かぐや姫の物語

This is going to be a short post, but I wanted to put something up since I probably won't update again until after Christmas. I have a 忘年会　(bonenkai, end of the year party) Friday night and I'm heading out early Saturday morning for Tokyo. I don't know how much time I'll have to update while in Tokyo and my family is getting flying in the day I get back to Kitakyushu. So I'll probably be MIA for the next few weeks, but hopefully I'll have lots of amazing pictures and stories when I get back!

As for this past weekend, I saw my first Japanese movie in the theaters! No subtitles or anything. The movie I saw was かぐや姫のもの物語 ( Kaguya Hime No Monogatari) or The Tale of Princess Kaguya. It is the newest Studio Ghibli film and tells the story of a princess from the moon born out of bamboo on Earth. It's a very odd story, but it's very famous in Japan. I was able to understand the first half of the movie, but the second half of the movie takes place in a high society temple and everyone speaks in Keigo. Keigo literally means "respectful language" and is a hyper polite form of Japanese that I don't really understand. The grammar changes and many verbs change or are extended. I had already read the story in my Japanese Literature class at Hofstra, so thankfully I was still able to follow the story because of the animation and previous knowledge. The movie was beautifully illustrated and I'm hoping to see more Japanese movies in the future (hopefully with less Keigo)!

Christmas Cards

I'm sorry I didn't update last week, I haven't been up to anything all that exciting. I'm saving as much money as I can for my Christmas trip to Tokyo! It's going to be a week long trip (Dec. 21st - Dec. 27th) with my friend Patrick. We're taking the 新幹線 (shinkansen, bullet train) to 品川駅 (Shinagawa station), where we will be staying in a hotel only minutes from the train station! Shinagawa is a southern ward in Tokyo and the train station there connects to five different train lines around Tokyo. It also has four special platforms for other trains like the bullet train. The trip up from Kokura will take about five hours, but I'm very excited! I'm also taking another short trip closer to New Years with my family, but the destination is a surprise for my parents, so I'll write about that later.

My last few weeks have been pretty low key in preparation for these trips. I went out with one of the Japanese teachers from Futajima and we had a great time at karaoke, but I haven't been out much other than that. I've been playing a lot of Pokemon and just hanging out with friends. On Saturday a bunch of people are coming over for a game day, which I'm really looking forward to.

Since nothing too exciting is happening outside of school, I figured I'd write a little bit about a project I'm doing with my students. I started the project last week and have been going around to all the English classes in my school making Christmas cards with the students. First they write a rough draft on scrap paper. I go around and correct their drafts as they work and once they finish and I've looked over everything, I give them a green card to write their message on and decorate. I've been really blown away by some of the results, the students are coming up with great messages and some of the artwork on the cards is phenomenal. All the English teachers at my school are excited about the project as well and are showing off the cards to other teachers in the staff room. I went to the post office today and mailed the 400 cards to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where the cards will be given to the patients at the hospital. My students were really excited that their cards are headed to America to real American children, it really motivated them. Sometimes learning English seems like a waste to them, especially the students who have never been out of their town, so having a real context for using English was something they really enjoyed.

One last very exciting note! I went to my monthly Kitakyushu ALT meeting today and we found out whether or not we are getting re-contracted today. I got re-contracted! I along with Patrick, Kris, and Emily signed our papers today and are officially working here again next year! More people we re-contracted, but I didn't notice whether or not anyone else signed the papers yet. I'm so excited to be able to work here again next year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The last week has been very busy for me! We had a Skills and Development Conference (SDC) on Monday and Tuesday that was mandatory for all Fukuoka prefecture JET ALTs. Many Japanese Teachers of English (JTEs) came as well. They came from all around the prefecture, but no teachers from either of my schools came. I didn't learn a whole lot, the conference was directed much more towards the JTEs, but it was nice to be with JETs from all around Fukuoka. The only downside was the distance. It was pretty far away from Kitakyushu, the commute by train was well over an hour and the building we were in was about a 25 minute walk from the closest train station. I stayed with a friend over night in Fukuoka city so the the commute would be easier the first morning. Juha and Dan stayed over with the same friend and it was nice to go as a group. Almost all the Kitakyushu ALTs made it to the conference on time, sign in started at 9:30 and the conference started at 10:00, but unfortunately one girl over slept. She was almost two hours late and in Japan tardiness is a huge faux pas. Our supervisor had to write a formal apology and the girl has to turn in a report on why she was late by the end of the week.

The Kitakyushu Board of Education was also supposed to let our schools know we would be away on the Monday and Tuesday. However, most of us got calls during lunch asking if we were sick and why we weren't at school. It turns out our supervisor wrote letters to our schools, but never faxed them. There was a lot of confusion, but thankfully every is sorted out now.

Despite the few hiccups, SDC wasn't as bad as I originally thought it would be. The previous JETs had warned us that SDC was the biggest, most boring waste of two days that you could possibly think of. I didn't find many seminars to be useful and spent a lot of my time playing games with David, but I was inspired by a few and got a lot of great project and lesson ideas I'm hoping to start next week! I even won a raffle for a gift certificate to a kabab restaurant in Fukuoka city that I hear is pretty good.

After SDC my main focus was Thanksgiving! Being one of the only two American Kitakyushu JETs, I volunteered to host it. I wasn't sure many people would come since Leah is the only other person to celebrate Thanksgiving this Thursday, but I had a really great turn out! Eight of my friends came over and we had the closest thing we could get to a traditionally Thanksgiving. Leah made green beans and broccoli, Patrick made salad, Caol made mashed potatoes, David and Fumiko made chicken and pork, and I made stuffing, gravy, pumpkin pudding, and cranberry cookies. The obvious thing missing here is the turkey. I tried to find turkey, but I had started looking too late. Some places told me they could order it, but it wouldn't be in for another week. The stuffing was courtesy of home, Mom sent me a care package full of Thanksgiving necessities. Stuffing mix, pumpkin pie filling, cranberries, and chocolate turkeys were a few of the Thanksgiving essentials I got from home.

I also got some Hanukkah things in the care package. I took the small menorah and dreidels to school to tell my students about Hanukkah. They were also great as a game while we were waiting for everyone to get to my apartment. We lit the menorah and everyone insisted on learning the Hanukkah prayer. (We had already been speaking in English, Japanese, Irish, Spanish, and Finnish. We thought adding Hebrew was only fair.) The gelt was also a big hit. Kyoko won most of it during dreidel, but shared with everyone. Fumiko took some home to show her mom during New Years, no one had ever seen chocolate coins before.

All in all I had an amazing Thanksgiving. Juha and Kyoko brought what was recently rated the second best 梅酒 (umeshu, plum wine) in Kyushu that we had with dessert and everyone said it was the best Thanksgiving they'd ever had. Granted Leah is the only other person to celebrate Thanksgiving before, but I still think it went really well. They are already asking me to do it again next year.

I have to help prepare for a tea ceremony my students are putting on. I don't have too much planned in the upcoming weeks; I'm saving up my money for Tokyo and another travel destination that is TBA. Happy (late) Thanksgiving and Happy Hanukkah!

Illuminations and a Mountain

This week was pretty uneventful. I did go over to Leah's for a small dinner party, which was fun, but I was mostly looking forward to Illuminations on Friday. Illuminations, or 光の祭典 (hikari no saiten, festival of lights), has been slowly set up in Kitakyushu for the past few weeks. Christmas trees made of lights started appearing, lights were hanging from more and more trees, and a foot bridge was slowly covered. Friday was when they finally turned on all the thousands of lights.

There are lights everywhere! Lights are hanging from trees, scaling buildings, and covering bridges. There are lights at Kokura station decorating pillars and hanging from the overhang. Lights are in the shape of different animals, even our Kitakyushu mascot is made out in lights in front of a multicolored Christmas tree. The bridge has benches in the middle with lights arching overhead and even the river banks are lit up.

I had plans to meet some friends by Riverwalk to see all the lights, but I got so excited I couldn't wait. I went an hour early to check it out myself. I'm glad I did because there was a live performance going on that I would have missed otherwise. A Japanese group was singing English Christmas songs. I would normally say it is way too early for Christmas songs, but with all the lights and happy people the music fit pretty well. I walked around for a bit before meeting my friends, who told me as Christmas gets closer even more things will add to the lights that are already out.

 

 

The next day I went out with Juha, Kyoko, and Caol to climb Mt. Nuki. We left a little late and didn't end up getting to the train station until 1:30. We also underestimated how long it would take to walk from the train station to the mountain trail. We had to walk to a lake from the train station, which took us about twenty minutes. We passed beautiful temple on the way, but didn't stop for fear of losing time. We also passed a group of お祖父さん (ojiisan, grandfathers) on the way. We asked them about how long it would take to make it up to the top of the mountain and they sort of laughed at us and told us we wouldn't make it.

We continued anyway and soon made it to the lake. We had to walk around the lake in order to start our hike up the mountain and found a path through a bamboo forest. The path seemed a bit overgrown in places, but we continued anyway. When we got to the other side and met back up with a road we found this sign facing away from us:

It says, 「あぶないからはいってはいけません！」(abunai kara haitte wa ikemasen, Do no go in because it is dangerous!) We still are not sure why the path wasn't blocked from the side we came in on, but apparently we were not supposed to take that path up. It did save us some time, though, and we continued now that we were back on the road.

We soon reached another forest path, one that was definitely not closed. We started to climb, but we were worried about losing the sun since it was starting to go down. The trails we were taking were in the middle of the woods and we would have a very hard time getting back if the sun set and we lost our light. We hiked for about another hour, but were still about an hour away from the top. We stopped on a smaller peak of the mountain and had a picnic dinner (we had brought bento with us) before turning back. We were sad not to make it all the way up, but the sun was almost behind the mountains and it was dark by the time we reached the train station.

We did quickly stop at the temple we had seen before because we wanted to check it out. There was a fortune machine there and we all got fortunes. My fortune was the best luck, so I kept it with me.
We headed back to Kokura, where Caol and I met Dave for dinner. He showed us a really nice little street full of restaurants I hadn't seen before and the food was amazing. After dinner we went to karaoke before heading home for some much needed sleep.

Next weekend I'm helping out at an elementary school to teach the students about Thanksgiving. It should be a lot of fun!

Mike's Visit!

This week I was very excited to have Mike come and visit me! I had work, but we still managed to get out and do a lot of things!

Mike arrived in Fukuoka Airport on Monday, November 4^th around 10 P.M. I left Kitakyushu after dinner to meet him at the airport. He’d been on two planes traveling for almost eighteen hours, but we still had to take the subway to Hakata station and then a train back to Kitakyushu. We got back to my apartment a little after midnight and almost immediately fell asleep.

On Tuesday my school had the day off as a substitution day for Saturday, when I went to school during culture festival, so I took Mike around the city. We started by walking along the monorail to Kokura station, then walked though Uemachi (an arcade next to Kokura station with many shops, restaurants, and game stations) to get to Kokura Castle and Riverwalk. We had lunch at Riverwalk and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Riverwalk and Uemachi. We had dinner at Booties with Caol and Patrick where Mike triedふぐ (fugu, puffer fish) for the first time.

Wednesday I had work, but it was a BoE meeting day. On meeting days I leave work early to head over to my Board of Education in Kitakyushu. Since last week I was at Shinozaki (my closer school), I had enough time to meet Mike for lunch before heading to my meeting. I was really excited about this meeting because we finally got our business cards! After the meeting I met back up with Mike and we went to Habit, a burger place many of us go after our BoE meetings. We were joined by Patrick, Leah, and Juha at the restaurant and afterwards went back to Juha’s apartment to play board games.

