Lucerne: Reunion

Finally, it was time to meet M-san again. It's been a long time.

We arranged to meet near the station, and go for breakfast, before having a tour of the city.

Osaka: Non-okonomiyaki reunion

So, why Osaka? Well, the main reason is that while I was studying hard in Fukuoka, M-san has been holidaying with relatives and friends there. Our holidays overlap just enough that it's feasible for me to rush up to Osaka (skipping my last day of class, sadly) and meet her there!

Even better, A-san still works relatively nearby and is able to catch a train over, which means we could get together for a reunion.

Sa- and pi- kuras

My last weekend in Fukuoka got a little complicated. I was lucky enough to have several friends suggest meeting up, but then ran into complications trying to actually schedule things. I suppose the trouble is that you can easily schedule one uncertain thing into a known schedule, but trying to juggle several things without any idea when they might happen is tricky.

What I did manage was to meet KT-san again. This time we didn't arrange anything as ambitious as going to another town (possibly a shame in retrospect, but the weather had been iffy) but just went for a walk around town. Obviously, we started in Maizuru Park.

More sakura and I'm not sorry

This week, KM-san suggested we go out for tempura. It's been eighteen months since we last went, so I was glad to go with her (via a quick trip to a certain otaku shop to buy a nerdy present for a delightfully nerdy friend).

We went to Hirao tempura near Tenjin. The way this works is that there's a vending machine-style order system. You insert money, choose a meal option and buy a voucher. You then go inside and work your way through the (seated) queue. When you get a seat at the bar (and they're bar seats, so I tend to find them a bit less reassuring than something firmly on ground level) you hand over your voucher. The staff are in the middle of the restaurant, with people seated all around them.

Sakuramatsuri begins

With the cherry blossom season opening, the Fukuoka Sakura Festival began at the weekend.

I met up with J-san to stroll around the festival a bit. The blossom wasn't really out at this point, so it's not quite the best day for it, but it was relatively peaceful and the place was pretty lively.

Kyushu Olle, the tourism board (or one fo them?) for Kyushu, which is naturally represented by an anthropomorphic sheep thing with a banana on its head. Or something.

Okonomiyaki II: revenge of Okonomiyaki

So I've been wanting to eat okonomiyaki again for about eighteen months, in fact, and KM-san kindly offered to go with me.

My schedule this year is much more consistent; I start at 9.30am and have classes until either 3pm or 4pm, with an hour for lunch and brief breaks between classes. There's more hours because this year (not being a long-term student) I'm on the conversation course track, not the generic track.

Unexpected Cuisine

We met fairly early, so we had time for a coffee and a walk before we went for food. I needed them too, as I'd inadvertantly eaten too much lunch and was very full!

I'm staying in Hakata, so we wandered north a bit in search of Higashi Park (東公園).

London Crossover Adventure!

So a few weeks ago,* I was delighted to hear that one of my classmates from GenkiJACS would be visiting London! Regular readers may remember M-san of okonomiyaki fame, who is also Miho-san of internet fame. The word "charming" was practically invented for Miho-san, so of course I was happy to take a trip down to London and do some touristing with her and a couple of her friends.

* I started writing this post nearer the time, but it's actually four months ago now.

For any non-British Isles readers, London is nowhere near my hometown (which is near Liverpool) - it's about two hundred miles away. It's also horrifically expensive to go to London, because (inexplicably in my view) it's incredibly popular. To make the most of the time, I decided to go the previous evening so we could meet up in the morning, and also so I wouldn't be spending half a day travelling there and back.

After much frustrating searching, I happened upon the Swinton Hotel. It does exactly what it says on the tin: it's a cheap, no frills hotel that's near King's Cross. Providing what you need is a place to sleep and a bathroom, it's got you covered. No photos this time: honestly, it wouldn't be worth it. It looks like a very small room with a small bed in it, and the kind of carpet they put in very cheap hotels. It was fine.

End-of-trip reflections

So, now that I've finished, come home and had some time to digest it all, I wanted to reflect a bit on my whole six months at GenkiJACS, coming back to my feelings in the half-term update. I'm also looking at the evaluation form I completed at the end of my stay, although I won't post specific extracts.

While I will mention various negatives, it's always easier to pinpoint problems than things that were good. The latter tend to be vague and diffiuse, the former are often specific.

A Little Less Conversation

As the last of the term wears on, I continue slowly unpicking myself from the city into which I have grown these thin, tentative roots, hoping that not all of them will wither entirely in the process.

