ASS(et) Management during the Japanese Winter

There are a number of reasons why my health has taken a back seat and why unfortunately my ass is growing at a rather alarming speed…

The Japanese stubbornly refuse to actually ‘get with the programme’ like the rest of the world and HEAT and INSULATE their homes. Their ideas of energy conservation are to NOT have central heating in their freezing buildings, instead they prefer to choke and poison themselves by using KEROSONE STOVES! Ha! Yes, I kid you not…and In order to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning, they OPEN THE WINDOW in order for the fumes to escape…so when it is minus 5 degrees outside, they…OPEN THE WINDOW…!?!

So OK, we can learn to live with that, perhaps…BUT they refuse to have double glazing and thick walls and insulation, instead preferring to use paper, wood and hardboard to build houses. If they at least insulated, they could save energy, but no… Some schools and offices HAVE Air conditioning units that also double as heating systems, however they have to ASK THEIR SUPERIORS and have consultations and meetings about if it’s cold/hot enough to warrant ‘wasting energy’ by putting on the Air-Con/Heater.

Many people bring fleece blankets to work to place over their legs or have these sticky strips called ‘Kairo’ which you can stick to your back, your legs or your feet and your body causes a chemical reaction in the Kairo, which self-heats and warms that part of your body. When one day in work, I was visibly SHAKING and faltering when I was speaking due to the cold, I was given a Kairo by my teacher. She told me to stick it in my lower back, above my liver. ‘If your liver is warm, your body will be warm’, she said. She was right, it worked but I thought to myself ‘In a country where they have the most advanced technology in the world, why are people forced to use Kairo sticky strips to keep warm?’

So anyway, most Japanese homes have this thing called a Kotatsu. It’s a table with a removable top, where a blanket is placed underneath and a heater underneath creates a cosy ‘cocoon’ for you to out you legs and chest if you wish.

Japanese people refuse to ‘conform to Western tastes’ and get comfortable, cosy furniture. Instead, they use a cushion or a mat to sit on a hardwood floor. There is relatively little ‘lounging’ in Japanese homes, probably because most people work obscene hours and get very little free time to actually enjoy for themselves (heaven forbid they should bring shame on themselves by leaving work when they are supposed to or perhaps take their allotted time off!). I tend to use a ‘legless chair’ to place under the Kotatsu and enjoy the zen-like experience of being back in the womb!

HOWEVER the problem for most people is that once you’re under the Kotatsu, it’s very difficult to summon the motivation and energy to get back out. In the past, I’ve actually held in my pee and thought ‘Screw the weekly shop, it’s too cold to go out…’ I’m sure people must have dehydrated to death under the Kotatsu. There are urban legends of people burning their pubes under their Kotastu and Kotatsu’s also come with a manufacturer’s health and safety warning ‘Do NOT sleep under the Kotatsu!’

However, during his first year, Benji DID indeed burn himself ‘in a private area’ due to the Kotatsu being turned up too high. The area blistered and the doctor said it was similar to third degree burns. This very long winded point is anyway supposed to inform you that the reason why my ass is growing at an accelerated speed is because it is too goddamn cold to get my ass out of the Kotatsu and go exercise outside. I hate going outside anyway, to do so in the cruel Japanese winter is extra salt in the wound.

Another reason for my slug-like state of late is that my school is close to my apartment, as it was in Hirata BUT when I do my school visits, I no longer have to walk/cycle a total of 60 mins to get to my school and back, instead take a bus from right outside my house then get off right in front of my visiting school. The exercise sessions I was forced to take to get to my old visiting schools was plenty to keep me from growing love handles, but sadly those days are gone. When I go shopping, I no longer cycle 30 mins to go to the superstore, instead hop in the Suzuki and nip over to ‘Trial (Japanese Walmart, but crapper). Of course, my dance classes stopped when my dance buddies selfishly left Japan to go back to Amsterdam and Hawaii.

When it comes to exercise, I am a social butterfly; I prefer to communicate with people as I am doing it…a pleasant distraction from the task at hand, if you will. Also, I think the associated guilt of missing out on a group visit to ‘body toning class’ or Yoga is a positive thing. It stops you giving up quite so soon. But really, who is there to stop me from NOT exercising, now? Benji is allergic to physical activity-induced sweating. He really is more of an Arts and Crafts person than a Gym person, and as a consequence I believe the last time he wore a pair of trainers was in 1986.

Lastly, the internet had been both a pleasure and a pain. A pleasure in that I have not paid for a movie or a CD since possibly the end of 2005 and I am able to download and watch TV shows and movies in the ‘comfort’ of my Japanese apartment. A pain in that really, it has made me shrink into myself and cut myself off. The combination of the Kotatsu and the Internet has been the lethal nail in my social coffin. Quite often Benji and I will be on separate computers watching separate shows. It really is the height of geekiness. Whatever is the world coming to? Is this the future of family life? When we catch ourselves being anti-social, we always laugh, but it’s a scary thought.

