Freda`s top 10 Japanese experiences

Here I sit at my gray army desk, decorated with kanji cards and daruma dolls, there are no classes today and I have already eaten all the cookies I was going to give the kids for next week’s lesson. I have nothing but time. This is a far cry from last week`s teaching my tail off and taking an interview that will decide my fourth year fate concerning the Jet program and so with all these extra minutes at my disposal I have taken the time to think about why I would want to stick around.

Japan and I have danced a fine tango and while we have most definitely stepped on each other’s toes from time to time I think we have had a frak load of fun. Sometimes, when I am able to overcome my lazy ways, I have highlighted some of the places and people who have made this time on foreign soil so special but for the most part I just put up a few Facebook photos and get back to gaming, or teaching or trying to coerce Roland into making me some tea because I am trapped in my fluffy blankets and cannot escape. I have however seen some pretty exciting places and chatted away to some pretty amazing people so here is `Freda`s top 10 Japanese experiences. I have tried to stick to things I have not discussed before but I make no guarantees.

Number 10: Kumamoto

Einstein was wrong, there are three big infinites; the universe, human stupidity and Kumamon the bear and while this representative of Kumamoto is truly terrifying, and everywhere you look, he does not dull any of the shine given off by this breathtaking prefecture. Not only did Roland and I get to share a few beers over some raw horse meat (yes I felt bad) with great South African / Portuguese company but what rivals climbing up an active volcano in the dead of winter or spending time with ninjas and samurai at a picture perfect castle. Number 10 on the list is walking the summer gardens with Roland and freezing my ass off in the company of my brother in law and a very angry Mount Aso.  

Number 9: Nara 

While standing near this sweet-potato seller, we heard a foreigner loudly say: there is always money in the sweet-potato stand!   

The old capital city of Japan has some hardcore deer! A few of them had tattoos and one was definitely smoking a cigarette while mugging me of every rice cracker I carried. If you are planning to brave this city stocked with giant bronze Buddhas and spectacular wooden temples make sure you keep your hands where the deer can see that they are cracker free. My dad getting damn near knocked down by deer and having my breath stolen by the immensity of Todaiji temple is why Nara is sitting pretty at number 9.

Number 8: Nagasaki lantern festival 

Allow me to lay a little math on you. Take 3 effervescent South African ladies and add one stoic Namibian, subtract a snowy mountain highway but allow for a toasty car filled with road trip snacks and supplies, multiply by an amazing Dutch infused town and finally set it all alight with millions of glowing lanterns. We stuffed ourselves full of Izakaya food (pub fare) and Kakuni Manju (buns filled with pork BBQ) and ran around the cold night air taking thousands of photos of the magnificent paper lanterns. That night still inspires a huge smile on my face and a great desire for fatty pork barbeque every time I think of it.      

 Number 7: Fukuoka Beer Fest and Costco 

Being crushed under Costco goods

October-fest, Japanese style

In a land of plastic cheese and pizza topped with mayonnaise and corn only one hero has the stones to step up and with a booming gaijin voice proclaim, enough of these flavorless potato chips and inability to find feta for your salad or muffins the size of your head, I will save you puny teachers of English for I am Costco! It might take two and a half hours of driving but if you take some good company along (I am looking at you Ducky and Katie J) the time flies.

Fist you load up on your yearly calories with a pizza slice, American hotdog and bottomless coke from the food court, then you wash handfuls of orange pizza grease from your face before grabbing a ginormahuge (thanks for the word Alisha) trolley that you proceed to fill with tubs of peanut butter, German sausages and of course mountains of cheese. If you are still good and hyperglycemic from all the sugar feel free to visit a fun German beer festival held every now and then and get your imported brew and pretzels on. It is impossible to have anything other than an epic time.

