Drummer Girl

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  Shizuoka, Japan
Saturday, September 30, 2006

Well, earlier this week, I learned a very cool Japanese art form: the taiko drum. It was really amazing actually. About 6 of us drove out in two cars a little over an hour away from the city- out into the middle of nowhere Japan... literally, the middle of nowhere. One of the ALTs has a Japanese friend who was kind enough to bring us with her to her class. We drove down a small dirt road with no street lights or houses anywhere in sight to this tiny little shack in the middle of some fields where people were banging on really loud drums inside. After about an hour and half of banging rhythms out on these drums, my arms could barely lift a pencil for the following two days! But it really felt spiritual in an intersting sort of way. We're going to look into possibly finding a class nearby where we could attend more regularly. You can check out the pictures and video clips attached to this e-mail to get a better idea of what it was all about.

So, are you ready for some more humorous anecdotes? If you're still reading, I'll take that as a yes. Well, last week, another ALT from Canada, went to her school's enkai. And if anyone thought my "small dog sashimi" episode was ridiculous, I guarantee you that her experience tops it. So she is a very funny girl actually and, while they were eating dinner, she explained how she attempted, and failed, to crack a joke. Apparently, a plate of seafood came by and a Japanese coworker of hers tried to explain to her what it was. He asked her, "What do you call the octopus that has ten legs?" She replied, "I don't know. A decapus?" For the rest of the evening this coworker explained to everyone how the dish they were eating was called "decapus" in English. Lindsey, the ALT, tried to explain that she was just joking, but apparently they didn't understand. So they enjoyed a wonderful decapus meal that evening... I think it was really squid, or maybe calamari, I'm not sure. But after that, they went to the second enkai, where things really get outrageous. They actually took her to karaoke- unlike my principal who baited me with the false promise of karaoke and then whisked me away for small dog sashimi instead. I thought karaoke would have been a safer bet. Boy was I proven wrong! At her enkai, when the microphone was passed to the principal, he selected a Japanese love song and decided to serenade this ALT, with his head on her shoulders! Yes, by far, a more bizarre image than I would like to imagine.

So another funny thing happened at the English Speech Contest a couple of weeks ago that I forgot to write about. I must preface this anecdote with the following explanation: In Japanese phonetics, there is not sound for "see." The closest that you can come is "shi." Therefore, you will need to use this formula: [ Japanese see = shi ]
Okay, so if you understand this information, and you plug in this formula, you will then perhaps understand why all ALTs who attended the English Speech Contest were chuckling under their breath and trying not to burst out laughing when the Japanese emcee got onto the microphone to kick off the event by asking, "Everyone, please take a seat."

And in other news, news almost completely unrelated to life in Japan, I heard a really good joke the other day at the English Speech Contest. Some of you will think it is really cheesy, but I thought it was great! It made me laugh out loud. Here goes: "What did 0 say to 8?"








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"Nice belt." :-) You know you love it!

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Taiko Drum class

Tell me this is not pretty damn impressive!

The BIG drum!

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