nostalgia

i have a secret

I don`t really like summer.
I can almost hear the gasps and shocked silences echoing through the halls of blogdom. I don`t much like the heat and don`t much like the uncomfortable stickiness of the season.

BUT summer has one saving grace (apart from the ice cream)...

the rain

i love love love rain. And today, in my little nook of Japan, it`s raining all drippety droppety greyness that makes me strangely happy. i`ve never understood my love for rain. the very nature of it - the ominous colours, the dull light - is supposed to put me down in the bottom of the dumps. But it doesn`t.

Rain in Japan does bring out one more thing in me.

Nostalgia.

Nostalgia for the rain of my African childhood gone by. The rain of Japan is very silent and inobtrusive. Much like the people.

The rain of Africa comes at you with the force of a Greek God

it takes over the sky...one bit at a time...
until complete erruption signals that no matter what humans, as self proclaimed rulers of the planet do on a daily basis, we are no match for the earth itself.

It`s a lot like Africa itself. My continent has all this power bottled up inside. The power to do as much good and create as much beauty as it has to completely destroy itself.

I want to sit on a window seat in my holiday home in the bushveld and smell the thunderstorm in the thatch roof. That`s what I`d like to do today.

P.S. Thank you for your video comments. And I say this with a lot of love and respect for you all - What the heck are you talking about?!?

Good grief people! I`d give you my accent! Here - have it! The South African accent (often confused for an Australian one) is not really a coveted commodity. I hate hearing myself speak. Hate it. I had a brief stint reading the news on the radio. I ran away.

PPS Hello Brooke`s mom!

Videos!

Haha. Like I said, I am not great in video mode. a bit of a loser, in fact. But here they are anyway. The first one was shot on the train to Furano about SA Janken and the second one is from Christmas (for Thomas. I miss you Tommy!) ... we were supposed to talk about the joys of Christmas, but became completely sidetracked by whether or not Anderson Cooper is gay.

We went to Furano! Only we didn`t actually get there!

This weekend was interesting. I would say `the best laid plans ...` etc etc, but that would imply that we had plans to begin with. Instead of travelling with disregard to schedule. This weekend was originally a road trip - most of my friends in Japan are Japanese... and really busy. Slowly, in the lead up to this weekend, they started having to cancel because of work (bar my friend Masaki who randomly decided to go to Australia to run a marathon without telling anyone). So by the end, it was just us 3 foreign frauleins and we ended up having to take the train. Yay Yay Trains!
Only now, we had lost our travel guides. And, none of us 3 really bothered to research anything. We just went to karaoke on Friday night, got home at about 3 am, packed and left Saturday morning at 9:30.

The slow train journey took about 3 hours , with us changing trains a few times and taking pictures with the random characters on random platforms.

We also shot the video explaining my South African rock paper scissor creation... please don`t judge me on this video. I am awful on camera. I hate it.

We had booked a hotel through our usually trustworthy travel agent Mika. She gets us amazing deals - her hotels in Korea were awesome... I dream of those hotels.

But for some reason, she put us in this `town` called いくとら　Ikutora about an hour away from Furano. It was basically this - a grass field in the middle of nowhere -

With one traffic light and a (as you can see) really busy main road.
We stepped off the train and laughed for about 20 minutes because we were well and truly NOWHERE. Oh Mika. Why did you put us here?! There was nothing (beautiful nothing, but nothing nonetheless). Absolutely zippety doo dah. But for some strange reason, we loved it. It was one of those moments where you think - I never would have come here... I never would have been here at this moment in time.

The town was featured in a famous Japanese movie called ぽっぽや　Poppoya - about a train man in the middle of rural nowhere (pretty apt place to shoot) and so the movie soundtrack (completely haunting music) was played all over town. This dead quiet place with beautiful music echoing through the streets.

We kept looking at each other and canning ourselves.

Or saying how we felt like we were in Signs or (insert any horror movie). It was completely amazing.

