Shureisai and More

Lots has happened! My school festival, first Rotary inbound orientation, and the departure of my entire school grade to France. Except me and six others.

First more observations!

Food is a really big deal here. There are many TV shows about food, not just about cooking, but watching people eat. These just make me hungry. A common conversational question I get is what I had for dinner the day before. Whenever I eat anything in school, everyone asks if it tastes good. There's a focus on all food being delicious and pretty.

There are no stop signs! Instead, there are just white lines painted on the ground, often with とまれ (tomare, stop). Also there aren't many sidewalks, only on main roads. Pedestrians and bikers just walk in the road, on either side. I think I'm figuring out some biking etiquette, though, in that if someone is biking at you on the wrong side of the road, you have to go around them. I'm surprised there aren't more accidents. Actually, a middle school boy from Kenmei was recently hit by a car and killed as he was biking home from school, so that was really tragic.

The shureisai, my school festival! I had heard much about school festivals before coming, and knew they are a huge deal and everyone puts in a lot of effort preparing for them. However, it was totally different than I expected, and honestly a little underwhelming. I knew that my class was making popcorn, and we worked after school for a week and spent the whole day before making decorations for our classroom. I imagined that most of the festival would be like a fair, moving between the different classrooms. I knew the dance club and some other clubs had been preparing performances, and I pictured everyone watching these outside or something.

Instead, on the first day (it was two days)  we all filed into the auditorium, and I had to sit in the very last row because the rest was all full. Happily two very nice friends stayed with me. I thought there would just be a couple opening things, but instead we sat in there all day, from 9am-4:30pm, with a break for lunch. Mostly the middle school classes performed dance numbers or skits, and one did a really cool puppet show. The skits were apparently funny, but unfortunately I couldn't understand them so they were lost on me. In the dance numbers, there were always one or two people who knew what they were doing, and then everyone else who looked like they had been unwillingly dragged into it. There was one girl who kept trying to leave the stage, but was pushed back on. I think I have been spoiled by the amazing talent show at the CSRYE conference in Grand Rapids, where everyone actually had impressive talent.

Then at some point in the morning, just as I was thinking how nice it was not being the one on the stage for once, Gabbi, Hannah and I were called up to give our comments on the festival. They had some poor boy try to translate our English, and the whole thing was very confusing.

The handbell choir was impressive though, I had never seen one of those. They played songs from Beauty and the Beast and Phantom of the Opera. The baton/cheer club was really good as well. The English Speaking Society gave brief presentations about tourist sites in Osaka, which I thought was cool but no one understood. Also, at the beginning of each day, their main English-speaking teacher, who is sort of in charge of us exchange students, would shout, "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Kenmei's 2013 shureisai is now opennn!!!" met with absolute silence instead of cheering. My friends were like, "I think he said something about 2000 people?" The same thing happened with the head student of the English Speaking Society. He asked "How are y'all doing todayy?!" Silence. "I said, how are y'all doing today??" And finally Hannah shouted out, "We're doing great, thank you!" Awkward... On the whole, though, the day was very long and honestly boring, at least for me.

The next day was better. There were a couple performances in the auditorium to start the day, then we went back to our room to finish preparing it for selling popcorn. There were many other classrooms selling food, all more intense than popcorn. To get food, we needed tickets specific to that item, which we had bought the week before. Tickets were also sold the day of, but they sold out quickly. I ate chocolate hottoku, which was basically a filled pancake, tamosen, which was like egg and some sauce and other things between two big crackers, and yakitori, a chicken kebab. I tried to get things that looked Japanese, but there were also frankfurters, pancakes, hashed potatoes, muffins, waffles, yakisoba, and udon. Also the school was giving away free "pan" for some reason. I worked in our class collecting tickets, which was kind of silly because then I had to be the one to keep explaining that we were out of popcorn for the moment, with my lack of Japanese. There were two haunted houses as well, and I went to one with some friends. The decorations were pretty good, and it was mainly people jumping out at us. After a few hours, most people had used their tickets and the day started to drag again. We had a brief closing ceremony, and finished.

Ok I realized this will be too long with Rotary also, so I'll make that a different post. I have been on some interesting outings with my host family, though!

Last Monday, which was a school holiday I believe for the fall equinox, I went on a fishing/BBQ/airplane-viewing excursion with my host mom and two of my sisters. We got all dressed up in rubber boots, aprons, and thick gloves, and got on a little fishing boat with two other families. After a few minutes we stopped and watched one of the men take in fishing cages, with little fish and lots of octopi. They were so cute. We moved to a different location and took in a large fishing net. We all got turns with this one, mostly catching more little fish and some big crabs. I'm sorry, I have no idea what types they were, I'm not good at seafood names. Since we were also conveniently near the Kansai International Airport, we spent the next 45 minutes cruising around waiting for airplanes to take off or land. We saw about three, and I can't say it was thrilling but I found the whole idea amusing, and it was nice to relax on the boat. Back at the harbor, we watched them skin and gut the catch, and each family was given a platter with fish, octopus, oysters, sausages, and corn on the cob to grill on these long grills. Soo good and fresh. So it was nice experience and I didn't even get sunburned! Something else I've noticed is that barely anyone wears sunglasses, even on this sunny day out on the water. Unfortunately, I forgot mine in America and haven't gotten new ones yet.

This Sunday I went out again, with my host parents and little sister, to Minoh waterfall on the outskirts of Osaka, about an hour of train rides away. The place looked like a cute little resort town, and we stopped to have soba in this beautiful outdoor restaurant overhanging a picturesque river. We also ate the specialty of the area, deep-fried momiji, small Japanese maple leaves. I didn't actually taste the leaf, just the sweet deep-fried batter. It was a pretty shape, though. The walk to the waterfall was about 30 minutes, on a paved path. The whole way was beautiful, through a valley full of maple trees. Apparently it's breathtaking once the leaves turn. I think we might be going back to see that. I saw a number of foreigners along the way, and many runners. It looked like an awesome place to run. The waterfall was nice, and my host dad and sister stopped to sketch it, which they are both good at, while my host mom and I went to look at a temple. It's so nice how these beautiful nature places are so accessible, so I can have that, the big city of Osaka, and the area where I live, which is quieter and mostly residential, all connected by the train system.

In school right now it's really sad because my whole grade is on their school trip to France for two weeks, but I wasn't able to go. That would have been soo much fun! Instead I go to school until lunchtime only, thankfully, with Gabbi and the other six students who didn't go. We actually have to study, but it's good because I've worked on my Japanese a lot more than I had been.

Also, I leave the country for a month and a half, and I learn that the government is shut down?!