I said BRR!

It's definitely gettin cold out here. Granted not as cold as it is in Colorado (no snow yet) but it feels colder. This is most likely because despite it being an average of about 14 C this week (57F) it just stays that way. And the worst part about living in this cold is the little known trivia about Japanese winter survival...no insulation in the houses, and no central heating. So when I wake up in the morning, it's basically the same temperature inside as it is outside. Survival depends on space heaters, warming blankets/rugs, and the lovable Kotatsu (your Japanese word for the day) which is a coffee table you plug in and throw a blanket over because it heats up and keeps your legs warm!

Anyways, before it got all cold I managed to get out and have a good bit of fun and wanted to share some pictures and even video footage taken with my phone. I realized I was becoming increasingly homesick in general without even realizing it. Being unaware of how lonely I was because I was so busy allowed it to sneak up on me and affect my life in ways I didn't think it could. In turn I ended up putting alot of attention and hopes on things out of my control for happiness, and put so much energy into them I forgot some of who I was, and about creating my new life here. I was even being too much of a hermit and not getting out cus I was tired after work. Before I came here I was so confident, calm, rational and in tune with myself back home that I thought I was great it at no matter the circumstance, and thought I was doing really good with dealing with the homesickness and incredible loneliness I expected here. What I didn't expect was that it was more deep than I realized, and it totally caught me off-guard. It was like being on top of my little world, and so thinking that I could handle anything, I graduated myself to the next world. But it feels like going from peewee T-ball to the major leagues: it's an entirely different ballgame, and it comes with a lot more than I thought. So realizing this with the help a harsh wake up call, and conversations with good friends, I got myself back out doing fun stuff, and here are the results!

The first pic (they go in order from bottom to top) is from the night my local neighbors threw a sort of BBQ welcome party for me. They had whipped up their own delicious special sauce and threw meat after meat after veggie, after scrumptious meat on until I couldn't eat anymore! Then I just ran around and played with their little kids to work it off :)

The next few pictures are from Karatsu's Kunchi (Karatsu is the area of Saga prefecture north of here and Kunchi the festival is this yearly festival they all look forward to immensely). It was a blast! They have something like 14 floats that have giant ropes attached to them with two lines of over a 100 people pulling them around town, and people riding on it playing drums, flutes, and everyone yelling Essa! Essa! The floats go around town at night, then everyone gets drunk, then they wake up and do it all again during the next day.

Then I took some photos of Josh (a JET friend who lives nearby) and I hanging with our new friend Kousuke at his house down in this awesome valley. His family was Samurai, he has a great house with land and a forest and a lake, some dirt bikes, and we rode around, played soccer, hit golfballs and just goofed around.

Finally the photo of the city and the ones from the nightclub were in Fukuoka city. It's like the 2nd biggest city in Japan, and we went up for a pair of birthdays to a club called Fubar. It was good fun! We got there at like 10PM and stayed until the morning bus back at about 7AM.

*and of course the last one is just my students being goofballs in the hallway*

WHEW! I feel like I can write for pages and still not get everything that's happened recently in, but those are the big things. For the more curious types, hit me up on facebook or skype!!

-E

Extra photos

Aren't you all lucky, extra pictures! I had to get these from the teacher I worked with, but yeah, they're all from Anshotaikai (the speech recitation competition). *See below for the actualy blog post about all this, and more.

Fall!

Wow! It's been a month since the last update, I have truly been slacking. This past month has flown by with being way crazy busy, and I will try to summarize here. I'll also try saving the pictures for the end, so give me some feedback on if that works or if it's better with them mixed in with the text.

So since I got back from Kyoto, things got busy from the outset with work. I was told well ahead that there was a speech contest for the English students at my Junior high were coming up and that we would need to practice a little bit after class hours (and outside my work hours) so that we could help the students prepare. I didn't realize, however, that this meant I would be spending half of my lunch period, as well as everyday after class for about an hour working on it! They wanted me to perfect their pronunciation, their intonation, rhythm and pauses, and add gestures/body language to make it more interesting. It only required that much because all three grades at the junior high had a team that participated, so even with all that practicing and a rotating schedule, one group didn't get practice with me each day. They put alot of effort into it, and we managed to take home a bunch of prizes as a result! (the most of all the schools participating I think even) My first graders took first prize, my second graders took 2nd and 3rd prizes, and one of my third graders took 2nd prize. I'll include some pictures from the event. Overall it was lots of fun being a coach for these exceptional students. They came a long ways in the short time we spent together, and I was quite proud of their effort. I felt like we also got a chance to bond outside the classroom and hang out (I even gave them English nicknames) and reassured them that it didn't matter if we wont or lost, just that they learned and had fun. I also got a chance to make all the students laugh a bit when the JETs present were asked to put on a 'model performance' of each of the three speeches, haha. I have some pictures from driving there, and of the awards being given out I'll post.

