Wednesday, October 24, 2007

i am a foul wind

...or so my air filter would have me believe, since every time i walk into the room, the little green "clean air" dot turns red.

today i was writing 1-10 on the blackboard.
1 through 5 were ok (thank you preschool math), but then i hit a difficult patch: 6. 2. 8. 9. 10. what the...? in what universe? but to be fair (it's me, do we really need to be fair?) i was thinking "six, second, eight" which sounds a little like "seven" and the numerals have a resemblance too.
or something.

like every blogger, everywhere, i have some lovely stuff i haven't gotten to post yet, so think of this as the flashback that never happened the first time.

i was traumatized last week when i looked at the imdb pages for the two lead actors for the new show chuck! and realized that though i expected them both to be in their early thirties, they were, in fact, both younger than me. *gasp*

From Early September:
i was geared up for the school festival this year. i had my key places to hit: cotton candy stand, shaved ice stand, pudding stand. can you say "cracked-out on sugar"? what could i do; they sold out of curry early. i also wanted to see the tea ceremony again and watch my students' remake of The Terminator. there was an art show, a magic show, calligraphy, and many other fun things to see, eat and play.
here are the cotton candy girls. they kept shrieking "it hurts! it hurts!" when they had to add the sugar because hot pieces fly out and burn, but they kept dutifully on. the leader, the girl in the middle, always greets me with "LAUREN! OH! YEAH! YEAH!" to which i'm never quite sure how to respond.


then a close-up of my cotton candy. the hot, wet mouth of the sky was trying to eat it as fast as i was.


and though i tried to take some covert pictures from the window above, it seems i am never hard to spot.



From Late August:
in japanese, fireworks is 花火, literally "flower fire." this is my lucky second year to witness the phenomenal event that puts my town on the map--the annual august 17th fireworks display. last year it was raining, and it was marvelous nevertheless. this year the weather was clear, and an unbelievable 190,000 people showed up to see it (town's population normally: 20,000)! people book train tickets early, and kara and i were barely able to squeeze onto a standing-room only train for the two hour ride from tsu where we had been helping with the new JETs orientation. we watched the thermometer in the overburdened car (usually cool with air conditioning) creep to over 91 degrees. my long legs were awkward crouched painfully on the floor, but a kind old man practially sitting in the lap of another stranger made a little space for me to stretch them out. forget going to the bathroom, i think someone must have been sitting in there too!
it was worth it, of course. we had a surprising number of new JETs show up, and we all enjoyed reclining on the beach with explosions in the sky. the highlight was the immense single firework that made all the others seem piddling and small. they said they wouldn't count it down since last year it had failed to go off, so we waited...the resulting fireball and sonic boom flattened us spectacularly! below is a video taken by my best teacher friend. about halfway through the clip, the announcer says "mamonaku desu" which means "any time now." my friend forgot to turn the camera off, she was so busy shrieking and clapping.

4 comments:

  1. I don't mind if you are a foul wind so long as you don't break foul wind.

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  2. awesome pic! thanks to your one-comment-per-blog, i know one person still reads it. but not even a mention about the cool fireworks video?

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  3. how could i comment on the fireworks video when the woman holding the camera already said the only thing that can adequately describe it?







    すご〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜い!!!

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  4. ...one month... *cough*...two days and counting *cough, cough*

    ReplyDelete