JET Program CIR Report
CIR Report from Kanazawa (9)
October 2008By Sophie Bocklandt
(Coordinator for International Relations)I am now officially a third year JET (my contract started in August 2006) and eventhough I thought this would be my last year, I have actually been asked to stay a fourth one in Kanazawa! Until recently 3 years was the maximum on the JET program, but the policy is changing and we are now given the chance to stay 4 or even 5 years. I have time until the end of the year to think about it, so you will read my answer in my next report!
But first things first, what have I been up to these last months? Using the last of my holidays in July, I went back to the Mount Fuji area with a long-time friend, together passing by countryside Yamanashi prefecture (delicious peaches, grapes and udon noodles) and visiting the Fujikyu Highland theme park, where on a clear day you can enjoy the rides while gazing at impressive Mount Fuji. For those who know my passion for theme parks and fast rides, I can only say this is the best park I have gone to so far! Many rides are listed in the Guinness World Records Book (fastest rollercoaster, rollercoaster with the most loops (backwards!), 90 degrees drop rollercoaster), but even more impressive is the huge haunted mansion in the back, which is located in a real abandoned hospital. The perfect setting for your own Japanese horror movie! About 45 minutes of screaming your lungs out and running towards the exit, passing through scary deserted rooms and hallways, dodging lifelike dead bodies and being chased by actors with the most horrifying make-up. For those who dare, another only-in-Japan experience!
After going up Mount Tateyama in my first year and reaching the top of Mount Fuji just a few months ago, I thought it would be appropriate to finish the top 3 of Japan’s most beautiful mountains and so I went on a daytrip to Mount Hakusan with some friends. Thinking about it, it was a crazy thing of us to do, since it was raining all day. Climbing Hakusan is mostly climbing over rocks so it get’s slippery, climbing up also means colder temperatures and nobody was really dressed for this challenge. But coming back after a day of feeling cold and miserable and then stepping into a hot bath, was one of the most rewarding moments I have had in Japan!
In fact Kanazawa has been confronted with severe floodings at the end of July. One early morning heavy rainfall made the Asanogawa river overflow, flooding the surroundings streets and districts. These include the beautiful Kazuemachi and Higashi chayagai geisha districts. It was an impressive volunteer and charity effort that made sure the streets were cleaned up and houses were restored in record time. So at the end of August we could already enjoy a beautiful illumination at the geisha district with traditional Kaga Yuzen silk lanterns. (For the record, I live next to Saigawa river, at the other side of Kanazawa. This river also rose and showed a never seen wild current, but luckily for me and my neighbors, the Saigawa did not overflow.)
August 2008 was watching and commenting the Beijing Olympics with my friends (and eventually cheering for the Japanese athletes, since they were the most present on our Japanese tv-screens), enjoying fireworks and jazz in the Kanazawa night-time, eating sushi with friends and being impressed by the minuscule sushi creations of the chef (a sushi of only one grain of rice, with wasabi mustard!), by coincidence meeting up with a pilot from Ghent who once in a while does cargo flights to Kanazawa, meeting up by coincidence with a Belgian student while taking a night bus from Kanazawa to Tokyo, and thanks to the wedding dinner of one of our French club members, finally meeting the one other Belgian actually living in Kanazawa! Seems Belgians are finally finding their way to Kanazawa! In fact I met a load of foreign exchange students in August, thanks to the Japan Tent Exchange Programme, offering foreign students from all over Japan the chance to enjoy Ishikawa hospitality and traditions for one week. And another fun event, the magazine I posed for in kimono, “eye on Kanazawa”, has been published! It’s an free English paper, aimed at a foreign public, introducing several aspects of life in Kanazawa. It is being distributed at several tourist locations throughout town, stations, hotels and restaurants, so I often ran into my own Japanese look-alike these days!
August is traditionally the arrival time of many new JETs and therefore the returning home of others, including one of my best friends from Canada. We spent so many hours going around Ishikawa and hanging out at each other’s houses, enjoying each other’s cooking, movies and company, that it was sad to see her go. Luckily for me I can’t be too lonely, because my boyfriend has arrived in Tokyo for one year of study. So a lot of my weekends I am now spending in the Japanese capital. The distance is considerable (4,5 hours by train, 7,5 hours by bus) and so are the costs, but being bored in Tokyo is out of the question! In September I finally made it to a live sumo wrestling tournament. I was amazed by the huge amount of visitors, including a lot of foreigners, the hustle and bustle in and around the sumo hall and mostly by the excitement of the Japanese. I know Japanese as rather silent reserved people, but when the sumo wrestlers appear, they start cheering for their favorites and get really loud. There is even a voice announcing not to throw cushions on stage! The seats closest to the sumo stage are cushions on tatami mats and apparently excited viewers have a tendency to throw those cushions at the sumo wrestlers! Too bad I did not see it happen lol The same excited loud atmosphere at the sports festival of my boyfriend’s dormitory. I got to see tug-of-war and piggyback fight, two sports I wasn’t really familiar with. The tug-of-war is mainly the pulling of a huge rope with about 15 people at each side. The winner is the group who can pull the other group the fastest over a line, concerning a distance of as small as half a meter. Still it can take a few minutes before this happens, resulting in an overexcited atmosphere among the viewers. In piggyback fight two teams form some sort of “horses” made out of four people, one person sitting on three others. Two kings are depicted and put in corners, being surrounded by defending “horses”. The attacking “horses” have to try to throw the king of the enemy of his trone as fast as possible. It’s a rather hard sport, a lot of kicking and pulling, falls can be really painful, noses might get bruised, but again it’s very excited to see from a distance. And to ease the harsh fighting atmosphere, there is always Halloween in Disneyland Tokyo, which is now celebrating its 25th anniversary!
Another summer, another kid’s event with the 4 CIR’s. This time we decided to do a game only event, with a sitting in a circle event from Brazil, a running over event from America, another running around game from Korea and last, the “vogeltjesdans/danse des canards” from Belgium! And to finish in beauty, snack time with exclusive drinks and candy from our four respective countries! Another returning event was the Ishikawa International Festival where me and my boyfriend held a Belgian booth, with a little Belgian snack corner, a quiz, an animation movie and many many pictures. And the beginning of October was again the time of the International Friendship Festival in front of city hall, where my CIR colleagues and I did presentation on stage in traditional clothing (this year I chose a traditional Vietnamese and Korean outfit).
With the installation of a new French Ambassador in Tokyo, we had a reason to invite him to Kanazawa. And from sister city Nancy a new art exchange student arrived to study for one year at the Kanazawa College of Art. The first days we went all around town to help her get installed, passing by city hall, the bank, the cell phone shop, several supermarkets, her apartment. It was a flashback to my own arrival, now more than two years ago. Time goes fast!
In just a few days I will once again be on my way to Europe to accompany the mayor of Kanazawa on his business trip to the European sister cities Ghent and Nancy. And because of the 150th anniversary of the Japanese-French diplomatic relations we are also passing by Paris. Another challenging work adventure which I will gladly share with you in my next report!
Maybe our paths will cross one of these days, and if not, have a wonderful time wherever you are!
Greetings,
Sophie Bocklandt
(Photos by Sophie Bocklandt)