Saturday, 12 March 2011

Saturday, 12 March 2011
The Morning 

The Earthquake is what finally drove the nail and the wall apart

It's the morning after the disaster.  A group of the women up here and Mr S - who, although he lives downtown, didn't know which disaster centre to go to, made his merry way up here (thankfully, otherwise it would've been a much lonelier and snuggle-less night) - camped out in my kitchen.

The shelter was a squash of families with babies wailing and the eldery desparately trying to creak their way into positions fit for sleep.  It was warmer than my apartment - hundreds of people breathing in a confined space and they had these nifty camping heaters that I was very tempted to steal - but there was no place to attempt the aquisition of zzzs.

I had cleared my kitchen while there was still some daylight yesterday afternoon, so we laid out all the futons and blankets I have and had a slumber party of tweenie proportions (minus the Justin Bieber posters and pilfered liquor).  It was actually kinda fun.  At least it was a respite from the desparation of so many people crowded together, no electricity and the aftershocks that kept crashing like waves at high tide.

The sirens seem to have stopped.  Last night, they were a constant chorus.

I was at school when it happened, feeling sorry for myself and wanted affection.  Weepy - just like on Wednesday when the earthquakes started.  I had gone to the toilet for a silent little cry.  I'm starting to suspect that I might be like an animal that goes nuts before an earthquake.  And there was that feeling when I got back from South Africa that I needed to put together an emergency kit that consisted of more than a bottle of water.  Aaaand all that shopping I forced myself to do this week for tinned food.

I had just gotten back to my desk when the first tremors started and I thought it would be like the others earlier this week - a little heart pounding, but over in a minute.  I kept looking at one of my other teachers, who sits opposite me, whether I should duck and dive.  He kept saying it was ok.  We all kept saying it was ok.  Then Instinct grabbed me by the collar and I dove under my desk, just as a tower of books crashed down around the spot where I had been sitting.  All I could see were the metal underbellies of desks sliding across the floor.  Heart was crawling out of my mouth, clawing for the release of crying.

When it finally eased up (I don't know how long it went on for - seconds turning to hours) we snatched our bags and coats and hop scotched across the toybox staffroom.  The snow started picking up.  Most of the children had already gone home, only the last stragglers who were still playing sports.  Outside, the windows were quivering.  The ground was still heaving, but it was less terrifying than being surrounded by desks and drawers and books tumbling over themselves to get to the floor first.

The minutes become an hour.  The realization -  so many of the other people you love and care for and even hate (but in hating, they enrich your life) are also bobbing up and down and maybe their buildings were more eager to crumble and, further more,that you may no longer have a home to go to - swims up for air.

What needs to be done today:
1.  Clean yourself as much as possible without using any water.
2.  Dress super warm.
3.  Consolidate supplies around the house - batteries, water, food, candles
4.  Clean up the other rooms.
5.  Try to recharge phone.

The Afternoon
My first year here, earthquakes were this entertaining diversion.

Perhaps this is sick and twisted, but I'm almost glad I was here when this happened.  To be in the thick of it.  To experience something on the ground.  The aftershocks that won't stop.  The soundtrack of sirens.  Having to put your life back together again.  Living wthout water or electricity.  No possibility of distraction but cleaning up and hunting down food.  A test.

Most of the house is cleaned now, at least to a livable state.  We've come up with a solution to the Number 2 Problem - taking dumps in plastic bags and store it on the balcony, but have yet to test it.  Originally, Mr S wanted to dispose of it in my neighbour's veggie patch.

The biggest concern is water and keeping warm tonight.  Walking to the shelter last night - after it grew dark and realising that I couldn't stay in my apartment - it felt like walking through an apocalyptic wasteland (possibly a little over the top, but I'm going with it).  With no street lights, you remember how dark the night is.  People camped in their cars for warmth.  The group of ALTs that gathered were a merry band - losing and then finding Mr S - marching through the streets, past the shrine and cemetary next to my apartment, both littered with crumbled statues and gravestones that had given up.

