The Cherry Blossom which Japan is so famous for is now in full bloom, and is breathtaking no matter how many times you see it. It's beauty lies also lies in the fact it is so brief - the wind and the rain bring the delicate blossom floating off the trees all too easily, and so we have to wait another year for the blossom to show itself. I should really be taking lots of photographs for you to see it, in this i'm failing miserably. Forgive me. Just believe me when I say it's beautiful.
Thank god it's Spring. The oppressive weight of winter has lifted, and smiles are appearing on peoples faces. People who hibernated for months unable to leave their kotatsu's (those good old heated tables) and watching anything they could download off the net (thats pretty much all most of us did all winter) are now emerging again, and breathing a sigh of relief that Jack Frost has decided to go annoy somebody else for a bit. I'm sure it's all the same your end, I hear England is now full engrossed in Spring and having a reet good time.
Feeling frustrated at my VERY slow development in the Japanese language malarky, I decided to go to Fukuoka for a week and study. Fukuoka is the biggest city in Kyushu, it's where I go chasing the techno, and it is sublime. It was almost like this cruel taste of what life would be like in a big exciting, multi cultural cosmopolitan city. It's perhaps the most international city in Japan due to it's location to the rest of Asia, and you can feel it as you walk around. For a start there are heaps more western foreigners, which makes you stand out just that little bit less, like a foreign presence is not something that is FREAKY. (Not the dancing kind.) Even Tokyo, for it's size, does not have the same 'international' feel to it, so I am told. The wonderful thing about Fukuoka is that it just has this pulse, it feels alive, unlike Shimonoseki. The whole thing with JET is that you have to accept and embrace where you are placed, the majority of placements being half countryside and small city kind of places, and half of me has been able to do this, but there is another half of me that longs for the pulse of the big city. When I arrived at the school they told me to watch out for these dodgy cyclists and motorcyclists who ride two people to a bike, with the person on the back reaching for girls handbags as they cycle past, and if you try and hold on, you get dragged behind them. This kind of thing is pretty rare in Japan, and it's funny, just the knowledge that there is this minor crime incident in occurance helps to make you that little more alert of everything around you. Being on your guard can at least help to keep you awake, alert, and attentive. I think one of my problems in this country is I walk around in a semi awake state, never really having to pay much attention to anything on concentrate on anything too hard. The lack of challenge for one thing makes my brain feel half asleep. So living in Fukuoka for a week was perhaps the best thing that I could have done. A lot of my friends have been receiving letters off me these past few months with a definite note of poor little lou i miss you all so much and i'm ever so tired and low. But, I'm feeling like i've come through that now. Fukuoka woke me up, and I feel sparkly again. For my degree I did a dissertation of Virginia Wolfe, and the film of The Hours. If you didn't see it, there's this part where VW, going crazy in the confinement of the small town of Richmond, says to her husband:
I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of these suburbs...
but the violent jolt of the capital, that is my choice!
(VW became depressed in London, so her and her husband moved to Richmond to give her the peace to recover from her depression. but London was her blessing and her curse.) I love this line, it was a line that stood out to me from my first viewing, and I feel this exactly; that the intensity of living in a big city like Fukuoka, Tokyo, London, would be overwhelming for me, that i'd probably go a bit insane, but in contrast Shimonoseki is anthetising me a little.
Anyway, enough of the academic blah. Apologies, i nearly went off one one there.
So Fukuoka was great, studying Japanese everyday was heaps of fun, stimulating, and I wish I could live in Japan and do nothing but study Japanese. This whole working malarky is a bit inconvenient eh!
This weekend I went on camping trip with some of the other English teachers in Yamaguchi. It was kind of camping, me and Leanne recruited some people to help build a bonfire, and we had the whole marshmellow thing, but, there was something very important missing, of the fungus variety, if you catch my drift. What camping trip in Spring is complete without our little friends eh? (obviously guitars and costumes and caitlin's tequila were very much missed aswell. But then not everybody else would agree those are essential elements of camping I guess. Each to their own.)
But we did get to see something rather special today. There is this yearly event in the next prefecture along - horse back archery. These riders dressed in beautiful elaborate costumes ride horses down a long strip of grass, and along the strip three wooden triangles are placed for the riders to shoot with their arrows as the horse is running at quite some speed. Just like off of House of the Flying Daggers, or summat like that. Fantastic to watch! They have to load up their bows super fast to try and hit the next wooden board and not all of them could do it, especially if they had the disadvantage of a super genki horse.
Here's some shots:
On parade.
Sorry, this one is pretty blury but its just to give you an idea of what they were doing.
I know you've all seen Leanne's face before, but, just look behind Leanne. Look at the Cherry Blossom! Beautiful eh! Whilst we were watching the archery, the wind was blowing, and cherry blossom was falling like rain on us all. Some actually fell into my hand - Leanne said in surprise, "you know what that means don't you? If you catch cherry blossom you will be lucky in love!" And I caught TWO! Whee!!! Looks like life is going to get pretty special sometime for me. Either that or i'll just have a threesome. Hmmmm.........
To end on a rather melancholic note in contrast to the rest of this, I have to tell you all my sad news. My girl, my wonderful, wonderful kindred spirit that came in the form of Sally from Yorkshire, has left Japan, and is now in Thailand chasing her own happiness again. I am a little devastated at this loss - I know the loss of Sally is just the first of other potentially very sad departures of people I love close to me. Sally, you are one of the best things that happened to me in Yamaguchi, I miss you incredibly, and Yamaguchi is never going to seem quite so colourful again now that you are not here to climb mountains with me, abuse Marko with me, (Marko you know it's our way of showing you we love you) be my rita/sue/bob too, and talk mooncups with me. Japan was not your cup of tea, but I hope Thailand brews you a good cup and you decide to stay on there for a bit and savour the tea leaves. I will see you in August and we'll go sit in the park and drink cider and love the grass.
Sally was an anarchistic vegan who worked for a horrible company called BENDA (can you believe a british person would actually call their company BENDA??? Seriously. Stands for British English and Dance); its a company that teaches English and Dance, but they were real c*nts and they made her work ridiculous hours and drive stupid distances to teach one lesson. Plus she lived in a place that was even more lonely than Shimonoseki, so after 6 months she had to get out.
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