Aloha!
Hello all, long time no blog!
It has been quite a while since I put anything up on here, but it's not because there's been a shortage of content! Since last time my parents, grandmothers and a family friend have come to visit me, I've had another friend come visit, Claire and I have gone to the penis festival (the same as that which I visited last year), the extra special long Golden Week holiday has come around - and with that a new Emperor and Era (Reiwa), and last month I went to Hawai'i! I also managed to get my camera wet due to a brittle water bottle, meaning an expensive trip to the camera hospital was required (ouch), so for the last few weeks I've been unable to take quite the same volume of photos as would normally be the case! However fortunately this did not affect Hawai'i, so there is a wealth of material to devour there, I promise!
I was invited to go to Hawai'i through Tokyo University by a professor whose son I teach English. The course itself was designed to give second year students a taste of travelling overseas, speaking English, doing the whole host family thing, and also, given the demographics of Hawai'i, meeting Japanese people who do not necessarily speak Japanese, being third or fourth generation Americans.
My role was to be a teaching assistant, essentially helping chaperone them places, be an avenue for them to direct questions, and generally help run the course. My role in this was far smaller than that of the other organisers, so full kudos to them; as some points I had significant imposter syndrome! However, naturally, when the offer was put to me I couldn't sign up fast enough!
It was an overnight flight to Hawai'i, and with timezone differences we arrived before we left, giving us a solid Saturday and Sunday to do things before the course kicked off on Monday. The students had all met their host families at the airports and were off to do various things with them, meaning I hung out with Yuki and Kotaro, her son. That day happened to be a free entry day at the Bishop Museum, a centre set up to showcase Hawaiian natural and social history, as well as the Hawaiian monarchy and subsequent annexation by the United States. We spent easily several hours there looking at all kinds of things, as well as listening to live music and trying some Hawaiian food - poke, which is raw marinated fish over a bowl of rice (mine was a spicy chili flavour, really good)
As the sun dipped below the horizon, we headed to Waikiki Beach to have some food for dinner and watch hula dancing - there is a free performance put on a couple of days every week, which is very popular by all accounts. My circadian rhythm was all out of whack so I wasn't particularly hungry, meaning my dinner was a pack of small chicken wraps from a convenience store, but that hit the spot rather well!
After all that, jetlag was starting to hit me pretty hard (fought to stay up beyond 8pm), and so we headed to the university accommodation in which I was staying, Lincoln Hall, which is right in campus, so very convenient for me. Once there I managed to stay up til after 9, which I figured was good for getting me into the swing of things locally.
Next morning was a trip to the farmers market for some local baked goods and fruit, which was very nice, plus a trip to the supermarket to get yoghurt and cereal. Fully supplied for the week, the three of us headed to the Pacific Aviation Museum in Pearl Harbour. We had a study trip planned there for later in the week, but that would be of the Pearl Harbour Museum and the USS Missouri, rather than their aviation museum. As a fan of aircraft (same with Kotaro), we figured it was a good idea to make a separate trip out there for ourselves. We were lucky to get a tour from a guide who knew his stuff, and he walked us through their impressive facility which had aircraft from the mid 1930s all the way up to the 1980s. They also had a Stearman airtrainer plane which was discovered as being the craft used by President George Bush when he was learning to fly, making it quite a significant individual for US history.
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| A Zero, the primary fighter aircraft that attacked Pearl Harbour |
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| P40 Warhawk, the American mainstay fighter in 1941 |
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| CH-46 Sea Knight |
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| UH-1 Iroquois/Huey and AH-1 Cobra |
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| F-102A Delta Dagger - an early adopter of the delta wing formation |
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| C-47 |
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| F-15 Eagle |
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| F-14 Tomcat of "Top Gun" fame |
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| B-25 Mitchell |
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| P-40 Warhawk |
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| Stearman Airtrainer used by George Bush when he was learning to fly |
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| The USS Bowfin, a WWII era submarine credited with sinking 19 enemy vessels |
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| The view across the harbour, with the USS Missouri and the USS Arizona Memorial visible to the left of the island |
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| Anchor recovered from the USS Arizona |
Dinner was an eclectic bunch most nights, as there are plenty of joints close to campus that do very good food. On this particular night we went to a Chinese place, but I also had Mexican, Vietnamese, more poke, Thai, and dinner at the house of a professional colleague of Yuki who works at University of Hawai'i. I was very pleasantly surprised at the reasonably cheap prices (though many people remarked how expensive it was in Hawai'i compared to the mainland), and also of course portion sizes were astronomical, being the USA and all!
