All Posts from the With pics Category
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Brass and potatoes
Wednesday was a national holiday today. Our longstanding friend Mr Nishihara, who grows vegetables on a small plot near his flat, invited us to join in his Potato Harvest Festival (loosely translated), which is basically him getting together with a few mates at a picnic spot by the river to make up a stew of new season potatoes while drinking themselves silly on sake in the process. There were 11 of us all together, the weather was glorious and sunny and a lovely time was had by all.
Here then is my photojournal of the proceedings.
First of all we made camp by the river:
Then the Men set up the fires and the things for hanging the pots on. Eleni came across to check on their handiwork:
The adults who couldn’t do clever things like build fires (that’s us) got to peel the potatoes, while the kids had to rip up this extremely healthy but disgustingly squeegy stuff called konyaku into little bits like this:
Ruby is not a big fan of ripping up konyaku:
Meanwhile Felix went and played in the raging torrent of a river with the only other kid there on the day (who luckily just happened to be of similar age).
And finally we all got to sit around and eat the extremely healthy stew of freshly harvested potatoes and konyaku plus the eleven secret traditional herbs ‘n’ spices etc etc.
Now at this point the idea was to sit around for several hours longer drinking more and more sake; but luckily the kids and I had to nick off after lunch in order to perform in our first ever public outing with the Poporo brass band in the evening. Mr Nishihara was disappointed as always with my refusal to get rolling drunk during the day but I prefer to leave that sort of stuff to night-time. We had a long conversation about cultural differences (he maintains that you simply HAVE to drink sake in order to properly appreciate the cherry blossoms in April, for instance) but were unable to reach any sort of meaningful conclusion because he was too drunk for rational discourse.
So on to the concert. It was held out on the lawn behind the Poporo Cultural Centre to commemorate the annual Illumination Ceremony, which as far as I can tell involves not much more than the mayor coming out and pressing a big round button and all these pretty lights come on.
Here’s a couple of before and after shots:
Actually those lights do look rather purdy don’t they. And you can see from the first photo the bullet train line in the background, so every now and then a bullet train would thunder past overhead which added to the ambience. The concert was great fun and afterwards we all got to sit around and chat, and then we went out to dinner with none other than Mr Nishihara, who’d somehow managed not only to stay awake but to come along to the concert, and his wife who was kindly playing the role of taxi driver for the day.
And what better way to finish this report than a nice relaxing bit of brass band music.
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Skool open day
Last Sunday was another open day at Sunami primary school. Or not really an open day, but a “come along and view a normal class” day. These are held a couple of times each term including on a Sunday every now and then, presumably to give all the overworked fathers a chance to come along too. So Sunday was a normal school day for Felix, the poor little blighter, although he got the following Monday off which was in fact way cooler.
The class we were instructed to view was science, which I was quite excited about since it’s usually more interesting than the good old chalk-n-talk approach of other subjects like maths and Japanese. And I was amazed to find that the teacher had all the Year 4 kids working with bunsen burners heating up bits of metal as part of an experiment to see if metal expands when it gets red hot. Even more amazingly, the kids did what they were told and nobody got burnt. For the record, metal does seem to expand when it gets hot.
That’s real flame in there!
The idea was to heat up the little ball over the flame and then see if it fits through the metal rings — those are the ones being modelled by responsible young Felix while the teacher looks on unimpressed in the background. (Actually he’s a great teacher and Felix loves science classes.)
Then after lunch there was another one of those friendly events involving the parents. This time it was a dodgeball game for which I had bravely volunteered Eleni’s services. As with the Mihara Games, it involved several practice sessions beforehand, although these seemed to be more for the fun of it than a genuine attempt to develop playing skills.
The dodgeball championships were held in the gymnasium and all the kids were up on the stage cheering on their parents. Eleni put in an excellent effort — Ruby and I agreed that we’ve never seen her move so fast, except maybe when she encounters a cockroach in the kitchen — and the Year 4 parents ended up in second place, winning all their games at the group stage but losing out in the Grand Final to Year 5.
