Sports Days

Pretty much every high school in Japan has a brilliant thing known as Sports Days or Sports Festival.  This is a time when each grade level is divided up into many different teams, colorful (and usually pink) team shirts are designed, and the whole school competes against themselves in volleyball, basketball, dodgeball, and softball.  Classes are out during this time and competitions are held for the entire day or days (in our case, two days).  It's another example of the Japanese spirit of fostering close group bonds and cooperation, while demonstrating the importance of "the team" (as opposed to our very individualistic society back in the States).  

In reality, though, these days are just a whole lot of FUN!!!!

In addition to the top four sports competitions, there is also a jump-roping contest and a ping-pong tournament...

The peace sign...one thing that is very much predictable in this country!  Bring the camera out, and the fingers go up every time.

The festival ends with a huge ceremonial relay race among all of the teams, followed by team awards, hugs, and LOTS of photos!

Celebrating in style with my students...school uniforms normally don't allow for this!

Lake Shikotsuko

Not giving Jacob the chance to even think about being jet-lagged, we headed down to Lake Shikotsuko last Friday for a weekend of camping and merriment with other JETs at the HAJET (Hokkaido Association for JETs) Central Welcome Party.  Although our visions of volcanoes (one active), mountains, and clear blue lake were chased away by overcast skies and the occasional rain, the weekend was still good, dirty fun--just like camping should be!

Apparently, this is a common site at these welcome parties:

Ahhh, the onsen...one of Japan's finer aspects.  Being quite the volcanic country, Japan is literally sitting on hot water, resulting in thousands of onsens, or hot springs, which the Japanese use as public baths.  Hokkaido has a ton of these things (lucky for us) and they come in all varieties, from free, naturally-formed, outside onsens, to large indoor spa resorts, and everything else in-between.  Like everything else in Japan, there is a long list of strict onsen etiquette which begins with thoroughly cleansing every part of your body beforehand.  Oh yeah, and you have to be naked.  To wear clothes in an onsen is like wearing shoes on a tatami mat...it just isn't done.

We got the chance to visit our first onsen while camping at the lake and it was, indeed, grand!!!!

We, of course, chose the "pabulic" bath as it was definitely cheaper:

The women's side had two indoor onsens, and then this amazing outdoor onsen sitting right on the lake-edge.  Forturnately for us, there were no jet-skiers that day!  By the way, this pic was stolen from the internet...apparently, naked onsen-goers don't really like having their photos taken.

Just up the ways from our campground were even more onsens situated in the little onsen village of Shikotsuko.  Perfect for getting a beer and some raman after a hot soak:




The people in Hokkaido consume more ice cream than any group of people I've ever seen in my life...not that I'm complaining:

If you can put fried cheese, hot dogs, cheese cake, and chicken parts on a stick, then you sure as heck can put a grilled squid on a stick:

Back at our campsite on the lake...getting ready to board the swan boats, reminiscent of bygone carnival days galore, and perfect for "bumper swans"

Fun-time JET friends representing the U.S., Canada, and Trinidad and Tobago:

Bring on the grillin'...also known as the burning hunger pics:

Mmmmmm...burgers (psychedelic burgers at that), dawgs, and yakisoba!!!  I LOVE campin' and grillin'!!!

Yes, it's true...yet another name-ala-sparkler finale!  Next party I promise to get a little more creative with the sparkler shots:

Guess Who's Arrived!?!?!?!?!?!

Hubby Jacob has arrived!!  Let the tom-foolery and Japan shenanigans (Japanigans, if you will...) begin!!

Print Club...

...also known as purikura here in Japan,  is the unequivocal answer to all of my photo booth fantasies!  School girls galore fill notebooks upon notebooks up with these sticker photos, and at 400 yen ($4) a pop, they can easily spend small fortunes on them over the course of their impressionable years!  My obsession with retro photo booths in the U.S. has officially met it match...purikura booths had me at first "Cheezu!"

Sam and I found an arcade of these things during our Sapporo shopping frolic this past weekend, and we attacked, promptly:

There are booths upon booths of Print Club stations, fitting anywhere from 2-10 people (my people unit of measurement in this case being school girls)!  

For all your role-playing needs, there are also costume racks stuffed with Disney characters, football jerseys, yukatas, and Sam's favorite, Japanese school girl outfits:

The inside of this particular booth, with its green-screen stage area and lighting/camera panel, was fairly large and intimidating.  Mix that with cute, screechy, unintelligible Japanese-girl voice and J-Pop playing in the background and you have what most people would refer to as "a cultural experience!"

Did anyone ever watch Jem and the Holograms growing up?  This lighting/camera panel reminds me of Synergy:

The photo session inside the booth consists of 6-8 poses on various imposed backgrounds and green-screen effects galore!

After your photographic romp inside, you are then directed to the outside of the booth where you can draw on, stamp, and otherwise alter all of your photos in anyway imaginable!  This is also where you select your sticker sizes and have copies of them sent to your crazy Japanese cell phone:

Here are a few of our lovelies:

By the way, for those of you who were wondering...yes, we DID surpass the ages of everyone else there by a good 5-10 years!   This is only the beginning...

Wednesday Weekend Wrap-up

"But, Crystal," you say, "Why write about the weekend when it's already Wednesday?"  Well, I'd like to take this opportunity to lie and say I've been incredibly busy with social appointments galore, but the truth of the matter is that I've just been lazy.

That being said, here is the weekend wrap-up!  Last Friday was my first Welcome Enkai (Japanese all you can eat and drink party) for work and it was a food and fun frenzy!  The co-workers I've met and worked with so far have all been amazing...the enkai gave me the chance to meet and talk to so many more of them in a more relaxed and fun setting than school (it's a little hard to talk to all 90-some of them on a given work day)!

This photo demonstrates the ingredients to language-learning-fluency:  booze, phrase book/dictionary, fun native speakers, and zero to no inhibitions:

Some of the festive courses, including "see-through sea-food" such as the shrimp below:

This is how you suck the brains out of said see-through shrimp heads (I didn't try it):

Crispy, fried shrimp head:

Which I DID try (it was crunchy and shrimpy...mmmmm):

One of my favorite pics of the night!  Anyone who can blow a smoke-ring is a friend of mine!

This weekend also brought me yet another fun guest and fellow JET:  Sam from Australia!!  I met her at the Sapporo Orientation and she is good genki-fun!!!

Posing with some ridiculously large naan at a Japanese-English-Farsi-speaking Indian restaurant near Sapporo Station:

We also stumbled upon a "kid-friendly" travel fair...the moonwalks back home are so lame compared to this inflatable role-model:

Sam and Eri getting to know my spacious closet (also potential guest-room overflow):

Yes, after my plastic-food photo run, I was in the mood for some shots of the real thing!!  This is a little sampler "Taste of Hokkaido" tray at a hip little restaurant we ventured to:

Oh, and perhaps the greatest thing EVER...we finally found our way to the Japanese fabulousness that is Print Club!!!  It was so great, in fact, that I feel it deserves its OWN post, therefore, I leave you with a teaser pic from Print Studio Rosa (are you excited yet!?!):