First Week of September

Okay so because mother is nagging me, I love you mom, here’s another post. If this one doesn’t make sense it’s due to the fact that I’m severely hung-over after my three day drink-a-thon. But I’m getting to that.

So Friday started in the most reassuring of manners. I spent a half-hour driving around Kuguno looking for my Junior High. Finally, after the second time I stumbled across it, I went up to my Elementary school and asked for directions. My principal, who’s sort of adopted me as I’m almost the same age as his daughter, drove in front and showed me where the school was. The sad part is I’d made it there by myself the week before.

So I was late for the first time. My English teacher, Omizou-sensei, found my story of getting lost hilarious and so I’m guessing no one found me being a few minutes late to be a huge deal. I introduced myself to some more classes. Questions I’m asked a lot include, What did you have for breakfast?, Do you like natto?, How old are you?, and of course Do you have a boyfriend?

Anyway I ended up leaving work early on Friday because I had to go to the Board of Education to meet the Superintendent. Luckily, one of my boxes of winter clothes was there so I was able to pick it up at the same time. I am a little concerned that it was only one box given that I sent two and I sent them at the same time, but there’s nothing much I can do but wait and see at this point.

Quick side note: We’ve had an increase of bear sighting in the Takayama area. One fisherman was attacked, he’s fine, but now everyone’s on hyper alert for them. Sometimes the teachers actually go check the paths/streets that the kids use to get home, if they’re near the forest, for bears. I just love the image of teachers doing a bear check before letting the kids go. And for those of you who are worried, there’s not been a single bear sighting in my village.

And back to Friday. After going to the Board of Education, I went home, got changed and then met up with Kuguno Elementary’s principal downstairs. We live in the same building though I live on the third floor and he lives on the first. Together we took a taxi to my first enkai.

An enkai is a work drinking party. They often are all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink so they are deadly. This one I only had 2 beers and I was very much inebriated. I found out I speak better Japanese drunk than I do sober. This particular enkai involved drunken language lessons from me. I taught all my teachers “the only Spanish you need to know.” Dos cervesas por favor. Or two beers please. I translated it for them and they loved it.

So I got home around 11pm went to bed, and then had to go to Kuguno Junior High on Saturday morning for the Sports Festival. It was actually a lot of fun. For me at least. I just sat there, took pictures, and tried to get the kid with the broken leg beside me to talk.

Some of the events were intense. They had some of the usual, relay races, tug-of-wars, and three-legged races but some of the other events…Like the most violent one was probably the rope-grabbing race. They leave a bunch of short lengths of rope in the middle of the field and the girls on each team line up on opposite sides. When the pistol goes, they run grab the ropes and drop them on their side. Doesn’t sound so bad does it? But once you’ve dropped one you can go back and help your friends. Which means you can have like twenty girls all trying to get the same piece of rope and they’re hardcore fighting each other for it. It’s a lot of fun to watch.

Another of the more interesting ones was the back running race. They have one kid on each team, the lightest, and they have him climb onto their backs, they’re have bent over, and he runs across the field this way and back again. It looks like it’s fun to be the kid doing the running.

One of the other ones I liked was the team jump rope. They get like ten to twenty kids in a line and they all have to jump this huge rope. The aim is to have the highest number of consecutive jumps. The winning number was thirty-four. I have no idea how they do this.

Halfway through the day the kids do their cheers. This isn’t like “Go lions go” or anything like this. First off, the kids have painted their own mascots, big boards with something on it in their team’s colours. White team had a white tiger and the Red team had a picture of Napoleon on a horse for some reason. I still have no idea why. The cheering itself involves chanting, synchronized movements, and in the case of both teams, coloured flip boards. They flipped these over and back to reveal the different colours and created patterns with them. It was frigging cool.
The Red team added in a number involving fans. They spelled the word WIN in English which was sweet. The White team however, took it to another level. Not only did they have their flip boards but half-way through they switch the colours from green and white to green and yellow somehow. Then, in the second half, they opened and closed their black uniform coats to reveal their white t-shirts and formed patterns with them. While chanting. And in the end they made a massive (A V in Japan often stands for Victory) out of both their shirts and their bodies. It was super awesome. I was thoroughly impressed.

So after a day of sun and sweat, I went home to get clean, change and I was right back out for another enkai. This time, I met up with my Science teacher from Kuguno Junior High, he too lives in Miya, and we took the train into Takayama. We ended up at Kanki, which is a favourite restaurant with us ALTs as they do a very good Caesar salad.

There was no Caesar salad in evidence at the enkai. There were however, not one, but two fish heads. One raw, one cooked. The teachers had a lot of fun trying to make me eat the cooked one’s eye. No one else ate it so I assume they were just messing with me. This was like an extension of lunch time where I made the mistake of sitting in the gym where the students and their families were and not in the staff room. Several people seemed to decide my sandwich was not a good enough lunch and began the game of ‘Feed the Foreigner’. I tried to refuse but they wouldn’t let me. And then I couldn’t not eat it. I thought I was going to die. So much food!
So Saturday’s enkai also involved me drunkenly teaching languages to people. This time it was mostly English with a tiny bit of German and Danish thrown in. One of my teachers kept thinking I was Dutch for some reason. I had to explain, using my little chart that I’d drawn in my notebook, to explain what background I come from. They all found this fascinating. Which kind of makes sense since all of them are Japanese and all they’re ancestors are Japanese so the idea of having a mixed background is a novelty.

Again, I managed to keep my drinking within acceptable drunken levels and got home at around 10pm. I went to bed, got up early, made cheesecake dip and then took the train into Takayama and walked to the Valor where I was meeting the other ALTs. We did a bit of last minute grocery shopping and then piled into 4 cars to head to the river in Kamioka.

It was Aiko’s, a Japanese friend of us ALTs, birthday. So we went to the river, crossed it, and set up a barbecue. We spent the day there, swimming, jumping off the cliffs, and sliding down the mini-waterfalls. Well that is until we discovered that there were leeches around the waterfalls. Then we stayed off those rocks. Though they were only tiny little leeches no bigger than tiny bits of thread. They came right off.

We ended the day with several bouts of river sumo wrestling or Mizumo as we called it (Mizu being water and Mizumo being a combination of the words Mizu and Sumo). Aiko was the girl’s champion and Carl was the boy’s. Finally, with the sun going down, the river is between two mountains so it gets cold quickly, we made our way home, tired but content.

So that’s what I was up to this weekend. Stay tuned because there are like 5 ALT birthdays this month so we’re going to spend most of this month in a drunken haze. Until the next time I’m bored at work, Bye!