The other day, I went to a small festival. I’m not sure what it was called, why it was being held, what it’s celebrating or where it was, but it was fun so I thought I’d show you a few photos. If anyone can work out where it was or which festival it is from these photographs, you should definitely consider a career in crime fighting.

We arrived at the shrine at around 3pm, and already the place was packed. Most of the people there were wearing either. The weather was pretty decent today, although it looks quite gray in the photograph, you have to bear in mind that rainy season rages on and this was the first day of many without rain. As you can see above, there were thousands of little yellow lanterns lining either side of the pathway. These had been rented by various companies for advertising purposes. I wish I had known, I might have bought one and written “Mike” on it then spent three weeks trying to find it.

There were yet more yellow things inside the shrine’s courtyard, although this time they were smaller and box shaped. Again I’m not absolutely sure what they represent, but my tenuous grasp of Japanese naming conventions made me think they may be personal messages or something. Anyway, there were zillions of these things everywhere, all neatly organized on the way up to the shrine itself. I wanted to go to the front of the shrine and take a picture of the entire courtyard, but the queue to pray was huge and I’m not much of a Shinto Buddhist anyway.

One thing I was definitly not expecting was the children’s dance competition that was going on at a stage inside the grounds, quite close to the shrine itself. Each group of girls were dancing to various traditional Japanese songs, aside from one group who apparently thought it was suitable to perform a frankly unique and confusing dance routine with Diana Ross’ You Can’t Hurry Love blaring out from large speakers. I was moderately surprised, but I think Diana would be happy to know that somewhere in the world, her song is interrupting Japanese tradition.

After we had exhausted the shrine, it was time to head to the streets to watch the dancing. I can’t remember what the various performances were called, but I can vaguely describe them to you.

The first performance was something I have cryptically entitled “Woman hits drum a lot”. Incase you can’t work it out, basically a bunch of women each took turns to play the same rhythm on a drum over and over, a bit like I did in Atami. Obviously they weren’t as good as I was, but they certainly were very well dressed. However, throughout the majority of their performance, I was rather hungry, and as there were street vendors selling all sorts of food (and beer!), they quickly lost out.

Up next was a dance troupe called “The Repetitive Grandma Dance Team”. Again this name is a creation of mine. Basically, they all walked around a statue and performed the same seven step dance about forty billion times. Possibly once for every year they have lived, I don’t know. Regardless it was about as interesting as watching a group of people slowly do the same thing over and over again.

As interesting as all these various events had been, as well as eating noodles, drinking beer and watching kids catch goldfish with little nets, nothing could possibly stand up to the giant-man-catching-fish-mobile, which acted as the climax of the festival.

I don’t really know what purpose it served, or what it represented, but it was half carried by men and half motor driven, which I think is sort of cheating. At one point it actually crashed and tipped forward, almost squashing some poor man’s food stall, but eventually it made it’s ungainly way through the crowds and out to freedom.

With that done, there was just time for me to buy a delicious chocolate coated banana, which I don’t think is traditional Japanese food, then time to head off home.

An interesting tidbit to end today’s update: As of tomorrow I have exactly one month left in Japan. Eeeeeeeeeeeeek.

It’s never just a case of saying “cheerio” these days…

One of the traditions of Junten school is for the volunteers, who all year have been instructed only to speak English to their students, to give a farewell speech in Japanese. As a result I have spent the last few days getting to grips with mine, practicing it, trying to memorize it and at the same time desperately trying to remember what on earth it’s about. For your entertainment, here is my speech in Japanese, my attempt phonetic Japanese and the English meaning as best as I can remember it. I added spaces into the written Japanese because I don’t know all the kanji yet, and it gets too hard to read otherwise.?There’s some mistakes in here, especially with my Katakana writing (foreign words), but it’s a close as I can get it.

Speech In English

Hello! It’s Mike!

Thank you everyone for the last year.

Today is my last time to speak to you, so I am feeling sad.

I want to talk about two things I have noticed about Japan.

The first is sports day. For me, I noticed that English sports day is very different to Junten sports day. For example, tug-of-war, group skipping and horseback fighting. Actually, I wanted to join in with the horseback fighting, but the teachers said I was too good!

