I have had a busy couple of days this week getting ready for my mom to arrive and running here there and everywhere. Last Friday I went out to a sweet Italien restaurant with the other Shio people. We haven’t been out as a four pack for a while so it was fun to have a great meal and enjoy the banter. We had some great fondue. I haven’t had fondue in a long time. It seems so 70s but it is a delicious appetizer that I want to make at home. On Saturday, I went to Tom Hayward’s school festival at Shigakan, Shiojiri’s high school. They had a fashion show, dances, art displays, wine making, food stalls, brass band, and so much more! The school festival is the big celebration of the year. A lot of work goes into the school festival and it means a lot to the students. It is open to the public and students from other schools in the area come to view it. It was a very hot day so I was glad the events were mainly outside. We sat in the gym for the fashion show and it was sweltering. I got to see several of my graduates there which was really nice. I miss those kids. They were much cooler than this year’s third year students. I will have to wait to get my film developed before I can put pictures up of this event. Tom and Gisela took some good shots too that I would like to include at a later date. The three days culminated in a giant mud fight on the baseball pitch. Good times!

After the afternoon’s events, I went home and had a nap for about an hour before driving down to Kiso for an eikaiwa class with Dave’s students. I arrived about an hour early because I didn’t know where the place was. No one was around so I chatted to the guys at the gas station and then took a dip in the river. Kiso is some much cooler than Shiojiri. I don’t know if this is because of the mountains or what but the temperature is noticeably nicer. I sat on a rock and dried my clothes as I hadn’t brought a bathing suit. By the time I was about dry, it was time to head off to Chanko Nabe, the most talked about restaurant in Kiso Fukoshima! Well at least by other JETs. Nabe is a big pot of stuff that you cook at your table. It is what the sumo kids eat while training or so I have heard. The sauce is wonderful! I ate a vast amount of the stuff and talked to a bunch of Dave’s third year students. They were great at English and several of them sang and played the guitar. They really like Avril Lavinge. Third year students are about 15 years old. After that we headed up to the station to see the kids off on the train and the rest of us went out to karaoke. Despite living here for three years, Dave has never learned to love karaoke but that night he sang many a song and we all had a great time. I love a good round of karaoke. When its crap, there is no recovering it but when it goes well, a great time is had by all and our throats are raw the next day. This was just such an event. We stumbled back to Dec’s place around 3:30 and had various snacks made by the lovely Dawn. I hadn’t really met her before that night although I have heard of her. She lives in the north and has also been here for three years. It sucks that I am just now meeting all these cool people who are leaving this month! Anyways, she was great fun and made us all toast and marmite sandwiches. Some had tomatoes, some had chips on them. People seemed to be staying up for the soccer game which comes on at 4 in the morning but I could only stay awake long enough for the players to take the field and then I was out for the night. You had a real commitment to the world cup here if you actually watched the games. The earliest any game was on was about 9 or 10 at night. The rest usually started at 4 in the morning. I think Tom and Dec both made a fairly strong effort to catch most games or at least all the England games. But I digress.
The next morning, Lauren and Dawn headed off to retrieve their cars and I had several cups of tea and a refreshing shower. After that we headed off to a kids Sumo tournament that was happening near by. I don’t know how sumo works all that well but there doesn’t seem to be a weight class system. Some of those match ups were very disproportionate. That didn’t always matter though. I saw a much smaller boy put a larger kid out of the ring in no time at all. Sometimes though, the big kid would just pick up the other kid and set him down outside of the circle. After that we went with a few of Lauren’s students to a local soba place and had lunch. They weren’t as talkative as Dave’s bunch so eventually I just stopped talking to them. It was making me too tired. After that we went to the store and got a water melon for Brett and Kim. They are, I think, the closest other Canadians around. They live in Mitake which is essentially the tiniest place going. It does have a very keen feature though, which is the Evolution Park. It is a big valley with a model of the solar system and a bunch of dinosaurs. It is very strange to come across a place like this in the middle of no where. I took what I hope will be some great action samples of these events. It was quite overcast so I hope it turns out. After choreographing a dance involving the melon and my school festival song, we headed off to Brett and Kim’s place and had a chat for a good long while. Then we grabbed some dinner at the Italian place in Agimatsu. I couldn’t believe that Agimatsu had an Italian place. Apparently Dave had been warned by his teachers that the owners were not really Italian or even Japanese people but in fact North Koreans, who at the moment are not terribly popular with the Japanese. We still managed to have a perfectly lovely dinner though. I had a very authentic tasting spaghetti pesto that I couldn’t finish and then dropped everyone off and headed for home. I got back to Shiojiri around 10:30, just in time to pick up Emi at the train station. We were going camping with the students for the next two days. I will cut the post here though camping is a whole other kettle of fish. These pictures are all courtesy of Dawn. She takes really good photos. The first is a group shot at Chanko, the next is Dave feeling an emotion I can't quite put my finger on. The next is a group of sumo kids suiting up for battle and the last one is a shot of a pretty incredible mullet. Thats all for now, see you on Sunday Mom!