A Japan Kinda Christmas I: Party at My House

Last Friday was the Christmas party for Amakusa ALTs, held at the house of yours truly.  This year, we did a pot-luck style dinner, with everyone bringing a little something to share.  The party officially started at 7:30, but our first guests didn’t arrive until about 8, giving Amanda and I a little more time to clean around the house.

For our part, Amanda and I had purchased two iCon boxes from McDonalds that were full of chicken related products.  In Japan, chicken is the signature food of Christmas, along with Christmas cake.  Since Christmas is not a national holiday here, you can purchase chicken from KFC and McDonalds on Christmas day.  I believe KFC was the one to popularize this dish as a Christmas food in the 70s.  The in-house story has it that a foreigner came in and ordered a lot of chicken, remarking about the difficulties of finding turkey in Japan and concluding that chicken would have to do.

Thankfully, not all our guests kept with the theme of chicken, offering up dishes like an amazing pasta bake, chips and salsa, dried cranberries, garlic bread, and spam onigiri.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t considered the plate and silverware needs of our guests and many of them had to settle for tiny dishes.  I’ll know better next time.

Though a Christmas party, the get together followed the pattern of nearly all ALT social events.  We sat around and talked about work, our coworkers, our kids and hilarious stories from back home, especially in Jonathan’s case.  We didn’t have a lot of people show up, but I was surprised by some of the Amakusans that chose to attend.  It was a nice, casual occasion that gave us all the opportunity to unwind and relax during what is otherwise a pretty stressful time for ALTs.  We played a few Christmas songs to remind us that yes, indeed, this was the Christmas party.

Eventually, we dug out the taiko drums and played a little Taiko No Tatsujin Wii 3 and, more hilariously given its participants, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles.  Jonathan was quite enthusiastic about both, trying his best on Taiko while refusing to not play anything less than the difficult setting.  Erik was reluctant to play Taiko, though I have no idea why as he did really well.  Amanda and I naturally enjoyed it, though I feel the song selection is a bit lacking.

Watching Erik and Jonathan play Resident Evil was a blast too.  I had forgotten most of the controls, so some of their problems came from my incompetence.  Still, between the jump scares, skipping all the cutscenes (and then making remarks about how they were “randomly” fighting something), taking turns trying for headshots, and declaring how badass they were it was a lot of fun.  They unlocked quite a few new items and earned a bunch of money as well, so there’s also that.  And really, what better way to celebrate Christmas than by taking on hoards of the undead.

The party went pretty late.  I got to bed around 3.  We had a few guests stay the night, but they were gone by the time we got up the next day.  All in all I think it was a pretty successful party, though perhaps not the most overtly Christmasy one.

Ariake Bazaar

Last Friday, I noticed a few tents were going up in the track area of the schoolyard, known as the ground in Japan.  I asked my principal about it and he tried his best to explain that there was some sort of festival going on that weekend, even providing me with a printout about it and talking with one of my JTEs to ensure I really understood what was happening. 

Most of the events, it would seem, were going to be held on Sunday, including a taiko performance and baumkuchen making.  I read a little closer on the rules of the baumkuchen and discovered that it required a team of three, so quickly dropped it.  Had I been told of this event a little in advance I may have been able to work something out and it still baffles me that my school doesn’t tell me about these kinds of things despite my constant willingness to participate.

Long story short, Amanda and I attended only for the last few hours on Sunday.  There were a number of things for sale, both on the ground and inside the community gym, but nothing that really caught our eye as a must buy.  Also inside the gym were an incredible amount of pictures of octopus drawn mostly by my students.  

This represents about 2% of all the pictures.

I had a fun time running around trying to find the students whose names I could recognize and smiling at their very different interpretations of the octopus.

There was a pin set up with a few wild boars in it, though it was more sad than entertaining to watch them as it was clear they weren’t treated well.  One of them had a pretty deep gash on its nose from where it had tried to get out of the enclosure, probably in an effort to get to the other two inoshishi held in a tiny cage off to one side.

Amanda mentioned she had heard that a lot of Japanese zoos treated their animals the same way.

The taiko performance was the one thing we both wanted to see, and it definitely delivered.  There were a number of school age children in the group that performed, but I only recognized one as mine, though a few of the others looked vaguely familiar.  My assumption is that they’re membership includes a bigger area of Amakusa than just Ariake.  They performed five or six songs total, with a break after their first four or so.  During the break, a few guys dressed as a dragon came out and ran around, performing all kinds of really cool looking actions and nearly biting people’s heads off.

You know, for luck!

For their last song, the performers went out into the audience and invited people to play their drums.  One of the girls came up to me and offered her drum, which I gladly took and joined in.  I tried to put the drum on my shoulder, but it had been adjusted for her small frame and I couldn’t manage it.  Undeterred, I held on the strap and played the taiko for the rest of their performance.  I may have looked ridiculous or like I didn’t know what I was doing, which to be fair I didn’t, but it was really cool.  

After the song, I gave the drum back to the student I recognized.  We spent a little more time looking at the octopus pictures before everyone started to pack up and we decided it was a good time to leave.  It was a short experience, but an overall good one.