Felix has just arrived back from a two-day camp up in the mountains organised by the good city of Mihara along with 71 other tinies of primary school age (and a few brave parent volunteers). He got to split wood, make a fire, cook dinner (and presumably do the washing up!), set up the tents and make a comfy campbed out of newspaper. They did lots of fun wholesome stuff such as make things from wood, look at the moon through a giant telescope and play games around the campfire. And in a really nice touch, they’d handed out bits of cut bamboo the week before which Felix and I had to fashion into his own personal cup and pair of chopsticks armed only with a saw and sandpaper, just like in the hardware ads on the telly. Plus we had to make an Indiana Jones style flaming torch by wrapping some bits of old cotton (last year’s pyjamas) on the end of a pole, which the kids carried with them when they went for a night-time walk through the bush. Needless to say Felix got hardly any sleep and arrived home completely shattered but it was all good clean fun. I have great memories of doing this sort of stuff as a kid. Maybe I’ll have to go along next year as a volunteer for a bit of vicarious nostalgic enjoyment.

Meanwhile Ruby, not to be outdone, was over on the neighbouring island of Ikuchijima with her soccer buddies on a day of fun and frivolity organised by the Sanfrecce soccer team. Given that her school contemporaries have turned out to be a dismal failure in the friendship department, it’s nice that she gets to do this sort of stuff together with her soccer teammates, who are unfailingly nice and friendly. (Why are they so much nicer? We’ve decided that Ruby’s year level at school (especially the girls) must just be a Bad Lot; being stuck together ever since kindergarten has sent them a bit loopy.) They swam at the beach, cooked things on the barbeque for lunch, played games and generally had a great time from the sound of it.

With both kids out of the house on a Sunday, Eleni and I took the opportunity to head out for lunch at good old Cafe Hoxton 15 mins down the road overlooking the sea. Having only ever had coffees there before, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that they do excellent pasta and pizza so we duly earmarked this place for a family dinner sometime soon. It’s so ridiculously hot at the moment that we’ve been eating out a bit more often in a bid to reduce hot sweaty cooking activities to a minimum (plus you get to sit in an air-conditioned restaurant for an hour or so).

Also we discovered a rather nice beach directly opposite Cafe Hoxton, which will come in handy after our local beach officially closes for the season on August 31, at which point Ruby will be officially forbidden from swimming there by her school. This gives us a backup option so that we can just throw a blanket over Ruby’s head and spirit her away down the coast where nobody will be watching while she splashes about.

Y’hear that Japan? We’re gonna BREAK YOUR RULES. Such rebels.

But first of all, a weather update. Summer has arrived here with a vengeance. It’s been over 30 all week and of course ridiculously humid which makes it feel like over 40. Japan is in the middle of a record heatwave according to the news.

Just my luck eh. I’m a winter-lover by nature. I’ve never liked summer; I see it as an extended period of stupidly hot weather to be endured until normal programming resumes at the start of autumn. But I seem to have a knack of creating abnormal weather conditions wherever I go.

Let’s recap shall we:
• London, 1989 – record temperatures across Britain. (Also the sunniest summer on record.)
• Italy in 2003 – Heatwave across Europe; one of the hottest on record.
• Japan in 2010 – Record temperatures for early summer with predictions of hottest summer for 100 years.

Thanks alot, weather gods.

Even in February 2009 when I was in Tokyo visiting clients with plans to whip off for a couple of days of skiing…. you guessed it: record mild winter, no snow.

And while I’m sweating it out over here, back in Melbourne they’re having a wonderful cold winter at the moment, the lucky things. So you see, I seem to bring the heat wherever I go. I suppose it could be argued that global warming has something to do with all of this, but I refuse to let scientific theory stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

Ahem. The weekend wrap.

