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 ;-)

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 :-)

The School Lunch Is Out To Kill Me!!!

Today is the second day of school. The students are writing tests all day so there are no classes. There is still, however, school lunch.

Lunch works differently over here, or at least it does in Jr. High. At 12:30 4th period ends and there is 15 min 'Lunch Preparation' time. Everyone, including the teachers, eats the school lunch. I am no exception. And, because I am the resident ALT I get to eat with the students, a new class each week. This week it's class 1B.

Each class has designated 'lunch kids' (they may have official names for them, but until I find out what those are I'm calling them 'lunch kids'). They don huge aprons, face masks and kerchiefs, and they dole out the food, which is brought up to the front of the class. Quite frankly, they look scary: like evil nurses in miniature. Actually, forget the 'lunch kids', they're Evil Lunch Nurses.

See! This is the sign that hangs outside the room where the Evil Lunch Nurses pick up the lunches. It's an Evil Lunch Nurse, out to get you! (sorry about the picture quality: I took it with my cell phone)

Today the lunch consisted of: white rice, vegetable pickles, a bowl of miso soup with fried tofu and vegetables, teriaki salmon, and a quaint glass bottle of milk. Since I'm lactose intolerant, I didn't have to drink the milk and was given strict instructions to tell anyone who asked that I was allergic to the stuff. The rest of it was ok and since I didn't eat breakfast, I rather enjoyed it. Until about 30 mins later. All I will say is that the school lunch tried to kill me, and very nearly succeeded.

Another thing: I was all prepared to chat up the kids, trade japanese for english etc. But the kids don't talk! Barely a word was said. Now, this may be because by the time the Evil Lunch Nurses have finished serving everyone, the students only have about 10 mins to eat. Or maybe it was because I was there. But it was still rather creepy.

I don't know what I'm going to do about lunch tomorrow.

School has officially started

The Higashiyama Jr.High official opening ceremony was held yesterday. I cycled to work in my charcoal grey suit and immediately regreted doing so. Duh. I got to school just in time for my very first staff meeting. A bell was rung, everyone stood up, bowed and said 'ohayo gozaimasu', which means 'good morning', and then a whole lot was said in Japanese. I understood a few words here and there, and when I was being talked about. The other teachers really find my mixed Japanese/Irish heritage interesting, and I can understand enough Japanese to know when it's being brought up in conversation. Anyhow, they made me get up in front of everyone, introduce myself briefly in English and then in Japanese, and then I got to sit down again. I tripped on my too-long pant legs while walking up to the front of the staff room. Great first impression. (actually, I was kind of embarrased about my pant legs -- which are too long because I had them hemmed for heels -- but then realized that all the other female teacher's pant legs were also too long. Yes, I could have re-hemmed them, but my laziness has allowed me to kind of fit-in. hah!).

At 9:15 the entire school filed into the gymnasium for the official welcome ceremony; I wish I had brought my camera (but I didn't, so no pictures). The students, who had been coming to school all through the summer break wearing their school gym clothes, were now wearing their real school uniforms. I was not disappointed in the least - they were everything Japanese school uniforms are supposed to be! The boys wear white dress shirts and grey pants, and the girls wear white and navy sailor dresses. Their shoes are colour-coded to correspondwith the grade they're in. They lined up outside, and then jogged-in purposefully to form lines. Once everyone was in there was a lot of bowing, more japanese, and then the school song was sung. Wow, what an experience. I was expecting a pitiful, half-hearted, warbly sort of thing with the staff cringing and the students looking uncomfortable. Instead, three 3rd year boys (the equivalent to about grade 9) got up on the stage and took turns yelling at the ceiling, their hands clasped behind their backs, bobbing up and down while leaning backwards. Then the rest of the student population got up and did the same thing. In two-part harmony. While yelling. And bobbing up and down in that backwards sort-of fashion. IT WAS BIZARRE!!! But very, very cool. And the staff seemed to approve. Then, after a lot of talking, I heard the kocho-sensei(principal) start talking about me again. And it was my turn to get up on stage.

Duh-duh-duhhhhhh.

Now, I generally don't have a problem speaking in front of people, and I had been asked to prepare a short speech in simple English. So I did. However, earlier that morning one of the English teachers asked that I write it out -- so that she could translate it into Japanese. For me. I got the translation about 15 mins before the ceremony started and practiced furiously. I got up on stage and stumbled through it; out of the corner of my eye I could see the other English teachers giggling amongst themselves. In the end, I think I got most of the pronounciation correct, and if anything it strengthened my resolve to learn Japanese. And I'm sure the kids got a good laugh.

Later that evening I went out for dinner with a friend, and then for drinks at a really, really cool bar/lounge thing with a huge collection of vinyl and a really good sound system. And all was well with the world.

A Tour and a River

Last Friday the Jr.High/Elementary ALTs in Takayama received a tour of the old section of the city, courtesy of about 40 Jr.High/Elementary school students. They were pretty cute and a few of them spoke English quite well.

The girl on the left is Mimi. She looks all cute and innocent, but she came up to Norikura last weekend for English World, and was pretty merciless when it came to our game of Capture the Flag (she made me a prisoner!). In the background you can see some of the preserved 'traditional houses' that Takayama is famous for.

This is a mechanical puppet that lives outside of a restaurant. Everytime he lifts his box a new meal appears: it's hard to see, but in this picture he's currently advertising Hida beef, a regional specialty.

Tasting miso in a miso shop. They also sold huge bottles of shoyu (soy sauce).


But the highlight of last weekend was definitely The River. It's exactly what is sounds like, a lovely stretch of river about 15 mins outside of Takayama, with a swimming hole and waterfalls and large rocks to stretch out on and soak up the sun. It's actually one of many 'secret river' locations, but all are referred to as The River by us ALTs.

By 'ethnic' chili we assumed they meant Mexican

Oh, and how could I forget: that evening the owner of a local English coversation school threw a party. We drank lots of beer, ate lots of food and chatted with many Japanese people (many of whom were incredibly impressed that they sold Kewpie mayo in Canada - you know, the stuff that comes in the sqeezable bottles with the red cap. Angela knows what I'm talking about!!)

And of course, karaoke afterwards