POLESTAR
Volume 13 Issue 17 September 2016
Photo courtesy of Rachel Davidson
Photo courtesy of Zhabina Anna
Dear Hokkaido ALTs,
Summer is just about finished, but we’re sure everyone will try and squeeze in some final sunshine, camping, and generally warm adventure before autumn and onsen season take over. We hope you like what you see and consider helping us to make it better. Anyone can submit work to Polestar. Facebook message or email us at editor@ hajet.org with any ideas, questions, or concerns. Thanks to the writers and photographers who made this issue memorable!
Jack Powers, Editor Isabelle Legault, Designer
Next submission deadline: September 30th
“Give your shadow a chance to unveil itself.” -Anonymous
Photo courtesy of Ferfie Brownoff
. s e r P e th
o m d i o a r k F a, Hok Hey
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that pales in comparison to the places I’ve travelled to and the people that I’ve been fortunate enough to spend time with. Part of this is kind of selfish - it’s fueling a personal desire for socializing and exploring as much of this island that I can. With that being said, the last few weeks have opened my eyes in an unexpected (yet good) way.
The humidity and rain seems to be throwing off even the most rugged obaasans in my town. The typhoons that have made contact in the North have apparently been more numerous and more intense than the norm. You may have experienced floods, landslides, evacuations, road closures - throw in the start of school to deal with as well, and it’s enough to discourage even the most stoic amongst us.
I’ve learnt things about people that I never would have guessed had I not spent some time getting to know them. That’s not really all that profound - in fact, it’s not profound at all. It’s totally expected. It doesn’t change the fact that I really enjoy that. In contrast to my friends on JET in other prefectures, I could just about hang out with a different Hokkaido ALT every day for the next year. There is so much to discover here. Now, more than ever, that’s really starting to sink in for me. I’ve also been fortunate enough to have my eyes opened a bit by the selflessness and dedication of a lot of folks. Just small things really, but seeing that and keeping it in mind really helps to push through some of the chaos that can seem overwhelming at times.
Ferfie Brownoff President | HAJET he last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. I know that’s a pretty lame pun, and I can do better. Weather aside, things feel like they’ve been flying by, which can be both good and bad. For some of you, like myself, I’m sure it’s been hard to keep your feet on the ground. Whether you’re a brand new JET or have been living here for 8 years, a lot about this summer has been kind of crazy.
I recognize that the damage is very real in a lot of areas, perhaps even in your own communities. Not to downplay the severity of what has happened here in the past few weeks, but I want to talk about the positives that I’ve encountered, despite all of that. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a slew of awesome people since August 8th. Yes, since that time, every one of my weeks has been busier than I had expected. But
Again, I don’t want to diminish the reality of any issues you may be dealing with in light of recent events. That said, I’m pretty damn grateful to have a community this resilient and diverse that I can turn to, if need be. So, why don’t you enjoy this community, together with me?
HEC
Introducing: New Coordinator
Phillip Hennessy HEC Coordinator | HAJET
Get excited, people! I believe participating in HEC is
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follow. Check out this testimony by a former student:
any of you new ones might not know me yet, and some of you old ones may have been wondering who the new Hokkaido English Challenge (HEC) coordinator is. Well, here I am! I’m the new HEC coordinator, yoroshiku! My name’s Phillip Hennessy. I’m in my second year on the JET Program in the town of Abashiri (famous for drift ice and jails!) I spent almost the entire year before coming to Japan living outside. Being for 172 days on the Appalachian Trail (AT) and 182 at a wilderness boarding school, I adapted and changed my ideas about a lot of things. Most significantly it solidified in my mind the importance of new experiences and broadening your horizons while also holding on to those things that are important to you. It always comes back to people for me. I know how powerful the impact of a few people can be. That is why I feel so strongly about HEC. This camp provides the opportunity for Japanese students and Assistant Language Teachers alike to build lifelong friendships. It’s a challenge in every sense of the word. Students are tested on many levels and ultimately, the ones that make it into camp get to spend 5 days outside with mosquitos and rain and beautiful things. Not that we will be climbing Mt. Denali, but we are overcoming challenges together all the same. Simply put, working alongside others in a stimulating environment makes for some very good friendships and a lasting impact. Here are two of the core values of HEC: 1. To empower our students to use English in a meaningful and creative way. 2. To expose students of Hokkaido to a variety of cultures.
among the worthiest of all pursuits that an ALT can
“Most of my friends didn’t like English (they) wondered why I liked English. It’s because to communicate with people from other countries and learn different cultures. I was nervous but happy to be [at HEC], but I could meet friends there and little by little I could feel comfortable. By the end of the camp I felt close to many people. I think I changed, becoming more confident to use English. Because of the camp I decided to become an English teacher.” Yukari 2003 Student “Just Listen: Student Interviews.” I saw students make big transitions throughout camp. I saw them lose their English inhibitions, and I saw them dance their hearts out. I had never seen anything like it in the classroom. In one case, I received a letter from a student at the beginning of camp. She was worried that she couldn’t make friends and didn’t know how to go about talking to people. On the last day of camp, I think she barely got any sleep at all because she wrote a letter to every single camp participant, students and staff alike. That’s about 85 letters, all written in English. I want to encourage you to get involved. HEC receives no practical support from the government. Although we are recognized as being a legitimate program. we receive no financial support so as to maintain the independence and flexibility to run camp our own way. The challenge is run entirely by ALTs and friends, and it doesn’t happen without you. Website: hec.hajet.org
Photo courtesy of HEC
HEC Volunteer Positions
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e are looking for dedicated team players to join this adventure. If you are interested in any of the positions below please send a short bio to hec@hajet.org outlining why you are interested in the position and what makes you a good fit. Also, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!
Executive Committee: Events Coordinator We are looking for a dedicated sociable person who can facilitate fundraising events for HEC. The events coordinator will be working together with me throughout the year. The most important skills to bring to the table are organizational and communicative skills!
Assistant Test Coordinator This person will help the current test coordinator (Catrina Caira) in her duties and should be interested in taking over her position next year. We are looking for someone with good organizational skills, good written communication skills, experience using Google docs, and access to a color printer. This is going to be one of the most important positions to keep HEC going strong next year! For more information please contact Catrina at hec.test@hajet.org
Sponsor Relations Chair This person looks for sponsors in Hokkaido to give money to HEC. One of the most important skills necessary for this position is a high level of Japanese, probably N2 level or higher since they need to be able to communicate with Japanese-language sponsors. Optimally, they should also have lived in Hokkaido for more than a year, so they have a better idea of foreign owned businesses here that would be amenable to giving to HEC.
General Operations: Website Administrator The obvious skill set here is web design! But this should also be a flexible person who can contribute to the maintenance and improvement of the HEC website.
Media Manager This is a creative and flexible position. If you like to reach out to others over social media and empathize with our cause, this might be the perfect position for you! This person must have access to the appropriate equipment in order to take photos and videos. Additionally, this person must have the right amount of techsavyness to create promotional video(s) for HEC.
For more details about any of the positions please contact Phillip at hec@hajet.com
Photo courtesy of HEC
Last Chance Fireworks Jennifer Wang Sapporo Representative | HAJET
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s the summer holidays draw to a close, many of you may have noticed the sudden splurge of the number of couples at your schools after the cultural festival. Finding a girl to watch the fireworks with has long been a nerve wrecking fiasco for high school boys. In fact, one of the boys at my school came up to me the week after the festival and said to me, “I was so sad and lonely during school festival. I watched fireworks by myself. I was so sad I went to McDonalds alone and ate a lot of hamburgers *motions shoveling food into his mouth with both hands*.”
tourist attractions, such as the Blue Pond in Biei (美瑛 青池), have suffered major damages from the typhoons and will be closed off. Sadly, the pond is said to have lost over a meter in depth and is no longer blue in color but a murky brown. So be sure to check the condition of the tourist spots before planning any road trips within Hokkaido!
Standing next to your love interest amidst the hot summer night, with fireworks bursting in the background as you sheepishly dish out all your feelings has become a common climactic scene in many Japanese manga. Whether it’s the allure of seeing that special someone in a yukata, or the excitement of candied apples and yakisoba, summer festivals play a big part in fulfilling Japanese teenagers’ romantic dreams.
If you haven’t been able to attend any of these firework festivals, fear not. Lake Toya will be hosting fireworks every night for twenty minutes starting at 8:45 PM. This event started at the end of April and will be running until Halloween, so you will have plenty of time to plan a trip. Though they may not be as massive as the UHB Fireworks (#1) or the Moerenuma Artistic Fireworks Festival (#2) in Sapporo, Lake Toya’s fireworks are still worth a trip as they are just one part of the stunning natural park and onsen area. In addition, you can find a surplus of Gintama goods at this location. Gintama’s author, Hideaki Sorachi, was born in Hokkaido and named Gintoki’s sword after the lake. From replicas of his sword to even his moped, the shops are sure to not disappoint.
