All Posts from the Culture Category
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It’s started…
That noise again. Endlessly repeated, like nails on blackboard, over and over again, until you think you might just go mad. It sets your teeth on edge, it makes you want to run screaming for the exits but you can’t, you’re trapped inside, you have to stay, you have to get the shopping over and done with before you can finally make good your escape into the relative sanity of the outside world.
Yes, I’m talking about Christmas carols.
How well I remember the horrors of the Christmas shopping period from my Tokyo days. I mean, I don’t object to carols as such; they’re nice and Christmassy and everything, it’s just that Japan seems to have a predilection with two in particular: Santa Claus is Coming to Town and I’m Dreaming of White Christmas. Actually “carols” is the wrong word; they’re more into Christmas songs, generally the more schmaltzy ones, which might be bearable or even enjoyable once in a while but not day in day out for months on end. Especially since the versions that they play in the shopping centres are inevitably of the horribly saccharine variety.
Purists may wonder why Christmas is celebrated in a country with minimal Christian background, where the main religions are nominally Buddhism and Shinto, and where 25 December is a normal working day. Well, the Japanese retail industry has no interest in the already tenuous connection between Christmas and Christianity; they just want to shift units. They know a good marketing opportunity when they see one, and they’ve latched onto Christmas with a vengeance.
So here we are in the first week of November and the dreaded Christmas music is already coming out the loudspeakers and the trees and baubles are starting to appear in the stores.I mean, I thought late November was a bit early in Australia but this is ridiculous. It looks like we’re going to be tortured by this stuff for the next two months.
I doubt that the locals share my frustrations, because the Japanese have a wonderful ability to filter out background noise. Japan is the land of background noise, whether it be endless announcements on the trains, piped music at the beach, crowd controllers with megaphones, or even the good old Community Loudspeakers installed in every corner of every town and village across the land (this morning — Sunday morning — our local Big Brother speakers sprang into life at 7:15 a.m to remind us of some important announcement or other. Because nobody sleeps in, do they?). There’s a shop in the local shopping centre in town which has been playing a Best of the Beatles compilation for about ten months now, non-stop. Every time I walk past it’s either the Ballad of John and Yoko or Paperback Writer or the Long and Winding Road. If I worked there it would drive me around the bend in a week, but the shop staff just block it out. Amazing.
But as for me and the supermarket shopping, I think I might have to invest in some earplugs or start taking tranquilisers or something in case I’m seized by a violent urge to take out a few of those loudspeakers over the next two months.
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Brass and potatoes
Wednesday was a national holiday today. Our longstanding friend Mr Nishihara, who grows vegetables on a small plot near his flat, invited us to join in his Potato Harvest Festival (loosely translated), which is basically him getting together with a few mates at a picnic spot by the river to make up a stew of new season potatoes while drinking themselves silly on sake in the process. There were 11 of us all together, the weather was glorious and sunny and a lovely time was had by all.
Here then is my photojournal of the proceedings.
First of all we made camp by the river:
Then the Men set up the fires and the things for hanging the pots on. Eleni came across to check on their handiwork:
The adults who couldn’t do clever things like build fires (that’s us) got to peel the potatoes, while the kids had to rip up this extremely healthy but disgustingly squeegy stuff called konyaku into little bits like this:
Ruby is not a big fan of ripping up konyaku:
Meanwhile Felix went and played in the raging torrent of a river with the only other kid there on the day (who luckily just happened to be of similar age).
And finally we all got to sit around and eat the extremely healthy stew of freshly harvested potatoes and konyaku plus the eleven secret traditional herbs ‘n’ spices etc etc.
Now at this point the idea was to sit around for several hours longer drinking more and more sake; but luckily the kids and I had to nick off after lunch in order to perform in our first ever public outing with the Poporo brass band in the evening. Mr Nishihara was disappointed as always with my refusal to get rolling drunk during the day but I prefer to leave that sort of stuff to night-time. We had a long conversation about cultural differences (he maintains that you simply HAVE to drink sake in order to properly appreciate the cherry blossoms in April, for instance) but were unable to reach any sort of meaningful conclusion because he was too drunk for rational discourse.
So on to the concert. It was held out on the lawn behind the Poporo Cultural Centre to commemorate the annual Illumination Ceremony, which as far as I can tell involves not much more than the mayor coming out and pressing a big round button and all these pretty lights come on.
