Christmas in Nippon

Some sweet children singing in a nursing home:

My friend Jinno dancing as Santa:



Japanese Christmas Carol:

Memoirs of a Geisha

One of the oldest and most respected Japanese arts is that of the tea ceremony. The spirit of the tea ceremony is 'ichigo-ichie' or once-in-a-lifetime encounter. It means that the chance to serve a guest at a tea ceremony happens only once and that person must be treated with respect. In my city there is a group of volunteer Japanese women who give tours to foreigners. On the 24th of November, they hosted a kimono party and tea ceremony.

The director of the program chose the red kimono just for me. Apparently it's highly coveted and I felt special that the kimono was set aside with my name on it. There were several ladies there to help with the dressing. I got a lady who was very skilled in her movements and didn't need to undress me and start again like others. After getting dressed came hair. The hair dresser was delighted that my hair could achieve such volume with a little teasing. I was just delighted.

Juliana and I took many photographs with the girls before the ceremony began:Sitting the traditional Japanese way while receiving tea and eating sweets (feet tucked under the bottom) nearly killed me, but each time I would shift to the side the front of my kimono would split open and I would go from elegant maiko (apprentice geisha) to wonton brothel maiden)...you know me...

Then some of the ladies taught tea ceremony. I wanted to join but some of the Japanese women asked to take pictures with me so I showed up late as usual.

As the event came to a close and the kimono were returned, the girls felt a pang of sadness at becoming uncouth foreigners once again and so struck a compromise: return the clothes, keep the hairstyle. Me...not so much. I preferred a Japanese gangster chick look:











Afterward, we trekked to an Italian restaurant/pizzeria and ate delicious food.

Epic Birthday Party

It started out as a simple invitation.

Allee dearest was turning 22, a fine age for a young woman coming into her own in Japan.

She wished to host a birthday party for herself, so she decided to invite all of her friends to her house for a modest celebration.

The only problem...she lives on an island in the middle of NO WHERE.

...

I mean it. Her assigned city is made up of four islands. Hers, which manages to host the only high school, has only one main road which circumnavigates the entire island. There are no bridges, just ferries by the hour.

I know I would never visit such a crazy place.
So I R.S.V.P.ed "yes".

The party was potluck, with Allee providing the main course of "NABE", a Japanese stew in a cloudy broth. It's popular in winter to host NABE parties where friends/family gather around the nabe pot and drink alcohol and chat it up.

I decided to bake cookies (from scratch!).

As I was baking, minding the time since I had to bike to the train station to take a train to catch a taxi to a ferry port in which to catch the ferry to her hidden island to walk to her house (PHEW!), I received a txt message from a JET I had met in NYC. He was in the neighboring prefecture but since my city was on the way to the ferry port, Would I like a ride?

Of course I did. That's when the trouble began...

He showed up and I was ready (of course). We got in the car and began our cross-island journey with me navigating with my poor Japanese since his is non-existent.

Really, we only got off-track once before we ended up in the proper city. Once there, we had no idea where the port was so I asked for directions at the convenience store. The brilliant part is that the last ferry for Allee's island was at 6:30PM and we were counting seconds as we managed to hit EVERY RED LIGHT. We got to the ferry port just in time to realize that we had not a minute to spare. Stephen threw me out of the car with the intention of me stopping the ferry while he parked. I bolted in time to watch the ferry pull out of the dock I screamed in frustration, promptly scaring a young Japanese couple making out.

I called Allee to tell her the news and she said that we could start crossing the Great Seto Bridge (瀬戸大橋, ), or Seto-Ohashi Bridge. At 13.1 km long, it ranks as the world's longest two-tiered bridge system, going from Shikoku to the main island of Honshuu, and from there catch a different ferry. We had three hour before the last ferry.

NOW GO.



we just sound lost...

Safe to say we made it safely with only a few distractions...(Stephen needing to go to the bathroom...directions...and dinner - we were running a few hours late by that point). We caught a ferry where we met another foreigner on his way to the party. Once on the island of obscurity, Allee's directions were, "turn left. Stop when you see the foreigners in the road."

Of course we drove "too fast" for them to get to the road and ended up half way up the island's mountain before we decided to call and scream at her. We could only image how the guy following behind up felt.

After turning and finding her, we were escorted to her rather spacious apartment where I met the other foreigners from the neighboring islands that made up her city. By then I was hungry again and excited for my first NABE pot.

...Allee, bless her heart, can't cook.


What we got was sludge. No really...it's not suppose to be yellow. Or look alive.


I was scared. Stephen politely refused to eat.

And then the toilet broke just when everyone needed it.

Giving Thanks the Canadian Way

Even in college, I have never met such a diverse group of people than on this island full of Japanese people. Though the least changed of the four islands, I have come in contact with people from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, South Africa, Jamaica, Germany, and Romania to name a few. And I am being introduced to new holidays and traditions such as Canadian Thanksgiving.

And here I was worried I would miss a home-cooked meal.

There was no turkey (trying to find one is nearly impossible with these supermarkets) but the roast chicken was quite tasty. Sadly, no stuffing or Spanish rice (I miss my grandma's rice) but I managed to make mashed potatoes from scratch. Trying to eat Japanese food everyday inspires me to learn to cook from scratch since instant Hamburger Helper is lacking.

Anyway, there were some surprising dishes such as salad with hidden pilaf and broccoli/cauliflower cheese casserole. Dessert was an amazing angel food cake purchased from a bakery and pumpkin tarts I dared not touch.


