I didn't know what to expect here in Japan. But I didn't really think the streets would be so clean, the cars so small and people constantly folding in half. These guys are constantly bowing in greeting, farewell or just for the hell of it. Everyone is so polite, cars are given room to enter lanes and a polite wave is given in return. Large stickers on cars let other road users know the car in front is either being operated by a novice or someone in their latter years. Yellow number plates indicate that the bearer has an engine capacity of less than one litre. These things are tiny, and square, but they get along.
I'm lucky to be here with a Japanese guy from Tokyo who works with me and is really helpful and friendly. This is one place a phrasebook would get an extra hard work out. There is very little in the way of menus, signs and signs in English and even less people who speak it.
I'm in a city called Oita on the southern island of Kyushu, doing some trial work in a limestone mine not far away. Typical mining, so nothing interesting there, except for the morning exercises, the bowing and waving, the language and it's little quirks, the size and methods of these operations, ... and the bowing !
Ever since childhood these guys have heard the same music for their morning exercises and have been taught the routine so well that when the music starts coming out through the loudspeakers they're swinging their arms and swaying their hips in perfect unison before they even get out in the carpark to join the others. Driving to work we heard the same music on the radio, then on another day we were in the pit early and heard it through the PA system in the mine next door.
I suppose it keeps their backs supple for all that bowing.
The mine is on a mountain in Tsukumi, that has four companies working different sides and is worked from the top down. So to get to work there is a sealed road winding it's way from just above sea level to 600 metres above through thick forest. With the weather the way it has been for the last few days, that means winding in and out of the clouds. The rock is dumped down an eight metre diameter by four hundred metre vertical shaft to an underground crusher and conveyed to treatment plants then to the port close by.
Everything thing on this island is either through a hill or over a valley. The part of Kyushu that I've seen, and Ive been told that most of Japan is the same, is very mountainous, very green and very clean, but there are 127 million people here! It's not a very big place, but if you ironed out all the kinks and hills it would flatten out to a fair amount of country, and a lot of trees. There are trees everywhere. Not just a clump here and there, but thick forests right up to the edges of the cities and towns.
So far we've only eaten in the same restaurant once and that was the one with quivering fish and squid. Because the fish is eaten raw in Japan it is important that it is fresh. This means you have to be careful when you reach across for a strip of squid flesh, that is laid in strips on a leaf over it's back, that the eyes don't follow you around and the tentacles don't try to grab your chopsticks out of your hand. That was a bit freaky but the rest of the meal and sake was really good. The fresh flesh is eaten with ginger and wasabi to help keep the bugs and germs at bay that that can present in uncooked meat, so the fresher the better. Even if thet means chasing it across the plate.
The bars here are the size of a small loungeromm back home and most are set up with their own karaoke machine. We've had a few good nights at one where I've met a local barber, Kai, and his girlfriend Tsunami. I couldn't get my tongue around her name so that is her nickname now. Along with Hitomi, the woman who owns the place we've discussed important issues; like why koalas smell and how deep is the water on the Great Barrier Reef. They love all things Australian and I am talking so slow so that I can be understood, I sometimes laugh when I hear myself and what I sound like.
Not a lot of pictures yet, but with a trip ot this weekend there will be some then.
Watch this space ....
