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?!

First week of school

Last Friday was the first day of term. That evening we of course had a work party to celebrate. We ate at a 'Chinese' restaurant in Nikaho. I say 'Chinese' because it is not really what I would call Chinese. The food is just the Japanised versions of Chinese food that Japanese people eat all the time, not the real thing at all. But it was edible, that was the main thing.

On Saturday I had been expecting to go to Omagari to see a fireworks competition which is the biggest and most popular in Japan. Each year I have been here my plans to go have been thwarted, and this year was no exception. I was going to go with Atsuko, Toshi and Miwa. We were going to go in Atsuko's car. Now all three of them dislike driving. Even though the trip to Omagari only takes 1 1/2 hours (three hours on the day of the fireworks) my friends decided that they would need three drivers to accomplish that feat. But it turned out that Miwa would not be able to drive Atsuko's car because the insurance only covers people above 30 years of age. Both Atsuko and Toshi thought 'But that means I will have to drive for three hours total! No way!' and started arguing with each other over the phone about who would do the larger portion of driving. Eventually they both decided that they did not want to go, and that was that. This was not decided until Saturday morning, so I did not have time to find another way to Omagari.

Now, I don't drive so I can't be sure, but I was under the impression that two 1 1/2 hour stints of driving in one day is quite manageable for any driver. My Dad, Mum and sister have all driven the 9 to 10 hour journey between Wellington and Auckland in a single day at least once each. Although that journey is difficult, it is still doable. Three hours out and three hours back shared over two drivers is nothing compared to that, don't you think?

Anyway, instead of watching fireworks, Atsuko, Miwa and I ate lunch at a Japanese restaurant and went to Aeon in Honjo. I was home in time for dinner.

On Sunday I performed in a festival in Yuzawa. Yuzawa is a town quite far inland from here, further than Omagari. It took about 2 hours to get there. It was a parade-style festival. We, with several other yosakoi teams, performed our dances in rotation along 2km of roads. It took over 2 hours. I got a little sunburnt despite wearing sunblock because I sweated the sunblock off in the heat. Periodically and at the end we did easy dances all together, and that was the hardest part. Especially since we had five or six 'last time's. It was very tiring indeed. My dinner was conbini onigiri, fried chicken, cheese and pudding. When I got home at 7pm I was so tired and aching that I could not move. I napped, woke up long enough to sort a few things out, and then was asleep again before 10 o'clock. And I was still tired and achy on Monday.

On Monday torrential rain and thunder started in the afternoon. If I had left at the normal time I would have avoided it but I had to stay late to tutor a student for next weeks speech contest in Honjo. I didn't take an umbrella (not that I would have wanted to use one in a thunder storm) so I got very wet. The students are not allowed to leave school in a thunder storm, which I thought was strange. Most kids in NZ would ring someone to come and get them in such weather, but there are not actually teachers stopping them from leaving the building. I had to ask the teacher at the door for permission to let me out. He was saying "It's too dangerous, too dangerous," even though I could quite clearly hear that the thunder was still 7 miles away. Anyway, I escaped and sprinted to Max Valu so that I would have food to eat that evening. When I finished, the rain was even harder so I decided to wait a few minutes to see if the rain would let up a little. There were many other people waiting too. But that just pissed me off! I mean, I was waiting because I had to walk all the way home in the rain. Those other women were waiting because they didn't want to get wet between the door and their cars in the parking lot! The woman beside me waited for five minutes before deciding to run for it. It turned out that her car was the closest car to the door. It was less than five metres away! And it wasn't locked so she didn't need to fumble with her key or anything, she just needed to hop in. I mean, how pathetic can you get? The rain never did let up, so I just walked home in the torential rain, sans umbrella.

What do you think? Are Japanese people weak? Am I crazy? Which is it?

It rained on Tuesday and yesterday too. Now, I know people are supposed to feel horrible and sad on rainy days, but I have been feeling happy. It was so hot before, but the rain cooled things down. Apart from that many of my shoes are damp, the rain has been welcome. It is not the constant, clinging pervasive rain of the rainy season; it is fresh cleansing rain and thunderstorms that add character to the atmosphere.

