Tuesday, 29 August 2006

I'm on holidays this week so we had planned to spend some time in the neighbouring prefecture of Nagano but unfortunately Mark had a whole bunch of work to do which curtailed the project scope of the holiday. But on Tuesday we packed up the car and drove two hours to Matsumoto in Nagano-ken for an overnight stay. We went to Matsumoto Castle which is the centre-piece of Matsumoto. The original castle was built in 1595 and was on a hideous tilt when they began restoration in 1950 (but some bits have been completely rebuilt). Apparently the town was on the verge of pulling the whole thing down and selling the bits for scrap until someone decided it might nice to keep it (and it's now a National Treasure of Japan).

Here's Buster standing by the moat at the front of the Castle - it's beautiful isn't it?

Here's another view of the outside. Unfortunately it was too dark to get any good photos of the inside but it was suprisingly cool - who'd have thought that those tiny windows for firing arrows and guns out of would let in so much breeze?

We also visited The Japan Ukiyo-e Museum which houses a bunch of wood-block prints. What were initially one color wood-block prints in 1710's developed to the multi-colour prints by 1760's. They are described as mass-media for the common man. They were quite beautiful and we even bought a woodblock print to take home with us.

We stayed at a ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn - kind of like a bed and breakfast) near the centre of town.

Here's our room at the ryokan.

Usually you get dinner and breakfast at the ryokan but we opted to eat out because Matsumoto is quite big and we were staying near the posh bit. We wandered around town for a bit and ended up having dinner at a fabulous Indonesian restaurant. Which sounds weird I know. If it's any consolation to you, we had a traditional Japanese breakfast at the ryokan - rice, grilled fish, pickles and miso.

Friday, 25 August 2006

Yes, I am a slack cow. I have no idea what I’ve been doing since I last posted. Working I think. We did have our big camp “Kangaroo Republic” a couple of weeks ago which saw us all do a lot of hard work.

We took about 170 or so kids to a big hotel at Mt Naeba which is a huge ski resort in winter. We left Takasaki on Thursday morning and arrived back on Saturday night absolutely exhausted. For the most part, we had a great time. The kids were generally very well behaved although there was the odd one that could have done with fatal beating or two. We had 12 extra non-Japanese staff who basically were there to talk to the kids in English although only a few of them were native English speakers.

My favourite part was the dance contest on the Friday night. All the kids were split up into eight groups depending on their ages and each group was given a specific dance and music that formed the basis of their entry in the dance contest. I was working with the orange team and our dance was the Macarena. Most of you will know that I am spectacularly uncoordinated, so the Macarena was a challenge for me. But the kids had the best time.

Here's me with one of the kids practising our dance moves.

Here's me and some of my kids - from front left is Ririka and Airi and at back from left we have Suzuka, Itsuki and Yuri. Ririka is one of my favourite students - she's not the smartest but she always tries hard and is a nice kid. On the bus on the way up, the kids were playing a game in Japanese and she asked one of the Japanese staff if I was bored because I couldn't understand what was going on. She's a real sweetie.

Unfortunately I don't really have many photos because I was too damn busy to get my camera out. And Mum, before you ask, I was wearing a bandana so I didn't have to brush my hair.

Sunday, 5 August 2006

Yesterday was the Takasaki Festival so we all met at Megan's house to get dressed together - you may recall that it is near impossible to get dressed in a Yukata on your own. We got our Yukata's on and tied at the right length but then couldn't figure out the obi from the instruction sheet. Thankfully Mark came to our rescue and deciphered the instructions and soon tied all the obi's.

We all walked into town and partook in the festival spirit by eating and drinking far too much. I had a baked potato with a huge slap of butter and then I had a mini toffee apple which was delicious.

This is me, Sarah, Canadian Emily and Megan at the Takasaki Festival..

Here are some of the Taico Drummers at the festival.