what would japan be without its thousands of festivals? i can't find an exact count, but some estimate that there are more than 2,500 festivals in this country every year. im trying to make some of the more awesome ones while im here japan, and so heres a post about the last three i went to. also, sorry for the exceptionally long posting but its been a while since my last one so im just sort of making up for it. ok, here we go..

nagoya festival (名古屋祭り), nagoya

nagoya festival (名古屋祭り)

last month i went to the annual nagoya festival (名古屋祭り) with some fellow english teachers. saturday morning started with a huge parade going through the major areas of town. it was kicked off by three popular feudal lords from 16th century nagoya history who came out on ornate floats and did puppet shows for the crowd. they were followed by dancers, horseback riders, marching bands, and color guards. the finale was an awesome reenacted battle between dudes with long spears and a guy with a.. what the.. with a gun?! yeah, well, i guess fighting fair was overrated even back then. suffice to say, the guy with the gun totally won that fight.

a reenacting of some ancient battle

tenjin festival (天神祭り), iga (伊賀)
the next weekend i went to iga (伊賀) to watch the tenjin festival (天神祭り). the towns small size and narrow streets made this festival really freaking fun.
we had to actually push our way through the crowded streets [外人スマッシュ (gaijin smash!!)] just to get from a fellow JETs house to the interesting part of the festival. it was pretty neat to see so many people literally pulling the floats through town with big long ropes.

pulling the floats through the streets

the best part of the festival, though, was the oni (鬼) parade. onis, by the way, are like japanese demons:
what made the oni parade so hilariously awesome was the fact that parents purposely brought their young, innocent children to the festival TO SCARE THE LIVING SHITE OUT OF THEM. thats right; these terrible, terrible parents brought their young'uns to the front of the crowd for the sole purpose of scaring the tears out of them. literally! you could hear the sounds of crying babies from blocks away. and the best part? the parents were smiling and laughing about it. check out the smiling mother holding her crying child in the top left corner of this photo:

a smiling mother holding a crying baby watching a drunk oni (鬼) stumble by

that oni was particularly cool because he pretended (at least i THINK he was pretending) to be drunk. he drunkenly stumbled side-to-side through the streets the whole time. i was told that there is, in fact, a reason why parents try to scare their children: its said that having an oni make your child cry during the festival will ward off illnesses and bring good luck. the end of the parade, i got the chance to pose with an oni. all in all, this festival was one of the most fun ive seen so far.

from left to right: oni, me. hmm wait..

shouryuusai festival (翔龍祭), ryuujin (龍神)
a couple of weekends ago, i made the long trek over to wakayama prefecture (和歌山県) to visit a friend from boston. he lives in a town called ryuujin (龍神) which literally means "dragon god." his town has an annual festival called shouryuusai (翔龍祭), which means "the flying dragon festival." its pretty much the coolest name for a festival in the most awesomely named town ever.

wicked dragon art

also at this festival were a bunch of chainsaw artists making sculptures out of wood. i dont quite get the connection between a flying dragon festival and chainsaw art, but you wont hear me complaining. watching these guys use noisy violent instruments to create beautiful pieces of art was a lot of fun. their creations were actually pretty intricate too. good job, chainsaw artists!

this post might be very boring. if so, then im happy to correctly reflect the tone of my typical weekdays in blog-form.

__before school__
i wake up, cold, around 6am to my iphone's alarm clock playing the only song anyone should ever wake up to. after folding up the futon and putting it in the closet, i grab a can of bug spray and walk outside to the shower. i try my best to shoo away or kill-spray all the moths, mosquitoes, spiders, and other miscellaneous bugs i happen to see while i take a wicked hot shower. some mornings, if im feeling unusually hungry afterward, ill eat an american breakfast of cereal or yogurt. with the amount of sleep ive been getting lately, morning coffee is pretty much mandatory (im drinking it black these days). i spend the rest of the morning preparing my lessons for the day. then its time to load up the backpack and either walk, ride my bike, or take a bus to my first school of the day.

