Saturday, April 22, 2006
Cherry trees in bloom
Yesterday after work I went to take photos of the cherry trees that are blooming in Seishi park. The weather was not good; it was dark, and I got rained on. Nevertheless I got a lot of photos, some of them good. I will only load a few now, because the weather may clear up sometime between now and when the blossoms fall.
Photos of Kamagadai
Today I appear to be able to load photos from work. (Yes, it is a Saturday morning and I am at work. Today is the inter-school sports exchange. I will have monday off instead).
Anyway, here is Kamagadai combined school:
Here is what is accross the road from Kamagadai school:
Here is another view of the school (see the pile of snow in the distance):
Here is the view down the road in one direction:
The other direction:
Inside the school. At the end of the corridor is the gym:
What I was standing in front of when taking the previous photo:
Friday, April 21, 2006
Creativity
I've got lots of pictures to upload, so I will separate them into different posts.
So, first of all. Recently, I have been feeling very creative. Last Saturday, I cooked a steak and ale pie. Here it is:
My dinner that evening looked like this:
Of the two or three pies I have cooked in my life, this was the best. It was not a perfect pie. There was only flaky pastry at the supermarket, so the bottom of the pie was soggy. Also, the 'ale' I used was un-watered-down Guinness Extra Stout, which perhaps was not smart. The pie tasted good for lunch the next day, but that evening it was bitter. But considering the number of pies I have made in my life, I declare the experiment a success.
Sunday evenings dinner looked like this:
The green stuff is boiled chicken in a bit of white sauce with mixed vegetables, lemon juice and a whole avocado. Tasted better than it sounds.
What I was doing for the rest of that weekend (and finally had a chance to finish last evening) was drawing this. Please click on the image to see it full size. I don't usually post here when I submit something to DeviantART, but I am so very proud of this picture.
So, first of all. Recently, I have been feeling very creative. Last Saturday, I cooked a steak and ale pie. Here it is:
My dinner that evening looked like this:
Of the two or three pies I have cooked in my life, this was the best. It was not a perfect pie. There was only flaky pastry at the supermarket, so the bottom of the pie was soggy. Also, the 'ale' I used was un-watered-down Guinness Extra Stout, which perhaps was not smart. The pie tasted good for lunch the next day, but that evening it was bitter. But considering the number of pies I have made in my life, I declare the experiment a success.
Sunday evenings dinner looked like this:
The green stuff is boiled chicken in a bit of white sauce with mixed vegetables, lemon juice and a whole avocado. Tasted better than it sounds.
What I was doing for the rest of that weekend (and finally had a chance to finish last evening) was drawing this. Please click on the image to see it full size. I don't usually post here when I submit something to DeviantART, but I am so very proud of this picture.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Kamagadai
Yesterday I promised that I would talk about the new school I am visiting, Kamagadai Shochugakkou.
I have been to Kamagadai twice since term started. Last week, I was picked up from outside Konoura Jr. High at 8.30am and taken by town car to Kamagadai. There was significantly less snow than there had been when I visited during spring vacation. When I got to school, I met the English teacher Mr. Sato. He is the husband of Yumi sensei the school nurse who left Konoura Jr. High the other week. Small world, huh? He has also just moved from another school, so the students don't really know him either. Anyway, we discussed the day's lesson plans, and then I talked with the Vice Principal. Kamagadai has a lady V.P. who is very, um, loud and genki. She kept unselfconsciously speaking broken English to me, which I thought was really good.
From 9.30am until lunch I was teaching. 2nd period was the 3rd grade student (there is only one). He is an odd boy, very shy, who seems to lack the courage to learn. His English is quite bad. 3rd period was the 2nd grade class. There are seven 2nd graders. With the exception of one boy, they are surprisingly good at English. 3rd period was the 1st grade student (again, only one). She is still filled with an elementary student's enthusiasm for learning English. She is always smiling and is eager to learn, the kind of student I wish all my students were.
Then I ate lunch with all the Jr. High kids. All nine students, two teachers and I can sit around one big table. I didn't have a schedule in the afternoon, so after having a meeting with the head of the Elementary teachers, I was taken back to Konoura. The ride back was horrible. I was sitting in the back of the car, and the driver (an old guy with a thick Akita accent) only spoke to me briefly twice. I was feeling very car sick by the time I got back to Konoura.
Yesterday, I went to Kamagadai again. I had a different driver on the way up the hill (the hunter bear-eater guy I wrote about yesterday). The V.P. was not there yesterday. The principal had not been there last week. Are they there in turns?
My morning schedule was the same as the week before. I took a few photos at lunch time. (I will probably be able to find time to load them up on Thursday or Friday, but it is unlikely I will be able to load them today). Then in the afternoon I had, not a class, but a welcome session with all the elementary students. There are less students than I thought. I had heard there were 25 students. Assuming my memory is working well, there were 16 or 17 students (I didn't do a head count). Maybe 25 is the number of all the students in the whole school.
After the embarrassing round of applause and the greeting, all the students, even the first grader who has been a student there for about two weeks, stood up and sang 'Country Road' together. I was blown away! They had all of that memorised? I have tried teaching 'Old MacDonald' to elementary students before, but all I could get them to remember was 'e-i-e-i-o'. 'We Wish You A Merry Christmas' had the same level of success despite the fact that it is played on TV and in shops for the three months leading up to Christmas.
After the singing, every student introduced themselves to me. I shook everyones hands and listened to what food and/or animal they like. Then I showed them pictures of New Zealand. After that we played 'London Bridge'. It was lots of fun.
The old driver took me back to Konoura. He did not come in the town car that is for taking people places. He came in the town car that has speakers on top and broadcasts news announcements to the people. It took a while to get back to Konoura because we drove slowly with recorded announcements blaring from the top of the car. We kept detouring to drive around suburbs and broadcast the messages (whatever they were) as widely as possible. An interesting experience.