After sunset
Gas!  We have gas!  Our first hot meal and a cup of tea!  After a day of unsuccessful searching for water (just missing the water tank filling bottles at the shelter and only a cup of green tea to drink all day), the final dregs in the pipes has sputtered out!  Six litres!

Friday, 11 March 2011

It's been almost two weeks since the earth bulched and, much to the annoyance of some, I have been decidedly quiet.  So much was already being written and I was dealing with issues like food and hair so greasy I was two thirds of the way to brunette, that the blank page and I were having communication problems .  When I had the chance, I attempted to keep notes of the day's adventures.  These are the highlights. And, yes, I use that term liberally.

Friday, 11 March 2011
In the morning

Graduation for the third years today.  I find the whole ordeal a little silly - all the ceremony, the dewy-eyed parents, the mothers in their kimonos and hairstyles that you know they got up at 4am to create, the fathers in their pressed suits.  All the weeping!  And all the speeches that I don't understand! I will have to entertain myself by trying to play match the parents to the acne ravaged teenager.

I could accept it if the students could actually, you know, fail a year.  All this fuss just for pitching up and doing the minimum.

But, I've had to make an effort to smarten myself up a bit and am feeling pretty as a grumpy peach in my 50s dress.  I might have to take my bobby socks off though.  It might work for Japanese fashion, but I think it might be tacky, considering the occasion (apparently, I did give a smidgen of a shit).

I really wish everyone would stop running around like there's an earthquake happening (this is the first time I'm re-reading this and, yes, I did actually write that), especially because they have already taken care of every painstaking detail.  It's making me nervous.

The Crooners perform tonight.  Kinda nervous about "Don't Stop Believing" - just pulling out that goddamn E!

Later that morning...
Well, that's over.  Almost cried a few times.  I blame the lack of food.  Muscle cramps started just before the cereminy and progressed to get worse over the next two hours.
The kids walked in reaaaallly slowly to Vivaldi and were so nervous about getting the 90 degree turn that they'd practiced that many of them messed it up.  They sang the same songs as last year.  Speeches were made.  Everyone sniffled a bit.  They exited to a Jazzy instrumental cover of "My Way".

A sudden wave of overwhelming sadness.  Sadness and aloneness.  Overemphasizing the positives of being in a somethingship with someone.  Of how much I wish for witty texts that warm your tummy and sparkle a dreary day.  Of an unexpected hand that laces its fingers through yours.  Of wanting to be wanted.  A palm on the knee.  A grasp around the shoulders.  Someone to discover and be discovered by.  To kiss and inhale and fall into.  Someone to stand too close to and have neither flinch away.  But, also, knowing the fultility of grasping for it.  These Things like to take me by surprise, when I'm looking in the opposite direction.  And then, suddenly, there you are.  AAAAGH!  I can't believe I just spent even more words obsessing about this.

Late afternoon, after the earthquake, and I returned to this:

But, as I was standing on the sports field, after we had evacuated the school building, and the snow  - in an irritating display of post-apocolyptic poetry  - started swirling around us, I had feared that I might not have a home to return to, so this was very, very good, with the exception of being highly irritated that I would now have to clean up - never a particularly favourite activity of mine on a good day.  This was not a good day.


After we had sent all the other students home, another teacher had been kind enough to give me a ride home.  As we drove, I briefly thought, "Maybe it wasn't that bad", because we passed a woman with a bag of KFC and she appeared very chilled out.  She wasn't walking fast or running.  Just strolling along, enjoying the late afternoon walk home and the KFC that awaited her.

 I know!  I know!  There are some of you shaking your head and saying, "I've seen your apartment look worse" - this is because I have an alcoholic five year old called The Claw, who occasionally takes possession of my life.

 I should mention, in defense of the messier of us, that not packing my stuff away the night before saved my laptop from being crushed by the desk.

Le Bedroom floor, taken as the sun was running away.  My bed is was another oasis, untouched by any fallen objects.  Won't be changing that room's set up.

The kitchen cupboards

Everything that used to be in them.

The olive oil was very shaken by the experience.

