monkeys

We went on a drive to Nikko yesterday, about 200km away. While up at Chuzenjiko (Lake Chuzenji), we ran into some of the local fauna, snow monkeys.

guests!

Our guests arrived yesterday, and we've been busy ever since. This morning (well, at 11 when we finally managed to get everyone out of the house), we hit the road for Kamakura, where we saw a giant old buddha and washed our money in a temple for good luck. The Kamakura Daibutsu is one of Japan's oldest surviving large Buddha statues, dating back to the Kamakura period in the 1200s. The bronze statue is joined to the ground with a fairly sturdy foundation, which is why the statue survived the 15th century tsunami that washed away the temple that used to house it. After everyone admired Buddha in all his glory (he's pretty fat, there's a lot of glory to go around), we went on a medium-length hike to Zeniarai Benten, a shrine contemporaneous with the great Buddha. It was constructed by the shogun in the 1200s, and quickly gained favor with merchants, who went to the shrine to wash their money. Somehow, the locals came to believe that money washed in the spring waters of the temple grounds would double (or better) in value within a year or so. We took out a couple hundred dollars worth of yen and washed them thoroughly.

Afterwards, we headed to Chinatown in Yokohama for dinner. The prawns in chili sauce were tasty. Tomorrow we were going to go to Nikko, but the weather is supposed to be lousy, so I think we're going to stay in.

More reports from the field to come later.

Christmas Concert

For the third year in a row, Sam and I played with a group of local teachers in the town's Christmas concert. Sam continued this year with her percussion duties, and I was the conductor again. No photos from the actual performance (yet), but here's the group shot we took afterwards. Yes, I wore a Santa suit.

Bounenkai

The kids went home for winter break about four hours ago, and in another two we'll (we being the staff here at Hishida) will be heading out to the Excel Hotel Tokyu for our bounenkai. In Japanese, it's written 忘年会, with the first character meaning "forget", the second being "year" and the last signifying a meeting or gathering of some kind. You can roughly translate the entire phrase as a "forget the year party." I haven't asked if they'll be serving Duff.

Lack of motivation

This blog being private has given me a serious lack of motivation to read it, let alone post here. But, it is the end of the term so I'll be away from my pictures for a while so I guess I'd better get caught up.
We took a hike through a natural wetland (or what is remaining of it just outside the airport gates). It is apparently very relaxing or whatever. I personally find the LOUD JET ENGINES to be the opposite of relaxing. Anyway, cute sea of yellow hats.


After the hike obviously we had lunch. Kids have to eat. But Japanese parents have no clue how to pack a lunch. I am serious. They pack 10 times more rice than their child could ever eat and then at least $10 worth of candy. I understand that everybody eats school lunch so they never have to learn how to pack a lunch but shit, that's just dumb. Serina and Konoha ate some gum that changes the color of their tongue. Here they are comparing.



Greg found Miyu, one of my first graders, at the town Sports Festival. Miyu does, I think literally, fart sparkles. She is so cute and happy, as you would expect from her smiling face in this picture.










Aaah, the Halloween Party. As you can see, I am a pirate.
Nothing to see here. Just a pirate.













Haruki bobbing for apples. We used mini apples because the kids just can't stand to get their faces wet AND bite into a whole apple.







The 4th graders made a puzzle game. Anna, Kouki and Yurie try to sort it out.










This picture fulfills two needs, which is great because I am sick of this formatting game already. On the left, the bowling game. In the center, Tsubasa with what looks like a sling-shot. Oh yes, we had a shooting game.


We made a jack o'lantern.













Decorated the halls to make Halloween Town










I don't seem to have many pictures from inside the ghost house...









Really, that's pretty much it. Nobody uploaded the Christmas party pictures yet (we performed It's Christmas, Charlie Brown) and pictures of the kids running is boring.

It's cold

This was the view from our back window this morning. Pack your long johns, Irving (you too, Jonathan).

 

mikan!

Though it's easy to forget this time of year (because it's damned cold), the Narita area is pretty far south. We're at about 35 degrees north latitude, which puts us roughly on par with Santa Barbara. A good reminder of this are the mikan trees that sport beautiful, bright orange low-hanging fruit this time of year.

The mikan is essentially a mandarin orange (in fact, mandarins were introduced to the US via Japan). They're a bit smaller than a tennis ball, have very thin skins (you can peel them with a fingernail), and the fruit inside is very soft, and from time to time very sweet (though sweetness is hit or miss, like oranges back home).