On Monday I had my last meeting with M-san, my conversation partner, and one of the first people I met in Fukuoka. Of the six people I was initially paired with, I only met a couple more than once. M-san has been a constant in my life here; we met for about four hours almost every week, which means I've spent about 100 hours chatting with her.

M-san introduced me to Fukuoka castle, amongst other pleasant places to wander. She showed me around interesting back streets, classy department stores, and second-hand manga shops. We have watched turtles and herons in Ohori Park, browsed Y100 goods, eaten doughnuts and tempura (not at the same time, I hasten to add), and sipped an awful lot of coffee in an array of cafés. She was an invaluable source of information on everyday life in Japan, cheerfully helping me track down household essentials and presents.

More than this, M-san has probably been the single greatest thing for my Japanese. My teachers have worked hard to instil me with grammar, pronunciation, situation-appropriate styles of conversation, and all the other technical essentials - even keigo - but for building your confidence in a language, it's hard to beat spending four hours a week discussing a bewildering array of technical topics. Amongst things I can remember, we've discussed the demographic and political history of the UK, trends in gender roles, geek culture, food (quite a lot), opera and theatre, literary criticism, fashion, Lovecraftian fiction and horse-riding. Admittedly this was in a mixture of Japanese and English - it'd be a pretty lopsided language exchange otherwise - but it really forced me to up my game in terms of explaining concepts to someone without the technical terminology. It also meant I quite rapidly pushed past the troublesome 'bland' stage, where you can only have quite straightforward conversations about simple topics. It's very easy to sit there forever, because you don't feel comfortable with the frustration of trying to discuss complex things, and because other people realise you can't do so and avoid those topics. So I'm very grateful to M-san for hoisting me up beyond it.

All those conversations also did wonders for my confidence. By regularly speaking a lot of Japanese, in a natural setting, about quite unpredictable and complex topics, I got much more comfortable with the idea. Classroom practice is good, but typically restricted by focusing on particular topics, and often it's very scripted - sometimes literally. You're also competing for time with the other learners, all of us making mistakes. One interesting result of our conversations was that my performance in class improved a lot, which left me more comfortable and confident talking to the teachers, which led to me getting to know them much better, having more conversations, getting book and travel recommendations, and just generally improved my Japanese once again. It's the synergies, as the 90s would say.

I've also enjoyed our conversations for their own sake, as well as the challenge of trying to explain aspects of British culture that I don't fully understand or only vaguely remember. It's been good practice! Frequently I am grateful for my linguistics degree, as I try to tease out grammatical distinctions or implications from some phrase.

So it was with great reluctance and full of mourn that I finally left M-san on Monday. We stayed out a bit later than usual, chatting through all kinds of things, and exchanged some small gifts. I painstakingly wrote out a thank-you card, trying to strike that awkward goal of "heartfelt gratitude" between "politeness of princes" and Love Actually through the cultural barrier. And we got someone to take a photograph.

Yes, the contrast between perpetually-elegant M-san and my unshaven, scruffy self is a tad unedifying. Luckily I am largely obscured by the flash reflecting off this window. Maybe one day we'll meet again, and I'll get up in time to shave.

Farewell celebrations

So now I have only a week left in Fukuoka, and it's time to start saying goodbye. This week I had two farewell parties with little groups of friends. As well as seeing people again, I thought it was a nice chance to introduce some people. One of the things about staying here for a long time is that the students turn over fairly quickly, while it's actually quite difficult to get to know local people. You have no particular connection to anything going on locally, so you don't really meet people. At the same time, for the Fukuoka residents, making friends with people who'll only be around for a few weeks (most students) isn't a very tempting opportunity.

So I thought this would be a chance to introduce a few other long-term students to some of my Japanese friends. Hopefully they can hang out a bit after I've left.

The English Pub

My first gathering was in the Black Sheep British Pub, near Tenjin. H-san (of previous fame) selected this and it seemed oddly appropriate. After some confusion we did all make it there, and found it really quite a decent pub approximation, complete with enormous television showing the Liverpool-Leicester football match (3-1, good job lads). I was particularly pleased to see K-san again, a lady I met about six months ago but haven't seen since.

