Friday night the party theme was to wear a handmade costume using non-clothing items. Some people were super creative, using bubble wrap, curtains, photos, umbrellas, used milk cartons, maps and such to make hats dresses etc. I went with the toga using Cheryl and Scott's old sheets and Dan's 100 yen laurel he made.
Saturday we had a very full day. Went to the lake to do some cliff diving and brazilian BBQ:
Then we visited a huge dam nearby:
From the dam, we were overlooking a tiny town in a gorge, we could hear taiko drums playing and saw some women in yukata [summer kimono] so we decided to take a look after....
Don't feed the monkeys!
And finished out the evening in a tiny town lantern/ taiko festival in the middle of nowhere. Everyone wanted to talk to us because we were gaijin [foreigners]:
Inside the floats are taiko drums. The men holding the floats turn them completely sideways and the drummers have to continue drumming in whichever angle. Women walk around with coolers of sake and beer to keep the men....um.... motivated.
People were stopping us in every direction, giving us rice balls to eat, fans to keep us cool, beer to drink.... so nice.
And then we headed back, stopping to learn the Japanese Samurai art of archery.
The class was held at one of the 3 premier Samurai training facilities in Japan [about 30 min from my house] with schooling up to university level [only 17 out of 1,000 High School graduates got to go] and one of 2 places to study astronomy in the country.
About 200 years ago, the whole place was burned to the ground, including the nearby castle... which you may remember from my Spring pictures
The trip was organized by the International Association. So cool!
Now I am back at school for the final week before summer vacation. Don't get confused- this is summer vacation for STUDENTS ONLY. That means, every day... from July 17th to August 24th, I will be sitting at my Junior High school, looking over prospective graduate programs [in Elementary Education]. If you have any advice... let me know!
Best Indian Food I have ever had, which we had twice in Fukushima:
In other news: 11 days till my birthday!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment