are growing bigger as cherry blossom season draws nearer.