Toyota Fireworks party...

There's tons of summer festivals going on in Japan at the moment, and that means tons of fireworks going off. On Sunday, Toyota City had one of the biggest ones, with 15000 fireworks going off over two hours! I headed down there with Mari, one of the school directors - the train down was absolutely rammed with people, most of whom were wearing yukatas or jimbeis and looking very cool (not literally though - apparently it gets pretty toasty in them). It's not surprisingly, but Japanese people really pull of these traditional clothes well - the women look stunning in their yukatas, and the guys look pretty snazzy too.

Here's Mari in hers:

I wanted to get a few photos of random people in their yukatas too, but I only managed to get one in the end as everyone was watching the fireworks!

Aah, cute (and younger than I realised from the back - they probably thought I was a dirty gaijin perv. Which of course I'm not)

The streets were packed as you can see:



But there fireworks were amazing! Whereas in England we just say "oooh" and "aaah" to fireworks, the Japanese let out this constant exclamations of "pretty!" or "cool!" or "big!" (when it's a huge flash type one). Each time they do, it's like the first time they've seen fireworks; they sound completely surprised by each one even though the show was going on for two hours. If the firework goes off once, then has lots of smaller explosions after, the exclamations stack up: "Cool! Ah, coolcool coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool!!!!". It's all very charming.





The firework show was also a notable cultural contrast to the UK in how people behaved there - despite it being really crowded, everyone was very considerate and didn't stand in other people's way or sit down in stupid places so you couldn't walk. Getting to the trains afterwards was also very organised and easy - the police had it all sorted and controlled the massive flow of people into the station, then onto the platforms and into the trains so we got home very quickly. I think it's going to be a shock for me to get back on the Tube in London....!

All you can drink...

On Saturday two of the schools here joined forces to throw a big all-you-can-drink party at a nearby Izakaya. For two hours, you could knock back as much booze as you liked for a measly 3000 yen. And let me tell you, the Japanese do NOT mess about at these things - beer was flying left right and centre and the air was filled with Japanese drinking songs and chat.

Needless to say, everyone got completely plastered. There was also a kid of one of the students there called Yukito who was hilarious - he was a little shy to start with but he gamely tried to speak a little English and by the end of the night he was the centre of attention, pretending to throw fireballs at people ala DragonBall and playing Rock Scissors Paper (and winning - damn his mad janken skills). I managed to have a conversation with him in Japanese which makes sense seeing as we both have the interests and vocabulary of a seven year old (actually, I think I'm doing him down there): what his favourite Pokemon was, did he want to see Transformers etc. Here's a couple of photos:

What was also really cute is that however much Anna (school staff, in the purple t-shirt) tried to get Yukito to say rude things about us in Japanese (e.g. "Chris and Thom are old men"), he wouldn't do it! He kept shouting "no they aren't!!" - yay.

And a couple more of other people:

There's an inexplicable disparity between the Japanese social scene and it's municipal transport system, so whereas most of the izakayas are open till at least 3am , the trains stop running at 12. So after the mass exodus of people dashing for the last tube, a few of us decided to go to a nearby karaoke. I don't remember this too well, but I do remember that you were allowed to take your own booze in - normally we have to sneak it in people's bags.



I should also mentioned that after this on Sunday I had a NASTY hangover which even lovely Starbucks couldn't shift. Bleugh.

Aloha month...

Every school seems to be having Alohoa shirt month at the moment, but actually it's really great because in return for wearing a psychedelic nightmare of a shirt, you can also wear jeans and trainers. Here's a charming photo of me in mine:

I'm holding fans because that's what we're giving out at the moment as flyers to pimp ECC, and I went to the station to give some out. It was pretty fun - most of the punters thought it was hilarious that a gaijin in a terrible shirt was chucking fans at them, and some even tried a bit of English out. I also ended up giving a load out to a gang of troublemaking youths hanging around the local fast food joint ("troublemaking" in Japan being "wearing outlandish clothes and talking quite loudly"). The police eventually turned up to have a word with them - not sure how good a publicity that was, them chatting to the local constabulary while twirling our fans.

Here's a nice photo of the Japanese teacher Eri and me:

Behind the scenes info - Eri is actually quite tiny and is balanced precariously on a tiny stool. She also taught one of my students that day who said to her "Chris is my teacher, he's really fun" - which chuffed me up until she told me he added "and he's got a big nose!". Whaaaatt???!!! Where did that come from?!

