Wammy is a Japanese toy recently on the market that consists of pliable pieces of plastic that can be connected to other pieces to make virtually anything.  Without having tried the toy myself, I bought a box of them for my five year old sister Paige, and sent them to her for Christmas.  They were a huge hit.  They were the present she played with on Christmas morning, and made her the envy of all her cousins.

This toy is not yet available in America, and I had thought it was only being sold in Japan, but apparently it has made its debut in the UK.  Follow this link to see a five minute video (almost entirely in Japanese, but you can get the idea) about the toy’s popularity abroad so far.

One strange thing about the toy’s creation is what inspired the idea for the shape of the pieces.  Nejiri konnyaku or “twisted konjac,” a common Japanese food made from an odd gelatinous food made from an odd type of yam.  Here’s a photo:

If anyone is curious what “Wammy” means, well, it’s a Japanese pun of sorts.  Combining the words for loop (wakko) and to braid (amu, or ami in the nominal form), we get wamii, which looks better when spelled Wammy (for decorative English purposes).

Since hearing about how much Paige enjoyed the toy, and watching the previous video, I decided to try some Wammies myself, and bought a small “ocean” themed set for 500 yen the last time I was at Bic Camera in Sapporo.  Along with Yoshie, we couldn’t stop playing with them.  They’re fun, addictive, and as my father said, much much more enjoyable than Legos because they allow one to be much more creative, building and destroying without worrying about how you’re going to take it all apart or where you’re going to put it or what you’re going to do with it when you’re done.  It’s a toy that maximizes exploration, one that’s hard to put down once you’ve started experimenting.

I finally posted all of my photos from my four day bike ride north from Oumu around Cape Soya and then south to Rumoi.  The captions of the photos chronicle the trip well enough.  I’ll let them and the photos tell the story without a blathering blog post.

Photo below links to the gallery.

Here’s a map of the route:

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A college friend of mine, Jeanine Dargis, is starting up a hostel in Northampton, Massachusetts, near my alma mater (sort of) of Hampshire College.  I was actually rather surprised that there wasn’t already a hostel in that town, considering the sort of nice little place that it is.

In order for the project to move forward, they need to raise some money.  $15,000 dollars.  I decided to pitch in a bit, because starting a hostel is something I’ve thought about, and I’d like to see them succeed.  The neat thing about this donation system is that your donation doesn’t actually become a real donation unless they meet their funding goal.  In that sense, it’s a pledge, kind of like the pledges in elementary school for Jump Rope for Heart.  Your uncle’s 1¢ per jump pledge will only becoming a $20 donation if you actually bother to do all 2000 jumps.

So, if you appreciate the uniqueness of hostelling and feel like chipping in, go to the link below and pledge some dollars to help them meet their goal.

This weekend marked the 22nd annual Pumpkin Festival here in Saroma.  It’s by far the biggest event of the year, with the whole town coming out for a weekend of festivities revolving around the famous local pumpkins.

The Pumpkin Festival weekend kicks off every year on Saturday night at 6 pm.  As it gets dark, the Cinderella “Dream” Parade begins at the Town Hall and ends about two hours later at the Citizen’s Center where there are fireworks, vendors, and a band.  That’s right, the parade lasts two hours, enough time to allow each group in the parade to do a performance at several locations throughout the route.  These are elaborate performances, with costumes, choreography and fantastic floats.  People spend weeks preparing for the parade and it’s definitely the main event of the festival.

While I was present for last year’s festival, I had only just arrived a few days before into Saroma, so I didn’t know anyone or have any idea of the work involved.  This year, I helped out a lot more and had a much better time.  I had hopes that a high school exchange group from Palmer would be in Saroma for the festival as well, but that didn’t work out.  So, in lieu of those fellow northerners, I was happy to play host to another, Petri from Finland.  Petri visited Saroma last year through couchsurfing, and liked it so much he decided to come back.

