You Spin Me 'Round

Today was the practice for the sports festival on Saturday. I was at the sports festival last year for those reading my drivel so today's spectacularities weren't as amazing this time around. Still enjoyable mind.

I've noticed in my time in Japan that Japanese people don't particularly like to wear sunglasses. I asked a teacher why this is and my suspicions were confirmed - it's because Japanese people usually have darker eyes so the sun isn't as much of an issue.

Which means I can't wear glasses because it's against the social norm.

Which means that I am suffering a slight because of who I am!

Which MEANS I am being discriminated against!!

Outrageous.

We spent the better half of the morning sponging the ground of moisture. I recall I used to do this when I played tennis as a youngster. Well... this used to happen when I was a teenager... I don't actually recall doing it myself. Needless to say using a sponge to rid the ground of water isn't a very effective way to go about things - so it was fortunate that the sun came out.

The events/games were all slightly tweaked from last year and again made so that literally anyone could win the race. Obese? Mentally disabled? Lacking legs? You can STILL WIN!! I think it's a lot of fun to watch though and it least it gets the students active. I wish I could have helped a little more and be useful but it seems there was nothing for me to do. They were big on the whole student initiative thing so I sat around and cheered when appropriate. Great.

So on Saturday I'm going to fulfill my role of awkward mandatory attendee and run in the teachers relay, get in on the tug-of-war, throw some balls into a basket and then do the dance at the end. Full itinerary. How will I ever find time to sit around and do nothing? I'll find the time somehow.

I will have to find some headbands.

Friend in the Field

Lately at one of my schools there has been some pretty heavy construction/demolition happening. Today (and for the last few days) there has been near consistent jack-hammering all day. You can hear it everywhere in the school. Annoying. There's a demonstration class happening tomorrow for the elementary school teachers to watch how a junior high school English teacher teaches. I've got to do a whole lot of unnecessary stuff for it but it should go well me thinks.

Onto the topic at hand. Onto the blog that I need to write right now or else it becomes too late to do it. Onto my ramblings of when Brendan came to stay.

(Brendan drinking beer and giving me some cartilage on a stick)

Brendan came up to visit me over the period of Golden week. It's a series of public holidays one after the other it what would appear to be clever and generous of Japan... but look harder! What ends up happening is work-holiday-work-weekend-3daysoff-work-work-weekend. Therefore meaning that a fun romp over the course of a week (thereby living up to it's name) is in actuality chopped up into tiny pieces.

We made the most of it though I think! Brendan arrived on a Saturday and after a party that night involving me getting *highly* emotionally distressed about people purposely destroying my screen doors and we set off for Nikko the next day. Because the weather has been so retarded in Japan this year (snow falling onto the cherry blossoms. Go figure) we were able to see quite a lot of cherry blossoms in Nikko which was nice!

Other than Nikko we went to Disneyland which we thought would be crowded but totally wasn't for some reason! I showed Brendan my town and I also took him to the town I work in, Bato, which was having some kind of pseudo-festival. In Bato we met up with my friend Sam and had some soba at the restaurant he works at. He's from America and is on exchange - the family he's staying with runs a soba restaurant that he works in every now and then. Afterwards we made some pottery famous in the area/prefecture and had some fresh fish and eel from one of Sams old host families whose children I teach.

We went down to Tokyo for a bit and met up with some friends to go to a seaside town called Kamakura. It's a nice place but it was SO busy! Dare I say busier than Disneyland? By the end of that day we were exhausted but after staying in Tokyo for the night we made more of a trip around Tokyo visiting various places and catching up with another friend in Harajuku to go see a shrine together. For the next two days afterwards I had to work so Brendan wisely opted to stay in Tokyo in a pretty ritzy hotel while I slaved away at teaching English to inattentive children unwilling to admit the holiday was over.

He came back to my apartment on Friday night and we had some dinner with some pals and the next day we had to rush (i.e. speed) to Utsunomiya the next day so Brendan could get on his bus and therefore his flight.

(Snow in Nikko)

I actually stole these photo's from Brendan as I didn't really take many pictures. I'll try to take a picture of Brendan's finished toilet-bowl-cup from when we made pottery. Art.

Any Questions?

Breaking it Slowly

I managed to drunkenly break into my own car from the outside with a coat hanger after locking my keys inside. Convenient! I'll write a post either tomorrow or the day after about Brendan's stay. So uhh... look forward to that!

kris.

