undokai
today... so much:
1. Five hours of undokai (sports festival) at the yochien (preschool) where we teach once a week. The preschool is associated with a Buddhist temple, and if I had to describe it in one word (which probably isn't a limitation that anyone but I am going to put on myself), it would be "charming." The school by itself is like something from a movie, with bright paintings of cartoon characters and playground equipment that includes an elephant slide, a t-rex slide, and a cow, a dachshund and more animals for climbing on.
Plus, of course, there's the children. First of all, the ones I teach are kindergarten age, so automatically there is an adorable factor with their tendency to stare off into space or cling to your leg and have hair that sticks up or is braided into pigtails and look so darn cute in their miniature clothes. (They wear uniforms and baseball-like hats complete with elastic straps that go under their chins. Baseball hats are color-coded according to children’s classrooms.)
But, because they are kindergarten-age and you are their teacher and you are American (and thus look different and act differently than other teachers and people in their lives and are a novelty), they are also so incredibly happy to see you. We (myself and whoever is assisting with the class... it alternates every week between TK and Shigeko, Mari, and Ai-san) walk by their classrooms on the way to the gym (where the classes are held), and there’s cries of “Kassie-sensai!” and little ones running up to give you a high-five or wave. They’re just so overjoyed to see you. I've only led one class at yochien, plus observed one and co-taught one with Adrian, but already they seem overjoyed to see me, like we’ve already bonded or I’ve proven myself (which I don’t like I have at all. But I don’t want to dismiss student appreciation. Heaven knows I’ll take it wherever I can get it.)
So, that’s the school: surrounded by this wooded mountain with an adjacent temple and in a building that belongs in a storybook and with enthusiastic children. Today, today, though, was just over the top (but not in a bad way).
Shigeko and I represented TK Study Room at undokai, and she picked me up at 8:10 a.m. this morning. This is plenty early considering I’ve gotten into the bad habit of staying up late and sleeping until 10 or (gulp) 11 a.m. since my workday Monday through Friday is 1-about 9:45 p.m. And it didn’t help that last night I stayed up until at 4 a.m. fucking around (for lack of a better phrase) online and with this very blog.
(Freshman year of college, the person who lived kittycorner across the hall from Sarah and me told me that the human body’s sleep cycle naturally repeats at 3 hours. So if you can’t get a full night’s sleep, she said, your body will feel more refreshed if you can something that’s a multiple of three – 3 hours or 6 hours. I still don’t know if that’s true, but I like to tell myself that when I can’t get as much sleep as I should. So 4 a.m.-7 a.m. = three hours of sleep.)
I woke up a little before my alarm, but went back to bed. Alarm went off at a little after 7 a.m., I was up, had those post-dream, pre-full conscious thoughts. As I mentioned in a previous post (yes! self-referencing), at 7 a.m., a song plays on a citywide broadcast system here. This morning, of course, was no exception. Except: shortly following the music today, there was a woman’s voice making an announcement in Japanese that, of course, I couldn’t understand. At that point, I started to wake up a little bit more. After living in Cannon Beach and being prone to worry anyway, I don’t take tsunamis and the possibility of sudden natural disasters lightly. What is this woman saying, is something wrong?, I half-wondered from my futon bed. (From ambulances to fruit salesman to recycling trucks, there are all sorts of recorded voices that are broadcast through speakers on vehicles here, so in a way I kind of tune them out because I can’t understand them, but I was paying more attention from my sleepy state because I could tell this was from the main speaker system, not a vehicle.) Then, when following the announcement, a siren went off, my heart went into overdrive. I jumped up from the floor, pulled on a pair of corduroys and looked out the window. Last night was the biggest and longest earthquake since I’ve arrived (and, again, it wasn’t bad at all. I think it maybe lasted 15 seconds – which probably means it lasted about 5 – and it wasn’t very strong), so I was also kind of primed for disaster. I pulled back the curtains, slid open the balcony door and watched to see what other people were doing - if it was serious and others were getting up and getting out. No one came out, and the siren stopped after two times (stopped after two times doesn’t make any sense to me now. “What do you mean stopped after two times?” Two blasts is nothing, and I know I was up and about for awhile before it stopped, but I never questioned the “two times” until I proofread this, but oh well.), so I figured things were OK, but my heart had been jump started and I was up for the day.
