Halloween Poetry!

Happy Halloween! ^o^  First, enjoy a picture that is a digital reproduction of the doodles I draw on the chalkboard to explain how to go trick-or-treating:

When you go trick-or-treating, you become almost as large as the houses.

Anyway, now that Task Booklet 3 of the Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy Course has been submitted and is presumably on its way to Tokyo with an October 30th postmark, I can post one of the poems I did for one of the tasks.  The task was to write some haiku or tanka.  For the free topic, I choose to write a tanka I call 「博多のハロウィン」 (“Hakata’s Halloween”), which was inspired by Halloween, the fact that there actually is a Halloween parade in Hakata, and the chapter on dialects. I’m not completely sure this is correct Japanese nor correct use of Hakata dialect. ^o^;

ハロウィンじゃ

飴を買わんと

行かんばい

微笑んでおる

幽霊のため

(In romaji): harowin ja / ame wo kawan to / ikan bai / hohoendeoru / yuurei no tame

Translation:

It’s Halloween

You have to buy candy

For smiling ghosts

Well, I like it at least.  But I usually do laugh at my own jokes. ^o^;

EDIT (November 22): I’ve gotten the Task Booklet back, and my poem has a big swirl on it, meaning it was okay!  ^_^b (Unlike Task no. 5 which has all sorts of red “calligraphy” on it. ^o^;;;)

I didn’t go to the Halloween parade because the night of the 30th I went to a Halloween party, whose grand finale was a 2-hour karaoke session that started at 2AM! XD

I hope everyone gets what they want from the Great Pumpkin, and don’t forget to do something nice for the Great Pumpkin as well! \^o^/

I’m Wearing Plaid!

Haroo!

This isn’t for Halloween.  This is my 制服 (uniform) for GACKT’s mock school concert.

The online store I ordered from did not let me down. Well, I did measure myself about 10 billion times and check each garment’s size 10 trillion times before ordering.  My co-ALT lent me one of his ties.  Now I’m ready to go to Kobe in my fake uniform and be a “student” in GACKT’s school!

For the record, the uniform of the school I work at looks nothing like what I’m wearing.  That would make me feel kinda weird. Well, weirder than this whole thing already kinda does, but oh well. It’s a funny kind of weird. ^_^;

Random Life Stuff: Catch-Up Blitz!

Contrary to this blog’s contents, September and October have been busy as hell between work, study, and everything else.  So what’s been going on?  Let’s get this blog up-to-date in the fastest way possible: a Random Life Stuff post in bulleted list format!

• For about three days there was a 5-legged cricket in my apartment.  I gave him some grass, water, and called him “Five Legs.”  He left when I tried to give him a bit of banana.
• I did moonviewing （月見）the night of the Autumnal Equinox (Sept. 23rd; it’s a national holiday).  I couldn’t really capture it in a photo with my little point-and-shoot, but after boosting the highlights and shadows, I got an image that is at least interesting if not filled with…night feelings.

~Cosmic Aesthetic Emotions~

• The last week of September through the first week of October was Census time in Japan.  Yay, I get to be a statistic!
• All this month I’ve been doing a Halloween Extravaganza in Oral Communication classes.  It consists of three lessons: I. Intro to Halloween, II. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” and III. Exquisite Corpse presentations.  I made sure to buy Halloween stickers to give out as points, and my co-ALT bought some candy.  Next week on the 28th & 29th I plan to sneak about in the hallways during lunch time carrying a candy-filled pumpkin.  I told the kids, “if you see me with a pumpkin and quietly say to me, ‘trick or treat!’ I might give you something.” (Can you tell I really like Halloween? \^o^/♡)
• On 10/10/10, I went to a charity event some JET friends of mine were involved in benefiting a school in Cambodia. It was held at Nishimura Temple in Fukuoka City.  One of the highlights were all the candles set inside of cut bamboo.  Also, there was music provided by two groups; one from Ooita Prefecture called Baoba (you can see pictures from this event at this post over on their blog), and another one called AlayaVijiana which featured a sitar player! Another highlight was the carrot cake one of my friends made to sell at the event.  *Nom nom nom*
• I didn’t get to go mountain climbing with the first years this year because they went on a day when we had class with the second years. T_T
• I’ve also been busy working on my presentation for Mid-Year Seminar. ^_^;
• Another thing trying to kill me is the Linguistics & Pedagogy Correspondence Course I’m taking (produced by CLAIR and the Research Institute for Japanese Language Education).  Last year I did CLAIR’s Advanced Japanese Course, but that one was set at the relaxed pace of one book/test per month.  The course I’m in now is at the breakneck pace of one book/test due every 2.5 weeks.  Which wouldn’t be too bad if I had received the first book on time or if the tests were multiple choice; neither of these is the case.
• So with all this, I need to relax every now and then.  Well, it took 74 hours spread over 6 months, but I finally beat Final Fantasy XIII. I don’t plan on doing any of the post-game quests.  I rate this game 3 ☆s overall, but definitely 5 ☆s for graphics.
  

  FFXIII at least looks incredibly beautiful.