Thursday I was at work again, but Mike had some fun exploring Kokura a little more. He went to Cha Cha Town (so named because the Kitakyushu accent often puts “cha” at the end of sentences) and had sushi for lunch. He also went to Aru Aru City, a big mall behind Kokura station designated to everything anime. After work, Mike and I rode the monorail to Kokura station. I needed to meet Patrick to finalize our trip to Tokyo for Christmas and Mike wanted to look at all the stalls set up in the station selling lots of different food and even some clothes and jewelry. Going to the travel agency with Patrick didn’t take long, so Mike and I met up with Juha and Kyoko at 鉄なべ (tetsunabe), one of my favorite restaurants in Kitakyushu.

Friday, again I had work. Mike said he didn’t go out much, I think he slept most of the day since he didn’t get much of a chance to sleep off his jet lag when he first arrived. He did go out to Tanga market. Tanga market is a street full of fish shops one stop down on the monorail (or about a fifteen minute walk) from my apartment. Mike got some delicious たこ焼 (takoyaki, fried octopus) there for lunch. He also brought some fish and vegetables home, which we made for dinner when I got home from work.

Friday night we went out since Mike had never seen the Kokura nightlife before. We met Leah and Caol for drinks, then we all headed to karaoke. Leah and Caol went home after karaoke, but my friend Vixay was DJing at Orange Door for the night and I had said we’d stop by to see him. At Orange Door, Mike and I ran into Juha and Kyoko who were also there to see Vixay. We sat with Juha and Kyoko for a while before heading home.

Saturday we had a very quiet day. We mostly stayed in and played games. We did treat ourselves to a fancy dinner at a restaurant Juha had suggested the night before. I’m not sure of the name (Juha didn’t know the name either, just gave us vague directions), but it was a very nice焼肉 (yakiniku) restaurant. Yakiniku is kind of like BBQ, you get various meats, seafood, and vegetables that you grill at your table. The place we went was small, but the food was incredible!

Sunday we ventured outside of Kitakyushu. We first went up to Shimonoseki for its famous Karato Ichiba fish market. This market is huge and has almost any kind of fish you could want. Puffer fish is the specialty in Shimonoseki, so almost ever stand had it. We tried as many kind of fish as we could! My favorite was トロ (toro, fatty tuna/tuna belly). I see it a lot on American sushi menus, but with limited availably and I’ve never seen it actually available. It is considered by many one of the best sushi ingredients, but there is not much toro on each tuna, so it can be hard to come by. I can’t wait to go back sometime to have more!

We walked down the wharf after leaving the market, but it started to rain so we hopped on a bus and headed back towards the train station. We decided to head into Fukuoka since Mike didn’t get a chance to see it other than through his plane window. We walked around Hakata for a while looking at the shops.
Eventually we headed to the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. They have an exhibit going on until January of Studio Ghibli cells and layout designs. There were even some TVs set up next to the layouts showing you exactly how the transition from layout to film occurred. At the end of the exhibit everyone was given a little circle sticker and a black pen. We were told to draw anything we wanted and stick it on the wall. Everything about the exhibit was amazing!

We walked back to the train station after the museum, stopping at a few shrines along the way. We got ramen for dinner and then headed up to the 8^th floor of Amu Plaza in the train station to find the Pokémon Center. We had a lot of fun playing the games and looking around. There was a big event going on because a new pack of cards had just been released, so we picked up a few packs as souvenirs. We shopped around a bit more in the mall before heading home.

Mike got on a plane Monday morning that left at 7:20 A.M. and he’s back in New York. I hope he can visit again soon!

Futajima Culture Festival

As I said previously, last weekend was my school's (Futajima's) culture festival. We had spent a very busy week getting ready, especially with the first year students. All the first year students wrote a short paragraph in English describing a friend or family member. I had to read over all of their paragraphs and correct them every time they wrote a new draft. A few needed to be corrected on the final draft (with sticky notes so it wouldn't mess up their nice papers) as well. So that's somewhere between 130 and 140 paragraphs I read and re-read. Then on Friday we grouped all the paragraphs by class and taped them to giant pieces of paper, which we hung in the gym for parents and other students to see during the festival.

The entire school became a display case for student work, not just the gym. Most of the classrooms and hallways were decorated with work the students had done. There was a huge variety of work ranging from science projects to stitch work patterns to ikebana (flower arranging). There were painting and calligraphy projects hung up and small ceramic desserts the students had made in art class. The special class did a short research project on recycling and made tote bags out of newspaper for other students to take. The third year students made books describing a school trip they had taken to Nara, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. The set up took a long time, but seeing it all during the festival was well worth it.

The festival itself started at 8:45 A.M. on Saturday. Students, parents, and teachers all gathered in the auditorium and our principal started opening ceremony. Pretty much everything in Japan has an opening (and closing) ceremony. My school day starts with an opening ceremony, which consists of the head teacher saying good morning and giving out any announcements. The principal and vice principal sometimes give out announcements as well. The opening ceremony for culture festival was led by the principal of Futajima. She thanked everyone for coming and talked about how hard all of the students had worked to prepare. Then three of the students who participated in speech contest came up and did their speeches for everyone. There was a projector displaying both the English as the students spoke and the Japanese translation so everyone could follow along.

After the speeches, the special classes had the stage. They sang two songs and each student had a chime with a different pitch. They rung their chimes in an order so that it accompanied the song they were singing. The first years went next and they also sang a few songs. They also did a dramatic reading of a story I didn't quite understand, but there were pictures accompanying it. The students would take turns telling the story and everyone would say certain parts in unison. The second years were up next and they also started with some songs. The second song they did was "When the Saints Go Marching In." It was very fun! It is a very repetitive song, but they did a different little dance each time they repeated it and even had props. The second years did a reading as well and then it was the third years' turn.

The third year students all did skits. There were four skits in total, one done by each class. The first two classes did their skits and they were very fun! The plots were sometimes a bit strange to me, but both stories had the message of coming of age, finding friendship, and growing into their own selves. Some of the key plot points from these first two skits were magic stones and teacher/magicians. The students had a really great time putting on these plays and everyone seemed to enjoy them.

