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Ceiling of stars

August 2001

Hello folks,

It's Dave C-C here again. Still haven't worked out an email address of my own, so thanks to Dad for putting up with my remote use of his account. Again, replies to my hotmail account would be best.

I thought of the subject line while I was standing in a shallow, fast-flowing creek, running by a campground in the mountains of Kamiyama, at about 11pm this past Sunday night. It was a strange sort of end to a strange sort of day, I guess, but it was all good. It went something like this.

All the new Tokushima JETs arrived just before six in the evening last Friday at Kamiyama, a little place in eastern Shikoku whose name means "Mountain of the Gods". We were promptly matched with local Japanese families and whisked away alone or in pairs for a two-night homestay. With a top bloke named Robbie from Wisconsin, I was handed into the care of the Nakagawa family.

The roads in Kamiyama are much like those in the Iya Valley - cramped, winding, constantly under construction, and equipped with convex mirrors on most corners. But of course, the place is beautiful, and the Nakagawa's house was hidden somewhere up one such road, amidst the trees and perched just above the Akui River. Nice place and a very nice family to boot.

Mother Masako and father Yoshimichi have three children - two sons, 13-year-old Daiki and 9-year-old Takahito, and a beautiful 2-year-old girl named Maho. They also live with the grandparents on the father's side. We duly visited the grandparents on the mother's side on Saturday morning - I have some of their home-grown Japanese tea to prove it!

We spent the weekend playing with the kids - a bit of soccer, some fireworks, and maybe too much Nintendo (kids are so damn good at those games!) - and being driven around to some great places. Oh, and being stuffed silly. It was more like moving from meal to meal than moving from place to place, but the food was sensational.

I had my first swim in the Pacific Ocean on this side of the world at Naruto on Saturday afternoon - we are truly spoilt with beautiful beaches in Australia, but the water was nice enough and I was glad to paddle.

Then we got to walk under the new bridge between Naruto and Kobe, on the sightseeing platform from which you can see the famous Naruto Whirlpools. The tides are huge in this part of Japan, and forced to flow through a narrow strait. The violence in the water at certain times of the day causes whirlpools. We weren't there at quite the right time, unfortunately, but it was still pretty. The sea under the bridge is always agitated and the bridge itself is a marvel of engineering. The sushi we had down in Ishii on the way home from the bridge was just the thing to finish off a great day.

Parting with the Nakagawas on Sunday morning, the JET group had some teaching demonstrations to run through before an afternoon of free time. We piled into the back of a couple of trucks to be driven to the base of the local waterfall, for a steep but rewarding hike to the waterfall itself. As an aside, I didn't think there was such a thing as a good driver in Japan until this short trip - our driver did exceptionally well on tight and steep roads to get a trayfull of westerners safely to the mountain. It was worth it, too.

With all the rain dumped by our recent typhoon, the hike up the hill was a little slippery but not too dangerous, and the waterfall itself was in full flow. The falls come over in two main sets, with a chain running up the side of the incline to let you get up to the higher pool. Not content with beauty for its own sake, many of us clambered up the chain to jump into the freezing waters of the top pool and be pummelled by the falling water for a few minutes. A little crazy but lots of fun! Of course, getting up was one thing, but getting down was quite another! Suffice it to say that we all made it safely back. A warm bath at the local onsen was definitely in order.

The Kamiyama onsen (hot spring bath) is quite nice. I didn't realise it would be my first really public experience of an onsen until I walked in the door to see as many old Japanese men and young Japanese boys as westerners in the bath room. All naked, of course - one of the things you'll have to get used to if you come to Japan for any appreciable length of time! No worries, though, and the hot water was a blessing after the cold of the falls.

As I walked in, this onsen had a locker room before the bath room. Inside, a wall of showers and a sauna room on the right, a cold bath in the near left corner, the large hot bath in the centre left (with a large window??), a room with a high pressure jet just beyond that (sort of like a tough massage, really), and a coolish aromatherapy sort of bath in the far left corner. Some people can spend hours in onsens, but I just treat it like a slightly long shower. It's nice, but I get over it pretty quickly.

