Photo for Today

My Halloween craziness has begun! This week has been filled with craft activities and preparing for three Halloween parties. I barely have time to think straight, much less write blog entries. Sorry! Here's a nice shot of Aaron and Holt snoozing on the couch, though. The little guy refused to take a nap at school and subsequently passed out around five p.m.

Ridge's New Shirt

Just a quick snap shot of Ridge showing off his new shirt. It seems that he has gone completely "native" and insists on making the peace sign for all of his photos lately. That's what everyone here does - kids and adults alike. As soon as a camera come out, those fingers go up and everyone poses.

Oyuugikai

As I mentioned in the last post, last weekend was the pre-school “singing and dancing” festival. “Oyuugikai” literally means, “Dance party”. This annual event takes an amazing amount of patience and perseverance from the teachers, in my opinion. I can’t imagine anyone in the U.S. trying to teach a group of three-year olds dances, even if they are very simple. Each age group learned two dances; one was performed with all the boys and girls in that age group, and one with just boys (or just girls). The oldest class, Ridge’s class, also learned a third dance that was actually a bit complicated. The event finished with a group song, as you can see in this photo.
Pre-school students

Each “act” required some amount of costume change, which the mothers helped with. Most of the audience was comprised of grandparents, fathers, older siblings, and friends. Our situation was a little reversed. Aaron is much more laid back than me, so we decided it was better for him to be the one with the boys and helping them change into their costumes. I hung out in the back with the dads and manned the video camera. Here is the rack set up in a room off to the side where they hung all the costumes (each was labeled and arranged in order of appearance).
Costumes

Here is Holt, dressed in a costume resembling that of a popular animated hero on TV named “Rollpan-chan”. She is a character from the Anpan Man series (I wrote a blog entry a while back on him. Click here for a reminder. I explain him more in this post about Holt’s birthday blog link ).
Holt

Here is Ridge dressed in a traditionally-styled costume performing his “Yosakoi Soran” dance. It’s a traditional kind of dance with a modern twist that is very popular with adults. He really loved doing it and took it very seriously.
Ridge

We were really very proud of the boys and are still amazed that they did all the dancing right along with their Japanese friends!

I’m sorry that this blog entry isn’t as descriptive as usual. This is a very busy time of year for me. Between now and November 11th, I have no less than FIVE Halloween events to deal with and plan, two social parties I have to attend, an English contest I have to attend with a student next week, and a family portrait to try and arrange for Ridge and Holt. My English classes are all doing crafts now, so I have to do a lot of prep for that, too. I’m afraid I haven’t had much time for blogging.

Here's a picture we snapped today of the boys cuddling on the couch.

Photos

Well, school festival season is at an end. I will try to write a post this week to give you an idea what exactly “school festival” season entails. For now, I will simply share a few photos with you.

This is Ridge wearing his new “hero” track suit (EVERYONE wears these track suits here). We bought the boys treats as a reward for doing such a great job at their own school festival two weekends ago. I’ll explain it all in my next post.
Outfit

These links are of the pizzas we made for our pizza night on Friday. Holt’s is a heart with a face and Ridge’s is a giant face.
Heart pizza
face pizza

Oblivious

This morning I was reminded of how oblivious Aaron and I are to the events occurring around us sometimes. Its not that we plan on it and its certainly not because we don’t care, we just don’t know enough Japanese. In our day-to-day lives, our lack of Japanese has ceased to be much of an issue. We know enough to get by, enough to know when to ask for help, and we know who to ask for translating help. After a while, it’s easy to become complacent about living in a country where we really on catch a fraction of what is happening. Nobody expects us to understand, and we have certainly risen to their expectations. However, sometimes it can be a real shocker to get some insight into the world everyone else in the village lives in.

This past weekend Hokkaido was covered by a huge storm system. The wind began on Saturday night and didn’t stop until sometime in the wee hours of the morning on Monday. The howling was fierce, rattling our windows and making the sliding wooden doors in our house shake. Aaron and I settled in to watch a mildly scaring movie and I found myself starting constantly, jumping at the wind and rain as it blew through the village. Earlier in the day Aaron had braved the roads to Nayoro and returned home with tales of high water and rushing rivers. We didn’t think much about it because, though there is a river running through the village, the houses are all situation pretty far from danger. So, our little family just battened down the hatches and watched the crazy weather from the warm comfort of our home.

Now, it’s Tuesday and I’ve returned to work (Monday was a holiday). After three days off, I was sitting at my desk, sluggishly finishing the last of my coffee when Mr. Kamaya came into the office. He always likes to tell me about things that have been happening that I might not be aware of. It really helps me to not feel so much like I’m in a vacuum. This morning he shared with me what his weekend had been like. Apparently the entire staff (or at least the male staff, I would guess) pulled what Mr. Kamaya called a “special shift”. They worked for 24 hours straight keeping a vigil over the village. City office workers took turns filling sandbags and placing them in strategic locations all around the village for fear of flooding. He communicated that they had been genuinely concerned about some of the homes being destroyed or the roads washing away. Then he mimed falling asleep at his desk, chuckled, and rubbed his forearms to say that he was sore and tired.