Here’s a couple of before and after shots:
Actually those lights do look rather purdy don’t they. And you can see from the first photo the bullet train line in the background, so every now and then a bullet train would thunder past overhead which added to the ambience. The concert was great fun and afterwards we all got to sit around and chat, and then we went out to dinner with none other than Mr Nishihara, who’d somehow managed not only to stay awake but to come along to the concert, and his wife who was kindly playing the role of taxi driver for the day.
And what better way to finish this report than a nice relaxing bit of brass band music.
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Takehara bamboo festival
When Ruby was in hospital a while back to have her appendix out, her teacher came in to visit. (Teachers in Japan take their pastoral care pretty seriously; it’s not just a phrase that gets put in the glossy prospectus to make parents feel all warm and rosy.) And while we were chatting away in front of the invalid she told us about this bamboo festival down in Takehara, which just happens to be one of my favourite nearby spots as it has a beautifully preserved Old Bit. Pretty much any hint of a festival is enough to get us out sniffing around for Culture, so last weekend we went down to check it out.
The action doesn’t get underway until the sun goes down, the reason being that the entire event is centered around wonderful displays made from bamboo with candles in them.
All along the roads are bamboo lights and then at various points there are little displays like this:
There are quite a few traditional houses in Takehara that operate like museums during the daytime, but that evening it was open slather and we were wandering in and out at will. A few people had dressed up in kimonos and one place had some music coming out of it, so there seemed to be a few events going on but we’d arrived a bit late and didn’t really have time to check it out closely.
But there was just something very lovely about the low-key approach that set it apart from many of the other festivals we’ve been to. No main stage with loud music, no stalls selling soggy chips and cheap plastic trinkets, no madding crowds to force your way through, just lots of cute bamboo thingies to admire as we ambled amiably along.
At one point we went around the back of some facility or other to find the toilets and stumbled across this wonderland:
Bear in mind that these are all made out of nothing more than bamboo and candles, with the occasional piece of twine.
I rather like this long exposure shot of an ancient traditional bit of stonemasonry in the background that looks for all the world like a castle keep:
Meanwhile Felix, not to be outdone, took this shot of the lanterns going down the stairs:
So you get the idea: a nice night’s entertainment. Unfortunately we had to turn back before long because it was getting late and I suspect that we really only scratched the surface.
On the way back to the car we came across these cultural dudes:
Note the lights going all the way down the street that consist of three cut bits of bamboo strapped together with candles on the inside. It makes you want to buy a whole lot of bamboo and cut it up on an angle and put it in your garden. Or it did us, at any rate.
All in all a very worthwhile experience. And another one to add to the list of things we have to go back and do properly next year, including more photographs.
Click here for more Takehara bamboo festival photos.
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Toe socks
Toe socks are back! In the Sushi on a Stick household, that is. I’m not talking the garish striped knee-high abominations of the 80s, but the nice ordinary type that you can buy in nice ordinary clothes shops.
Now it turns out that the thin cotton ankle-height lace-up toe socks known as tabi are actually an ancient traditional cultural item in Japan. Eleni has a pair that she has to wear for official drumming performances. And I’ve even got a pair somewhere back in Australia which I carted home from Tokyo ages ago thinking that they were lovely and cultural, and of course I’ve never worn them once. (Just like those conical hats from Vietnam that have been gathering dust in a cupboard since approximately 1993.)
But the other day I noticed that a friend was wearing toe socks not as a fashion statement or for a traditional performance of any kind, but just as a pair of socks.
And then while I was waiting in the hospital for Ruby’s appointment the other day I came across a magazine article the other day extolling the virtues of the humble toe sock.
Also during summer I had Ruby telling me that long socks with shorts and runners were a bad look. (Yes, I’m happy to take fashion advice from a 13-year-old. So long as it’s delivered in an appropriately respectful tone of voice.)
And finally, there I was the other day in good old UNIQLO, possibly my favourite clothes shop in Mihara if not the world in space, and I came across short-length toe socks in nice sensible middle-age colours at three pairs for $12! Seeing as I’m constitutionally unable to pay more than about $5 for a pair of socks, this was what finally won me over.
So the planets have aligned and now I’m converted: toe socks are great. It feels so healthy to have your toes properly separated rather than wedged together getting all sweaty and horrible crammed inside your shoes. The only downside is that you can’t just whip your socks on in the morning; you have to take the time to worm each toe in individually. But in this crazy mixed-up world in which we live in*, how therapeutic and relaxing it is to spend a bit of quality time with the little ones at the start of every day.
