Run

Actual sports day post. The day before the sports day I asked a student how the weather was going to be (typical question for students) to which he responded with 'cloud and rainy... but sunny in our hearts' which is a good outlook for the day I think. Turns out it did not rain but stayed consistently cloudy all day. The teachers all said that it was a good thing it was cloudy because it wasn't so hot but let's face it - sunny weather is the best kind of weather. So mediocre weather aside the day went off without a hitch. Last year it was a first for me so this year didn't hold the same level of thrill but this year I felt more at home with everything. I had absolutely no responsibilities but this year I felt more comfortable with that. I now know most of the students' names, I can speak more Japanese and I've done it all before so this time around I knew what to expect - meaning I could enjoy the day a lot more than I could last year.

(kids trying to grab sweet bread with their mouths. unsuccessfully.)

Watching the kids participate was fun because it looked like they were having a great time. It was great to watch them run in the races with huge smiles on their face. A far cry from the sports days at Beaconhills. 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m in sprints, hurdles, and relays; long jump, high jump, triple jump; discus, shotput and javelin. I don't remember having a smile on my face during any of these ... does anyone else? No.

(Wait, he's not at a Beaconhills sports day - why does he look dead?)

I ran in the relay like I did last year against the third year students. There were three teams, class 1 + class 2 + teachers/parents. This year I was the second runner. Upon starting the race it became immediately obvious we would lose as our first runner handed me the baton about half a field behind the students. Meaning from the second runner we were already half a lap behind. So we lost hideously as expected but it was still fun. Tell you what wasn't fun? The pain in my legs the next day.

(It's not a very flattering picture of me but I thought you might want to see it)

So I'll leave you with some pictures of the day and you can fill in the blanks yourself.

(Fatty Magoo wrestling a pipe from two lesser females)

( The leader of the winning team, the trophy is almost as big as he is!)

(tug of war)

(throwing balls into a basket. Just 'cause)

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.