Vacation Days 1-2: Sydney

That's right, folks, we spent our Christmas vacation this year on a 14 day cruise around Austrailia and New Zealand! It was entirely too much fun. On December 22nd, we left Sasebo and took a bus to Fukuoka. From there we flew to Narita airport in Tokyo. We had a long layover, so we took the subway to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. Then we flew all night, arriving in Sydney around 8:00 on the 23rd. The ship was still unloading from the last cruise it took, so we spent some of our morning sitting on the docks looking at this:

And this:

Oh! And this:

Once we were allowed on the ship, we dropped off our things and ran straight back out into town again to see what we could before dinner. We walked to the middle of the harbor bridge (but not up to the top because that was high enough for me). We also took a closer look at the Opera House. There was a market going on in the rocks, so we began our shopping too. At dinner, our view was of the Opera House and the various sailboats wandering though. It was lovely.

After dinner, we ran straight back out again to catch a little Sydney night life while we could. We walked as far as the WWI ANZAC memorial, and on our way back wandered in the Fortune of War Pub, which came highly recommended by several of the guys on Zack's ship.

Our second day in Sydney, we decided to hit the aquarium, since we weren't going far enough north to see the Great Barrier Reef. The aquarium has several places where you can actually walk under the creatures, and it was a pretty cool time. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any good pictures of the sting ray the size of my car, or any of the colorful fish through the glass, but here's one of the residents of the aquarium:

After the aquarium we went back to the Rocks for further random walking and investigating, and on Christmas Eve, the Mercury set sail for Melbourne....

We're baaack...

Just so everyone knows, Zack and I made it back from our fabulous trip to Austrailia and New Zealand safe and sound. Pictures and stories will be coming soon. :-)

Sumoo!

Zack was gone over Thanksgiving Weekend, so I went to see Sumoo wrestling in Fukuoka. It was one of those things that I figured I should do if I had the chance since we are, after all, in Japan. I learned that there are exactly six Sumoo tournaments held each year, each one lasting 15 days. The trip I took was on day 15 of the only tournament held in Fukuoka each year, so it was a good time to go, apparently.

The trip turned out to be not only entertaining, but also informative, at least to some extent. While I did not learn exactly why everything is done in the tournament the way it is, I did learn a little bit about the many traditions that make Sumoo what it is. For example, the roof you see over the wrestlers here is representative of the roof of a shrine where sumoo would have originally taken place.

The wrestlers you see there are one of the professional teams at this tournament. I learned that there are five classes of sumoo wrestlers, and they wrestle during tournaments starting with the lowest class (the amateurs) and going up to the highest. There are always two teams: east and west. I have no idea how the teams are determined. What I do know is that every wrestler on the east team will wrestle everyone on the west over the course of a fifteen day tournament. Wins and losses are then totalled and the guy with the most wins gets a super big trophy (and a lot of money).

I also learned that there are no weight restrictions in sumoo. Everyone wrestles everyone else regardless of size. We saw a few cases where a (relatively) little guy was pitted against a much bigger guy. The neat thing was, the bigger guy did not always win.

See, every wrestling match starts out with two guys facing off like the ones above. The guy in the kimono is the judge. There are two ways to win, though: either you can push your opponent out of the circle you see on the floor in the picture above, or you can cause your opponent to touch the ground with any part of their body other than their feet. The nifty rule summary we got said that anything from a pinky finger to a top knot touching the ground will cause a wrestler to lose. When the wrestlers try to knock each other out of the ring, and they're fairly well matched, the result looks something like this:

When someone is knocked over, it usually happens too fast for pictures. The above picture is of the best match we saw. The guy on the left is Russian, by the way. The two pushed each other and tried to throw each other off balance for a solid three minutes (if it had gone four, it would have been declared a tie and there would have been a rematch). It was really captivating to watch. (The Russian finally knocked the other guy out of the circle.) I was amazed at how flexible these guys are despite the fact that they are enormous.

So most matches don't last very long, usually just a few seconds, may be a minute, but they are really very exciting. And after the last match, the people in the expensive seats throw the cushions they've been siting on:

Then the trophies are awarded. We didn't stay for the whole trophy ceremony, but the wrestling itself was very exciting. I'm told it's much better in real life than on TV (like most things), and I can understand why people would follow it now. I hope I get a chance to bring Zack along next year...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Okay, so I'm really late about posting these, but November was a busy month. Sorry. Over Halloween this year, I went to three costume parties: two at the junior college and one that OSC hosted for the International Ladies Club. Here are some pictures from each.

Party 1: the English Department Party

The part of this party most worth seeing was the mummy wrapping contest. Here are the results:
Not a lot of kids dressed up, but we did get a few witches...

And the teachers showed the kids how to REALLY dress up...

... As did this student:

Party 2: Childcare English

I decided that, to ensure that I was not the only person in costume, I would bribe my students. I told them there would be trick-or-treating at the party, BUT no costume, no candy. All 18 of my girls dressed up, the boys decided their pride was worth more than candy. As a back up plan, I had them all make paper plate masks. Here's one guy's brand new "costume": And here are a few of the girls...

And there's all of us:

Party 3: International Lady's Club

The adults got to have some fun on this one. The idea was to show the Japanese women what Halloween was all about. The buffet lunch was a haunted house, and EVERYONE dressed up. Here's what it looked like:

Sponge Bob is secretly a Japanese woman...

More Japanese costumes...

