The Christmas season is upon us and with it the holiday traditions. Oliver is shown above in Friday’s winter concert held at the school. It was his final elementary concert as he will be a middle schooler next year (yikes!). The students were asked to dress in an urban/hip-hop style, but Ollie looks more like a Trump supporter than a city dweller. They sang “Hall of Fame” and he had a small duet rap part at the end of the song.
It also is the time of parties. Saturday night the faculty met at an Italian restaurant in Senri Chuo and afterwards we went for some drinks at a nearby “stand-up” bar. We had a lot of laughs with friends. Nadia is shown below with Nakae.
We hosted the global futures (boarding) students Sunday night for a traditional American turkey holiday dinner. Besides being beautiful, Nadia is also a really good cook and prepared an exquisite meal. Turkey, gravy, homemade stuffing, cranberries, sweet potatoes, etc. The students in our school and especially the dorm are so nice, it was an enjoyable evening for us to host them.
Owen’s middle school basketball team finished third in the season ending Western Japan Athletic Association (WJAA) tournament last weekend. They lost to Canadian Academy of Kobe in the semi finals and came back to defeat Nagoya IS in the consolation match to finish in third place out of eight teams.
The team finished with 9 wins and 5 losses on the season. They defeated every team in the WJAA at least once. The low shooting percentage in the tournament weekend held them back from reaching the finals. The WJAA is a nice middle school league and the basketball season runs from October to early December. A 14-game season is a good number, although I wish they had more games during the week and less Saturdays. I felt Owen and his teammates Ren and Henri were three of the best basketball players in the league. As they grow and mature in high school, I am expecting to see continued success if they stay together.
Owen’s trademark running shot
Owen had a very good season and I was proud of him. Left handed people look unconventional in the sport to me. In Japan in middle school basketball, at 5-4, Owen is solidly a position 3. His strength is a running mid-range shot. He is continuing to develop an accurate outside shot and is pretty good taking it inside for layups. He is not quick or fast, but has good defensive instincts that translate into lots of steals and rebounds.
The soccer season begins in January and I am already looking forward to watching him play.
Oliver is pictured at USJ with one of the many mascots.
I had a delightful Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends. For the first time in many years, we didn’t have school as our fall break coincided with Thanksgiving. We have 6 luxurious days off, including the Wednesday before and the Monday after. Just what the doctor ordered after a busy fall trimester. Wednesday November 23 is Labor Thanksgiving Day here in Japan and a national holiday. It was established after World War II as a day to commemorate human rights and honor rights of workers. It also dates back 2,500 – 1,500 years ago in Japan to the various harvest festivals under different emperors. A mental note to have the kids make drawings next year to give as gifts to the local koban (police box) as is the tradition here. We celebrated the day with a big thanksgiving dinner with friends (photo below).
It is “peak” autumn foliage color right now in Osaka. My bike ride up to Katsuoji temple in the Minoh Hills National Park was stunning. Although it is cold in the mornings, it quickly warms up to make it comfortable biking weather.
On thanksgiving day itself, which is not a holiday in Japan, we organized winter clothes and closets and did some long overdue projects around the house. With both Nadia and I working and the kids being quite active after school, we needed a day or two concentrating on the house. I hope to finish today (Saturday) with putting up the Christmas stuff and continuing improving our home.
The ubiquitous “selfie” at USJ
Because this is not a holiday here, we took the kids to Universal Studios Japan (USJ), which is one of the four Universal Studios (Orlando, Los Angeles, Singapore, Osaka) theme parks. During holidays, the park is absolutely swamped with people causing long waiting times for rides, but during the off season and during the week, it is reasonably crowded. I think our longest wait time was an hour and most attractions were 15-30 minutes. Seeing the popularity of the Osaka USJ, which averages 8 million visitors per year, the owners, NBC Universal, are opening parks in Beijing (2019), Seoul (2020) and Moscow (2022). The Japanese especially love cartoon characters, Harry Potter and other universal movies, and so even with other parks opening in east Asia, I think USJ will be fine.
As you might know from previous blog posts, amusement parks are not my “cup of tea” and I loathe the crowds, consumerism and artificiality of it all. However, riding roller coasters is one of the things kids need to experience so I am glad I went yesterday. I loved watching their reactions to the rides and spending the day with them. It was a good way to spend “Black Friday” and we saw other Osaka International School families taking advantage of our school holidays being different than the local schools. It was a full day as we finished off our USJ experience with a decadent meal at the Hard Rock Cafe. We are planning a trip to Tokyo Disney before we leave Japan to round out our amusement park experiences.
