Camping

There was a miscommunication and me Al David Jenny joined Jeff Dorrie Dyl Jess Jessie Becca at Oku-Nikkawa camp-site with no food to cook for dinner. Trains don't so much stop as hesitate at Oku-Nikkawa train station and there was a long mountain dirt track pocked with pot-holes, a pile of traffic and the dark between us and the nearest shops. So we piled into the only building apart from the house where the drunk farmer lived- the restaurant.

'Restaurant' is quite is quite misleading though, and to look at the place, I'm not sure anyone would call it that. More a mountain retreat with a side in selling food. A place where you never really get to drunk since there's no-one else around to see you drunk, least of all yourself in the toilet mirror or the bottom of your glass.

We caught them off-guard and they warned us it would take about an hour and 45 minutes til they could could feed us a hearty curry rice, steaming and wholesome grub on a drizzly night that'd shrubbed out the morning sunshine. They had to get another batch of rice on the go in the rice cooker.

We were welcomed by three Tokyoites, a mother and two children who sat peeling baby bamboo shoots into a cardboard box. There wasn't space to sit since the other tables were occupied- one surrounded by four country-types who cooked meat on a portable hot plate in front of them, the other strewn with empty Super Dry bottles and scraps of 竹の子(baby bamboo) shells, green, wet, scattered. It looked as if a large group had just left, although I think the smoking lady who took to Jeff immediately might have been solely responsible, judging by the lilt to her voice. The Tokyoites soon left, making way for us. Apparently they too were clientele, although we'd all taken them for proprietors or at least friends or relatives.

Two plastic trays of baby bamboo were thumped down in front of us, spilling sprouts like pencils rolling free. A squirt of mayonnaise for each tray and entreaties to eat, eat eateat please soon followed. There are places tucked away in cities too in Tohoku (north-east Japan), at which there's no need to order, instead sit back and await the food that is brought you, anything they have, or anything they want to give you. 山菜 (SanSai) mountain vegetables with bonito fish flakes and soy followed, then accompanied the rounds of bamboo.

In spite of a heavy night before and to spite the bad weather, inevitably it came to beer for us. One of the country types leaped to the chill to fetch us bottles of Super Dry and asked 1 2 4 5 how many. He ambled back along the narrow gloomy corridor- bitten into with stuff and piles of stuff and stuff collapsed on stuff on the floor- that reached away from our table and handed us our beers. A little later, he too bid the owners goodbye, apparently just another punter helping out.

Becca returned from a foray deeper into the restaurant in search of the lav having first found the owner's living room instead. Jeff strode to the table strewn with empty bottles, his hand was clasped between two, warmly, and he and three of the locals, or perhaps more transient Golden Week vacationers started up joshing one another in clipped Japanese I had no ear for. We all et up our curry. A grand old time was had.

桜

 
 
 

Give them Peanuts

It was so slow for an Assistant Language Teacher at school at the beginning of term, that I took to wearing the same shirt twice in a fortnight (someone would notice if in a week) and made reams of worksheets in preparation for lessons.

Lately, things picked up a lot.

Today, I decided to theme the worksheets for the Third Grade Kids and the theme is peanuts.

In the Food Chain worksheet, "Peanuts are eaten by small fish"

in a cross word, one clue runs, "When I smell delicious peanuts, it makes me______". See if you can guess the answer to that one.

a question for the Character Find sheet: "How long have you loved peanut and beef sandwiches?"

And finally, the Information Gap exercise and, "Was the peanut sausage invented in 2007?".

All this talk of peanuts. I'm peanut hungry.

Bloody knees and busted shins

The really great thing about half inch bolts on flat wide white bike pedals is that your feet hardly ever slip off the pedals.

The really shit thing is that when they do slip off...

花見

Even though I knew what to expect from things this time round, a second year in Japan, still, expectations seem to have been thwarted.

Last year this time of year was a week of school nights spent under the trees, surrounded by grander parties with blue tarpaulins and platters of sushi, office workers straight from the office and us sat on jackets til it got a little too cold and we a little too tipsy to care, and pulled on our jackets. Trees illuminated with spotlights, a dozen of us and a white quivering ceiling.

This year, I've managed to get to Kajo Park late, and no-one seems to be sticking around like last year. In fact no-one seems to be around like last year. I went last night with a friend Nicole and we bumped into some students of hers from Nanko High School and took pictures with them on the bridge, then ate dango, because it's what you eat at Hanami time.