The food was a slightly odd mix - I don't claim exhaustive knowledge of pubs, but while fish and chips or bangers and mash are solid options, I don't particular find nachos, burdock fritters, or buffalo wings to be 'British'. The range of dessert pizzas was also an unexpected novelty (chocolate and banana pizza, anyone?). Most of us opted for the fish and chips. It was fairly decent, although again slightly surprising - it was delicate and sparse, the sort of thing I'd expect in a slightly poncy restaurant or M&S café, rather than the mountain of potato segments pubs normally offer.

After a couple of beers and a lot of enjoyable conversation, we left the pub and moved onto a local coffee place H-san recommended. It was a fairly quiet, tiny place where a group kindly moved tables so we could all sit together. We had lattes and (in my case) a little scone, rounding off our meal from before and chatting a bit more, before we finally went our separate ways. It was really nice to see everyone again, and it seemed like my classmates got on pretty well with my Japanese friends. I was particularly impressed by the alleged beginners, as virtually all conversation ended up being in Japanese.

Okonomiyaki Farewell II

The other group I've met up with are C's friends, all of whom I've also met on trips and so on. They've been really welcoming and I wanted to see them again. Plus, C had done a lot of event arranging, and I didn't want that to entirely fade out as soon as she left, so it was deffo my turn to plan something. In conspiracy with M-san and T-san, we arranged to go to an okonomiyaki restaurant (not that one though), and a few classmates were able to come along.

This was a little different: another place where you kneel down, and this time the tables were equipped with teppans (heated iron plates) to keep the food warm and even cook it a little more if you want. We thought for a bit we'd be having to cook our own food, but this was not the case. We had a bit of okonomiyaki and some yakisoba, and another beer. This time we mostly spoke in English, interspersed with Japanese and German. We had some pretty complicated conversations as well. I feel like I've spend an unusual amount of time talking about very serious things like politics, economics and society since I came here. Perhaps it's because most people I meet are (naturally) those with an interest in other countries, which tends to involve knowledge of differences and relationships between them? Anyway, I did my best not to rant, despite the latest announcements from Osborne.

Afterwards, we once again sought out coffee. Late-night coffee culture doesn't seem as strong in Japan as in western cities, so it took quite a while to find somewhere, but we did eventually get out of the very chilly wind and guzzle some hot caffeine. I suppose the cold helped us wake up, and the walk let some of us stretch aching legs after all that kneeling. I once again had a lovely time talking to everyone, and was very sad to leave. T-san and M-san surprised me by bringing along little parting gifts for me, and I did my best to remember the right expressions of polite gratitude!

My presents turned out to be some fun Japanese stamps from T-san, and a very cute set of sheep chopsticks (next year is Year of the Sheep) from M-san. Thank you!

I'm going to miss all these very nice people when I'm back in the UK. I hope to see some of them again one day.

A-templing we did go: Hakata Temple Illuminations

So recently (although not as recently as I'd like - bit behind) a group of us were gathered by C for a final outing before she left, and we attended the 博多千年煌夜 (Hakata Millenial Illuminations). Basically, various temples in the Hakata area were open by night (well, bits of them) and lit up. It was interesting. Unfortunately, my camera really can't cope well with night - embarrassingly, a lot of people's phones were much happier to take pictures that looked like what your eyes saw. Well, it's a bit old, I suppose.

I confess I am not especially sure of where we went, but two places come usefully to mind: Shoufuku-ji and Touchou-ji, because I went there recently by day.

Touchou-ji

Most of the temples had various food stalls set up inside or nearby, although I don't think the temples themselves were running them!

I bought what proved to be a shark dumpling, a Hokkaido dish, apparently. It was... dumply?

Somewhere or other?

I really don't know where this temple was. The ladies led us there, it was dark, the brochure has very little information and one photo per temple. It was mostly gardens, which look pretty similar.

I'm quite pleased with these pictures of leaves, but then I did take a lot!

More food stalls! Here I was prompted to buy and eat something sweeter. I'm not sure what the Japanese is, but they were like　Chinese 汤圆 (glutinous rice balls with sesame and other tasty things)　in a liquid made from faintly sweet adzuki (Japanese red bean).

Joutenji (承天寺)

The special feature of this temple was that it opened up the buildings, giving access to a lot of places you can never normally see. A big hit was the Zen garden, which had been illuminated with colour-shifting lights. My camera really couldn't do the place justice, but I tried.

Something or other, probably meaningful.

Finally dragging ourselves from the Zen garden steps (you can't actually go inside) we passed through the building.

