遅れてしまってごめんなさい！

It's been a while! Oopss... I apologize for being a lazy blogger lately... I have excuses, but they are flimsy and not necessarily worth hearing. I'll just say that October was a crazy month and leave it at that! Let's see if I can sum it up really quickly.

1.  I went to an awesome festival in Otsu where my fellow ALTs and I got to pull a Tanuki float around the town for an entire day. It was invigorating and crazy fun! I don't know if I'll have another experience like it. 
2. I went to a doll festival and watched children doing sumo in the same day. 
3. I taught Halloween vocabulary and USA Halloween traditions to about 1000 Japanese children. 
4. I went to the Yuru Chara Festival in Hikone. Important towns throughout Japan are represented by mascots. One weekend in October, all of these mascots gather for a festival meet and greet at Hikone Castle in Shiga. There were around 200 people dressed as mascots. It was overwhelming and wonderful and ridiculous. 

I also hung out with some cool people, took some beautiful bike rides around my area, and attempted to study Japanese. Although I had some mishaps this month, I think that teaching-wise it has been very fruitful and I have had a lot of enjoyable adventures. 

Today was Halloween. Although I have been teaching it to every single kid at my school this entire month, Halloween is still not a holiday that is really understood by most Japanese people. They don't celebrate it and therefore don't know the purposes behind the traditions that we have during this time of year. They may have heard of "Trick or Treat", but going from house to house to ask for candy is not something they would do. Jack 'o Lanterns are non-existant, as Japan doesn't have orange pumpkins. (They have the kabocha, the Japanese pumpkin, which looks more like a squash). Dressing up in costumes is seen as a little strange and out of place. This may be because of the connection that they make to cosplay, which is seen as a fringe activity. Anything that deviates from the norm is not as easily accepted. 

I tested these cultural difference today when I came to school dressed as Doraemon, a lovable Japanese cartoon character from 1969 who is known by kids everywhere. I knew that I would get a lot of weird looks, but I thought it would be a great way to connect to the students and make my teachers laugh. It definitely did that! I got very mixed reactions, ranging from excited to indifferent. Almost all of the first year students were ecstatically happy. They were much easier to rile up and get pumped about Halloween. The second year kids were also entertained and amused, but not as energetic. The third year kids thought I was a weirdo (albeit a weirdo that they were kind of entertained by). For example,

Girl: Annica-sensei! Hello! You are Doraemon!

Annica: Yes, today is Halloween, so I am Doraemon. Happy Halloween!

Girl: Everyone thinks you are stranger.

Annica: Strange?

Girl: Yes, you are strange.

Annica: ....

And so on. (Honestly, I think they already thought I was strange, so I'm not loosing too much rep. I will admit to acting ridiculous in their presence to attempted to get them to not feel intimidated by me, the foreign teacher.)

Basically, I had a highly entertaining day freaking the heck out of anyone who saw me and trying to get everyone at my school in the Halloween spirit. Maybe by next year I will be able to convince them that Halloween is a cool holiday. Then again, they may not ever take me seriously again. Hm...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

American Doraemon

Japanese Doraemon