With Benji away this holiday, I had many days where I would literally spend up to 9 hours staring in a somewhat demonic, foam-mouthed manner at the computer screen. Sometimes I wouldn’t even bother getting changed or showered. Instead lie there greasy-haired having my soul sucked out of me whilst I devoured Season 10 of friends, Season 11 of Frasier, the 3rd Season of Six Feet Under, the Fifth Series of Scrubs and numerous other shows and movies. This was also prime opportunity to use this time to watch things that Benji doesn’t find totally repulsive and vomit-inducing….like Desperate Housewives and the latest BBC Drama Literature Adaptation like ‘Bleak House’ or ‘Jane Eyre’. This was my winter vacation, I am ashamed to admit.

I noticed well before Christmas and the New Year vacation arrived that my back was starting to twinge and spasm sometimes when I bent my back. Over the vacation this was (I’m sure) made worse by my Kotatsu and Internet retreat. The pain intensified daily. I even tried venturing outside for an hour-long walk to try and rejuvenate my back muscles. I was surprised at one stage that even over my I-pod I heard my back/pelvis make a rather alarming cracking sound, however the pain refused to die. I found myself suddenly letting out a random shriek or a small scream when my back twanged in public places and I was beginning to walk like Quasimodo. I didn’t fancy being institutionalized over the festive break, so after some recommendations, my friend Nori as translator, I went hopefully to a Chinese Acupuncturist.

It was all rather bizarre. I was first ‘punched’ gently all over in a shiatsu-style type of way then the guy told Nori to tell me that he was gonna stick in the needles. To be honest, I just wanted a Shiatsu massage but the guy wanted to do the needle thing. Most of them I didn’t feel, but occasionally it felt like they stuck them in too deep onto my muscle and I let out a panicky shriek, much to the delight/amusement of the Acupuncturist. Do they live for these reactions, maybe? Sickos. All in all I had 16 needles in my lower back. They attach these vibrating electrode things to the needles and hook them up to this electric-looking device and put a hot heater over you. I felt like a mouse in an experiment.

It was kind of weird and it made me feel a bit sick. The guy kept telling me ‘Kimuchi, Yo’ (Feels good) and I was thinking ‘Erm….no…actually! If you just stuck to the punching thing, that would have been fine!’. I definitely felt suppler for the first five minutes, until it came to putting on my shoes, during which my back twanged again. So basically I was \4,000 (or £20) skinter but no nearer to walking upright confidently. I will try the acupuncture again, but if that fails I’m going go to the doctor and see what he can do. Also, I am going to try and look for a pure Shiatsu masseuse. It’s about time, I’ve wanted one since I got here.

Oh yeah, I thought I’d also mention the fact that I ran over a small child on my bicycle the other day at the local ‘Izumi’ supermarket. I was biking away, listening to my I-pod and this kid ran out from behind a car. My breaks are crap anyway and besides, I had no real time to stop. I rode straight into him and knocked him arse over tit. He was only about three. I know that had that been back home; a knife-wielding parent would have emerged telling me that they would wring my neck and/or phone social services and perhaps a solicitor. Here however, the guy came out and apologized to ME for running over his son and knocking him to the floor, possibly traumatizing him for life. I felt terrible, but there was no coddling and the kid must have been a hard-arse because although he looked stunned, he just hopped back up and went into the supermarket. Gotta love Japanese kids.

I’ll keep you posted as to my Quasimodo back situation…

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The Green Green Grass of Home

Visiting home with Ben last August was amazing and just the tonic I needed after 8 months without seeing the clan...

First of all, the most surprising thing was that my step-dad who ‘hates all Yanks’ really warmed to Ben. He took it upon himself to educate dear Benji on the customs and colloquialisms of Wales including incredibly detailed explanations on the differences of tone between the insults of ‘Wanker’ and ‘Tosser’, etc. Also, how to greet a local yokel from the Valleys of South Wales…

Valley Boy: O’rite, Butt? (Are you alright, old chap?)
Benji: Tidy butt/Tidy like. (Why yes, I’m very well, thank you for asking).

* ‘Butt’ in Valley-speak comes from the word ‘Butty’ or ‘Bytti’ meaning ‘friend’. ‘Tidy’ is also valleys slang for ‘Cool/Good/Alright/Nice’. ‘Like’ is used as punctuation, sometimes. It is usually used to join sentences like a comma, or as a full stop at the end of a sentence, as opposed to at the start, like in some countries. “I was walking down the street, like…and I saw my butty and ‘ee was with this boy, like…so we went to ‘ave a cupple uh pints and ‘ee was a really tidy boy like...”

