For the past few years, during spring break, I've also done something with a group of my students. Past activities include a trip to the Higashiyama Zoo and a trip to the Nagoya Aquarium.
This year, due to the unusual cold weather in late March, we decided to go bowling. Most of the kids had only been bowling once or twice before, so I think it was a good experience for them.
For me, I just enjoyed watching them. Check out this short clip of my youngest student named Ha-kun throw a ball as big as he is.
Afterwards, we all went to eat McDonald's hamburgers and fries. It wasn't exactly an educational day, but it when else will I have the chance to throw rocks with a bunch of ten year old nihilists?
A couple weeks ago I went to see Damo Suzuki's Network play in Nagoya. Damo is an ex-member of the '70s German prog-rock juggernaut CAN. He's now on what he calls the Never Ending World Tour.
Damo travels alone to cities all over the world, and he has a revolving cast of musicians improvise behind him. In each city, he assembles a band of local musicians. Thus, every night is new and slightly or maybe even extremely different.
His show in Nagoya consisted of Hiroshi Higashi (Synthesizer), Makoto Kawabata (Guitar), Atsushi Tsuyama (Bass) all members of the Acid Mothers Temple. As well as local Zen musician Kei (Guitar) with pal Ryoko Ono (Sax), and Taiqui (Drums).
I've been messing around with YouTube a lot recently, so I decided to post this short clip from the show.
We stayed in a Japanese style, onsen hotel called Takemine, located on the top of the ski resort. The only way to get there was to take a snow-cat from the parking lot or ski in. After we arrived, everyone changed into the comfortable yukatta's provided for us, and we went to eat dinner in the dining hall.
The hotel served Japanese carp in a variety of different ways. I'd never eaten carp before, and I was shocked at how good it was.
After dinner, we returned to our room for a three-dimensional sound experiment. We played the Flaming Lips' Zaireeka album using two iPods, each connected to an iFusion speaker setup, and two iBooks, each connected to an external speaker set-up. For one night, we had the best stereo on the planet!
The next day we woke up, put our iPods in our pockets, walked out into a blizzard, and went cross-country skiing across a 3km cat track. At the end of the cat track, we strapped on a pair of snowshoes and went trooping through the woods like the March of the Rotten Vegetables.
Eventually, we decided to dig a snow cave. We managed to hollow out a deep snowdrift that provided us shelter for lunch. After eating, we went back outside and noticed all our tracks were snowed over. It took us some time to find our way back to the cat track, but we did it.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped off in front of a mirror to have some fun with our cameras.
Pure silliness. Believe it or not, that was the music I was listening to at the time.
All jokes aside, that night I ate one of the best meals of my life; carp sashimi, carp in a kind of sweet miso soup, nabe, tsukemono, fish paste served with a shiso leaf, and a few bottles of atsukan.
Our last day, we woke up to beautiful sunshine and went snowboarding all morning before catching a 3pm snow-cat back down the mountain.
At the end, I concluded that any time Jason, Mark, and I get together hilarity ensues.
It was a bittersweet occasion. I taught these students for four years starting when they were 5th grade at elementary school. I have many fond memories with them; for example, these students wrote letters to my uncle when he was sick, and in return as thank you notes, they received baby pictures of me from my father.
I was very proud to watch them walk and receive their diplomas, but the event also marked the end of my tenure at this school. From April, the town of Jushiyama will merge with a neighboring city, so my contract with the local BOE will be lost.
I enjoyed myself here immensely, but it's time to start moving on...
