Merry Christmas!

I would just like to wish everybody who looks at my blog a Merry Christmas! I've received quite a lot of Christmas cards, greetings and wishes from various people and I'd like to thank you all so much. This Christmas will be a bit wierd. I'm going on a holiday for two weeks to Hong Kong, Thailand and Shenzen in China - I'm looking forward to a break but I will miss my family and spending time with them and my friends over Christmas! Don't worry - time is flying and I will see you all soon. I have been so very busy these past few weeks but I will do my best to update you all with my goings on once I return back to Japan!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Chris aka. Santa-san!!!

KYOTO - The epic journey...

At the end of November we had yet another long weekend (how I love them so!). We had planned to go down south to Kyoto for about a month and I was really looking forward to seeing the southern regions of Japan.

It was a good trip overall, but we had a few challenges hindering our efforts to experience Kyoto. Firstly, it started snowing. The first serious snow in Yamagata really. Everybody was a little shocked, people hadn't put their snow tires on when it first started, and then everyone was rushing around in their cars, queuing up at garages to get their tyres fitted. (I made a booking to get mine done).

Our plan was to drive about 3 hours to the neighbouring prefecture Niigata, and then to catch a night train down to Kyoto. Unfortunately, the snow cancelled the night train and we were potentially stranded (we did get a refund though). So after a bit of scurrying about and last minute planning - we decided to get the Shinkansen the morning of the day after. We all stayed over at Al's in Yonezawa and at 5.30am got up to get the first bullet train down to Tokyo, and then from Tokyo to Kyoto. All in all it took about 6 hours to get from Yamagata to Kyoto. And EVERYBODY was going to Kyoto too it seemed. The shinkansen were incredibly busy.

You can choose to buy a reserved ticket, or a non-reserved ticket (cheaper) - of course we wanted to save our pennies, so we ultimately sacrificed comfort, specifically seating. We had to squat in the corridors of the train, which wasn't so bad - except that we could either stay near rubbish bins, or toilets.

Me and Guy keeping our spirits up, wedged between other peoples legs and rubbish!

Changing trains at Tokyo main station was a bit of nightmare. It was very very busy - and the ticket system was proving to be more complicated than it really seemed. We arrived in Kyoto station at about 2pm. Kyoto station is amazing. A beautiful work of architecture. A massive quasi open air venue with a very high ceiling and an escalator that rises up to the heavens! (not literally). I read a blurb about the significance behind the design - I loved how conceptual and pretentious it was! After grabbing something to eat, we tried to make our way to our hostel.

Kyoto Station was all ready for Christmas.

We got the wrong bus. It wasn't so bad, we could walk a little way to the hostel from where the bus stopped (it passed where we wanted to get off, but it was a non-stop one-stop bus, so we saw it pass our intended destination).

Once settled, we rested a little bit - had a celebratory beer for making it down to Kyoto successfully despite the snow, and then we set off to see some of the sights. The big thing to see at that moment was a temple called 'Kio-mizu-dera' - which was being illuminated at night during Autumn.

It was packed but very beautiful. A rather nice incident happened at our hostel where I met a guy at our hostel who studied at the 'Double Maîtrise' Law degree at Cambridge and therefore knew the people I knew through my friend Kieran who studied law at Cambridge. Small world eh? He came along to the temple too and then we went our separate ways.

It was really hard to take photos with it being so dark - you just have to go and see for yourself!

After the temple, it was time for another bold adventure. Having spent less than a day in Kyoto, we were aiming to spend a night in Osaka - about 40 minutes away by train.

Osaka is often considered the 'second city' next to Tokyo. We learnt that there was a British DJ playing in one of the clubs in the city and we were curious to check him out. He was very good - the club was quite small but had a nice atmosphere and some good music was playing. Unfortunately we were all INCREDIBLY tired, having been up since 5.30am that same day - and we could only return back to our beds once the trains started running again, which was about 5am the next day!

Yes...we were a little silly - but it was good fun nonetheless and we all survived it! After the club, we decided to get some Ramen from a little shop in the city before we caught our train at about 6.15am and I got back to my bed at 7am!

The neon of Osaka

Getting ready for a night of boogie-ing. Probably all looking a little worse for wear too!

Kiwi Clare is loving it though! She went to Osaka two consecutive nights! Two all-nighters! Unbelievable! She always appeared to be full of energy during the day-time too!

Towards the end of the night we couldn't take anymore...!

...but no journey is quite complete without the customary 'Jump-shot'!

........I got up at midday that same day and was (not quite) ready for a day of sightseeing. We managed to see the 'Ginkakuji' (The Silver Pavilion) - not to be confused with the slightly more famous 'Kinkakuji' (The Golden Pavilion) which was quite far out. Unfortunately I didn't have time to see that one but maybe I'll go again!

