Of Cultural Festivals
Those of you who have visited my pictures during the doom hiatus will notice that I DID manage to get a few cultural festival pictures up, but that for some reason those pictures all included a paper doll who I insisted on referring to as Stella and treating as if it were a real person. For reasons that I cannot fathom, this seemed to mystify quite a few of you, and, although I have since explained to all who asked, I am sure that there were some (and by some I mean 1, and by 1 I mean 0) who didn't ask and are even now wondering what exactly it is I get up to in this strange, strange land. This next paragraph, then, is for you.
I recieved Stella, who as I mentioned before is a paper doll admirably dressed in pink and shiny plastic jewels, in the mail a few days before my school cultural festival, way back in October. She arrived with a note explaining that she was part of some friends of the family's daughter's school project. (try saying THAT three times fast) Said project involved reading a book, making a doll, and then sending said doll off into the world to make its fortune. The project is finished when the doll returns to its roots and write the Great American Novel about the Great American Dream, except for those dolls that went off to different countries, who must all write Russian Novels which are 20000 pages long and involve people who's names you can't keep straight. Some of them also go on lecture circuits.
But seriously, the dolls were sent to friends and/or relatives who were supposed to keep them for three weeks and chronicle what daily life in whatever place they were in was like, as well as anything else of note that they could find to chronicle in that time. After those three weeks, we were to send Stella back to where she came from along with pictures and whatever else we felt like sending.
My experience with Stella was actually somewhat irregular, as I was requested to eventually pass her on to some other friends in Kuala Lumpur and thus could not keep her for the full length of time. Instead, I kept her long enough to take her around the cultural festival and the big green Buddha of Anamizu and sent her on her way with a tear in my eye as I stuffed her into her nice padded envelope.
Thus, the pictures. The more you know...
I didn't have as much involvement with the cultural festival this year as last year, mostly because I was gone that crucial first week of September when all the classes decide what they are doing and because of the crazy planning that we had to do for our almighty doom open-class thingy at the end of October that the big-wigs from the prefectural board of education were coming to observe. This was of particular import because, due to Noto's economic situation in particular (bad) and Japan's economic situation in general (worse), high schools all over the peninsula are closing and we kind of do not want to be next although it is probably only a matter of time since we have a grand total of 165 students. So yes, big deal. Which means planning and more planning and writing lesson plans and then rewriting them because we failed to put in the proper spacing and making multiple copies of everything and then finding out that I actually had two classes that day and we needed to figure out a way to pretend that we had been following the textbook all along or we were DOOMED.
I also had to study for the JLPT. So. Not so involved this year. A shame. I did help put up the calligraphy display, though! Go me!
The cultural festival this year was also held on a weekend two weeks earlier than last year so it wouldn't be too close to the open campus day. Saturday we set up, Sunday we had the festival, and then we got Monday and Tuesday off.
During setup, I mostly wandered around and took pictures with Stella. Other than that and the aforementioned calligraphy display, I helped students out with their own projects, most notably the giant photo mosaic of kyushu that the second years made and periodically checked on the home ec room to see if any of the students working on the food that they would be selling the next day needed "help" with taste testing. The answer was, sadly, more often no than yes, although I did get to eat a bunch of Takoyaki, yay! Incidentally, my takoyaki-making kids this year are WAY better at it than the ones from last year, those were some of the best I've ever had. (because they were filled with love! or, more likely, because they've all done it before.)
I also provided moral support in the form of heckling for one of my JTEs and two of my 3rd years, who were part of this years Musical Revue. (Funny story, actually, my JTE got roped into it at the last moment because the two students were too shy to go up on stage by themselves, poor tykes) That was pretty much it, though, although I DID make some origami cranes and boats for my punk first-year kids, which earned their respect for the first time ever and led to one of my most punkiesty punkitty punks ordering another of them to go and get me chair. I thought that was really sweet and had been inclined to look more favorably on him right up until last week when he called me a hag again, the little shit.
That night, Cyndi and I had a mini birthday party for the aforementioned JTE(who is Seika, by the way), for which I made Tacos (yes, Tacos are so awesome that they deserve a capital letter) and Cyndi made Taco Salad (Taco Salad is also awesome) and I made no-bake Polish cheesecake (cheesecake is usually awesome, but this particular cheesecake was a gooey mass of failure and does not deserve a capital letter). We also watched a horrible romantic comedy that I am not even going to try to remember the name of because it was just that horrible. In other words it was a lot of fun.
The next day, we got up bright and early and made our way to the school for some awesome cultural festival action. (well Cyndi didn't, cos she doesn't work there) Allow me to take a moment to enumerate to you the wonders that awaited those who came by.
