That is, until this week.

This week the heavens really opened and we’ve had four days of almost constant rain, including several truly thunderous bursts where the sky went all dark, the roar was deafening (well, pretty loud anyway), the lightning flashed and the thunder cracked, and the garden turned into a big lake. The power even went off a few times, just to add to the enormity of the occasion.

But the best thing of all is that school was cancelled, not once but twice, or in Felix’s case, three times. He had the day off again yesterday, despite the fact that the rain had all but stopped. The reason for this is that the decision to cancel school is based on the official warnings put out by the local weather bureau at six in the morning. If the bureau still has a heavy rain warning out, the phone tree starts up and we all start calling each other with the happy news. Yesterday the bureau still had a warning out at the magic hour, despite the fact that there was no rain forecast for the rest of the day, so that was that.

It may seem a bit pathetic to cancel school on account of rain, but it’s been pretty fierce in this part of Japan. Already two people have been swept away by a river in our city of Mihara alone and many more are missing and a few rivers have burst their banks, so although our particular spot is OK you can understand the overly cautious stance. Plus the school would be abrogating its responsibility to make the tinies walk to school in bad weather conditions.

I used to do quite a bit of translation for a government department responsible for public works and disaster prevention, and every document started off with “Japan is frequently visited by a wide range of terrible natural disasters including flooding, earthquakes, volcanos, typhoons” etc etc, and I used to think what a pack of wimps, stop carrying on will you. But when you consider that there’s 120 million people crammed into this tiny country of which 70% is covered in steep mountains, you start to understand why they’re so paranoid about landslides, fast-flowing rivers, eruptions, tidal waves and all the rest of it — because these things do happen, and quite often too.

Anyway the kids were rapt. Felix immediately set off to visit various friends (particularly the one that has the fully sick video game) while Ruby read a few books, watched a movie and re-ran a few of her favourite Glee episodes. Today however there is no rain and normal programming has resumed and all is quiet once more at Sushi on a Stick central.

So school holidays started a bit early for Felix, but you won’t be surprised to hear that Ruby’s school has simply rescheduled the missed days during the school holidays. We got the “holiday” timetable yesterday and it turns out that the original quota of five weeks has been encroached by extra days at the start and end of the holidays, plus full day brass band practice for the first week and a half, plus a couple of “compulsory attendance” days in the middle for good measure. We told the teacher that we’d “probably” be away for these, but even if we’re not we might have to “pretend” that Ruby is “sick”.

Civil disobedience has never felt so “good”.

Unfortunately it was low tide so the beach was half empty of water. You can see the waterline on the breakwaters. It was also a bit murky, whereas normally the water is crystal clear and inviting.

Incidentally those breakwaters may seem a bit namby-pamby but the Japanese are not known for their swimming skills (which seems odd for an island nation with the population clinging to the coastline). And we think they’re great, given that the memory of seeing our two kids swept out to sea by a rogue rip just last year is still fresh in the mind.

My favourite bit of the beach is the line of vine-covered shelters up the back. You can see them on the right here:

I’m not very good in the sun so it’s great to have a bit of shade to escape to. Of course, this being Japan, there are vending machines stationed at regular intervals dispensing ice-cold drinks. The only thing missing is an ice-cream vending machine. Yes, they do have them; there’s one at the soccer ground where Felix trains on Saturday mornings with 16 different flavours.

And this being Japan, the beach also has loudspeakers blaring out music all day long. That is, all day long during the official beach opening hours from 8:30 in the morning through to five at night. I know this because I can hear the music starting up from my office window, several hundred metres away up the hill. It’s that loud. I think the authorities, when they designed this man-made beach, decided that it would be not just a nice stretch of coastline for swimming but a proper beach resort with amenities such as showers and vending machines. And piped music. (The other day when Eleni and I went for a swim, guess what was coming out of the speakers? Beach sound effects such as waves crashing and seagulls cawing. To add to the experience, presumably. You gotta laugh.)

This being Japan, the loudspeakers are naturally used to discharge regular announcements at deafening volume welcoming us all to the beach and reminding us of the rules, such as not climbing all over the breakwaters, not lighting barbeques, swimming safely and taking your rubbish home. From four o’clock onwards at ten-minute intervals there are more announcements alerting us to the fact that the beach is about to “close” and encouraging us to start packing up and going home.

