Kudamatsu Mall Bunkasai cont'd.

These pictures give a tiny glimpse into the phenomenon of fashion in Japan. Everyone is fashionable in Japan. In one way or another, people dress on purpose. Little kids, grandmothers, they're all rockin' something good when they go out. It is not uncommon for me to see a super-fly young couple grocery shopping together with their super-fly three-week-old baby. This is in stark contrast to my own growing up when I wore faded trackpants with tapered legs well into my senior years in highschool. But I wore them well.

You're never too old to dress young, is the unofficial motto for most contemporary Japanese.




Likewise, you're never too young to dress old(skool). I think I saw a pipe in his breast pocket.

Kudamatsu City Bunkasai (Cultural Festival).

This was one of the last festivals of the 2 week festival blitz that happened all over Yamaguchi-ken this year (every year, a different ken hosts the national cultural festivals). This one was held at The Mall and the parking lot was converted into a fair or market of sorts. Quite strange, actually, I'd never seen anything like this because they were selling - get ready for a huge shock - USED goods! It was reminded me strongly of markets in Uganda, of all things, because the vendors just spread out a blanket or tarp on the ground and laid out their stuff. I'm not sure if this was a special day for used clothing and stuff but I haven't seen it anywhere else.

Below are some random things for sale. What is Bruce Lee doing with his thumb?






Those trees are pretty sweet. I bet you're jealous because you think it's warm here. It's not. It's warmer than Canada, but when your school or apartment doesn't have insulated walls or central heating, 14 degrees feels much colder.



These kids were just jumping and spinning in midair...I don't know if they were practicing for something, but they were really good at it. I wish they would've practiced in front of a solid background though.


Below, a cheerleading group doing a pretty quick routine to "Hey Mickey" (you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind...). I'm not cheerleading routine expert, but this seemed pretty high level for little kids.





This picture has nothing to do with this bunkasai, but I thought I should post it. It was from the Kudamatsu Junior Highschool bunkasai from a few weeks ago...a picture drawn by a student who shall remain anonymous because I don't know his or her name.

Women's Volleyball continued.

On Saturday night I saw these women do something which I thought was impossible. They were playing undefeated Serbia/Montenegro, the top team at this tournament with a perfect 6-0 record. And they showed it in the first two sets by totally dominating the smaller Japanese squad. The S/M spikes were just malicious; they hit so hard the ball was often not visible to the naked eye. I gave it up, to be honest, and told myself that Japan is just playing for pride at this point. Turns out they have a lot of pride!

Our girls really started clicking in the third set and the attack combinations, blocks, digs, were all firing perfectly! The turning point in the set (and ultimately, the game) was when Japan got two crucial blocks from the most unlikely player: tiny captain Takeshita!

Japan then basically cruised through the next 3 sets and took the match 3-2!! Unreal.

JAPAN WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL aka my favourite thing to watch on TV.

The women's world volleyball championships are being hosted in Japan now and I have quickly become addicted to watching it on TV, as well as shouting and agonizing and sweating over every rally. I have also come to terms with the fact that I have an unrequited crush on these women. Most are within my age range. And I am tall enough for most of them. They are really good...sometimes inconsistent, but they are often brilliant and it is very exhilerating to watch.


My favourites are #11, #12, #5, #3 (team Captain Takeshita) and Libero #6. The Libero, Kaoru (aka `The Princess` as the media has dubbed her) is just amazing, her digs and returns are often spectacular and sometimes singlehandedly keeps her team in the game. Takeshita is amazing too.


This is Kimura Saori #12 and she's the youngest player on the squad at 20 years of age.

Takahashi Miyuki. She is only 170cm tall but can absolutely crush a volleyball. She played in Italy last season.

Above and below is national team captain Takeshita. I like her because she is just so cool. She's like a zen warrior on the court or something, never loses her cool, always steady and present. Also, she's a phenomenal setter; you just have to see it to believe it.

Ken's Taiko DEBUT! HOSHI DAIKO - @ Akiyoshida Culture and Music Festival

The next sweet "away" gig with my favourite people who bang big drums with precision. You may recall that I visited Akiyoshida three weeks prior with Shoko, Brett, and Jen to see the limestone caves. We left bright and early 6:15am but that didn't deter some of the men in the group from cracking a few beers in the back... about 12 hours too early for me. When we got there, I was astonished to see a whole parade ground swarming with drummers and taiko! Overhearing other people talking, I realized that the "Ibuki" piece that we had been practicing for a while (the long, difficult one) was going to be performed en masse with probably at least 15 taiko groups from around the ken. Something like 200 drummers, plus students from two jr. high schools working the bamboo sticks (long, huge pieces of bamboo that are hit with sticks... very impressive when hit in unison with about 200 students; it makes a sharp *CLACK* sound). The composer of the piece is a young woman who is also a very good conductor - kept smiling, encouraging us, kept us together, etc.

