Taiko

Rarrgh how annoying I was at full tilt describing my weekend when I was informed (in Japanese) that using a computer was very bad. Then someone managed "electricity!" and I shut it down fast without saving anything...

umm...

the weekend.

Friday was the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I spent the evening watching horrific TV shows about it with the dairy lady and the Chinese CIR. The dairy lady, (who is in her 60s) is from Nagasaki. Not much you can say. That was one of the few times when it is better not to have words. Some things are best communicated in silence.

Saturday... due to some miscommunication I believed I was swimming on Saturday and so waited for Rika to call. by the time I realised she wasn't going to I had the house spick and span and had wasted away the afternoon reading. At around 6 my predecessor's friend Ken turned up in his big black SUV to go to a taiko drumming festival.

The festival was over the other side of the island at a village/hospital/hospice type place for mentally disabled people. There was a big tower with a drum and chanting men set up with lights all around it and the place was full of extended families and locals.

When it got dark the villagers (including an English teacher yay!) all began to dance around the tower using what looked to me like an impossibly complicated step... after some hours of my future students pointing and giggling and the patient attentions of the English teacher and a lady in scary white pants and a mickey mouse t-shirt I was a pro! (until I fell in behind some boys and accidentally mimicked boy-steps causing much laughter from the sidelines)

Sunday I went swimming and got to explore the island. it is just beautiful. There is one little rocky bay that is incredibly home-like. Kuoatunu with pines for pohutakawa (and a concreted walkway), or the west coast. Nice.

Swimming went better than last time... but we now think it is the little animals on the seaweed that are eating me, didn't I always say seaweed was evil!

Righty
Have decided to learn taiko and failing that, will take flower arranging classes.
donna