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.