Now there's something new...

I just discovered this evening that the toilet at Fukuwatari Station is a squat. Not only that, it's a squat long-drop. Yup, you squat, have a poo, and it falls down a hole. Yuck.
In other news, the other guy who got off at Fukuwatari tonight was hott. But that's nothing to do with anything.
What have I been doing the past month? Not a whole lot. I announced the 2006/7 Okayama JET LookBook a fortnight ago, and have spent most of my evenings working on that since then. It's been going much, much more smoothly than last year, since a year of making the Fuzzy Peach has taught me all about the miracle of text boxes on Word. Basically, I made a page-by-page layout beforehand, and now I'm just pasting in the photos and words as people send them to me. It's been fun.
Went to Bernie's birthday barbecue today. The twenty-something gaijin populating her backyard will surely be the biggest news to hit Yoshinaga in years. It was a delight, and I realised I had forgotten the pleasure of standing around the barbecue, beer in hand, watching the meat cook. Good times.
At school, I have had very little to do. A combination of school trips and exams has deprived me of most of my classes, leaving me to spend my days working on the LookBook, studying kanji, and occasionally working on the other book I've very occasionally been working on writing. Elementary school, on the other hand, has been fun. A fortnight ago, I finally gave my last jiko-shokai (self-introduction) lesson of my life to the year 1 class at Takebe Elementary. This year I've shortened my self-into speech to just ten minutes. I show an Australian flag, a map, four photos and draw pictures of emus, kangaroos and crocodiles, and then let the kids ask me questions in Japanese. The other two schools' year 1 classes just asked "do you like oranges?" and such, but Takebe's kids' questions were much more impressive. I was asked (among others):
How fast can an emu run?
How many countries speak English?
When are all your family's birthdays? (with brothers-in-law and nephews that's ten people, so I didn't spend the time to answer that)
How long does it take by train to cross Australia?
Are you taller than Inoue-sensei? (their teacher is a freakishly tall woman. And no, I am not.)
How long have you studied Japanese?
And so on. Pretty impressive for six-year olds.
Finally, I've finally noticed that my schools are fairly enlightened when it comes to gender roles. Of my four schools, there are two male and two female kocho-senseis, two male and two female kyoto-senseis, and two of the Office Ladies are actually men. Interesting, ne?

