January was a musical month. On January 20th I taught classes at the second annual International School Day. It was held on the island next to me that belongs to Hiroshima Prefecture. This is the same event at which I taught square dancing last year. It is an event sponsored by the rotary club for junior high school students in Hiroshima Prefecture, and is meant to be a kind of international exchange experience without spending all the money to actually go abroad. The classes can be about almost anything as long as there is no Japanese used. It is supposed to [View Full Entry]

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So, when the weather finally became good enough to get a ferry ticket off of the main island of Okinawa, Erin (a fellow English teacher in Japan whom I met at the hostel) and I took off for Zamami Island. Zamami is a very small island about an hour-and-a-half ferry ride southwest of Okinawa's main island. The water was still turbulent and I got seasick pretty quickly. However, things started looking up once we arrived in Zamami. It was a really pretty island with a population of only about 700 or so, and it had all the kind of activities Erin [View Full Entry]

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It’s been a couple of weeks since my winter break, but I’ve been so busy with the new semester that I haven’t had time to write anything about my trip to Okinawa. I did so many things and took so many pictures there, that I have decided to break this entry up into two parts. The first half of my trip was in the capital city, Naha, on the main island of Okinawa. The second half of my trip was spent on a much smaller island southwest of the main island of Okinawa. Okinawa is the southernmost prefecture of Japan, located [View Full Entry]

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Happy Holidays Everyone! Like all good hardworking Japanese folks, I worked on Christmas day and through the rest of the week. However, I still managed to celebrate Christmas in many ways. About a month ago the head teacher at the preschool asked me if I would play my violin at their winter performance. Of course there was a catch. She requested that I do it dressed in a female Santa Claus costume. You can imagine that I wasn’t too enthusiastic about the Santa costume part, but of course I agreed. I accompanied my oldest preschool students on the tune “Santa Claus [View Full Entry]

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Just before it started to get really cold her and winter came to stay, I took a three-day weekend trip to the Iya Valley region in Mideastern Shikoku. I had been there once before last summer when I went white water rafting in the beautiful Yoshino River. At the time I thought it looked like such a beautiful place for hiking, but I was with a group and we were on a time limit. So, I decided to return to this region by myself and hike around a bit. Besides the surprisingly clear Yoshino River and the beautiful Iya Valley, there [View Full Entry]

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The weather has become what it’s going to be like for the rest of the winter with temperatures lingering just above freezing so that it’s cold and rainy all the time. But, during the last bit of autumn we had an unexpected Indian summer, and it was a perfect day for a bike ride around the island of Yuge! I started my bike ride early in the morning and didn’t know just how warm it was going to get, so I dressed very warmly with several layers, my hat, gloves, and scarf. But, I ended up taking a layer off every [View Full Entry]

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The last couple of weeks have been very busy with all the school culture festivals happening. The culture festivals, or “bunkasai,” are annual performances to showcase the school’s and community’s talent. As soon as the undoukai are over with in September, preparation for the bunkasai in November starts. I was involved in three different bunkasai this year: my junior high school’s, my high school’s, and the Yuge island community bunkasai. So, I had a lot of preparation to do too. For the junior high school’s bunkasai, I was directing the play &ldqu [View Full Entry]

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As I explained last year, Halloween is a very popular thing in Japan, but only commercially. Japanese people don’t actually celebrate the holiday in any way other than buying things like little plastic jack-o-lanterns and pumpkin cakes. Still, I can tell that Japanese people are really interested in the holiday and think it’s a fun idea. It’s just they don’t really understand what it’s all about, just like Americans might want to celebrate Oktoberfest or Cinco de Mayo but don’t understand what the holiday is. In fact, I’m sure many Americans don’ [View Full Entry]

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Basically the biggest event of the year on Yuge, the autumn harvest festivals, are finally over. Each of the main neighborhoods holds a festival that continues for about three days, so all of the island’s festivals put together span over three weeks. There are three main festivals on Yuge; Kamiyuge (upper Yuge island), the smallest is my neighborhood- Hikino, and the biggest- Shimoyuge (lower Yuge island). I planned on boycotting my neighborhood’s festival this year because women are not allowed to participate in certain festivities (something typical of the Shinto religion), but a [View Full Entry]

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The regional competition for the junior high school English speeches was last weekend in Matsuyama, a city about two hours south of me on mainland Shikoku. If you were reading my blogs at this time last year, you will remember that I went to this same competition last year with my student Emiko who left victoriously with second place. No such luck this time, although I thought at least one of the two students whom I went with should have won second or third place. I'm not just saying this because I have a biased opinion about my students. I genuinely [View Full Entry]

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