*tips hat to Terry Foy*
This past Saturday our university held its semester-ly Saturday Jamboree, which is basically a small festival with several activities for children. As helpers and participants of the games and activities, we had to rehearse prior to the invasion of small Japanese kiddies. The first game rehearsed is the Japanese version of Duck-Duck-Goose, called
"Hankachi Otoshi". Instead of saying "goose", everyone holds their hairs behind their back, and the person who's "it" drops a handkerchief into someone's hands and tries to either keep going around the circle to tag them again if they don't realize they have the handkerchief--or they try to beat the person with the handkerchief chasing them back to their empty spot in the circle.
Next was "Daruma-san ga Koronda", a game very similar to Red Light, Green Light. Instead of saying "red light!", the Oni ("it") chants "Daruma-san ga koronda..." while players attempt to sneak closer to him. When the Oni stops, he turns around and can call out people who aren't frozen. The variation: the Oni can capture people he finds moving when they're supposed to be still. The rest of the players try to get as close as possible to the Oni to tag him, or the captured players, freeing them--before the Oni catches all of them.
In Japan, Rock-Paper-Scissors is called "Janken." Though you don't actually chant the words for rock (guu), paper (paa), and scissors (choki), you say "jan-ken-pon!" and pick one on "pon." We were also educated in the ways of Polish and Italian Rock-Paper-Scissors, kamien-papier-nozyce and carta-forbice-sasso, respectively. It also seems to be played in much larger groups in Japan than the usual one-on-one or three-way contests in America...
Rock-Paper-Scissors en Masse
We're working so hard, preparing for this festival...
it's exhausting just to see, isn't it? =P
And coming soon, XTREME Jump Rope!
Impressive...most impressive.
The slightly older children were having fun playing with the bubbles as well...
At the reception desk, all of us
gaijin got to greet little kids, and give little kids fake paper passports to hang around their necks while at the festival. Plus, they got two super-awesome red stamps on the paper: one for arriving, and one for leaving. I took over Tina's shift for a while so she could go play some games, and got a tiny bit of practice writing childrens' names in
hiragana on their "passports."
My roommate Wendy talking with one of the Japanese kids at the drawing station, to the right. Apparently the little oni I drew would give the kids nightmares. (Seriously, kids are more durable than most people think...) And besides, my dragon-person was pretty! Purple and green and shiny, with three horns in traditional
Kazul-fashion. Apparently if it were real it'd be scary though, so said the boy. I don't know, I guess rainbows and kitties are just very uninspiring to me right about now...
Below is Mei-chan drawing
Totoro with a cute little girl.
a tossing game with boxes decorated like animals
I don't know what it is about this fishing game that's so addictive,
but apparently it's impossible to tear the kids away.
No idea who this curious character is...
Ok, this was truly the highlight of my day: XTREME Jump-Rope.
At least, that's what I'm calling it--I think here they call it skip-rope. But it's not any ordinary jumping-rope; the recipe includes hip-hop, break dancing, and acrobatic choreography mixed with jump-rope. The end product is pure awesomeness.
For the Japanese, jump-rope is serious, serious business.
Oh, man look at that transverse wave in that rope!
...
NERD
a resplendent afternoon sky
The Aftermath: Alice, Part II
I returned to I-House a little earlier than the rest, partly from boredom (I'd pretty much played all the scenes), and partly because I was getting rather sleepy.
Andrea caught me in a moment of chiaroscuro with his camera when he came back from the festival and I was snoozing on the 4th-floor couch. I've kind of been taking naps here in the afternoons quite often recently. It's usually a warm spot if it's sunny outside, and I don't end up napping for too long because of the noise level in the common room, and the couch itself isn't terribly comfortable...Andrea was also very kind and didn't take a picture when I was sleeping with my mouth open.
Thank God I didn't drool.
It reminded me of a very old photograph of me when I was little though, which Mom's always called "Alice"...
Today
Alice, about 17 or 18 years ago...
