The Hungry Lion

One day a hungry lion slowly came out of the forest. He wanted some food.

He sat on the grass and looked around. He waited for a long time.

The lion saw a rabbit under a tree. He ran after the rabbit.

Just then, a beer ran in front of the lion. The lion wanted a big dinner so he ran after the beer.

The beer ran away very quickly. The rabbit ran away, too. So the hungry lion got nothing.

Sometimes we are like this lion.

Vag Mogs

I started this post a long time ago. I wanted to write about the Vagina Monologues but it turned into a hugely confused, emotional something about how lost and out of it I have been feeling lately (worrying my poor parents by going incommunicado (does that make sense?)) and a rant about Japan what I've found here and what I will be happy to leave behind.
Since my home Internet is bung, I was adding snippets and stray thoughts every time I checked my email at school. It all got a bit much. I will try and order my thoughts and then will write something to let you all know where I'm at.
Here is the fairly lucid stuff I wrote about the Vag Mogs...
Although preceded by the craziness that precedes any production, thanks to the dedication of Titia who organised the whole shebang this year, everything came together on the day. I offered to make sashes for all involved which turned out to be far more of a headache than it should have been, but we all looked splendid on stage. I was involved in a few of the monologues, but my main one was "My Vagina was My Village" about the systematic rape that took place during the Bosnian war. It was pretty intense and knocked me around a bit, but I think it went OK (there is enough of the egotistic actor in me that I wanted some critical assessment of my performance but the best I got was "wow, awful"). We raised 80,000円 (about 1000 NZD) for the local woman's refuge. I shall post pictures if I can.
This year the spotlight (the Vagina Monologues focuses on the plight of a different group of women every year) was called 'reclaiming peace' remembering the women of the world affected by war, and the women left picking up the pieces when the fighting stops. Last year the spotlight was on comfort women, those 200,000 women from all over South-East and East Asia forced into prostitution by the Japanese military during the second world war. As you may remember, we elected not to perform the comfort women monologue for a number of reasons, one being that it is a condition of our visas that we do not make political statements. As I was writing about this year's performance, I read something that made me really, really angry. In 1993 the Japanese government issued a half-hearted apology to the surviving comfort women (but refused to offer any compensation) and it gave hope to the thousands of women still alive that something official might follow. Last week the Japanese Prime Minister denied anew that the military was involved in coercing (abducting and forcing) these women into prostitution. Some members of his party are calling for the apology to be rescinded. This made me grimly satisfied with my decision to be leave Japan and it's baffling nationalistic treatment of it's past. I need to be somewhere where I am not prevented from taking part in the political process on any level. But... is leaving really the most effective protest? where would a country be if every resident/citizen who cared about social issues skipped the country because they had a government who didn't? I joked about never coming back to New Zealand if National got into power in the last election, but what good am I overseas? I don't quite know what I am getting at here, or how this all ties together and honestly I don't think I'll be living in New Zealand long-term in the near future. But no matter where I am, I think I can safely assume I will be somewhere less frustrating, where I can make my voice heard. Here endeth the rant. The original was crazier, I promise.

Snow!

It's snowing! After Sunday's scorcher I thought it was about time to get the woollies packed up and posted out of the country, but yesterday morning I awoke with an even stronger than usual aversion to getting out of bed. It wasn't until I was shivering in the shower that I figured it was gonna be a cold one. (At least it gives me and bus-stop-fellow something to talk about, the weather is an inexhaustible conversation topic in this country. Next week we can talk about how cold this week was. Joy.) Yesterday there were wee flurries of snow. Kinda like ash after a burn off. But today school has been looking like a run-down snow-globe all day. It's days like this that I wish I could eat the hot school lunch... even if it does smell like socks.

Something I'm really not gonna miss about Japan is my pajamas always smelling like my lunch. My morning schedule is finely tuned, every second counts. In the 20-30 minutes between prying myself out of bed and racing for the bus... the hot water goes on, the veges go in the frying pan, the rice is out of the cooker, I shower while it cools, I dress, I dash. Um... breakfast happens in the shower. So you can see, until I am in a country with wheat-free sandwich possibilities, I shall bear the delicate scent of fried vegetables in the evening. Living alone huh.


a
a

+
a
a
a
a
a

=

a

臭い

Taiko!

Taiko!
Since the very first festival I attended in Japan (wow, that incomprehensible evening on the island cruising around with Kentaro in his SUV seems a life-time ago) I have been captivated by Taiko drumming. The rhythms get into your chest somehow and it makes me silly-grin-happy to watch taiko... and playing taiko is better yet.
Last year towards the end of September, Rebecca and I joined an all-women taiko group up in Kanagi, about 20 minutes from Hamada. For the most part, those months last year were spent watching the others practising for festivals, but they always made time to teach us a few rhythms, and so every Wednesday and the odd Saturday that we were free, we trekked up there to get our taiko fix. Since we started again in February, we were been learning in earnest, in preparation for last weekend's festival. I have a a callous of which I am terribly proud.Our last practise was on Saturday and just when I thought I had mastered the rhythms... I managed to send my stick flying right to where I imagined a wee granny, or one of the cute taiko kids sitting during the next days performance. To calm our pre-performance jitters Rebecca and I met Ed for a quiet one after practise finished at 10ish. At around midnight it suddenly seemed like a stellar idea to repair to my house and watch Once Were Warriors. After which, of course, no one felt like going straight to sleep... it was almost four by the time I got to sleep. Sunday was HOT. Twenty four degrees HOT. I think that is hotter than it got the whole time I was home for Christmas. Doesn't sound hot to you? Try leaping around a drum for quarter of an hour. I was terrified, my hand were sweaty, my feet were slipping in my tabi (hoof feet, will post a picture) and my bee-antenna headband was giving my poor tired head a headache.
But once we started everything was OK, the rhythm took over and I was on a drumming high. Kiri-chan our ever patient and friendly sensei, had told me before-hand that i should smile nicely every time I made a mistake... as was to be expected there were a few rhythm errors and a wee issue with leaping out from behind the drum in my tabi... and somehow my smiles compounded so much (still smiling from the last mistake? stretch it a bit more) that by the end I was grinning like a crazy person and all the kids in the front row had stopped pulling faces to try and put me off and were looking rather scared. I can't wait to get back out there.
As a self-assured seven year old told me just before the concert...
7: "Once you've been out there as many times as me, it's just not scary any more."
Me: "How many times is that?"
7: "Hmmmm (in Japanese this is eh-to eh-to)... this is the second."
So I'm set. Next time (May I think) I will be cool, calm and collected like this guy.

Taiko makes me happy.
Thanks to the lovely folk who came to support us and take pictures.
(Pictures to come when my home Internet stops being a dick.)