And lo, a great sadness descended upon the Sushi on a Stick household. Felix came back a few days ago from playing with his best-friend-up-the-road Ryota and promptly burst into tears. I don’t want to go home, he wailed, and I can see why: over the past two years he’s built up a wonderful team of friends who live locally, who he can just zoom off and visit on his bike at any time because it’s a country town where the kids play in the streets (and you don’t have to wear a helmet either). How could you give all this up? Plus Ryota has a Wii which is handy because ours broke last year.

Even Ruby was sad on her last day of school, although in a spectacularly Orwellian rewriting of history she refuses to admit as much, despite having released details about her tearfull farewell into the public domain via her blog. Still, her parents know better. Meanwhile Eleni has shed a few tears of her own and there are sure to be more to come as we go through the roster of painful goodbyes.

As for me, our two years in Japan have been a rollercoaster ride, mainly due to the initial disappointment of Ruby’s experience at school. But as she began to make friends outside school, and then eventually at school too, life in Japan got rather nice and cosy and as a result I felt altogether better about being here. So Japan and I part on good terms, although I’m still very annoyed about the summers.

Just like when we left Italy in 2004, I feel sad about what we’re leaving behind and even ambivalent about our return. But we have to draw the line somewhere, and two years seems as good a time as any. The longer you stay, the harder it gets to wrench yourselves away. And while Felix would love to spend another year with all his mates at Sunami primary, I can’t quite stomach the thought of Ruby doing third year junior high, where they ramp up the studying even further in preparation for the dreaded entrance examinations into senior high school.

Anyway, the kids are making the most of their last couple of weeks in Japan with a full schedule of play dates. Ruby is out with a different set of friends for six days in a row, culminating with a sleepover with Bestest Friend Rio from soccer tomorrow night. Felix, not to be outdone, is already on his second sleepover and is in fact joining Ruby tomorrow on a sort of double-date because he gets on well with Rio’s younger brother Reo (yes, it’s a disturbingly similar name; there are four kids in the family and apparently their names all start with R. Must be a fashion thing).

So the last week has been a steady process of sorting and packing. You realise how easy it is to furnish a house and add bits and pieces over the course of a year or so than it is to get rid of it all at the end. It seems such a waste to let all our stuff go but you can’t take it all (although we probably pushed the boundaries in this respect; two days ago we sent off a ridiculous 28 boxes to go on a ship to Australia. As if we don’t have enough junk at home already.) We’ve sold off the air-conditioners and various other saleable items, and now it’s just a matter of divesting ourselves of the remaining detritus of two years worth of accumulated family flotsam and jetsam. On Sunday we’re having an open house where we’ve invited people to come around and literally make off with whatever isn’t bolted down. For the final two days, Mrs Yoshida (mother of one of Felix’s friends from school and fellow drummer in Eleni’s troupe) is very kindly putting up the entire family at her place so we can attend to the small matter of cleaning the house out ready for the inspection on Tuesday.

And then, barring any last-minute emergency ambulance incidents (apparently I’m due for one) or nasty earthquakes or other unforeseen events, we’ll be gone. Just like that. Kind of weird really.

Are we really going to turn our backs on the life we’ve known for the past two years and return to the life we knew for six years before that? Which one is the proper one anyway? It’s hard to know any more.

In any case, things are finishing up here at an ever accelerating pace. The kids have both had their last soccer practices at their respective clubs, their last futsal practices, and their last days at school. Amazingly, it turns out that finally, after slugging it out for a year and nine months, Ruby had started to quite enjoy school, not least because her classmates seemed to have eventually found it within themselves to accept her in their midst. So the last day at school was actually quite a saddening experience for our normally unflappable teenager. Felix, meanwhile, has had a fantastic time with his classmates ever since he started yet in typical fashion was not particularly perturbed to have finished. He just takes it all in his stride does our Felix. I hope he doesn’t feel too sad when we get back to Australia.

Eleni is suffering major withdrawal symptoms as she contemplates the end of her role as a pillar of the local Sunami community. She has been a regular at the local community center, what with the Japanese drumming, English classes, taichi sessions, not to mention the many other culturally stimulating activities such as cooking, sandal-making, calligraphy, kimono-wearing and flower arranging (let alone all the others I don’t remember). Eleni is on the public record as saying that she would have liked at least another year in Japan and hopes to return again one day soon. In fact, our imminent return to Australia is increasingly shaping up as only a temporary reprieve from the overseas adventuring that has come to define our lives. Though whether the next destination ends up being Japan or somewhere new is up for discussion.

But I digress. Last Sunday, as if to underscore Eleni’s pivotal role in the local community, a party was held in her/our honour with about 40 people in attendance, including the members of the drumming troupe and various dignitaries from the community center, including all the guys who run the festivals that we’ve variously been involved in (such as the beach opening ceremony and the portable shrine carrying ceremony). It was rather a humbling experience given the amount of effort that had clearly gone into preparing the masses of food, games and activities, a dress-up session, various musical numbers (including the kids and I reprising a couple of numbers from the PJO swing band) and of course speeches.

One of the games was this very wacky exercise where you get people in pairs, with one person sitting behind the other. The one behind is blindfolded and has to either put makeup on the face of or feed cake into the mouth of the person in front by following their commands. Naturally it’s very hard to do and shenanigans ensue. Here’s Felix about to get made up:

Note the guy next to him is already having a great time with the foundation powder.

Felix ended up getting lipstick all over his face, although the general consensus was that this was the result of deliberately bad instructions on his part.

In the next bit, I had to feed Ruby cake. She was thrilled at the prospect of having me for a partner:

And sure enough, shenanigans did ensue:

But I have to say that we won the round thanks to my skilful cake placement — not a drop of whipped cream was spilled.

