Miyajima!

Using Hiroshima as a base, we also set out to visit Miyajima for a day.  The small island lies just off the coast of the Honshu mainland and takes about 45 minutes by tram then 20 minutes by ferry to reach from the Hiroshima city-centre.  The island is most famous for the giant Torii Gate that stands in the waters (or out, depending on the tides) just offshore but is also known for its abundance of wild deer, a giant rice paddle, a large public aquarium, fresh oysters and momiji manju (a deep-fried battery sweet treat, much akin to cream donuts).  It was a sweltering hot day when we headed out there, but a nice relaxing break from city-life nonetheless - check out the pictures below!

Posing in front of the famous Miyajima Torii Gate at high tide.

This little cutie kept swimming right in front of us at the Miyajima Public Aquarium - I think just he loved getting his picture taken!

Finless Seto Sea dolphins.

John, patting a penguin!

The little guys were taken for a walk shortly after pat-time and we were surprised to see them waddling through the gift shop on our way out.

Selfies in front of the torii gate at low tide.  You can, and we did, walk through the gate for good luck during the low-tide.

You know you're Asian when you insist on posing in front of the world's largest rice paddle!

Hiroshima: A-bomb Anniversary and Lantern Peace Festival

In the two years I've lived in Japan I've travelled to a great many places, unfortunately Hiroshima was not one of them.  Quite some time ago though I put it on my "Japan-list" and so began planning a little post-JET holiday to the city to coincide with the annual A-bomb Memorial Day peace festival celebrations.

Every year on August 6th Hiroshima reflects on the tragedy of the atomic bombing of 1945.  Crowds flock to the Peace Park and A-bomb Dome on this day to pay their respects to those killed or affected by the violence and the mood is both solemn and hopeful.  The festival centres around a lantern-floating event in the evening, where thousands of paper lanterns are sent downstream as the sun sets in Hiroshima.  For about 600yen (or $6 AUD) you can buy one of these paper lanterns, sit at a table and decorate it with your message of peace, then saunter down to the riverside launch zone to push it into the water.  Literally thousands of people do this and by nightfall the river is lit up with the candlelight of  those lanterns of condolence.  It truly was a beautiful sight to behold.

Hiroshima A-bomb Dome, by lantern-light.

Peace lanterns flowing slowly down the river.

Hiroshima during the Peace Festival.

Weeping willow, bicycles and a river full of lanterns.  Such a beautiful night!

But Hiroshima is more than just a city once devastated by the bomb.  It is a vibrant and green city - much more visually stunning than any other Japanese metropolis I've been to.  The air has a seaside atmosphere to it and the rivers that meander through the city help this summery breeze to flow.  Oysters are big business in Hiroshima, as is Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (savoury Japanese pancakes) and we indulged in both specialties while we were here.  We also took the opportunity to rent bicycles from our hostel and cycle around the city for a day of sightseeing - where we visited Hiroshima Castle, sipped coffee in air-conditioned Tully's and shopped at Tokyu Hands for scrapbook supplies.

Hiroshima Castle.

John, dressing up as a feudal lord inside Hiroshima Castle.

Standing at the top of Hiroshima Castle.

The view of Hiroshima city and castle park.

John, standing by a "tsunami pod" inside department store Tokyu Hands.

Tokyu Hands sells everything - from stationery supplies to toys, emergency supply equipment to electronics.

Getting our scrapbooking on at Tokyu Hands.

I'm glad I finally made it to Hiroshima in the end, and at the end actually.  It was a truly lovely way to end my stint in Japan - indulging in culture, celebrating peace and relaxing in a laid-back city on holiday!

Leaving Japan and Life on JET

I don't know how I feel about this leaving Japan and my life on JET just yet...  I am about a week past finishing up my job - which has been a sad and often tearful transition - and about two weeks prior to departing my adopted home country for the final time.  I have to say, I am enjoying this free time to truly breathe in my surroundings and live like a knowledgeable tourist in Tokushima.  But it's also a weighty time of year, when new JETs arrive and old JETs leave and you're forced to make new friends and say goodbye to old ones.

