Internationalization

It was a 3 day weekend here in Japan.  Bryn and I spent our Saturday doing load after load of laundry in order to switch over to "autumn wardrobes".  Last week the students and teachers changed into their autumn attire (students have to wear their uniform jackets, male teachers have to wear ties, female teachers dress like it's freezing out).  It's still not quite cold enough to warrant too many layers, but mornings and evenings require long sleeves.

Since we did so much laundry, we found ourselves needing to replenish our laundry detergent and fabric softener.  Just to mix things up, we decided to shop in a supermarket we don't go to very often in Mipple (a biggish shopping center down the road).  It was in Mipple that we came across this...

That's right! Trip to Dubai fabric softener (with the snuggle bear and everything!).   How can you NOT buy it?!?  I've never been to Dubai, so I can't tell you what it smells like, but the bag describes it as a "desert oasis" scent.  Talk about internationalization!  Now everytime we wash clothes it will be like we are magically transported to the UAE.  

I am sure all of the teachers will be asking me if I visited Dubai recently when they smell me ;)

In other news...guess who doesn't have to eat school lunch anymore...ME!!! YAY!!!  No more asking for my plate without that, begging a teacher or student to eat this, sneaking inedible bits into my rice box, forcing down fish heads, etc.  Words cannot describe how happy this makes me.  Yay, yay, yay :)

We are off to Kyoto or Osaka or Kobe this weekend.  We aren't quite sure of the final destination, but I need coffee (ie Starbucks) and shampoo (I have become obsessed with Lush) so off we go.  Hopefully we'll come across something blog worthy for y'all ;) 

Elementary School Excursion!!

Friday was the Yoza Elementary School walking excursion. Usually the school treks up to the top of Mt Oe and some surrounding mountain peaks, but this year the Mt Oe plans were canceled due to the high number of bear sightings and attacks so far this autumn.
Instead, this year we took the little blue local train to Amanohashidate and did our walking there!
This may not sound terribly exciting, but this particular school is right up at the far end of the valley, in the foothills of Mt Oe, and as such, many of the younger kids had hardly ever (if ever at all) been to the sea! Many of them had never ridden on a train before either, so it was very exciting for them. I was in charge of "group 2", which consisted of eight children, most good, but two of the boys had a tendency to walk off... yikes! I was responsible for them, so I had to have one eye on the rest of the group and one eye on these two boys the whole time. I only lost one of them ONCE!... but I found him, so everything was ok! haha

First we took the bus from school to Nodagawa Station, and then the train to Amanohashidate. Once at our destination, we walked to the famous Chionji Temple there. This temple dates way back to 808AD. The current structures are from the 15th~18th centuries. There's an iron tub/pot in the garden which was made in the 13th century. It's a very special place, and it was great to be able to walk around with the children and teach them about their heritage.

After the temple, we played some games on the grassy lawn nearby and then set out in our small groups walking across the pine-studded sandbar. It was really fun actually.

 These were my kids...well, the ones ahead to the right were a different group. In the time that I was getting out the camera and taking this picture, the two wandering boys wandered off... I managed to get them back before they disappeared though! 

As we reached the end of the sand bar, we went over to the water's edge and threw stones into the sea. The kids found it HUGELY fun.

Then onwards we went up the mountain to Kasamatsu Park viewing deck to get an aerial view of the sandbar (Amanohashidate). Most visitors take the chair lift up the mountain, but we walked up the old steps... steep steps... seemingly never-ending steps... it was hard going! haha

 The view from the top was wonderful as always, only it seemed so much more well-earned after the long-haul trek up those stairs!! This was incidentally when I lost that boy! 

I was so relieved to find him alive!

Then we walked on... and on... and on... until we reached the Tango Ancient History Museum. It was EXTREMELY interesting to see the exhibition of treasures excavated from the ancient burial tombs in the area (dating from about 250~500AD or so). They also had exhibits of Jomon Era (10000~300BC) pottery, artifacts and jewelry discovered in the area. After that we were given a guided tour of the ruins of the great Kokubunji Temple (built well over 1000 years ago, but destroyed in the fires of civil war in the 16th Century), and a tour of an old Edo Period house (170 years ago).

