Now: And there are also lows...

As some of you may have noticed, my blog has been quiet of late. I apologize. The truth is that I have not trusted myself to be open on this platform for the fact that, of late, I do not have many good things to say. But now I have decided to speak anyway.

When you are in this fragile state of constantly negotiating a new culture, there is often no warning between sudden shifting feelings of extreme elation and soul-crushing homesickness. And no matter how long you have been living abroad, and no matter how much experience you have already had with culture shock and homesickness, there are always still times when it gets you.

Right now is a great time to be in Japan -- the weather is finally not stifling, the air is crisp while the days are still sunny and the leaves are turning those lovely warm colours as summer is retreating into fall. And there are still many exciting events and cultural festivals going on -- and yet my thoughts can't be torn away from Canada and my friends and family at home. I find myself either retreating into myself or reaching out on every social platform available to make contact across the Pacific. And of course all the while I am searching desperately online for the blue moon "cheap" flight home for Christmas that I already know I cannot afford.

Why am I torturing myself like this and why can't I stop doing it even as I know I'm doing it? It's emotional, not logical. Rather than being a problem with a formulaic solution, it's a current you just ride out as best you can until the storm passes. And hopefully whatever got you through the last one does so again.

For me right now, I have a lovely tri-fector of reasons for my dampened spirits of late.

The first I have already hinted towards. I am homesick and dreading the upcoming Christmas season. It will be my third Christmas away from home. I have only been home once so far, in the middle of my two years thus far in Japan and specifically for two beautiful summer weddings. Cost has always been the central issue keeping me away at holiday season time, mainly thanks to the ridiculous raping that North Americans commonly face when getting a university education - of which I am still suffering from the lingering effects of.

The second is that I still miss the good friends I had for the past two years here in Japan that have recently gone home. While technology always makes contact possible, it's not quite the same as having those partners in cultural exploration alongside you to lean on with a knowing sigh, them being in a similar place, mentally and emotionally, in this ex-pat adventure.

The third is that I have been dealing with, for a long time now, an uncomfortable medical issue. Doing this in a second language and having to rely on others' help when I am by nature a very independent person has been difficult. That, and getting used to a doctor-patient relationship that is vastly different than what I am used to, has made things less smooth. The simple questions I am used to openly asking, such as details of the treatment or side effects of medication, were treated as a personal insult to the doctor's wisdom. All of these things have led to a few miss-communications that have added to my situation. I won't go into any more details, but understandably, I wish that this was all happening on my home turf.

I wrote this blog today not for sympathy or help. It's my life and they are my issues, only I can get through them. And I will be fine - I know all of this will pass in time. But I wrote this because I want to be genuine about the ups and downs that come with living out of country. We see and read about the wonders so often and these are really not the whole picture. Though facebook may make us all think otherwise, it's not always amazing. In life the positive is only so good because of the comparison with the negative - ying and yang - and in my blog about the "trials and tribulations for this foreigner living abroad in Japan", both deserve a say.

A Japanese High School Festival

Love being able to hang out
with the students <3

Lots of decorations everywhere!

In stark contrast to my dull and boring summer spent mostly alone in a big office, this past week at school was the busiest and most exciting week of the year! It was Omiya's School Festival (学校祭 - Gakkousai), which is a week-long affair including a Chorus Competition (合唱コンクール), Cultural Festival (文化祭 - Bunkasai), and Sports Day (運動会 - Undoukai).

Omiya's Brass Band playing at the beautiful
Medikit Arts Centre Auditorium

The High School Cultural Festival is one of the most amazing things I have experienced in Japan. Cultural Festivals in Japan are amazing feats, and the standard at my school, being a top school, is the cream of the crop. Not only do I enjoy marveling at all the students' incredible talents, but I also love the relaxed atmosphere and unstructured time which allows me to casually interact with the students.

