March in Osaka

Between all the traveling around with Stuart I had quite a busy month with work but made it through fine getting my fourth City Life newsletter published on time, finished off my ten-week Kiwi English course, ran a Kiwi Cooking class, translated "View" (a promotional magazine for Sakai) and all the other requests that came through as people realised they had budget left so might as well do some of the "nice to have"s. Although I cant complain because with our leftover budget I got a new laptop to use at the office instead of my clunky old desktop with a full harddrive. It was also nice to have dinner made for me a few nights when I got home from work.

Looking through my March photos, this month seemed to centre quite a bit around food but that's a big part of life in Osaka. As soon as we got back from our skiing and snow monkey weekend in Nagano, Tsuda-san and Pi-chan took us out for a meal of delicious tempura and sashimi, so as soon as we got back from our Kanto trip we had them over for a night of nabe. I took Stuart out for kaitenzushi (sushi train) and we had pancakes at home more than once. I enjoyed an early birthday / welcome back (for Stuart) dinner with my workmates and then had a joint birthday party with Louise where the Osaka crew who were still around (with guest appearances by Tom and Colleen) had a great night out of tabe/nomihoudai at Kushiya and karaoke in Namba

The highlights of work this month was the last of my ten Kiwi English classes and my second Kiwi Cooking class. To end the English course on a fun note we played a board game for the last class and had lots of NZ lollies, snacks, anzac cookies and marmite and cheese bites for them to munch on. For my second Kiwi Cooking class I was much more prepared (and it helped to have Stuart there as I needed more than two hands to get everything ready on time) and did a demonstration of different stages of the meal and then supervised as about 30 people prepared my Mum's recipes of pumpkin soup, lemon honey chicken, cheesy potato bake, glazed carrots and apple crumble for dessert. This time a few of the JETs even took part (Louise, Mindy and Han) so it was great to have a more international presence ;)

I had a couple of days off to spend with Stuart around Osaka. He had been by himself to the aquarium and the zoo while I had been working and we had been to Osaka Castle on his last trip, so we made purikura in Sakai, ate kushikatsu in Shinsekai, Yoghurtland in Shinsaibashi and enjoyed the night view from the floating garden atop the Sky Building in Umeda. As he was here for a whole month we got to both go skiing and see the spring flowers and enjoyed a picnic on his last day in Daisen Park underneath the blossoms.

 

Just as in NZ, the end of March spells the end of the financial year. However unlike back home that means massive personnel changes here. Most of the people who are on fixed term contracts finish on the 31st of March and new people start on the 1st of April - this was seven of the international team. On top of that, seemingly without rhyme and reason it is also a time to shift everyone around the organisation (it is said this is so they can't specialise) so about six additional people were moved from my team, bringing the total to almost half of the international division changing overnight with no handover and everyone just taking it. We went out to lunch with a few of the girls, had cake at the office for afternoon tea and then a small leaving gathering for a few of the girls we were closest to.

Just as Februarys blog wouldn't have been complete without mention of the Canterbury Quake, Marchs is not complete with mention of the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami. It has been tough to see my home, and then my second home ravaged by Mother Nature in the space of three weeks but I am very lucky that I have been safe in both cases but many families and entire towns will never be the same again. There have been a lot of debates about the sensationalism of the international media and questions raised about their focus, but on the other hand there has been criticism of the Japanese media being screened by the government and witholding information so as not to cause panic. This is not the place to reopen this debate but I would like to ask for everyone to think of the people that have been affected and need help right now, rather than getting angry and overreacting. Over 12,000 people were not able to return to their families on Friday 11 March, the survivors lives will take time to rebuild, the emotional scars will take years to heal and the economic aftershocks are unprecedented. What any country affected by a natural disaster needs is the support of the world, rather than its criticism and sensationalised media reports causing panic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tVWhZ_qGD7g 

Thank you for all of those who have supported Japan during this time and please don't forget the images and the people you saw in the days after the devastation, they will need everyones continued support and prayers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=firuvTBOD5k&feature=related 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDXcyfkg95k&NR=1 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IOv6D2CITc&feature=relmfu

Tripping around Japan with Stuart in March - Taking the scenic route home through Mie and Wakayama

Deciding not to venture into Tokyo itself meant we had a few days up our sleeve until I had to be back at work so we took the scenic route home. Canceling our hostel and night bus tickets, I bought another seishun-18-kippu and we used local trains to travel back from Yokohama towards Nagoya where we stopped for a late lunch and then down to Taki to meet up with Donny and had a Chinese shabu-shabu tabehoudai for dinner. It was quite a pretty train ride as it was a clear day and Stuart got to check out Mount Fuji.

