Christmas and New Year's in Japan

This Christmas and New Years I'll be spending time with some relatives in and near Tokyo. My grandmother's cousin's son and wife (Koki and Kazue, who took me to Mt. Aso earlier this year) will be having me over to their place in Tokyo on Christmas day and for a few days after. Then, the 3 of us will go to Koki's father's house in Saitama prefecture, about an hour and a half by train from where Koki and Kazue live in Tokyo. At Koki's dad's house, I will be able to see a few other relatives as well. On New Year's Day we will visit a famous shrine in Tokyo. And somewhere in these 10 days of vacation I have, my relatives and I will travel together to a ski resort - where I am lucky enough to go snowboarding on a mountain in Japan! This is the first winter vacation I have spent away from my immediate family (the Meuse 5). But, this is also the first time anyone in my family has spent these holidays with our Japanese relatives. I am happy to be keeping our family connection going, but I am more immediately excited to eat lots of their food, get to know them better, and check out New Year's in Japan. I've heard it's the biggest holiday celebrated in Japan.

Christmas, however, is a different story. Though I've seen lots of Christmas decorations hung up in department stores (which I spotted even before Thanksgiving!) - and it's hard to walk into any store lately and not hear Christmas music, or flip on the TV and not see some sort of ad with a Christmas jingle, I've seen very little religious connection to the holiday. I asked one of my co-teachers if Japanese people celebrated Christmas, and he told me that on December 24th families and couples get together to have food and drinks. Also, one of my new friends here, who has spent 3+ previous years living in Japan, told me that Christmas here is more like a couples' holiday, while New Year's is more about family time. And, I've asked students a few times now during a warm-up activity, "What date is Christmas?" - and more often than not I've gotten the answer "December 24th." I understand that to expect a largely non-Christian nation to be celebrating a traditional Christian holiday wouldn't make much sense, but it's funny to me to see so many Christmas decorations and hear so many Christmas songs (including ones sung by students) while the true meaning behind the holiday seems to go largely unnoticed. Though I can't speak for all of Japan, and I'm sure there really are lots of Japanese people do celebrate Christmas as a Christian holiday, I think this generalization more or less holds true for most of Japan.

Well I wish everyone reading this a Merry, Merry Christmas, and a Happy, Happy New Year. And for all who are enjoying plenty of holiday sweets, I leave you with this picture, taken at the local "Trial Supercenter..."

Asparagus Biscuits anyone?

Back at Shonai Chuu

I feel like I've been through a lot this last week and a half. Today I played some basketball with a few of the older boys from Shonai after having school lunch. I've been playing with these guys pretty regularly now in my short time (3 and a half weeks total) at Shonai Chuu. On the court I couldn't be happier - having a nice pick-up game, usually with fair teams and pretty upbeat and polite dudes. Off the court, in the classroom, is a whole different situation. It's not that I've been the direct target of disrespect. In a way I actually feel respected by these kids because they're willing to listen to me in a way they don't with their regular English teacher, and they are almost always friendly with me.

What really bothers me is that they are allowed to do things in the classroom that are beyond what I consider near to acceptable but are considered a part of everyday life at Shonai Chuu. I can see that when clumps of kids are chatting and not listening to my "American English pronounciation" of a few words - this may not be so bad. But it seems these kids are being brought up to think that it's ok to talk while the teacher is. Or to bring a stray dog into the classroom (this happened yesterday). Or to eat their lunch before everyone else begins eating (a huge cultural no-no). Or to tackle and write on each others' faces with big black pens (I was with one of the English teachers when this happened, and she barely looked up as we walked past these 2 kids). Or to go to the bathroom using urinals that don't have water running in them (this bathroom is also the one the men teachers use, and it really reeks and needs cleaning...its the worst place I can think of at that school). Or to grow up learning to pronounce the word "were" like "waar" because their teacher teaches them that its proper English. Or to hit each other during class and bully one another (one student was punching another student kind of hard in the kidneys, to a point where I felt the need to get in his face to stop him from continuing).

