another post

hello everyone

wow i have been doing so much interesting stuff lately!

first- some interesting facts ive learned:

1. Shikoku (the island im on) is often in drought. i must be honest i thought that it was like a japanese-version of a drought, i was like haha "come to australia and ull learn what a drought is"... but i learned today that last year Shikokus dam got down to 0%. yes 0%. apparently u were only allowed to use water for 2-3 hrs a day so they used the water in the bath for heaps of things
2. takamatsu's grey water is not filtered at all, it goes directly into the local rivers. (they look disgusting). so if ur cooking with lettuce and noodles and u wash ur bowl down the sink, guess what ends up in the river? apparently the government cant afford to introduce proper treatmet systems for grey water

the other day me and cathy went to a primary school in the outskirts of takamatsu where cathy was going to give a talk on international understanding. cos it was in japanese and i know about that kind of stuff already, i spent the hour and a half at a lovely, big Shinto shrine near the school. (Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan). after that being in the shrines grounds which i really enjoyed cos its the one place in japan that nature is preserved, there was a lovely mini-forest there, i went back to the primary school. there,me and cathy were talking to the schools principal who told us that the area the school is in is a traditional area of the burakumin. the burakumin, i have learned, are at the bottom of the traditional japanese caste system and were originally in the days of the samurai, people who dealed with death- eg executioners, leather-makers etc. there was a lot of prejudice against them until recently, and some even persists today. the principal said that this has influenced a lot of the kids attitudes in the classroom and stuff.
cathy told me later that mainly its people who are 60+ yrs old who still feel prejudiced against the burakumin and other minority groups like the Koreans. but she said that if u have burakumin blood in you and you live in your hometown, everyone knows it by your surname and discriminates against u (eg a Bahai with burakumin blood told cathy that no matter how good he is at his job, how high in status his job is, hell always be the 1st to be fired). i find that really sad. and the family of cathys friends in the 80s or so hired private investigators when their kids got married to ensure there was no burakumin blood in the other person.

after going to that school, me and cathy helped pack up for a local charity called Second Hand which had been having a charity bazaar at a local community centre. the charity is similar to oxfam in that it sells goods, then donates that money to places where its needed. But Second Hand only operates in Cambodia and has helped build schools, donate ambulance equipment etc to people in Cambodia, who are really impoverished.

for your entertainment, theres a japanese band which used to be quite popular called Kinki Kids. when i first heard about it i was like "do they know what theyre saying???" but Kinki is an area of Japan, so the band was saying that they were from kinki... lol

i dont know whether ive said already, but the prefecture (similar to a state but smaller) Takamatsu is in is famous for udon noodles. udon is a thick white noodle. so yeah ive been having a lot of udon lately but its yummy

i have been doing sooo many of those study circles i talked about last time. im doing the first workbook which is the one im actually up to with the childrens class fathers, then next week ill start the 2nd workbook with a friend of ando-san, i finish the 1st one with her this week, then i have another one of the 2nd workbook with a group of 4 housewives who i found to be extremely spiritual in the one we did together this week, and then theres another one of the 1st workbook which i did last night with another lady...
its so interesting to hear everyones perspectives cos theyre all so different and also to hear the culture coming through- like one of the housewives kept linking the bahai values to things shes read in haiku poems and at Shinto shrines etc, and one of fathers and another lady were talking about rank and hierarchy a lot... im really enjoying them all though, for me its such an amazing opportunity to talk about deep things like life after death etc with otherpeople i wouldnt normally interact with

i tried octopus the other day. it was horrible. it actually looked like an octopus tentacle, like the weird squingy round things that stick to things was still on its tentacle. anyway i tried it cos when in romes do as the romans do right? wrong! no amount of cultural sensitivity is worth trying octopus- its textures was rubbery and then the squingy things were crunchy ad it was a horrible experience. i gave ando-san the rest of mine and shewas so touched she gave me her fresh pineapple slices, i was like if you say this is a fair deal? actually japanese bread is pretty bad too- the only varietys are thick, medium or thin white bread and there are 6 slices in each. (i saw "brown" bread today which cathy thinks is coloured brown which had 3 slices)
to give u some idea of how the japanese like their bread, the bread i ate for brekky this morning was advertised as being "soft and sweet". yuichi laughs a lot at how bad japanese bread is so i dont feel like im being too culturally insensitive. but if you toast it its ok and the homemade strawberry jam yuichi made drowns out the taste of the bread. actually inall fairness tho i love japanese food andwith the exception of octopus and the bread, its all really nice and im eating way more then i would back in australia cos it tastes so muchbetter and feels so much healthier.

anyway i have written an insane amount especially considering i havent been doing that much (i spent the day today dusting the spare room thoroughly then mopping and vaccing it) in the last couple of days

love sonia

xx