Osaka- it's okay! (big trip part 4)

On Wednesday, August 8th after visiting the monkeys we grabbed a local train from Kyoto station to Osaka and walked to our next hostel.  By that time it was around 2 in the afternoon so we were able to check-in and relax for a little while.  I mentioned to Mikey that our hostel offered an izakaya (bar) tour at 7 PM where we could meet some fellow travelers from the hostel and hear stories from one of the hostel employees so we decided to sign up for that.  In this way we met Mr. Yano, an older guy who does maintenance at the hostel and loves to drink with foreigners and practice his English.  When we arrived at the izakaya we went upstairs to a private room that had been set aside for us (maybe the izakaya owners don't want too many crazy, sake-drinking foreigners to be making a ruckus downstairs).  At first Mikey and I were the only guests there but Mr. Yano assured us that some other guests from the hostel would stop by later.  Mr. Yano proceeded to give us a slip of paper with convenient Osaka-ben (Osaka-area dialect/words) written on it. 

Such phrases included:
maido = "hello" (differs from Tokyo-area "konnichiwa")
ohkini = "thank you" (differs from Tokyo-area "arigatou")
beppin = "beautiful woman" (differs from Tokyo-area "bijin")
nambo = "How much?" (differs from Tokyo-area "ikura")

Mr. Yano also gave us both a funny sticker that had a picture of his face on it along with his favorite English phrase "It's okay!"...  I can't even guess how many times Mikey and I heard that phrase that night...  Apparently Mr. Yano has only been learning English for a few years so he relied heavily on hand-gestures to get his meanings across (he was quite skilled at that though so it wasn't too bad).  He asked us where we had visited in Japan and whether we had been to Nara Park (which is famous for its beauty and for the many deer that roam it).  The deer are supposedly very pushy there.  People are allowed to feed them deer-food so the deer will pretty much mug you trying to see if you have any (Mr. Yano's impression of the deer was very funny).  His story reminded me of a bad experience I had in an Australian petting zoo where a kangaroo snatched a bag of kangaroo-food from me (this was when I was studying abroad in college)... haha.

Soon after that two other hostel-guests arrived (I will call them Jeff and Millie).  They were cousins from Belgium and were also godfather and goddaughter (Jeff was a good 10 years older than Millie and he had promised her that once she graduated from high school that he would take her to Japan since she had always wanted to go).  Jeff spoke very good English but Millie preferred to use French and also knew some Japanese from watching J-dramas (TV dramas from Japan).  We ended up hanging out with them several times since they were nice and easy-going people.

Mr. Yano welcomed the newcomers and proceeded to tell Millie and I that we were kawaii, the Japanese word for cute.  He said that his wife on the other hand was not kawaii, she was kowai (scary) and would often yell at him for staying out late drinking.  This story made us feel a bit bad since we were keeping him out late (and he was drinking a fair amount of sake and plum wine).  But after we had all eaten dinner at the izakaya he suggested that we go to a different bar down the street (maybe he was avoiding his wife?).  Along the way to the new bar Mr. Yano taught us a very amusing game that is played in the Osaka area.  Basically you pretend to have a katana (Japanese sword) and "slash" a random person (whom you don't know) in the street.  The "slashed" person then pretends to die.  The same game can be played with a fake gun (in which case you "shoot" a random person).  To demonstrate, Mr. Yano prompted my brother to "slash" a random woman sitting with two of her friends at an outdoor restaurant.  He did and the woman "died" while clutching her side.  Mr. Yano then had Mikey pull out a "gun" and "shoot" one of the woman's friends.  She did a very realistic jerk as the "bullet" hit her so she must play the game fairly often... haha.

After having more to drink at the other bar we were all feeling bad about keeping Mr. Yano out so late so we told him that we were going back to the hostel (Millie said that she wanted to go to bed while Jeff and Mikey decided to go to a different bar in that area instead).  Back at the hostel the receptionist was still there since she said she had to wait for some other new guests to arrive so that she could let them in the building.  We sat down and talked with her.  We told her that we had been out with Mr. Yano and she asked us if we had heard about his kowai wife.  When we said yes she told us that in reality Mr. Yano isn't even married, he just likes to tell that story!