After that we were all elaborately dressed up in some very fine kimonos by some local experts.

Felix was offered a ninja costume but opted instead for the ancient traditional cultural reindeer costume.

There was a ceremony where we pulled apart a ball to reveal a sign saying Eleni Don’t Go! or words to that effect.

And many presents were duly received.

It was a great night and we felt very honoured.

But that was six days ago and it already seems a world away as we wrench ourselves back into Ordinary Australians mode.

And just to add to the general weirdness of it all, we’ve come away on a last-splurge holiday up to Tokyo (to expose the kids to the bright lights big city side of Japan) and Nagano (to expose the family to a skiing holiday). I am writing this from our hotel room in a tiny little ski lodge in the wonderful town of Nozawa Onsen, site of the 1988 Winter Olympics and all-round cute Japanese mountain village where the top temperature today was -2 degrees, now that you ask.

Next week we return to Sunami and our mountain of half-packed boxes. For the first week of January the kids have already arranged a succession of last-gasp sleepovers at the homes of their bestest friends. Meanwhile, Mummy and Daddy will be hard at work getting the house in order, both literally and figuratively. Some friends have offered to help us clean it out on the last day, which is very kind. So it will be a rather strange time. But then again, everything is rather strange at the moment.

The last few weeks have been a flurry of catching up with people, touring all of our favourite eateries one last time, and packing up the house. Meanwhile I am still trying to maintain a semblance of working like a good breadwinner.

It’s a funny feeling, preparing to leave after so long. I’m so used to living here and am feeling quite sad about it all. I’m going to miss so many things, not just the cafes and restaurants, the clothes, and the quiet country life on the coast amongst the islands, but also the countless little things like our nice deep Japanese bath, the way you can leave things in the car without having to worry about them getting stolen, and ordering things from Amazon Japan and having them arrive the next day.

Yes, the summers are evil and the schools are atrocious, but all in all Japan has been a wonderful place to spend the last two years. There have been times when I’ve been fed up and just wanted to run off back home–but of course that could have happened anywhere (including Australia, in which case there would be nowhere to run back to). Faced with the imminent prospect of turning my back on the life to which I have become so accustomed, I realise that I’m quite fond of this place. I felt it quite strongly when I was up north last month; perhaps it was the sight of so many people being so selfless, a whole new side of Japan that I hadn’t seen before.

In any case, the wheels are in motion and we’re now firmly in “last time” territory: Eleni’s last drumming performance was on Saturday, the kids and I had our last PJO brass band performance on Sunday, we’re starting to say our last goodbyes to people we’ll quite probably never see again. Ruby finishes school on Friday, Felix next Wednesday.

Next Thursday we’re off on the Last Great Family Trip, this time all the way to Tokyo (a longstanding promise to the kids) with a side trip to Nagano for a spot of skiing. We get back just in time for the New Year and our last ever dose of local culture, which includes climbing the mountain at daybreak to watch the sun rise then eating the ancient traditional cultural New Year thingies on January 1.

The final week will be spent cleaning up the house, which promises to be no small task. And then we hop on the train to the airport at 3:05 pm on Tuesday 10 January and… that’ll be that.

Kind of sad really.

And that means that Japan is my friend once again. It’s amazing how different the place feels when it’s not disgusting and humid any more. It’s like you’ve been given your life back; a whole new world of exciting possibilities opens up when you’re no longer hot and tired and sweaty and filthy every minute of every day (except maybe for that brief moment after you emerge from the shower, but even that doesn’t last long).

And I can finally start wearing sox again. I even went and bought myself a new triple-pack to celebrate.

I won’t go on about the summer too much except to say: try to imagine over two months of 40+ degree heat without a break. (Officially the top temperatures were 30 – 35, but the Feels Like temperature that factors in the humidity is always nine or ten degrees hotter, so I’m saying 40+.) I know summer is meant to be hot, but this is just plain WRONG. And what’s more, I’m increasingly gripped by a sense of moral outrage about it all; people should not have to put up with this.

But put up with it they do. I truly believe that, even leaving aside the earthquakes and tsunamis, the volcanos, the typhoons, the torrential rains and landslides and swollen rivers and flooding and everything else that can make Japan such an inhospitable place to be, just the mere fact that people here are able to put up with such ridiculously hot conditions year in year out is testimony to their hardiness of spirit. Or perhaps it demonstrates that nature’s really got it in for Japan. Or maybe that I complain too much.

Anyway, whatever; all I know is I’m not coming back. That’s right, you heard it here first: I AM NEVER SPENDING ANOTHER SUMMER IN JAPAN, not even if you pay me. Well, maybe if you gave me a million yen and I donated it all to charity and got that warm rosy feeling inside I might consider it. Not that I need to feel any warmer during a Japanese summer, come to think of it.

And for the sake of balance, I’d like to mention here that I absolutely love winter in Japan; crisp, clear and spectacularly cold. My ideal fantasy is to get a “wintering apartment” in Japan and just shuttle back and forth between Australian and Japanese winters, like those young-person skiers who go from one ski field to the next all around the world, albeit about 30 years older. Maybe I’d catch the occasional summer in Australia, say, once every five years, just to remind myself that the sun can be hot, but that would definitely be enough, for I love the cold too much. I think I must be British on the inside.

The only real benefit of summer 2011 is that it has helped me to clarify my official position on Japan, which is that it would be the perfect place to live if it weren’t for the schools and the summers. Really, everything else about life here is just fine as far as I’m concerned: wonderful food, cheap clothes, islands to explore, mountains to ski on, lots of Cultural Stuff to do. The solution, I suppose, would be to wait until the kids graduate (no more schools) and then resettle way up north where the summers are pleasant and there is plenty of snow. But who knows where I’ll be by then.

