There and back again. Again.

There's a lot of things I'm going to miss about Japan. Food, people, scenery, general levels of respect, the pace of life. But one thing I definitely won't miss is poison bloody ivy. Two and a half weeks after helping move a massive wood pile and I've still got red marks up my sides, thighs, stomach and neck. It's like chicken pox in plant form. So... that's a fun little memento.

For the last couple of weeks of Adam's Japan Tour 2018 I went back to Iwanai. It might seem weird coming back again - this was my fourth visit, and it's not a quick place to get to. But Iwanai is definitely 'home base', whereas most other areas I've been to in Japan feel more like pitstops. I've realised that it probably feels pretty comfortable because it's a very similar town to where I'm from in the UK - almost the same population, similar seaside climate, the same slightly 'forgotten' atmosphere of a town where a lot of the shops are shuttered up. Plus the scenery's incredible, the people are lovely and the food's amazing, so what's not to like? Any traveler to Japan should wish for the chance to be invited to a Hokkaido home for a barbecue, food and hospitality like you wouldn't believe.

Summertime Iwanai is a very different place to the last time I was here in April when there were plenty of piles of late-winter slush still piled up by the roads. July in Hokkaido is all about deep greens and rushing rivers, although unbelievably there's still a few patches of snow up in the high peaks. And bugs. Buuuuuugs. I'll never complain about a few flies and wasps in the UK again - the crickets up there hop about with real intent to drive you insane and there's some sort of biting moth that are like mosquitos on crack. And the summer means warm-weather Workaway chores at the ski lodge. Aside from my best friend the ivy-infested wood pile there's plenty of odd jobs to get ready for next winter, and a concrete out building to smash by hand with a sledgehammer. When you're not being bitten by the bugs it's actually quite therapeutic.

June and July in Japan are festival season. It seemed like every couple of days there was a celebration of one food or shrine or flower or something. The uni festival was a bit of a washout (literally, it hammered it down) but it's a chance to try this fairly unique delicacy. Sea urchin gonads, that is. The locals go absolutely crazy for the stuff, queueing in the pouring rain for a taste. It actually looks less weird than it sounds, somewhere between those foam banana sweets and a little yellow tongue, and taste-wise it's sort of.... the essence of the sea, but in a good way. Just be sure to try it with some rice, eaten solo it's very strange.

The Iwanai Jinja (shrine) Festival is one of a hundred similar events up and down the islands that transform sleepy little areas in hives of activity, and are another reminder of how impressively committed Japanese people are to any cause for celebration (and any excuse to have a drink). I'm not sure of the exact shinto specifics but essentially the two gods in the main temple are summoned into smaller mobile shrines, and then carried around town by teams of about fifty guys called Mikoshi. It's sort of 'god's day in the sun' combined with a chance for local businesses to get a prosperity blessing top-up for the year ahead.

The whole thing's pretty crazy - nice, quiet businessmen from the senior levels of the town change from suits to samurai outfits, school kids of various ages do ritual dances with huge ceremonial poles being thrown across the street at each other as the shrines criss-cross the town over two days. There's a lot of adrenalin, a lot of drinking, a lot of fun. Just the people watching is a full day's entertainment, and in a town like Iwanai that works both ways - I'm getting quite used to feeling like a goldfish in a bowl being the token tattooed white guy. A few of us gaijin monkeys were asked to be Mikoshi but I politely bowed out to watch from the sidelines - maybe I should have gotten involved, and I did maybe regret not being part of the gang when you can see how bro'ed up the guys were at the end of fifteen-plus kilometers hauling a huge shrine around town. Although with my ink I would have had to wear something like a wetsuit to cover up in the full heat of summer.

This trip's been less about bouncing around the islands and more about getting to know Japanese culture in more depth in fewer places. There's still a lot of stuff to fight to understand, and it's not a perfect culture by any means. For instance the level of misogyny in the workplace is apparently still pretty terrible. The idea that in any work scenario an older man should always override a younger girl is still pretty prevalent, and complaints from women against male colleagues apparently sometimes have a way of making it back around to victim shame the girl. The MeToo movement died a death once it crossed the Sea of Japan. There's a lot of traditional mindsets to break down, but... it'll happen.

I've also met a few people along the way who... how to say... they want to make out that certain things are Super Special Japanese Secrets that a gaijin MUST LEARN to understand, when really it's something totally universal. It's hard to explain exactly, but once or twice I wanted to say 'no, no... that would be just as annoying/difficult/etc in any other country'. It's a fine line. Not trying to run down Japanese culture by any means, but maybe I've just stayed there long enough that I'm now starting to pick up on the lows to go with the highs, and experience the full package. No culture's perfect, and I'd take the standards of respect, quality and craftsmanship in Japan over anywhere else any day. But sometimes as a gaijin you do occasionally think 'screw it' and just boulder through. Some situations can be improved by a little blunt, white-person, rudeness giving the polite ceremony a kick in the arse to hurry things along.

It probably comes as no surprise that I'm already thinking about going back. I'm not fluent but left just as I was getting the hang of having half-decent conversations. There's been a little voice in my head talking about actually moving there long-term, but so far I haven't thought about an actual plan. If that happens I don't want to float around like an eternal backpacker doing something like teaching just to make some pocket money, I'd want to DO a job, and my spoken Japanese needs to be a helluva lot better for that to be an option. Either way it's a little academic for now, I don't think they'd give me another visa and I haven't got any savings left. But 2019... we'll see. Winter's happening either way, that sweet Hokkaido pow-pow won't carve itself.

#travel #japan #Workaway #japanese