Kofun and Rowing

So last week was a bit more eventful but still slowly getting eased into things. I shouldn’t be complaining for the lack of work, but it is a task to amuse myself for 8 hours a day while I’m supposed to be working. On Tuesday my supervisor took me around to 3 of my schools to do aisatsu and meet the Principals and some JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English). I was a little nervous again meeting new important people, but they all seem nice and I’m excited to work with them.

On Wednesday I got to go to a culture assets center and saw some pottery from the Kofun period. Matsusaka has a tomb from the Kofun period (roughly 250-538AD). I remember learning a little about it when I took Japanese history, but it seems like a blur. A guy there talked with us and told us stuff about the displays, but it was kind of hard to grasp since it was all in Japanese. Anyway, we also got to make a pendant from that period. It’s supposed to either represent a tooth/fang or a fetus, but it also looks like half of the yin/yang symbol.
This is what the Kofun tombs look like. (ancient keyhole-shaped mound tomb). The things that border it are pottery called haniwa.

This is a boat shaped haniwa. The thing sticking up on the left is supposed to be a sword and on the right side is a umbrella.

Working on my 勾玉（まがたま）magatama. The people during the Kofun period wore stuff like that.....

The rest of my time I’ve been preparing photos and materials for my self-introduction lessons. Printed out and laminated a ton of picture cards of maps, my family, things from and about Hawaii to share with the classes. I’m supposed to report to the BOE everyday so far, but there really isn’t anything for me to do but try to prepare some lessons and what not. I try to look busy, but it’s so boring.

Also this past weekend I went to a rowing carnival in Odai. I went to one practice on Friday and rowed for a little, but on Sunday the day of the race, I sat as the coxswain (basically I yell at them to row…not really, but I keep the pace and steer) so I wasn’t rowing. Our boat didn’t really know what we were doing so we had a hard time keeping our boat straight and almost crashed into another boat. I was probably a really bad cox too and didn’t steer properly. (CATCH….ROW……CATCH……ROW) But the other JET teams did pretty well. Overall in their category they got 3^rd and 4^th in the mixed division. But it was still fun. I’d like to do it again. I got to meet more JETs and people around the area. Odai was only about 45mins away by car. After the races we drove further up the river and swam in the lake a little. A cop drove by, and at first we thought he was going to bust us for swimming there. But he was chill, just wanted to tell us that there were other nicer spots to swim and the area we were in wasn’t really that clean. Maybe next weekend we might go back to one of those other swimming spots.Team Kampai

Team Ikemonki

River at Odai (45min car drive away south west from Matsusaka)

The rowing teams: Koala-Panda Chan (all female team), Ikemonki (mix team), Kanpai (mix team but, all males)

"The dirty river we were swimming in"
Further up the river where we ate dinner and swam for a little bit.

There are some parts of the races if you skip to about 3mins in. It has my boat, but we were loss badly. (On the far right, we were going really crooked too)

And here is a link to the audio from my recital before I left Hawaii. I'm playing in tracks 1 (Diaz - echos from home; Violin, Trombone, Baritone Trio), 2 (Bach Chaccone), 9 (Barber Violin Concerto, 1st Movement) , 12 (Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, 3rd Movement).