Another Festivals

Last Friday was the “welcome party” for the new ALTs in Sasayama. Mind you, these ALTs came in August. It is never too late I guess. The dinner was at a Chinese restaurant that I had never even seen before in Sasayama. You learn something new every day. It was a pretty usual enkai. The thing about enkais is that they get you all excited with moving around and drinking and such, but then they always end before nine. Lame. So it’s either going home or finding something else to do. And since Sasayama is…well…Sasyama, this makes it difficult. But luckily we have a few places. I met some friends at the karaoke bar. It has a karaoke machine and like five monitors, so you can embarrass yourself and watch others do the same. It is refreshing because usually in Japan, karaoke is done in booths with a private party. So it is nice to get out there and make a fool of yourself every now and then. The bar is pretty shady and I am pretty sure it is owned by yakuza, so it adds to the flavour.

The next Sunday was my junior high’s culture festival. Otherwise known as most boring event alive. This is definitely one of those events that only parents can appreciate. The kids put on skits in the morning. Japanese kids’ acting is not for the faint of heart. They whisper on stage and act with the enthusiasm of Malaysian prisoners. Add to the mix, the whole “it’s in Japanese” thing, and you get a very bored very sleepy me sitting in the back of the school gym wishing for a quick death. In the afternoon they put on a choral competition. I hated these things in school and I have grown no fonder of them since. The songs are cliché ballads about springtime, peace or coming together as one. The three-minute songs are about two and a half minutes too long. I was asked to judge the competition and merely picked the two least offensive performers. After seven hours of sheer agony, an allotted ten minutes of pompous ceremony-ness finished the day. As with all school festivals, the teachers had planned to have a celebratory party afterwards. It is hot pot season in Japan now so everyone gets together, boils a soup base in a big pot and throws everything in. Everything was pretty good. Not amazing, but not bad. Of course the usual suspects got drunk and began the night’s entertainment. Last year this teacher had dry humped pot lids for a good half hour with no one looking. This year he wrestled with the math teacher until they were cuddling on the floor. I did not find this awkward because of the actual events, but because I knew that on the next school day, everything would be as if nothing happened. And that just weirds me out. You should not be able to hump pots and have everyone forget about it.

This week I had a Halloween day at an elementary school. Recently, Halloween has become really popular in Japan. I do not really know why. They do not actually do anything Halloween related, but they will decorate classrooms, houses or have displays in stores. So the teachers wanted me to explain Halloween to the students. In my opinion, Halloween is one of those things that if you are going to do it….go all out. Costumes, decorations, food etc. Having me make a slide show showing pictures of Halloween things while you wear a witch hat is just insulting. Since prisons have looser rules on food than Japanese schools, I could not pass out any candy or make cookies or anything. This is like having a GOP after-party without a dead hooker. You might as well just go home.