Anyway, my school has a tree, and a couple of weeks ago it was determined that the fruit was ripe enough to pick and eat with lunch. The fifth and sixth graders managed fine on their own, but my first and second graders are sadly too short to reach any of the fruit themselves. You can see what our solution was.

That's Airi, a very cute first grader.

Miki, a very big first grader.

Naoki, a very big (but very happy) second grader.

Tokyo at night

Our friend Kris was just out for 8 days, which is why we haven't gotten around to posting since after Thanksgiving. I took last Thursday and a couple other half days to drive him around the region. Sam couldn't take the time off, unfortunately, since she's missed so much work lately. Not that it mattered in the end, because she got sick again and was out from Tuesday-Friday. We managed to cram a lot of activity into a week, and I'll try to write more about it in the next few days. For now though, enjoy some pictures of Tokyo at night. Kris and I went up to the observation deck of Tokyo tower last Friday. Though I've been there many times, it was my first time up since we got our new camera, so I had some fun.

Behind the large tower (which incidentally wasn't there three years ago) you can see the skyscraper district of Shinjuku.

Looking straight west towards Shibuya, home to many clubs, clothing stores, and tasty restaurants.

The Rainbow Bridge, which carries part of the Shuto Expressway across the mouth of Tokyo Harbor. On the far side of the bridge is Odaiba, the newest area of Tokyo, built entirely on reclaimed land.

thanksgiving in japan

My turkey got a slightly blackened on the top (though only the skin, underneath was just fine) this year, but otherwise all went well. The risotto was tasty, the mashed potatoes garlicky, and the gravy was, well, gravy.

We had two Japanese guests, two Americans, and an Englishman. I handed a full plate of food to Katsumata sensei, a young teacher from my school, her eyes went so wide that I immediately turned to Tokushige sensei and told him to do his best (even he seemed skeptical). I went back and collected a smaller portion for Katsumata sensei.

blog lockdown

So, as everyone who can read this must be aware, someone at company HQ stumbled upon this blog and freaked out. Though our schools are both pretty aware of what we've been writing and posting here, the company has privacy concerns and is in CYA mode. So for the time being, everyone who wants to read will have to log in using a Google username.

If you know someone who wants to be included on the readership list, have them send a request to:

diamond@subtend.net
Ask them to put something about the blog in the subject line.

never a good sign

During 4th period the lunch lady (who serves, but does not cook lunch - it's made elsewhere) came into the staff room and announced, "Today's lunch is weird. Looks like hospital food."

I spent the next twenty minutes filled with dread (which ended up being mostly justified - that was pretty gross).

bored

Sam and I are both home sick this Monday. Not bronchitis this time, just seems to be a run of the mill cold, or perhaps a mild flu. We tried to take it easy all weekend hoping it would clear up by now, but no luck. So we're off to see the doctor in two hours or so.

Of course, even sick one can only lay around in bed for so many hours, so while trying to alleviate my boredom I stumbled upon this little thing. I thought it was neat.

fun with muticulturalism

My 3rd graders wrote haikus about Halloween. Wrap your head around that for a minute. Then go find someone who reads Japanese and marvel at how cute these are.

Halloween!

Not really much to report. I built a miniature haunted house at the entrance to Hishida's music room, and we played a bunch of games. Then the kids got candy. It was fun.

Sam's party was much more involved, and I'll let her tell you all about it when she can get around to typing.

Here are pictures from Hishida (my school).

The kids paired up and used toilet paper to turn each other into mummys. Here Hinano is wrapping her friend Mieko (both in the sixth grade).

The fifth and sixth grades posing. Differentiating the vowel sounds between mummy and mommy made for a good lesson point.

The first and second grades posing with their scarecrow creation.

Moena did her best to destroy the large bat-shaped thing that turned out to hold lots of candy.

The pirate pumpkin was impressive when lit.

Why Tokyo Rules, Part 342

Guys like this really add to the ambiance.

パンプキンづくり

The fifth and sixth graders helped me make a jack-o-lantern today. They chose a design by a girl in the 4th grade (which at my school means she gets to take it home after Halloween).

The first grade boys were impressed. Pirates are popular these days.

News you may not have seen in the NYT

The largest English conversation school in Japan is in the midst of a rather spectacular collapse. The chain of schools, called NOVA, employs over 5,000 foreigners in Japan and is notorious in the local English-speaking community for being a lousy place to work. The average teacher stays for 8 months, which I think says more than I could. Anyway, the firm was slapped down by the the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) for some shady business practices in the spring. The ruling included a six-month ban on signing lucrative long-term contracts with students.