Number 6: Camping in Okinawa 

View from the tent

Camping in the rain is not great, camping in the rain while dying of the flu is really not great. Camping in the rain while sick and discovering that the showers are cold and the toilet is of the squat variety is misery incarnate. And yet, despite all of this Roland and I crawled out of our tiny tent, feasted our eyes on the most incredible view and had a memory making time on the island of Okinawa. The aquarium is pretty spectacular and the main tank that holds a few whale sharks is impressive to say the least. The flower park / greenhouse right next door is also well worth a visit and driving little pineapple shaped cars while eating pineapple slices as you look at pineapple plantations is pretty damn fun. It was refreshing to dine on some foreign food like spareribs and American ice-cream but Roland and I will forever kick ourselves for assuming that the taco rice that we saw advertised everywhere was not as we assumed octopus rice (the Japanese for `octopus` is `tako`) but a delicious Mexican inspired deconstructed taco on rice. Oh well, at least we learned how to make it at home. 

 Number 5: Hakone  

This little town just outside of Tokyo is ridiculous! It throws you over cliffs in cable cars, it lets you ride pirate ships over mountain lakes, it shows you actual Picassos and lets you lie down next to authentic Henry Moors, few places packs so much sightseeing into such a small package and it is well worth a visit. The open air art museum had me gasping at every second name I read and seeing a snow covered Fuji san from the deck of a pirate ship is as amazing as it sounds. Now add koi ponds and cherry blossoms in full bloom and you end up with a kickass mini adventure by anyone’s standards.

 Number 4: Eating okonomiyaki in Osaka 

I have always appreciated a good contrast and so when my early evening was filled with staring out over the entire Osaka from the Ueda sky building`s roof, nothing made me happier than getting down to the old-Japanese-street-style restaurants kept in the basement of this iconic building, sitting down in a tiny Okonomiyaki eatery and telling the sweet old Japanese chef to osusume (recommend) us up something to eat. The restaurant is pretty famous and has at most five tables so the in-laws and I had to wait a little while but holly molly was it worth it. 

While I like Hiroshima style Okomimiyaks, as Roland calls it, I love the Osaka style even more. There is not all that much of a difference, one is more mixed and one has more cabbage to batter ratio but at the end of the day a meat, cheese, egg, sauce, mayo grilled pancake hits the spot. You can even add some noodles if you so choose. The atmosphere at that restaurant was friendly and warm and the izakaya style place around the corner was equally nice. The kind owner even gave us free desert because he said foreigners should enjoy their time in Japan.

Number 3: Disney…freaking…sea!!! 

Yeah....I have very little shame...

When I was growing up in good old SA, telling my folks that I wanted to go to Disney land was usually met with `well I want a red Ferrari and we can’t always get what we want`. Don`t get me wrong, my childhood was far from Annie or Oliver Twist-ish but living so far away from the US-of-A meant my chances of meeting Mickey were slim indeed. Well you can suck it improbable childhood dreams because I randomly organized my ass all the way to Japan and in so doing put myself in the direct path of Tokyo Disney. I have seen both parks (Disney Land and Disney Sea), the latter park twice because why the hell not and I have some really fun memories to look back on. There is the time that we made my slightly claustrophobic mom-in-law go down an Indiana Jones cave ride just after she had told us that her biggest fear was getting buried alive, I fondly look back at Roland`s face radiating `what-the-hell-is-this`, during what he felt was a very boring ride down `it`s a small world after all`, seeing the fear in Ducky and the German`s eyes after doing the Tower of Terror and how much fun Cornelia and I had trying to do every bloody ride in the park while looking super stylish in our matching Mickey and Stitch hats. Yeah, I totally got to high five the hell out of five year old Freda.

Number 2: Osaka`s King Tut exhibit.   

Not only did I get to hang with king Tut`s stuff, I got to see a whale shark.

Every now and then when I glimpse a famous artifact on an Egyptian documentary or in a random magazine, I still go `I saw that` to nobody in particular. As a little girl I was obsessed with Egyptology, thanks largely to my dad telling me the life story of Cleopatra while I sat, wide eyed in the back of our old Volkswagen bus. I knew the names of Egyptian gods like kids today know their Pokemon and on my wall hung a replica of the Rosetta stone (a gift from Ducky), kindly framed for me by my loving mom. I even took ancient cultures as a minor during my university days. So imagine if you will how shaky my knees were while I walked into an exhibit housing 122 objects excavated from Egyptian tombs, 50 belonging to Tutankhamen himself. I was beside myself with joy and I barely had the ability to occasionally whisper in Roland’s ear, `Can you believe this` or `I saw pictures of this sculpture in probably 20 textbooks`. I am trying to do it all justice but honestly that day was beyond what I can manage with words. 

Number 1: It was always going to be Odaiba Island. 

Most people know this manmade island as a slightly cheesy district of Tokyo city but I know it

as the freaking future! Odaiba adds a generous helping of sci-fi to your soul with its futuristic artworks, ultramodern architecture and of course the huge Gundam fighter looming over all of us mere mortals. What other place on earth comes equipped with an onsen village (an entire town built to look like Edo period Japan, where everybody wears yukata (summer kimono) before or after spending some time in all the different types of warm water baths), a Toyota test track where you can race (ok....go like 40 kph) any of their models for like R30, huge shopping centers where the ceiling of the building matches the sky outside, a Ferris wheel, a games arcade and my favorite part, the Miraikan science museum, where you can see the little robot named Asimo, kick a ball, shake his groove thing and chat away to his handlers. Few things are as fun as watching that little robot run around. 

When all of this has tuckered you out I recommend getting yourself a huge Hawaiian burger from Kua'aina while you look out over the bay, sporting a fine view of Tokyo Tower and a fake statue of liberty.

 This is also the home of the most famous Anime expo in the world. Comiket takes place twice a year and sees more that 500 000 people, many dressed up as their favorite characters, come to shop, chat to other fans and show off their costumes. The crowds are amazingly managed and you see huge Tetris squares of people marching army style into slots, eventually leading to the main event. It is something to behold but be warned the trains are a tad full on those days. 

So while I am not so big into warm woolen mittens or brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things. There is still so much left for me to see, I have yet to visit the Hokkaido snow festival or naked man battle and I hear rumors of Harry Potter world opening next year. So if all goes well with my interview results I will have a few more pages for you after another year in Japan, if not I am getting my South African adventure on and you guys better all be ready with the braai invites.

So, winter in Japan ...

Snow blasted trees in Kumamoto

Due to abandoning my old, frosty ice fortress of an apartment last year, just after the worst of the winter had, had its way with me, I have been bubble-wrap free since April 03. You see winter in Japan is a war waged with warm little bags of magic metal, kerosene heaters and if you do not enjoy Jack Frost nipping at your nuggets, bubble wrapped windows.

So how does a chilly G.I Joe or Jane protect him or herself against the onslaught of Japanese winter, I hear you ask. I realize that you folks back in Sunny South Africa are reading this post with frowns on your foreheads while you wonder why I am not just putting on a warm jacket and maybe if things are really bad, switching on the little heater covered in dust due to lack of use. This is not sunny South Africa; this is snowy, ice-rainy, below zero, poorly insulated Japan. Some of our doors are made of paper for crying in a frozen bucket. 

But, while nobody really wins this war, most of us escape with our lives and this is how we fight the good fight.

Get your onsen on!

While I have thawed many a toe in the warm onsen waters all over Oita, this last weekend I was lucky enough to try something new. Most of my onsen experiences have been at the cheaper public baths where you either wear a swimming costume and share the mineral rich waters with both boys and girls or you birthday suit up with members of the same sex. My last encounter of the warm water kind saw me relaxing all by myself in one of the `family` baths where you can either have the place to yourself or invite your nearest and dearest, well the ones you care to see naked anyway. Not only did my beautiful rocky pool come with an outside shower, sauna and kickass kabosu (type of lime) body wash but a steaming hot waterfall filled my natural stone bath. Yeah, as far as scrubbing up is concerned, it does not get any better than a Japanese onsen.   

Not so private bath

Private bath

Surrender to the nerdy side.

Now I realize that not all of you out there are as, shall we say, enthusiastic about nerdy or geeky things as my partner in crime and I are, but hear me out. While some of you know your way around a ski slope or snowboard, I was not blessed with the ability to do anything other than hit the ice, face first whenever I even look at skate or sled, so my options tend to turn more towards indoor activities. My advice to anyone thinking of braving the Japanese winter on a long term basis is to don your fluffy Jedi robe, crank up the kerosene heater or crawl under the kotatsu with a few good friends and start playing some board games. There is nothing quite like getting your ass owned at some cards against humanity or Geek-challenge or even some weird zombie game that I still need to get the hang of. Roland and I even managed to win a bottle of champagne for riding a particularly knowledgeable friend`s coattails all the way to geek trivia victory at our local bar. If you prefer to Han Solo it up, the Japanese speed demon internet can also provide you with many hours of mining metals in a good MMO, fighting some foes on X-box live or even just watching some quality shows on Japanese Hulu. All in all I give gaming with some good friends a solid 10 out of 10.       