On Saturday morning I put Ruby on to her train for a two-day training camp with her soccer buddies from Hiroshima Sanfrecce. We actually missed the first train because our little local line was out indefinitely due to a landslide on the tracks caused by the torrential rain last week. Unfortunately I had no idea of this and we arrived at the tiny seaside station and waited for the train… and waited… and waited… until suddenly it occurred to me that the train was never coming, so we jumped in the car and did a mad dash across town with the Eggbeater engine screaming as we pushed it to the limit, screeching into the main station at Mihara only to discover that the train had been cancelled altogether and we had to catch the next one. Whatever, it all worked out in the end and Ruby had a great weekend, played heaps of soccer and experienced her first stay away from home in Japan.

On Saturday night, the three of us took the opportunity (i.e., not having Ruby around to complain about it) to check out a local fast food chain called MosBurger that Felix had been eyeing off for some time. It actually wasn’t too bad, in a fast food kind of way. I can report that MosBurger serves much the same plastic food as Maccas (NB: must try the Terikayki McBurger sometime), though the option of burgers made with rice patties rather than sugary bread buns at least represents a bit of innovation.

I’ve actually heard Japanese people defend fast food places like Maccas, MosBurger and KFC with the line that “at least the food is actually cooked right there and then.” And they have a point. Apparently there are now restaurants that are designed to operate with only one solitary operator in the kitchen. Presumably they just reheat and serve. Which makes the other chains look like fresh food champions in comparison.

When we got home on Saturday night I got a call from one of the dads who is a bit of a local legend because he’s president of the school council at the primary school, asking me to take part in a shrine-carrying ceremony the following morning. Not really knowing what was involved, I agreed to it on the principle that it was nice to be invited and nice to experience new and exciting things in the locality.

It turned out to be one of the most exhausting experiences in recent memory. The combination of searing heat (see above) and a bloody heavy wooden shrine with two kids inside chanting and beating a drum was more than I’m used to. Luckily I had to nick out for about two hours in the middle of it all because of a prior engagement; if it hadn’t been for that I probably would have fainted pathetically at some point. Luckily also I had to take the car, because all the other guys carrying the shrine were knocking back beers that magically appeared at every stopover point on the route. The first round came out at about 8:30 in the morning and there were new beers being handed around about every 15 minutes after that. As you can imagine this led to a very hot sweaty drunken group of guys by lunchtime, and the grand finale of the parade, which involved about 20 of us whirling the shrine around and around on its ten-metre sticks with the two boys strapped inside, was positively frightening. Somehow we managed to finish without incident. Tragically I have no photographic evidence.

After I finally got home that afternoon, exhausted and bathed in sweat, it was time to head to the beach. The crowds have finally arrived and it’s now officially a Scene, with people of all ages cantering and splashing or just hanging about looking cool. I had a bit of a nap while Felix demonstrated his impressive breadth of social skills, making friends first of all with some young children (building sandcastles), then with some Year 9 boys (playing catch in the water) and finally with a group of young men who buried him in the sand a couple of times. One of them had a few tatts which got me thinking because apparently the only people with tatts in Japan are the dreaded yakuza. Still, they were very nice with Felix; for instance, they didn’t bury his head. Just so long as they don’t try to recruit my son.

On Sunday night we had a group of friends from Okayama over to stay, the guys that we stayed with up in the mountains at Niimi back in Golden Week. Their daughter Chisato is exactly one day older or younger than Ruby (I forget which) so we’ve kept in contact over the years. It was nice to catch up again and we all went out for a meal of Okonomiyaki (of course!) and ate and drank and chatted and generally carried on. Since it’s the start of the school holidays I assumed they’d be able to stay for a few days, but the visit ended up being less than 24 hours because Chisato’s school has club activities scheduled every day during the holidays except for a four-day break in the middle (the week of 16-20 August being a semi-sacrosanct holiday when the entire country sort of goes to sleep). Which makes Ruby’s club look almost lazy; sure they practice solidly for the first couple of weeks but after that they actually stop altogether for about three weeks. Unprecedented stuff.

Finally to round off the big weekend we went to watch Felix play a match at his usual venue in Onomichi, about half an hour up the road. Tragically it was so hot and dusty that I totally forgot about my plans to pop in afterward to the cute little bakery just near the soccer ground where they sell really nice mini-croissants glazed with maple syrup. What a complete waste of a day. No, only kidding. Besides, he’s got another match there in a couple of weeks so all is not lost.

