Mom Comes to Visit!

Matsuri, Kyoto, MEGA Matsuri, and Hiroshima

おはようございます、こんにちは、or こんばんは！

This month started out with a big solo day trip…to Osaka! Okay so not such a huge trip since Osaka is only an hour away, but still! To be completely honest, I found Osaka to be quite overwhelming. However, despite the thousands of tourists and multiple levels of maze-like streets, I was able to find some hidden gems such as a famous onigiri restaurant that I stumbled into and the longest shopping street in Japan (3 km long!). I also went to Osaka castle, which, while beautiful on the outside, I found to be disappointing on the inside. Maybe I’m just biased, but I much prefer the original 17th century interior woodwork of Himeji castle to a museum with replicated artifacts that is so packed you can barely move (Osaka castle). Nevertheless, enjoy these pictures!

The next day, for some reason, Barbara, Leslie, and I decided that it was a great idea to hike a mountain! Specifically Mount Shosha, which is what I like to call, the hidden gem of Himeji! At the top of Mount Shosha is a giant temple complex called Engyoji. Fun fact, the main temple is where they filmed The Last Samurai (yes like the Tom Cruise movie that I still have never seen)! So now, of course I need to find a way to watch it.

Mom Visits!

A few days later my mom flew to Japan (yay!) but before I could see her, I had to figure out how to get to the airport to pick her up which was an adventure in itself. There is a bus direct from Himeji to Kansai Airport (yay) but the website was entirely in Japanese and didn’t like my American credit card (boo). So, I decided to select the “pay at the konbini” option and subsequently spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to work the pay machine at the konbini. Long story short, I figured it out and got my mom to Himeji safely!

Matsuri

The day after my mom flew in was my neighborhood (Shinzaikehoncho)’s fall Matsuri! まつり (matsuri) means festival in Japanese, and it was unlike anything I have ever seen. That morning, everyone in my neighborhood donned our hapi (a traditional short robe) and met at our local shrine. Once there, I learned that we would be helping to clear the path of any bad spirits by sweeping the ground with (what I like to call) a real-life truffula from the Lorax while yelling “yo-yasa”. The best translation for “yo-yasa” that I could find in English is “heave-ho”. Behind us would follow a giant shrine called a yadai that weighed around 600 lbs and would be hand carried down the street. However, we soon discovered that we did not have enough people to carry the yadai the entire time, so (to the fortune of those carrying it), wheels were added. This went on for a few hours until we eventually got to an intersection where 3 other neighborhoods were gathered! There I realized that my neighborhood was known as the “ピンク (pink) team” and that I wasn’t just given a pink headband for no reason.

The 4 neighborhoods then picked up their yadai and hoisted them into the air to see who was the strongest/could hold them up the longest. I am still unsure who won, but I like to think that we did (go pink team!). We then continued to “yo-yasa” our way through the neighborhood to the local park where we stopped for lunch. After lunch, most of us decided to go rest until the neighborhood dinner, and I subsequently fell asleep for the next 3 hours. That is all to say that it was a very exciting, yet very exhausting day.

Kyoto

The next day, my mom and I hopped on the Shinkanzen and arrived 45 min later in Kyoto (wow do I love how easy it is to travel here)! Our first stop was the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest which is one of the main tourist attractions in Kyoto. While the bamboo was beautiful, the crowds were not. However, we discovered that there were several beautiful temples just past the end of the main path that were not so crowded, so we decided to stick around. We also ended up finding a very cute traditional noodle (soba and udon) restaurant that was perfect after walking around 5 miles just that morning alone. After that, we went into the city and explored some of the other famous temples including Kinkaku-ji (the gold temple) and the Chion-in Temple and the Gion district.