Due to the unusual amount of rain (and typhoons) in Hokkaido this summer, many firework events were either postponed or cancelled. Furthermore, some
Lake Toya’s Homepage: www.laketoya.com/event/
Photo courtesy of AJ Kay
Crab Proletariat Literature spotlight Jack Powers Editor | Polestar
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early every acre of Hokkaido was wild, full of potential and the promise of back-breaking labor. Kobayashi Takiji argued in his 1929 novel, The Crab Cannery Ship (Kani Kosen), that the burden and the spoils of the enterprise were not shared fairly. At the time, the nickname for a laborer in Hokkaido was “octopus,” because octopuses will even eat their own limbs to survive. Takiji used the story of a crab-fishing journey from Hakodate to Kamchatka to illustrate the extreme inequities in Japan’s imperial-capitalist system, especially as it related to the development of Hokkaido, a topic dear to Takiji, a native of Otaru. Though the events of the story are limited to the ship itself, the ship’s destitute workers hail from around the colony and the country, coming to squeeze away some little money for their family. As one of them says, “You can’t hardly live without dying.” The narrator uses only
descriptors in reference to the individual workers to mirror not only the apathy of their overlords but also the surrender of their own self-worth within the repressive capitalist system. The workers snitch, beat, rape, and blame each other to get through the journey. The 300400 laborers on board the ship include young boys from the slums of Hakodate, destitute farmers, Yubari coal miners, and life-long fishermen and sailors. “Poverty had brought them together,” Takiji says. Capitalist authority is embodied in “the manager,” a slave of the real corporate overlords in Tokyo, who mercilessly beats his workers and makes decisions entirely based on the bottom line. At one point, the manager declines to help save a drowning ship because it’s worth more to the company as insurance. A short conversation between a fisherman and the radio operator exemplifies the attitude of the manager, named Asakawa. “What the hell does he think human lives are?” “Human lives?” “Yes, human lives” “But Asakawa doesn’t think of you fellows as human beings.” The settlement of such a vast and powerful landscape as Hokkaido was necessarily rough work. But Takiji also argues that it was a lie, a scheme, a scam, that coerced thousands on thousands of workers to submit their bodies to a system that only paid those at the top. Takiji writes, “Each railroad tie in Hokkaido was nothing but the bluish corpse of a worker.”
continues
Kanikosen (manga)
Most of the work in Hokkaido was seasonal labor, meaning that working well past nightfall was common. Additionally, unlike the mainland, in 1929 most of the workers in Hokkaido were completely unorganized, so that they had little means of resistance to inhumane treatment. They were desperate. This was not the utilitarian dream of the frontier it was often depicted as. The system perpetuated itself through the financial coercion of the under-classes. Posters and movies throughout the mainland proclaimed the prospective riches of Hokkaido and the bounty of work to be found there. Takiji explains that banks would offer up large upfront loans to settlers, wait for them to turn Hokkaido’s untamed fields into viable farms, then hit them with overdue loan payments and seize their properties. It’s telling that Takiji often refers to Hokkaido as a “colony” and settlers as “immigrants.” Hokkaido was not Japan; it was a frontier, pacified and exploited for the sake of Japan. He relates the treatment of laborers in Hokkaido to the other colonies of Taiwan and Korea. Takiji saw Japan’s expansionism as both a direct
product of its out-of-control capitalism and also as a shield for the system’s excesses. Labor repression was explicitly justified as necessary in order to strengthen the geo-political/racial standing of the Japanese Empire as part of the international race for resources and wealth. The manager on the crab cannery ship regularly compares work aboard the ship to that of a war, in this case against the Soviets. The manager’s speech to the men before setting off for Kamchatka: “Needless to say, as some of you may know, this crab cannery ship’s business is not just to make lots of money for the corporation but is actually a matter of the greatest international importance. This is a one-onone fight between us, citizens of a great empire, and the Russkies, a battle to find out which one of us is greaterthem or us. Now just supposing you lose- this could never happen, but if it did- all Japanese men and boys who’ve got any balls at all would slit their bellies and throw themselves into the sea off Kamchatka. You may be small in size but that doesn’t mean you’ll let those
stupid Russkies beat you.” The racial/imperial paranoia of the day fools the workers into thinking that their suffering is honorable. But after a fierce storm forces an errant crab-fishing boat to hit the Russian shore, a group of Japanese sailors come into contact with Soviet and Chinese propagandists. The sailors come to realize that these enemies are actually humans and that their Marxist vision of capitalist exploitation sounds familiar. These sailors return to the main ship with mutiny on their minds, finally understanding their own worth. At book’s end, the workers’ first rebellion is beaten back by a nearby Japanese navy ship. The workers on the crab cannery ship let the naval officers on board because they believed that they would share their interests, the interests of the people, but instead the ringleaders are rounded up and taken off the ship. Finally, the workers realize that their state and its representatives care only about the profits of their oppressors. So they organize and rebel again.
