Global Village Camp

Shinkansens and nice hotels

Woke up at 5:30 on the 26th, had a quick breakfast and did some last minute packing before host dad drove me to Hamada station 20 minutes away. Caught the bus to Hiroshima station (2 hours), the driver provided the bus stop information service in English as well as Japanese. I was the only foreigner on the bus, he must have done it just for me. I ignored the lot though because I was more intent on sleeping.

Arrived at Hiroshima station and found the correct Shinkansen platform. The exciting feeling of travel was in the air, people coming and going from all over the place. I was intent on looking like a person who had lived in Japan for five months and knew what I was doing rather than a tourist, but I gave myself away when I took out my camera to document the platform for posting on the bog.

The train pulled up, I got on. My seat was next to a man in a business suit who smelled like a smoker who hadn’t had a cigarette in a few hours, I could almost feel the bacteria breeding in his mouth. There was a great deal more leg room than an economy aeroplane seat which made for a comfortable sleep. The ride was smooth and fast – 300km/h. I gave up trying to focus on the power poles near by after a few seconds as my eyes were getting sore, so instead I watched the mountains and rice paddies rush past my window. The thing that surprised me the most was how close we came to other trains travelling in the opposite direction, it wouldn’t have been more than two metres. So we’d pass a train with 16 carriages in the space of about two seconds flat, which meant we were travelling at 600km/h relative to the people in the other train only inches away. There have been no Shinkansen-related (says Wikipedia) deaths apart from one person being stuck in the doors, and suicides commited by jumping in front of or from moving trains.

We stopped every half hour or so for a couple of minutes, it was interesting to note that all the women wearing Yukata got off at Kyoto.

Met Ayako from JFIE at Tokyo station and we caught a local train to Narita Airport. I occupied the just-arrived students from Canada and America while we waited for the Australians and New Zealanders to land – we went straight up to the observation deck on my reccomendation when nobody else had any suggestions. We saw both the planes with students on them come in, the one from Australia was the same one that I came in on in March this year.

Once everyone had arrived, we shuttle bussed out to what I consider a fancy hotel, which means to say, one without the stale tobacco smell coming from the air vents and where you can choose to open your room’s window if you like. I had a room all to myself; I found CNN News and MTV’s [America] top 5 songs count down on the LCD TV. Not what I’m used to watching or listening to, but a welcome change from the norm here in Japan. Had a good feed of pasta for dinner, and almost wet myself at the sight of pancakes, maple syrup, fruit and yoghurt for breakfast the next morning. Spied a flight crew from Phillipine Airlines, my thoughts changed from how good pancakes tasted with yoghurt and tinned fruit to how different things were in this Naritian hotel to my host family back in Goutsu.

We then bussed out to the camp site in Shizuoka Prefecture, making a break for lunch on the way at something that could be described as a road house. It was absolutely massive, a labrynith of food shops and toilets. I had a chuckle at one shop called ‘Crazy Crepes’, the lady behind the counter gave me the look of, ‘would you like to buy something’ when I took a photo of the sign. I ended up buying a salad and a sandwich (not at Crazy’s), drooling at the prospect of some more decent round eye food for a change.

Global Village Camp

One of the first people I saw upon arriving at the camp was Kyouhei, a bespectacled 13 year old boy from Tokyo who, despite his paper-thin frame, was a load of fun. If you were to look up ‘tall and lanky’ or ‘legs that look like make him look like a spider’ in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Kyouhei next to the definition as an best example known to the human race. His legs would have been no bigger than five centimetres in diametre all the way up; they didn’t get any thicker or thinner at all. He was really fun to muck about with, a lot of energy which he used to jump on people as thy walked past, for example. Bird poses, silly noises, little characters he pretends to be… you know the type.

Even though we were at the foot of Mt Fuji, we didn’t get to see it over the four days because it was mostly covered in cloud, we sat in a café eating milk tea ice cream (straight from the vending machine) waiting for Fuji to show its face. Speaking of vending machines, a lot of time was wasted waiting for the new arrival students to stop being amazed at the talking drink machine or the variety of things which could be bought from a metal tower. I understand the feeling, though.

Good company in the Japanese kids, exchange students and visitors from the UK, USA, Canada, Mongolia, NZ and Australia. Sometimes it’s a shame to meet people who soon go back to the other side of the world when you wish they could be the ones who go to your school or live down the road. Although the company was good, generally speaking our group was shy, bored, sleepy or maybe just disinterested. There was no feeling of group bonding, so it was strange when we did so well in the tasks of the first day. Ahhh, good old group work.

One of my favourite cultural learnings of the whole camp happened on the first night, when a group of Japanese teenagers described to me ‘Strip Janken’, which I imagine is like like Strip Poker but a lot more to the point.  Amongst some of the international students we made a couple ‘your host mum…’ jokes, an exchange student twist on something a lot more commonplace.

There was an interesting experience when I went to brush my teeth in the communal sink area, two of my new Japanese buddies ran to get their tooth brushing equipment and come with me. We brushed our teeth, and then we brushed some more. As soon as I went to spit my toothpaste out, they followed suit almost instantaneously. The funny thing is, if I didn’t spit first, we’d probably still be there brushing our teeth today. I never knew oral hygiene could be so socially awkward.

