Christmas Cake, Cards, and Downton

A belated Merry Christmas and a Happy 2013! I hope you enjoyed the holiday season. We ate our fair share of Christmas cake here:

And I enjoyed another year of doing a secret santa christmas card exchange at my schools. My students drew names of whom they would make a card to in a lottery. My favorite was a 3rd year girl writing to a 1st year boy:

The 3rd years are in the midst of studying for high school entrance exams, and all the grades had lengthy workbooks of homework in each subject to do over the winter vacation. It is not surprising to see the senpai (senior students) scolding the younger students like this.
Meanwhile, yours truly spent the beginning of vacation "studying" in preparation of going to London by watching Downton Abbey.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish for England to be like Downton, or a Jane Austen novel.

My entry about our honeymoon there would make this post lengthy, so I will save it for a separate one. Until then, you can get a preview with my photo album here.

This is Halloween

Being in a country that doesn't celebrate Halloween doesn't bother me too much. I'm a bit of a humbug... Halloween is fun when you're a kid or around kids. Halloween in Japan is mostly an excuse for businesses to put up a few decorations and proclaim a Halloween sale. My students, though, are my kids and I've enjoyed giving them a taste of another culture with Halloween parties and activities. This year I held a jack o' lantern drawing contest with hilarious results:

Anime charcters, creepy faces, cuteness, and a tomato too!

Costuming is a bit of a challenge, but I refashioned a dress into a skirt, bought a tie, poofed out my hair, and used a chopstick as a wand to become Hermione. More than a few people thought I was dressed up as a student thanks to the school uniform look.

I figured this is probably the last year I can get away with being a Harry Potter character, which makes me sad.

I caught another cold and am feeling a bit under the weather, but I need to show you a few of my sewing projects I completed, so I'll try harder to get those posts up!

Happy Halloween!

Boys of Summer

Schools in Japan have Sports Festivals, or Sports Day, and most of my schools have them around this time of year. The days are still blazingly hot, but the nights are showing signs of Fall by cooling off. Sports Day is a nice sendoff for Summer and way to try to enjoy the heat.
Students form teams and compete against one another in various events. Usually there's races and relays, along with tug-of-war. Last weekend I attended my main school's Sports Day, and since it's such a big school (almost 400 students), events are broken down into boys' and girls' events. For example, boys do the traditional tug-of-war with the rope, and the girls do a form of it where they race to pick up 6 ft. long pipes and carry them to their team's side. Elementary schools do something similar, but with tires instead. Often, the last unclaimed pipe/tire becomes a chaotic battle as every member tries to help drag it to their team's side, and usually time runs out before the last point is claimed.
Sometimes students perform a dance too. My girl students wear happi (Japanese robe/vests) and do both a traditional Japanese dance and then a westernized number. 

(Just to warn you, these pictures are blurry because 1. Keepin' people anonymous, and 2. I liked playing with my blurry camera option.)

Obstacle courses are popular events, and this year each grade had a different task to do in their race. 1st years had to crowd 5 people into a hula hoop and run together. 2nd years had to form a line and pass exercise balls behind them to their teammates. 3rd years always do a 3-legged race.... but instead of 2 people, an entire homeroom class runs together to the other side. Now that is some serious teamwork, and it's tough not to get out of sync and fall. They did very well this year. 

There was also a girl's relay where 4 people at a time carried the above-mentioned long pipes and had to twist and turn around cones.
Boys also have a time-honored tradition of a battle game called "kibasen," where 1 student is lifted by two others to form a knight on a horse. Each knight has a cap, and the teams battle to knock off the opposing cavalry's caps. It reminds me a bit of the "chicken fights" we had as kids in the pool.
Another big tradition is "kumitaiso," which is gymnastics. This is one of my favorites, because I like seeing my students form tall pyramids and towers using their strength.

I've felt reminiscent of Field Day in elementary school where we did obstacle courses, races, and my all time favorite, the parachute.

It's been fun, Summer, but now I'm ready for Fall!

New town, new faces, new experiences…

About 3 weeks ago I moved from Kudamatsu to Fukuyama. Fukuyama is about a 3 hour`s drive by highway east along the coast from Kudamatsu. There`s many reasons why I moved, and I`m happy with my decision. While I live in a bigger city (around a population of 460,000), I teach in the town next to it, which has a smaller population of 58,000. I enjoy the many things to do and see in a bigger town, but I also like the environment and attitude of the smaller town, especially job-wise. Here`s some highlights:

Big town Fukuyama

Many libraries… with an English book section!

