So many thoughts, so little time

The other day, I was outside, weeding the school grounds with the staff and students. Suddenly, a bee charged at me, sending me flying into the air in a hoe-swinging panic. I ran around for two minutes, flailing at the bee that followed me as though it had some sort of fear-seeking lock-on technology. I finally lured it away when another bee came at me from the other direction. After evading it, I went back to weeding. Of course, a third bee felt left out and came at me with the furor of a thousand suns, and I scrambled to safety. Cleaning time ended and we were allowed to go back inside for the morning staff meeting.

During staff meetings, the teachers take turns making announcements in a very formal manner (bows and everything). Since I don't speak much Japanese yet, I always sit quietly during the morning meeting. This time, I waited until everybody had made their announcements, and when the person conducting the meeting asked if there were any other matters to discuss, I raised my hand, stood up, and said with a straight face, "I just got chased by three bees. It was not fun. That is all." I sat back down as though nothing strange had happened. The other teachers chuckled.

At church last week, we were sitting in the back row of Sunday School singing a hymn, when I realized that the whole congregation--with the exception of Me, Stef, and the American missionary--was singing in unison. I thought of the Japanese beliefs about social harmony and not wanting to stick out, and realized how plain it can seem sometimes. While, the Japanese don't have to deal with as many insurgents, they often appear to be devoid of their own personality. Just as our alto, tenor, and bass voices added color to an otherwise drab chorus, so do we, as Americans, add a bit of color to Japan. Whenever I start to wonder why they pay me to be here, I can just look back to Sunday School.

This weekend, we had a pretty cool festival in town. I performed Highway Star for the first time, and I think I did pretty well. Sure, it's a lot of screaming. But it's much easier to have some stage presence when you're rocking out to Deep Purple than when you're singing about how you can make your baby smile.

That same night, Ryota, Tetsuya's brother, danced and sang on stage with my young students. Japanese music tends to borrow phrases of English, such as in the following, "watashi wa anata o I LOVE YOU FOR EVER BABY" or "sumimasen, wakarimasen, kono yuubinkyoku de HIT THAT GIRL YEAH!" For some reason, they always write the English in these songs in capital letters on the CDs.

One thing that makes these songs a bit funny is the fact that Japanese phonetics are not like American English phonetics. The letter "I" is pronounced like the latin "I", so words like "hit" and "his" sound like "heat" and "he's", and so on. Imagine my surprise when the emcee announced the next song to be sung and danced to by Ryota and the gang: "IT'S MY SOUL!" I know that the Japanese can seem strange sometimes, but I had no idea that they were that morbid. I couldn't help but chuckle every time the chorus came around, and Ryota told us all about how "something-something-EATS MY SOUL! YEAH!"

Gotta go teach! But first, here's some video of the festival, as well as a little video of Kelsey running in town.