The stage: featuring an eating contest, para-para dancing, the brass band, Seika and her 3rd Years, and taiko performed by a bunch of 3rd year students who took their shirts off at the end. arranged in ascending order of interesting. Seika's mini-concert went well, they weren't what I would call COMPLETELY on target with regards to the songs, but it was all made up for by the fact that one of them was wearing a godzilla costume.
The food: There was: takoyaki, donuts, yakisoba served by 3rd-year students in drag, croquettes of the potato and crab-cream kind, fried chicken, grilled corn, udon, cookies, coffee, and some other food that I no longer remember because I'd gone into a food coma by the time that I ate it.
The art: Calligraphy, stair art for each of the classrooms (I no longer remember who won, I think it was my favorite class, but I may have just decided that in my mind because that's what I wanted to happen), the art club's and art classes pictures and other works, haiku and tanka poems by most of the students and some faculty, the aforementioned kyushu photo mosaic, the giant hands clasped together on top of the school to showcase the theme of "bonds", and various decorations around the school, etc.
The video games: These were hidden in the other building, but yes, we did have a room with a smash brothers tournament going on as well as other accoutrement of gamingness (mostly psps) for those who like that sort of thing. I did not stay there long, as I do not enjoy getting my ass handed to me by my students.
The informative displays/demonstrations: we had a room devoted to the earthquake, to sports day, to the school trip to Kyushu, to AIDS awareness and prevention, to the Advances of Modern Technology, and to astronomy. This last was actually a "planetarium", which consisted of a large room that they had managed to make almost lightproof with a taperecorder and some sort of projector unit in the middle of the room which ran a short "show" about the stars ever [insert whatever period of time it was here since I got bored and left]
The PTA Bazaar: I bought some glasses! With strawberries on them!
And, finally,
The hot air balloon: quite probably the coolest thing there, so it was a little weird that more people didn't go on to see it. I actually nearly missed it becasue I had no idea where they were inflating it. By the time I figured it out (it was out in the athletics field behind the school, no, not THAT athletics field, the OTHER one that's actaully a public track), they were already ready to let it go up - sadly with no one in it as this was against safety regulations. (This was, by the way, the first time I had even heard of safety regulation EXISTING in Japan. This is, after all, the home-country of the fire and violence festival from which, Eliza tells me, something like half of her students have permanent scars) Still it was very impressive, right up until the moment it fell over (don't worry! I have pictures!).
Fortunately for those people thinking how lame it is that we didn't just put people in anyway regardless of any safety violations, we did a second launch after the festival was over. This time, since everyone who might reveal our treachery was gone, we had students take turns taking rides. Unfortunately, the balloon had a limit of 60 kg, so not everyone could get a go. And, in actuality, not that many people WANTED to, although that might just have been because the volleyball coach insisted quite loudly that it was ok to just let go of the ropes and let the balloon drift away forever. (there was, incidentally, not method of steering the balloon included, it was just the balloon portion with a small basket attached to it with rope. It could only be filled with helium while on the ground)
Later on, when said teacher took his turn in the basket, I seriously thought that the students would take advantage of the situation in order to exact some form of unholy revenge, but it turned out that said teacher had been lying about his weight and thus got no higher than a grand total of two feet in the air. Now THAT'S comedy, people. The only way it could have been better would have been if it suddenly became really windy and the balloon went flying around the field trailing students behind it in a comical fashion. Sadly, that did not happen. He just sank back down again and got out.
And that was the bunkasai. Of course, there was the cleanup afterwards to be done, too. And then the obligatory "we're all exhausted but lets party anyway" enkai. It was a pretty fun enkai, too. (although I paid for it the next day) We had hot pot! With many different ingredients none of which I remember anymore! The highlight of the party was finding out that one of the new teachers had studying Gundam at university and even written his thesis about it. Sadly, I was forced to admit that the only Gundam I had ever seen was Wing (which, for those of you who don't know, is as unwise as revealing to a cowboy that the salsa that you just gave him was made in New York City, and will probably garner the same reaction: a loud cry of offense followed by a lynching) I freely admitted that I realized my sin, but was treated to an extended discussion of the exact order of the different Gundams in terms of quality. Having never seen them, I can't say anything positive or negative about his taste, but I WAS impressed that he could list them all.
The night finished with pizza and hot cocoa at the diner-type-thing next to the station and a discussion that degenerated into an extended bitchfest about one of the teachers at my school, which I found really funny. Mind you, I was pretty drunk by then. Then we all stumbled home and that was the REAL end of the bunkasai.