From onsen to quick jam session with Americans Stirling and Keith back at the campground. Both are keen on guitar and Keith has spent his past four years teaching music in the US, so I was certainly in good company. I didn't know that they were lining up to perform at that evening's town party, but I got roped into writing new lyrics to the tune of Hotel California. The product? Hoteru Kamiyama. Which I ended up singing. So much for trying not to embarrass myself too soon. :)

Stage nervousness aside, it was a top party. All the homestay families turned up, we saw a performance of Awa Odori dance by the locals and a traditional lion dance before it was the JETs' turn on stage. One of the men in our group is Maori - encouraged by a few beers and lots of goodwill, he got up and led a few JETs and locals in a haka. I have to say, Japan was the last place I thought I'd be participating in my first haka! The band was next up, a mishmash of guitars, drums, wood blocks and shakers. All things considered, we weren't too bad - someone even asked when we would perform next! As usual, the food was great and there was plenty of beer to go around. A really good night.

But the party was anything but over at nine o'clock. Heading back to the campground, we kept talking, drinking and singing until someone suggested we head down to the creek for a swim. Not necessarily in clothes, mind you. Somehow, about a dozen people were up for it. There is no photographic evidence to suggest I was one of them, but if ever there was, I would blame it on my newly developing Australian sense of adventure. :)

Sitting somewhere a little downstream in the creek, it was a beautiful clear evening and I looked up to see lots of unfamiliar stars through the gap between the trees. Of course, I couldn't find the Southern Cross that I am used to searching for. I asked one of the JETs to identify any constellation for me, to get my bearing in the northern hemisphere's starscape. He found Orion and the North Star, which was a good start. The foundation of my ceiling of stars.

A few more beers and lots of talking later, we eventually headed back to camp, though some people had trouble finding their clothes. Whoever it was with that torch had gone away by then, which I guess was a good thing. The rest of the night and the next morning is a blur of talking, sleeping on a carpeted bunk, standing on a crowded bus for the hour long trip back to Tokushima, and just scraping onto the train back to Mikamo after a fun attempt at communicating with the attendant at the station. Despite losing a little sleep, a super weekend.

I think I mentioned in my last email that I was about to visit Awa Odori, Tokushima's traditional festival of dance, and spend three days at a Buddhist temple doing an English camp with local students. Both of these things came and went with a few memorable highlights, such as:

* my first hundred clicks in the Pajero, my first use of a squat toilet in Japan, and my first (and probably last!) session of Buddhist meditation, called "zazen" - just not made for people of my dimensions!
* Awa Odori - a great idea, heaps of people there, but a little less beer and more dancing would have been more up my alley. Maybe next year I'll join a "ren" and do the dancing bit properly. They have a saying here, "Odoru aho, nimiru aho", which translates as "Dancing fool, watching fool". The philosophy is that you're a fool whether you're dancing or watching, so you might as well dance! Yeah!
* dressing up with two mates as one of Japan's most popular female pop groups, Mini Moni, for a performance in front of the kids at Anrakuji Temple.

In the week or so between the English camp and the homestay, I managed to meet a few of the locals. My aging neighbour is Mr Fujiwara, with whom I've had a couple of broken conversations in Japanese. Down at the village store are Kita-san and Saiki-san, whilst the photo shop just down the road is run by Doura-san. The two ladies at the town office front desk are very friendly, Shimonishi-san and Nakai-san. Finally, I've almost got the staff room at school worked out. The next challenge is learning all of my kids' names next week. School starts this Saturday - wish me luck!

Having just reached three pages, I'd better stop, but don't let that stop you writing back! Thanks to all of you who already have, it really makes my day. Having forgotten to quote it last time, here's my physical address for your future reference:

David Cowland-Cooper
Teachers' Apartments
363-13 Ichiu Nishiiyayama-son
Miyoshi-gun, Tokushima-ken
778-0101
JAPAN

There is room, though, for one last good wish in this email, which is to my Mum. Great to hear you had a super birthday with the family in Sydney on Saturday. Sorry I couldn't be there with you. Enjoy the rest of your holiday and I'll talk to you again soon.

Until next time, take care and lots of love,

Dave