I have been to Kamagadai twice since term started. Last week, I was picked up from outside Konoura Jr. High at 8.30am and taken by town car to Kamagadai. There was significantly less snow than there had been when I visited during spring vacation. When I got to school, I met the English teacher Mr. Sato. He is the husband of Yumi sensei the school nurse who left Konoura Jr. High the other week. Small world, huh? He has also just moved from another school, so the students don't really know him either. Anyway, we discussed the day's lesson plans, and then I talked with the Vice Principal. Kamagadai has a lady V.P. who is very, um, loud and genki. She kept unselfconsciously speaking broken English to me, which I thought was really good.
From 9.30am until lunch I was teaching. 2nd period was the 3rd grade student (there is only one). He is an odd boy, very shy, who seems to lack the courage to learn. His English is quite bad. 3rd period was the 2nd grade class. There are seven 2nd graders. With the exception of one boy, they are surprisingly good at English. 3rd period was the 1st grade student (again, only one). She is still filled with an elementary student's enthusiasm for learning English. She is always smiling and is eager to learn, the kind of student I wish all my students were.
Then I ate lunch with all the Jr. High kids. All nine students, two teachers and I can sit around one big table. I didn't have a schedule in the afternoon, so after having a meeting with the head of the Elementary teachers, I was taken back to Konoura. The ride back was horrible. I was sitting in the back of the car, and the driver (an old guy with a thick Akita accent) only spoke to me briefly twice. I was feeling very car sick by the time I got back to Konoura.
Yesterday, I went to Kamagadai again. I had a different driver on the way up the hill (the hunter bear-eater guy I wrote about yesterday). The V.P. was not there yesterday. The principal had not been there last week. Are they there in turns?
My morning schedule was the same as the week before. I took a few photos at lunch time. (I will probably be able to find time to load them up on Thursday or Friday, but it is unlikely I will be able to load them today). Then in the afternoon I had, not a class, but a welcome session with all the elementary students. There are less students than I thought. I had heard there were 25 students. Assuming my memory is working well, there were 16 or 17 students (I didn't do a head count). Maybe 25 is the number of all the students in the whole school.
After the embarrassing round of applause and the greeting, all the students, even the first grader who has been a student there for about two weeks, stood up and sang 'Country Road' together. I was blown away! They had all of that memorised? I have tried teaching 'Old MacDonald' to elementary students before, but all I could get them to remember was 'e-i-e-i-o'. 'We Wish You A Merry Christmas' had the same level of success despite the fact that it is played on TV and in shops for the three months leading up to Christmas.
After the singing, every student introduced themselves to me. I shook everyones hands and listened to what food and/or animal they like. Then I showed them pictures of New Zealand. After that we played 'London Bridge'. It was lots of fun.
The old driver took me back to Konoura. He did not come in the town car that is for taking people places. He came in the town car that has speakers on top and broadcasts news announcements to the people. It took a while to get back to Konoura because we drove slowly with recorded announcements blaring from the top of the car. We kept detouring to drive around suburbs and broadcast the messages (whatever they were) as widely as possible. An interesting experience.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
In the news tonight
Today I went to Kamagadai to teach. The driver who took me pointed out red smears on the window of the town car. "What's this?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said.
"It's sand from China."
I just read a report on a news page about the dust storms in China.
The rest of the journey to Kamagadai was taken up by the driver talking about hunting. "Can you hunt in New Zealand? I am a hunter. I like to eat bear because it is sweet. I like to eat it raw. I have been to Hokkaido to hunt Shika deer. Deer is tasty when raw too, especially if you put pepper on it." Alarmingly, he kept taking his hands off the steering wheel to mime out holding a rifle. He only let up from this discussion on the tastes and textures of the flesh of wild animals long enough to point out 'skunk weed' to me. He is far more interesting than the other driver, the one who does not speak.
At Kamagadai, the English teacher told me an alarming tale. I don't watch the news here, and if I did I would not understand it anyway, but apparently birds of various species have all of a sudden started dying off in droves all over Hokkaido and Tohoku, and a few have died in Tokyo too. This has been happening just in the last couple of weeks. The very first thing scientists checked for was bird flu, but apparently the birds were flu-free. However, they all had recently eaten insects. I'm assuming Mr. Sato meant they had all eaten the same type of insect. Anyway, it is very scary, and the Japanese public has been told to stay well away from bird carcasses. If anyone hears a proper news article about this and can give me more details, please do so.
(Tomorrow I have some free time, so I will get around to actually writing about Kamagadai, which I realise I have not yet done).
"I don't know," I said.
"It's sand from China."
I just read a report on a news page about the dust storms in China.
The rest of the journey to Kamagadai was taken up by the driver talking about hunting. "Can you hunt in New Zealand? I am a hunter. I like to eat bear because it is sweet. I like to eat it raw. I have been to Hokkaido to hunt Shika deer. Deer is tasty when raw too, especially if you put pepper on it." Alarmingly, he kept taking his hands off the steering wheel to mime out holding a rifle. He only let up from this discussion on the tastes and textures of the flesh of wild animals long enough to point out 'skunk weed' to me. He is far more interesting than the other driver, the one who does not speak.
At Kamagadai, the English teacher told me an alarming tale. I don't watch the news here, and if I did I would not understand it anyway, but apparently birds of various species have all of a sudden started dying off in droves all over Hokkaido and Tohoku, and a few have died in Tokyo too. This has been happening just in the last couple of weeks. The very first thing scientists checked for was bird flu, but apparently the birds were flu-free. However, they all had recently eaten insects. I'm assuming Mr. Sato meant they had all eaten the same type of insect. Anyway, it is very scary, and the Japanese public has been told to stay well away from bird carcasses. If anyone hears a proper news article about this and can give me more details, please do so.
(Tomorrow I have some free time, so I will get around to actually writing about Kamagadai, which I realise I have not yet done).
Monday, April 17, 2006
Huh
It appears that I am unable to load pictures from inside the school network onto Blogger. There are a whole lot of things I cannot do from the school network. For example, I can check my Yahoo e-mail but not my Hotmail.
I don't have a lot of time in the evenings, but I will try and get around to loading up a few pictures I took on the weekend (nothing scenic, sorry).
Wait a moment . . . didn't I upload the picture of Beni the MP3 Player from work? Why isn't it working today?
I don't have a lot of time in the evenings, but I will try and get around to loading up a few pictures I took on the weekend (nothing scenic, sorry).
