Kite Festival

A few weeks ago around the end of May we had the Tahara Kite Festival here in town. I didn't get to go last year because of a choir concert and for the same reason I wasn't able to attend very long this year but luckily the concert ended early and the festival ended late so I was able to see some real kite fighting action, which mostly consisted of me trying to figure out who was trying to cut who while avoiding being hit by kite strings lined with sharp glass.


A team shows off their kites.

There is another larger and more famous kite festival in the nearby city of Hammatsu. The kites there are a lot bigger and a lot more colorful. Although the ones in Tahara aren't shrinking violets either. By the time I got there around 12, everyone had stopped for lunch. But when I came back after the concert they were having the final showdown. Even the mayor was in on the fun, fighting with a kite that had the city hall logo on it.


Here they are getting ready to launch the kites.

The way it works is that each team has a kite that is sponsored by different families or businesses. They try to cut the other kites strings with the ground glass on their own string. On this day all the kites were either blue or red and they worked together to take down kites of the opposite color.


The festival is held behind Jusco in the rice fields.

People hang out all day on their tarps and under tents, picnicking and watching the kites fly. They handed out small kites and free drinks at the library across the street from where the festival was held. We had to be very careful to not get caught in one of the kite lines that moved up and down the main street. It was bad for the kite and bad for us if we got in the way. One man in our group got hit with a line and he said it really really hurt.


If you look closely you can see the kite line in this man is managing.


They look so small up in the air.

It was a really good time. I don't have pictures of the group but a mix of Japanese people and foreigners showed up from Toyohashi and Nagoya to hang out with us locals and enjoy the kite festival. All of these pictures were taken by my friend Mako since I was busy traipsing off to choir to bother taking any. Now that I've seen the real deal, I'm very interested in going to Hammatsu's festival next year. And coming back to Tahara's again as well of course.

I'm a dinosaur

I got confirmation this week that Tahara is not replacing Nathan with someone from Georgetown. I'll be the only Sister City ALT left and Vanessa will be the only JET left. There are two possibilities for next year. One, they don't replace Nathan with anyone but leave me alone at the two junior high schools and divide up his elementary schools among the rest of us. Or two, they replace him with yet another private from the nearby big(ger) city.

Option one is cheaper but leaves the schools with one less ALT, which they won't like. Option two lets them keep the same number of ALTs at a lower cost than hiring someone from Georgetown, but it carries some risk too. The dispatch company keeps sending ALTs who are not only not native English speakers but don't speak English well at all, and one guy who made the kids cry. They didn't renew that guy's contract but instead replaced him with a Nigerian who doesn't speak English OR Japanese well, making it all almost impossible to plan lessons with him. So option one might be looking attractive at the moment.

But it would make my job a lot lonelier. I'm already dreading September when I get back and realize that Nathan is gone for good. Even if they replace him , it won't be the same. And all of this makes me think that they won't replace me when I leave either and then the Sister City ALTs will gone forever. It makes sense when you think about it. I've known for awhile that Aichi is phasing out the JET program and since my contract is really just a photocopy of the JET contract then it makes sense that we would be phased out too. I'm a dinosaur, according to Nathan, the last of my kind. And that makes me sad.

Eigo Noto

As of last year in Japan there was very little in the way of organized English instruction before junior high school. In my town, the ALT showed up once a month and organized a lesson that mostly included games. I actually had a principal tell me to please teach words only. Sentences were too hard. My students learned very little if any English from me. If they were good it was because their parents sent them to eikawa.

This year the Japanese government rolled out new textbooks for 5th and 6th grade called Eigo Noto (literally English notebook.) A lot of people think they suck. I definitely don't think they are great but the material they cover is much more advanced and it means the teachers can no longer shut me down because something is too hard. I can point to the book and they now have no argument.

I'm not sure how other cities are handling the new weekly requirement, but I think some are just having the homeroom teacher teach the lesson while others are increasing the ALT visits. In my city, they've actually hired what they call ATs, assistant teachers, who visit the schools each week. They are Japanese natives (most of them anyway) who speak English very well, (I know this because I interviewed them.) They plan the lessons, meet with the homeroom teachers to go over it, and then they team teach with the homeroom teacher once a week. I still only show up once a month. I jump in and follow the plan for the 5th and 6th grade but I still teach my regular "fun" lessons with the younger grades the rest of the day.

The two ATs I work with are very different. One hates the textbook and asked me to plan and teach a separate lesson last time. This time I haven't had an email from her so I'm not sure what to expect when I get to school tomorrow. I'll have a lesson waiting in case she didn't plan anything. I'm not a huge fan of hers. She's not very genki and she's a whiner. She actually wanted me to leave my flashcards with her last time and looked put out when I explained that I have three elementary schools and my cards travel with me. I've given her websites where she can get her own cards. And the board of education gave her a CD-rom that has materials on it as well; all she has to do is print them out. She's also lost her 5th grade textbook already and says that makes it hard to plan. Uh yeah...

The other girl is awesome and I want to hang out with her outside of school. Her lesson plans are a little schizophrenic though. I like to spend more time on activities but she flits around from thing to thing, often even changing from grammar point to grammar point. But she's always on top of things so I don't complain. Especially since she gets results. Today in my 6th grade class the students could answer questions like "Can you play baseball?" and "Do you like to swim?" with very little trouble distinguishing between "Yes, I can" and "Yes, I do." Some of my junior high school kids still can't do this. Eigo Noto isn't the best, but with some supplemental activities I think the students will benefit.

The other thing my schools are implementing is the "Let's Enjoy English" cheer at the beginning of each class. Four students come to the front and lead the group, going over what they need to remember during English time. They are: big voice, big smile, eye contact, and big actions. I love it and have started doing it with my 3rd and 4th graders too. If they start to slack off, I can just yell out BIG VOICE or BIG ACTIONS and they immediately perk back up. Not surprisingly most of the sixth graders hate it but at my really genki school all the students are excited to come to the front to lead the group. And the fifth graders at all my schools are pretty okay about it.

I was worried about this new year and how things would change, but overall, I am liking it. Although my legs are really sore today from dancing the Hokey Pokey with the older kids and to the Genki English "Hello, How Are You" song with the younger ones. Friday I am back at the junior high and even though I love my ES students I am looking forward to something more sedate. I don't think I could survive if I had to do elementary school all the time.

How do you say "wakarimasen" in English?

Today the third grade teacher at Tobu JHS decided to teach some classroom English so that while the students wrote essays about their school trip they could ask me and Nathan for help. The first phrase she taught them was "How do you say _____ in English?" She didn't take into account though that Nathan and I both speak very little Japanese. So yeah, I spent 4 hours today saying "Uh....I don't know. Sorry." I am not a dictionary!

I am a spelling bee champion though. (Sharonville ES 1994 oh yeah!) And it's a good thing because the second question was "How do you spell ______?" So I wasn't completely useless today.

Pig Flu

Japan has gone crazy over swine flu. I thought I was a hypochondriac but I don't even compare to the Japanese. My sister sat on the plane in Narita for almost an hour while health officials came through, kitted up in full body suits and masks, and took everyone's temperature. A red dot meant you had to stay for further testing. No dot meant you could leave the plane. Thankfully, she didn't end up in quarantine and our trip went smoothly.

But now that there are confirmed cases of the swine influenza in Japan there is a mask shortage. Schools are being shut down. Nathan's friends are here visiting and he had planned on bringing them to school two days this week so they could experience the craziness that is a Japanese junior high school. Already at two of our schools they have asked us about swine flu and if there are any cases in Kentucky. We assured them that they were healthy. They were still worried but maybe it's okay if they visit school. We should have known with the maybe. Maybe in Japanese is a pretty strong NO.

Nathan was already using nyenkyuu to spend time with his friends, but then the superintendent called as we were heading out to dinner to tell him that he could have those two days he had planned on working as "special" days off school to spend with his friends. In other words, keep your dirty flu-infected gaijin friends away from our students. Of course, I still have to go to school so now I have a whole week of being by myself. I've considered telling them I made out with one of them just to see if I get sent home too.

Although to be fair, one teacher did say today, "I don't know why they are so worried. It's not that bad." I knew there was a reason she was my favorite English teacher.


Special mask I made for my sister when she visited, back when you could still find masks.


In other news we had a small tremor tonight. I really really hate earthquakes.

How I became the best dancer in the Tahara Mixed Chorus

Mostly by being a smart ass. I think one of the worst things a choir can do is dance but that's because the kind of choral music I like isn't exactly dancing material. Would you dance to Mozart's Requiem? Or to Shubert's Mass in A Flat? What about to some Morten Lauridson or John Rutter? I think not.

So there's the first problem. I could almost tolerate the music we were singing until they decided we should dance to it. When I found that out I realized I had two choices. I could sulk in the corner half-assing it or I could make fun of the whole affair by being completely over the top Broadway wanna be with it.

I went with choice two. Then my plan backfired, because even though I was standing in the back, I was still spotted and suddenly I was being dragged to the front of the room as an example of how to do the dance. I think maybe only the director and one guy in the bass section, Mr. Suzuki, (who was also dancing like a loon) understood that I was being a bit of a smartypants. Everyone else just thought I was AWESOME. Of course once I set the precedent of over-the-top silly dancing I had to keep dancing like I was trying out for Footloose right up until today's concert. I got big pats on the back afterward from the other choir members and even from a few random strangers in the audience.

So yeah, that's how I became the best dancer in the Tahara Mixed Chorus. Lesson learned: don't be a smart ass because Japanese people won't get the joke. Instead they'll try to make you do a dance solo in front of the whole freaking town and then the joke's on you.

Speaking of choir, I was actually thinking about quitting the choir recently because I found out it's going to cost me $120 every six months to stay in and the twice weekly rehearsals are really starting to get to me. But then randomly one of the little old ladies gave me a cake, just handed me a whole cake one night after practice. How can I tell them I want to quit when I'm holding a cake in my hand? I can't. And then today after I had declined to buy a bento lunch (because they are expensive and I'm never sure if I'll like what's in it,) one of the other ladies insisted and bought it for me. Apparently I'm a sucker for free food.

Although at a cost of $240 a year and countless hours of my life sucked away doing a horrible dance about a fish girl named Ponyo, I'm not sure it really counts as free. My plan is to wriggle free after summer break, using the JLPT as an excuse. I'll explain that I need the extra study time to pass the test. Unless of course they make me another cake in which case I'll never quit.

Clam Digging

I'm from Ohio. For those of you geographically challenged that is nowhere near the sea. It's a good ten hours by car to get to an ocean. We have a dirty river and Lake Erie and that's about it. So living in Tahara where I'm a fifteen minute ride from the Pacific Ocean and the Mikawa Bay has been great.

A few weeks ago I found out just how great it really can be when I was invited to go clam digging. I love clams. Particularly in chowder. My family took an epic road trip through New England when I was in junior high and one of the things I remember is eating grilled cheese and clam chowder for lunch every single day and sometimes again for dinner. It was great. You could tell it was fresh when every once in awhile you would crunch down on a piece of sand. Really, really great. So I was really excited to go clam digging.



Shiroya Beach on the bay side.


Turns out I'm not so good at clam digging though. For starters we showed up in shorts and flip flops and then realized that all the locals were wearing raincoats and boots. That's because it was FREEZING. We were also missing some vital tools, shovels being the main item. Let me state that it is possible to dig for clams using only a very large rock but I wouldn't really recommend it. My hands ached for days after. Eventually, I gave up and went to sun myself on some nearby rocks, leaving the work to the experts like Miyuki's grandma. It took our group of six people to get the same amount of clams as that seventy-something year old woman.



My friend Miyuki and her grandma.



Nathan shows us what we're looking for.


Our catch for the day.


But while I may suck at digging for them, I excel at eating them. After soaking in salt water for several hours, Miyuki declared them ready to cook. A little steam, some sake, onions, and a clove of garlic and they were ready for consumption. And man oh man were they good. They were definitely worth the sore hands, back, and legs the next three days. Oishikatta!





Side note: I'm holding chopsticks in this picture but it's practically impossible to eat these little buggers with them.