Buy anything that emits heat.

As I am typing this I am wearing heattech clothing (a type of undershirt or leggings that were designed to keep you toasty), I have two kairo on my person (a little bag of….um…magic, that starts warming up the minute you take it out of its plastic wrapper and last for about 20 hours) and I am breathing in the fine fumes given off by my kerosene heater because it is cheaper than using electricity. I eat hot pots called nabe and while I do not have a kotatsu (table with a heating element and duvet) to snuggle under, I spend many an hour under my electric blanket.

Kairo

While I am by no means a veteran of Japanese winter I feel it my duty to warn any new teachers thinking of heading to the land of the not so warm sun, that while you are going to cry at least once over having to face your freezing shower room or find your teeth chattering as you try to teach in a classroom devoid of any heat, there will also be crisp white Christmases, warm ramen with friends and if you are lucky, soaking in an open air onsen as steam rises from your fingers and snow collects in your hair.

A watched tent never blows over.

The many lessons I have learned while camping in Japan:

1.    Cats are heartless creatures who will steal your last chicken drumstick while giving you a look of pure disdain, or even cat-burgle your potato salad purely because it can.   

2.    Just as a watched kettle never boils so an almost blown over tent will not tumble into the sea no matter how hard my friend Josie stares at it.

3.    No matter how idiot proof Roland makes the instructions, I will still put a tent together to look like an abandoned witch hovel that bergies would be too ashamed to sleep in until he comes to fix it.  

4.    Metal pegs and a plastic hammer do not work as well as one might think.

5.    Whenever we are in a crowd or an onsen I will embarrassingly speak Japanese to my Korean friend, every friggin time.

6.    When David says he will get some fire wood he means he is about to deforest half of Japan.

7.    Camping in Japan is ridiculously fun.

I think it was when we felt the second vibrating tremor under our feet as we hammered in our first peg, that Roland, Lauren and I realized that we had chosen to erect our tent on an old meteor crash site. However, Roland was not going to let a little granite and diamond stop him and his plastic hammer and so after a few muscle spasms and manly grunts he Germaned his way into the ground.

The Nagasaki based campsite was beautiful, with a grassy Frisbee field and an ocean filled with sharp rocks, jellyfish, sea urchins and some weird muscles that one of our party members thought we would eat if he cooked it. He was wrong. David and Minyoung were the second couple to arrive along with their adorable baby who gave me nothing but suspicious looks the entire weekend. Well that is not strictly true as he did flash me a big smile when he saw that I was heading home. Damn kids and their ability to tell who is scheming to kidnap them.

The second couple thought they would take the scenic route past our campsite to the other side of Nagasaki prefecture, because who doesn’t like an extra hour of driving before putting your tent up in the dark. Luckily Josie and Mark made it in time for our first meal of eat whatever comes off the grill, immediately. I think we ended up having chicken for starters and garlic bread for dessert.      

The next day dawned with a cup of stolen coffee and a trip to the nearby onsen to wash some of the smoke out of our hair and some of the bacon and egg grease from our hands. I know I say this all the time but man I love to onsen! There is just something weirdly fun about being naked outside, in a gorgeous stone hot-spring while talking to your girlfriends about how boys can`t close a cupboard or find an object just slightly left of their field of vision.

As the other campers went back to chill, Roland, Lauren and I headed to the nearby Huis-ten-bosch theme park. Not only does this perfect replica of a city found in the Netherlands appeal to my Dutch sensibilities of eating chocolate and cheese, at this time of year it plays host to the gardening world cup and a Van Gogh exhibit showing off fifty of his works. 