There were hardly any places open in the area around the hostel (since it was a Wednesday night and we were some distance from Osaka Station).  So Jeff, Mikey, and I went into a random restaurant that claimed to have Belgium beer.  The owner of the place (who had been drinking at the bar section and seemed tipsy) came over to chat with us and ended up sitting with us for quite a while (I think she was interested in us since we were foreigners and she wanted to practice her English).  The more that she drank though, the less sense her English made and Mikey and Jeff kept looking at me to translate (even though she was still mostly speaking English - I guess I still understood her the best).  It was kind of awkward (and one of the waiters who seemed to have an interesting sense of humor kept laughing at our situation from across the room).  But the owner did give the guys some free drinks (and I got a gelato) so... all's well that ends well?  In the end Mikey and I stayed up later that I had intended so we slept in a bit the next morning.

Mikey said that he still wanted to go to an aquarium (since we hadn't ended up going to the one in Himeji).  So around noon we grabbed some bento (packed lunches) from the nearby supermarket and took the subway to the Osaka aquarium.  And now for a picture-tour.

Approaching the Osaka Aquarium.

Penguins!  I love penguins.

The aquarium had a nice setup where you were able to see each large tank at multiple levels.

There were several large rays.

These small fish look like a swirling cloud.

A rather ugly fish.

Cute clown fish!

Tiny string-like fish(?)

Dolphins!

More swirling fish.

In other news, I may have seen a monkey crossing the road on my way to school on Wednesday... is that even possible? 

More soon (hopefully).

The Culture Festival 2012 and Halloween

So, due to a special request from my blog's "most loyal reader" (aka my brother) I'm taking a break from my continuing saga to talk about this year's culture festival at Hashi Middle School.  As you may recall from my post last year, the bunkasai (culture festival) is an annual event at every middle school in Japan.  They are all a little bit different but most involve decorating the school with various art and school projects, the students singing numerous songs (usually each grade and each class sings a song), performances by the school band, and often include class skits.  My school also has a talent show and gender-swap competition at the end of the day.  The whole culture festival ran from 9 AM to 5 PM on Sunday (the kids and other teachers went to school on Saturday the 27th as well to set up and practice everything but they also got Monday and Tuesday off from school to make up for it).

This year I tried to help out more before the festival (mostly just with the posters that the students were making that explained some of the special events that have taken place this school-year so far).  I also asked the students about their class performances beforehand (though some were unable to explain their skits very well...).  Thus I found out that one first-year class was doing Snow White (with six dwarfs instead of seven), class 2-2 was doing The Emperor's New Clothes, class 2-1 was doing Momotarou, and one of the third-year classes was doing an original story called Moshi-Dora.  During the festival itself I discovered that the other first-year class was doing Alice in Wonderland while the other third year class was doing a rendition of Little Red Riding Hood.

I also wanted to do something during the festival itself (like participate in a skit or sing a song).  Last year all the full-time teachers sang a song together so I was hoping to participate in that as well this year.  Unfortunately when I asked the teachers they said they weren't doing a song (I think they had been told that the festival had to end by 5 PM this year).  But since the festival was right before Halloween I figured that I could at least wear my Halloween costume, Link from the Legend of Zelda video game series (the Ocarina of Time version, in case any geeks were wondering).  I told Risa-sensei about my costume and she said that wearing it during the festival would be fine. 

On the day of the festival I brought my costume along to change into later (I figured I could wear it during the afternoon segment).  When I arrived Risa-sensei said that she had decided to dress up as well (as an old man since she had the wig for it) and said that we could both be in the gender-swap competition that way.  I'll admit I was surprised that I would be going on stage (and would apparently be interviewed in Japanese) with only a few hours to prepare...  Risa-sensei thought it would be funny if I did all the talking between the two of us (as we were going to be interviewed at the same time).  So we came up with four questions and answers (and I memorized the answers in Japanese which wasn't too bad except that I had to memorize the word jitakukeibiin which means "I guard my home" as Risa-sensei's answer to the question "What is your job?" - which basically is a long-winded way of saying "I'm unemployed."

But before that we were able to watch the class performances which were each about five minutes long; here are some brief descriptions/reviews of the skits:

1-1:  Alice in Wonderland - Well, I think that their skit was based on Alice in Wonderland anyway since it seemed from their props like the five main characters were very small in size.  The kids weren't using microphones though so it was almost impossible to hear them.  Some of the other students were dressed as bugs and one of the teachers made a guest appearance as an angel. 

