Remember Ayers Rock? And Kanga-kun (the inflatable kangaroo?)
Well, the library at my school made a display for Australia just recently, and wanted to use the Ayers Rock and the Kangaroo, so of course I said yes. As advertising they drew a little cartoon in their newsletter to let the students know –
That top panel? Apparently that’s me. I always wanted to know what I’d look like as an anime character… And it’s amazing they predicted me getting a fringe!
Basically the cartoon reads as –
*AYERS ROCK!!* Did you see the Ayers Rock that the Junior High English Club made for Culture Festival?
The Librarians meet to plan the display about Australia… “Did you see the inflatable Kangaroo??? It was cute!” “Right, lets borrow it for our display too”
*REAL KANGAROO* ‘Waaahh!’ “What is it?? Wood?!”
“No way!” Looking very closely (it is kinda a wood colour…). ‘Miss Librarian, it’s wood isn’t it?’ “No, no no! It’s not made of wood…”
Well, it’s official. I’m moving back to Australia sometime next year. I’ve decided not to sign a new contract, so from April I’ll be a free agent. I can’t tell you how much I look forward to not teaching (the little sh*ts).
Actually, my job is still pretty good, and the holidays are still brilliant, but it’s time to move back to the ‘real world’ and get a career. I never wanted to be an English teacher for the rest of my life, and so, I need to start trying for what I want.
Living in Japan for a long period of time has been great. I came (this time) with 3 goals in mind – travel as much of the country as I can, climb Mt Fuji, and pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level 2. I’m pretty happy to say I’ve achieved the first two, and I’m going to make my final attempt of Level 2 in December.
But there are still things I have yet to do. Like go to Ueno Zoo, or Shikoku even… So I made a list (If you haven’t noticed, I like to list things). My 6 month list has a lot on it already, so I won’t bore you with the details, but most things I’ll post about over the next 5 months or so will be things from the list.
For example, the other week I went to the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. I’ve been meaning to go there for years, and I just lucked out in that on the day I went it was free admission.
The museum is in Kogane park, and contains a number of buildings from Tokyo over the last 200 years or so. In particular, I wanted to go because some of the buildings were used as inspiration for the Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away. Like the Public Bathhouse –
And the Stationary Store –
But the thing that really struck me was how much I’m going to miss the little details when I leave Japan, like shaped windows and rice paper –
bamboo –
lattice work –
carvings –
and of course gardens –
Although it wasn’t the best examples I’ve seen, the museum was a pleasant day out. And just enough to satisfy my taste for the Japanese aesthetic. Check out my other photos on flickr!
If you ever watched an anime set in a school, no doubt there was an episode with the ‘Culture Festival’. Most anime portray this as a day at school when everyone opens up a cafe in their classroom. Or maid cafe even. But in real life, it’s a bit different.
2nd Grade Hallway
Culture Festival, or Bunkasai, is a time when each class gets together and does something in their classroom for their friends and family to come along and see. This can be the maid cafe so often seen in anime, but also popular are haunted houses, short dramas, game rooms, and displays.
Our school had ours in September, and this year the High School kids all seemed to want to make haunted houses. And they are scarily good at it…
Best Named Haunted House
In the Junior High, short dramas were the order of the day, with everything from Lupin the Third, Little Red Riding Hood, and ‘Sex Change Short Stories, Precious Lovers’… No, really.
"Sex Change Short Story"... really...
It’s a lot of fun, but also pretty surreal. Cross dressing is very popular. Very very popular…
She needs a shave...
Myself, well, for English Club, we just did a small display about Australia, which included a paper mache Ayers Rock, and a cricket board game.
Uluru, just like the real thing 😛
I also had the distinction of being ‘pervert catcher’ this year, when I caught a guy taking photos of the girls (>.<;)
For some more non-pervy photos, check out my flickr set!
Every 5 years the Japanese Government holds its Population census, and 2010 is a census year.
Today I had a little Japanese man come and deliver my census forms. At first, he was like “National something, something, something… Do you understand”, and I was like “ummm… no?”. Of course this all happened in Japanese. And then I noticed his ID strap, which had ‘2010 Population Census’ written on it in English, and it clicked. I had read in the City newsletter that it was coming up, so I figured I actually had to talk to the census taker rather than blowing him off (like I usually do with the “I don’t understand Japanese” line I tell to salesmen).
Anyway, after the man invited himself into my apartment (seriously? does this country have no idea about privacy or security), and asked me about how long I had lived in Japan, how many people live in my house, and my name (I really hope he really was an official census taker…)… and then finally gave me the documents (as pictured above). He was um-ing and ah-ing a little over the fact he only had the Japanese instructions, but I said that’s okay, there’s bound to be instructions on the internet….
September is here, and that means a few things, but mostly – it’s back to school.