While I enjoyed looking at the amazing little blocks of art that was the sculpted gardens, getting to see the actual paint strokes of the artist I admire most in the world was one of those moments that just gives my soul a good shake. I was biting back the tears as I stared into that man`s eyes as he saw them and felt him wring every drop of emotion out of me with a few well placed patches of colour. I bought a little overpriced fridge magnet at the gift shop depicting one of his self-portraits so that every now and then when I grab a block of cheese or put back the milk I get to have that little chill of Goosebumps up my arms as I remember how it felt to see so much genius a few inches from my face.   

   

My intellectual introspection was very short lived however as not five minutes after viewing this amazing exhibition I found myself barefoot in an exact replica of the Royal palace of Amsterdam. You see, Lauren had worn some pretty high heels to the park, not knowing that the place is huge and so after many a kilometer her feet finally said no! She was also wearing tights and so would have looked like even more of a crazy person if she had no shoes on so after much protesting on her part I handed her my slip on shoes and walked the fancy pants palace grounds, street urchin style.       

Our last night once again saw the grills lit and the meat marinating as all of us attempted a game called Geek challenge, sponsored by the lovely Ducky that is currently living it up back in SA. Now I don`t want to say that Josie and Mark cheated to beat team Froland but they did, a lot! Our imminent defeat even made Roland brave enough to cry, `Noooooo woman` when I hastily shouted out the wrong answer relating to the X-men.      

Other than losing our ETC ticket for 10 minutes as we hit the toll booth while searching up a storm, the trip back was all Belgian ice-cream and magic dumplings filled with curry and a soft boiled egg. It really was a fantastic weekend and I am already looking for the next campsite to be lucky enough to get a little visit from a few foreigners and one suspicious little kid.

For Fuji`s sake.

I love the jokes people tell when they are nervous or scared. Not only do they come with an extra kick of honesty but that lifeline of a giggle is great when you are desperately trying to shut your mind up about how old tennis shoes is probably not going to cut it on crumbling volcanic rock. Nothing like some self-deprecating humour to convince every other passenger on the Tomas the tank engine bus heading to mount Fuji, that at least they are better off than those four South Africans. Sure Roland and I had only gone to bed at around 2am the previous night due to our replacement bus needing a replacement bus and our plane being delayed to the point of missing the last train from the airport. I have it on good authority that cup noodles, coke and kitkats are an extremely good way to carbo-load the night before climbing a mountain and the best way to rest up the morning before is to run around Tokyo trying to renew your passport. Oh yeah, we were in fine shape.

The frosty wind that rushed through my hair had nothing on the stare I directed at Roland as we fondly remembered him saying, `oh why bother with beenies and down jackets, it`s shorts wearing weather on Fuji at the moment`. Luckily I was beaten with the stubborn stick and packed semi decent ways to keep warm but Roland grabbed a light jacket, sweat pants and a superhero shirt. I will treasure the photo I have of me wearing the extra pair of pants I took along, as a hat/scarf combo until the day Roland regains feeling in his fingers and toes. 

We paid our R5 to pee, adjusted our backpacks full of energy drinks, oatmeal cookies and downed the last of our starbucks coffee as we confidently headed in the wrong direction for the first five minutes of our climb. Cornelia and I celebrated getting to what we thought was the next base camp (after about 30 minutes of walking) with a little sit down, until the nice man handed us a map and said welcome to the start of your climb. We decided to climb at night because having a nice warm sun and being able to see where we are going is way too mainstream for us extreme climbing types.

As all good horror stories start, our first few hours were all fun and games. We happily skipped up the loose gravel stairs, yes stairs of the yoshida route and bought bananas and cocoa at the 6^th station. We took photos of the moon light bouncing off the clouds so far below our feet and said things like `Wow guys, just think about how amazing this is for a moment`. And then somebody lost an eye, well metaphorically at least. The fun started morphing into taking deep breaths due to the lack of oxygen and the games quickly turned into trying to rub the volcanic dust out of our eyes and ears. Our dialogue became less `can you believe we are here` to `what were those people talking about when they said Fuji is challenging but not so bad` and `nobody said anything about proper climbing with boulders and hands and knees`. If someone has told you that climbing Fuji is easy, they are either in good shape or lying, trust someone whose only exercise is asking Roland to pass her the remote control.   

