Fukuoka!

The great adventure begins...

We had one day to play in Fukuoka and we enjoyed it...


We had about 3 hours to wait in Mr. Donuts for Joe's flight to get in. Courtney and I enjoyed a few games of phase 10, 1500 and way too many donuts. We enjoyed these AWESOME cupcakes:




We walked around Fukuoka and enjoyed the Christmas decorations.
These were outside a departo:

and



Also walking around Fukuoka we giggled at some Engrish...want a hair cut?
some pot? you decide...





What kind of shop would you guess this is??



(ok, the picture kind of shows it...but really...hip.hop dope clothing?)




Art Museum visits too. We saw some beautiful Asian works...


Courtney and I enjoyed the kiddy table...we colored a picture of one of the famous pictures. It was a "Mary and child" piece. The original could not compare to our work!



After a long day at the museum I was tired! (not just because I had traveled over 600 km over night). Why not use the art as a bed...


We found a beautiful shrine and prayed for a safe trip...


These were tied to the entrance. I don't know what they are or mean. Something to do with New Years I am guessing but I thought they looked awesome.


We did a little shopping. We passed on these sweet sunglasses even though we all looked great!



This poster was all over one of the buildings. The caption Joe and Courtney are pointing to says "Silent Night. Ho Chi Mihn Night" We all loved it as we would be spending out Christmas
in Ho Chi Mihn!!

singing my heart out

As many of you know, and many don't know, I have joined the Niigata charity musical group. The organization is a non-profit that raises money to build schools and teacher housing in Papua New Guinea. The group raises money by performing a musical all over the prefecture. We rehearse threw out October, November and December and preform threw Januray, Febuary, March and early April. Over our spring break in April, a group goes down to PNG and builds the the school or teacher housing.

Every year a group rewrites a normal story, typically a Disney story and makes it more "Japanese" sounding. This year, our play is based off of "Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs." The story was rewritten as "Snow White and the 7 Samurai. In the story Snow White is a male. The character's name is Yuki (Japanese for snow and a popular name here!) The story reason the queen is jealous is because Yuki has the most beautiful hair in all the land. (As hair is a big ordeal here...many of my male students spend atleast twice as much time on their hair as me!) Also, in Japan, hair salons are on every corner (it's like casinos in South Dakota!). So the story is that the queen sends her stylist out to the forest to cut off Yuki's hair but she cannot do it. She sends him to live with the 7 style samurai. The queen sends her bad fashion ninjas to get Yuki and so on. I am one of the bad fashion ninjas. It is a great role-battling, sneaking and bad fashion!

There are many many wonderful (or not so wonderfully) sung songs in the muscial. Our director just uploaded 3 to youtube and know that everyone will enjoy our horrible singing and dancing. I am in all three of these songs. Please check them out and have a laugh:

This is one of the last songs of the musical. It is when the ninjas and the samurai face off but before the big battle fight scene we must dual in song!

Please ignore that I cannot sing my line. I know the song but I didn't acutally learn the verses until that day so I didn't know the tune at all. I have been practicing my line and actually hoping to pass it off to someone else! :)

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=1_3783PmYWA

This is the opener. We learned the dance that day so please don't judge!

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=CWrIBqy_fiA

We have begun to get this dance down. The Queen is the one at center stage and we are dancing as faithful ninjas. This song comes right after the queen tells her stylist to buzz all of Yuki's hair off.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=z7v4AgKcWgY (

jump rope time....

There are many events that go on in the Japanese schools and I was able to experience one such event last Friday at school. This event is mass jump roping. The goal is to be able to just together as many times as possible as a class. There are about 35 kids in each class so it took some major work on the twirlers part and team work. It was set up as a competition. Each class got 3 minutes to get as many jumps as possible. From that, they set up a bracket where the classes competed against each other for the championship. The goal of this interesting event is to build community in the classroom and develop students' cooperation skills.
I would say they did pretty well!
Class 3-1 won by getting 28 jumps!


Below are all the first grade classes warming up:





Here is class 3-1 in one of their champion jumps...They got up to 23 in this video.
Listen and learn to count in Japanese!
(watch the twirler in the very back corner...tough job!)

kids say the darndest things...

My second grade students have been working on "if" sentences and they wrote me a fax. They had many funny and strange. I enjoyed reading them and you will too...

(You can click on the picture to make it bigger and actually see them clearly!)

This one says:

"Christmas is coming soon. I am having a party. If you are free, please attend."

Aren't my kids sweet?!?!


This one says:

I found an interesting TV program last night. The title is "Full House"

I LOVED that show...about 10 years ago...but now it is very popular here!!



This one says:

"I played with my friends yesterday. I saw an interesting movie. Please talk to me if you can see. If you can see, please talk me."

Thank God I am not blind...


This one says:

"I played tennis yesterday. What did you do this weekend? Please tell us if you can speak Japanese. If you can speak, please tell us!"

I just liked this one because it says, "tell us if you can speak Japanese" it made me laugh.



Here, in another 2nd grade class the students were practicing IF sentences.

Question 2 asks, "What would you do if you were the prime minister of Japan?"

Student's answer: "I would have money!"



Usually teachers ignore me but sometimes I get warm welcomes. This was on the desk where I was to sit for lunch one day. On the board it also said, "Welcome Ms. Colin teacher!" I smiled at the effort to figure out my name. :)

the first "snow" of the season!

I was awaken this morning by cars slushing and sloshing threw the streets. I found my car covered in snow and since I was not ready, used a spare piece of cardboard in my car to shovel it off my car. It was not a pretty sight.
The snow here can be described in one word: wet. It doesn't snow as much as it just hails and sleets and then collects into a snow looking slosh. It's not the most pleasant. But it would be good sticky snow for a snowman or snowball fight!

Here is my car covered in snow: (not covered...this was taken after a day of rain/sleet/hail at school!)

actual address

For personal (intelligent) reasons. I don't want this on facebook anymore but still want people to have access to my address. (Emily-that means you). If you ever feel like sending me anything...a nice bag of peanut butter M&Ms would hit the spot! ;)

New address: (I love mail!)

Niigata-ken
Niigata-shi, Kita-ku
Hakushin-cho 1-9-16
Cottage Okura II 205
950-3325
Japan

Please ignore my first post with my address (Emily) as I was moved to a different apt.

Ninja camp part 5

After a fun day at ninja camp it was time to go our Japanese style inn. It was called the Pension Love Apple. These are the owners. They had dinner waiting for us when we got there. We had hot baths and comfortable beds. They kept us company all night. We had a great time talking with them about everything from Japanese relationships to skiing. It was a lovely night!


They were wonderful company!

Nagano is well known for it's soba (buckwheat noodles) and we ate delicious soba while there. The owner (who drove out to find us and guide us back to the inn) brought us here before we got to the inn. He explained this is a soba field! It was very cool until we saw the signs that said to watch out for bears!

The camp was so much fun! Here Naomi and I are trying to walk across the obstical course:


We had fun following the kids:


Building on my great sense of balance...we walked across the tightrope!


The rings were fun too!


Naomi and I also practice taiko drumming skills. It was at the end of the opstical course.


Jon and I were using up our tickets and mastering our skills!


Jon and I killed the target and earned these ninja star cell phone charms. (I also want to point out that I used only 8 stars to hit the target 3 times while Jon used 20!)


The best part of the whole day was the guy that beat up Jon in the parking lot! He was showing us some ninja tricks and Jon got to be the victim! Naomi and I laughed a lot!


And after a hard day of ninja training we felt we earned some ice cream! And when you go to Nagano, of course it will be made out of soba! It was delicious!