Iyo-Scenes

Welcome to Ehime, the land of sunsets and tangerines. Or more accurately, mikan. Everywhere in Matsuyama, the prefectural capital and largest city on Shikoku, you’ll find orange-related products. The mascot of Ehime (because everything in Japan has to have a cute mascot) is some sort of dog-orange hybrid by the name of Mican (no relation to George Mikan of Minneapolis Lakers fame). 

Summers in Japan revolve around matsuri, or festivals. The first one I experienced here was baseball-themed in Matsuyama. There was a street parade with dancing, and as I observed, my nose detected a familiar scent. I turned around on Okaido – one of Matsuyama’s covered shopping streets – and walked into a total hipster shop. Though I came for the intoxicating scent of nag champa incense, I stayed for the 80s hip hop. In Japanese, I enquired if it was LL Cool J, and was informed that it was actually a group called Mantronix, which I had never heard of before. It’s a stripped-down, electronica, 808-heavy sound that was sampled by Beck, Beastie Boys, and many others. Thank you, Japanese incense store hipster guy!

After I had my fill of dancing – it’s to the same song over and over again, so you get the idea pretty quick – Matt (from Beijing/Hong Kong/Perth), fellow Iyo JET, and I went looking for an izakaya. Other new Ehime JETs I met in Tokyo were to meet us there, but because of the matsuri, they were mobbed. After being turned away by at least five places, one establishment offered to call their sister restaurant and reserve a table for us. Thank god they did, and Tom from London, Linus from Cincy, and John Criddle from Mississippi found us well enough. Some of the fare below includes mash-your-own potato salad, chicken nanban, and dashi tamago.

Also occurring in late August is the festival of Obon. Obon is not unlike the Mexican Day of the Dead, as people all over Japan return to their ancestral homelands to clean their ancestors’ graves, dance, and generally party. My most senior JET coworker, Carl (from Philippines/Winnepeg), invited us to a celebration in his mountain town of Nakayama (which literally translates to “in the mountain”). If your idea of Japanese trains is that everything is gleaming brand-new and hyper-efficient, check out this one-car situation that has definitely seen better days.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to two different celebrations at rural schools, where there was food, drink, and dancing. The mayor of Iyo made an appearance at both and danced behind me for some time (dancing is done in a circle, kind of like around a May Day pole), which was nerve-wracking. Jazmyne (from Tacoma, the other new Iyo ALT) and I were spontaneously asked to introduce ourselves at the second celebration in front of maybe two hundred people, including the mayor and a city council member. 

On a rainy day, I walked to a local ramen shop, which was surprisingly bustling for a Sunday afternoon. Contrary to what might be your perception of Japan, the area I live in has some major freeways, and this ramen spot is right on a busy one known as 56. I sat at the counter to wolf down some miso and green onion ramen.

Afterwards, I walked maybe 25 minutes to a bookstore where I snagged an NBA magazine in Japanese. I then walked another few minutes to my final destination, a secondhand shop called Book Off. I scored a cool jacket from Book Off, before going back the next day for more necessary items like a coffee maker and a floor chair. Also on 56 is a Yoshinoya, with a drive-thru, which I honestly cannot remember ever seeing in Japan. 

There’s a restaurant around the corner from city hall called Hikari, which is run by a single obaachan (grandma). The restaurant is small and cozy, with around a dozen small seats surrounded by fish tanks, and the portions are massive and cheap. Being a one-woman operation, your food might take over an hour, but you can taste the love in every bite.

One of my first pieces of actual work (not desk warming) was assisting with the orientation of kids from Iyo who are going to Salem as part of an exchange program that has been going on for years. About 20 middle schoolers, some of whom are students at my school, are currently in Salem to experience a taste of American culture. Over the course of three days, my fellow ALTs helped the kids with scenarios like going through customs or ordering in a restaurant. I provided a personal touch with some information about Oregon, including a pronunciation game, history, geographical stuff, and fun facts. So if you see a large group of Japanese middle schoolers wandering around, say, the Woodburn Outlets, there’s a good chance they’re from Iyo and you should say hey.