Nusa Penida

Like the other post says, on the Tuesday of my week in Bali with my parents, we took an overnight trip to Nusa Penida. Nusa Penida is an island off Bali, a half-hour boat ride away. In every other sense, it's part of Bali; it's part of the province of Bali, and the people are Balinese-speaking Hindus. However, it's virtually tourism-free, has a drier climate, and the people are poorer than mainland Balinese.
We got to the harbour at Padangbai harbour bright and early to buy our speedboat tickets for Rp20,000 each. Instead, we paid Rp50,000 each. This is a common, sometimes-fair-sometimes-not phenomenon later described as "skin tax," if you get my drift. We took a packed public speedboat across the strait, with some cool views of the 3,142 metre Gunung Agung behind us.
Soon afterwards, we arrived at the FNPF's bird sanctuary on Nusa Penida. The sanctuary's primary focus is the Bali starling, one of the most unbelieveably endangered animals in the world. The last census counted a total of six birds remaining in Bali. Six! The FNPF sanctuary rehabilitates, retrains and releases starlings formerly kept in zoos or as pets, and has so far successfully released about 50 or 60 (Dad will correct me I'm sure) starlings on Nusa Penida. The sanctuary is also home to Java sparrows, lesser sulphur-crested cockatoos, Mitchell's lorikeets, and a very impressive kind of hornbill (forgot what kind). After meeting Ketut, our guide for the day, and Fauna, the sanctuary's lovely three-legged dog, we hopped in a truck for a day around the island.
Our first stop was for a view along some rather bloody spectacular coastline, with certainly the tallest cliffs I've ever seen. Next, we drove to the release site for the starlings. Birds from the sanctuary are transferred to the release site - basically a huge aviary, built to blend in with the surrounding countryside - to get them accustomed to their surroundings before being set loose. It's pretty cool, really.
From the release site we took a steep hike down into the valley, heading towards the sea, to an awesome natural spring. Mum and I took a swim, and it was fantastic, of course. I've never swam in fresh water like that before; so clear and deep and wonderful. From there, we took a short scramble down the beach, admired the enormo-cliffs, then took the steep trail back up to the release site again.
Our next stop was a weaving village. We saw some nice weavings, hand-made with natural dyes, but the asking price was more than any of us actually had, so it was no sale.
Lastly, we stopped at a empty temple where a pair of starlings was known to be nesting. We spotted them eventually, and thanks to Ketut knowing precisely where the individual starlings lived, we managed to to see eleven starlings over the course of our trip. That's 11 out of maybe 60 in the whole world, which I reckon is pretty awesome.
Back at the sanctuary, Mum and I took a stroll along the beach (conveniently across the road). which was entirely taken up by seaweed farms. The seaweed from those farms is used in shampoo or cosmetics or somesuch, rather than for sushi. We had several friendly "selamat soreh"s (good afternoon), and a few odd looks, too. That's Nusa Penida for you; a part of Bali where you still get foreigner-stares.
There was some kind of ceremony happening that night (frankly, though, there's a ceremony every other day in Bali). From the nearby temple, we could hear singing, chanting, and prayer recital all night. As in, really all through the night and into the morning without a break. So I couldn't get to sleep at the bird sanctuary because the chanting at the temple was too loud.
Kuta this ain't, people.

Bali

Friday
I arrived in Bali around midnight and enjoyed a rather horrendous wait at immigration, thanks to the simultaneous arrival of four other flights, and also thanks to the fact the Balinese never seem to be in much of a hurry to do anything. After an hour of standing around, meeting Mum and Dad, and an hour of driving, I arrived at Chez Powell in Ubud. Hurrah!

Saturday
We spent our first day in Bali wandering around Ubud. Ubud is a fabulous town; the guide books generally call it the "cultural and culinary capital of Bali," and they're not wrong. It's a bit like what Chiang Mai is to Thailand, or Kyoto to Japan, only on a much smaller scale. So, in brief: art, dance, markets, shopping, eating, monkeys, temples, rice paddies. We stopped by Dad's office first (he's working for the Friends of the National Parks Foundation - check out their website), then on to the cute little town library, and then to lunch. After lunch, we stopped at the Smile shop, where Mum volunteers, and finally stopped at the Kupu Kupu shop; Kupu Kupu is a local NGO providing assistance to handicapped people in the area, Mum does volunteer work with them too. Later in the evening, we had a fabulous Balinese tapas for dinner, polished with a margarita in my case. It's funny, the only thing in Bali that costs just as much as elsewhere is cocktails, but on the other hand, they do make them really damn strong.

Sunday
On Sunday morning we went for a walk among the rice fields just out of town. It's a bit of a quirk of geography, I suppose, that you can emerge from the middle of Ubud into idyllic rural scenery so easily; on this walk, the farming loveliness starts barely 200 metres off the town's main street. So we had a lovely wander among the rice fields, with lots of "selamat pagi" (good morning) from farmers and passers-by, and hundreds and hundreds of ducks. Ducks are wonderful. We had brunch at a little restaurant perched in the middle of the fields, where we met an expat American lady who had taught at Keith Area School in the '60s. Keith is three towns away from Mt Gambier. All together now, "it's a small world, after all..."
Later, we stopped to check out the work of an artist who had set up in a little shack on the path. I bought three bookmark-sized paintings of birds for about $10 or so. Still later, heading back to Ubud, we met two kids, a brother and a sister. They wanted to try their English, Mum wanted to try her Indonesian, so we had a neat little bilingual conversation. The girl had a notebook, in which was written the names, nationalities and ages of all the foreigners that she had met, which we filled in. As we left, I thought that that was exactly what we wished our students would do, pretty much.

