Drops

Recently there have been some very powerful drops in Japan. One sort is making National news, the other sort made local news.

The National news is reporting very heavy rains in South Japan. From Okinawa to Kyoto, there have been daily rain falls of 350ml in some areas. Today the heaviest rains were around 40ml an hour. The sheer number of rain drops has started some catastrophic events. There have been land slides and flooding, and people have been washed away in swollen rivers. This is all just the beginning of the rain season, but Okinawa has received over half of its annual rainfall in the past month.

The have been so heavy due to the warm tropical westerly (from the west) winds that are blowing from South East Asia. This flow of air is occluding (when one front catches up to another…the reason it rains a lot in Vancouver too) with flows of southerly flows coming up off the Pacific Ocean. This mixture of warm moist air causes rain drop coalescence and strong winds. That has been your backyard meteorology lesson for today.

The other drops are of a much more solemn nature. I suggest if you don’t want to feel a little sad not to read on.

As I mentioned these drops are much more local. These drops are the tears of families in Nakano. Right here in my neighbourhood, Nangu. On Tuesday evening, around 5 o’clock, a second year student from Nangu Junior High School was on his bike. He was either headed to or from the tennis courts right near my house. He didn’t have his helmet on, and he apparently blew through a stop sign. He came out of a blind side street and was hit by a car. They did everything they could, but his injuries were too serious. He passed away within the hour.

Needless to say the people in my neighbourhood, and the staff and students at Nangu JHS are all pretty shaken up. Nangu is the school at which Brandon teaches. He knew the kid, and says he was a pretty good guy. Maybe not have been the best student, but he was still a good hearted little guy. Second grade JHS students are usually 13 or 14 years old.

We found out on Wednesday morning at Kousha JHS. The teachers were all pretty shocked, but they relayed that there have been a number of traffic accidents in Nagano recently. Apparently in another city a boy was hurt pretty badly in another traffic accident. I was pretty shocked. As I wandered around the school looking at the kids, I couldn’t help but think that they are just that, kids. I couldn’t imagine how I would react if that had happened to one of them. Brandon seems to be taking it ok, but I wonder how I would take it. My school is a third of the size, and it is such a tight knit community that I think something like that would be very traumatic for everyone.

I guess it is just another reminder that part of the beauty of life is how wonderful it can be, while being so fragile.

Info and Pictures

Yet again it has been a while since I sat down to write for my blog. It is neither that I have not sat nor written, I simply have not gotten around to writing for this. He is a bit of a catch up on things, before I get to the fun stuff…photos included.

The catch up:

My leg. Everyone asks, so I guess people wanna know. It’s doing ok, still gets sore when I push it, but it is getting better. There is still no set time on when it will be better. It’s an injury, and unique to it’s own characteristics and to my body and life. I really wish I knew that in Japanese, and could politely say it to the people who ask me the same question “How is your leg” every time they see me.

School Work Stuff. It’s been busy as usual ever since the school year kicked off. I have been doing many elementary school visits, and a more consistent class schedule at Kousha. Things are good. I had to go to a conference in Tokyo last week. It was for JETs that have singed up for a second year. I really wish I could have just stayed and taught. The small group meetings led by senior JETs were for the most part well done. That’s more than I can say about the ones put on by CLAIR (one of JETs governing bodies) and MEXT (the Japanese Ministry of A Million and One F*#$ing Things…seriously, it’s like sports, culture, education, science, and technology). When they were not simply patting us all on the bums for having the ‘noble job of ALT,’ they were completely insulting our intelligences by offering irrelevant presentations and by appearing to answer genuine concerns of JETs while simply spewing political crap at us. So yeah, that’s how I feel about that. I just saw it as a huge expense for our BOE to send 2 of us all the way to Tokyo, put us up in a 4 star hotel downtown Shinjuku, pay of the conference fees, and have half of the material be completely irrelevant and insulting. Especially since they don’t have enough money to keep 4 JETs after July. Just wasteful in my opinion.

Coming Home. I have a visit planed to Lotusland…or is it Yogawearland yet? Either way, I am going to be in Vancouver for the better part of 3 weeks. I arrive on July 15^th, sometime well before I actually left Japan. I have a return ticket for the 4^th or 5^th of August, which puts me back into Japan an entire day after I took off. Ah, the International Date Line…doesn’t it make international air travel so much fun?

Technology. I will now be sharing more photos as I finally chose the digital camera I want. I also got the hack for my DVD player, so it is now region free and will play all my Canadian and Japanese DVDs!

And now a story, with the promised pictures.

So this weekend in Nakano was the バラまつり (Rose Festival). The city rose garden is know around these parts to be pretty spectacular when its in bloom. This leads itself to large crowds of Japanese people packed will all sorts of digital recording devices. Be it a simple cell phone, to a professional quality camera, everyone save the kids are toting something.

My part in the Festival was a little different. Miyuki and Yoshiko, two gals from the English Conversation class we teach at the community centre, asked Devin and I to help them with a contest. The way it works is that 10 teams receive buckets upon buckets of roses, and a metre squared box full of Oasis (that green flower spongy stuff). We were all given 3 hours to create an image for a contest. The public wandering through the park for the weekend would vote on the images.

Devin with our roses

The other teams were off at the word go. Our team was a little tired and dragging our feet a little. The other teams seemed super organized. Groups started pulling out all sorts of prepared materials. One group had a stencil, a group of Baachans (Grannies) had some scale prints of impressionist paintings. We stood around deciding what we were going to make. We had a few small images printed, and decided on a large wave. There is a famous Japanese block print that has s big wave and a buncha dudes in a boat. We took the wave and put a sunset instead of the dudes in the boat.

Devin started on the sun. I got going on the wave. Yoshiko and Miyuki worked on the ocean and the reflection of the sun. We were still the slowest moving team, as Miyuki’s husband (one of the organizers) was eager to point out. Still we plodded.

Devin and Yoshiko hunched over the sun.

Same thing from the proper angle.

Our picture started to take shape, and we all got really excited. We worked hard for a few hours, and saw some of the other groups finishing up. A class from a local elementary school was one of the first done. Some Highschoolers were quickly putting the finishing thouches on their work. Even the Baachans were onto the fine detail of their impressionist work.

Finally after most groups were gone, and the rest seemed to be cleaning up, we stood up to take a look at our finished work. This is it in all its splendour. We called it “Beach in Bloom” in Japanese, and for ourselves we went with the cheesy name of Rosebuddies.

"Beach in Bloom"

You can only kind of see it in the picture, but the wave actually grows three dimensionally as it rises and crests. It was really sweet.

In an epilogue to the creation, we went back today for the announcement of the winners. We had looked around at them the day before. We were confident that the elementary schoolers would take first, what they lacked in creative capacity they more than made up for with their cuteness in the logo of their school. The others were good, but lacked a lot of thematic creativity. The other nicely themed one was the Baachans. That being said, you really couldn’t tell what it was when you were looking at it.

Well we ended up winning something. We got the Special Achievement Award or some other sweet sounding consolation prize that really means 5^th place. The elementary school kids and the higschoolers beat us, which was nice to see…even though ours was superior. The real kick in the teeth though was that the Baachans took the gold. We are positive that what they lacked in clarity of image, they made up for with sheer voting numbers…I mean can a half foreign team really compete with a team of aged locals?

We still got a beautiful framed enlargement of our team around the finished work. Devin and I went onstage to receive our award and prize. I am sure we will be in the local rag again. And on top of it all, I got more roses than I could ever dream of having use for. They are in vases and hanging up sidedown all over my house. I have stripped the petals of other, and given a bunch to my sweet old neighbour. And that is the end.