Kiritampo Party

The nurse at one of my schools is a member of LABO and every year they have a kiritampo party at Sanbouen (三望苑) in Honjo. I went last year for the first time, and she invited me again this year.

This year 6 of the local ALTs joined the party; Paul, Austin, Abby, Todd, Jimmy and myself. When we arrived the barbeques were were already cooking sweet potatoes. We were all handed beers and told to enjoy ourselves!

Kiritampo is mashed up rice that is moulded onto sticks and then cooked over a BBQ. We helped out mashing the rice and forming it onto the sticks.


We didn't get to help out with the cooking of them, but did get given more beer and various salads. And when the kiritampo was cooked we were served kiritampo nabe; a soup with various vegetables and of course the kiritampo.

After eating we went to the park area and set up two slacklines, a kind-of not-so-tight tightrope. Most of us are still learning how to balance/walk on the line. I can balance pretty well, until I try to take a step forward. Its a whole lot of fun though, and easier than you might imagine.


We got to see an amazing sunset just before we left too!

Rice

Today I was at Shimokawa elementary school (下川小学校). During a free period before lunch the principal asked me if I wanted to join the 5th grade students harvesting rice. Every year the kids get the opportunity to plant a field of rice and then help harvest it.

I was delighted to get the opportunity to try it out!


A kamada or sickle (鎌田).


A small inekariki (稲刈り機) or rice combine harvester.


We stacked the rice at the edge of the field.


I spoke to a little old Japanese woman who was working there. She explained the entire rice reaping process to me. But unfortunately about 98% of what she said to me went right over my head. One thing I did pick up on though was that the field we were working in would have a yield of about 240 kilograms; about a years supply of rice for 7 or 8 people.

Yakeyama

The day after Honjo Festival myself and Paul decided to head north to hike a mountain range near Hachimantai (八幡平) in Noshiro. We planned on hiking for 3 days but due to bad weather and multiple bear warnings we cut it back to a short hike up Mt. Yake (焼山) and back.

Yakeyama translates roughly to burning mountain. And we quickly realised why, shortly after we arrived. On one side of the mountain is Tamagawa Onsen (玉川温泉), a very famous onsen because it has the highest acidic water in Japan (pH 1.1). And close to the onsen much volcanic activity can be observed like boiling steam and sulphuric gasses gushing from the rocks.


Many people bring mats and lay down on the ground, as it is believed that the area contains a significant amount of radioactive radium which is believed to cure many different ailments.


We continued up the mountain where at the top we found a crater lake full of white liquid! Gasses from under the liquid gave the impression that the water was actually boiling!



The summit, 1324m.


That evening we went to Tamagawa Onsen. They had many different baths with varying levels of acidity. I tried most of them, but the highly acidic ones were not very comfortable on sensitive areas of the body.

The next morning we went to the far side of the mountain to the more anally friendly Goshōgake Onsen (後生掛温泉).

Honjo Festival

The two Japanese guys who were on our rowing team this year live in the same area as me in Honjo. They invited me and my friends to take part in the local Ōnomichi chōnai (大の道町内) festival on 20 September. We practiced twice at my local community centre (大の道公民館), which I just discovered existed!

We were practicing a simple enough beat on the taiko (太鼓). We needed to have 2 drummers at any given time, one rhythm and the other on main beat. There were also a group of fue (笛) players. And everyone shouts out the word sore (それ）, multiple times!


On our second night of practice, the day before the festival, we had plenty of free food and drinks given to us. We ate what has now become usual to us; yakitori, yakisoba and okonomiyaki. And we drank sake from square wooden cups!

And after a late night we got up and returned to the community centre for 8am the next morning for the opening ceremony of the festival. And it's customary to open any good ceremony with a shot of sake; so that was when our started drinking!

We were the first group to lead the drumming. Basically the group tours around the local area. People watch from the side of the street, and random people come out of their houses and give large bottles of sake to us! Some people even give out envelopes with money inside!


