Nihondaira Hikefest

The Nihondaira is a huge wooded hill in southeastern Shizuoka City. It encompasses about 25 square kilometers and includes not only forest and tea fields, but also a zoo, a shrine/history museum, the prefectural art museum, a university, a sports stadium, and more.

Armed with a simple map with a dotted line representing a hiking trail across the Nihondaira to the Pacific coast, I figured it would be easy enough to follow the trail and walk all the way from near my apartment (somewhat close to the northern edge of the hill) to the summit of the Nihondaira, then take the ropeway from the summit to the coast, then catch a bus back home from there. On Saturday of Golden Week (a five-day holiday weekend, May 2-6), Davin and I set off around noon and discovered fairly early that the map was crap. Oriented by the distant vision of our goal—the radio towers at the summit, where the ropeway begins—we hiked through the university (shown above) and art museum areas at the north border, then consulted a couple of locals as to the whereabouts of our dotted line trail. On the right path, we walked on as the distance between houses grew greater and the rows of tea bushes longer and more prevalent. Through tea fields and bamboo forest we walked uphill, and eventually arrived at a grouping of gray buildings that resembled a retreat center. After we saw some signs and a man came out of a building and gave us a flier for upcoming shows, we realized we’d found the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, very secluded. (There were several small theaters, including an outdoor one, like at American Players in Spring Green!)

When we questioned the flier man about the dotted line, however, he showed us a bus schedule. We said we wanted to walk, but he was very discouraging of this. Due to our sad Japanese skills, we couldn’t understand his reasoning, so we found where the trail continued…but did not get far when his scare tactics set in a bit. Looking again at the still-distant radio towers, a debate ensued: How far away do those towers look? How many switchbacks do you think there are? When does it get dark? What time do the busses stop running? and If he’s a local, wouldn’t he know?

We ended up taking a bus from the theater back to our neighborhood, to recover with a sushi dinner and try to conquer the Nihondaira another day.
P.S. One of the day's highlights was seeing everyone out to picnic and play on the huge field in front of the university. These little boys were pretty excited to be trying out their makeshift sleds on the hill.

I stopped by the World Sushi Expo...

...and saw a sushi chef hack open a giant fresh tuna.The sushi chef doll gestured emphatically to pump up the crowd, while the MC narrated the whole process; I believe the event was also televised. Intense!

The chef's team portioned and packaged the tuna, then the MC auctioned off the goods to the crowd.

I visited a food stand for a green tea pancake (filled with sweet purple beans) instead.

Container Garden Love

I hadn’t known anyone who lived in Numazu until Davin ran into—at Baird Beer, of course—a fellow JET Programme employee that he’d met at orientation/training and learned that the guy and his wife work in Numazu high schools.

Davin and I went to visit Will and Chrissy for a weekend, and went to Baird of course, but also finally saw more of Numazu, checking out an ultra-fresh sushi bar and Will’s school’s music program concert, featuring some extremely talented students. The piano duets were amazing!

Before returning to Shizuoka City on Sunday, the four of us ate tacos for brunch in the backyard sunshine. Yes, Will and Chrissy have a yard—albeit tiny—but a piece of grass nevertheless, so hard to come by in Shizuoka. They’d converted part of it into a great garden, inspiring Davin and I to get some garden ingredients to arrange on our balcony in hopes for our own herbs and veggies.

In this place where it’s hard to say how long I’ll be, I’ve resisted investing in much stuff, at least the sort of stuff that I can’t take with me, or that would be a pain to take with me, or that I’ve have to find some way to get rid of when leaving. Generally, I’ve not been an extraordinary help to the ailing Japanese economy. But when I thought about it, a garden is one creature comfort completely worth the startup costs. I can’t believe we didn’t start one earlier.

We bought four large planters, a huge bag of organic soil, and some seeds and starts, and scored some additional pots and a trowel from a friend moving from Shizuoka to the Tokyo area. Thus far, we have some good-looking greenage!
Planters lined up on the a/c unitGreen pepper with a viewTwo types of tomatoes
Cute baby spinach
Happy mint, basil, and lettuceDavin's pal "Aloe-fonso"...with strawberry, parsley, and hot peppers

As I type and sip my mint lemonade, I'm just waiting for the mystery pepper seeds from Thailand to sprout in one of the four long planters to declare a complete success!

Numazu Brew

I have toured the Sapporo brewery in Sapporo, Hokkaido, and the Orion brewery in Nago, Okinawa. I am yet to visit the Yebisu brewery in Tokyo, but I already know none of the above could rate with the Baird Beer microbrewery in Numazu, Shizuoka.Numazu is a coastal city an hour east of Shizuoka City by local train, and the brewery is a quick walk from Numazu Station. The trick is making absolutely sure one leaves at the end of the night in enough time to catch the last train back to Shizuoka City (around 11 p.m.).Baird Beer was started in 2000 by Bryan Baird, originally from Boston, and his wife, Sayuri. Patrons sit on comfy couches or varnished tree stumps in the small, second-floor Fishmarket Taproom, and can enjoy their choice of seven beers on tap year-round, plus an additional 6-10 seasonal specials that change each month or thereabouts. Varieties range from golden, fruity ales to thick, midnight-black stouts; the beers have original names and great logos as well. There’s always the Angry Boy Brown, Rising Sun Pale Ale, or Kurofune (“Black Ships”) Porter, but on my last visit, Bryan the Brewmaster had crafted Temple Garden Yuzu Ale made from Shizuoka yuzu fruit (which resembles a tiny grapefruit), and Morning Coffee Stout brewed with Guatemalan beans. Among others! While Baird is hands-down the best beer I’ve sampled in Japan, I’d rank it at or near the top of my best-anywhere brewpub list as well.

The stellar beer selection, accompanied by endless peanuts and pretzels, light dishes from the decent menu, and perhaps a game or two of Scrabble or Bang!, does make catching that last train difficult, but I’ve not had to sleep on the Numazu beach thus far.Check out: http://www.bairdbeer.com/

Osu Junior High School

My second school is much smaller than Aojima, with less than 300 students. To get to Osu, I take the train from Shizuoka to Fujieda as before, then I take a 15-minute bus ride south from Fujieda Station to the school. There are only two English teachers at Osu, one who studied at a university in Scotland and thus, has a cute Scottish accent. He is quite a clown (he goes out for smoke breaks in between classes and I still wonder if it’s just cigarettes that he smokes), and likes to interrupt my lessons to talk about himself and interject jokes. One day, after I’d explained the rules of a game to a class of seventh graders, I emphasized, “No English—Japanese only!” and he followed with, “No Japanese or I’ll kick your ass!” I’m pretty sure none of the students understood what he said, but they could probably tell from the look on my face that it was something inappropriate…

As there are just three homerooms per grade at Osu, I only gave my introduction nine times. Since then, over the past three weeks, I’ve taught “Hello, nice to meet you,” “My name is _____,” and “I like/don’t like (sports, subjects, and food vocabulary)” lessons to the seventh graders; “You look (emotions)” and past progressive tense lessons to the eighth graders; and passive versus active voice lessons (with town landmarks vocabulary) to the ninth graders. It was emphasized in training that the team-teaching dynamic would vary at every school and with every teacher, but so far, all my teachers have pretty much stepped back and let me run the show, jumping in to make comments or to elaborate/clarify in Japanese, if necessary. This makes more work for me, in a way, but as it is I have plenty of prep time to burn, and I find the experience more rewarding this way as well.
So those are the specifics, easy to convey. A bit more difficult is describing how different schools in Japan feel to me compared to those in the U.S., and what the pros and cons of such contrasts may be. I don’t mean to make hasty generalizations, especially given my limited experiences; I’m basing my thoughts on Japan off teaching at only two schools, and my views of secondary education in the U.S. merely off what I recall from being a student and from stories of friends who teach K-12.

So, what’s the difference? First, it is glaringly obvious how much education is invested in here, by numerious parties. Parents pay for uniforms, the students' books and school supplies are glossy and taken care of, and the school facilities are basic (no technology, surprisingly) but well-kept. When I was a student, teachers tended to have their own rooms and students traveled from room to room for classes; in Japan, students have one homeroom where they stay for all their regular subjects (besides music, art, science lab, home economics, and P.E.), and the teachers travel around instead. It's a pain for the teachers to drag all their materials around each hour, but as a result of this arrangement, students are given a sense of ownership of their room. They even eat in their homerooms; a few class representatives retrieve the food and supplies from the main kitchen, then the students serve each other and collect all the dirty dishes and garbage to be whisked back to the kitchen after the meal. There are no janitors (and no janitors' salaries to pay); every day there is scheduled cleaning time between lunch and recess. For fifteen minutes, to upbeat music playing over the intercom, everyone at the school (including me) grabs a broom or rag, refills bathroom supplies, empties garbage cans, cleans the chalkboard erasers...whatever sprucing is needed. This is brilliant, because of course if students know they're responsible for their own mess, they're more concerned about keeping the place clean to begin with, or at least not trashing the materials and workspace. Overall, there's a respect for school property that I recall as severely lacking in my schools growing up:

School buildings tend to be three or four stories, the windows are often wide open, and there are no screens; however, I am yet to see anything or anyone exit a building via window. I walked into an eighth-grade classroom and students, unsupervised, were carefully using razorblades to cut out syrofoam blocks for a class art project. And students may be unsupervised at many times throughout the day, oftentimes during recess, cleaning time, individual reading time, and club practice. Sure, they screw around, get completely off-task, and chaos ensues, but no one is injured and nothing's been destroyed. In my middle school any combination of the above would have guaranteed disaster! Five seconds without a teacher present and someone's backpack would've been tossed out the window, someone else would've been bleeding, and the art project probably would have taken some perverted turn for the worst.