Saturday we took it pretty easy in the morning (while Donny went to the gym) and tried to figure out our next plan of action so spent a bit of time trawling through the Lonely Planet and online and decided to head south down towards Wakayama. But first, we were spending another night in Taki so went out to visit Ise-jingu that afternoon (and found an awesome secondhand VW dealer - very tempted!) and enjoyed Korean for dinner with the most amazing pumpkin ice-cream - served in a mini-pumkin! - and then it was time for some karaoke.

The next morning was a pretty early start as the trains only run south from Taki about every two hours on a Sunday but it took us straight to Shingu where we had an hour between trains to check out Kumano Hayatama Taisha and grab some fresh onigiri for lunch. Again we had a beautiful train ride around the coast but unfortunately when we arrived at Shirahama at 2ish it was spitting a bit. Despite the rain, we decided it was better to rent bikes for the day for Y500 rather than get a bus pass for Y1000 and try and figure it out the weekend schedule to see everything we wanted to see before our next train to Wakayama at 7pm.











However, soon after leaving the station it started raining harder and didn't really let up at all for the entire time we were outside, despite wearing ski jackets we both had jeans and skate shoes on and were absolutely drenched by the time we got back to the station at 6pm to drop the bikes back before the rental office closed. Although in the four hours we managed to cover quite a bit of ground and saw Engetsu Inlet, Shirarahama Beach, Senjojiki and Sandanbeki.

In the rain, the saving grace of the whole outing was a little gem of an onsen called Saki-no-yu which was amazing, Stuart had had a quick soak in a footspa earlier around the coast but we decided it was worthwhile getting out of our wet jeans (and back into them) to enjoy one of the top three onsens in Japan. For Y300 entry it was amazing with three tiers of bath (mens has two) with the bottom one having the waves splash slightly into it from the sea, we were pretty lucky that we were there close to closing time and on such a yucky day so mine was empty and I could take a couple of pictures, but it looks like the mens was even more impressive (although I'm not sure if people can see in from the pier/lookout thing on the left) http://okadenki.cocolog-nifty.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/22/photo_8.jpg

 

We had planned to find somewhere to stay in Wakayama for the night but being a Sunday of a three-day-weekend and considering how wet and cold we were we just headed all the way home (making good use of our Y2300 train ticket to cover almost 400kms that would have normally cost over Y6000) it was a good way to end the trip.

Tripping around Japan with Stuart in March - Yokohama and Kamakura

After a small earthquake shook the restaurant we were eating dinner at in Nagoya we boarded the night bus arriving in Yokohama on Wednesday morning. Disneyland was closed so my plans to spend my birthday there, spend a night at a fancy hotel and then do DisneySea on the Thursday had to be rearranged. At short notice we found a hostel in Ishikawacho and set up camp there for a couple of days. Spent Wednesday checking out the Italian Gardens, Motomachi and China Town before walking through Yamashita Park to Sakuragicho. 

With Disneyland closed I wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel at Cosmo World for my birthday but despite Yokohama not having forced rolling blackouts it was also closed. So did some shopping in Akarenga and World Porters, had dinner in the foodcourt and picked up a small pound cake on the way home. Thank god Stuart was there and had bought a candle and lighter with him or the whole birthday would have been a bit of a failure. We celebrated being together and safe.

Rather than venturing into Tokyo itself we decided to spend one more day in Yokohama and then head back towards Kansai (much to Stuart’s disappointment). We made the most of the day and went to Kamakura to explore Engaku-ji, Tokei-ji and Jochi-ji before taking the Daibutsu Hiking Course up over the hill past Kuzuharagaoka-jinja, Zeniarai-benten (highly recommended) in Genjiyama-koen and Sasuke-inari-taisha to arrive at the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) just after 4pm. 

 

 









Although we were pretty lucky we didn’t arrive much later as even though it was open till 5:30 there was a blackout scheduled for 4:45pm so they were closing just before that and we only just made it in on time and got some pictures with noone else around (they were turning some other foreigners away as we left). Took a quick stroll on the beach for a bit but decided to try and get home before it go too dark. It was a weird feeling walking to the station with all the traffic lights down and shops closed with a few staff outside getting rid of stock they couldn’t keep refrigerated. One convenience store close to the station was still open (Im guessing because it was part of the actual station building) so we picked up some beers and pot noodles and managed to make it home fine, although a few of my friends in Tokyo said they had to spend another night at work due to suspended train services so I think we’ve made the right decision not to stay in the area and put more strain on it than it needs at this time