And you just can’t go past three pairs for $12! I’m thinking of buying a few hundred sets to take back to Australia in 2012 to launch a new craze of Therapeutic Sensible Socks for thrifty middle-aged men with too much time in the mornings.
* Paul McCartney
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The Games
The long wait is over; all the anticipation, the excitement, the endless tossing of tiny bean-sacks into wicker baskets finally came to a head on Sunday when the Mihara City Games were staged in brilliant sunshine (still far too hot for this time of year) up at the Sports Park, a very fine facility tucked away in the countryside about 20 minutes from the city centre.
Some 21 different sections of Mihara (population 100,000) were represented at the Sports Day, each with its own tent set up around the arena. While we were setting up the tents we listened to a performance of military pomp music of the sort that seems to be favoured for sports days and major events; it was performed by a massive brass band consisting of no less than 176 students from six different schools in the area (Ruby’s missed out for some reason).
Then we had the opening ceremony with the inevitable half hour of speeches, followed by massed stretching exercises to recorded piano music of the type performed by factory workers first thing in the morning. It was my first experience of “radio exercises” and I have to say I felt all pleasantly stretched afterwards.
Here’s a shot of us all on the main arena during the opening ceremony:
As with Ruby’s junior high school sports day, there was a broad selection of events including traditional relays and running races as well as a number of wacky traditional races such as:
• the three-legged skipping race
• the centipede race, where teams of five people have to shuffle along with their ankles tied together (hilarious)
• the ancient traditional cultural bean-sack-in-the-wicker-basket event
• kick the annoyingly-shaped rugby ball along the ground
• ten-pin bowling (though with three pins rather than ten)At lunchtime there was even an ancient traditional Japanese drumming display by Mrs. Sushi on a Stick and her cohorts.
After lunch came my favourite event and the one that drew the biggest cheers: the all-in relay, which involves competitors from primary school age through to over-60s. Every age group completes half a lap running against people from the same age group, starting with primary school, moving through junior high school (as far as Year 9), followed by under 20s, then 20-29, 30-39 and so on up to 60+. I love the idea of an all-in relay; not only is it great to get everybody involved, but it makes for an exciting race because the sheer number and diversity of competitors creates plenty of potential for overtaking and being overtaken which all adds to the fun.
In the end Sunami was unable to repeat the heroics of last year and we had to settle for second place behind our arch rivals Tanoura-up-the-road. It turns out that our real estate, the affable young Kobayashi-san, is on the Tanoura team and when I was begrudgingly congratulating him today he confided that they start practicing their bean-tossing in about June, over three months before the big event. (Sunami put in about three weeks.) No wonder they got in an incredible 73 bean-sacks to our 52!
And to finish off all the adults went out for dinner at a local hotel where there was food and drink laid on (where does the money come from? I assume it’s the annual membership fees for the local neighbourhood association. How wonderful) and we all had to give little speeches and many people got a bit tipsy and there was great merriment all round. It was special for us also because it marked the first ever occasion on which we have left the kids at home to eat dinner and wash up by themselves while we go out to have fun. What an important milestone in the parenting process. (And it only took three phone calls to sort out the arguing about who was going to do which parts of the washing up.)
The after-party:
Eleni celebrates with her bowling team (half of whom have kids in the same classes as ours):
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Let the Games begin
Hot on the heels of sports day at the junior high school comes the annual sports day for the entire city of Mihara (population 100,000), where the various neighbourhoods battle it out for bragging rights and quite possibly a trophy of some sort. Much like the sports day, there is a broad mix of events such as bowling and croquet for the oldies and sprints and relays for the kids.
Readers will be pleased to hear that the Sushi on a Stick household is well represented at the 2010 municipal carnival: Ruby has been chosen for the 100-metre sprint (although the appendicitis might have put paid to that), Felix is doing a soccer dribbling race, Eleni is on one of the bowling teams and I’ve been roped into an ancient traditional cultural game where you have to toss little bean-sacks into a wicker basket suspended on bamboo pole 4.5 metres in the air.
And although the idea of the Games is undoubtedly to get together and have fun in the sporting spirit and all that, it’s clearly a more serious affair than the sports day at school. I mean, you even have to practice. There are daily practice sessions scheduled at the local primary school from seven until nine in the evening, right up to the night before the Big Day (though maybe not every day). On the couple of times we’ve been down there were about 50 to 100 people all scurrying around doing time trials and beavering away and the Men-in-Charge are highly committed so it would appear that the Games are not just a turn-up-on-the-day type affair.
