When the wheels come off

So, as you may have figured out, I'm an Assistant English Teacher in Japan (note the capitals; it's that important, I tell you).  The job has it's ups and downs, it's perks and drawbacks, but the one BIG highlight of the year is the summer holidays, which I get off (not all English teachers here get that luxury, but it's usually a trade-off between pay and free time, so it all evens out in the end).

I had planned to return to the UK for 3 weeks this summer, but after a furious reshuffling, I'm now staying here, with a trip to Korea as the big feature of this summer break.  But that's not all!  Ooh, no.  Tomorrow morning (and it's the nasty end of the morning - I'm up at 4am to catch trains, ugh), I'm off on a trip to Nagoya and Hiroshima, taking in other various places on the way, including one of Japan's most famous sights - so watch this space!

Mike the Bike really stood out in a crowd.

Even my days of rest between Karuizawa and this have been packed with stuff, planned or spontaneous.  Last weekend, not long after my last blog post, I was halfway to cycling to Cainz Home when my (t)rusty old bike gave up on me (Mike, I called him.  Mike the Bike.  Okay, stop the sniggering at the back): the back wheel buckled, well beyond repair.  I nursed the poor thing back to D2, where I bought him 16 months ago*, and I bought my nigh-identical replacement.  Spike, he's called.  Well, I couldn't think of any other names that rhymed with bike.

It's a good thing too: just that night I was halfway through cooking when I realised I was missing a vital ingredient.  You have never seen a guy hustle a bike through Japanese suburbia so fast.  To Yaoko and back in under 10 minutes.  Which was just as well: moments later the Mother Of All Storms rolled over, with lightning breaking more frequently than a card castle on a bouncy castle.  One lick of lightning struck either ridiculously close to my apartment or the building itself: no gap to speak of between the lightning, the thunder...and the power cutting off for a good half hour.

But the night wasn't finished yet.  Oh no.  Not to be outdone by the sky, the earth wanted to get in on the action too, and at 4am I awoke to my apartment shuddering at a 6.4 magnitude earthquake.  Phew.

A chance to really break Spike in came on Monday, when my friend Marcos and his visiting friend from Miami, Tanya, came to visit, specifically to take a bike-ride around the wonderful Shinrin Koen.  Shinrin Koen is huge national park near my house, and it's big selling point (for me, anyway) is the network of dedicated bicycle-roads throughout the park.  It was especially fun to be weaving through the rapidly darkening trees to reach the exit before closing time: we were sure we wouldn't be closed in, but it sure was a good motivator.  Trouble was, I'd bought my own bike, so even aftet we'd left the park I had to push-pedal my way another 4km home.  Needless to say, when I got back a shower was in order!  The izakaya food, drinking and karaoke were an excellent way to unwind afterwards too.

So, here I am.  Time to turn in and a few precious hours sleep.  Here's hoping nothing disturbs that...

See you in a few days!

*Yeah, 16 months isn't that long, I know, but I used my bike every single workday, for at least 8km.  I figured that I did around 1,900 miles on my old bike, roughly the same distance between Sierra Leone in Africa and the tip of Brazil.  A little a day sure adds up, doesn't it?  Not that 8km a day in the sweltering Japanese summer felt like small fry, ooh no.

Creatures of the Night

Well.  If there's one absolute truth about Japan, it's that everyday brings a new experience worth talking about.  My trip to Karuizawa with my girlfriend was no exception.

First, a bit of background info: Karuizawa is a town that sits high in the mountains straddling the valleys of Nagano and Gunma, and as such is styled as an alpine town, complete with ski slopes, sports outlets and faux wooden lodges.  Make no mistake, though: Karuizawa is an all-year-round resort (a fun fact for you: Karuizawa is the only place in the world to have hosted events for both the summer and winter olympics); indeed, the high altitude makes it a refreshingly cool escape from the baking heat of the lowlands in the summer.


We checked in at a delightful Pension (ペンション、taken from the european meaning of the word, which is similar to B&B), called the Castille.  When we were deciding on places to stay, this one had the clincher for me: it had cats.  Lots of them.  Any one who knows me knows that I have an unhealthy obsession with cats, and as soon as we checked in I made it my personal mission to track down and harass each and every one of the hapless creatures.  The downside?  On the second night we awoke at some ungodly hour to the caterwauls of an all-out catfight.  I waited for one of the staff to go out and break it up (surely it had to be common enough for it be someone's job?) but no.  Clearly, 我慢 ('gaman', bascially putting up with it) was in full force, and the yowling went on unhindered for about 15 minutes before I had enough and went out sort it out myself.  I imagine the image of me blundering down a moonlit Japanese backstreet in my PJs and flailing my arms wildly at retreating cats must have been a sight to see, but it worked, and I got a few more hours precious rest.  The next morning I awoke grogilly to see the culprit cat sunning itself on the terrace.  I ate my jam on toast giving while giving it bleary, evil stares.

The full day in Karuizawa was bliss.  We rented bicycles and rolled our way to Kumoba pond, a lovely little place that can be walked around in half an hour.  We saw huge koi fish and indigo butterflies as big as your hand.  Then it was onto Kyu-Karuizawa (Old-Karuizawa), the centrepiece of which is a street called Ginza-dori (Ginza-street, so-called because of it's resemblance to the trendy Ginza district in Tokyo), and we spent the day drinking in the various shops of trinkets, confectionery and more jam you will ever see in your life (Jam is Karuizawa's specialty).  I left with a Totoro banner and a pair of chopsticks with my name printed on them.

That evening, my girlfriend and I decided to splash out on a proper, fancy meal (not what you see in the photo, though that was just as lovely).  Thanks to the unsettled weather we decided to take a shortcut to the restaurant.  Bad idea.  The back road took us through an unlit stretch of dark, damp forest.

Twice we sped up our walking: the sound of something very big crashing through the trees towards us, what I could only take to be a wolf walking RIGHT UP TO US.  I hope you can understand that I don't have any photographic evidence of this encounter, but still...it couldn't be a wolf, could it?  They've been extinct in the wild in Japan for over 100 years.  No, this had to be a dog.  A...a wild-looking dog that had emerged from the forest, with no houses in sight... I tried to play the role of brave man as my girlfriend was understandably terrified (note to readers: the shortcut was HER idea!), but to be honest, I was scared too.  It seems stupid now, I know, but in the dead of night, on an empty, misty road, it all seemed so much more menacing.  Still, the dog-wolf-thing passed us by after giving us a long, hard look, and we quick-footed it towards the inviting, warm lights of the restaurant.  Needless to say, it was the best thing I'd ever tasted.