And We're Walking... We're Walking...

Never one to turn down a chance to do something ridiculous, I signed up for the Hagi Walk. Wednesday was the Spring Equinox and apparently that means we got the day off. Rather than enjoy my day off, I decided to join Yamaguchi City High School's trans-prefectural walk. Just as the samurai used to do. Albeit without a horse. But I did have a sword! (made from bamboo)
The walk follows the traditional path from the North in Hagi to Hofu in the South, passing through Yamaguchi City. We woke up way too early for my liking and went to meet up at the school for the bus. The Yamaguchi ALT cruelly divided us up among the three buses, leaving me with only one person. The students on the bus, as the Japanese are wont to do, feared English, so my attempts to communicate with them / teach them annoying songs were rapidly thwarted.
We arrived and it immediately began to rain. Despite this, there was a lot of sitting in rows, standing in rows, and tons of unnecessary ceremonies. We were told to experience the history or something. Despite the fact that most of the history was paved over and converted into highways. The ceremony went on and on and on.  Eventually we started. There was a local news station covering the events and I trailed behind to get interviewed. I tried to get my friend to join the interview, but he claimed to be unable to speak Japanese and ran off. I'll never understand why no one wants to be interviewed. They (well, everyone) were curious about my bamboo sword I brought. I said it was in case of samurai.
The walk started, and I ran around talking to everyone. I didn't want to stick with one group and bother them the whole time, so I did a lot of running. Most of the JETs were content to just talk to each other, but I wanted to talk to the students. It's the only part of the job I actually like. Since it wasn't my school, I decided to use a lot of Japanese, too, which made things easier.
Of course, all this running pretty rapidly wore me down. Japan isn't exactly a flat country. Well, the terrain isn't at least. Fortunately, there were a few rest points along the way, but each time I rested, I feel behind more and more.
The camera crew followed up for about half the trip, within their city bounds. Apparently it was a Hagi-only news station, so despite my desire to see myself on TV, it was impossible. Which is really disappointing.
We reached some halfway point and had a group picture, I thought I didn't have time to grab my sword, so I was a bit disappointed (especially when I realized I did have time [and even more especially since the other JET did have his tiny plastic sword]).
We reached a pretty cool dam 8 hours into the trip and I was told that you could see Yamaguchi City from it. I was shocked that we were only halfway done with the trip, but then I was given the sad news that we were only doing half the walk and that the goal was Yamaguchi City.
I managed to be the like second to last person to arrive at the final destination, the school. We were given some kind of bean stew and everyone eventually dispersed.
Perhaps one day I will complete the walk.
On a horse.

Light 'em Up

So, this happened like last month, but I am just getting around to writing about it now, sorry. So, every year for the Chinese New Year, Nagasaki has a lantern festival (apparently). As always, I learned about this too late, much like the Naked Man Festival the week before it. In fact, the only reason I found out about it was because someone had heard that love hotels were a cheap alternative to real ones and he wanted to stay in Fukuoka for cheap before going to the festival, and apparently I was the expert on Fukuoka love hotels.
That week was also a week with a Saturday working day, but I had already used all my daikyuu, and I wasn't keen on dipping into my nenkyuu anymore since I had just done that last week. I decided that the festival was a night festival anyway, so arriving after work should be fine since Nagasaki was fairly close.
So, after 8 hours of sitting around doing nothing, I set out to Nagasaki. Unfortunately, 12 hours of sitting left me incredibly drained, and by the time I arrived, the events were over. So, I hoped that Sunday the sun would set early or something so I could see the lit lanterns.
I managed to find a hotel (I'm so good at planning ahead), grabbing the last open room, cutting off the person who came in a minute after me. In the morning, I found out some other ALTs had come for the festival. I met up with one of them that branched off from the group. We explored and looked at the lanterns in the light.
Along the way, we ran into some old man. My friend has a strange ability to cause creepy people talk to her. So he began to tell us how his grandchildren were in high level American universities or working for NASA. I told him I wanted to work for NASA too one day, but he told me that NASA was an elite group of smart people from around the world, so it would be hard for an American to get in. I missed the part about "American" and thought he meant me specifically, so I joked that I would be a janitor, but my friend was offended because she understood all of what he said.
Later, we met some other ALTs, including a Nagasaki one, and went to the Peace Memorial. It was even less exciting than the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and we mostly just talked about the difference between post-WWII Japan and post-WII Germany's reactions to their pasts as reflected in their choices of monuments. Then we got some food.
All-in-all, not a lot of lanterning. By the time it finally started getting dark, I had to leave. I was fairly upset that I had missed the lanterns lit up, but seeing them in the day was pretty cool. I just had to use my imagination. Missed all the dragon dances and things, too, though, which kind of sucks. But maybe I'll be in China for New Year some year.