One last Japanese Festival

We have been a whirlwind of activity as we prepare to leave Japan and return to Kansas City. Yesterday 6 big bags were picked up to be transported to the Tokyo airport and now we are finishing up packing and cleaning. We leave Japan in about 36 hours! We have had a fun couple of weeks and have had some nice dinners with families, given many good bye speeches and went to a local festival last night.

Here is Jonas dressed for the festival in his yukata.



The festival consisted of floats like these being pulled down the street by a group of people. This festival lasted until 2 am! We left much earlier than that.


Jonas seemed to be a bit overwhelmed by all the people, floats and noise--it was a noisy festival. He spent a lot of the time on Jason's shoulders quietly checking out the scene. This is not his usual operating style. Normally, he is running around, checking everything out.


Jason with some students. Since we visit 8 schools between the 2 of us, we saw many students last night.


A very decorated cell phone





Jonas did get down to explore for a little while



And he was intrigued by pieces of paper flying around in this machine.





Jason and with one of his students and her boyfriend. She was one of the float pullers.



Eating dinner at the festival. I am going to miss Japanese festival food. We ate yaki soba (similar to friend noodles), yaki tori (grilled chicken on a stick), edamame and a jacket potato.







Our friends and fellow ALTs Rheanna and Mark. This is the Mark who took the fantastic sumo photos that we posted recently.

Jason - #1 Dad

Jason recently participated in the 2008 World Sippy Cup. Our friend Jeff writes a column every month on the final page of the Chicago magazine called The Closer. They are always funny and this month he decided to rate a few fathers in a 'competition' of sorts.

Jason took second place, but he is number one according to Jonas and me.

Check out the article on the Chicago Magazine website. Jason is on page 2. He also appears in the print magazine, but no picture there.

One more thing-- If you begin to think I am lame when you read that Jason gets up 90% of the time when Jonas wakes in the night, go to the Anonymous comment posted at Jul 17, 2008 07:18 pm.

School Festivals

I spent all of last weekend at school festivals (bunkasai in Japanese). From what I have seen, every junior high and high school holds one of these cultural festivals every year. I was quite impressed.

On Saturday, I went to Kita Ko. Below you can see groups of students selling and eating food in the courtyard.


One of my favorite students is in this picture. She always talks to me and is always excited. When she saw Jonas she said, "Oh my God. Everyone come for a picture."


The students were very good at selling their ice cream, floats and shaved ice treats. I felt compelled to buy one of everything since the students kept asking me to buy something until I did. Jonas did not seem to mind and was still able to nap after all that sugar! The picture on the right is a group of students in the temporary cafeteria. They had many lunch choices for sale.



Inside their were stores and displays of student art.


































Above are students playing Go and the Koto club playing beautiful music. Afterwards they let me try and we took a group picture.


This is the illustration group


The festival ended on Saturday afternoon with dance and singing performances. Prizes were awarded to the classes that earned the most points.

On Sunday, I went to Akita Senior High School's festival. Three of my four schools had festivals on the same weekend. They had a wider variety of food, including jacket potatoes.


This is the broadcasting club. I was impressed with their communication center.


They had an interesting competition...which boy makes the prettiest girl...

number 3 won and was incredibly excited.

Many of the class projects at this school seemed to carry a political or social message. This particular one addressed the increasing prices of food and other necessities.


There was also some major rock and roll going on. This band played Red Hot Chili Peppers along with their original music and Japanese rock.

See the Stitch fan above? Now that it is hot here these fans are everywhere. Air conditioning is not used nearly as much as in the States as a way to conserve energy. I like this.
Here is another rockin' band. This band also played original songs. I love the name of this band - P!nk Shell.


This picture includes a group of track and field students who eat lunch with me every time I visit Akita Senior High.


After dance performances, a quiz show and a skit in the gym, there was a night festival that included fire.


Then more band performances, including a teacher led band. The teacher wore leather pants and sang "We Will Rock You." I thought of my nephew Holden (once when we were watching a KU game and they were losing, Holden yelled out, "Hey KU, get the mud off your pants." Yes, the actual line is face, not pants, but he was six. Close enough).

Here are the students dancing to a student band.


And finally the festival ended with fireworks. Yes, a high school festival ended with fireworks. It was July 6, so it was my substitute 4th of July celebration.



I think the school festival is a great tradition to take back to the states. The students organize this festival and take on a lot of leadership. The festival builds community and pride among the students, as they organize and display their hard work. Parents and community members have a chance to see the students' hard work. I love the Japanese school festival tradition.

The (nearly) Full Monty

 

A quick warning. This post contains several graphic photos that reveal more of Jason than many of you have ever seen. Certainly more than you want to see. The pictures are courtesy of the fantastic Mark Lidell. Naturally, I picked out the ones that make me look best, or at least not so hideous. It wasn't an easy task.



So, I participated in a charity sumo tournament last weekend. The charity is run by some Akita and Aomori JETs, to build a school and provide scholarships for kids in Nepal. The contestants, nearly all foreigners, were other English teachers from around the prefecture, and a handful of guys from up in Aomori. I was one of them.

Here are the highlights:

I'd like to say that I did my family proud by dominating the dohyo. This would not be true. I was beaten soundly in my first match, of which there is actual video evidence of somewhere on some other blog, and if there are enough requests, I may even link to it. No shame there, though. That guy finished third.

The second match was a disaster. Feeling I was too passive the first round, I overcompensated the second time by going full-bore, straight into the other "rikishi" and straight out of the ring, bringing him along with me. Actually, I'm not really sure what happened. I know that he, a very nice guy, and I made a pact earlier in the day not to throw each other out of the ring and onto the ground. After picking himself up off the ground, he gave me a "What the hell?" look, to which I had no good answer, later pointing out to him that he was in fact the winner and I could take no responsibility for having our backsides caked in sand. What I knew for certain was that I was 0-2, facing a likely and shameful 0-3 finish, which may have just forced me to stay in Japan for an additional year so I could redeem myself at next year's charity event.







In the third match I faced an Australian named Mark, an incredibly nice guy who is also incredibly fit. He didn't have the bulk or size that the rest of us did, but that was mainly due to his being in phenomenal shape. A spectator actually mentioned to me, later in the week, that he looked almost a bodybuilder-esque. I can tell you having seen him up close, this is an absolutely accurate observation. He also was 2-0, beating the other two guys (who I lost to) in our group and was a win away from advancing to the semifinals and eternal sumo glory. Did I mention he works out? I'm just saying -- look at the guy.

 

So, as you may have suspected, I managed to win this last one, even though there is a rumored photo out there somewhere, and I'm not saying where, which may, just may, show my foot grazing the sand of the outer ring just moments before Mark goes out. But that's just a rumor.



Tricia didn't get to stick around to see me and my moment of glory. It was way beyond his normal naptime, and according to Tricia, he was not a happy kid by the time they finally left and was asleep five minutes after being buckled into his car seat.


This, from Tricia:

The event began some amazing taikai drumming. Jonas loved it too. He had been running around, not wanting to sit still, but the minute the drumming started he was focused, watching and listening intently, as you can see in this picture. And, yes, you can see I enjoyed the drumming too. My mouth is open in awe.



One of the things Jonas did when he ran around was enter the dohyo. This official was very sweet and let Jonas play in a big pile of sand, but it was time for him to leave the dohyo.





There was a lot of pre-sumo activity and Jason was in the last group to fight. I tried so hard to keep Jonas there long enough so we could watch Jason compete. But the poor guy was ready for his nap and let me know by doing what toddlers do when they are tired - throw fits.

You can see the tiredness in his eyes in this picture. He played hard during the pre-sumo warm-up and got very sweaty and dirty. Both of us had a layer of sand on our clothes when we left.