In other exciting news, I had a Defining Moment this week when I clicked on the OK button that authorised the credit card payment to the airline company for the purchase of four one-way tickets back to Australia. Yes, it’s official; we’re going back in mid-January 2012. Which we already knew, but buying the tickets makes it somehow more real. Especially when you pay for them a month later.

This Sunday the Mihara Games are on, the ones where the different areas of the city compete for bragging rights in a variety of events that includes relays and running races for the youngsters along with old favourites such as Tossing the Bean Sacks into the High Basket and bowling. Eleni and the kids have been invited to attend (Eleni in bowling, Ruby in two relays and Felix in a Kick the Soccer Ball Around the Cones event) but I’ve been spared, thrillingly, given that sports of any description tend to make me nervous (except for skiing, where you can fall over quietly by yourself) and it means I don’t have to front up for practice three or four times a week with the others. Call me lazy, call me a quitter, I don’t care; I’m sure the rest of the Sushi on a Stick household will do me proud. Stay tuned for a full report next week.

You might have heard that typhoon season has arrived in Japan. Recently we’ve been visited by Typhoon No. 12, which the weather forecasts continually refer to as “large and strong,” and indeed it’s brought record rains to various hapless parts of the country, many of them up north as it happens, as if they haven’t suffered enough already this year. However we haven’t had much of it down here other than a bit of wind and rain. For some reason Hiroshima seems to be spared most of the natural havoc that is regularly visited on the length and breadth of this country (although many would argue that a certain bomb about 60 years ago created more than enough havoc of its own).

So Typhoon No. 12 has already caused something like 19 deaths from houses being washed away or buried under mudslides, not to mention extensive flooding. In other words, this one is serious. Television images of raging torrents of water accompanied by breathless accounts of wind destruction, floods and general inconvenience is pretty much par for the course during typhoon season, but I can’t remember the last time I heard of this many victims or saw cars literally underwater.

Meanwhile, down here in sleepy Mihara the only thing out of the ordinary was the mighty wind that arose on Friday night and literally howled through our tiny flimsy little house and kept me awake for hours wondering if we were still going to have a roof in the morning. Part of the carport roof (which is particularly flimsy) broke free and started flapping about very loudly and annoyingly, and Daddy was required to steal out for some running repairs with a couple of bricks, but other than that there was no damage. Although we did suffer a loss: our huge big floaty ring that we bought down the local 7-11 (floaty rings are big in Japan; no beach trip is complete without one) tragically got blown away and is probably half-way to China by now, where it’ll be comparing notes with Felix’s soccer ball that was lost to the cruel sea last year.

Due to the typhoon all soccer practice sessions were cancelled without notice and Eleni also cancelled her English class on the basis that mothers probably wouldn’t want to be ferrying their kids around in the raging winds. This left us in the very rare situation of having the entire weekend free of commitments. And what a lovely weekend it was too. We ate lunch out as a family on both Saturday (tempura and noodles) and Sunday (sushi), rented a DVD (one of those terrible Twilight movies), and then suddenly and quite inexplicably succumbed to the urge to acquire an iPad. And Lo, a great happiness descended upon the land as the kids downloaded app after app and sat there fondling the Shiny Screen of Awesomeness for the remainder of the weekend.

Although we did take a break from tapping, pinching and swiping to go on a massive clothes shopping expedition. Seeing as we’ve only got four months to go in country, and with the rare treat of all four of us having a day off, we took the opportunity to begin stockpiling some of the fantastically cheap clothes that Japan does so well. My personal mission is to amass enough clothes to last me about five or ten years. To this end, I’ve spent all summer hunting out specials and have already picked up several pairs of bathers, about ten pairs of shorts and more T-shirts than I care to count. Now the summer stuff has disappeared off the shelves and the autumn lines are in, so it’s time to start amassing long-sleeve tops and jeans and so forth, and the very best place for that is of course my all-time favourite clothing store Uniqlo.

Which is where we spent over an hour on Sunday in a frankly embarrassing orgy of pulling things off racks and trying them on and running around the store shouting “lookatthislookatthislookat this”, as a result of which I got to take home a lazy three pairs of jeans and five shirts, while Felix scored two pairs of jeans, two shirts, a jacket and heaps ‘o’ underwear and Ruby and Eleni found all manner of shirts and pants and cardigans and tops to enhance their respective wardrobes. The whole lot set us back about $400 but I figure we now have enough clothes to last the family a good couple of years (five or ten in my case), which makes it an absolute bargain.

I’m finding there’s something compulsive about clothes shopping in Japan. For instance, tonight I had to go back to Uniqlo to pick up the pants that had been altered (they shorten the hems for free — isn’t that nice?) and found myself gazing at the very same racks and feeling an irrationally strong urge to buy yet more shirts and pants, even though I really don’t need any more and by the time I get around to wearing them they’d probably by eaten away by moths. I just want so badly to buy clothes… it’s kind of worrying actually. Does this make me a shopaholic? At least I’m contributing to the local economy.

Incidentally I wasn’t strong enough to resist the primal shopping urge; in the end I succumbed and bought myself… just one more shirt. After all, it was a bargain.

In Ruby’s case, the school holidays actually finished last Monday, when work experience started. (Of course the school couldn’t possibly countenance giving the students time off for work experience, so they shave a week off the holidays instead.) She spent a productive five days at an architectural design company playing with CAD all day, and ended up with a rather nice floor plan of her very own house design, along with a cute little cardboard model complete with grass and trees and tiny little paper figurines (one of them sitting on the toilet even).

