Yesterday was Constitution Memorial Day in Japan, so we had a lot of events related to Article 9 of the Japanese constitution. (This is the article that says Japan is pacifist and will not bear arms, will not fight in wars, etc. Apparently, Japan and Costa Rica are the only countries in the world to have such clauses in their constitutions.)
Right now everyone is in Sports Festival fervour. Everywhere you go, you can see people wearing ribbons the colour of their team. Some people are wearing costumes, holding up posters, etc. I can't read them... The teams are sorted according to month, and I am in the Blue team.
Our team name is 'Earth'. I find this very amusing, because Japanese people can't pronounce the 'ur' (they say 'ar') or 'th' (they say 's') sounds in 'Earth'. These sounds are not present in Japanese. This means that our team name sounds very much like the word 'arse'. I am in Team Arse. Go team, go.
Sports Day is in two days. I am participating in the 'tsunahiki' (tug-o-war). I think it is going to be scarily enthusiastic. You have not seen passion until you have seen Japanese team spirit. Hahaha.
I was having my daily coffee today - I always to go the bar on the 8th floor, where they play Norah Jones every day - and got invited to join the blue team for lunch downstairs. So there were lots of us having lunch downstairs. ^_^
Today I took videos of my two classes. The idea is that I will video them now, early in the course, and then near the end of the voyage, will play back their video, so they can see how they have improved. Hopefully they will have actually improved. Hahaha...
May 8 (Sat)
I'm writing this from the Red Sea. Days of the week are virtually meaningless on the boat. We follow our own time and space.
I've swum in several seas and oceans so far. The pool water on our ship comes from the ocean, so I've swum in the South China Sea, Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden. The recent waters have been very salty.
The weather's getting less stifling. Even though we are in the Middle East and it's very hot, it's a drier heat. More like Adelaide on a summer's day. The worst stretch, I think, was between Vietnam and Singapore. Maybe the first few days after Singapore too, when we were passing under India and Sri Lanka. Someone said we were getting the pre-monsoonal weather.
It seems to have been pleasant weather ever since we left Yokohama; although it has rained a couple of times, never when I've been outside.
I feel like I have a lot to update but not much time. We have come safely through the Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden (as I mentioned, those areas are famous for pirates). But no problem.
May 9 (Sun)
Today is Sunday. There is actually a 'Bible reading' event on Sundays, in different languages, but I have had to teach both Sundays, so I haven't been able to attend.
Anyway: three things: 1) Undokai, 2) Fashion show, 3) Meeting my students.
1) Undo kai
The 'undou kai', or 'sports festival', is an important part of Japanese culture, especially in school days. From what I've heard, the format of our ship's undokai was a standard one, with most undokai following the same order of events. But I've never done a real Japanese-style sports festival before, so it was a great experience.
I've done Japanese-y things before, but it's always interesting to me to see how many cultural things are embedded in this country. Like there were a bunch of young people doing Japanese-style taiko (drumming), and pausing for dramatic effect with specific poses and shouts, wearing happi coats and hachimaki, taking turns, to the accompaniment of Japanese music... If we had a bunch of Australians doing drumming, we would just choreograph it randomly, without years of history to indicate how it could be done, but they were following all these traditional conventions.
The ship was divided into four teams, based on birth month. I was in the blue team, 'Earth' ('Arse', as I mentioned before ^_^). The four teams - blue, white, red and yellow - came wearing their team colours, and the very first 'event' was to count the number of participants. Our team came last, which I felt was a rather poor beginning.
The danchou (team captains) were four young, gung-ho guys who strongly resembled anime characters. What I mean to say is, you see anime characters and you think 'hahaha, that's so exaggerated'. But these people do exist in real life (or at least, when you put them up in front of an audience, they transform into caricatures ^_^). Our danchou had straggly blue and white hair; the red danchou had a kind of red punk-y pompadour.
They were really funny, leading their team cheers with bellowing voices. Each had dyed their hair the colour of their team. Apparently this cost them 30,000 yen each (!!!!!). It shows the lengths they will go to for their team...
The order of events was something like this:
Compared with an Australian sports day, the emphasis was really on team sports, and there was a good mixture of old and young competing in each event.
Radio Taisou is a Japanese custom I had never heard of before. From the days before television, they would play music over the radio and people would do simple stretches and exercises to the music. We were all led in these stretches before the proper events happened. Then we all did a bit of a dance. ^_^
The funny relay was great. Basically, a person from each team would run around the pool deck, and have to complete a few challenges (like pulling a piece of candy out of a bowl of flour using their teeth, putting on a mask, etc) and run to a box which had papers in them. On the paper would be something like 'Someone named Suzuki' or 'An interpreter' or 'Someone with a red handbag'. The person would have to race to find someone in the audience meeting that criteria, and take them with them to the finish line. It was really funny, even though I couldn't read the papers. ^^;;
Some other events included group jump rope - about ten people had to jump at the same time, and only one team managed to get more than 1 jump, because there was always some older person jumping at the wrong time. ^^; But it was all fun. There was a three-legged race relay - had a couple of people come a cropper - and a centipede race, where several people, standing in a line, have their legs tied together and must move in unison. There was a game where people had to throw beanbags into a box (when I say that, I mean a big mass of people all throwing at the same time), and our team won. ^_^ I participated in the final event of all, the tug-of-war, which was like the grand finale and worth the highest number of points.