The aftershocks keep coming.  I'm on a raft bobbing on a sea of land.  And they won't stop.  Ok, Earth, we get your point.  Could you stop now please?  The sirens, too - a constant wail that makes it all so much worse.

A broken vinegar bottle explains the smell.

Getting soppy in spite of myself and other medical adventures

It's been another week of medical adventures.  A hospital that I had been to two weeks ago refused to give me my file of test results.  I discovered that the worst crime a doctor in Japan can commit is to keep a patient lingering in the waiting room.  However, once you gain access to the inner sanctum of the consulting room, you will be rushed through within a few minutes so that the next person will not be kept waiting.  If this comes at the expense of your diagnosis, shoo!  don't complain.  Don't ask questions.  Take yet another batch of meds we're not sure will work and please stop crying.  And "arigatou gozaimasu!"

However, through all the kakness - the diet as resistrictive as Julius Malema's capacity for reasoning, the hospitals as concerned with a patient's care as a sadistic rapist, the highlight of my social life being the anticipation of the latest 30 Rock episode - I can't help being grateful in spite of myself.  While I think there is value in the all the New Agey teachings of Love and Gratitude, sometimes Positive Thinking is Delusional Thinking.  Sometimes you are in a really kak situation and you need to be realistic about your circumstances in order to get yourself out.  So often, it seems that people use the Universe and The Secret as another excuse not to take responsibility for their lives.  Putting out positive vibes may very well help you win the lottery, but at some point you're going to have to switch off America's Next Top Model, get off the couch and buy a ticket.

So, in spite of all of the above, I am grateful.  The restrictive diet, stomach cramps whenever I eat, the vomiting and the nausea have been the most effective diet stragegy since...well...I don't think I've ever encountered one quite so efficient.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not some skinny bitch in need of a reality check.  I put on a lot of weight when I first came to Japan, but even with changes to diet, weight training and clocking in ridiculous (or impressive, depending on your perspective) amounts of kilometers on the treadmill, I couldn't get the weight to budge.  And, honestly, it's great to feel like I'm back in my own skin again and not like Oprah stuffed in a condom.

Meals are simple.  I have always been a bit of a foodie, but being a grown up is exhausting and your best intentions for an elegant dinner can get lost at the bottom of a bag of Doritos.  Now, I make some baby food style veggies and beans and mix this paste with soup stock.  Pow!  Yeah, it might sound yawn inducing, but after weeks of everything hurting, it's great to have something that doesn't.

Pain is a great compass.  We often do things that we don't really want to do in the hope that someone will like us, not judge us, maybe take a tumble in the sheets with us.  But, when you go through a period of prolonged pain, you only have the energy for those that really count.

I have been wonderfully shocked at the people who have come to my aid.  For almost three weeks, I could barely leave my apartment and I have been blessed (ugh, yes, I hate to use that word, but out it has come) with generous individuals who have  patiently listened to tear stained hour-long phone call monologues, brought me groceries and  the first bunch of flowers I have received since 2006.

Most of all, people have shared their personal struggles with keeping a tenuous hold on their sanity.  People that I don't know very well and who, from the outside, look like they've got it all together.  Perhaps, for all our displays of coping and manipulating our Facebook profiles to show the world of exes and friends we subtly resent that we are doing so god-fucking-damn well, we are just these broken, fragile things stumbling through the mud and hoping we have enough strength to wipe ourselves down when we stumble.

Getting lost in the forest

This is not the blog post you were supposed to be reading. Last week, I was supposed to go to Yuki Matsuri, the annual snow festival in Sapporo. This was going to be a regaling of beer soaked adventures, epic snowball fights and making out with inappropriate strangers.

Unfortunately, my digestive system decided it was going to hold me hostage in my apartment, only allowing me out for a series of doctor and hospital visits. I have been prodded and poked - not in the slightly disconcerting Facebook way, but rather in the highly regimented and very disturbing Japanese way.

I won't bore you with too many details of my medical adventures. It might upset your stomach as much as mine and, considering that privacy regarding health issues means something different here (read: expect to have none), you could just call up my board of education and get all the details of my bowel movements.