By the time we reached the second last station even a zombie would be all ` it’s not you it’s me` but even here Roland still managed to be charming as he told me that the mud caked around my eyes kind of looked like mascara and that I was totally working the pants/hat/scarf combo. An insanely icy wind was blasting us from every angle and there was nothing more in the world I wanted after 7 hours of solid climbing than another hour and a half of the same. It is strange to think of that final push now, I just zoned out and put one foot in front of the other as I stepped in the little puddle of light my R10 torch provided.    

However, when we stumbled through the tori gate emphasizing our arrival and Roland squeezed my hand as we looked out over all the world covered in soft clouds my breath caught and not from the thin air. As the light of the rising sun colored the sky in shades of my little pony pink, the other climbers started to sing the national anthem. Sure I was tired and sure I just paid R40 (400 yen) for a cup of tea and sure I had a 5 hour climb down the mountain ahead of me but there I was, standing on mount friggin Fuji, hearing such pride on the voices beside me and it was perfect.  

That childlike wonder lasted all of until I put my 1^st foot down on the way back. Oh the torturous horror that is the decent of that bastard mountain! Fuji`s exit is one, unending line of bulldozed zigzags made up of crumbling stones forged in the fires of mount doom and placed there with the sole purpose of making you slide, fall and stumble your way down. Cornelia and Andrew locked arms and in so doing managed to keep the other from tumbling down and breaking crowns, whereas I just clung onto Roland like a limpid as I tried to break the world record for complaining. I could not even fake a smile for the poor, hopeful day-climbers we met at the end and I was happily dreaming and drooling by the time the bus driver closed the doors.

I have not even gotten rid of all the dust in my ears or shaken off my old-lady limp yet and Roland is already throwing words like Kilimanjaro and base camp of Everest around, so instead of writing my next entry I am just going to copy and paste the inevitable article of that South African tourist who tragically succumbed to hypothermia while trying to sport some shorts on his way up the Himalayas.     

A suitcase stuffed with groceries

There I was, lying ever so awkwardly on my ziggurat of sofa cushions, provided by the good people of Haneda airport, struck down by the grandmother of all flues, while three little Japanese kids chased each other around and around my pyramid of leather pillows. The children were playing Zombies versus the-as-of-yet-unaffected, totally unaware of the fact that they were a few feet away from someone actually turning into the un-dead. This was my last day in Tokyo and thankfully only the second day of suffering from the plague.

The rest of my family holiday was pretty damn perfect. On the 18th of December 24 little bottles of Amarula, 8 peppermint-crisps, 2 travel worn parents and one beautiful bottle of Mrs Balls chutney landed at Oita Airport. Roland and I posed for the 1st of fifty million photos and then it was off to show the folks our new hometown. It was fun impressing them with our ATM drawing, Petrol pumping and food ordering skills while they surprised us by eating everything interesting we put in front of them. My dad complained every time he had to put down R50 for a beer but not even this stopped him from ordering two at every restaurant anyway. I was informed by my mom that the one night they slept in Tokyo alone on route to Oita my dad was sent on a food foraging mission and came back with a bread roll (with nothing on it) and a milk beer which he chucked down the drain a moment after tasting it.

Our 1st out-of-town-overnight was the moving city of Hiroshima which we reached via the light fantastic. I have heard the odd I’m-so-over-it foreigner tell me how the shinkansen is really not that exciting but let me tell you as a 1st time flyer, that the Japanese bullet train is a gorgeous piece of engineering that you need to ride at least once in your life.

It sounds cliché, but I really could feel a beautiful duality to Hiroshima the entire time we were there. The city has a way of rushing you through a spectrum of emotions and yet it is so wonderfully balanced that by the end of the day you still feel calm and weirdly filled with hope. In the morning we made our way to the atomic dome and peace park and if there is ever a place that will leave you despondent at human cruelty, this is it. God, it was sad. We can debate all the sides and everyone can put forth their propaganda and argue all they want, at the end of the day so many people had their one chance at life stolen so heartlessly that it gets to you and it really should. And then slowly Hiroshima leaves all that sadness behind and starts turning on the charm. Before you know it you are sitting in a warm, atmospheric okonomiyaki restaurant or walking deserted winter streets lit by thousands of Christmas lights and realising that you are already addicted to the uneasy magic that this city has in spades.