Here in Japan, you don’t find your own work experience and contact the school; rather, the school draws up a list of places that have agreed to take on students and you have to choose what you want to do. These are typically uninspired options such as the local 7-11, the local petrol station and a cleaning company, although they do have a few more interesting ones too. Ruby’s preferred option was the nice Italian restaurant down by the beach, called Zona Fortunato (Italian scholars will note the error), and I have to say that this would have been pretty good because (a) the hours were only 11 to 3; (b) she might have learned something about cooking; (c) it was 10 minutes walk from home and (d) we could have come down for a meal to embarrass her in action. But on the other hand, she has often talked about wanting to be an architect someday, and it sounds like the design firm was fun, notwithstanding the 8:10 am starts. And I figure she can always work in a cafe when she’s older, and we’ll come and embarrass her there instead.

You know how I said we were definitely going to see the Pirates ‘n’ Fire festival on Saturday night? Yep, you guessed it… we piked out. It was just too hot and, after all the fun and excitement of the summer, I just couldn’t muster up the energy for yet another trip to a distant beach with an hour’s drive home and another late night, especially as we had to front up to a working bee at the primary school on Sunday morning at 8 a.m. sharp, plus the kids and I had a concert on that day. So, another culture fail to add to the list. After all, we went last year (you can read about it here) and it was fantastic fun and at least we can say we’ve seen it and everything and… enough already.

Even though we didn’t make it to P&F, though, I was rather pleased with myself for discovering a new island, a new beach and even a new cafe on Saturday. Ruby had soccer practice starting at 4:30 in the afternoon at her regular ground which is about an hour away (lots ‘o’ driving… it’s part and parcel of country life) and I had two hours to kill so I decided to take the opportunity to explore a nearby island that was marked on the map. Turns out it even had a beach, although by the time I arrived the beach was officially “closed”, in the sense that the music had been turned off and I didn’t have to pay ¥1000 ($10) to drive in. However the water was still very much there, so I went for a nice swim on a totally deserted beach. Though I did feel a bit of trepidation as I stepped into the water, mainly because I was half expecting to be told off at any moment for Swimming Out of Hours.

(Once back in the Tokyo days, Eleni and I went down to Okinawa for a holiday and we found a lovely deserted beach just near our hotel. But no sooner had we stepped into the crystal clear water than a man raced up on a beach bike shouting at us to get out. It turned out that the hotel which owned that patch of beach was closed for redevelopment and therefore the beach was officially off limits. I tried to protest that the ocean is not private property and people can choose to enter it where they like but he was having none of it and kept carrying on making so much noise that eventually we up and left. We ended up at another “properly supervised” beach with music screaming out the speakers all day long.)

Back on topic, here’s the beach I discovered on Saturday:

Happily I was able to swim undisturbed (certainly by other swimmers) and even buy an ice-cream from one of the stores, which strangely was still open for business despite the beach being closed. Clearly they haven’t read the rules.

On the way back I tracked down a lovely cafe clinging improbably to the side of the hill with the most stunning views from the outdoor tables. Tragically the coffee was disgusting but it was worth it for the island vista spread out in the setting sun:

And readers will be pleased to know that we managed to make it to a festival on the Saturday night anyway, the one put on by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the big factory complex on the way into town. We went last year and I wrote about it on this page, so I won’t go on about it here other than to say that it was another one of those wonderful sea-of-humanity events with thousands of people wandering around and many of the girls dressed up in yukatas and millions of stalls and a big stage down one end and, to finish off the night, a fireworks show, bringing the fireworks count for 2011 up to five.

On Sunday the kids and I did another concert with the PJO band, with Eleni offering moral support from the audience and taking millions of photos. Here is a selection.

Felix ensconced in the trumpet section:

Our band leader Habu-sensei (Mr. Habu to you) has taken a shine to Felix and often gets him up on stage for an interview. I love it because it’s the only time (other than when he had to introduce himself for the first time at the local primary school) where I ever get to see Felix looking nervous and subdued.

Ruby and Felix between them have an embarrassing number of solos. Ruby even has an entire song (the theme from Ice Castles, if you must know; a soppy ballad but it’s not too bad considering) where she gets to stand out the front and get closer to her adoring fans:

Eleni the photographer got a bit arty at one stage and started shooting in black and white:

And finally, yours truly up the back pumping out those bass licks. (How’s the look on Felix’s face — I think he was doing a high note.)

Another crazy action-packed weekend, in other words. Ruby was back at school on Monday morning; Felix had a few more days of freedom but now he too is back inside the hallowed walls of learning and I have time to write posts (at least, that’s my excuse for the pitiful lack of postage during August; pretty poor form to blame it on the kids, I know, but that’s what they’re there for).

And now all we need is for the hot and humid weather to finally go away and leave us alone so that normal programming can resume in earnest.

And it’s been tons of fun. By my calculations we’ve set foot on seven new islands (and driven across countless others in the process), discovered three excellent new beaches, checked out four separate fireworks shows; and we’re not finished yet, with the Pirates ‘n’ Fire Festival still to come on 27 August. That’s apart from all the regular going down the local beach stuff and the kids attending various soccer training camps and Felix going off to Skool Camp and doing wholesome school holiday activities in town. Felix has also been zooming around the neighbourhood on his bike visiting friends (especially Ryota up the road, who has a Wii — not that this has anything to do with the friendship), while Ruby has organised days out with no less than three friends: one from school (two years ahead of her; not from her current group of classmates, who are a total loss), one from PJO brass band and Rio from the soccer club, the one who came with us to the Katy Perry concert in May. In fact it’s been so full-on that we still haven’t made it down to the beach to let off the huge pack of fireworks we bought a couple of months back. Can you believe that?

Needless to say I can’t possibly do justice to all the Fun that’s been Had, so I’ll just whip through the highlights. Better get comfortable, this may take a while.

Summer officially started with the beach opening ceremony on July 2, which I’ve already covered here.

The following week the Nishiharas invited us down to the island of Omishima (hereby designated as our first island visit of the summer) to visit a culturally important shrine of some sort. It was a very nice thing to do on such a stinking hot day, on account of all the lovely shady trees in the grounds of the shrine. Felix got hold of the camera and managed to take 140 photos, which I cruelly forced him to whittle down to just 20. The poor thing, he still lives in a world where cash flows infinitely forth from the ATM and no digital photos are ever deleted. Clearly I need to work harder on robbing him of the innocence of childhood.

The shady spots were possibly my favourite parts of the shrine:

Eleni has fallen in with the rather quaint Japanese tradition of strolling around under a parasol (ladies only, obviously):

There was loads of cultural stuff there:

This photo looks overexposed but I think it illustrates the intensity of the Japanese summer quite nicely:

One of Felix’s six million architectural shots:

I managed to wrest the camera from his grasp at one point (that’s Mr Nishihara by the way):

And lastly, a shot of Mummy with a large propeller. Of course.

The next weekend we were off again, this time with our family friends the Hiranos for an overnight stay at Dogo Onsen, a hot spring town in the city of Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku. The trip to Matsuyama involved crossing no less than six islands, thus bringing the cumulative Island Count to seven.

Poor Ruby was away at a soccer camp that weekend and we did feel rather guilty when we stopped at a pool the first day in a city along the way (I forget where; Yusuke was navigating). It had a slide and one of those walking circuit thingies so beloved of Japanese public pools everywhere, where the water flows along and sort of pushes you around as you walk or just sit in a floaty ring. This one had the added attraction that the circuit goes inside the building at the back and then back out again.

Here’s Felix testing out the design capacity of the floaty ring with the Hirano kids:

Meanwhile the Ladies sat in the pool chatting:

Next we headed over to check out the handome onsen building at Dogo Onsen. And what a fine building it is indeed:

Even more so at night:

Up a side alley we spotted an ancient traditional shooting gallery and stopped to let the kids give full reign to their destructive urges.

Felix didn’t manage to shoot enough Kewpie dolls to win anything but he made up for it by ingratiating himself with some drunken office workers with excellent aim who’d come along afterwards and convincing them to hand over their prizes since they didn’t need a few toy guns anyway. He’s going to go far that boy.

The hotel was pretty ordinary but the brekky was good:

For the second day we ambled around town and eventually stumbled on a cafe serving rather good parfaits. Eleni has always maintained that Japan does really good parfaits but sadly we’ve hardly had any in over a year and a half. So we made up for it by treating the kids, and I generously offered to help Felix out at regular intervals since he clearly couldn’t manage that much ice-cream on his own:

Fast-forwarding now through various soccer camps, the spectacularly successful fishing trip with Mr. Nishimura and my epic shrine-carrying efforts (described in lovingly painstaking detail on this page), we get to the day Daddy insisted on dragging the family off on a mid-week adventure to yet another island chain, this one about an hour down the road, which had been recommended by several different groups of friends so I really thought we should see it and there’s only four months left and we have to get out and do these sorts of things or we’ll miss out and we’re probably never coming back this way or not for many years at least etc etc etc etc.

We set off with only vague plans to find a beach somewhere and go for a swim and, in that wonderfully fortuitous way that seems to happen when you’re on the islands, we stumbled on possibly our Best Beach Ever, even nicer than the one where we swam at Kosagijima after our fishing heroics. And the reason it was so nice was that there WASN’T ANY CONCRETE. Well, there was a short section up to the left but if you looked the other way you could pretend that the beach was 100% natural, which is an absolute rarity in Japan, a country in love with concrete, where virtually every metre of coastline (and every inland river, for that matter) has been fully concreted, supposedly for protection against natural disasters (tsunami, river flooding) which certainly do happen although I think we all know the real reason is to win votes from the powerful construction companies. Tragically for the construction companies, there’s pretty much nothing left in the country to concrete any more. Unless they start on the beaches.

Unfortunately not many photos were taken but here’s a nice one of Ruby in her new Beach Hoodie. Since she’s a teenager we thought we’d better buy her a hoodie so she can hang out in shopping centers, but this one has the added advantage that you can go swimming in it and avoid having to put on annoying sunscreen. What a good idea!

After an exhausting day at the beach we were all tired and ready to go home. So of course Daddy insisted that we all go a few more islands along to visit an accredited old preserved bit of town that I’d heard about from someone somewhere. The kids were thrilled with the idea:

Especially when we piled out of the car and started wandering around the Old Township and they were forced to pose for random photos:

Still, it was rather nice, what we saw of it:

Unfortunately most things were closed (including a very tempting cafe facing the sea) because Tuesday is the day off, which we didn’t know, so we’re going to come back again some time for another visit, and kids, as you can imagine, are thrilled with the prospect. They just love Culture and Old Things. By the way, we crossed another five islands that day, bringing the Island Count to 12.

