Taiko Festival

On Sunday I went to a taiko, or Japanese drum, festival with James and his family. Jo was there, also. I'll just post some low-quality pics instead of talking forever.



I believe this group, if you can make them out, was preschoolers, who were ridiculously good for probably not being able to tie their own shoes.



Eventually, the people running the event got around to interviewing the little kids for the local tv station. I actually didn't get interviewed, which I'm kind of happy about, but also kind of disappointed about.



I tried to get a picture of a little kid watching the show, but it was too far away, so I don't think you can see him here. At least you get an idea of how big the crowd was.







There were a bunch of groups, three of which I have taken low-resolution pictures of here. Some of them went all out with costumes and masks, with their routines telling some sort of story, though I didn't really know what it was. Some of the groups, at least, were traveling groups from other cities and probably professional.



This guy played an extremely long piece on the marimba, which was a nice change of pace, what with all the drumming. I guess they aren't really strict about keeping things traditional here, which is nice.



This guy, who appeared to be older than dirt, was playing shamisen, a three stringed Japanese guitar that sounds really weird if you have not heard it before. He was going crazy on it, like some kind of ancient Japanese Les Claypool, popping and everything. Nuts.



These two guys played guitar and sang while wearing big goofy hats. They did a couple songs, including one that seemed to be titled "'N'-town Mai," which means "'N'-town Rice." The rice in "N"-town is famous, I guess, for being really good, so this song contained the lyrics "'n'-town mai umai," a play on words because mai sounds like umai, meaning delicious, roughly. Ha ha, a good song.





Those are James's kids eating ramen. It was too dark at that point to get good pictures, sorry. I spent a lot of time playing with them yesterday. That's about it.

Din Din

Hey, how about some more pictures of food?



ピーマンです。That's right, a tiny green pepper, or piiman, which is a loan word, but, weirdly, not an English one, obviously. I think it's actually from Portuguese, but I don't know for sure.



茄子です。Nasu, which we call eggplant. People love them here, which is good because they are not bad at all. Where could this be going?



That's right. It wouldn't be a meal of mine if it didn't involve some kind of pre-made thing. In this case, it's maabounasu mix. For those who'd like to see the Chinese characters, that's 麻婆茄子. Literally, that means "hemp old woman eggplant," but what it really means is Chinese-style eggplant.



So, there's the impressive meal. I'm pretty sure you are supposed to eat it with rice, but I'm running kind of low on that right now, so I'm saving it for things that really need it. Also, it was supposed to be enough food for 3-4 people, but I think that means little people who aren't hungry. That's it for now. Later.

New Blog Link

I added a link to another blog in the link section. It's called A Cup of Something Warm. Apparently, it features all the latest news on coffee, tea, cocoa, non-gazpacho soups, hot toddies, and, much, MUCH MORE!

More School Stuff

It's been a few days since I've updated, and I've got some new pics, so I think I'll let them do most of the talking. On Wednesday, I went to the second smallest school here and the big activity of the day was digging up jagaimo, or potatoes. They aren't like normal potatoes, but I guess we don't really have a word for them. They are sort of purple colored and long. The dictionary just says potato, though.



Potatoes, we are coming for you!



As with everything here, potato digging must start with a bizarrely military-like assembly of students who must be engineered somewhere for cuteness.



Let's do our best!



Not every student can be asked to concentrate on speeches at such an exciting time.



Enough of speeches, it's digging time.



I believe these baskets were designed for the sole purpose of carrying ジャガ芋.



A fine haul of potatoes.

Also of note that day was that I had to gun my car through the mountains to get to the bank while the kids were at recess and cleaning time (with the vice-principal's permission) so I could pay a bill because I am supposed to be at work 8:30-4:15 every day and of course the bank is conveniently open 9:00-3:00 on weekdays. Also, it is the only place to pay most bills. Seriously, what? How do people without housewives get things done here?