Monday
On Monday morning I went with Mum to help teach a class at the Kupu Kupu foundation. We had two students, girls about eight years old, who were quiet but keen, and covered colours, clothes, and body parts. Next, we had lunch at a nice hippie cafe (tempeh burgers, hurrah!), then stopped by Dad's office to meet his colleagues. The other staff at the office are Bayu, Komang, Made, Made and Made. See, in Bali, men and women have the same given names, and children are named according to their birth order. So a family's first child is named Made, the second is Wayan, the third is Nyoman, the fourth is Ketut, and then it starts back at Made. There are a few other names around - Komang, for starters - but there's still an awful lot of Mades and Wayans around.
That evening, we went to see a performance of the Kecak dance at a local temple. In short - because I am stupid and don't really know - the Kecak tells a story from the Ramayana, with an all-male choir providing the musical accompaniment. The choir, who sit in a circle for the performance, are representative of a monkey army, and their "ke-chak-a-chak" chant echoes the sound of monkeys. I think. The Kecak dance was followed with a Fire Dance, in which a man riding a prop-horse danced in hot coals and kicked the glowing embers around the performance space, rather perilously close to the audience.

Tuesday
On Tuesday we went to Nusa Penida for an overnight visit to FNPF's bird sanctuary. I'll put that in another entry, because it was really cool and un-Bali-like.

Wednesday
After visiting the local market, we hopped on the ferry back to the mainland from Nusa Penida. The actual crossing can be done in thirty minutes, but we were on that boat for three hours. We boarded at 10 o'clock, but didn't depart until 11:30. Then, the boat took its merry slow time getting to Padangbai harbour. When we got near the harbour, another boat was taking up the only berth. Padangbai is a launching point for ferries to Lombok, so if there are several ferries competing for the one berth, why do they not co-ordinate the arrival times? It's a mystery that can be solely put down to "Bali time." Anyway, we putted around the harbour in circles until the other ferry left and we could finally disembark. Phew.

Thursday
On Thursday, Dad worked in the office whilst Mum and I had a lazy morning before heading out to the Ubud Botanic Gardens. The gardens are lovely, and blend in with the surrounding forest very nicely. The pitcher plants and orchids were especially cool, though the "labryinth" was rather lame. That night, we had dinner at Indus, perhaps the best restaurant in Ubud. Indus is perched on the edge of a ravine, overlooking two river valleys and the steep ridge between them, with the occasional view of Bali's highest mountain, Gunung Agung (when the clouds part). A wonderful spot, and the fluttering bats and ample geckos just added to the atmosphere. Of course, geckos aren't really anything special in Bali, but whatever.

Friday
In the morning, Mum and I went to the Ubud market. Technically there's only one market in Ubud, but really, there's two; the one selling souvenirs to tourists on one level, and the local produce market for locals on a lower level. Interestingly, the market was pretty much women-only. The LP reckons that since women are in charge of cooking food, they're also in charge of buying and selling it, too. Like most markets, the Ubud market is fabulous.
Next, we popped into Ubud's number one tourist attraction, the Monkey Forest. The forest is home to a large troop of long-tailed macaques, who, technically at least, are wild, but they're not likely to wander out of their forest haven any time soon. These monkeys are very assertive and very confident. They have sharp eyes and won't hesitate to snatch whatever takes their fancy. The mere sight of a water bottle was enough to send a young monkey clambering onto my shoulder, eager for a grab. When I tried to gently prod him away, the little bugger bit me! One of the resident monkey experts immediately came to check it out, but the little blighter didn't even break the skin. No rabies for me, then.
We had lunch with Dad and his colleagues, enjoying a fabulous (and fabulously cheap!) nasi campur.
The rest of the day? We lounged around, before finally heading back to the airport for the midnight flight back to Japan.