They sold kakigori (shaved ice; a common Japanese summer treat), and one of the events had the danchou (team captains) compete to eat bowls of kakigori, in their team colours, as quickly as they could. Terrible! They were all clutching their heads in pain... but our danchou won! Yay Blue. ^_^
It was a great day, under the blue Arabian sky. Kind of funny to be having such an intensely Japanese experience at the entrance to the Red Sea... I loved every minute. Lots of fun Japanese music played, and everyone was super genki.
Each team had also choreographed a team cheer, which was also for points. I think the Red team's was the best - so so super cute - while ours looked rather like they had come up with it in in about two minutes. However, Yellow won this section, probably because Yellow came last by a long way, so they wanted to give them some points. ^^;
White and Red dominated for most of the day, and for most of the day, Blue was coming third. When we came to the tug-of-war, we beat Red, while White beat Yellow. Then it was us verses White for the Big Finale. Chanting 'A-su, A-su' (Earth, Earth) and pulling on the 'su' sound, we got them over the line and won the tug-of-war! The high fives were many.
When the final points were tallied, and our danchou's ice-eating success, and our tug-of-war win were added, Team Earth came from behind to win the sports festival!!
It was very exciting. ^_^ We got to go to a 'winner's drinks' session afterwards, and there was a big party until early morning. (There are many, many late-night parties on this ship, most of which I don't attend, having early morning classes...)
2) Fashion show
You know that Japanese people like to shop, right? Well, so far we have been to China, Vietnam and Singapore. This means that quite a few ladies on the ship have bought aodai (Vietnamese traditional dresses), Singaporean batik dresses (like the Singapore Airlines uniform), Chinese dresses and sari. In addition, a number of people have kimono and yukata (Japanese summer kimono).
Therefore, they organised an Asian Fashion Show so that all the lovely ladies - and a few gentlemen - could show off their new purchases. We teachers were encouraged to participate, and I borrowed a yukata to wear (and found a random kind soul to put it on me ^_^).
There were four categories of clothing: Japanese, aodai, sari, and 'other' (Chinese dresses, Korean, etc). There was some cute choreography too, such as a young couple - who are going to get married on the ship - coming out in aodai together, and him carrying her off the stage. I was one of the first to go onto the catwalk and strike my poses, so I got to watch most of it.
3) My students
I mentioned that I have one class of all elderly people - the oldest is 88. So I have to take it slow for that class, but it's a really lovely class and I enjoy teaching it. Anyway, one of the students invited the class to try tea ceremony in his room (he has a balcony room - lucky ^_^). He had met a tea ceremony teacher during one of the ship tours, and she was there, wearing kimono, to teach us the procedure.
Although the other students are all over 60, several of them hadn't learned tea ceremony before. I couldn't understand very much but I enjoyed it. We couldn't sit on tatami mats, but otherwise we tried to follow the same procedure, each person taking a turn.
In tea ceremony, your movements and words are quite deliberate. Before taking the cup, you apologise to the next person for going before them (osaki ni); they reply 'go ahead' (douzo). You pick it up and hold it in one hand, carefully turning it with the other hand so that the picture on the cup faces you. The cups have seasonal pictures; for May, a kind of lily is suitable. Then you drink, trying to drain the dregs. Then you put it down carefully, gently lifting it to admire the picture on it. And you generally eat sweets before and after the tea, as the Japanese matcha (powdered tea) is rather bitter. I like it though.
Later that day I also met that same class for a drink in the on-board izakaya. I learned some new things about my students, for example, one of my septuagenarian students was a surgeon, and another was a 'hibakusha' (atomic bomb survivor) who helped remove bodies from Hiroshima after the bombing. It was difficult for us to communicate, but I wished I could understand more of their stories.
Sometimes it is easy with people, especially when they are beginners at English, to think of them purely in terms of students - 'oh, he can't understand very much', 'she can't speak very well', 'he gets confused'. You can forget that a person may be highly educated and articulate in their own language, since you hear them speaking in broken and basic English. It was a good reminder for me that my students are not only students.
...
There are so many events on this ship - and in such a short time - that we always have a lot to do, but mostly it's fun stuff. So for example, May 6 was Sports Day (no classes), then May 7 was the Fashion Show, then May 8 was 'All English and Spanish Day' (where students had to try to talk to as many people in English or Spanish as possible) and there was an auction with proceeds to support refugees, and there was a book sale, with books going to a refugee camp.
Tonight - May 9 - we are having 'Arabian Night', and tomorrow we will be in Egypt. We teachers are planning to go into Luxor for the first day, and then go snorkelling in the Red Sea for the second. I think we will be very tired, but it's gonna be great. ^_^
We've been at sea for about 13 days with no land, but it hasn't been a problem. I haven't even really thought about it. The boat becomes your world. ^_^
Today was a quiet day. It was the last day of our first 'term' of teaching, so we have quite a few days off. The next week will consist of ports: Safaga, Safaga (Egypt), Aqaba, Aqaba (Jordan), up the Suez Canal, and then Egypt again (Port Said). So no classes for a little while.
Today I spent some time up at the pool, and I just went to our port orientation. Before each port, or each series of ports, we have a boatwide orientation session - translated into English over the little handheld radios (simultaneous broadcast devices) - where we hear about the ocean route we've just travelled, where we're about to travel, and some important cultural information about the countries coming up.
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