A bunch of the American Ladies went with a Wizard of Oz theme. Here are some munchkins:

These ladies made everything they're wearing by hand:

And even Little Bo Peep had fun...

So it turns out if you really want to celebrate an American Holiday right, you just have to leave the country!

For Thanksgiving, the families from Zack's ship got together at the Harbor View, since the ship was still out at that point. I also did a day-after dinner at a friends house, so I got all the traditional food. Zack said there was turkey and pumpkin pie on the ship, too.

Posts to look forward to: Sumo wrestling!!! I actually saw it, and it's really fun to watch. Now that November is over and I'm taking a break from grad school, those should be up fairly soon. Also, Zack is putting together some pictures from this last deployment.

Japanese Performing Arts

October 26-28:

Wow, what a weekend it was in Sasebo. I barely got home at all. On Saturday, I went on a tour with FIS (Friendship International Society), the group who sponsors my Japanese lessons. We visited Hirado, then wandered to the next island over, famous for a giant statue of Budda:

And also for a scenic road/trail called the Kawachi Pass:

Though the pictures pretty much speak for themselves, it was very much like being in Scotland again. We had a picnic in the pass, which was lovely, then went on to a small town to take in a local festival.
Our guide, a native of the town we were visiting, said that the festival was a local harvest celebration, held every year to thank the sea god for all the fish they had caught. Usually, there's a Kabuki play involved, but this year, it was "just" some traditional Japanese dance:

We were also told that the dancing was all done by local ladies. I thought it was quite good. Definetely worth the trip.
Also, in Sasebo this weekend was a festival called Yosakoi. The Navy ladies have been getting excited about this festival since early September. Yosakoi, as they described it, is a dance festival. Tons of dancing groups come to town and they (you guessed it) peform dances all over town. While all this is accurate, it doesn't really do the festival justice. It's a very difficult thing to describe, but I'll start with what I know: marching band (sorry for those of you who aren't band geeks). Think of it like a band competition at a high school: there's people in funny outfits wandering around, there's a big arena where people are performing, and lots of other people running around helping get the uniformed people where they're going. Now make the high school a whole city, add two more arenas, and close off a few roads for good measure. Have the uniformed folks running from stage to stage and dancing on the closed roads in between. You'll be getting closer to what Yosakoi is like now. Here's a picture of the main stage from above:

In my head, I had imagined that the dancing would be of a relatively modern sort based on what I see kids doing in parks occasionally. I had also figured the dancers would be college/high school aged. In fact, while some of the music had a modern spin to it, and the moves reflected that, mostly it was a more traditional form of dance, I would say. Also, the dancers ranged in age from just old enough to walk to old enough to be grandparents. Here are some of the pictures, but they don't really do the thing justice. It was a really cool weekend.

Soon to come: Halloween pictures from three parties (more than I've ever been to in one year in the States), and pictures of Dory in her Halloween costume.

Reasons they're not up yet: Grad school, grad school, substitute teaching, grad school, a speech contest, nanowrimo, and grad school. Stay tuned...

Cruisin...

Well time just has been flying along. I'm working on my ARP for my master's degree, lesson planning on the fly, and singing a lot recently, too. I joined the choir at church awhile back, and they invited me to join a Christmas Caroling group for the holiday season. Who doesn't like to sing Christmas carols, right?
And just because I had discovered that I'm now officially home only two nights a week on average, the ship's family readiness group was in desparate need of a President, so now I'm doing that too. (It was either me, or the whole thing would fall apart, apparently.) I know that the family readiness group is supposed to support the families, and that ours is clearly not terribly active, but that's about it. How we go about supporting families? No idea. Luckily, the current ombudsman used to be FRG President, and she's happy to help... or basically just tell me what to do... which is what I really need anyway, so I'll be helping to raise money for and plan a Christmas party on top of everything else. I wonder if it's my job to contact Santa...
As a reward for burying myself in random projects, I got great news from Zack last night. We officially have permission to take our Christmas vacation: a Cruise through New Zealand and Austrailia. I'm super excited, and now I get to plan all of that, too. So far, I have the cruise booked and Dory's trip to the kennel: she got the last kennel spot available for the dates, so we found out just in time.
The funny thing is the more I find that I "have to" do, the more I find myself capable of getting done. Granted, I have been resorting to planning lessons in the morning on my way to school (which I NEVER could have done in the States) from time to time, but I get a lot accomplished in the average day now, so life is good.

General News

So this week I started teaching daily. I'm subbing for another teacher at the Junior College until November, so suddenly my mornings are gone. I can't figure out how I used to teach full time and still have energy to walk the dog at the end of the day. Good thing Dory still refuses to take walks here. I think she's afraid the house will disappear or something.
Zack is gone again. He called me a few days ago with two important pieces of information: 1. He passed a major inspection with flying colors thereby winning the approval of his CO for at least another 24 hours, which is a major major major relief because this was causing a lot of stress. I don't claim to understand all the details, but I know that their ship now qualifies again for the Blue E, which is a big award for a ship. So go Zack! 2. He was on his way into Disney Tokyo. I promptly went to MWR and signed up for two trips in November to make myself feel better.
Other than that, life proceeds quite normally. It's FINALLY starting to cool off, so I'm not using the AC so much. I'm almost done with another class for my graduate degree, and I've also teach two private classes a week now, one of which is in my house, which means I suddenly feel required to keep the dust out of my downstairs. This could be a full time job all by itself. So the time is going quickly. I'm not entirely sure where my September went, but I'm pretty sure October will go much the same way.