In fact, one of Eleni’s friends is on the organising committee and she was telling us in hushed tones about how the next town along (Tanoura, if you’re interested) has gained an unfair advantage in the bean-sack tossing event in recent years by using special elongated bean-sacks and baskets to collect them in, which is not strictly fair but somehow they get away with it. Of course, the honest folk of Sunami would never stoop to such levels, which is why we have to practice even harder so as to WIN FAIRLY and thumb our noses at the cheats down the road.
Which piles on the pressure on yours truly as the representative foreigner. My strike rate is pretty poor and my right shoulder is already killing me from concentrated tossing, but I mustn’t give up for the sake of Sunami and all who sail in her. So down we troop of an evening to practice tossing bean-sacks into the basket, and when all the bean-sacks are in the basket we lower the basket to the ground and take all the bean-sacks out of the basket, then stand the pole upright again and start tossing the bean-sacks back in the basket once again. And again, and again, in a manner strikingly reminiscent of that Greek myth about the guy pushing the rock up the hill all the time and it always comes rolling back down. Still, it’s all in the name of community spirit, and how we laugh joyously together as the bean-sack sails past the wicker basket for the umpteenth time.
The Games are on October 10 and so hopefully I’ll be getting a few more sacks in the basket (as they say) before then. Stay tuned for a full report with pics and 90-second video highlights.
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Best Festival Ever
We went to the Pirate ‘n’ Fire Festival on the nearby island of Innoshima last night, and all agreed that it was our best festival to date, even edging out the award-winning Naked Man festival, for the simple reason that rather than just having lots of people dancing around (as in the Yassa Matsuri) or a long line of stalls stretched along a street for no particular reason (like the Shinmei-ichi festival), this one actually had a sense of purpose to it.
It turns out that Innoshima used be a stronghold of pirates operating in the Seto Inland Sea area. There is a castle on the island and a pirate museum and so on, and the three-day pirate festival is held every summer to commemorate the island’s pirate history. (And bring in much-needed tourist revenue, ahem.)
This time our planning was impeccable. We caught the ferry over in the afternoon (a road trip via Onomichi would have been quicker but Eleni loves taking the ferry; she’s got a thing about ferries). On the ferry our resident teenager was very grumpy so I took a photo of her:
I actually think she looks better grumpy.
On Innoshima, we were careful to park our car near the exit of the carpark so as not to get caught in the mad rush at the end as happened after the Yassa Matsuri fireworks. The event itself was held on the very fine local beach (Note: must go back some day soon for a swim) which provided a great setting with heaps of seating so everyone could sit and watch without getting squashed, which was nice for a change.
When we got there the bonfires were already set up on the beach and there was lots of loud banging going on which turned out to be men dressed in ancient traditional cultural armor firing off ancient muskets or blunderbusses or whatever they’re called. I’ve heard that these are notoriously unstable and can blow up in your face but there were no unseemly incidents other than the guns occasionally failing to fire on cue. They made a tremendous noise and flash of light when they went off, which I’m sure would have been enough to give the enemy pause for thought regardless of where the bullet ended up.
On the left in the above photo you can see the massive torch thingy that gets set alight at the end of the night, and on the right is one of the many bonfires that were dotted along the beach.
After that there was an endless succession of dance numbers put on by local schools and community groups and so on and this was possibly more fun for the participants than the spectators but it gave us a chance to wander around and check out the festival stalls. Then there was a wadaiko drumming display which was once again a joy to watch. Eleni and I are now completely smitten by traditional drumming (her from a professional perspective, him as a student not a tourist) and can’t get enough of it. That and fireworks. Oh, and okonomiyaki too.
By about seven o’clock dark had fallen (there being no daylight saving in Japan) and it was time for the main event, which involved the ancient traditional cultural soldier dudes returning with Indiana Jones style flaming torches and setting fire to the very large torch that had been brought over and placed in centre stage.
Then a whole lot more people armed with flaming torches arrived by boat (including a party of foreign students dressed up for the occasion) and were welcomed on shore; by the end there must have been about a hundred of them all waving their fire around the place.
Earlier in the evening I’d seen some of the Young Foreign Things drinking very determinedly and I was a bit worried about them being given a huge ball of fire to look after but no-one seemed to get burnt.