On Thursday, I went to the school farthest away and had a pretty decent day. The kids there love baseball, so I played baseball with them during one of their recess times. I played soccer with some of them later, too. The teachers always find this amusing, which is good, because playing sports in the blazing heat while they are working in the cool office excuses me from having to plan lessons or even get my own drinks. They always laugh and say, "otsukaresama," basically, "thanks for working so hard." And the kids practically drag me out of the office for the purposes of playing. But, I'd rather be amazing kids with my ability to kick balls across the field than working inside, so it is kind of nice.

I also had to go to the kindergarten across from that school at the end of the day to work out a scheduling problem (which was just me writing a 1 instead of a 2), but for some reason the kindergarteners were still there at almost 4:30, despite the elementary school kids having already gone home. I was having a conversation with one of the teachers there who likes practicing English so she can go to America at some point when the kids pulled me out of the office so I could play with them. We ended up playing "What Time is it, Mister Wolf?" Eventually, I did have to go, though.

On Friday, I went to a smallish school and only had three classes because they were combined. In each class we played a game where I put a plastic fruit or vegetable in a black box adorned with a question mark and gave hints as to what it was so that the kids could guess the names in English. It went really well, and the teachers thought it was awesome that I used a clue about Momotaro, the legendary peach boy of Japanese myth. While playing this game, I really wondered how people get by without Japanese language ability. This game is basically impossible to do unless you speak Japanese because all the kids understand is color names. People must manage somehow, I guess. I played catch with some kids after school, too, and one of the ladies at the office showed me a picture of her dog because I'd mentioned that I like dogs. Awesomeness all day.

Daigakuin

So, I'm trying to come up with places to apply for grad school. Ideas, anyone? U of I sucks because they didn't give me anything but insufficient loans last time, but that's just about the only place that is out specifically. I am basically just looking for a few things:

Doctoral program, preferably either direct or something like a one-year master's-into-doctoral thing.

Actual mathematics, not applied math, statistics (which makes me almost ill), or some kind of engineering thing.

Financial aid such as assistantships, fellowships, or just stipends. Something that will allow me to pretty much do just this, even if it's a typical grad student amount of money, i.e., one step above hobo.

This one's not a deal breaker or anything, but preferably not some craphole of a place.

That's about it. Ideas are appreciated. There are just too many places to figure it out, and I can't just apply everywhere because I will run out of money paying application fees.

Turtle School

I noticed a lack of comments on the last couple posts, but that's ok. They've been kind of short. I'm going to fulfill request number two from a while back soon, but it might be a few days. First, let's talk about my day at the Turtle School.

I am calling it the Turtle School because it has the Japanese word for turtle, or tortoise, really, in it. It's pretty sweet. The classes were small, so they were combined. Also, I didn't have to do anymore self-introduction, which is getting kind of boring. Today was mostly games, music, and free time. Also, school lunch featured some kind of crazy curry-tasting soup which was awesome.

First I had class with 1st and 2nd graders, which was interesting because the previous time I had gone to this school, the teacher wasn't there, so I just met her today, and she didn't come to me with a lesson plan until we actually started class. It was just teaching fruit, which is pretty standard. Japanese kids love fruit, so they will continue to yell out names of fruits, wanting me to translate them. It's sort of funny because they aren't old enough yet to realize that almost all of their words are borrowed from English, so, for example, painappuru is pineapple, and meron is melon. Actually, it is honeydew melon, but that's just one of those pronunciations you don't bother with. We played some fruitsbasket and sang the classic "Seven Steps," the words of which I will reproduce for those unfamiliar:

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven
One, two, three
One, two, three
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven

Then I had a bunch of free time. While I was working on Japanese stuff, the vice-principal asked me to help her translating some questions into English because the sixth graders are going to go to Hiroshima in the near future, and are supposed to interview the foreigners they find at the peace park. At first, I was just answering her questions, but then I asked if I could just write it for her because spelling is particularly impossible in English and I think especially confusing for Japanese people, who are blessed with the most logical spelling system of anyone excepting maybe Koreans.

