The guns have stopped firing! But the bells still ring! It is now autumn and the rice harvest is finished.

After sleeping soundly on my first night in Japan I was awakened at dawn by the sound of shooting, or maybe fireworks. This continued at regular intervals throughout the days for five weeks. I discovered that the sounds in fact came from guns used by farmers in the surrounding fields and orchards to scare birds away from their ripening crops. I immediately thought of the difficulty faced by Warrnambool Council in trying to find an acceptable means to scare the corellas from the Norfolk Pines in Albert Park and elsewhere.

Other sounds of Japan have not been as scary. Close to my house is a tower on top of which is a loud speaker which is used for local community announcements. It also sends out chimes every day at 7.00 am and 6.00 pm - on the dot as is the rule in for everything Japan. The first 500m of the main street of my suburb has speakers attached to each of the electricity poles. These emit soft, soothing music, no doubt in the hope of encouraging pedestrians to linger longer, feel good and spend money! Each of the major intersections in central Nagano, a city of 350,000, has multi-direction pedestrian traffic lights which play `Coming Through the Rye` (as they did 18 months ago when I was here on holiday) as a signal to pedestrians to proceed. I wonder what would happen if local University students got to the sound system and changed the music! I suspect that there might be a short period of total confusion in this well-ordered society. There are constant reminders of where you are on trains, what the next station is, and what connections you can get there. And at major stations there is a loud announcement to wake you up if, like many Japanese, you have dozed off in the train. I like the drawn out `MATSUMOTO..O..O..O..O..O..O` which I heard again as I passed through that station en route to Nagano.

Probably more annoying than the scare guns was the political spruiking from cars patrolling the streets in the 2 weeks prior to a recent Council election.

Without doubt the most pleasant sound has been from the students at my school during their annual school Festival. Secondary schools in Japan are of 2 levels - Junior High School for the first 3 years, then Senior High School for the last 3 years. I am at a J.H. school. These traditionally have an annual school Festival. Highlight of my school`s Festival, over 2 days, was the music. There were performances from the school band, school choir, various small groups, Taiko drum band and then a contest in which each class, 13 in all, took part. In each class one of their members played piano accompaniment and another conducted. Their singing was excellent and every student in the school participated. A video was taken of the whole musical program and it has since been re-played to the students in small doses over their lunch times. Lunches at both Primary and J.H. schools in Japan are provided by the authority and eaten in the classrooms by students and their class teachers. I also eat school lunch in the classroom and though much of the food is a mystery I expect that it must be nutritious.

The school is very ordered and students take much of the responsibility for checking rolls, reporting absentees, collecting homework and delivering it to the teachers, then collecting it back and distributing to their class, preparing lunches and cleaning up after. Then of course a daily occurrence is the cleaning of the school by everyone, including the Principal - something quite foreign to Australian schools. I feel that each class acts as a close-knit unit, has pride in its home classroom, and that there is a genuine corporate spirit within each class group which creates a corporate spirit throughout the whole school. Obviously this is where the basic training is given for what I perceive Japanese society to be - well ordered and well mannered.

I have experienced 3 Public Holidays here so far - Respect for the Aged Day (15 Sept.), Autumn Equinox Day (23 Sept.) and Sports Day (10 Oct.). With 4 other teachers I spent the Sports Day long week-end at a city called Takayama, on the opposite side of the Japan Alps from Nagano. It therefore involved a car trip across the Alps through magnificent scenery and in perfect weather and with autumn colours just starting to appear on the trees. Mountains hold no fears for Japanese engineers - they just bore straight through them. On that trip we went through numerous tunnels, 2 of which were over 4 km long. Takayama is sited in a superb location and can only be described itself as a living museum having countless buildings preserved as homes, shops and warehouses and used as they have been for hundreds of years. It has one of the major Festivals in Japan the highlight of which was a night procession of elaborate, priceless floats, illuminated by candle-lit lanterns and with period-costumed attendants. Other activities included ancient music, the lion dance, and manipulation of puppets mounted on some of the floats. Just outside the city is the Hida Folk Village, also on a superb site with sweeping views of the Alps.

This Village is a re-creation of agricultural life in that region during the EDO Period (1603 - 1867). The huge houses with high, thatched roofs can all be inspected throughout (shoes off of course), and a good idea can be obtained of farming in that period, including the raising of silk worms in the upper floors of the houses.

I hope that I am able to have many more cultural experiences as memorable as that week-end during my stay in Japan.