I've started approaching things as "the last time I'll ever..." which is making me cherish my moments as well as take on a nagging feeling of regret already.  And I am both excited and apprehensive about leaving John and my (new) comfort zone behind to return to the unfamiliar familiarity of Australian life.  I've been doing my research though and will hopefully be prepared for the creeping reverse culture shock that is sure to come.  But for now, it's all about the final memories and long goodbyes.

Last Classes

For the past two weeks I've been slowly proceeding through the "last classes" with students of all grade levels at each of my schools.  On top of all of the other "moving stresses" these looming classes mostly just seemed sad and emotionally relentless in the way they stretched out over a fortnight.  To say that I wasn't really looking forward to them, and saying goodbye, would be a massive understatement.  Starting to write this final chapter and actually vocalise the goodbyes was ridiculously draining, not to mention scary.  As though uttering the words finally made my impending departure real.  And after each class I was left feeling a little bummed that I wouldn't see those kids again, or be back in that classroom again and I knowing that each class was merely one down in a long succession of such lessons made me feel even more beleaguered.

And then something happened.  As the number of 'final lessons' dwindled, it stopped seeming so sad.  It became something I'd done and reacted to emotionally so many times that I knew how to handle it.  I started to feel like an old pro at the goodbye thing, the tears stopped backing up and I was able to just enjoy the final lessons with my students.  To be sure, seeing my kids smile and knowing pretty soon I'd be back in Australia probably never to lay eyes on them again was moving, but I hoped they'd remember me and cherish our good memories.  So we smiled at one another, took some pictures together and that was enough.  I will miss them though!

The Rainy Season

As an Australian I am used to dealing with the heat.  In fact, I like hot weather and summer is my favourite month.  In my opinion, there's nothing better than slipping into a summer dress and spending the day by the water, in the sunshine, sipping a cold alcoholic beverage.  So naturally, after the frigid winters, I look forward to the warmth in Japan.  But a Japanese 'summer' is entirely unlike the Aussie summers I've experienced in Western Australia and Melbourne.  This is probably because first of all you have to get through rainy season!

Rainy season is the term used to refer to the roughly month-long period across June and July when it gets ridiculously humid and often rains without warning in Japan.  And I'm not talking sun showers here, oh no.  I'm talking torrential downpours that start just as quickly as they stop.  Or other bouts of rain that continue for 24 solid hours, threatening to flood everything in sight.  Rain so heavy that you cannot see out of your car windscreen and are drenched through within 5 seconds of daring to brave any uncovered distances on foot.

But all that rain is good for the environment and the crops and whatnot, right?  And it must cool the place down and provide a welcome relief from the heat, right?

Yeah, it's probably good for the farmers and rice crops particularly.  But it does cause wide-spread flooding actually and can be quite dangerous.  The Japan Meteorological Agency often issues severe flood warnings as a result of these downpours and people die getting caught in the waters every year.  On top of that, it wreaks havoc with car batteries for some reason too, so getting stranded in the shitty weather is a real possibility!

And no, it doesn't cool the place down.  It makes it even more humid.  It makes it feel as though you're walking through a cloud.  Before you even dry off from your shower, you're slick with sweat and it just gets worse throughout the day.  You sweat even if you're not doing anything, your clothes need washing the instant you peel them off and it sometimes becomes so humid it's actually hard to breathe!  Lately in Tokushima temperatures have been soaring beyond the mid-30's (celsius) and let me tell you, the rain does NOTHING to cool the place down!

And though sunshine and warmth is sunshine and warmth anywhere you go, you can give me a hot dry Aussie summer over a Japanese rainy season any day!

Technology!

I've touched on this in this blog before but surprisingly Japan is relatively behind the curve when it comes to technology in everyday life.  It may be synonymous with high-tech advances and robotic everything, but generally speaking day-to-day life in Japan is rather devoid of technology.  Let me explain how...

1) It could be done on computer, but let's use pencil and paper!  Oddly enough, many office and menial tasks in Japan are still completed using old fashioned pencil and paper.  My teachers rarely use email for example, and when they do everyone logs on to an archaic shared computer as if email exists solely on that one machine.  My JTE's have often expressed surprise when I deliver a ready-made lesson plan not 10 minutes after speaking to them about the day's lesson - as though the idea of finding exactly what I need on the internet is some kind of insane wizardry.  In fact, I distinctly recall one of my teachers being completely in awe at the concept of Google Earth and even more taken aback when I explained that yes, I had seen and used it before.  The pen and paper theme continues throughout office-life with vacation requests needing to be filled in on paper and stamped by a million different people before they can be approved, paper memos and schedules being the norm for information dissemination, internal mail document-forwarding existing in lieu of email communication and sending faxes between businesses still rather commonplace.