All the while there was a commentary going on which added to the sense of occasion and was no doubt very meaningful and historical to the locals, but unfortunately my Japanese vocabulary is sadly lacking when it comes to history so I couldn’t really work out what it all meant.
At the end of the night there was the inevitable fireworks display. Although advertised as “only” 1,400 fireworks it went on for ages and some of them were very fancy. Felix was most impressed. However in a bid to avoid the madding crowds we had to get on the shuttle bus back to the carpark while the fireworks show was still in progress but this created a cultural bonding atmosphere of camaraderie on the crowded bus as everybody craned their necks to get a good view of the fireworks display from the bus windows.
And to top it all off, we exited the carpark in style and encountered no traffic whatsoever on the way home.
So all in all it was a really great festival experience and we’re determined to go again in 2011. Hopefully we’ll be even more organised and catch the full-on pirate parade and boat race too.
Click here for more festival photos.
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Yassa Matsuri festival
Last weekend was the big festival on the Mihara calendar, the one that’s in all the tourist brochures and on the telegraph poles: the festival known as Yassa Matsuri.
There was a huge stage in the big open area in front of the station and millions of stalls selling the usual festival type foods and people everywhere. They put out a big long list of performances throughout the afternoon but it was just so baking hot that there was unfortunately no way that we were going to stick around for them all. (These days the four of us are permanently camped in the sole air-conditioned room of the house: Daddy’s tiny office upstairs.) So we decided to go in and check out the massed dancing display in the evening. Besides, our friends Yusuke and Yoko’s kids were dancing in it.
The massed dancing consisted of an endless succession of different groups dressed in coordinated happy coats doing the special Yassa dance that has been handed down since time immemorial or some such. Anyone can take part if you attend the practice sessions for a couple of weeks beforehand (we’re trying to get Felix inspired for next year; Ruby of course is far too cool for that sort of thing). Many of the groups appear to be organised by workplaces. For instance at one stage in the video below you can see signs for DNP, a printing company with a massive industrial complex just out of town. I guess that explains the presence of quite a few sheepish-looking 20-somethings in the parade — they’d been roped into it on fear of instant dismissal.
The highlight for me was the endless succession of wacky decorated cars.
Like this one for instance:
This one gets a special mention for the hub caps:
Here’s a good all-round effort, featuring sensitive design aesthetics plus a bit of Culture in the form of lanterns:
And this one was possibly my favourite for the afternoon — after all, you gotta love a cow on a truck:
The dancing goes on for an hour solid and in the 30+ heat and humidity it’s a wonder the kiddies weren’t fainting by the roadside at the end. Actually it was we who were nearly fainting until we managed to locate a rather excellent ice-cream truck which saved the day.
On Saturday night it was time for the annual fireworks display. My fiendish plan to go and put a sheet down early in the afternoon was scuttled when we agreed to hook up with friends and go together. However by lucky chance Felix spotted a friend on the riverbank who, incredibly, had space left on his blanket for all six of us so we ended up with prime seats for the show.
And what a show it was, lasting 50 minutes and featuring all manner of interesting stuff to watch. I realised later that it’s been many many years since I’ve seen a proper fireworks display up close so I’ve got nothing to compare it to, but I thought it was great. However we’re told that the City of Mihara apparently only has a modest budget for fireworks (let alone anything else) and the advertised total of 6,500 fireworks, as stated proudly in the leaflets, is considered pretty ordinary as fireworks shows go. Onomichi up the road, for instance, has over 11,000 in their show. Next year we’ll have to go see that one too.
I particularly liked the way some of the big ones burst open into tiny pinpoints, which then fizzle into little fuzzy balls of light. Also you can see ones that somehow form shapes: a heart, a star, circles. Eleni reckons she saw a fish at one stage but I reckon the flashing lights were getting to her.
After the firework we were stuck in the temporary car park trying to get out like the rest of humanity for A WHOLE HOUR which kind of put a damper on things, but only slightly.