So, while Aaron and I were drowsing in front of a new DVD, the rest of the village was pulling together to keep the roads and homes safe. We had no idea. Keep in mind that we live right across our very narrow street from the city offices. I usually know if there is something going on because I can watch the building from my couch. As Mr. Kamaya was telling me about his “special shift” I found myself in awe of the casualness with which these guys take care of each other. It really is like this village is one big family. Mr. Kamaya didn’t seem to see much special in what everyone had done, he was just telling me he was tired. I think when it’s finally time for us to leave, it’s things like this that I will miss the most; the amazing sense of community prevalent in Nishiokoppe is really something special.

Photo for Today

Here's a shot from last weekend when we had our party. Ridge, Holt, Aiko, and Hibiki chowed down on some genuine Kraft macaroni and cheese. I wonder if I've gotten the girls hooked on it...

Snack?

Wow! My week has just peaked. Now that I've been here a year, I find myself surprised less and less as we settle into Japanese life. However, my assistant superintendent (who speaks about ten words of English) just fixed that. As his meeting ended, he walked to my desk with a dish he had been snacking off of. The women he was meeting with had brought it to him. From a distance, I could see something longish and red. I peered at the plate and assumed it was some kind of dry chili pepper as he gestured towards me as an offer to sample the snacks. I've become accustomed to all manner of dried fish snacks, but I was completely unprepared for what I suddenly realized was not fish at all, but candied grasshoppers. He laughed when he saw my undisguised horror; I couldn't help myself. I didn't even have to spit out any of my meager Japanese vocabulary for him to understand that I was declining his kind offer to share.

"It's good," he said in Japanese.
I waved my hand in front of my face, using the Japanese gesture for no thank you (though in my case I suppose it meant, "no way!").
"Amai?" I asked, wondering if they were sweet.
He smiled. "Hai," he said affirmatively and assured me again that they were good, but I just waved my hand again a bit frantically and we both laughed.

I think I've lost my appetite.

Dinner and Drums

I know, I know. I’ve been terribly remiss in my blogging duties. I haven’t even posted any photos lately. Sorry about all that. I have some free time at work right now, so I’ll give you a little update on life in Nishiokoppe. You’ll have to wait for pictures, though. I don’t have any handy.

Last Friday night was our first dinner party in a while. I decided we needed to have fajitas (thanks to all the fajita seasoning mix that Mom brought us). The guest list sort of kept growing and growing until we were looking at feeding about 12 people, including Aaron and me. On top of that, two more Japanese children, courtesy of the two Japanese moms that I invited, would join our two children. This was the largest crowd we’ve had in the house to date. It was cozy, yummy, and oh so very English speaking! I was in heaven. We had Colin (Australian), two Canadians, a fellow from Nebraska, and assorted Japanese friends. Needless to say, the dominant language spoken was English. I can’t remember the last time I was around so many people speaking English!

I cooked up a HUGE batch of fajitas (I had to mail/internet order the meat), Mexican rice, borracho beans, and queso. We topped off the evening with the all American cookie: Oreos. Everyone must have had a good time because the first people to leave were the moms (plus their kids and one husband) and they didn’t leave until nearly midnight. I think Aaron stayed up talking with our overnight guests until about four a.m. A few folks stayed the night and hung around for breakfast. When they eventually headed home, I felt like I had gotten a great dose of English.

Sunday was the Kamiokoppe Elementary School Festival. The kids were really excited and energetic despite the fact that there are only five of them. They sang some songs, did a great little play, and showed us their unicycle stunts. I was excited to finally be a part of something like this. What with there only being four teachers on staff now, they needed some extra hands for the show. Kamiokoppe has a tradition of the teachers playing a few instrumental songs. They tried to arrange it so I could help them by playing keyboard or recorder, but I was finally able to make them understand just how musically illiterate I am. So, I played the snare drum for two songs. I was terribly nervous, despite the ridiculous simplicity of the songs. I haven’t played an instrument since we were forced to learn the recorder in the fourth grade. Everything went off with very few snags and everyone had a lovely time. I also got to help open and close the curtain. I know it sounds like no big deal, but it was a real treat to feel more like part of the staff as opposed to feeling like a guest all the time.

Next Saturday will be the Pre-school School Festival. The boys have been practicing their songs and dances for a while. It’s been a challenge to encourage Ridge to be brave and try his best, but he’s a trooper. I’m crossing my fingers that nothing will go wrong and everyone will have a good time!

Anyway, that’s it for now. Fall is coming without a doubt and the trees are all starting to change colors. I’ll try and have some photos to post later this week.