Festival On, Wayne!

There are a lot of things that Japan does right. Sushi, cleaning, convenience stores, and seasonal produce are the first things that come to mind. I can’t get over their seasonal produce. Persimmons anyone?

But Japan also festivals it up like there’s no tomorrow. 

Even in a small, rural area like Miyazaki, we have really fun local festivals pretty much monthly and I always enjoy the chance to get out and see what folks in the community have been working so hard to put together.

A few weeks ago, some of my fellow ALTs starred in one of the local Hyuga festivals, so a big group of us came out to cheer them on. 

I wasn’t able to make it for the first night’s dance (I had a neck spasm? Am I eighty years old?), so I missed Lindsay and Cameron’s assuredly mesmerizing performance. 

However, I got to see Jodi playing taiko drums and stealing the show. We were all very proud. 

Jodi rocking her Taiko uniform

Afterwards, all the festival participants circled around a giant light up sumo man doing a choreographed dance. I took that as an opportunity so I jumped in too, even though I had no idea what I was doing. 

Nothing makes me want to dance like a sumo booty!

The dance consisted of movements mimicking different daily activities in the life of a Japanese farmer (or at least, that's what it seemed like to me). I was trying to pull off the “sun rise, tend to the rice field” dance move and smacked someone in the face.

They were cool with it. As they say in Wayne’s World, “Festival on, Garth!” 

Speech Contests

English Recitation Contest: We Mean Business!

Working as an elementary/junior high school English teacher in Japan can be described as a low stress, high reward job. You get paid to basically be a foreigner, show up on time, and be silly with children. What’s not to love?

Yet sometimes, I find that this sort of work cycles between being totally awesome and fulfilling (I get paid to sing the alphabet and play tag at recess? Perfect!) and feeling like a total waste of time. When I have classes, it’s a great job. 

But more often than not, I have several days where I’m sort of desk-warming at the town hall's board of education office. 

Getting paid to do nothing might sound like every loafer’s dream. But for me, especially at the beginning of my time here, it felt sort of demoralizing. 

Everyone else has something to do, clacking busily away at their laptops, while I just have eight hours of sitting and finding clever ways to pass the time. It makes me feel like I’m a child at the office's “take your daughter to work” day.  Except that my parent is a bunch of Japanese office workers who I can't really communicate with. I just don’t feel very connected to anyone or anything.

However, when my students are practicing for the Junior High School English speech contest, these feelings are suddenly completely obliterated. 

Suddenly I’m a pronunciation expert, acting teacher, and general English master with appointments in my planner and reasons to stay late at work. All the teachers direct their questions to me. I edit speeches, teach kids the way that native English speakers enunciate and intonate their sentences, and I even get to choreograph their gestures. 

I’m suddenly useful! It’s a great feeling!

Last year, after months of practice together, one of my students, Yuta, received first prize in the Northern Miyazaki prefecture speech contest. He wrote a great speech about his homestay experience in Australia, and his pronunciation was so natural!

Yuta had clearly worked incredibly hard on mastering all the tips the teachers and I gave him, which was super rewarding to witness. 

After the Northern contest, he then went on to receive fourth prize in the Miyazaki-wide speech contest in the following month. The top three students in that contest go on to the nation-wide speech contest in Tokyo. He was so close to going to Tokyo!

He did an amazing job, and seeing one of my students succeed was one of the best moments of my professional life.

So that was last year. This year, in September, another one of my students, Masaya, received first prize again in the Northern Miyazaki prefecture recitation contest (which is basically the same contest, only you don't write your own speech). It was so exciting, and I totally felt like a champion teacher. 

I think Masaya was a little bummed that he won however, because his high school examinations were coming up rapidly. Suddenly he had to study for the Miyazaki wide speech contest and his tests at the same time. Poor stressed out middle school students! 

So, last Tuesday, one of my favorite co-teachers, Noma sensei, and I road tripped to Miyazaki City to watch Masaya perform his speech in the prefecture-wide contest. 

The Miyazaki City Cultural Center, where all the speech contest magic happens.

We chatted about non-school things: boyfriends, food allergies and rude people. She made me laugh like crazy! It was great to spend time with a teacher friend outside of school and just relax together.

Masaya did not place in the prefecture wide contest, which was a little disappointing, but I think he was happy to be done with the whole process.  His family came to watch him perform, which was very cute, and they were all so proud of him! Noma sensei and I congratulated him on a job well done, and then we went out for lunch.

A happy Noma sensei pictured with Chicken Nanban four ways. Yum!

When I was in the US, I feel like a work event like this might have been a little bit annoying to me (“I have to stay late at school? I have to sit through middle school students giving speeches? Ugh!”). But now I’ve just become so grateful to get to know the people I work with and the students I teach on a more personal level. 

I’m always surprised and delighted when I notice these little changes in perspective. Here’s to another year of figuring things out in Japan!

Camping Champions

It can be tough when you have a five day weekend and dreams of traveling to far off lands, but no money in your bank account. I know. I've been there dozens of times.

One of those times was in September, during the silver week holidays here in Japan. So I decided to plan a camping trip with Alex, Luke and Jo for a little bit of budget-friendly outdoorsy fun. We spent three days at the Hourigawa campground, just an hour and a half north of Kadogawa town, and enjoyed hiking, river views, s'mores, and even hot springs relaxation time. The best part (or at least, a really great part) was that staying at the campsite only cost us 500円 per night (around $4.70). 

My bank account and my inner lumberjack were equally happy.

Cult-ure Festival?

When I was invited to Kadogawa Junior High School's culture festival, I didn't really know what to expect. I've never attended a culture festival in general, let alone in Japan.

When trying to envision what I might be in for, my brain brought up memories of my high school art shows: strange, technicolor paintings of nudes, wire sculptures of monsters with bananas for claws, ugly pottery fresh out the kiln. It was fun then, so I thought the Japanese version would be just as weird.

It was. Just in a different way.

Culture festival day. I sat on my knees on the gymnasium floor, scrunched up with approximately 200 other parents and their children, behind the teachers and students in uniform. There were no chairs, because I live in Japan. It reminded me of an indoor picnic mixed with a school assembly.

The main event consisted of watching my students perform speeches and sing songs, while a group of judges decided which of the classes was the most cultured. A difficult decision, considering that they were all junior high students. 

Judging twelve year old students on how cultured they are is like judging white bread on how spicy and bold its flavor is. It's just not practical.

But I digress. I hunkered down on the floor next to Inamura Sensei, a teacher I had worked with last year who had gone on maternity leave. She displayed her tiny, chubby, drooling baby for me, and I had about twenty minutes of pure joy when I would pinch her chubby cheeks and she would reciprocate with chubby smiles. The baby, not the teacher.

So far, culture festival seems pretty fun, right? Babies, indoor picnicking, spicy, bold flavors. It's everything I want out of a Sunday.

But then the singing starts.

The first graders (seventh graders in the U.S.) in class one come to the stage. The piano begins to play a jaunty tune. The kids begin to sing a lovely song about walking through the mountains on a summer day.

"Okay," I think to myself. "This is a fun little show. I can get into this. I'll have some nice traditional Japanese songs to hum throughout the day. I already feel more cultured."

The song finishes. The students leave the stage. The parents and I clap and nod approvingly to one another. 

The first graders in class two now come to the stage. The piano begins to play the same jaunty tune, and the students once again begin to sing the same song about the mountains and the summer day.

"Hmm..." I think to myself. "I guess that first performance was like a practice round, and now they're performing the song for real. Excellent, okay, yeah."

The song finishes. The students leave the stage again. The parents and I clap and nod approvingly to one another once again. We are in this together after all.

Class three. Jaunty tune. Mountains and summer day.

"Oh my god," I think. "Oh. My. God. They are going to sing the same song all damn day. Well, this is just first graders, right? Maybe we'll get a different song from the second graders. I guess I can listen to this five times without wanting to hit someone."

Cut to third graders, class five. Jaunty tune. Those awful mountains and that stupid summer day. 

