Shinden School Festival - Saturday

This weekend is the highlight of the school year for Shinden Elementary School - the festival. It's parents day, uber-activity-fest and a traditional matsuri rolled into one, and takes place over two days. Since I need to clear space on my camera's memory card, I figured I may as well use the photo upload time to blog yesterday's activities.

The morning saw each class put on various presentations and plays related to things they had done throughout the previous year. The sucjects included school trips as well as things like recycling and bike safety.

I started in the himawari ("sunflower" aka speacial needs) class, which is my favourite class. They were making washi paper, by folding it and dipping it into different coloured dyes to create a tie-dye effect. Mine is on my desk, waiting to be turned into something cool.

Next up was Hitomi's (Kato Sensei) class, who did a series of presentations on their trip to Nara.

This is Hitomi's class again, doing a presentation on some ruins in Nara. The boy on the left, Kosei, is hilarious.

I think this is the fourth grade (the morning quickly turned into a blur of different presentations of various levels of incomprensibility).

In the afternoon, everyone, including me, got kitted out in their festival togs, which consisted of a happi, tabi boots and a headscarf, the name of which I've now forgotten, and took the dashi (floats) out for a trip around the neighbourhood.

But not before we watched... the local brass brand, which was accompanied by some American-style cheer leaders who danced along and waved flags. (?!).

And here I am, in front of the smallest dashi. I had to wear shades - it was squint-o-rama bright without.

I was pulling alongside the 6th grade girls, and lent them my camera to get some pics of eachother. I now have about 20 photos of girls in various poses doing the V sign ;)

And finally, we got them back to school and could wind up for the day, ready to start again tomorrow...

Turning Japanese?

Well it had to happen sooner or later... Today, I am wearing a face mask. I have a cold and sore throat and feel like a steaming pile of proverbs. The guy who sits next to me, who has been making big, flemmy, unshielded coughs for the past week, has been sent home via the doctor (the Japanese have a very melodramatic view of personal health, and go to the doctor four times more than the average American - fact), a fact that doesn't bode well for me. Since tomorrow is festival, an event the whole school has spent the past month planning for, I felt I better protect my colleagues from my evil gaijin germs. Also, there's a small part of me that's playing the passive-aggressive game and letting them know how poorly poor Fi feels.

Inuyama

Yesterday was a public holiday, which meant another day off. Result. Since it was to celebrate Culture Day, which is devoted to promoting the arts, culture and academic endeavour, I figured I should do something constructive and took myself to Inuyama (literally "dog mountain"), a castle town an hour from Nagoya, for the day. I was actually due to go hiking, but my hiking buddy was struck down by an unidentified lurgy, so that has been shelved for another day. In actual fact that worked out quite well because not only was it freezing yesterday, but by going hiking later in the month we will be able to catch the autumn leaves in the mountains. It being cold, I decided my thermal leggings, coat and scarf would have their first outing of the season. A wise idea, it turned out, especially as the day ended up involving a fair bit of walking.

Heading from Inuyama station to my first stop, the castle, I had to take a photo of this ridiculous looking dog. There is another similarly attired pooch behind, but it's hiding, presumably in shame.

Inuyama's most famous attraction is its castle, one of the top three in Japan, one of only 12 built before the Edo Period and, supposedly, also the oldest one in the country. Before going in, however, I decided to warm myself up with lunch:

Clockwise from top left: miso udon (the Nagoya region is famous for its miso, and udon is a traditional mountain-area food; stodgy and filling), pickled daikon with yuzu, vegetables with katsuo bushi (dried fish flakes) and steamed rice. You will see a raw egg atop the udon - this is a very Japanese thing, and they are apt to put raw eggs in anything and everything. A popular breakfast, for example, is steamed rice with a raw egg and some soya sauce mixed in. I have recently started whisking one into cooked porridge for breakfast, with very pleasing results.

Anyhow, eggs aside, here is the castle, in all its sun-basked glory:

The views from the top were pretty good, although it was cold and windy so I didn't hang about too long:
In the summer, one of the tourist attractions of the town is cormorant fishing on this river, whereby people in narrow boats hold a basket full of fire over the water, which attracts fish. Then birds, which are attached to the boat with a string around their neck, catch them in their beaks. The string stops them swallowing the fish, and they dump them on deck for human consumption. I have just realised, upon typing the above, how utterly bonkers this sounds, so go and read about it for yourself.

Next up was Urakuen, a garden with a famous tea-house. I love gardens, and I love autumn in Japan, and this clear but sunny day was the perfect time to enjoy them both.

My combined ticket also let me into two museums, one housing the two floats which are used in the famous Inuyama Matsuri, and the other showing off the dolls which are used on the floats to put on extravagent puppet shows. The dolls are mechanical and use cogs, wheels and bits of string that, when operated by people below, make them move. Outside the latter was an original cormorant fishing boat:

After all that walking I needed re-fueling so headed to a shopping mall and... McDonalds. Woo! Now before you get all huffy, I should point out that since I have been in Japan, I can count my trips to McD's on one hand, and the number of times I have eaten there, as opposed to having a coffee, on three fingers. But they had a new Autumn menu item I wanted to try - the Gataeux Maron McFlurry. This basically consisted of vanilla ice-cream into which had been whisked some cake, caramel sauce and chesnut pieces. It was ok, but more sauce and a touch of salt wouldn' have gone amiss.

Then it was back on the train and home to my absolutelybloodyfreezing flat, to put the heating on and sit and read with my duvet wrapped around me.

Results: follow-up

Well, I asked Sensei about his nanadan grading, and the answer was... not entirely clear. I don't think he's got it yet, but rather is attending a number of sessions related to the grading itself. All I understood was that there were a lot of other instructors there (some 200!) and that it's not happened yet. Ah the mysteries of the dojo and the frustrations of speaking mediocre Japanese! :)

Random act of kindness

Just on the way home after Round 2 of my domestic shopping spree. Heavily laden with a table, rug and shelf, with leeks for the stew I'm making tonight sticking out of the top of my bag, trudging along in the rain, I can only imagine what a sight I looked whilst walking to the station. Which is what must've prompted a random kind lady to hold her umbrella over my head, and accompany me there.

Sketches of a Sensei

Yesterday, the fifth grade did their third lesson on school subjects, primarily using the sentence "On X-day I study Y-subject" and also "Z-sensei teaches Y-subject". I asked them to draw a quick sketch of any teacher, in order to have them stand in front of the class and introduce them using the target sentence. I like doing this as the results are usually hilarious, and today they didn't disappoint. A few of the kids drew me and I've scanned in the best for you to have a look at. As you can see, they are all budding manga artists!

This one is by Riho, who's one of my favourites. She's really smart and a great artist too.

Funnily enough, this was by one of the boys. Alot of them drew their teachers with wings and rocket packs.

I think this is the cutest one :)

It's been a busy week at school so far - you will notice in these pictures that the kids have drawn me wearing a shirt. Suprisingly, that's because I was wearing one. Only for one day, I should add - school photo day. I also taught the fourth grade, which consists of one class of 41 kids. As you might be able to imagine, it's completely bonkers. I don't know how the teacher copes, but she manages to organise them with levels of precision the military would be proud of. Tomorrow I am teaching the first grade for the first time (at this school) and I can't wait. It's home time now, and as they were filing past the staff room window some of them leant in and said "ashita no sanjikanme yoroshiku onegaishimasu", which means, more or less, "please favour me with your teaching tomorrow during third period". So cute :)

Tonight is my one training-free night, which I intend to spend in my new and enourmously comfortable chair, reading a book and eating miso nasu :)

Results

Results are what comes from effort, and recently my instructor, my dojo and myself have all been putting a lot of effort into our practise. Here is a summary of our results (well, nearly all of them...).

First up, the promised results of yesterdays competition. I'm really pleased to say that our dojo, Ikueikan, came away with two gold medals. They were both won by students in the 15 and 16 age groups. Everyone had put a lot of hard work into training for it and it was great to see their efforts rewarded. The surprise of the day was that Judi-chan got knocked out in the semi-final. She is an excellent kumite fighter, but maybe didn't feel mentally up to it on this day. Essentially, a kumite competition involves trying to hit the other person as fast as you can, without getting hit yourself. It's a bit like fencing, but with fists and feet not swords, so you can imagine that a big part of it is mental resolve!

One of the students who won was considerably bigger than many of the other opponents and I, amongst others, was guilty of thinking that maybe it would hamper his speed, but he well and truly proved us wrong by winning against a much slimmer opponent through good techniques and speed. He also got a couple of fantastic head kicks in, which helped rack up the points. This picture is of one of the semi-final rounds - the guy on the left is the one I am referring to, and he is up against another student from our dojo.

All in all, it was a good day and a big well done to everyone.

I found out yesterday that the dojo is expecting even bigger news... It turns out that the reason Sensei wasn't able to attend yesterday was because this weekend he is taking his nanadan (7th Dan) test. I noticed he's been training hard recently, practising seishun a lot, a beautiful but to my eyes unattainble, kata (video performed by Shiomitsu Sensei, head of European Wado Ryu Renmei, my old organisation), drilling kihon and doing general fitness work, and this explains why. In a couple of hours we will get to know how he got on - my fingers are crossed for him! (Not least because tonights class could be a killer if he's not in a happy mood ;) Anyway, stay tuned for the results of that tomorrow.

My own results aren't so dramatic, but are pleasing nontheless. My body has finally got used to the punishing schedule of 6am starts, all-day elementary school teaching and 4 days a week training. I no longer hurt when I get up off my futon, and I don't dread the long kihon sessions like I used to. Progress is on-going - my techniques are always adapting as I learn new and better ways of doing things, and I am slowly refining the few kata that I know to get them totally spot-on. Hopefully by the start of next year I will do a bit of kumite, but only when I am happy with everything else, since I personally view it as more of a fun distraction than a serious pursuit, and at this early stage in my training I don't want to waste my time trying to get super-fast at the expense of getting super-skilled. Anyhow, this week I feel that I will be ok for my shodan (1st Dan) test in June next year. Next week I might feel differently ;)