The second thing is the Easter, Halloween and Christmas parties. At the Christmas party, I was Santa, which was very fun. At the Easter party I ate too much chocolate. Thank you very much to everyone who came to the parties.

Thank you also to the Shorinji Kempo club. We tried really hard to get over the communication barrier and I had a lot of fun doing Shorinji.

Thank you very much to all the teachers, I am sorry if I got in your way. Special thanks to Mr. Nakahara for looking after me this year.

From October, I will go to university to study Japanese. Next summer I plan to come back to Japan, but I think you should speak English to me! Please try hard to learn English!

Just one more thing. Thank you very much to Mr. Watanabe the headmaster and Mr.Nagatsuka the associate principle. Thanks also to all of the teachers, the office staff, and the students. Thank you very much. See you next year!

Speech In Written Japanese

こんにちわ。　マイクです。

一年間　みんなん ありがとうございました。

今日は　みんなんに　話す　さいごのひで、　とても　さびしいです。

私が日本に来て　かんじた　ことお　二つ来いて下さい。

一つめは　たいくさいです。私が　イギリスで　やっていた　たいいくさい　わ　順天のと　ちがていました。

なぜなら、　順天でわ　大縄跳びと　つなひきと　きばせんお　したからです。

ところで、　私も　きばせんお　した　かった　けど、先生が　マイクは　うまいから、　だめだと！　いいました。

二つめは、　エエスタと　ハロウエエンと　クリスマスの　パアテです。　とくに、　クリスマス　パーチ　のとき、　私わサンタ　なったので、　たのしかたです。

それから、エスタパーちのとき、　チョコレと　お　食べすぎました。　さんかして　くれた　みんなさん　ありがとう　ございました。

少林寺拳法 クラブ　に　入れてくれて、　本当に　うれしかったです。　がんばって　コミウニカシオン　おして　おかげで　少林寺も　うまかなりました。

先生がた、　いろりろ　じゃまして　すみません　でした。　とくに、　中原先生　おせわに　なりました。

十月から、　私は大学に行て、日本語おべんきょうします。　来年のなつ、また日本に来たいと思いますので、　そおのときにわ、みんあと　かんぺきな　英語で　話せるよう　に、　がんばって　ください！

もいちど、　いわせて　ください。　わたなべりじちょう先生、　ながつかこうちょう先生。　先生がた、じむしょうのみなさま、　せいとのみんあさん、ありがとう　ございました。

また、きっと会いましょう。

There we go then. Probably the most disjointed Japanese in the entire world. Nevermind, at least they can’t say I didn’t have a go at it. Thanks really go to Lynsey and Tom who wrote pretty much the whole thing for me.

For those of you who can read Japanese, I’m sorry for hurting your language. For those of you who can’t, those symbols sure look pretty, huh?

I fought against myself not to use that incredibly cheesy update title, but in the end my desire to embarrass myself until the end of time won through. Also, as I sit here writing this now, a huge typhoon rages around just outside the thin walls of my apartment. If I don’t make it through, I leave all my photos of shrines and dead fish to you, the reader.

I couldn’t sleep last night. I can’t really sleep at all right now – it’s rainy season, my air conditioner is on it’s last legs, and to top it off, whichever idiot is renovating the flat next door to us decided to renovate the wall where my head is pretty hard for about two hours at one in the morning. If he does that again I’m going to renovate a patio door down his throat. I think I got to sleep at 1am, which made waking up at 5.30am quite a challenge. Still, I did, as this was the day I was going to Tsukiji Fish Market. Apparently, the market carries over 400 different types of seafood, is world famous for quality sushi, and handles over 2000 metric tons of seafood each day. I assume that does not include the boats because otherwise that’s not really very impressive.

One last word of warning – if you are squeamish you might not want to click any photos in this update. Fish with no heads abound!

Basically, after hopping off the train and walking for a few minutes, a powerful smell overwhelms you and you feel like you’ve just been hit with a haddock. You spend the next twenty minutes trying to dodge the miniature cars they use for transporting the fish and eventually you make it inside the oversized barn that the market is held in. Once you are there, you wander up and down the millions of isles, being pushed out of the way by irate old fishermen and enthusiastic old women, desperately trying to stay dry. An endeavor you will inevitably fail at.