Monday was the first day of 'school', with the students all coming to campus bright and early for a welcome ceremony, orientation and small lessons for the first day. My involvement was limited to the initial welcome ceremony plus some general logistics, and then afterwards I headed to a mall to get some shopping done (nabbed some shoes which was a score for me!). Photographically speaking it wasn't much of a day, but successful all the same.
Tuesday was our fieldtrip day, having our guided tour of the USS Missouri and the Pearl Harbour Museum, followed by lunch at a very local restaurant, and then off to the Plantation Village, which showcases life in the late 1800s to early 1900s for the settlers that came from South East/East Asia to work primarily in sugar cane farms.
I was very excited to learn we would be taking a yellow school bus like what you see in the movies; feeling I was in a stereotype.
The Missouri was incredibly impressive, and being able to walk all around through it, seeing the size of it all was awesome - it is a seriously big boat! It is 270m long, weighing in at 52000 tonnes fully loaded. Launched in 1944, it was recommissioned in 1986 and took part in the First Gulf War, where it fired several hundred of its 40cm wide rounds, as well as some of its newly installed Tomahawk missiles. Our guide was George Arine, who played a Japanese Admiral in the 2012 movie Battleship, starring Liam Neeson (he gave us his business card which has the Missouri on one side and him in his movie costume on the other)
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| Admiral Chester Nimitz |
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| Drink Coca Cola? |
The Missouri was also the site of the Japanese surrender in WWII, with their leadership coming aboard the ship in Tokyo Bay in September 1945. The exact position of the surrender is marked with a plaque, and they have copies of the surrender document - interestingly the first signed version has an error, as the Canadian representative signed below the line, rather than on the line, meaning everyone after him was shunted down one - the ultimate conclusion being that the final signatory, from New Zealand, had to create a space for himself to sign in! This was noticed and the second copy was signed properly by the Canadian.
The Missouri also has had the experience of being struck by a kamikaze, something that was captured in a photograph. The pilot clipped the side and did only superficial damage (the dent is still in the hull), but the Captain of the ship insisted on giving the pilot (or the half of him that was left) a burial at sea with full honours (the sailors made a Japanese flag especially), much to the disagreement of the crew.
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| This is the angle from which the first torpedoes launched against the Pacific fleet came - where the USS Oklahoma and Tennessee were berthed |
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| Kamikaze about to strike the Missouri |
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| The result of a Kamikaze clipping the hull |
After the tour we were able to go inside, which allowed us to see the mess halls, bunk "beds" (they were too small to be justifiably called beds), and all the facilities on board - including the doughtnut bakery, legal offices, dentist office and computer training room (installed in the 1990s)
We made our way further and further up the ship towards the bridge, encountering some of the more modern weaponry as we did - including the Phalanx anti missile defence system, which was a very impressive beasty to see.
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| View from the gunner deck |
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| Inside the "bunker" within the bridge |
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| Demonstrating how thick the armour is |
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| View from the bridge |
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| Looking forward towards the USS Arizona Memorial |
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| There was a big machine gun and a helmet to wear, how could I resist? |
Lunch was at a very local Hawaiian restaurant, which served up some vegetable/tripe stew which was very rich in aroma and taste - one bowl was enough for all of us to not finish - in addition to that I also had a bowl of poke (one more in a long series of this dish; it is delicious)
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| Quite the flavour experience |
We were next off to the Plantation Village, which showcased the history and way of life of the settlers who came from China, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan in the late 1800s and early 1900s to work on sugarcane plantations. It is set up like a model village, with different houses set up to show both the different eras and ethnicities of settlers. On the whole it seemed a rather unpleasant existence, with hard work and pretty garbage pay, in addition to small, hot and humid houses with very few amenities - though actually similarly sized to Japanese rooms I think!
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| A memorial garden for the Korean settlers |
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| A monument to Japanese settlers |
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| Example of a very early Hawaiian plantation worker hut |
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| Part of the Chinese section - the original had to be demolished, and was rebuilt according to a photo, at which point the two storey building was already missing a piece of decoration - can you see it? (look for something that is not symmetrical) |
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| Coffee berries |
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| A kitchen from the Portuguese house |
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| Coffee up close |
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| A later model Japanese settler's house |
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| Japanese settlers built for themselves a Shinto Shrine (and also a public sento bath) |
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| Roof chickens! |
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| Appropriately named cannon ball plant |
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| An old kakigori (shaved ice) machine |
After the village experience, we made our way back to the campus and broke up for the rest of the day - I went an explored the campus, feeling like a university first year again, before going out with Mizuho (one of the UTokyo staff) for Mexican at a nearby and very popular outdoor restaurant.
Wednesday was a day of activities at university; first a hula workshop and then a class on pidgin English. The hula teacher was a really gentle man who walked us through all of the steps and motions, as well as telling us the story of hula - how it was banned by Europeans for a long time, before being brought back and practiced solely by men (whereas historically it had been done by both), before becoming the cultural institution it is today. Our hula was about two people walking along the beach, admiring each other and getting the other to do a twirl to show off their beauty - it was quite good fun!
The pidgin English workshop was less photographic, being more of a lecture, but no less interesting, learning about how different cultures took English and shaped it with their own languages, creating the hybridised speech that is still in use today (the very first morning I was confused to all hell by our waitress who spoke it).
Yuki Kotaro and I had dinner with a former neighbour of hers that evening, and on the way back to my accommodation, I stopped by a carpark that had caught my attention on previous evenings because of the number of cats it attracted.
Something about the light or the warmth or the wide open space (I thought cats preferred boxes but there you go) caused them to congregate and have some meeting or whatever (plotting more like), and they were quite happy staring at me staring at them staring at me until I moved on, before they could resume their no doubt nefarious scheming.
Next morning after a breakfast of pancakes and French toast, Kotaro and I went up to Manoa Falls, a waterfall in the foothills above the university, and also where some of the Jurassic World movie was filmed apparently. I totally believed that as we walked through jungle across muddy tracks with a clear and overgrown stream trickling away below us. It was very pretty, and the first real experience I had had with nature in this highly urbanised Pacific island.
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| Easy too imagine dinosaurs in these trees |
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| Not a mighty torrent as some falls are, but a famous waterfall all the same! |
Then it was back to civilisation and to the Japanese language school Manoa, a place where Japanese American students can study Japanese language after school (school after school, how cruel). Our students had all prepared to join in with performances by the students in various classes, doing soran bushi and Tonari no totoro dances, singing Japanese songs and doing origami. There is a rotation system in place, so while some classes were going on, others were outside playing football, which is where I found myself most of the time - it had been quite a while since I had played that game; little 8 year olds darting all around me, but none could withstand a full on charge by me (if you are reading this as me saying they were more nimble but that I may have crashed into several of them to get the ball, then yes, you are correct). All in all, a very fun afternoon playing with children, and for our students to see people who were ostensibly Japanese but did not necessarily speak the language very well (if at all)
Friday morning came around, and Mizuho, Kotaro and I arranged to get up early and climb Diamond Head, a small mountain that borders the big bay of Honolulu. With a big crater at the top, it was used as an observation outpost by the Americans in WWII (little good it did them when the attack did come), but today is a pretty nice comfortable hike. It took us up a number of tracks, through some war era tunnels and emplacements, and gave us some good views of the city and ocean.
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| Mongoose were introduced to Hawaii to deal with rodents, only that rats are nocturnal and mongooses are diurnal, meaning little predation ever happened...woops |
Diamond Head was a pretty little hike with some nice sunshine, and superb views, and marked the second of the two little hikes I managed to do while there - well worth the early wake up!
Friday afternoon was the 'graduation' ceremony, where everyone was presented with a certificate and a necklace of shells - as a member of staff I got one which is made of things that I think are seeds (hard to tell). There was lots of food, and everyone gave a small speech about what they had got out of their week there.
The afternoon was spent drinking beers at the staff bar with the teacher of their course, Peter, and then Yuki, Mizuho, Kotaro and I headed to Waikiki beach for the Friday night fireworks, followed by more poke and (in my case) some Bud Light beer (I'm now an American). Saturday was pretty well get up, wander around campus really quickly to take some pictures, and then head to the airport - the flight back was 9.5 hours (5 hours going there), so quite a long one in which many movies were watched, and it was well after midnight before I collapsed into my bed back in Tokyo.