We made our first pit stop after about 15 minutes. We stopped outside a house and were ushered into an open garage. In the centre of the garage was a table with onigiris, pickled vegetables, miscellaneous meats and large bottles of beer and of course sake.


After indulging ourselves for about 15 to 20 minutes we were each given towels and told that we would be carrying the portable shrine, called a mikoshi (御輿, 神興 or 神輿) for a while. The towels were to pad our shoulders as the shrine was quite heavy.

When we picked it up and placed it on our shoulders it quickly became apparent that most of us foreigners were taller than the Japanese guys we were with. Some of the guys could not get their shoulders high enough to take any of the weight! Our chant also changed from sore to wasshoi (わっしょい).


We continued carrying the shrine and chanting for the rest of the day. We made regular stops at houses around Honjo. Eating and drinking without fail at each stop! Some people were even slamming large glasses of sake at 10am!!


I can't actually remember what time the festival ended (probably 5 or 6pm), but when it did we went to Yumiko's house for sushi and alcoholic refreshments. And after about two hours there we headed back to Jez's apt for bit of a party there.

It was one of the most enjoyable days I have had since I arrived in Japan!

Speech Contest 2009

Every year there is a speech contest for all the junior high schools in my area. 2 students from each school take part in the contest. One student does a recitation and the other writes their own speech. The ALTs usually coach the students with pronunciation, intonation and body language etc.

We always start practicing with the students about a month before the contest, and it's usually an enjoyable experience as we get given more responsibility than usual from the JTEs. But it also gets kindof hectic during the last two weeks.


This year one of my kids came in second place (the tall guy). And out of the 4 students I worked with he was by far the laziest. He usually didn't even show up for practice, and twice he told the teacher that he wasn't going to take part in the competition!

Regatta 2009

We had our annual rowing competition on September 13th. Unfortunately this year my team, Aburakoji Guys, had very few practices beforehand. In fact we only had one practice where we all practiced together as a team.

This year our team was made up of Kikunosuke (cox), me (stroke), Jon (3rd), Austin (2nd), and Takafumi (bow). The weather on the day of the competition wasn't the may west. It was quite windy with heavy showers at times.


In our first race there was 3 boats. We were going to go through to the next round no matter where we finished. It was really windy during the race, with the wind helping us down the river. We finished in 2nd place, posting a time of 2:01, which was actually the 3rd fastest time of the day and was a faster time the the winners of the competition last year! But of course it had a lot to do with the wind!


After an extended break, mainly due to the competition moving slower because of the weather, we were back in the boat for our second race of the day. There were 3 boats in that race too. We got off to a good start, and could clearly see that we were not going to have any problems in this race as the other boats were much slower than us. So we didn't push ourselves too hard and easily finished in 1st position.

Our next race had 4 boats and we needed to finish in the top 2 to progress to the next round. Unfortunately for us 2 of the teams in this race were very strong rowers. One had won the competition the year before, and the other had made it to the finals. So we knew we wouldn't have the luxury of taking it easy this time.

When the gun fired we started as strong as we could. But became very obvious to us that our start was our weakest point. The two good teams had great starts, and both got about a boat length of a lead within the first few seconds. We kept on their tails but never the ability to catch up to them. So we finished in 3rd place, and bowed out of the competition for another year!

Akita Mago Uta National Competition

The Akita Mago Uta National Competition (秋田馬子唄全国大会) is held in the building next to my board of education every year. And this year I was given free tickets to go. I was a bit sceptical after the Honjo Oiwake competition we had been to in August but Paul and myself decided to go check it out anyway.

The concert started in the morning but we decided not to go until the afternoon. And when we arrived I was surprised to find that the venue was quite full. We had to stand in the door, and couldn't really see the stage. I spoke to a guy from Yamaguchi ken way down south. He was just after singing in the competition. He told me that Mago uta means packhorse driver song. It is a folk song. I asked if everyone was going to sing only that one song, and sure enough they were!

The brochure we had received on the way in listed close to 200 entrants! Fair play to any judge who can listen to the same song that amount of times! We stayed for only a short while, maybe 5 or 6 entrants and left!