On the weekend Ruby had a barbeque with her soccer team (and coach) at Sunset Beach, a rusted and fading but still serviceable beach resort on the island of Ikuchijima, the one that’s just a short ferry-ride from our place. So Eleni, Felix and I took the opportunity to go down to Innoshima, the next island along, to check out the practice sessions for the boat races that take place as part of the Pirate ‘n’ Fire festival at the end of August. They row these long thin boats called “koyaha” that apparently were favoured by pirates because they could zoom out to the ships before the poor unsuspecting victims had time to react. Here you can see some of the boat teams rowing madly across in the background while Felix checks out his foot at the water’s edge:

Tragically we won’t be able to attend the boat races because there is a PJO concert on the very same day. But as it turns out you can have a go yourself at rowing a pirate boats on the practice days. We thought this was an excellent consolation prize.

Plus you get to pose for the obligatory commemorative photo:

Island Count = 14, New Beach Count = two.

Last week was a huge weekend for culture. On the Saturday night was the Yassa Odori festival, where about eighty or so teams from the local area battle it out for the honour of putting on the best performance of the Yassa Odori dance, an ancient traditional form of dance that is only performed in Mihara or so the literature will tell you. We went to this last year and I wrote a comprehensive report including videos and photos of the wacky decorated trucks and colourful costumes so I won’t bother with more photos here.

Suffice to say that this year it was a far more meaningful event because Eleni, Ruby and Felix were all dancing in Team No. 63. (I managed to worm my way out of it by claiming official photographer status.) All the teams had to dance past the official judging panel, which included two Miss Yassa dressed up like air hostesses from the 60s (you can just see them down the end):

They had to go to practice sessions for several weeks beforehand and then dance for hours on the night itself and were thoroughly worn out by the end, though culturally stimulated. Eleni won the Best Smile prize for her team and got to dance in the special Best Smile On the Night parade at the end, though tragically she didn’t get to take out the big one.

I’ve posted a video further below for your viewing pleasure.

Sunday night was the local festival for Sunami Heights, which is our particular area of Sunami, which is our particular section of Mihara. In other words, a very local event involving a few hundred people at most. One of the lovely things about summer festivals is the number of young girls (generally up to age 30) who seize the opportunity to get dolled up in their summer yukata (lightweight kimono) and wooden sandals for the event. Ruby was likewise keen to get into the action so we found a yukata at the local shopping centre and arranged for a special hairdo for the evening. The teenager was so impressed with the makeover that she took hundreds of photos in the kitchen before setting out:

I was working at one of the stalls for the first hour but managed to nick out for a moment to photograph the teenager parading around in all her glory:

And here we are a bit later, in a more natural pose. Ruby has recently embraced mobile phone emailing, the equivalent of SMS in Japan, and is now almost constantly wedded to her screen.

Eleni’s drumming troupe, as always, got a guernsey:

And young Felix was commandeered to play the horagai, an ancient traditional cultural conch shell, in one of the songs. Being an accomplished trumpeter now, he gets quite a good sound out of it, which is no mean feat.

The kids also did a bit of dancing, with some of them taking it more seriously than others:

Tragically the powers that be had very stupidly organised the Sunami Heights festival on the very same evening as the Mihara fireworks, which I for one was not going to miss for the world, so we had to leave the festival early and miss out on much of the dancing and general merriment. As soon as Felix’s “dancing” was over, we piled into the car for the mad dash across town and, although we were about 15 minutes late, for some reason the fireworks were also delayed so we got there with impeccable timing, just as the first ones went off. Clearly the God of Public Events Management was smiling upon us that night.

Here’s some video from that weekend.

And finally, to wrap things up, our friend Miyuki from Nagoya came to stay so we zoomed over to the lovely old well-preserved fishing town of Tomonoura and had a highly convivial lunch at a cafe overlooking the harbour.

Then we wandered around the shops a bit, and Ruby took the opportunity to send off another 100000000 emails.

Then on whim we caught a five-minute ferry across to yet another new island, which turned out to have a wonderful beach on it (also no concrete) from which you can actually swim across to the next island because it’s THAT CLOSE. Definitely a new experience for the Sushi on a Stick household and another contender for Best Beach Ever.

Island count = 16, new beach count = three.

Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get any photos because we were in a tearing hurry to get to our next engagement, a fireworks show at Fukuyama, which promised some 10,000 fireworks. They always like to boast about how many fireworks are in the show. Thus the Fukuyama fireworks promised to be our biggest to date. The firework count was well ahead of 6,000 at Mihara and 1,500 at Innoshima, and though I had thought at the time these were ample, the Fukuyama ones were really something else. There were times when it seemed that the whole sky was ablaze and even a bitter old cynic like me couldn’t help but let out the odd “ooh!” and “ah!”. (Yes, with exclamation marks too.) Although I would say about the Mihara ones that every explosion echoed around the nearby mountains for about ten seconds, creating this continuous rumbling effect like a train going past or an approaching thunderstorm, and that was pretty impressive. But the Fukuyama ones were easily the best we’ve seen, plus the fact that so many people were dressed up in their yukatas and the sea-of-humanity factor with everyone enjoying themselves by the river.

So it’s been an amazing summer, but one can now sense it coming to an end. For a start, the temperature is finally winding down; Mother Nature has finally relented, and not a moment too soon. This weekend we’re going to take it easy; tomorrow I’ve got soccer duty and Eleni is teaching, and on Sunday we’ve got a clean-up day at Ruby’s school followed by band practice, so it looks like a festival-free weekend for a change. Next week Ruby has work experience — during the school holidays, of course, the school couldn’t possibly let them go for a week during term time — and Felix has one of those random go-to-school-during-the-holidays days.

Then school goes back in earnest at the end of August and normal programming resumes. And with any luck we’ll find some time over the next week to go down the beach and let off that big bag of fireworks.

