halloween

Jesse and I both had Halloween parties at our schools the past couple weekends. It meant an extra day of going in to work, but they were really fun. At the school I went to, we took the kids out trick-or-treating. The school managers had asked some neighborhood stores to give out candy when we came by. We were a crazy-looking group...about 36 Japanese kids, 30 of which were witches and princesses, some Japanese staff and a few foreigners. I was a rather boring pumpkin, but one of the other teachers was a big eggplant! One little girl shouted "Happy Halloween!" to everyone passing by. We got a lot of smiles. There are a lot of foreigners in this town, and they seemed the most amused. My favorite part of the day: this little 2-year-old, Madoka, held my hand the whole time we were out walking around. She is adorable!

Here's Jesse with some of the kids at his party.

Interesting side-note: We learned that day that eggplants are sometimes used as part of the o-bon rituals in August, when Japanese remember their ancestors. Eggplants represent horses, if I understood correctly, and the idea is that they are sort of a gateway from "the other world." One little girl was really scared of the teacher dressed as an eggplant. I doubt this has anything to do with it, but it seemed sort of appropriate.

film festival

Jesse and I have been trying to catch as many events as we can in Tokyo lately, especially knowing that our time here will be drawing to a close. Last year, we went to the Tokyo International Film Festival and saw a European film (Bye Bye Blackbird) and also sat in on a Q&A with the director. We just happened to find out at the last minute that the festival was back this past weekend, and decided to head into the city to see one of the films, which we did...eventually....

This year, we hoped to see a Japanese film. I suppose that sounds strange since we live here, but we can never go to Japanese movies in the regular theatres, because, of course, they don't have English subtitles. We decided to go to "Notebook of Life" at 4:30pm, knowing nothing about the movie except that there were a lot of beautiful snow scenes (as was obvious from the Japanese-only website).

We got there early, got reserved seats, and settled in. But there were two problems: a) They had double-booked many of the seats, including ours. It took them quite a while to get it all figured out and find a place for everyone. b) When the movie finally started, there were no subtitles, even though we had inquired about this ahead of time.

They apologized and we lucked out in getting the last two seats for another movie at 6:20, and they gave us the tickets for free! Which was great, since they were $15 each. I have to say, all this is quite unusual for Japan in my experience...usually stuff like this is so organized. So since we had time, we walked around the area (Roppongi), which has a lot of interesting architecture (I'll post pictures of it another time).

The movie was great. It's called Chosyu Five and is about five Japanese samurai who went to England to study in the late 19th century, just before the Meiji Restoration. Four of the five main actors and the director were all there before the movie for comments! We had no idea that was going to happen. Afterwards, there was a Q&A with the director, which was also really interesting.

The director, on the left, with four of the actors.

ka ki ku ke ko

One of the things that's interesting to me about the Japanese language is that there are a limited number of sounds. Almost every syllable is made up of one consonant and one vowel, accept in the case of a few blended sounds, and a few de-voiced sounds. Often, the words differ by only one syllable, and this can be confusing. Is it karimasu or kirimasu? Kakimasu or kakemasu?

One of my friends has been going to ramen shops lately and ordering a spicy kind of ramen. The word for "spicy" is "karai." Incidentally, the word for "hate" is "kirai." So lately, he's been going into restaurants, ordering his ramen, then turning to the waitress and saying "kirai." I.e., "I'd like such and such ramen please. I hate it."

charming yukari

Jesse and I went for a walk this afternoon, just as the sun was starting to set. I remembered while we were out enjoying the neighborhood that I used to feel disapointed that we lived in a suburban area "with no charm." While I'd still love to live out in the country, or even in the city, I've come to really love our neighborhood. I was struck by a few interesting scenes today (and I was testing out our new camera) so here they are:

Lots of vending machines in Japan. This one was sort of in the middle of nowhere.

This was at a nearby temple in the setting sun.

These buckets were at the edge of a cemetery. They are labeled with family names, and used to wash family graves.

A random Japanese house.

A family shrine, at the back of their gardens.

Jesse, rice fields, an apartment building and a lady with a dog.

yamagishi

We spent a beautiful fall day at Yamagishi Farm near Narita today. Tetsuo's parents live there, along with two other families. Yamagishi is a community that was founded in the 1950's and that has many locations throughout Japan and in other parts of the world. Mio and Tetsuo met at a Yamagishi when they were growing up, and Tetsuo's parents have continued to live and work in several locations. This is one of the smaller ones. We had a delicious lunch that consisted solely of food from the farm - fresh tomatoes, cooked eggplant, pumpkin, and numerous other Japanese vegetables. Then, we spent the afternoon digging up sweet potatoes and touring the other areas of the farm.

Digging up the sweet potatoes.



These "beans" were nearly a foot in length.

Tetsuo and his father and mother.

A vegetable. We learned so many new food words today. This one slips my mind.

Mio and Tetsuo and grass whistles.

rainy day

That hardly captures it. September is typhoon season. A couple days ago, there were two typhoons near Japan, and we felt the effects. The train line that we live on had an accident on Friday - one of the electric wires they run on broke (due to the strong winds and rain), so the trains stopped running. Our head office called and told us we'd need to take a taxi to the nearest station on another train line. We got ready quickly, packing our work clothes, including a second pair of socks and shoes, in plastic bags and then in our backpacks. We sloshed through water on the sidewalks, our umbrellas flopping around in the wind, for about 20 minutes, on our way to the taxi stand. We took a $30 taxi ride (at least the company will pay for it) thoroughly soaked, and then hopped on a train for a couple stops. Jesse went to the airport that day to pick up a new teacher, and ended up sitting in the airport for over five hours. The plane was due in at 2:10. Apparently, they diverted it to an army base, where it sat for a bit and re-fueled, then flew back to Narita, circled, and finally landed at 7:20. Jesse and the new teacher didn't end up getting to their destination until 10pm, due to trains that were both very late, and very slow. He took another taxi home. While I was at my school teaching that day, rain pelted the windows, water steadily streaming down them all day. All in all, it rained from Thursday night to Saturday morning. I don't know how many inches we ended up getting, but I am going to guess a lot. Today, it's 75 degrees and beautiful. It looks like a different world out there!