• Do not eat or drink to excess.
• If you discover any health problems, such as tooth decay, seek medical advice.
• Avoid staying up late and/or sleeping in.
• Observe the rules of the road. In particular, on a bicycle, do not dink your friends, ignore traffic signals or ride in the rain while holding an umbrella in one hand.
• Do not drive a car/motorbike without a licence. (So if you’re 13 years old and want to drive a car/motorbike, be sure to get your licence first.)
• Do not sit up until late in the evening watching TV or playing video games.
• Do not go out at night. (Here it helpfully provides the definition of night as “after the sun goes down”. Thanks for that.)
• When going out, students should ideally wear school uniform or, if not, appropriate attire for junior high school students. (And here it adds that the choice of attire may be left up to the parents. This seems very magnanimous of the school. Can we be trusted with such responsibility? After all, apparently we’re incapable of supervising our own children at the beach.)
• Do not go into department stores or supermarkets unless you have good reason to do so.
• Students are forbidden from visiting karaoke clubs, game centers or cinemas without a parent present. (Thirteen year olds? As if.)
And right near the end, the very best one of all:
• If possible, make time to talk with your family members. (Fat chance of that! You should see the pile of homework that Ruby came home with today.)

I was speaking with the principal recently and he finally set me straight. It turns out that the summer holiday is not actually a holiday at all; it’s just that the weather is so hot and oppressive that it would be impossible to study in the classrooms, which don’t have air conditioners, so instead the school sends the students home to study there for a month before calling them back in September when the weather starts to cool down. He was smiling as he said it, but he was deadly serious.

And now we know what the teachers are doing staying back until eight o’clock every night: writing up useful lists of rules like this. Incidentally there was also another two-page Statement of Rules on Swimming, but I accidentally screwed it up and threw it straight in the bin.

So if anyone out there can think of any other zany rules we could add to the list, feel free to leave a comment. Prizes for best ideas. Must be 32 words or less, neatest correct entry wins.

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”.

Felix

Felix has settled into school life without problem. He has picked up the language well, even slipping into the local dialect, and is not having any trouble keeping up with the work. Indeed, he loves studying kanji characters. A couple of months ago he brought home a new kanji dictionary and he still reads through it to discover new and interesting characters and then point out their distinguishing features. A true language nerd in the making. Meanwhile he’s made quite a few friends and often goes around to play at their homes after school. On Wednesdays after school he heads off to the local temple with a few friends to study Japanese history and culture with a couple of volunteer fathers. I can’t imagine why he chose to do this, although the free Coke and sweets may have something to do with it; also the fact that he scores a lift home afterward. He likes playing at the local soccer club and has made a few friends there too. As of last week Felix has also joined the junior swing orchestra and become more inspired to practice his trumpet. All in all, I think he’s quite happy being here in Japan.

Ruby

At this stage of proceedings, it seems that Ruby has drawn the short straw on this whole Japan thing, thanks to her draconian school. I’ve already ranted about at great length about the school (such as here, here and here) so I won’t go on about it any further, other than to say that junior high has proven a major culture shock. On the study side, however, Ruby has applied herself admirably to the intensive homework regime and managed to get some impressive scores on her mid-term and end-of-term exams. Outside of school, she’s kept busy with her two soccer clubs and the junior swing orchestra, not to mention the occasional shopping trip for yet another pair of shoes.

Me

Well I love it here and feel quite at home. For a start, things are so cheap. Prices are the same now as when we were here in the early 90s thanks to a couple of decades of depression/recession, so food is cheap, clothes are cheap (and good quality too), electrical goods are cheap, eating out is cheap. Here we can eat out once or twice a week (usually we go for the cheap-and-cheerful okonomiyaki). Also Japan has great cakes and sweets, which make up for the lousy coffee.

I’ve had plenty of work to keep me busy. One regret is that I haven’t had any interpreting jobs (meaning business meetings and factory inspections as opposed to translation at the computer). I like the idea of getting out of the house every now and then. Of course, the reason I haven’t had any interpreting jobs is because I’ve been too lazy to go out and look for them. I did have some new business cards printed and I bought a new suit back in March, but that’s as far as I got. I think I lack inspiration, I’m getting too old for this. Back in the Tokyo days I was keen as mustard and studied like crazy, but these days I’m content to sit back and let the kids do it for me. I can’t even write kanji characters properly any more. The kids laugh at me, but then, that’s their job I guess.

Eleni

Eleni possibly has the most varied and interesting experience of all of us. On Mondays she takes an English class for a group of Mature Ladies. On Tuesday she takes an English class for a couple of very immature ladies (kindergarten girls). On Wednesdays she has Japanese drumming classes (see video of her latest performance here). Every second Thursday she does flower arranging, and every second Saturday she takes more English classes for kids down at the local community center. In between all of this she does a bit of proof-reading work (set up by me through one of my Tokyo companies; a true husband-and-wife team effort) and catches up with all the friends she’s made through her various classes and group activities, from whom she gets lots of handy recipe and gardening tips. (Which reminds me; I must post a photo of her fabulous veggie garden.)

Family

I think we feel part of the place now. We’re familiar enough with the town of Mihara to know where to get the things we need, but still unfamiliar enough that there is plenty to discover. Sometimes we hear second-hand about “those foreigners down at Sunami” so word has obviously gotten around. And we’ve managed to ingratiate ourselves with a few locals to the point where we’ve already had a few gifts of bags of fresh vegetables from people who either have a tiny plot somewhere or know someone who has a farm nearby. At the moment we’re inundated with potatoes for some reason.
We’re still managing to spend time together as a family, the demands of junior high notwithstanding. These days, card games in the evening have been replaced with watching the latest Glee episodes downloaded from iTunes — tragic I know, but at least we’re all in the same place at the same time with a happy teenager. In terms of outings, Ruby’s soccer matches in the countryside always provide a good excuse for a Family Day Trip, and now there is the beach just down the road.

During the summer holidays we plan to spend a week visiting friends up in Nagoya and also do a few overnight trips around the islands. At Christmas time we’ll head up north to Akita to visit our longstanding friend Eku and indulge in a bit of cheap Japanese skiing. And we might just sneak a few days off school in October or November when the weather cools down a bit and whip the kids off somewhere. So although both kids are certainly finding school more of a challenge than what they were used to in Australia, we’re trying to pack in lots of other stuff to maintain a bit of balance.

Overall mark: B+
Comment: Excellent work Japan, but your education system lets you down.

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.

For the first couple of weeks, Ruby will be trooping off to school every day because the brass band is practicing hard for some big competition coming up on August 9. She’ll will be spending the full day practicing, although they do get a one-hour break in the middle of the day for… guess what… study! Because the school also doles out a massive lump of homework over the summer holidays, since it wouldn’t do for the students to have a bit of free time to relax. After the competition the practice sessions are scaled down a bit, but she still has to go in most days.

And by the way, when you go to school in the holidays you have to wear school uniform.

So school’s out, but school’s not really out. Like a long-life battery in overdrive, Japanese school never sleeps. Even the short breaks for the New Year and the end of the school year (in March) are less than two full weeks, more like ten or 11 days, and you can bet that the kids will be lumped with huge piles of homework then too.

It’s reached the point where we’re hardly surprised any more at what the education system here serves up. It seems every week Ruby comes home with another wacky edict from school: No sweet things for lunch. No drinks breaks during PE classes. No playing at lunchtime. No leaving the house during exams week. Hair ties must be the regulation colour. Hair can only be tied at the back, not halfway up the head. Underwear must be pure white.

Not allowed to swim at the beach until the school says so? No problem.
Native English speakers have to study English too? Makes perfect sense.
Have to stick with the same club activity for three years or your marks go down? Fair enough.
Have to attend school throughout the holidays? Whatever you say.

