My First Halloween

30/10 Halloween. We celebrated Halloween a day early but no one here knows what Halloween is anyway. Actually, I don’t know much about it either. I made it over to Ria’s a few hours earlier to paint some posters while Ria and Lisa were busy preparing food. The haunted house in the picture turned out pretty well which was a great combined effort from Team 1, Team 2 and Team 3 (Lisa, Me and Ria). The kids were all so cute and most managed to dress up. One of my favourites is the acorn boy. The enjoyed themselves even when it started raining. One game they played was… find the eyeball (grape) in the brains (dyed noodles). The game worked well even when Te-chan decided the eyeballs were yummy. After the games had finished and the rain started, Ria and Terry took all the kids “trick or treat”-ing. It was basically to the parents’ and the local ALTs’ houses. It was quite a successful event considering only one of us actually celebrate it on our home country (Lisa-Hawaii).

Photo explanation: 1. Te-chan struggling to become an elephant. 2. Te-chan…giving up and Princess Charlie. 3. The kids playing scary bingo. 4. Little Flamingo. 5. Acorn boy (So cute). 6. The sword wielding elephant. 7. All the kids around the sPoOkY hOuSe.

Yukuhashi City Softball

29/10 Shiyakusho Sofutobo-ru. Yuki and Airi picked me up on a glorious Saturday morning to go watch employees from the Yukuhashi City Hall play softball. You can see you glorious the day was by the pictures. The shirts in the team photo were made by Yuki. The “words” mean "Let's Lose!!" Yuki’s husband is the man on the right. The play of the day would have to go to one of the outfielders… the ball was coming down on him and he tripped over but still managed to catch the ball. It’s something you would see on Channel 10s, Play of the Day. Even though I told them I was terrible at softball they still made me have a go. I was stoked that I actually hit the ball but they could’ve caught me out if they wanted to. It was pretty fun but I think I’ll stick to karate. The last photo is of Yuki and Airi.

Sunset and Sunrise in Yukuhashi

Yukuhashi Sunset. At the moment this is the beautiful sunset that I have been experiencing. Pictures speak a thousand words so I'll stop now.

Yukuhashi Sunrise would have to be even better than the sunsets, although due to the time of the morning I sometimes don't feel like its beautiful. Instead I would prefer the view of the back of my eyelids. The picture doesn't really do it justice but again I'd rather be in bad than taking photos.

Preparing for Bunkasai

Izumi Bunkasai. Bunkasai is the school cultural festival that is held once a year. Each class is to make a banner and a big paper mache model. On the bunkasai weekend they do a big parade and the classes win prizes for the best model. The following day the have a big chorus competition. Everybody sings. A student even conducts the class. After that is finished, guess what they do to their lovely models? Anyone? Yes, the put them in a big pile a BURN them. I have been told that they do this as there is no space to store them. As you can see some of the banners and models are amazing. The are all designed and coordinated by the students. Every day for two weeks there are no classes in the afternoon. The students work on these projects. The models that are building are Stitch (Lilo and Stitch), Spongebob, Tigger, a drink vending machine (??) and many Japanese cartoon characters that I am slowly starting to recognise. It is all built of bamboo, tied together with plastic, paper mached and painted. The boy in the top left corner of the first photo is the coordinator of his class and is a very funny boy. Apparently he "loves me". The boy in the bottom left of that picture likes to be called "Johnny". Those two together make teaching this 3rd year class very enjoyable. The banner of this class is the girls posing with pink flowers in their hair. The banner is of Snow White, Cinderella and Ariel. It's simply amazing! The class painting the Sponge-Bob is really good too and this is only an 1st grade class. The group of five girls (peace-ing) are some of the ones that invite me out to play chasey and volleyball. The girl beign hugged on the left has told me she want to marry a foreigner! Anyway... I've probably gone on enough about this. The bunkasai is on the 5th and 6th of November.

Minamikushiyama and Shimabara

22/10 Minamikushiyama and Shimabara. On the Friday night Terry, Ria, Charlie-chan, Te-chan and I left for Nagasaki prefecture. It was supposed to be a 4.5hr drive but it was extended a little by a vital things forgotten and by missing a turn-off. The latter was probably my fault as I was gas-bagging too much. Luckily Ria woke up and asked where we were and why were we there. Overall it was a pretty good trip. We stayed at Monica's place who is a NZ ALT that come over at the same time as Ria. Seeing as we stayed up late chatting, I slept in a bit. Unfortunately for Ria, Te Akonga and Charlie woke up at their usual early time. Seeing as there were no plans to do very much I thought I would go for walk down to the wharf. Minamikushiyama is a small fishing town. As you can see I took many photos of the wharf, the boats, the falcon (like) birds that were stalking the fishermen. I thought the mini tractor/trailer vehicle was quite unusual and took a photo of it, mostly to show Cam (my brother). I was returning back to Monica's and every person I walked past asked me where I was from and the other usual questions. They were all so friendly. As I was walking past one the fishing sheds a man came out and signalled me to come over (at first I thought he was waving but then remembered their come here hand signal is upside-down to the western way). In the shed were about 8 fishermen all drinking and eating. It was 9:30 in the morning! They offered me a beer... and obviously it is rude not to drink it. They asked heaps of questions and with my limited Japanese skills we all managed to have a fairly decent conversation. I found out such things as; they get up every morning at 4 to go fishing, this day the weather was too bad to go out and that these men drink this early every day! They asked if I like sashimi. When I said yes they got some fresh fish and made it for me. I watched (and took a picture) so now I will be able to make it myself!! It was soooo good. After that, they asked if I liked lobster. Stupid question. They went and got 2 small lobsters for me. In Australia you'd be fined if you got them this small but in Japan I guess anything goes. They brought up the fact that in Australia it is not allowed and had a good laugh??! So, I had sashimi lobster, which I must say isn't that great but then they cooked one up for me. Oishii!!! Delicious!!! (The photo is of them preparing the lobster sashimi). The head/top half the lobster was still moving as the sashimi was being prepared and even when I ate some it was still moving somewhat. Ewww. After that they made me miso soup made from lobster and then yakiniku. Yeah I was stuffed full. I didn't ask for any of this food, people kept on having short conversation is very fast Japanese, leaving and then returning with all this food. During this whole time they drank copious amounts of shochu and were legless by the end of it. Seeing as they kept on feeding me beers I was not particularly sober myself. I had gone and got Ria and she had some of the Yakiniku and luckily she used the kids as an excuse to return home, it also gave me an opporunity to leave (and sober up). In the afternoon we headed off to Shimabara to where Terry was performing at a charity concert for New Orleans. Terry's performance was great. It was good to hear him sing at a formal occasion rather than singing to the kids while they are in the bath. Afterwards I went out with some local ALTs (from South Africa) and did karaoke. It was such a great night. That night we stayed at Jenny's house. She is an American ALT, we met for the first time that night.
23/10 Jenny made us pancakes for breakfast! She's such a nice girl. The pancakes were really good too. Shortly after breakfast, we headed back towards Yukuhashi. We stopped off at this huge food warehouse called Costcos. It's like a Bunnings but for food. You obviously have to buy things mostly in bulk but they have testers for their meat and fish. Yes, the meat was cooked and the fish wasn't. The Aussie beef was delicious. Aussie beef is the main beef that is here as the Japanese beef is (more) expensive and because of the mad cow disease (I think) they still don't allow American imports. Australia has a big monopoly here at the moment. After that we went home and I had dinner with Ria, Terry, Charlie, Te Akonga and Lisa. We all were pretty exhausted, although Ria was the first to get shut eye as she took a cold a flu tablet and it completely knocked her out!

Autumn is here

Autumn is setting in but the weather is more like the start of winter. We went from sweatville to jumper town within about two weeks. I think the weather will even out a little. As you can see the leaves are turning up it their toes and falling off. No, sorry, they are turning red which is very beautiful. I am waiting until the leaves in Kyoto turn red/orange/etc. as it is supposed to be very pretty. Kyoto is one of the most famous places in Japan. I am hoping to go twice. Once within the next 2 months and again in spring with mum to see the cherry blossoms..

Maybe I am training a little too hard!

I am now training three nights a week. The night before I took this photo I got stuck into the bag work possibly a bit too hard. The skin off my knuckle is logical but I have no idea how I got the bruise although it looks pretty cool. (No JB, it's not as cool as the bruise I had 2 years back - I'm sure you remember). My sensei said "Rub salt into it", I replied "WHAT?!?!" (Do you think I am stupid?) He said "It will get better quicker" (Obviously this was in Japanese). Anyway I went home, gritted my teeth, and did as he advised. OUCHY MAMA! Anyway I think I over did it because after that the whole was bigger. Now, 10 days later it still hasn't healed, maybe the salt, maybe the fact is the bag work hasn't stopped if you know what I mean.

Our little train ride!

16/10 Choo choo! I went walking with Ria on this Sunday morning and she told me that one of the local train lines were 100 yen for as far as you want (max about 50km). 100 yen is about $1.20. So I decided to join Ria and her family on a train ride. We went to a small town called Aka as there was supposed to be a carnival of some kind. When we arrived everyone lined up to buy tickets for a little train which we thought would take us to carnival area. We waited for about an hour and a half for our turn on this little train, we realised that the same people that went down came back. After all the waiting the train took us about 1km to a ............. man made tunnel!!! Actually I'd say 60% of the ride was in these tunnels. The attraction in the tunnel were these really tiny bats. There were quite interesting as they were so quick it seemed like you were watching shadows. Freaky! But I guess the whole point is we waited soooo long and paid a heap for this dodgie little train ride. Terry was far from impressed which just made me and Ria laugh more. Charlie and Te Akonga had their hands on their ears most of the time because the racket the train made going through the tunnels. There was this interesting 'straw' hut made from the spent rice stalks (I can't for the life of me remember what the proper name is). After the disappointment of the choo choo we went to Saigawa where there was a jumping castle and FOOD! I was hungry bum by this stage. We ate, at the few stalls and came home.