Post XIV
I cannot believe it has been 10 days since I last wrote on the Blog. I guess not having internet in the house has kind of made me forget that it exists. I find it surprising how little I miss the internet. Considering how much time we all spend on the bloody thing, one would think that you might not know what to do with yourself without it. But, that has not been the case really. I have barely even noticed not having it. It means contacting the family is a massive pain, but actually sending a letter is like 100 Yen (60p) so that’s the best way to stay in contact if I am honest. Might cancel the internet altogether (I would have to send A LOT of letters in a month to rack up a 5000 Yen bill in stamps – what I am currently paying for internet).
But, at the same time, I really want to keep up the blog, as much for myself as for any readers that might happen to give it some time. So, I will decide about the internet later.
So what have I done of late? Well, my student had her speech contest. It’s a very strange phenomenon the speech contest, and there seems to be two strategies: recite good English, or, recite bad English but cover it up by being extremely enthusiastic. A bit like the Eurovision song contest, it seemed less about the quality, and more about the performance. Which is a great shame as it meant that my student, who speaks extremely well but who is rather shy, didn’t place in the top three. Despite confidence building exercises, she just felt too uncomfortable with big gestures and smiles, and so, despite her near perfect speaking, she was overshadowed by the extra energetic students. I am still so so proud of her, and she has come an extremely long way since I met her (all down to me of course………..) and she has a lot to be proud of too. Not many people would have the confidence to speak a foreign language for 5 minutes, whilst being judged, to a room full of people at just 12 years old. I’ll also miss the practice sessions themselves, weirdly, as it was a great time to goof around and make a fool out of myself, and really try and help her to realise that the most important part of the contest was just to enjoy it.
Other than that, I played a gig with some of my teachers at the island music festival. It was a good laugh actually, though we played really cheesy JPOP songs which probably didn’t do my ‘street cred’ much good. The kids liked it though. A bunch of the kids had various performances too, and so did a lot of factory workers, which meant that the festival was a miss-match of thrash punk, JPOP, Jazz Dance, Hula and acoustic Bruce Springsteen covers in hybrid Japanese/English. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this al got a bit much by around 4 so I went for an Onsen again.
The Onsen on the island is interesting because it always has tourists (Japanese and otherwise) in it, which means it doesn’t have a ‘locals only’ type of feel to it which they often do. It also means that there are often people who want to talk to you. I find it very strange that once you are naked, everyone is perfectly comfortable to speak to strangers, foreigners and so on. The conversations are often similar, but it’s always nice to meet new people.
I’ve also been to Okayama, which is a city with a castle, cool garden, and a shit ton of skate shops, guitar shops, second hand shops etc. Really cool little place and I’ll definitely be going back frequently as it is not too far from me!
Well all of that was a bit of a stream of consciousness, but I don’t really have the energy to check it. I hope it’s remotely comprehensible, but perhaps not. I wanted to fill people in on what’s been happening, and though I have missed a lot of things out, I think the post is way too long as it is. So, to sum up, I’ll end with a cliché hope that I can post more frequently etc etc, and I think this week should be less busy than average, so perhaps I actually can post more frequently this week….
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