We had an American living in Japan by the name of Michael come to do a couple of workshops with us, the first of which was some basic Taiko drumming. That was really good fun, every last bit of the body gets used to hit the drum, producing a lovely, deep boom along with everyone else. The next day we had a drama improvisation workshop, a lot of quick excercises where we had to mime an idea with others in a small group. For example, in one excercise, in pairs (I was with Kyouhei for this one, he was great fun) we had to arrange both of our bodies to communicate ‘coffee cup and saucer’, ‘picture in a picture frame’ or ‘knife and fork’ without talking between ourselves. Good fun, a lot of creativity involved too.

I was once again reminded of how cheap and ubiquitous guitars are, not to mention the incompetence of some beginners who insist on practising in front of others – at least one person brought theirs along to attempt to play the old clichéd tunes like Smoke on the Water, Teen Spirit, etc. Having said that, there were *good* guitarists in our company, two of whom included Takeda (Japan) and Tim (UK), who performed an award winning song of the former’s composition on the final night. It was a song about Takeda’s dog: “My dog is a very very cute and cute ooh / Kawaii kao wo shite … “, and even though the chord progression was the way overused I-vi-IV-V (think of that simple piano duet called ‘Heart and Soul’), it was skillfully arranged into something very sophisticated. Everyone went around singing it for the next few days.

We had a games night which included the biggest game of duck duck goose I had ever experienced, at least 100 people in the circle. We played an good game on the recommendation of the Japanese students, I think it was called ‘Oni’ or something similar: two people (Onis) hold hands and run round trying to tag everyone else. When someone is tagged, they hold hands with the person who tagged them and group of three, continuing to tag people as usual. When a fourth person is tagged, the group splits in the middle to make two pairs of Onis who continue to tag people as before. I think it’s best played with a lot of people like we did.

We had some Japanese returnees (back from overseas exchange) help out with the camp, there were great fun and kept on saying things like, ‘get back in your cage!’, which meant ‘time for bed, return to the dorms’.

More Shinkansens, robots and even some unexpected magic

I was on the same Shinkansen as a couple of other exchange students and Japanese returnees on the way back home, including Jackie (from WA, we’d met at a previous camp in Hiroshima) who was with me for most of the way. We got really bored and decided to ask the ticket checking man if he was a robot. He replied with a professional smile, ‘No. I’m a human’. Jackie and I sat there trying not to laugh as he checked the tickets of the other people along the same row (the man opposite us shot a not-too-happy look). Gaijins behaving badly, that’s what we were. We decided against asking the food trolley ladies in fluffy pink uniforms if they were birds (flamingos, perhaps?) or aliens and instead asked for ice cream, which was rock solid and couldn’t be eaten for at least 15 minutes. Maybe the robot man had a word to them.

I had a little time to kill at Hiroshima station before the return bus to Hamada, so I went for a walk and found a shop that stocked a range of spices, cheese and other international things you can’t find in Goutsu. I love shops like this, it’s a quick break from regular Japanese life. I settled for a can of guava juice to take with me on the bus back to Hamada. On the bus, I received a couple of emails (mobile phones here use regular email instead of text messaging) from Yuta, one of the guys from my dorm. Over the next few days I got about five emails that started with, ‘Hello, my name is [Japanese girl's name]. Nice to meet you!!! Do you remember me?’, which of course I didn’t because I’m hopeless at connecting names with faces in Japan.

Even with the Shinkansen rides, Airport visits and Kyouhei, my favorite part of the journey was on the slow old local [diesel] train back to Goutsu. It was about 8:30 at night, so there was hardly anyone on. A group of about six older people were merrily chatting amongst themselves, evidently they had been out on the Sake (and that’s why they were on the train – driving with a blood alcohol content of anything but zero in Japan lands you in jail with penalties for your passengers too). There was a small group of school girls coming home late from their club activities. One guy – looked like either had or was about to finish school – sat by himself until his friend got on at another station; the friend ran through the train, past the chatty club girls and the rowdy old people, and hugged his mate as if they hadn’t seen each other in years. I like it that blokes here don’t mind getting close with each other; they’re friends, right? Maybe it stems from the Japanese tradition of rolling around on the floor in extremely close contact with someone else, AKA Judo. If it happened in Australia they’d be labeled ‘gay’ without any second thoughts. Even though I didn’t know the two guys, from across the carriage I could still feel the warm friendship between them as they talked in loud, semi-euphoric tones. One of the club girls came down for a quick flirt before they all got off together.

At Tsunozu station (the one closest to school and just before my destination of Goutsu), my first host brother Koyo got on. He came and sat next to me, quiet and shy as usual but with a big grin on his face. I could smell a tiny hint of cigarette on him, he must have been waiting for a long time at the station. To my complete surprise, he told me he had been practising magic tricks for the school festival; with no hesitation at all he pulled out his cards and showed me one of his tricks. It was so… crazy… to think that Koyo, who always seemed disinterested in almost everything I saw him doing, was practising magic tricks at school until 9.00 at night… the more I get to know him, the more amazing things I find out. This guy’s a bit like a magician’s hat himself, there’s so much stuff in there you’d never think he had in him that he just effortlessly pulls out to the amazement of… well, me anyway.

The train pulled up at Goutsu station and I got off. I tapped on Koyo’s window from the outside to wave to him, he gave me a quick glance and a flick of the hand but it seemed as if all the excitement had left him and he had gone back to his usual disinterested mood. It’s like you can’t have him in large quantities, only small little quirky incidences like the one I had just experienced.

I’ve written far too much to be bothered to proof read, post a comment if you spot me speaking garbage.

Photos.