Festivals and Giving Thanks

Konnichiwa, dear bloggers! As of tomorrow, Jon and I will already have been in Japan for three months! The time has flown by, yet we have now settled quite nicely into the routine of life in Ashikaga as ALTs. Not so many things are new to us anymore, and while it feels nice to become more familiar with our surroundings, I also miss being surprised by different cultural and societal differences. Or I should say, being as surprised. There are still some things that we haven't become completely used to, and probably won't adjust to completely during our stay here. The hygiene factors, for sure, count among those things.

Life at school continues with some events marking the seasons: on Halloween weekend my school had "bunkasai" - the school festival. It was an amazing experience! Every class decorated their classroom in a different theme (haunted houses and general game rooms were popular). There were also special performances in the gym - chorus performances, dance routines, brass band performances, cello solos, speeches about exchange trips to Springfield, IL (the sister city of Ashikaga), etc. I enjoyed the gym performances the most, especially the rendition of YMCA the brass band performed, with players not playing locating themselves around the gym and waving pom poms in time to the music! Everyone got into it and for once I could participate full force and know what I was doing! The students were all very dedicated to the preparation for the school festival - in fact during the week leading up to bunkasai, classes after lunch were cancelled and the whole school spent the last half of the day preparing for the event.

Although Japanese junior high school students have very long days (if they participate in school clubs) generally starting at 8 am and ending at 5 or 6 (after which some students still go to extra tutorial classes away from school), much of the day can be dedicated to physical fitness in the form of the school clubs (table tennis, soft tennis, badminton, etc). Classes seem to take a back seat to all sorts of activities like clubs, or different festivals. This month my school has been preparing for our own chorus competition and last week all classes after lunch were cancelled to either practice or for teachers to hold parent-teacher conferences. Needless to say, I have had to struggle to keep myself occupied at school during the day. Sadly enough, I also already exhausted the 15 English books I picked out for myself to keep up my reading habit! I will have to be more creative in school as well as out, from now on.

Today we went back to Coco Farm and Winery in the beautiful hills of Ashikaga. They were holding their annual Harvest Festival and we had been told by several natives that it was the place to be! It was definitely crowded - most people took shuttle buses because of the sheer number of people crowding the location, but we took the smarter route and opted to bike (as if we had another choice ha!). It was nice to be able to weave in and out of traffic and not have to sit in a car. When we arrived, we paid $20 a piece and got our 'Harvest kit' which included a wine glass each, a 'member button' and a ticket which we exchanged for a bottle of wine and souvenir corkscrew. There were food tents and wine tents everywhere and a stage situated in front of the vineyard where the crowd sat enjoying the music and refreshments. Our friends Michi and Yuki (the same ones who went paragliding with me) met us there and kept us company. There were so many people there, and more foreigners than we've ever seen in Ashikaga! Something we noticed shortly after arriving in Japan was the lack of foreigners in most places - they stand out a lot - especially lack of dark skinned people (African Americans, etc). In fact it took me several weeks to even see one African American looking guy! Today there were at least two I saw a couple times, and the fact that the sight is so rare here is still bizarre to me. We saw several young people that looked like ALTs and a few of the ALTs that we know from Ashikaga schools. Normally we don't see any of the other ALTs on a regular basis, although it seems as if we are in the minority with this. Other ALTS hang out frequently together, but we don't really want to spend our time with other people from our home culture because we're here to experience Japanese culture! It was a great day and experience at the festival, but we decided to go home after witnessing a man 10 feet away from us vomit into his lap and the tarp he was sitting on. Officially the first time seeing an intoxicated Japanese person, and we saw a lot of them today!

With November already half over (incredible!) we are starting to look forward to our winter vacation and Kristin's visit! Thanksgiving is coming up and I have done my duty and drawn some pilgrims, Native Americans and turkeys for the English bulletin board at school. Explaining and focusing on my own culture's holidays and hearing them taught to students by Japanese English teachers has made me appreciate them more than I ever have before. I never really thought about how many special things we do around Halloween until I had to think about it and make a game for my students around our traditional activities. This week as I cut out and colored my Thanksgiving decorations I returned to a familiar elementary school activity and thought about what I was thankful for. I deliberated and wrote out each of the ideas I came up with, cut them out and put them up on the board under the heading "I am thankful for...". Jon, family, friends, music, languages, food, water, oceans, books, sunshine and my dog were some of the things I wrote down. In fact, with the death of my dog at the beginning of this week, I am thankful for so many memories of loved ones, those here, and those who are no longer among us. I am thankful that my family could see Sasha grow up, thankful she was there with us during the good times and important moments, during the scary times and the sad. I can still hear her tail thumping on the carpet as someone walked past her, or her nails clicking on the pavement. It's nice to have those memories to draw upon when needed. I am so thankful for memories.

What about you? What are you thankful for?