Wait a moment . . . didn't I upload the picture of Beni the MP3 Player from work? Why isn't it working today?
Friday, April 14, 2006
Yosakoi Soran, Part 2
As I discussed in Yosakoi Soran, Part 1, I am a member of a dance club that performs 'Yosakoi Soran' dances. At the end of the post, I added a couple of links to Yosakoi websites. Those links had some information on the origins of the dance style, but I would like to speak a little on the matter myself.
Firstly, Yosakoi Soran as it is being performed in festivals all over Japan today, is not a traditional dance form. What happened was this: A university student from Hokkaido was visiting the south of Japan and happened accross the 'Yosakoi festival'. This festival, which has been held in a certain area every year for centuries (I believe) involves a dance called the Yosakoi dance. Although the Yosakoi dance is traditional, it is very energetic, whereas the traditional dances of most Japanese towns are Bon Odori style, which is not very energetic at all. The university student thought it would be fun to put a derivation of the Yosakoi dance (complete with wooden naruko castanets) to music derived from the Soran Bushi, an energetic festival music style native to Hokkaido. This combination was jazzed up with rock music elements and a group of Hokkaido university students made the first Yosakoi Soran team.
Since then more teams have been made, and festivals have started taking place in many places in Japan. The biggest festival is the one in Sapporo. For a dance team's routine to be accepted into one of the big festivals, it has to contain certain elements. The naruko (wooden clapper) of the southern Yosakoi festival must be used. The music, no matter how modern and rock-music-ified, must contain identifiable elements of the Soran Bushi music. Some teams have flag bearers, someone who stands at the back waving a huge flag with the team's name on it around in the air. Some teams have a caller, someone who is dressed up in the team's costume but who does not dance: they get to hold a microphone and introduce the team. Then they get to yell things like 'Yusho!' and ' Sore sore!' or, in some teams' cases, sing lyrics to the music. Teams who do not have a caller have someone who introduces the team in a big genki voice and then quickly puts the microphone down and runs to their dancing spot just before the music begins.
These are not strict requirements, and therefore there is a lot of variation between different teams' routines, and a lot of room for innovation. Each year, many teams come up with radically new interpretations of Yosakoi Soran: radical new costumes, radical new music, radical new dance moves. Saihoku Repputai, the team from Wakkanai I joined, likes to have the female members and the male members doing different routines. This year we are experimenting with a little bit of acting put into a bridge in the music. It is very embarassing. The other women and I have to kneel to the side and pretend to fix our collective makeup and hairdos while the men stand in the middle and pretend to smoke cigarettes. It's bit odd, but it is the first time our team has tried something like this.
Back to April last year:
I expressed my wish to join the Yosakoi team. (Yosakoi Soran is too long to say, so we say Yosakoi. Which is not really correct.) I started going to dance practice on Tuesday evenings. With Taiko on Monday, Eikaiwa on Wednesday, normal dance on Thursday and Japanese on Saturday, I was very busy.
For a long while we practiced the easy Yosakoi Soran dances that all teams practice and perform together for fun at the festivals. These include Yotchare and Ranbu. Kids often learn Yotchare for school festivals.
I found out that lack of Japanese abilitiy had caused more confusion on my part. What I had joined was not the dance team Saihoku Repputai I had seen perform in Sendai. I had joined the Kisakata team Kafuumai. A month or two after Kafuumai began practicing, about half the members also started practicing Saihoku Repputai, but they practiced on Monday night when I had Taiko practice, so I decided at first to learn only the Kafuumai dance.
It took quite a while for the teachers of Kafuumai to make last years dance, because Kafuumai at that stage was only a year old and so no one was very good yet. So after a leisurely six weeks of learning easy dances, we had four weeks to learn the more difficult festival dance unique to our team. The music for our routine was not so good because we did not have the money to pay a good composer and band to make it. Also, our costume was not so good. It was well-made but looked silly. But we all trundled off to the Akita Yaatose festival for the debut of Kafuumai '05.
It was a hot day, although another performance we did later was hotter. Our very first stage performance of the day met technical difficulties when the MD of our music played for about ten seconds and then died. Another MD was found, and we could dance. During practice the teachers of the club, who were at the very front, had spent too much time checking that we were dancing well and not enough time practicing themselves, so on that first performance of the day our front row made many obvious mistakes and cracked up laughing. We found a corner to practice in before the next performance.
The next performance was a parade (where the dancers, instead of standing in a square-ish shape and dancing in one area, form a long shape and move about 100m down a spectator-lined road). Before we started a festival official put a sticker on my back labelling me 'cute' which I wasn't. In the pink clothes, with several kg more fat and several kg less muscle than I have this year, I bore a strong resemblance to a pig. Why does Kafuumai have to wear pink?
That day we did two stage performances, two parades and two sessions of "Everyone in the middle, let's dance together! Come on kids! Come join the performers!" free dances. During the free dances we performed Yotchare and Ranbu, and then an encore or two. There were so many people dancing together (although only one or two spectators took up the offer to join in) that it was hard to find dancing room. Also, one performance of Yotchare was about three times as tiring as a performance of Kafuumai. Despite this, the free dances were fun.
Although the day had got off to a rocky start, and I was exhausted and boiled alive, all in all I had a good time.
(I will stop here. I'll write about the rest of last year's festival season, and how I eventually joined Saihoku Repputai, later.)
Firstly, Yosakoi Soran as it is being performed in festivals all over Japan today, is not a traditional dance form. What happened was this: A university student from Hokkaido was visiting the south of Japan and happened accross the 'Yosakoi festival'. This festival, which has been held in a certain area every year for centuries (I believe) involves a dance called the Yosakoi dance. Although the Yosakoi dance is traditional, it is very energetic, whereas the traditional dances of most Japanese towns are Bon Odori style, which is not very energetic at all. The university student thought it would be fun to put a derivation of the Yosakoi dance (complete with wooden naruko castanets) to music derived from the Soran Bushi, an energetic festival music style native to Hokkaido. This combination was jazzed up with rock music elements and a group of Hokkaido university students made the first Yosakoi Soran team.
Since then more teams have been made, and festivals have started taking place in many places in Japan. The biggest festival is the one in Sapporo. For a dance team's routine to be accepted into one of the big festivals, it has to contain certain elements. The naruko (wooden clapper) of the southern Yosakoi festival must be used. The music, no matter how modern and rock-music-ified, must contain identifiable elements of the Soran Bushi music. Some teams have flag bearers, someone who stands at the back waving a huge flag with the team's name on it around in the air. Some teams have a caller, someone who is dressed up in the team's costume but who does not dance: they get to hold a microphone and introduce the team. Then they get to yell things like 'Yusho!' and ' Sore sore!' or, in some teams' cases, sing lyrics to the music. Teams who do not have a caller have someone who introduces the team in a big genki voice and then quickly puts the microphone down and runs to their dancing spot just before the music begins.
These are not strict requirements, and therefore there is a lot of variation between different teams' routines, and a lot of room for innovation. Each year, many teams come up with radically new interpretations of Yosakoi Soran: radical new costumes, radical new music, radical new dance moves. Saihoku Repputai, the team from Wakkanai I joined, likes to have the female members and the male members doing different routines. This year we are experimenting with a little bit of acting put into a bridge in the music. It is very embarassing. The other women and I have to kneel to the side and pretend to fix our collective makeup and hairdos while the men stand in the middle and pretend to smoke cigarettes. It's bit odd, but it is the first time our team has tried something like this.
Back to April last year:
I expressed my wish to join the Yosakoi team. (Yosakoi Soran is too long to say, so we say Yosakoi. Which is not really correct.) I started going to dance practice on Tuesday evenings. With Taiko on Monday, Eikaiwa on Wednesday, normal dance on Thursday and Japanese on Saturday, I was very busy.
For a long while we practiced the easy Yosakoi Soran dances that all teams practice and perform together for fun at the festivals. These include Yotchare and Ranbu. Kids often learn Yotchare for school festivals.
I found out that lack of Japanese abilitiy had caused more confusion on my part. What I had joined was not the dance team Saihoku Repputai I had seen perform in Sendai. I had joined the Kisakata team Kafuumai. A month or two after Kafuumai began practicing, about half the members also started practicing Saihoku Repputai, but they practiced on Monday night when I had Taiko practice, so I decided at first to learn only the Kafuumai dance.
It took quite a while for the teachers of Kafuumai to make last years dance, because Kafuumai at that stage was only a year old and so no one was very good yet. So after a leisurely six weeks of learning easy dances, we had four weeks to learn the more difficult festival dance unique to our team. The music for our routine was not so good because we did not have the money to pay a good composer and band to make it. Also, our costume was not so good. It was well-made but looked silly. But we all trundled off to the Akita Yaatose festival for the debut of Kafuumai '05.
It was a hot day, although another performance we did later was hotter. Our very first stage performance of the day met technical difficulties when the MD of our music played for about ten seconds and then died. Another MD was found, and we could dance. During practice the teachers of the club, who were at the very front, had spent too much time checking that we were dancing well and not enough time practicing themselves, so on that first performance of the day our front row made many obvious mistakes and cracked up laughing. We found a corner to practice in before the next performance.
The next performance was a parade (where the dancers, instead of standing in a square-ish shape and dancing in one area, form a long shape and move about 100m down a spectator-lined road). Before we started a festival official put a sticker on my back labelling me 'cute' which I wasn't. In the pink clothes, with several kg more fat and several kg less muscle than I have this year, I bore a strong resemblance to a pig. Why does Kafuumai have to wear pink?
That day we did two stage performances, two parades and two sessions of "Everyone in the middle, let's dance together! Come on kids! Come join the performers!" free dances. During the free dances we performed Yotchare and Ranbu, and then an encore or two. There were so many people dancing together (although only one or two spectators took up the offer to join in) that it was hard to find dancing room. Also, one performance of Yotchare was about three times as tiring as a performance of Kafuumai. Despite this, the free dances were fun.
Although the day had got off to a rocky start, and I was exhausted and boiled alive, all in all I had a good time.
(I will stop here. I'll write about the rest of last year's festival season, and how I eventually joined Saihoku Repputai, later.)
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Secrets of NASA
NASA astronauts visited the moon during the late 1960s and early 1970s under the Apollo program but have not returned.
So what, they're all still up there?
So what, they're all still up there?
Monday, April 10, 2006
Bizarre finds in glass cabinets
This actually happened last week, but I just remembered it now:
After my Eikaiwa (English conversation) class last Wednesday, my students and I stopped to look at the new arts and crafts display in the foyer of the Community Centre. There is always a display there. At the moment, the display is of toys that have been made out of old kimono. Anyway, when I got to the end of the display, I was confronted by a dusty old display case tucked away in a corner that I think has always been there but I never looked at before. On closer inspection, the cabinet contained shards of pottery. There were no dates written anywhere, so I asked Mrs. Doi how old the pottery is. "It is Jomon." Jomon pottery? In Konoura? Cool!
I had assumed that Konoura would not have interesting things like that. Until an earthquake 250-odd years ago Konoura was mostly under a lagoon and the bits that weren't under water were islands. They were some of the '99 Islands of the North' (of which there were actually 103, but they were named after a more-famous set of islands down south that really were numbered 99).
I had a closer look at the pottery, and it really is ancient. The decoration was similar in construction (although the patterns were different) to Beaker pottery of Europe.
Here is a link that I don't think is quite correct, but it is an interesting read anyway. Keep in mind: although the article suggests the Jomon people only lived on the Kanto plain, that is quite simply not true. Konoura is no where near Kanto, and as I have already mentioned, Jomon pottery was found here. Jomon pottery is found all over Tohoku (Northern Honshu), not to mention the rest of Japan.
The article also states that Japanese is in the same language group as Chinese and Korean. This is also untrue. Japanese grammar has no relation to Chinese or Korean. The writing systems are related, but that is as far as it goes. Japanese, as far as linguists can tell, is a distant relative of Mongolian and Hungarian (which are also not related to Chinese), with a Pacific Island influence. The people of Northern China probably did not speak Chinese but a proto-Mongolian at the time that some of them came out this way. In Okinawa I think the language was mostly Pacific Island type, but I don't know the language of the Ryuku so I'm not sure. I can't ask Japanese people about this, because when I do they say "We speak Japanese. We always have." Japanese like to believe they are free from foreign influence. Unless they are under 30 years old. Then they want to be American.