Although initially I was less than enthusiastic about these events I’ve come around to the realisation that they really do a good job of bringing people together. To this end, I’ve volunteered Eleni for the parents vs kids beach volleyball championships in December on behalf of Ruby’s junior high school. This one sounds a bit more serious with practice sessions on Monday and Friday evenings so by the time December comes around I’m confident she will be fully integrated into the local community.
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Takehara bamboo festival
When Ruby was in hospital a while back to have her appendix out, her teacher came in to visit. (Teachers in Japan take their pastoral care pretty seriously; it’s not just a phrase that gets put in the glossy prospectus to make parents feel all warm and rosy.) And while we were chatting away in front of the invalid she told us about this bamboo festival down in Takehara, which just happens to be one of my favourite nearby spots as it has a beautifully preserved Old Bit. Pretty much any hint of a festival is enough to get us out sniffing around for Culture, so last weekend we went down to check it out.
The action doesn’t get underway until the sun goes down, the reason being that the entire event is centered around wonderful displays made from bamboo with candles in them.
All along the roads are bamboo lights and then at various points there are little displays like this:
There are quite a few traditional houses in Takehara that operate like museums during the daytime, but that evening it was open slather and we were wandering in and out at will. A few people had dressed up in kimonos and one place had some music coming out of it, so there seemed to be a few events going on but we’d arrived a bit late and didn’t really have time to check it out closely.
But there was just something very lovely about the low-key approach that set it apart from many of the other festivals we’ve been to. No main stage with loud music, no stalls selling soggy chips and cheap plastic trinkets, no madding crowds to force your way through, just lots of cute bamboo thingies to admire as we ambled amiably along.
At one point we went around the back of some facility or other to find the toilets and stumbled across this wonderland:
Bear in mind that these are all made out of nothing more than bamboo and candles, with the occasional piece of twine.
I rather like this long exposure shot of an ancient traditional bit of stonemasonry in the background that looks for all the world like a castle keep:
Meanwhile Felix, not to be outdone, took this shot of the lanterns going down the stairs:
So you get the idea: a nice night’s entertainment. Unfortunately we had to turn back before long because it was getting late and I suspect that we really only scratched the surface.
On the way back to the car we came across these cultural dudes:
Note the lights going all the way down the street that consist of three cut bits of bamboo strapped together with candles on the inside. It makes you want to buy a whole lot of bamboo and cut it up on an angle and put it in your garden. Or it did us, at any rate.
All in all a very worthwhile experience. And another one to add to the list of things we have to go back and do properly next year, including more photographs.
Click here for more Takehara bamboo festival photos.
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Mid-weekend wrap
Well I mean I know it’s against the rules to write a weekend wrap half-way through the weekend but here I am on a Saturday night with a bit of free time and the computer on my lap and so much to report, so I hope you’ll forgive this breach of protocol.
This week Eleni has been in Tokyo doing a spot of work (and a lot of shopping), which came about when, quite out of the blue, she was asked to help correct some exam papers or something that required actually being in Tokyo, and it was just the excuse she’d been looking for to go up and visit friends and get rid of a bit of cash. (And I’m pleased to report that the cash all went on nice sensible things such as a new pair of walking shoes and some much-needed parmesan cheese for the Sushi on a Stick household.)
So anyway on Friday we all trooped off to pick her up from Hiroshima Airport and then we headed straight over to Fukuyama to catch a concert by the Austrian brass band known as Mnozil Brass. This was a spur-of-the-moment thing; a month or so back I came across a flyer at the local Community Centre in Sunami where Eleni teaches English on a Saturday, and seeing as Ruby and Felix and I now have a professional interest in brass bands it was decided that we should go and check out a real live one at close range.
