Mamemaki Taikai

I was under the impression that this little festival was for Setsubun. But I asked a teacher of mine and she was totally positive it went by the name of Mamemaki Taikai. So that's what we'll call it. There's a really good chance this event goes by both names. Between my horrible japanese and their somewhat-okay english is where the name Mamemaki Taikai comes from so I hope I'm not misinforming you.

At any rate this is the event where you cleanse your house of evil spirits by throwing beans at it./them./him. The evil spirit is the thing portrayed by the red monster in tiger shorts. The kids' only goal is to throw all their beans at it./them./him.(in this case it/she. there are only female teachers at this school and they had to make due. gambare sky class teacher. good show.)

They have a saying for this event..."Out with the bad. In with the new."

You might not know that we sort of have the same thing in America. It's called meditation and it's done only by grown-ups...boring.

more student pics

These pics are from the Undokais of Mito Lily Kindergarten and Uchihara Lily Kindergarten. They did so well in their dance performances I almost cried. Their homeroom teachers actually did cry. I'm ordering a dvd of the performances so I'll be able to show you all one day.

Fuji and basketball.

So about two weeks ago I climbed Mt. Fuji. It took us (me, janet, mark, and elizabeth) 4 hours and 10 minutes to reach the top. As you're climbing you think to yourself,"I will never do this again." Everybody says that. But low and behold as we were in the car driving home I thought to myself, "I could do that again. Darn it!!!" Maybe later though.

Then one week ago me and some friends got tickets to see the 3rd and 4th place games of the FIBA world championship games in Saitama, Japan. We got to see America play Argentina. It was a great game. They were neck-in-neck for most of it, but in the end America pulled ahead. Awesome game. We yelled, screamed, and made friemds with the Japanese surrounding us by coinning the phrase, "U.S.A. Gambare!" Which means, "Come on U.S.A., you can do it, keep fighting!" Fun times.

This weekend was soooo boring;)

This was Mito's annual Festival. I'm not totally sure what they were celebrating, but I'll find out and report back. This year it snuck up on me. I went to church one sunday and everyone was talking about the big festival next weekend and then I forgot again until the festival was in full swing. On Friday night we had a big cookout and then walked to the park where the party was goin down. They had fireworks and venders lining the lake I run around. I saw a ton of my students from last year. They are now in 8th grade and look so much older. I really miss them.
Anyway, on Saturday they had the big parade where groups of people danced up and down the street for hours and hours straight in blazing heat. Kudos to them.

Japanese style cookout. (complete with bamboo)

These pics are from a few weekends ago when some elementary schoolers invited us to play a friendly game of softball. Seeing as how I hauled my glove all the way from the States, I decided to go and play. My team got the snot kick out of us, but a good time was had by all. I actually have a picture of me rounding the bases, but it's much to embarrassing to post on the world wide web. After the game the parents treated us all to a cookout complete with bamboo cups and chicken on a stick. And if that weren't enough, there was watermelon for dessert. I took the liberty of showing the young players how to spit a seed and encouraged them to compete in said activity.

Here's the deal...a huge amount of noodles were prepared and stored in two large coolers. In order to eat you had to stand on either side of the little bamboo slide and catch the noodles with your chopsticks as they slid down the shoot. The bamboo cups people are holding had a cold, japanese broth in them and after you caught the noodles you put them in your cup to mix with the broth and then you slurped them up. It was delicious. There was also an array of cooked veggies to munch on as well as chicken bits on a stick.

The whole day was a blast and the people were great.