The next pin I could prick into my map of Japan was Kyoto. Sadly my dad caught a bad case of “shrine sickness” that only shopping could cure so Roland, my thankfully more cultured mother and myself headed to 4 or 5 world heritage sites. The day started silver at ginkakugi where my OCD approved of every raked pebble and perfectly placed square of moss and turned gold that afternoon as we admired the spectacular kinkakugi, one of the most famous sites in all of Japan. While my mom had been a trooper all day, the December chill finally got the best of her and so Roland and I took the train to Fushimi Inari shrine, alone. This is the site of the thousand tori gates (those red beams you always see in postcards of Japan) and Roland and I were lucky enough to see it with almost no one else in sight. Sure we lost a bit of toe due to frostbite and the metal in my leg just blatantly refused to bend to my will but even having to manually swing my left leg onto the following step did not make this shrine any less striking. Everywhere the stone fox messengers of the gods sat protecting graves or snacking on the fried tofu left out for them and walking through those thousands of arches covered in Kanji was pretty special. I am never going to give you a good enough picture of this place so feel free to click on this video to see what I am on about. Kyoto Rising Dawn

 And now a little detour, designed entirely to shame my father, who deserves every letter of it. You see Japan’s marketing department will have believe that seeing a Geisha is as easy as strolling into a teahouse, requesting your favourite shamisen tune and getting one of these lovely ladies to flutter over with a cup of green tea. This dear sir is not the case. Still today you need an invitation (usually a pricey one from a Japanese person) or you need to be in Kyoto for the Gion festival where these creatures of culture dance and perform in the streets. The only other way to see a Geisha is if you are lucky enough to catch one shuffling gracefully to or from work. Now imagine if you will how excited the German and I were to spot not only a Geisha but a Maiko (Geisha in training) as well on their way to their 9 to 5 as it were. Now imagine if you will how sad we were to discover that we had left our camera at the hotel. But lo, what silver lining is this? My dad has his new camera and after taking a few photos at a not so annoying distance we happily headed back for a good night’s rest. But lo, what not so silver lining is this? While showing my mom the photos that night my dad deleted every photo and so our Kyoto trip ended, Geisha photo free.

Our last stop over before hitting all the bright lights of Tokyo was Nara, where gangster deer extort rice crackers from you with more than light nudging and where a huge Buddha and pagoda blow a sizable hole in your mind and I think this is a good place to stop. I will talk about Tokyo in a later blog I intend to write about Roland’s parents visit. So I will end off by saying thanks mom and dad for an amazing holiday and that I think of you every time I sip some rooibos tea, spread some chutney on my cottage pie or look at those beautiful photos we took of the Geisha……oh wait, maybe not the last one.

To click or not to click.......

This is his moment. He plants his feet squarely on the temple tiles, leans back slightly for a better angle and with a ferocity formerly reserved for sending war correspondence via telegraph he clicks that camera button until only a blur of a forefinger remains. This master of oils for the digital age in not only the one Japanese stereotype I cannot seem to refute but also the inspiration lying behind Roland running after every autumn leaf struck by light and why Ducky is slowly developing a limp due to the weight of her new monster camera.

The wonderful thing is.........I cannot begin to blame them. There are three things Roland and I never leave the house without, the first being our alien registration cards, the second, these small mint candies (although we have moved to peach flavor of late) and the third is always our camera. There is just so much to see and it is easy to be caught with your Japanese jeans down (figuratively, for all the older aunts reading this…..figuratively).

It has gotten to the point where Roland is even mocking himself, like when he expressed regretfully the other night that the lunar eclipse he was taking photos of was at such a high angle that it was impossible to capture some leaping dolphins surrounded by fireflies, framed by the glistening moon. The German`s kitsch compositions aside, there really is a great many things happening at any given time and there is something very satisfying about getting to save a slice for later.

A few months ago, we were snapping away shots of the fire festival, a few weeks ago had us documenting a long tunnel dug out of the mountain by one monk with a whole heap of time on his hands, a few days ago we took a few photos of thousands of LED lights arranged into crashing waves and Christmas trees and just yesterday we clicked away at a resting warship complete with saluting crew. The last making me smile when I noticed that while Japanese moms where pointing out the captain to their kids, the crew were all pointing us out.

