Gion Festival: Day 1

Friday was my town's local Gion Festival. It was amazing, and my pictures don't do it justice--doubly so because I forgot my camera and had to use my cell phone to take pictures instead. So I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs in this post.

The main part of the festival was the parade. A bunch of guys carried/pushed/pulled these gigantic wooden floats that weigh 2 tons. A bunch of kids rode the floats, waving and playing taiko drums. These things were enormous, which I hope you can tell even from my bad photos. And they didn't have wheels. The men dragged them down the road, and it literally left skid marks behind on the pavement.

They had this whole chanting cheer going on, too. It would build up, and then they'd propel the float forward in a short burst (or turn it, or rock it back and forth), and get as far as they could before stopping for a rest. You could tell they were tired when they were done.

It was fun when they crossed the main road, because they had to stop and wait for the light to turn green.

Since Jamie and I were the only foreigners there, a lot of people came up to talk to us and show us around. In fact, for the six or so hours we were there, we were only alone for about 20 minutes. We even ended up eating dinner with a bunch of the float-pulling guys.

My students were everywhere. There were a lot of shouts of "Kristen!" and then some impromptu English practice. (Hello. How are you? I'm fine, thank you. And you?) All the random people we met were very impressed with the number the kids who knew me. But then again, some of the kids who shouted hello weren't even my students.

The bigger floats were packed with kids and taiko drummers, but the smaller ones had dancers, like the one below. When the float would stop, the dancers would come out and do a number, and then they'd go back inside for the next round of float-pulling. I can only imagine what it was like to be inside the float as they were spinning and shaking it around.


The floats were pulled to the grounds of a temple, where there were lots of stalls set up with festival food. There was also a traditional dance, which you can sort of see in the picture below. A bunch of guys with drums and giant fans danced around a big fire. It was really neat to watch.

Overall, it was an amazing day, and I swear we must have met half the town, so it was a good day for international relations, too. ;)

School; Gakkou; 学校

Today I took my camera to my little school in the mountains, because the scenery is beautiful up there. The bus dropped me off in front of the school at 8:50, and I decided to take a picture of the steps leading up the mountain side through the trees to the school's entrance. I took my camera out of its case...

And saw that the batteries were dead.

So, yeah. Sorry about that everyone. I forgot to take the batteries out of the camera after my last picture, and my camera has a nasty habit of sucking batteries dry even when it's turned off. (How does it do that? Seriously?) So I have no pretty pictures for you.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and while this blog entry isn't going to be that long, I figure I'll take the chance to describe some aspects of Japanese schools and let your imagination do the rest.

Those of you who watch anime probably already know this, but people have to take off their shoes before entering a Japanese school (in the same way they have to take them off before entering a house). The students have to wear uniform slippers, but the teachers can wear anything they want. At first I used the visitor slippers. They're up on a rack at the entrance, have the school's name printed on them, and in the case of my mountain school are bright green. I'm lucky in that I can manage to just fit into them (Most guys I talk to can't), and it worked out well enough until the first time I wore stockings. The slippery slippers combined with the stockings caused the shoes to slide off my feet constantly--which made getting up stairs awkward, I can tell you. So now I bring a pair of sandals with me.

A great part of teaching English in Japanese schools is the teachers' room. In America (at least in my experience) teachers have their own classrooms with their own desks, bulletin boards, storage cupboards, etc, and the teachers' room is a sort of break room. In Japan, all the teachers' desks are in the teachers' room, and they go to the different grades' classrooms to teach. Now, some people would rather have their own space, but I like this setup because it puts all the teachers in the same place for me to chat with. It also serves as a break room because there's tea and coffee, and because of the Japanese tradition of omiyage (bringing friends and coworkers presents back when you go on vacation) there's always various snacks and treats. FYI, this setup is the same in businesses; workers don't have cubicles or seperate offices, but rather everyone's desks are set up in the same room.

Also, Japanese schools have designated cleaning time, where students get out brooms and stuff and tidy up the school building. Pretty different, huh?

So there are some tidbits about Japanese school life for your reading pleasure.

Sushi!

Japanese schools have something called 文化祭 (bunkasai), which translates to culture festival. My tiny school up in the mountains had one this Saturday, and I attended. The morning was a sort of ceremony/recital. Each grade sung songs and showed pictures from their class trips. A few students had solo numbers either singing or playing instruments, and the 3rd year boys put on this really funny dance number. Artwork was on display, and the morning concluded with a final song sung by the entire school.

Then it was sushi-making time.

A bunch of teachers, students, and parents gathered in the cooking classroom to make makizushi. We were grouped at tables like this:

This is actually a really good picture, because it shows all the stages of sushi development. First you have the blank sheet of nori, as shown in the top right corner. Then you spread the rice over it and add ingredients (shrimp, cucumbers, etc), like the top left. Finally you roll it, like the person is doing on the bottom left, and you end up with the final product, shown on the bottom right.

I made three rolls all together, and it was a lot of fun. The lady who was instructing said I'd gotten really good at it by the third one. :)

Once I got home I chopped the rolls into pieces:

And it was delicious.

Another First Day of School

So today I went to my tiny school up in the mountains for my first classes there. It only has forty students, so I was able to meet the entire school in three periods. And the English teacher is really friendly and a big Pirates of the Caribbean fan--so I think we're going to get along great ;)

Today was also the first day I got to each lunch with the students! In Japan, students don't have the option of bringing lunch from home; they all eat the school-provided lunch. And it's healthy stuff too. Today we had fish, rice, miso soup (tofu and seaweed), this noodle thing mixed with mushrooms, and milk. Oh, and an umeboshi, which is this pickled fruit thing that is very, very sour. I think I amused all the students by my reaction too it (which was basically screwing up my face and saying "sour" in Japanese).

And since I only had classes in the morning, I got home by two o'clock. And did laundry. But that's not very exciting, so I won't blog about it ;)

Bonus Pictures: An eating contest at the festival I went to on Saturday in the neighboring town!

First Day of School!

So, this week I finally got around to what I came to Japan to do: teaching! I visited two junior high schools, one on Thursday and one on Friday, to do my introductory lesson. Each class of students was a little different. Some were very quiet. Others were...not. But the basic format of my lesson was the same.

I did my self-introduction. This involved a lot of big, laminated pictures including a map of Florida, a photo of Disney World, and a family picture, to name a few. Basically I'd just talk about myself for a good fifteen minutes. A highlight was when I'd show them this picture:

of a specialty Florida dish and tried to get them to guess what it was. When they threw out a couple wrong answers (or just stared at me silently in some cases) I flipped over the picture to show them:
And they all got a kick out of the fact that you can eat fried gator in Florida. (Sort of like this Floridian gets a kick out of eating fish heads in Japan.)

So after my presentation I'd open up the floor to questions, and if they were completely silent I made them take out paper and write down three questions. Some common questions were whether I had a boyfriend and how tall I was (which I really should've looked up in centimeters, since they don't use feet and inches over here [or practically anywhere outside America, for that matter]).

Then the students did quick introductions in English. "My name is ____. I like ____."

And finally we played a game. I had them break up into groups of 5, and I put a postcard in the middle of their desks. Then I'd pick a keyword from my pictures (Ex: Florida) and they'd have to listen for me to say it. The first person to smack the card after I said it won. We would play for several rounds, and some classes got more into it than others. (At one point I had a student rolling around on the floor in laughter.)

And that's the gist of it. I'm going to be doing this same lesson for quite a while, since I've only visited 2 out of my 4 schools, and I haven't seen all the classes in the schools I have visited yet. But I'm having a lot of fun! The kids seem really glad to have me (lots of shouted "hello"s when they pass me in the hall) and I'm looking forward to getting past the introductions and getting to know them better.

And now, since I haven't posted any Japan-related pictures yet, have some of the castle I visited: