Oendan and Soujyusai

It’s been a good rest of the week. The first part was a filled with no little frustration due to the ever present language barrier, but that’s just part of life. I don’t take being able to speak the same language as people for granted anymore.

One of my high schools has an oendan, as since we had a cheer meeting the Oendan led cheers. Oendan is basically “cheer-people.” You could think of them as cheerleaders in that they lead cheers, however, the Oendan is composed only of boys. They wear black and there is a lot of shouting and bowing. They don’t have pom-poms but they do beat a large drum. I was lucky enough to witness the oendan group do a daikon dance. Basically, they did a little dance holding Daikon. Think of daikon as a giant white carrot, about the size of your forearm. Yeah. Seeing that lifted my spirits.

On Wednesday, I ended up going out to eat after a shopping trip with some people from church and we went to an okinomiyaki restaurant. I remember, when I first came here, how much of a mouthful “okinomiyaki” seemed. Okinomiyaki is a pancake with cabbage and whatever else you want (octopus, shrimp, cheese, fish flakes, etc.) and is super yummy. At the restaurant you cook the okinomiyaki yourself, which I thought was pretty fun.

Today was the first day of the soujyusai, or bunkasai, or school festival, at one of my high schools. So some of the students dressed up in costumes. (This is traditional school-festival behavior). My favorite groups were the Dragon Ball group, the One piece group, and the Super Smash Brothers group. There was also a kid dressed up as the shinigami from Death Note that did a great job. Anyway, it was definately enjoyable . The students in costumes went on a short parade around town. The main day of the festival is Sunday and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m amazed by the students creativity and effort at these sort of things.

I joined an aikido group. I really like aikido. No one in the group speaks English. It’s a little tricky but fun.

I am greatly anticipating my return visit to the US of A.

floating backward from twenty?

The new school year is in full swing. Two months will do that. In fact, end of term exams start the week after next thought the term doesn’t end until mid-July. They’re early because of the festival in July. The weather has been beautiful, classes are good, etc. My Japanese is slowly improving. It’s one of those things where the more you learn the more you realize that you don’t know.

I found an aikido group and am going to join. I’m really pumped about that. I anticipate the sore wrists and joints, but am more than willing to make the trade. At home I’ve been practicing with kamas a lot and that’s fun because they’re sharp and you swing them around. I cut myself, but not during practice. I was trying to use them like scissors and it didn’t work. Anyway, I still have all my digits so it’s all good.

There are days you just can’t help remembering the world is so messed up.

I had a rather scary thought the other day. What if, five or ten years from now I’m still the same person I am now. Still stumbling over the same things, still struggling with the same weaknesses. I don’t want to be the same person. I want to grow. I want to be changed.

One of the most difficult things for me at school is still students names. My goal of memorizing all the students names is not progressing well. Maybe if I saw them more than once a week? The names are written out in Roman letters, so that I can read them, but even though I see that sometimes my tongue just won’t cooperate. the other day I was calling on a student and I read the name Junichi “ju-ni-chi” when it was supposed to be “ju-n-i-chi” and all the students laughed.

Which I guess is fair, because sometimes we all laugh together at their English.

Jishin?

the irony is that since the last post, titled earthquake, we had a much bigger earthquake (and longer in duration). That earthquake came about a week ago and no one really cared. Of course, the real earthquake is the one in China.

It’s May now.

Jishin

It’s been too long since my last post. All of March has evaporated.

My mother came to visit, which was really lovely. I enjoyed seeing her. I enjoyed showing her around and being show around with her. We got to do some cool things like go to famous places and onsen and even a tea ceremony. I thought the Japanese tea ceremony was pretty neat.

I’ve finally started playing my guitar. I think I’ve played it every day this week. Don’t be fooled; I don’t possess any skill with guitar I just play the same simple things a lot and I love it. It helps me worship.

Jishin means earthquake (or it can mean confidence) and we had two small ones yesterday. Fun on the ring of fire, eh?

Koko ni iru yo

So, I heard someone rave about Koko ni iru yo by Soulja (and Aoyama Thelma), but I didn’t really think anything of it until yesterday, when I fell in love with the song. I like it a little big better than Soba ni iru, but they are both pretty nice I think.

So check them out if it floats your boat.

Graduation

Today was high school graduation. All the high schools in the area have it on the same day. There are still three or four weeks of school left for the other grades, but the seniors are free. The school year is truly coming to a close.

So, Japanese graduation. Well, there are students and speeches and tears. There are some things you would expect to see at a graduation. Then there are different things. For example, no robes. Students just wear their normal uniforms. No pomp and circumstance, no giant basketball stadium (usually one one or two parents come for the students, not the entire family and friends) All the other students (sophomores and juniors) attend as well. No valedictorian or salutatorian, no hats and tassels.

There is a lot of bowing of course, as you might expect. I bowed about seventeen times in the hour and a half ceremony and I wasn’t even involved. So those involved obviously bowed more.

When it came time to recognize the students, the homeroom teacher called out all the names of the students in the class and then a representative of the class went up to the stage to receive the class’ diplomas. No individual call outs, walking across the stage, or personal moments of glory (I guess it fits with the Japanese theme of community).

All in Japanese, so I basically understood none of what was said, but I am proud of the students and glad for them. And I was also surprised who cried. People I wouldn’t have expected to were really trying to hold it back. Lots of guys crying too.

And this evening, there is a graduation enkai for the teachers. So off I go.

Enjoying life

The last few days have been very pleasant. Work has been nice. I like classes, I like my students. I like drinking tea and learning new kanji.

I’ve been doing art in a frenzy this week. I promised I’d bring along something I’d been working on to a cultural festival this weekend, but I haven’t been working on anything. So basically I’ve been throwing something together this last week. Yeah for cut and paste! I tend to gravitate that way when left to my own lazy devices. Luckily there’s some colorful and fun origami paper to make flower from. I’m also going to do a drawing… tomorrow…

When this business ends, I’m not certain how happy I will be, but for now, life is good.

My Third Cup of Coffee

I had my third cup of coffee today. Quite an event, eh? I could’ve said that I didn’t like coffee and avoid the experience, but I drank it anyway. With the cream and sugar of course. And I kind of liked it… if people keep serving me coffee I may come to like it. But I won’t convert to it like the rest of my coffee-addicted family. …green tea is good too.

So, things in my bathroom a starting to freeze. My face wash has been difficult to get out of the bottle for quiet awhile, but yesterday my liquid foundation turned into solid foundation. This morning as well. Which makes it difficult to use. It is now in the refrigerator; that is suppose to be a better environment. Hopefully it will be better tomorrow (that is, liquid once again).

Since the snowboarding trip I haven’t done much out of the ordinary… I went to onsen again. Always nice. I went to classes. I saw some swans and ducks. They flew here all the way from Russia.

Probably just to see me.

Snowboarding and charms

So I went on this three day snowboarding trip last weekend which was an absolute blast! I think that I love snowboarding. Though I’m still just a beginner, I feel like I’m making progress. Snow is great. At least, three days of it is, and the snow was really amazing. At the top of the mountain the trees are so covered in snow they don’t look like trees but blobs, and they’re called the Zao (name of the mountain) snow monsters. It’s wickedly cold up with monsters, but pretty cool all the same.

The first day of snowboarding I got a little lost, because I got separated from the others and didn’t have a map. Ended up at a dead end on the east side of the slopes just as the lifts were shutting down. I ended up having to take a bus back to town, which was an adventure. I was happy for the bus.

Uh… let’s see. Yeah. It was a good trip.

I recently became aware of charms. I mean, you see them around here all the time. They were selling them at pretty much all the temples in Kyoto, but it didn’t really connect. The thought that an object, a pencil, a foot, a sock, was “lucky” was always just a joke to me. Ad it occurred to me recently that people seriously put some stock in that. A charm is an object that people use to feel safe, to get some control and even though they may know it might not work they put some trust in it, or are afraid to go without it. …idk. I guess I just never put myself in that mindset because, because for me pencils are wood, foots and dead animals, and socks are cotton or whatever. And they’re just that. Trust and hope and safety are in God. He’s big enough for all of it.

Anyway

January…

So, it’s obviously been too long since I posted.

January was good. Some fun things happened: like making mochi. Mochi is rice, pounded together into a single solid mass. Imagine kneading bread: fold, push, turn, repeat. Well, with mochi there is this giant wooden tub and it goes like this: hit with a hammer, fold/turn, repeat. So there’s a giant hammer involved. Lot’s of fun. In my case, there were also very large snowflakes involved. I spent most of my time doing the folding/turning, which was fun.  And mochi tastes good. I mean, it isn’t really tasteful, but you eat it with stuff, like sweet beans, seaweed, daikon, or natto. (natto=nasty)

I also went to a daruma festival. Look on daruma on wikipedia if you’re interested in what that is. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daruma ]

And there were classes and snowboarding. Oh yeah, I went snowboarding for the first time in January. Snowboarding is loads of fun but way harder than it looks. I fell down a lot and it was really tiring. I think the perfect end to a day of snowboarding is an onsen. Constant cold looses in heated baths. And it’s cool because you’re sitting outside even though there’s snow on the ground…

Uh… okay, that was the post-travel January high lights.

Today was the second good day of snow. We have flurries now and again, but today was the second day it stuck. We get the least snow out of this whole area of Japan, but I’m thrilled by even a little. Snow is so enchanting.

There you go.

Oh yeah. Unless a meteor hits or the earth shatters, my one year stay in Japan will become a two year stay in Japan.