Finally, here's a couple of my students getting into the Aloha spirit - maybe not entirely willingly.

Summer Intensive Course...

This week all normal kids classes are off and the kids have a Summer holiday. However, work doesn't stop for the teachers - oh no - as we get to teach Summer Intensive Courses to 2-3 year olds and 4-5 year olds. The students come every day for three days and have a different teacher each day. It's a nice chance for the kids to mess around with a new person and for us to play around with some new kids. HOWEVER, I was a little nervous as past experience dictates that kids that age have one of 4 reactions to me:

1) Shyness
2) Curiosity
3) Enthusiasm/amazement
4) Fear/crying/telling their mum they want their old teacher

In fairness, I'd be freaked out by a gangly foreigner with big starey eyes and - as it happens - a loud Hawaiian shirt on (it was Aloha week at that school), but that's little comfort when children all around you are sobbing and forming massive snot bubbles out of their little noses.

Thankfully, all the kids were great - a little bit of shyness, but generally hugely excitable and very very cute. One kid in particular was full of beans and kind of roared before every answer - "what're these?" "rrrrrrRRRRRRROAR BANANAS!!". I have more of these classes on Saturday so it could still go tits up, but at the moment they're not the cry-fest I feared they might be.

Nagashima Spa Land...

Monday 16th July was a national holiday in Japan, which means pretty much everyone gets the day off and can recover from the exhaustion garnered by copious amounts of work, and going "ehhhhh?!?!?!?" 40 times in every conversation. I was just going to sit about in my pants, but the Japanese teacher at one of my schools - Chieko - suggested that we check out Nagashima Spaland which she had some discount tickets for. After great consideration, I decided that my pants could wait, and the trip was ON.

It was as we were driving there that Japan experienced a pretty nasty earthquake - actually, Chieko was demonstrating how cool her satnav was but showing me it could pick up tv too, and we saw a news program with pictures of destroyed buildings and wrecked motorways.

Me: "Oh, is this from a while ago?"
Chieko: "No, this is today".
Me: "What!?!? You mean this morning?!"
Chieko: "No, now. Right now. This just happened".
Me: "........um.........shit".

Nagoya was untouched, and most people didn't even feel it outside the epicentre, but still - nasty.

Anyway, on a more cheery note - Nagashima Spaland is a big amusement park with loads of rides and roller coasters. Here are some photos:



This is the Steel Dragon - 3rd highest rollercoaster in the world, longest roller coaster in the world, and quite frankly one scary looking bastard. You can see how high it is from these other photos:


Aieee! So before we went on that, we went on some slightly smaller rides:

The White Cyclone - actually made of wooden struts which creak and shudder a bit. Worrying that the tracks your zooming around on might suddenly collapse into a pile of matchsticks nicely heightens the tension.

There was also a cool log flume which I didn't take a picture of (doh). The neat thing was, there was a bridge over the main splashdown zone with a plastic shield so you could stand there watching the wall of water shooting towards you like the Poiseidon Adventure (or Titanic for you young'uns). You could also stand next to the shield and get soaked, thusly:


Chieko also took a rather well timed photo of me about to get shat on:
Here's another ride which was fairly tame by the park's standards - one loop-the-loop? Piece of piss.

If it looks a bit grey and miserable in these photos, that's because it was - it started out as a gloriously sunny day and slowly got darker and darker and began to rain. The upshot of which was....they had to close the Steel Dragon! Apparently one of the cars derailed a few years ago (!!!!!) so they're very cautious about the weather conditions.
On the one hand I was pleased that I didn't have to worry about losing control of my bowels on a terrifying rollercoaster AND having a legitimate reason for passing, but on the other I felt a bit defeated, so me and Chieko resolved to go back again soon and conquer the beast.

Nagashima also has an amazing hotspring place near it with proper hot water coming out of the ground so we decided to check that out too. No photos of that as everyone wanders around nekkid (segregated by sex of course), and frankly you wouldn't want to see aged Japanese winkies bobbing about on your computer screen. But, in the main spa bit you have to take your shoes off, and you can also change into a yukata. This gives the whole place a weirdly serene Star-Trek feel, everyone wandering around chatting a weird language in their eccentric uniforms. I half expected Commander Riker to strike up on his trombone and ruin my day.