The article also states that the Yayoi displaced the previous inhabitants of Japan. I have already discussed this a little along with language. It did not happen that way. Even today there are the remnants of the Ryuku in the south, the Ainu in the north, and another couple of minority groups I have forgotten the name of who live (lived) in Kyushu and Shikoku. Amongst the people here in the north of Honshu, there are people with brown hair, curly hair, heavy beards (on men and sometimes women), long noses and non-Asian eyes. Obviously the Japanese are not racially uniform.
Here is another link. I just found this now. This is in Akita Ken (but as far away from me as is possible to get and still be in Akita). I had no idea I was living near stone circles! In fact, this is the first time I have heard about stone circles in Japan at all. 4000 years old? That's older than Stonehenge, isn't it? Although I will admit that the stones aren't nearly as big as the stones that make up Stonehenge.
A practical link.
Another link. Whoever wrote this sounds like they know more about what they are talking about that the first link's author did. It is quite lengthy; I have not read it all yet.
Another link (this stuff is interesting). This article also points out that the Jomon culture was also in Korea and Eastern Russia. This makes sense since the land was joined up at that time. I have heard that there are little-known often-ignored cultural minorities in Korea like the Ryuku and Ainu of Japan who were shunted into less-hospitable areas by the Asian immigrants.
Nothing like reading articles on archaeological research of prehistoric cultures early on a Monday morning. Yeah, I'm a geek.
After my Eikaiwa (English conversation) class last Wednesday, my students and I stopped to look at the new arts and crafts display in the foyer of the Community Centre. There is always a display there. At the moment, the display is of toys that have been made out of old kimono. Anyway, when I got to the end of the display, I was confronted by a dusty old display case tucked away in a corner that I think has always been there but I never looked at before. On closer inspection, the cabinet contained shards of pottery. There were no dates written anywhere, so I asked Mrs. Doi how old the pottery is. "It is Jomon." Jomon pottery? In Konoura? Cool!
I had assumed that Konoura would not have interesting things like that. Until an earthquake 250-odd years ago Konoura was mostly under a lagoon and the bits that weren't under water were islands. They were some of the '99 Islands of the North' (of which there were actually 103, but they were named after a more-famous set of islands down south that really were numbered 99).
I had a closer look at the pottery, and it really is ancient. The decoration was similar in construction (although the patterns were different) to Beaker pottery of Europe.
Here is a link that I don't think is quite correct, but it is an interesting read anyway. Keep in mind: although the article suggests the Jomon people only lived on the Kanto plain, that is quite simply not true. Konoura is no where near Kanto, and as I have already mentioned, Jomon pottery was found here. Jomon pottery is found all over Tohoku (Northern Honshu), not to mention the rest of Japan.
The article also states that Japanese is in the same language group as Chinese and Korean. This is also untrue. Japanese grammar has no relation to Chinese or Korean. The writing systems are related, but that is as far as it goes. Japanese, as far as linguists can tell, is a distant relative of Mongolian and Hungarian (which are also not related to Chinese), with a Pacific Island influence. The people of Northern China probably did not speak Chinese but a proto-Mongolian at the time that some of them came out this way. In Okinawa I think the language was mostly Pacific Island type, but I don't know the language of the Ryuku so I'm not sure. I can't ask Japanese people about this, because when I do they say "We speak Japanese. We always have." Japanese like to believe they are free from foreign influence. Unless they are under 30 years old. Then they want to be American.
The article also states that the Yayoi displaced the previous inhabitants of Japan. I have already discussed this a little along with language. It did not happen that way. Even today there are the remnants of the Ryuku in the south, the Ainu in the north, and another couple of minority groups I have forgotten the name of who live (lived) in Kyushu and Shikoku. Amongst the people here in the north of Honshu, there are people with brown hair, curly hair, heavy beards (on men and sometimes women), long noses and non-Asian eyes. Obviously the Japanese are not racially uniform.
Here is another link. I just found this now. This is in Akita Ken (but as far away from me as is possible to get and still be in Akita). I had no idea I was living near stone circles! In fact, this is the first time I have heard about stone circles in Japan at all. 4000 years old? That's older than Stonehenge, isn't it? Although I will admit that the stones aren't nearly as big as the stones that make up Stonehenge.
A practical link.
Another link. Whoever wrote this sounds like they know more about what they are talking about that the first link's author did. It is quite lengthy; I have not read it all yet.
Another link (this stuff is interesting). This article also points out that the Jomon culture was also in Korea and Eastern Russia. This makes sense since the land was joined up at that time. I have heard that there are little-known often-ignored cultural minorities in Korea like the Ryuku and Ainu of Japan who were shunted into less-hospitable areas by the Asian immigrants.
Nothing like reading articles on archaeological research of prehistoric cultures early on a Monday morning. Yeah, I'm a geek.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
More enkai
There was another enkai (work party) last night. This is the season for them. My wallet is protesting. Last nights party cost 5000 yen, which is becoming the norm.
The party was to welcome the new teacher and new nurse who have come to our school, and followed on last weeks party where we said farewell to the leaving teachers. We have one new teacher in addition to the nurse, not two, because we will not have a student teacher this year. The new nurse seems very kind, and I had a nice chat with her.
Then I was talking to Mitsunori-sensei, the teacher sitting beside me. Mitsunori-sensei was a classmate of my friends Sumiko and Atsuko when they were all at Sr. High. Sumiko and Mitsunori-sensei do not like each other. It is so funny! Sumiko says 'that guy is strange' and then Mitsunori-sensei says things like, "Sumiko can't ride a bike. Go ask her about it!" then cracks up laughing. I just take anything one says about the other with a grain of salt.
Anyway, Mitsunori-sensei told me I should ride a scooter up the hill to Kamagadai, and I said no it's not my image. So he said I should ride a horse. I said I fall off horses. So Hosoya-san said I should ride a cow up the mountain. I said, "I'd never get there!"
Then everyone told me I should perform Yosakoi at the Sports Day. I said no.
The party was to welcome the new teacher and new nurse who have come to our school, and followed on last weeks party where we said farewell to the leaving teachers. We have one new teacher in addition to the nurse, not two, because we will not have a student teacher this year. The new nurse seems very kind, and I had a nice chat with her.
Then I was talking to Mitsunori-sensei, the teacher sitting beside me. Mitsunori-sensei was a classmate of my friends Sumiko and Atsuko when they were all at Sr. High. Sumiko and Mitsunori-sensei do not like each other. It is so funny! Sumiko says 'that guy is strange' and then Mitsunori-sensei says things like, "Sumiko can't ride a bike. Go ask her about it!" then cracks up laughing. I just take anything one says about the other with a grain of salt.
Anyway, Mitsunori-sensei told me I should ride a scooter up the hill to Kamagadai, and I said no it's not my image. So he said I should ride a horse. I said I fall off horses. So Hosoya-san said I should ride a cow up the mountain. I said, "I'd never get there!"
Then everyone told me I should perform Yosakoi at the Sports Day. I said no.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Yosakoi Soran, Part 1
For my whole life I have been a lazy person who does not like to participate. While I was a University student I was enrolled in a T'ai Chi class, and when I was a child I was a member of a few clubs. I would tell my mother I wanted to join the club because it looked interesting, but I would only go for a short while and then drop out. This happened with gymnastics, baton twirling and Brownies. Other than that, for my whole life I have not done the 'group thing.' I did not join a single team or club during high school. I did not get involved in any community activities. Yet despite this, I have found that here in Japan things are different.
Not long after I came to Akita, the next town over hosted an international event that I attended. I saw kids from the school performing dances in a style I had never seen before. They were dressed in costumes made of bright fabrics cut in non-traditional yet still distinctly Japanese style. They were leaping about waving wooden clacker-things to music that got into my mind and made me want to dance too. I thought 'Wow, that's pretty cool,' and then promptly forgot all about it.
A week or two later, my town had its annual summer festival, the Wantou Matsuri. At the festival, I saw this type of dance being performed again. That time it was not school kids dancing, but adult women who belonged to a dancing club. I got out my Japanese dictionary (because I could not speak Japanese at that time) and said to Machiko-san who works at the BOE, "Sh . . . shi . . . shitai," (which translates as 'want to do'). Well, she managed to understand what I meant, and on Monday morning when I went to work I was told (via translation software on a computer) that they had rung the teacher of the dance club, and someone would be coming to my house on Thursday evening to take me to the club in Kisakata.
I found out that the Thursday night class is an 'all-styles' dance club, not just that Japanese-style dancing. I did not understand at that time why I was learning line dancing instead of what I wanted to learn. I did not understand the instructions at the club, and I was very unfit so it hurt a lot. Therefore each lesson seemed to last for ages and I had that feeling of 'wanting to quit' that I knew from my childhood, but I stuck with it. That was mainly because someone had been assigned to drive me to the club, and they turned up at my house every Thursday evening whether I wanted to go or not.
I gradually started to learn what was going on. The Japanese-style dancing is called Yosakoi Soran. I could not join the Yosakoi team at that time because it was the middle of the festival season. I had to wait until the next spring. But until many months later that was all I could understand with my limited Japanese.
I received my naruko (aforementioned 'clacky things') as a present from the office lady at the Elementary school at which I sometimes work.
In the October of that year, I was invited to go with the Yosakoi people to Sendai. The Kisakata team is half of a big team, the original half of the team living in Wakkanai City in Hokkaido. So in Sendai I got to meet a lot of crazy people from the very end of Japan (Wakkanai is the most northern city in all of Japan) and watch the team perform many times in a big festival. My job was to watch everyone's bags as they danced. The trip was a lot of fun, and made me even more eager to join the Yosakoi team.
I started to enjoy the Thursday classes. My Japanese was making progress, as was my fitness, so that made a big difference. Then the spring of last year arrived. It was the beginning of the Yosakoi season, and I could enroll with the team.
So I went along on the Tuesday night and started learning Yosakoi Soran dances.
(I will continue this later: I need to collect my thoughts for a bit first. For now, here are some links:
Link 1
Link 2)
Not long after I came to Akita, the next town over hosted an international event that I attended. I saw kids from the school performing dances in a style I had never seen before. They were dressed in costumes made of bright fabrics cut in non-traditional yet still distinctly Japanese style. They were leaping about waving wooden clacker-things to music that got into my mind and made me want to dance too. I thought 'Wow, that's pretty cool,' and then promptly forgot all about it.
A week or two later, my town had its annual summer festival, the Wantou Matsuri. At the festival, I saw this type of dance being performed again. That time it was not school kids dancing, but adult women who belonged to a dancing club. I got out my Japanese dictionary (because I could not speak Japanese at that time) and said to Machiko-san who works at the BOE, "Sh . . . shi . . . shitai," (which translates as 'want to do'). Well, she managed to understand what I meant, and on Monday morning when I went to work I was told (via translation software on a computer) that they had rung the teacher of the dance club, and someone would be coming to my house on Thursday evening to take me to the club in Kisakata.
I found out that the Thursday night class is an 'all-styles' dance club, not just that Japanese-style dancing. I did not understand at that time why I was learning line dancing instead of what I wanted to learn. I did not understand the instructions at the club, and I was very unfit so it hurt a lot. Therefore each lesson seemed to last for ages and I had that feeling of 'wanting to quit' that I knew from my childhood, but I stuck with it. That was mainly because someone had been assigned to drive me to the club, and they turned up at my house every Thursday evening whether I wanted to go or not.
I gradually started to learn what was going on. The Japanese-style dancing is called Yosakoi Soran. I could not join the Yosakoi team at that time because it was the middle of the festival season. I had to wait until the next spring. But until many months later that was all I could understand with my limited Japanese.
I received my naruko (aforementioned 'clacky things') as a present from the office lady at the Elementary school at which I sometimes work.
