Tuesday, March 4, 2003

What I did today Today, I... Did lots more for the Ogiri event (I'm well and truly on top of things at the moment!); Got a 'funeral gift'... of washing powder; Went to Miyanohara Elementary School; Went to a kaki-goya (an oyster 'factory'); Met Udo-san and Miyuki for an English 'lesson' in Mos Burger; Continued the English 'lesson' in (of all places!) a shipyard (it's a long story... don't ask).

Right, that settles it. We must be in a new ice age. This morning, it was snowing. Hard. In Etajima. In March...

I had three lessons at Miyanohara Elementary School today. The first lesson was with the fifth- and sixth-years, who continued practicing their scripts for the Miyanohara non-video video. Just like in the previous lesson, there was plenty of energy; but little of it was directed in a productive direction. The children will be able to speak their lines in time for the recording; but, just as with the play they did, they'll be middling, average, run-of-the-mill, boringly unoutstanding. It would have been pleasant if, just once, this class could have done something that stood out in some way. I like the children, don't get me wrong, but I can't help feeling that their teachers let them down. I ate lunch with the third years, and then afterwards went out into Miyanohara (I nearly wrote 'the town') with one of the upper year teachers to take some of the photos for the video. We called in at a kakigoya- an oyster 'factory', where I took some photos of the oysters in their cages (dangerous beasts, you know, oysters), and of the shelling process- lots of ladies swaddled in shawls and blankets hacking away at the rock-like shells to open them. This was the first time I'd been to a kakigoya, and in a way, it was fascinating, although the smell- a pungent fishiness (although somehow different to the smell of raw fish)- wasn't particularly pleasant. After lunch, I had a double lesson with the third- and fourth-years, where we made curry. The cooking went well (although, as ever, given the amount of open space in the kitchen, there were some boys who drifted off to mess around- and run around), but I learned that curry 'roux' doesn't work well- at least half of the groups ended up with curry that was relatively close to cement in terms of consistency. I have to say, though, that this was due at least in part to some of the children's inability to understand the instruction 'cook over a middle-to-low heat'; quite a few of the groups would have put the average blast furnace to shame. Normally I use curry powder when I make this curry, but in the shop close to the office they only had the boxes of roux for 'Japanese curry', so I had to use that instead. The taste was fine (despite which some of the children complained that it was too spicy!), but having used roux made the whole thing much stiffer than it should have been. Indeed, it may have been the first balti curry in the history of the world able to be cut with a knife and fork!

A while back, the mother of the husband of a member of the International Club died, and so, as is the custom in Japan, I sent koryo, a gift of money. After the funeral I got a pack of three soaps, but today the Takkyubin man came to the office with a big parcel for me from the island's biggest (only?) funeral company, sent in the name of the family to whom I'd sent the gift. I opened it when I got home after my English lesson, to find... two bottles of washing-up liquid, a box of washing powder, a box of kitchen wipes, and some cling-film. I'm sure that no matter how long I'm in Japan, I'll never fail to be amazed by the versatility of washing powder as a gift here! (As an aside, with Japan's ageing society, starting a funeral company sounds like an eminently sensible career move...)

Pick of the Photos In the window of a shop in Dazaifu, Kyushu. No comment!