This year’s summer vacation was Busy. Hot. Exhausting. But good 😀
For most of my summer I’ve had guests visiting, because it was pretty much my last chance to have people stay before I leave Japan sometime next year. From now on life in Japan for me will be focused on passing the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) level 2, and then selling my stuff before moving, and I just won’t be able to dedicate myself to visitors like I usually would.
On the day Angus left, I started working for a friend, covering his lessons while he was overseas. It was really refreshing to teach students who wanted to study English, unlike teaching at a school were they are forced to learn. It was only night lessons, so during the day I had time to chill out, watch tv, and sort out my house a bit before my next set of guests.
For the final part of the vacation I actually had my friend Michael come for a week to climb Mt Fuji, followed by my father visiting for 10 days just because. By the end of August I had been expecting the weather to start cooling down, but this year has been most unusual with temperatures continuing to reach up to (and occasionally over) 37 C even into September! It’s actually been the warmest August in Japan since 1946, so I had started to slow down a bit because of exhaustion.
Shibuya Crossing
Despite slowing down a little, I still did a lot of sighting seeing with Michael and Dad. With Michael we went to Shibuya and Harajuku to see the cosplay kids hanging out there, and Asakusa and Odaiba to see a bit of Tokyo’s history and skyline. With my Dad, his main requests were to go to Tokyo Tower and Odaiba, so we spent a couple of days doing that. We also saw Inception, went to the National Nature and Science Museum in Ueno, and probably most exciting for me – went to Disneyland for my birthday!
Rainbow Bridge and Himiko Ferry
So, overall, this vacation was busy, hot, exhausting, but fun! (and I went to Disney 3 times! win!!)
Almost a month ago, without any fanfare (or baking for that matter), yamaonna had its first anniversary. And on this occasion I would like to take a time out to look at my first post Happy New Blog, and in particular, the resolutions I made.
Firstly, ‘Write once a week’. I’d say I have been successful at this. Although I might not have written every week, I have written the equivalent of once a week.
Secondly, ‘Write interesting entries’ (in order to improve my writing). I can’t say that my writing has improved, but I think I have learnt to focus on methods that make my writing more readable. Like breaking things down into bulleted lists.
‘Write entries for hikes, walks, flower information, etc…’. Check again 😀 9 hikes already written up, more to come. A few flower and gardens pages also complete, but there is, as always, more planned.
And lastly, ‘I suppose I should write it in Japanese’. Weeeeeelllll.. This one hasn’t happened.
Overall, 4 out of 5 isn’t bad. However, it makes me think, what should I try to achieve with my next year of yamaonna? Apart from continuing on my ‘successes’ to date, I think that dropping the ‘write in Japanese’ resolution is probably for the best. I’m just too shy to share my bad Japanese with people who know me.
But what does that leave me with to aim for? Well, I still want to continue writing about hikes, flowers, and gardens. And maybe, just maybe, I might try my hand at some social commentary (oh won’t that be fun kids?). But above all else, from now on expect regular updates.
Yamaonna will be updated every Saturday between 5 and 10 pm AEST. The first, third, and fifth (if there is a fifth) Saturdays will be posts about life in general. The second Saturday will be posts about flowers and gardens. And the fourth Saturday will be posts of hiking guides.
Finally I’m almost finished blogging about Lauren’s visit. We really did fit a lot into 2 weeks! So this post is devoted to miscellaneous things.
The first weekend that Lauren was here was all shopping. I’m pretty lucky that I have the largest shopping center in Japan only 30 minutes from my house, so after meeting Lauren at the airport and forwarding her bag to my house, we went there. We walked around for a few hours before deciding to head home and crash on the couch for the evening. Wayne’s World 1 was watched, and then quoted numerous times over the next 2 weeks.
The next day was spent in Akihabara, and Lauren managed to get the majority of her souvenir shopping done. She also bought a new video camera, and I bought a new compact digital camera. My new camera, a Nikon Coolpix S570, isn’t the latest model, but I’m really happy with it. It takes really great portraits, I think the automatic face detection software softens the face (always a plus).
Next was our trip to Hakone, followed by the Cat Cafe and Yokohama. On the 27th of March, we actually attended the YouTube Hanami party in Yoyogi park, which accounted for our slight hangovers on our trip to the snow. The Hanami party was lots of fun, but I got far too friendly, and the lines for the toilets were really really long. In the evening the party moved from the park to the Hub in Shibuya, but we were only able to stay for a few hours since we had to be up early to catch the train the following day.
