Climbing Mt. Hakusan.....

I am so sorry I didn't do my regular update this weekend! I was absolutely stuffed. I had three hours of sleep on Thursday night (stoopid computers), and was on a train to Takayama one hour after finishing work on Friday night. The plan for the weekend was to hike Mount Hakusan on Saturday. The photos in which you see the weather is really nice was actually Sunday. Saturday was a miserable day weather-wise and made the hike a little more challenging...

The photo below is of myself and Megan. In the distant background is the peak of Mt. Hakusan. (on the right, behind the mountain in the foreground... you can see it through the branches of the tree). We walked from where we are standing in the photo to the peak. The hike was 6.9 km one way, and 2.7km high.

This is some of the group which went on the hiking weekend. On Friday night we stayed at a temple converted into a hostel (really nice and warm). Waking at 5.30am on Saturday to depart at 6am was an absolute killer. By 7.30, twelve of us were starting our trek up the mountain.

This is at the beginning of the hike. There was a huge lake, and we were surrounded by the beautiful autumn colours. Of course, I must remind you that this is NOT what it looked like on Saturday. It was grey and murky. We couldn't really see very far into the distance..

The first couple of kilometres was a lot of path and steps surrounded by yellow and red leaves. It was pretty slippery due to the rain. The first kilometre was a little difficult because we went off a bit faster than we should have.

Some of the group had already climbed Mt. Hakusan a few weeks ago and they had explained how gorgeous the view was. This view is the best I could come up with. We would mostly just look into the distance and see cloud everywhere. The steam coming off the surrounding mountains was pretty awesome looking though.

The trees were my friend on the hike. They helped me when I slipped. I slipped quite a lot....

We had a brief rest at the 4km mark. It was really cold and my tracksuit pants were almost around my ankles from being so wet. I was not so well prepared with proper clothing..... About half of the group turned back at the hut because they didn't want to challenge the weather (besides, they had already hiked the trail). After we left the little hut, we came across some snow! It was so exciting to see my first snow in Japan.... we were having snow ball fights and even decided to make a snowman on the way down.

However, the excitment only lasted a matter of minutes.......

For most of the last kilometre to the top, we were knee deep in stupid snow. I was seriously tempted to take my pants off because they were so uncomfortable. My glasses also frosted over so I couldn't "appreciate" the scenery. Prior to the hike, there was a promise of hot ramen (noodle soup) at the top of the mountain. This is what was spurring me on to finish. However, one of the quicker hikers passed us on the way back and told us that there was absolutely nothing open at the top of the mountain. I was so pissed off at this!

So I decided to turn back at the 6.5km mark. Why on earth would I want to continue on to the peak of a mountain which I couldn't see anything from and not eat ramen?! I wanted to call a helicopter to get me down the mountain quickly, but that was not an option. So I trudged down the mountain slipping and sliding. It was first raining, it then started to hail. After that, there was snow which was going horizontal.

However, the last few kilometres weren't so bad, because I knew there was a worthwhile goal at the end! Wating for me was a fabulous onsen (below). It's a natural spring which was on the side of the lake. It was the best thing to do after a freezing walk.

This is the cabin thing that we stayed at on Saturday night. It was weird because they had a couple of bear skulls brewing on a stove in the middle of the room. It wasn't put into our food, so I suppose it was to fragrance the air or something..... We stayed up drinking a bit and having fun with some crazy Japanese guys. I was one of the first in bed because I am turning into a Grandma....

After leaving Hakusan on Sunday morning, Megan and I shopped around Takayama for a bit.

It was good to get a few items bought for presents!!! I was so wrecked on Sunday though. I hit the wall at about 3.30 and was ready for home. It was funny to see all these Japanese tourists taking photos of weird things like eating these rice ball things on sticks.... so I decided to have a photo taken too. Maybe I will know some day what it was that I ate. I think it must be famous for Takayama...

OK, that's it for me tonight. I also went to Ise Shrine last Thursday. I have photos and will post them up maybe tomorrow night. Cya L8R Alligator!!!!

Meet the Class!

Hi! Well seeing I am here to teach, I may as well show you that I do actually go to work!

This is my 1-7 class. They are the first year senior high students, so the equivalent to year 9 (14-15 years old). There are about 40 to 45 students in each class, but they are so easy to control. They are not posing for this photo, they actually work! Other English teachers in the area complain about how their students use hair straighteners, make phone calls and do their makeup in class... The only thing my students get told off for is for wearing too baggy socks.

