Autumn
By Oli
At 6:37 PM · Friday, 26 September · 2003
To Diary
In the space of a week the season has changed. I find it quite scary how Japanese weather does this — it’s like someone in the Meteorological Service has changed the season dial or something. We had a few days with no humidity about two weeks ago, but now after the most recent typhoon the temperature is about 8° lower. Amazing. I’m sad to see the end of my swimming season approaching, but at least it will bring some relief to the mould.
On the swimming front I’ve finally worked out how to do both a front flip and a back flip. I don’t know what Duncan Fleck will say about this, given his three years of subtle suggestions and encouragement ;-) Sorry Dunc, but I got there in the end! On the mould front, I never realised that mould would grow on non-food things, like shoes, bookshelves, even glass! There’s something inherently wrong with this, and it’s going to be expensive too -> camera lenses. I hope there’s no permanent damage.
Recently we’ve just been doing the same old thing, working and playing. On the work side I’m trying to set up a class in the local Community Center to teach Elementary School students. Nothing has happened yet, because although they want me to teach, they are stalling on how I can do this without being a volunteer. In typical Japanese fashion we are told everything is OK in general, but there are some specifics that need to be worked out. Unfortunately no one can say what the specifics are or what solution will be satisfactory. Heh.
I haven’t had any web design jobs recently, which is starting to worry me. On the up side it’s given me time to polish the design of this site and really learn about CSS. I’ve done some print design for Miwa’s salon though, for guests from an upcoming tournament. It’s a tournament by the International Senior Amateur Golf Society, which has the ironic and probably most apt acronym of ISAGS(!). They really should have thought about that beforehand! ;-) Miwa’s work has been going well, with the busy summer season now past. She’s thinking to offer some new options, and is considering Stone Therapy and maybe face Reflexology. I hope she needs to practice!
We went to see the Giant Straw Sandal Festival
in Daiō-cho・（大王町） recently - a massive straw sandal is blessed, laden with some seafood, then floated out to sea to scare a local sea monster. The idea is the sea monster will see the huge sandal and be afraid of the ‘enormous monster’ who has lost it, and not bother the townsfolk. It was pretty cool, and something I’d been wanting to see for a long time. It just sounds so ludicrous — perfect Japanese culture ;-) We also went to see the local Doll Festival
in Anori・（安乗）. It was a performance of puppet theater that dates back 400 years. Most of the dolls required three people to animate them, and they were used to narrate traditional Japanese stories. Of course I didn’t understand much of the old Japanese (all sung, just to make things harder), but it was an interesting experience.
Apart from that life is good!
