Diving and life updates (can’t think of a more exciting title!)
Hello ladies and gents, and apologies for the lack of recent updates. Believe me, if I thought I had something useful and worthwhile to tell you then I would have posted. But I’m a believer that if you have nothing good to say, it’s much better to say nothing at all. That’s not to say that my life is bad at the moment (don’t get worried, mother!), but just relatively uneventful. Let’s see if can think of something exciting to talk about though.
First of all, I spent last week showing my photos from the Yonaguni trip to my students and co-workers. They all loved them, although my students found uncanny similarities between me and the Yonaguni horse, especially in this photo! I have to admit, they do have a point! Speaking of students they continue to amuse and sometimes bemuse me. One of my good (albeit a little cheeky) students called me over a couple of days ago during a lunch break. “Do you know Child’s Play?” she asked. I told her I did, remembering that very kitsch series of horror movies in the early 90s. She thrust a photos in my direction and replied “Look! My friend host mother looks like Chucky!!!”. And the most disturbing thing was, this woman did! I was in 2 minds as to whether I should laugh along with her, or tell her that she shouldn’t be saying things like that. In the end I did a bit of both because I couldn’t keep a straight face. And then she started explaining to her classmates in Japanese what she’d told me, and soon enough most of this classroom were laughing along at this photo. It’s things like that that really make the days go by quickly here.
Sticking with school, the 3rd year students have their Centre Test on Saturday. This is the standard university entrance examination, and unless students have an offer directly from the university (due to having taken a private test and interview), they have to take it. This is the biggest event in their school life, and the stress level is running at an all-time high for many students. You can really see the tiredness and stress in their faces, and it’s hard to know you can’t do much else to help them at this stage apart from offer your best wishes and your hopes that they will ggan-ba-tayh (i.e. try their best). Ah well, after the weekend their stresses will be over and hopefully they can relax for their last couple of weeks at school. Hopefully I’ll be given a couple of classes with them and be allowed to follow my own agenda. I did that a couple of years and watched films with the students. They really enjoyed that (some students watched Memoirs of a Geisha yesterday) and the post-film discussion we have does get them thinking and using English they don’t use all the time.
Onto diving news, and I went diving on Sunday with Brian at the Sunabe seawall. We planned to dive on Saturday too but it was rainy and cold so we went to a lovely onsen with a couple of other divers. That was a good morning and it was nice to sit back, relax and chat about everything (usually diving, traveling, women and work - my usual topics of conversation with Brian!). The diving on Sunday was excellent though. I tried out my new fins - a pair of Scubapro Twinjets - a Christmas present from Brian, although to be fair the conditions weren’t great for testing new gear. There was quite a bit of surge in the water, even down at 15-18m which surprised us. The fins felt pretty powerful but I also found them quite tiring to use too, and my breathing rate was higher than normal. We had a 60 minute dive but I finished much lower on air than I’d have liked. On the second dive I went back to my Force Fins to try and compare compare the fins, but we went the opposite direction on the seawall, and there was no surge to speak of. But my Force Fins felt so much more comfortable and my breathing was slower and more relaxed. As much as I might look like Daffy Duck, these Force Fins do the job for me and really make my air consumption drop. As for marine life, we were treated on the 2nd dive of the morning. We saw an octopus at the start of the dive and one at the end, loads of lionfish, mating seasnakes, cuttlefish, and a huge nudibranch! I haven’t sized it with the photo I took, but it mush have been 9cm long and at least 5cm thick. That thing was big! And just as we came out of our second dive, the sun broke through the clouds and it turned out being a lovely day.
Since then things have been relatively uneventful. Did some car maintenance and servicing on Sunday afternoon, and then have had fairly standard days at work this week. Hopes are high of diving this weekend, but it all comes down to Mother Nature and what she has in store for us. In other news, I’m thinking of going back to Kyoto at the end of March this year to see the cherry blossoms coming out. I fell in love with the Gion area of that city, and the history and especially the geisha history there fascinates me. If I can find someone who is willing to spend a little, I really want to be entertained by a geisha (see photo below) in the evening. I can’t stress how exclusive this is, but there’s a guy who can arrange it for you (have a look at his site here). It’s by no means cheap, but those few hours would give you stories and memories to last a lifetime, and a brief glimpse at a part of Japanese society that even the Japanese don’t see too often. It’s like the trip I took to North Korea - it was a little more expensive than my normal holidays but just the interest I have generated in people when talking about the place is amazing. And my students now see me as an authority on the country!
Right - I’ve talked for far too long now so I’ll be going. I’ll leave you with one final photo of Yonaguni. This photo was taken of a roadsign I saw. Note that most road maintenance operations normally have more than one person working… not in rural Yonaguni! Take care, and dive safely.
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