Happyokai and My Little Home

Well over the past couple of weeks I've been celebrating Christmas in Japan with the two kindergarten's 'Happyokai' or Christmas Performances. The first was a week ago for Hikari no Kuni yochien and it went pretty well. The second was this weekend for Hikari. Each class either did a song and dance or small play in Japanese. Each age group (3/4, 4/5, and 5/6 years) also sang an English song with me. The oldest ones sang about the weather, the 4/5 sang a feelings song and the little ones sang about a banana. My job was also to walk around and collect money with the kids for charity, and I made them say "Thank you" instead of "Arigatoo go zai emas" which many of the parents thought was halarious. Toshkey (who is one of my afternoon class students) is the one in the bow tie making the weird face. It's just like Taiwan in that the students really don't smile in pictures, but if I would have made the peace sign they would have been all over it (but like I said in one of my past posts, I'm resigned to stop doing that...) It was nice this time around being the random English teacher instead of a classes teacher like last year in Taiwan, a lot less pressure. Hikari's performance yesterday was really good and I felt inclined to take a video of the older students dancing the Totorro dance. Totorro is a giant cat that the students just love here. Their moves are pretty good too, the teachers really practiced with them and the end result is this. Enjoy, they're too cute in their little cat costumes.

Santa also made an appearance for the children, he even spoke some English which I was thrilled to hear, yes it was pronounced poorly but it was English nonetheless. Santa handed-out presents for the students and then Encho Sensei (The Principal in black) and Gacko Encho Sensei (Her mother, the big boss in white) handed out presents to all the other children in the audience.

Here are some pictures of my little home too. Mom has been on my case about it for about 4 months now even before I moved here. It's small, cozy and free. Oh and did I mention it's free....yes the nice perk I appreciate every month when I don't have to pay rent. I have a little kitchen that I have been using for almost every meal. I've discovered that I don't mind cooking afterall. That's not to say I'm creating gourmet dishes every dinner, but I don't loathe it like I used to. It's actually fun sometimes. I think because I couldn't cook all last year in Taiwan, and I'm not as busy as I was in University so it isn't a pain in the butt like it used to feel. Next weekend my goal is to make Christmas cookies for all my teachers, we'll see how that goes, especially trying to find all the ingredients here. I also have a little Christmas set-up going on, no real tree per se but a red blanket wrapped around my luggage with Holly and Dad's decorations they sent me. And my cute stockings that Mom got me, it's fun.

Also I've offically paid for my trip to Koya San, Nara and Kyoto so it's really happeneing which is super fun. I leave Christmas Eve early in the morning from Sapporo, fly to Osaka and then try and make my way to Koya San mountain for my traditional Christmas celebration with Buddha. The next day I'm planning on waking up early and maybe praying with some monks (if I do that I have to wake-up at like 5:30am so we'll see if that actually happens) and then checking out some really old and sacred buddhist temples. All in all I'll be gone 7 days, and I'm sure there will be some good stories from it, hopefully not ones where I get lost on a bus to god knows where, but happy ones.

Oh and about two weeks ago I got into a car accident and Bill bit the dust, my first car (*sob*), but the end result has actually turned out to be okay. No one was hurt, I now have a new car which is newer (it's a Toyota Corsa, kind of like a bigger Echo), my insurance payments have gone down since my car is now smaller, and it didn't cost me anything since the accident was the fault of the other driver. It is a bit ironic though, I get into an accident here in one of the world's safest countries to drive in and yet last year when I lived in Taiwan, a country where laws are 'guidelines', I was fine. Go figure.

-Lindsay