I've been busy

So the last two weeks have been rather busy. Some friends from Toronto dropped by Takayama and stayed a couple of days, I went to a Fox fire festival, bobbed my hair yet again (no bangs this time), went to another izakaya with some teachers, drank a whole lot of sake, bought some really good sake, had two days of English hour workshops up at Norikura, and had Japanese lessons and Taiko drumming and Ken-bu classes. Oh, and I've been going for walks/jogs in the evenings. Now it is Friday and I am going hiking up in the mountains tomorrow. Most likely, here:

Or possibly here:

I will post pictures at a later date, including pictures of the last two weeks. But until then, here is me and a friend at Karaoke last week:

Have a great weekend everyone :-)

Sports Day !

First of all, I would like to start out by saying that MY TEAM WON!! We rocked. Secondly, Sports Day -- in Japanese 'Undokai' and at Higashiyama Jr. High, 'Toukonsai', for reasons not clear to me -- is not like anything we have in Canada. It is Track and Field, Play Day and the Olympic Opening Ceremonies mixed vigorously with a pinch of North Korean Mass Games and a liberal serving of Japanese tradition, pomp and ceremony.

Actually, it's not very complicated. At my school, all 450 students were divided into 3 teams: Yellow, Blue and Red. (I was a member of the Yellow team. Who won *cough cough*) Each team had one main leader (a 3rd year student), and several more team leaders who provided competent leadership that the rest of the team could look up to. The students started meeting at the end of the first term and came in every day through the holidays to make props, costumes, practice routines etc. Hmm... Ok, I think pictures would be far more interesting.

The three teams gathered out on the field. Each student wore their sports uniform and a headband (which made for some pretty funky tan lines at the end of the day!)

Parents, grandparents, locals, dignitaries etc. all gathered for a day of friendly competition and to see how the youths of Takayama are progressing. There were sun umbrellas, hats and bentos (packed lunches) a plenty.

A horn was blown (or a bell rung, I don't remember) and all the kids came runnin'.

The team leaders saluted the Kocho-sensei (Principal who is out of this particular shot) by screaming at him.

Everyone did their morning excercises, including the teachers (and yours truly - I don't know how I managed to take this picture)

And then all the students ran away screaming because they could no longer take the super genki and super irritating exercise music.



And then the events beain! This is when it becomes clear that one is in Japan. The students participate in large groups - sometimes their entire team!, everyone participates no questions asked, and during each event crazy, whacky back-ground music is played. (Think the Can-Can plus Jingle Bells plus insane cartoon music with a touch of the opening theme of Saturday Night Live) The only serious event was the group relay, although the students take every event seriously. The other events were as follows:

Mass-team Tug of War


The 15 (?) Legged Race

The 'That Log is Mine You Wicked Wench' game. (Ok, so I don't know what it's called. But two teams - girls only - lay down along two ropes on either side of the field. A shot was fired and they all got up, screaming, and had to try and throw as many logs as possible on their side of the rope. The whole point of the game was to watch Jr. High girls wrestle each other to the ground and/or get dragged through the dirt. Fun times!)


The Running With Logs game. Fairly self-explanatory. There was a lot of screaming involved with this one too.


The Drag a Kid Around the Track on a Tire event. Exactly what it sounds like plus screaming.


The Carry a Kid Around the Track While He Hangs Like a Monkey event. You'll notice they're wearing helmets. They were needed; many kids fell or were dropped, generally on their heads.

The Mukade event (yes, that's it's real name. Mukade are gross, disgusting,and poisonous centipedes that you need to boil to kill. They're nasty creatures, but I enjoyed watching this event)

The kids who weren't participating cheered on their teammates, ran around with big flags, and beat on a Taiko drum

The giant flags


Just before lunch the girls got together and performed their dance. They used this rather odd music with lots of shouting and wailing in it, and their moves and actions were like a more vigorous version of a Bon Odori dance. This year they decided to wear costumes. I tried to be supportive, but quite frankly I think they look like wannabe superheroes. And all of that synthetic material was making the girls sweat!

Another shot of the dance

After lunch the boys got to perform their dance. They took off their shirts and shoes, grunted, sweated and acted all manly.

Observe the manliness

Yet more manliness


Next came the cheering contest, and I was asked to be a judge. Each team had 2 mins to perform a cheer using various props; my students used pom-poms, fans, their shirts and their hands. And their voices. They were judged on how loud they were, their creativity, their energy and their timing.

The Blue team using pom-poms

The Red team doing a wave with their pom-poms

The Yellow team spelling out "No. 1" with pom-poms

... and spelling TOP with their fans

Next there was a hand-held hanabi (fireworks) show! It was pretty cool.





Then there were more events! In this one, kids from each team had to race across the field but on the backs of their team members.

