Konnichiwa! I'm a gaijin teaching English in the Japanese countryside and I wanted to share some of my experiences and thoughts about life in Japan. These are basically emails that I have sent home to friends and family, but a friend of mine suggested that it would be interesting to post them on a website. So please enjoy!!
Greetings again from the land of sunshine and palm trees, October 13, 2002
Ahhhh, now that mid-October has arrived, the sun is setting earlier, the weather's getting cooler and the leaves are beginning to take on a reddish hue here in Japan. Sounds familiar, I bet. Now I know that some of you are beginning to experience frost and snow and fairly nippy temperatures these days and you're probably wondering what the weather is like in Japan. Well think of a typical August day in Canada. The sun is bright and hot, but there is a gentle, wafting breeze that keeps you feeling cool and refreshed. The sky is cloudless and the mercury hovers between 20-25 degrees. At night it cools down to about 15 degrees, making it cool and comfortable. Well that's what it's like here. The Japanese have a term for this kind of weather,akibare, which is understood to mean fine weather, but literally means, ‘autumn fine weather'. And so it is!!
Hoff and I decided to take our obaasan bikes out for a ride today and explore the northern reaches of our town and enjoy the akibare. Ono lies primarily on a flat, open plain, but to the north, the town is bordered by low green hills. So we headed for them thar' hills today to see what we would find. Wow, we truly discovered how beautiful it can be to live in the countryside. We rode our bikes through countless persimmon orchards, heavy with orange, ripening fruit and past old-fashioned Japanese style houses with low concrete walls and impeccable Japanese gardens (green grass is a rarity here, so gardens usually consist of sculpted trees, low shrubs and gravel). We met many farmers along the way, but for the most part there was no one around. We started going up, up and up a gentle slope lined with persimmon trees, until the road turned to gravel and the persimmon trees gave way to wild mountain foliage. Obaasan bikes are unfortunately unfit for off-roading adventures, so we turned westward and skirted the edges of the hills taking in the spectacular greenery, featuring short palm trees with wide, flickering fronds and thin, towering Japanese pines with green vines encircling the naked bark. Soon we came across a special surprise tucked away in the trees. We found what was obviously a very old, large Shinto shrine with very steep, rounded stone steps leading through thetorii up to the main hall. The grounds were full of huge, old Japanese cedars and the whole atmosphere of the place was quiet and rustic. Across from the shrine grounds was a bamboo grove with some of the largest bamboo trees I've ever seen. The stalks were so wide that I could not wrap my hands fully around them. Then we continued our slow descent down and to the west of the hills and found a smelly chicken farm and some of the local baseball diamonds . Baseball is quite a cultural obssession here. At almost any given time, one can turn on the TV and find a baseball game on. From there we started heading back eastward, winding our way through the orchards and past farmhouses and irrigation ditches. Anyone with an interest in engineering would be sure to be fascinated by the irrigation systems here in Japan. The Japanese use a complicated system of channels, dams and ditches to move precious water from the moutains and rivers to the plains to irrigate the rice paddies that require a lot of water to grow rice. It's quite interesting. As we made our way towards the Mimizu river that cuts thought the centre of town, we found these huge mounds that at first I honestly thought were just giant compost heaps. But then I remembered that Ono has over 200 ancient tomb mounds within the town limits and these were probably were a few of them. On closer inspection, we found that indeed they were!! We found grave markers that of course we couldn't read and discovered that they did conform to the classic keyhole shape that was commonly used in ancient tomb construction. My knowledge of Japanese history is a bit rusty, but these tombs are probably date from the Kofun period, making them around 1,500+ years old. Pretty mindblowing!! So this was the final highlight of our bike ride and we both agreed that this was a terrific way to spend an afternoon and that we will soon embark on a hill-skirting excursion, part two. We feel really lucky to live in such a beautiful town with such cool stuff. I think that it'll be a long time before we run out of interesting places to go and see.
So I wish you all a happy Thankgiving, please enjoy some turkey and cranberry sauce for me (we don't have those foods here) and enjoy the fall weather!!
Cheers,
Willow
PS. The good weather here does exact it's price, though. We still have mosquitoes here and I get eaten alive everynight. The mosquitoes are quite nasty too, they take a big chunk out of you. So remember, cold weather can have its benefits!!
