November's 12 on 12

Well, I wasn't expecting to have much luck with today's 12 on 12 assignment. Life has been feeling fairly routine. But I dutifully brought my camera along with me today and I was glad I did!

Photos 1, 2 and 3. The 9th graders have been tasked with doing speeches in English to introduce traditional Japanese things to me. It's been quite interesting. Today was the the third class' turn and I took photos of each group. Here are the most interesting of the eight presentations.


The abacus. How it works is still a mystery to me. The teacher asked them to demonstrate 1 +2. Hello, we have ten fingers, just count it out!!


The clever boy on the left took photos of his grandmother's living room which is very traditional. In the photos were a household Buddhist altar, a set of dolls which are a traditional wedding present (the dolls are old people, so it's a wish to grow old together), a folding screen, and tatami mats.For some reason, every class has shown me these little bean bags that kids juggle. And there is always one kid in the class who is a really good juggler.

Photos 4 and 5. This week, the 8th graders are doing Trial Week. Businesses in the community host the students this week as they try being clerks and waitresses and gas station attendants and so on.

The 8th grade English teacher took me to lunch where these two students were working. They were so cute and full of nervous giggles as they served their English teachers lunch (more on lunch in later photos!).Other students are spending Trial Week doing community service projects at nursing homes or at this orphanage. (These students are in their gym uniforms)

Photos 6 and 7. Just when I thought that spaghetti is a fairly safe option when presented with a menu completely in Japanese script, they decide to add deep fried (or maybe dried) minnows to the spaghetti. I don't want to elaborate, lunch was traumatic enough.

Photo 8. A family cemetary in a bamboo grove. (It started raining at this point, so that was the end of the today's photography. These last photos are ones I've taken earlier.)

Photo 9. Vending machine containing large bottles of alcohol!

Photo 10. This is ingenuous! You know how kids always love to climb UP the slide? Well, look at this - handles on the slide so the kids can do just that!

Photo 11. Couldn't pass up taking a photo of this McDonalds. It just looks so homey. Did I tell you about the time I went into the McDonalds and just pointed to the photos of Coke and fries. Apparently I pointed to the "super size" of both. I was sooo happy with my mistake!

Photo 12. An elementary school practicing for Sports Day. Here they are practicing tug of war, one class against another. Except for the practice, they don't have a rope! This was soo funny to watch - the kids pretended to pick up the rope, heave and take a little step back. Then the other side would do the same!

the bum's rush through the tea ceremony

For weeks, we've been talking about going to a tea ceremony at one of Japan's many gardens. And today, we decided to head over to the garden next to Himeji Castle to admire the fall colors and try the tea ceremony. Much is written about the tea ceremony - how the elaborate ritual is intended to give the recipent time to comtemplate the tea, and life in general. We were excited to finally experience this ancient tradition and happily took off our shoes to enter the tea house and paid our 500 yen. What we didn't know is that today, approximately 150 high school students were also visiting this tea house to experience the tea ceremony. So we were ushered in, seated in low chairs, given our sweets and our tea to gulp down and then move on out to make room for the next group of guests!! It was rather anti-climatic! But we plan to return on a quieter day. Here are a few photos of the event.

There happened to be a wedding at the garden today, so I snuck a photo of the bride and groom in traditional wedding clothes.

I was amused by all the shoes at the entrance to the tea house. This should have been our first hint that they were busy today.Our sweet. It's shaped like a ginko leaf. It was rice dough folded over white sweet bean paste (no surprise there).

The bowl of frothy green tea. I thought it tasted like seaweed, but then again, I think everything here tastes like seaweed or fish.

The server/hostess at the tea house.

Some guests at the tea house. They dressed for the occasion. We wore blue jeans.After the tea ceremony, we wandered around the garden a bit and saw this man whose job was to pick the algae off the stones in the little stream.

Tagged

Reading the blog of my friend Christine, who is currently living in Heidelberg, I was inadvertantly tagged. I guess this is a twist on those emails people sometimes send around:
Jobs I've Had:
1. One of Santa's elves, back in grad school.
2. Reader of English flashcards, slowly and well-enunciated (my current position)
3. Peace Corps volunteer - this position entailed being the village's chief source of entertainment, as in "did you see what that odd mzungu did yesterday?"
4. Compliance and Enforcement Officer (picture me traipsing around muddy construction sites tugging at silt fence)

Places I've Lived
1. Phoenix
2. Kenya
3. Boston
4. Japan

Foods I Love
1. Chocolate (brownies, cake, ice cream, candy bars)
2. Ethiopian food!
3. Hummus and pita
4. Mini Reeses Peanut Butter Cups

Websites I Visit
1. www.cnn.com
2. www.facebook.com
3. www.msnbc.com
4. www.hyperdia.com (for the train schedules)

Places I'd Rather Be
1. Phoenix... sometimes...
2. Hawaii
3. just travelling around Japan more
4. anywhere around the Mediteranean

Movies I Love & TV Shows I Watch
1. Will & Grace reruns
2. Friends reruns
3. Scrubs reruns
4. any movie someone here at Shirasagi is lending out. I can't afford to be fussy!

People I Tag
We here at Shirasagi read each other blogs religiously - partly to find out what everyone has been up to, but we often already know what everyone is up to...
On that note, I tag anyone here at Shirasagi who is reading my blog! You're it!

Fooled again

It's very humbling to be illiterate.

Last week, I was in the combini (convenience store) looking for a snack and saw this package. Must be dried fruit, I thought. Raisins, and maybe dried apricots, or even mango, and dates. It was pretty cheap for fruit, but for 100 yen, worth a try.

I was soooo wrong. These are candied beans. Try to imagine pinto beans and lima beans being candied and sugared. Not so yummy, but at least it wasn't some sort of sea creature.

In retrospect, considering that they put "sweet" red beans into ice cream, I should have guessed. (Just this past Saturday, Heather was tricked into thinking she was buying a chocolate chip ice cream bar... nope, red beans in ice cream.)

Okayama and Takebe

This weekend Heather, Suvanya (Sue) and I went to Okayama. We weren't really planning to go by Shinkansen (bullet train), but somehow those were the tickets we ended up with. Heather and Sue had already been on the Shinkansen, but they were very patient with my child-like excitement! It was very cool - the trains go flying through the station! Inside was like being on airplane, complete with seat trays and a stewardess going down the aisle. We arrived in Okayama, 90 km away in just 30 minutes (I guess that would be 112 miles an hour).

In Okayama, we visited the Koraku-en garden, the third most beautiful garden in Japan (Sue asked the obvious question - what are the first two... but Lonely Planet didn't say. Guess we'll never know, unless we stumble upon them by accident). The garden was quite nice, with great views of the castle. As usual, I went a little crazy with the camera. Here are some of my favorite shots.

After lunch, we visited Okayama Castle, also called the Crow Castle because it’s black. The shachi (the fish with tigers heads (aka dolphins by some confused Japanese people)) on this castle are gold, which contrasts beautifully with the black of the castle.

Okayama was filled with statues, trinkets and manhole covers of the local hero - Momotaro. It's not a very compelling story, so I'll let those of you interested check out that link to wikipedia. No matter how uncompelling the story, the figures are cute! (that's a dog, pheasant and monkey with Momotaro)

On Saturday night, we stayed at an International Villa (kind of like a hostel). It was about an hour train ride north of Okayama, and it was in the country. Definitely rural – at least as rural as Japan gets! The villa was attached to an onsen – hot springs for bathing in. After dinner, Heather and I checked it out. A very helpful sign explained the rules to us in Engrish.
The manners when bathed to the spa:
1. Let’s wash a body in the wash place.
2. After scouring off the bubble of the soap fully, let’s enter a bathtub.
3. So as not to generate spray, let’s enter a bathtub quietly.
4. To drink at the bathroom and to eat are a ban.

Another interesting sign at the onsen –
“Make not do a lost article. The lost article disposes of it.”
(makes me wonder if they’ve got some magical lost-and-found system here in Japan! Or maybe they’ve been reading too much Harry Potter!)

In the morning, Heather and I were the only ones at the onsen, so we were able to sneak a camera in and take this photo!

Tanuki continued

Today, I’m at an elementary school. This is the same elementary school with the stuffed tanuki extolling the virtues of safety! I think he must have been a road kill victim himself (or herself) and now is teaching children to look both ways before crossing the street! As promised, I remembered my camera so you all can see a real live (err dead stuffed) tanuki!

Elementary schools seem to have an aerial photo taken of the school every few years. (These are one of the things I stare at when I am dropped off in a school meeting room for an hour). The students are lined up in the school yard in the form of the school symbol or the name of the school. Here is a photo of the 1994 photo of this elementary school. And, by chance, a teacher is out in the school yard right now, chalking the outline for the next photo, apparently to be taken tomorrow!

And just for fun, a photo of the cigarette vending machine in front of the school.

And a photo of the scenery around the school (this school is in a rural area and today was a foggy day - very picturesque).

Cultural Festival at School

All of last week, Yumesaki Junior High School spent the afternoon class periods preparing for their cultural festival. Each homeroom class has been practicing a song for the choir competition, and the school halls and grounds were filled with groups of students singing. I wasn’t sure what else might occur on cultural festival day, but it had to be big! On Monday, the entire school spent a half hour doing “big cleaning”. This actually meant “gardening”. So instead of just having an adult run a lawn mower over the grass, everyone was pulling up handfuls of grass and weeds. I’m sure if I asked why, I’d get the standard answer that this teaches the students discipline. And I’m sure they’re right about that!

On Tuesday, we had no classes at all. Instead, students spent more time practicing the songs and toured the art room and home ec and science labs where students’ projects were on display. The home ec room was particularly interesting. The 7th graders had learned about doing laundry (they could teach me a thing or two. To start with: how to read the detergent boxes. I’m afraid one day I’m going to buy bleach thinking it’s detergent and then I’ll be really sorry!), the 8th graders learned about cooking, and the 9th graders made children’s toys.

All the students also took their chairs into the gym, so that they would be ready for Wednesday (the day of the festival), and then they practiced getting up on stage and going back to their seats. (In the photos, you can see the white name tag stickers on the back of each chair with a student’s name on them.)

Finally, yesterday was the cultural festival, and I think the best comparison to make is to say it’s like Parents Night, the school play, and maybe the School Holiday party – but all on one day (not during the evening). Lots of parents came, and I was amused to see they all brought shoes or slippers to change into when they went into the gym. I asked a teacher if they had been told to do that, and she said no, everyone just knows.

The program of the day was as follows:
Greetings and singing the school song
Performance by the school brass band (they were quite good. The band teacher seemed very pleased!)
PTA choir sang a song
Speeches by students
“Who am I” game – basically killing time while the school play set up. I was honored to be one of the people featured in the game.
The school play, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. It went pretty well, just a couple minor hiccups. The actors spoke in English, but everyone in the audience had a Japanese translation of their lines, and the narrator also explained in Japanese.
Then after the lunch break, the much-anticipated school choir competition! There were 15 songs, one for each homeroom class. They were all good, but three of the five 9th grade classes were fantastic! I’m sure the judges had a very difficult time deciding. Here’s a short clip of a 9th grade class. (Just 45 seconds. I was keeping myself entertained by playing with my new camera. Can you tell?)