Yesterday I was at the elementary school. My desk this year is near the large windows, and facing them. The roof overhangs the walls by quite a bit so the windows can be left open in the rain so long as the wind is not too strong. I had no classes so I sat all day in the staffroom at my desk, mostly alone, with the sound of rain and thunder all around me because four very large windows on two sides of me were wide open. I was so, so happy.

Boredom

I am so bored, and at the same time so angry at myself. I mean, it is the last day of the summer holidays. I have lasted throughout the whole of the summer holidays without too much difficulty, but now on the last day it is too much. I am writing this post simply as a last-ditch attempt to stay awake.

Hmm . . . what can I say? . . . Guess I will talk about the weather.

As I wrote last month, this year's rainy season lasted for a long time. It turns out that the insanely hot season is also determined to go on for a long time. In Japan in the middle of summer, there are a few weeks when the weather is not hot but sweltering. Temperatures rarely drop below 30 degrees even here in the north, and down south they are usually above 35 degrees. It is so humid that the water has trouble staying in the air despite the heat. This weather usually lasts until the obon festival and no longer. But not this year.

It is a week and a half after obon and yet the weather is only just changing today (and it has not changed much). I saw the weekly weather report on Sunday evening, and the weather lady promised me that from yesterday the weather would be alternately rainy and cloudy, bringing a welcome break to the hot weather. On Tuesday, the weather lady gave a more precise forecast. Wednesday - rain in the morning, cloudy in the afternoon. I woke up yesterday all excited with thoughts of cooling rain, and then a second later noticed the lack of pitter-pattering on my window. A glance out the window brought all my hopes crashing down around my ears. It was sunny. On the way to work, two rain drops fell on me before the meager clouds evaporated and the day became hot and sunny just like the day before.

Today there are a few clouds which occasionally pass in front of the sun, but the gaps of blue between them are heart-breakingly large. At about nine o'clock this morning, the heavens opened and I thought This is it! The rain has finally come! But the rain ended again five minutes later and the day warmed up. It it slightly cooler than the past week, but only a little.

Every day when I get home from work it is 37 or 38 degrees inside my apartment. I know this because the ALT before me left me a thermometer. I wish I could leave a window open but I can't. My apartment is at street level with my window right beside the road. My windows have no latches on them. If I leave them just a little bit open, anyone could pull them all the way open and then climb inside.

*+_+*+_+*+_+*+_+*+_+*+_+*

Yesterday was my English conversation class. A new student joined us for the first time. I met Saya for the first time not long after I came to Japan. She was friends with some people I went to karaoke with. She knew some English, and because I knew very little Japanese then, I talked with her for a while. I saw her once more in Denkodo, where she helped me converse with the salesperson when I went to pick up my computer Tsurara-chan. A week after that, Saya moved to Canada to study English and to work at a travel agents. Last month Saya came back to Japan, and I saw her in a bar in Honjo. I was talking to her for a while. Although my Japanese is a lot better, I still talked to her in English because she is so good now. I think her English is a lot better than my Japanese, although she says the same thing of me.

Anyway, Saya asked if she could come to my English class during the months that she is back in Japan, because at the moment she has no other opportunities to use English. I warned her my class is low level, but said she was welcome to come anyway. So she did. Between Saya, Toshi and Miwa, quite a rapid English conversation got going mid-class. All the older ladies, however, were utterly lost. After Saya introduced herself (with a level of English even Toshi and Miwa had trouble keeping up with) I asked everyone to introduce themselves to Saya. First they thought they were supposed to ask questions of Saya, and then they introduced themselves with "My name is . . . " followed by an account of what they did the week before. (We usually talk about the previous week at the beginning of class - that was why they got confused). The younger three students were laughing behind their hands. When we moved onto a simple activity things were okay, but the free talk, since it broke from the established routine, was a disaster.

I wish my class could be split into two levels, a high level and a low level. Since younger people joined my class, a definite gap in ability between two groups of students has formed. The older long-time students who come to class for the social opportunity have low level English. The younger people (Toshi, Miwa, Saya and to a certain degree Atsuko) who joined because they wanted to practice English and/or were already friends with me have a much higher level of English, and can even use idioms and colloquialisms they picked up from TV.

What can I do? How can I keep the activities within the older ladies' capabilities and yet keep it interesting for the younger folk? I don't think there is one easy answer to my problem.