These people are lining up at an altar - I didn't actually mean to take their photo, I normally avoid that sort of thing, but the picture took a few seconds due to lack of flash. Nothing personal seemed to happen in that time so I felt it was probably okay.

I just like the contrast in these pictures.

Why, Cthulhu! I wasn't expecting to find your head here.

And a very cunningly-made wind-chime that made its sutra (I think? I was told it's a sutra) spin permanently in the breeze.

Somewhere else

You had to buy tickets in advance in blocks of, I think, eight. Somehow, it worked out as best for us to go to four temples, but we were running short of time. We rushed off to try and fit in a fourth temple, but arrived too late. However, the man at the gate very kindly let us just peek our heads in to see a few of the lights.

Surprisingly, I cannot identify it! Shocking, I know.

And the finale

Obviously, after rushing around four temples, we were all getting hungry. There just aren't enough photos of food on this blog.

One of the many festival floats you sometimes see around the city.

Group photo! Taken by a passing stranger from far enough away that everyone is fairly anonymous, sadly.

It was pretty hard to find a spot, especially as our group was fairly large, while many Japanese eateries are very small, built for lone diners or pairs to grab a bite after work. After some wandering (many places were full near the temples, and others were closing as it was 9pm or later) our Japanese friends a cheerful pub-like place where they were able to squeeze us in.

This is where we ate: Ikko (一虎).

Salad made with fried crispy daikon (huge, white, radish-carrot looking thing, which I eat a lot here).

Beef with negi (a kind of onion-leek relative)

Boiled dumplings in the soup used for ramen.

Chicken pieces with some sauce I managed to avoid, and an okonomiyaki to share.

Between all this, we managed to eat a huge amount of food, drink a little beer and talk for ages. It was enormous fun and a nice contrast to the rather individual pastime of temple-viewing - what with queues, crowds, attempts at quiet and people taking photos, you couldn't talk that much in the temples.

I even, as part of my campaign of trying new things, ate a mussel. It was... mostly like other slightly chewy seafood, really. Perfectly edible, not my favourite thing ever.

Wrap-up

As usual, I had a fantastic time with all my friends and acquaintances here, and am sorry that the time left for further adventures is growing so short. Only ten days left in Fukuoka, and seventeen in Japan. It's a strange feeling.

Housematery

So recently one of my favourite humans managed to find the time to pop over to Japan for a week. That would be my old housemate, SC. We'd been talking about it for months, so it was brilliant to see it coming together.

As it worked out, SC basically spend some time with me at the weekends either side, and then shipped up to Kyoto during the week while I was at school. I kind of wish I'd been able to go to, but I really need to maximise my study time while I'm here. This is especially true because I'd missed several days due to illness just before she arrived, and wasn't on good form for a while afterwards. So I'd fallen behind, and honestly I'm still struggling to catch up.

The first night, all we managed was to meet up and eat. After strolling around for a while looking for promising places where I could understand the menu, we picked up some food from a tiny restaurant in Tenjin, and went to this place. It's a financial services building with a cafe outside, but everything was closed by, oh, 8.30pm or whenever we went. So we sat outside in the cool darkness, talking about stuff and eating chicken with curry sauce and rice. It was really nice. The only downside was, as ever, the lack of bins! I ended up taking the remnants awkwardly home on the train, which is a bit of a hassle when it's pots half-full of curry sauce and bones, even when you have a bag for them. Thankfully no leaking occurred.

Temples Galore

The next day we met up near Hakata station, and went a-templing. We wandered up to Shoufuku-ji, the first Zen temple in Japan. It was great. It's a large, very calm, very tranquil place (at least, when we visited!) and after wandering around for a while, we sat and talked on the steps of the main hall. There was nobody around for us to inconvenience, after all.

After that, we proceeded up the street and bumped into Touchou-ji,, the oldest Shingon temple in Japan. Here we pondered the very orange tower, and admired the very impressive inner hall, although neither of us is in a position to appreciate the significance of what we saw.

Since we were running short of time, we returned to Hakata station and discovered the array of shops and restaurants in the huge tower above it. Not something I'm used to - our stations are pretty much two-dimensional. We ate at an Okinawan restaurant, which was mildly bittersweet from my perspective, but the food was good. Then we parted ways for the week.

Kumamoto II: the Return

The following weekend SC came straight down to Kumamoto, and we arranged to meet there. Having already been once, I was in a position to act as guide and show us around. The weather was far nicer than the first time I'd been, and having company was also a lovely change for my tourism experiences, so all in all I had a great time. We saw the castle first, and it was very pleasant.