And what an excellent spur-of-the-moment decision that was, because Mnozil Brass turn out to be not only highly talented musicians but great entertainers with a crazy wacky bent. They incorporate all sorts of routines into their music, such as a Western medley complete with slow-motion shoot-out scene, and a piece performed by one guy operating a pair of trombones with his feet and a pair of trumpets with his hands (the blowing is done by four guys positioned around him). Here’s a sample of their performance that I found on YouTube, although it doesn’t really do them justice:
Some of the routines were so funny I had tears in my eyes from laughing so much, and even Felix managed to stay engaged right to the very end. We were pretty pleased with ourselves for managing to get out to a proper grown-up concert as a family, and it inspired us to seek out a few more interesting shows during our remaining year and a bit in Japan, not least because the ticket prices are so very reasonable.
Then today was Felix’s birthday. He likes to get a trail of clues to his birthday presents so we obliged him with a series of cunning riddles that wound up at a hidden stash concealed in — where else? — the toilet:
All those birthday decorations around the photo are because Ruby discovered the border option on the camera and this one was taken before I could get hold of it to turn the decorations off.
This year we lashed out and got Felix a Nintendo DS, thus fulfilling his life’s ambition and bringing him up to speed with his friends, all of whom have been battling Pokemon and ruining their eyesight for years now. He wanted to have a DS party where everybody would bring theirs along and presumably the idea was just to sit there jabbing at tiny plastic buttons for three hours. Thankfully most of his friends forgot to bring them, so instead they spent the time on more healthy pursuits such as playing trains upstairs:
kicking the soccer ball around the garden:
and woofing down the endless supply of home-made pizza churned out in the kitchen:
Ten pizzas in about two hours; not a bad effort if I do say so myself.
We even went so far as to organise the doughnut-on-a-string game:
(And what a pleasure it was to visit Mr. Donuts for the first time in a long while to pick up the necessary supplies.)
Finally there was an ice-cream cake with candles and lolly bags at home time, just in case the kids hadn’t had enough sweet muck.
For some reason I had been under the impression that Japanese people don’t really celebrate birthdays, but the boys all seemed perfectly at home with the concept and it all went swimmingly. Birthday Boy pronounced himself to be well pleased with the day’s proceedings which was a relief, because I always tend to feel a bit nervous in the lead-up to a birthday party — so much expectation, so much responsibility. Another one of the way, phew!
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Toe socks
Toe socks are back! In the Sushi on a Stick household, that is. I’m not talking the garish striped knee-high abominations of the 80s, but the nice ordinary type that you can buy in nice ordinary clothes shops.
Now it turns out that the thin cotton ankle-height lace-up toe socks known as tabi are actually an ancient traditional cultural item in Japan. Eleni has a pair that she has to wear for official drumming performances. And I’ve even got a pair somewhere back in Australia which I carted home from Tokyo ages ago thinking that they were lovely and cultural, and of course I’ve never worn them once. (Just like those conical hats from Vietnam that have been gathering dust in a cupboard since approximately 1993.)
But the other day I noticed that a friend was wearing toe socks not as a fashion statement or for a traditional performance of any kind, but just as a pair of socks.
And then while I was waiting in the hospital for Ruby’s appointment the other day I came across a magazine article the other day extolling the virtues of the humble toe sock.
Also during summer I had Ruby telling me that long socks with shorts and runners were a bad look. (Yes, I’m happy to take fashion advice from a 13-year-old. So long as it’s delivered in an appropriately respectful tone of voice.)
And finally, there I was the other day in good old UNIQLO, possibly my favourite clothes shop in Mihara if not the world in space, and I came across short-length toe socks in nice sensible middle-age colours at three pairs for $12! Seeing as I’m constitutionally unable to pay more than about $5 for a pair of socks, this was what finally won me over.
So the planets have aligned and now I’m converted: toe socks are great. It feels so healthy to have your toes properly separated rather than wedged together getting all sweaty and horrible crammed inside your shoes. The only downside is that you can’t just whip your socks on in the morning; you have to take the time to worm each toe in individually. But in this crazy mixed-up world in which we live in*, how therapeutic and relaxing it is to spend a bit of quality time with the little ones at the start of every day.