The company staggered along for a few months, but starting last month people started getting paid late (not at all in the case of some middle managers), evicted from company housing (even though the company had been deducting rent from paychecks and supposedly passing it along to landlords), and branches of the school started closing down. Things took a marked turn for the worse this week when teachers were not paid as scheduled on Monday, and the CEO sent out a fax saying they'd try to scrape together the cash for salaries by "around the 25th".

We've known a few NOVA instructors over the years, and this isn't a fun time for any of them.

The frustration exhibited in this video is pretty standard:



The bunny ("usagi" in Japanese) is the company mascot, if you were wondering. Oh, and Nozomu Sahashi is the CEO.

Sam's sick again

Sam and I were talking last night and I noted, with some amusement, that though I studied German for seven years I don't think I ever learned the word for "bronchitis", though I sure as hell know the word in Japanese (気管支炎 - ki-kan-shi-en, if you were wondering).

She's been sent home from work three days in a row now, and went to the doctor yesterday to get the bad news. Hopefully this doesn't mark the beginning of "bronchitis season" like we've had the last few years.

Video Project Finale

The final segment, starring the whole class, with the first grade making a short group cameo as a group of preschool students on a field strip.

Video Project, Part 2

In this installment, Godzilla shows up and attacks the good people at Monster Circus. After ensuring the safety of injured guests, Yoshihiro takes Godzilla out.

the end of a posting drought (hopefully)

I've been busy since the undoukai (I feel compelled to note, that sentence is essentially how we speak at this point. When we move home the random inclusion of Japanese nouns and verbs in our English speech is sure to cause endless amusement with prospective employers.), and Sam's still nursing that injured elbow and cursing Japanese medicine under her breath.

Anyway, here's what I was working on (the first part of it at any rate). My 5th and 6th graders pooled their collective knowledge of the English language (and asked many questions of me) and wrote the scripts for three short plays back before the summer break. I helped with things that were just too hard for 11 year-olds to translate. I also did the video editing after the fact, though they took care of set design and stage directions. I'm quite proud of them, all in all.

Like I said, here's part one. There are two more.

Undoukai pictures

I promised pictures from last weekend. I think I've explained at length what the "Sports Day" consists of, so I won't really bother now. This year was more or less without incident, though due to hot weather we did have one 3rd grade boy collapse from heat exhaustion. This is apparently common. Anyway, the kids were pretty cute. Here's the evidence.

Daiki, a sixth grader, was the leader of the white team.

Yoshihiro (the other boy in the sixth grade) was the leader of the red team.

Akane (a 4th grader, in front) and Yui (3rd grader, in back) joined the others in a synchronized warm-up routine.

Yoshihiro's considerable girth gave the red team a decided edge in the cheering competition.

The first and second grades had a race that involved picking up a grocery list, running to a "store" (really a table in the field), grabbing their groceries, then matching the ingredients in their basket to cards with the names of various Japanese dishes written on them. Moena-chan struggled, since the basket was bigger than her.

The first and second graders also joined together for an event with their grandparents. The object was simple, throw as many of the beanbags in the basket as possible within 30 seconds.

The entire student body teamed up for this race, which involved hanging onto a bar and running around a series of obstacles. The pairs were often mismatched for comic effect, as illustrated by Yoshihiro and Kazuki, above.

Mizuki, in the 5th grade, joined her mother for the obligatory three-legged race.

These kids can do extraordinary things on unicycles. Yoshihiro and Daiki played catch while riding.

Several large groups of the girls managed to hold hands and rotate around an axis.

Ayato (a first grader) had fun with the dance the entire student body performed together.

Airi (also a first grader) enjoyed herself a great deal.

Sayaka (a sixth grader) executed a nearly perfect forward flip during the dance finale.

The Shibayama Volunteer Fire Department returned and put on quite a show (that's one of my sixth-graders dads on the top of the pyramid).

It got quite heated.

The kids joined with all the guests (mainly parents and grandparents) for a traditional Japanese dance called the "yosokoi odori".

The final event was an all-school relay. Above, the hand-off between several members of the 3rd grade.

Largely thanks to Yoshihiro's booming voice, the red team was victorious at the end of the day. The principal presented him with the school flag as a symbol of victory.