I asked Shigeko about the siren when she picked me up not quite an hour later, she said, yes, the voice means it’s just a test, and that she hadn’t heard it, and had I heard any fireworks this morning? Ishinomaki’s big festival is a fireworks festival, but it’s held in August (early August, I didn’t get to see it this year). However, I actually heard fireworks the night before, and told her so. No, she said, these fireworks would’ve been this morning. It was overcast today, and apparently in lieu of an announcement on the radio or television, to let parents’ know if undokai was still going on or not, they light off fireworks in the morning. One firework means the festival will go on; more means no festival today. Parents list for the fireworks to learn if the event will go on or not.
Man, I’m a tease. I haven’t even started to write about undokai and this is long and it’s getting late and I want to get to bed earlier tonight. But undokai, basically, is a school festival for families. Parents, grandparents, siblings, even cousins and aunts and uncles come to the school to watch students participate in races, dance and do choreographed pom-pom routines to music, play music, play games. There were games for parents (musical chairs which concluded an interview with the winner over the p.a. system) and grandparents (basically a relay using a crochet-like mallet to hit a ball down a line and run back) and parents and students together (making baskets with bean bags – cooler than I made it sound – and children riding on their mom’s shoulders and trying to take off other children’s caps). All the school’s teachers were, of course, busy with their classes, but I didn’t have any official duties than to wave at students, give them thumbs up and say “good job!,” so I sat next to the principle and the PTA president in the main tent under an archway decorated bouquets of at least two dozen balloons and cartoon characters rendered very skillfully from construction paper. It was so much fun. Five hours was perhaps a little long. But I took 118 pictures and four short videos of the action. Students performed to a Disney melody and to “Stars and Stripes Forever” and numerous Japanese tunes. Flags – both nations’ flags and flags with elephants and gators and those mass produced and those made by yochien students – were hung about over the field and along the classrooms. It was cute – or, kawaii. There were parachutes and students who lost one shoe during a race and kept going, and those who cut across the round dirt area where undokai races were held. I joined parents and other teachers for tug of war. I’ve been having some technical difficulties with posting photos on Blogger, and I question the wisdom of posting pictures of children I don’t know on the internet, so I’m only going to put a few pictures from undokai online. If you’re interested in seeing more pics, let me know and I can email them.
After undokai got over and Shigeko and I helped clean up, the sun came out and it was hot, and Shigeko asked me if I wanted to come back to her house to have “frappe” – like snow cone. She and TK are so wonderful. I so want to be a good employee for them. I want to be a good teacher, anyway, but they’re so wonderful to me, I want to do them justice. So, yes, we went back to her house, I had a reunion with their vocally uninhibited dog, Choco, and had shaved ice with maple syrup and condensed milk. TK had come back from his reunion with college friends in Sendai, so we all ate together and talked. I asked them about making ramen. The night before I was in the grocery and wanted to make ramen, but no clue. So, long story short, they asked me to stay for dinner, we went to the grocery, I asked them dozens of little questions about grocery-related items that I don’t realize I don’t know until I’m in the store and I have no way of asking anyone.
1. Five hours of undokai (sports festival) at the yochien (preschool) where we teach once a week. The preschool is associated with a Buddhist temple, and if I had to describe it in one word (which probably isn't a limitation that anyone but I am going to put on myself), it would be "charming." The school by itself is like something from a movie, with bright paintings of cartoon characters and playground equipment that includes an elephant slide, a t-rex slide, and a cow, a dachshund and more animals for climbing on.
Plus, of course, there's the children. First of all, the ones I teach are kindergarten age, so automatically there is an adorable factor with their tendency to stare off into space or cling to your leg and have hair that sticks up or is braided into pigtails and look so darn cute in their miniature clothes. (They wear uniforms and baseball-like hats complete with elastic straps that go under their chins. Baseball hats are color-coded according to children’s classrooms.)