Of course, two weeks later we had the TOWN bunkasai and then a week after that we had the JUNIOR HIGH'S bunkasai.
The town bunkasai was nice, a bunch of arts and crafts were showcased in the public gym and there were a bunch of performances a the cultural center. I have a few pictures. I was particularly surprised by all of the crafts on display, apparently our community center puts on quite a few classes including: woodworking, silk dying, yarn-working (crochet and knit), dollmaking, ikebana, and drawing/painting in a large variety of styles. My favorite was probably this set of nifty collage things made with real Bits o' Nature (TM). There was one picture with a stream made out of cotton that was REALLY well done.
The performances consisted of a bunch of stuff that I missed because I was sleeping and/or doing laundry and a bunch of stuff that I didn't miss because I finally got there. To be a little more specific, there was yosakoi, singing, koto playing, playing of that horrible violin/keyboard THING that I believe I've mentioned once before and still do not approve of, the junior high brass band, and some other stuff I don't remember. I saw several people from town, which was nice. AND I took the opportunity to wash and dry my kotatsu blanket so that I could get that sucker up and running.
The junior high's bunkasai was much the same as last years was: A bunch of plays that I watched with various levels of understanding interrupted by a bunch of singing that I listened to with various levels of cringing. The 1st years did a period piece again, so I didn't really understand it. I also overslept and missed the entire first section, so I wasn't really equipped to figure out what was going on. The 2nd years...what did they do? I no longer remember. Oh! Yes, they did a pleasantly deranged play about a scientist who travels back in time in order to teach children about the importance of...integrity? honesty? something. Actually, the teaching might have gone the opposite way. The only lesson that I took out of it was that all problems can be solved with paper, scissors, rock - which is what the students opted to use instead of violence. Hey! Maybe "violence is bad" was the ostensible lesson. (Really, I think we all know it was the paper, scissors, rock thing) The 3rd years did a play about how tolerance is important, which I loathed because it was particularly condescending as far as these plays go.
There was also a short talent show during which several of the male teachers (including the one I have a crush on) put on devil horns or cat ears and proceeded to bounce around on stage while completely failing to actually sing. It was really cute. But dark, so none of my pictures came out. SAD! Other than that, not much to report, high school cultural festivals are so much cooler.
Well, that wraps it up for cultural festivals this year. Would that I had 15 or so to go to like some of the municipal JETs...Sigh.
I'm going to finish this up with a quick FYI regarding the winter holidays. I'll be arriving in the states on the 23rd and departing Texas, at least, on the 3rd. If anyone wants to meet up at some point, I'm game.
I recieved Stella, who as I mentioned before is a paper doll admirably dressed in pink and shiny plastic jewels, in the mail a few days before my school cultural festival, way back in October. She arrived with a note explaining that she was part of some friends of the family's daughter's school project. (try saying THAT three times fast) Said project involved reading a book, making a doll, and then sending said doll off into the world to make its fortune. The project is finished when the doll returns to its roots and write the Great American Novel about the Great American Dream, except for those dolls that went off to different countries, who must all write Russian Novels which are 20000 pages long and involve people who's names you can't keep straight. Some of them also go on lecture circuits.
But seriously, the dolls were sent to friends and/or relatives who were supposed to keep them for three weeks and chronicle what daily life in whatever place they were in was like, as well as anything else of note that they could find to chronicle in that time. After those three weeks, we were to send Stella back to where she came from along with pictures and whatever else we felt like sending.
My experience with Stella was actually somewhat irregular, as I was requested to eventually pass her on to some other friends in Kuala Lumpur and thus could not keep her for the full length of time. Instead, I kept her long enough to take her around the cultural festival and the big green Buddha of Anamizu and sent her on her way with a tear in my eye as I stuffed her into her nice padded envelope.
Thus, the pictures. The more you know...
I didn't have as much involvement with the cultural festival this year as last year, mostly because I was gone that crucial first week of September when all the classes decide what they are doing and because of the crazy planning that we had to do for our almighty doom open-class thingy at the end of October that the big-wigs from the prefectural board of education were coming to observe. This was of particular import because, due to Noto's economic situation in particular (bad) and Japan's economic situation in general (worse), high schools all over the peninsula are closing and we kind of do not want to be next although it is probably only a matter of time since we have a grand total of 165 students. So yes, big deal. Which means planning and more planning and writing lesson plans and then rewriting them because we failed to put in the proper spacing and making multiple copies of everything and then finding out that I actually had two classes that day and we needed to figure out a way to pretend that we had been following the textbook all along or we were DOOMED.