To me, the loudspeakers neatly symbolise the Japanese love for information bombardment. Despite what we Westerners might like to believe about rock gardens and Zen minimalism, the Japanese (particularly those in positions of authority with loudspeakers at their disposal) seem to believe that “more is better” rather than “less is more.” A look at any typical Japanese website (like this one) will show you what I mean.

The Japanese are constantly being bombarded with information. Constant announcements on the trains. (In Tokyo, where there’s a station every few minutes, the announcements basically never stop.) Endless tape loops shouting out from the shelves in the department stores. Guys with megaphones at any public event involving more than, say, 20 people. And how about those Big Brother loudspeakers that are stationed in every town and village throughout the nation blaring out announcements, usually early on Sunday mornings, such as the one at 7:30 this morning reminding us all to vote in the election. As a result the locals have acquired an innate ability to just shut it out. I think this is a key requisite for anyone planning to live in Japan for any length of time. Either that or a massive stock of earplugs.

To finish off with: we had Mr. Nishihara and his wife to dinner last night for a barby. The Nishiharas brought these dinky little fold-out tables. It was highly convivial although I still didn’t get the coals going properly and managed to burn the eggplant slices, while the onion was so black that it didn’t even make it to the table. Oh how we all laughed.

Readers may recall that the extended Sushi on a Stick household (including visiting aunts and grandmother) actually tested the beach out a couple of weeks back, before we realised that it had yet to be officially opened, and before Ruby’s school handed down its edict about students not being allowed to swim yet. (Perhaps it was out transgression that prompted the crackdown.) The sun was hot and the water was beautiful but the beach was… totally deserted. Of course. It wasn’t open yet.

It is a lovely beach, carefully sculpted into a crescent shape and provided with nice shady areas, steps for sitting, showers for washing, thousands of drink vending machines and a little stall called Casa del Mare (except that the last bit’s broken off so it looks more like Casa del Mai… the House of Never?). As Sister Rose remarked, it seemed like such a waste to have a beautiful beach sitting there not being used.

But this being Japan, the opening of the beach requires an official ceremony. Thus it was that on Saturday we had a stage complete with PA, a row of seats for the inevitable phalanx of distinguished guests, and various traditional cultural dragons and bells and elaborately dressed priests and other hangers-on:

Eleni and I got roped into carrying a small cultural thing over a distance of about 20 metres to the stage area. What a massive contribution!

As part of the ceremonial proceedings, Eleni’s wadaiko drumming group was invited to perform. This was her first performance in a public arena so she was rather nervous, but it all went well. Here’s some blatantly partisan video evidence:

A photographer from the local council asked me whether it was OK to put Eleni in their glossy magazine monthly magazine, so this could be the start of her media career in Japan.

While Eleni was performing I ended up standing next to the mayor, and this called for a photo of course.

So I think we’ve really raised our profile here in sleepy Mihara. AND we’re free to go to the beach at last!

One of the first things I did was to take them to Cafe Hoxton about 15 mins down the road for a coffee. This place is a jazz-inspired and they have little sculptures out on the terrace, like this one:

Isn’t that just the coolest thing?

Then we proceeded onto Takehara, another 10 mins down the road. In this excellent photo of the streetscape taken by Sister Rose (none of mine worked out), it looks like a Ye Olde Worlde exhibit at a fun park, but it’s actually a living breathing town with real life animatronic people in it. Hard to believe we only stumbled on Takehara by accident a few months ago. Which just goes to show the value of the occasional aimless Sunday drive when you’re in a different country.

Another day I took Sister Liz and my mother up to the Buttsuji temple complex, one of my favourite spots in these parts, where I discovered an audience of stone Buddhas that I hadn’t noticed the first time. (Amazing what you see when you haven’t got the kids in tow.)

Click here for more Buttsuji photos.

Rose the Cruise Director took the family on a trip to Matsue to see some museum in Matsue on the other side of the country. It only took three hours, since Japan is quite skinny down our end. The museum has a stunning garden attached. Here is the evidence:

Another day she took Sister Liz off to Kyoto where they saw this garden:

Boy did they get good value out of their Japan Rail Passess. Tragically the Sushi on a Stick household isn’t allowed to buy them as we don’t have tourist visas, otherwise I would have been to all these exotic places too… But at least we got some photos, if indirectly, and I thought I should put them in this post, even though it’s technically immoral since I wasn’t actually there.