My students are great. They go from being completely studious to crazy. I don't know what the dude in the top left corner is doing. Maybe the fun stuff was too much for him and he wanted me to set him more homework.... So more about my job... I teach 12 periods each week. The periods run for a standard 50 minutes each. I teach 8 first year classes and 4 second year classes.

I am basically a tape recorder for the first year classes, reading dialog and listening practice questions from a textbook. Lesson topics include things like Superstitions, Pets and Hobbies. I sometimes alter the lessons so they are slightly bearable for both the students and myself. Tomorrow one of my classes is acting out a play from the book, and the winning team will win a cool prize! Some of the classes have some crazy students. In a second year class, one boy wrote up a comic of Snoopy, calling him "Fooooooool!" and "Hard Gay" (Hard Gay is some popular character made up by the crazy Japanese people). I was going to read the story out to the class, but it ended up in a cat and mouse chase as he was embarrassed and ran after me to get it back.

This is my school. The first picture shows the little courtyard that the students sit at during the Summer and eat their lunch. The second photo is of the pool. It is covered now because it is getting really cold. The waterpolo team trains there everyday, morning and afternoon. So that means the students are at school from about 6.30am until 7pm or so. Poor things!!!!! The third photo is of some silo thing. It's a huge eyesore and it's getting all rusty. The last photo is of the teacher's building. My staffroom is on the second floor. Construction was going on at the time in order to prepare the building for an earthquake. Apparently Gifu is 20 years overdue for a huge earthquake or something, and the Japanese are a very prepared bunch!

Today a group of students from St. George's school had their first day at Ogaki Higashi HS as an exchange group. They're a cool bunch of people and they seemed extremely tired today. The first period we had an opening ceremony for them, and I translated for the MC. The following period we had a tour of the school. I even saw things that I had not yet seen in three months! Later in the afternoon we went to the City Hall and paid a visit to the Mayor. We were served green tea and listened to Kasai (my supervisor) interpret what the Mayor was saying. It was a lot of talking about landmarks and Japanese culture. The blonde girl in the middle is Silvia, she is an exchange student from Slovakia. She moved to Japan 7 months ago and has another 3 remaining. Her English and Japanese is amazing, and she is a really sweet girl. I will miss her when she leaves!

The Weekend Update 2

Well this weekend was pretty busy. I don't think I have had a day of nothing for the last 2 months or so. Well on Saturday, I was up to nothing and Megan called up saying she was bored. She had checked out the orientation guide of Gifu that we got three months ago and read something about a place called Tarui and how it had hiking, a shrine and a kick ass bakery.

After a bit of research, we found that Tarui was only 1 train station away from Ogaki. So we thought that we would give it a shot. Darkness falls really early here (maybe 5.30), so apologies for the dark photos... we spent a bit of time at the bakery. It was a really nice bakery (sorry, no photos), and I had a really yummy hot chocolate. It was a little chilly outside so it was really comforting. After the bakery, we went through a really quaint little town to find a shrine.

The walk up to the shrine was really fun. A few of the houses had these funny little rock statues out the front. They were just simple rocks that were dressed in matching aprons. It reminded me a little of The Three Bears or something....

The shrine looked really cool at this time of the evening. The red/orange paint really stood out against the gravel and the greenery in the background. We walked around the inside of the shrine, and took off our shoes for good measure.

Across from the shrine was a wall of prayers and other little knick-knacks. It looked pretty cool.

On Sunday, we went to a traditional Japanese dance performance. We got the tickets for free, so there was nothing to lose really. It was a strange experience. I felt both bored and excited at the same time.... The actual performances were really boring because the dancers would hardly move. However, the costumes were marvellous. They were really intricate and beautifully embroidered. We sat through half of the performances and then left before we fell asleep.

The dude sitting behind the dancers doesn't actually take part in the dances. He sits there and helps the dancer out with costume changes and hands them props. The last photo shows a dancer in her first costume. The next photo below shows the same dancer after a costume change. The guy in the background just about tore off the outer layers of the first costume.

The second last photo shows the musicians. They played pretty slow music. The singers were really funny because they kept on making whooping noises. The drummers were funny too. They kept on licking the bottom of their drums. The facial expressions on all of the actors and the musicians never changed. They all looked so bored and serious. That is except for the dude with the sword above. He made really cool facial expressions, such a character. There were a lot of really old ladies in the audience. They also seemed pretty bored, and some of them were asleep. They look really funny when they sleep. It's like they're convertibles because they all fold up.