After the first two skits we took a break for a few hours to let parents and students walk around the school and see all of the work the students had done. I really liked this time because I had a chance to walk around as well and not only see all the work, but spend some time with the students. We had lunch after we were finished looking around and headed back to the auditorium. We started back up with a great performance by the choral club, then back into the third year skits. The other two third year class' skits had pretty much the same messages at the first two, but this time the plots had more to do with runaway students and puzzles that could summon demons and witches. These second skits also had considerably more cross dressing than the first two. After the skits, all the third year students got up and sang a song together. They were then joined by the other two grades, so all the students were up on stage. They all sang the school song and then it was the teachers' turn. I went up with all the teachers and we sang a song together before closing ceremonies.

I went out with the teachers to an enkai (work party) that night and had a great time! I even went to nijikai at karaoke and sang some Japanese songs with my coworkers. I came back to Kokura fairly early, though, because I had plans on Sunday. My JTE Sugiyama invited me to an English concert in Kokura. I met her at Riverwalk the next day and the concert was really enjoyable! The opening was a high school band in Kokura that was very talented! One of the songs they even managed to dance to despite all having instruments that in some cases were bigger than them!

The main act was called "Voice of Virginia." A preforming arts college in Virginia sends it's top students ages 24-27 to Kitakyushu every few years to preform popular English music. Virginia to Kitakyushu may seem a little random, but Norfolk, VA is Kitakyushu's sister city. The songs they preformed were a huge range, from disco to Motown to a three song Adele set. They all sang and danced and even brought a live band with them for their music. The whole concert only lasted about an hour and a half, but it was really fun. It was also really nice to spend time with my teachers outside of school.

After the concert we went downstairs to Starbucks for a coffee. Riverwalk is getting all decked out for Christmas already with a giant Christmas tree made entirely of Christmas lights. Even Starbucks was selling exclusively Christmas mugs and take home coffee.

Sugiyama and I sat outside and drank our coffee and chatted for a while before we had to go home. It was a great end to a great weekend! And coming soon on Nov. 15th is Illuminations, when the entire city starts all their Christmas lights up!

Caol's Culture Festival

Sorry I didn't update last week, nothing very exciting has happened. Also Pokémon X and Y came out, so most of my free time has been devoted to mu 3DS. I still don't have too much excitement to report, but I still had a fun weekend and next weekend should be even better!

After getting out of school on Friday I met up with Leah. We had dinner at my place then walked to Kokura station. The weather has finally cooled down and I've started walking more instead of taking the monorail. We went shopping by Kokura station to see everything the stores had put out for Halloween. The mall closed earlier than we were expecting and since we were supposed to meet a friend we decided to kill time in Starbucks, hoping for some pumpkin coffee to go with our night of Halloween window shopping. Of course, we forgot that Japan doesn't do pumpkin flavored anything, so we ended up with two teas and two small desserts. It was nice to sit and drink our tea, looking out at everyone walking to and from the station. I eventually heard from our friend that she wasn't going to be able to meet us, but Patrick ended up in the Starbucks with us. We all walked back to my place together and had a nice night in watching Hot Fuzz and Sean of the Dead. Leah and Patrick had never seen the movies before, but they are some of my favorites.

The next day Patrick, Leah, and I headed off to Jono, one monorail station away. Our friend Caol, a high school JET, was having his culture festival and the school had asked him to bring some other English speakers. During the culture festival each class set up a booth that sold food or small gifts. (In Japan, the students stay one class all day instead of having different students in each class like in America.) It was really nice to meet a lot of the students and try the different food. One class was even selling pumpkin flavored ice cream, so Leah and I jumped at the chance after missing our pumpkin coffee the day before. We saw some dance performances put on by some elementary school students and a taiko performance by some middle school students. There was everything from fresh fruit to fresh fish to buy and one class even had a beef leg on a spit next to another class selling flowers. It was a lot of fun to meet the students and it made me extra excited for my school's culture festival that is happening this weekend.

Saturday night I went into Fukuoka with some friends. There was a big bar crawl called Night Walker that is very popular among both Japanese people and many of the JETs from around Fukuoka prefecture. We had a great time and made a lot of new friends. I hadn't been to Fukuoka city much before, but I'm hoping to go out more in Fukuoka now that I know it a little better!

This week is going to be a long one as everyone gets ready for culture festival. There is some Halloween stuff going on in Kokura on Wednesday and Caol is going to cook a traditional Irish Halloween dinner on Thursday. So although it's going to be a tough week, it should be a fun one. Hopefully I'll have some good updates again soon!

A Weekend Full of Caves and Waterfalls

We did have a typhoon this week and school was canceled in advance on Wednesday. The typhoon never really came, though, it was just a windy day with some rain. But none the less it was a long week for me and I was so excited when the weekend finally came around! We had another long weekend and a few of us had rented a car again. We weren't exactly sure what we wanted to do and we weren't planning to stay anywhere over night, but we knew it would be a fun weekend!

We picked up our car on Sunday and all met at Kokura station around 8 AM. Juha was nice enough to provide us with some croissants, breakfast sandwiches, and coffee as we sat in the car deciding where to go. We know we wanted to go to a beach, so we decided to head towards Tsunoshima, a small island in the north west of Yamaguchi prefecture. We were soon on our way and with Kyoko in the front helping Vixay navigate, we didn't get nearly as lost as our first adventure. We quickly hit the Kanmon tunnel (the tunnel running under the water connecting Kyushu to Honshu) and we were making such good time we decided to take a detour.

We were passing through a town famous for hot springs and kawarasoba, a kind of soba noodles cooked and served on a traditional roof tile. We thought it might be fun to try kawarasoba and stopped at a small restaurant. Unfortunately, we were too early and nowhere was open. We parked and re-grouped. While driving we had talked about going to Akiyoshidai, the longest cave in Japan and one of the longest in Asia. We decided to change course and head to Akiyoshidai first and go back towards the beach later.

We got to Akiyoshidai around 11 AM and headed in. The entire cave is a little under 9 kilometers long, but only about one kilometer is open to the public. Thankfully it was a huge cave and they had put in big lights so that we could see. Everything inside was incredible. From "1000 Plates," a huge group of pools that had formed and were overlapping and stacked up to the stalagmites and stalactites that could be seen almost everywhere to the "Pillar of Gold," a giant column of limestone that connected the floor to the ceiling and looked like a pipe organ made of stone, we spent time taking in ever part of the cave.