I don't mean to dwell on the negative here...because there really is a lot of good I can say about these kids, their teachers, and the school. I'm just complaining to feel a little better and to give everyone a small sense of what I've been going through lately. Last week was a lot more difficult than this one, and 2 grades of students will be watching "Shrek" tomorrow, so maybe I won't feel like I have to be on high alert like its been so often (to be fair, this 'being on guard' feeling only applies when I've been working with the 2nd and 3rd graders (14-15 year olds) - the 1st graders (+/-13 year olds) have been really awesome to work with). Also, I'm finished working at Shonai on Friday, so I have only three more days there for a while. And, one of their English teachers is leaving on Friday as well, so when I come back I'll be working with a new teacher. Things might be better when I come back...

A Weekend in Seoul

The reason I haven't posted lately is because I've come down with a cold and I've been keeping pretty busy with laying around. After days of taking it easy, I'm feeling much better now, and I'm happy to be blogging again. The weekend before last I went to Seoul, South Korea, to visit my girlfriend Elizabeth. The plane ride from Fukuoka City (a 45-minute train ride from Iizuka) to Incheon international airport in South Korea took about an hour and a half. I could have taken the ferry across the ocean to Pusan, a port city in South Korea, but because I was going to Seoul (much further inland) the cost of flying ended up being about the same, and overall a lot more convenient. Getting through customs and immigration was pretty easy, going there as well as coming back to Japan.

I had two distinct moments that weekend that gave me a sense of my living in interesting times. The first happened when I was at Fukuoka airport, checking out the crowd about to board a plane for Korea. I saw mostly Japanese and Korean people - older, younger, and of both genders - but I also saw one African lady. She might have been African-American, or African, or of many backgrounds, but it really struck me at that moment how internationalized the world we live in actually is. I was thinking that a few decades ago seeing her there would be something that was unbelievably rare, but now it's a part of everyday life. In any case, I still really wanted to know her story.

The other moment that gave me a funny feeling of our times happened when Elizabeth and I were visiting a temple in the middle of the city (which, by the way, has about 11 million people living in a centralized area - as well about 8 million in the suburbs). As I looked over the Asian style roofing that made up the perimeter of the temple, not only did I see tall buildings but I also saw a big, colorful video screen. We stood in the middle of a temple that was hundreds of years old (though it had been rebuilt and so was new in that sense) - and were looking at a brand new, bright video screen showing an advertisement. This was the second time I thought "Wow...what a funny world to be living in right now."

I can't think of much else to say other than to explain the few good pictures I took and give a big thanks to Elizabeth for being my awesome guide and helping me to a very enriching weekend...

The temple we visited in Seoul.

An area of Seoul called Insadong, which has many small shops, street food stalls, craft booths, and restaurants lining this main pathway and the narrow alleyways on it's sides. I was surprised to see so many people there, but Elizabeth told me that it was comparatively not crowded at that time.

Me at a restaurant in Insadong famous for its dumplings, or mandu. Here I'm about to pick one up with Korean chopsticks, which, unlike in Japan, are made of metal. After getting used to the lighter, wooden chopsticks in Japan, these heavier ones were a little difficult to use. But, on the plus side, I got a nice little hand workout during the meal.

A photo of the subway in Seoul - cheap, convenient, and extensive. Elizabeth and I covered quite a bit of ground in just a few days on this thing. Compared to the subway in Tokyo, the price was significantly cheaper, though the Tokyo subway is also quite extensive. One difference that really struck me as being non-Japanese was seeing people hawking goods on the subway. This is something I don't think would ever fly in Japan, where keeping to yourself (especially among the older generation) is the preferred norm, and having to sit there on a commute to and from work while someone with a raised voice tried to sell you a pipe cleaner would be considered downright rude.

A busy street in Seoul at night...