I’m a little behind on blog entries. So, this entry is not about last weekend, but the weekend before. That weekend was my junior high school’s bunkasai (school festival). We’ve been preparing for it for over a month now. Sometime in September, one of my students asked me if I would play my violin with her piano accompaniment for the festival. At the time, I didn’t realize what this was all about, so I agreed. Soon she showed me two pieces she wanted me to play, and we started practicing every Friday after school (for a long time she and my [View Full Entry]

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The season of “bunkasai” is here and everyone is busy with preparations. A “bunkasai” is a festival that all schools (even through college) hold around this time in Japan. The word “bunkasai” literally translates to “culture festival,” but it’s really just a school festival with food stands and student performances. Just as the undookai (sports festivals) and aki matsuri (fall festivals) created a lot of chaos and exhaustion earlier this fall, preparing for the bunkasai is just as strenuous, but lots of fun at the same time. However, my [View Full Entry]

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This past weekend I finally got off the island for the first time in about a month. I was definitely starting to get a case of the island fever, so I decided to go mountain climbing on the tallest mountain in Western Japan, Ishizuchi-san. It’s almost 2,000 meters high which is only about half the height of Mt. Fuji. However, the hiking on this mountain was just as difficult, if not more difficult than Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji was terrifying because I climbed it at night, and feeling like you’re up in an airplane in the dark with nothing to protect [View Full Entry]

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The last Halloween I spent in Japan when I was studying in Osaka was a bit depressing. Once the month of October begins, Halloween trinkets and other paraphernalia start showing up in all the shops and super markets. Seeing all this Halloween stuff everywhere kind of gets your hopes up that maybe they do celebrate the holiday after all in Japan. But then October 31st comes and goes, and nothing happens. Halloween exists in this country just as a commercial ploy. So, this Halloween, I decided to change all that and spread the Halloween love all over the island of Yuge. [View Full Entry]

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Shikoku, one of the four main islands of Japan and also the island that my much smaller island of Yuge is considered to be part of, isn’t usually a destination of the average tourist because there aren’t many famous places to visit on the island. However, the one thing about the island that will be mentioned in any tourist guide to Japan is the famous Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage. This is Japan’s most famous pilgrimage route and can be compared to hiking the entire Appalachian Trail in America, but with a Buddhist twist. The temples are scattered all over Shikoku, so [View Full Entry]

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First: I tried posting a video here, so please click on the icon and see if it worked out. Another weekend of fall harvest festivals is over. Last weekend's festival was just in my small neighborhood, but this weekend, two of the much bigger neighborhoods (if you can even say there is a big neighborhood) on Yuge had their festivals. So, of course the festivals were more extravagant, and of course there was more danjiri carrying and sake drinking! The festivities started on Friday evening at the big shrine on the main beach on Yuge (Matsubara beach). After I was done [View Full Entry]

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The autumn harvest festivals have begun. What are the autumn harvest festivals? Good question. In short, they include waking up at the crack of dawn to carry a huge, very heavy portable shrine (in which the rice god lives) and another huge, even heavier carriage (in which four children play the taiko/drum). The portable shrine is called a mikoshi and the carriage for the children is called a danjiri. They are carried on several people’s shoulders all day while they visit different parts of the neighborhood to bless houses and farms for a good harvest season. Then, finally the rice god [View Full Entry]

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Well, the big news is that my junior high school student, Emiko, finally had her English speech competition last weekend in Matsuyama, and WON SECOND PLACE!!! She was second best out of 36 students from all of Ehime prefecture! This means that she will now be going on to the national competition in Tokyo in November (on her birthday)! She is so excited because she has never been to Tokyo before and it will be a great way to spend her birthday. I am so proud of her and am glad that I actually made it down to Matsuyama that day [View Full Entry]

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Okay, I guess it's impossible to avoid culture shock no matter how many times you've been to a country. It's a weird thing, because it's like a disease you don't know you have until it gets really bad. I say this because the first stage of culture shock isn't really shock at all. It's more of a super happy feeling of excitement and curiosity. So, when I first arrived in Japan, I was often asked, ''Do you feel culture shocked?'' and I would think ''No, I don't feel shocked at all, I'm just happy to be here.'' But now, right on [View Full Entry]

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Hello all! I’ve been slacking off on my blog entries because of my very busy schedule. Sorry! Now that the schools’ undookai and the holiday and typhoon are over, it’s really time to start studying hard for all the students. For Jennie-sensei, this means it’s really time to start planning an insane amount of lessons. Last week I drew about twenty different picture cards for visual aids of everything from fruit to scenes describing the grammar point of ''It is difficult for me to get up in the morning;’’ I printed out pictures of everything from famous people [View Full Entry]

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