September 29th, 2006
11:16 am
Reach for the sky!
Once again, sorry for not writing for a while (jeez even Towers is updating more frequently these days). But I’ve been busy and plus my computer was in for maintenance.
Two weekends ago I had a equivalent of a bank holiday Monday, so I decided I should go travel somewhere, and I thought to myself
“why not take the car? It’ll mean I’d be able to stop along a few places. Where should I go, oh why not go to the most northern tip of Hokkaido?”
So off I went in my green car (as in colour, not as in good for the environment) driving along the sea coast and getting overtaken by all sorts of vehicles including big red lorries yellow lorries. I normally like travelling on my own, but seeing other young men at rest areas with pretty girl friends does make you feel a bit well… deprived. Oh not to mention most of them had nicer cars too, not that that’s important.
“Made me laugh”
Anyway around three hours into the drive I felt pretty exhausted, the scenery although nice, it’s pretty much the same all the way along, and having people tail gating you waiting for the solid line in the middle of the road to disappear was pretty intimidating, it felt like being made to walk the plank.
After a few scenery stops I arrived at the northern town of 稚内 (Wakkanai) six hours after I set off. It was already dark and I was hungry and tired. Oh did I mention that there was a huge storm out of no where along the way? It went from clear sky to Niagara Falls, it was like in the Truman Show. Anyway I had a wee look around and then found a cheap Japanese style hotel near the station and slept there.
Does any know what this pole thing is about? I’ve seem them in various countries, there’s one at Samyé Ling as well.
I was in a much better mood the following day, and so set off to all the tourisy places, and then aimed for the very top of Hokkaido. Cape Soya.
Freeky abandoned cable car thingy.
Stereo typical all happy and genki Japanese family.
“The most northernly point of Japan” except it’s not true since there’re two tiny islands further north.
After looking around Cape Soya it was 3 o’clock, time to head back down again. I thought rather than taking the same rout back I’d take the mountain route just for a change of scenery, the mountain route was spectacularly windy which stopped me from feeling sleepy, I had expected to be back home at about 7pm, but when 7pm came I was only halfway! And it was really really dark, to cut the long story short I won’t be going out driving long distances ever again, it took me eight hours to get back and so it was a bad bad weekend, I didn’t not enjoy it at all. I now know that travelling by car is not fun, I’ll stick to the trains from now on.
September 16th, 2006
9:13 pm
Famous! Now in English!
Well I guess I should probably have translated this earlier, but don’t you all know at least know one Japanese preson? Anyway I have to the report is extremely flattering, and I’m feeling kind of embarrased that so many people in my town have read it, oh not just my town, this is the Kita-sorachi-shimbun (北空知新聞) so it’s for the whole Kita-sorachi sub-prefecture. The reporter was a really nice guy, he even delivered two copies of the paper for me personally without charge! Anyway, here it is my translation, feel free to correct any mistakes.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Just graduated from university and now on the JET Programme who wants to have the opportunity to get to know the Japanese people, he is very enthusiastic about Japan “I would like to know more about Japan, and the best way is to live here and work here that’s why I’ve joined the JET Programme”. And that’s why he is now working as an ALT in Chippubetsu.
He likes Japanese movies, especially those by Kurosawa and Miyazaki. He was here three years ago on a Working Holiday visa, although sadly he couldn’t find a job then. He has no problem in speaking everyday Japanese, “I think Hokkaido in Japan is kind of similar to Scotland in Britain”. He is very knowledgeable about the history of Hokkaido’s land reclamation, he thinks that Hokkaido has quite a different feel to the main island.
This is his first time being a teacher
“teaching is so much fun, the elementary kids knew a lot more English that I thought which really surprised me. Everyone’s been so welcoming here which makes me really happy.”
He had already made friends in town, he also ran in the school marathon so he is truly a member of the town now. At weekends he likes travelling around the prefecture in his car. He has been to Asahikawa, Sapporo and other places. “I want to see as much of Hokkaido as possible before the snow comes. I guess I should probably travel by train when the snow comes”, he says with a smile.
September 11th, 2006
1:48 pm
Kancho taihen!
The weather’s finally a lot cooler now, I like that but it’s also kind of scary knowing that it’ll get really really cold soon.
First of all an update on the kanchos (should that have a capital K?), what can I say it’s getting worse! What started out with just one boy has now spread to pretty much ALL the kids in the fourth grade and below, on the school open day I was surrounded by all the kids trying to kancho me, some went against the normal tradition and tried to get me from the front as well! Most of the parents were pretty amused by it, and were glad that their kids were having fun! Man, I still have an introduction class for the 4th and 3rd years, but I’m kind of worried about wearing my kilt know. I remember thge 1st year class were all distracted and prefered to lift my kilt up rather than concentrate on what I was teaching.
I was told that one way to avoid the kancho would be get whoever kanchoed you in a head lock position and shout out “Kancho taiken” which is like “free kancho” and the kids would kancho that person instead. However in my case there were just too many of them, I got hold of one of the boys, but only half of the kids went for him (boy they even got his pants down! Glad I had a reliable belt on), then other half decided they should try and rescue him by err…. kancho me.
At my welcome party I was asking the teachers how could I get them to stop kancho me. They said the reason they keep doing it is because I always laugh when they’re doing it, and it’s ok to get angry, it’ll make them stop. While I don’t really want to be kanchoed, I do find it funny.
Oh and the welcome party was fun, they were pretty amazed to find out that I can speak Chinese as well, one of the teachers said “man we should start teaching Chinese as well, you don’t happen to have a traditional Chinese dress as well do you?”.
I didn’t get the weekend off since it was the school festival. But I’m getting two days compensation which I can take whenever I like! Anyway here’re some photos.
Some 1st graders.
The school brass band, all girls; boys seem to prefer baseball and basketball.
Some students giving speeches, like why you shouldn’t smoke, safety on the road (which is probably quite relevent to me), then it got into deep stuff like “what is happiness?” and “one step forward”.
Group jumping competition.
Here’s a video of one of the performances Cheet leaders, sorry I haven’t figured out how to embed videos onto the page reliably yet so you’ll just have to download them for the timebeing. Quicktime is required.
The last weekend was also the goodbye for this steam train, apparently it’s been in service here for tourists until now. As a big fan of trains of course I had to go and say a personal goodbye.
I guess they’ve painted it black just so it wouldn’t look any dirtier from all the smoke. It was the first time I’ve seen an real steam train pulling into a real station. It was pretty romantic, sadly my lover didn’t appear out of the smoke.
Have you ever had TWO egg yokes from one egg before? It’s kind of scary.