Meanwhile, Grandma was keen to see her grandkids in action at a Real Japanese School. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a suitable time to see Felix’s class, but I was able to sneak her in to brass band practice one day, where we discovered Ruby has managed to master the trumpet pretty well:

This next one is after the family had gone home but I’m going to chuck it in here anyway. Last Sunday Ruby had a match up at Fuchu in the mountains, and I embarrassed her severely by insisting on a team photo, though as you can see nobody seemed to mind too much. See if you can spot the one girl NOT doing a peace sign. What a rebel!

So you get to see lots of acrobatics like this:

and this:

And there are running races for the tinies:

And a massive tug-of-war.

Those tents at the back are where all the Proud Parents are cowering in the shade enjoying picnic lunches while the kids sweat in out in the burning sun. (And if you look really carefully you can even see the sparkling sea there behind the tents… sorry… am I sounding a bit too much like a travel brochure?)

During the festivities they had the results up on a big board at the front. Felix was happy because the White Team (his team) won the day on points:

Meanwhile in other exciting news, the pool at the primary school is due to open in just a few short weeks. The pool up at the junior high school is also being prepared for the summer, and guess who gets to scrub down the walls before they fill it: that’s right, Ruby and her compatriats were all out there today armed with brushes and towels and hoses. (Ruby “accidentally” got her best friend Kasumi wet but managed to buy her off with a muffin.)

And on Saturday Felix and I went to Onomichi to do some shopping and found this quaint little coffee shop where they make coffee using equipment that looks like something out of a mad scientist movie:

The coffee itself was pretty ordinary but at least we had fun watching them concoct it on the bunsen burners.

This week I noticed, in a city slicker sort of way, that it must be planting season — the planting machines and the trays of seedlings sort of gave it away.

On Saturday afternoon we found out by chance about the Satsuki festival on at the local arts and culture center (called Poporo; who on earth thought of that name?) so we headed down to have a look. It wasn’t an ancient traditional culture type festival so much as a string of performances by local band/music/choir/rock groups, plus a flea market, together with the regulation line of food and drink stalls. At the flea market Felix and I spotted an enormous remote control Mothra toy [Mothra is a classic Japanese monster from the same stable as Godzilla. Check out the 1961 trailer below. Fast forward to 1:30 for views of Mothra.]

Tragically the Mothra toy cost about $200 so we had to pass, but it was in any case a lovely day for the festival: low 20s and sunny. Before too long it will be low 30s and oppressively humid so we have to make the most of the good weather. I took a photo of the main stage, although it looks a bit small and pathetic from so far back. But I’ve included it here just to show off that Poporo roof, which looks as if a giant metal Mothra might burst out at any moment.

This morning (Sunday) we headed down to Onomichi, a small town about half an hour down the road, to witness Eleni’s debut peformance of wadaiko (Japanese drumming). She’s been practicing every Wednesday with her new best friends down at the local community center and today was their first hitout with Eleni in the group. Here they are in full flight:

The performance was for a volunteer organisation which hosts exchange students in Japan. Afterwards they gave all the students a go and invited our two to join in as well. Felix was up there like a shot but Ruby was unable to take part, being too cool for that sort of thing.

At lunchtime we went for a walk through picturesque Onomichi. In a couple of weeks my two sisters and mother are coming to town, so we’re busy checking out interesting places to take them. We’d actually been to Onomichi a few months ago and wandered along the seaside section of town, and I remembered being singularly unimpressed. But it turns out that all the picturesque stuff is up in the hills BEHIND the town, silly me. You catch the cable car up the hill and wander around these cute little winding paths in the hillside admiring the trees scenery temples cherry blossoms sea views etc etc. There are even a couple of little cafes tucked in amongst the culture, and near the cable car station at the top of the hill is a shop selling ice-creams with flavours such as green tea and black sesame (sounds weird but actually delicious). So now I rate Onomichi quite highly; the black sesame ice-cream in particular  is worth bringing the family for.

