Long Time, No Blog

It's been at least 2 months since my last update here, and I have been meaning to change that for awhile. Thing is, whenever I sit down and actually have the time and energy to blog, my brain isn't exactly in the mood. I keep thinking of what I could write about and I think about it so much that I never decide on anything. Should I write about my day to day life? About the oddities and differences I notice every day in Japanese culture? Should I be writing for myself, or for an audience? Well this time I'm not going to think about anything and just let it run its course. Hopefully the result is somewhat coherent and understandable.

I said I would blog about a family trip to Nagano, but never did, and won't be dedicating this entry to it now. It was too long ago, and it the memories are still pretty vivid, but I don't feel like digging down and writing a long entry about it after so much time. I will say that it was fantastic, a real change of scenery. We stayed at a nice Japanese style hotel where I was treated to my first Onsen experience (Which was about as nice as bathing with total strangers can be, really), wearing a yukata and eating a ridiculously traditional and very expensive looking Japanese dinner. We went in a cable car over 3000m high and got to walk around at the top of the mountain, seeing wild monkeys, lots of cloud and some great scenery. Not much of a view down though, thanks to the aforementioned cloud.

After returning to school we soon had the school Bunkasai/Gakuensai (Culutral/School Festival). It was a great success and probably one of the highlights of my time at school here. Basically, every class puts together a performance of some sort. My school did the 2nd year performances on the Big Ground (Oval, minus the grass) and all the 2nd year classes put together individual dance routines with different themes and stories. Our class decided on a Pirates VS Ghosts theme for ours, starting with the Pirates waking the ghosts, then fighting them and eventually becoming friends and splitting into pairs to dance. It involved a pirate-specific dance (or ghost-specific, for the ghosts... I was a pirate) as well as the pair dance to be memorized. As such we had a LOT of practices. This involved being at school all day on Saturdays and Sundays (Often till about 5 or 6pm) and staying back on school days (Until around 6 or 7pm) for the weeks leading up to the festival. It was the best part though, I was able to feel like a real member of the class and bond with a lot of people I hadn't had a chance to yet.

The performance itself went well and I think if memory serves me right, we came 3rd in our year. Besides the bunkasai, we just recently had the Taiikusai (Sports Day), and I was entered into the 100m sprint thanks to a loss at Scissors/Paper/Rock. I expected to lose, and I did. I was unlucky put in a race with 4 other guys who were all undoubu (Sports Club) members and way more athletic than I. My loss was my slightly easier when everyone commented that I looked cool losing haha. What can I say to that? There were a lot more fun, non-serious events than in Australian carnivals. There were ones like the 6-legged race, where people had their legs tied together, or obstacles courses and such. Even one where you had to run out with a big elastic ring, pick up a sign with a description on it (Like... Person Wearing a Red Shirt, or a teacher's name etc.) and find a person in the crowd that matched the description, then tie yourselves together with the elastic before running to the finish line. The classes also had jump rope competitions where everyone in the class lined up and had to see how many jumps they could get in the time limit. We got 55 which wasn't too bad.

It's started to get really cold here, although there are still warm periods during the middle of the day. You really get the whole 4 seasons deal here in Japan, and they are proud of it. Japanese people will always say things like "Japan is the country of 4 seasons!", and then you may think "But, Australia has 4 seasons too! Doesn't every country?", but then you can see just how different the seasons are here. And you actually get the whole feel of the season. Autumn in Australia is a little colder, but little different... here the Maple Trees turn bright red before shedding all their leaves and it really is a sight to see.

I will definitely keep trying to upload photos and whatnot. I have had a lot of trouble with the program I was using not really wanting to work at all. So I will have to explore some options and get back to you. This all said, I will try to update more often. Sometimes I feel like I just want to keep the great memories in my head instead of forcing myself to write them down, but I suppose it's nice to keep a record and let people know what's going on.