The reason why everybody was in Kyoto for that long weekend was for 'Autumn'. The trees and the changing colours of the leaves. They were pretty spectacular, and only made better as a result of the neat and beautiful arrangements and compositions of some of the temples.

An example of the beautiful vivid colours of Kyoto's Autumn.

That evening we went for a fancy meal called 'Kaiseki' - the Japanese equivalent of Western 'haute cuisine'! It was delicious! It wasn't terribly expensive either - and there was so much food! Maybe about 9 different courses of Sushi, Sashimi, Meats, Pizza style things, Salads, Tempura etc. They had some delicious home-made beer too - quite a change from the same beer you get everywhere in Japan.

After the meal, we were (needless to say) a little tired and promptly went to bed. The last day, me and Siobhan went to 'Fushimi Inari-taisha'. It's an amazing place with thousands of 'Torii' - the thresholds to shrines. It's a very beautiful and peaceful place but it takes ages to walk around, and quite a lot of it is uphill so we were exhausted after it!

Me and Siobhan at the Temple of the Fushimi Inari-taisha.

Torii Galore!

Kyoto really was a beautiful place and quite different to the North of Japan, or even Tokyo for that matter - much more traditional. It was really nice to occasionally see Geisha and Maiko walking around the old style streets, and there were lots of Japanese people old and young, male and female, walking about wearing some beautiful traditional kimono. 

On the Sunday when we went to the Fushimi Inari-taisha, we saw lots of people dressed in traditional wear. It might have been a special event happening, we weren't sure. I love this photo with the little boy dressed up with his mother, pulling a face as he was having a photo taken!

Me and Clare hunt down a Maiko (trainee Geisha) and have our photo with her! She did look very beautiful.

The journey back was quite horrific: we had to get a very very packed Shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo (getting riled by quite a lot of rude Japanese people - I think I find the city folk can be quite rude and discourteous sometimes - they're quite happy to push or barge around you to get a seat.) After the rough Shinkansen ride, we proceeded to get the night bus back from Tokyo to Yamagata.

We arrived back in Yamagata at about 5am and it was about -4 degrees Celsius. Absolutely freezing. I had just enough time to get back home, shower and straight off to my new school!

I'm not quite sure how we all managed to do that - but we did pretty well! After school I went to bed at 7pm and slept a solid 12 hours. It turned out Yamagata had a small earthquake at about 11pm that night too - and I slept right through - didn't notice a thing!

I would love to go back to Kyoto!

A Mystery Solved!!!

A while ago, before I came to Japan. My predeccesor gave me a few photos of where I would be living. On the picture of the house, right in the corner, there was what looked to be a bonfire of sorts! A tall wooden wig-wam - but only a quarter of it was on the photograph. Nevertheless it got us all wondering what it was, especially my grandparents. Anyway, it seems I have solved the mystery.

Since about the beginning of November I've seen these wooden constructions popping up around Nanyo and the rest of Yamagata. Wondering what they were for, I discovered that they are to protect the trees and plants from the looming winter full of snow and frost.

So there we go! It seems that the photo my predecessor sent me must have been taken during winter - even though I received it around May or June! Sure enough, the tree in my neighbours garden now has the wooden wig-wam to protect it!

Hasashiburi dess (or, 'its been a while'!)

I've been so busy that I have seriously neglected my blog. And now Christmas is almost upon us!

These past few weeks have been quite varied and interesting. I had my first trip to a Japanese doctors (no matter even if you're dying or no matter what diry highly contagious diseases you bring in...you must still tkae your outdoor shoes off!!!) It was quite reassuring to discover that the doctor spoke pretty good English (him and his wife are studying English conversation, and so they invited me for dinner with them sometime in the not too distant future!).

But despite a few rare hiccups like that, I've been feeling really settled. A funny feeling, like I have lived in my house for ages and take it all for granted. I don't think twice about the rubbish sorting (although I regularly groan at having to think which collection days are which, and how much time the recycling preparation takes! I often miss the collection days I need too! I have a massive pile of aluminium from August - and they're only collected once every two months!)

Another sure sign that I'm settled and comfortable is how hard it is now for me to get out of bed in a morning, (probably also owing to how incredibly cold it is inside my house now!) but my routine is quite established now, and whilst I still wouldn't say that I'm a great teacher, I guess I'm a bit more familiar with what I should be doing. A third of the year has passed - the longest term is ALMOST over!

I've been having some great times, and I feel very tempted to do another year here - one year just seems to short. I can appreciate how a second year can be quite different to the first - you build better relationships with friends and people in your community, you are more familiar with Japanese customs and daily-life, your Japanese gets better, you become more confident as a teacher and you have make a deeper impression on your students, pretty much all of them who are fantastic and I would love to work with them more....it's one of the toughest decisions I've had to make yet!