The first event was the Chorus Competition, in which every class prepares one song to sing, hoping for the honour of being one of the top three classes. Because my school is fairly large (about 10 classes per grade level and 1300 students total), the entire school walks to a nearby arts and performance hall for the competition. The Medikit Arts Centre is a beautiful auditorium with incredible lighting and interior design, and topped off with the largest organ I have ever seen!

The classes all practice one last time after lunch.
What dedication and determination!

In the morning, various music clubs and groups showed off their skills, often with fun, lively songs and light effects and even with students dressing up in silly costumes. Some of the performing groups were the school's brass band, chorus club, a small acapella group, and the koto club.

Playing the koto

You wear these on your
fingers to play koto

The koto (事) is a large 11-stringed Japanese instrument which was traditionally played by geisha. It lies on the floor, with strings tuned by being propped up at different points by removable pieces. The player plucks the strings with specially designed picks that are attached to the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand, while the left hand pushes on other strings to attain various notes. In my first year I was a part of my school's koto club, and while I was not very good, it was an amazing experience!

In the afternoon was the actual competition portion of the day, in which each class took a turn to showcase their skills singing a song of their choice. The winning classes are usually the senior classes, having more experience with the level required to win and knowing each other and their skills better. What's amazing is that the students organize themselves and practice together for hours in their summer vacation time! And all just for the glory of winning! Japanese students seem to be driven by friendly competition more than students back home.

The Cultural Festival Day was
kick-started with a dance!

They interviewed me!

The next event of the Festival Week was the Cultural Festival Day; a showcasing of all the other various club groups and activities that the school and the students have to offer.

In the morning, everyone gathers in the gym for various slideshows of school events and other student films and skits. In the slideshow they even showed photos from the Chorus Competition that happened only the day before! One student group interviewed the sweet couple who run a soda and burger restaurant across the street. Another skit was a funny skit of a senior boy dressed in a blonde wig prancing through the empty halls to the song, "Let It Go", from the latest Disney movie, Frozen.

Ikebana and Calligraphy displays

Photography Club displays

Art Club paintings

Next, the afternoon was the open school portion of the day. The school is decorated, the classrooms are transformed into display areas, student talent shows happen in the gym, and various baked goodies are sold.

Parents, past teachers, and even previously graduated students, now in their university summer vacation time, come to see the festivities going on. What's again incredible about this day, is that most of it is student led and organized. The students organize themselves into committees and do all the decorating, scheduling, and even the audio visual or backstage requirements. And they dismantle and clean everything up when it's over. I don't think that this is as much the case in other schools, but I have recently learned that my school encourages student independence and self-sufficiency as much as possible for these sort of events. And they certainly did an amazing job - everything went off without a hitch! I was thoroughly impressed and I think it's invaluable for them to be able to learn these skills early.

Students playing a
Japanese checkers game

Students in the Tea Ceremony Club
dressed in kimonos to serve tea

During the open school festival day I usually wander around with my camera and admire the various displays, watch performances, and talk to students. The students at my school are so eager and willing to interact with me, which is wonderful. Realizing I can't fully understand the program schedule, they will also often come up to me and tell me where to go at what time to see their particular performance.

The Calligraphy Club girls work
together to make a large poster.

This past year, a girl in the Calligraphy Club asked me to watch her group's demonstration, which I had never seen before. They got a large sheet of paper and used various sized brushes and coloured paints and all worked together with music playing to make the beautiful poster you see below. They were so coordinated, even patting down and drying the layers of paint, and so the whole process only took about 10 minutes!

The girls with their final product!

Other exciting things that I was able to enjoy watching were various student talent performances on the main stage. There were various bands, most of them in J-pop or punk rock style, and there were dance groups who did large coordinated dances in J-pop style and even with some break-dancing! Through talking to students, I learned that all these groups had made it through auditions to be one of the groups selected to perform. Quite an honour for them I imagine. They definitely had the crowd support of their fellow peers, as some students even brought glowsticks!

Watching one of the student bands play

The groups were all incredibly talented and it was wonderful to see this other side of my students. What I was left wondering; however, is when the students with private bands and such possibly had time to practice...! This is because Japanese students usually have their club activity 6 days a week, and then some even go to cram school for a few hours on some evenings to study more. Japanese students are very busy, especially compared to most North American students...

