One thing that struck me about the ceremony was how much responsibility the students take on. Students ran the sound and lighting, played the piano and conducted us all in singing the school song, and read the names of prize winners. It's a trend I've noticed in general in Japan - it seems that many members of the community are involved in local festivals and traditions. The students also clean the school for 15-20 minutes after lunch each day, as classical music is piped into corridors. Music is also played at the end of the day signaling home time - some other JETs from Nobeoka told me that a tune is played throughout their whole town at the end of the working day!
Today I completed my first two lessons. Just now the schedule is temporary while students prepare for their cultural festival and sports day next weekend - they are all scarily talented at their chosen activities, whether band, dance, choir or sports - but there has been time to do some short self-introduction activities. They went pretty well, apart from when the projector fell on my head after I gestured too enthusiastically towards the flags of Britain. At the end I had the students ask me questions (with a piece of Edinburgh rock as a reward for volunteers) - these were some of the ones I luckily didn't have to answer...
I've also had a chance to get to know some of the other teachers. This week I taught Saito-sensei, who chats to me a lot, the phrase 'Oh my gosh.' He proceeded to repeat 'Ohmygoshohmygosh' for a while to himself; whenever anything mildly surprising happened throughout the afternoon he began shouting 'OH my GOSH!' He and Hayato-sensei took me and the other ALT out for lunch to eat okonomiyaki too.
It's like an omelette with cabbage, bacon, cheese and barbeque sauce, served onto a hot plate embedded in the table. Delicious. We discussed our favourite movies - theirs were Titanic and The Hunger Games - but they were also surprisingly vocal about The Lion King and Aladdin!!
In other news, the volcano Sakurajima in neighbouring prefecture Kagoshima went off again today, leading all the teachers in the staffroom to watch out the windows with dismay as ash covered their cars. But, the hot weather is finally abating a little and allowing for less of the sweaty tomato face look.
This means I've been able to explore a bit further around town without spontaneously combusting. This week I was winding my way home through some back streets and happened upon the first Japanese cemetery I've seen. Against the stormy sky it was pretty striking.
But I'll move on. I'm aware that not everyone's idea of a fun trip out as a child was watering the flowers at the graveyard (still not sure if I was morbid or just very bored, but I digress). Last week I got to meet up with all the JETs from Miyazaki Prefecture at our last orientation in miyazaki City (shi). It was a couple of days of workshops and classes, punctuated by a lot of bowing and awesome lunches. Here we see the Japanese sarariman (salary man) - we got huge plates of amazing chicken nanban, Miyazaki's signature dish, for 500 yen.
After a bottle of white wine and some very cheesy pizzas, we found what must be the smallest bar in the prefecture. This is literally all there is to it!
Even better, it was called 'One Coin Bar' - the coin in question being 500 yen - about £3.25.
What better circumstance for your first vodka martini?
We detoured somewhat between classes the next day, distracted by the carp.
Then we found some creative ways to take advantage of the air con...
Meetings were held in this rather lovely old building (this one is for you Dad).
On our last night, we celebrated with an all you can eat and drink buffet and karaoke session. This unlimited booze is a common - and dangerous - offer in Japan. Alissa and I started things off with Valerie and proceeded to while away the next few hours tambourining, dancing and drinking copious amounts of umeshu.
In case you can't tell, that is excitement, not fear.
These guys won my coolest couple duet award.
This made for a charming surprise while trawling through pictures on my camera the next day.
We finished our night in a wee bar with the best moscow mules I've ever tasted and chats with some Japanese computer science students. This interesting piece of evidence was useful in piecing things together the next day... still not sure who 'Colin' is.
The next morning we hunted down pizza, chicken, chips and pancakes for a Westerner brunch blowout. Our friend failed to turn up after we asked for an extra seat for him and we received several bemused looks as we conversed with/ fed his empty chair... not so sure we gave good gaijin that morning, but hey ho.
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I'll soon post my pictures from the rest of the weekend, when we road tripped down to Kushima for a fire festival. In the mean time though, can anyone PLEASE explain to me why my phone company keeps sending me this picture?
It's starting to become disconcerting (Pepe is loving it though).
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