The (first) long weekend…

On Saturday the 15th, Miyashiro had their school festival and I was asked to go and basically experience the festival. I claimed it as a workday so I was there from 8:30am to about 3:30pm. In Japan, if teachers (and I suppose students as well) have to work on the weekend, they take the next working day off. So I would have Monday off because of a national holiday, and then the Tuesday off as well.

I wasn’t sure what a school festival was but I assumed it would be like the street festivals I had seen. It actually wasn’t. Each class decided on a booth that they would run and decorated their classroom accordingly. There are 18 classes at Miyashiro (6 of each grade). There were 3 or 4 haunted houses, several classes had ice cream and soda stands, a couple classes sold okonomiyaki (a Japanese pancake with vegetables inside) one class had a haunted café, one class sold baked potatoes with butter, one class sold pancakes with either chocolate or strawberry sauce, and there were others but I don’t remember. A few clubs organized things, like the tea ceremony club did tea ceremonies, and the calligraphy club showed their work. And I tried one haunted house but it wasn’t scary.
Also, Aaron wanted to come to the festival so he was there for the morning. All the students were saying hi and talking to him… and these were my students! They don’t say hi to me. That’s the life of the Asian JET. We don’t get the celebrity status. At least they warned us in the orientations. Anyway, here are some pictures.

That weekend, one of the girls from the language class in Toronto came up from Gifu to visit and see Tokyo. Sunday morning, she, one of the other Toronto JETs living in Saitama and I went to the Imperial Gardens in Tokyo. It was cool because it was this massive garden that seemed so peaceful and quiet, and surrounding it was a city of modern buildings. There were some guard houses and lots of nature. We were only allowed in one part of the garden.

From there, we walked to Tokyo Tower. It was a longer walk than I expected. Tokyo Tower is 300-something meters high, a good 200m shorter than the CN Tower. We didn’t go up because the line was quite long. On the way to the train station we passed another temple. And another street festival.

After that we made our way to Harujuku to see all the people dressed up in their costumes, as well as the Meiji Shrine, which is supposedly the biggest in… somewhere. There was a dancing guy in boxer shorts, some Elvis impersonators dancing together, and a whole bunch of people in scary costumes. Here we met up with a couple other Toronto JETs living in Saitama.

On the 17th, I went with six other Saitama JETs to Kamakura (about 2.25 hours from my place), which has the big Buddha statue. It was a pretty good trip, but I’m sure it would have been possible to see more than we actually did. I was trying to get the postcard look for my pictures.

On Tuesday I ran a few errands, went to Tokyo to get my re-entry permit (which allows me back into Japan if I leave for holidays) and did a couple karate classes at the dojo in Iidabashi. I am still sore from those classes. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this sore.

Then I only have a 3-day workweek until the next long weekend. But only a 3-day weekend this time.