First of all, the 2011 Sunami Beach Opening Ceremony was held in the morning. Now this would be little more than a cultural curiosity if it weren’t for the fact that Ruby (and presumably Felix, though we’ve never bothered to check) is officially prohibited by her school from swimming until such time as the beach has been officially declared open. So it was with great anticipation that we trotted down to the ceremony, not least because the Sushi on a Stick household was well represented this year. As at last year’s ceremony, Eleni’s drumming troupe was called upon to do a couple of numbers, but this year Felix also got to chip in on the drums with a bit of ancient traditional thwacking of his own.

Not only that: when we all got down there, Ruby and I found out that we too had been roped in to carrying some mini floats in the procession dressed in all the gear. Ruby was initially unimpressed, being a teenager, but she soon warmed to the idea:

Like all good Japanese ceremonies, this one started off with a succession of interminably long speeches, which gave us plenty of time to pose for photographs. Here Ruby models the traditional Fish In Net float:

Tragically Felix was off somewhere else for this one:

Finally the speeches finished up and it was time for the procession to head off, led by the dragons up the front.

We had to go through that little streamer gate on the grass, then deposit our floats all of five metres up the hill. And that was the extent of the cultural contribution of Ruby and myself. Next up was the dragon dance, with Felix and his buddies thumping away in the background:

And Eleni’s drumming group finished off the day. Tragically I forgot to take any photos of it, but you can always check out the 2010 version on this page, which looks much the same. (It might even have been the same song. The repertoire doesn’t change much.)

After the ceremony, Eleni had to go off to teach English, which she does every second Saturday, so the kids and I decided to celebrate by — why not? — going down the beach. This wasn’t actually our first swim for the year; last week we managed to spirit Ruby under a blanket in the car to a rather nice little secluded beach (well shielded from the prying eyes of passing teachers) that we discovered just five minutes down the road. But of course it’s much more civilized to simply saunter down the road with your bathers on.

And I’m pleased to report that a lovely day at the beach was had by all. After a while Ruby had to go back and do some homework so Felix and I decided to stay on. He soon met up with some of his beach friends from last year, a group of 20-something boys that he plays catch with. I even managed to get in a little nap on the sand — such luxury! — and was just thinking about collecting Felix and heading home when all of a sudden he’s running towards me screaming and this time it’s not just for show, he’s genuinely injured himself, he’s cut his leg on a rock, a huge gash that’s leaking blood everywhere and before we know it a Helpful Guy has called an ambulance and we’re off to the hospital and he’s got four stitches in his heel.

So that was a bit of birthday excitement, and finally I got to fulfil my longstanding ambition of riding in a Japanese ambulance. (Dream big, eh?) As we sped merrily through the red lights it occurred to me that in the space of 18 months in Japan, fully three-quarters of the Sushi on a Stick household has been carted off to hospital in an ambulance: first Ruby with her appendix, then Eleni with her fractured cheekbone, and now Felix. Clearly it is my destiny over the last six months to become ill or injured to the extent that I too require emergency medical attention. I just hope it isn’t that serious.

Speaking of which, it could be argued that a cut to the foot isn’t really serious enough to warrant an ambulance, but being a Saturday afternoon the hospital options were limited and Helpful Guy said that we’d get seen to more quickly that way. (Plus they’re free under the national health so who was I to argue?) And he was quite right, too; within about half an hour Felix had his foot stitched up and we were out of the hospital and free to proceed to the next and final phase of the birthday celebrations, namely, dinner down at our nice local Italian restaurant Zona Fortunato, which is the most wonderful place to eat pasta and watch the sun go down over the neighbouring islands.

Once again I forgot to take a photo of the occasion, but here’s one from a month ago, when we went there for Ruby’s birthday:

Eleni very sportingly delivered the kids home at about eight, which meant that we could all sit around chatting (for we had also invited our long-suffering friends the Nishiharas) until the outrageously grown-up time of about ten and watch the lights of passing ships shimmering in the moonlight etc etc. Highly convivial. And I think this one has to go down as the most action-packed birthday I’ve had for some time.

Speaking of school, the other day Ruby played some sort of weekend tournament up in the hills behind Onomichi and while watching the match I was suddenly accosted by the parents from one of the other teams. It turns out that they have just recently returned from Ohio after living there for 16 years and wanted to practice their English. Fair enough, I suppose. The conversation soon turned to my favourite axe-grinding topic, the evils of high school in Japan and I discovered that their 13-year-old daughter, who was born and grew up in America, is having a tough time adjusting to the good old Japanese education system. The poor thing is to all intents and purposes American yet they make her sit down and study English three times a week! (I guess Ruby’s not the only one.) I really felt for the daughter; if you grow up in Japan then at least you know what you’re in for, but for her it must have come as a tremendous shock. And unlike Ruby, she can’t just go back to civilization after two years. So I said we should get the girls together for a mutual griping session. Hopefully that will make her feel a bit better.

Felix’s annual sports day was last weekend. Luckily the threatened rain did not eventuate and a pleasant day was had by all. There were lots of events for all ages including my favourite for the lower grades, the Big Pants Race:

And a good old-fashioned Tug of War. How long is it since we’ve seen one of these?

The kids apparently practiced daily for weeks on end on endless acrobatics, which the Japanese cherish as a symbol of cooperation and teamwork. Here are some examples:

and various combinations of pyramids:

As Ruby always likes to point out, they’d never allow these sorts of things in Australia, where it would be dismissed as “far too dangerous”. Like those dangerous experiments they do in science classes. That’s right, our kids are living on the edge here in Japan. Not to mention the perpetual threat of earthquakes.

