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.

This year, I’m happy to report, we managed at least to do part of the above. There was no unseemly staying up until midnight but we did manage to compromise our beauty sleep by getting up at 5:30 in the morning to go for a walk up the local mountain and watch the sun rise on the new year. The kids were intially unimpressed at being roused in the cold and freezing dark but put in a good effort, all things considering, and we made it up to the allotted meeting spot on time and joined up with the Yanamotos and headed off to trek up the road in the pitch dark with our torches to the top of the mountain. Felix had trouble maintaining his energy levels along the way:

But he made it up eventually, just as the sun was about to come out:

Ruby was tired out by the experience:

But at least they had good reception up there.

And there were hordes of other people there too.

Although it should be noted that most of them came by car, the wimps.

Tragically when we got to the top the clouds completely obscured our view of the sunrise, but it was a good experience nonetheless. And I got to brag to everybody that I had in fact already seen the sun rise with my own eyes on my epic trek with Mr Nishihara last February.

Then we got home and waited for our very own feast of special NY goodies, brought around to our place in various trays and pots by none other than the Nishiharas. It looked a little bit like this:

Sadly we all had to eat off the small table because we’d given our big table away the previous day (to a good home, of course).

The feast included a special type of sake that everyone has to sip at, or in Felix’s case take a huge gulp of. (He was rapt to have a legally sanctioned opportunity to consume alcohol.) It gets served from its own very special ancient traditional serving set:

The feast included massive crab legs which Ruby had never tried before. Unusually for our princess, she willingly took on the challenge of eating her Very First Crab Leg:

The meal was lots of fun, and it turns out that Jan 1 is much like Xmas day in Australia, where far too much food is consumed and alcohol is drunk, and everyone then sits around in the afternoon feeling bloated and playing with the new games/toys (this year it was Felix’s excellent new Sushi Tower Game, where you stack up the plates and bits of sushi etc. on the revolving sushi belt until they fall over then you have to pay for it with tiny plastic Japanese money).

And of course there were masses of leftovers which we ate for dinner as well as lunch the next day. All in all, a highly convivial festive season.

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.

I hooked up with a volunteer group called It’s Not Just Mud, which is run by a young British guy who was happily teaching English down in Osaka but was so struck by what he saw on the telly that he quit his job and packed his bags and came up to volunteer while camping in a tent. That was in June and he’s still here, and It’s Not Just Mud is now a well-organised unit (soon to be an NPO) with a steady stream of volunteers coming through, and even their own house which operates like a huge commune and reminds me of the place I used to live 20 years ago.

Well the volunteering was a revelatory experience and I’ll try to describe what I encountered. Most of Ishinomaki still resembles a war zone. All the debris piled up in the streets has been removed and the streets have been cleared. The majority of the damaged buildings have been removed, but there are still enough around to give you an idea of the sheer power of the tsunami.

For instance, here are some typical examples of houses that have clearly not been touched since March.

(If you look really carefully you can see the clock inside that must have stopped when the water reached the ceiling.)

Many of the blocks have been cleared. I reckon that more than half the houses in our area were gone, and about half of those remaining were uninhabitable. In other words, maybe a quarter of the homes actually had the lights on and people in them.

The water came up to the top of the ground floor of most buildings and hung around for several days. So the top floors of homes are mostly OK, except where they’ve been bashed into by a large floating object, such as another house. Incidentally, we’re told that many people died of exposure in the freezing cold days after the earthquake, huddled in their upstairs bedrooms with no food or drinking water and no way to get out.

This house copped a bit more than most; perhaps it was a low-lying area.

The lucky homeowners with lots of money in the bank can just rebuild, and we saw quite a few brand spanking new homes around the place. But most don’t have that sort of money, and the government handouts have been pretty woeful and as for all the millions collected by the Red Cross worldwide, well, nobody seems to know quite what’s happened to it, which is kind of alarming. Meanwhile, I was surprised to see even some of the large franchises have elected not to rebuild. Or perhaps they don’t have the money either.

