So it's been way too long since I've posted anything about my experience in Japan. Well, a lot has happened since winter break. During the holiday, I went on a ski trip to Hokkaido and had quite an adventure. It was a trip with the young teachers around the area and was a lot of fun. I got to fly to Hokkaido a total of 3 times in one trip! Haha...the first time we tried flying in there was a big snowstorm. We weren't able to land so we had to fly all the way back to Haneda. We just had to wait for our destiny....see what we had in store for us. After a full day of waiting, we were able to get on a 2nd flight to attempt a landing this time. This was a flight at 5pm and we got on. We approached Hokkaido and were able to successfully land!
The snow in Hokkaido was amazing...I mean amazing! It was the best powder snow I had ever snowboarded on. Overall, a great trip filled with good food, good people, and GREAT snow!
Then I went on a trip to Mt. Fuji onsen (hot springs) with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. We spent the night in Kawaguchi-ko. Then we went to Shizuoka the next day to visit my grandfather's grave. He actually has 2 tombstones in Japan. One in Nagano and the other in Shizuoka. I did not know that his hometown was actually Shizuoka until this past year. All this time I had thought he was born and raised in Nagano! What shocking news!
Then the 3rd day we met up with some relatives who I had met for the first time that were on my aunt's husband's side. We all had a very nice lunch and enjoyed each other's company. Overall, it was a good new year's. One of my friends who also used to live in Japan came back to visit for a few days so we all had fun hanging out as well.
But to bring you up to speed on what's been going on recently...graduation ceremonies and end of the year events. The junior high school's graduation ceremony was last week Friday. It was a rainy and sad day. The students graduated and though it was gloomy, it was a refreshing next steps for the students. They graduated and will now move on to the next step in their lives.
Since they graduated, the 3rd graders do not come to school anymore. It's been kind of quiet and lonely, but there's still the 1st and 2nd graders so it's not too bad. But classes have been pretty slow. It's the end of the year and not too much going on except for end of the year tests and other organizational/administrative things. The other day on Monday, we began watching the movie "Monsters Inc." I forgot about the movie and it reminded me of the good old days, haha.
Today, I had no classes scheduled as the students had tests. So that meant finding things to do for the entire day. However, my principal came up to me this morning and asked me, "Kento! Today's schedule? What do you have?" I replied by saying that I had no scheduled classes and would be preparing for other classes and my adult conversation class that I have on Wednesday evenings. He then said, "Ok, at 8:45, we go takenoko searching!"
I was actually pretty excited. I had never gone to go hunting for takenoko (baby bamboo). It's actually a lot more difficult than it sounds. In Japan, the season for takenoko is in the early spring. And they can be very pricey as it's very manual to look for takenoko. And you do not always get a lot even after searching for awhile. So we went to a nearby bamboo forest from the school. The process of searching for takenoko is mainly rubbing the ground with your feet and feeling it with the balls of your feet. Those who have done it for awhile will know the feeling and not be fooled by other roots/random tree stumps (as I was many times today). I managed to find one small takenoko that was probably about the size of a large thumb! Haha...but at least I found one. Recently, it's been pretty chilly here considering the time of year in Chiba, so not too many takenoko are around. Hopefully in the next few weeks as it warms up, more takenoko will be sprouting and hopefully I will have a chance to go again and find more this time. My principal found about 4 so we came back with 5 total!
Considering the conditions today, not too bad and a great experience. It was pretty fun and was something I didn't expect to be doing on a Wednesday morning. We spent about an hour out there searching and then came back. Not too bad!