Once here you realize why the Japanese cameraman is such a cliché all over the world, it is hard not to be infected by this hobby as many of the foreign folk living here can attest. I do however find myself more at the editing edge of this endeavor, making sure Roland does not upload fifty photos of the sunset hitting Beppu Bay for your viewing pleasure, dragging him and Ducky away from the snow kissed pine needles before they develop frostbite in their clicking finger and deleting all the photos Roland took of me, looking like a mountain hag.

One of my favorite pictures that Roland took.

 I do not think my partner in artistic crime and I will ever really be any good at photography but I have no doubt that at some point in the far future our kids will run away from home, rather than look at one more photo of Beppu Bay.

It`s always better with Coke.

It has been a year and I am still gloriously off balance. Japan is still dragging me down, long, cold corridors one moment and combusting tiny sparks into eruptions of fiery flowers above my head, the next. I see all the new English teachers inject themselves with this distilled variety of life, from the second they land in Japan and I find it fascinating that the same still goes for me. All I need to do, to prove my point is tell you about my week.

It started as all chaotic things do, with one part ninja, two parts narcolepsy and four parts drama. This year at the Annual Yufuin Summer Seminar I was offered the chance to participate in the Amazing Race and while `Nurse Freda` did race her frilly apron off, the addition of a narcoleptic partner cost her the million dollar prize. My opponents ranged from scheming twins to board breaking ninjas but it was the clueless American couple that dark horsed their way to victory. My days were spent teaching drama and my nights were spent in the onsen as well as trying to imagine that the beanbag they had given me was a pillow.

Well I say `it started` but now that I think about it, the evening before, Ducky and the new JET from her town already set the ball in motion when they joined us for the Kamegawa fireworks festival. Now as you know, Roland is good at a great many things, he braais a mean boerewors, he owns hard at computer games and he is particularly good at leaving the shower-button up so I get a surprising blast of cold water in my face, while expecting a slow trickle from the tap, but he is absolutely appalling when it comes to saying `NO`. Thus, it did not take a group of fishermen long to catch him in their net of free beer and interest in South African culture. I left my man with a vague description of where we were sitting while he educated the sailors about the value of substituting Coke for water when drinking brandy. Roland never found us in that stormy sea of faces but we all enjoyed the fireworks and Beppu`s fishing community started teaching all of their friends about `Brannas and Coke`.

It did not take long for my week to turn to hell, quite literally. The appropriately named hell tunnels were carved by Buddhist monks a crazy long time ago and filled with mythical creatures and spaces narrow enough to warrant sniggering speeches from Roland about how there are not enough tunnels to get lost in and that he is sure that the crocodile headed statue was not looking the other way a few seconds ago. The yang to this dark yin was to climb to heaven and be rewarded with a calming view of rice fields.

Our day was however not all underworlds and ascensions, we also parked by a small roadside shop, on top of a mountain while we waited for a too-close-for-comfort thunderstorm to stop setting off chains of white light in our general direction. Luckily the rain was short lived and we soon found our way to two beautiful waterfalls, one completely enclosed by an impressive amphitheater of rock. We stumbled upon a huge Buddha and a delicate pagoda, all thanks to some small tourist signs and the perfect diction of Riaan Cruywagen directing us via GPS.

Little foxes in the back of the buggy, on their way to go dance.

The very next day we were on a boat. The Ferry dropped us off on Himeshima Island where Ducky, Roland, a boatload of Americans and me watched the famous fox dancing. Thousands of little kids don kimono and fox costumes and dance to taiko drumming and the sound of a thousand cameras clicking. We climbed a creepy mountain trail while there and christened it `Mountain where Ducky secretly took us in order to sell our organs to locals so we mocked her about it for a good hour, trail`.

Mountain where Ducky secretly took us in order to sell our organs to locals

Sunday dawned with river gorges and yawned with suspension bridges and that night I slept like someone who can afford to leave the air-conditioning on all night.

The week’s final breaths came in booming blasts as Roland and I watched another fireworks festival, this time together. I had never been that close to big fireworks before and my heart beat unconsciously along to the loud expulsions of energy that was causing soft ash to collect in my hair. It has been a year and this country is still every bit as thrilling as when my toes touched the tarmac at Narita airport.