But there are also many stores up and running, including the ubiquitous convenience stores, the mainstay of modern Japanese society, as well as smaller local shops. And in amongst the devastation it was reassuring to see the vending machines back in action:

One morning I went down to look at the oil terminal that used to lie right on the shoreline. The area covered in water used to be where the trucks came to fill up with oil. Apparently the entire land mass has subsided by 700 mm — enough to let the sea in to cover it all over.

Nearby was this sad light pole:

And this oil tank, completely shifted off its base:

There are several rubbish dumps around town where bulldozers work ceaselessly adding more to the mountains of debris.

Along with piles of rubbish, there are piles of cars. Literally.

Anyway that gives you a general idea of the scene. So on to the volunteering effort. For the first two days we were shovelling mud out of drains by the side of the road, where it has been sitting for eight months, and into little white bags. It was a bit like an archaeological dig; in one place the mud was full of tools and car parts, in another place household crockery, occasionally a DVD, all sorts of stuff. It was a slow and labour-intensive job, but until such time as somebody invents a roadside trench scraper, this is the only way to get the stuff out.

I must admit to being pretty apprehensive beforehand, given that manual labor is not my strong point, but I’m happy to report that the back held out OK, I was a Useful Member of the Group and lots of mud was duly shoveled into bags to be taken away, presumably to one of the rubbish dumps. Which is kind of ironic when you think of it, because bags of dirt are exactly what you need when the water comes. Perhaps they could store them all somewhere to be brought out in time for the next tsunami?

On the third day we were on house-gutting duty. This involves removing the water-damaged walls, floors and sometimes ceilings on the ground floor of a home in preparation for Real Builders to come in and redo them all with new materials so that the owners can move back in. For those whose homes were left relatively intact, it must be a wonderful thing indeed to have teams of volunteers come in and refurbish the place for you. But a pity for the ones whose homes had to be torn down. Such is the brutal luck of natural disasters.

This is one of the rooms where we removed the floor. Note the thick layer of mud on the concrete base that has sat there for months and then dried up during summer. And yes, we had to shovel all the dry mud into bags too. Next to me is Nicole, a 16-year-old from Canada who came all the way over with her step-dad to help out.

On the fourth day, our sturdy team of volunteers started the day helping to hand out a truckload of 16,000 cabbages donated by a kind farmer in Nagano prefecture. We unloaded a stack at one of the temporary housing villages on the edge of town. I was surprised to see a soup kitchen set up at the village, doling out meals to the residents; surely by now everyone would have their act together? But then someone pointed out to me that these people would have lost absolutely everything on March 11, including their jobs; so they started with nothing and with no source of income still don’t have enough money to buy and cook food. You just assume that everything sorts itself out, but clearly in many cases it doesn’t.

In the afternoon one of the guys took a few of us about 20 minutes up the road to the town of Onogawa. Here the devastation was complete. The entire township, with the exception of a few houses well up on the hillsides, has been wiped clean. The funnel-shaped topography of the inlet at Onagawa served to channel the tsunami into a wall of water higher than anything seen elsewhere.

This photo was taken on our way down the valley. Even up here, the ground is bare.

This photo shows the hospital on the hill near the sea; the hospital carpark doubles as the official evacuation point. But the wave got so high at its peak that it reached the second floor of the hospital, and those who gathered there were swept away. In the foreground is the underneath of a four-storey reinforced concrete building that was toppled over. Word is they’re going to leave it there as a sort of monument to the power of nature.

This is the old seafront, previously a bustling shopping district, showing the toppled building and the newly raised roads.

It’s a similar story over the other side of town. If the wave reached the hospital then I imagine that these buildings would have been totally submerged.

This used to be the produce market on the water’s edge.

And finally, another toppled building lying serenely in the peaceful lapping water with boats nestling nearby.

So that was my four days and I dearly wish it could have been more. It was an inspiring experience and one that I would love to do again. Many of the It’s Not Just Mud volunteers are repeat offenders; some have been there for weeks if not months on end. I’d love to be a bigger part of the clean-up effort. If only we weren’t going back to Australia in a couple of months… if only we didn’t live down the other end of the country… if only I’d gone up there a bit earlier… lame-sounding excuses I guess.