Only the boys did this event. Two teams started on either end of the field. Half the group crowded around a long pole with a flag in the top while the other half started running around the track. When each team had run half way around they suddenly stormed the other team and tried to grab their flag. The first team to capture the flag was the winner. Inevitably there was a great deal of tackling, grappling and violence. Boys were seen limping off the field with battle wounds. The Yellow team was totally creamed in this one.


And finally, after being outside in the sun all day, after running and dancing and pom-pom waving, after fighting, cheering and generally exerting themselves to the fullest, these poor children had to jump rope. And if they weren't jumping, they were sitting in the sun, dripping and melting and yelling encouragements to their teammates. Gambatte.

At last it was 3:30. Time to get in formation, salute the Kocho-sensei again and then scream out the school song.

Awards were handed out. As previously noted, my team won :-)

The team leaders gave their final speeches, and every one of them burst into tears. It was all very emotional and there was hardly a dry eye in the crowd. Except for me. Desite wearing a hat, long pants and a high-cut t-shirt I got horribly sun- burned. I got the worst sandal and t-shirt tan of my life!

There was time for one, last victory cheer...

And then all the teacher's got thrown into the air in celebration (?). This isn't me, it's of my JTE's Ms.Yamaguchi, but I imagine I looked much the same. At least the student's didn't drop me on my head like the teachers did later that evening.

And so that was Sports Day. Everyone had a great time and went home tired, sunburned and hoarse. Except for the teachers who went out that night for a big dinner and lots of drinks. :-)


p.s. I apologize for the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. I may or may not fix them at a later date.

I am now climbing apparatus

I have now been to two out of three of my Elementary schools: Nishi and Iwataki. Elementary school children - ages 6 to 11, thereabouts - are awsome. They speak to you in Japanese and don't care when you don't understand them. They speak to you in English and don't care when they don't get things right. They are also smelly, have sticky hands, like to use the new ALT as their own, personal jungle gym, and are impossibly adorable. They're also accomplished unicyle stunt artists.

On Wednesday I rode to Nishi Elementary on my bike in the pouring rain. As soon as I approached the building I was attacked by little beings wearing blue shorts and yellow hats and brandishing big, yellow umbrellas. I was made even more happy when a boy caming running up to my desk in the Teacher's Room looking for high-fives; he was one of the kids I worked with at the Norikura English workshop in August. I did intros for a 3rd year class and a 4th year class, and got to eat lunch (a small, hard lump of fish, vegetable salad in a rice vinegar dressing and 3 slices of white bread with a plastic package of what looked liked plum butter but tasted like a food product possibly related to chocolate) with a very loud class of 8 year olds. I handed out stickers and homemade namecards and was a hit. I rode back home in the pouring rain and promptly fell asleep for 3 hours.

Yesterday I was picked up in the parking lot of the local cinema (which is close to my apartment), and was driven 20 minutes north to Iwataki Elementary. It's a 3-story building with a pool, gardens and sprawling school yard high on top of a hill surrounded by rice paddies and mountains. It also has a total of 23 students. They manage to use the entire school, save the third floor, but even still it's rather eerie. There's dust in the corners and the library is only open on thursdays. My lessons on animals, sports and family went over well; they all know what moose and beavers are, as well as hockey and lacrosse. I brought Mr.Moose, an adorable stuffed moose who wears a plaid scarf and who is on loan from my friend Angela, and he was a huge hit. The kids - 6 1st graders, 5 2nd graders, 3 3rd graders, 6 4th graders, 2 5th graders and 1 lone 6th grader - were wonderful. They all wanted me to read the English on their shirts and shoes. And after lunch they all brushed their teeth to hypnotic, fairy-tale music. It's an interesting place, Iwataki. The Vice-Principal asked me if my parents would mind buying and shipping him a router saw table from Sears in Canada (he'd pay them back of course). I told him that it was very hard for them to get to a post-office. This was the same man who asked that I send him pictures of animals for him to print and laminate, and then called up and asked if I really needed the one of the elephant? When i started to insist that yes, I most certainly did, he informed me that he had guests in his office and he had to go. Indeed. Something tells me that his guests didn't speak English, but he wanted to make sure they knew that he did. ;-) And in the end, the elephant never got printed.

