Starsiren

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Starsiren by *togiren on deviantART

Autumnal Equinox

Saturday the 23rd was the autumnal equinox. There was a sports exchange that day, so I spent the morning at work. In the evening I went to a barbeque in Kisakata.

For a long time now Sean (the Nikaho ALT) and I have been asking Jon in Kisakata to organise a party, because Jon has a whole family-sized house to himself that is near the beach. He finally got around to it. Unfortunately Sean could not come because of a sad occurence, so at the party was Jon and friends of his I had never met before and myself with my friends Jon has never met before. The two groups did not mix. Maybe they would have mixed under better conditions.

With me were Atsuko, Toshi, Miwa and (later in the evening) Saya. We had a barbeque near the shore but not actually on the beach. Now, it is well past barbeque season. It was cold, and dark because the sun went down quickly and the closest streetlight was broken. No one thought to bring any lights. One of Jon's friends ran his car to light the party area with headlights. If anyone wanted food from the table they had to use the light on their cellphone to find what they were looking for. The stars were pretty though.

This of course is the reason why the party stayed split into two groups: one set of people were huddled around the 'barbeque' (coals glowing in half a section of cement pipe) and the other half was huddled around Atsuko's portable gas burner that we cooked stew and Yakisoba on.

I guess we were just unprepared. It seems as if Jon forgot to tell his friends to bring stuff: some people brought some meat, but as for non-meat food, they were all eating the foods that Astuko and I brought with us (I took a lot). We couldn't eat Toshi's fruit because we didn't have a decent place to cut it. We all thought Jon would have paper bowls and stuff, but he didn't. We had to go to Max Valu to buy some.

I don't know what was with Jon. He wouldn't let us use his house, he wasn't prepared, and he cut the party short by going off by himself and crying. I don't know why. I kind of feel sorry for him, that he was sad, but I don't know why he was. The rest of us had a good time despite being cold and unable to see. Come to think of it, maybe that is why he was sad. Maybe he felt left out?

Anyway, after the party died, Miwa went home because she had an early start on Sunday, but Saya, Toshi and I went to Atsuko's house. We stayed there until 4am drinking red wine and soba (buckwheat) tea. About two or three o'clock in the morning Saya's friend came to pick her up, but he ended up drinking soba tea with us. Then he (whose name I cannot remember) gave Toshi and I a ride home as well as Saya. I live near Atsuko and Toshi lives near Saya, so it wasn't so far out of the way.

I had Monday off because I worked on Saturday, so I spent two lazy days doing nothing. At dance practice on Tuesday I finally received a DVD of my trip to Sapporo, complete with the actual footage of our team on the Yosakoi Matsuri TV coverage. We were on TV for about three minutes. I was at the back so there were no closeups of me, thankfully. If I figure out how to convert footage ripped off a DVD into a web-friendly format, I will see about YouTube-ing it and sharing it here. I also received photos of the trip last week. I really ought to see about scanning them up.

As yet I have no plans for the coming weekend, so I don't know if I will have anything to write about next week. Maybe I will go shopping.

Too much beef

Last Friday I went to eat yakiniku (grilled beef) with my friends. On Saturday I didn't go anywhere but instead stayed home watching Noh theatre on TV while crocheting, just as if I were in my seventies. But I had fun, which come to think of it is probably the most disturbing thing. That evening I made from scratch a steak and cheese pie, because I really do crave those from time to time. At nine I watched the last episode of 'My Boss, My Hero,' a TV program I have been watching recently. It is a school / yakuza comedy drama, which sounds like it wouldn't work but does. I am sad that it is over. Maybe I will buy the DVDs when they come out. Afterall, I didn't see all the episodes, and they may come in handy for studying Japanese some time in the future *innocent look*.

On Sunday I went with Sumiko and Atsuko to Akita AEON Plaza. I bought a new pair of jeans because my old ones have about 10% the pigmentation they used to, and a new pair of trousers for work. I also bought muesli, Twinings tea and cheese. And what wonderful cheese it is: feta from Greece, Edam from Holland and blue cheese from Denmark.

On Monday I went with Atsuko to a concert in Kisakata that I had received a ticket for. The person playing was Karen Nunis Blackstone, who lives here in Akita because her husband is a professor at Akita International University. She is from Malaysia, and apparently is fairly successful in her home country. She is a singer/songwriter who sings the blues and other jazz related stuff, although there really are a lot of influences in her work. Playing with her were two professional musicians from Malaysia, a base guitar player and a percussionist who played rare folk instruments. There was also a guy who might have been a professor playing the electric violin and the banjo, and Professor Blackstone on the harmonica. Billie Nunis Blackstone (11, daughter of Karen) entertained the audience from time to time with cute spontaneous dances of the type only children can do. The concert was spoilt for me slightly by Atsuko laughing hysterically at a song about Namahage.