First we took them to a new seaside cafe that we’d discovered just a few short months ago. When we arrived, the cafe owner took us out on a tour of the front garden for a bit of a local geography lesson, which included a short stint on this terrifying concrete ledge thingy. Felix took the opportunity to traumatise Eleni by pretending to hang over the edge.

The visitors were most impressed with the very elaborate cake presentation; so impressed, in fact, that we just had to take a photo or two:

I made the mistake of ordering a large coffee. I mean, just look at the size of that cup. It was a nice coffee, though.

Then we took the troops over to the island with the rabbits on it:

And later, a cute lantern display down at Onomichi:

Later we factored in a stop off at everybody’s favourite temple, Buttsuji–tragically the “butt” bit is pronounced “oo” as in “book”, but it still looks good in a photo:

This one gets the Gold Logie for Best Winged Beast:

So it was all a bit sad when they left and we realised that there were no more tours to conduct, but in any case we’ve amassed so much local information over the last two years that I figure we could always start up a tour guide business at some point in the future.

Meanwhile, the Mihara Sports Day was also held last Sunday, and the three representatives from the Sushi on a Stick household acquitted themselves very well from all reports, yet despite their heroic efforts Sunami once again lost out to evil Tanoura up the road, boo hiss we hate them they are too competitive and practice too hard and clearly don’t understand that the Games are meant to be conducted in the spirit of Fun. Which means, letting Sunami win every now and then.

I love this photo of Felix with his mates just before the Soccer-Ball-Around-The-Cones event, looking like something out of a manga cartoon:

Ruby and Felix after their events. Ruby ran hard and was well pleased with herself, as you can see. (Felix if you’re reading this, you were Really Good too, OK?) Love the big S on the front of the vests (that’s for Sunami I believe, although the Superman reference is most pleasing).

By three o’clock it was all over, and even before the official closing ceremony had finished–which surprised me somewhat, in a country that so loves its ceremonies– we were all taking down the tents and packing up. In an amazingly short space of time, the whole carnival, the thousands of people, the tents and flags and brass band and food stalls and loudspeakers and podium and everything else (the locals certainly know how to put on a festival) had been shipped off and there was nothing left but a dusty old field.

And thus our Last Ever Mihara Sports Day came to an end.

Incidentally, Felix’s soccer team had a tournament yesterday at that very same dusty field. And I realised that I’d never really taken enough notice of the Ending of the Match Ritual before, which is a terrible omission because it really is quite a ritual. So I’d now like to relate it to you in all its glory.

In Japan, when you finish a junior soccer match, first of all the players of both teams line up in the middle with the referees and all bow deeply towards the spectators, who clap. Then the players from both teams shake hands and say the equivalent of “good-game-good-game-good-game” ad nauseum and also shake hands with the referees. The referees are now free to depart the field of play. Next, players from each team go over to the opposition team’s bench where they bow once more and say Thank You to the opposition coach and associated hangers-on, who politely clap. Then every player lines up to shake hands with the opposition coach. Then they troop over to their own bench and do the same to their own coach and parents and we all clap furiously and they shake hands with their own coach. Then the players from both teams shake hands with one another again (in theory, although I didn’t see much actual hand contact by this stage). And then, and only then, are we allowed to declare the game over.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to cope with the lack of ritual in Australia. Soccer matches that end when the final whistle blows? Outrageous.

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.

And last weekend was our first proper Last Time, if you get my meaning, because we took what will surely be our last visit to Niimi for the foreseeable future. Niimi is a tiny village tucked away up in the mountains of central Japan, about two hours away from our place, that we’ve visited a few times over the last 20 months to catch up with our friends and surrogate parents, who are the actual parents of Hironori (nickname: Sweden), the guitarist I played with in Tokyo 20 years ago who now lives in France.

