A great long weekend of sorts.

Last week was the JET mid-year seminar. I wasn't looking forward to it at first, because of the disruption it would cause to my comfortable routine in Nanyo and being away from my home, but naturally it was a lot of fun and I met a load of equally fantastic JETs from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc etc. years. 

Lots of workshops and activites - there were a few cultural based workshops, in which I tried my hand at Sumi-e painting (traditional Japanese painting with Indian ink), and Ikebana (Japanese style flower arranging).

The seminar lasted from Wednesday till Friday, so it meant I got a bit of a break from teaching! On the Friday night a couple of JETs had planned a bit of a dance event at a small bar popular with foreigners in Yamagata City. It was brilliant! Clubs and places to dance are a real rarity anywhere other than the big cities like Tokyo and Osaka, there were loads of people there - mainly JETs but some from other English teaching projects and a some Japanese people from Yamagata university and Japanese English Teachers too.

It was called 'Kings of Neon' - because you can buy glowsticks and neon accessories from every 100yen store. There was so much neon! It was very colourful and it seemed that everyone really appreciated the chance to dance - I myself, was dancing pretty much for a solid five hours, along with some other wicked dancers (mention to Cherie the self-titled 'Queen of Neon', Dorrie and Julia for their serious (in both senses of the word). in the end, I was the last one dancing on the dancefloor - Max who was DJing, was playing tunes just for me! Great great fun.

Some of the guys made us our very own T-Shirts to promote the night - they're ace!

The place was packed and everyone was having a great time!

Me and Siobhan were in our element!

The day after it was an amazingly beautiful sunny and clear day. And....snow has been falling...especially up on the mountains. So me, Max and Siobhan went all the way up to the top of Mt Zao, the popular ski resort and one of the biggest mountains in Yamagata.

When we got up to the top it was about -5 degrees celcius, about a metre of snow at the top - and you could see for miles! Breathtakingly beautiful, although looking at the ski slopes - I'm getting a bit nervous of trying skiing or snowboarding!

In the evening (surprised I had so much stamina) I went to meet some new Japanese people who speak amazing English in Nanyo! We bought a few bottles of wine and had some great conversation!

My 22nd Birthday!

On November the 2nd 1985 I was born in England, and 22 years later I'm celebrating that day in Japan!

I was very happy with how the day worked out. I'd been asked to play the piano for the Japanese national holiday known as 'Culture Day' (文の日/bun-no-hi) at Yoshino Junior High School on the 3rd of November, which I knew could have very easily hindered any plans I might have wanted to make involving merriment and festivities.

Nevertheless I arranged to meet up with a bunch of my JET friends in Yamagata City, somebody booked a table at an all-you-can-eat-all-you-can-drink bar and about twelve or so people came along.

The 2nd was a Friday, so I woke up having to go to school - the postman had been trying to deliever some parcels for quite a few days but I was always in school and all the messages he left were in Japanese! The night before I had rung up an English speaking helpline and got the parcels redelivered to my work address. Therefore, in the morning I didn't really have anything to open!

At school my pupils sang 'Happy Birthday to You' (everybody in Japanese knows it - although they said 'Ku-ri-su' (Japanese style!) when my name was to be mentioned, to fit in with the lyrics. And when I got back home I'd got my parcels and some cards to open at a more leisurely and enjoyable pace! (Thank you to everybody who sent me a card! I'm still receiving occasional cards and parcels even now! It's fun for me to prolong my birthday!)

I got some nice presents, bits of chocolate, wine etc. The nicest and most amazing was from Siobhan - first she had knitted me a lovely blue scarf, and then she had put an incredible amount of time and effort to make me a huge big card from all my JET friends! It's brilliant, she wrote lyrics and quotes from my favourite music artists and movies, and then on the inside she had asked everybody to send her a birthday comment which she wrote in the card, along with lots of photos! It was great!

The restaurant surprised me with a birthday cake - complete with sparklers!

The front of the amazing card that Siobhan made for me! (クリス is 'Chris' in Japanese!)

On the 31st October, I was also thrown a bit of a surprise birthday party by my good friend Marie who lives in Akayu. We sing together on a wednesday night and she had asked me the week before to make sure I was free after the rehearsal - she was going to invite a few friends over for some drinks. Well, I had no idea they were all going to throw a little party for me! There was some lovely food and her friends are all so nice - they even gave me some presents to - another lovely scarf and a cosy neck warmer! I'm kitted out for Winter now!

New Blog! Bigger and Better!

Having had endless frustration with my last wordpress blog - I have changed to blogger.com. It is much more Mac friendly, much easier to use, and I've managed to keep all the settings and blog entries as their original dates and such. Only this time....all my blog entries now come with photos! Its much more interesting now, and easier to read (I hope) - my Flickr site is still there to the right of the page, consider it to be an enhancement to the blog!

Autumn

As I look back on my ideas of Japan before I came over, I get the impression that I completely ignored the climate and weather of the place. I can’t remember ever considering that it was incredibly hot in the summer, notably cooler in the Autumn, freezing and snowy in the Winter, and a nice warm temperature in the Spring. As Spring is the most publicized and recognised season of Japan - I guess I assumed that the moderate climate was an all-year-round thing.

Of course it can be completely different in other parts of Japan, the further south you go it stays moderately warm in Winter and doesn’t snow. There can be a striking difference between Japan by the West coast, and Japan by the East coast. In winter, the west coast receives cold air from Siberia which results in heavy snowfall, whilst the east coast receives warm air from the North Pacific Ocean. I’m no geographer so Wikipedia will probably do a better job (If you’re interested).

You can be sure to be reminded that Yamagata has four distinct seasons. Because it is surrounded by mountains, it experiences the ‘basin effect’ where the weather elements become trapped and intensify as they linger. After a very hot Summer - some days reaching about 34/35°celcius - Autumn is definately here. It’s very spectacular, and I’m quite convinced that Autumn in England isn’t as impressive. All the trees turn magnificent shades of deep reds, bold oranges and bright yellows. Because the mountains are completely covered in trees, Autumn transforms the hills into an Impressionist painting, speckled with subtle shades of greens, reds, browns, oranges and yellows.

I went up to Mt Zao with Emily last weekend. We picked a wrong day becuase it was attrocious windy and rainy weather, but despite that, the trees were even more spectacular - hundreds of trees shining golden, bronze and ruby colours - the odd specks of green. The Japanese claim that Spring and Autumn are the nicest times to come and see Japan, and I wouldn’t argue with them! The temperature is comfortable and the Japanese landscape is beautiful.