Hachiman Shrine

We took ourselves off for a bit of stroll the weekend before last as the sun, well, it wasn’t exactly shining, but as the fog was a little less dense than usual, you could catch glimpses of this glowing orb in the sky.

We went to Hachiman Jinja (shrine) near the old port. In over eight years living in the city it was my first time to visit. While I can’t say that those eight years were blighted by my ignorance of the place, it was still a pleasant surprise. That said, the bar is set quite low in Muroran, so ‘pleasant surprise’ can be applied to anything that isn’t made from corrugated iron and/or belching noxious smoke.

Anyway we pottered around for a while ringing bells, clapping hands, splashing water and generally letting the gods at Hachiman know that we were here and could they please do something about the fog. 

Turns out they were the wrong gods. Enshrined at Hachiman is Ukemochi-no-Kami (the goddess of food) who, according to Wikipedia, “was visited by Tsukuyomi as she prepared a feast by facing the ocean and spitting out a fish, then she faced the forest and bountiful game spewed out of her mouth, finally turning to a rice paddy she coughed up a bowl of rice. Tsukuyomi was so disgusted he killed her. Even her dead body produced food: millet, rice, and beans sprang forth. Her eyebrows even became silkworms”.

To which all I can say is “eeuuughhh”. I am totally with Tsukuyomi-san on this one. Though I can relate to the eyebrows-becoming-silkworms. I wonder if anything similar happened to her ear-hair. I am expecting mine to turn into creeper vines.

But I digress.

Also there is Kotohira-no-kami, the god of the sea, who is a whole lot more acceptable than his fellow food-regurgitating deity.

Thankfully there were a couple of late blooming cherry trees to distract us from the thoughts of bountiful game spewing and coughing up rice bowls, though Cian reckons he wouldn't mind giving the latter a try.

The sounds of summer

In Hokkaido June is the season of the undokai. Literally translated as 'exercise meeting', it approximates the school sports day back home, though without the edgy glamour of the egg and spoon race. Sanae's school has their undokai this coming Saturday with Cian's following a week later. 

I will have more to write about this over the next fortnight or so as events unroll (most of it in complaining mode about PTA conscription), but for now I want to talk about music. And dance.

Yes, I know, not something you would traditionally associate with a sports day, but from observing both my wife and son over the last couple of days, it seems to be by far and away the most important part of the undokai. There has been singing, there has been dancing, there has been singing and dancing. And there has, sweet merciful Jesus, been a lot of it.

Apparently each class in school 'must' perform its own unique song and dance routine on the day. Why? I have no idea. This is Japan. They don't explain that sort of thing to us foreigners. 

Anyway preparing for this little bit of Broadway takes an inordinate amount of time, sweat and body beat coordination. As a home room teacher of second class, Sanae has spent pretty much the past month choosing a song, choreographing an accompanying dance, practicing it, refining it, practicing it again, and finally teaching her students how to do it. 

I'd like to write that the girl has got her groove down, but I can't lie to you dear reader. The end result is  a sort of frenetic mishmash of random limb movement and some heavy panting. Like you were being attacked by an aroused octopus off its head on ecstasy. Set to music. Ahh the music. This is where she really went wrong. She chose the song 'PONPONPON' by that well known Japanese chanteuse, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. 

You can experience it in all its bewitching, melodic glory here. Now, try dancing to it.

Cian meanwhile has been concentrating on his own 'Lord of the Dance' routine. He is quite coy about the dancing, but he has revealed that he will be 'bustin out the mad moves' to a song entitled 'shake sanba', or in English, the 'Salmon Samba'. 

I swear I am not making this up. You can see one interpretation of it here. It helps though if you go out to your car, pop open the petrol tank cap and inhale as much fumes as you can before watching it. 

I have no idea, none, whatsoever as to what is going on in that video. Maids and the serial killer from Scream. Like I wrote; this is Japan. They don't explain that sort of thing to foreigners.

Going to school

To coincide with Cian's start in elementary school, I rejigged my classes in the university so that they were all in the morning. I figured that for his first term at least I would have to walk up with him to school for 8:00 am (yes, Cian's school starts at 8:00am. We leave the house at 7:30 which means the boy is usually out of bed by 6:00, which in turn means I am up at 5:30 to make his breakfast. I would like to write that all this is having a wonderfully positive effect on his cognitive development but about the only thing this time schedule has done is make me addicted to Red Bull).
Anyway, given that I am usually in my office just after eight I decided to schedule all my classes for 8:45, the earliest you can start in the university. Then I could leave earlier in the evening to pick up Cian.
This was my plan. I thought of it as a 'good plan', a plan, indeed, that 'might come together'. In short, an A-team type of plan.
Unfortunately, all concerned with my plan thought I was a 'crazy fool'.
Cian decided after three weeks that it was decidedly uncool to be seen walking to school with his old man. His friends didn't seem to mind, in fact quite enjoyed chatting with me as we walked up, but Cian was having none of it. By the end of April a 250 metre exclusion zone had been declared around Cian Takahashi Gaynor and all 'unfriendly' adults were banished forthwith.
For my students the 8:45 class start is (we're still only at the midpoint of the term here) proving to be physically, mentally, and emotionally impossible. It is like teaching a class of zombies. Zombies who'd rather be dead than awake. I'd like to point out to my students that the fascist class time I imposed upon them was in order to facilitate my son, but as said son has happily gone prodigal they have to suffer the consequences. However, I just can't bring myself to look them in their eyes and tell them so. Principally because most of their eyes are closed. For the entire 90 minutes (I tend to only wake them if their snoring drowns out the CD player during the listening sections).
And I too will have to suffer the consequences when they turn in their end of term class evaluations and describe me as the Mussolini of Muroran.