We even did an "adventure course" on our way back out. This course was really pretty small and right by the entrance.It lead to a small plateau higher up in the cave. There were rungs put into the side of the cave wall and a chain along the edge to hold onto. We all climbed up and played around on the plateau before making our way back to the the steep steps on the other side and out of the cave.

On our way back to the car we stopped from lunch at a kawarasoba place. We were a little surprised to see one, but figured it was a sign since we had been too early for the one's we passed before.

Akiyoshidai had been a lot of fun, but it also had taken us more time than we expected because of how long we stopped to look at everything. We headed back towards our original destination of Tsunoshima and the promise of some beautiful beaches. We got to Yamaguchi prefecture around 3 PM and headed across the bridge to Tsunoshima Island. We found two beaches, but neither were the ideal beaches we had seen in pictures. Also, no one was swimming and Leah was worried about being the only people in the water (or even in bathing suits). Kyoko explained that we were passed swimming season already, so the nicer beaches back on the mainland were closed and that no one would be swimming.

We decided to try our luck at a beach back on the other side of the bridge and were ecstatic to find it open! Well, it may not have been open, but it was a free beach and there was no gate. By this point it was getting late and we were worried about getting to swim before sunset, so we changed into our bathing suites pretty quickly and were in the water in no time. We swam and played in the water for a good hour or so before it got too cold and the sun was starting to set. We got out and dried off and stayed on the beach to watch the sunset. My pictures on the iPhone don't do it justice, it was gorgeous.

It had been a long day and we decided to head home. We got back to Kokura around 8 P.M. and all went out to dinner at our favorite gyoza place under the station. Vixay dropped everyone off after dinner and we agreed on a time to meet in the morning.

The next morning we headed out around 10 A.M. We tried to get breakfast at a pancake place near Leah's apartment, but again we were too early and ended up eating breakfast somewhere else. We talked about where we wanted to go and decided to head to a waterfall Juha had heard about. We didn't expect much and wanted to get it out of the way early.

It was in Fukuoka prefecture still, so we did not have to go very far. We were a little worried about the road leading up to the waterfall, it was very narrow and winded up a mountain. It reminded me of the beginning of Spirited Away. Someone even said they thought we might be accidentally driving to the Spirit World. Thankfully, Vixay got us up safe.

We walked along a nature path, stopping to admire the many small shrines we found along the way and occasionally wandering down close the stream we were following. After about a 20 minute walk we came to the waterfall. It was breathtaking. It was in two parts, the taller part at the top fell into a deep pool that collected and then bubbled down some rocks to the stream below. There were more shrines built into the walls and there were small statues everywhere. We sat at the waterfall for a while and climbed up to the pool and some of the shrines. Many people came and went, most dipping their feet into the water or cleaning their hands with it. A few people we saw brought lunch and had a picnic on the rocks. We decided next time we have a car we'd come back and a have a picnic.

After the waterfall we decided to visit another cave. Juha knew a good one on Hiraodai, a mountain not too far away. We drove back down that tiny road and then up the mountain of Hiraodai. Monkeys live on that mountain and we saw one on the way up! That was my first time ever seeing a wild monkey. Everyone else was surprised as well. Usually the monkeys are hard to see, but this one was hanging out on the side of the road. We think it was waiting to cross the street.

We made a wrong turn and ended up at a different cave then we meant to, but decided to explore this new cave anyway. It had a really cool entrance way and it was a little scary looking, but it turned out to be a very short cave with nothing much interesting. The guy running it ended up letting me go in for free, though, because he said I looked like a super model. He was definitely much creepier than the cave was.

We headed to a lookout area and sat for a little while planning our next move. We had originally said we were going to head to another park in the area that day, but decided to stay on Hiraodai to go see the caves we meant to go to in the first place and climb a little if we had time. We headed off for the other cave and found it quickly. We had to take off our shoes and put sandals on before going in because this cave didn't have a walkway like the first one, so parts of the cave we would have to walk through water.

This cave was much smaller. We were forced to walk single file and squeeze through small rock openings. Sometimes we had to duck when the ceiling got low. I was worried at first about the water and the tight spaces, but this cave may have been my favorite. The water was cold, but very clear and kind of refreshing. The highest it ever got was a little past my knees, but I had been crouched down then to avoid a low ceiling at that point. It was difficult when people needed to pass going the other direction, but it was easy enough to stop in places there was more room to let them through. (There is no outlet on the other side, so you have to walk in one way, and then back out the same way.) The end of the cave is not really an end, it's just the end of where they stopped lighting it. You can continue if you have a flashlight and proper clothes, but apparently the water starts to get a lot deeper in the pitch black section. Vixay, Leah, and I are hoping to get a chance to go back and explore the dark areas another day.

By the time we got out of the cave and had some well deserved-ice cream it was getting late, but we weren't ready to go. The cave was at a bottom of a hill, so we climbed back up and got in the car. We only made it maybe a minute or two before Leah saw a boulder field she decided was perfect to play in. Leah and Vixay headed off in to the rocks and Kyoko, Juha, and I stayed by the car. Kyoko was poking Juha with some dried grass that was everywhere and the end broke off. Juha decided it was the perfect hair extension and we had soon had some collected and started haphazardly placing them in his hair. He even tried to copy my hairstyle.

After our little detour, we jumped back in the car and drove to a lookout point under some of the mountains peaks. We hiked up to the top just in time to see the sun set over Kitakyushu. We explored the mountain a little bit more, but I found a mukade (giant poisonous centipede) and we decided it was time to go. We talked about coming back to have a BBQ one day when there's a full moon and we can watch the stars.

We headed back to Kokura to return the car and found ourselves walking around Kokura by 7:30 P.M. We decided it was time for dinner and Vixay and Juha suggested an all you can eat yakiniku place they knew. The food was delicious and we all had a round of beer to celebrate our successful trip. We hung out until about 9:15, when we went our separate ways. Except me, I followed Vixay home so I could play some video games.