We’ve also become good friends with Sweden’s cousin Yumi and her two daughters, who live in nearby Okayama and always pop up to Niimi when we’re in town. And so it was on this occasion that we caught up with them too, starting with a visit to their local fun park called Highland in a place called Kojima, which is on the edge of Japan just where the Seto-Ohashi, one of the biggest or longest or somethingest bridges in the world in space, takes off on its long journey over to the island of Shikoku. We took the kids out of school for a day, which meant that the fun park was blissfully empty and there was no waiting time for any of the rides.

Highland is one of those faded and rusting old theme parks that clearly hasn’t changed (or even had a lick of paint) since the grand old days of the 70s when the Japanese economy was seemingly unstoppable. The roller coaster in particular gave every impression that it might happily fall apart at any moment, especially the loop-the-loop bit.

But the scariest ride of all was the sky bicycles, which really do look as if they are about to fall off the rails.

Too scared to admire the view; just keep pedalling!

Perhaps it’s because there’s no machinery to drag you up the slope or around the track; you’re really on your own out there.

Felix, meanwhile, was all set to do the bungy jump when the attendant announced that it was too windy, so he had to settle for second-best on the frankly quite terrifying gravity drop ride. Here he is the second time around with his new best friends that he met at the bungy jump office:

Here’s a commemorative photo with some of the Okayama gang, including Mrs. K on the right:

The next day, we went to a nice town nearby called Kurashiki. In the underground car park at Kurashiki, the machine really spits out the tickets. It’s official:

Kurashiki has a lovely Old Bit by the canal:

Although you can’t really see it in the photo, there are lots of highly cultural old buildings along the canal and in the streets behind. It really is a very lovely spot.

Then we headed off to go visit a bit of Culture in the form of a five-storied thingie. We had to park the car on one side of the road and then cross over to the other side and go through the rice fields (look how high the rice is! Must be harvest time soon) to get to the Culture, which was very pleasant.

Eleni bribed Felix to sit nicely for a photo by offering him use of the camera for ten minutes, during which time he managed to snap about 40 photos, but I sneakily whittled them down to just a few, including this arty one:

The kids really enjoyed the culture:

Then we headed up to Niimi, where it’s grape season right now. If you’re a tall foreigner you have to pick the grapes while stumbling around beneath the bird netting:

Here Eleni relaxes with Yumi outside the grape field after a hard morning’s picking:

We ended up taking home about 25 bunches of grapes. Only a few of these were for us; the rest were presents for various people, just about everybody we know in fact, because in Japan it’s poor form to go anywhere without bringing back gifts. Sometimes this can be annoying (and expensive) but you do get a warm rosy feeling inside as you go around dispensing freshly picked grapes to all and sundry, and of course over the last 20 months we have enjoyed countless gifts from the self-same friends so a bit of quid pro quo is definitely in order.

Niimi is so quiet and peaceful that much of what happens involves just sitting around chatting. Here, Felix practices his acrobatics on the road outside the grape field with the endlessly obliging Yu, husband of Etsuko, sister of Yumi, cousin of Sweden, who lives in France. Small world isn’t it?

We had to leave Niimi at lunchtime in order to race back to Sunami for a special festival at the local shrine in the evening. Though small in scale it was rather elaborate, with dancing and chanting and musical performance and a procession involving a dragon or two.

Fires in baskets are always good for atmos:

Here’s Felix blowing the ancient traditional conch alongside the village elders:

Naturally, Eleni’s drumming group got a guernsey as always:

So that was a pretty full-on long weekend, but there’s precious little time left now for these sorts of shenanigans, and what with soccer and band commitments we have only a few weekends available to us until December. I can sense the end of our journey, and though on the one hand I feel sad that we didn’t get around to doing everything that we wanted to, on the other hand I feel satisfied that we’ve covered a fair bit of ground and had lots of fun in the process.

Or perhaps that’s just a pathetic justification: in truth, I can’t really be bothered. Summer has worn me out.

I’m also a broken man: my neck hurts, my right knee is killing me, some of my fingers have gone numb, my bottom is saddle-sore, and my lower legs have taken on a life of their own, the muscles jumping around like crazy so that it looks as if there’s a bunch of aliens in there waiting to burst out.