Cars

For the last year or so I've been driving around Japan on my international drivers license which has been great as far as I'm concerned - $25 bucks and a picture apparently qualifies me to drive in over 46 countries no questions asked. But that only lasts for one year and mine expired back in March. Usually, to get a Japanese drivers license once must undergo a written test (in notoriously poor/ambiguous English), a driving test (that people fail on average 5 times) and finally an eye test. So generally it takes a long time and multiple tries to pass.

Fortunately, as an Australian citizen I can skip over the written and driving test and just do the eye test to obtain my license. I don't know why... but I'm not exactly complaining about it! However, even as an Australian citizen there are still a few bureaucratic hoops to jump through, such as; proving when my license was first issued, proving I had my license in my country for 3 months before coming to Japan and proving I'm a man because it doesn't actually state that on my license. All easily dealt with but they need original documents which must be sent from Australia etc. It's all quite bothersome.

So after I finally had everything and got the day off work to go in I went to meet my fate.

The day begins at 6:30am. The license centre is located in such a place that it is extremely difficult to catch public transport there ... so I didn't. I had to write my name on a list at 9:00am to have an interview at 1:00pm so after wasting four hours I was taken to a small room and questioned. Then waited. Then had a picture taken. Then waited. Finally getting my licence at 4:00pm. A process that in total took about 40 minutes was some how stretched out to 7 hours. Go figure.

In any case, my picture isn't awful and at least I'm not driving illegally anymore. It must be noted though that while I was driving illegally I was also driving exceptionally safely and now that I have my license I can feel myself slacking a little...

My car changed a while ago from the blue one I may have posted here a while ago to a light purple (dare I say lavender) car. It's a better car in all regards as it has things like central locking and power windows but the fact that it is the WORST POSSIBLE COLOUR FOR A CAR is a bit of a downer for me. Nevertheless, it is what it is so I'll have to deal with it.

Look out Japan!

Unforgettable Season

You know, when I was in Australia the weather was lovely! Beautiful blue skies, sunny days and perfect temperatures in that I had the choice between shorts or pants - it all really hit the spot. Then I came back to Japan which is supposedly spring and it was COLD! I put off wearing thermals for the first few days because IT WAS THE PRINCIPLE! Why should I be wearing thermals in SPRING?! Needless to say the weather has been on and off the past few days/weeks and further needless to say is that the Japanese weather forecast has been wrong almost every single time.
But what grinds my gears is that Friday night it actually snowed. It SNOWED in SPRING!
Snow aside, the cherry blossoms have... blossomed... so everything has become about 200% more beautiful. These tree's are pretty much everywhere but you wouldn't know it until around this time ever year when they burst forth with a mass of these beautiful flowers. It was quite a site to see the cherry blossoms against snowfall. I don't think that it happens very often. I didn't take any pictures of that though because I've been quite busy the past few days!

(above; a seemingly normal park TRANSFORMED by cherry blossoms)

Busy practicing for the festival that was this weekend! For those of you not in the know I've been practicing taiko (japanese drumming) for the past few weeks and today I performed with lots of the peeps I've been practicing with. Maybe some of you remember when I first moved into my apartment there was a festival happening outside? Well it's the same festival! What it entails is each town within the greater city of Otawara has a float/portable shrine. Inside these floats people play the taiko as it gets pulled around the city. It's a big festival with 9 floats in total, heaps of food stalls and huge community participation. This year I was one of the drummers!

(above; the float I played in / hung around)

So on both Saturday and Sunday I was in the whole Japanese get-up and followed, played and otherwise lingered around the town/float I was associated with. Which turned out to be a lot of fun in case any of you were wondering. The biggest shame is that I've only been practicing for a short time and I won't be here for the next festival so I wasn't able to play to my full potential. I was still pretty good though I think! It was really nice to be a part of the group and do things like cheering along with the players, eating the home cooked lunches, drinking the free beer and so on. In some ways I think a white person participating in such a Japanese event is probably a bit odd (I did get my fair share of surprised stares) but the community were all very welcoming.

(above; My taiko teacher and I)

The festival culminated at night with all of the lantern lit floats closing in to form a circle full of people jumping, screaming and having a good time while the drummers went nuts and played as fast and as loud as they could. It was quite an experience I tell you! I feel very lucky to have been a part of it and to have had the experiences that I had. Not many foreigners can do stuff like this y'know!
Otherwise it's back to school as usual. I don't think any of my students saw me play as my town is a little far away from them so maybe I'll keep this as my little secret ;)



P.S. Brendan comes next week!

Back on the Motorway

Thought this blog was dead didn't ya? Thought I'd given it up didn't ya? Well to be honest I did too. I mean going a few months without blogging would kill off any blog wouldn't it? Fortunately I have a lot of you on some sort of email alert system so it's probably not even a big issue!