After we arrived back from the snow, we needed a bit of a sleep in and easy day, so we went to the Park Hyatt in Shinjuku for high tea. The Park Hyatt has the hotel bar that is featured in Lost in Translation, but personally I went for the food (big surprise there…). I’ll be doing a blog about that next (^-^)v
A full day at Dinsneyland was next on the agenda. We spent 14 hours there that day, and it was lots of fun. Of course being the school holiday it was really busy, but we got to ride most of the ‘big’ rides, and a few of the classics. It was also interesting as, for the first time, they were holding Easter celebrations. So the decorations were really nice.
Disney's Easter Wonderland
By this time, the cherry blossoms were starting to bloom, so we went to Ueno to see the flowers (and the crowds!). Ueno is one of the most popular places to have hanami, and it’s super crowded all the time. However, you can understand why, as it’s very pretty.
Ueno park in bloom
Ueno park was actually just a stop on our way to Alkatraz ER in Shibuya, a medical dungeon themed Japanese bar. I do love going to themed bars in Tokyo, but this place was a bit of a let down. There were some cool and weird things, like drinks served out of severed heads, drinks with banana’s that looked like… well… and then there was the vibrator drink… Where the waitress (in short nurses uniform complete with g-string) mixed the drink with a vibrator while moaning (0_o)…. But overall it was over priced, as we had to order the all you can eat and drink menu, and they neglected to inform us that drinks from the special drink menu weren’t included in that deal. Next time I would prefer to go to the Lockup.
Our last couple of days were spent wandering around Costco (Japan is all about shopping at American stores…), singing karaoke, and looking at the local cherry blossoms.
Continuing on with the Australian Invasion (of one), the next day trip Lauren and I took was to Yokohama. Our main reason (my main reason?) for going there was the Ramen Museum, however no trip to Yokohama is complete without a visit to Chinatown. The Yokohama Chinatown is one of the largest in the world, and its a very bright and lively shopping and restaurant area, with a couple of shrines thrown in.
Chinatown Shrine
So we wandered around there for a while, and I stocked up on Chinese pork buns and egg noodles. Since we were going to the Ramen Museum later we didn’t have lunch at Chinatown, and we made our way along the bay side to the Minato Mirai area. There we took a ride on the ‘Cosmo Clock 21’ ferris wheel.
Cosmo Clock 21 Ferris Wheel
It really struck me how much the Minato Mirai district has changed since my first visit in about 2002. It’s a much more international tourist friendly place, and there are more things to do. From the ferris wheel we spotted a couple of things I want to try next time I’m in Yokohama, like the foot bath at the Manyo club, and putt-putt at Vivre. Both of which are on top of the buildings!
From Minato Mirai it was finally time to get our late lunch (or early dinner) at the Shin Yokohama Ramen Museum. The Ramen Museum is one of my favourite places to go in Yokohama. Once you enter the Museum and walk downstairs into the basement, you enter a mock-up of what Japan was like in the early to mid Showa era (1925 and onwards).
Shin Yokohama Ramen Museum
At any one time, there are about nine different restaurants showcasing different varieties of Ramen from all over Japan. You can buy large or small bowls of ramen, and traditional Japanese sweets. We were only able to fit in two small bowls of ramen, so we had Tonkotsu ramen (broiled pork bone soup) from the Kumamoto shop ‘Komurasaki’
Tonkotsu ramen
and Miso ramen from the Hokkaido shop ‘Eki’
Miso ramen
Both were very delicious, but pretty heavy. I love trying different types of ramen, and tonkotsu still remains my favourite. Alas, living in Kanto, the regional flavor of ramen is soy sauce, so I don’t get to satisfy my craving very often.
And, after rolling ourselves home, that was our day in Yokohama!
Once again, Lauren made a video, and you can check out her YouTube channel here!
鳴く猫は鼠をとらぬ – ‘a meowing cat catches no rats'(all talk and no action)
The Problem: Many Tokyoites live in apartments, or work long hours, and can’t keep a pet. And yet, many still crave the love and affection of a pet.
The Idea: A place with cats where people can come and play and pet them.
The Execution: Cat Cafes
Lauren and I visited a Cat Cafe while she was in town. The idea is great I think, being able to go to a cafe and play with cats, take photos, and just chill out. And it really didn’t seem to be cruel in any way, the cafes have quite strict rules (like no waking sleeping cats, or doing things they don’t like), are quite well staffed, and the cats have an area to escape to if the humans become too much.
We visited Nekorobi in Ikebukuro, which was one of the cheapest and closest cat cafes to where I live. It was 1000 yen for 1 hour, and that included free drinks, cookies and cats! In the room there were about 10 cats, and about 6 or 7 customers at a time. The cats had plenty of toys and baskets, and there were some sofas and chairs about the room for the humans (and sometimes the cats).
'Doraemon'
Although I think it’s a great idea, you’ve gotta admit that a cat’s personality isn’t really suited for this kind of work day in and day out. Most of the time, most of the cats were sleeping. Not many wanted to play, and some would walk away as soon as you petted them. They only got active when, just as we were leaving, they were being fed. So really, we spent most of the time just taking photos of the cats. I will admit, they did have some very beautiful cats!