I am about to tell you about two things that happened to me during my visit to the market. I want to make it absolutely clear that before today, I held no grudges against fish. I quite like them, especially when they are swimming around in big shoals. Plus, I enjoyed Finding Nemo. However, this alliance ends today.

• The walkways between each set of stalls in incredibly thin. As a result, you have to walk very slowly. This gave one fish that wasn’t quite dead yet a chance to thrash around in a vain attempt to escape. This fish failed, but the water that was ejected from the box as a result of it’s fight made it’s way rather quickly to me, where it covered me. Entirely. Thanks a whole lot, you stupid fish.
• Not more than ten seconds later, we came to the end of the pathway, and prepared to go back across the market the other way along the next pathway. However, just as I was stepping out, an eel which was not in any way dead leapt from the box it had been put in and started thrashing all over the place. It cornered me and I was afraid it was going to come down to Shorinji Kempo, which might be quite hard against an eel as I’ve only practiced against foes that have arms and legs. In the end, the fisherman responsible for this feisty rebel cut it’s head off. Another victory for mankind!

That’s right. I was assaulted twice today by fish. I bet nobody has ever used that sentence before.

Aside from my near death experiences, the fish market was a pretty cool place, especially if you like seafood. The people who took me were pretty professional fish buyers, as not three hours later we were tucking into a delicious meal of fish, fish and more fish. Whilst watching the English language channel on the TV, which I tried to translate as best I could. (I couldn’t).

So there you have it. Another day, another salt water bath. I would definitely recommend going to the fish market if you are in Japan and can stand getting up at about 5am. You really need to be there by 6am to get a proper look around the place. I shall leave you today with a picture of the killer eel’s brothers, no doubt saddened at the loss of a comrade. Remember that I had just suffered a terrible assault, so to take this photo took bravery unmatched throughout all of human history. Or something.

You knew after my incredibly wordy June that it would take me two weeks to write anything in July, right?

Rainy season rages on, and with it a serious lack of photographs. Everyone in the country is currently suffering from a slump in enthusiasm, myself included, because all day we are pelted with rain and boiled in the humid air. I’m not sure how much longer I can take living in an oven. If I start displaying signs of madness I want someone to put me in a freezer for an hour.

Anyway, throughout last week and this week, I have been saying “goodbye” to all my various classes at Junten, as well as the four different adult classes. Each class had a different, unique way to say farewell before sending us on our way;

My Junten Parents Class (PTA) decided to throw a large party in the English centre at the school. Bearing in mind this meant having to shut down access for all students to our office, I was quite surprised that the school were happy for us to have the party there, but I think the PTA might hold a lot more power than people realize. They’re like the mafia, except they replace arranged murders with cups of coffee.

The Wednesday Lunchtime class, limited by their number of members and time, decided it would be best if we just had a normal lesson. I say normal, they provide lunch for us every week and I swear they were trying to kill me with the amount of bread I was supposed to get through. Then as it was the last lesson I did a pretty boring “Everyone remember what we’ve done and don’t forget me and send me chocolates” speech, and everyone was very sad. Then it was back to Junten to be assaulted horribly by bad English students. Oh well.

Our Wednesday Evening class, the most advanced class of the four, threw a big party at an Izakaya, where they gave us these stunning pictures of us that one of the members had drawn, and everyone had signed. I don’t currently have access to a scanner, so you’ll have to make do with a dodgy photo.

We had a great time at the Izakaya (Japanese pub/bar/picnic), and everyone said goodbye. Weirdly, I went along to their lesson with Lynsey two days ago, and we said goodbye again. So really they said goodbye to me twice. That’s right, I broke their hearts twice. I’m a terror.

Finally, the Monday Evening first took us out to an Izakaya, then the following week took us on a two hour all-you-can-drink party ferry. I wish I’d taken my camera now as I doubt anyone is going to believe my description of this, but basically loads of surprisingly middle-aged Japanese people dress up in traditional clothing, then “dance” to “music” on a boat which is circling around the Tokyo bay in the freezing cold. I can’t really go any further than this without bringing to light some terrible memories that I’ve successfully repressed, so I shall stop here.

Tomorrow morning at some horrible hour (6am) I will be going to Japan’s famous Tsukiji Fish Market. Going with me will be my camera, so no excuses here!