1-2:  Snow White - A surprisingly good performance given that this class has some troublemakers in it (Prince Charming was actually one of the troublemakers so that in itself was funny).  At the end Snow White apparently transformed into a man (the homeroom teacher) when she was kissed by the prince and the spell was broken.

2-1:  Momotarou - (a Japanese myth where a boy born from a giant peach grows up to save his village from a horde of ogres with the help of his friends the dog, monkey, and pheasant).  They missed some of their cues and had some issues with the visuals so it wasn't as good as their practice I saw last Friday.

2-2:  The Emperor's New Clothes - (apparently just called "The Naked Emperor" in Japanese) was pretty good but they played too much music.  I was wondering what they would do when the emperor put on his "new clothes" but they just had the student wear shorts and the same cape he had been wearing in an earlier scene, which worked well.

3-1:  Their rendition of Little Red Riding Hood was hilarious.  Instead of having one they had three Red Riding Hood Sisters (who were the tallest boys in the class from the basketball team).  They went to give their grandmother a gift but were confronted by four wolves and much sword and fist-fighting ensued.

3-2:  Moshi-Dora - Moshi means "if" and Dora can be an abbreviation of dorama, the Japanese word for "drama" but in this case Dora stood for "Doraemon," a cat-shaped robot from the future who is a famous Japanese comic book and anime character.  The plot of the story was "What if our teacher were Doraemon?"  At the end, their homeroom teacher came out in a full Doraemon outfit!

After the skits I got on my costume and participated in the Mister-Misses contest with Risa-sensei (we were the only girls participating).  The kids thought that our costumes were good (I was pleased when I heard some of the boys correctly identify me as Link) and I managed to not mangle my lines too badly so all-in-all it was a success!  The rest of the festival passed in a blur and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that it was 5 o'clock.

On Tuesday I dressed up once again for the kids at Hayai Elementary (since it was the day before Halloween).  At the beginning of the day there was an assembly and I entered the room from the back after I got my costume on (I had attached the ears with the help of spirit gum before I left for school).  During the assembly a couple of the 5th grade girls noticed my costume and kept turning around to stare at me.  The excited look on their faces was priceless!  Then at the end of the assembly the vice-principal told the students to turn around since I had dressed up for them.  A lot of the students were enthusiastic about the costume (though many asked if I was Peter Pan... does he even have pointed ears(?) or Legolas from the Lord of the Rings).  The vice-principal also pulled out a camera and took a picture with all the students (there are only about 60 at Hayai Emelentary) and the teachers (including me).

During class with the fifth graders one of the girls who is a big Legend of Zelda fan got the others to call me "Link-sensei" - which was awesome.  After the lesson the same girl came up to admire my costume close-up; she said that it was very accurate (which pleased me) and pointed out some of the details to one of her friends, "See, this part of the triforce represents courage, this one is power, and this one is wisdom." - she's a smart kid.

During lunch I ate with the third graders and I noticed some of them giving me weird looks from across the classroom.  I told them to ask me questions if they wanted so one girl asked me if my ears were real.  I almost said 'yes' before remembering that I had on the fake ones so I told them that they were rubber...  The kids must have thought that I'd always had pointed ears but they hadn't noticed before... haha.  I should have told them that everyone in the US has pointed ears.  I think some of the confusion was due to the fact that I had arranged my bangs to be covering the seams of the ears so they were fairly well-disguised.  One boy asked me how the ears stayed on and I told him it was with a special glue (I let some of the students tug on them to show that they were on securely).  All-in-all, another fun day.

In other news I saw a spectacular double-rainbow on Wednesday but I didn't grab my camera in time to capture it.  Actually, the weather has been kind of crazy the last couple of days with torrential rainstorms giving way to bright sunlight and even a big thunderstorm last night.  There don't seem to be many thunderstorms in my area of Japan compared to the number I would experience in Massachusetts (especially in the summer) maybe that's why it was humid all summer long, there were no storms to break the humidity.  I'm sure that the weather here can't compare to cyclone Sandy in the US though.

Anyway, have a good weekend!