But, because they are kindergarten-age and you are their teacher and you are American (and thus look different and act differently than other teachers and people in their lives and are a novelty), they are also so incredibly happy to see you. We (myself and whoever is assisting with the class... it alternates every week between TK and Shigeko, Mari, and Ai-san) walk by their classrooms on the way to the gym (where the classes are held), and there’s cries of “Kassie-sensai!” and little ones running up to give you a high-five or wave. They’re just so overjoyed to see you. I've only led one class at yochien, plus observed one and co-taught one with Adrian, but already they seem overjoyed to see me, like we’ve already bonded or I’ve proven myself (which I don’t like I have at all. But I don’t want to dismiss student appreciation. Heaven knows I’ll take it wherever I can get it.)
So, that’s the school: surrounded by this wooded mountain with an adjacent temple and in a building that belongs in a storybook and with enthusiastic children. Today, today, though, was just over the top (but not in a bad way).
Shigeko and I represented TK Study Room at undokai, and she picked me up at 8:10 a.m. this morning. This is plenty early considering I’ve gotten into the bad habit of staying up late and sleeping until 10 or (gulp) 11 a.m. since my workday Monday through Friday is 1-about 9:45 p.m. And it didn’t help that last night I stayed up until at 4 a.m. fucking around (for lack of a better phrase) online and with this very blog.
(Freshman year of college, the person who lived kittycorner across the hall from Sarah and me told me that the human body’s sleep cycle naturally repeats at 3 hours. So if you can’t get a full night’s sleep, she said, your body will feel more refreshed if you can something that’s a multiple of three – 3 hours or 6 hours. I still don’t know if that’s true, but I like to tell myself that when I can’t get as much sleep as I should. So 4 a.m.-7 a.m. = three hours of sleep.)
I woke up a little before my alarm, but went back to bed. Alarm went off at a little after 7 a.m., I was up, had those post-dream, pre-full conscious thoughts. As I mentioned in a previous post (yes! self-referencing), at 7 a.m., a song plays on a citywide broadcast system here. This morning, of course, was no exception. Except: shortly following the music today, there was a woman’s voice making an announcement in Japanese that, of course, I couldn’t understand. At that point, I started to wake up a little bit more. After living in Cannon Beach and being prone to worry anyway, I don’t take tsunamis and the possibility of sudden natural disasters lightly. What is this woman saying, is something wrong?, I half-wondered from my futon bed. (From ambulances to fruit salesman to recycling trucks, there are all sorts of recorded voices that are broadcast through speakers on vehicles here, so in a way I kind of tune them out because I can’t understand them, but I was paying more attention from my sleepy state because I could tell this was from the main speaker system, not a vehicle.) Then, when following the announcement, a siren went off, my heart went into overdrive. I jumped up from the floor, pulled on a pair of corduroys and looked out the window. Last night was the biggest and longest earthquake since I’ve arrived (and, again, it wasn’t bad at all. I think it maybe lasted 15 seconds – which probably means it lasted about 5 – and it wasn’t very strong), so I was also kind of primed for disaster. I pulled back the curtains, slid open the balcony door and watched to see what other people were doing - if it was serious and others were getting up and getting out. No one came out, and the siren stopped after two times (stopped after two times doesn’t make any sense to me now. “What do you mean stopped after two times?” Two blasts is nothing, and I know I was up and about for awhile before it stopped, but I never questioned the “two times” until I proofread this, but oh well.), so I figured things were OK, but my heart had been jump started and I was up for the day.
I asked Shigeko about the siren when she picked me up not quite an hour later, she said, yes, the voice means it’s just a test, and that she hadn’t heard it, and had I heard any fireworks this morning? Ishinomaki’s big festival is a fireworks festival, but it’s held in August (early August, I didn’t get to see it this year). However, I actually heard fireworks the night before, and told her so. No, she said, these fireworks would’ve been this morning. It was overcast today, and apparently in lieu of an announcement on the radio or television, to let parents’ know if undokai was still going on or not, they light off fireworks in the morning. One firework means the festival will go on; more means no festival today. Parents list for the fireworks to learn if the event will go on or not.