Students practice outside
before their performance

(At some point in the future I'll do a separate post about these sorts of comparisons ;) ~ stay tuned!)

Marching around the field

Believe it or not there is still more! The grand finale of the school festival week is the Sports Day. This happens on a Sunday so that the parents too can come and enjoy. And actually, students and teachers come into school the day before also, yes, Saturday, to do a run-through of the ENTIRE DAY, including all the events! We get other days off in lieu, so that's not a problem. Japan is just very particular about its ceremonies and seems to go above and beyond to make certain that there is absolutely no margin for error. I suppose that the students are used to this and in their opinion it's probably still better than regular classes, but surely they must get slightly bored and pretty exhausted doing the same thing two days in a row...? Anyway, that's a discussion for another time, and as it happened this year our trial-run day was half rained out, hehehe.

First in the Sports Day is the opening ceremony. Again, Japan loves its ceremonies. This is begun by the four student colour teams (white, red, yellow, and blue) literally marching around the field in very militaristic fashion while the brass band plays. They even salute at some points!

One group doing well at the jump rope!

Throughout the morning there are the regular running events, followed by some other fun games for the different grade levels.

The first year students (grade 10's) play a game I had never seen before. They hoist a large plastic garbage bin on two poles about 10 metres in the air and are timed to see how many different balls of various sizes and shapes and point value they can get in their bin.

The huge tug-of-war!

The second year students (grade 11's) do large group jump rope competitions, with about 40 students all jumping together around one huge rope! I've seen groups able to get 30 jumps in a row!

A few groups getting ready for the horse game

The senior girls and boys each get their own game.
The girls do a massive tug-of-war and the boys do a game in which one boy, wearing a hat, sits on two others' shoulders and these groups of three run around trying to snatch the hat off an opponents' head. Apparently it represents warriors on horseback fighting each other. It's absolutely hilarious! And of course they love it. I wonder if that sort of thing would fly back home? I've never seen anyone get hurt.

Groups of boys charging
at each other

After lunch, all of the students do a simple folk dance which changes partners as you move around the circle, and as the crazy foreigner I love joining in. The students get so happy and excited that I'm participating. I feel like perhaps students back home would try to look "cool" and either act indifferent or snicker to their friends. Surely some of them do that here too, but it's definitely not the norm.

The last part of the Sports Day involves the Ouendan ( 応援団 ), which literally means "cheering squad". Each team has a group who dress similar to traditional Ouendan fare, but with their team's colour ribbons, and performs an intense coordinated dance to a beating barrel drum. This is of course part of the competition too, and all the groups are scored for their performance. It's mostly sharp movements with the hands, on which they wear striking white gloves, but they also use props such as fans, masks, and this year one team even used samurai swords. Some teams have their gymnastically talented members doing cartwheels or back flips too, but traditionally Japanese cheering squads rely more on drumming, shouting, and using banners and flags.

This is how Omiya's official Ouendan look
- intimidating, huh?

 For the absolute last act before the closing and awards ceremony, there was one more Ouendan performance. This was done by the school's official Ouendan group, and was quite different from the previous dance style Ouendan. Omiya's Ouendan is especially very traditional because of the school's long history; it was established in 1888.

So in this Ouendan, the leader stands on a raised platform and does the main war-cry-like deep throat shouting, which are rally cries about the school, while the other members repeat together after him. These other members also beat drums or wooden planks and one bears a flag so huge that it is strapped around his torso! In between the war-cries, they do some sharp movements with their white gloved hands.

The Ouendan leader shouting rally cries from the
platform and the flag bearer with Omiya's school logo

The strength required for such a
thing is incredible! And he even
 whips it within a metre of the ground

As you can imagine, this traditional Ouendan group's goal is not merely to entertain, but to promote school pride and intimidate other schools or sports teams. I was incredibly surprised the first time I saw them! But I have thoroughly loved being able to experience this traditional cultural aspect. Many of the other schools do not have such intense Ouendan groups and it has even become a source of pride for me at Omiya, so they must be doing their job well ;).

