John Stupart.com

As well as being the birthplace for my snowboarding career, Esashi also has a seriously awesome annual crab festival once a year. Going with a friend from Nayoro, I had intended to simply stay for a bit, eat some crab, take some pics and then go home, but it turned out to be much more!

Almost as soon as we arrived some very good friends of Shelly (Nayoro ALT) insisted we stay over the night and partake of much beer-goodness. The festival itself was situated around a horseshoe-shaped peninsula just outside Esashi, ringed with stalls stelling an astounding array of food, oddly enough including crab. We spent Saturday night drinking beer, eating some awesome seafood and watching the shows on the grand stage that had been erected. If I’d planned it a little better I might have been able to simply camp out at the park next door (there were quite a few tents there!), but regardless it was great fun. After the final fireworks display I went with my new-found hosts to a local bar for some more food and beer, extolling upon them the many unique features of South Africa, from monkeys stealing the fruit to chasing away the hobos begging at the robots.

AND THEN, as if one festival wasn’t enough, I went to Wakkanai on Sunday afternoon to get a haircut only to find that the entire street on which my barber was located had been converted into a festival area, with something close to 300 different stalls. This being Japan they mostly sold food, and a LOT of it, and it certainly wasn’t as awesome as Esashi, as most folks simply sold the same stuff as their rivals further down the road, but it was an interesting sight. The downside, of course, was that I couldn’t get a bloody haircut, which means having to make another drive to Wakkanai sometime soon. I’m tempted to try the local village barber dude, but they almost certainly know no English, and I don’t quite have the Japanese language confidence to specify a haircut in detail. Maybe I should just shave my head!

In the work department, conversation classes in the evenings are progressing quite nicely, and the past couple of classes have seen the student ranks swell from 4 to 8! A colossal number! This week’s topic: “What I would do with $10 million”. I’m guessing there’ll be at least one food-related reply! On that note, some of the mothers coming to the class made me some snacks to take home, which was pretty damned awesome! Fresh sushi and some small scallops which I turned into a really nice seafood stirfry were certainly welcome gifts, even if they weren’t asked for. All the better I suppose.

Here’s some video I took of one of the dance groups performing at the crab festival. They were on TV a while ago in a huge tournament. They’re #4 in the prefecture!

Today is FINALLY a really sunny day, leading me to actually believe my eyes in that Summer has arrived. Poking my nose out the classroom I can catch a whiff of the fresh air with a hint of the many pine forests that litter the interior. When the wind changes I can smell the gross fishy smell of the scallop factory on the coast. Not so nice! As a plus, it’s very warm. Relatively speaking. 18 degrees here feels like a summer day, whereas in SA I’d likely be wearing a jersey!

I’m starting to gather boxes and budget lists and whatnot in preparation for leaving in 30 days time, which involves a remarkable amount of admin. I’m still inbetween, finding I’m really looking forward to going home while at the same time I’m really going to miss this slice of Japan. Driving through the countryside I can see the ski slopes, towns and places I’ve been to through all of the seasons, and I think the simple contrast in the surroundings will be sorely missed. Before coming to Japan I was reminded time and time again of how miserable a long, snowy winter is. But contrary to popular opinion I found it to be my favourite season of the year. Aside from snowboarding, simply waking up to a snowy wonderland was genuinely awesome, and something I really shall miss when I leave. Indeed, the long snowy winter is something that counted strongly FOR the chance of recontracting when I had to think about it in February. If only Hokkaido had a need for political consultants who speak English… then I think I might have found my eden.

Likewise I turned 24 on Sunday, an event which went by largely unremarked here, as birthdays are generally not celebrated overly much. That was something I missed; going out with friends for a birthday beer. A simple pleasure, but one made impossible here by language and geographical barriers. Also there’s a 0.0 alcohol limit when driving, which makes it all the harder. So now, feeling like a proper adult (hah!), I await my return to SA and the real world while still enjoying what’s left of Japan as much as possible.

This includes the job, as I’ve gradually grown very familiar with the students, teachers and community surrounding them by now. While learning the technicalities of the job took a very short time, gaining the trust and comfortable ease of working here took far longer. Now, joking with the kids in the hallways, talking with Eizo about the finer points of English grammer and vocabulary (the intricate meaning of ‘hindsight’ for example :-P), reading the internet at the BoE or having a short conversation with a student’s mother or father at the grocery store, I find I’ll miss being known and recognised. I’ll truly miss living in a town where everyone knows my name and is generally very friendly. The small graces of polite conversation is something I had forgotten about, and perhaps I shall once again forget, but it has been enjoyable while it lasted.

At any rate, if I can ever learn Japanese properly by the time I’m ready to retire, I think I know just where my retirement home shall be. With all the other o-ji-sans in Sarufutsu, sipping prune juice through a straw and throwing rocks at the children. Truly a blissful existence!

Well, it’s still pretty cold here in Sarufutsu. While Sapporo and more southern parts of Hokkaido are starting to experience mid to high twenties weather that should symbolise summer, way up here we still have single digit temperatures and night with a seriously cold wind blowing during the day. I don’t mind so much, as I’ve always rather enjoyed the cold weather. If only it’d snow until July though… (UPDATE: It’s now 6 degrees. Summer here we come!)

This weekend I went to Asahikawa to get a decent-sized and priced tog bag to take on the plane back to SA. I needed something big enough to fit my computer as well as some odds and ends, as well as to search for some flyfishing gear. The city had none of the latter, but I did manage to get the bag, as well as a bunch of westernised foodstuffs from the foreign food store, like nougat, gouda cheese, Ceres fruit juice and Campbell’s soup cans, something which I have become quite addicted to. Driving in the city was as frustrating as any Japanese metropole, as nobody really has a clue about driving. Entering a traffic circle is a recipe for disaster, as they’re relatively new in Japan, yet no instruction has been given to the people as to their navigation. Thus it’s basically a free-for-all everyone for themselves kind of affair where right of way doesn’t exist and motorists haplessly barrel into the circle, never knowing just where they’re meant to be. My blood pressure probably spiked in those harrowed seconds…

Other than seeing a million foxes on the way back, I managed to get home at a respectable hour without much fuss, cruising behind another drive for the most part at a good speed allowed me to make the trip in under three hours. Sunday saw the usual park golf tour with Chris, in which he clearly and most definitively kicked my ass. But on the way back, I passed the Onishibetsu community hall which was a hive of activity, drawin my interest. Curious, I investigated to discover that it was the pre-Shinto shrine festival celebration, which involved food, drink, goldfish and karaoke. It was certainly quite interesting to see, and I bumped into a lot of fellow teachers, office workers, and of course just about all the student from the town. The Junior High Students showed a disturbingly high interest in buying a beer for me when I said I was thirsty. Gleams in their eyes when they tried in their broken English to say as much was… disturbing. Still, they had been drinking fanta and eating corn dogs since 6pm so I can notch that one up to hyperactivity. It was strange seeing what was effectively the entire town’s population in one place at the same time, but a little weird, as the gaijin obviously sticks out like a sore thumb. It would’ve been nice to have at least ONE other foreign devil to divert attention. Nonetheless it was an interesting end to the week, and I’m glad I investigated.

Here’s one of the really crappy pictures I managed to take with my phone’s camera: