Adopted words

It seems to be that some words in Japanese get very easily adopted when we are speaking English as well. Probably I will occasionally use some of these in my writing, so I am going to start compiling a dictionary here of loan words. I haven't yet worked out how I can link bits of my blog together, but when I do I shall put in links where I have used these words.

eki - station
gaijin - foreigner
kakkoi - very stylish (often used to describe nice looking men)
keitai - mobile phone
nomihodai - all you can drink for a set time and price. They vary a lot, but a rough guide is around 2000 yen (£10) for anywhere from 120 minutes upwards. Normally includes a choice of around 30 drinks including beers, cocktails and spirits.
purikora / print club - small photo booths where you take your photos and decorate them with cute stamps before printing millions of the things so everyone can have one, but then are too small to see. Mostly frequented by teenage girls during that day and in the evening by people who have been drinking too much.
suuuuge! - an exclaimation of joy and amazement. (thanks to Crust for this submission)
tabehodai - the cousin of nomihodai, this means a set menu of food for a set price. obviously not nearly as interesting.
viking - all you can eat buffet for a set price
yaki-niku - barbecued meat

Sendai Party

In the evening we trailed the red light district attempting to find a restaurant that fitted the bill of having room and being one we had a discount coupon for. Jo and I didn't mind at all, as they left us standing on a street corner while they went to try and find one, so we got to spend a long time watching the men with big hair and badly fitting suits trying to sell their lap dancing women. Basically they pick on poor random men walking down the street and show them a "menu" of girls and try to convince them to go to the bar. We found the whole thing highly entertaining (and that was before we had drunk any alcohol at all!). It is something we have noticed that the men here just don't fit suits properly at all. They are always too big in the shoulders giving them the effect of a kid on their first day in big school.

So eventually we did find a restaurant and drank a lot and didn't eat enough to compensate. Afterwards we went back to Ryoko's house. On the train we got accosted by two drunk men who wanted to practice English. There is a switch when you cross the Iwate southern border and gaijin women go from being something very scary to something interesting. It is a little unnerving at first.

Other than that we didn't sleep quite enough and spent a small fortune on books.

Print club

This weekend Jo and I took the bus down to Sendai to visit Satomi, Ryoko and Asami from last year's 3-3 class. Probably because we completely failed to do any sightseeing and just went shopping, there is a slight lack of pictures. We did get a chance to do purikora though, and these are the photos from that. When we were in there we saw some crazy fashion people that had dressed up specially on a Saturday afternoon to go and take pictures in a small box. Other than that we managed to go to a lot of shoe shops, have a coffee viking lunch and drink some coffee - a well utilized Saturday.

lighting candles

The big candle

Towards the end of the day they change into Western style dresses and walk around the room and light a candle on each table, and then a big one on the stage. This was a really nice part of the pseudo-western part of the ceremony, but they didn't throw a bouquet, which I was quite disappointed about, as there were lots of Japanese girls in incredibly high shoes who I think had the potential to be quite comical.

Priest

Harada's family are Buddhist priests, so there were many of the people from his father's temple there. Although we didn't see the actually ceremony apart from on a video screen, I was told it was quite unique because he is part of a temple family. Probably for the same reason the party was quite lavish. There were more than 150 guests and the food must have been quite fancy because on the first tray they brought out I couldn't put a name to a single item.

Kimono

One of the stranger parts of the whole thing had to be the present giving. It is traditional not to give gifts to the couple, but just an envelope with about £100 in it. Then in turn, they give the guests a big bag full of presents. I got a bottle of something with the wedding theme design on it and the date and so on, lots of bits of food and a really nice dinner set.

cake cutting

The couple met in Ireland, so everything had a four-leaf clover theme. The cake was strawberry sponge cake, but to make the clover design they made it green, and of course being Japan, they used green tea to do it! not so good... but they made up for it with this really, really good coconut sorbet-cream thing which was soooo nice, but sooooo sickly.

greeting guests

Today I went to the wedding party of one the teachers at school. Over the course of the afternoon they changed outfits three times. This is the first one and is a traditional Buddhist style.

Kurakake-san's summit

The top of the mountain was about 900m, but we started from about 300, so it was quite an easy climb and only took about two hours. The mountain in the background is Iwate-san.

Boyz

These are some of the first year boys I teach. The three on the left are my favourites, they are really fun, and although they have a complete lack of English ability, really do try quite hard.

Miki

Once a year the whole school takes a day off school and goes on class field-trips. This year I went with the first year students who climbed a local mountain and then went to the shopping mall on the way home (very educational).

Janken

Living in a land where pretty much everything, from who will speak in class to prize give-aways, is decided by janken (rock-paper-scissors), we have often joked that businesses must make all their difficult decisions this way too...and now it has really happened. Last week, The Maspro Denkoh electronics company was selling 10 million pounds worth of Picasso and Van Gogh paintings, but the could not decide whether Sotheby's or Christie's should auction them, so they gave the contract to the winner of a single round of janken!

We are now back from Hong Kong. It was really excellent, if not a little hot. As you can see, it was also quite tiring. Anyway, I spent last night putting up all the pictures, but I haven't been able to write the comments yet. I shall start doing this soon enough, so come back and have a look from time to time.

plane

lantau buddha

Lantau buddha

dimsum

Even with our now complete lack of faith in the Lonely Planet, we decided to give its advice one last try and attempt a dim sum breakfast. Apart from the restaurant not being the size of an aircraft hanger, there not being a single trolley-pushing lady in sight, and the other diners being quite civilized and not the raucous crowd promised, it has to be said it was a pleasant experience. Although, we did note that all the Chinese were given nice window seats over-looking Hong Kong Bay, whereas the noisy foreigners were stuck in a corner and given the most surly waitress going.

double deckers

Maybe the most exciting thing about HK (apart from HobNobs and roundabouts!) was the double-decker buses. This is on the way to Stanley Market. Ant and Cedric were particularly excited, as they come from countries which don`t really have them. As for me and Jane, we just felt a bit like we were 15 again, rushing up to the top deck to sit at the front.

Big Buddha

This was exactly what it looks like; a big Buddha statue. This is on Lantau, the final island we went to, where the airport is. Actually, one of the more interesting parts of this day was the bus ride to get to the temple. It is situated really high up in the mountains, and we had to get a bus from the station. On the way there, we had a driver who appeared to think he was in Le Mans, and certainly not driving a bus. With a sheer drop on either side, careering along the little windey roads was quite entertaining (and Jane`s little squeals were certainly entertaining to the Chinese people in front of us!). Then on the way back we ended up being the on the last bus back, so the whole of the local building site workers filled up the rest of the bus, making it us, and about 45 sweaty men.

city living

These are some typical houses that the people of HK live in.

Chunking Mansions

This was the final hostel we stayed in, and delightful it was too. We actually came to this building looking for a the dragon hostel, but got cornered in the entrance hall by a strange little man who bundled us into a lift and took us to a different hostel. It was ok in so much it was clean and quite cheap, but the boys room was full of clouds of bugs, and our room had no hot water, not to mention that due to the slight lack of any sound proofing on the windows, our room was essentially the same as sleeping in the main road outside. The hot water was not so much of an issue though, as when getting up at 5am to get to the airport, a cold shower is actually quite refreshing. I don`t think Ant was quite so optimistic about it when she wanted a bath on the first night though.

McDonald's man

This cheeky little man was advertising bracelets in McDonalds. He was just so cute, I had to get a photo. In reality, it was Cedric that managed to get a picture of him by brazenly walking up to the counter, ignoring the lady trying to serve him and taking a photo of their menu display. (It is just pay-back for me getting a photo of a kids` party in a different McDonalds a few days earlier)

Macau St Paul's

Until 1999, Macau was a territory of Portugal, and the island is littered with European architecture. One of the more famous pieces being this church. A fire in 1835 destroyed most of it, but the front still remains, and you can see pious warnings in Chinese, and various carvings. The church was built by Japanese exiles, and so many of the drawings are Japanese style. I remember reading that there was a depiction of the saints in Samurai armor, but having not actually seen them (although we were only there for about 3 minutes), and having not been able to find this information again, I am doubting my memory now.

Thanks to the Portuguese, we were able to get a very delicious and familiar meal on the night we stayed there.

Grandview Hotel

Macau is particularly famous for the huge amount of Casinos on the island. In the early evening, helicopters could be seen bringing in the rich from HK. Due to this, there is no shortage of nice hotels.

Normally we would never pay out for a hotel like this, but we got a special deal when we bought it with the ferry ticket, and so we had one night of luxury and indulgence. It was so nice to have a bed and a room to ourselves, and have a bath with hot water and no stains, and have air con that didn't make a noise, and carpets and sheets with no insects. Pure heaven! And the breakfast! Oh, the breakfast! We had a full English, plus all the good bits of Chinese food on the side. Just the best start to a day.

Macau

A couple of days before we came home we took a lightening speed tour of Macau. We were on the island for less than 24 hours in total, but we made everyone count.

I don`t know what this is, but other people were taking photos, so we did too. It is, more importantly, just in front of the wine museum, where we chose to spend the first of our precious moments on Macau.

10,000 buddhas

This is one of my favourite of the 10,000 Buddha statues. The colour is even more scary in real life. A lot of the religious culture is from India, so there is a strong influence from there. The other religions in HK are Taoism and Confucianism from China. There is also a strong Catholic following, and you can see a surprising amount of Christian graveyards.

10,000 buddhas

Last night Miles and Cedric went out clubbing and didn't return until 6am, before falling into the double bed we were sharing between three people. Yes, we were sharing a bed. After the relatively nice YH we stayed in the first few nights, we then had to move to a new place. When we had the brainwave of not booking any accommodation, we failed to realise that yes it is very easy to get accommodation in HK, but not when it is also the same time as China`s public holidays. So the second hostel was a last ditch attempt to stay off the streets. It was cheap, we`ll give it that, but one room was the approximate size of a double bed, and had a double bed in it, and four people were supposed to sleep in there. Interesting.

Anyway, so having given up hope of the boys being up and about in the near future, we hauled ourselves off to inaka to visit Sha Tin and see the history museum. After a very nice set lunch, including Chinese tea ceremony, we trawled round the museum, and watched a traditional dance display. A couple of the dances were really good, but when we had the line-dancing, middle-aged, black-cat-suit-encased ladies come out, we decided we should get on with our day.

After a brief detour up a mountain, due to our now complete lack of faith in the Lonely Planet guide meaning we thought we would have more luck reading the Chinese sign post than the book, we found ourselves at the bottom of the 400 steps that would take us to the 10,000 Buddha statue temple. The Lonely Planet assured us it shut at 5.30. It was now 5.45, and several hundred meters vertically to the temple. What to do? We used our best judgment and ignored the book and started climbing. A good job too, as when we reached the top it was most definitely open, and really, really breathtaking. Inside the temple, the walls were lined with 20cm high, completely individual statues. There was not one bit of wall to be seen...and it was a big temple! There really are 10,000 individually carved, golden statues. There are about 300 or so 6 foot statues that go up either side of the path on the way up (and get increasingly scary towards the top I noticed), so that makes a hell of a lot still left to fill the temple. Sadly the LP hadn`t been that far out, so we only had about 15 minutes at the top before they locked up for the night, but it was still worth the climb.