What can I say? It was incredible! The sheer power of all those drums!

The rest of the day was individual groups giving performances and they were really really good. A whole day of taiko, beautiful weather, good food, good friends... ideal.

I forgot to get a picture of me in my uniform, but I looked pretty cool. Actually, everyone looks really good in their uniform.... for some reason, all the men in my group (average age of 50) are buff. They smoke and drink and are somehow really fit. The women too, and the girls (they don't smoke or drink though). And then me. I'm still skinny and un-buff. But I am the tallest.



Here is a pic attempting to capture the whole field full of drums. You can see the bamboo sticks in the foreground and the big "odaiko" (literally, "big drums") lined up along the back...the subwoofers of the taiko ensemble. Our odaiko was the biggest one there.



Since it was a music concert, there was a performance by this male choir, composed mostly of old men trying to catch their collective breath while wearing hot suits in the hot sun.



This was a wicked show put on by a small group, I think 5 adults and 4 elementary-age girls. These two women in the middle were the showstoppers, they had a unique setup of three drums (low-middle-high range) for each of them and they worked them like magic. I would've married either of them at the drop of a hat.



This guy was in the same group as the above women. I want to be him. Look at how cool that is. It was like a mixture of martial art and music. The interesting thing about taiko is that knowing and keeping the rhythms is only half the task. Equally as important are the movements of your arms and legs and to do it in unison with everyone. So this guy had the sweetest and most impressive-looking part of playing the side-drum which I want to do before I die.



Maki, a girl in our group.

OKI takes my camera.

One day after school (at Suetake) I was chillin' with my guitar and along came Oki and Kyoko, two adorable 9th graders, and they plunked themselves down beside me to listen to me noodle. I had my camera sitting beside me (I had been taking pics of bunkasai preperation that day) and Oki went ahead and took a picture of me playing at which point I told her to take as many as she liked, so she and Kyoko disappeared for a bit and came back with a few of the pics seen below. Actually, I think it's a great way of getting pics of students or teachers without being awkward... saves me the trouble.



These are 4 girls who stopped to chill with me. They are wearing their "gym clothes"; usually they wear these shorts and t-shirts (minus the blue jumper you see there) underneath their skirt and tunic(?), which must suck in the summertime.


This is a teacher, I don't know his name.


This is Masaya, a very musically gifted 9th grader, as well as being selfish and mischevious (so Yamashita sensei tells me). He plays percussion in the fabled Suetake brass band and plays the marimba, drum kit, timpani and bells with such skill and grace it's almost professional. He is one of my three "guitar club" members. When I asked at the start what they could play, he whipped out "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton and I nearly fell over.


Kaoruko, a cool 9th grader who is also Mizuki (speech champ girl)'s best friend. The three of us had a great chat one day after school while they told me how stupid boys are, how lame their school uniforms are, how tall my bike seat was, etc. Very fun.


This is the picture Oki took of me. The sun doth shininged bright upon my faceth.

SHOUT OUTS(in alphabetical order):

to Meghan who demanded a spot on the blog...

to Mike and Anna, who had the grapes to move to Japan!

to Tola, who is like Winter, or Summer...

to Vicky, who will save the world...

to Ben: I would go back to highschool just to have you as my teacher...

BUNKASAI - School Cultural Festival.

This is a BIG deal here. Kids spend pretty much a whole year preparing for this and the last few weeks have been intensive practices after school for the various "acts". Among these are performances by the chorus club (choir), computer club (anime video and sports club highlight reel), drama club (do a play), and my personal favourite, the brass band. Sincerely, the junior high brass bands here are unbelievable. In fact most kids at most activities are unbelievable good because they do it every day, all year. Unlike in Canada where kids can do mulitiple activities at a time and cycle through 2 or 3 sports in a school year, here in Japan, kids pick ONE thing and they do it to death. So the end product are 12-14 year olds who are really good at what they do.


Here is the Kudamatsu brass band performing. Quite an experience. First of all, as I think I've mentioned, the band is really good. I'm talking full band here, including a complete percussion section with gong, timpani, xylophone, MARIMBA for cryin' out loud. Secondly, the 1.5 hour performance included dramatized skits (acted by some teachers, which the kids went NUTS over...the girls were screaming like it was Ricky whatsisname who sang those songs) in between movements so that the whole thing was like a soundtrack kind of. And to complete my day, if not my life, they played a DEEP PURPLE medley at the end, including "Smoke On the Water", which rocked.