And you just can’t go past three pairs for $12! I’m thinking of buying a few hundred sets to take back to Australia in 2012 to launch a new craze of Therapeutic Sensible Socks for thrifty middle-aged men with too much time in the mornings.
* Paul McCartney
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The Games
The long wait is over; all the anticipation, the excitement, the endless tossing of tiny bean-sacks into wicker baskets finally came to a head on Sunday when the Mihara City Games were staged in brilliant sunshine (still far too hot for this time of year) up at the Sports Park, a very fine facility tucked away in the countryside about 20 minutes from the city centre.
Some 21 different sections of Mihara (population 100,000) were represented at the Sports Day, each with its own tent set up around the arena. While we were setting up the tents we listened to a performance of military pomp music of the sort that seems to be favoured for sports days and major events; it was performed by a massive brass band consisting of no less than 176 students from six different schools in the area (Ruby’s missed out for some reason).
Then we had the opening ceremony with the inevitable half hour of speeches, followed by massed stretching exercises to recorded piano music of the type performed by factory workers first thing in the morning. It was my first experience of “radio exercises” and I have to say I felt all pleasantly stretched afterwards.
Here’s a shot of us all on the main arena during the opening ceremony:
As with Ruby’s junior high school sports day, there was a broad selection of events including traditional relays and running races as well as a number of wacky traditional races such as:
• the three-legged skipping race
• the centipede race, where teams of five people have to shuffle along with their ankles tied together (hilarious)
• the ancient traditional cultural bean-sack-in-the-wicker-basket event
• kick the annoyingly-shaped rugby ball along the ground
• ten-pin bowling (though with three pins rather than ten)At lunchtime there was even an ancient traditional Japanese drumming display by Mrs. Sushi on a Stick and her cohorts.
After lunch came my favourite event and the one that drew the biggest cheers: the all-in relay, which involves competitors from primary school age through to over-60s. Every age group completes half a lap running against people from the same age group, starting with primary school, moving through junior high school (as far as Year 9), followed by under 20s, then 20-29, 30-39 and so on up to 60+. I love the idea of an all-in relay; not only is it great to get everybody involved, but it makes for an exciting race because the sheer number and diversity of competitors creates plenty of potential for overtaking and being overtaken which all adds to the fun.
In the end Sunami was unable to repeat the heroics of last year and we had to settle for second place behind our arch rivals Tanoura-up-the-road. It turns out that our real estate, the affable young Kobayashi-san, is on the Tanoura team and when I was begrudgingly congratulating him today he confided that they start practicing their bean-tossing in about June, over three months before the big event. (Sunami put in about three weeks.) No wonder they got in an incredible 73 bean-sacks to our 52!
And to finish off all the adults went out for dinner at a local hotel where there was food and drink laid on (where does the money come from? I assume it’s the annual membership fees for the local neighbourhood association. How wonderful) and we all had to give little speeches and many people got a bit tipsy and there was great merriment all round. It was special for us also because it marked the first ever occasion on which we have left the kids at home to eat dinner and wash up by themselves while we go out to have fun. What an important milestone in the parenting process. (And it only took three phone calls to sort out the arguing about who was going to do which parts of the washing up.)
The after-party:
Eleni celebrates with her bowling team (half of whom have kids in the same classes as ours):
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Niimi revisited, unplugged, etc
Last weekend we went back up to Niimi (pronounced “knee-me”), a tiny little hamlet tucked away in a distant corner of Okayama prefecture, and once again had a ball.
Niimi is the ancestral home of Mr and Mrs Kobayashi, parents of Hironori, the guitarist in that legendary Tokyo band of the 1990s called The Moment that featured yours truly on bass. Mr and Mrs K are endlessly kind and welcoming, so much so that going up to Niimi has become rather like visiting distant relatives in the countryside.
