Friday, December 17, 2004

Obligations

Am I supposed to write about mid-year seminar? All of my fellow bloggers have, so I guess I will put in my two cents. All of the Yamaguchi JETs met at Seminar park for a big two day long seminar. Exciting things were bound to happen. Riiight. Well, it was rather enjoyable. Despite my nasty teacher being there, I didn't really speak with her. It has been confirmed that she is the ugliest person in Japan.

The lectures and presentations were nice. I got a lot of great ideas and learned a lot of good things. I actually liked Schalkoff's presentation. He is very creative and enthusiastic. Have you all seen him on his gardening show? Just proves that he is a little garden gnome. All the JET presentations were good. Chris always steals the show. Everything that comes out of his mouth is hilarious nonsense. Patrick took the floor for elementary school (he fits the part of that job) and didn't let any of his teammates get a word in edgewise. How generous of him to provide ALL of the information for that presentation. Of course Gillian's knitting needles were a great accessory for the audience and properly showed the JTE's that us, ALT's, don't give a damn about our job. Let's applaud that sign of respect.

The evening was nice. Went to a Mexican restaurant and had burritos that had sausage in them rather than beans. Well they both give you gas so I guess it was a good substitute. On the way home we got lost and stopped off at a small little udon shop to ask for directions. The couple that ran the shop exceeded our expectations, he actually drove in front of us while we followed him. On top of that they gave us some mikan. I love Japan for that very reason. They didn't even want money. Although we hooked the man up with a beer and some sweets. After that we all gathered in the lobby and played drinking games. Kat, Ellen, Kirk and Dan were cracking me up. Can't wait to play concentration and fuzzie duck again. It was also great to catch up with others. Catch up, get gossip-same difference. Good seeing you Jo, will plan a Hagi party sometime in the future. That will just about do it. I am really enjoying reading the ZenZen. What a great magazine written by great people.

Monday, December 13, 2004

People Watching

Rather than attending the ALT Christmas party (which I can't wait to hear about) a few friends and I went to Hiroshima. It was in celebration of Bren's 24th birthday, hooray for Bren! I ended up spending most of the day time alone. The others wanted to see the Peace museum and park, I had already done this so I wandered the streets of Hiroshima. This second visit has really allowed me to get oriented with the city and realize that it is all shops. I actually have no clue where the businesses are because every tall building you see is a giant mall.

Allow me to describe the Japanese mall or department store to you. From the outside it looks like your average office building. Inside there are 9 floors of shops. The basement is usually where the food shop is. The rest of the floors have small little shops that all flow into one another. There is no doorway between shops so it is confusing which shop is which and it is difficult to tell what their names are. Each floor has about 10 or more of these little shops. Some floors have larger stores like the Gap (which takes up about half of a floor), a bookshop, The Loft (a store containing everything you could ever want), Muji (similar to The Loft minus color) and Tower Records. It would be impossible to have an identical outfit as someone else is Japan. I remember in high school everyone wearing the same thing, I can't imagine that happening in Hiroshima.

There is also an arcade area that is a covered street of shops called Hondori. This is where I sat and watched people for a long time. The people of Hiroshima are so unique to the people of Yamaguchi (or Tamagawa for that matter). I felt like I was sitting in the audience at a runway fashion show. Everybody of every age is dressed stylishly. I tried to look for someone just wearing average jeans, a sweater and sneakers; finally I just had to look at myself for the description to be satisfied. The fashion trends now in Japan are wearing dark colors (black, grey, blue, green). Most women wear skirts of all different lengths, some pants and jeans, but they are unique looking. For shoes they wear the most uncomfortable looking shoes. Pointy ones, stiletto heals, boots, slip- ons all clunking through the street. On top they wear multiple layers of rags that look as though it is out of a pile of clothes that someone is pillaging from the 80's. Some of the styles I quite like, others are just weird. Men wear all different kinds of things, so it would be difficult to describe what they wear. In Hiroshima there are people my age. Couples strolling through the street holding hands (even some fairly young couples that look as though they could be in jr high). Old women all wear skirts and nice shoes. The people in this country don't seem to dress for comfort, which is a very huge American characteristic. Anything comfortable will do, no matter how hideous you look. Don't get me wrong, it is nice to walk into a shop dressed well looking like you can afford to buy something at this store, but walking around for 5 hours in high heels just isn't my idea of a good time. So next time you go to Hiroshima don't forget to wear your mini skirt in the cold, and most uncomfortable pointy shoes to feel in place.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Tap Dancers Anonymous

Tap dancing is an addiction for me. It is one of the only things that I 'have to have' other than the necessities (water, food, shelter). I am just starting to go through withdrawal here in Japan. I can feel in my body that I have not been tapping enough or learning new moves. I need it, I want it, and I almost can't have it. I need to remedy this urge to tap dance. I have taken a few steps to feed my addiction.

1. Making the stage at the Board of Education my own personal performance hall. I strap on my tap shoes, crank up my boombox and improv. I have even gone as far as starting to choreograph a routine for no reason other than to become creative or teach myself something.
2. I have a yearning to be taught something new. I am not creative when it comes to making up steps or routines. I have emailed past teachers to ask for their advice on videos to buy or the tap scene in Japan.
3. After some guidance from these roll models I have started to surf the internet. First, I researched the history of tap. I thought of writing an essay to send into Zenzen (the ALT newspaper in my ken), but decided that only I would take interest in that. Then I started researching tap dancers in Japan. I have stumbled on a few names.
4. I emailed these Japanese tap dancers and still waiting for a reply. I am interested in seeing a performance or taking a workshop, anything tap will do.
5. I have been showing my old videos in classes at the elementary school. They love it! I have videos from when I was 6 all the way up to last year. Obsession.
6. In my 6 nensei I taught a short little tap class. The teacher and all the students learned to shuffle and flap like the rest of them. I had one student, a boy named Tsuyoshi who got really into it. He put tacks on the bottom of his shoes and challenged me to a tap duel. For those of you that don't know, tap dancing is built around challenging and mimicking people. This boy was WAY ahead of the game. He put up a fair duel and had everyone in tears laughing.
7. This is very far fetched but satisfies my urge for rhythm. I have started taking Japanese taiko (drumming) which has allowed me to express myself using drums. Thanks to my tap background I am having a fairly easy time picking up the rhythms. That got me to thinking, how fun would it be to improv to the beat of a Japanese drum. Talk about a cultural tap jam.

This is my obsession. I feel that everyone has one, healthy or not. You can decide whether mine is healthy or not.

Salutations

A few students and I came up with the most clever ways of saying 'Good Morning' and 'Good Afternoon'. In the morning you say 'Ohayoo Gozaimasu', which of course sounds like Ohio. So, now I say a very loud 'Ohayoo' and insert a 'kara kimashita' right after that. Which means 'I come from Ohio'. Very clever indeed. The funniest one is how we modified 'Konnitiwa'. 'Konbini' means convenience store, so we tacked that on to the beginning of the word. We tacked another 'wa' at the end of the word to make the word Chiwawa or chihuahua. So the whole word is 'Konbinichiwawa', hilarious!

Friday, December 03, 2004


Finally, the flamenco photos Posted by Hello


Flamenco ladies Posted by Hello


Flamenco dancin fool Posted by Hello

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Land of Mikan

Last weekend was spent driving down to Oshima to celebrate Thanksgiving, family style. Paul and Elissa, an American couple had their second annual Thanksgiving party. They were recently in the States so they were able to pick up some things that they just don't have in Japan (cranberries and stuffing!!). We arrived and immediately started eating. I was in awe with the amount of food that was prepared. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, lasagne, kougel and of course rice, were some of the items on the menu. A whole room was devoted to dessert! Carrot cake, yellow cake, coconut cake, pumpkin pie and probably 5 kids of cookies and muffins. Bet you can guess where we ended up hanging out. There was a nice mixture of western people and Japanese. The Japanese people all being excellent English speakers (many of them were English teachers). The conversation was excellent, especially by a rather drunk Japanese man. We introduced him the the term 'wino' and he told us how he was a very shy 'drunk monkey'. I think he got the meaning of shy mixed up because he was anything but. There was also a funny and genki little three year old named Yukito there. We all had lots of fun wrestling with him and playing games. He would say 'kiku' which apparently means kick and would kick you and attempt to tackle you. He was lots of fun!

The next day we headed off to the onsen on the island. It was nice and relaxing but very unusual. The water looked as though it was stained with rust. Apparently the iron and salt content in the water is to do something good for your skin. I noticed no difference in my skin's texture and really didn't enjoy the smell. But, I am willing to try anything. After that we went to a Jamaican Restaurant owned by a Japanese Rastafarian couple. They, as well as their gorgeous children, have the most amazing dreadlocks. They are even featured in a book about dreadlocks. They moved to Jamaica for a year (about 5 years ago) to celebrate Bob Marley's birthday. They took all their savings and up and moved. When they came back they started this restaurant that makes the most amazing jerk chicken and Caribbean rice. We ate outside under the sun on this warm fall day. Couldn't have asked for a better time.

Oshima is known for their mikan (or clementines, mandarin oranges, whatever you all may call them). In Tamagawa, rice fields cover the empty terrain however, in Oshima mikan orchards are seen everywhere. It is really pretty now that they are ripe and ready to pick. We stopped off at a stand on the side of the road and bought the most delicious and fresh mikans I have ever tasted. Cheers to food!