Nomikais

Last Friday I had a “nomikai” (literally “drinking meeting”) with my gakunen. The staff room at my junior high is divided by the years that the teachers teach. These are called “gakunen”. It basically means “year” as in the year that you teach. So the 1st year teachers sit together and so on. Makes since. But there are a few of us that don’t fit into a certain gakunen like the PE teachers, the music teacher etc. So we are just placed around the desks willy nilly. Odds are it was decided through an elaborate rock paper scissors meeting. (seriously, this game is used to decide everything here) So I sit with the 3rd year teachers. Long explanation I know. Anyway, my gakunen never really talks to me, so I was pretty surprised when they invited me to their nomikai last Friday. It went well. It takes a long time for people to open up to you here, so being able to be in a more relaxed environment was great. Today a few even said good morning. It’s like that scene in that Helen Keller play where she learns the word for water.

Saturday, I was invited to see the junior high “brass band” play for the local festival. The band concert was not really what I was expecting. In the middle of one of the songs some of the kids came out dancing and wore costumes for another song.

The latter part of the weekend I went to neighbouring Okayama prefecture. A Sasayama-ite had booked a house so I came along for some good times. It was this house in the middle of nowhere on top of a mountain. The house was a thatched roof house designed just like a Japanese farmhouse. I thought it was pretty neat. In the middle of the house was a fire pit where you could set charcoal to warm yourself. Seeing as the house had no insulation whatsoever and visible cracks along the connecting walls, a fire in the middle of the house would be a necessity in the winter. It was a nice relaxing weekend. We went biking one day using the old lady bikes the people who owned the house had let us use. When we were coming back home, we stopped off at an onsen where white herons supposedly came to heal their wounds. It was a proper onsen and not just heated water so it had a distinct sulfur smell.

That’s about it for the excitement of the past few days.