They’ve even organised a roster of Parent Patrols during the holidays. Our turn is on August 3. We have to meet the other parents and then march around the neighbourhood checking that the kids aren’t being naughty. A big long list came home yesterday of things to look out for (and report back to school the next day, obviously). Things such as:

• Riding too fast on a bicycle
• Dinking friends on your bicycle
• Fishing from the roadside
• Swimming outside the designated swimming areas
• Laughing out loud (OK, I made that one up)

But now, in the name of journalistic integrity and balance, I should like to present what I believe to be the other side of the story. From talking to other parents and reading up on the internet, I have learned that other points of view do in fact exist.

First of all, many if not most parents have to work throughout the holidays (throughout the year in fact; Japanese have never been good at exercising their rights to annual leave, and in the current depressed economic climate people are doubly scared to take time off) and so are glad to have the kids looked after. When you think about it, plenty of Australian parents put their kids in school holiday programs while they continue working; well, here in Japan, the school takes care of it for you. And it doesn’t cost a yen!

From the kids’ point of view, meanwhile, the after-school clubs are meant to provide an enjoyable diversion. No matter that you do it every day after school, sometimes before school as well, and on weekends, and during the holidays; that’s because in Japan, if you’re going to do something, you do it properly. Like, really really properly. Sure it sucks up every last minute of your spare time, but getting together with your friends to engage in something that isn’t study is still fun. Isn’t it?

I have also heard a number of times that the club activities are there to keep the kids off the streets where they might be tempted to engage in naughtiness and Choose the Wrong Path — a sort of state-sanctioned juvenile delinquency prevention program. In Japan, as elsewhere, years seven to nine are seen as the so-called “difficult age” when kids are wanting to distance themselves from their daggy embarrassing parents and start flexing their teenage muscles. The club activities give them the opportunity to stay out until 5:30 or 6:00 every night, so that by the time they get home there’s barely time for homework, dinner and bath before bed. If your teenager is being difficult then this has got to be a win-win solution.

Our case, however, is different because:
(a) while we love all things Japanese, we’re not used to such an authoritarian education system
(b) we both work from home and are around all the time –afternoons, weekends and holidays, and
(c) we still like spending time with our teenager (though she does push her luck occasionally).

At least the primary school is under no such pretensions. As far as I’m aware (fingers crossed) Felix does not have to do anything during the school holidays other than the regulation pile of mindless holiday homework. The school pool remains open throughout the break, which sounds like a great way to get together with friends. Naturally there is a parental supervision roster for this too, but I’m actually quite looking forward to checking out the holiday pool action at Sunami Primary.

And who knows, maybe Ruby will end up having a really great time with the brass band after all. After all, you can never tell what teenagers really want. Why, they don’t even know themselves. Best to keep them busy. That is the Japanese way, grasshopper.

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!

One day last week the teacher delivers another stern lecture to the class: apparently some students are under the misapprehension that lunchtime is for playing. (We’re talking about the tiny bit of lunchtime that’s left after everyone’s finished eating in the classroom and packing their things away; about ten or fifteen minutes.) Lunchtime is most certainly not about playing. What remains of the luncheon period is for getting your books ready for the next lesson. If you have any spare time, you may wish to read a book quietly in the school library, but there is to be NO PLAYING.

So there you have it: from eight in the morning until four-thirty in the afternoon, zere vill be no free time, no fun, no chatting idly with friends. Who needs friends anyway? School is for studying, and nothing else.

No wonder that bullying is such a problem in this country.

The other day I had a dream, of a crazy fantasy world where students go to school from, oh, 8:30 or so in the morning and finish at maybe 3:30; where every day they have both recess and lunch breaks to spend as they please; where they can choose different after-school activities every day or even just go home if they want; where the classes are varied and stimulating and even make use of modern technology such as computers; where school, in short, is a place that you like going to… oh wait, that’d be Australia. And probably most other civilized countries.

We came here to experience a different culture, and I’m loving it all… except for the draconian education system. I desperately want to be proven wrong about this. I would love to be able to retract this piece sometime. But at the moment, this is what I see and it seems so terribly unfair.

There, that feels better already.