Meanwhile, last week we set a new record for the cheapest meal yet in Japan: just ¥390 (that’s $4.42 at today’s exchange rate) for okonomiyaki at a new shop we discovered just down the road. What an absolute bargain! Sadly I don’t imagine there’ll be anywhere back in Melbourne where we’ll be able to feed the entire family for under $20… sigh. Only six months to go. Better make the most of it.

The story begins on Friday, when Sunami primary school held another “come in and check out the kids in action” class visits for parents, this one combined with a Skool Gruel tasting session. With great magnanimity I decided to decline this year so Eleni took up the challenge. She reports that it was pretty tasty and quite possibly good for you, at least if the spiel from the visiting nutritionist is to be taken at face value. Here’s what the little angels got on their placemats on Friday:

After lunch it was class visit time which was home economics. I’m quite impressed with some of the stuff they get up to at primary school; they’ve done all manner of interesting science projects as well as regular wood carving sessions using scarily sharp tools, there was a no-holds-barred sex education component last year (ie in year 4!), apparently they were growing rice at one stage, there’s been a bit of cooking going on recently and then Friday was sewing class. Yes, they’re teaching all the kids to sew at school, which is something I’ve never heard of but I love the idea. Each kid has a little sewing kit with the full array of needles plus a little bit of cloth to practice on and it’s all very civilized. Felix wasn’t too bad on his first time, although this was quite possibly due to the assistance of his one-time Love Interest (sadly no more) Kotone next door:

Incredibly, no-one managed to prick themselves with a needle. Indeed, there are no accidents during the dangerous (by Australian standards) scientific experiments, nor during the wood carving or anything else for that matter. The way I see it, Japan is an altogether less litigious society which means the kids get to do more Fun Stuff at primary school.

On Saturday Felix and I hopped on the bus for a day tour to Sera, a town about an hour away up in the mountains. Sera is famous for its orchards and flower gardens and general naturefulness and it is a lovely spot indeed. Unfortunately it’s also where I managed to get horribly lost a couple of weeks ago while trying to navigate from one of the aforementioned flower gardens back to the concert hall where the band was due on stage any minute. It was such a disturbing Twilight Zone experience that I vowed never to set foot (or tyre) in the place again unless driven by a professional. Our bus driver was wearing a proper uniform so I decided I could trust him.

The first stop was at an orchard place growing all sorts of fruits. We were originally going to be picking strawberries but because of the recent rains there weren’t enough around or something like that, so instead we made strawberry pizza. Yes, you heard it right. Actually I recall from our time in Italy that the Italians themselves make sweet pizza as well — I distinctly remember seeing honey pizza and Nutella pizza on the menu at one of our favourite haunts — so perhaps the Japanese are more in tune with Italian culinary sensibilities than we give them credit for. Having said that, try to picture in your mind the combination of pizza base with custard cream then strawberries and finally chopped cheese on top. I mean, that’s just weird. Still, it was pretty tasty I have to admit. And the kids had plenty of fun making them:

The pizza (“pizze” for you purists) were cooked in a real wood-fired oven and everything:

(If you look really closely you can see the strawberries on top. Of course! Would I lie to you?)

Then we got to sit around and eat our morning tea pizza on the edges of this beautiful old farmhouse converted to a cafe:

I managed to find myself a coffee too so by this stage I was pretty happy on my little patch of verandah:

Next stop was a barbeque lunch up at another spot that was so high up it felt like we were on the very top of a mountain. There was a huge playground and a walking trail and lookouts and lakes and ponds and other bits and pieces, so I went for a nice walk and then found a flat bit of bench and promptly had a little nap in the midday sun while Felix and his friends roamed around the enormous playground on the roof of the world:

Luckily there was an announcement over the ubiquitous loudspeakers when it was time to leave (courtesy of the highly professional bus driver) otherwise I might have become Lost in Sera yet again, only this time without a means of transport just to add to the fun and excitement.

Speaking of excitement, on Saturday night Eleni and the kids spotted a wild boar crossing the road on the hill just above our house, the road that the kids use to go to school. There’s a bit of wildlife around these parts apparently; a few months back I myself saw a wild monkey sitting nonchalantly on a rooftop but I’d really like to see a wild boar, although not up too close thank you very much. Tragically I was out on Saturday night at a soccer function so I missed the sighting, but Eleni called me straight away to fill me in and the other soccer parents thought this was brilliant and we all drank a toast to the Wild Boar of Sunami.

On Sunday I was feeling much the worse for wear after one too many toasts to the Wild Boar of Sunami but we’d arranged to catch up with Yusuke and Yoko and kids for the first time in many months so I heroically dragged myself out of bed and down to Takehara, a cute town about 30 minutes further down the coast with a beautifully preserved Old Bit that is wishfully referred to as Little Kyoto in the tourist brochures:

And I’m glad I did because Y&Y took us to an Okonomiyaki restaurant that was possibly the best we’ve eaten to date. It was just what I needed in my hungover state, too, like a big fry-up of bacon and eggs only more interesting. Eleni and I are starting to tire of our regular okonomiyaki places and are always on the lookout for new ones. Half an hour is a fair way to go for dinner but we may just have to make the effort; it really was that good.

And on the way back we stopped in for a quick coffee at Cafe Hoxton, which appears to be run by a jazz enthusiast and has this dinky little sculpture on the balcony:

While gazing out at the islands we started thinking about all the seaside day trips we’re going to do this summer. Last year we did all sorts of enrichment activities during the stinking heat of summer, even going up to Nagoya and Kyoto for heaven’s sake, so this year we’re going to keep it nice and local. Nothing more than an overnighter. There are so many islands and beaches and cafes and hot springs to explore and we’re determined to fulfil our touristic duty in exploring it all. Well, a fair bit of it anyway.