'Anko'
Once again, Lauren made a video! And check out her YouTube Channel!
About a month ago, my best friend Lauren came to visit. We had a really busy schedule because this was probably the last chance she will have to visit me in Japan. One of the first things we did was to visit Hakone using a package from JAPANiCAN.
I’ve been to Hakone so many times that I’ve lost count, but this was Lauren’s first time. The package from JAPANiCAN was really really good value. For 11,900yen we had bullet train tickets from Tokyo to Odawara, and one night at the Hakone Prince Hotel. Using the bullet train to get to Hakone was really quick, cutting a 5 hour journey from my house in half (I live in the sticks!). Once we were in Odawara we bought some Odakyu Freepasses and we were off!
Hakone Checkpoint
Firstly we caught the bus to Hakone-machi were we had some lunch at a restaurant overlooking Lake Ashi. This is also the start of the Ashinoko hike, but this time I wasn’t there for hiking. Our next stop was the Hakone Checkpoint Museum. This is a recent (2007) replica of the Checkpoint along the Tokaido Highway, and it’s pretty interesting because it illustrates how difficult it was to travel in the Edo period. Only people who had documents and legitimate reasons were allowed to travel from Tokyo. And anyone caught trying to sneak by the Checkpoint were arrested and tortured in some very gruesome ways. Although the Checkpoint buildings themselves are new, the attached museum is a bit… aged… and doesn’t have much English signage. But its pretty easy to guess things like ‘this instrument was used for torture’, etc, etc.
Inside the Hakone Checkpoint
Old Tokaido Highway
From the Checkpoint Museum we walked along a small section of the old Tokaido. The old highway was lined with cedar trees to give some shade to travellers, and even though it’s right beside a roadway, you can still get a feel for what it must have been like to walk from Tokyo to Kyoto.
Certainly something that didn’t exist back then is the Pirate Ship Cruise we caught across the lake. I had high hopes that while in Hakone we would have fine weather, but we were not lucky, and there was no views of Mt Fuji that day. But despite that, the round trip from Hakone, on the Pirate Ship, then ropeway, and finally cable car is still fun, and an interesting view of Japan for those who have only really seen the cites beforehand.
Lake Ashi
Egg Ice Cream
Of course, our next stop on the round trip was Owakudani, an active volcanic area. From the ropeway station we were lucky to catch a glimpse of the top of Mt Fuji, and then it was up the trail to try some Kuro-tamago, black eggs that have been boiled in the sulphurous hot springs. Each egg you eat is said to add another 7 years onto your lifespan, and if that’s the case I managed to add another 17.5 years to my life that weekend.
What got me really excited, however, was Egg ice cream! I’ve mentioned before how there is a lot of variety of ice creams in Japan, but this was the first time I had ever seen Egg flavour. Thankfully the ice cream didn’t really taste very eggy, but more like pudding. I truly think it was pudding flavor, but re-named so that they would sell more….
Owakudani
As we were staying at the Hakone Prince Hotel, we backtracked on the ropeway to the lake, and caught a bus around to the hotel. The Hakone Prince is kind of like a resort style hotel. It is on a large piece of land (there is even a golf course), and all buildings and attractions were owned by Prince. But unfortunately the isolation ment there wasn’t even a convenience store to be had, and dining options were either the two restaurants at the hotel or room service. As we had a late-ish lunch and eggs, we weren’t starving, so we decided that room service was the best option for us. It also gave me a bit of a thrill as I had never ever ordered room service before. I had the seafood curry, and it was the best seafood curry I had ever had. Plus it was really novel to have my dinner wheeled in for me (^-^)
Seafood Curry dinner
The next day the weather had turned bad. It was 3 degrees C and raining, and being in the mountains, the clouds had set in. We had already decided to go to Yunessun, a hot spring theme park, so the turn in weather wasn’t so bad for us. Yunesun, although a little expensive at 3,500 yen, is really great for people who don’t want to bathe naked, because it has a swimsuit zone with many different kinds of baths like wine, sake, green tea, charcoal, and more. Although, the outside area is a bit trying when you are running from bath to bath and it’s only 3 degrees! The most interesting bath for me was the Dead Sea bath, it has a very high salt content which makes you float very easily.
By the time we finished at Yunessun it was time to head back to Hakone Station and on to Toyko on the bullet train. So, the goals of 1- see (a bit of) Mt Fuji, and 2- go to an onsen were achieved.
Lauren also made a great video of our trip – you should also check out her YouTube Channel! (er, also, language warning!)
the story of an Aussie girl living in Japan, who loves travel, hiking, walking, flowers and food.
yamaonna 