JET Program CIR Report
CIR Report from Kanazawa (4)By Sophie Bocklandt The weather in Kanazawa has been very interesting these past months. Until April it was rather cold and rainy, but as soon as I got back from San Francisco, it started to warm up fast and I could put away my heater and extra covers. However, the sudden change caused me a severe cold and once I was recovered from that, I suffered from hay fever! Furthermore I had the great idea to explore the nearby beach of Uchinada on one of the first sunny days of the year, without any sunblock, resulting in a painful sunburn! Since June I go back to work in skirt and top, but the heat in Japan always goes along with humidity. And that only got worse during the rainy season from late June till about now. Therefore my house is filled with shikketori or humidity removers, little boxes and sachets filled with minuscule chemical balls that absorb humidity. Unseen in Belgium, but very necessary in a tatami-floored appartment like mine! It is when the sun is shining that I most appreciate the Saigawa river near my house. On sunny days a lot of people enjoy fishing, walking, jogging, cycling and picknicking on the riverside and I am no exception to that. But starting to jog again was not my only good resolution. I got my teeth checked for the first time by a Japanese dentist, went to Japanese language class and started studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. To warm up test-wise I just took the TOEIC test, the most popular English test in Japan. And I had my very first ikebana flower arrangement class! As always I went out a lot after work, mostly to delicious restaurants all over Kanazawa (organic food was a nice first for me) or to the movies, but I also ended up in an authentic rockbar hidden in the back alleys of quiet Kanazawa and on the top floor of the luxurious Nikko hotel, enjoying Kanazawa’s night skyline while drinking cocktails! Since some of my JET friends will go back home at the beginning of August, I attended several farewell parties, fun and sad at the same time. Luckily there were some birthdays to celebrate as well, including my own! A chocolate fondue and a karaoke bar with my friends, the perfect Belgian-Japanese combination!! To treat myself I went away the next weekend to neighboring Toyama-ken, where I enjoyed the beautiful Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, which crosses the Japanese Alps with different transportation facilities (train, bus, cable car). Gazing at gorgeous mountains of 3000 meters of height and walking in the snow only wearing slippers, are experiences I will never forget! Work was very busy these months, lots of contact between the sister cities. One of the projects between Kanazawa and Nancy is the exchange of a scholarship student. Last year a French student came to Kanazawa, so this time Kanazawa will send one of its students to Nancy. For this purpose all the candidates had to pass by the city hall for an interview and I was assigned to test their level of French! I must say it was a very fun experience to be seated at the other side of the interview table for once! Furthermore a cultural delegation went to France, combining a visit to Nancy and Ghent, so lots of organisation and overwork. And the delegation to Ghent is finally getting form, so even more overwork. At the beginning of July we scheduled another kid’s event. Since my American colleague is one of the JETs going back home at the beginning of August, we thought it would be fun to do something with the 4 Kanazawa City CIR’s together. So we ended up teaching Japanese children games, songs, animal sounds and gestures from America, Belgium, Brazil and Korea. But I think they most enjoyed the international candy and drinks they received at the end! To continue in the kiddie atmosphere, my Brazilian colleague and I will do another kid’s event at the end of the month. Since we both got a little older in July, theme of this event will be “birthdays”! We will play some typical birthday games and then prepare Brazilian beijinho cakes and Belgian pancakes with the Japanese children. At the end of May I did my most intense work performance until now. I was asked as a guest speaker for a discussion forum about ryokan, traditional Japanese hotels. With the aid of several family members and friends I was able to explain about Belgian hotel life and give my opinion as a foreigner on the Japanese ryokan. I felt very nervous in the company of Japanese hotel experts; and the presence of some of my colleagues and the local press did not really help, but I managed well. And appearing in the newspaper and on the tv news the following day was of course flattering! In fact I starred on Kanazawa cable tv for the whole month of June, telling about my job and sharing my impressions of Kanazawa. And on the radio I explained some more about the different Belgian holidays. To Japanese it is surprising that half of our holidays are christian. They also think we don’t have many public holidays. But to Belgian people it is normal to take at least once a year a longer holiday of several weeks, something that is hardly done in Japanese society. They only have the public holidays, plus one week of holiday during the New Year’s period and the so-called Golden Week. This week at the end of April, beginning of May combines five different holidays in a row, but if I can give you one tip: never travel around Japan at that time! All Japanese people do so during that one week, so you will have to face lots and lots of crowds, full booked flights, trains and hotels and very expensive prices! I started my Golden Week holiday by visiting a specialized takenoko or bambooshout restaurant, located in a regular house hidden in the mountains. Bambooshouts are a specialty from Ishikawa and the surrounding prefectures, but you can only eat them during a few weeks. It is such a big thing here that I even took part in a takenoko event where I went looking for my own takenoko, tried to dig them out with a hoe and at night prepared them with misosoup and rice. Furthermore I went to a kutaniyaki pottery festival, in fact one big market place filled with cheap priced kutaniyaki, the typical colourful pottery from Kanazawa and surroundings. The first weekend of June was again party time in Kanazawa, with the Hyakumangoku festival, the biggest festival in the city! Starting on Friday hundreds of paper lanterns are put floating on the Asanogawa river. On Saturday afternoon there is a big parade with dancers, acrobat fireman doing stunts on ladders, miss Hyakumangoku waving at the public and much much more. Unfortunately I was not able to see the spectacle other than on television, because I needed to prepare for my own performance. At night about 45 dance groups participated in a 2,5 hour lasting dance parade through the main street and my dance group was one of them! It was a challenge to remember the dances after only one rehearsal and dancing on geta was a (painful) first experience. But I had a lot of fun really participating in Kanazawa’s biggest festival! On Sunday there were plenty more of events, but I chose to visit the Doulos boat, according to the Guinness Book of Records “the oldest passenger-ship in the world still in use” (from the same time as the Titanic). This boat with an international staff goes all around the world to spread the Christian religion and was now passing by Kanazawa harbor. The friendly staff invited my friends and me for a dinner with the crew and a private tour of the boat, ending up chatting in one of the cabins. We felt really welcome! Since friends are so important in life, I went once more to Nagoya to see some of them, a Japanese friend came all the way from Kobe to be guided by me throughout Kanazawa, and thanks to another JET orientation in Tokyo I was able to meet up with friends I had not seen in years! But the most joyful occasion was the arrival of my sister only a few days ago! She will stay in Japan until halfway August, so our Japanese adventures together will be nice material for my next report! I can hardly believe that already a year has passed! I am really looking forward to the next one, especially now that my business trip to Ghent will finally go through!! I wish you all a nice summer ending and a special happy birthday to my sister!!! Till next time! |