Now would be a good time to explain the grade system in Japan too, as Mark requested just a short while ago. The compulsory schools in Japan are divided into 4 parts: Preschool (Hoikuen/Youchien), Elementary school (Shogakkou), Junior highschool (Chuugakkou) and Highschool (Koukou). The preschool encompasses everything from two years old to five, being like a kindergarten and lower. Elementary is much like in the U.S. with classes ranging from 1st to 6th. Junior high is 7th, 8th, and 9th grade equivalent to the U.S. and highschool is the last three years 10th, 11th, and 12th. This would be no problem except that when you ask a student what grade they are in Japanese, they will never answer 7th, 8th, or 9th. They will say 1st, 2nd or 3rd because it's always assumed to be in the context of what grade in their school. Since I work primarily with the Junior highschools, I might refer to my students as first graders, second graders, or third graders, but I mean the twelve, thirteen, and fourteen year olds.

On top of doing this stuff, we also had Bunkasai (culture day) to prepare for. This landed the weekend before the speech competition and it was basically a day for a bunch of artistic departments of the school to showcase stuff, and have a fun day of work. It did mean I had to come in to work on a Saturday though. It was cool, because for each part of the performance it was split into each of the three grades, and every member of that class participated in each one at least a little. Each grade had to sing as a choir, performed a theatrical play, showed some artwork, shared their community involvement projects, etc. I also had more effort to put in since I was in the Taiko (Japanese drumming) group with the students who were performing at the event, so that added another night a week spent practicing just with the Junior high students. It was alot of fun and I'll throw a picture I've got up from one of the songs they sung, and if I can get the DVD my Principal gave to me to work, I can even post the video! (I'm way better than that first one when I arrived)

Outside of work I've had fun with JET get-togethers now and then like our Saga Sake festival. I also went to see Rancid live in Fukuoka (a really good American band I've wanted to see for a while). Also got to go to a Jleague soccer match with a taiko buddy and his coworkers; since his company sponsors them they get free tickets (there's a funny story behind this that's ideal 'lost in translation' material, so ask if you'd like to hear).

Overall a very fun and exciting month, though near the end I could feel myself start to be a little drained and get a little sick even as I came down with a cold. I also had a bit of homesickness creep in that I had been ignoring I think while so busy, and it led to a bit of a funk. But I'm pulling through both right now, and just writing out about all the fun things I've done has helped me feel better about it. I miss everyone at home very very much, but things are good.

BTW, not sure if I mentioned it yet, but please email me lots as it makes me feel loved to hear from everyone, and I would like to stay connected with what's going on with friends and family, especially those I don't get to talk to regularly! My phone's email address is ericraschke@i.softbank.jp so do it!

My allstar 2nd and 3rd graders off to win us some English trophies!

After the competition I wanted to have an impromptu Halloween party for the kids who worked so hard. No costumes to speak of, so we resorted to TP mummies.
My Taiko teacher Mori and the girl part of our team (the boys were off goofing around I think)

They sung along with songs played over the speakers as well as choral ones at culture day

Rancid venue in Fukuoka. This place was packed.

The organized cheering section for our soccer team, Sagan-Tosu!!!

Kyoto!

So this past week we had a 5 day weekend vacation from school and I decided to meet up with my good buddy Kevin in Kyoto and do some sightseeing. I had been before on my study tour but I could hardly even remember what I had seen. Overall it was excellent. I stayed in a local hostel, saw tons of temples and shrines, walked and biked around the city, and got to hang with Kevin and his Tokumachi friends.

I took about 200 pictures which would not only take forever to upload

here, but also would probably bore the life out of everyone, so I’ll try to just throw up a couple of my favorites here and then some more on facebook (not all 200).

We didn’t really stick to a very solid program, instead preferring to wander wherever our curiosity took us, which I believe served us quite well and proved fun. Because it was Silver week (the break) there were tons of tourists everywhere and it was a little tiresome to simply follow the crowd so we avoided this whenever possible.

The main thing to do in Kyoto is to check out the plethora of temples and shrines. All the Buddhist structures are labeled Tera or Temples so they’re easy to tell apart from the Jinja or Shrines which belong to the Shinto tradition. Either one can be a small offering spot, to a large complex of buildings, though often the temples seemed to be more elaborate and grand

Among the highlights for me was the first night’s dinner, where we ate at this excellent little traditional Japanese restaurant (2^nd picture). I also really enjoyed wandering Ponto-cho,

a small side street crammed with restaurants and bars that is famed for being an area where Geisha and their Maiko apprentice can still be spotted occasionally. This place was excellent but as it turns out is impossible to get a table at, we tried for about an hour. The 'Philosopher's Walk' (4th pic) by the creekside was excellent as well, quite peaceful compared to the rest of the city, and we even found a sketch artist drawing there who sold us copies of his works. On the last day we took this really nice hike through Fushimi Inari shrine which is the shrine of many Tori gates. The gates

are the orange ones you see which are the easiest indicator that it is a shrine instead of a temple as they only denote Shinto places. This one had so many it created a tunnel of them all along a 4km hike around the south-eastern hills above the city. It is dedicated to the harvest and the key that the fox holds is the key to the granary.

P.S. I apologize again for the crazy unorganized blog, I'll work on making it prettier/simpler. I think I might just be trying too hard to make it look just right!