However it was all worth it. The scenery was spectacular and though a typhoon had brought heavy rain the day before, the skies magically cleared and it was a very pleasant day for a ride, notwithstanding the 90% humidity.

The Shimanami Island Ride is an annual event that goes across our local island chain, starting at Mukaijima (the island next to the mainland) and continuing across all six islands right through to Imabari on the huge island of Shikoku. Unfortunately I only found out about it last year after the event, so to speak, so I was determined to do it this year.

There were four courses to choose from: the 190 km one was obviously intended for hard-core cyclists (containing a deliberately high quotient of hills) and was immediately out of contention; then there was 140 km, 100 km and 80 km. The 80 km one was obviously for wimps so I chose the super rugged 100 km course. Well over a thousand riders took part but we were all spread out to prevent unruly jostling and there was no congestion to speak of. The ride followed normal roads, but although we were nominally competing with the traffic, there’s very little happening on the islands on a Sunday so it was all very peaceful and convivial.

All the bridges have been built with special bike lanes and even little bicycle-only approach paths that are not at all steep (except when you’ve done 50 km or so; then they become horribly steep). The bridges were the highlights in fact because of the views as you cycle along and the cooling breeze high up in the air. And I learned an important Bridge Fact: suspension bridges are not perfectly flat, they go down a bit after the middle, which is rather lovely when you’re at that stage when you can’t be bothered pedalling.

In retrospect I should have chosen the wimpy 80 km course, because I discovered at the 45 km mark that I hadn’t read the fine print (in the form of altitude maps kindly provided for each course) and they had in fact snuck a few hills into the 100 km course. Curses!

Anyway here are some photos.

Here I am before the start, with no idea of the cruel surprise that was about to be sprung upon me in 45 km.

A quick pitstop at the second bridge, still blissfully unaware of the evil hills that await.

After the half-way point (did I mention the hills?) I was decidedly less enthused with the scenery and the ride was possibly even starting to become a bit of a slog. However I’d arranged to meet Eleni and Felix at Dolce, a rather excellent gelato shop on the island of Ikuchijima (which we regard as our local island since it’s serviced by the ferry that leaves from Sunami), so I resolved to at least make it that far. By the time I finally got there I was ready to squib out of the last bit of the race and just catch the ferry home with the others, but the fortifying effects of a double gelato plus some motivational input from Eleni was enough to get me over the line, and off I went once more. And although the last 20 km or so were a struggle, there was some consolation in the form of the occasional discovery along the way, such as this interesting shop:

I wonder what they do in there? And why are the windows boarded up?

So I made it to the end, yay. It was more exercise than I’ve ever done in my life but it was definitely a good experience, and hopefully the sensation will return to my fingers before too long and I should get movement back in my neck some day soon and with any luck the aliens will stop dancing in my legs and I’m sure my bottom will have recovered in time for next year.

Meanwhile, here are some random photos for no reason.

The other day we spotted this sign while out driving.

I think it’s something to do with books, or at least I certainly hope it is.

Also, a couple of weeks back Ruby was awarded a Gold Tag for her summer science project on salt, and it was on display down at the municipal offices so we all trooped down to have a look.

Found it!

And look, the gold tag and everything!

A couple of weeks back, I took the kids down to a local restaurant/cafe place (Eleni being slightly unwell that evening) where a couple of the guys from our brass band were playing an impromptu gig just set up in the corner. And I thought to myself, what a lovely thing to do. So I took a quick snap on my phone. Excuse the low quality.

Here are the students all marching onto the arena with the flags at the start. You have to laugh at all the pomp and ceremony and precision marching. Who was it who claimed that the post-war pacifist constitution got rid of Japan’s militaristic leanings? I have my doubts.

The sports day had lots of races and relays, a good old-fashioned tug-of-war between parents and their kids, which the kids inevitably won because the teachers joined in on the kids’ end, and other wacky events for the locals involving oldie-friendly activities such as putting the ball through the croquette hoop, kicking the unpredictable rugby ball along the ground and bowling over ninepins with a soccer ball.