I got to sleep in my lush bed which was a real treat and have a continental breakfast of French Goats cheese, English muffins, Parma ham and Italian cheeses every morning if I wanted. I got to eat lots of baked beans and multigrain bread and Branston pickle, which I really miss when I’m in Japan.

One of the most fun things was introducing Ben to new and strange foods that he has never tried before. It was like when you have a little cousin and you teach them to swear or give them a sip of beer or a bar of chocolate when their mother had told you not to. I kept buying things and getting excited because I knew he had never tried them before…like Melton Mowbray Pork Pies, Cornish pasties and Prawn Cocktail crisps.

Against Ben’s better judgment and will, my step-dad forced him to eat one of the scariest things on the U.K breakfast menu – Black Pudding (made of congealed pig/cattle’s blood, suet and spices). Bless him. Bob tried the same thing when I was eight. We weren’t allowed to leave the table until all our breakfast was eaten (including the black pudding), so when Bob left the room my step-brother Justin and I threw it over next-door’s fence into their garden and then claimed we’d finished it – voila!

One day, Benji and I visited the museum of Welsh life in Saint Fagans with my Dad and we went for lunch. My Dad couldn’t believe that Ben had never tried Cider before and since Cider was the new black last year, we tried some ‘Magners’ and my Dad took a photo of Benji trying his first proper pint of cider – it was so cute! Can I just say that if you ever go to the ‘Plymouth Arms’ in Saint Fagans, you simply must try the Steak n Ale pie, it’s a must. The Fish and Chips there were pretty damn good as well…and an American (epic) size portion, no less!

I finally got to meet Taiyo-chan, my new nephew. He is a gorgeous baby and I nearly abducted him and brought him back to Japan. My dogs Tess and Chips are in their winter years now. They were 14 last April, so they really are quite old. Chips is covered in gross growths/dog boils and Tess is fat with cataracts in her eyes. They absolutely reek of dog-old age-bad-oral-hygiene but from a distance or if you hold your breath when you stroke them, you can still appreciate that they are cute.

I was shocked by how tall and grown up my nieces and nephews were. Callum was nearly as tall as me and you could have full on conversations with Ellie-Mae although she was at the stage where she was asking ‘Why?’ all the time. Emily started high school the month after I left. Laura, my eldest niece was planning on going to University. Jesus. So much stuff goes on at home whilst I’m not there.

We got to road trip up to North Wales to go and hike Snowdon Mountain (OK, we’re not that hard-core; we got the train to the summit and then hiked down). The view from Snowdon was…..erm…well I imagine it was lovely but we couldn’t see bugger all due to the thick blankets of fog and misty rain. Bugger. It was quite annoying. After hiking for 2hours though, the fog cleared and we could actually see some nice views. Sodding Welsh Weather.

Benji got to hear Welsh being spoken all throughout North Wales which was probably weird for him. It was nice for me though. The landscape in North Wales is really spectacular. The homes there are amazing, gorgeous little stone cottages built with huge Llanberis stone and Welsh slate, tucked away in dense forests and green hills. We also visited Portmeirion, the Italianette village in North Wales. Again, the weather was crap.

We then drove down to West Wales, although we cancelled our night by the Sea in Tenby because it was cloudy and rainy. We caught up with some of my friends – Rhian and her fiancé Roger who came down from Staffs to see me, Caroline and Lee and their baby Rhydian, Sarah and Rob, Abby and Louise and the recently married Lyn and Helina. I saw my little gay Timmy and Welsh Sam, my friend from Uni. When we were out for dinner with Sam at Las Iguanas in Cardiff, I made the mistake of ordering a Tuna steak. If you have lived in Japan for two years and tried the seafood in Hawaii, this is a big no-no…unless you like feasting on scouring pads.

Seeing all the shops, bars, restaurants, events…It really made me wish I was back in Cardiff. I really missed the city. Even though when I lived there I was always skint! Being home was as always, a great chance to catch up with my mad cousins. I was keen to get Benji accustomed to our Welsh hillbilly way of life. He was, I think pleasantly surprised by our closeness, our crassness and our constant ribbing of each other. I think at one stage he was freaked out at all the volumes of people who came to the house. ‘There are so many people!’, we must have looked like the Corleone family with all that feeding and talking, although admittedly less money and organised crime. He had to go to bed for an hour to recover.

I had a really hard time leaving everyone (again). I knew that I wouldn’t see most of my family for another whole year. Because this is my last year on the JET Programme, I had to save money for University. This means that this year, there will be NO more holidays and/or trips home, until I am home in July/Aug. I am so excited to be coming home. There’s so much more of the U.K I want to see and it’s about time I went over to France, as well. I’ve seen a fair bit of South East Asia, but now I think it’s time to explore what’s in my own back garden….

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Cream Teas, Mysterious Stones and Land Rovers

During the last week of mine and Benji's trip home last August, we went down to Bath to stay with Shimane’s ex-best ALT in the Tsuwano region – Mr. Sam Barclay. He had only been back in Bath 2 weeks. He took it upon himself to be our tour guide around the city although we suspect he made most of it up...

We saw the Pump House, the Royal Crescent and had a Cream Tea at Sally Lunn’s – the oldest tea rooms in Bath. By the way, when you have a Cream Tea, it is advisable NOT to eat a whole tub of clotted cream, unless you enjoy feeling sick for the whole day. (I wasn’t being greedy, I just didn’t want to be rude….and it cost a bloody arm and a leg).

We were originally supposed to go and see Stonehenge because it is a World Heritage site and I wanted to use Ben an excuse to visit it and do things I would never normally do. However, Sam wanted to take us to another place called Avebury which is the same kind of thing – a number of large, strange stones in a random field, the purpose of which no one alive today understands. Avebury was cool and much less crowded than I expect Stonehenge is. The good thing about Avebury is that it is free, the stones are not roped off and there are cows and sheep wandering around looking at you in a bemused manner.

We stayed the night at Sam’s parent’s house.
Sam lives in a twee little village that really puts the ‘Priss’ in ‘Priston’. It is just like one of those chocolate-box English villages where every other person is called ‘Henry’ or ‘Edward’ and their wives are in the Women’s Institute and their children go to Boarding school and they all vote Tory.

I bet they don’t get many chavs in baseball caps joyriding through their streets at 4am high on Vodka and Tamazepam….lucky buggers. As I suspected I saw some Land rovers and muddy wellies in the vicinity, always a true sign of a well-heeled village. I found it charming.

It reminded me of the summer in 2000 I worked for ‘Bell Language International’, at Bloxham Boarding school in Oxfordshire. That year, I really got a glimpse of what it would be like to go to a £20,000 a year school. It was a bit like a Harry Potter school, and they had huge grand paintings of posh old pompous white blokes on the dining room hall walls. The village had just two pubs and a quaint little post office. I stayed in a stone cottage with twenty two bedrooms and the prettiest English garden you’ve ever seen.

This was where the sixth formers (year twelve) students stay. In their school they had archery and lacrosse teams, went skiing every year and had a big pool and sauna right in the middle of the school ground. This was certainly different to working for the ‘Welsh Language Initiative’ Play schemes in South Wales, where a child’s placement for a day used to cost about £3.75 you have to wait your turn to use the scissors and the only trip they get is at the free museum in Cardiff!

At Bloxham, however, I worked alongside people who had attended Eton and St. Andrews. I felt really conspicuous and at first, about as welcome as a fart in a space suit, but it was all my paranoia that perhaps I wasn’t ‘good enough’ or ‘posh enough’. I actually used to enjoy the banter between me and the Eton boy, he used to taunt me about going fox hunting on Boxing Day so I used to cut out adverts from the RSPCA and PETA and stick them on the wall, when I knew it was his shift.

This one time, his motorbike that cost more than a year’s fees at the same school was stolen from the village. He was devastated, but there was a little part of me that thought ‘ha-ha’ like the fat kid from ‘The Simpsons’. I don’t know whether that was just down to my Intolerable cynicism and cruelty or a more likely, a working-class chip on my shoulder.

Anyway later that day, one of our staff members happened to find his bike in a nearby country lane. He was so relieved to have his little bike back that he took us all out for a quick Magnum of champers at the local.

That day, I had torn the ligaments in my thumbs doing a spastic pike jump on the trampoline. It really bloody hurts, having torn thumb ligaments, so I put my hands in the champagne bucket to soothe them and Eton boy said ‘That’s what we love about you, dear girl…you’re so incredibly classy. But we wouldn’t have it any other way…’ He really was lovely (swoon) and despite being a toff, I found it impossible not to get along with him. Anyway…yeah so Priston reminded me of Bloxham.

Sam’s parents were lovely and they had lush dogs, one of which was named George, a Springer spaniel. There’s nothing that gives me more joy than an affectionate and stupid dog. George was both these things. Sam’s dad took me around their veggie garden and seemed surprised that I recognised rhubarb and runner beans. When I was younger and before both parents used to work quite so much, we had quite an impressive range of veggies.

I thought to myself ‘Ahhhhhh this is the life…’ I think Bath and Somerset and Gloucester areas have some really pretty villages and towns. I really wouldn’t mind settling there (even thought it’s England…I think I could get over it…) and it’s close enough to South Wales that anytime I wanted to go see the clan, or possibly go joyriding through the streets in a stolen car at 4am, high on Vodka and Tamazepam, then my little home town hamlet of Tonyrefail is no less than 1.5 hours away….

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