In the October of that year, I was invited to go with the Yosakoi people to Sendai. The Kisakata team is half of a big team, the original half of the team living in Wakkanai City in Hokkaido. So in Sendai I got to meet a lot of crazy people from the very end of Japan (Wakkanai is the most northern city in all of Japan) and watch the team perform many times in a big festival. My job was to watch everyone's bags as they danced. The trip was a lot of fun, and made me even more eager to join the Yosakoi team.
I started to enjoy the Thursday classes. My Japanese was making progress, as was my fitness, so that made a big difference. Then the spring of last year arrived. It was the beginning of the Yosakoi season, and I could enroll with the team.
So I went along on the Tuesday night and started learning Yosakoi Soran dances.
(I will continue this later: I need to collect my thoughts for a bit first. For now, here are some links:
Link 1
Link 2)
With a little help from my friends, Part 3 - Beni the MP3 player
Name: Beni
Name meaning: Crimson
First seen: right before I bought him
Bought: June 2005 at the MP3 player and keitai (cellphone) shop right outside the 'Denki Town' exit of Akihabara JR Station
Model: Sony Walkman NW-HD5 R
Price paid: 34,000 yen
Colour: red
HDD: 20GB
Software: Some horrid Sony crap called SonicStage that is a bitch to use. Oh, and it is only compatible with the Japanese version of Windows. What's with that?
Battery life: 40hrs. This is of course only if you don't turn it on and off, and if you don't skip tracks. Functional battery life = more like 20 hrs (which is still better than iPod I believe).
Comments: I bought this MP3 player because it has certain advantages over current iPods. Firstly - it has a 20GB HDD yet comes in a colour that is not white. Yay! Also, it is smaller than the 20GB iPod, more the size of a 4GB iPod. But the software is crap: yet again Sony shows that their software team is not up to the standards of their hardware team. There is one other problem: sometimes Beni freezes and I have to pull the battery out and reinsert it. Overall, I like Beni. But I procrastinate something awful when it is time to load more music onto him. Fighting with SonicStage is not my idea of a good time.
As an aside, this model did not sell very well even here in Japan where everything is supposed to sell well. Sony quite quickly released a new 20GB MP3 player in a 'cuter' design. But that player is quite a bit bigger than Beni. I'm not sure I would like to lug it around in my pocket. They have also released a 5GB (?) version of that new MP3 player, that is only slightly smaller than my Beni. I wonder how the sales of the 'cute version' are? Since Japan loves cute, it is probably selling well.
(The picture above was taken with my cellphone. Maybe I will take a better picture later).
Dreams and nightmares
I had a series of strange dreams last night. This is a novelty for me, because I haven't remembered a dream for ages. I am not sure what order the various bits went in, but here goes.
There was a section that was obviously a reaction to my recent Final Fantasy XII binge. I was in battle (and I may have been FFXII's main character Vaan) and I was trying to storm this building (which was remarkably like a school) and there were rules to follow in battle (i.e. the battle system, which was indeed like FFXII). So I and some others were fighting soldiers or goons or something who were coming at us through a big shattered window, and we wanted to get through the window. Then I was going through the window, hauling myself over the sill in a cumbersome manner to flop into the next room as if I were grossly overweight which I am not, and was not. Then I was in a school gym, and some stuff happened, but apparently it wasn't interesting because I can't remember it.
There was a section where I had become Sophie Hatter from Howl's Moving Castle. It had something to do with 'Wolves in the Walls' by Neil Gaiman, which is funny because I have never read Wolves in the Walls. All I have ever seen is a picture from the new play on Neil Gaiman's journal. Neil Gaiman himself was there too. I know why he was there. He was there for the same reason that I had vivid dreams in the first place. Last night I was reading Neil Gaiman's journal, and he described some vivid dreams he had, and I thought "Hey cool, he's lucky. Why don't I remember my dreams any more? I want vivid dreams too." And so I had them. Complete with cameo from Current Favourite Author. Neato.
I feel sorry for him for being in my dream, though. My subconscious is not kind to guests. I (Sophie) said that I had (somehow) prevented Mr. Gaiman from having to put his head in a toilet, so he said "Okay" and put his head in the toilet. (I'm really sorry, Mr. Gaiman, I don't mean to be so cruel). I got an amusing comedy movie-like view of this scene from further down the toilet looking up, and then the wolf and I were pulling aforementioned author out of the plumbing and saying "No! You don't have to do that!" Then I think I told Neil Gaiman (or maybe it was someone else in another part of my dream) that John Cleese reminds me of cheese. Wensleydale cheese to be precise, because he looks like Wallace from Wallace and Grommit. (Now I am awake, I no longer think John Cleese looks like Wallace). Then wolves and authors were blessedly allowed to leave my dream as I moved on.
I was in a cave, and I had separated from Sophie and saw her from the outside. There was no Calcifer in my dream, so the spell never came off Sophie, and no Howl so her aches and pains were never alleviated, and she wandered off into the gloom an old woman with aching joints. It was really quite sad.
You know, my dream was so much more funny for me writing it down than when I was simply remembering it. I am at work at the moment, and the whole time I was writing out the above passage (minus last paragraph) I had to keep stopping to put my hand over my mouth to stifle my giggles.
Anyway, maybe I should talk about something that happened to me in this world.
Last week I got a call from Machiko-san (who works at the BOE, and does not speak English). She said some stuff, and of that stuff this is what I understood: Saturday at 3pm, New Zealand, please come to BOE, party, no money, you don't have to drink if you don't want to. So I thought "Wow, there is something important on to do with the cultural exchange between this town and New Zealand, and since I am the resident Kiwi, I ought to go." So I said I would.
So I trundled off down to the BOE on Saturday afternoon and found the front door of the building all blocked off with cones because of the rennovation that is taking place. So I went in the back door and got told by the old guy at the front desk that I should go to the big room up stairs. So I did, and I went in the door . . . and there was a big group of old people in there mid-meeting. I thought I had come to the wrong place, but I was waved in and pointed towards a chair. I sat down, not sure if I was supposed to be there, not sure if I was wanted. Then I noticed the '100% Pure New Zealand' posters at the front of the room, so I figured I was in the right place after all. But the meeting kept going. For 45 minutes. And I . . . just sat there. Then some guy from Osaka got up and talked about New Zealand. From what I could understand, he spent half the time talking about the funeral of a friend of his, and the differences between Japanese and New Zealand grave stones. Riveting stuff, I'm sure.
