Hello loyal readers. Been a while. Winter has come. Apparently I'm susceptible to Japanese colds, either that or its just leaving the air conditioning unit on overnight (the number one cause of problems in Kyushu apparently). Been too long to recount things in too much detail. Some highlights moving back through time: this past week I went to Uto middle school cultural festival and played guitar to back up the optional english class singing Mr. Big's hit song. I never fully understand the workings of the schools, but it seemed like the bunkasai was basically a hodgepodge of performances, instrumental (they had the only brass band of the area spicing up all the songs I heared over and over at the sports festivals), choral, class plays (one of which got huge points for being written by the kids, had a cool club scene with hip hop, and the most frequent set changes in a 30 minute space I think has ever been done), dance, and speeches from the students on social issues, the war, and such. At another ALT's culture day, apparently they did a dance that had nothing to do with the background projections on the screen of Japan japanese suffering from the bomb, battle, lots of explosions- apparently this freaked out the ALT quite a bit. at another bunkasai my friend Andrew went to, they jumped rope to 50 cent tunes for 40 minutes. anyway, it was a good time, took the whole day, and the kids put on a mad show. A reoccurring theme in my struggle to understand japanese school culture is the eerie but impressive combination of millitary discipline and ceremony in these young kids, amazing performances and team work, and at times an utter lack of enthusiasm or discipline. yeah, i went to an elementary school the other day, and the kids were singing a song in unison with this scary chanting ubervoice. beautiful but scary and ringing of fascism, if thats possible and not my paranoia. moving on.. ahh a really cool thing was going to the yabusame festival at the nearby town of koyama. been going on every year for hundereds and hundereds of years- kid gets chosen by the town to dress up like Link in zelda, ride a horse, and shoot targets at super high speed- the more he gets, the better luck for the town. really cool, awesome ceremony with old school music, dudes dressed up in samurai attire, felt like i was in the past for real. ill put in a pic or two from that. before that, went to a halloween party, wont go into too much detail but that was a really crappy night kindof. was supposed to be an international event, and was entirely for our benefit, but our hosts (the local rotary club) didnt seem to want us there. they fed us lots of drink, but there were kids there for the party, so it was very strange. yeah... This week im going to fukuoka to see some crazy sumo competition. getting psyched to see some more of the island.