This morning the rain broke, sputteringly it came down all day long and the clouds smudged right down into the mountains until the two were indistinguishable in great charcoal blue swathes. In a strange way, I liked it. Cowering at home then under a brolly and on my momma cherry town-cruising bike all the way to school. Drinking hot mugs of Houji Cha at school like we were served with extravagant breakfasts, in ryokan, my mother and I, in Kyoto this last trip I was on. The blossom falling, speckling pavement, collecting.

Black eggs and green tea

A little time has passed now since my Dad came to visit Japan for the second time. The cherry blossom front that sweeps up from the Ryukyu Islands on a diagonal to the furthest tip of Hokkaido and the disputed spits of land beyond has breached the eastern gate of Yamagata castle, as yet unfinished (both blossom and the resurrection of the castle). Purple tipped weeds or flowers or brush of some sort have sprung up in clumps, bunching on the banks of rice fields that as little as five weeks ago were levelled with the road for a blanket of snow piled on crop stubs. The light pools a little late afternoon in hills that glow vibrant, brown, new. The rains came, the season changed, my mum came and went and Fuji San streaked in the sun before haze shrouded over again one train ride by- all of these things happened more or less in reverse order, since my dad took his second trip to Japan.

Of that trip, black eggs and green tea stick in my mind. We moved room one night after the next for three in the Parkside Hotel, Tokyo, unprepared as they were for our sudden change of plan. Each time we returned I would brew a cup of green tea for Dad and me. Tea tea-bagged and water brought to the boil in a clever little thermos come kettle. And one day, one more black egg each from the sulpher springs of Owakudani, Hakone. There, I'd hoped we'd glimpse Fuji-San, basking in the fresh sunshine that would three weeks later hit Yamagata and breach those walls and tease out those delicate little pink and white wafers. As it turned out, that privilege was saved for Mum, that train ride we took by, on Mum's way to Tokyo, to the wrong terminal, to the right one and away from Japan.

Dad and I did see Fuji-San, but the crown nestled in a large, spongy cloud. Large enough for the largest mountain in Japan. I climbed Fuji-San seven years or so ago- that didn't provide too many problems, but the descent was quite another matter, in the dark, with nothing but an empty beer can and a spare jumper tugged tight over my body by interlocked crossed arms- my preparation for the hike. I told Dad that story as we descended another peak in Hakone, in the dark. Not as high as Fuji, this one, but just as dangerous and even more so, as things turned out. We'd misjudged the time and the view from the top was crap. Onsen and dinner in the hotel's reputable restaurant awaited and we descended briskly. A little too briskly, as it turned out.

Dad dropped one footfall into thin air where he had expected firm rock. He staggered on, seemed to regain his balance then tripped and stumbled a pace or two more in the gloomy dark ahead, before falling flat against the slope. I remember his speed scared me. Then when he didn't get up immediately, that was the next thing that scared me. The grunt of discomfort, muffled by the rock that now cushioned his face, next. And finally, the blood that Dad declared, 'There's blood', as he raised himself up, the blood that grew so sticky so quick in my hands and against my kei-tai phone as I realised I had spent a year in Japan without needing to know the telephone number for the emergency services. So why would I know it?

I called Akiyoshi first, because he always knows what to do. No answer. I called Justin next, because he always answers, or replies to mails within seconds. And when he answered, I realised I didn't know what I wanted to ask him. I think maybe I just needed to tell someone we were in trouble. Shouting help wouldn't have done it. In an hour and 45 minutes up and down, we hadn't passed a soul.

I really thought he could just drop and pass out at any point, blood gushing from his head. Along with Dad saying, 'There's blood', I remember the sound of it striking the rock he'd fallen onto as he lifted his head, like the sound you make pissing up a tree, I remember thinking fuck he's bleeding quickly, here in the dark, away from everyone else.

Ambulance (the first my Dad has ever been in), a needle prodded in a dozen times to anaesthetize, a difficult stitching job on a deep, jagged cut that went this way, tacked back and carried on it's original direction again. Swelling, slow moving, Dad shaking uncontrollably with a normal expression on his face in the car back from the hospital, and me feeling nauseous for an hour. Sugar in Dad's tea. A hot bath and a round of sandwiches in our room rather than the onsen and the French restaurant. Stares for the rest of the trip.

Next time no more hills.

Best of times, worst of times: after and before Dad's accident, 花の寺, Mum struggles