The Japanese Communist Party had a particularly strong influence in Hokkaido at the time, and even now it regularly polls as the third-most popular party in prefecture-wide elections. Takiji was an ardent member of the banned JCP and helped fight for workers’ rights in his native Otaru. After writing several more underground novels, Takiji was tortured to death at the Tsukiji police station in Tokyo in 1933. Takiji’s literature, especially The Crab Cannery Ship, has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence in popularity since around the 2008 recession. The book’s newfound relevance, after so many years of being relegated to crusty libraries, dovetailed with the spread of parttime employment and joblessness. Recently, the word “kanikosuru” was coined to describe working slavishly, with the implication of severe exploitation on the part of the employer. This word joined other terms like “income-gap society” (kakusa shakai) and “working poor” (waakingu pua) to capture the economic fraying of Japanese society, not least in Hokkaido.
Bombay Blue
Indian Restaurant
Marissa Beale Contributer | HAJET
because none are available in Iwamizawa. “We buy
ust over a month ago, I arrived in Iwamizawa with several other new assistant language teachers. Our first meal in our new home was not Japanese cuisine, but Indian. Our coordinator took all of us to Bombay Blue, an Indian curry house, for lunch. It turned out to be a very welcome surprise.
a few spices that we import from India,” said Khemlani.
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Should you visit, upon entering the first person you will see is Peter Singh who manages the restaurant. He greeted us in English, but he also speaks very good Japanese. “I came to Japan ten years ago because I wanted a break from India,” said Singh. He has also been to Thailand, the U.K. and Arabia. In 2014 he started working at Bombay Blue, and while there is a larger Indian community in Sapporo, he enjoys living in Iwamizawa because of the nature, small-town feel and convenient shopping. Originally from India as well, owner Jimmy Khemlani opened Bombay Blue in 2009 after discovering that there were no Indian restaurants in Iwamizawa, a relatively small city of 89,000 residents located northeast of Sapporo. Seven years later, business is still going strong. “We moved to Japan for our kids’ education,” said Khemlani, who also considered Sapporo and Otaru as possible places to open an Indian curry shop. He chose Iwamizawa for the opportunity to create a new market for Indian cuisine.
spices from Tokyo and some from Osaka, and there are
The restaurant’s atmosphere and authentic cuisine are popular among residents and visitors, so much so that there is another restaurant in Ebetsu, and a third branch that will open at the end of the year at the Niseko Ski Resort. “People here know us well,” said Singh, who joined the staff in 2014. “We do the Chitose Air Shows and also have a party bus for traveling to different events.” In September they will be at the JoinAlive Festival. Bombay Blue is also present at many outdoor festivals and events, as they offer an outdoor catering service. The chefs are all from different parts of India, so they know the cuisine. Each chef at the restaurant has been cooking for at least 15 years. Prior to working at Bombay Blue, one of the main chefs used to be a chef at Bob Marley’s restaurant in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The tandoori chef, who prepares the naan at the restaurant, used to cook food for the royal family at the Maharajah’s palace in Jaipur. “I like Japan a lot,” said a chef who recently joined the staff. He has worked for many years as a chef in Japan. The restaurant menus are available in Japanese and in English. “I want to stay forever in Hokkaido,” said Singh with a
“I was told by my friends that my decision of opening a restaurant in Iwamizawa was very wrong, and that it would be difficult for business to survive in such a small town.” His decision proved to be a good one. After doing some market research, he saw that there were a lot of Indian, Nepali and local curry shops in Sapporo, but no shops Sapporo to Asahikawa. “I thought giving it a shot in Iwamizawa would be interesting and challenging,” he said.
smile. During the winter, when Iwamizawa is expected
One of the challenges is getting the correct ingredients
like it in town.
to receive record amounts of snowfall, patrons can still get curry. “Business is slower during the winter, but we’re still open,” said Singh. Bombay Blue has quickly become the go-to spot for our batch of new ALTs living and working in Iwamizawa! The food is delicious, and you won’t find another place
Photo courtesy of Bombay Blue | Iwamizawa
Photo courtesy of
Kelsey Woodford