Then food and alcohol was brought out, which turned out to be what I was invited for. Because I love partying with people in their 50's, 60's and 70's on Saturday afternoons. Mr. Oyagi who had been one of the bosses of the Konoura BOE before the merger was there, and he said he had been transferred back to Konoura again, which means there will be another familiar face at the BOE. This is good because for the past half year familiar faces have been few and far between. Other people spoke to me too. For a while I was talking to the old women, but then the ex-Mayor grabbed a hold of my hand and wouldn't let go. He patted me on the head and on the knee and made jokes about sexual harrassment, so I escaped and found another old woman to talk to. Seems I found the wrong woman, because my conversation partner kept encouraging people to come and harrass the young woman. I started to get tired of dealing with shameless old Japanese people, saw that I had been there long enough not to be rude in leaving, and excused myself to go to the supermarket.
The generation gaps in Japan are so broad. Old Japanese people are utterly different to their young counterparts. As I already mentioned, old people are utterly shameless. Young people spend their lives in a mix of constant embarrassment and worry. Oh, I know it is like that everywhere, but like everything else, the Japanese take the trend to the extreme. Japan just doesn't know how to do things by halves.
***
There was a section that was obviously a reaction to my recent Final Fantasy XII binge. I was in battle (and I may have been FFXII's main character Vaan) and I was trying to storm this building (which was remarkably like a school) and there were rules to follow in battle (i.e. the battle system, which was indeed like FFXII). So I and some others were fighting soldiers or goons or something who were coming at us through a big shattered window, and we wanted to get through the window. Then I was going through the window, hauling myself over the sill in a cumbersome manner to flop into the next room as if I were grossly overweight which I am not, and was not. Then I was in a school gym, and some stuff happened, but apparently it wasn't interesting because I can't remember it.
There was a section where I had become Sophie Hatter from Howl's Moving Castle. It had something to do with 'Wolves in the Walls' by Neil Gaiman, which is funny because I have never read Wolves in the Walls. All I have ever seen is a picture from the new play on Neil Gaiman's journal. Neil Gaiman himself was there too. I know why he was there. He was there for the same reason that I had vivid dreams in the first place. Last night I was reading Neil Gaiman's journal, and he described some vivid dreams he had, and I thought "Hey cool, he's lucky. Why don't I remember my dreams any more? I want vivid dreams too." And so I had them. Complete with cameo from Current Favourite Author. Neato.
I feel sorry for him for being in my dream, though. My subconscious is not kind to guests. I (Sophie) said that I had (somehow) prevented Mr. Gaiman from having to put his head in a toilet, so he said "Okay" and put his head in the toilet. (I'm really sorry, Mr. Gaiman, I don't mean to be so cruel). I got an amusing comedy movie-like view of this scene from further down the toilet looking up, and then the wolf and I were pulling aforementioned author out of the plumbing and saying "No! You don't have to do that!" Then I think I told Neil Gaiman (or maybe it was someone else in another part of my dream) that John Cleese reminds me of cheese. Wensleydale cheese to be precise, because he looks like Wallace from Wallace and Grommit. (Now I am awake, I no longer think John Cleese looks like Wallace). Then wolves and authors were blessedly allowed to leave my dream as I moved on.
I was in a cave, and I had separated from Sophie and saw her from the outside. There was no Calcifer in my dream, so the spell never came off Sophie, and no Howl so her aches and pains were never alleviated, and she wandered off into the gloom an old woman with aching joints. It was really quite sad.
***
You know, my dream was so much more funny for me writing it down than when I was simply remembering it. I am at work at the moment, and the whole time I was writing out the above passage (minus last paragraph) I had to keep stopping to put my hand over my mouth to stifle my giggles.
Anyway, maybe I should talk about something that happened to me in this world.
Last week I got a call from Machiko-san (who works at the BOE, and does not speak English). She said some stuff, and of that stuff this is what I understood: Saturday at 3pm, New Zealand, please come to BOE, party, no money, you don't have to drink if you don't want to. So I thought "Wow, there is something important on to do with the cultural exchange between this town and New Zealand, and since I am the resident Kiwi, I ought to go." So I said I would.
So I trundled off down to the BOE on Saturday afternoon and found the front door of the building all blocked off with cones because of the rennovation that is taking place. So I went in the back door and got told by the old guy at the front desk that I should go to the big room up stairs. So I did, and I went in the door . . . and there was a big group of old people in there mid-meeting. I thought I had come to the wrong place, but I was waved in and pointed towards a chair. I sat down, not sure if I was supposed to be there, not sure if I was wanted. Then I noticed the '100% Pure New Zealand' posters at the front of the room, so I figured I was in the right place after all. But the meeting kept going. For 45 minutes. And I . . . just sat there. Then some guy from Osaka got up and talked about New Zealand. From what I could understand, he spent half the time talking about the funeral of a friend of his, and the differences between Japanese and New Zealand grave stones. Riveting stuff, I'm sure.
Then food and alcohol was brought out, which turned out to be what I was invited for. Because I love partying with people in their 50's, 60's and 70's on Saturday afternoons. Mr. Oyagi who had been one of the bosses of the Konoura BOE before the merger was there, and he said he had been transferred back to Konoura again, which means there will be another familiar face at the BOE. This is good because for the past half year familiar faces have been few and far between. Other people spoke to me too. For a while I was talking to the old women, but then the ex-Mayor grabbed a hold of my hand and wouldn't let go. He patted me on the head and on the knee and made jokes about sexual harrassment, so I escaped and found another old woman to talk to. Seems I found the wrong woman, because my conversation partner kept encouraging people to come and harrass the young woman. I started to get tired of dealing with shameless old Japanese people, saw that I had been there long enough not to be rude in leaving, and excused myself to go to the supermarket.
The generation gaps in Japan are so broad. Old Japanese people are utterly different to their young counterparts. As I already mentioned, old people are utterly shameless. Young people spend their lives in a mix of constant embarrassment and worry. Oh, I know it is like that everywhere, but like everything else, the Japanese take the trend to the extreme. Japan just doesn't know how to do things by halves.
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