All in all I had another AMAZING long weekends. The next on is at the end of the month and I can't wait! I have no idea what we will do, but I'm sure it will be good. This was the perfect trip with lots of adventure and best of all, no kerosene.

Speech Contest

Two and a half weeks ago I had a three day week because of Sports Day and holidays. I had to work a Saturday and Sunday, but it was so much fun to be outside dancing and playing it didn't feel like school. Last week I made up for it by having a six day week. I, along with all the other Kitakyushu JETs, were judges in Kitakyushu's English Speech Contest two days ago (Saturday). Despite working a longer day than I normally do at school, I really enjoyed it!

We have all been preparing out students for this contest since before school started. About one to fifteen students from each middle school participated. They were given three speeches and had to pick one to memorize and recite. The first speech was Martin Luther Kings, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," the second was Severn Suzuki speaking at the UN about making positive environmental changes and the third was a fictional character Takuya speaking about the history of Kitakyushu. A very small group of students wrote their own speeches, but none of my students did and I was not an original speech judge. The students have been staying after school, sometimes for hours, practicing with me. We worked on everything from how to correctly pronounce words to where to put natural sounding pauses to stressing the correct syllable within a word. All of my students worked incredibly hard and were incredibly nervous when the day finally came.

The JETs got to the convention center early and had breakfast. After breakfast we went in to find our students and do one final practice with them. Many of the English teachers from my schools came to see the students' speeches. We did one final run through of everyone's speech, then I told them how proud I was of all of them for their hard work and wished them luck. They then had to spread out into their respective groups.

The contestants were split into eleven groups in order to help with time and to insure we did not judge our own students. Kris and I were in group A, so we went to the room early to set up the tables, chairs, and podium. We went back downstairs for the opening ceremony, which was pretty quick and not very interesting. We lead our group of students up to our room and helped them find their seats. All the students were quietly mouthing their speeches in one last attempt to practice before we started. The day went by pretty quick, we had 26 speeches in total to listen to.

Our judging criteria was pretty loose. The students could get a total of 30 points over all. 10 points for memorization, 10 for presentation, and 10 for English. Memorization was pretty straight forward and presentation we judged by the volume and eye contact of the speaker. English was a bit more vague. We decided that pronunciation of the harder sounds ('th' and 'v') would be a big part as well as how naturally the students spoke. Afterwards, Kris and I easily came to a decision about the winners. There was one winner in each group and three second place prizes.

We reported our winner and runner ups and went back downstairs to hear the winners announced. All the JETs were finding out who's group their students were in and asking how they did. 前田 (Maeda), one of my students from 二島 (Futajima), won first place in her group! Unfortunately, another of my students who I had stayed late with a lot didn't win. She was a third year, so will be in high school next year and unable to try again. She found me right after the ending ceremony and started to cry. I told her I was really proud of her and knew David, the judge in her room. I told her she did really well and was really close to winning. I told her I was really proud of how hard she worked and we went to go find the other teachers. It was really heartbreaking, but she seemed a bit cheered up after we talked. I had gotten little notebooks for all the students who participated and gave them out before everyone left.

Yesterday (Sunday) I had a low key game day. Dan, Nick, and Jake came over and we played a whole bunch of board games, both in Japanese and English. I had a ton of fun! Today is Patrick's birthday, so I'm going to look for a bakery after school so I can get him a cake. Wednesday we have typhoon warning, so maybe no school! That's all for now, I'm going to get back to cutting out pumpkin cards for a game we're playing in school tomorrow!

Baseball!

So this last weekend I spent some time in Fukuoka City. I live so close, but I rarely venture over to our city next door. This weekend, however, about 30 or 40 JETs got together for an AJET even; we went to see Fukuoka's baseball team, the Softbank Hawks, play in the Fukuoka Dome Stadium. Going to a baseball game in Japan was something I had wanted to do last time I was here, but never got the chance to. Leah and I were the only two Kitakyushu JETs going, so we met at Kokura and hopped on the Sonic train for the 45 minute ride to Fukuoka. We met some friends on the subway and met everyone else at the stadium. I didn't know a lot of the other JETs since we came from all over the prefecture. We all quickly made friends, grabbed a beer and some popcorn, and watched the cheerleaders and mascots dance before the game started.

We were sitting near the away teams', the Seibu Lions, cheering section by the outfield. The game started off very poorly for the Hawks. The Lions scored three runs in the first two innings and the Hawks were still at zero. The game continued poorly for the Hawks and us JETs talked though much of the game. The crowds at times were more fun to watch, every player had their own little song that the crowd sang when they came up to bat. People also had small plastic bats that they clapped together in different rhythms. Seeing a whole stadium doing a synchronized cheer was pretty cool. There were also bracelets you could buy that looked like clear watches. The "watch" face would light up different colors based on what was happening in the game and so when a big play happened, for example if we scored a run, all of a sudden the whole stadium would start flashing colors from these bracelets. At the beginning of the seventh inning, though, the cheering was by far the best. Everyone in the stadium had a really long balloon and blew them after the sixth inning. Instead of tying the ends of the balloons, everyone just held onto them. Just before the Hawks went to bat their song started playing and everyone let the balloons go flying into the air. Pretty much everyone in the stadium had sent out a balloon and it was really amazing to watch.

Some people were going to a nijikai (second party) after the game at a nearby beer garden. The game was running long and not looking good for the Hawks and it was getting close to the reservation time, so many of the JETs left at the begging of the eighth inning. The score was 5 for the Lions and 3 for the Hawks. The Lions scored again in the top of the eighth. I stayed at the game with about a quarter of the JETs. I was with my friend David, who had been to four other Softbank Hawks games and said he had yet to see them win. I was still hopeful. It was my first Japanese baseball game after all, I wanted my team to win! We did manage to tie in the bottom of the ninth and the game went into extra innings. I was so excited I bought a Softbank Hawks hat and some more popcorn and went back to cheer with the few JETs still there. The Lions were up first and didn't get any runs. The Hawks had two outs, but managed to get a run and we won! Everyone went crazy! It was so much fun! (Clearly we won because I bought that hat.)