The blue team wins

Finally, at the closing ceremony the scores are tallied and the awards given. This year the blue team stole the show, a huge source of pride for the team leader, as you can see by his emotions getting the better of him when it was announced (see picture to the left). All the students did so well, and I am left, again, in absolute awe of my students here in Japan. They are so dedicated and give so much to their school community. These are some amazing memories that they have made, and I am ecstatic to have had the privilege of observing <3.

On Motivation: Now

Magic happens when we're motivated!

Motivation is one of the most important factors for success - in any situation. When we are motivated, we push ourselves and get better results without feeling worn down. We have that positive drive which acts as a seemingly unending well of energy and inspiration. We can accomplish incredible things and feel amazing whilst doing them. Reaping the rewards can create a continuous cycle of positive reinforcement.

New JETs have all the motivation in the world. They have been building towards and preparing for this exciting new phase of their life which is finally coming to fruition. Everything is new and exciting and there is so much to learn and do. They are usually very genki (energetic/healthy/happy). It's us older JETs that have to be careful about losing our way.

So empty... :(

Recently, I have had some extremely contrasting weeks in terms of my own motivation. This past summer vacation was the first time that I was not away traveling; I decided to save my money and days off for future trips. Summer vacation in Japan for teachers is not like it is back home; except for a few days because of a traditional celebration to do with ancestors (お盆 ~ Obon), teachers still have to come to school - even if there are no students and seemingly nothing to do. Teachers are not automatically given long summer breaks, but have to take vacation days.

... All by myseeelllllffff ... Don't wanna be ...

Since it is my last year here, I decided to save my money and precious days off for future final trips around Japan when the weather is not disgustingly hot and humid. This meant that I was pretty well alone in a big communal office in a big empty school, and, since we had already decided to use the same curriculum I had created for the year before, I had nothing pressing to do.

I loooove my adorable students!

I found this situation to be devastating. I was bored out of my mind; chained to a desk (building?) feeling that the grass was greener anywhere else. My motivation plummeted to an absolute low, and my morale along with it.


I tried to study Japanese (as I regularly do) but couldn't concentrate for long. I read about and tried to practice playing the harmonica, my latest attempt at a new hobby, but could only do this for so long at a time. I briefly updated my online resume but most of the necessary information was on a hard-drive at my house, and somehow this was too great a hurdle. I went for walks but felt guilty if I stayed away too long as I was at "work" and "on the clock". Next, I decided to enlighten myself and read world news articles; a good activity, but one that didn't exactly help my floundering spirit. And so I counted down the hours until the next weekend, when I could enjoy my life in Japan again.

SO CUTE!! My absolute favourite!
A true story about a girl's grandfather accidentally
buying cat food and thinking it was tuna
and wanting to eat it!

How could these kids not be a
source of motivation?

I had known going into it that this past summer would be difficult for me. I know myself quite well at this point. I am a teacher because I love the students - take those away and my spirit fades. Also, I like to feel useful and accomplished in my work, so having no related tasks to complete left me feeling useless and wishing for a Canadian teacher's summer break. I know that in terms of my work, I need these two aspects to feel completely motivated; an internal feeling of purpose and external connections with students.

However, going into it, I had also known that this low phase would not last forever. I am now at the light at the end of the tunnel as things are getting back in swing at Omiya. While official classes don't start until next week, the students are around and there are various activities going on. On top of this, students have been coming to me for individual help with writing or speech competitions and I've been able to find other extra projects to do on the side, including an English Comic Competition. My teacher heart is starting to feel whole again.

So what are your main sources of motivation? How much is internal drive? How much is externally derived? How much do you actively try to affect your own patterns of motivation? Let's hope you can try a little harder than I did this past summer... ;p

In my next post;
The Japanese School Festival

Exploring Miyazaki: A Little Bit of Now.