OK, that's it for me. Keep up the comments because then I know you're checking out this blog! Thanks to everyone for the comments so far!

Speech Contest

Well today was the end of a lot of preparation and stress. Two of my first year students (equivalent to year 10) took part in the 30th Lions Club Inter-High School Oratorical Contest. They had to make a speech in English, the topic being "My Dream". My students were really sweet and they were easy to train. They would take on anything I advised them to do (gotta love that!)

On the left is Kaoru. She spoke about her dream to become a school counselor. It was a story which I could relate to a lot because it was about how she had become alienated at her old high school and had to change schools. She turned out stronger and she is a really sweet girl. The girl on the right is Nozomi. She spoke about her dream to work in foreign countries helping out societies which had been affected by war. I'd say it was a very relevant speech, and she was an absolute laugh. She was a really cool girl.

Of 27 students which participated, Nozomi scored 5th place and Kaoru scored 2nd place. They were excellent. They sounded very fluent, had clear voices and had good intonation. As a result, they each won a certificate, trophy and a trip overseas to wherever they want to go. I reckon it is a pretty sweet deal!

My school, Ogaki Higashi SHS, ended up scoring first place overall against 17 other schools. It is the first time the Ogaki Higashi has won the award, so I suppose my supervisor will give me a bit of credit for that (HOPEFULLY!?!). And no, we didn't win any overseas trips or anything. We got this massive flag. I don't know what will happen with it, but I think it will be paraded at the next school assembly. The teacher on the left is Ono-sensei, and on the left is Ohashi-sensei. They were extremely proud of the students too!

Gifu Cultural Tour

Today was a miserably wet day. When it starts raining here, it doesn't seem to stop at all! I spent the morning at school once again helping out with my speech contest students. They are really sweet, even though they can mix up their "L"s and "R"s.....

Later in the day, a huge group of us gaijin (foreigners) spent the afternoon on a cultural tour of Gifu. Five minutes after leaving my apartment, my jeans were drenched up to my knees...

The first place we went to was a cormorant fisherman's house. Cormorant fishing is where a fisherman guides cormorants to catch sweetfish. The cormorant has its neck tied so it doesn't swallow the fish. They catch about 6 or 7 fish at a time. In an hour, a cormorant can catch about 60 sweetfish. Pretty skilled I reckon! (They make funny noises, sounding like barking dogs sometimes)


The fisherman then showed us the traditional outfit. They wear blue outfits because they have a calming (?) effect on the cormorants. As the sweetfish move slower at night, cormorant fishing is performed at night. Due to this, the fishermen carry big bundles of fire to allow the cormorant to see the fish. To protect their hair from fire, the fishermen wear headscarves. They also wear straw skirts. I forget why though.....
Cormorant fishing is very traditional, and has been around for 1300 years. It is passed down through the family. The fisherman's son will become a cormorant fisherman when he is older. There are 6 fishing masters in Gifu, and this fisherman is one of them. The river is the Nagara river (very difficult to say in Japanese - Nagaragawa). The depth is very shallow, from 10cm to about a metre.

So after the fishing visit, we went to Gifu Park to participate in a tea "ceremony". I had seen one on America's Next Top Model, and this tea ceremony was a rip off. We paid 400 yen admission, sat at benches and had a grumpy woman in a kimono deliver the bitter bitter tea and the um, tasty sweet. I gingerly ate the sweet, which tasted like an overcooked potato gone cold and skulled the tea. It was like swallowing sea water.....

The Gifu Great Buddha in the Shobi-ji Temple was next. It was huge and very difficult to take a decent photo of, so my apologies.... This Buddha is the third largest in Japan. It took 38 years to make and is 25 metres tall. It's made of bamboo, covered with clay, and then covered with a stack of Buddhist scriptures. It's pretty cool, it gives the "OK" sign.

These statues were sitting all around the Buddha. They look like they're cheering him on. I don't really know what they are, but they all had different expressions and personalities. Many of them were missing their hands and eyebrows.....

These two guys were my favourite. The hand in the second photo wasn't actually connected to the statue. I suppose it was like Thing from The Addams Family.... I'd think it would be fun to go back and give each of these statues names. I reckon the first guy suits "George", and the second one is "Fabio"