Rugby game

November 23
I went to rugby stadium of Tokyo to see the game that my younger friend took part in as a rugby player with my friend. He the player is a student of university of Keio. University of Keio is one of the most intelligent private universities in Japan and so famous. The opposite team, university of Waseda, is also intelligent private university. The game has been famous in Japan. So the stadium was crowed with so many people, OBs and students of these universities. Thanks to my younger friend, we were able to see the game from seats that were so close to players and cheer for him. We were disappointed because my friend’s team lost the game 0-40.

You seemed to enjoy Thanksgiving Day. In Japan, we don’t have Thanksgiving Day, but we have Labor Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 23, as a national holiday. The holiday looks like your Thanksgiving Day but the origins are different. Our origin seemed to be that so old emperor in Japan thanked their grain in so old time.
There are 15 national holidays in Japan. Japan seems to be one of countries that have the most national holidays in the world. In addition, there are so many small memorial days but they are not holidays. Almost of days in a year are memorial days of some kind. Japanese people may like memorial days.

Example :Nov. 11 (11/11)
We have 17 memorial days in that day.

1. World peace day
　The day the WW1 ended.

2. Peanut day
　The time we can get peanut and peanut has 2 beans like 11.

3. Socks day
　Socks are always pairs, like 11.

4. Salmon day
　Japanese word that means salmon looks like 11.

5. Bean sprouts day
　Bean sprouts look like”1111”.

6. Chimney day
　Chimney looks like”1111”.

Continue…

It is worthless. I don’t know almost of them. (^_^;)

Hiking in Akiyama

My friends and I hiked the ridges of mountains around my local area, Akiyama, on Saturday. It was so fine day but so cold because winter is coming.

It was so hard for me to hike this course because it has a lot of uphill and downhill in addition I had sprained my ankle last week when I was playing soccer. So I challenged this hiking with bandaged my ankle.

Almost people who took part in this hiking were very talkative. We talked and laughed a lot during this hiking. It was so fun. My friend’s father said, “Walk zigzag in mountains”. So we followed the advice and walked zigzag. Then we realized that our life is similar to climbing mountains and a wise remark. It’s “Don’t take a shorter way in mountain climbing and your life!”

I made a guidebook for this hiking remembering hiking when I was a schoolboy. This picture is the front cover of it. I also made the theme of this hiking. It was “Beautiful and historic scenery in Akiyama”. There are so many small mountains in my local area. They are turning red or yellow. These are very beautiful and walking in such mountains is very nice and makes us feel so good. We enjoyed seeing beautiful views.




Akiyama, my local area, is enclosed by so many mountains. In the old time, our ancients had to go through mountain paths to trade with nearby villages. We walked same ways. There were old walls made from stone and we could feel the feelings of our ancients. Now, we have tunnels so we don’t have to go through such mountain paths and we were unable to see such historic things without hiking like this.

We also went to the mountain called “26 night mountain”. In old time, it was said that our ancients used to pray to moon’s god for health of their family, good harvests and no disaster and so on at night on July 26 every year. It was interesting that the people praying were only females. I also prayed with our palms together there for health of us!

However I caught a cold yesterday. I have a runny nose. Why? Maybe playing too much?











Last two photos are my friends who is examining with pig’s femurs. There are too many bones. It’s a sicking sight a little. He is studying about “Bone Fracture Healing Assessment and Application to the Osteoporosis Diagnosis by Impact Testing”

Trash pick up

We picked up trash along the main street in my village on Sunday as Youth organization of Akiyama. The theme was “Let’s change aluminum cans for money and donate them to our community!” It was so magnificent as well as long. About 10 people attended this event.

I don’t know if your countries have a custom that is to change aluminum cans for money. In Japan, everyone can do, but almost of people I know don’t do and don’t know about this. So this attempt was fresh and interesting for us.

I wrote two sentences to put them ahead of cars with my brush. You can see two papers that my friend is holding. The left one means, “Let’s pick up trash and donate!” and the right one means, “It’s what I can do” in Japan. Another photo is the chair that had been thrown away under a bridge so we hauled it up.

Our village has two tunnels. Around them, there is a lot of trash because there are not houses at all. So we went there and picked up trash well. It was terrible. It was too much trash to pick up in one day.




After picking up, we separated aluminum cans from all of trash. I took them to a recycle company to change aluminum cans for money. The company looked like a normal house rather than a company. I got 420Yen, about 4 dollars. The money was so little but so worthy for us. We have to be careful about how to donate and what we should donate so little money to. Personally I wanted to donate our elementary school. However I think it is too little. Maybe we will put it in a collection box in a convenient store.

We went to usual bar after we finished. We ate so much food and drank so much but it was very cheep because someone had paid money for our alcohol. I don’t know who he is. Only master of the bar know him. He paid about 300 dollars. It’s very expensive and he has a big heart. I think we should perform activities more responsibly because there seem to be so many people seeing us and hoping we work well.

Even so, alcohol of 300 dollars is too much. That meant one person drank 30 dollars because there were 10 people in a bar. Don’t worry! I didn’t drink so much!

The last photo is "Teruteru Bouse". I made it in hopes of being good wheather before the day. So it is a lucky charm of wheather in Japan. Do you have such a thing in your country?

Latest weekend

Saturday, November 3, 2007
My friends and I made some new boxes for winter. We like to snowboard and organize a team, Snowbird. We made them hardly with several machines from the morning. In the lunchtime, we went to famous restaurant. We ate curry, drank a beer and gossiped. It’s adult time for me. I hope we would spend such a holiday in future.
Finally we worked until 8 p.m. with some right and made 4 boxes! They were very tough but very heavy because they had a lot of wood. So we can’t feel free to carry them too heavy. (-_-;)
It was a full and adult holiday.
Next time, we are going to make some rails with welding machine! This photo is one of my friends and the lightest box.











Sunday, November 4, 2007
I went to school despite a holiday because there was a school festival. One of my friends belongs to “Kadou” club. “Kadou” is the art of flower arrangement of Japan. So he displayed his work. We went to see them with a camera. They were very beautiful and artistic. These photos are his work and him.





















After that, we did tasting wine a lot for free because my university develops some kind of wine and grape is specialty product in Yamanashi. It was delicious! (^_^)

I will tell you about Halloween in Japan because Arla asked me.

What Halloween means? It is American culture? Or it is a function of Christianity? I don’t know about real Halloween well because we don’t Halloween. However, I have heard about Halloween recently. Now, many people who have their shops started to put up decorations in their shops and tried to sell some goods that were associated with Halloween. Probably normal people in Japan don’t know when it is and children don’t go around their house then. So Halloween is only a business chance in Japan.

I thought why Halloween don't spread among Japanese people. In September of Japan, there is “Tsukimi” like your Halloween. “Tsukimi” means a night with a full moon. Almost of families decorate Japanese pampas grass and Mochi and so on. You know Mochi because you ate in Kenya. When I was a child, we used to go around our neighborhood at the night and say, “Please give me moon”. Then they gave us some chips. For me, I used to go to 60 houses and get two big bags of chips. The origin of “Tsukimi” is that ancient people prayed for a good harvest.
This photo is a general decoration.

In anywhere, you know, it is important for children to do such events. As for me, not only I was able to know my neighbors through such events but also my neighbors knew me. So we certainly greet each other whenever we meet. We don’t have to lock our house because we trust each other. In addition, one of my neighbors sometimes takes in our laundry and folds it. I want to try to keep this environment.
Unfortunately, Now, there are nothing like such an environment and events in big cities in Japan.