Greetings again from the land of sunshine and palm trees, October 13, 2002
Ahhhh, now that mid-October has arrived, the sun is setting earlier, the weather's getting cooler and the leaves are beginning to take on a reddish hue here in Japan. Sounds familiar, I bet. Now I know that some of you are beginning to experience frost and snow and fairly nippy temperatures these days and you're probably wondering what the weather is like in Japan. Well think of a typical August day in Canada. The sun is bright and hot, but there is a gentle, wafting breeze that keeps you feeling cool and refreshed. The sky is cloudless and the mercury hovers between 20-25 degrees. At night it cools down to about 15 degrees, making it cool and comfortable. Well that's what it's like here. The Japanese have a term for this kind of weather,akibare, which is understood to mean fine weather, but literally means, ‘autumn fine weather'. And so it is!!
Hoff and I decided to take our obaasan bikes out for a ride today and explore the northern reaches of our town and enjoy the akibare. Ono lies primarily on a flat, open plain, but to the north, the town is bordered by low green hills. So we headed for them thar' hills today to see what we would find. Wow, we truly discovered how beautiful it can be to live in the countryside. We rode our bikes through countless persimmon orchards, heavy with orange, ripening fruit and past old-fashioned Japanese style houses with low concrete walls and impeccable Japanese gardens (green grass is a rarity here, so gardens usually consist of sculpted trees, low shrubs and gravel). We met many farmers along the way, but for the most part there was no one around. We started going up, up and up a gentle slope lined with persimmon trees, until the road turned to gravel and the persimmon trees gave way to wild mountain foliage. Obaasan bikes are unfortunately unfit for off-roading adventures, so we turned westward and skirted the edges of the hills taking in the spectacular greenery, featuring short palm trees with wide, flickering fronds and thin, towering Japanese pines with green vines encircling the naked bark. Soon we came across a special surprise tucked away in the trees. We found what was obviously a very old, large Shinto shrine with very steep, rounded stone steps leading through thetorii up to the main hall. The grounds were full of huge, old Japanese cedars and the whole atmosphere of the place was quiet and rustic. Across from the shrine grounds was a bamboo grove with some of the largest bamboo trees I've ever seen. The stalks were so wide that I could not wrap my hands fully around them. Then we continued our slow descent down and to the west of the hills and found a smelly chicken farm and some of the local baseball diamonds . Baseball is quite a cultural obssession here. At almost any given time, one can turn on the TV and find a baseball game on. From there we started heading back eastward, winding our way through the orchards and past farmhouses and irrigation ditches. Anyone with an interest in engineering would be sure to be fascinated by the irrigation systems here in Japan. The Japanese use a complicated system of channels, dams and ditches to move precious water from the moutains and rivers to the plains to irrigate the rice paddies that require a lot of water to grow rice. It's quite interesting. As we made our way towards the Mimizu river that cuts thought the centre of town, we found these huge mounds that at first I honestly thought were just giant compost heaps. But then I remembered that Ono has over 200 ancient tomb mounds within the town limits and these were probably were a few of them. On closer inspection, we found that indeed they were!! We found grave markers that of course we couldn't read and discovered that they did conform to the classic keyhole shape that was commonly used in ancient tomb construction. My knowledge of Japanese history is a bit rusty, but these tombs are probably date from the Kofun period, making them around 1,500+ years old. Pretty mindblowing!! So this was the final highlight of our bike ride and we both agreed that this was a terrific way to spend an afternoon and that we will soon embark on a hill-skirting excursion, part two. We feel really lucky to live in such a beautiful town with such cool stuff. I think that it'll be a long time before we run out of interesting places to go and see.
So I wish you all a happy Thankgiving, please enjoy some turkey and cranberry sauce for me (we don't have those foods here) and enjoy the fall weather!!
Cheers,
Willow
PS. The good weather here does exact it's price, though. We still have mosquitoes here and I get eaten alive everynight. The mosquitoes are quite nasty too, they take a big chunk out of you. So remember, cold weather can have its benefits!!
posted by Willow at
9:23 PM