When we got home I did a bit of mowing with our shiny new push-along lawn mower:

I’m not quite sure why but I’ve always wanted one of these. Now, finally, I have realised my life’s ambition: a push-along lawn mower. Just like Dave Sullivan.

And finally, Felix and I finished off the weekend in style with a visit to the local onsen. That’s our third visit now, but our first time on the left-hand side. Men and women are segregated (obviously) and they swap the sides daily; our last two visits were on odd days so we were on the right-hand side, but today was an even day so we got to try the left-hand side. Verdict: more massage spots, better views, but smaller selection of baths. On balance, we prefer the right-hand side.

After the designated carriers have wheeled in the trolleys, the designated servers dole out the gruel from the pots.

The designated lunch monitors check that everybody has been served, then issue the Japanese version of 2-4-6-8-dig-in-don’t-wait.

Then the fun begins. Luckily there are no silly rules that you’re not allowed to talk while eating, like we had when I was at school back in the dark ages.

How about those US Army-issue metal plates! Like something out of MASH.

All the adults then repaired to a different room to try out the lunch for themselves. And listen to a highly involved presentation from the nutritionalist at the local council about how they try to incorporate seasonal ingredients and ensure a good balance of vitamins, minerals, riboflavin and iron, while making mealtime fun and interesting and many other things which I didn’t quite listen to as diligently as I possibly should have. I did however study an enormous table that gives a breakdown of the meal content in terms of nutrients, iron, energy and six million other parameters.

It’s all very thorough and I’m sure they’re doing a great job, but at the end of the day it’s institutionalised food on thin metal plates. Actually one of the mothers raised the crockery issue at the end of the talk. And the response? The local council is apparently “aware of the issue” but “unable to take action at this time.”

In any case, I’m sure that in terms of nutritional value the skool slops are surely way ahead of whatever we could be bothered slapping together for Felix at 6:30 in the morning, and at ¥240 (under $3) per meal it’s a bargain. Don’t imagine I’ll be eating out at the local primary school any time soon though.

But mostly it’s the ferries chugging doggedly along going poco-poco-poco-poco taking huge flat barges loaded with huge pieces of metal down to the shipyards further down the coast. The other day I spotted two barges pushing the entire back half of a ship:

I probably need to get out more often.

Anyway, when it’s foggy the ships all get going on their horns. This morning was a real pea-souper — I could actually see the fog rolling in across our garden — and there was a great deal of pooting going on out in the bay. At one point there was even a high poot and an answering low poot going back and forth like in Close Encounters (just the single note obviously, as opposed to a five-note cadence with pleasing structural resolution, but I guess it’s the best they can manage). Which is all very well although five in the morning was a tad early for my liking. Couldn’t you transport those things some other time? At least it makes a change from traffic noise, of which there is virtually nil around here. And while we’re at it, there are NO leaf blowers in our corner of Japan, heaven be praised. I’ll take pooting at five in the morning over those stupid leaf blowers any day.

OK it’s gripe time now. Having experienced two very different education systems (three if you count Italy), I can’t help but draw comparisons, and I’d like to share a few here.

• The kids have virtually no free time for playing. At primary school the “long break” is all of 20 minutes, and although lunchtime is 45 minutes most of that is taken up with eating and packing up the school lunch so they’re lucky to get 20 minutes to run around outside. I can’t help but compare this to Australian primary schools, where the kids get an hour and a half unadulterated free time. At Ruby’s high school, where you bring own lunch, they get barely 15 minutes to themselves after they’ve finished eating, and that’s the only break in the day. What are the chances that the lack of free time might have something to do with all the bullying and other stress-related problems that plague the education system?
• Computer education is woefully behind. Apparently in Year 9 they’re just learning how to turn on the computer and create a file in Excel. Contrast this with Australia, where according to Ruby they were making PowerPoint files in Year 1 (probably Year 2 or 3 after discounting for exaggeration) and had moved on to designing websites and creating 3D models in Google SketchUp and Kahootz by Year 6. How is it possible for the land of technology to be so far behind at the school level? Or is it just us out here in the sticks?
• There are no drinking taps. The primary school is serviced by tank water rather than mains water, which the kids are discouraged from drinking. Every kid brings a water bottle (NB: cold tea is the norm; plain water is a strange drink enjoyed by foreigners) and when that runs out… well, I guess that explains why Felix looks so hot and bothered sometimes when he gets home. Meanwhile Ruby nearly got heatstroke in a PE class the other day when they were all sitting out in the baking sun with no access to water (OK, cold tea). Apparently you’re not allowed to drink during class, and PE is a class, ergo…

I don’t mean to sound overly negative. The curriculums are well-structured, the teachers are committed, the schools are well-equipped (if a little shabby), the results are there to see. Besides, we came here to experience a different culture and way of life, and this is it. Whether by design or by default, Japanese schools see it as their duty to foster toughness and resilience. Even at the risk of dehydration.