I have counted. This song has been repeated fifteen times so far.

By this time, I have stopped thinking. The words in my brain have been replaced with Japanese song lyrics. I don't even understand most of them and yet they are there, repeating.

I have forgotten my past. I have forgotten my hopes and dreams. I am a robot, programmed to walk among the mountains and enjoy summer days.

When I finally leave the festival, and my soul returns to my body, I like to think that I feel a little more cultured than when I walked in.

But really I probably just have a new appreciation  for mountains and summer days. Too bad it's fall now.

A Quick and Dirty Guide to Japan Garbage Sorting

I've now lived in Miyazaki for over a year. It's interesting. I'm starting to forget things that were once totally commonplace to my life.

What street did I used to live on?

What was the name of that bookshop I used to frequent?

What do tacos taste like again?

But I suppose that makes sense. A whole new set of Japan-related things have replaced those old, outdated memories with new ones in my brain. It's just like recycling.

Speaking of recycling, recycling is one of those Japan related things that I just figured out how to do. Just this month.

I know that might seem crazy considering I have lived in Miyazaki for over a year already. However, if you know anything about garbage sorting in Japan, you'll understand.

Here's how they sort trash here:

Group 1: Burnable garbage (Picked up on Mondays and Thursdays)
This includes normal garbage like fish skeletons, used paper towels and the love letters that I wrote to myself (you know, usual stuff), but also Styrofoam, clothing, and aluminum foil.

All things that are not what I would classify as burnable.

But as I am not the recycling advisor of Japan, I just have to let it go. しょうがない。

Group 2: Plastics (Picked up on Fridays)
Anything plastic except for plastic bottles. Why would that be, you ask?

Group 3: Plastic bottles (Picked up on the third Wednesday of every month)
This is where it starts to get tricky. God forbid you drink too many bottles of Coke Zero, because you'll have them piled up under your sink for a month. And don't forget to remove the caps and plastic label to be placed in plastics!

Group 4: Recycling (Picked up from a remote location on the second Wednesday of every month)
If you weren't intimidated before, now is a good time to feel intimidated. Not only does the recycling need to be brought to a certain specific location in your neighborhood (and every neighborhood is different), it needs to be separated into brown glass, green glass, clear glass, steel cans, aluminum cans and cardboard. The labels need to be removed. They need to be clean. The cardboard needs to be flattened and stacked in an orderly pile before tying it off with twine.

We're not done yet!

Group 5: Wild Card (Pick up unknown)
This is anything that doesn't belong in the other groups. Batteries, broken appliances, CDs, ghosts. To this day, I don't know where it's picked up. I just have a box of these things in my closet that I try to forget about. It causes me anxiety.

And after all that, it's important to note that if things are improperly sorted, or placed in a non-regulation garbage bag, you'll receive a little pink note that reads, "You are ignorant. Here is your trash, returned to you. Try again, fool."

I'd like to say I've never received this note. But alas, even my superior garbage offerings have gone unaccepted by the trash goddesses.

However, today I turned in my recycling with every bottle cleaned, every label removed, every cardboard perfectly folded and wrapped in a perfect Christmas bow. The tiny garbage grandma checking over my work gave me an A+ and I went off to work with a skip in my step.

So I guess I know about garbage now. But what I really want to know is if I will ever enjoy a taco again.

I will pray to the garbage goddesses for an answer.

Desk Naps at Lunchtime

Two things I've noticed about working in the Board of Education office in Kadogawa town:

1. I've totally become immune to the number of office workers who wear Crocs shoes on a daily basis.

2. People use their lunch breaks to take naps with their heads down on their desks.

I love this practice of desk napping. I find it entertaining. Sometimes I even think that maybe I should take a desk nap-- however, I'm a known drooler, and I don't think I could deal with the embarrassment of waking up to a puddle of saliva on my laptop.

During my lunch breaks  lately, I've been trying to have a 45 minute adventure every day that I'm at the office. Why eat inside when the weather is still relatively nice? There's so much to see and do just within the limits of my town! I think mixing things up in daily life is the key to feeling more energized about your days.