The first thing that made it really great is that unlike the last time we went up, which was during the traffic madness of Golden Week, this time the freeways were virtually empty and the whole trip took barely two and a half hours. What a glorious feeling to sail straight through (in a couple of minutes) that stretch of bumper-to-bumper hell where we spent a good couple of hours the last time and nearly ran out of petrol in the process. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun on a freeway before (except maybe when I got to do 170 in a hire car on a freeway in Italy once, but I shouldn’t really mention that).
Also instead of 17 people like last time there were just the four of us staying overnight, which if nothing else meant we all got a good night’s sleep. Niimi is just so peaceful and quiet. I made up a video; excuse the daggy subtitles but I didn’t want to spoil the serenity.
And the other really great thing about Niimi is the genuine farm experience. On Sunday morning Felix and I were awake before the girls (funny that) so we joined Mr K in a stomp through the grapevines, Felix still in his pyjamas and dressing gown, and picked off some bunches for breakfast. Later in the day Felix got to ride on the back of a motorbike and do a spin of the hamlet, and also had a turn in the back of the truck. Eleni learned how to shell chestnuts, which turns out to be extremely time-consuming but in a peaceful kind of way, and I found out how to make rice:
• Grow the rice in a paddy
• Harvest it and hang it out to dry
• Put the stalks in a machine that separates the stalks from the rice grains
• Put the rice grains into another machine that rips off the husks (producing brown rice)
• Put the brown rice into yet another machine that polishes it into white rice.As you can see you need a fair bit of machinery to make rice, even when it’s only for your own personal consumption. But if you haven’t got your own rice polishing machine, no need to worry, for dotted around the countryside are these dinky little Auto Rice Polishing Stations (ARPS) that look like photobooths but are actually there for the benefit of small-time growers with not enough machinery (or perhaps no barns to put them in). We’ve seen them heaps of times and for ages couldn’t work out what they were for. Felix at first thought they might be places that gave you free rice. Tragically the world doesn’t work like that, son. No, you put in your healthy brown rice at the top, chuck in a few hundred yen and out pops the lovely polished white rice at the bottom. Isn’t technology wonderful!
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Let the Games begin
Hot on the heels of sports day at the junior high school comes the annual sports day for the entire city of Mihara (population 100,000), where the various neighbourhoods battle it out for bragging rights and quite possibly a trophy of some sort. Much like the sports day, there is a broad mix of events such as bowling and croquet for the oldies and sprints and relays for the kids.
Readers will be pleased to hear that the Sushi on a Stick household is well represented at the 2010 municipal carnival: Ruby has been chosen for the 100-metre sprint (although the appendicitis might have put paid to that), Felix is doing a soccer dribbling race, Eleni is on one of the bowling teams and I’ve been roped into an ancient traditional cultural game where you have to toss little bean-sacks into a wicker basket suspended on bamboo pole 4.5 metres in the air.
And although the idea of the Games is undoubtedly to get together and have fun in the sporting spirit and all that, it’s clearly a more serious affair than the sports day at school. I mean, you even have to practice. There are daily practice sessions scheduled at the local primary school from seven until nine in the evening, right up to the night before the Big Day (though maybe not every day). On the couple of times we’ve been down there were about 50 to 100 people all scurrying around doing time trials and beavering away and the Men-in-Charge are highly committed so it would appear that the Games are not just a turn-up-on-the-day type affair.
In fact, one of Eleni’s friends is on the organising committee and she was telling us in hushed tones about how the next town along (Tanoura, if you’re interested) has gained an unfair advantage in the bean-sack tossing event in recent years by using special elongated bean-sacks and baskets to collect them in, which is not strictly fair but somehow they get away with it. Of course, the honest folk of Sunami would never stoop to such levels, which is why we have to practice even harder so as to WIN FAIRLY and thumb our noses at the cheats down the road.
