|
Royalty and culture: 11-3-99 Not too much has happened since I've been back from my Kansai trip... just regular work and such. It is so much fun, though. Classes are really interesting... recently, I have gotten requests to sing for them! heh heh... I suppose I set myself up for it, because I mention karaoke as one of my hobbies... but I don't mind singing a little bit, because I figure most of these kids find English class SOOOO boring... I am happy if I can make it a little more interesting, even if it's sort of embarassing for me! Sometimes I sing an English song, but sometimes they want to see if I can sing Japanese. So there is this one song by a group called Morning Musume... it's really cheesy, the group is a total teeny-bopper group... but I like cheesy music! The song's chorus has parts where the whole group goes "whoah whoah whoah" and "yeah yeah yeah," in between the solo lines. So I agree to sing for the classes on the condition that they do the "whoah" and the "yeah" parts.... heheh. It's so funny to see 30 kids singing backup for me! One class really got into with with hand motions and everything! Not every class is all that interesting, but there are certainly lots of fun days in my job. One recent interesting development is that I am playing a Queen in a school play. Every school has a bunkasai, a culture festival, where they display art, perform choir pieces, and do plays and such. So my coworker, Peter, was asked to play a horse in one of the school's plays. He was wondering whether or not to do it, and I told him, "Of course you should! Who would say no to a bunch of kids?! I would do it if I were asked." Then as a joke I added, "But I only play royalty." Indeed, no farm animals for me! ;) So I found out the next day he accepted the horse role, and asked about a queen part for me... turns out they had one! Guess he decided if he was going down, he would drag me with him. I don't mind! :) Apparently I won't need to speak, but they are making me a costume. This will be interesting for sure! Today was a national holiday, Culture Day. Ube had a big festival all day, it was very nice! It's great to see all the people in the city gather in one place. There was a big parade with people wearing traditional costumes and doing a traditional dance, and there were all kinds of food stalls, etc, and a stage for performers. It was really fun. :) A lot of my students were there, and it was funny to see their reactions to see Peter and me walking around like normal human beings. Since we travel around to all 12 junior high schools in the city, we don't really see the same kids twice, so we don't get much of a chance to learn their names or faces. They definitely remember us, though. We are like celebrities here, it's so funny! Because I am newer than Peter, more kids knew him... some girl practically had a heart attack when she saw him, she stood there squealing and pointing (happily, but just like really surprised). The funniest reaction I got was from a group of girls who knew me but couldn't remember my name- I guess Allison is a bit hard to pronounce in Japanese- so they stood there going, " Ah... Ah...Ah...Ah......" really intently, until I finally prompted them with "Allison!" and then they were like "AAAAALISON!!!!" or more accurately "AAAAHRISOHN!!!" It was so cute. I get a lot of kids recognizing me around town nowadays, when I am riding my bike, or browsing around at Sam Goody, etc. It's really nice when they are so thrilled to see me, it makes me feel loved. :) |