MEGA Matsuri

I had been told by some of my fellow Shirasagians that I HAD to go to the 灘のけんか祭り (Nada no kenka matsuri), and so of course that is where my mom and I went the next night. Let me just say, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but I am so glad we went as it ended up being one of the most unique and amazing experiences I have had in Japan so far. The Nada matsuri is the largest festival in all of Hyogo prefecture and happens in the 灘 (Mega) area of Himeji every year. Neighborhoods from all over the city carry their giant yadai weighing over 4 tons to Mega and hike them up the mountain to the shrine at the top. They then continue to carry the yadai back down the mountain to the arena where they fight by bashing them into each other. Additionally, they do all this while wearing nothing but what is essentially a diaper. Technically it’s called a fundoshi but it looks like a diaper. The festival truly is mega not only in location but also in size. I think that was the most amount of people I have ever seen in one place at one time in Japan. We decided to hike up the mountain while the yadais were being carried down and so we ended up being really close to the parade coming down.

I hope these photos and videos will leave you in just as much awe as I was at the sheer amount of people and force it must have taken to carry these 4 ton, glowing shrines all day (although I will warn you that there are lots of butts because of the fundoshi lol).

Hiroshima

The last day trip my mom and I took was to Hiroshima. We spent the majority of our day on a walking tour seeing all of the famous landmarks including the Atomic Bomb Dome and Memorial Peace Park. I have to admit, Hiroshima in general was a bit much for me. It’s like going to Auschwitz, something that I think every person should do at some point in their life so that we can learn from history and work to make sure nothing like that ever happens again, but that does not make it easy. As an American, I learned about the atomic bombings and WW2 in history class, but its different going to the place where it actually happened, seeing graphic pictures of the aftermath, and hearing personal stories from the descendants of the people who survived. It’s hard to internalize the fact that I am a citizen of a country that at one point in time made the active decision to cause a catastrophe like that and that humanity has the capability to do it again if we are not careful. To be completely honest, I don’t know if I will ever fully process that fact, but I do know that as an American in Japan, my uncomfortability with history is something that I will have to face again. For example, one of the readings in the 9th grade English textbook that my students use is a story about a mother and a son after the Hiroshima bombing. My JTE asked the students to complete a worksheet and write some sentences about what they felt about the story. As per usual, she asked me to mark and fix their worksheets for correct English spelling and grammar. I did as I was asked, but I have to admit that I felt very uncomfortable the entire time. Who am I to edit the words of my students who belong to a country of people that personally felt the repercussions of that bombing when I am from the country that let it happen, even if I am just correcting for spelling and grammar? Long story short, I finished editing the papers and all was fine, but it was the first time since I moved here that I felt uncomfortable being who I am in Japan.

To end on a lighter note about Hiroshima, we also tried Hiroshima style Okinomiyaki which I think is one of my new favorite Japanese foods! The best way I can describe it is like a veggie, egg, and noodle pancake with a super yummy sauce. I highly recommend it!

All in all, I had a great week with my mom, and I am so glad that she came to visit and got a taste of my life in Japan! I miss her a lot already and can’t wait until I get to see her again in May!

Work Update!

I want to talk about the craziness that is school observations! One of my JTEs had her observation a few weeks ago and asked me to be a part of it. Little did I know that I would have about 50 people staring at me and grading my every movement for an hour! That day, there was a shortened schedule so every student that wasn’t in a class being observed got to go home early. As soon as the bell rang, the students in the classes that were being observed prepped the classroom by taking all of the doors and windows out of the wall. When I got to the classroom that day, I was so turned around because nothing looked the same without the doors and windows! Then, while the class started as usual, about 50 people with clipboards and official looking suits smushed into the back of the room and the hallway to watch us. Weirdly enough, I think my students liked being watched because they were having more fun and spoke better English that day than I had ever seen them before. At the end of the lesson, everyone left and I helped the students put the doors and windows back in their spots. That is all to say, the lesson went very well despite being a major culture shock for me!

That’s all for now! Hopefully I will be able to send the next update sooner than I was able to send this one out, but time got ahead of me this month! As always, feel free to send me any questions or comments! Miss you all!

またね,

サブリーナ (Sabrina)