Yuichiro Miura

At yesterday lunchtime, Japan time, 80 year old Yuichiro Miura stood on top of Mt. Everest. In doing so he set a new record for the oldest person to climb the world's highest mountain. "Climbed" though may be a bit a tad expansive as by all accounts he was hauled to the top by a small army of sherpas, and is now in the process of being lowered down the mountain by the same army.
Such mountaineering impurity doesn't matter a damn here in Japan where Miura-san is being hailed as a national hero. He is from Sapporo so his "Look at me, Ma!" moment made the front page and was covered in depth in the Hokkaido Shimbun. He was all over the evening television news last night (though even his remarkable exploits were overshadowed by the even more remarkable plunge in the value of the Japanese stock exchange), and this, I suspect, is merely a prelude to the frenzy that will accompany his return back to Japan.
But, I hear you ask, has he ever climbed Muroran-dake in winter and then stripped off to the waist? No he hasn't, but like all true lovers of the high places, he relishes the feel of the crisp, thin air against his manly skin. Though he could do with a little more chest hair to be truly termed a 'mountainy man'.

Sausages

We had our first barbeque of the year yesterday. In fact, it was our first barbeque ever, 5 crisp sausages worth. We held it beside a lake so that if things went flammable we could sling the whole thing into the water (or, alternatively, if Cian's inferno dreams were realized and we started a raging, uncontrollable forest fire, we could sling ourselves into the water).
Yesterday was also the first real spring day in Muroran; the sun shone, though lazily and hazily, the temperature rose into the mid-teens and Daddy unleashed his winter pale legs (though with that all-season muscle tone) upon an unsuspecting world.
Spring has been late arriving this year. The cherry blossoms are only beginning to bloom now, a full two weeks later than normal; the rice crop has yet to be planted and the winter geese from Russia are sill here, enjoying the chilly weather and craping their communist shite all over the place. Sanae, rather ambitiously, planted some tomatoes and cucumbers yesterday, but today a bone chilling fog rolled in off the ocean, the temperature dived, and most of the plants keeled over in shock.
The geese ate the rest.

Endaka

In August of 2012 the Yen set a new record high against the beleaguered Euro; 94 yen would have bought you 1 Euro.
We didn't go home last year.
This year we are planning to go back to Ireland in August (brace yourselves) and as of Friday's closing prices, it now takes 131 yen to buy 1 euro.
That is a decline, nay base jump freefall, of close on 40%.
Now if you are say, Toyota, you are counting all your yen denominated profits and laughing all the way to the 'ginko'. In the three months from January to March alone the company reported profits of $3.2 billion. For every, single yen the currency drops in value against the dollar, Toyota rakes in an extra 350 million dollars in profit.
But I don't work for Toyota, don't have shares in the company, and don't even drive their cars.
I do however have airplane tickets to pay for. As these have now got ridiculously expensive we have decided to invoke the 'Ghost Protocol'. There is a lot I am not at liberty to tell you about, but what I can tell you is that involves flying home via Dubai, slave traders, indefinite bonded servitude, and Cian.
Yes, we will miss him, but listen he's 6, old enough to make his own way in the world and there comes a time in every parent's life when they must loosen the ties that bind and have somebody else bind them, probably with iron manacles, and allow the boy to experience life in all its verisimilitude, or whatever quota of verisimilitude has been allotted to the notorious salt mines of Taghaza.
But at least me and Sanae will be back for the hurling semi finals in August so it should all end well (as long you are not a Clare supporter).

Spring

This weekend was Golden Week here in Japan, a series of public holidays which meant we 'enjoyed' a four day weekend as both Friday and today were days off. Given the weather though 'enjoyment' was hard to come by and in truth 'Pissy Wet Winter Week' would have been more apt. Since early last week we have had unseasonably cold temperatures with highs here in Muroran barely touching 6 degrees. Mind you in comparison to Obihiro, in the center of Hokkaido, we are positively balmy here. Or rather, I am positively balmy. Sanae and Cian went to Obihiro to visit Sanae's mother over the weekend and really, should have brought their skis. This morning they woke up to this:

At midday the temperature in Obihiro was 1.9 degrees and the snow was still falling. According to this evening's weather forecast, the mercury in Japan's arctic is due to fall to minus 4 tonight.
Minus freaking four! And this is the 6th of May which, according to the Augustinian calendar, is the sixth day of summer. No wonder Japan has remained a resilient unchristian country.
Daddy, meanwhile stayed in Muroran 'working' and, ahem, catching my first waves of 2013, but you'll just have to read about that in 'Mad Hairy Bastard Surfing Magazine'.