Recent Adventures

Now with picture updates from Brian!

I apologize for being so bad at blogging. Here is a run-down of our latest adventures.

Last Saturday we went to the Sekikawa

snake festival. Aimee, another married ALT lives in Sekikawa, and invited us to go. The villagers walk through the

entire village carrying a HUGE bamboo snake on their shoulders. We tried carrying it a couple times, since people take turns and there is a whole group that follows the parade. The fun part was

when they made the snake “slither.” We got thrown around on the street, but it was so much fun! I thought I was really strong when I was carrying it, but I guess I didn’t realize how heavy it really since Brian was so tall he had

most of the weight on his shoulders! The one time I tried carrying without Brian I definitely felt some weight! They started carrying the snake at 9:30am and ended around 12:30pm. We hung out at A

my’s house after the festival and then returned to Murakami.

Brian Edit: Here's our first views of the snake.

Pictures of the snake coiling into the plaza at the end of the procession!

Finally, after the end of the ceremony, the snake becomes a playground:

Murakami has 5 JET teachers. We went out lunch after the festival with Liz. Her apartment building has a restaurant below it and on the weekends they serve Mexican food! Brian and Liz got the Mexican platter, but I got their Margarita pizza with fresh basil to mix things up. The food was amazing and it was nice to find a place that we could go when we desperately need some familiar food.

On Sunday Brian and I spent most of the day resting, and I graded papers from my first week of school. I had all the 8^th graders summer vacation homework. They were required to write ten sentences for three days about what they did over summer vacation. Some of them were really good and some made absolutely no sense. It took me quite a while to get through all of them. We also listened to a Terry Prachett book on tape. We are just that cool!

I was at my base school Monday through Wednesday. We’ve been having cheerleading practice everyday after lunch in preparation for Sports Day, which is this Sunday. All the students are required to learn their team’s cheers. There are four teams: Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue, and I’m on the Green team. Our cheers are very interesting and there are even some dances with them. They base the cheers on popular Japanese songs. On Wednesday we didn’t have classes, so instead we spent all morning and afternoon outside rehearsing for Sports Day. Each grade has special activities they participate in. They have the 100m dash, relays, and slightly more unconventional sports where they all race into a circle and grab tires and the team with the most tires wins. They also have tug-of-war and a race where four people are on two skis and they are required to work together to race around the track. Many of the students seem to have fun, but it was very hot on Wednesday, and they were quite tired from being out in the sun all day.

I have very interesting students at my base school. There are quite a few (about 10-15) who have no respect for the teachers, principals, or rules, and wear their hair crazy and uniforms unbuttoned town to the chest. These students find it really amusing to ask me dirty questions in both English and Japanese. They say the worst things in Japanese because they think I won’t understand them. It’s been getting kind of annoying since the kids will follow me after cheering practice and say ridiculous things to me.

Most of the kids are very nice and shy. I have Yutaro’s sister (the boy we went to karaoke with), who is really nice and talks to me everyday after lunch. There is also a really popular boy who always comes into the teacher’s room and talks to all the teachers. He says he really wants to learn English, and he’s very nice, but I think he might be a bit of a brown-noser. Most of the students seemed to enjoy the Bingo game I made (it took me ages since I made different ones for each grade, and photo-shopped pictures of real things for it). Overall I know they aren’t huge fans of learning English, but it’s fun while I’m in class.

Yesterday I rode my bike to Iwafune Elementary School. The ride doesn’t take very long, about 20-30 minutes, and the kids were so cute! I worked with the 3^rd, 5^th, and 6^th graders. I got to play with the students after lunch and I picked weeds with them. They are very patient with me when I can’t understand what they say, and they use a lot of gestures. We played Tag and Stuck in the Mud. The teachers all thought what I wore to ride to the school was really cute too, and they all cried out “wakai” which means “so young!.” I’ve been getting that a lot recently. Most Japanese tend to get married in their late 20’s early 30’s so I’m a bit ahead of the curve.

Today I’m at my largest school, Murakami Minami Elementary which has over 430 students! I only get to work with the 6^th graders today, but I will also work with the 5^th graders.