All Genkied Out

Yesterday I began doing my self-introduction to the students of Higashiyama Jr. High. I have pictures that I show using my laptop and a projector, and I play a game of tic-tac-toe with questions about myself and my family (what is my pet's name, is my brother older or younger - that sort of thing). The English teachers here all seemed to be impressed and keep asking if I've ever taught before, but I AM EXHAUSTED!! I don't know how much longer I can continue being genki (up, energetic). I'm also getting tired of talking about myself. Maybe next week I'll tell them that I went to school at Hogwarts and have a lion named kitty-chan as a pet.

In other news, yesterday's lunch made a half-hearted attempt to kill me and didn't quite succeed. The meal consisted of breaded chicken, steamed vegetables, a weird corn/veggie soup thing and a huge stick of brown bread. (Brown bread here is basically white bread dyed brown, and it all tastes like wonder bread.) The thing is, lunch came with a single fork and no knife. So to eat the chicken you had to skewer it with your fork and rip chunks out of it, and either slurp the soup or eat it with a fork. I admit, I missed the rice.

I feel as though I'm starting to settle in. I've made some really good friends here - although all the new and old ALTs get along really, really well and we have some pretty good times together - and I'm liking being on a schedule again. Some of the young, female teachers at my school took me out to an izakaya for a welcome dinner, I start Japanese lessons next week, and tonight I'm going to my first Kenbu class - that's samurai dancing with a sword and fan. Pretty cool stuff, and I'm really, really excited. I won't have internet access at my apartment for another month, but I have a keitai(cell phone) and friends with cars. That's really, really important :-)

And just so I don't continue this trend of posts that are all text and no pictures, here are some shots from last weekend. On the Friday night my friend and I went to a reggae party (yes, a reggae party) and had a blast, and then on Sat. a bunch of us from Takayama met up with some other Hida region ALTs and went to the little village/town of Maze to visit an onsen and to watch their amazing fireworks festival. I don't have a picture of the onsen (hot spring/spa), but it had 15 separate pools/stations, including a hot pool, a cold pool, scented pools, a sleeping pool, stream rooms , jet showers, inside pools, outside pools and steam boxes where only your head stuck out. It rocked. The boys went to their side, the girls went to ours and we stayed for 1.5 hours. Then, while we de-pruned we ate yummy festival food and then watched the gorgeous fireworks display.

The little mountain town of Maze

Festival Food! Flavoured 'ice', a festival favourite and very pretty to look at

People and more people

Fireworks. We were perched precariously on the edge of a high wall which itself was perched precariously on the edge of a cliff, but we had an amazing view. The fireworks themselves were spectacular: they were enormous, colourful and made the most spectacular noise.

More fireworks...

And after a full day of onsens and fireworks a few of us went down to The River by Kiyomi, lit a fire and toasted marshmallows. But, this being Japan, we had to toast small, strawberry filled marshmallows using chopsticks over a fire built mainly with more chopsticks and cardboard. We managed :-)