Here's me and Chieko in our yukatas lookin' cool:

Nagashima Spa Land ROCKS, and I can't wait to go back and try the waterpark....

Yukata Week at Kasugai....

The school I teach at on Saturdays - Kasugai - is having yukata week this week. A yukata is kind of like a kimono, except much less time consuming to put on and less restrictive once you have. The staff all wear them, and so do the teachers, except me because I forgot to look for one on my day off (although the chances of getting one in my size are slim).

So here's a picture of the wonderful and radiant Masumi Hiyama, staff member and all round superstar :)

The kids where them too! There's sweeties as bribes, but it's still cute:

The kid on orange is the brother of the kid on the far left, and has moved through through several stages in knowing me - beginning at abject terror, onto shyness, familiarity, and now friendliness and maybe a little unchecked aggression. This can be a problem as small children such as him tend to have their heads at groin height meaning any high speed charge towards me can mean I sound like I've been inhaling helium for the rest of the day.

Also, the girl on my knee always fights to get on for photos, then looks downcast when they're taken! She's there voluntarily, honest!

Neighbourhood tour part 2 - Robot Museum!!

If you ask people to name some things Japan is famous for, they'll no doubt say "robots". Actually first, they'll probably say "sushi", then "those weird comics with the schoolgirls showing their pants", and then many many other things - but if you punch them a couple of times and tell them to stop ruining the introduction to your blog entry, they'll probably say "robots".

With that in mind - Nagoya has a robot museum! Now, don't get too excited - it's actually more of a shop that sells robot related toys and gadgets rather than a place you can buy a second hand Johnny-5, but still it's pretty cool, especially with the Transformers movie coming out here soon.

This is what is looks like:

Here's a couple of close ups of the various robots they sell:

If you know your robots, you can pick out some Gundams, and also a couple of Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion I think. If you're not interested in such geeky information - well, you've probably already stopped reading.

Some more, older fashioned robots. Oh yeah, it's not ageist the robot museum - all robots of every age, creed and colour are welcome. Except Chinese ones of course .

This is Paro, the World's Most Therapeutic Robot (fact!). It's really really cute and cooes and looks at you with it's big eyes when you stroke it - kawaiiiii!

I wonder if when Josef Capek (thanks Wikipedia) first coined the word "robot" in 1920, he ever imagine in his wildest dreams that one day such a thing as this would exist, and that Japanese people would pay a frickin' bundle to own one.

While we're dealing with all things kawaii, check out super deformed Darth Vader!


The only thing he uses the Dark Side of the Force for is making sure his enormous head doesn't cause him to topple over like a chump. "Apology accepted, Captain Nee-oof, I've done taken a spill, so I have". [Wow, this is the turning into an extraordinarily geeky post].

Strangely, whilst the most powerful Sith Lord in the galaxy looks pretty cute here, the renowned bundle of fur that is Hello Kitty looks rather sinister as a robot:

Look at it's blank, dead eyes - almost certainly plotting the destruction of the human race. Creepy.

I liked this big silver one, even though he didn't do anything except look a bit gay:

This one is also cool - I'm not sure if it's from Astro-Boy or another Osamu Tezuka manga, but with his steel companion above, he ups the gayness of the Robot Museum by a considerable degree. I think it's the wrist bands.


Here's some more Gundmans - at first, there's not much that catches the eye.
But look closer.....who's that in the back....?



Wow, it's a sexy girl Gundman. Phwoar! Actually, because it's very hard to fully emasculate what is essentially a hundred foot tall killing machine, this looks more like a cross dressing Gundam. What a diverse shop this is.

This is my friend Jacqui who I went to the Robot Museum with. Now, I know she might be a bit annoyed at me for saying this, but I think if you squint a little she looks just like Optimus Prime. I know I shouldn't say it, but it's true:

And finally, and not very interestingly, I had to take a photo of this:

OFFICIAL yo-yo strings. Wouldn't want to unofficial strings on our yoyos now would we? It's probably make them explode into a fiery ball of death if we tried to do a Round-the-world.

That's all for now, but just in case you were dying of curiosity - the shop in England that's name is "selfish" in Japanese is.....Wagamama! Cool huh?