This is the handicapped kids class at Suetake performing with their bells. I love these kids; left to right Sota, Yuya, and Yuka (with an eyepatch over her fake eye so it wouldn't fall out during the performance, I was told later by their teacher). And I like to think they love me too. They performed this for me at the end of class I had with them one time and it was soooo cute...and actually, very difficult, if anyone has every done bells. Yuya in the middle loves music and really got into it; a few times for emphasis he would raise his hands above his head and throw his head right back like this was the best thing in the world. Everyone in the gym (all 700 students, plus parents) was clapping to their song and at the end, a big chant of "encore encore!"

* just an aside about encore, because I heard it a lot this weekend. It sounds, to the western ear, like they are all chanting "Un-cle Ray! Un-cle Ray!" and you may wonder, "who is Uncle Ray, and why is he so popular? And how can he be at three different schools at the same time?". In fact, they are just pronouncing the word 'encore' phonetically, as it would be read in Japanese. En-co-re.


Here are some Suetake 7th graders practicing. Each class performed a song and at the end, the best class out of each grade were given prizes. Each class had an accompanist and a conductor. The conductors were so amazing and cute. They would walk out onto stage. Stop. Face the audience. Bow. Face the choir. Raise his/her hand (choir would then assume the relaxed position, legs slightly more apart from the 'attention' stance). Count off one bar at which point the pianist would start. Then conductor would conduct another bar with BOTH arms, and THEN the choir would start.


This is a massive mosaic-type mural made of thousands of little coloured squares of paper. This is Kubo's mural, depicting this year's national high-school baseball hero, Saitou (of WASEDA, who led his team to victory by pitching 22 innings in the final two days) and Tanaka (who pitched just as hard for the losing team). These guys are honestly nation-wide celebrities now.

HOSHI DAIKO - Hiroshima gig.

Our taiko group, Hoshi Daiko, went to Hiroshima this past Sunday for two performances at an outdoor cultural thing. I was really worried that I didn't have enough cash to get me there and back, plus food, but it turns out the entire trip was FREE. Free private bus ride, free lunches, drinks, and snacks provided for us... And it was sooooo fun to take this trip with the group! Yoshie, the girl nearest to my age (she's 20) noted that this group is made of "kodomo to ogisan" ("kids and old men"), but I dont' really miss not having agemates around. I love the kids and the others are really nice, and fun too, so it's all good. Great great day.


Nagisa (8th grade at Kubo - I mis-printed her name as Nagesachi before. My bad) doing the X and 4th grader Akana (I think) beside her. In the background is 5th grader Saia playing her gameboy. These kids, young as they are, have all mastered some incredibly long and complicated songs. So impressive.


Saia and Nagisa smile.


The front row in the ready-position before they spring into action! Those uniforms are so cool-looking. The wristbands, the shirts, the ninja-pants, the "tabi" shoes (if you enlarge the pic, you can see the girls wearing them). These shoes are worn more like those water-shoes with rubber soles. They are wrapped onto your foot a certain way so that it fits your foot like a glove and grips the ground very well. It is also the standard footware of construction workers in Japan; quite the opposite of the clunky steel-toed boots of Canadian construction workers.


Far left is Nagisa and Chika beside her. I asked Chika one time how long she's be playing taiko. NINE YEARS she said. No wonder she's so good. You can also see the massive bass drum in the background.



Yoshie playing the flute for a piece called "Ibuki" which is long, but one that I've nearly learned. I actually did not drum today because I didn't feel I knew it well enough, but they said everyone makes a few mistakes through every performance and nobody notices anyways, so I probably could've done it. They are all very supportive.




This guy and his monkey were one of the acts of the festival.

AKIYOSHIDAI - Limestone Caves Adventure.

Brett, Jennifer, their supervisor/awesome-cool-gal Shoko and I made a day trip to Akiyoshidai for some serious underground cave exploring (as opposed to above-ground cave exploring). Shoko drove us in her red-hot Mazda blaring Foo Fighters and Christina Aguilara. We went to two caves actually, one was really touristy and had lights everywhere and automated speakerboxxxes talking to us...but the second one was awesome b/c we got headlamps and rubber boots and after a point, there was no lighting so it was up to our headlamps and flashlight.


I cannot look at this picture of Brett without laughing to the point of being awkward. He was trying to buckle up his helmet strap.


Shoko, Brett, Jennifer.



Certain rock formations had names based on their shapes and such. This blue-green formation in the middle was a king or something, I forget.


Bizarre. Looked like a waterfall.


This is, to me, the side of a massive dinosaur. See its skin.


I'm not sure how these colours came about, but I do remember when I took this picture I couldn't see anything; this is just the way the pic turned out. Pretty sweet.


We took an elevator from the depths of the caves to the top of a hill and from there we could walk around on this beautiful, rocky, UNDEVELOPED land. It reminded me of my dad's pictures of Scotland. No sheep though.

Oct. 7-8 - UNESCO English Camp.