Anyways, here are some Nishi kids on their unicycles (in the pouring rain):

A highly enjoyable weekend

Had a great weekend. My school had it's Toukonsai (Sport's Day) on Friday -- which I'll get to later -- and that meant an enkai (party) for the teachers afterwards. It was held at the Hida Hotel in a big tatami-mat room. The Principal and two Vice-Principals sat at one end of the room, and the teachers sat on the ground in two long lines against the walls. Everyone had a pillow, a back rest and a lovely wooden tray filled with beautiful dishes of food. The second-year teachers were responsible for organizing the party, so they started off serving people drinks. Everyone had a small glass of something (it was red, sweet and alcoholic) to start off the party with a 'kampai' (cheers), and then the beer, sake and oolong tea started flowing. In Japan you never pour yourself a drink, someone else does it for you which means everyone talks to everyone else. It was great fun but I was quite frustrated at not being able to speak Japanese. Women in kimono were continually taking away dishes and replacing them. All the food was small, colourful, delicate and beautiful. And delicious. The teacher's got to relax and simply chat and enjoy themselves. The strict rules and unspoken codes of the workplace vanished. We sang songs, drank, ate, chatted, drank and played our own 'sport's day' games. At the end I got tossed up in the air as a 'welcome to the family' sort of thing - and was nearly dropped on my head. Then some of the younger teachers continued on to a bar/lounge for the 'second party' -- that's really what it's called -- and I was given excellent whisky, many compliments and a taste of real japanese karaoke. Good times were had by all.

On Sat. I went to one of the morning markets along the banks of the Miyagawa river: I bought cucumbers, potatos, onions, tsukemono (japanese pickled vegetables) and some pretty cuttings of something that resembled holly. I ran into my friend Becca, and we arranged to meet later in the afternoon to do one of the 'temple walks' in Takayama. We ended up visiting about 7 or 8 temples and shrines, and eventually found ourselves in a sort of garden tea-house decorated with a mix of japanese antiques (think 1920s typewriters and attache cases, japanese farm house antiques, beautiful old fans and french china dolls - it was incredibly surreal and we decided that we'd actually fainted from heat stroke and were in fact either face down on the road somewhere or in someone's backyard drinking from their garden hose). We 'hiked' through the lovely, forested Shiroyama park, made our way back through the old historic section of town (where we pretended to be tourists and samples the miso and sake), had dinner at a cheap but delicious izakaya (with an entertaining English menu) and ended the day with fruit and chocolate cake at a tea shop overlooking the Miyagawa river.

On Sunday Becca and our friend Fletcher had planned to go hiking. We left Takayama at 6:30am, bought snacks and lunch at a combini (convenience store) and drove about one hour north-east to a mountain whose name is something like 'Fukiji'. Our guide book said it took 4 hours to complete and was pretty much a steep incline the entire way. It was absolutely a steep incline and the day was hot and humid. Fortunately it was heavily forested so we weren't walking in the direct sunlight. Full of youthful, genki energy we set out and passed many groups of hikers no younger than 65 (!). We were sweating and breathless before long, but we kept on going and eventually reached the 'peak'. In less than one hour. There were some beautiful views, and it was great training, but it was something of a disappointment. I think we were looking for something that climbed higher than the tree-line. But in the end it was enjoyable and we were glad we came. The second trail we'd planned on hiking was closed so we ended up having lunch beside a waterfall and then spending the afternoon at an onsen. Then it was back to Takayama for dinner at a sushi restaurant and then 'Purikura' (short for 'Print Club'; you grab your friends and take all sorts of silly pictures in a picture booth with crazy backgrounds, and then add all sorts of embelishments. I'll post some pictures later). I was going to go to sleep early, but I ended up going to Red Hill (a local bar) to return a movie the owner had leant me and so I stayed for a drink. Just one.

As the post title suggests, it was a highly enjoyable weekend. Now here are some pictures:

Becca inspecting the trail in the midst of some beautiful cedar trees

The top of the 'mountain'! Becca is less than impressed.

The view from the top of the mountain

Me and Becca beside our waterfall

Me, Fletcher and Becca. We went and soaked in an Onsen next and it was delicious.

The exhaustion, the dampness

I am sooo tired. Exhausted. One step away from being the Living Dead. Ever since I've arrived I've been going, going, going and it's finally caught up with me. I need sleep. And coffee.

The weather has changed. On the first day of September it suddenly became cooler, I kid you not. I've taken out the matching duvet to my futon and am partially closing my windows and doors at night. I'm wearing sweatshirts - during the day! The past few days have been rainy, and my school is damp. My second period class smelled like daikon.

Went to my first Japanese lessons last night with a lovely woman named Noriko, and my friend who is another new ALT. Noriko is excellent, and at what works out to be $8.00/hour, is a steal. I desperately need these lessons; I really need structure when studying.

Tomorrow is my school's Sports Day. I will take pictures and explain it all later.

Jya

One before the weekend

More introductions today, and they all went well

This is a picture from the first-year English textbook. In the book, the new English teacher is Ms. Green from Toronto, Canada. When she does her introduction and is asked if she can speak Japanese, she says "sukoshi", which means "a little". I get asked this exact question over, and over and over, and they all start cheering when I answer "sukoshi". It's absolutely hilarious, the kids love it and it's the truth! I do speak a little Japanese! Have a great weekend everyone. I'll be camping at a electronic/trance festival and probably won't get much sleep ;-)