Catch-up

Okay! Let me attempt a quick catch up. In the past few months I have done the following:

-Gone to Fukuoka for a weekend filled with Sumo,Costco shopping, and dancing till the early morning. Fukuoka is awesome. I live in a rice field (well, almost), so going to Fukuoka was that much more amazing just because it was a big city. Sumo was a once in a life-time experience. once. It was very interesting to see but I don't think I get it. It was so fascinating how ceremonial it all was. The actual "matches" didn't last that long, maybe a few seconds and they were preceded by a lot of foot stamping, squatting stretches and other stuff. Thankfully there were pamphlets in English that explained all the rules and history. Costco was ridiculous. I bought tons of foriegn/homesick/what the hell is this?i can't get it in my village food, and between the four of us we weighed down Josh's car to the point of almost scrapping it back down kyushu island to get home. Dancing was, well, I love it. I don't dance anywhere near as much as I used to, though I might hold a dance party tomorrow night in the rice field across the river from my house. (There must be somewhere I can plug in a disco ball...) That night in Fukuoka there was quite a large group of JETs from Kagoshima; it was a party. Danced till my feet hurt, the music sucked and the sun came up. Hands down, the highlight of that evening (um, morning?) was Josh falling asleep in Mos Burger at about 5am, forgotten breakfast in hand.

-Danced in the streets of Kagoshima Shi and Satsumasendai Shi for festivals. It was one loooong weekend; I danced every day in a different city. I can now wave my hands about and only look mildly uncoordinated when I attempt the traditional (kagoshima?) dances we perfected that weekend. In Kagoshima we had a group "genki gaikokugin and friends" made up of foreigners and locals. The parade was almost 2 hours I think, and it was definitely in the hot sun! There was free shochu [alcohol of choice here, made from sweet potatoes] being handed out at booths on the street. Hot sun + dancing for hours + shochu = :s In Sendai the group I was in consisted mainly of people from my Board of Education Office and schools. I stuffed myself with festival food, mostly okonomiyaki (fried cabbage, seafood pancake thing with mayonaise and sauce). There was also a festival at one of my schools that weekend and of course there was dancing there too!

I really don't like this format of a quick catch up so I'll stop. I'll be better about keeping up.