Catch-up post #3/3: Undokai and more school observations

Hello everyone,

You've made it to the last post in the catch-up series.

On Sunday, Sept. 27, I got up at 8 a.m. and headed to one of my schools — not for class, but for Undokai (Sports Day). All throughout Japan, kids (and their teachers) from kindergarten through high school spend a day competing in a series of team activities.

Though I was a little grumpy about having to be up so early on a weekend, it was pretty amusing to watch. Usually the events are done in kid-teacher pairs. There were all kinds of competitions, including:

• Bamboo pole-climbing
  

 

 

(I find it hilarious that they have to remove their shoes before climbing the pole. How very Japan.)

• String-tying (I competed in this one)

The object of this competition was to choose a string at random and tie it to the bamboo pole, then the next pair would choose another string and tie it to the first string, etc. Whichever team had the longest string of strings by the end was the winner.

(My team came in last.)

• Wacky relay races

 

  

• Hula hoop and giant shorts racing
  

• Balancing balls on a racquet while running

• "Basket" ball

The teachers would throw the balls over a string tied at the top of the poles, and the kids would have to catch the balls in their baskets.

• Tug of war, the age-old classic

• I don't even know what to call this one...

There's a bin filled with flour and pieces of candy hidden in it, and the kids have to stick their faces in the (communal) bin and find the candy without using their hands.

(For a country so paranoid about swine flu... WTF?!)

Then the teachers have to pop balloons by sitting on them.

• Cheerleading

• Giant ball rolling

• And, last but not least, a mini Yosakoi Festival!
  

Someone gave this little girl a pair of clappers, and she just wandered around waving them everywhere:

 

(Too cute!)

One of the teachers was handing out these sports drinks to everyone:

(It's not tasty. Note: it's probably not a good idea to drink anything with the word "sweat" in the title.)

Fun times — and since it was on a weekend I got to take a half-day off from work, as long as it was on a day I didn't have school.

Speaking of school...

Lunchtime is very different in Japanese schools than it is in the U.S. Usually I'll have lunch in the staffroom with some of the other teachers, but at one of my schools I have lunch with the students. They eat lunch in their classroom with their homeroom teacher. A couple of kids bring in bottles of milk for the students and a pot of green tea, which they pour for the teachers (though sometimes I've been given both). Then one or two students will lead the rest of the class in saying "itadakimasu," (something people in Japan generally say before a meal — it means "I humbly receive"/"bon appetit"/"let's eat"). When I had lunch with the second grade, the teacher also put on a CD of kiddie music (in English) containing songs like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "London Bridge is Falling Down."

The students are usually too preoccupied with their own food to care about what I'm eating, but the first time I had lunch with the sixth grade I had to show my lunch to the entire class because they were so curious about it (I had brought sushi that day, and the teacher was shocked that I knew how to use chopsticks. I get that a lot.)

When the students are done eating, they say, "gochisousama deshita" ("thank you for the meal"), and then they have to brush their teeth. In one class, the students had to show the teacher that their lunchboxes were empty before they could leave the classroom. After they're done brushing their teeth, they clean the school. Schools in Japan don't have janitors — all the cleaning is done by the students. Gotta love that Japanese work ethic.

I started at my fifth school yesterday. Since I hadn't been to the school before, I didn't get to do uchiawase (lesson plan meeting) with the fifth and sixth grade homeroom teachers. They were both woefully clueless about what was going on, which resulted in a hilarious situation in the sixth grade class. The lesson was about gestures. Since the Japanese "come here" gesture is similar to the American "go away" gesture, the homeroom teacher and I were supposed to do a skit in which she beckons to me the Japanese way and I misunderstand and start walking away. As I started to walk away, the homeroom teacher didn't realize that it was part of the skit and started panicking and flapping her hand at me even more frantically while shouting, "Come here! Come here!" It was pretty funny.

Well, congratulations — you've made it though this babble and are now caught up on my life in Japan!

I'm leaving bright and early tomorrow morning for Hiroshima, which is a four-hour bus ride away. The sake festival is tomorrow evening, and since it's a three-day weekend, Sunday and Monday will be devoted to sightseeing before catching the bus back to Kochi Monday night.

Good weekend to all!

Peace,
Britt

Catch-up post #2/3: My not-so shiny Silver Week

Hey folks,

The September catch-up continues with Silver Week (a bunch of public holidays in a row), which was from Monday, Sept. 21 through Wednesday, Sept. 23. It made for a nice five-day weekend. But it seemed like everyone else already had plans. I had just resigned myself to spending the break being a hermit when Leeako invited me to Mount Ishizuchi with a group of people planning on climbing it. Excited to have something to do, and ignoring my fear of heights and the fact that I knew good and well I was nowhere near in any kind of physical shape to climb a mountain — the tallest mountain in west Japan, no less — I agreed to go.

I met up with George and an Ehime Prefecture JET named Dani in Kochi City, and we took the train to Gary's place in Sakawa. Lisa, Ben and Leeako met us there. We stayed the night, squabbled over the next day's itinerary (the classic clash of the "we need to plan this out"-type people and the "let's just go with the flow and see where we end up"-type people — if you couldn't tell, I'm the former) and left the next morning for Ehime, where we met up with Dani's friend Paul and stopped at a convenience store to get stuff for lunch. I feel that I had good reason for insisting on figuring out a basic plan of the next day's events — to get to the main starting point of the hike, you have to take a gondola part of the way up the mountain. The last gondola runs at 6 p.m. and if you miss it, you're in for several hours of walking a poorly-marked path in the dark to get back down the mountain.