Hawai'i was a great time, and I am very grateful to have been offered the role of Teaching Assistant on the course. Hawai'i had never really been on my to go list, but being offered the chance to go for free I of course wanted to go - and now having been I can see the magic of the place. It is touristy, but there is also a certain charm to the place, and a pace that Tokyo is somewhat devoid of - that and I loved how verdant it is, and to be able to see the ocean almost whenever you wanted was magic (yes I can see it from my dormitory here but it's a huge port, not a vast empty Pacific seascape)
University of Hawai'i Manoa is a gorgeous campus, and everyone looks as though they are going surfing after class (they probably are), and has a very park like feel going on - I would happily study there fulltime!
Now for a complete change of pace - Kanamara Penis Festival. As you can see by clicking on the link at the top of this post, the festival has a long history with praying for STD prevention (popular with prostitutes), has a story about a demonic infestation of a royal vagina, and now is associated with the LGBT community in Japan - who have themselves contributed a large pink penis palanquin (P3 for short) to the parade. This time Claire and I went together (last year I rode solo), and as we waited at the front of the crowds beside the preparations for the start of the parade, Claire pointed out someone she thought I might recognise - as it turns out it was James May of Top Gear/Grand Tour fame! He was in Japan filming an Amazon Prime show about Japan, and that naturally required him to carry aloft a giant penis through the streets. In addition to all the penis paraphernalia it was pretty cool to be within 10 metres or so of him, and overall it was worth the crowds and sun (this festival grows in popularity every year as more and more foreigner munters such as myself come and advertise the festival). Because of the camera incident in Hawai'i, Claire's camera was utilised and as such many of these photos are hers (though photos taken from within crowds are more likely to have been taken by me due to my height advantage)
Penises done and dusted, the next big thing on the calendar has been the change of Emperor, Era, and with that, a big ol' holiday! Japan has quite a few more public holidays than New Zealand does, and quite a few of them stack up in the end of April to start of May. Coupled with holiday law in Japan mandating that where there is one non holiday between two public holidays, the non holiday is made a holiday too, and the Monday-isation of holidays falling on weekends, this can be extended a fair bit. Additionally, this year was the abdication of Emperor Akihito and the coronation of his son, Naruhito, meaning there were some extra one off holidays put in. This made for a ten day Golden Week (so called because in the film industry here it is considered a golden time to shoot an entire film) - last year's was 6 days or so. Because Japanese so rarely take holidays, this time of year is for many the one time where they can have an extended break, and so things get very busy! It is not a good time for people to come to Japan to visit the likes of Kyoto or Nara, as the number of Japanese descending there is huge, and crowds all over the place get crazy.
Like last year, Claire and I decided to stick in Tokyo for the most part, doing little day adventures and the like; taking an opportunity to go to things that might not be so feasible during regular weekdays or weekends. One such trip was to Nokogiriyama, a mountain in the neighbouring Chiba Prefecture that had been on my list since last year's Golden Week, but which we ran out of time to do in 2018. Thus we resolved to do it this time round, and did it with our friends Fiodar and Katya. The mountain was used historically as a quarry, and there is much evidence of this, with lots of cliff faces and cuts into the mountain at very right angles, making for striking scenery. Additionally, there are two giant stone Buddha set into different parts of the mountain, making for some good sightseeing beyond the natural variety.
The site of this Buddha cut into the mountain was also the location of the finish line for a Top Gear Japan special years ago, where Jeremy Clarkson narrowly beat the others in a race across Japan in cars vs public transport - so naturally I had to stand where Clarkson stood; being quite on theme with the sighting of James May a few weeks earlier!
There was more walking along the paths and through a mixture of bush and steep tracks cut into the mountain until we reached the summit, which gives you the "View of Hell". There is a stone "tooth" sticking out which is known as a saw tooth (appropriate given the mountain name itself is named after a lumber saw). The queues for the viewing point on the tooth were insane (well over an hour), so we opted not to do that, but got a good view nonetheless!
After stopping for lunch at the summit and the obligatory photo of the saw tooth, we headed along to the other big Buddha, which is the largest of its kind in Japan. To get there we walked along some cliff tracks in which there were hundreds of small stone Buddha statues, resting in all manner of nooks and crannies in the cliffs. Some were in a serious state of decay, either through natural erosion, or in some cases victims of the anti-Buddhist sentiments that were in force during Meiji Era Japan in the late 19th Century.
