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AAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhh I somehow managed to wipe all but 2 of the photos from my trip. Heart broken. I hate technology sometimes. Read the blog, and I will try to salvage the photos. sob
The home stretch. A time to start thinking back. Difficult to do, but as is so often the case in life, it is difficult to have a clear headed perspective on things happening at the time. There is too much worrying about having to be back at work the next data, making sure you are keeping up your squeaky clean image on the island, fitting your hour of studying a day to insure that you are making progress and don’t get that stupid felling back when you cant articulate or understand what’s going on around, eating healthily, keeping up with the ever changing rubbish collection (an ongoing mystery) and at the same making sure you are getting the most out of things while you are in your short life.
Wit all the above constantly whirling around the noggin’ it is easy to just always be aiming for somewhere or something and not take time to really look at how great every day is.
The weather, the weather! I know I always go on about this, but the longer I live here, the more oppressive and miserable I realize the weather back in Britain is. It is just not natural to live in the dark for the winter and to e cold up until summer. The sun. Oh how I will miss the sun.
In truth I am sure I will arrive back and realize that in actual fact the weather in the UK was not all that bad and certainly the central heating is a godsend, but at the moment I feel like I wake up fully awake every morning to the e sun beaming in and I don’t know what it would have done if the winter had gone on any more.
The outro. The days get warmer and warmer, in fact until, you begin to feel as though you have a hot blanket around you, then it get stuffier and stuffier, until soon the heavens drop and the world turns into a old wet sock.
The rainy season is just around the corner but for now the weather seems to be a light switched on from above.
The islands really highbernate in the winter and even in the sring, come a day like today, the rain, seems to send everyone running for cover, and once again it feels like there is no-one here.
I stand on my balcony, and there is not a sound, apart from the distant whirr of the shipyards across the small sea.
A single fly flying around my room also indicates that the insects were in fact not all finally killed of by the winter, and were in fact once again hibernating ready to re-emerge and say hello soon. Thus soon, once again come the restless nights and waking up with mosquitoes flying around my ear and things crawling in the walls. It’s amazing that o matter how long you are here and are used to it, your body can never quite sleep through it.
In an old house, all the nets and cleaning cannot keep the nature out however, and I accept it and open my wares to the inhabitants of the seto naikai, rent-free. The only problem is what follows them in to feast.
The rainy season. Urgh.
I need to think of a plan. I turned winter round this year by discovering snowboarding and onsens, so I need to come up with some way of putting a spin on the rainy season….. If you have any ideas, let me know.
Hot rain, cheap showers?
Whilst the weather has been favorable I have been finally getting to know the large rock of Shikoku, which, despite lying to the south of me and being technically a member of by prefectual reasoning I have explored little, owed mostly to the fact that I live about 3mins ferry form the Hiroshima mainland.
But I feel I have bee unfair to the Shikoku. After all it is Japan fourth largest island, and for many years cut off and happily so, giving it a sleepier, and at times more traditional feel that is ever changing since 2 enormous bridges have been built to connect it with mainland.
The first of these adventures was during The annual Golden Week, a so called week long holiday in Japan, that actually is a number of national holidays, including Children’s Day and Green Day, which are all clumped together. Larger companies allow their employees to take the days off in between to create week holiday. Not schools. Or not my school anyway.
Thus my Golden week was reduced to a golden 2 days, spent sick in bed.
However the 2 days preceding it were spent in the great company of a family that I used to teach on my island, but owing to the fact that the father is a policeman, he is moved on, as all government employees are, after 3 years to quite literally to other side of Ehime Ken, a good 5 hours by boat and train.
After being a little apprehensive about going to vista the family, and daydreaming of awkward silences, and boring car journeys, I of course, had a great time and a fantastically privileged opportunity to spend time with a family on their day off.
The destination as Uwajima, a seaside town area in the south of Ehime, famous for its pearl cultivation, Bull Sumo, and more infamously, its fertility shrine.
The weekend saw summer like temps and I enjoyed a relaxing journey down the seaside to sight of terraced mountains, electric blue seas, and orange groves.
The area is even more rural than where I live, which although is not and island area, it had managed to stretch itself off around bay and secluded peninsulas, that give the impression that they are islands in themselves.
It was beautiful.
In fact the sea was much cleaner, and everything was surrounded by beautiful mountain that were covered in newly leafing cedar trees that gave a nice dark and light green pattern to the countryside around.
I was nice to see the family, and I had forgotten how well I had got along with them.
The mother, had been the loyal wife who had moved from he city to my island with her husband, only to be cut off on a island with “too many mosquitoes and no shops” and my English conversation group had been her only means of social interaction. She cried at her last English Class on leaving.
The son was in my kindergarten, and the father in my other English class on a Wednesday. A kind serious, and very Japanese man, who would come in his police uniform, and who would sometimes regale us with his skills on the guitar at playing Beatles tracks.
A very Japanese family, who had adopted a possibly Japonized English boy for the weekend.
The first involved a lot of seeing the few sights that Uwajima had to offer, and I wondered if they would take me to the fertility shrine at one point, but luckily I was saved the embarrassment.
After seeing the standard sights. We headed to a nearby town called Matsunochou, a very typical, and very beautiful little town, further up in the mountains where the father was born and I would spend the night. The grandfather and mother had been told that someone was coming to from the island they had lived, but nothing else and so were a little surprised to say the least when I walked through the door.
At first, I have to say I relay struggled with his bordering Kochi Prefecture, past generation accent but soon the beers were flowing and all the usual topics of the queen and how sad it was when princess Diana, were off and going.
It is always tricky in these situations, especially with people from an older generation, to avoid talking about the war. The story usually goes, Oh your English? Which leads onto why everyone speaks English, or with people in my area, how all the ships used to built by the British, which then leads onto, the British Empire, which nice ends up landing of the doorstep of WW2. Like a car crash waiting to happen, you can see the hints early on but there is nothing to stop it and suddenly, once again you have the weight of your countries behavior over the world, and the horrors of the Second World War on you shoulders again. Sometimes, it seems inevitable and you just seem to have to get it out of the way early and move on, hopefully gracefully without offending anyone, or turning the room to silence, as if your white presence was just a horrifying reminder of the atrocities. I am annoyed at any war or behavior that seems to put me in this position over and over again. Not only is war crap but also it seems to define countries, and all the other things about eh country become irrelevant. I hope that we realize this now in Britain, that it doesn’t matter how many good things you do, or fantastical artists or writers you have. If you invade another country that’s what you are remembered for.
Anyway we got it out the way, and luckily, I am not American, which would be worse. Sorry to all my fantastic US brethren, but don’t say you would be chuffed to be American if you were in Londonderry, although perhaps that is no longer true…
It was great night, and when you have been away for so long, it is nice to sit down to that cozy family atmosphere and they are a great family and I am very grateful to them.
Being the country, we were surrounded by rice paddies on all side and that night I fell asleep to the sound of thousands of frog’s ribbetting into the night. It was like being in the jungle. I love Japan.
The next day, after an enormous, hearty breakfast of rice, pickles, fish and soup, we set off in the car to nearby Kochi Pref.
I had accidentally invited myself unintentionally the night before to stay to night, when really I had just meant that I wanted to go off on my own and explore the surrounding countryside whilst I was there. Being no-where to stay, and being Japanese and ever ready to bend over backwards to help, even if it is not wanted, I was convinced into staying another night and going home the following day.
The drive would take us down the Shimanto River, famed to have the cleanest water in Japan, to which the father claimed was “not quite accurate’ meaning ‘bullshit’, but before that we would pop round the corner to a cousins house for a surprise.
"Makenashi!" Uwajima is probably known most famously amongst Japanese for its Gyudou, or Ushizomu; Bull Sumo. Cows are not really native to Japan, and especially no the kind tat you see at these sumo contest, but apparently when the Dutch made it to Japan in the 18thC they stopped off at Uwajima port and introduced cows and the townsfolk came up with there own brand of bull fighting, but one where the bull doesn’t get slaughtered at the end.
These fights still go on annually and the cousin of the family own one of the strongest in town.
“makenashi” never lost a fight he told me as he showed me his giant, solid as a rock bulldozer like creature who was tame as a kitten, but who looked like he drank protein shakes all day down the gym.
I intend to return in July to view this beast, named the Akamatsu bull after the family, in full battle mode this summer.
