the day to day

I have started teaching so finally it feels like i can establish some kind of routine. this is what my working weeek is like:

I wake up and roll up my futon (you cant leave a futon on tatami because it will go all mouldy). Japan, I was suprised to discover, has really good bread - thick sliced and yeasty. They have also developed excellent toasters as a compliment. So i make toast and have it with strawberry jam (thick and natural tasting) accompanied by an iced coffee - `Virginia`s Finest` that I can buy from the vending machine across the road. Then I hops onto my bicycle at 7:56 and I rides to school. It is not easy riding to school in a pencil skirt (a pencil skirt indeed! its the new me) - a constant negotiation between balance and decency. Along the way I see my students on their bikes - soemthing about the angle of handle bar to bike seat gives everyone on bikes here an extremely relaxed appearance, its realy cool. everyone also rides extremely slowly.

then i get to school and check my email. i dont feel too guilty about this coz i arrive early and check mail in what is technically off-the-clock time. everyone in the teacher's room looks extremely busy ( totemo isogashii), even when they are sleeping at their desks. remarkable!

I teach between 2 and three classes a day (which i will describe in detail another time) and for the rest of the time I am at my desk marking, doing lesson prep and making surfing wikipedia look very important and absorbing - which it is. I read about Ghandi for like an hour the other day. There was a lot i didnt know about Ghandi! Every now and again Shintani-sensei will come to my desk for an impromtu Japanese lesson. He prefers to be called Gunch, his nickname since creche. It means 'as insolent as a rock' and he is extremely proud of it. He is the only teacher who has the gumption to leave at the bell at end of the day - all other teachers stay at least two hours into the evening. My lesson with Gunch yesterday was a Japanese/Astronomy lesson. I learnt how to say Southern Cross and Polar Star, he told me where the latter was situated in the sky; and I also learnt to say 'I have seen the Southern Cross,but never the Polar star. Gunch-san, have you seen the Southern Cross?`

When school is done I cruise around the city on my bike. Because my fridge is so small I buy groceries daily - it gives me endless pleasure. At first I was frequenting a supermarket that was so big it was scary. Then I found one closer to my house. But it so small it was scary! Then I found one over a hill and around a dale which was just right! Every evening I go there and buy something to drink (juice is really good in Japan) and some kind of desert - bitter chocolate or an enourmous pink peach - the size of a small melon.

For dinner I have miso soup - Im learning to make it pretty good! And then my peach! Then i go onto the balcony and look at the mountains or read a bit.

Its a little life isnt it? Not too little to be scary though...just right!

.

the ferry to Okunojima

The Japanese do campin right! A big group of us (gaijin and nohonjin - foreign and japanese) headed out yesterday morning to Okunojima - an island about 15 minutes from Mihara.

The island is now a peaceful resort, it looks like Jurassic Park - very lush; with views of Inland islands. It used to be a secret island - not on maps or anything - where the Japanese made poisonous gas from the early 20th century until the end of WWII. Now there is a museum and monuments that commenmorate all the workers and rabbits who died or were affected by the production of mustard gas. The rabbits were set free after the factory was closed and now roam free on the island. There are thousdands of them sleeping and frolicking along the paths, in the shrines and all around the campsites. Bunnies more than any other animal I think, need adverbs. The do not sit - they flop. The do not run but lollop about. They are very tame and will quitely sidle up to you, noses twitching and eat straight from you hand. The ones by the campsites are fat and velvety. The ones up in the hills are a little more rugged so I made a point of feeding them lots.

The island is covered in wooden walk paths that lead you up to the very top of the hills and all around the coastline. The views are stunning, the inland sea is a milky teal colour and perfectly warm. I spent happy hours reading The Great Gatsby on the mossy ground surrounding the island temple and also on the beach - a tiny patch of sand which i had to share with hoards of frolicking kids. We went for a swim at night and the ocean was teeming with phosperesence (sp?). I felt like a Harry Potter character, cutting silver lines in the black water with the silouettes of mountauns all around.

The campsite, like everything in the country, is clean and super organised. We set up our tents in a straight stripe looking out over the sea. I was aware that as a South African, used to tonnes and tonnes of braai meat, I may be a little dissapointed by a Japanese BBQ, but no! I was well impressed. For meat we had tender little medallions of beef that came off the braai super tender. Instead of marinading they went onto the fire flavourless and we then dipped them into a variety of deeply delicious sauces. After the meat came yakisoba - onions and cabbage fried down to sweet strings that are then added to noodles and fried again. We had this for dinner in the leftover meat juices on our plates and then again for breakfast on thick slices of white bread, with scrambled eggs and mayonnaise. So good!

One feels a great triumph swimming in a new sea. The inland sea was no dissapointment. I kept having to remind myself to take it all in - the view of mountains and islands, the little fishing boats buzzing lazily along and big tankers going about their business in the distance. I got horribly sun-burned (sorry mom) - thats what you get for falling asleep on the beach. It was well worth it.

I will definitely go back to Oukonojima in the autumn and spring to watch the bunnies go about their business under the colourful trees. For more pics of bunny island check my flickr account.

What fun I did have. The weekend made me want to buy a tent and a camping chair and do the whole of Asia from campsite to campsite. Coming home to Mihara I felt that sense of achievement one feels after camping - i did it! Also the feeling of fantasy, that not an hour before you were in a wrold without buildings or trains, just watching the sea go in and out on an island where bunnies rule supreme.