School Opening Ceremony

9/4/2010
I was dead tired when I got home yesterday, so I didn’t blog, and I forgot to make a list of what to blog about. I’m pretty sure something interesting happened yesterday, but I don’t remember, so it must not have been too important. Sooo, fast forward to today. It was a very long day….
This morning I rode the train to school as usual (even though it is Saturday). Except I had to walk to school (in formal shoes). :( I met with like 3 other students and 4 teachers at the school, and we walked to Masumida Jinja (masumida shrine) together.
Also, this summer has been the hottest summer in Japanese recorded history (113 years), a lot of people have died from the heat this summer. And today was the hottest day in Japanese recorded history. Awesome day to have to walk to school….
A lesson about Ichinomiya!!! 一宮(Ichinomiya) means “First shrine” and it is named after Masumida shrine, which is in the middle of town. It’s right next to the train station, and it is HUGE. I apologize, I didn’t get that many pictures of it, but I will probably go again some time.
So the reason we went to Masumida shrine today is that we had a school opening ceremony, a sort of blessing for the opening of our school. Now I will break down what this ceremony consisted of.
When we first got there we had to wash our hands at this thing (I don’t know what it’s called, and I hope that people who have done this don’t make fun of me). I just started describing it, and realized I took a picture of it, so I’ll make sure to attach that! Anyway, there are these bamboo cups with long handles, and you dunk them in the water, and you poor water on your left hand, then on your right hand, then you rinse your mouth with the water, then you clean off the handle of the cup with the water.
After that, we went into this really nice air conditioned building to wait for everyone to get there.
Once everyone was there, we went to the shriney part of the shrine, for this really awesome ceremony. We all went in (took off our shoes of course) and had to sit seiza style (if you don’t know what that means, look it up please) and this guy started hitting a big drum, then this guy came out, and went to a prayer-y place, and started praying, like sing-praying, and while he did that, everyone had to bow. Like bowing while still sitting seiza style, if you have never done that before, let me tell you how comfortable it is. First, imagine that your legs are completely asleep, but you still have to use them to keep balance, and keep from falling on your face. Next, imagine all of the blood rushing to your face, as if you were upside down. Also, your hands are on the ground helping keep your balance, and your arms get very sore. Now that you can imagine that, I will tell you that after the first prayer, there was a second, and it lasted at least 10 minutes. I thought I was going to die. After all of that praying, two girls came out in traditional clothing, holding branches of some sort, and they did a dance along with a guy’s singing, it was really cool.
After that whole ceremony, we got a mini tour of the shrine, we just saw a few parts, and a guy explained them to us.
After that, we went back to the air conditioned building to get drinks and wait for lunch. While we were waiting, the head priest guy started talking about Aikido, because he is apparently an Aikido master. When he found out that more than half of us were interested in Aikido, he got pretty excited. He did a little demonstration with our English teacher. He asked Ben (English teacher) to pick him up, so he did, and it looked pretty easy. The priest guy said that he was imagining he was a bird or a butterfly, so he was very light. Then he asked Ben to pick him up again, but he couldn’t do it. The priest guy said that time he imagined he had grown roots, and was as sturdy as a building. It was really cool, but also really funny to watch my English teacher picking up a Shinto Priest.
When it was time for lunch we went into this room, and there were bentos already out for us. And guess what! Yeah, nothing vegetarian… I ended up having to go out with someone again. This is getting really embarrassing… but this time it was really cool. I went with Mizutani sensei (The Beginner class Japanese teacher, and my host mom’s sister) and her friend who teaches English at a University in Ichinomiya (I think it’s Ichinomiya university). We went to a super market to get some food, and then we went to the university to eat it. I met a couple other teachers at the university, and I met one of the English teacher’s students. She was very nice, and Mizutani sensei took a picture of us together. Also, we walked by the gym, and stopped to watch the gymnasts, they were doing something with throwing hula hoops, it was really cool to watch!
After that, we went back to the shrine, and had to sit through the whole ceremony…. At least 7/8ths of this thing was in Japanese, like difficult Japanese that I could not understand. They had a computer hooked up to a projector, and they were typing out translations to English on a word processor, but that was a total fail. First Nyssa was doing it. She is the assistant at SYA, she is American, but she is fluent in Japanese. She was having trouble keeping up with the speakers though, because she couldn’t type fast enough and translate at the same time. So this lady that works at the shrine came and offered to help, she is Japanese, but she said she was very good at English. Her translations definitely kept the ceremony more interesting, but it was really really difficult to keep a straight face. My favorite translation that she made was “I’m sorry I’m late, It’s because of old people” Yeah, I don’t know what she was trying to say either. So yeah, most of us had no idea what was going on, those translations didn’t get me any farther than my minimal amount of Japanese. The speakers included: Fukutomi sensei (resident director), the vice-mayor of Ichinomiya (?), the Mayor of Ichinomiya (he’s the one that was kept back by old people), this lady who translated the book about if the world were a village of 100 people into Japanese (she was like the main speaker, she spoke for a very long time, and I think she had good stuff to say, apparently she’s a peace activist, but… well, I don’t know what she said), and some other people that I don’t remember who they were. At one point, I was absolutely sure I couldn’t stay awake any longer, but I endured!
After that, I left with my host mom, her friend, and her friend’s host daughter (Candace/Kumiko). As we left, we were given gifts from the shrine. They were in envelope things, so we didn’t look at them until we got into the car. As they were given to us, we were told to take care of them, and not lose them. Then my host mom told us not to step on them (?). When we opened them, we found chopsticks (like the throw away wooden kind), a bag with like 20 grains of rice in it, some cookies (I think), and a bag of little ball things that look edible. My host mom told us that you offer it to the gods, and then eat it, I think, I didn’t really understand. Anyway, I went over to Candace/Kumiko’s house for a bit. We ate popsicles and talked, I found out that I’m staying the night at her house on Friday (I don’t remember why, I think my host mom and host dad will be busy). Oh yes, and Candace/Kumiko’s host mom gave my host mom and I a router thing for wireless internet. So as soon as we find someone who can tell us how to install it, I will have internet at home (not quite sure if this is good or bad).
On our way home, we stopped at the super market to get pan (more like pastries than bread), fruits, tofu, and yogurt. My host dad is at a “nomikai” tonight (basically he’s out drinking), so my host mom and I had dinner alone. I ate sooo much for dinner, I was super hungry after such a long day.