Sakura

Sakura, or cherry blossoms, can be seen all over Japan in the spring. There are dozens of parks around Kyoto where 'hanami' (flower watching) parties take place among students or coworkers. I was around Gion last Monday and here are some pictures:



This is a tree inside of Yasaka Shrine. There are booths selling snacks and various wares throughout the shrine. A lot of people were having hanami parties on tarps laid out under the trees.



Cherry blossoms over a stream.



A Maiko, or someone dressed like one, around Gion.

Kiyomizu Temple

Last weekend I went to Kiyomizu Temple with a friend. It's a fairly famous temple (like half the temples in Kyoto) that is best known for it's large veranda and a waterfall nearby.



You can buy these wooden plaques around the temple and write your wishes on them. I think certain areas/temples are for certain types of wishes, such as for marriages, newborn babies, or tests. Sometimes people write very interesting things on these.



This is the entrance to the temple grounds. Unlike many temples, this one doesn't seem to be walled off. I'm not sure if it's because of expansion around it or the nearby mountain behind it, but it's fairly open compared to most temples I've been to.



A view from near the top of Kiyomizu Temple. It's up a big hill (or little mountain) and has, in theory, a good view of the city. The day I was there it was pretty hazy. I'm told this is because strong winds picked up sand in a desert in China and blew them across the ocean to Japan. The next day, after a little rain, my car was really dirty and covered in sand.



The veranda is probably one of the most notable parts of the Temple.



These are cherry blossoms on a tree down the street from Kiyomizu. It's a little early for cherry blossoms here and unfortunately I didn't get to see many while I was there. I may yet go back sometime when there are more of them.

Flowers

There was a send off party for me today at one of my schools. I was brought up before all the students and gave a short speech. Then they gave me flowers. I don't have a vase or anything, so I put the flowers in a beer glass.



I am classy.

Towards the End of the Year

I have about a week and a half left in my contract. I have about a week or two off before my next contract starts and I'm not quite sure what to expect. Currently there are four ALTs (English teachers) in my town. From April there will be two including myself. I don't know my schedule yet, but it seems I will be a lot busier than I am now. I'll probably be going to more schools and will have less free time.

Right now I go to five schools. I spend half my time at a junior high school and split the rest at four elementary schools. From next year (I think) I will go to two different junior high schools, spending one day at each of them. The rest of my time will be split between several elementary schools. It seems that I will only be going to one of the schools I go to now.


Last Friday was my last day at my smallest school. The teachers gave me a picture of me with kids that had little notes from each of them. This week will be my last day at two other schools. I'm not sure if there's anything planned, but I'll find out soon enough.

On Friday there was a post-graduation party for the junior high school. We ate a pretty nice (and very expensive) restaurant. The most notable 'food' there was a semi-live shrimp. To eat it, you had to rip off it's head, strip off the shell, and dip it in boiling water. It moves while you do all of this. I think Ben and Claire can look forward to this in a few months.

Some people hate Japan

So this is actually an e-mail I sent to Peter in response to this article. It is exceptionally long (it crashed my computer at school twice, though it is fairly old and you probably don't have to read it. I thought other people might find it interesting and, rather than writing something original, decided to post it here:

It' basically impossible to be a vegan in Japan and difficult to be a vegetarian. Despite this, it seems like Japanese people eat a lot more vegetables than Americans. They even eat things that I wouldn't call food but they call vegetables (see Konyaku, which my dictionary awesomely translates as Devil's Tongue). I was talking to one of the teachers here about WWII the other day and she said that some American and British prisoners in one camp thought they being mistreated because they were fed roots and fish they considered inedible. In actuallity they were being about as well as the prison guards. Nevertheless, the head guards of the camp were punished after the war for mistreating prisoners by feeding them what was then a typical Japanese diet.

I can't speak much about corporate culture in Japan (or in America for that matter), but I have seen/heard some of the things mentioned in that article. Schools in general, at least where I am, seem to be a little more relaxed. Teachers typically stay in the office when they aren't teaching classes, at least for middle and high school. Every morning, when someone comes in they usually say "Ohayo Gozaimasu" and everyone else responds in kind. This makes it hard to be late because everyone is alerted to arrival.

The layout of the office is interesting. At one end are the head people, at a school the vice-principal, a scheduler (I think, I am not really sure what this person does), and the principal, who also has a private office. It visually demonstrates who is in charge. Everyone else sits at large, heavy desks arranged into groups by class year or subject area. At one school I sit in the front where the principal would typically sit next to a board with announcements and a tally of which classrooms have sick/absent students. This means other teachers are constantly looking at me, though really they are looking at the board. It is intimidating.

(Also, I should mention that Japanese keyboards are slightly different so typing this is a little awkward, especially apostraphes and quotation marks. Therefore I am avoiding contractions. It is nice that I have now have a computer with internet to use at my main school, though a lot of websites are blocked)

I could comment more, but I don't feel the need to match the length of that essay. I will say that I want to go to a pachinko parlor or hostess bar out of morbid curiousity. I probably never will, at least not long enough or as many times as I would need to get a better idea of them. I mostly don't want to go because they cost to much and have a fairly negative stigma. I think sometime in the near to medium future I will be dragged to a maid cafe, which is like a hostest bar light "for nerds" I am told.

Nantanian Kids Festival

One thing that continually surprises me is how vibrant Nantan, the town I live in, seems to be.* There are constant festivals and events that tend to be well attended, at least the ones I've been to. There's a local international society that runs a few events each year, all pretty full. The field trip in Nantan I went on last fall that got my picture in the local paper was one of those events.

I'm also surprised by the number of people who can speak English. Most the people I know who speak English well are older Japanese women who used to live or work in Kyoto or some other, bigger city before moving out here. There's also a woman who is younger and used to live in Chicago.

Last weekend was the "Nantanian Kids Festival". The international society, along with volunteers, set up booths for six countries; South Korea, the US, China, Germany, the Philippines, and Brazil. Each of those was represented by someone from that country, except for possibly the Philippines. Children paid some small entrance fee and were given a 'passport' with pages for each of the countries. Each page had basic greetings in that country's language, how to count to ten, and a short quiz about history or geography that could be answered by looking at things inside the booth. There was also some 'money' in the back that could be used to buy snacks from each country.

Naturally, I was working in the America booth. We had face painting, which I hadn't thought of as an American thing before someone mentioned it:



These are some of the decorations we put up:



As I said before, these events tend to be well attended and this was no exception. At several points I found myself essentially unable to move and had to stay in one place for a prolonged period of time:



This picture will surely haunt me if I ever take LSD and look at the Statue of Liberty**:



*Really though, I don't know what I'm talking about. I can't accurately compare Nantan to other small towns in Japan, or in America even. It just seems different from what I would expect and anything I say is purely anecdotal.

**In Japanese the Statue of Liberty is called the Goddess of Liberty, which always struck me as odd.