So, I just wrote down the questions and whatnot in English, then Japanese, and wrote furigana above the English in katakana. Katakana is the script for foreign words, and it's not particularly hard. It's only around 50 characters, and it's about the second thing you learn in any Japanese class, but the people in the office all thought that was amazing. They kept talking about how amazing it was that I was able to write things in Japanese (with as much kanji as an elementary school kid, no less!) and English one after the other. I appreciate the adulation and whatnot, but it's actually very easy, so it's kind of embarrassing that people act like it is amazing.

So, enough of that thinly-veiled bragging. After lunch, I played baseball with some of the kids in front of the school, which was super fun. Then I had class with the fifth and sixth graders, which meant playing fruitsbasket with colors and some singing. Fortunately, the teacher had brought me a lesson plan in the morning, so I was ready for stuff. We sang "Do, Re, Mi." It was good that she told me what we were going to do because they wanted a translation of the words, so I spent my free time in the morning doing that, among other things, and was ready. They also gave me sheet music for the song, so I had to play it on the piano for them, and then also sing it a cappella so they could learn pronunciation better. I can't say my singing was the best, but the piano was simple enough to play.

Then I had class with the third and fourth graders, wherein we also sang "Do Re Mi." They seemed much happier to sing, and also were interested in the translation. We also sang a "Hello Song," to the tune of "Frere Jacques," which involved me having to learn the (admittedly simple) solo answer part. So, I'm getting good music practice here, if nothing else. Then the kids got to learn more complicated self-introduction stuff like nicknames, which are apparently the funniest thing in the world. One kid insisted that his nickname was just his name + kintama, which I will leave to the reader to translate.

After class, I had more free time, so I just stayed in the music room and messed around on the piano because I don't get to do that too often, not having one to play in my apartment, which is probably good because I would keep the little neighbor kids up. The first grade teacher and the vice-principal came up after a while and wanted to listen to me playing even though I was just making crap up, so I played "Imagine" for them, which the teacher recognized, and "Do Re Mi," which the vice-principal sang along with beautifully. So, now I'm supposed to play in some sort of talent show or something in February, I think accompanying the teacher on oboe and the office clerk on sax. So, that's cool.

After that, I went to the office basically to kill time by studying Japanese until I had to go home. So, one of the women who works there (in some capacity I'm unsure of) gave me a bag of already cooked rice for basically no reason whatsoever. People here are so sweet like that. I used the rice to make donburi, or bowl of rice with stuff on it. Here's a picture, since I didn't really have a chance to take any pictures are the school.



It's just more instant stuff, so don't think that I am doing any real cooking here. Also, it was on sale. A few minutes before the end of my work hours, a dude in what appeared to be a pink chef's uniform came into the office carrying a couple huge trays of various breads (sweet ones, not various kinds of actually healthy bread). The vice-principal asked me what kind of bread I like, so I told her that I had to go and all, so that I could politely refuse another gift, but she insisted and bought me a couple of things for the road, including one shaped like Anpanman's head. I'll do an update about Anpanman at a later date, but here's a picture of the other one that I ate earlier tonight.



I'm aware that pictures of food are less interesting than pictures of schoolkids and the details of what I eat are less interesting about what games I played with kids, but I can't just take pictures all the time at school and really I play fruitsbasket EVERY DAY and it never changes, so you'll have to live with my culinary exploits dominating the blog for now. Don't like it? Come to Japan and write a blog about it. I will even read it. Just don't expect me to get on facebook.

Kindergarten

I went to a kindergarten today instead of the Board of Education today. It was pretty fun. I played a little music for my self-introduction, played a couple games with the kids, and spent a lot of time carrying kids on my shoulders, which they called kataguruma, or shoulder car. We also went hunting for bugs for quite a while. Jo was there, too, but she was in the other class and didn't come out and try to catch bugs, so I don't have much to say about that.

Anyway, I forgot to take my cellphone, so I don't have any pictures. Instead I will post this picture of macaroni and cheese that I ate the other day. Thanks, mom! Garfield did not lie when he said, "Dinosaurs are delicious!" Verily, Garfield. Verily so.