After the seedlings have been planted, the rice fields are flooded again.

Went to Nagaoka city to watch Chieri from Ladies Club perform a hula dance but she was absent cos she was ill. There was a flower exhibition going on.

Cute bunny flower pot...specially for you, Anne!

ASEAN-Japan night

Brought my English Club students to the International University of Japan in my town (sounds quite grand huh?) for its ASEAN-Japan night. Students of each of the ASEAN countries set up food stalls offering samples of their local delicacies (except for Singapore, which put its name up with the Malaysian stall and contributed a tourism poster starring Dick Lee).

I had Thai curry, nasi lemak at the Malaysian stall, dango (mochi balls on a satay stick) at the Japanese stall and agar agar at the Philippines stall. The food wasn't spicy enough to be authentic (and I can't even take spicy food back home!). Nevertheless, my students still proclaimed that it was too spicy.

Students representing the ASEAN countries. First time in months that I've seen tudongs!


There were also song and dance performances by almost all the ASEAN countries except Malaysia and Singapore I think. Malaysia played their tourism video though (the Malaysia, Truly Asia one).

An energetic bamboo dance by the Philippines.

A funny para para dance performance by the Japanese students called One Night Carnival.

Some of the students from my English club.

When I drove the boys back to their dormitory, I asked them which their favourite performance was and they replied "Myanmar". I asked why (because I certainly did not anticipate that to be their answer!). They said "because the dancers are so beautiful" and sniggered. Terrible boys! (In case you have not seen Myanmar women, my students did not mean that as a compliment) Brings to mind a very uncomplimentary remark about Myanmar women that my former colleague once made.

Rice Planting Day

The rice fields were flooded beforehand to prepare for rice planting day.

Today, the water was drained so that we can carry out rice planting the traditional back-breaking way. Yes, today was my school's rice planting day. All the teachers and students participated. Although the fields were drained, the soil was still very muddy.

The rice fields had grid lines marked out. We were given trays of rice seedlings and had to walk into the muddy rice field BAREFOOT (yucks!) and push each seedling about 2-3cm into the mud along the grid lines. Those green patches lying randomly around are the trays of rice seedlings. You just pull out 1 or 2 seedlings out each time to plant.

It felt really disgusting, more out of fear of what lay beneath the mud. I had visions of stepping on a scorpion or snake. The first time I stepped on some really soft mud, my foot sank in till about mid-calf. I shrieked and wailed and the students laughed at my reaction. These girls next to me dumped mud on my foot and attempted to bury it. I screamed and moved my foot. As soon as I did that, the girl next to me screeched "Oh, Shindy!" and pointed at my foot. I looked down only to find that I had trampled on her freshly-planted rice seedling. Haha!

After a while, I got used to being in the mud and stopped wailing about it. It actually felt rather cool at certain parts. Anyway, we took about slightly less than an hour to plant one line of seedlings across the field each. As I was planting, I recalled a song that I learnt in primary school

"Planting rice is never fun
Bent from morn till set of sun
Cannot stand and cannot sit
Cannot rest for a little bit"

I can fully appreciate the song now (although I spent only about an hour in the fields). As we were planting, a farmer was happily driving his rice-planting vehicle in the next field! Grrr!

After the proper work was done, the students started playing with mud. They threw mudballs at each other. They got really dirty. It was funny to see everyone out of the rice fields cos we all looked like we were wearing black socks! We washed our feet and hands in the nearby drains. The water was so cold cos it came from the snow melting from the mountains. Still not clean! Second round of washing at the sprinklers along the road to melt the snow in winter. Urghs, really hard to clean beneath your nails and the part between your flesh and the nail. Many more rounds of scrubbing before I was satisfied, but many people walked around with dirty nails for the rest of the day.

We had an enkai that night, which was quite fun, but I felt very uncomfortable. Was dying to get home to scrub myself clean!

BBQ

Kate organised an American-style BBQ for her English Club and kindly invited another JET and I to join in. We had the BBQ in a park near the mountains. Nice park. Many families there. We found a nice quiet spot near some big trees...for shade! Dunno why they like to have lunchtime BBQs here...guaranteed to get a sunburn!

We grilled home-made hamburger patties and bratwurst sausages and made hamburgers and hotdogs. There were also baked beans, pasta salad and potato salad. The students contributed handmade desserts. The desserts were yummy but there were too many!
It felt a bit strange cos the BBQ pit was used only to grill the burger patties and the sausages and there were so many pre-prepared items like the salads and desserts. Anyway, the sausages were great. Really tasty and juicy. I actually offered to bring something Singaporean along (fully prepared to search for satay recipe online and prepare some, but Kate wanted to keep it American-style).

On the subject of different BBQ styles, Japanese-style BBQs are quite different. They grill lots of vegetables, e.g. eggplant, corn with soy sauce, onions (yuck!), etc, and finish off by cooking a huge tray of yaki soba on the grill.

Here are most of the English Club students.

And the kids played frisbee after that.

