Hi everyone. Sorry it’s been a while. I have been very busy the last few weeks and the invitations from students to go out and about on the weekends don’t seem to be slowing. Well my sea freight finally turned up a few weeks back, so now my apartment is all the more homely. It is about one month into autumn here. Beautiful weather throughout the day, sunny without being hot and cool evenings.

Work has been busy but fun of late. This last week I had all my adult students fill out a form I had made to try and find out exactly their views on learning English conversation. It asks questions on why they are learning English and their thoughts on different teaching methods. This feedback will allow me to prepare lessons the best lessons I can. The children’s classes had Halloween cooking classes last week. This year they cooked sweet pumpkin muffins. They had lots of fun cooking but I can safely say that if I see a pumpkin muffin again in the next six months, I will murder somebody. I must have eaten 15 of them last week. Each student got to eat them at the end of the lesson and take a few home in a small Halloween gift bag. It was a relaxing week of teaching children.

A few weeks ago I went to a relatively new restaurant here on the Japanese coast called Fururu Farm. It is a very healthy buffet restaurant. The Japanese call them ‘Viking’ restaurants. Adjoining the restaurant is a fruit and veg store, a cooking school, the farm where all the fruit and veg is grown and about a dozen cabins that can be rented out. It reminded me a lot of Kiama. This area is known as the Sezaki peninsula. Quiet, but relaxing. Later that day, they gave me another few hours tour guiding around Maizuru. They took me to a few different temples, the local fish markets and up to a sky tower on a local mountain to get a good view of the Maizuru area.

With these same students, two weeks later we went out on a Saturday night to a Maizuru City Brass Band concert in the local music hall. Ridiculously cheap tickets. $6.25 Australian dollars for a great concert of about two and a quarter hours. After the concert, they took me to a local Izakaya restaurant. This style of Japanese food is basically a choice of about 40 entrees to eat while indulging in great Japanese beer or Sake.

Another young aussie teacher I met a few weeks back has been letting me use his Vespa motorbike, so I have had a bit of fun the last couple of weekends scooting around locally.
We went to a town about forty five minutes away called Amanohashidate, which translates to ‘bridge to heaven’. This is regarded as one of the three most scenic places in Japan. It is a stretch of island across a bay between two villages about an hours walk in length. We opted for the jet boat transfer instead, just for a bit of extra fun. There is a viewpoint across the far side of the bay up on a mountain, that when you bend over and look between your legs back at the island connecting the two bays, you are looking at ‘the bridge to heaven’.

I have discovered another great onsen about a kilometer from my house. The 26th of each month has a special connection with bathing in Japan; so on this day, most onsens run a special offer. This onsen offers 12 visits for the price of 10.

This weekend just past I went to Miyazu, a town where we have one of our schools. I met the teacher there Susan who is also a professional photographer and we spent the day driving around mountain villages taking photos.

In the last few weeks, the people of Maizuru in particular are concerned about the nuclear situation in Korea. Maizuru is a sea-side port and the number one port in Japan visited by North Korean ships. As a result of Kim Jong IL’s test a few weeks back, Japan has stopped all sea-trade with North Korea. A huge impact for both countries. From Kyushu, Japans most southern Main Island, you can actually see the coast of South Korea.

The pictures above from top to bottom : A photo I took on sunday in a small mountain village. See if you can see an image of two people looking at each other in the lower half of the tin wall ; cooking class last week ; a Japanese spirit I drank a little too much of a few weeks back ; Amanohashidate ; dried octopus ; a view from the sky tower looking down on my town ; a photo I took to show just how mountainous not only Maizuru, but Japan is ; your everyday cafe/restaurant strip and lastly, Fururu Farm.

Anyway, I am having a great time. I have been so busy; I think I will start writing down every night what I have done that day so I don’t forget to mention it here.

I hope you are all well. Take care,

Tim

Hi everyone.

Two months and a day I’ve been here. Time is flying by. Before I know it, it is the weekend again. I haven’t really had a chance to be bored yet. Whether it is being taken shopping, lunch at a student’s house or dinner at another’s, there is always something happening over the weekends. The teaching is going really well. In a couple of weeks, there is ‘observation week’ where parents come and watch their children. Should be interesting. A few naughty kids I am sure will be angels when their parents are watching.

I have had a good couple of weeks just past. Last weekend, I had lunch at some really wealthy student’s house. The woman picked me up on Saturday morning and took me food shopping and then back to her and her husband’s house for lunch for about five hours. On their block which is about 1700 square metres, they have two houses. The first house is a 130yr old traditional Japanese farm house passed down through the husband’s family.
The second house is a Log house built entirely from imported Canadian spruce. They stayed in a log house in Canada on holidays in the late 80’s and liked it so much , they flew a few of the builders out to Japan to build them one. While I was there, they played a full early Kylie Minogue album for me. It was the thought that counted.
On Sunday, I, the boss’ family and two students had a bbq down at Kanzaki Beach. Not your usual Aussie bbq of sausages and steak. We ate rice, fish, roasted tomatoes and pork and miso soup. Very delicious all the same. On our way back we stopped at Fujitsu onsen for my first onsen of 2006. Aaaggggghhhhh. Very relaxing. An onsen is a Japanese hot spring bath. It is a public bathhouse usually with natural hot spring water. Depending on what part of Japan you are in, the water can be 100% naturally boiling hot or the further it needs to come up from under the ground, it my need to be heated. They can be found in and around the cities, in hotels or out in the mountains etc.

I have started my Japanese lessons again. Every Monday for an hour. I am also learning how to read and write Katakana and Hiragana. It is now autumn here so it is cooling down and the occasional rainy day. A typhoon came very close to this part of Kyoto a couple of weeks ago but detoured the night before it was due. It did hit the far south part of Japan killing 9 people. Thinking about doing a few hike’s in the coming weeks around the Maizuru region with some students and other teachers. There are some good ones to be done very close to various mountain temples and non-active volcanoes. Maizuru Mountains can have the odd wild boar and black bear that need to be looked out for.

After 2 months, my freight finally arrived in Japan and is being delivered this weekend. Looking forward to some warmer clothes now I am in autumn. Next week I will be able to start practicing some Japanese cooking with my cookbooks on hand.

Thanks to everyone for all the emails. They make me feel like I am one hour away not nine. Here are a few pics of Kanzaki beach, an onsen and some from a trip I was taken on to Kyoto City with some students a few weekends ago.

Take care all,

Tim