On Friday night, we went to the snow removal center after dinner.  The Town Hall Social Club of which I am a default member creates a theme-based parade performance every year.  This year’s was Yatterman, a children’s superhero cartoon from the 1970’s.  A group of men hang out in the snow removal center - basically a giant garage - every night for about two weeks making costumes and building two floats, one representing the theme, and another themed float to carry costumed preschoolers.  That night Petri and I were able to help with a few small things, but in order to match the level of productivity in the work area, it was necessary to consume quite a few beers in the process.  Here I am helping the Deputy Mayor visualize the color pattern on the front of the main float:

The main float, the giant robotic dog Yatter-wan, was something else.  In the end it was at least 15 feet tall.  It was constructed of painted papier mâché on a custom built metal frame, hydraulically rigged to rock back and forth on a hinge.  There was even a tree-climbing pig that went up and down.  It was so large the head had to be built separately, and then moved outside with the float platform and lifted up on top with a big front-end loader.

The characters and the costumes rivaled the float for creativity and humor, though.  There were the good guys, consisting of Gan-chan and Ai-chan, and the bad guys, consisting of the evil yet sexy Doronjo, and her hapless goons Boyacky and Tonzra.  Here we have Gan-chan, Boyacky, and Doronjo preparing for the parade.  Yes, Doronjo is played by a man.

And I should mention that Petri and I played no characters in particular, just some dudes in black jumpsuits, which we’re wearing in the picture further above.

As the sun began to set, we all pulled the floats over to the Town Hall, where everyone in town was assembled to begin the parade.  It was a nice feeling to see all of the students I teach, the teachers I work with and the people I’ve met assembled in one place for such a fun event, to hear their kind greetings and get high-fives from super-genki children (who may then decide to poke you in the crotch).  The sun sinking further, the lights on the main float came on.  Shortly thereafter, we hit the street, broke out in dance, and finished off our portable keg of beer along the way.

As soon as we (the last float) arrived at the town center and completed our performance, a fireworks show began over the river.  It was really fantastic, with several fake finales, and a surprise final finale that caught everyone off guard.  Then the night continued with food, drink, cigars, and music.  I even introduced my girlfriend Yoshie to my co-workers, something which felt slightly awkward, but which was unavoidable - they’re nice people and I’m tired of being protective about my private life.

The next day was the real festival, with the pumpkin contest and weighing, lots of vendors, a big bingo game, and more food and beer.  I put on my funny hat and sandals and went out with Yoshie and Petri and some other ALTs who came in from their party out at Kimuaneppu Point on the lake.

We stuck around for long enough to get some free meat and beer from the snow removal center, have some ice cream, and see the weighing of this year’s record pumpkin, which came in at 363kg (800lbs)!

It was a really great festival, and although I managed to become more involved, I want to be even more involved next year, especially in the construction of the float.  I’m also really thankful to Petri, who made it a blast of a time by coming all the way from Finland!  It brings me to ask: Who’s coming next year???

 All photos are courtesy of Petri Kauritsalo.

Last June in Murakami, I had the privilege to do some really fun English lessons in the swimming pool at Senami Elementary.  My supervising teacher at that school, Mrs. Hiki, was really, really, into English and integrating it into her classroom.  A few months ago, up here in Saroma, I gave a presentation about my experiences as an ALT in Niigata Prefecture to the teachers at Hamasaroma Elementary.  They were impressed with many of the special lessons that we had done in class, so I suggested trying to recreate the swimming activity, since it didn’t require as much preparation or special in-class study time as some of the other lessons I presented about.

Last year, Mrs. Hiki and I hurriedly made a bunch of fish shapes on copy paper and laminated them.  Half were totally waterlogged and destroyed after two periods of munchkin-munching.  This time, I tried to come up with a better way of making toy fish that would be much more durable and less wasteful.  So, using 25 boards of A4-sized EVA polyethylene foam, I drew and cut about 100 salmon, whales, octopi, squid, crabs, dolphins, starfish, sharks, turtles and scallops.  Then, using an oil-based marker, I drew faces and outlines on all of the shapes.  After they had dried for a few days, I coated them in waterproofing spray and let them sit for another day.

The day of the lesson was almost too cold to use the pool.  The water temperature was 24.5 C, and the outside air temp was 25.  We had a whole 75 minutes for the lesson, so we started off with some stretching on the deck, and then warmed up with “head, shoulders, knees and toes” in the pool!  That was a blast, because when you reach down to touch your legs, your face goes right in the water.  The next part of the lesson, teaching the actual names of the different sea creatures, was where I started to lose the kids.  Next time, we’ll spend a class beforehand learning the names, and dedicate all of the pool time to moving around.  Basically, even though I tried to speed through it, standing in a cool pool without any movement got fairly cold, and fairly boring.  So we quickly moved into gestures, and into the main fishing game.

