Weird Divide

HEYYYYYY

I'm on holidays now! I'm on holidays for the next 5 weeks or so and in anticipation of a very busy August with Sally and David I am doing next to nothing to fulfill my days and you know what? It's working out for me! I like doing nothing when I know that I'll be busy in the future so that makes it ok. I have been doing a lot of subbing at the conversation school next door as many teachers have gone back home for the holidays. It's nice to meet some new people/students and it's not really all that hard.

Last weekend was the Yamaage festival in Nasukarasuyama which is the town over from where I work. This means that everytime I drive for work I see signs pointing to this place but I've never properly been there. I had dinner there once or twice but that was in the outskirts so it may as well have not been. In any case, the same teacher that invited me to the Firefly festival invited me to this one and again, my pal Kevin was keen to go. He was more keen to go to see some of his students - he teaches primary school so it's ok to see them out and about as they're children and they love that sort of thing.

I teach junior high school, and it's not so ok... I guess? Remember the morbid fascination of seeing a teacher outside of school? It's like they DO exist when we can't see them. I remember Ms. Liberts (my 5th + 6th grade teacher) used to shop at a supermarket waaay out of the way to avoid seeing students and let's not forget Ms. Jones the drama teacher who lived over an hour away from school and now I can understand why.

On the first day our pal Vera came and we all got drunk for some reason and we really, really enjoyed ourselves. I saw a few of my students including the weird one that likes to touch my face and stand inappropriately close - turns out his father works in one of the food stalls but even though we stood there for a long time I couldn't possibly tell you what he was selling. We watched some outdoor kabuki (as that was the whole point of the festival) which we didn't understand but it looked interesting! Kevin speaks Japanese and he couldn't understand it so I guess I was on equal footing with most of the audience ... albeit a bit taller so I could see better.


The NEXT day we dressed up in our festival gear which is essentially shorts and a wrap-around robe type thing but it's all super thin and perfect for summer. We got there pretty early and gorged on festival food (it's all so amazing!) but that night for some reason I saw crap loads of my students. I couldn't walk two meters without seeing one and while I'll admit it was fun to see a few it was really awkward for me to see this many. I saw some teachers too, but that's ok as I can just smile, say konichiwa and that's all I really need to do.

So after a while of dealing with "ooh~~ kurisu sensei?!" we met up with one of our managers who had decided to come with his family. We went to go visit a friend of his and get some burgers (with burger buns - I have not seen burger buns in Japan until this point. They were wonderful) and after a while of looking around we left. Overall I think the first night was better but both days were really enjoyable so I hope to go to many more festivals in the summer!

P.S. They had some foreigners working at the food stalls and when I tried to speak to them they claimed they didn't know English. But they were speaking in a form of broken English that only English speakers can do - you know the kind? There's no break in the sentences to think of the English word it all came out smoothly and the way they said it too... SCAM ARTISTS!

Yayyyy. kris.

Reproduction

Written at school;

I'm in the school gym. I'm in the gym because the students are having a lecture on 'Adolescence'. I don't understand what is being said but from the pictures on the projector screen it probably has something to do with puberty and child birth. It's been some time since my last post despite my best intentions otherwise but I thought i'd make the effort and give an update. I guess the main things going on right now was the visit from Eliana and James, and the fact that summer holidays are coming up soon. But before I get into i'll run you through the little things that have occured since we last communicated.

I was invited to attend a firefly festival (hotaru matsuri) by one of my teachers. I wasn't really massively keen to go as the teacher in question speaks next to no English what-so-ever but I thought maybe if I could russle up a friend then a festival can't be too bad right? So I got the friend (Kevin) and we arrived maybe one or two hours after the festival had started.
Only this 'festival' was actually a collection of about five families that set up a tent and use a big barbeque to cook food. This 'festival' was not really a festival at all so upon our arrival we were announced to everyone via the karaoke machine they had set up and we recieved a round of applause. It was a good thing that Kevin speaks Japanese very well as I certainly don't so with his help I think everyone had a good night.
## The fireflies were smaller than I imagined and their light was this yello/green neon. For some reason I fully pictured dragon fly sized insects with a light the colour of ET's finger. Optimistic? They were still nice though.


The next weekend was a barbeque by the river. The Japanese people often can't go to the sea but they insist on the water component. So we went out to the riverside which is mostly rocks and crappy pointy grass and had a Japanese style barbeque even though none of us are Japanese. Tell you who was Japanese? The two kids that walked by our barbeque and ended up being invited to eat something. Then, very much like seagulls, they left and came back with more friends who were hungry. I got drunk so I had a good time.
## Not to suggest that getting drunk is the only way to have a good time. But it helps.

(picture; fireworks at the bbq. Melted my glasses and some of my hair)


So THIS weekend James and Eliana decided to haul ass up to visit me as a part of their travel plans around Japan. They had to drop a friend off at the airport and they missed the originally planned bus so I ended up picking them up around 12:00am which was a bit of a drainer but it was alright. They stayed at my place for two nights and on the Sunday we went to Nikko which is this really beautiful place up in the mountains. It's pretty much bursting at the seams with shrines, temples, and visitors. It's only about an hour away from my house though (down one road!) and it was a lot of fun to see the old shrines and explore the place. We found this really nice black shrine up this long, uphill path that didn't look regularly visited but was surround with this electronic monitering machinery (I guess they need to put it somewhere?).

(pictures; the aforementioned shrine and sake bottles.)

So summer holidays are coming up soon! I get 6 weeks off and I have Sally coming for 2 weeks (Aug 1st - Aug 14th) and then David is coming up for two weeks (Aug 15th - Aug 28th) so I'll be a pretty busy douchebag! It's good though as it'll be fun to see Japan with different people and I'm massively excited to see them and to show them around my town and what not. It's going to be grand.

It was so hot today.

Oh and I found some NEW glasses. Real Ray Bans! Club Masters! 3100 yen!