Man, I’m a tease. I haven’t even started to write about undokai and this is long and it’s getting late and I want to get to bed earlier tonight. But undokai, basically, is a school festival for families. Parents, grandparents, siblings, even cousins and aunts and uncles come to the school to watch students participate in races, dance and do choreographed pom-pom routines to music, play music, play games. There were games for parents (musical chairs which concluded an interview with the winner over the p.a. system) and grandparents (basically a relay using a crochet-like mallet to hit a ball down a line and run back) and parents and students together (making baskets with bean bags – cooler than I made it sound – and children riding on their mom’s shoulders and trying to take off other children’s caps). All the school’s teachers were, of course, busy with their classes, but I didn’t have any official duties than to wave at students, give them thumbs up and say “good job!,” so I sat next to the principle and the PTA president in the main tent under an archway decorated bouquets of at least two dozen balloons and cartoon characters rendered very skillfully from construction paper. It was so much fun. Five hours was perhaps a little long. But I took 118 pictures and four short videos of the action. Students performed to a Disney melody and to “Stars and Stripes Forever” and numerous Japanese tunes. Flags – both nations’ flags and flags with elephants and gators and those mass produced and those made by yochien students – were hung about over the field and along the classrooms. It was cute – or, kawaii. There were parachutes and students who lost one shoe during a race and kept going, and those who cut across the round dirt area where undokai races were held. I joined parents and other teachers for tug of war. I’ve been having some technical difficulties with posting photos on Blogger, and I question the wisdom of posting pictures of children I don’t know on the internet, so I’m only going to put a few pictures from undokai online. If you’re interested in seeing more pics, let me know and I can email them.
After undokai got over and Shigeko and I helped clean up, the sun came out and it was hot, and Shigeko asked me if I wanted to come back to her house to have “frappe” – like snow cone. She and TK are so wonderful. I so want to be a good employee for them. I want to be a good teacher, anyway, but they’re so wonderful to me, I want to do them justice. So, yes, we went back to her house, I had a reunion with their vocally uninhibited dog, Choco, and had shaved ice with maple syrup and condensed milk. TK had come back from his reunion with college friends in Sendai, so we all ate together and talked. I asked them about making ramen. The night before I was in the grocery and wanted to make ramen, but no clue. So, long story short, they asked me to stay for dinner, we went to the grocery, I asked them dozens of little questions about grocery-related items that I don’t realize I don’t know until I’m in the store and I have no way of asking anyone.
So, we had ramen and okonomiyaki (also called a Japanese pancake or Japanese pizza which I had had at their house before and tried to make at the apartment and failed through equal parts burning and having the cabbage and green onion doughy part fall apart) and I got lessons on ramen from Shigeko and okonomiyaki from TK. Dinner was followed by ice cream and sweet German wine and watching a serial samurai movie. Japan makes so much sense when I’m with them. And then I come back to my apartment where I don’t know the language or how to communicate or how to get anywhere or have a comfortable place to sit and read or anyone to talk to, and I feel kind of overwhelmed and lost. But, just because I don’t know the language now doesn’t mean I can’t learn.
Also! Today, heard from the meisties – shout out! – which suddenly made things seem a lot more manageable and enjoyable. ‘Cause, you know, you’re awesome. Love, all-enveloping love. And I’m so glad things are going well for you and healthy and happy and you’ve gone from PCT to PCV.
Thoughts from the Indigo Girls, who I have been listening to for part of the writing of this long-winded entry:
“Oh, the fear I’ve known, that I might reap the praise of strangers and end up on my own.”
“We are fortunate ones, fortunate ones, I swear.”
“maybe that’s all that we need is to meet in the middle of impossibility.”
“don’t you write you it down, remember this in your head. Don’t take a picture, remember this in your heart.”
posted by kathy at 10:38 PM
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