One of the biggest frustrations has been in the extreme specialization that seems to pervade the medical community here. I have yet to come across the equivalent of a GP. When I first starting having symptoms, I was taken to a doctor who kinda seemed to be a GP-ish type. However, his job seems to be to take care of easily diagnosed viruses and bugs, hand over the antibiotics and send you on your way. Should the medicine not work, he pokes you a bit more and then hands you over to the Internal Medicine department of the closest hospital.

Here I underwent a battery of the standard tests and still nothing concrete showed up. I was sent on my less-than-merry way with a "maybe it's stress". No "the stomach might be a symptom of something else", not even a proper discussion of my eating habits or possible allergies that might be causing weeks of debilitating pain that make it very difficult for me to eat, let alone walk. So, yet another batch of drugs are handed over and my exit from the hospital reverberates as a wave of relief that the gaijin who insists on crying is gone.

Over-specialization seeps into all areas of life here. Walk into a 100yen store and you will be bombarded with special lunch boxes for your banana and do-dads to hold the lid of your instant ramen down while it's rehydrating. Quaint, but hardly necessary. At first, it deludes you into thinking that people are really, really, really good at what they do and are all perfectionists. You think that because the streets are really clean and your Internet is fast that people know what they are doing. But, try and order a filter coffee with real milk and you will be met with complete incomprehension and possibly an anxiety attack that results in a blubbering mess, at which point you just concede to shitty fake cream (even though you can see the milk they use for lattes behind the counter) .

On one hand, specialization does make sense considering you have a relatively large population living on a fairly small cluster of islands. Then, you take into account a culture where societal pressure to conform is it's greatest control mechanism. You also need to create jobs for everyone. So, you get people to do a few things very well and are content to just keep the established systems running. If you aren't content, there are plenty of people to replace you. Before I came to this island, I had this grand idea of "Japanese Efficiency". My post might be delivered quickly, but it also takes six months of humming and ha-ing for me to get the teachers I work with to try a new exercise in class.

In the 100 yen store, this is mostly a harmless waste of your disposable income, but in fundamental systems, like education or political reform, one is so focused on the bark on the trees that one forgets one is even in a forest at all or why one is in the forest or what a forest is in the first place.

It's been an enlightening ride in the grass on the other side. In South Africa, we complain about service delivery, government corruption, the police force that we less faith in than the criminals. At least the criminals are getting their job done. It becomes easy to forget that everything is a system of checks and balances. Yes, it's wonderful to be able to walk home safely at night and to live in a country that boasts a low crime rate. However, Japanese people are not inherently better than South Africans. They are brought up to follow the prescribed norms of society and are effectively cut off and shut out if they choose to deviate. As a foreigner, I am routinely out of the club and I know how lonely it can be even when the only crime you've committed is not eat kyuushoku. (Kyuushoku is the school lunch that all junior high school students and teachers eat and not the way I chose to spend my calorie allowance). The glorious civil obedience comes at the cost of the individual and innovation. While I am willing to accept that the individual over the collective is a western value that causes just as many problems as its opposite, it is the individuals that go out on a limb that help us to progress.

Japan faces it fair share of problems: its stalling economy, declining birthrate and its aging population being high up on the To Do List. Without gutsy individuals who are willing to make concrete and unpopular decisions, it may very well recede into Wikipedia as a has been. In the meantime, I fantasize about House coming to the rescue - after he has nearly killed me a few times, as per the series structure.

My hope for you is that, no matter which country you live in, despite crime statistics and the value of your currency, you can take comfort in the evidence that suggests we are all fuck-ups in one glorious way or another and all that you can hope for is to find a place where the benefits make the fuck-ups bearable. Or, at least, ignorable.

Brrrr....(or what my lips would do if they could move)

Dear Readers or, I should say, Reader

It's been a while since I posted anything and I'm sorry. I was lost in the wilderness of hangovers and apathy and generally wondering if the whole thing isn't just a pointless exercise in narcissism. But I'm cold and this is the only way to make sure that I still have some semblance of life in my extremities (weeell, I could go to a doctor, but that would be a level of self-harm that I'm not currently capable of and the medical system here is best left for another post).

