竹馬. . .bamboo horse

this summer at dance cream (my main dance studio) i tried to learn how to use 竹馬 (kind of japanese stilts made of bamboo – hence 竹~bamboo and 馬~horse). . . anyway. . . i failed to succeed. . . both of the little kids (sakura’s sister who is a first grader in elementary school and another dancer’s daughter who is a third grader) can hobble around the studio on them. . . many of the adults can even do low arabesques and work their way up to a slow jog. . . i eventually managed to stand for two seconds and a few times succeeded in taking one and a half steps before falling off. . .i just can’t seem to make the same arm work with the same leg. . .

earlier this month, i attended the nursery school 運動会 (sports festival) to discover that my problem may not be due purely to lack of coordination. . . maybe more a lack of training from the time i was in diapers. . . see for yourself. . . my kids are the coolest. . .

this is what i call the pre-takeuma stage. . . the three year olds start on these little can like things, as you can see. . .

these are the five year olds. . . they can go a full 50 meters or so on those things. . . and, as you can see, some of them are set at a level as high as the kids themselves. . . すごいですよ！

just for fun. . .

around may or june the old gymnasium was torn down in order to build a new, earthquake safe elementary school . . . which naturally makes me feel safe to be teaching in the old one ;)

anyway, the construction guys have pretty much taken over the parking area in front of my place . . .the dormitory i live in is literally right next to the elementary school. . . as in i have to make all my curtains are closed when i’m getting ready in the mornings. . .

today was one of the rare days that i was able to go home to eat lunch and relax a few minutes away from students (and away from soji). . . as i left to return to work, this is what i found. . .

i found it amusing to see all the construction workers sprawled out on the parking lot and in their trucks. . . there were at least six or seven more of them, but this was the only picture i could risk without fear of being caught. おもしろいね.

quirks

japan is an odd place sometimes. . . they believe strongly in this appearance over reality concept. . . this leads to me sitting at work for hours or days at a time having to appear busy even though i really have nothing to do . . .

although i personally am not having problems with the appearance vs. reality thing at the moment (teaching at seven schools and dancing every night keep me busy enough), but i just left the junior high school where a staff meeting was in progress (i am so grateful that i am one of the alts that gets out of those things). . . most of the teachers are sleeping, making midterm tests, or grading papers. . . no one actually listens to a word being said. . . why bother talking if no one is going to listen? the training starts early on (as i mentioned in the blog about my over-worked students). . .

more quirks in the system. . .i recently had the choice of staying at work for an extra hour and a half to eat school lunch. . . or returning to my office early and grabbing my own lunch along the way. . . apparently my decision to cancel one day of school lunch caused my supervisor an extra hour of work. . . he had to call to cancel the lunch, make a second call to cancel the charges to my account, and was apparently rather distressed with the fact that my one little bottle of milk could not be cancelled. . . i.e. i will be charged possibly thirty cents for a bottle that someone else will probably drink anyway. . .

that’s all i have time for at the moment. . . still so much more to say. . .and so many pictures i need to post! for now, here is one of a fisherman at the beach last saturday (no, i don't actually know who he is). . .

小さいブログ. . .ゴメンね！

i know, i know. . . it's time for me to write a real blog reporting on all my amazing experiences in japan. . . and although it is my now my second year here (and i therefore have a much better understanding of my surroundings and the events taking place), i do still have exciting new experiences to report. . . the problem is in the fact that i have no time to report them . . .

i suppose the place to start is dance. . . as i believe you know, i will be dancing as part of the guest team at yosakoi in osaka this november (my birthday weekend to be exact). . . if you can read japanese, here's the info (dance cream is the name of the studio i dance at) . . .
http://sasso-japan.org/expo-vol2.html
http://park.expo70.or.jp/facil/facil_04.html#yosakoi
i'm not really clear on all the details. . . all i know is that we have numerous street performances and a couple of stage performances. . . i think we only dance on saturday (the 18th). . . we are leaving kochi around midnight on friday night. . . taking a bus to osaka (3+hours?) . . . and then dancing all day staturday. . . i believe relaxing a bit/ sightseeing on sunday. . . and returning. . . while i am obviously extremely excited, i am also getting pretty stressed out. . . as the only person on the team who has never participated in yosakoi, i have no idea how to use narko or maneuver my happi or scream random words in japanese (it's like trying to learning things like woohoo in english. . . よちょれ　and わしょい are not particularly useful for daily communication). . . aside from those challenges, my teacher put me in all four of the dances both in the street version (which everyone does) as well as on stage. . . since we started learning the first dance in june or july, two of the dances have been pretty well drilled into my body (including the chants and narko and happi). . . a third dance is coming along (although we spend very little time on it in rehearsals. . . as in running it once maybe every week? if that). . . the fourth, however, is my biggest source of stress. . . apparently my teacher has decided not to actually teach it to me. . .i finally asked him for a video of it (but have no time to watch the video). . . we NEVER practice it in rehearsal. . . i have no idea how he expects me to be in this dance. . . learning combinations is my biggest weakness in dance. . . so, yeah, that should be interesting. . .

okay, i know that's just a start, but i really need to go home and go to bed now. . .

out of curiosity, who still checks my blog? is it down to just my mother? i know i've been neglecting my readers lately. . . sorry about that! i have so much to say. . . it's getting harder and harder to know where to start. . . anyway. . . hopefully more to come in the NEAR future. . . for now. . .おやすみなさい！





"well, art is art, isn't it? still, on the other hand, water is water. and east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. now you tell me what you know." ~ groucho marx




"every child is an artist. the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." ~ pablo picasso