Then we played a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit and as the only American, I did our country poorly. Seriously, every other question was about baseball. I did manage to shine in the pop culture/history/science categories.

I was thankful to be invited. :)

Fright Night: Halloween in Japan

Okay.

Japan does not go Trick-or-Treating.

In fact, my students tended to be surprised when I described this Celtic born holiday and its American ways. However, they did understand the concept of Jack-o-lanterns, witches, and candy.

I volunteered to work at a neighboring (by that I mean 3hrs. by train) city's elementary students Halloween Party on the 18th. I dressed as a school girl, borrowing the junior high school uniform from a high school girl I befriended. The party was super cute, with around 500 kids in two shifts of 1.5 hours. They came in various degrees of holiday dress. I first helped out at the bean-bag toss but got bored after an hour and went outside for a break. There I discovered other kids waiting to attend the later half of the party. I ended up playing "Simon Says" with them and they called me "Sailor Moon", a popular anime/manga in Japan.


Though wearing a girl's uniform was fun, my friend Dansby and I really wanted to have a gender-bender JHS partner costume. Wearing the male uniform was hilarious and since he has long hair, Dansby made a pretty good Japanese school girl. A;; I did was darken my eyebrows and gel my bangs but I really looked like a boy:

Girls kept approaching me and asking me to pose with them. We went to a lounge bar that was hosting a party and won best couple costume. Afterward, we headed to the biggest city in our prefecture and danced all night. The ride home at 6 in the morning was something else. I was completely sober (as usual) but everyone else (driver excluded of course) was drunk/tired and completely ridiculous.

Me and my prize:Too bad I didn't drink it :P

TAIKO: It's a man's world

Japan has many festivals such as HANAMI (cherry blossom viewing) in the spring; TSUKIMI (moon viewing) in September; OBON (respect for the dead) during the late summer; and OSHOUGATSU (New Year's day). The region I live in is famous for another festival known as TAIKO, held during the middle of every October. My city is especially famous for this event in which men carry large MIKOSHI (portable shrine)

on their shoulders and there is a TAIKO drummer inside. They do this in celebration of the rice harvest. The MIKOSHI is said to weigh over two tons and only men are allowed to carry it. Smaller MIKOSHI are made for children and women to carry. Whenever I ask people what their favorite festival is, they reply "Taiko". Everyone gets really into the spirit of things and dress up.
Neighboring cities have DANJIRI (portable shrine on wheels):
Men and women are allowed to pull these shrines. Following the DANJIRI are carts of sake (alcohol) and everyone chants and drinks while the crowd follows them around. On the first night they trekked from the center of the city up into the mountains.

Each city in my area has their own version of the festival that lasts for 3 days, including activities that carry on throughout the night. I was given Friday off in order to enjoy the holiday. I ended up going to this huge park with other foreign English teachers from around the local cities. What was funny was realizing just how many students I teach as every 5 minutes I heard my name being shouted and cameras flashing. I felt like a celebrity.

Autographs - OK!

We Speak Good English

Since I have arrived to Japan, I spent my evenings sharping my biking skills in order to prepare myself for traveling to work. As noted in my first post - I suck.

However, though I have dutifully reported on my nightly happenings, I realize that I never mentioned that my days were also filled with work. Unlike my fellow JETs in neighboring towns, I was put to work right away visiting different schools and giving guidance for the upcoming speech contests.

That's right kids! My "city" and prefecture both have English speech contests held annually in the Fall to stimulate an interest in English and help students improve their personal skills.

>insert smiley face here<

It was actually fun to go around to all the junior high schools and meet the teachers and some students. When I started teaching, I could find them in the class and be like, "BUDDY!"

The topics were usually club activities or a grandparent's death. There were occasional ones that were self-reflection and even fewer that included personal interests or opinions.

So the first half of the month of August was spent in this fashion: speech contest, lunch, speech contest, biking. My RA and fellow JET David would join me and slowly convinced me to bike to these schools where I would have mini-heart attacks trying to avoid students spending their summer days at school for club activities. The second half of the month was switched up since David went back to the States and I began Japanese lessons: Japanese lessons, lunch, speech contest, biking. It was during this time I got sick for the first time. It was not pretty...

Once school started, I would teach (OR give self-introductions and play games) during the day and assist the English teachers after school with the speech contest participant(s). It sometimes got repetitive but I did see improvement and that was cool.

The hard part was when I went to the actual contest and watched them perform. I felt like a mother watching her baby on stage and was so nervous. Plus, how does one determine who wins? I watched these kids struggle to memorize difficult English translated from a Japanese speech and spoken effectively with a strict time limit. I felt that there should have been more prizes because the crestfallen look on some of the kids faces was like,"AH!"

The city contest had an added bonus in that for the 15 minutes the judges were in the back room making decisions, David and I were asked to perform at the contest. Now, I refused to give another speech, although David spent his time talking about his paintings. I decided for mine to give a short skit on SOMETHING. I managed to recruit David and Juliana, a JET in a neighboring town that I met in New York, and we reenacted how students play tricks on new teachers: KICK ME! sign (and yes, Juliana actually kicked me and I face-planted), wet willie, wedges, noogies, spit balls, etc. It ended with me (as the poor unfortunate teacher) assigning detention and laughing evilly. Scarily enough, my laughter echoed off the wall. Two of my students won prizes and one of David's. All girls though.

Afterward, there was a party for the teachers (enkai) and some of the judges and other persons of important stature who attended. One man kept putting kick me signs on everyone. I expected this from the kids...but the adults were really into it too. Haha.

The prefectural speech contest was uneventful with a surprising win from a student in our city.