Home to the most famous religious pilgrimage in Japan, the 88 Shikoku Temple Pilgrimage, the road in Shikoku is always being walked by these white clothed, straw hatted travelers, and around the coast of Kochi, where we were heading, there was a one around every corner. Ashizuchi, home to a famous view of a lighthouse, and Shikoku's most southerly point, and 3 of the 88 temples, spread over the area, the coast was full of Japanese tourists, eager to use their 2 days of holiday I the year, and get a photo of both the light house and themselves in front of it.
The coastline was beautiful to see and it was great to see so many ‘ohenro san” or pilgrims, but it certainly was packed. The whole of Japan all coming to take a picture of this lighthouse. I mean its not if we are not short of them in Britain, but it is amazing what the board of tourism can do to re-spin Japan as being the only place that the Japanese would want to see.
Any way it was a nice days outing and a chance to see a famous sight, but we returned home pretty damn exhausted and ready for sleep tot he sounds of the frogs again.
Signs of fertility To the Japanese, Uwajima is famous for Bull fighting. To everyone else, its famous for the shrine of fertility and possibly more so for the adjoining sex museum.
Now, I had come with the intention of sneaking off at some point on my own to go to this, as I felt that I could not leave with going to this so written about and infamous sight. But again the Japanese over kindness was getting into eh way. It is very hard to be direct, possibly both for the Japanese and the British, so when I kept on saying that I would make my own way home, in the end I ended in a car, being driven to the next town to a place, that I had intended to visit after my fertile encounter.
Tricky. Now I was a town away from Uwajima, and I said goodbye I felt a slight annoyance at the fact that I had said a million times, that honestly it was fine, I would make my own way from Uwajima station, but that here I was after al this miles away from where I wanted to be.
Can’t blame the Japanese for being nice, but sometimes they can kill you with kindness. Its tricky and sometimes I get confused with it myself.
Anyway, being a man of perseverance, I got on the train to head back to Uwajima.
On the train I felt like a criminal, and the thought of bumping into the family I had stayed with and having no choice but to say that I wanted to go and visit the sex museum, but was too embarrassed to say so, and so had sneaked back into town, was revolving around my head. Chances are they would have replied well ‘Well why didn’t you say so! That’s why everyone comes here. We go there twice a week! Here, borrow our monthly passes.’ But at the time it seemed a little over awkward to say so.
So off I went looking around every corner, feeling like every person in Uwajima new where I was headed. Finally I arrived and there seemed to be no one there. Perfect, I slip in now, take a picture and leave and no one will be any the wiser and I will be able to tick it off my list of places in Japan.
The shrine itself was actually rather nice, and red and I wondered why it was considered a fertility shrine until I saw a rather strangely carved log at the side of the entrance.
‘Now wait just a minute! That’s no log!!!’
You get the point.
I was surprised to see that it was actually a white robed priest that was manning the museum entrance, and no that sex has the same guilty connotations as it does in the Christian west, as it does here, especially when it comes to Shinto’s, a piracies that resembles something like Paganism, but yet I still gave him a look like “you naughty old son of a gun, you!” and he returned me look like “looks who talking”, and so I paid my 1000 yen entrance fee and shut up.
The less said about the inside of the museum the better, for the sake of the rents and other family members, but it gave me a insight to why there is so much pornography in every convenience store and normal bookstore, and it also left me feeling slightly scarred for life, and wondering how bad a life as a celibate monk could actually be. Well, it wasn’t that bad, but it was like a chronicle of the history of sex in different culture and was about as graphic as you could get. If you ever seen the karma sutra then you’ll get the general idea. Who could have know that being a graphic pornography in the Meiji Era could have earn you such a living!!!
Anyway, an experienced that will not be forgotten quickly, and I left like I had really seen Uwajima.
Overall, a fantastic weekend, and a reminder of how nice a content life can be with family, and it made me miss mine a little, but all in all it made me happy to get a glimpse into normal Japanese family life. And on the way I managed to see some great sights, stroke a bull (watch it.) and have the bird and bees re-explained from every angle of the world.
Who could ask for more?
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denis
non-member comment
not only did you wipe all your photos but the two you have look exactly the same. Good blog anyway.