Many JETs pose after the welcome dinner

It is the time of year of welcome parties and summer festivals in Japan, and so lately JETs find that there is always something fun to do. It definitely adds to the excitement of life in Japan for new JETs! And of course it brings us older JETs out and having a good time socializing too ;).

This past weekend was no exception to the busyness of the season, begun with a JET welcome party and then followed by a festival and camping down by the southern peninsula of Miyazaki, Cape Toi.

The one photo I managed...
With an amazing photo bomb!
Boo ya!

To start the weekend off, our local Miyazaki JET volunteer group (MAJET) organized our big annual welcome party for all the new JET arrivals throughout the prefecture. It was a large event of about 75 foreigners getting together this year! There are about 55 JETs within the whole of Miyazaki prefecture and many of them, this year especially, have partners who came with them to Japan, making the party bigger than usual. I imagine unsuspecting locals must get quite a shock seeing that many foreigners gathered at the little ol' "downtown" cross-street at Tachibana Dori in Miyazaki!

Barno2Gatsu pic from their website.

The main event was a dinner with a 2 hr all-you-can-drink (nomihoudai, 飲み放題) at a downtown Spanish restaurant [Barno2Gatsu; バルの２月], which has some amazing red wine sangria! Mmmmm! I was too busy socializing to take many photos it seems, but it was a great time as expected!

A typical izakaya and
nomihoudai experience

By the way, nomihoudai is the timed all-you-can-drink service for you and your party and is started anytime by simply asking your waitress. They will warn your table when your time is almost up and you should do a last call. I've found nomihoudai here are about ￥2,500 (about CAD $30 today) for a few hours and they tend to include beer, wine, umeshu (梅酒 - a sweet wine-like drink made from pickled plums and sugar), shouchuu (焼酎 - a clear distilled Japanese alcohol distilled from barley, rice, or various other things), and some chu-hi (チューハイ - fruity high-ball drinks with vodka or shochu). Nomihoudai is simple, cheap, and common in Japanese restaurants and izakayas (居酒屋 - drinking and tapas bars). It is both wonderful and dangerous. I will miss this sorely when I go back to expensive dining out in Vancouver...

Small private room style karaoke

Japanese parties usually have a nijikai (二次会 - second party), sometimes even followed by a sanjikai (三次会 - third party). There were two options for our nijikai; either going to an arcade and games center or to do karaoke in a large private room with space for mingling. I am usually not the biggest fan of karaoke, though it is definitely growing on me after being here for 2 years and having some amazingly hilarious times with fellow foreigners who don't care if anyone sucks at singing, but just make it fun for all.

Away we go!
行っています！

(Highlights include male friends taking on some Disney Princess roles and a girlfriend doing deep scream-o interpretations of unlikely songs!)

Also, even if you don't want to sing, you can join in with a tambourine or maracas, free to borrow at any Japanese karaoke. These sort of experiences have really helped me to appreciate the Japanese style private room karaoke. Now the Western style on a stage at a bar in front of a bunch of strangers way just seems so weird...

Down the stairs to the left through the torii gate is the
main shrine at Udo Jingu. To the right where people
are standing is where you can throw the undama. 

After a fun Friday night though, the weekend still had more to come. The next day we headed down south towards Cape Toi, where that night a Fire Festival was being held. On the way we stopped at one of the (imo) best shrines in the prefecture, Udo Jingu, which is famous because it is in a cave along a cliff on the Nichinan coastline and so offers spectacular scenery.

Beautiful views over the cliff side.

After some research I discovered that the shrine is dedicated to Yamasachi-hiko (man of the mountain harvest), who is a deity known for hunting and who is also the father of Emperor Jimmu, the mythical first Emperor of Japan. Apparently Emperor Jimmu was either born in the cave or visited it as a young baby, and the many breast-shaped rocks nourished him. Drinking any of the water that drips in the cave is seen as especially lucky for pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing. The shrine is also known to give blessings to newlyweds.

Inside the cave shrine area.

Try to throw your stone in the pool
in the rope for good luck!

One of the things to do at Udo Jingu is to try to throw clay stones you can buy at the shrine (undama) into a water pool on a rock below, distinguished by the shimenawa rope around it. You can buy 5 of the little stones for ￥100 (about CAD $1.25 today). Of course you can also buy omikuji (fortunes) and omamori (good luck talisman) at the shrine.

The priest reading blessings towards the alter and the
assistant in the corner. As far as I know, because I was
not photographing the alter area, it was alright for me
to take this photo. 

When we were there we were lucky enough to see part of a Shinto ceremony performed on a woman, presumably blessing her (or perhaps her unborn child?). She was kneeling down with her face prostrate on the floor in the center of the room while the priest first sang / read some blessings from a scroll. Next, he moved around her waving a big golden instrument with bells and leaves over her, and a young female assistant either played the flute or beat a taiko drum in one corner of the room. It was incredibly beautiful to see.

Next, we were off to the Cape Toi Fire Festival, which I got to experience for the first time! In my first year it was canceled because of rain, and last year I was away back home in Vancouver for a visit, so the pressure was on for me to finally get to this festival in my last year! Luckily the weather reports of storms were wrong and Amaterasu (the Sun Goddess) seemed to favour us :)

Our new friend who gave
us some of his salt!

Fire wielding men
dancing around the pole!

After setting up camp at the beach on the way and making a new friend of a local salt farmer, we drove up and got to the festival just in time for the main event. The legend behind the festival is that the local village had been terrorized by an awful serpent until a monk killed it by throwing a torch into its mouth! Now, a 30 metre wooden pillar is erected upright while men dance around and throw fireballs up at it to set off some fireworks in a bucket on the top of it.

As you can see, I stayed a fair distance
away from the fireball danger zone ;p

The stage to the right.

As you can imagine, this is not in accordance with most other countries' safety standards; many miss-throws happen and the crowd has to be careful! In the hour or so that it took the men to light the pole, two people in the crowd were apparently hit with fireballs! One was a child! o.0 !! Luckily we heard that both were fine!

The snake pole is
finally lit!

Yay fireworks!

To add to the atmosphere of the flying fireballs while the snake is trying to be lit, kids chant in Japanese about banishing the snake on a nearby stage while beating taiko drums. Also, there were food stalls around selling the typical festival snacks, such as 焼きそば (yakisoba - fried soba noodles),  蛸焼き (takoyaki - fried octopus dumplings), イカ焼き (ikayaki - grilled squid on a stick), 焼きともろこし (yakitomorokoshi - grilled corn on the cob), フライポテト ("furaido potato" - french fries), かき水 (kakigori - shaved ice), and of course ビール ("bi-ru" - beer).

The ferry drops you off here and there
are suddenly monkeys everywhere!

That night we camped out at the beach across from Koujima Island (幸島) and visited the island the next day via a local ferryman / fisherman who takes you across for ￥1000/person (about CAD $12 today). While this may seem expensive, it's worth it at least once because Koujima, also known as Monkey Island, is famous for having "cultured" monkeys.

Quite an end to a weekend! 

Pretty place to be anyway!
Even without the monkeys!

In the 1950's it was observed that the monkeys there washed their food before eating it, and so since then many studies were done about primate families and animal acculturation. These days the ferryman feeds the monkeys as he brings a boatload of tourists and so they come out and are used to having people around.

Unfortunately, according to a news article from a few years ago (see link below), it seems that over-feeding because of the tourist aspect has led the monkeys to lose some of their "cultured" ways.

They are by no means tame though; you still have to be careful not to look them in the eyes or touch them, but it's exciting to be able to observe these semi-wild creatures in such close quarters. Especially cute was when we had three little siblings playing "king of the castle" and vying for top position on an old white torii gate - a more challenging jungle gym for them because of the smooth and straight edges!

(Kojima Monkeys Still Draw Scientists 5 Decades On).

In my next post;
Summer Vacation & Motivation