Which piles on the pressure on yours truly as the representative foreigner. My strike rate is pretty poor and my right shoulder is already killing me from concentrated tossing, but I mustn’t give up for the sake of Sunami and all who sail in her. So down we troop of an evening to practice tossing bean-sacks into the basket, and when all the bean-sacks are in the basket we lower the basket to the ground and take all the bean-sacks out of the basket, then stand the pole upright again and start tossing the bean-sacks back in the basket once again. And again, and again, in a manner strikingly reminiscent of that Greek myth about the guy pushing the rock up the hill all the time and it always comes rolling back down. Still, it’s all in the name of community spirit, and how we laugh joyously together as the bean-sack sails past the wicker basket for the umpteenth time.
The Games are on October 10 and so hopefully I’ll be getting a few more sacks in the basket (as they say) before then. Stay tuned for a full report with pics and 90-second video highlights.
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Submarine museum at Kure
I’ve never been a big one for museums, but this one caught my eye. After all, I’ve never been inside a real submarine. So off we headed last Sunday to Kure, about an hour and a quarter away along the coast. Kure is a massive shipbuilding city that was Japan’s second largest naval base during the war or something like that.
We got down there after lunch and were moseying along in front of the department store looking for a place to park and all of a sudden there it was:
Japan must be about the only place in the world where you can park your car next to a sub.
It was a great museum, although most of it is actually a large building next door and they only let you walk through a small part of the submarine at the end. But it was still worth it.
Felix made sure to try out everything on offer including the beds:
the hatch:
the periscope:
and the radar equipment:
The submarine was only decommissioned in 2004 and it’s funny to think of navy dudes running around inside it until recently. There are a few old-timers on hand inside to make sure that no-one touches anything untoward but they didn’t seem to mind us taking photos or examining the equipment at close quarters.
In the museum part there were medals from various countries including Australia:
Which makes you wonder: how did they got hold of all these medals anyway?
There was also a series of panels explaining how they got the sub up out of the water and carried it across the road into the middle of the night and plonked it on its special holders, which looks to have been quite an amazing operation in itself.
And finally, in the department store next door to the sub we found a rather nice Italian restaurant where they do a mighty fine pizza, and Felix discovered some extra-special rails for his plastic train set. This is his latest obsession; he even goes on YouTube and watches endless videos of trains going around massive complex tracks and crashing into one another, like this one:
At least it keeps him off the streets I guess.
Anyway so Kure was deemed a huge success and we can’t wait to get back there and eat the pizza and buy the plastic rails and check out some more naval history. Plus there’s a nice cafe listed in our cafe book that we have to check out. What more could you want from a day out?
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Sports Day at Junior High
The annual sports day at the local junior high school was held last Sunday.
As you might expect, they do it a bit differently in Japan: there’s less of the long-distance slogs and traditional athletics such as high jump and long jump, and more emphasis on en-masse events such as marching:
and acrobatics:
Now most junior high schools have at least a couple of hundred kids so they spend a whole day doing all the events for the different classes and year levels. Whereas Ruby’s school has just 70 students, so what they do is to combine their sports day with the get-together for the local area. So you end up with three sets of events: one for students, one for parents of students (and occasionally both, such as the parents vs kids tug of war), and one for the local residents. And it works really well to have alternating events where everybody gets involved.
I got roped into a few events including the parents relay (where I forgot to line up on my turn and left the runner stranded on the track) and the 100-m sprint (where I managed to finish last), but despite the disappointing results I think I gave it 110% and certainly sports was the winner on the day.
I’ve made a short Reader’s Digest version of the Sports Day for your enjoyment — seven hours condensed into 90 seconds, which is all you’re allowed on flickr. But it’s probably just as well — some of the dance sequences were awfully long…
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This blog is about the adventures of a family of Australian barbarians spending two years in the islands of southern Japan. Stay tuned for regular updates on the food, the culture, the earthquakes, the wacky festivals, the school system and more. 
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