Though I live about a five-minute walk from the ocean, my beach is kinda rocky and near some questionable industrial action (including a katsuobushi – bonito flake – factory). One weekend afternoon, I went to check out a nicer beach about a 15-minute walk from Iyo City Hall. The beach appears to be man-made (apparently, most beaches around here are rocky), but there was a little food stand and even a half-court for basketball. 

This week concluded with yet another orientation, this one in Matsuyama for all new Ehime JETs. Much like Tokyo orientation, the best part was meeting new people. Thursday night, there was an enkai (drinking party, where you pay a fee for a few hours of all you can drink and eat). On Friday, we had the privilege of partaking in the traditional Japanese tea ceremony and even whisking our own matcha. Come eveningtime, many people were too hungover from the previous night’s debauchery to go out again (not I, dear reader), so I tagged along with some JETs to a club to watch their friend sing.

The singing was great, but the food looked atrociously mid, so I left solo and went to a small Mexican restaurant I had walked by earlier. I had been craving Mexican food for days, and there’s not much of it here. So when the place I observed was endorsed by a Mexican-American JET veteran, I decided to give it a go. I spontaneously found a group of JETs at the restaurant (it would seem that Matsuyama is a small enough city that if you’re out and about in the happening areas on a Friday or Saturday night, the odds are good that you will run into someone you know), and we dined together. And honestly? Two decent-sized tacos for 700 yen a pop, and a Corona to wash it down, left me very satisfied. Is it the best Mexican food I’ve ever had? No. Was it better than I expected? Yes. Will I be back? Also yes.

Another day, we (myself, Jazmyne, Carl, and Adeliade, from Oklahoma, with whom I will be working at school) walked up to Matsuyama Castle, which looks down on the city from a mountainous park. There’s a lot of history here that I’m not familiar with, and I’ll have to visit the history museum in Matsuyama to educate myself further. Just know that many sites, from the castle to random roadside shrines, are in the ballpark of 400 years old. I can see why Ehime is known for its sunsets. Afterwards, of course, we had to go to an izakaya where we enjoyed motsunabe (offal hotpot).

Some other scenes and dishes. The view from the balcony of city hall, where you can clearly see the ocean. Tempura with zaru udon. An obscene bowl of pork ramen. Taimeshi, a traditional Ehime dish, tai as in sea bream (abundant in these parts) and meshi as in rice. And jakoten, a type of fish cake.

I got the chance to visit one of Matt’s schools in the countryside (the countryside in Japanese is referred to as inaka, which literally translates to “the interior”). The elementary school, which only has maybe two or three dozen students, is 130+ years old, and it’s made of wood and smells deeply like a fragrant sauna.

More random stuff. My bike, owned by city hall and lent to me. City bikes (as opposed to mountain/road bikes) are called mamachari (as in mom’s bike). The coin-operated machine around the corner from my apartment that will polish your rice. A minuscule bottle of mayo that you could carry around in your pocket for when you need an emergency dose of mayo. And a beautiful house by the sea.

I think that’s it for now. On September 1st I will start teaching, and I won’t be sitting around city hall much anymore. WordPress just forced me to buy more storage, so I will continue to post. Maybe I’ll develop some sort of consistent format, recurring columns, or something like that. I can tell you that when Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest releases on streaming (as it was not given a theatrical release in Japan). I’ll jot down some thoughts on that compared to the original Kurosawa film High to Low (1963). I also think I’ll start including a glossary of Japanese terms I use at the end of my posts so you can follow along at home.

Japanese Glossary

• mamachari: mom’s bike
• inaka: countryside, lit. “interior”
• tai: sea bream
• meshi: one of the many words for rice
• dashi: the basis of all Japanese cooking, a soup stock made from
  • katsuobushi (bonito flakes)
  • konbu (kelp)
• tamago: traditional Japanese omelet, lit. “egg”
• nanban: fried chicken with tartar sauce
• jakoten: type of fish cake
• enkai: drinking party with coworkers, usually all-you-can-eat/drink format
• obaachan: grandma
• Obon: festival celebrating ancestors
• matsuri: festivals, in general
• motsunabe: offal hotpot

Catch you later!