Japan part 7

05/19/2008

Since last november I have been taking drum lessons at a local community center. These are not American drums, but rather Japanese drums called "taiko" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiko).
They have religious origins, and temples will often call in a taiko team to play for a religious ceremony or festival. My taiko group performed on April 3rd at a temple near Nara city, for a festival celebrating Buddah. Here is a video for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEYMp94wZUQ

It was definitely great fun, and even though I wont have any more performances before we leave, I am still going to my weekly classes :)

April is also the start of the new Japanese-school-year. This means there is a lot of shuffling around of teachers. The way the school system works here is that each teacher belongs to the system as a whole, and the head-hanchos can move teachers around as they see fit. A teacher can put in a request, or refuse to move, but the board of education does not have to honor their wishes. Teachers can be moved after one year, or 14 years... they never know for sure when it will happen! They're given about 3 days notice, and during those 3 days all the teachers in Nara-ken who are moving must pack up all their stuff and unpack again at their new school. Thus the begining to middle of April was full of welcoming ceremonies and goodbye parties of various kinds.

Towards the end of April real classes at school finally start ... but then during the first week of May there is a string of National Holidays known as "Golden Week" - which basically amounts to a 5 day weekend!

All of Japan gets Golden Week off so traveling is typically busy and expensive during this time ... so Ian and I decided not to go anywhere and just relaxed at home. It was very nice :)

In other news - right now Japan is in the middle of a swine-flu scare. A group of students from Osaka went to Canada for Golden week and one of them returned with swine flu. That student was on the volley ball team at her high school, and there was a volley-ball match between other Osaka & Kobe highschools .... and now there are over 100 cases of swine flu in Osaka / Kobe (hand-washing using soap is not common amongst the students!) and every single school in Osaka is closed for the week. On top of that, they are screening every single passenger on-board any planes coming from the states or Mexico, and if just one passenger has a fever, that passenger and every passenger around him will be quarantined in Tokyo for a week! I personally think they are over-reacting, by, well, A LOT; but who knows. At least if swine flu comes to Nara I might get a week vacation!