Oh, the psychedelia!

So a group of us traveled north to Tottori Ken for this:After late trains, food and beverage stops, and one wrong turn, for some inexplicable reason we drove over a concrete drainage ditch and watched a hubcap roll away, bursting into laughter as it came to a halt. After retrieving said hubcap, it became apparent that the tyre needed changing.
Girl power. These tiny yellow spare tyres are actually illegal in New Zealand now, and the reason for that became clearly obvious when we had to continue the rest of the way to the venue traveling at 30km/h.

Eventually we arrived, and through the power of headlamps we pitched our tent at the far end of the venue amongst cedar trees, and joss stick burning, jimbei and didgeridoo playing neighbours.

By now it was past 12 am and time to boogie. We planted ourselves among the sparse crowd of Japanese people illuminated by the DJ booth, arms and legs spread looking for all the world like newly arrived aliens.

Intending to head off to Yonago the next day to get a new tyre, we found the dodgey spare had gone completely flat too. A Japanese woman and her friend with dancing sticks got on the phone on our behalf, and while we sunned ourselves on the parking lot concrete next to a slowly frying egg, she secured us a new tyre and spare - for free!! Bless the kindness of the psy-generation!

Time for a roadtrip in to Yonago for a non-squat bathroom break, greaseys to settle the stomach, and a shopping spree at not one but two different 100 yen stores to secure glow paraphenalia.

Following this we took a very roundabout route to get to the Sea of Japan to see surfers trying their luck on miniscule surf, some crabs, a lot of garbage, and Mt Daisen glowering in the distance.

We then headed back to find gravity had shifted slightly since we'd been gone.

Oh no, it was just "mystery house".

We then created a spectacle by roasting marshmallows and mimicking Marilu's fire poi with home made glow stick poi. The rest, I don't actually have a clear memory of....

Gawdangol'typhoon, man.

I'm sitting here watching King of the Hill (Advertised on Japanese cable TV as "a look at regular American life") at 6.30 am, thinking about my weekend. As it's Respect for the Aged day on Monday, I should be having a nice long weekend, however my plans have been foiled by work forcing me to attend a Culture Day festival with no day in lieu, and a whopper of a typhoon that hit Niimi last night. To the rest of the world it's name is ShanShan, but in Japan, it's known as Typhoon Number 13. Is there no justice in the world?

Something that does have something to do with Japan

I've posted about Hard Gay before, but it's recently come to my attention that a group called "bakafish" have been adding subtitles to his show and putting them on you tube. Every time I see his face, I crack up. I love you tube, and I love Hard Gay.

Hard Gay invades the Yahoo Japan head office because he thinks they've stolen his trademark "Hooooo".


Hard Gay invades the TOMY head office against the wishes of his employers to try and have a toy made in his likeness. (Part I and II).



Hard Gay invades The Television magazine head quarters to try and get on the cover. (Part I and II).

The Little Sports Day That Could

On hearing that the Sports Day at my favorite JHS was not cancelled despite all weather reports indicating rain, I headed up to N JHS to watch the bizarre "athletic" events.

N JHS is now such a small school with only 16 students, that they joined together with the local primary school and kindergarten and held the event on the grounds of the primary school. I was extremely excited about this as I've never been to a primary school in Japan before.

The first thing I noticed was a row of ichirinsha, or unicycles. One for each student. In Japan, every student learns how to ride one of these, but for most, the talent is lost by the time they hit high school.The motto for the day was "Powerful Brave". Below that is says "Minna no kokoro o hitotsu ni", which literally means "treat everyone's heart as one". I guess it's the same thing as all for one and one for all.JHS team red!JHS team white!As with last year, the day starts off with an official march onto the playing field.After the flag raising, ceremonial speeches, and the ridiculous passing backwards and forwards of cups and flags, it was time for calisthenics. This routine has been memorised off by heart by students for over 100 years and nearly everyone joined in, except me. I decided to pass on the sporting activities, seeing as I wasn't wearing the requisite white polo shirt and blue or black track pants. I didn't get the memo I guess.

The first event was called tamairi, and involved throwing balls into a hoop. While the primary school and JHS school students were busy doing this, the rain that had been threatening all morning finally started.In true Japanese fashion, the programme must be adhered to and the show must go on. The students huddled in the rain.Eventually everyone was called off the field.While we waited to see if the rain would let up, I had an argument with the headmaster of the primary school. He insisted Japanese sports day was all about athletics. I tried to explain that these games are not athletic. I think I really knocked his socks off when I told him that sports day in NZ consists of real athletic events such as discus, shot put, high jump, javelin, hurdles etc.

The rain lightened up for a short while so I got to see the cute little kindergarten kids doing their 10 meter dash.Eventually we crowded into the gym to finish off the day. Surprisingly we all fit, and had room to hold obstacle races, eating competitions, and dances. The kindergarten kids did a zebra dance and a ninja dance, the primary school kids did a traditional Soran Bushi dance, of which I have seen many renditions, and enjoy immensely, and the JHS kids did two cheer routines to J-pop music. Unfortunately my camera wasn't up to much and I didn't catch very good images in the gym.
The day was topped off with the mukade race, where all the kids have their ankles tied together and race around falling over each other and causing carnage.Even after a second year the reason behind all this still hasn't become clear to me. I'm finding that this is true with a lot of things in Japan. Will the madness ever cease?

Something that has absolutely nothing to do with Japan

Spock and Captain Kirk get Closer with a little help from NIN. (If your audio is on, this video is not worksafe, however, without the audio on, there is no point watching it!)

Safety at School

School is a violent place. In one month, there would be at least one broken ankle, one broken arm, a broken nose, two broken fingers, and occasionally a broken collar bone at my schools.

Every month, the school nurse receives a health and safety poster to tack on the walls of school corridors.

They usually feature horrendous pictures of burns, insect bites and injuries. Along with these is information on how to avoid the above inflictions, and how to treat them.

This one, features broken teeth.

Inaka Spelunking

After a hellish first week back at work, I took a group of people to see one of Niimi's major tourist attractions - Ikura Do and Maki Do. Fish on a stick!I've previously posted about Ikura Do, but hadn't been to Maki Do before. It was a pretty cave, complete with an area for holding a dinner/party in. It had coloured lights, piped in music, and beautiful rock pools with obviously receeding water lines. Whilst singing the Fraggle Rock tune to myself I wandered among the rock formations.

Amazingly, we managed not to miss any of the busses or trains, and made it to Takahashi for some kaitenzushi before heading down to Okayama City for some shopping, drinking, eating, dancing, and what turned out for me to be an all-nighter ending in a kip on the floor of the ichibangai underground shopping centre in front of the station entrance.