FESTIVALS IN KASEDA

Previously, I mentioned a Kaseda Matsuri or festival, with much food and dancing and all the local families coming out to celebrate and meet their friends, just like a fireman's carnival in the states.  The festivals were held on the street right below my apartment so I was always aware that something would be going on, and I would be right in the middle of it.

On this early Saturday morning in September the hammering woke me up before 8.  I looked outside, and it appeared they were building a large, shallow rectangular pool.  I assumed they were making a wading area for the children.  I had early on observed the Japanese loved their children and grandchildren.  I went about my chores and didn't pay much attention outside.  I had wash to do and cleaning, and the usual weekend tasks.  Suddenly I heard shrieking and screaming and had to run to the windows to peek outside.  

Well, it was a shallow wading pool, but its purpose was not just for the kiddies.  Instead, farm-raised sea eels had been released into the pool.  Then the kids went in and caught them.  Their catch could be taken home and eaten.  Silly me!  I really had to remember that in Japan I was truly a tabla rosa, a blank slate and I knew nothing even when I thought I had it all figured out.  The eel pool was a great big success, and parents and kids were happy about it.  I was glad I had observed it from a distance, as I am not a big fan of live eels.  But I have eaten unagi, the eel that is served with a thick, heavy teriyaki sauce, and I am a fan of that.  If you put sugar and soy sauce on just about anything, it becomes edible.
 
Once school started,, some of the students were not so shy.  They knew where may apartment was and they had met me in their classes.  A friendly student named Tomomi came up the steps and got me to go downstairs an hour or so after all the fun in the pool had ended.  

We got in line with another student, her friend, Shian, and I got my first matsuri  (festival) dancing lessons.  Everyone was joining into the groups of practiced dancers and having fun.  I didn't feel like a foreigner doing this.  I had to remind myself again that this was a unique experience and to keep it for my memory bank.  But I fit in to a group of people of all ages having fun in the sun.  

If little kids can do the dance, I should be able to learn it, too.

"We start out like this....." ( My apartment is right behind me.)

Tomomi and another student, the fellow in the white pants, Shian, taught me the basics.  Tomomi lent me her hapi coat.

We then checked out the food booths.  No funnel cakes here, but something like them though not sweet called takoyaki were available.  They bake little muffins in small pans and inside each little muffin is a piece of tako (octopus).  They are a little chewy and can be found at festivals and roadside stands, similar to  hot dog stands.

But we went to a Tako on a Stick booth and ordered that instead.  They were cooked in teriyaki sauce and put on a stick.  Look out corn dogs!   Chewy, but like I said, sugar and soy sauce and I could eat it.  It wasn't bad at all.  If you go to live in a foreign place, you need to try to rid yourself of the "ick" factor.  You will have a much better time, although everyone has their limits.  One of the Kagoshima specialties was tori sashimi, raw chicken.  Even though I lived there for 4 years, I would never try it.

Tomomi and I eat Tako on a stick.  It's chewy, but quite good!

A tip on learning to read Japanese.  The top 4 symbols say Ka Se Da Shi  which means Kaseda City.  The symbols are written in hiragana characters.  The characters below are written in kanji.  It is very difficult to read Japanese because you need about 2,000 kanji characters to read the newspaper.  Highly educated academics need to be able to read 4,000 kanji.   Hiragana is an easier way to write all the separate sounds in Japanese, without using the pictorial like symbols taken from the Chinese characters.  Hiragana has over 200 symbols, which I learned to read while I was there, although I still didn't know the meanings of most words after I put the sounds together.  I only ever conquered a little over 200 kanji and remained basically illiterate the entire 4 years I was there.  

The six symbols in red say Ka se da Ma tsu ri in hiragana.

I studied the hiragana not only from books but by going to karaoke and reading the words while the others sang.  TV news and maps for weather helped with kanji, which then enabled me to use the bus and train system, as I could identify the cities names.  Of course, reading labels at the store finally helped me understand why the beef did not taste like beef in the US.  Half the time I was buying a pork and beef mix.

Some words use a mix of hiragana and kanji, so I could only read some of the syllables.  It was a huge challenge and while it was a barrier, I loved when I read something!  My first attempts were signs hanging in front of stores.  I don't know how many times I read ta ba ko (tobacco) to some disgust, since I have never used it.  But soon I could read un a gi, unagi (eel), so I was learning if ever so slowly.  There are also another set of symbols called kana, also over 200 in number.  I could also read all of these.  They are used to express foreign words, like ar bei to, from arbeit meaning work in German and arbeito was used for part time work.  If this sounds confusing, good!  It totally was.  Especially when the Japanese would know the word was a foreign one and they would expect me to recognize/translate it even though it could have been French or German, as in the case of arbeito.

From then on, if I was in town and there was a festival on the street below, I made it a habit to attend.  I was meeting enough people through school and at the restaurants and through the original friends, and Nancy and Brian that I could run into people and exchange greetings and have a reasonably good time even though I went out on my own.

My apartment was on the corner, second floor, of the building on the left, which gave me a bird's eye view of the street activities.

This is actually at a later matsuri.  I have my own hapi coat now.  I look happier because  I have confidence from dancing in the huge Ohara Matsuri in Kagoshima, which will be my very next blog post, and coming very soon.

Around this same time Nancy had started taking me to some of her adult evening classes that were in her list of duties.  These were women and a few men who were closer to my age and we could share conversation about  a lot of things we had in common.

Nancy was fluent in Japanese, but I could still add some ideas and lots of laughs with my hand motions if nothing else.  Some of these people became our best friends and would have us over to their houses often throughout our stay, to meet friends, enjoy a holiday, or to pass a cold winter's night with a hot pot of wonderfully cooked foods.  

I have never taken to a lot of the sashimi or raw foods, and one of my favorite memories was at one of these home parties, when I mentioned I wouldn't eat the raw oysters.  But I said I liked them fried.  I was sorry I mentioned that, in one way.  The hostess, Junko, couldn't move to the kitchen fast enough, while with another 10 or more guests coming, she quickly made some of the best fried oysters I ever ate, just for me.  I really had not meant that she should do that, and I still feel guilty that she went to the trouble.

However, I started getting used to a pattern here.  I might feel like I fit in; but I was different and I would always be a foreigner, especially in this rural area.  However, they wanted me to like them, their culture and their country, and, therefore, they would jump over hoops even though I didn't need them to do that to make me happy.  Sooner or later, a lot of us ALTs really liked this celebrity status they gave us so happily.   We did not realize at that time that we  would have reverse culture shock when we returned home.  In our own countries we would not really be that special any more.

"TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, YOU GIVE ME A MIGRAINE."

As the beginning weeks of September and October passed, I had finally visited all of my assigned schools and met most of my Japanese teachers of English.   Three high schools were my chief postings, and my home based school was Kaseda High School which was a highly competitive academic school where students were expected to enter college.  

Another high school, Makurazaki Suisan, was at the south end of Kyushu Island a 30 minute or so ride from my apartment and also on the sea.  The students here studied maritime related courses and fisheries.  Fish farming, marine biology, radio communications and all things related to ships at sea were studied here, but college educations were not expected to be pursued, although those who wished to pursue more technology could remain here another year beyond the 3rd year of high school.  At Kasasa High School students were expected to assume clerical and blue collar career paths. It was near the sea as well, about 45 minutes along a beautiful seaside route.

I had 2 junior high schools that I visited twice a month, so I spent two full days a month in each.  Oura Jr. High School was to the west, not as far as Kasasa High School and just across the street from the East China Sea.  Kawanabe Junior High School was east in the middle of farm country where the crops were rice, squash, daikon radish, and tea.  The main animals raised were chicken and pigs.

I would often see trucks with 2 level trailers and slats for air so that the large pigs were easily visible when they passed. Pork is a very important part of the diet and it was really prepared so many delicious ways.  But another ALT who had a motorbike mentioned the smells were terrible if you got behind one.  As many times as I had seen them, I had never thought  about that.  But afterwards, every time I saw a truck loaded with pigs, I was glad I was not on a bike behind it.

Another sight along my seaside bus routes to the schools were to see hundreds of fish lying on horizontally stretched nets all freshly caught and spread out to dry.  Dried fish were another part of the diet not just to eat whole but to flavor other dishes the way we use beef or chicken broth.