It was quite fun and I really enjoyed the sausages but I felt a bit like I was working since I was surrounded by high school students (although they were not my students).

White water rafting

Went to Minakami, Gunma prefecture for white water rafting with 3 other JETs. 45 mins drive by expressway. It was a lovely day for rafting. It was a bright sunny day and there was so much water in the river because it rained lots the night before and the snow was melting higher up in the mountains. The water was COLD!

The river was moving so fast. The course was about 20km long. It took us around 2 hours to complete it. 5 of us (including guide) in a 7-man raft...it was hard work, but we managed to catch a lot of rapids and it was really fun.

Not our photo cos the photos were too expensive, but got this photo from the website of the company we went with. We did get totally drenched like shown in the picture.

Lunch with Minako

We had lunch with Minako (ladies' club member) at Katie's apartment. Minako brought her 8-month old daughter Aina.

Lunch was prepared by Kate - Asian chicken lettuce wrap and pasta. Katie made a fruit salad and I made chocolate pudding topped with ice-cream. The recipe for the chocolate pudding can be found here...it's really easy to do. http://www.microwavecookingforone.com/MoreRecipes/ChocoPudding.html


They have senbei (rice cracker) for babies

Sansai-picking

Bleary-eyed but excited, all 10 of us packed into the family's MPV and drove off to Hakkai-san to pick mountain vegetables (sansai 山菜). We will make tempura with the sansai we pick for lunch.

First stop: Armed with plastic bags, we trooped off to pick kogome...

These are kogome. Only the young ones (with the leaves still tightly coiled) are good.

Grandma Sekine is the expert...showing us which plants to pick

On our way to the second spot, we munch on onigiri in the car (from left: Kyoko and Midori)

Second stop: To hunt for the elusive kinome

These are kinome

Gorgeous views

There're still patches of snow (now ice) on the mountain (from left: Katie and Kate)

Everyone enjoys onigiri and fried chicken for breakfast (from left: Aussie exchange student Kie, Yamoto-san, Kyoko, Aussie exchange student George, Kate, Katie, Grandma Sekine, Midori and Grandpa Sekine)

Before returning to the Sekine family home, we visit the Hakkai-san shrine to thank the mountain gods for the vegetables we picked

Back home: Sorting through the vegetables we picked under Grandpa Sekine's supervision while Grandma Sekine prepares for lunch

Our spoils

The fruits of our labour!

Then, grandpa Sekine taught us how to make soba to go with our sansai tempura

Rolling the dough out before folding it...

and then cutting it

The soba on the black tray behind the tempura has been cooked

And finally, lunch is ready! It was yummy!

After lunch, everyone took a siesta

The view of Hakkai-san from the Sekine family home

It was a wonderful experience!

Homestay

Went with 2 other JETs (Kate and Katie) and 2 Australian high school exchange students to the Sekine family's house for a homestay.

The Sekine family lives in a big 3-storey house. There are Grandma and grandpa, Chiharu and husband, and Chiharu's 5-year-old daughter Koharu and 2-year-old son Kanta. The children are hyperactive and Kanta is really cute! Koharu fell in love with Australian exchange student George, who is 16 years old, and declared that she wants to marry him. The children have a playroom on the second floor that has a loft!

For the special occasion, Chiharu's elder sister, Midori, returned home. The Sekine's family friends Yamoto-san and Kyoko also joined us.

After a fabulous dinner of mushroom and koniyaku rice, fried chicken, salad with bacon, miso soup, etc, we all retired early. The plan is to go mountain vegetable (sansai)-picking tomorrow morning at 6am!

Spring in my town

The snow has nearly all melted and tulips in many bright colours and daffodils are in full bloom in my town...beautiful!

Sakura in Yuzawa

Check out all the fallen sakura petals on the ground. You can see the sakura tree in transition - turning from pink to green - in the foreground.

Taken at my visit school in Yuzawa.

Children's day

Yesterday was Children's Day (Kodomo no hi) in Japan. Basically, families with boys will display carp streamers outside their homes. (Girls have a separate festival called Dolls Festival in March)

These are some of the carp streamers that I saw in my area. Small carp streamers hanging from an apartment...

...and big ones outside a house.

The big black carp represents the father, the medium-sized pink one represents the mother and the little blue one represents the son.

Singapore election day

My friends had to work today cos of the elections. (I'm a registered overseas voter, but was a walkover in Tanjong Pagar GRC.)

So anyway, I went to see a festival in Ueno. It was so crowded and there were 2 small portable shrines being paraded around.

That night, we went to Gaspanic at Roppongi. It was so packed with people. Then, the crowd started doing para para (synchronised dance movements). It was so funny to watch! Para para is quite popular here. Some discos even designate some nights as para para night.

There was one part when the Japanese started getting hyper and shouting at certain points during a song. Quite interesting to watch...a bit like our ah bengs. View my short video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQrYrjmZc-Q

Saw this Hummer limousine! Wonder which celebrity or rich person it belonged to...