The weather over the past few days has been extreme. On Saturday the weather was bad. On Sunday it was snowy, freezing and so windy that the trains stopped running. Come Monday, it was still far too windy for the trains to run. Apparently there was awful trouble with the Sr. High Schools, the students of which rely on trains to get them to school. It wasn't an ordinary school day, either. It was a test day for the current students, and also for the kids who will be students there from April. I stood at the window of the staff room on Monday, looking out with wonder at the clumps of sea foam that were blowing about in the air and falling onto the school field. The school is not next to the sea.
On Tuesday when I went to Kamagadai I found that a lot of new snow had fallen. The whole time I was there it continued to fall heavily. I only had one class, so after it finished the vice principal gave me a one hour lesson on the koto in the music room. After work, I needed to go into Honjo to take back some DVDs. I hadn't been able to take them back over the weekend because the video store was undergoing a renovation until Monday. So they were due back no later than Tuesday and no earlier either. Unfortunately, the trains were still not running. I told the driver about my dilemma on the way back from Kamagadai, and he took me to the bus stop to check the bus times. We found when the next bus to Honjo would leave, but not where in Honjo it would stop. There are two places in Honjo that busses may stop, one place being a fifteen minute walk from the video store and the other being over an hour away. So I went home thinking that I had one hour before I had to start my horribly inconvenient and freezing trek to the video store and back. But then, I got a call from Machiko-san at the BOE. Apparently, the driver had gone there and told her about my problem, and she (as always) had a solution to it. Apparently her husband would soon be going into Honjo to pick their son up from school because, of course, since the trains weren't running he couldn't get home on his own. So Machiko-san arranged for her husband to come and get the DVDs from me and to take them to Honjo for me. I was so happy and relieved!
I had a very quiet day at the Elementary school yesterday. Apparently on Monday there was a continuous stream of second and third grade pupils going to the sick room with, uh-oh, influenza. All the sick kids were sent home but on Tuesday even more kids were sick. Yesterday, all the second and third grade kids were at home whether they were sick or not in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading, but unfortunately that measure had been taken too slowly and many pupils of other grades were absent too. Out of the other four grades worth of pupils who should have been at school, 56 were absent, 53 of them with the 'flu. Fully half of the first grade pupils had the 'flu, as well as about a quarter of each of the higher grade classes. All together, less than half of Konoura's Elementary school kids actually attended school yesterday. The lunch room felt very empty indeed.
Today the weather is much nicer, although it is still snowy and cold. I hope this cold snap does not bother me next week when I go on holiday to the Kansai area.
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Lost and/or gained in translation
Winter quite randomly arrived this week. There is more snow today than there was in all of winter except a few days back in December. And it's cold.
Researching the Kyoto area in preparation for my trip has made me wonder about the history of the area that I live in. The history of this area is not very well known, and little of what is known has been translated into English. This is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject. But on Tuesday I suddenly realised that I could just run the Japanese page through Babel Fish. Why am I so stupid? Why have I never thought of trying Babel Fish out before? Anyway, try running this page through Babel Fish and see how much information is there. Unfortunately it turns into very strange English because a lot of terms that aren't supposed to be translated literally, such as place names and people names, are. So I have to double check by rikai.com. This is going to take a while.
Last night only two students came to my English class because of the weather, so we didn't have a proper lesson. I asked about the history of the area and Doi-san told me a little about the history of kisakata. The ships that carried rice north to Hokkaido from the south and then returned carrying seaweed used to stop at Kisakata. They also stopped at Nikaho and Sakata. (I should draw a map later). Kisakata was then as it is now, a sand beach, so the ships would moor out at sea and the people would come to the shore in longboats. There was also a checkpoint on the northward highway (now Route 7) in Kisakata, so some trade was done.
There were two major famines in Kisakata. For about twelve years starting at about 1710 the summers were cool and the winters warm, which made the rice crops rot in the ground. For most of those years there was no harvest. People ate mountain herbs and such, and because snow did not fall they continued eating them through winter, right down to the root, and so nothing grew in spring. It was a very tough time. Then the same thing happened again ninety years ago.