• This past Thursday I did another teaching visit to the School for the Blind.  In one class the teacher had the students sing the chorus of “You Are My Sunshine.”  I actually didn’t even know the song consisted of anything other than the chorus.  For the first time, I heard the first verse and realized that it’s actually a really sad song.  A really sad song that all of a sudden starts talking about how wonderful Louisiana is.
• For some reason unbeknown to me or any of the other 3 ALTs involved, I was chosen to be a judge in the Prefectural English Speech & Recitation Contest for Commerical High Schools.  (A “commercial school” is one that isn’t college prep, rather its students tend to get jobs directly after high school.  Here’s the article about it from the Arbiter of Truth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_high_school_%28Japan%29)  So next week I will once again not be in my school for a day.
• In a massive stroke of Luck, I got tickets for a Kamui Rakuen (Gakuen) show in Koube (widely known as “Kobe”).  These tickets were available only by lottery within the fanclub.  Non-fanclub members can go as long as they’re with the DEAR whose name is on the tickets, so I invited two friends.  While I’m very excited to go to such a concert, there’s one part that’s had me going “Dammit GACKT!! Why’d you have to do this?!?! TT_TT”: in order to get in to the pretend school that is the Kamui Rakuen, you have to be wearing a school uniform or something that passes for that. The rules are kinda strict but do have a little bit of leeway, but…while I can find plus size clothing in a store nearby, it’s a whole ‘nother matter when you need specific pieces.  I found a shirt I could use in a resale shop, but for the skirt I’ll have to resort to online stores.  I’ve found several “large size specialty stores” online, some of them with really nice pieces, but you can’t know what something’s gonna fit like even if waist and hip measurements are specified. Gaaaaaah, I knew I should’ve learned how to make my own clothes! >_<

Well, that’s it.  This blog is now up-to-date. Whew!

Oh wait there is one other thing!

• Last year I spent Christmas in Japan, so this year I’m going home.  (So get my room ready y’all! ^o^)

Introducing: ~Vignettes~

Lucky Hill, now with 25% more nostalgia!

… …XDDD Don’t mind me.

Anyway, I’ve created a new page, ~Vignettes~. Like all the other Pages, you can access it from the tabs below the header image.  This page will showcase brief conversations/interactions with students.  Currently, most of the content had already been posted in previous blog entries, but there are a couple I hadn’t posted before.  Also, to take into account the possibility that I misunderstood what was said to me when kids spoke to me in Japanese, I wrote down what was said to me (as I remember it).  I hope this Page will help satisfy the curiosity of those burning with the question, “what are the students like?”  Or just give you a healthy dose of “kids say the darndest things.” ^o^

体育祭 – Sports Day 2010

Okay, this post is a month late.  ^_^;  Partly I’d been putting it off because I was wondering whether I should put no pictures in it to be able to leave the post open, or whether I should post pictures (which more than likely have students in them) and password protect the thing. After going the password-protected route, I decided to take out some pictures, leaving only those in which it’s impossible to make out individual students.

For those just tuning in, 体育祭 (taiikusai, literally meaning “physical education festival” but usually translated as Sports Day Festival), is something schools across Japan put on.  The English translation is deceptive as when we think of “sports” we think of matches of things like baseball, soccer, etc, but there aren’t any such sports on Sports Day.  Instead, there’s tumbling, tug-of-war, relay races, cheerleading, hitomoji (making an image/letters with each person holding up one board), girls’ dance, and ouen, which is sort of like manly, militaristic cheerleading.  (If you type 応援団 into YouTube you’ll get several results; all are a bit different from each other and different from the way it’s done at my school, but that’s the general feeling.)

This year I actually took many more pictures in lieu of taking video.  Unfortunately, this year my seat was in the fourth row, so I couldn’t get a single clear shot until the end when I went to crouch down in front of the first row.

A wide shot showing the Red Team’s back board. You can also see a bit of Yellow Team’s.

I went into the school building during the lunch break to get the above shot. The Red Team backboard, obviously the one executed with the most skill, was made by the third year Art Course students.

Blue Team is happy!

Blue Team’s back board, which I thought had been made by the second years, was actually done by the first year Art Course!

At the conclusion of this year’s events, before the awards ceremony, there was something I didn’t see last year: all three teams came together and did ouen for the school.  There was a special ouendan composed of male members of the student council; they wore purple headbands, their regular uniform pants, the special taiikusai shirts, loafers, and white gloves.  In the middle, they raised a bamboo pole that had the school flag tied to it.  There was a small stake in the ground for the bamboo pole, but it wasn’t much really considering the height of the whole thing, which must’ve been about 50 feet (15 meters), and after about 5 minutes it started to waiver.  Luckily, the boys didn’t drop it. ^o^

Also fresh this year was a co-ed relay race near the end.  At least, I don’t remember this event being there last year.

Well, there’s really not much more I can say without putting up pictures, so I’ll leave it at this.  If you want to see last year’s posts about taiikusai, here are links (one is password protected. Don’t ask me what my name is, I won’t tell you.  ^o^):

Backboards for Taiikusai

It’s *Show Time!*