So that’s our big dose of culture for the year. And our Yassa Matsuri goals for next year are as follows:
• Get Felix into the dancing parade
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• See as many other fireworks shows as possible, including Onomichi and possibly the neighbouring island of Setoda
• Find a better place to park. -
Fireworks and festivals
Summer in Japan means fireworks. Not just the annual grab-a-spot-early-on-the-grass kind put on by the local authorities (although there are also some of those coming up next week), but the kind you buy at the supermarket and let off down the beach at night right under the sign that says No Fireworks at Night. Yes, you can buy your own fireworks in Japan and it’s a wonderful thing. (For the benefit of overseas readers, fireworks were made illegal in our corner of Australia many years ago by the evil nanny state. I have vague memories of bright fireworks in cardboard tubes from when I was very young so it must have been in the early 1970s that they disappeared from the shelves. Apparently you can still buy them interstate and get them sent to Victoria, but somehow it doesn’t seem worth the bother.)
Does this bring back memories for any fireworks-starved Victorians out there?
The huge big fireworks packs at the supermarket also contain sparklers which I reckon are a bit boring (seeing as they’re still legal in Victoria) but the kiddies love them:
We’ve already tried a couple of different packs from the supermarket and the trick is to get one with lots of fountain type fireworks (like in the video) than the aforementioned sparklers. Felix and I are conducting extensive research in this area at the moment. And when you go down to the beach to let off your fireworks there are generally a few other groups down there doing the same, so you get to see a few different types. The other day some people had ones that rocketed up in the air and set off huge showers of sparks. Hopefully our next pack will have some of these in it. More research required.
Summer is also for festivals. Already just in our local area we’ve had the carrying-around-the-portable-shrine one a few weeks back that nearly broke my back, plus the one nearby where Eleni’s drumming troupe got a quick workout. This weekend coming up is the big one, Mihara’s annual Yassa Matsuri festival where they block off the roads in front of the station and set up a huge stage and there’s dancing and singing and all sorts of carrying on. And as part of the festival there will be a massive fireworks display along the river on Saturday night.
The Japanese do put on an excellent fireworks display and I’m really looking forward to it. In the grand old Japanese tradition of public gatherings, there will be about 10000000000 people there and it will be impossible to get a good spot to view the action. Except that we have thought up a very sneaky plan. We’re going to park the car at the local Fuji shopping centre car park at about four or five in the afternoon and go down to the river to spread out our blanket. We will then spend a couple of hours wandering around in air-conditioned comfort and grab a leisurely bite to eat before heading out into the sweltering heat and making our way royally through the sweating crowds to our very own Reserved Spot, from where we will admire the fireworks display in extreme comfort.
Well that’s the plan anyway. Something is sure to go wrong, like our blanket will get blown away during the afternoon or stolen by heavily tattooed yakuza types.
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If you open it, they will come
Our local beach finally “opened” yesterday, which means that the good citizens of Mihara (not to mention the local schoolchildren) are finally free to partake in the beautiful waters without attracting potential condemnation.
Readers may recall that the extended Sushi on a Stick household (including visiting aunts and grandmother) actually tested the beach out a couple of weeks back, before we realised that it had yet to be officially opened, and before Ruby’s school handed down its edict about students not being allowed to swim yet. (Perhaps it was out transgression that prompted the crackdown.) The sun was hot and the water was beautiful but the beach was… totally deserted. Of course. It wasn’t open yet.
It is a lovely beach, carefully sculpted into a crescent shape and provided with nice shady areas, steps for sitting, showers for washing, thousands of drink vending machines and a little stall called Casa del Mare (except that the last bit’s broken off so it looks more like Casa del Mai… the House of Never?). As Sister Rose remarked, it seemed like such a waste to have a beautiful beach sitting there not being used.
But this being Japan, the opening of the beach requires an official ceremony. Thus it was that on Saturday we had a stage complete with PA, a row of seats for the inevitable phalanx of distinguished guests, and various traditional cultural dragons and bells and elaborately dressed priests and other hangers-on:
Eleni and I got roped into carrying a small cultural thing over a distance of about 20 metres to the stage area. What a massive contribution!
As part of the ceremonial proceedings, Eleni’s wadaiko drumming group was invited to perform. This was her first performance in a public arena so she was rather nervous, but it all went well. Here’s some blatantly partisan video evidence:
A photographer from the local council asked me whether it was OK to put Eleni in their glossy magazine monthly magazine, so this could be the start of her media career in Japan.
While Eleni was performing I ended up standing next to the mayor, and this called for a photo of course.
So I think we’ve really raised our profile here in sleepy Mihara. AND we’re free to go to the beach at last!
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This blog is about the adventures of a family of Australian barbarians spending two years in the islands of southern Japan. Stay tuned for regular updates on the food, the culture, the earthquakes, the wacky festivals, the school system and more. 
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