No comment!

I had a most pleasant weekend. Teru and band were once again playing on Okinawa honto so I went across to see them again. This time it was a slightly larger venue and a number of other bands were playing. Teru’s band definitely got the crowd going way more than any of the other bands, and I gave my all in the head banging and moshing. For the rest of the weekend I hung out with some of the Okinawa honto JETs, and had a bleedin’ good time too! Aside from seeing the other JETs it was mildly shocking to see so many foreigners around. Although I was in Okinawa city with has a large population of US military so I should have expected it. The one upshot of this was that I was able to buy a number of English books, yippee! Until that moment I was rapidly finishing my last novel and facing a bleak bookless future. Back on the topic of seeing so many Gaijin (foreign people) around, I do feel that I am leaving Japan and entering some weird Japanese American hybrid country when I come to the Okinawa honto from my island. There is American food, signs in English, shops catering for American tastes, menus in English (English in the broadest sense of the word) and of course hoards of Americans. It is nice though, it lets me take a break from the Japaneseness of my island, pollute my body with fast food and partake in any other western delights I had been missing. Back on the island I got back into the rhythm of running and hanging out with the taiko crew down at the stagi. Next week we have seven international high school students coming to Izena as part of a cultural exchange and language learning program. The students will be from the US, UK, Australia, china, Korea and New Zealand and will stay on Izena for 4 days during which they will complete some sort of project on island life. On the Saturday I will give my speech to them, my speech which I have yet to write. There will also be a taiko workshop and a performance of SEARANGERS! This is the marine equivalent of the power rangers performed by the multitalented Shoen Taiko group. They tried to do an English version on Monday but I couldn’t be around as I had my evening English conversation class so I spent yesterday going over that and today we will re-record sections. They did pretty well but I think someone has been teaching them some swear words which they had incorporated into the dialogue. And before you ask I did not teach them! We have also been working on a TV commercial promoting Izena island for some sort of small islands festival which will be held sometime later this month on Okinawa honto. It is surprisingly tricky to make even a simple commercial but we are making progress and I am now the voice of ‘WELCOME TO IZENA ISLAND!’. This Monday was my first evening English conversation class, I take 16 of the 1st years from 6-7 and 8 2nd and 3rd years from 7-8. The class is voluntary and they actually pay a small fee to take it, I think it is supposed to be something like an English club in a senior high school. I take this class by myself, i.e. with no Japanese English teacher to help translate so I was a little nervous as to how well it would go. Especially with the 1st years as their English is not quite brilliant but it went swimmingly and was great fun. The class with the 2/3rd years stretched on for half an hour extra before the JTE came and broke up the fun as they were turning off the lights and locking up the school. Admittedly I did use sweets to help motivate the pupils but I felt it was justified. The one down side of the class is that it overlaps with the teacher’s basketball practice so I cannot take part in that which is a shame. I also have an English conversation class with ten of the 3rd years for one period during school hours on a Wednesday, I have just finished taking that today. One activity I did today was to give them Calvin and Hobbes cartoons with some or all of the text blanked out and have them be creative and create new dialogue. It was hilarious! Perhaps I can scan them in and show you the best ones, they made me laugh allot!