__morning classes__
upon arriving at school, i take off my shoes at the entrance way and put on the guest slippers because outdoor shoes are not worn inside school. then i go straight to the teacher's room where, if im lucky, the office lady will already have a hot cup of tea or coffee waiting for me on my desk. office ladies are freaking awesome! at 8am all the teachers gather for our daily meeting. as i dont understand most of what is said, i can only guess that everyone uses this time to talk about upcoming school events. or maybe they take turns making fun of the foreigner that cant understand them. possibly both. ill probably never know the truth.

classes usually start at 8:30am. even though i am officially an "assistant language teacher", i teach the kids by myself about 95% of the time. conveniently for the real english teachers, this means that they have none of the responsibility but they get all of the recognition. gee, they sure have a sweet gig.

class is usually spent trying to entertain the kids enough so that they dont fall asleep, talk to their friends, or have enough time to be rude to me. by the way, kids misbehave A LOT in japanese schools. but surprisingly, there is no such thing as disciplinary action here. in america, kids can get written-up, suspended, sent to the principal's office, expelled, ect.. but in japan, when the kids act up, they dont get punished at all. in fact, most teachers dont even ask them to stop misbehaving - they just try to ignore them. suffice to say, some classes are just plain chaotic and almost impossible to teach.

__about my classes and schools__
i teach anywhere between four and six classes every day. my 6-class days are ridiculously tiring to the point where i catch myself day-dreaming at school of jogging after work just to relax. yes, jogging for hours just to relax - imagine that.

i go to two schools on mondays and tuesdays, and only one school on the other days. three of my days are spent teaching elementary school kids (elementary school in japan are from grades 1-6). the other two days are junior high (grades 7-9). my smallest school has about 50 students. the largest probably has about 400 or so. class sizes range from 3 to 35 students. large classes are difficult to control, but they also have a greater chance of being interesting and making me laugh. no matter how dumb most kids can be sometimes, some of the awesome ones have already mastered the art of being hilarious, which is always a welcome surprise for me. smaller classes, on the other hand, are usually very behaved but sometimes unenthusiastic and painfully quiet.

both of my junior high schools have a "special needs" class that i teach every week. i tend to dread teaching these classes because i cant seem to figure out how to plan good lessons for them. it seems that my lessons so far are either ridiculously easy that its hard to keep them focused, or impossibly difficult for them which also leads them to not stay focused. so it seems that no matter what i plan, i cant keep their interest. and for me, personally, i find it very difficult to deal with some of the terribly strange things that go on in special needs classes.

to be continued..

about a week and a half ago, my supervisor told me in very broken english that i was to give a televised speech that will be broadcast and re-broadcast many times over on my town's local cable station. yikes. he also mentioned that i only had a week to prepare. double yikes. but then he dropped the bomb.. it should be in japanese! a million yikes.

i went home and spent several nights writing, fixing, and practicing my japanese speech. i even asked some of my multi-lingual friends to help with some of the translations (thanks again for your help, guys!). honestly, i was actually starting to get excited about rising to the challenge of giving a 5 minute speech in japanese after only living here for 3 months. but as luck as would have it, two days before the speech, i was told that i needed to change my speech. first, i needed to make it longer. and secondly, i had to deliver it in english instead. wait.. what the fuck? changing the language on me right before the speech?! not cool.

on the day of my televised speech, the camera crew came to one of my elementary schools and video taped me teaching one of my 5th grade classes. suffice to say, that was hella nerve-racking in its own right. but it wasnt over yet! after i taught the rest of my classes for the day, i got escorted to the camera room for my big speech. except, once we got there, the camera man told me that it wasnt going to a speech at all - it was going to be an interview instead. what? why? fml.

so after preparing a 5 minute japanese speech, then re-writing it in english, then lengthening it, i was told to disregard all of that effort and just give an impromptu interview instead. ugh. ok, you win, japan. i give up. i will stop trying to understand or predict what you expect of me. you win.