After the concert finished, everyone was invited to stay and talk with Karen over snacks and drinks. Most people left. Atsuko and I were going to as well, but first Billie stole Atsuko's cellphone, and then right after the confusion ended the base player Adrian came and personally invited me to stay. I talked with all three of the Malaysians. They are all very nice people.

After I had finished socialising, and Atsuko had finished fighting with Billie, we went to meet Toshi and eat Shabu-shabu. It was my first time to eat it. Shabu-shabu is food that you cook yourself by holding it with your chopsticks, swirling it in boiling water, dipping it in sauce and then eating it. Foods available were leeks, tofu, mushrooms, cabbage and lots and lots of beef. It was delicious, but very expensive for food that the cook only had to chuck on a plate raw and give to us to deal with.

On Tuesday I watched the last episode of 'Kekkon Dekinai Otoko,' a TV program I have been watching lately (TV programs here run quarterly on fixed seasons, so everything finishes about the same time, and soon). The name of the program means 'the man who cannot get married,' and is about a man who cannot get married. A very strange man. Very strange, although in truth I have known stranger.

So in summary, my last week has consisted primarily of music, TV, shopping and beef.

Pictures part 5

Pictures part 4

On the day I went to take pictures of the fields, I met a very photogenic dragonfly who was willing to pose for me.

Pictures part 3

Last week I went to take pictures of the rice fields before the harvest is brought in.


There were a lot more photos like this.

On the way back I heard a railway crossing, so decided to take a picture of the coming train. It turned out that the train was a long-distance express train, one step down from a Shinkansen, so it was going pretty fast. I am amased I managed to catch the front of the train in the picture at all.

A minute later, a freight train passed going in the opposite direction. It was going slower, so I was able to get a better picture. That blue thing above the train in the right side of the picture is not part of the train, but a community centre in the distance.

Pictures part 2

There is a path that leads from my street to the area where the Elementary school and Sumiko's house is. This summer the path, along with most of Konoura, has been invaded with fast-growing vines.
These vines were not here last year or the year before, I am sure. It was actually quite scary walking up this path.

Luckily for me, the council cleared the path up last week.

I had seriously forgotten how broad it is.

But what is with these vines?! They are everywhere, choking out all other plants, covering up paths. It's like living in a b-grade sci-fi horror movie.

Pictures part 1

One day the other week in the middle of the hottest part of summer, I returned home from work to find that one of my healthiest plants had lost about a third of it's leaves since that morning. Over the next few hours, it lost over half of the remaining leaves. Look at all the leaves lying (positioned by me) around the poor plant. Please notice how green and healthy-looking the fallen leaves were.



Above you can see the stem and all the places where the leaves fell off from.

Half an hour after I took these pictures, another stem of leaves fell off. No more have fallen since then. The plant has three large stems of leaves and one small stunty one with two tiny leaves, and that is all. I put the plant closer to the window because I thought it would need more sunlight if the remaining leaves were to pick up the slack from the fallen ones. I am happy to say that yesterday I noticed that the plant has started to grow new leaves. Yay! They are still too tiny to take pictures of, so I will take a picture later when they are bigger.

And here is a picture of some fireworks in Honjo last month.

Blog template

I had to change the blog template because the old one broke for some reason. Are the yellowy titles in the side bar and such too hard to read? Please leave a comment if you don't like the new paler template, and I will change it again.

Speech Contest and stuff

I am so tired.

For about two weeks, I have been staying late at school to help train a couple of students for the Yuri Honjo Speech and Recitation Competition that we had this week. So I am tired.

On Saturday I went with Atsuko to Honjo. I had to take puri kura (those little stickers) of myself (alone - so lonely!) to use at the competition. We met up with Mariko, a friend of Atsuko's. After I had the puri kura taken, we went to buy cakes at a specialist cake shop. Buying expensive cakes was something I never did before I came to Japan because it seemed like such a waste of money. I would just buy supermarket stuff. But now that I have the money, I have learnt how much more delicious real cakes are than supermarket ones, or even than corner bakery ones. Also, it is nice to have your cakes put in a white cardboard box and then tied with a pretty ribbon.

