Shimoina Footy

Despite Saturday being a dreary and rainy day, I headed out to Takamori to watch my school's football team play a couple of teams from Iida. It surprised me that our entire team were ichninensei's (first years), while the other teams were playing sannensei's (third years), but I suppose there's no rule against what age teams are played against eachother.

The first match we won 1-0, but the rain came down, the pitch got muddier, and then my boys had to face the top team in the Shimoina area. They fought bravely but were outmatched and beaten 5-0. Despite the rain and the score they remained cheerfully upbeat, and I managed to get a few pictures huddled under the team tent.

My favourite tree..

(Click for bigger image)

I see this tree every day when I park at work, and regardless of time or weather, it's always beautiful. This was taken last week, right at the end of the summer.

A night at Odairajuku

Our house for the night at Odairajuku

A couple of weeks ago a group Iida english teachers took advantage of a day off school to spend the night in an abandoned settlement known as Odairajuku (大平宿). Well, that's what someone told me it was.

The drive up was like something from a Stephen King novel. That night a hefty storm was moving across the area and the drive into the mountains to Odaira was fraught with rain and wind, slow speeds and tight corners, giant toads and other beasties!

Anyway, there are several houses in the settlement that are available to rent overnight (or longer), so that's what we did. A night of barbequed food, drinks and not so good drinking games. Fun, at the very least.

And on the way down the following day Jackson and I saw our first monkey, despite my first impression that it was a small bear of some sort...

Mamushi encounter (蝮を見ました）

Despite creepy-crawly things in Japan being very large and menacing at times, there are very few things that are really poisonous or of real potential danger, so we were all very surprised by the critter in the photo above, a Mamushi Pit Viper, one of the two most venomous snakes in Japan. He was warming himself on the road next to our cars when we headed back from a BBQ at the river in Anan. He was "gently" dispatched by our snake-wrassler Joe, who grabbed him in BBQ tongs and threw him into the bushes.

"Cows moo everywhere"

On Friday my elementary classes were cancelled and I was told I was welcome to wander around and help organise today's Undokai (運動会; sports day). When I had a free moment I took a wander around the school Toshokan (図書館; library), reading some books and taking some pics of the ones I liked.


図書館


"Cows moo everywhere."


"The Forest Ghost."


Work this one out. The writing on the right says "Of course! The old lady died!"


"I want to go to the department store."


...Ms Fish experiences humour failure.

Sod's law & dark matter (英会話)

It's nice to be given an opportunity to teach something other than English, and my eikaiwa is always a willing arena. Today's conversations:

• The difference between compliment and flattery;
• What "Sod's Law" is;
• What the STV (Single Transferable Vote) is and how it is arguably a "fairer" system when compared to the "first past the post" system with respect to democratic representation;
• What dark matter is.

Today I also started handing out my old copies of BBC Focus to my members. I was very delighted at their eager response, despite a couple of them claiming it would take them a year to understand it. I reassured them it was very much an every day person's magazine and although the concepts within can be complex, the writings are not. I'm already eagerly awaiting their feedback.

Festival Flower Fire

The best thing about summer in Japan is the fireworks at festivals! And the food...


BOOOOOM!


Festival food, oh how I love you!


For no properly explained reason...


Oooooooooo!


Aaaaaaaaaaaa!


Eeeeeeeeee!


The god of hellfire, bringing fire...


Pirates carrying illuminated chronological device.


The finale. You can clearly see the fourth flame from the right about to blow, which it did about half a second after I took this pic.

Summer sunsets

... from my bedroom window.

Taiko outfit

The happi outfit I wore for the Takagi festival performance last month.

PTA day

Today was PTA day (parent-teacher-something), and involves parents of students coming in to watch the teachers teach them. Thankfully I was asked only to do one of these and it went rather well. At lunch all students head home for the day, but the teachers and parents get together in the gym for a game of whatever they decide. Today it was volleyball, so after lunch I headed to the gym with everyone to find out what this game was going to be. At first glance it appeared to be volleyball, as the nets were already in place.

My JTE: "We will play a kind of volleyball."
Me: "Ok... what's that?"
My JTE: "It's the volleyball."
Me: "It looks like a giant, foam pear..."
My JTE (really happy): "Yes!"
Me: "..."

So I spent a couple of hours playing this "type of volleyball", which along with the giant foam pear for a ball, had some odd, odd rules. As soon as I understood the rules properly it was really good fun... it's shame it took me most of the match to realise what they were! And of course, because of the shape of the "ball" the darn thing was bouncing all over the place!