After the game there was a ceremony for a retiring player. It was very nice, some team mates sang to him, he got a whole bunch of flowers, and he walked around the stands while people threw streamers. The real reason we stayed, though, was because if the Hawks win they light fireworks in the dome. There were strings that came down from the ceiling with the fireworks on the end and seeing fireworks inside of a dome was very surprising, but very fun to watch.

After the game I went out for ramen and gyoza with David. He was leaving that night with some friends, but let me stay in his apartment because there was a Fukuoka Board Gaming meet up the next morning and I didn't want to go back to Kitakyushu just to return to Fukuoka in the morning. Not only can that be expensive because of the long train ride, but I would have had to get up really early. I played board games for twelve hours the next day before going back to Kitakyushu and just for my mom, my pieces made friendship circles.

All in all it was an amazing weekend! I can't wait to go to another game and spend more some more time in Fukuoka!

Sports Day

I don't think I've ever experienced anything like Sports Day. This past week we've forgone classes in favor of Sports Day practice, setting up tents, and constantly reapplying paint to the dirt track. I spent probably seven or eight hours in the gym with all the girls in the school learning a dance that we performed today while the boys were outside doing handstands and making the largest human pyramid I've ever seen. We spent two hours doing yard work make the field beautiful and then ran around the track hundreds of times. Even the teachers got in on the action and had relay races against the student captains. It was all fun and games, but I never expected the actual day to be so amazing!

I started off by jumping out of bed. Even though it's Sunday, it feels like a Friday. I have the next two days off and today I just had sports! What could be better? I put on my yellow shirt (I was part of the yellow team) and hopped on my bike. When I got to the school there were signs up and people directing traffic into the parking lot. I found my way to my seat through the craziness of parents and siblings claiming spots around the track to set up blankets and lawn chairs. The students all started marching in, we did some warm up stretches, then got the games under way.

My first thought when I heard about Sports Day was that the students would be playing soccer, baseball, and other games, but really it was much more track and field oriented. First the students started with 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, and 800 meter dash. There would be fifteen or so races for each category. The students would line up at the starting line and as soon as one race finished the next would start. Other events included relays, an obstacle course, a variety relay, a "downstream," and a "whirlpool." The obstacle course consisted of jump rope, hurdles, a horse to jump over, and crawling under a net. The variety relay was a relay, but ever lap the students had a different challenge while running. For example, some students had to run while carrying a volleyball on a tennis racket, two students with their feet tied together, one student carrying another on hi back back, and many more. The "downstream" race consisted of students standing in a line and bending over so their backs created a path. The smallest student ran along their back and the students bending over had to constantly move to the front of the line to keep up the track. Finally the "whirlpool" consisted of four students holding a huge bamboo rod and running in circles around cones. On the way back to the rest of the team, the other team members had to jump over the rod and duck under it before it was dropped for the next four people to start running.

I had a ton of fun today hanging out with the students, their families, and the other teachers. I ran in a relay with the teachers and did a huge dance with the students. I've yelled 「黄色がんばれ！」(kiiro ganbare, Go yellow team!) so much I think my throat will be sore tomorrow. I apologize for the lack of pictures, I was not allowed to take pictures of the students. I have an enkai (work party) tonight with the teachers I saw at Sports Day today, so I'm off to meet them at the Chinese restaurant and then go to karaoke!

Beppu: First Road Trip of Japan

I apologize in advance because this is going to be a VERY long post. As I said before, this past weekend was a long weekend and six of us decided to rent a car to drive down to Beppu. We had so many adventures, planned and not. I could not have had a better time!

I woke up at 6:30 on Saturday morning to get ready. I made some tea and Caol came over before heading to the station. We meet Vixay, Juha, and our new rental car Betsy at 8:00 A.M. and were soon joined by Leah and Emily.  Once everyone had made a final run to Family Mart for a last minute breakfast we were on our way!

We made one quick stop along the way to visit Nakatsu castle. We walked around the castle grounds, where there were many shrines and a beautiful pond. We went to the main shrine beside the castle and Caol and Leah got fortunes. The fortunes came out of a machine that had a small doll in a display case. When you put in your money, the doll would walk to the back of the display through a door, then return holding a fortune, which she dropped down a small slide that lead to your hand. No one had bad luck and we continued into the castle. There was a small museum inside where we saw swords and armor from different feudal lords and at the top we could walk around outside on a small observation deck. After walking through the castle and outside we decided to continue on our way to Beppu.

We arrived at our hostel around 1:00 P.M. and were delighted to find that we had one room all to ourselves. We all claimed our beds, then headed out in search of lunch. We walked around for a while trying to find a curry toast place that another JET had recommended to us with no luck. We eventually gave up and found a nice place near Beppu station. We had ice cream afterwards and watched a band that was preforming in the station.

We all piled back in the car and drove straight to Hell, a group of natural hot springs so hot they cannot be touched. The hot springs were many different colors because of the different minerals and clay in the soil around them and it was amazing to see them all. Many also had gardens around them as well as shrines. There were also foot baths that were run offs of these hot springs that you could put your feet into. We all sat around with our feet in the water and by the time we got out our legs had turned red from the heat, but it was incredibly relaxing!

There was a tour guide standing at one and he showed us how blowing ash into some of the hot springs would cause them to smoke, or if they were already steaming it would double or triple the amount of steam. He even went inside the gate almost into the water to show us! Juha even took a turn blowing the ash in to see if he could get the entirety of the hot spring to steam. We ended our day at the Hells with an egg that had been hard boiled in the hot springs.

After going to the Hells we decided it was time to go to a real onsen (hot spring), one we could actually sit in and enjoy (and that didn’t smell like sulfur). After making a quick stop back to the hostel for our towels and soap, we went to Takagawara only a few blocks away. Takegawara is a small onsen and is famous for being the oldest in Beppu. We were hoping to try the sand baths as well, but unfortunately they were already full for the night. We agreed on a meeting time and split up.