Anyway, I bought a small blanc mange and a slice of a chocolate cream-filled chocolate roll. Both Atsuko and Mariko bought three cakes. I cannot eat as much cake as Japanese women can. I feel sick while they are still saying "Maybe I should have bought more . . ." Come to think of it, because I have never really sat down to eat individual (ot shared) cakes with people from other countries, maybe it is not just Japanese women who can eat more cake than me, it is most people. I don't know.

We went back to Nikaho City to eat lunch at Kitchen Morimoto in Nikaho (I had chicken curry) and then we continued on to Atsuko's house to eat our cakes. We talked until dinner time, and then Mariko went home and Atsuko and I went to Sumiko's house. We had not been there for a long time. Umeko the tiny cat is not so tiny anymore, and she is also not so evil anymore. We ate pizza, gyoza and salad, and watched TV.

On Sunday I went for a walk to take pictures of the rice fields before the harvest. On my travels I met a very photogenic dragonfly. It was sitting on a wooden post and would not give it up no matter how much I invaded it's personal space. First he shuffled over on his post as far as he could to get away from me. Then when I put my camera even closer, he would just fly in a short loop and land in the same spot again after I pulled away. I took nineteen photos of the dragonfly before I decided to move on. After taking photos of the rice fields on my way back home, I deiscovered that the dragonfly still had not moved.

I skipped dance on both Monday and Tuesday because I was busy and tired. Not only did I stay late at work training the girls, but I also had to prepare for the ALT games and activities that were held for the speech participants in the afternoon after the speeches had finished.

On Tuesday I was at Kamagadai in the morning. The school lunch there that day was goya champloo, a dish from Okinawa. It is a kind of stew, but the main vegetable indredient is goya. I had only heard of goya recently. It looks like a bumpy, ugly mutant cucumber, and the taste it so bitter! It tastes like that stuff people put on their nails to stop them from biting them. Now I know that I am known as the girl who licks that stuff off and then bites her nails, but This was a whole stew of it. I ate it but it was not fun. About half the students had trouble eating their goya, and one boy couldn't eat it at all.

Yesterday was the speech contest. This year there were four student of mine at the contest, two from Konoura and two from Kamagadai. The first student of mine to perform was Mitsuki, a girl from Konoura. She did a recitation. I was quite surprised the first time I heard that Mitsuki would be taking part in the competition. She is a weak sickly girl who hardly ever makes it through a day of school without leaving before lunch time. She is very smart academically, but she is so quiet and shy that she can barely speak. Because she did a recitation, she did not have to make her own speech and so I spent a lot of time encouraging her to speak louder and to use emotion in her voice. When she did her performance, she was very quiet, although louder than she usually is. There was not much emotion in her voice, but more than there was before. I am proud that she was able to get better, because that is something that is difficult for her.

The student from Kamagadai who did a recitation was Kengo. He is actually only a second grade student, but because there is only one third grade student at Kamagadai, a second grader had to perform. Despite being younger than most of the other contestants, I think Kengo did a good job. His speech was a bit rough and jerky. You could tell he had learned each word individually (many of the words in his speech he had not seen before he started practicing). But not bad at all.

The student from Konoura who did an original speech was Hiromi. She and Mitsuki are best friends. Hiromi did not do very well at all, but I don't think she was to blame. To tell the truth, the English teacher only finished translating her speech into English (she wrote the speech in Japanese) a week before the contest. Most students practised for a large portion of, if not all of, summer vacation. I felt so sorry for her and so angry at Mr. Togashi. Of course she had trouble remembering her speech. She had hardly any time to remember it in.

The boy from Kamagadai who had to to a speech was Hironori. This boor boy is the only kid in his class and grade in his school (which by the way was the subject of his speech) so he had to do a speech if he wanted to or not. Unluckily for him his English is terrible. He hates English. He did a lot better than anyone expected though. He managed to remember most of his speech. He just had trouble remembering which sentence came next. He took a copy of his speech with him and when he started to struggle, his teacher signalled him to look at it. No one is angry at him for that, because it really was a miracle that he could even get up there in the first place, poor kid.

In the afternoon we had the ALT activities. Each of us set up a stall showing interesting things about our respective countries to the students. I taught many kids about Wellington, netball, Maori, weta, kiwi and extreme sports (or what I know of them anyway). While I was doing that activity, I was reminded of how some other ALTs can not speak Japanese, and that the Japanese people who know them are used to talking about foreigners within their hearing, "because they can't understand anyway." An English teacher and her students standing less than two metres away from me while waiting for their turn at my stall, were talking about me in Japanese. "She's big." "But look at her boobs. Japanese people don't have boobs like that!" "Yes. And her hair. Japanese people don't have hair like that either." I am right here, why are you talking about me like that?!