Social Gatherings

Please excuse the blurry image. As Aaron put it when Ridge asked why the photo was blurry, "they just wouldn't stop moving". This is a shot of our first village gathering. Apparently, this is a very popular folk singer. He and his band came to Nishiokoppe today for a performance at the hotel. You can't easily tell from this picture, but everyone came with sitting cushions, snacks, and some with blankets. All but a couple of dozen people sat on the floor of this large entertainment theater located in Rimu, the village hotel. You can see a few more pictures of the hotel of you click the link on the right for Nishiokoppe's website. The music was great. The band consisted of a pianist, violinist, drummer (regular style), a man playing traditional flutes (shakuhachi), another man playing a traditional stringed instrument called a shamisen, a bass guitarist who also played another traditonal style stringed instrument, and an absolutely awesome woman playing the taiko drums. Her biceps where solid muscle. This shot only shows the smaller drums. Later during the performance, they wheeled out a larger drum, with a diameter of roughly three feet! The vocalist was interesting to listen to, but he also stopped to talk alot, so the boys and I were pretty much lost. Everyone else thought he was terribly funny.

At about noon today, our doorbell rang (though it is more like it plays a song than just rings) and who should appear but Mr. Kamaya. Over the next three or four minutes, he and Aaron manged to figure out that Mr. Kamaya was here to tell us that in twenty minutes, he would be coming back to pick us up and take us to the concert. Ooops! I had thought it was in the evening, so we had to scrap our plans for making lunch and dash out the door. Of course, as we walk into the auditorium, we turn heads. The boys quickly attracted the attention of the three children from across the street. That kept them highly entertained until the show began. All in all, it was an interesting experience.

Tonite, we have been watching a little Japanese television, mainly to see how people do things. For example, we were pretty sure we were using the futons and pads correctly, but five minutes into a Japanese cartoon, we could see that in fact we have been doing everything right. I never thought I would be watching t.v. to try and learn cultural nuiances! Right now, though, there is a show on about the Carpenters. I don't know what they are saying, but it's kind of nice to hear some music in English.

Friday night was our first welcome party, thrown by the middle school teachers. They are a total hoot! One of the ladies is pregnant, so I am eager to find some time to talk with her about prenatal care in Japan. The special education teacher continues to show me that special education is beyond the boundaries of language. He kept giving me a hard time, teasing and talking too fast in Japanese (his English is pretty limited). The principal, Mr. Dohi laughed and pointed at him, saying "difficult". I had to giggle at that and explained to him (with a little help) that I felt all special education teachers had to be difficult. What a shock when the special ed. teacher asked me if I knew about Asperger's Syndrome! He said he doesn't have any students with Asperger's, but he wanted to know of I was familiar with it. Talk about a universal language. The party was loads of fun - a barbeque Japanese style. We sat around a couple of small grills, built with seating around them 360 degrees. Pre-sliced meat and veggies are placed on it, and each person helps themselves when the food is cooked, then more is added, and so on. Very casual. They brought fireworks (mainly sparkers) with which to entertain the kids. Once the boys relaxed, they had so much fun they didn't want to leave at all! Several of the male teachers were chasing them, and pretending to allow Ridge to push them around and knock them over. Holt, of course, charmed the ladies. It was a very nice evening.

I've just discovered that I have no control over the order of my photos or where they are placed, unfortunately. The picture of Holt is just for fun. It was taking in the room we are using as our (Aaron and me) bedroom. It is actually a formal sitting room, but as it is the prettiest room in the house and we have no need for a formal sitting room, we turned it into a bedroom. I am standing in the far corner, with sliding screen behind me. The screens behind me open into another large room that is serving as the boy's room. We solved the clothing storage issue by putting all our clothes into the third bedroom on the other side of the house. The boys seem to get a kick out of having a "dressing" room. As you can see, the room has no bed because we simply fold up the futon and put in into a closet in the other room during the day. So, I guess we could use it as a formal sitting room if we really wanted to.

By the way, if you click on the photos, they enlarge.