Doi-san also said that fifteen years ago all the cedar trees on the hill above Kisakata blew down in large typhoon no. 19. The hills and the lower slopes of Mt. Chokai looked white because of the bark of the fallen cedar trunks.
Doi-san knows a lot of things. I ought to try and get her to talk about history more often.
Researching the Kyoto area in preparation for my trip has made me wonder about the history of the area that I live in. The history of this area is not very well known, and little of what is known has been translated into English. This is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject. But on Tuesday I suddenly realised that I could just run the Japanese page through Babel Fish. Why am I so stupid? Why have I never thought of trying Babel Fish out before? Anyway, try running this page through Babel Fish and see how much information is there. Unfortunately it turns into very strange English because a lot of terms that aren't supposed to be translated literally, such as place names and people names, are. So I have to double check by rikai.com. This is going to take a while.
Last night only two students came to my English class because of the weather, so we didn't have a proper lesson. I asked about the history of the area and Doi-san told me a little about the history of kisakata. The ships that carried rice north to Hokkaido from the south and then returned carrying seaweed used to stop at Kisakata. They also stopped at Nikaho and Sakata. (I should draw a map later). Kisakata was then as it is now, a sand beach, so the ships would moor out at sea and the people would come to the shore in longboats. There was also a checkpoint on the northward highway (now Route 7) in Kisakata, so some trade was done.
There were two major famines in Kisakata. For about twelve years starting at about 1710 the summers were cool and the winters warm, which made the rice crops rot in the ground. For most of those years there was no harvest. People ate mountain herbs and such, and because snow did not fall they continued eating them through winter, right down to the root, and so nothing grew in spring. It was a very tough time. Then the same thing happened again ninety years ago.
Doi-san also said that fifteen years ago all the cedar trees on the hill above Kisakata blew down in large typhoon no. 19. The hills and the lower slopes of Mt. Chokai looked white because of the bark of the fallen cedar trunks.
Doi-san knows a lot of things. I ought to try and get her to talk about history more often.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Happy New Year!
Welcome everyone to 2007. How was your new years? I saw in the new year with Atsuko, Miwa and Taisuke (a friend of Sayaka's). We had been planning on going to an onsen, but of course the plan got cancelled. We had dinner at Atsuko's house instead. I cooked a beef mince pie for them. We spent hours watching the K1 because Miwa loves it, and Atsuko loves Masato. (Ok, maybe I like him a little bit too ;) )
When the K1 finished at 11.30pm I put on Pirates of the Caribbean 2. What better way to see in a new year than by watching a Johnny Depp movie?
After midnight we went for a walk to the shrine. It was actually quite a nice walk on account of the unseasonably warm weather. No snow has lasted in Konoura for more than a couple of hours yet this winter. I spent pretty much the whole time at the shrine saying 'Happy New Year' repeatedly to students of mine both past and present. I went home at about 2am.
Today I didn't go anywhere. I watched a couple of DVDs and cooked a spinach, tuna and cheese pastie for lunch. The weather was disturbingly nice, and I briefly entertained the idea of going somewhere until I realised I had nowhere to go. Such is life.
When the K1 finished at 11.30pm I put on Pirates of the Caribbean 2. What better way to see in a new year than by watching a Johnny Depp movie?
After midnight we went for a walk to the shrine. It was actually quite a nice walk on account of the unseasonably warm weather. No snow has lasted in Konoura for more than a couple of hours yet this winter. I spent pretty much the whole time at the shrine saying 'Happy New Year' repeatedly to students of mine both past and present. I went home at about 2am.
Today I didn't go anywhere. I watched a couple of DVDs and cooked a spinach, tuna and cheese pastie for lunch. The weather was disturbingly nice, and I briefly entertained the idea of going somewhere until I realised I had nowhere to go. Such is life.
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