As we neared the big Buddha, the narrow, shaded track widened out to a very bright and hot open space with a huge Buddha at the end of it; a complete change of scenery from further up the mountain. There were many people who had come for picnics and such there, and there was a sense of hustle and bustle (see above re Golden Week)
All in all, the mountain experience was a good one, and gave us all a good workout of our thighs (taking the stair case track to the top was perhaps steeper than the signage had led us to believe!), and we got some good experiences out of it, not to mention being able to get out of the city for a while (though it was still visible on the horizon much of the time).
At the end of Golden Week, Claire and I made our way north west of Tokyo for just under an hour by bullet train to Gunma Prefecture, to stay with a couple of friends of mine from university in Wellington, Jasper and Ayumi. It has been a good couple of years since I had seen them, and they had graciously invited us to stay a couple of days at their place as an opportunity to get out of Tokyo metropolis, and see a bit of the countryside. Arriving in the evening, we had dinner and played some videogames together, with the main adventure taking place the next day. Claire and I enjoyed sleeping on tatami mats and futon (not that unusual here but as I have a conventional Western bed there is always some novelty for me). Once again, as my camera has bit the dust after consuming some water (looking to replace by September), photo credits go to Claire, Jasper and Ayumi :)
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| Claire and I with the Gunma mascot, Gunma-chan |
Mt Haruna is one of the three famous mountains of Gunma Prefecture, along with Akagi and Myogi (which were all names of WWII Battleships). Mt Haruna is a dormant volcano with a large caldera at the top, and a series of temples on the way up. Jasper Claire and I made our way up a mountain valley with all kinds of temples built straight into the rock, which themselves featured lots of colours and some seriously intricate carvings.
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| Yebisu, the God of good times (and the logo for Ebisu beer) |
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| There are many impressive geological formations up the mountain |
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| The temple has been built directly into the rock (and has a precipitously attached rock looming above it...) |
At the top of the mountain we enjoyed some local specialties (thick udon noodles for me - Gunma is famous for its wheat harvest). There was a quick stop off on the way back to take a look at the mountainous vistas all around, including some of the still snow covered Japanese Alps in the spine of Japan. That night was spent in an onsen bath, followed by tapas for dinner and then back to Jasper and Ayumi's for icecream and videogames - the simple pleasures!
Our second and last day in Gunma was less hiking, but more cultural icons. Gunma is famous for a Daruma Temple, called Shorinzan-ji. Daruma are good luck charms shaped like a big red head, and when you get one you make a wish, drawing on it one eye. When your wish comes true, you draw in the other eye, and it can then be brought back to the temple for collection, when at the end of the year they are all gathered together and burnt, which sends them back to heaven. Typically daruma also have a weighted bottom, so if you tip it over it will right itself - something about keeping your wishes resilient against troubles!
Shorinzan-ji did not disappoint in terms of daruma volume; there were hundreds of them of all kinds of sizes; suggesting a lot of wishes had been fulfilled over the last while! They also have a museum of different daruma, some historical and others novelty, such as Mickey Mouse and Japan Olympic Team themed ones.
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| Never pass up an opportunity for novelty photos |
Last up on our itinerary was Byakue-Dai-Kannon, a giant 41m high statue of a Kannon; something of a Buddhist deity. Last Golden Week Claire and I went to Ushiku Daibutsu, so this was something of a continuation. Going inside we climbed numerous flights of very steep steps, admiring some of the wooden Buddhist deities that were carved inside, as well as peering out of the windows that lined each level.
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| Looking very pensive over the trees |
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| Claire demonstrating the scale of the Kannon - or was it the Yeti? |
It was a whirlwind trip but we certainly managed to pack in a lot, and we were hugely grateful to Jasper and Ayumi for facilitating it; Gunma is not as well integrated on the public transport network as Tokyo, meaning a car is really needed to get anywhere - we were lucky to have Jasper and Ayumi take us places as they showed us around. Gunma is very lush with huge numbers of rice and wheat fields, making it an agricultural titan in Japan, and being so close to some famous mountains (outside of Fuji) was a nice change of scenery from the urban jungle in which we normally live!
As we boarded the shinkansen back to Tokyo, another successful Golden Week down, we prepared ourselves for a return to work and university (booooo) - but all's not so bad, as next week Claire and I will be in the US for a wedding, which is very exciting - plenty more blog material to come!
I'm making good progress with my research and have been writing up all manner of things, so it should start becoming a coherent argument at least over the next month or so - watch this space too!
But until now, stay frosty out there!
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