This camp, held by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, was for adults, which was cool because they people actually really wanted to participate and were willing to make fools of themselves speaking English, which is an effort rarely exerted by jr. high schoolers. Most of the 50 or so participants were young, and a number of them were from the local Self-Defense Force (SDF - Japan's army). I've never met such pleasant, good-humoured, and good-looking army people before!

As we got to know each other more, some of the Japanese participants told me, with laughter, that they didn't know if I was a participant or instructor; one guy, while we were gathered around a bbq for supper, said to me, (in Japanese), "man, you're English is really good, isn't it?".



This cute couple are both SDF veterans... how old do you think she is? She's THIRTY-ONE! And he's thirty-two. I thought she was my age! And their two-year-old son is adorable.



There was a "cultural" thing - a kodo concert, and it was amazing. A kodo is a long wooden 12-stringed instrument that is plucked with one's fingers. The synchronization of these four women playing was incredible.


This was breakfast. Common Japanese breakfasts include a bowl of rice, miso soup, and maybe "natto", a nasty, slimy dish of fermented soybeans that most foreigners balk at (and most Japanese love).


Two of the most unlikely girls in the army - Hiroko and "Yachan" (I forget her real name, but this is her nickname). So cute.


Kana and I drinking tea that was presented to us in the tea ceremony. The tea is like an expresso version of regular green tea - intense.

BIG NEWS!!
If you'll recall, Mizuki and Kento both went on to the prefectural speech contest. We got the astounding news last week that Mizuki had taken FIRST PLACE again!! And Kento had taken 4th again, but only the top 3 go on to Tokyo, so unfortunately, he doesn't move on. However, we were all ecstatic with Kento's performance and he said he got even more laughs and response this time around. So Mizuki is moving on to TOKYOOO...! It's next month, and it's a 3-day tournament - all the students are put up in a nice hotel all expenses paid, and their teacher/coach gets half expenses paid. But seriously, Mizuki is awesome.

This is the speech that one of my students, Okuda Kento (age 14), submitted for the speech contest. You might wonder, at first reading, why Kento was so insensitive as to say this speech in front of so many people so many times; how would his mother feel?? But in fact this speech is written with good humour, and is actually very unique among student speeches because of its funniness and drama. Most students write about lessons learned from baseball, or music, or how to better improve the natural environment around us…which are all very excellent topics, but there are so many of them, its quite exciting when you get a truly original speech like this one. Enjoy!

OKUDA KENTO's SPEECH:

Are you really so fat?

My mother is an ordinary housewife. But I think she is a little strange and unique. I want to tell you why.

One day, my mother said to me suddenly, “I am putting on weight so I have decided to diet from now on!”. She started her diet from that night. She started to exercise with dumbbells and a walking machine. But I found my chocolate cake disappearing from the refrigerator. I shouted, “What happened?! What happened to my chocolate cake?!” I asked my mother about the cake the next day. I wanted to believe that she didn't eat my cake. So I asked her, “You are on your diet now, so you didn’t eat my cake, right?” She replied casually, “I was very hungry at midnight, so I ate your cake.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was very surprised at her words and repeated them in my mind again and again. But my mother didn't care about breaking her diet.

She continued to buy many things from TV shopping programs that advertised, “Lose weight quickly!” and now there are too many weight-loss products in my house. Her current favourite is her ab-belt, but some just end up in the closet. She believes that she is losing weight, but I know she still eats takoyaki at night. She is fighting a losing battle against herself. She says, “I want to lose weight,” but she still eats late at night.

After hearing all this, you may think my mother is a very large woman. But on the contrary, she is not. She only wants to lose two or three kilograms and this is why she is trying these diet fads. Honestly, there really isn’t any difference between two or three kilograms. Many people, especially men, don’t worry about losing a few kilograms and would find her efforts to be meaningless. I also began to ask myself, “Is being fat really so bad?” “Should people judge each other solely on looks?” My mother is my mother whether she is fat or not. I will always love my mother no matter how she looks. I love her because of her personality, the way she thinks, and her other good attributes. I just want her to love herself because I love her even if she is a little big.

She is still on her diet now. I would like to see her succeed in her diet, but I think her goals will never come true. I hope she will accept herself for who she is. If anyone is thinking about dieting in the future, please think about whether it is for yourself or for others. And remember this question: “Are you really so fat?”.

OK I have to post this picture. This is Mizuki for you. She has a wonderful swagger that is very rare in Japanese girls. She likes English, Music, and Phys. Ed and could care less for everything else. When Mizuki tells me this, Yamanshita-sensei, who is her English teacher and speech coach, reacts with visible anguish. "Don't say those things, Mizuki!", she says, "You won't be able to get into high school with that attitude!". And Mizuki laughs; clearly she enjoys tormenting Yamashita-sensei like this ("Sensei, I like that face you make, it's so funny!")... they have something of a mother-daughter relationship...:) All you parents know your kids know best how to bug you where it bugs you.