Global Citizens Festival

I've been pretty busy over the last week. I realized that i have my Japanese exam in about a month and a half and i am no where near ready, so i've been trying to put more effort into my studies.

Last weekend, i went to the Global Citizens Festival, which was held in Iwaki this year. It is organized by one of the JET Coordinators in Fukushima and many ALTs participate. It took place on the waterfront in Onahama and featured several performances, activities, a market, and a gathering of NGO's in the area. The coordinator asked me to take a ton of photos, so a ton of photos i took. Here are a few that i thought turned out well.

There was also a woman performing at the festival who became a bit famous in Japan for her Fyakitori dance. I had the pleasure of going to dinner with one of my JTEs and her family. Her 8-year old daughter was a big fan of the song and dance -- although the mother had never heard of it. You can watch a video of the dance here: Fyakitori dance. You can also see a photo of her below, where she is wearing the same clothes as the video. The song -- and i imagine the dance, is quite infectious.

On another note, we were playing a word game in one of my classes the other day. The game consists of writing a list of words where each word begins with the letter that corresponds to the last letter of the last word. Teams race each other to come up with the most words. In one particular round, I asked them to only list adjectives. One of the responses that came from a small girl who sits around middle left in one of my classrooms, came up with the word, "shiteating." The JTE couldn't be in the class at the time, so I did my best to try and explain this word to the class, but i don't think they understood.