I don't want to go back and describe what I've done in the last few months but I will say it was, and still is (a bit) cold.

In the last few months, somewhere along the line, I decided that I want to stay in Japan for a little bit longer. But in the midst of sorting all that out I had a brief holiday in Australia! It was really good to be home and see everyone again. I ate all the foods I've missed and I saw all the friends I missed. I missed a lot of things... but I'm still loving what Japan has to offer. My schools are still great (if not better with the addition of new teachers), my apartment, friends and lifestyle are just amazing.

But my plan is to go to university in February so I'll be back sometime before that.

So I'll keep this brief but imagine it as oil to the joints. Getting the blog back in swing for the new year!

Today is Hanami (a.k.a. flower viewing) where we all go to a park, look at the cherry blossoms, and get drunk. I've got a complicated method of getting there and then to an after party but if all goes to plan it should be a wonderful night!

Post soon!

kris.

Celebration

(Charlie bucket enjoying himself)

Last Saturday was my birthday.

Oh thank you!

I went camping on Friday night which was a lot of fun but it was so goddamn cold. When we arrived at the campsite the puddles on the road had already turned to ice and it just got colder from there. I've been discovering lately how naive I am when it comes to cold environments. Prior to this night, the coldest I have ever been was when I was in New York. I was cold because I was studying in Miami, which is hot, so I just didn't own anything warm. Here in Japan I was under the impression I had warm things and yet apparently I do not. Eight layers. Eight layers of clothing on my torso, two of which were thermals. My lower body protections consisted of 2 pairs of thermals, jeans and the hope that I wouldn't die from some cold-related illness.

Sitting around the fire was fun and talking to everyone was a lot of fun but I woke up the next day at around 5:30am shivering quite badly (Happy Birthday!)

Saturday consisted of cleaning. I cleaned most of my apartment and just before I finished I had a nap and then people arrived. To be honest I wasn't quite sure how many people were going to come. I sent out the invites on Facebook and got some responses face-to-face; some on the internet; I invited a lot of people who don't use Facebook; There was another party on the same night that conflicted with some of the friends I invited; I'm a little out of the way for people and a horde of other reasons. Sorry I just went into listing reasons and didn't really warn you about the change of structure - did you read it ok?

(shoes)

Turns out I didn't really need to worry as almost everyone I invited came which was wonderful! The other party didn't conflict too much as people either came to mine instead or came afterwards. I was also happy as everyone was talking to each other and not forming distinct/separate groups which I was a little worried about.

To set up for the party I moved a few bits of furniture around and brought up some furniture from below my apartment. I cleaned and vacuumed and I also made punch. I made punch because it's interesting and deceptively alcoholic. When I first made it before most of the people arrived, I nor my friend Christal could taste the alcohol - but a Japanese girl said that it was waaay too strong. Each to their own I guess. In any case it worked beautifully as everyone got considerable drunk and therefore had fun.

I'm sure the sober people had fun too but probably not as much.

Assortment of events;

- The music was hijacked by people with poor taste in music (read: RnB fans) so the music degenerated from the party playlist, to RnB youtube videos, to silence.

- Turning on too many things that required power = power outage at some stage. Flicked back on. Party is go.

- I got a fair few presents even though I said I didn't want any. Some really cool and interesting ones!

- Hayley made a banana cake which was nice! I shared a slice with four people and then left it unattended for a while and came back to an empty dish covered in crumbs. The small taste I had was nice though!

- No obvious throwing up which is nice.

- My friend quit his job with the company via email. Called him the next day and he maintains that he still has no regrets and is firm in his decision.

- My paper screen doors which were already rife with holes/tears (but was subsequently healed by me and a mass of paper birds [cut from a stencil] to cover the tears) has had many NEW holes added. One big enough to put your head through... which was done... by many people.

Sunday I was going to clean but boy I just did not want to. So the rubbish was categorised by a few kind party-goers and I'm cleaning it up eventually. Don't rush me!

All in all everyone had a good time I think. I'm very lucky to have such a big(gish) apartment to hold people and that I have no neighbours. It's also good that all my friends got along with each other. I'm a very lucky person. I missed all my friends back home though and I wish I could have had you all here to celebrate with me. But 22 isn't such an important age I don't think.

Next year I'll be turning 23 on the 23rd of January. That's another cause to celebrate!

P.S. I asked my students the week before how old they thought I was. The general consensus appeared to be I looked 28. Which is wrong. Obviously.... right?