I also had to study for the JLPT. So. Not so involved this year. A shame. I did help put up the calligraphy display, though! Go me!
The cultural festival this year was also held on a weekend two weeks earlier than last year so it wouldn't be too close to the open campus day. Saturday we set up, Sunday we had the festival, and then we got Monday and Tuesday off.
During setup, I mostly wandered around and took pictures with Stella. Other than that and the aforementioned calligraphy display, I helped students out with their own projects, most notably the giant photo mosaic of kyushu that the second years made and periodically checked on the home ec room to see if any of the students working on the food that they would be selling the next day needed "help" with taste testing. The answer was, sadly, more often no than yes, although I did get to eat a bunch of Takoyaki, yay! Incidentally, my takoyaki-making kids this year are WAY better at it than the ones from last year, those were some of the best I've ever had. (because they were filled with love! or, more likely, because they've all done it before.)
I also provided moral support in the form of heckling for one of my JTEs and two of my 3rd years, who were part of this years Musical Revue. (Funny story, actually, my JTE got roped into it at the last moment because the two students were too shy to go up on stage by themselves, poor tykes) That was pretty much it, though, although I DID make some origami cranes and boats for my punk first-year kids, which earned their respect for the first time ever and led to one of my most punkiesty punkitty punks ordering another of them to go and get me chair. I thought that was really sweet and had been inclined to look more favorably on him right up until last week when he called me a hag again, the little shit.
That night, Cyndi and I had a mini birthday party for the aforementioned JTE(who is Seika, by the way), for which I made Tacos (yes, Tacos are so awesome that they deserve a capital letter) and Cyndi made Taco Salad (Taco Salad is also awesome) and I made no-bake Polish cheesecake (cheesecake is usually awesome, but this particular cheesecake was a gooey mass of failure and does not deserve a capital letter). We also watched a horrible romantic comedy that I am not even going to try to remember the name of because it was just that horrible. In other words it was a lot of fun.
The next day, we got up bright and early and made our way to the school for some awesome cultural festival action. (well Cyndi didn't, cos she doesn't work there) Allow me to take a moment to enumerate to you the wonders that awaited those who came by.
The stage: featuring an eating contest, para-para dancing, the brass band, Seika and her 3rd Years, and taiko performed by a bunch of 3rd year students who took their shirts off at the end. arranged in ascending order of interesting. Seika's mini-concert went well, they weren't what I would call COMPLETELY on target with regards to the songs, but it was all made up for by the fact that one of them was wearing a godzilla costume.
The food: There was: takoyaki, donuts, yakisoba served by 3rd-year students in drag, croquettes of the potato and crab-cream kind, fried chicken, grilled corn, udon, cookies, coffee, and some other food that I no longer remember because I'd gone into a food coma by the time that I ate it.
The art: Calligraphy, stair art for each of the classrooms (I no longer remember who won, I think it was my favorite class, but I may have just decided that in my mind because that's what I wanted to happen), the art club's and art classes pictures and other works, haiku and tanka poems by most of the students and some faculty, the aforementioned kyushu photo mosaic, the giant hands clasped together on top of the school to showcase the theme of "bonds", and various decorations around the school, etc.
The video games: These were hidden in the other building, but yes, we did have a room with a smash brothers tournament going on as well as other accoutrement of gamingness (mostly psps) for those who like that sort of thing. I did not stay there long, as I do not enjoy getting my ass handed to me by my students.
The informative displays/demonstrations: we had a room devoted to the earthquake, to sports day, to the school trip to Kyushu, to AIDS awareness and prevention, to the Advances of Modern Technology, and to astronomy. This last was actually a "planetarium", which consisted of a large room that they had managed to make almost lightproof with a taperecorder and some sort of projector unit in the middle of the room which ran a short "show" about the stars ever [insert whatever period of time it was here since I got bored and left]
The PTA Bazaar: I bought some glasses! With strawberries on them!
And, finally,
The hot air balloon: quite probably the coolest thing there, so it was a little weird that more people didn't go on to see it. I actually nearly missed it becasue I had no idea where they were inflating it. By the time I figured it out (it was out in the athletics field behind the school, no, not THAT athletics field, the OTHER one that's actaully a public track), they were already ready to let it go up - sadly with no one in it as this was against safety regulations. (This was, by the way, the first time I had even heard of safety regulation EXISTING in Japan. This is, after all, the home-country of the fire and violence festival from which, Eliza tells me, something like half of her students have permanent scars) Still it was very impressive, right up until the moment it fell over (don't worry! I have pictures!).