So I wonder if these students are too docile...sometimes I look at them in their snappy navy-and-white sailor uniforms and think, "Don't you just want to do something bad?" But I have seen them silly, screaming in excitement, and at times clearly irritated by one another...like I mentioned, there can be chaos. But it is always blanketed by a layer of respect for teachers, property, and so forth. Sure, there are some rules I'd consider excessive. But at least students have greater potential for learning when their classmates aren't abusing resources and disrupting the process. Wow, I sound like a real rule-follower here...I've got to admit, though, as a teacher I am being truly spoiled by having such great students.

This week, I head for the hills. My third school is in the foothills far northeast of Fujieda, in Okabe, a village that was just recently absorbed under the Fujieda Board of Education umbrella. I am very excited to see what Okabe is all about—on the schedule I was faxed, looks like I will be going hiking on Tuesday and jumping rope on Wednesday.

Photos: ninth-grade classroom, teachers' room, students' entryway

Even rainbows are different here.

The seventh and eighth grade students were outside running relay races. I was working at my desk in the teachers' room when one of the P.E. instructors came inside and made an excited announcement. A commotion ensued amongst the other teachers, then everyone rushed to look out the window. So of course I did the same...and looked up to see the craziest rainbow ever: It is not easy to take good photos of a rainbow that is circling the sun. But yes, there was a giant, full-circle rainbow ring around the sun. I knew that all rainbows are technically full circles (people just don't typically see the full circle because the horizon is in the way), but still, this was wild!

When I looked into this phenomenon online, I found that what I saw was most likely a "halo" and not a rainbow, since full-circle rainbows can only be seen from very high elevations (such as from an airplane; a person would have to be above the rain, with the sun behind him/her to see a rainbow), and since the colors were "backwards" (red was on the inside of the bend, a characteristic of halos; red is on the outside of rainbows...unless there's a double rainbow, in which case the second rainbow's colors will be backwards, like a halo's). Ah, science.

I heard from a friend that this rainbow/halo/whatever-it-was had been covered on the Shizuoka news. Apparently such a sighting is rare, so this really was a big deal! I'm glad to have seen it firsthand.

Aojima Junior High School

As I’ve mentioned, I’m assigned to work between three junior high schools in Fujieda, a relatively small town 20 minutes/five train stops west of Shizuoka City. Each of the three schools houses grades 7-9, and I rotate between schools every 2-3 weeks. My first weeks of work were spent at Aojima, the largest junior high school in Fujieda with 700+ students (a typical homeroom size is 35-40 kids). Aojima is located just a short walk from the Fujieda train station, and the school consists of two 3-story buildings connected by a walkway, two gyms (one specifically for kendo and judo), a scummy outdoor pool, and a large dirt field used for recess, P.E., sporting activities, and earthquake drills.

Aojima has four English teachers, 75% of whom are lovely to work with. Even the fourth isn’t bad; with her standoffishness and monotone voice in class and outside conversations, I thought she hated me, but when she brought me homemade blueberry taffy I realized she just has a very reserved personality. And the taffy was amazing.

For two weeks at Aojima, I visited English class after class; there were so many homerooms that I only got to visit each class once. And my first lesson is a self-introduction… so basically, for the whole two weeks I just talked about myself over and over, with various props and photos, making slight modifications to the guessing game and activity components of the lesson, depending on the grade level.

In fact, I did so much talking about myself that by Wednesday of the second week, I’d lost my voice. Truly. I could speak in a whisper with an occasional squeak—not fun. But despite my not-feeling-awesome-ness during the last portion of my stay, the school was really great!

A few highlights:

1. Part of my introduction lesson was a guessing game, where I’d ask a question and give students a choice of three (ex. “What country am I from?”…I’d put three flags on the board…“Canada, America, or South Korea?”). When I got to “What sport did I play in school?” they would absolutely freak out when I picked soccer from the choices of soccer, basketball, and tennis. They would all vote for basketball or tennis, and just scream when I narrowed the choices down and their choice was eliminated. I did not expect such a lame question to be so entertaining!