So many restaurants to try, and the variety is wider

The shopping… also has more variety, and a Gap

Big scale festivals. Fukuyama has a Rose festival in May I want to go to

Fukuyama has a castle

Better public transit and to more places

Usually a bit warmer than the rural, mountainous areas

Small town Kasaoka

Beauty of nature, including mountain views

Not as crowded and full of traffic jams

2 words: island beaches

More relaxing atmosphere

Smaller class sizes for me to teach

An international exchange group

Less people means less names for me to memorize

Living in a bigger city means more internationalization. In a metropolis like Tokyo, you`ll see more translated into English, more foreigners, and more places adapted for them. If you`re looking to live a more traditional Japanese lifestyle and learn Japanese day-to-day survival-style, the countryside is better. I`m glad I have the opportunity to live in a mid-sized city yet experience the culture of a smaller part of Japan. While I have pangs of jealousy for those who live in the big metropolises, where they have endless selection of things to do, see, and eat, I`m content to live a slower, more inexpensive life where I can focus my study of Japan and its language.

I have a total of 3 junior high schools. My main school`s total amount of students is about 400 students, and the other two are 18 and 7, respectively. The school with 7 total is on an island, so once a week I`ll be riding a ferry for about 30-40 minutes to this small island, where I`ll be teaching in a school with a beautiful beach view from the windows:

The 18 student school is also on a shore of a former mountainous island. The water between the mainland and the island was filled in and converted to farms for food crops a long time ago. Even though this school is now part of the mainland, it`s tucked by the seaside and surrounded by mountains. The area boasts that it has over 88 small shrines scattered about the mountains. While my main school doesn`t have unique surroundings, it makes up with a big student body and many activities and opportunities. Having only 3 schools gives me the chance to visit all my schools more often, and interact with the students/teachers more, for which I`m very happy.

Photo Dump

I have a ton of random pictures on my phone and my camera that I never know what to do with. They don't fit into a specific trip folder on my computer, but they are interesting, nonetheless.


Here's a shot of me at one of my school's mochitsuki festivals, where everyone pounds rice the old-fashioned way into a glutinous dough for making mochi, or rice cakes.


Here's a better shot of the teachers in action.


During some down time at school I tried a new craft: woodworking. Maybe if this teaching thing doesn't work out...


Found this R2D2 made of junk outside of a random shop. The interesting thing is he has a new cd/radio player installed in the middle of him, as a way to play music and attract customers.


My loaner car for the week is brand spanking new, and I couldn't help taking a picture of the evil 666km mileage.


The road construction signs in my neighborhood soothe any anger you have with soothing pictures. This one has lovely flowers, and another had a photo of a playful dolphin.


You know, I miss Starbucks a lot, even though I don't drink coffee. I never knew I missed the delicious cinnamon rolls. There's just something about lounging with a warm beverage in a cafe. There's only a few Starbucks here and they're pretty far, making it a treat.

A Pleasant Surprise

I mentioned awhile ago about one of my schools taking interesting school photos while I was there. I ordered the pictures back in July, before summer vacation, expecting to get them when I returned in the fall. Unfortunately, my schools got switched and I don't go to that school anymore. I gave up on ever seeing those photos. A month in to the fall semester, I was at another elementary school when the principal told me I had a guest. It was the secretary from that school! She brought the pictures to me. I asked her how much I owed her, and she said they were free: a gift for the year I spent at that school. I was so overwhelmingly happy by this.
I give you my class pictures from Mitsuo:

I'm the one in the back row, 4th from the left. Boy my hair was short then.


I could draw you an arrow to which dot I am, but it really doesn't matter too much.
I especially like the aerial shot with us spelling out the school's name. Luckily the name isn't too complicated in kanji (Chinese characters) since the school is small.

Will I Ever Get Used to This?

A few thoughts on things that throw me for a loop here in Japan:

Earthquakes. I'm from Michigan, so I've felt maybe one there in my life. I've felt 3 small ones here, and I would probably lose count of how many if I lived in a more major earthquake spot, like Tokyo. Every time they occur I feel freaked out. Afterwords the slight jarring/vibrating is enough to fool my body into thinking it's moving for several minutes, leaving me in a slight state of anxiousness. Of course, there's really no need to worry: it's like the sensation you get if you're in one of those vibrating massage chairs then get out. Last week there was one with an aftershock that surprised me. It's probably the sheer surprise of them that puts my body into an over-sensitive state.

I never have to be embarrassed of what I take pictures of here. The Japanese will always have me beat. I was at school, and we had an earthquake evacuation drill. The kids were ducking and jogging out of school in a quiet, orderly fashion, some holding masks to their mouths as a precautionary to dust/smoke. The school secretary was taking pictures. I'm sure those pictures will help us all relive that wonderful day in the future.

I was in a fifth grade classroom listening to the morning homeroom class meeting. There's the usual greetings, roll call, and uniform name tag check (they all wear a name badge with their year and class number on it). The teacher inquires during roll if they feel ok, have their badges, and also have a package of tissues (that last one... incredibly handy. Elementary kids sneeze and make messes frequently). It's really good that the teacher tries to keep track of who's got the sniffles and such, right? The next question threw me a curve ball:
"Who didn't poop this morning? Raise your hands."
And of course, some students nonchalantly raise their hands.
I had no idea that Japan was that in-sync and on schedule. Shame on my lazy American digestive system.
I should have expected this, because they also get regular teeth, heart, and urine checks. You should have seen my face when I was told what all the small cups on the table next to my desk were for.