| Sunday, October 29, 2006 |
| A Pizza walks into a bar... |
 Oh, another Halloween season that just won't die. So far I've been a witch, a mummy, classic Hello Kitty, Gothic Lolita Hello Kitty, and a love hotel. The first 3 were for shogakko, the last two were clearly not. My mom sent me a care package with sweets, and I thought for a moment about sharing the candy corn autumn mix. Ha. Ate the entire bag myself because I can't resist those chewy little pumpkins. Mmmm... food dye and sugar. It is almost like being home. Pizza-sensei and I kicked off this Halloween weekend with our eikaiwa students on Thursday. The toddler, Hinata, was enthralled by the pizza crust.
 Friday AJET party at Gorilla Bar! Almost 100 came, including my Yankee J-boyfriend Clairu, cowgirl Kae, and slightly more grown-up GosuLoli Kitty-chan. Birdie and I took on Jon K Gogh as our official lackey to organize the party and do our bidding from here on out, because he's a rockstar.
 This is what happens to people that criticize AJET. It's not a democracy and we don't really want to hear your negativity. Beware Bob-san Stab 'n' Stab!
The party was a blast, but the morning was monumentally rough. Last weekend we visited the domestic violence shelter office that we sponsor through AJET, and I spent all week making posters and preparing for a booth/presentation on the shelter for the World Citizen Festa. Too early on Saturday morning, I started getting sick, discovered a parking ticket on my car, and was late to meet Claire and set everything up. On arriving in the midst of the Brazilian dance show, all I could do was check to see that my whiskers had been wiped off, smudge away mascara, and pretend that I was going for the unshowered look. I rushed into our presentation on the shelter sounding very unconfident and feeling miserable. Luckily only 20 were there listening, and about 7 were from Herb's art class that I begged to watch us so we didn't look like losers without an audience. There's another DV fundraising group in Okayama that we might be able to network with, and I met the head of a prefectural NGO network organization , which was cool. The whole time I was talking and nodding and smiling, I was also trying to suppress all thoughts of vomiting and was generally a mess. So much for my facade of professionality... |
posted by Raychaa @ 1:35 PM  |
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| Monday, October 23, 2006 |
| I'm sorry, God can't come to the festival right now... |
 In my niko-niko ("smile smile") special needs class at elementary last week, the lone student kept hiding under various pieces of furniture, shouting "Boku wa inai, yo!" ("I'm not here!") repeatedly for the whole period. The teacher was looking a bit fragile, so we put on the Monster Mash CD and chatted in English instead. This weekend's theme: "Kami-sama wa inai, yo!"
On Sunday, 9 of us went to the Yoshikawa Hachimangu festival right next to Britt's house. It's famous because it's really old (700 years) and combines every type of fall festival known to man. There were portable shrines, dragon dances, an exceedingly slow march around town, taiko drumming, some mysterious meeting of god's "helpers" inside a circular bamboo-fenced-in area, meats on sticks, and two horses. There is a race at the end between 2 boys trying to win the favor of Kami-sama (God), and then another local boy who was selected the previous year to be Kami-sama rides up to the temple on horseback and shoots some arrows. After that the guys that had previously been smoking long cigarettes (amidst inexplicable piles of omiyage) in the bamboo lounge also race up the stairs, tripping over themselves in their ninja turtle footwear. You don't know what is happening or why. It's the festival that Ritalin forgot.
 There were lots of friendly locals to chat with, but it couldn't hold a candle to Kamotaisai. For starters, there were 3 portable shrines, but only enough men to carry 2 of them, which meant one shrine sat there looking lonely while the other 2 went off parading on the streets of Yoshikawa. (And did I say streets? I meant street.) The men were all dressed in white, looking from a distance like the KKK in rope sandals, and one of the shrines nearly broke when they crashed into the big stone gate at the entrance to the temple. The big sacred rope above also nearly came crashing down at this moment, which drew a collective gasp and then applause of relief from the crowds. Bless the little neighborhood for keeping tradition alive, but one granny who had been coming for 50 years says there are less people coming every year.
 People who were in attendance: this P-I-M-P and his little ladies in kimono. Also, the Mummy came, in addition to Bruttney's HotRice/Happy Day Every Day bus stalker lady.
The festival happens next to my small junior high, so Kami-sama is one of 2nd year students. I was talking to some of my girl students, all dressed up like little tiny hookers for the occasion, and they said that the boy who was supposed to be God wasn't there. This year, there would be no God. Why wasn't he there? Because he fell off the horse during rehearsal the day before and smacked his head on the pavement. He was whisked away in an ambulance and apparently also has a broken leg. Kami-sama wa inai, yo... |
| posted by Raychaa @ 5:55 PM |
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| Tuesday, October 17, 2006 |
| 950 Years of Kamotaisai |
Kibichuo town, the product of an endemic merger-plague sweeping Japan, celebrated its 2nd birthday on October 1st. The town festival that happens every 3rd Sunday in October is a 950-year tradition, still going strong. It began sometime between the years 1053-1058, and some of the trees on the shrine grounds have been standing for over a millenium. It is an amazing mikoshi (portable shrine) festival that gathers 8 shrines together on this day. How I view my beloved Kamotaisai, in 3 images:
The Young
The Old
The Restless... and Bruised
My Who's Who of Kamotaisai in three images:
1) Mochidani and her would-be boyfriend. Would he be legal and not her student and not have Hair the Color of Condiments, that is.
2) Bruttney's crazy bus buddy that kept standing a few feet away wherever we went. That's a "HotRice/ Happy Day/ Every day" sweater tied around her shoulders. Sassy!
3) Some giant gaijin lady, lost deep in the Japanse shire.
Our school board superintendent (The Mummy) was conspicuously absent, but it's probably because he's already seen Kamotaisai the past 949 years. Been there, done that, carried the mikoshi, got sloshed on sake by 9am, bought the meat-on-a-stick, wore the funny sandals.... for NINE AND A HALF centuries in a row. The poor guy probably needed a break. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 10:50 PM |
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| Friday, October 13, 2006 |
| Pimpin' All Over the Ken with my Big/Little Sis |
When my sister Annabelle emailed my keitai and asked if I had room for her on my tatami, I thought she was joking. One week later, she strolled up to the Okayama Starbucks where we'd met dozens of times before, and we kicked off a fun week of sister time. She's now on a 3-month stay in India, so Japan was a (mostly) free semi-surprise stopover en route from home. She lived in Kagawa-ken for 2 years, also teaching English, and we travelled a lot during my first year. Often people will lie to your face and claim a family resemblance when they meet one of your kin, but this does not happen with us. No one believes we're related, given that she is short, fashionable, and usually somewhat blondish, and I am not. She is being a jerk and holding all all our photos hostage right now, but suffice to say, it was a great week.
She saw the 2 best things in my town while I was at work (the bakery and the caged "wild" boars across from my little trailer village), she came to our community English class, and we onsened like we had OCD. Snacks and sweets were high on the agenda.
 Li'l Bub with li'l box of autumn mochi. Thanxxx DaniGal83. U R 2 Cool 2B 4GotN!
 Danielle and I are practicing kaitenzushi seduction, in case the hot chef returns. Other food-related ventures revolved around too many onigiri to count, more lattes than we should count, Black Thunder, fancy sushi nearly marred by gag-reflex-inducing sea urchin, Joyfull, and more onigiri. I tried to share the joy of green tea mushipan ("pan" from the Portugese for "bread", "mushi" is the kanji for "containing crack") but Abelle was unconvinced of its glory.
I took Abelle along to elementary lessons one day, and the kids nearly died with exhiliration. For whatever reason, I'm called by both names at that school, which means that it took the kids about 5 minutes of chanting in the hallway before they could remember all the syllables required to collect us for class. (Something like, "Shitsureishimaaaaaasu! Racheruarensensei ANDO A-na-be-ruu-arensensei...ichinen kyoshitsu ni kite kudasai!") Kawaii overload! We headed out on a Friday night for our standard Okayama haunts (Starbucks, HMV, Loft, Bagel&Bagel) and a loud izakaya where I nearly had a salaryman somersault off his bench into my lap while leaning over from his platform. I asked him in Japanese what he was looking for, he turns his head and shouts upside-down, "My shoes!!" His buddy grabbed him just as gravity threatened to catapult him my direction.
Hanging out in the same place and riding the Marine Liner train and gossiping about people we both knew from Japan, it was like the last year of my life had never happened. I know it's easy to get nostalgic when you meet up with people from your past, but ever since she graduated from high school, we've hardly spent any time together outside of our shared year in Japan, and now there we were again. Danielle called us "the coolest sisters ever," which I relayed to my parents, and we all had a good laugh. Abelle and I get along really well... now. We used to fight so much in high school that we'd sometimes spend the hour-long commute to school in furious silence and I do seem to remember one incident involving cursing and a remote control flying towards my head. (Don't even try to deny that one!) But, amazing what 5 years living apart and then reuniting in a stressful land across the Pacific can do for a sistership.
We spent the weekend on Shikoku, going to her old town and staying over with her old boss and his family. We biked to the next town over after a fabulous seaside onsen, and I think I may have found the most depressing place in Japan. It's called Nio, and used to be a town but now is a collection of abandoned buildings, visibly littered and half-concrete beaches, broken cars, and frumpy-looking people. The main attraction is a famed Tako-Ban shop, which is takoyaki (octopus balls) except made like a pancake and it takes almost an hour to get one order. There's one old woman cooking, her even-older mother rattling the coins in the register, and a whole slew of bored, dusty people waiting for said takoban. Any fool can do takoyaki, but takoban is a WHOLE NEW CONCEPT and the woman is thus an "innovator." (Verdict: Tastes like takoyaki, except in a pancake. The secret ingredient is love... and dust.)
We spent Sunday at the son's sports day before heading back home. This feisty little girl is a neighbor, and the kids were teasing her and messing with her hair. She pointed to her fringe and shouted "I cut it myself! I cut it myself!" and we all started cracking up. I should sure hope that was trimmed by an impulsive 3-year-old, or else that family needs a new hairstylist.
 Here's what I learned at Sports Day:
If you're male, and you're foreigner, and you're a total dork, and you come to Japan... you may be cooler in some people's eyes, but dorkiness does translate. Also, children can be so cruel. As background for this revelation, Annabelle's former ALT friend in the town was replaced by a guy we'll call "Stephen." The kids showed us the intro article in the school newsletter and proclaimed him to be strange. He's playing an accordion in his photo and fits Abelle's and my model of Hot Property. Arriving at sports day, we spot the Big S fidgeting and looking bored and awkward during the opening ceremony. It comes time for Rajio Taisho, which is a morning calesthenetics routine once practiced all over the country but now falling from favor in modern workplaces and schools. It's probably linked to the military, but is slow, easy, and you can follow everyone around you. Stephen-sensei was half-purposefully doing all the moves late or in the wrong direction, which he thought was funny, but he just looked like he was lacking the brain cells to copy what the 300 people in front of him were doing. Basically, he was doing The Elaine in the midst of a coordinated drill team, and it was painful. The elementary kids all around us were in hysterics and were copying him. The boy next to me looked up from his video game, shook his head, and said to his friend "Stephen-sensei really isn't cool," and there was agreement. The kids mocked his moves for the next several hours.
I never get to blend in and see what locals think of other foreigners-- it was like being a monkey in people's clothing at the zoo. Fascinating. Think people are laughing with you? They might be. Or they might be laughing at you. Paranoid much? Yeah, you probably should be. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 10:01 PM |
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| Monday, October 09, 2006 |
| Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Run in Kibikogen |
My town had its annual Road Race this weekend, and I finished my first 10K. I didn't run well or fast, but I had the honor of crossing the finish line with a blind guy who kept shouting "Let's GO! Let's GO!" for the last kilometre. (He ran with his sighted friend, each holding onto an end of a tea towel.) My town is home to the prefectural rehabilitation center, and there are a lot of special needs residents living nearby and working at some of the companies and factories. Thus, this event is billed primarily as a wheelchair race, and of the 1400 participants, 100 are on wheels. The last little boy to do the 3K had this neat chair where he was in a harness and could push off with his legs underneath. His dad controlled steering with a handle in the back, which gave it look of a push-lawnmower. The boy was grinning and yelling "Yatta! Yatta!" as he was inching uphill past the 10K and half-marathon start line, and all the bystanders were cheering, and I think if you listened closely you would have heard 4,000 hearts shatter like glass.
 Those are some of my Kibikogen babies starting the 3K. We shared gummi bears afterwards, which they thought were the funniest sweets they'd ever seen. Sure, chocolate mushrooms and dancing bean-paste buns are normal, but bears? In a moment of political incorrectness, one of the girls bit off the legs of the bear (as we are all wont to do) and then proclaimed "I've got no legs! I need a wheelchair because I can't run!" and I felt the awful urge to laugh. Wrong place, wrong time. The kids at my small junior high school are mandatory "bo-ran-tee-ah" workers for the race, coming from the English word "volunteer", and translated back into Japanese with the meaning of "not voluntary." Funny, that. The day's awkward moment came at the onsen (bath) in the afternoon, where I ran into 5 of my elementary kids with their mothers, and 2 of them were little boys. Britt was pointing out that in US teachers can't even give hugs from the front, lest they be considered sexual predators. By that standard, I'm now the Mary Kay LeTourneau of Okayama. Looks like we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. We're in a big tub in Japan...naked. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 3:05 PM |
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| Thursday, October 05, 2006 |
| Does your sister have any hobbits? (A cautionary tale) |
Being asked this question made my day. I know she has a hobby or two, but now I'm imagining my dear little sis with stacks of Frodo and Meriwether in her closet alongside her party clothes. Another gem came from the same class of rowdy 1st year junior high kids, following day. A smiley dude, who is about hobbit-sized, called me over to check his spelling for an activity on days of the week. He had written, "On Tuesday, I eat beaver." Understandably, I nearly fell out of my indoor slippers at something so inadvertently vulgar, but it turns out that "Bee-bah" is a the fond nickname of a bucktoothed classmate, and cannibalism is a running joke. Naturally. I'm really going to miss my weirdo students out here in the Shire.
Regardless of whether my sister has hobbits or not, I have an elementary class full of hobbit-punks intent on ruining the already-fragile psyche of their homeroom teacher. The other day, I was told to arrange a lesson on Halloween for all the grades, and right before class starts, the teacher tells me to also teach the question "How long/tall is it?" and hands me a measuring tape and ruler. The homeroom teacher is 22, in his first term out of university, weighs about half as much as I do, and has all the confidence of a hamster in Xanex withdrawal who feels threatened by wood shavings. I get contact anxiety sitting next to him. His kids are really friendly and noisy, but a few of the boys call him by his first name and tease him mercilessly about everything. This target question had nothing to do with Halloween and didn't seem like a good idea. We could measure things in their pencases and furniture in the room, and it would be a good, innocent lesson, I tried to tell myself. But had the cleaning-time Disney-medley music playing on the intercom suddenly changed to a minor and ominous key, I would not have been a bit surprised.
He and I walk in, incidentally wearing an identical color scheme, and the kids start yelling out, "You look like you're married! Ask Rachel-sensei to marry you! You need a wife!", some ruder comments, and so on. Nothing new. We get through the Halloween song and activity, and I have to delve into "How long is it?" I don't think I need to explain where things led from here, but needless to say, it wasn't good. There was taunting, a bit of yelling, a scuffle where the teacher had to wrestle a determined boy coming at his crotch with a ruler, and the consequent scolding of 2 boys in the principal's office. I think my teacher is on the verge of nervous breakdown. I wanted to crawl into a cubby and not come out until springtime.
Word to the wise: Don't teach this sentence, and never doubt the audacity of 5th grade boys. Especially ones wielding rulers. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 6:59 PM |
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| Sunday, October 01, 2006 |
| So Flesh and So Clean Clean |
The Merchant of Venice sets up a Farm Garden Happy's shop in Okayama city in June... and is quickly run out of business by September, before anyone has time to inquire about the wares.
"Excuse me, sir, might I have a pound of your finest... um... chicken? Or lobster emerging from a head of lettuce?"
 Punchline B for this photo: The Russian hookers are now also available in the old Daiei building when Desperado's is closed to the desperate clientele... |
| posted by Raychaa @ 11:03 PM |
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| So wrong it's right. And then wrong. And then wrong again... welcome to the inaka. |
| About Me |
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Name: Raychaa
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About Me: “No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this - 'devoted and obedient'. This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.” (Florence Nightingale)
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