Every Winter, no matter where you are, Facebook and the like are inundated with moanings and groanings about the cold and it irritates me as much as a bad lunch that you are forced to relive with multiple burps. If you're over the age of five, the ensuing frostiness should no longer come as a surprise. Unless you were dropped on your head as a child and have a glitchy memory. Then go ahead and reap the benefits that most of us spend a lot of our hard earned (or not) money at bars to enjoy. So. Yes. Where was I? Oh, yes, it irritates me to no end. Thank you for your bland remarks. I was in need of someone stating the obvious. Suck it up. It'll be over soon.

That is why it is with complete and utter tautology - no! that's not what I was going to write!... with complete and utter self-loathing that I even dare to write about how much this sucks. Weeell, not sucks exactly because I like the coziness it induces - the craving for hot chocolate and snuggly clothes and blankets, blankets, BLANKETS! And, it must be said, that the cold IS a unifier. Everyone feels it. Everyone deals with it. Everyone hates it - except the Canadians who are still walking around in flip flops. We may go home to ineffective heaters and five layers of clothing, but, on the street, we are one with the hobos.

However, I don't think my comrades back home have any idea of what kind of beast we're battling here. When you talk about the cold and the snow, they imagine toasty, centrally heated rooms, into which you emerge rosy cheeked and dusted with frost, rip-roaring ready for a night of passionate love-making on a bear skin rug.

Alas, Japan has not embraced the barbaric, unhygienic ways of the dairy-stenched West. We survive with kerosene heaters. People have been getting high off gas fumes for decades and so will we. Or, you can huddle under the kotatsu - a low table thingy with a heating element that you cover with a blankety thing and never emerge from again.

I had fully planned a productive evening of walking and cleaning my house. However, I made the fatal mistake of switching on my heater and getting under the kotatsu.

If you do not hear from me in four months or so, you know where to look.

A note on the photos: the table is the kotatsu (duh). Not the best photo, but I was trying to hide the rest of my ransacked apartment.

My heater isn't actually a kerosene heater, but a gas heater that's been around since World War Two and the temperature setting panel is as honest as the setting on your toaster (and, yes, for that is indeed a copy of Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World"! Thank you for wasting the time to notice. I put it there especially to show you how clever I am).

Vietnam Part Six: Mai Chau continued

We spent the next two days in the Thai village of Mai Chau (referred to as one of the minority villages in Vietnam), where we stayed with a family in a stilt house. I tried to find out why they are called minority villages - not when I went there, just now as I was typing this, but decided who cares? It's what they are called. The village has limited supplies of water and electricity. These services were only available during certain hours of the day, but thanks to Eskom, I was well trained for this.

What follows is a list of Awesomeness that occurred during those two days:

My hand and ankle got bitten and decided to swell - the ankle so that I couldn't walk properly, the hand was so big you couldn't see my knuckles for two days.

Even without electricity our host family was still able to concoct mountains of the best food we had in Vietnam.

Shower - well, there wasn't one. There was a concrete bathing room with a massive tin tub that would be filled when the water was on, and a plastic scooper that you would dunk and then splash yourself. Possibly the best bathing experience of my life, especially as the water was cold, but the village was hot and humid. Although within five minutes I was icky sticky.

Toilet - squat (which Japan has gotten me used to), but this one required more use of a scooper to flush your waste product away.

The Beds- the house was one big room on stilts that the family did everything in, but at night sleeping areas would be partitioned with thin curtains. We then each had a futon with our own voluptuous mosquito net. In the candle light it was fairy princess heaven and what I had always wished for in a bed when I was a child.

I saw fireflies for the first time in my life. They are incredible creatures, for which faerie lights are a pale substitute. I would like to invite any fireflies and their glow worm mates looking for a home, to come and live with me and be my loves.

Waking up naturally at 5am. No electricity at night. Not a whole lot to do. Early Sleepytime, plus lots of walking = super happy sleep cycle.

Walking tour of the village by our hostess, which included a super scary climb up to a cave. A way awesomer cave than the one Sexy Mexican David took us to. We switched off the flashlight and blew out the candle and sat in solemn silence contemplating the darkness and the madness that would descend if you tried to do this longer than 5 minutes.

They had hammocks - Ah hammocks! Another childhood fantasy of mine that was thwarted by too-small gardens or trees that insisted on being in the wrong place or parents that thought the money would be better spent on new school shoes. Mr S got a cold on the second day and decided to stay at the house and rest in one of the hammocks. His ass decided to make a hole so big, it split the hammock in two.

Cycling - While Mr S was recuperating and killing hammocks, Mr N and I decided to take a bike ride through the village. We spent a lot of time shopping in the more touristy area, and then decided to head back. I made the mistake of entrusting our route to Mr N, who decided it would be "fun" to ride through the rice paddies. Unfortunately, rice paddies are not meant to be biked through, and the wee walking paths quickly become unnavigable, which resulted in us having to carry the bikes a fair way and me screaming expletives to the bugs that were planning an invasion of my skin. Later, when recovering with a beer, I pretended that it had all been a good laugh - I wanted to seem adventurous and high spirited and not afraid to carry a bicycle unnecessarily through a rice paddie when there was a perfectly good road only meters away. However, Mr N, should you be reading this, I lied.

Vietnam Part Five: Mai Chau

We catch a taxi from the backpackers to Ha Dong bus stop, or bus station - we're not exactly sure which. The driver deposits us in the dust with a wave of the hand that Ha Dong is somewhere Over There. We head to Over There, but the people at Over There tell us that this is not Ha Dong. We walk a little further down the road, and return to Over There and from Over There we think we see a sign for Ha Dong on the opposite side of the road. We ask the people at Over There if Ha Dong is across the road. They tell us `Yes, it is Over There` (Over There now having moved to the opposite side of the road). We cross to the other side and are back at Over There. We try to read the bus schedule at this Over There, but decide to seek refuge in the bank next to Over There where a lovely lady tells us which bus to get onto. The next Cowboy Bus that lasoos along, we hop onto. This makes the conductor very angry, but at least we are moving from Over There to Ha Dong.

A few minutes pass before I break Mr N's reverie at ruffin' it, to ask 'How will we know when we have got to Ha Dong?' Frantic questioning of fellow passengers ensues. Another lovely lady comes to our rescue and informs us that the Over There we just left was Ha Dong, and this bus is leaving Over There but not going to Ha Dong, because it was already in Ha Dong. Get off bus. Walk back to beginning. Discover that the place where the taxi driver (who we had been cursing as a useless sod) was Over There. Get onto bus. Weeee and away we go to Mai Chau.

We drive for two hours in a luxury upgrade of a South African minibus taxi. There is a steering wheel and the door only makes its surprise open sporadically. Plus, we have green velvet curtains.

We are shuffled off by an enterprising taxi driver (not the bus driver, another driver of a normal car) in a dusty town. We are now Taxi Central, as cars and motorcycle taxis swarm around us, each offering a dodgier deal the one before. A helpful shopkeeper - another lovely lady ( it seems all our heroes are female) saved us from the buzzers and helped us get onto the next bus that we needed.

The next two hours we bumpity bumped up the mountain road and I made friends with the refrigerator that was being transported in the aisle. We abruptly took a pee break when the bus ran out of petrol and Mr N, Mr S and I discussed the Nature of Smoking, and addiction in general.

Mai Chau finally greets us. Hungry and tired and full bladdered, we are approached by an enthusiastic businessman who wished us to stay at his house. Distrustful and grumpy, we attended to out physical needs before agreeing to a no-strings-attached viewing.

We agreed and we speed along on the back of motorcycles, the mountains opened up to rice paddies and a wooden village and our city slicker hearts were sold. Finally, we had stepped onto a slightly less beaten track and could feel superior in our rusticness when we told our stories back home.