My First Week Back

It was really nice to be welcomed back by such a large group of fellow foreigners. Although everyone was out to welcome two new female ALTs, it was good to see so many familiar faces and I even managed to meet a few others that have managed to avoid me for the last six months. It seems quite strange to me, considering how small the gaijin community is, how so many people could be living on my doorstep that I was yet to have met. On Friday there were probably the largest number of gaijin I’d ever seen in my town. Many heads turned on our way to the Indian. I hope it's the way of things to come.

I had anticipated that I would return to some pretty hot and uncomfortable conditions but I still didn’t seem to be prepared for the weather I had in the first week back. All the schools are preparing for their sports festival, and one of my schools is teaming up with the local elementary school. During my first week back I’ve been asked to observe the preparations and rehearsals of these ceremonies. During one two hour session of the schools that have teamed up, I watched no less than three elementary school children get carried off the sports field after collapsing in the heat. Another fifteen or so were led away before this was necessary. Nonetheless, the show went on and kids continued to rehearse for the opening ceremony that was over a week away. They seem to take this event extremely seriously. Even I, who was not running around like the students, felt the initial symptoms of heat stroke for the rest of the day. It seemed to me to be an extremely Japanese moment. Although its not usually this hot this time of year, they’ve always been outside rehearsing for the ceremony at this time and so it's a tradition and traditions are incredibly hard to break in Japan.

Last weekend I had a really great time in Tokyo meeting up with some of the guys that I arrived here with. I also met some more new ALTs working for my company and enjoyed going to a Brazilian festival in Yoyogi park. Brazil is a country that has strangely close ties with Japan. The two societies seem quite at odds, one I imagine to be one of the most dangerous in the world, the other the safest, one has a huge gap between rich and poor, the other is has one of the smallest gaps in the world, one is really quite reserved, the other likes to party in speedos and flip flops. Anyhow, there was a lot of rum being served out by some very friendly, Brazilian/Japanese people, which can never be a bad thing.