Reflecting upon Thanksgiving, I have so many blessings. Healthy children, a beautiful wife I enjoy being with, even after almost 20 years together, an interesting career that allows me to follow my passion of teaching and travel, what more could a guy ask for. I am truly grateful for all of it!
Oliver and Ocean performed again with the Yamamoto Noh theatre troupe in the beautiful NHK (Nippon Hohsoh Kyokai) Hall in downtown Osaka. NHK, the biggest television company in Japan, Hall is home to the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra and theme of the concert was “East Meets West”. The idea was for the noh play to be backed by a full symphony orchestra. It was combining major art forms from the 1300s (noh – Japan) with the 1700/1800s (classical music – Europe). The mix was absorbing: the sparse sounds of the drums and flute of noh with the sumptuous full orchestra. The play is about conservation of the rivers and bay of Osaka, was backed by pieces dealing with water, culminating in Strauss’s Blue Danube.
NHK Hall is stunningly beautiful. It is located on the third floor and the escalators taking patrons to the entrance goes through this fantastic foyer with high glass ceilings and luxurious bannisters. I was surprised at the almost capacity crowd of 1,400 people for a Monday night. In the video above, Oliver’s speaking part comes at the 4:45 mark.
The crowd was loving the children’s role in the play. With the seriousness of the noh players and the sophistication of the orchestra, the kids made it accessible for everyone. I loved the director of the orchestra putting on one of the children’s hats for the grand finale piece and asking the audience to participate. It was a really nice for the kids to be on stage with both professional noh actors and the Kansai philharmonic. It is an experience they will never forget.
A huge thank you to all the parents who helped in getting the kids ready. Also to the Yamamoto troupe and the Kansai philharmonic.
Yamamoto is working to make noh more accessible to a modern audience. After the performance I spoke with Petko Slavov, a Bulgarian PhD in ancient Japanese theatre, and his company, Okina makes digital content, like apps and games that teach ancient Japanese culture. They also help Yamamoto make school visits and noh workshops. We hope to have them come visit in the spring.
Last night my daughter Ocean and I went on yomawari (night walk) in the Kamagasaki neighborhood of the Osaka ward of Nishinari-ku. Our school cooperates with the Sanno Children’s Center in their monthly walks to help the homeless of the city. The area is poorest in Osaka with 1/3 of the residents on welfare and a population of aging day laborers that live on the edge of subsistence, often finding themselves without shelter. Ocean is a very empathetic little girl and for her “genius hour” in school, is forming a club to help homeless. I wanted to encourage this so I supported her in going with the older students of the school. IB world schools put an emphasis on community service and the high school students for years have been helping out at the center. The center is also supports poor families by providing a place of refuge, entertainment and inspiration for children.
A homeless man on a street arcade in Nishinari-ku.
It is about a 45 minute train ride from our neighborhood to Kamagasaki and the differences can be seen immediately. Japan is unlike other countries in that wealth is not displayed as much. I think the culture of respect for others and the collective over the individual does this. Our neighborhood of Onohara-nishi is one of the nicest I’ve seen in Japan, but it is not like Los Angeles’s Bel Air or Detroit’s Bloomfield Hills. The buildings are grungier and the area is filled with cheap karaoke bars, coin operated laundries, etc. It is much neater than poor neighborhoods in other countries that to the local culture of tidiness and organization.
We met and helped around 6 homeless men. They cover themselves with a cardboard box (photo above) and sleep under the roof of the shopping arcades that are common in Kamagasaki. The kids delivered food, blankets and toiletries and the men were quite appreciative. The center is hosting community party today and the men were given a ticket for them to come and get a good meal.
At the children’s center getting ready to go out.
We cannot make next month’s night patrol (December 24) but hope to get back in January. It was an unusually warm November evening last night, but when it is cold, it must be tough to be on the streets.
I am also making a point to capture the small moments in my blog. Ocean the other morning woke up and told me about a dream she had. She said I led the family on a hike to a “poison place” in the desert. I jumped into a waterfall and at the end of the hike, there were buckets filled with poison. Oliver tipped one over and she said I jumped between her and the poison to save her. However, a bird picked up a bucket and dropped the poison on us and we all died. This comes from my insistence that the kids go on hikes and experience wilderness and my wife Nadia, a city girl, always thinks I am taking it to the extreme. It is my goal to instill in the kids a love of the outdoors. A funny dream.
The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) the largest media company in Japan recently featured a story on Oliver and Ocean and their friends performing in the Noh theatre performance last week. NHK has an English language channel for the international market called NHK World. On their nightly news program, Newsroom Tokyo, they broadcast the story of OIS students learning Noh theatre. Ocean’s interview starts at around the 5:30 mark of the 6:00 minute video. Above is the screen grab, and below is the entire video on YouTube.
With Nadia not feeling well today, I took the kids on a long hike through the Meiji-no-mori Minoh quasi national park up the Katsuoji temple. It was the first cold day of the year with temperatures in the 50s (11C). It was a refreshing walk under the trees which are a couple of weeks away from peak color. It was so relaxing to be talking and walking with my children in nature. I’ve been really busy at work and it was so good to reconnect with the kids. The highlight for Ollie and Ocean was feeding the nishikigoi (ornamental carp – basically giant gold fish). The hardy fish are regarded as good luck and are quite appropriate in the temple devoted to good fortune. Carp banners are flown above Japanese homes on May 5, children’s day in Japan. The nishikigoi was originally selectively bred in Niigata prefecture, north of Tokyo, from mutant black carp.
Oliver and I took on Ocean and Owen in street basketball, with Owen making a last second shot to have them win. Then we rode bikes up to the entrance trail. On the way back, Ocean and I bought some hamburger buns and we grilled burgers for dinner. I then took a long nap, to be woken by another shaking earthquake, not a strong as the jishin from a couple of weeks ago, but enough to rouse me from a dream. It felt like the shaking was part of my dream.
We have a couple more weeks before a much needed fall break. I am looking forward to the colors and cooler temperatures of autumn.
I learned the word for earthquake in Japanese yesterday in dramatic fashion. My cell phone and others around me suddenly started buzzing around 2:00 PM with the word jishin and some other instructions I did not understand. It was the advanced warning system here in Japan and it gave us a few seconds to take cover to protect ourselves from an earthquake. I don’t know how they do it, but it provided me a surreal moment, waiting for the anticipated shaking and possible destruction. I froze a bit, but not out of fear but out of excitement and anticipation of the experience. I didn’t go fully under the desk because I wanted to see what would happen. The shaking started slowly and then I could feel the entire building swaying slowly back and forth. A strange sensation!
The epicenter was 11 kilometers deep and around 300 kilometers away from us. Minoh is approximately where the arrow is and the epicenter is the red “x” in the Tottori prefecture. It is one of our favorite vacation spots with mountains and sand dunes. The intensity measured 6 shindo (degree of shaking)on the Japanese earthquake measuring scale which is slightly different from the Richter scale. I would say it was between a 3 and 4 in Minoh, our suburb of Osaka.
Everyone handled the emergency well and were calm and took shelter under a desk or table at school. After the shaking stopped, we checked the NHK news and upon finding out it was far away, we resumed classes as normal.
I won’t forget the experience nor the word, jishin.
We had a great day yesterday at the annual Falcon Cup soccer tourney on Rokko Island. My friend Trevor and I coached the teams this year. We took 34 elementary students making up 6 teams. With tears, shouts of joy, wins, losses through 25 games (14 wins) the student-athletes enjoyed the day.
Oliver’s team had some tough luck in the knockout rounds, losing in penalty kicks after dominating play in the first game and in the second game, they lost 2-1 on a penalty kick. They were placed in the bottom-8 tourney (22 teams total) and played through and won that group in an exciting penalty kick final. (video below). Oliver had a lot of goals including the two in the videos in this post.
Ocean played her first competitive soccer games. She scored 6 goals in her games, including the lone goal in the third/fourth place game which the team lost 2-1. Ocean is excited to play soccer and joined the after school club at the school. I am very happy that she likes sports!
One of my favorite holidays in Japan is the national “health and sports” day. It commemorates the opening day of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics . Two years later is was made a national holiday and is celebrated on the second Monday in October. The purpose of the day is to promote an active, healthy lifestyle. What a great idea! Every country should have a day like this. Most businesses are closed and the weather in mid-October is usually really nice which is conducive to doing something active outdoors.
Schools in Japan hold a sort of sports carnival on this day or a weekend close to it. As you can see in the photos in this post, Ocean and Oliver enjoyed our school’s sports day. They played water polo in the morning and field / athletic events in the afternoon. Owen participated in the middle school events, including winning the obstacle course. The day was marked by dance performances, picnics and music.
Owen rounds third in a recent baseball game
Thanks to Steve Lewis for the photos of my children being active!
An interesting side note, the 1964 Tokyo Olympics were held in October to avoid the rainy season and humid summers that are typical of the islands of Japan. The 2020 Olympics do not do this, starting July 24 and running until August 9.
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