Finally, we played Marco Polo.  Which I failed at demonstrating; it’s really hard to catch those little kids, especially in an echoing indoor pool that has no wind or sun to help indicate where you are going!  The whole lesson was a good time, and while it had a few hitches, I’d say it was a success: Two of my absolute wildest 2nd grade students were completely wiped out only halfway through the pool time.  The best part of the whole thing is that it gets kids out of the classroom and while I doubt more than five remember even half of the fish names we learned, they definitely had fun, and that’s pretty much my standard of excellence in my role as an ALT.

August 30th is a general election in Japan, for all 480 seats in the lower House of Representatives.  It’s receiving more attention, domestically and abroad, than elections in Japan normally do.  The nearly-unbroken 54-year reign of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is expected to finally be broken with a majority win by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).  The LDP leader and current Prime Minister, Taro Aso, is even less popular in office (11% approval) than even President Bush and Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski ever were (25% and 21%, respectively). Starting a few years ago, parties have released clear ‘manifestos’ outlining their election platform.  The LDP is essentially running on a “don’t change horses in midstream” platform, trying to instill a fear of change in order to maintain control.  The DPJ has some very popular policy proposals, such as a $280 per month per child supplement for families.  Both parties are running on promises of decreased taxes, increases in social welfare, particularly child rearing in order to slow Japan’s low birth rate.  The DPJ even promises elimination of road tolls on expressways across Japan (tolls can reach into the hundreds of dollars) and an elimination of the current 5% consumption tax once the economy recovers.

What I find interesting about this election is that the proportional election system and Parliamentary Democracy allow many third (and fourth and fifth) parties to exist and operate at a much higher level of notariety than third parties in America.  Sure, we have the Greens and the Libertarians, the Constitution Party, the Reform Party, the Communist Party, the Prohibition Party (thanks, Jacob).  But other than the Green Party in 2000 and Perot’s Reform Party in 1992, these parties have had little publicity and almost no effect on election results.  Even those that have been moderately successful, like Perot, win no role in governing because of the winner-take-all system of American Politics.  In Japan, though you have some weird ones that have commercials on TV and put flyers in my door.  I got a flyer from the Japanese Communist Party today, and one from the almost-a-cult Happiness Realization Party last week.   Here’s a list of all of the parties fielding candidates in the election, along with a list of the total number of fielded candidates (both regional and proportional).

• Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - 326 (party that has ruled Japan for 50+ years)
• Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) - 330 (main opposition party)
• New Komeito¹ - 51 (center-right buddhist party)
• Social Democratic Party² - 37 (what it sounds like)
• Japanese Communist Party - 171 (not as scary as it sounds)
• People’s New Party² - 18 (anti-postal privatization party)
• Your Party² - 15 (breakaway party from the DPJ)
• Japan Renaissance Party - 1
• New Party Nippon² - 8 (new party of the rebel former governor of Nagano Pref.)
• New Party Big Earth - 4 [one man party from Ashoro, Hokkaido (”big earth” is a Hokkaido reference.)]
• Happiness Realization Party³ - 337 (see footnote)
  
• New Party Essence - 2 (some nut from Tokyo)

¹allied with LDP
²allied with DPJ (two sources for this: wikipedia, 2.)
³party of the nutty “Happy Science” religion - deserves an entire post.

If none of this makes sense, this article in the Yomiuri Shimbun gives a good explanation on exactly how these parties are working together towards forming coalitions in the new government.  The Economist also takes a nicely critical view of the whole affair.

Here’s a little slideshow of the campaign signs for four of the major parties running in the election, taken this afternoon on Saroma’s main street:

DPJ, Yukio Hatoyama pictured. Slogan: seiken koutai (regime change).

LDP.  It says ima, gambaranaide dou suru? (If we don’t persist now, what will we do?)  What’s up with the cartoon character?

Social Democratic Party. Slogan: seikatsu saiken (rebuilding livelihood)

Japanese Communist Party.  Slogan: ima koso (now more than ever). Their party leader has to be the dorkiest looking leader of any party since Ralph Nader.  The only significant minority opposition party that is not part of the DPJ coalition.