Fortunately for those people thinking how lame it is that we didn't just put people in anyway regardless of any safety violations, we did a second launch after the festival was over. This time, since everyone who might reveal our treachery was gone, we had students take turns taking rides. Unfortunately, the balloon had a limit of 60 kg, so not everyone could get a go. And, in actuality, not that many people WANTED to, although that might just have been because the volleyball coach insisted quite loudly that it was ok to just let go of the ropes and let the balloon drift away forever. (there was, incidentally, not method of steering the balloon included, it was just the balloon portion with a small basket attached to it with rope. It could only be filled with helium while on the ground)
Later on, when said teacher took his turn in the basket, I seriously thought that the students would take advantage of the situation in order to exact some form of unholy revenge, but it turned out that said teacher had been lying about his weight and thus got no higher than a grand total of two feet in the air. Now THAT'S comedy, people. The only way it could have been better would have been if it suddenly became really windy and the balloon went flying around the field trailing students behind it in a comical fashion. Sadly, that did not happen. He just sank back down again and got out.
And that was the bunkasai. Of course, there was the cleanup afterwards to be done, too. And then the obligatory "we're all exhausted but lets party anyway" enkai. It was a pretty fun enkai, too. (although I paid for it the next day) We had hot pot! With many different ingredients none of which I remember anymore! The highlight of the party was finding out that one of the new teachers had studying Gundam at university and even written his thesis about it. Sadly, I was forced to admit that the only Gundam I had ever seen was Wing (which, for those of you who don't know, is as unwise as revealing to a cowboy that the salsa that you just gave him was made in New York City, and will probably garner the same reaction: a loud cry of offense followed by a lynching) I freely admitted that I realized my sin, but was treated to an extended discussion of the exact order of the different Gundams in terms of quality. Having never seen them, I can't say anything positive or negative about his taste, but I WAS impressed that he could list them all.
The night finished with pizza and hot cocoa at the diner-type-thing next to the station and a discussion that degenerated into an extended bitchfest about one of the teachers at my school, which I found really funny. Mind you, I was pretty drunk by then. Then we all stumbled home and that was the REAL end of the bunkasai.
Of course, two weeks later we had the TOWN bunkasai and then a week after that we had the JUNIOR HIGH'S bunkasai.
The town bunkasai was nice, a bunch of arts and crafts were showcased in the public gym and there were a bunch of performances a the cultural center. I have a few pictures. I was particularly surprised by all of the crafts on display, apparently our community center puts on quite a few classes including: woodworking, silk dying, yarn-working (crochet and knit), dollmaking, ikebana, and drawing/painting in a large variety of styles. My favorite was probably this set of nifty collage things made with real Bits o' Nature (TM). There was one picture with a stream made out of cotton that was REALLY well done.
The performances consisted of a bunch of stuff that I missed because I was sleeping and/or doing laundry and a bunch of stuff that I didn't miss because I finally got there. To be a little more specific, there was yosakoi, singing, koto playing, playing of that horrible violin/keyboard THING that I believe I've mentioned once before and still do not approve of, the junior high brass band, and some other stuff I don't remember. I saw several people from town, which was nice. AND I took the opportunity to wash and dry my kotatsu blanket so that I could get that sucker up and running.
The junior high's bunkasai was much the same as last years was: A bunch of plays that I watched with various levels of understanding interrupted by a bunch of singing that I listened to with various levels of cringing. The 1st years did a period piece again, so I didn't really understand it. I also overslept and missed the entire first section, so I wasn't really equipped to figure out what was going on. The 2nd years...what did they do? I no longer remember. Oh! Yes, they did a pleasantly deranged play about a scientist who travels back in time in order to teach children about the importance of...integrity? honesty? something. Actually, the teaching might have gone the opposite way. The only lesson that I took out of it was that all problems can be solved with paper, scissors, rock - which is what the students opted to use instead of violence. Hey! Maybe "violence is bad" was the ostensible lesson. (Really, I think we all know it was the paper, scissors, rock thing) The 3rd years did a play about how tolerance is important, which I loathed because it was particularly condescending as far as these plays go.
There was also a short talent show during which several of the male teachers (including the one I have a crush on) put on devil horns or cat ears and proceeded to bounce around on stage while completely failing to actually sing. It was really cute. But dark, so none of my pictures came out. SAD! Other than that, not much to report, high school cultural festivals are so much cooler.
Well, that wraps it up for cultural festivals this year. Would that I had 15 or so to go to like some of the municipal JETs...Sigh.
I'm going to finish this up with a quick FYI regarding the winter holidays. I'll be arriving in the states on the 23rd and departing Texas, at least, on the 3rd. If anyone wants to meet up at some point, I'm game.