Oh, and apropos (love that word) of nothing in particular, we bought Felix some purple pants at our favourite clothing store Uniqlo last week. He chose them himself, I should add. Here he models his new pants complete with the Leif Garrett look:

And it always reminds me of that song Purple Pants by the legendary Heebeegeebees:

We had a friend to stay last week. Kuniko is Japanese but has lived in Australia for about the last 20 years and thus is able to offer an interesting perspective on the two countries that we know so well. The first thing we did after she arrived on Thursday afternoon was to whisk her off for a meal of–what else–okonimiyaki.

As part of my ongoing search for a decent coffee in Mihara, on Friday morning we headed down to a funky jazz-inspired cafe by the sea called Cafe Hoxton. The coffee wasn’t that great (I really should abandon my quest for the holy grail about now) but it did sport some rather excellent Coffee Art on top:

On Friday night the girls went down to the local hot springs (except Ruby, who for some reason still steadfastly refuses to get naked with strangers) before Kuniko headed back on Saturday morning. So in two and a bit days I think we adequately covered the three key cultural highlights of Mihara: food, sea views and hot water.

Saturday was a big day for soccer. First of all I drove Ruby in to Sanfrecce soccer practice, which we don’t normally do because it’s an hour away. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to get a photo of the matching purple buses that take the girls to their games of a weekend:

Felix came along for the ride and managed to ingratiate himself into the practice session as a goalie:

After that we headed over to Felix’s soccer practice at Mihara UFC. This week was the annual Parents vs Kids match which was great fun for all concerned, and the parents would have thrashed the U10 kids had not a certain father let in a few too many goals (although I maintain that it made the game more even and therefore more interesting).

On Sunday morning we were meant to take part in the local clean-up day organised by our neighbourhood committee, to which I had duly promised to contribute only to have to cancel at the last minute when an impromptu soccer match was organised by Felix’s team. I mean, pulling out weeds for two and a half hours isn’t really my idea of fun on a Sunday morning, and you’re permitted to pay ¥1500 ($16) and officially squib out that way, but I felt a bit bad all the same. Particularly as the head lady came around afterwards to give us our gift for taking part (a bag of chips or something) when we didn’t actually take part… is that a sort of punishment via reverse psychology?

At lunchtime we went to see a concert by the local brass band, called the Poporo Junior Orchestra or PJO for short. (Kinda snappy isn’t it? By the way, the local culture center and concert hall is called Poporo. Nobody knows why.) This is because we thought it might be good for Ruby to have a proper place to play her saxophone other than the school band, where half the girls are still trying to convince her to give up the saxophone because it’s not a wind instrument. So we went for a squiz at a PJO practice session last week and guess what: (a) it turns out that some of the girls from the school band (the nice ones) are in the PJO too, and (b) it looks like fun and Ruby and Felix both want to join, and furthermore (c) they need a bass player and I am seriously considering it. Yes! Aging rock god lured out of retirement for ONE MORE ASSIGNMENT. Don’t you love the storyline, there’s a film in it for sure. But I figure it could be fun playing a few swing band jazz lines. May need to dye my hair grey for authenticity. Anyway Yusuke has lent me a bass and I found a dinky little Vox practice amp in the local guitar shop for the very reasonable price of ¥7000 (new) so it seems the planets are in alignment on this one.

To finish off the weekend we hosted Yusuke and family at our Second Ever Barbeque on Sunday afternoon. I managed to get the coals going nice and early but still burnt the food, although perhaps not quite so badly as last time. I’m confident that my coal-fired technique is improving and we should be onto edible food sometime before the evil rainy season arrives in June and barbeque plans are suspended until further notice.