Witches, Mount Kurikoma and Haiku's

Here's my weekly blog of my weekend. I try to live life to the fullest and never waste a day on sitting around and doing nothing - unless it is with the company of those I enjoy around me. Well - before we get to my weekend - I suppose I'll tell you a bit about my day at work on Friday.

I was at Sue' Elementary School - where I taught about Halloween yet again. I have one story about my day at school that I think you might find funny. For my Halloween lessons - I really just try to teach how to Trick & Treat, I dress the kids up in silly things I bought at a dollar store, I teach them key words and then do some sort of craft or activity for reinforcement of the words.

I try to teach English with picture/word association. I do not write the name of the thing I am showing in neither English nor Japanese. Most kids in Elementary school can't read English anyways - and then if you write in Japanese - they really aren't learning English - just reading the Japanese.

I was in my first grade class - doing the picture/word association with things like skeleton, ghost, pumpkin, black cat, bat, frankenstein, etc. I come to my picture of a witch. I say "What's this?" They all scream SENSEI!!!!! Now - they weren't referring to me - but rather their classroom teacher. I giggled a bit and tried to tell them, no it's a witch. I try again and again and again. Every single time, "What's this?" SENSEIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!! I couldn't stop laughing - and thankfully, the teacher had a good sense of humor and was laughing as well. The reinforcement of words for first grade is coloring pictures of the words I taught that day. While they are coloring - I go around the room asking what is this? while point at the picture on their paper to check their understanding. Every single student that had a picture of a witch on their paper, refused to say witch, but only put on the biggest smile on their face and said to me "sensei". Kids are kids no matter what country you are in.

After work, I was driving into Ishinomaki to meet the Brock man for dinner. I got lost a bit because I had never gone to Ishinomaki from this school. It should be really easy - but I got lost going to school so I wasn't really sure how I even got there in the first place. I stopped and asked a man for directions. I do this nearly every other day. I always can usually get myself halfway to where I want to be and then plan on just stopping to ask for directions once I get there. This means I am a master at asking "Where am I?" while pointing to my map book. Not once, has someone not been able to understand my Japanese. I stop and ask a man - who gave me such a hard time . It was so frustrating because I know he could understand me and he wouldn't help me. Finally, his wife came over, and I asked her once -where am I - and she understood me the very first time. My first encounter of Japanese not wanting to help foreigner.

I made it into the Ish and did some small grocery shopping where I got delicious things like pomegranate, flavored tea, cereal and campbells soup. Afterwards, Brock suggested this one place to eat so we went. It was seriously a hole in the wall but amazing. We go in and more than half the restaurant was just covered with clutter. The menu was pictures of dishes the restaurant owner man had made and he seriously like took a picture of these dishes and then pasted them to some cardboard. It was great. I ordered some sort of fettucine like dish. All these dishes are homemade. Yummmyyy.... Great place.

Afterwards, we headed back to my house. We got here and mapped out the route to the mountain we were going to hike on Saturday. This goes back to never wanting to waste a day. I didn't realize I had a completely open Saturday. I saw a picture of this mountain in the newspaper and how beautiful the colors from fall approaching were. I asked the Brock if he'd want to hike it once I realized my Saturday was open. The only thing was - I wasn't entirely sure how to get there. So - mapped out the route in my mapbook, and comparing things to a bigger map of Miyagi and also a map on the internet - and found the route. We headed to bed early. Woke up - had some breakfast, made lunch and headed out. 2.5 hours later - we had reached the mountain parking lot. I struggled quite a bit going uphill in my manual car in the mountainous terrain - simply I wasn't so sure which gear I should be in and it was my first time driving up anything soooo steep. But we made it! Went into this small building, found some maps of the area - and planned out a hiking route and had our lunch. We started out hike!






This was actually taken after hiking but it is a shot of the parking lot sign, and altitude of the mountain.








This mountain is called Mount Kurikoma. The trail was pretty easy since it was well kept - probably well travelled. It felt so good to be outside again. Finally, no rain!




Unfortunately, it was a hazy day and we only got to see these colors for a few minutes of a clearing. And with it being so cloudy - the colors aren't really apparent in my shot.

My co-pilot, the Brock man (with a name like Brock, you need to add THE MAN to it as well)

The higher we climbed, the colder, windier and cloudier it got. To the right is our summit picture. As you can see, we couldn't see much of anything. It was almost kind of creepy not having any visibility.

Below: This was on the summit as well - a shrine of some sort. I took it so you could see the poor visibility.

Headed back down from the summit. Originally we were going to try to summit a second mountain nearby - but with no inkling o f hope and really crappy weather - we just headed back to the trailhead. Below: Here are some colors from the trailhead.

Granted, I didn't really get to see the colors like I had hoped, but it most certainly did not ruin my day. It was such a rewarding feeling to want to do something - and do to it - without the help of anyone really. I have to get credit to the Brock man of course. But - I wasn't relying on anyone that has been here longer than me, or speaks Japanese or anything. We made it there entirely on our own. So - really - it was more rewarding than anything. I feel like maybe I can do this afterall. On our way home, we stopped to take some shots of the nature around us.

Can you sort of see the colors?

My hot rod

So, on the way home - I got pulled over. I have a tail light that has been out for a few weeks now. I decided to play the stupid foreigner. They came to window and started talking rapid Japanese to me. Of course, I couldn't understand them - I mean, if you talk to me like a 5 year old I can usually pick up a few key words to get the gist of what is being said to me. I just say to them in Japanese that I came to Japan in August, I am studying Japanese right now and I can only understand very little. They have me get out of my car and show me my broken tail light. I just looked shocked like I didn't know that it was out. Then, they started speaking rapid Japanese to me again. At this point, I show them my NY state drivers license, my international drivers license and my alien registration card. I started telling them that I am an English teacher, that I live in Monou and that I am from the USA and that I went to Mount Kurikoma and am now going back to Ishinomaki. They kind of just started laughing and didn't really know what to do or say. They wrote down my information and told me to drive safe. I didn't get a ticket but maybe I'll get one in the mail? I dont really know how that works. I sure hope I don't get one.

We got back to Ishinomaki just fine, had some dinner with the Brockman and then went back to Monou.

On Sunday, I went into Ishinomaki with one of my co-teachers named Yuko from Kanan Higashi. She was taking me to some International Association's English Haiku writing. We went in Ishinomaki to a park called Hiyoriyama. We went into a shrine. It was really nice - the association was mainly made up of college professor's and high school teachers and other pretty smart folks. We first discussed about Matsuo Basho - a famous Haiku poet. The one man - a college professor - when he was twenty actually followed by foot the trail that Basho went to write Haiku's. That distance is probably over 400 miles - and all mountainous terrain. It's insane to think he did that!

I really enjoyed reading the historical part of Basho and haiku's. I do love history after all. After explaining about Basho and a bit more about Haiku's - it was our turn to go get inspired and write Haiku. I went out and wrote my two. After that - Yuko showed me how to pray to a shinto shrine. I was very grateful because I've been to many shrines but never really understood why people did certain things or the symbolism of it all.

First thing you do is cross under the Torii - which indicates holy ground from normal ground. I always knew Torii led to a shrine - but I didn' t know that was the symbolism behind it. Then there is a thing of water and some pots in it. You fill the pot with water and dump it over your hands to cleanse them, then you refill it and put the water in your mouth, swish and spit on to the ground to cleanse your mouth. Then, you go up to the altar, put some monetary offering into this box thing. Bow twice, clap your hands twice, ring a bell, clap, pray, bow again. That's how you do it. Now - there are always two animals - this one were lions - I'm not sure if they are all lions or not - but these were. They are there to protect the shrine. The one has it's mouth open and the other has it's mouth closed. The lion with it's mouth open - had a baby under it. Also - there is always this wooden board where people hang up prayers. On the opposite side of the prayer there is always a picture. I had always wondered what the picture meant - but they explained to me that - it is the picture of whichever Chinese year it is. So right now - 2006 - is the year of the inu or dog. So - the pictures will all be of dogs if written in 2006. There are also different pictures for students praying to enter a particular college or high school. If there is a picture of anything besides a dog - it means it is from a different year. There are 12 different animals it can be. Now, I understand!

After everyone wrote their Haiku's, those that were written in Japanese had to translate into English and I had to translate mine into Japanese. Man, what a process. Apparently mine were too difficult to translate into Japanese and it was a huge ordeal. These are mine in English:

Autumn color change
Brings brief pleasure to the soul
Winter bestows us

Lingering sunshine
Escaping earth earlier
Early evenings

I don't particularly love mine. I guess my first one was bad because you aren't supposed to use two season words in one Haiku. However, I've never heard that before. And in my second one - I don't particulary like how I used early twice - but it sounded better than any other substitute words to replace them. Anyways - my translations into Japanese for those poems were diffcult for people to do.

I really enjoyed this day though - being in an informal classroom like setting again and learning new things with instruction. Obviously - I learn things all day long - but in such an informal setting that I never know why things are the way they are. Some people here call it Japanthropology.

I finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha last night. I highly recommend it.

That's it for me for now. To see all the pictures of my trip - click on the pictures link to the right and go to Mount Kurikoma. Hope you have an enjoyable week!