What an absolutely jam packed day. I’m exhausted!
Today was the culture festival at our school. It’s the culmination of weeks of practicing, planning and anxiety for the students. Today it all came together, more or less successfully.
When I got to school a lot of the classroom projects were displayed – a giant Elmo, a couple of cool designs hanging at the entranceway, a big dragon boat/float, and the big attraction: a giant whale made of balloons in the central area of the school.
I had helped out here and there with the whale during the past week, and it was fun to finally see the finished product. I heard that it took a long time to set up, and it cost more than 200,000 yen – about $2000. One of the teachers commented that they could have given that money to charity instead of building a giant whale – I agreed with him. Over the course of the day the balloons started popping in the sun, and at the end of the day it was a big, ugly mess. Visually startling, however.
This year I brought a fan, a towel, and a frozen bottle of sports drink along with me to the presentation in the gym. It gets so hot in there – it’s humid, and the doors are all closed so it’s dark for the dancing and skits. All my gear really helped out, though. I stayed in the back of the gym leaning against a cold cement wall, and that helped too.
There was a big turnout of parents, maybe twice what they actually expected. It made for a lot of foot traffic in the back. The parents would walk by and give me a long look until I nodded and smiled, and then they would smile back. For a while the members of the koto club came and hung out with me. They were all wearing traditional Japanese clothing, and so it must have been a weird sight to see a big white foreigner surrounded by twenty kimono-wearing high school students.
The presentations themselves were a little underwhelming this year. One of the current rages here in Japan is Matsumoto Ken. The best way to describe him is a Japanese version of Wayne Newton. He is a pretty flamboyant guy, and right now there is a samba that he does that is really popular. No fewer than four presentations had an appearance by somebody dressed as Matsumoto Ken. After the first time, it got a little old for me. After the third time, it got a little old for everyone else.
There were lots of sound problems this year, with people talking and nobody being able to hear, but the students didn’t let that damper their enthusiasm. They attacked their roles with gusto. It was their moment to be in the spotlight, and it didn’t matter if nobody could understand what they were doing or why.
At the lunchbreak I walked around and checked out all the exhibits. I sat in a wheelchair and tried to navigate through and obstacle course, I watched robots competing for ping pong balls in the science club exhibit, bought cookies from the cooking club, and spoke with lots of people as I walked around.
One exhibit that was really cool was a room completely decorated in origami cranes. They had a gigantic crane in the middle of the room, and a pathway through the classroom bordered by small cranes. It was really well done.
The vice principal had invited me to do the tea ceremony with him. The tea ceremony is a very complicated ritual that I have done one time before at a friend’s house. I really enjoy it – it’s very traditional, and the green tea made by hand is delicious. The vice principal gave me some pointers, and the students were patient with me and I tried to do things the right way. While we drank tea members of the koto club played right next to us, and we had a relaxing experience.
After the break we did more presentations, including one set in New York to the theme of “Shall We Dance?” – a movie that is popular here right now starring Richard Gere. It ended up winning the competition, and I liked it because since it was in New York the students spoke English during the dialog parts. Their English was good, too. They must have gotten some good help from an English teacher somewhere along the line.
We finished up with awards ceremonies, and some final speeches, a closing ceremony, a lecture on getting back to studying, and some other things that dragged on. Luckily, by the time I got out of there it was time to go home.
I came back to my place, took a shower and then went out to Akashi. I had to do some shopping, and I thought I’d throw a few darts while I was there and make an evening of it. I went to Osho first to get some ramen and gyoza. Osho is a chain, and this particular one is in a long narrow room. There are only three or four tables – most of the seating is at the counter. I sat there, and the seats are too small for me. I have to spread my legs completely to fit between the stool and the counter, and my knees were still firmly pressed against the wall. The counter has a big glass panel that separates you from the cooking that is going on – you can watch them make your food right there, and there is a lot of hot water and steam involved. The whole experience combines to make it a really cool experience. It might sound terrible, but there’s something really exotic about being pressed into a steamy noodle joint with a bunch of strangers and slurping down dinner quickly to make room for the next guy.
Donkey was actually pretty busy. There were lots of dart players there, and I was able to sneak into a rotation and throw darts now and then. I spent more time at the bar drinking Guinness and talking with some nice guys there. They are regulars there, and since I’m fairly irregular, we had lots to talk about. It was good Japanese practice for me. Somehow I got roped into giving pointers to a lady playing darts. She was having lots of trouble, and my bad explanations in Japanese didn’t really help much. She started getting a little friendly, and “Mommy” (the master’s wife) helped me out by asking how my fiancee was doing. With relief I told her all about Kuniko, and from then on I was getting a cooler vibe from the dart beginner.
Just before I left one of the patrons produced a cheesecake that we all split up and ate to celebrate another regular’s birthday. The cheesecake was really good – it had kind of a light honey glaze on top – wow. There went my diet.
Since my diet was toast, I thought I ought to drop in on the basement sushi place for a couple of pieces of sushi before I went home. There were only two guys in there, and they recognized me from another time. In fact, they had just asked the sushi master if I had been in lately, and then I walked in. Weird. Anyway, they had chatted with us a little bit when Struan and I were there a few months ago. We talked a little bit, and then soon some of their friends came by, and we all settled in together.
This is where things get a little hazy. I had already had some Guinness before I got there, and then I had ordered a bottle of beer with my sushi. In the Japanese style people were pouring beer from their bottles into my glass, and so I responded in kind. These folks were so happy to be talking with a foreigner that they were giving signals to the master, and he was delivering more bottles to me on their tab. I told the master to just keep me in sushi, and left things in his hands – which is a great idea. He knows what I like, and so I always had something interesting in front of me. The other folks (three guys and two girls) were full of questions, and some of them spoke a little English that they were eager to try out. I talked with one of the girls and she told me all about her boyfriend – they’ve been together six years, but since she is Korean, he hasn’t proposed to her. She was drunk, and maybe she was joking, but it seemed like there was a little truth to it. Koreans that live in Japan don’t get a lot of respect here. A lot of Koreans apparently hide their true ethnicity and take Japanese names in an effort to fit in.
One guy I talked with spoke a little English. He didn’t have a big vocabulary, but his accent was clear and he was very easy to understand. He had the funny habit of saying “I’m sorry” after everything. I would pour him some beer and he’d say “I’m sorry”. I’d say that I have to go to the bathroom and he’d say “I’m sorry”. He was really eager to speak though, and it was fun talking with him.
Finally I decided that it was time to catch a train before I got stranded in Akashi, so I told the master it was time to go. The group tried to pay for everything else I ate on top of the bottles of beer they had already bought, but I insisted on paying – I feel guilty when people buy my dinners. The master flashed me a number on a piece of paper, and the price was way too low, which probably meant that they had picked up some of the tab, but I paid and said thanks to everyone. I only had two business cards left, and they fought over them until one suggested that they could make copies.
I caught a train home with lots of other drunk people, and crashed right out on my bed. It’s the end of the week.
