HAPPY (belated) HALLOWEEN!

Hope you all had a great Halloween and we able to celebrate it! We definitely did here in Japan…but more on that later…

Last Friday I had a welcoming party with Hiroda Junior High School. It was a nice, intimate dinner with the principle, vice principle, the English teachers and a few others. And as most enkais are, there was SO much food! First off, we started with some sashimi – one of them I really have no idea what it was (but didn’t taste bad!), and the second was blowfish!! They didn’t know what it was called in English, so one of the teachers said “Poison!”…and I kind of drew my conclusions from that! And surprisingly, it was pretty good….and I didn’t die – so that’s always a plus! Then there was some sting ray meat, lightly grilled, two whole small fishes (one cooked, one not) for myself, tempura, a full crab just placed on my plate (gonna admit – not a fan of having to break the shell and having green goop fly everywhere….) and then rice, miso soup and fruit to finish it off! I seriously can’t get over the meals here – and I thought that “North American” sizes were so much bigger! They may have big portions – but the Japanese definitely eat so much more of many little things…and yet they stay so thin!! Anyways – after the dinner, they presented me with a flower arrangement with a pumpkin in the middle! Thought that was pretty cute!

Last weekend, Erin came up from Shimabara because there was the big YOSAKOI festival, here in Sasebo. It is the biggest festival in Kyushu (or so I’ve been told) and drew tons of people down here to watch the group dances. So from what I gathered from watching all day on Saturday is that they dance from one end of the shopping arcade to the middle, where they perform a dance in the little park, then I believe they dance again in the street, before making their way to the main stage, where they are judged. They have bright, elaborate costumes and make-up, as well as these noisemakers which they always use in their dances. And quite often the movements are quite similar. I believe they have been doing this style of dancing since the 1950s…its very upbeat and energetic – they have flags waving, cheers, shouting, and lots of movement – and of course they are all completely synchronized. Some of the groups are really big too – some look like 150 people are up on stage! So the teams are dance companies, or cities, or places of work (I just found out that City Hall has a team – so I could have joined! Maybe next year!). It was just a really entertaining day! Good festival fun!

Then Saturday night, Hitoshi (a fellow Canadian JET) hosted a Halloween party in his apartment for the other teachers in the area. Some of the girls decorated his whole apartment in garbage bags and cut-outs, and we had a great time getting dressed up! Erin went as a gypsy, and I went as a flapper. Some other funny costumes were Robo-Japanese salary man, a typhoon, a Power Ranger (which are really big here – and he got the full lycra suit and mask…), roadkill, and I’m sure many others, but I just can’t remember. Anyways – it was a great time! Quite a few people squeezed into his apartment, until things got a little too loud, and the police got called! Oops….needless to say that we booked it out of there, not wanting to get him in trouble – and headed to the arcade. Kind of made a spectacle with a bunch of foreigners all drunk and dressed like idiots…but thankfully at that time of night, the streets were pretty deserted! I think the cab drivers got a kick out of it!

So Sunday morning, I’d rather not go into detail about…let’s just say I was feeling a little ill. But we had a field trip to go to with my Japanese class. So – I attempted to pull myself together and met up with the group to go to Saga for the Yabusame festival – an ancient samurai archery festival. They had rented vans, so we all squeezed into them for the journey (after some plain rice, I was thankfully feeling better). The festival was a little slow-going, but interesting! They had tons of little kids dressed up and carrying floats and such. And then the samurai’s did their archery on horseback – I don’t really understand if they had a point system, or anything like that – but it was pretty cool nonetheless! Oh - and they were going around with bamboo poles filled with sho-chu (I think its rice vodka) and who out of our whole group do they ask to have some?! Of course, me - TWICE!

The past week has been good so far! I went on Tuesday to check out an odori (Japanese dance) class. I will be starting next week – so I am very excited about that! Had a Halloween party with some elementary school kids on Halloween (the flapper costume stayed at home…hahaha), and I’ve started again at Ainoura Junior High School. Funny story yesterday though – I was in class with the 3rd year students and teacher, and we were making sentences like “_____ is something THAT you read.” Etc. etc. Well the teacher decided to make an example of “______ is something THAT you shit.” Clearly I was shocked and trying to hold in my laughter – and also terribly confused! I later clued in that she was trying to say “____ is something that you SIT.” (not that that makes any sense either….). I thought it was pretty funny – although I guess you had to be there.

Long weekend coming up tomorrow! I have Friday off! Going to the Karatsu festival and Fukuoka Friday and Saturday (if we can find a hotel!) – then Monday and Tuesday I have a conference in Nagasaki City – so it might have to be a late update again next week! I’ve posted the pics from the weekend on my flickr site as well! (not all of them though – some will be forever hidden...)