It was not too crowded on the women’s side and we had a great time. Before you can even go in the pool, you have to wash off. Some onsen have small shower taps on the sides of the walls, but this one didn’t. So you take a small plastic stool and a bucket and sit near the pool, scooping out water and dumping it over you to rinse off. Once you’re clean you can jump into the onsen. Although I would suggest starting off slowly rather than jumping, Takegawara’s pool was about 90 degrees Fahrenheit! After an hour and a half of relaxation we met back up with the boys and headed out.

We drove up one of the nearby mountains to get a look at the entirety of Beppu. We could even see the city of Oita across the bay! It was beautiful, but we didn’t stay too long because we were eager to get some dinner. We again went in search of curry toast. We found the curry toast restaurant across the street from Takegawara (and where we were parking the car), but unfortunately it was closed. We wondered around a found a great little restaurant. We ordered a bunch of different things from ramen to mayonnaise shrimp and had a beer to celebrate our first successful day of Beppu. We decided to call it a night after dinner since we were all so tired and by now it was well after midnight.

We started the next day by walking to Beppu station to grab some coffee. Emily and I both had ice coffee, but rather than cooling it down with ice they put ice cream in! I was surprised, but it was delicious and a great start to the morning. Vixay met us at the station with the car (he had been at the airport that morning waiting for a friend to join us, but she never showed) and we hoped in and headed to Hita for B1, a Kyushu food festival. It was about an hour away and we had gotten a late start. Vixay’s friend was supposed to arrive by 8:00 A.M., but she didn’t have a cell phone and couldn’t call to tell us she had gotten sick, so we ended up waiting and not leaving until about 10:30. We still made it to B1 in time for some food, although many had been sold out. Despite this setback, we still had a good time walking around the parks and sampling famous food from all around Kyushu.

After heading back to Beppu, we went back to the Hells to see the hot springs we had not seen the day before. On our way back to the hostel we took a wrong turn and ended up at a lookout point. It was a beautiful place to look at the city from! It was really cool to see steam rising out from all over the town from all the hot springs underground.

We tried again to have a much earlier dinner at curry toast, but again it was closed. We ended up walking to a YouMe (a nearby mall) because some of us needed to buy more soap and shampoo and had a really nice dinner there. We walked along the beach to another onsen and headed in. This time we brought bathing suits because there was a mixed outside pool at the onsen. We started by splitting up and spending about an hour in the separate rooms. This onsen was much bigger and had a separate shower area, a few indoor pools, a beautiful outdoor pool, a steam sauna, and a “squall shower.” I’d never heard of a squall shower before, but basically it was a small alcove that when you pulled a string, a bucket of warm water dumped down on you. The girls hung out inside for a bit, then went to the outdoor pool before putting on our bathing suits and meeting the boys outside. The mixed outdoor pool was amazing. It was huge, with a hot tub sectioned off by stones in the middle. The pool was also warm, it was filled by water overflowing from the hot tub. This pool was also able to be open to the city and had an amazing view. Over the edge of the pool we had an incredible view of the city, Beppu tower, and the ocean.

We walked back to the hostel along the beach and decided to stay out a little longer. We found a small bar and had a few drinks. There is a big international school in Beppu and almost everyone in the bar was foreign. Because school is still on holiday, though, it was mostly staff who had come in on their day off to celebrate a birthday. The birthday boy was from Boston originally and it was very funny to have come all the way to Beppu only to have a Sam Adams with another Bostonian. After the bar we went back to our room in the hostel where we played card games and hung out.

Our last day in Beppu was definitely our most adventurous. We woke up early because we wanted to climb a mountain in Yufuin and we needed to bring the car back to Kitakyushu by 8:00 PM. So we woke up and left around 9:00 A.M. We again tried to go to curry toast, but again it was closed. We needed to grab gas before heading to Yufuin, so we stopped at a gas station and Vixay filled up the tank. We left again, but quickly noticed our car was making a weird noise. We pulled over and got out, but couldn’t find anything wrong. The car was still making the noise and was having trouble driving over hills, so we decided to go back to the gas station to see if they knew what was wrong. We went back, but the car died at the intersection before the gas station. Turns out, Vixay filled the car with kerosene. We eventually got everything fixed and we had gotten insurance on the car so we didn’t have to pay for the damage, but we did have to get a new rental car (which the company brought to the gas station we were at very quickly). It took a tow truck about an hour and a half to get to us and we blocked a lane causing traffic for the entire time. Caol and I walked to a grocery store and bought everyone some breakfast while we were waiting. Vixay will never forget the kanji for kerosene again.

After we finally got back on the road we definitely did not have time to climb Yufudake, the mountain we were hoping to get to the top of. We did drive part of the way up and walked around for a while. We stopped at another lookout on the way down the mountain for some ice cream and a great view of Yufuin. We got down to Yufuin around lunch, so we ducked into a ramen shop. After lunch we went shopping for omiyage to bring back for our teachers. While shopping, we ran into another Kitakyushu JET (who I didn’t know, but Caol, Juha, and Vixay did). He was visiting for the long weekend as well with his wife and as it turned out he had been stuck in our traffic jam earlier that day!

He gave us a great suggestion for one last onsen and we headed there to spend our last hour. The onsen was right near a lake at the base of Yufudake Mountain and was by far the most beautiful onsen we visited. It was very small, but the pool was outdoors and the day was gorgeous. The pool was made from a natural inset in some rocks and the boy and girl pools were side by side with just a small wall in between, so we could still talk to the boys. After the onsen we quickly walked around the lake and then headed home. We got back with no problems and turned in the car about 10 minutes before our time was up.

Emily had to go straight home, but the rest of us went to the arcade and played a few rounds of jubeat. Before I got home I went to Patrick’s apartment. Patrick is my neighbor and fellow new JET. He offered to make some dinner since he had been home all day. So I came back to my neighborhood around 9:30 P.M. completely exhausted, but was lucky enough to to have dinner and video games waiting for me.

I gave out my omiyage at school today and the teachers were all so happy! I have Thursday off because I’m going to school all this weekend and Wednesday night we have plans to start figuring out our next trip together! Hopefully Kagoshima in our next long weekend in August!