I have no idea what this is for. Possibly some form of sundail, or a crude compass?

I was delighted to see that the costume performance was happening that day. On my previous visit it had been rained off, but here we were able to get a good spot and watch, although I didn't understand much. The Japanese used seemed a bit old-fashioned (fitting the personas) and mostly seemed to consist of very long sentences that didn't contain much information. But the dancing was fun:

We took a break in the castle to eat some mochi, which SC had been given by a girl she met on route. She seems to have befriended roughly half the population of Kyoto over the course of a week, which doesn't unduly surprise me.

They were delicious, and with that very healthy lunch we pushed on through the Hosokawa place. It doesn't take that long if you're not trying to fill your day, so we were able to cram it in quickly. Although we discovered SC had managed to lose her ticket while walking around the castle, the Hosokawa staff very kindly let her in on the grounds that I had mine (probably guessing it was unlikely we'd randomly met in Kumamoto, and thus we'd presumably both bought castle tickets).

Afterwards we ate ramen in a nice little place, and then went for coffee.

One of the odd little events that holidays get you cropped up when we were getting our coffees. SC spotted a crowd with a van on a corner, and asked me to explain. I worked out that it was one of the many campaigning vans going around recently, this one belonging to Ishihara Yasanari, a candidate for mayor. While I can't quite make out the details of his policies, such crowd-pleasers as "town planning that each individual can be shining symbiosis", "school volunteer grandparents region take advantage of the good technique" and "I want to be able to take the city hall staff test in immediately towards the blind" explain the riotous reception he received. And we can all surely agree that "women are cheerful town, full of full of energy", can we not? As customary, the van was deafeningly loud and probably quite annoying for most of the local shops.

There was also a bit of singing with a rather talented lady; as far as we could tell she just turned up, sang on top of a van and then took her family off home, so I'm not sure whether she was a planned part of the performance, or simply decided it would be a lark and everyone was too polite to stop her...

It hadn't occurred to me that this would be fascinating, but as SC pointed out, an election hustings is a real novelty if they don't really bother with things like democracy or attracting the popular vote in your country. It was one of those teachable moments for me.

Back to Fukuoka

Due to various events going on, Fukuoka was pretty much full to the gills that weekend, and we'd been worrying about where she could stay. However, a friend of mine very kindly stepped in and offered to let SC sleep at her place overnight! Considering they'd never met and I've only known my friend a few months, this was amazing. もう一度ありがとうございました！

We reluctantly took up the offer when nothing else seemed available, short of helping her find a room in a love hotel (probably embarrassing, but a good anecdote for parties!). There was a fair bit of stress with the arrangements, as we were a bit late coming back from Kumamoto, and then had to take locate and take a Japanese bus (for the first time) while texting rapidly in Japanese (also for the first time). In the end we made it, and duly met up, laden with omiyage to thank my friend for this enormous favour. The next morning I called round to pick SC up, and was invited in to meet the family. This was another first, as I've never been in a Japanese home before. It was really lovely, sipping ultra-posh Fortnum and Masons' Orange Pekoe and chatting away. As far as I can tell, I managed not to do anything particularly impolite, which was a relief.

We left after an hour or so, and headed to Ohori Park for a bit of exercise. My friend had explained that there was a traditional Japanese garden there, which I'd always assumed was a temple and so not bothered visiting (I've seen a lot of temples, and I go there for the park). This proved to be another very tranquil place, and we wandered round for ages talking about jobs and politics. Ah, the exciting life of a 30-year-old! Then we picked up something to eat and drink from the cafe, and headed to the airport.

After a certain amount of confusion, SC managed to check in. Meanwhile I was accosted by a lady doing surveys, but we eventually managed to establish that SC, rather than I, should be doing it. A complex trilingual conversation ensued, since the lady turned out to be Chinese. Officially I can speak Chinese, but in this case it was much easier for me to use Japanese most of the time. That added a bit of extra interest to the trip.

And then it was time, and I said my very reluctant goodbyes and headed back home. It was lovely to see an old friend for the first time in months, and I spoke the most English I have since the summer. While I have got to know some very nice people here, and had a lot of fun, it's a different thing from from hanging out with a long-term, comfortable friend and just chewing the fat over ordinary stuff.

Come back soon!