week 8

I had 2 extra days weekend this week because of a national holiday and because I had to work on Saturday at the culture festival. So on Monday John, Kim and I headed out in my car to Tojinbo. This is a famous cliff edge in Fukui which looks pretty cool and is a famous suicide spot. Luckily we didn’t see any but we did see the interesting rock formation. We encountered reallllllllly strong winds due to the typhoon that was attacking the south of Japan quite forcefully. We took a walk along the deserted path around the cliffs to a big red bridge that lead to an apparently haunted island. The island was very sweet and had a little lighthouse and a temple. No ghosts or ghouls were apparent but I don’t think I would like to stay at night to check this out.





















Monday night saw the arrival of my new (second hand) sofa! It was very exciting as I don’t actually own anything to sit on in my flat! Unfortunately the evening was marred by an unwanted visitor at my windows. I like to call him knob face. He stood watching me at my kitchen window which was really freaky. He disappeared sharpish when I shouted some abuse at him, but it still kept me from sleeping that night. My first horrid event in Japan. : (

So Tuesday came after a sleepless night and so I decided to go out and console myself by spending lots of money. I went shopping in many different places and was able to buy lots for the first time because I had the car to transport it all home in. It was great. That evening I went to tennis training and I told the people at tennis what had happened the night before. Within ten minutes the police had arrived at the courts to take some details! I think it was the most serious crime they had dealt with in the past few months! The policemen took some details from me via my tennis friend who translated. For all I now he was making up a fab story involving the mafia, sawn off shot guns and drug smuggling. The policemen then came to my house and spent 20minutes thinking, talking in Japanese and taking photos of me! They made me pose in places and positions that I had been in when the ‘nozoki’ had occurred. I had to create the correct pose and matching facial expressions!

After this event the rest of the week was quite dull! I went to school, worked pretty hard really on lots of lesson plans, resources and my fab and groovy ‘English corner’- which is a notice board dedicated to cool youth type things in England like sport, fashion and music. On Saturday, John, Kim and I went for a day trip to Echizen. We took my car and drove along the coastal road down to Echizen which is famous for its ceramics, botanical gardens, yummy sea edibles and crab museum!! We picked an amazing day weather wise for this leisurely ride an it was really beautiful driving along the coast and passing through tiny little clusters of fishing villages. Thanks to John (!) we ended up driving on ‘route 4’. Route 4 was thought to be the road we took to get to the Echizen pottery village. This road however took us on the funniest drive yet! We ended up weaving around roads which clung to the side of a mountain. Not only was it the ‘squiggiliest’ road ever, but it was only big enough for one car but was 2 way. We drove really high up and then came to a road sign that obviously no access or road closed- something along those lines… but the silly people had left enough room for a car to get through and so us gajin decided that we would take a chance and see whether we could sneak through. The road turned into a dirt track, it got more squiggly, we nearly collided with a hawk which had a wing span bigger than the car, we passed over a bridge with completely rusted through lamp posts, and then came the tunnel…!We came to this dark tunnel which looked like any other Japanese tunnel, apart from the lights were out. ‘No problem’ say the gaijin, ‘we have lights on the car’. So we proceed. As we did so, the little bumps in the road turned into huge sod off hills. But we saw light from the end of the tunnel through a mass of dust and so continued. Only to find that a huge land slide blocked the end of the tunnel and had been the reason for the stupid sign being in the road about half an hour earlier. After we finished crying with laughter, we began our descent down the road…. We did eventually get to the pottery village on a different road. We were too late to try to make anything in the work shops but we still had a wander around the museum and then headed to the tea house to have some proper freshly made green tea. The women beautifully dressed in her kimono showed us into the tatami room and told us to sit. She then shuffled out and returned with a little sweet each which was individually wrapped in paper. She placed the sweet ever so delicately and precisely down in front of us and told us to eat. Next she shuffled in with three large ceramic ‘cups’ which contained the bright green and frothy tea. She carefully handled the cup, twisting it so the best position to drink from was facing each of us. The way she did this was mesmerizing. We then began to drink. The tea was very bitter, but I found it to be really tasty. We sat sipping our tea in such a tranquil and relaxed state, admiring the Japanese garden through the window.


















That evening we went to a delicious sushi place for dinner and afterwards we went to Andy’s in Matsuoka for a get together. It was a good evening chatting, listening to music, playing beer pong, Andy nearly killing us with fireworks and some very funny Chicago poses in the park!! For what reason? I have no idea!

























The following day was really nice too. After a morning of tennis I met up with Ryan and Jill in Fukui for more sushi and a nice chill out. It was so good to be able to drive into Fukui and meet up with them so freely without the hassle of public transport.