Arriving at the starting point:

Loading into the gondola:

The view on the ride up:

Arriving at the drop-off point:

(Don't knock the hat.)

From there, it was about a 30-minute hike to the shrine at the start of the trail.

 

And we're off...

 

The hike had to be like 95% stairs, most of which looked more like this:

(Picture stolen from Leeako.)

The other 5% of the hike: chains.

That's right, chains. Giant iron chains bolted to the side of the mountain.

There are three chains on the climb, not including this one. This one is the "practice chain." If you can't or don't want to climb the chains, you can take the stairs (which one hiker we encountered deemed "the loser road"). I decided to give the practice chain a go:

(Climbing the chain was actually a nice relief for my legs, since my arms were doing most of the work. Picture stolen from Leeako.)

After conquering the practice chain, we took a few minutes to rest.

(Ben, Gary and George.)

(Me, Lisa, Dani and Leeako.)

Onward ho.

At last, we came to the first real chain.

(Picture stolen from Leeako.)

My arms were too tired to do the second and third chains, so I settled for "the loser road." Stairs, stairs, and more stairs. They seemed to go on forever. I was beyond exhausted and wanted to quit with every step, but I didn't want to be the girl who almost climbed Ishizuchi.

I came across a smiling leaf, and — thought it may sound silly — it gave me some small motivation to trek on.

It was nearly 3:30 by the time I reached the top.

 

(There's a restaurant up here. Seriously, HOW DO THESE PEOPLE GET TO WORK EVERY DAY?!)

(I'm pretty sure these chains are just for decoration.)

The view from the top:

(Tengudake, the mountain's highest peak. A few members of our party went on to climb it, but I had neither the time nor the energy.)

I'm glad I took pictures right away — only a few minutes later, the fog started to creep in.

Pretty soon, you couldn't see a thing.

(It would have been so disappointing to get ALL the way up there only to have this as a view.)

We ate a quick lunch, then started back down the mountain around 3:45.

Everything went downhill from there. Literally.

As I said before, I was not physically prepared for climbing Ishizuchi. As a result, I fell behind the rest of the group quite a bit on the hike up — but I would usually catch up when they stopped to rest periodically.

On the hike down, however, we were worried about making it to the last gondola in time, since it took four hours to get to the top and we only had a little more than two hours to get back down. My paralyzing fear of heights decided to kick in at that moment, and that — coupled with the fact that I'm clumsy even on flat ground — caused me to make my way down the never-ending tiny wooden stairs too slowly.

I fell behind the group again — way behind, to the point where I shouted and none of them heard me. I had my cell phone with me, but my reception was extremely sketchy (I had tried to send Garrett a text from the top of the mountain and it wouldn't go through) and I was too afraid of careening off the side of the mountain and plummeting to my death to take my eyes off the path.

About half an hour into the descent, I tripped down some stairs and caught my ankle on a rock. I ended up twisting my ankle, which slowed me down and increased my panic even more.

I focused my dwindling energy on making it back to the gondola in time (but I didn't dare check what time it actually was for fear that I would be too late).

Then Leeako called me. It was 5:45 and I hadn't even made it back to the shrine yet. When I told her what happened, Paul and Dani came back to help me. Paul took my backpack and ran ahead to try to get them to hold the gondola, while Dani helped me walk the rest of the way back.

It was, hands down, the scariest day of my life. I had no idea that getting down the mountain would be so much harder than getting up it.

(I later went on an tirade — immaturely expressed via a Facebook status ending in a four-letter word — about the dangers of leaving someone to hike alone. A couple of people apologized to me, which I appreciated and accepted, and I apologized for the way I expressed my anger.)

We got there at 6:03. The last gondola had left, but luckily they sent another one up for us (and, it turns out that we weren't the only ones who needed it — there were about eight other hikers who had missed the 6:00 gondola as well). While we were waiting, I bought some omiyage for the folks at the office.

(In Japan, it's customary to bring back omiyage, or souvenirs — usually candy or other edible treats — for your co-workers whenever you go on vacation somewhere. Yesterday, someone in the office who had gone to Korea brought back seaweed chocolate for everyone. I knew what it was, and I tried it anyway. I regretted that decision immediately.)

That night, we went to an onsen to relax our aching muscles, went to dinner, and crashed at Dani's place in Saijo. I iced my ankle overnight, and it was feeling much better when I woke up.

The next morning, we grabbed breakfast, said goodbye to Dani and drove back to Kochi.

On the drive back, we stopped to goof around on a suspension bridge.

We got back to Gary's place, chilled there for a bit, and then had dinner, where George showed off his hand towel-folding skills. Meet Samurai Penguin and Dog Head.

George and I took the train back to Kochi City and I took a train back to Aki from there.

It was a few days before I could walk without wincing — my ankle was fine, but the rest of me was extremely sore.

Well, I certainly can't say my Silver Week wasn't interesting...

Peace,

Britt