2. If students didn’t have club activities after school and were dismissed around the same time I was leaving, I’d oftentimes have a pack of girls walk all the way to the station with me, trying to figure out how to ask me questions in English such as, “Do you like ice cream?” I had a tiny little 7th grade boy walk with me a couple times, too—so cute! Except he would ask harder questions, like “What’s your favorite anime character?”

3. A sweet 7th grade girl came up to me after class one day (after I’d talked about being from Wisconsin) and whispered, “Excuse me, Miss Lindsay? I lived in Indiana for five years!” with the most excited look on her face. (Can you tell I like the 7th graders best? They are just so kawaii...)

4. And lastly, my most notable experience at Aojima: I didn’t attend opening ceremonies at the school (in Japan, the school year begins in April; I arrived when ceremonies were over and classes were starting), so I hadn’t the chance to say hello to the fully assembled student body. I was fine with this, but the principal decided that a good time for me to give a little speech would be early the first week of classes, during the earthquake drill. (And what sort of impression would I have made, were I to question the appropriateness of this on one of my first days?) Teachers wearing hardhats (myself included) herded all the students outside, where the students were divided and counted by homeroom and neighborhood, then asked to sit down. Someone had set up a rickety metal platform, and the principal climbed it and made a few announcements into a megaphone. Then it was my turn! Oh, my. I’d been asked to use both Japanese and English, so I spoke line by line, first in English, then the Japanese translation (using the megaphone, natch):

Hello. Konnichiwa.
Nice to meet you. Hajimemashite.
My name is Lindsay. Watashe no namae wa Lindsay desu.
I am 27 years old. Watashe wa ni ju nana sai desu.
I’m from America. Watashe wa Amerikajin desu.
I’m excited to speak English with you. Thank you!
Dozo yoroshiku. Arigato gozaimasu!

(I have a very limited Japanese vocabulary.)

Absolutely hilarious. This was an experience I will never, ever forget.

A parade went past my house!

Really it was just one float, but it was the most excitement my tiny little street had seen in a while (probably since Election Day, when cars carrying megaphoned candidates drove by over and over, those up for election shouting the details of their campaign platforms for all apartment buildings to hear). First came some women and kids... Then came the men...

And they were helping pull this:

The traditional Japanese floats I've seen have been intricately carved, extremely tall, and typically "hauled" by a large group of people (whether the float is motorized or it really is being pulled). I like how the long hauling ropes corral the participants, emphasizing the sense of community and cooperation that festivals celebrate. This neighborhood assemblage was headed for Sumpu Park, near the city center, for Shizuoka Matsuri. Various floats paraded into the park, where there was taiko drumming, lots of food carts, and an appearance by a Japanese celebrity (I forget his name; I didn't wait in line for an autograph).
Unfortunately the day was dreary, with showers on and off into the evening…however, the show went on: raincoat-clad dancing troupes filled Shizuoka's city center that night, performing coordinated routines to peppy, blaring music. And almost everyone looked like they were having a great time on the shiny wet streets!

Hanami on the Nihondaira

There are many traditions surrounding sakura season; for example, banks give out complimentary pink boxes of tissues because so many people are allergic to the blossoms. A much better observance of the sakura arrival, in my opinion, is hanami. As far as I can tell, “hanami” translates as: going to sit on a tarp in a park, gaze at the cherry blossoms with family and friends, eat, and drink sake (or whatever you prefer), while basking in the sweetness of springtime. Everyone does this. The parks are patchworks of blue and green tarps, bags and coolers of treats, and perhaps a few wanderers who’ve over-imbibed…though overall it is a pretty low-key, family-friendly mass picnic. I went to a little hanami party on a mid-April Sunday, an absolutely beautiful day, at the Nihondaira park in Shimizu. We picnicked, wore bunny ears, played guitars, tossed the Frisbee, got a little sunburned…and Mark accidentally bought non-alcoholic beer, which was pretty funny.I may have eaten a few sakura petals...they were blowing from the trees onto our food and beverages :)

Sakura Season

The sakura (cherry blossoms) bloomed here in Shizuoka in early April, and it was lovely seeing green parks and tree-lined boulevards accented with pale pink flowers.

The traditions of sakura season were pretty great, too (I'll elaborate soon).

Nishikigoi-gazing

The moat around Sumpu Park in Shizuoka is filled with these wolves!
While koi fish are said to symbolize determination and strength to the Japanese, the Sumpu scene is less than inspirational: cloudy water, koi swarming to onlookers, hoping for bread crumbs (far from coy).Yet they're friendlier than the Sumpu swans, I'll give them that. And these aren't the wimpy, dead-within-a-week goldfish that are won as carnival-game prizes...apparently koi can live for up to two centuries.