2) ATMs close and EFTPOS isn't a thing.  This is something that caught me by surprise when I first came to Japan, but rather than running servers 24-7 and allowing people access to their money at all times, banks shut down their servers rendering ATMs essentially useless outside of office hours.  Getting paid today but stuck without cash before 8am?  Too bad, the ATM won't "open" until 9am.  Need cash at 7pm saturday night for a weekend out?  Nope, the ATM "closed" at 6pm.  Want to pay for your groceries by card?  Um, what?  No can do, you must have cash!  I have been caught out by this a couple of times, but soon learned from my mistake!  Basically, everyone makes it to the bank at some stage during the week to withdraw a ridiculous wad of notes which they carry around with them to pay for everything.  You must pay cash for groceries at the supermarket, electronics at big department stores, food at restaurants, petrol at service stations etc etc.  The only places you can use card (and I mean credit card, not bank card!) is at large hotels and some of the more tourist travelled places like airports etc.  Talk about inconvenient!

3) Nobody uses internet banking.  Let me say first of all that you CAN get internet banking.  You just can't DO anything with it other than check your balance.  There's no such thing as BPAY, no transferring money between accounts, no paying money into other people's accounts by online means and hardly anyone uses credit or debit cards to pay for purchases online.  If you want to do any of those things, you must go to a branch or use an ATM (during office hours of course!).  On the plus side, cash-on-delivery is major business here and one can order just about anything from Amazon.co.jp and opt to have it delivered to your door for a small fee, with nothing to pay until you actually collect the item.

4) Smartphones aren't the norm in Japan.  Most of the population get by with these little flip-phone thingies.  Don't get me wrong, if you can read and write in Japanese then these cheap little mobile phones are endlessly useful - you can use the internet, send mails, watch TV, listen to the radio even - but if you can't it's just calls and texts for you!  Only recently however have smartphones really become an "in-thing" in Japan, with iphone and android model sales taking off.

5) The land of the squat toilet AND the automatic washlet.  Toilets in Japan are a bit of a contradiction.  On the one hand, some are Western-styled seats with fancy electronic feature additions such as deodorising, washing facilities, heated seats and privacy sounds.  While on the other hand, squat toilets are essentially a bowl set into the ground with a pull handle to flush.  All rather bizarre and something I won't miss at all - at least until I have to park my behind on a freezing-cold seat in the middle of winter anyway.

Finishing Off the Shikoku 88

As you might know, I have made it my mission to complete the Shikoku 88 henro trail before I leave Japan and so it was with much haste that I found myself zig-zagging across my beloved island madly visiting temples in the weeks before my departure.

The temples still on my to-do list consisted mostly of remote Kochi or Ehime locations, as well as a number of the final temples in Kagawa.  I decided that I wanted to finish with number 88 and so began travelling to Kochi and Ehime on weekends.  Of course, with as much driving between temples as there was I could only manage 6 or 7 in a weekend - and so the pressure was really on to sacrifice my days off and get out there.

Big Buddha.

I wrote an article about this final stage of my pilgrimage for the Awa Life newsletter - you can read it and check out the pictures here: http://www.topia.ne.jp/_files/00005814/AwaLife201308.pdf


The feeling I got upon entering the final temple though, was magical.  My heart was racing and yet I was as happy and calm as I have ever been.  After getting my book signed for the final time, I wrote my wishes on a little piece of paper and tied them to a wire in the courtyard breathing in the air and letting a feeling of completeness wash over me.  It was a lot of work - lots of driving and walking up/down stairs plus it cost me around $300 AUD just for the calligraphies alone (not to mention fuel, food and accommodation along the way), but it's something that I am immensely glad I put the effort into.

The wishing wire at Temple 88.

John, writing down his wish at the final temple.

Pleased as punch just having finished the Shikoku 88!!!