Halloween, Saga Intl Balloon Fiesta, & Karatsu Kunchi 2008

Well, the speech contest was 2 weekends ago. Out of my 4 students competing - 3 of them got top prizes. One of those 3 (the senior) really had her heart set on getting first because that would mean she could compete in Tokyo... but she didn't get first... and she cried. She did a really, really good job though. Had it not been for the girl with the boring story, but good pronunciation (thanks to some intensive summer course), I think my girl would've gotten 1st. Oh well. They all did really well.


Anyway. This past weekend was another 3-day weekend. Yep. Monday was a national holiday for Culture Day. Friday I hurried home after work and caught a train to Asa - 2 towns over - in 0rder to catch a shinkansen (bullet train) to Saga Prefecture for the weekend! Saga prefecture is where I stayed the first time I ever came to Japan. Instead of a 4 hour local train ride I made it there in about 2.5 hours. Ian and his friend picked me up at Saga station and then we went to this apartment complex that houses about 6 or 7 Saga City JETs. They refer to it as "Gaijin Ghetto" (gaijin is Japanese for foreigner). It actually seems like a lot of fun. The Saga JETs were really nice and really fun. They set up a "bar crawl" among the apartments... which basically meant everyone went from apartment to apartment and hung out. It was fun. We eventually made it to some bar in Saga to finish out the night.

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On Saturday, Ian and I headed over to the 2008 Saga International Balloon Fiesta. I remember looking up Saga on the internet before I went there 6 years ago and read about it. My host family told me about it too when I was there. So I think it's really cool that I made it : ) Anyway - there were a lot of people there... a lot! Along with lots of good food... AND the Honda Asimo Robot was there! I guess all the cool balloons - like the ones in the shape of anime characters - are displayed in the morning, but we didn't get there until the afternoon so we missed those. But it was still cool! There were well over 50 hot air balloons in the air at one point. One of the contests was that the balloons had to try and drop a marker as close as they could to this giant red X and whoever got the closest won some money. We left after that contest because I was meeting up with Tomi at 5:30pm for dinner. Tomi was the woman in charge of the LABO group that I attended in Saga back in the summer of 2002. Ian came along and we had dinner at her house with her, her husband, and her son who is now 17. She made tacos! I'd like to point out that I taught them how to make tacos that summer : ) She also made some noodle dish and curry rice. It was a nice time. I would've liked to have met up with my actual host family, but they were busy. I guess one of my host brothers actually lives and works in Nagoya now, the other one is in high school and works at a yakitori shop, one of my host sister's is studying in America, and the other one is in beauty school in Fukuoka. My host mom happened to be in Fukuoka that night, so it didn't work out. But I hope to see them when Yumeko (the one studying in America) comes back to Japan to visit in December.

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After dinner, Ian and I made our way to where he lives in Yamauchi, Saga. It took about an hour by train. It's really pretty where he lives. Sunday we woke up and went to some small shops in his town - including a really good bakery. We decided to head back over to where the balloon festival was going on to see if there was anything new happening... but we got there and it was basically the same. We met up with his friend Karl who was at the balloon festival and hung out for awhile. Then it was off to Karatsu city for a really famous festival - Karatsu Kunchi!

It took about 1.5 hours to get to Karatsu. We met up with somemore Saga JETs and watched the floats go by from a car park - it was cool! It was a really fun night. I ended up sleeping at Ian's friend's apartment (Charlotte from Scotland) with some other people. Monday morning we all walked around for a bit to see the floats again. I remember when my host family took me to Karatsu in summer 2002. They took me to see Karatsu Castle - which is really cool and worth seeing - and they also took me to the museum that holds these floats all year. I remember them telling me about how once a year the town takes these floats out of the museum and parades them around the city. Well, I honestly never thought I'd actually ever be back to Karatsu to see it... but there I was. I think that's pretty cool.

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Ian and I eventually left and made our way to Fukuoka City in Fukuoka Prefecture - a stop for me on the way back to Yamaguchi. The main reason we went was to check out the Apple Store. It was cool. We also checked out this temple that seemed surprisingly new - as opposed to ancient like most of them. After that I finally made my way back home to Yamaguchi.

It was a really fun weekend : )

Oh, and before I forget - here are some of my students from my base school who were talking to me as I waited for the train after work on Friday. They're typical Ube Nishi High School (a.k.a. Nishi-kou) boys - complete disregard for the school uniform... but they are nice boys. The one standing next to me was showing off his 10, yes 10, earrings. I'm not supposed to tell the other teacher's that he has his ears peirced... because that is definetely against school rules. But it's not like I'd tell the other teacher's anyway... ha.

Side Note: It's election day back in the US!... a few of my JTE's have brought it up... but only in the "who do you think will win" type of way...