Like a kancho to the heart

Long gap since my last post - I've been busy. Here's an update with some pictures, though!

Last weekend, myself and a slew of other JETs traveled north to attend to the Northern welcome party, in a town (village(intersection)) called Nakagawa. Nakagawa station, three hours into the mountains, looks like this:



We arrived Saturday afternoon and proceeded to dick around the town and set up camp before nightfall, at which point we hit the hot springs (pictures omitted) and commenced doing the sorts of things adults generally do while camping.

In the morning, several JETs had signed up for the local festival, which entailed many spirited rounds of log-pushing. Log-pushing is essentially a tug-of-war in reverse; teams hold on to each end of a large log, and attempt to push the other team out of the playing area. I didn't get to take any pictures of it, but this poster sums it up:



Hooray! One of the JET mens teams managed to make it to the semifinals, which was probably due to their fetching lumberjack costumes.

Here's some other random pictures from the train ride back and the night in Asahikawa before heading back to work:




In other news, I had my first experience with "kancho" today. For the blessedly unversed, kancho is an important part of childhood in Japan and is enjoyed by boys and girls of all ages. It consists of clasping the hands together with the index fingers outstretched, and then attempting to ram the resulting projectile as far up the rectum of any given adult as you can. Yeah, I don't get it either. I knew about kancho previously, but today was my first time having a kid actually go for it. It's not a one-time thing, either - this kid was really earnestly dedicated and it's quite hard to keep an eye on a specific 8 year old when you are surrounded by thirty of them.

Ah, Japan.

Bombs at Noon

The Mombetsu ALT Krew (holla) went out on the town last night to see what could be seen. The week before had been long and harrowing, so it was time to end on a high note. We began our night at a local block party/festival/karakoke blowout. I didn't take any pictures, because I was busy eating yakisoba (lit. burned noodles) and yakitori (lit. burned chicken). I passed on the yakiika (burned squid). Like everyone else in the world, the Japanese know that it's not a proper party without beer and fire.
We met some friends of the departed ALTs, who introduced themselves to us and insisted that we treat them as family. Although you can never be completely sure, I believe that we were drafted into the local team for the upcoming Bon-Odori, a three-day festival that features townsfolk prancing around in costumes and dancing. The fact that we don't know the dance didn't seem to make much of a difference. One lady invited us to come to her with any problems we may have, as long as they didn't involve women or money. Fair enough! One family also noted that they frequently host exchange students (in Mombetsu?) and that a new high school student from America would be arriving soon. I believe we're having a party.

We went out and hit the mean streets of Hamanasu-doori afterwards, where Mombetsu's nightlife lives. At a friend's grandmother's bar, I was given my own bottle to come back to. A couple of bars and clubs later made it a good night. No pictures of this because, well, thats not really cool. Here's some random pictures of Mombetsu from this morning though:



Today is dedicated to cleaning. Tomorrow at 7 we get on a bus to Sapporo for three more days of final orientation, at which there will be no drinking or entertainment whatsoever. After I get back, classes begin along with the Obon festival mentioned above. Good times ahead!

Also, the title of this post is inspired by the fact that the city hall uses it's air raid siren to announce noon every day, even on weekends. And the title of the last post was referring to a particularly tortured mispronunciation of "clerk".