富良野 Furano Day Deux

i heart furano

One of the things about travelling by train, especially in the `wilderness` is that train times are quite few and far between.

It forces you to travel slow and enjoy the view.

It forces you to try teach people how to jump like a cheerleader go celeste go!!

Or to laugh like a loon atop a grassy knell in the middle of nowhere.

Furano Day Two AKA : We Actually Got Ourselves there and Things I Love Bout Furano.

The Flowers.

I can`t begin to describe how beautiful they were. The colours and the smell... I fell in love with the smell of Furano. I had to steal these pictures from the website of the flower farm because my photos didn`t do the colours justice. I would live in these fields in a heartbeat. Like a fairy. Or a hippie. Or a hippie fairy.

We didn`t make it to the asparagus cheese ice cream place, but we did eat Lavender ice cream! I`d heard mixed reports about it , but I loved it. (I think I would have loved anything about Furano at this point)


Because Furano is The BellyButton Of Hokkaido, (the geographic centre of the island) there is a Bellybutton shrine and a Bellybutton festival.
Next year I would love to paint a face on my stomach and dance with a giant red hat! It`s so strange! :p

This isn`t just a Furano thing, it`s an all around Japan thing -all train stations have stamps for you to stamp into your scrap book. I love this idea and it always reminds me of my best friend Shakti - when she came, she collected the stamps... we ran around all the stations looking for the stamp booth. I always stamp things in honour of you , Shaks! <3

The weekend didn`t turn out as planned. We didn`t get to the winery, nor the cheese factory nor the beer jam place. But I think it turned out the way it was supposed to. It was a great birthday (thank you for all your lovely wishes! xx And this afternoon is reserved for catching up on your blogs!)

trains trains trains trains! how i love you!

I`m getting very very old

Sunday is my birthday.

やばいやばいやばい

I`m turning twenty five.

That`s half way to 50.
And a quarter of 100.

Basic maths. Sad times.

I`m not one of those people who has a bucket list or a bunch of things she needs to accomplish by a set date. I admire things like clocks and calendars and diaries because they help the world maintain a smidgen of order. But one thing I`m wary of is letting the notion of time rule my life. I`d much rather let experiences and love and, dammit, life itself have its way with me. So although I cringe inwardly at the mere thought of 25 , I blame that on society :p and not because I am scared of a wrinkle or two.

There are things I want to do. Things I want to see. People I have yet to be changed by. But I`m in no rush. When we start trying to keep a checklist, it becomes more about ticking things off than about actually doing those things.

I got a pile of cards from my kids today -

Apart from the beautiful Obama one you can see there, the gems of the bunch were
`Dear Sarah Sensei , Happy Bathday. Let`s enjoy.`
`No Sarah? No LIFE! yeah! Birthday!`
`Dear Sarah - You come around. My heart beats endlessly. I will come again and again. Happy Birthday`

And the classic card with a drawing of a monster holding a giant knife climbing up a building while being chased by a squinty eyed wolf that simply said , `Merry クリスマス｀　Merry Christmas.

I`m going away for the weekend! Yay! We are travelling by TRAIN (my absolute favourite way to travel) up to Furano - a town about 3 hours away from Sapporo. It`s famous for lavender fields, beer jam and weird ice cream (asparagus flavour?!)

P.S. I am going to try and make a video depicting South African Janken from the last post. Haha. I can`t explain it. It`s a visual thing. I just need some sidekicks. It`s a project for the train ride!

I lie to small children

So far, I`ve taken the liberty of presenting myself to you on this blog as a (generally) decent type person. Here is one reason why I am not so :

I lie to my students.

Actually, worse, not to my Junior High kids. To the Elementary school ones. Little 7 year olds who`ve done nothing to me bar the odd poke on the butt and awkward snapping of my bra straps in front of the PTA. I straight out lie.

But I have a defense. I swear. In many instances I have no choice. Walk in my shoes for a moment if you will : - imagine this. You`ve arrived at a school and placed in front of about seventy 6 & 7 year olds in a gym. You`re then told that there`s no real plan for this class so would you just please go ahead and do whatever you`d like to do for 40 minutes. Only catch - the kids can`t understand a word of English. But they`d like you to teach them something English based and cultural.

The first time this happened, I`m pretty sure the look on my face was priceless. And it prompted one of the teachers to make a helpful suggestion : `Teach them one of your childhood South African games!`

Great idea. But for one thing : WHAT THE HECK is a cultural childhood South African game?! Seriously. There aren`t any. And the few songs I do know? None of them are in English - they are in Afrikaans and Zulu and are rather embarrassing to perform.

I did what I had to do. I made something up.

One thing you should know - rock, paper, scissors RULES Japan :

My teachers play it in the staff room. News readers play it. The kids gather round in groups of 20 people and play it all together (often I have no idea who the winner is, it goes so quickly). I`m 93 % sure that members of parliament use rock, paper, scissors to decide on votes. It`s called `janken` in Japanese. And I play it every day of my life.

So I created a South African version : -

Bushman beats Hunter

Hunter beats lion

Lion beats Bushman

THIS IS A FABRICATION OF MY MIND.

And I feel a bit bad about it because I taught it to about 20 different Elementary Schools. That`s hundreds of kids. Kids who might one day go to South Africa and try play South African Janken with other kids. Kids who will then look at my former students like they are completely and utterly nuts as my students prance around growling like a lion or ululating like a Kalahari bushman.

South African friends ; one day, if a Japanese tourist comes up to you and challenges you to a game, please go along with it. It`ll ease my conscience. Thanks in advance.

kanji and the art of embarrassing yourself

When I say - `I am about to tell you an embarrassing story`, i can tell that the first thought that runs through your head is this - That`s just not possible. Sarah is so full of class and dignity and grace, she wouldn`t ever do something to cause herself humiliation.

I don`t know where you got such a lovely bunch of hogwash from.

I am one of those people who falls down, drops things, spills things, sets things on fire (my own hair, twice), who yells out `wow, he`s HOT` just as the room goes completely silent and everyone turns around - on a daily basis. My grandmother was the head mistress of an all girls Catholic school and everything she does is with the posture and finesse of someone who aced their way through charm school. And she raised me with the hope that I would be the same. I`m not.

This story really isn`t all that embarrassing as it is funny. I don`t air my embarrassing stuff out in public. I would die of shame. Die I tell you. But I thought I would start small.

So I moved to Japan (that you know, right? :p ) and the first thing that hit me was that I didn`t understand anything. It was like being in a foreign country (hahaha). If you don`t know anything about the Japanese language - all you need to know is this - it`s made out of THREE different alphabets. One called katakana which looks like this セーラ　(that`s my name), hiragana which looks like this ありがとう！(which says arigato! or thank you) and thirdly, Kanji (ancient chinese characters) like : -

my favourite kanji. This says みらい　or `future`. I don`t know why I like it. I just do.

And when you write, you mix all three like this - 南アフリカから来ました。　Which says `I`m from South Africa.`

I desperately wanted a kanji name. Kanji is so freaking cool. So, I set about finding one that matched the syllables of Sarah - Se & Ra.

I started with Se - 世　which means World.

Ra was a little harder. There aren`t all that many Ra kanji - so I found a bunch and asked my friend Masa what they meant. The one I liked best was this 裸- and I asked him to translate. He said `noodle`. And since my family calls each other `noodle` (Sarah-noodle, pass the salt, please etc) as a term of endearment, I thought that 世裸　World Noodle, would be a fitting and apt name.

Only, he didn`t say Noodle.

He said Nu-do.

Which means naked. And for about 3 weeks I went around showing everyone (my students! friends! boss!!) my new kanji name - 世裸　World Naked.

I should have had business cards made. Only I`m not so sure people would`ve known what kind of business i was in exactly.

P.S. I would have auctioned my Africa Cheese Miracle off on Ebay and made my millions (retired on miracle cheese money). But alas alack - I have no forward thinking. I ate it! It was delicious)