Kabuki, More Temples and the Largest Buddha in Japan. A very Japanese few weeks

For the last three weeks I’ve been attending 5 new schools, one of which I am still yet to visit. On the whole the transition to the new schools has been very positive. Now that I’ve been in Japan and working as an ALT for half a year, I’m much better prepared to know what to expect. My level of Japanese is so much better, which really helps for making good first impressions and getting on well with both the staff and the students. My two new Junior High schools are about the same distance as the last ones, about 20-30mins away by bike but a couple of the Elementary schools are miles out into the sticks. Although I must be grateful that my new schools in the sticks are in slightly more picturesque settings.

Some of the schools that now attending are really rather small. Nakago, one of my Junior High schools has an average of 15 students per grade. The students there do seems to have above average English proficiency. You can really see the difference that the student to teacher ratio makes. I have to say that on the whole the smaller schools are a lot friendlier. There’s some social psychological reason that causes groups of 50 adolescent boys and girls behave quite differently to groups of 12. I’ve also begun to play football with the 3rd grade boys, at lunchtime, at that school. I must be becoming quite fit, what with the half an hour cycle there too.

Two of the last three weekends I’ve been hanging around with Lois, an old friend from University and Alessi, her international singer songwriter friend, that I befriended about a year ago. Lois being a journalist that reviews theatre and music on top of her 9 to 5 suggested we saw some traditional Japanese theatre. And so we all attended a Kabuki at the National Theatre, next to the imperial palace. I refused to get a translation headset in order to improve my Japanese listening skill and as a consequence didn’t exactly understand all that was going on. Occasionally Lois would whisper an update of what was going on, which was helpful. I could understand a lot of the words. However, putting them together in a sentence where I seem not to be able to hear the most valuable information and process everything so quickly, I was at a bit of a loss. Nonetheless it was a really enjoyable experience and the sets were spectacular. I also feel its another Japanese cultural experience that I can tick off the list.

The second weekend we met up was in Kyoto, where Alessi was playing a concert. I arrived from a rainy day in Osaka with Anne’s old housemate Jamie and his girlfriend Helen (who it was delightful to see). And the first night we went out for Lois’s birthday; first to my favourite vegetarian restaurant/ cat café and then I took Lois and Alessi to an all you can eat cake restaurant, which they were over the moon about. Then on Sunday we spent the day being guided around Kyoto, by the promoter of the evening’s entertainment and met up with one of Alessi’s old touring partners, who’s recently moved to Japan. The concert was very intimate and at a really quaint little venue by the confluence of the river. A good evening was had by all and we were all sad to have to go our separate ways.

It was good to be back in Kyoto and early on the morning before I left I went to Sanjusangendo Temple, one that's been recommended to me by a friend. It has to be the best temple I've visited so far. It's a fair bit older than many of them and contains a series of over 1000 life-size statues, which are unbelievable. I strongly recommend it to anyone that visits Kyoto.

And for the last few weekends I’ve been meeting up with a New Yorker girl that I seem to be dating. Last weekend she came over to the ‘wrong side of the bay’ or ‘the peninsula of dreams’ (depending on how you view Chiba) and we headed down to Nokogiriyama, somewhere I’ve been meaning to visit since I got here. Just a few stops down the train line there’s a large park up in the mountains above the coast, with spectacular views and the largest Buddha in Japan carved into a cliff face. It really is quite spectacular. It was such beautiful weather when we were out there too and there’s a lot more to see in the park, including a trail with over 1000 Buddha statues on it and various other carvings into cliff faces that make you feel like you’re on an Indiana Jones set. It was really nice to get out into the country again. I had a really good weekend, good company, good weather and a spectacular day out.