Then the kids put on a display called “Stunts” which involved a variety of precision moves such as this one:

And my personal favourite, the Sandy Bottom:

There were various sorts of acrobatics, like this:

And this:

And of course, humid pyramids:

I took the opportunity while all the festivities were in progress to take a look at the pool, which is on the roof of a three-storey building. This is what the arena looked like from the rooftop:

And this is what the pool looks like. Never mind the green water, the swimming season is over until next year, but doesn’t it look like you’re on top of the world? Like one of those horizon pools that rich people have. Maybe the photo doesn’t do it justice, but that’s what it felt like to me when I was up there.

And this is the rather excellent view over the pool wall:

Incidentally, the bottom third of every single window in every single classroom is frosted over to prevent the students from admiring this very view. Presumably the authorities feel that it might Distract Them from their Learning. Isn’t that just lovely?

But I digress. Back to the Sports Day.

It was a monstrously hot day. As with last year, summer has refused to start going away at the end of August like it’s supposed to do, and for some reason we were treated to an especially brutal burst of heat on this very weekend. The Sports Day was conducted right in the heat of the day and the kids were out in the middle of it with no hats right through the 20 minutes of opening ceremony and endless speeches, the warm-up stretching, the Stunts display, the gruelling races, the warm-down, and finally the closing ceremony and endless speeches, which were also on track for about 20 minutes except that half-way through a number of students started collapsing from the heat. When the teachers carted the first one off at the back, nothing much happened. Eleni and I could see the poor thing being given water and fanned furiously by some kind souls in a tent. Then another one fell over right at the front, in full view of the principal, and by the time it got to four students down, all of a sudden the teachers started to panic. The ending was cut short, the AP was out shouting “everybody inside for a drinks break!” and even after we’d all packed up and gone home we could hear the ambulances racing up the hill. Ruby reported that three of them were taken to hospital.

Now this type of stuff is on the national news with frightening regularity. Including last year, I reckon I’ve seen three or four “students collapse from heatstroke and taken to hospital” reports, and I hardly ever watch TV. So what has the school done to address the problem?

Funny you should ask.

Back in July, about half-way through summer, Ruby brought home an important-looking notice with the grand title, Heatstroke Prevention Strategy. And what exactly was the Heatstroke Prevention Strategy?

A white baseball cap. Which the school permits you to buy for ¥630, although you don’t have to buy it if you don’t feel like it, and even if you do buy it the school won’t make you wear it, and anyway most times you aren’t allowed to wear it for one reason or another, and it doesn’t cover your ears or neck so it’s of minimal benefit. But the very notion of allowing students to don a cap in certain situations represents a massive shift in ideology, partly because of the prevailing Japanese orthodoxy about toughening kids up (hence: no heaters in winter unless the temperature falls below 10°C; no water breaks during PE classes in summer; have to take all your books to school in the morning and back home at night, etc. etc. etc.) and partly because Ruby’s school is particularly strict, or backward, or just plain stupid depending on your point of view. (I’ll let you be the judge: further background reading can be found this, this, this and this.)

So this latest incident only served to further intensify my contempt for the Mihara No. 4 Junior High School, if that were possible. There is a back story to all of this, of course, concerning my ongoing battle since last summer to convince the school to make the monumental concession of allowing the kids drinks breaks during PE classes in summer (read about it here).

I wonder if the school will get rapped over the knuckles for failing to exercise its duty of care to pupils on the Sports Day. Or will it simply be dismissed as all part of the glorious toughening up process? I’m tempted to ring them up and say “hey guys, how about that Heatstroke Prevention Strategy! Worked a treat didn’t it?”, but I think upon mature reflection that it would be altogether easier if I just went back to Australia and left them to their own devices.

And it’s just as well that Ruby managed to stay upright the entire way through, despite being in about four different races, one of which involved lugging a 10 kg sack around the track, on a 40°+ day* for heaven’s sake, because if she’d keeled over too then no doubt I would have been exceptionally angry and no doubt it would have been highly embarrassing all round.

* Official temp was 33°C, but humidity adds around 10°C according to the “Feels Like” weather report.