The house was really interesting and was filled with tools and things from the old days.

All in all, it was a great day out (and anything historical is a huge plus for me)... but I won't lie - my muscles were SORE the next day! VERY sore! haha

Autumn is Here!

Orange cosmos flowering in front of an old seaside house in Fuchu.

Here's an interesting little difference between New Zealand and the USA:  In New Zealand our seasons start on the first of the month (well, the first of that month), for example, spring starts on September 1st, Autumn starts on March 1st, summer starts on December 1st, Autumn starts on March 1st, and winter starts on June 1st. It's really easy to remember and work around. Granted, this doesn't exactly match the weather exactly, but it works well enough. It appears Japan uses the same system (in reverse, of course), with autumn starting on September 1st. This seems normal to me and to be expected.

HOWEVER, in the USA, they use a different system!! Did you know this?? I didn't! In the USA, spring starts on the vernal equinox (March 21st), summer starts on the summer solstice (which in NZ we tend to call "the longest day", June 21st), autumn (fall) starts on the autumnal equinox (September 23rd), and winter starts on the winter solstice (which in NZ we tend to call "the shortest day", December 21st). I know the dates vary slightly depending on the year, but those are the dates for this year. Isn't that interesting! I imagine the American system is much more in tune with the actual weather, but it takes a bit of getting used to for me, who has grown up with seasons starting on the 1st and lasting for the entirity of those three months.

As you might have guessed, this was a topic of conversation in the Thomas household this September. I woke up on the morning of September 1st and announced that it was now officially autumn.

Liz thought I was bonkers, and informed me that it didn't start until the autumnal equinox on the 23rd!

THE 23rd!?!? Are you mad?!? Why would the season start on such a random date?!

... It's not random! Why else would it be called the AUTUMNAL Equinox?!?!... and so on.

Aaaaaaah, cross-cultural understanding :) haha

So this year we got to celebrate the start of autumn TWICE! Now that's a win-win situation if EVER I heard it!!

Of course, I say we got to "celebrate" the start of autumn, but really... we didn't do any celebrating as such. haha. Who does?

So anyway, in honour of autumn (and more specifically, the cooler weather it brings), Liz and I decided to go for a bike ride to Amanohashidate on Sunday. For those of you who don't know, Amanohashidate is the pine-studded sand spit, which is deemed one of Japan's top 3 most beautiful spots. It really ISN'T one of the most beautiful spots if you ask me, but I'm sure it was back in the day when they decided this. It's nice enough though, and has a pretty beach.

Randomly enough, when we got there (after a nice chatty bike ride... and it should be noted that even though we had a slight head-wind, we still made it there faster than we had expected) there appeared to be a "two day march" going on. I'm not sure what they did on day one, but Sunday was day two, and were all WALKING (note, no marching involved...except for this one old man holding a "two day march" flag... haha) walking along the dirt path through the pine trees... random. It made biking along that path pretty tricky at times, but we did well! We didn't kill a single old person!

We had lunch at our usual restaurant in Monju, and then headed home... but not the direct route... OH NO, we decided to take the LONG route across the spit, into Fuchu and then back through Iwataki. To most of you, this means very little, but just trust me when I say it's about an hour longer than the direct route. But it was fun because we chose to stick to the narrow back streets, and we had the camera on hand, so here are some of the pictures we took:

an old cart parked in a storage shelter on the side of the road.

bushels of rice hanging out to dry

we took narrow backstreets like this one

Liz inspecting (adjusting?) her bike seat. Note the slight incline of the road... it was pretty tiring after a while

and then back onto the cycling path. The trees were showing some autumn colours.

 

Riverside vege plots

Passing through Iwataki on the way home

ps. Just below this you will see that the blog says this was posted by Liz, but (as you will have noticed) it was published by me, Bryn! Actually, it was a team effort, with Liz uploading the pictures, and me doing the typing...