All of my bus rides to the schools outside of Kaseda were filled with lovely scenery.  I would arrive at all of them feeling relaxed and glad to have the opportunity to see rice fields, tea fields, bamboo forests and especially the views of the sea.  This would be my mindset when I arrived at Kasasa High School.

Unfortunately, many of the teachers that I worked with had so much more responsibility that they were not always in a relaxed state and were instead quite stressed.  Their thoughts on the day that I arrived were probably more along the lines of "Boy, and I have to put up with the English teacher today on top of everything else."

Only a couple of my teachers were really comfortable speaking with me from the first time we met.  Some were waiting to judge my character a bit before speaking with me.  That might sound strange, but a few months after I started, one teacher I finally got to know quite well told me that some of the other teachers had been very lazy, didn't like the job and came and sat in silence, bringing books to read and shutting themselves off completely.  That would have been impossible for a chatterbox like me, and, eventually, I had some of the best conversations I would ever have in those 4 years with that teacher.

Some of my teachers were in their 20's but some of my older teachers were in their late 60's.  These teachers had retired in some cases, but had been called back in for long term substitute positions.  One of these had great English, a wonderful smile, hiked up mountains and still jogged often, including 10K runs.  However, the other teacher who had been pulled out of retirement was older still,  and was out at Kasasa Sr. High School.  He was very much from the old way of teaching, using only reading and writing.  This was so common throughout Japan that it was the main reason the JET Program was introduced:  to bring in native speakers and let the students and the teachers become more comfortable speaking it.  He knew the subject thoroughly, had vast knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar and structure.  But especially n the more rural areas, there was simply no access to native English speakers, and no need to develop listening or speaking skills.

 Thus, while he seemed like such a kind man, it was very clear he was uncomfortable speaking with me.  He came from the city and was on a long term contract because the regular teacher was studying in Arizona on an exchange.  He had not even been in the classroom for a few years so he was very much surprised to find that he also had to have me at his side in the classroom twice a month.  This poor sensei only had to put up with me for part of a year but it became clear it was not easy for him.  I wasn't really catching on to that until one day he rubbed his furrowed brow and said, "To tell the truth, you give me a migraine headache."

I wasn't expecting that and I smiled weakly and said, "Of course, I understand."  (While to myself I thought, "And to tell you the truth, starting with my dad and brothers and quite a few others, you wouldn't be the first, nor would you be the last man I gave a migraine headache.")  But in his case, he seemed so helpless, kind and also so innocent that I went home with a heavy burden determined not to be a stress he could not bear, if only twice a month.  

So, I had to wait two weeks, but I tried to speak very slowly, and not as much.  I tried to find out what he liked.  That made a huge difference because we found out we both loved to watch birds, especially the herons and water birds that came to our area.  And we loved flowers and scenery.  Pretty soon the English was not an obstacle; it was a shared conversation we both looked forward to, and it became a friendship.

It would be this sensei that arranged for me to study flower arranging with the Ikebana Club teacher, a one on one lesson, and I only paid for the flowers and a couple of tools. (The time I spent with her also released him for an hour to himself.)  He was also the one that took me to the Tea Ceremony Club (Sado) to be very formally served our green macha (a tea reserved for the ceremony).  We were served on tatami mats by the girls illustrating their study of Japanese culture and the way of tea.  

    The Sado Club with Mitsushige Sensei (right).

     I loved that the schools had formal tatami areas (woven straw floor mats) for the ceremony.  We are all seated in formal seiza style.

 

   There are many symbolic steps to prepare the tea and the utensils, and there are also formal responses that those receiving the tea should perform.  I am not a religion major, but it seemed a little like communion to me.  My travels and experiences led me to believe we shared more commonalities than we had differences. 

Soon, our several months with each other were over and we had to say "Goodbye"  It was a very sad parting for me. I had learned so much from him.  Over the following New Year holiday I received a post card from him, as in Asia most people send greetings for their New Year holiday.  A pretty post card, but I hope I never forget his few words to me in English.  "As I walk along the banks of the Shirakawa,  the herons taking flight remind me of you."

It was one of the most beautiful sentences ever written to me, but I will always pair it with the migraine headaches that I used to give him.  
(All comments are welcome.  Comments do not have to be in English!  Google Translator can be used for comments left in many languages.  Thank you for reading my blog.)