Those Young 'Uns

So the other day I met some First graders at one of my elementary schools. Since it was my first time meeting them (most of them, I'd met a couple of them around the town before through siblings and such), I was going to do a little self-introduction. I usually do something very simple for the young ones. Three or so sentences with lots of gestures:
Hello!
My name is Lucky!
I am 25 years old!
I like strawberries!
Nice to meet you!


This time, instead of "I like strawberries" I accidentally said, "I am from Canada!" Of course that meant nothing to them. One of the kids kept on yelling that I came from the country of English and he actually yelled at me to go back to English at one point (hmf! I just might do that you little...! *ahem* little sweet thing. *ahem*... wherever English is.)

If I ever say that I am from Canada to the little ones I have my map of the world with me and my colour in the flag of Canada colouring sheets, but this time I had NOTHING! I stood there in a moment of "oh shit why did i say that." The kids stared at me with their eyes wide with wonder (one little boy intently sucking on his sleeve - for the entire class actually), some yelled at me some more, and then the wonderful teacher pulled out a huge world map out of some magic corner of the classroom.

So the map goes up and I start to point at Japan saying here we are! And the kid that told me to go back to English is yelling "That's here dummy!" Good. They know where Japan is on the world map. Step one accomplished. So I start to point to Canada, and also point at America to give them a frame of reference, because everyone knows about America. So as I am pointing at this big map the kids start to say "The weather is sunny here! And here it is rainy!"

Lucky the weathercaster. Yup. I guess they were simply referring to when they usually see someone point at a large map of the world... the weather report. It was hilarious. I had a good laugh, the kids thought I was nuts and eventually they understood that you have to take a very long plane ride to get to where I am from. I still think that one kid thinks I come from a country called English.

I Love My Students

"I want to talk about my favorite book. My favorite book is "Traveling Pants." It is the story of the Pants. It is very exciting and interesting. Thank you." - one of my more talented students (check out the complete sentences and proper punctuation.)

What are the Pants? Where do they go? I wonder if I can find this book in English...

Also, I think "pants" in Japanese means underwear. I am not sure how that fits into this, if it does at all.

Adventures in Small Town Breweries

Last weekend I had the chance to visit a shochu factory. Shochu is an alchoholic drink made from satsuma imo, or sweet potato as we like to call them. It is also made from sugar cane, rice and barley. The sweet potato kind is the most popular in Kagoshima mainland, while lento, sugarcane shochu, is a speciality of Amami Island (just south of here.)

Let me start by sharing my social-life delibitating not-so-secret secret, I hate shochu. I don't simply dislike it, the smell of it is enough to induce my gag reflex. Some people describe it as having a "strong and distinctive flavour", much like a run-down hostel might be described as having "charm." (In my brash and unforgiving to strong smelling liquer opinion.) Unfortunately, it is the drink of choice here, and a proud part of Kagoshima culture. How awful is it that it makes me want to hurl?

So why did I go to the place that creates this, in my opinion, nauseating drink? I did it for the kids! The kids? Yes! Kids and shochu, like peanut butter and jam. See, the kids in my town have this afterschool club, and they have a fundraiser for it. That's right, they are selling alcohol to raise funds for their lil kids club. Not any shochu, oh no, this is the good stuff. Last May these little tykes and their hardworking mothers and fathers planted the sweet potatoes and tended to them until they were ready for harvest. Then, they harvested their crop and took it to the shocho factory where they started the whole potato to drink process. Now, almost a year later, and after 5 months of fermentation, it's bottled, factory labelled and almost ready to sell.

Shochu can be fermented for only a month or two, the fast track to drunkenness, but the 5 month brew is supposed to be better. Perhaps it has a stronger flavour and smell? ><

One more thing to do before they can sell it...they made a special little label, a picture of the kids and parents in the sweet potato field, which has to be hand glued onto every bottle. So on Saturday morning, while the mothers and children went to a heated indoor swimming pool in a town nearby (oddly referred to as a "pic-nic" by my friend that invited me to this whole thing - maybe they did that after the pool?), I went with the fathers and some of their junior high school age sons to the shochu factory.

The entire place smelled like shochu (of course, right? something I did not have the foresight to think about.) Even the glue we used smelled like shochu because instead of using water to mix it, they use shochu! Wow. Besides feeling nauseas for the couple hours we were there, I had a great time. After sitting around with the men and glueing labels, and making faces at the junior high school boys smelling the glue, we got a tour of the place.

It was completely in Japanese, of course, and no one really translated for me. But I think I understand the process about as well as I understand how my office works after being here for a year and half. Here it is:

Step 1 (at the top floor of the bulding) - takes about a day and involves rice.
Step 2 (the floor below) - takes a day or two and involves the rice and hops. it looks like they grill it.
Step 3 (the floor below that) - takes a week or so and involves a large vat of stuff that gets stirred every day.
Step 4 (the ground floor) - the mix is now at 70% alcohol and goes into the fermentation pots.
Step 5 - the pots are covered with wrap and you can see the liquid trying to evaporate, collecting on the wrap and then dropping back down into the pot. by pot I mean a huge mother of a pot. it was in a very pretty room with wooden floors and Japanese style lights, the lantern kind.

As you can see, I have a very clear understanding of shochu is made (and how things work at the office.) If you are reading this and don't understand sarcasm then I have no idea what to say to you, except maybe kampai! ("Cheers!")... just as long as it's not shochu.

Okay, I haven't been completely honest, I do like lento shochu. It is the only shochu that I like. It does not have a strong smell and tastes slightly sweet. In no way does the word "pungent" come up when drinking lento. "Really drunk, really fast" on the other hand, goes hand in hand with it.

It must have been really amazing for the fathers to see the bottles come out of the little bottle window after all that hard work. 1 year in the making! From field to factory! So let's drink for the kids! If you wanna buy one, let me know and I'll hook you up. Or if I really like you, you might get the one that I buy, as a present, because there's no way in hell I'm drinking it.