Lots 'O Posting

Hey everyone;

So I'm finally caught up with the past couple months of major events around here, at least the ones I have pictures and stories for.  Stories and recordings and pictures of my rock band to come at some point, although pictures are up on Facebook. 

The past few posts might be confusing because I'm posting after they happened, so here's a quick calendar:

Parents in Japan: March 21-April 3
Ninja Festival: April 4
School Outing: April 22
Golden Week: May 1-5
Takenoko Picking: May 8
Paragliding Camping: May 15

This weekend I'm off to Nagano for the spring JET soccer tournament.  Time to win at least the party again....

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Paragliding Camping Extravaganza

In mid-May, several friends did paragliding off a nearby mountain for a Cambodian kids' charity.  They were scheduled to jump on a Saturday, and so organized a camping trip in the cabins on the mountain.  The wind was blowing the wrong direction, so it had to be pushed to Sunday morning.  I embarrassingly slept through the jumping (it was finished by 9 AM), but we had a great time around a big campfire, which is something that doesn't happen much in Japan.

We also got some incredible views of the Kanazawa area.  The newly planted and flooded rice fields made a striking sight in the sunset; reminded me more of aerial photos of New Orleans after Katrina than anything else.

The landing target.

The wind kicked up and curtailed the paragliding until later in the afternoon, but one of the instructors went up and was carried high up.  This looks like maybe the most exhilarating thing ever, and I'm definitely going to try to go later this summer.

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In The Forest Of The Takenoko

On the Saturday after Golden Week, I got to go on a trip to harvest takenoko, bamboo root.  In the spring, when bamboo shoots come up, Japanese people across the country go to uproot them.  If they don't, bamboo grows so quickly (1 cm/day) and so thickly that it can collapse hillsides.

While we were picking, a man talked to me about how central bamboo is to Japanese culture.  They eat it, make their houses out of it, make irrigation pipes out of it, decorations...I wish I had an analogous attachment to a natural product like that.

The leader of the expedition shows us how to pick right-size roots and hack them out from the ground.

I get my first takenoko!

After getting home, I followed the instructions some women gave me earlier in the day and cut up two takenoko pieces.  I boiled the softer tops with soy sauce and cut up the bottom to make with rice.  The end product was crunchy and delicious.  I topped it with basil and had dinner.

Two roots' worth of edible stuff.  There's a lot of it that you have to throw away, but I'm sure you can use that for clothing to to cure cancer or something.

The tops are finished.  They're my favorite part.

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Children On The Loose In The City!

An outing was scheduled for my second-year students in late April, and when the day came it was putrid weather.  Driving rain, wind, and cold cold cold.  So I figured that the outing, which involved moving all around Kanazawa, would be canceled.  Nope.

I was assigned to a couple checkpoints with other teachers while the students walked and took public transportation in groups of four.  They're given way more independence than 8th grade students would be given on a school trip in the States.

My pictures are not going to do justice to how miserable and cold it was.  I was wearing long underwear and was shivering most of the day.

On any other day, this would have been a nice outdoor lunch...

 ...but today the children were eating under bridges like homeless people.

 They had a better attitude than me about it.

 

Some kids went to an "ame" candy shop to learn how to put ame into jars.

 Ame is a crystalline, caramel-like candy. 

This spring in Kanazawa was the worst, weather-wise, of my life.  It was also one of the worst in recorded Kanazawa history, with the least amount of sunlight ever.  At least it can only get better next year!

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Gilded Life In Golden Week

Golden Week is the name for the annual 5-day weekend at the beginning of May.  It seems as if the whole country travels, often internationally, because taking time off from work is so rare.  I've heard that it observably affects tourism in the United States.  Therefore, me and many of my friends decided not to travel outside our area.  We spent the weekend traveling between regional cities to see several spring festivals.

First up was the Toyama Tulip Festival.

There are crazy breeds of tulips from around the world at the Tulip Festival.  Apparently they introduce a new breed every year, but we couldn't figure out where that was.

Shades of last year's baseball game.

From the Tulip Tower...

The next day we headed up to Wajima in a caravan of cars to visit some friends and visit some rural parks.  There was a small taiko drum performance going on when we got there.

Then it was on to the Dekayama festival in Nanao.  Very similar to some of the town festivals in the fall that I went to, the Dekayama festival involves a couple giant floats which get dragged around the streets of Nanao (a city 90 minutes north of Kanazawa) to singing, dancing, and merriment over three nights.  About a hundred people, culled from the crowd, are needed to pull the floats around.

In a fit of inspiration, a bunch of us decided to do what only children do and climb inside the float.  It's absolutely amazing, only held together by ropes and wood blocks.  Those rope clusters are under enormous tension, but totally solid.

For the last festival day of Golden Week, we tried to get back down to Uchinada beach outside of Kanazawa for the international kite festival, but we didn't get down in time to see the cool stuff.  People come from all over the world to fly enormous (100 foot-long) kites, but by the time we got there there were only some stunt-kiters practicing and hanging out.

I didn't take enough pictures by half, but Golden Week was fantastic.  The weather suddenly and divinely broke into wonderful perfection, and I spent the whole time with cool people bumming around my area.  No responsibilities, little cares, and great new things to see.

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