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It's been a very busy weekend.
Let's start with Friday. After classes finished, most of HIF packed themselves onto a bus to head to an elementary school in the community. I biked the way there with a group of other ashi ga aru students, which let me get a good view of the school's surreal beauty. It's a very well-kept building right on the ocean shore. The playground is separated from the sand by nothing more than a fence. The school windows look out on Mt. Hakodate and the long beach that stretches from the school toward the mountain. I don't know how the kids pay any attention in class.
Speaking of the kids, they were adorable. All elementary schoolers, so this whole gaijin business is still the coolest thing since packaged rice to them. The welcomed us into the assembly hall and gave us a couple cutely adult-solemn speeches in high pitched little kid voices, after which we played games.
The younger kids played a chaotic variation of rock-paper-scissors with the lower level HIF classes where everybody wanders around to music, somewhat like musical chairs, until the music stops and you pick whichever partner's nearest you. Whoever loses the rock-paper-scissors match has to grab the winner's shoulders and follow him or her for the rest of the game. If one train of kids loses to another, they merge. With around thirty kids and twenty students, you could see how this might get real crazy real quick.
The older kids played more familiar tug-o-war with the higher level classes. My team won both times, probably because all the aggressively macho guys (and me, accidentally) happened to be split to one side.
After the games, the kids all got together and, of course, bowed to us in unison. I'm used to it, but sometimes it still makes me giggle, all this bowing. Then they taught us the Hakodate squid dance. All I can really say about the dance is that it involves a lot of hopping and wiggling.
For our part, we taught them the hokey-pokey. Let me tell you, they found the "you put your backside in, you put your backside out, you put your backside in and you shake it all about" part high-larious.
After the dance, we were literally mobbed by the kids as they picked their favorite gaijin to grab and drag toward a classroom. I had four different kids hanging off me, all screaming "Se takaaaaai! Sugeeeeeei!" to each other as they bum rushed me toward the fifth grade classroom.
In the classrooms, each group of students introduced themselves and played a game with the kids. Our group did pictionary. There was entertainment all around.
Fifth graders at the very least aren't nearly as stiff as our impression of Japanese schools makes them out to be, and the classroom was as brightly colored and welcoming as any normal American fifth grade would be. About the only thing different was that the kids automatically raised their hands from the very beginning of the game instead of calling out answers, behavior which would probably take a little coaxing from American kids. They still waved their hands like they were having seizures from excitement the exact same way though.
When the school day ended, a group of HIF students decided we wanted to explore the beach. We found an access point through an alleyway and hung out there for a while taking silly pictures of each other and talking about the things university students generally talk about. Someone went and bought beer, of course, so we added a bit of drinking to the mix. Which you can do here, because there's no open canister law. Which is a terrible, terrible idea and I love it.
Speaking of lack of open canister laws, that evening we all congregated at Goryoukaku again, which has become the well-established hang-out of HIF students. We're probably being recognized as the pack of drunken foreigners who sort of speak Japanese by now. There's a particular konbini that we always meet at called Lawson's, which supplies us most of our alcohol. We go in and out of there probably eight or nine times a night, and spend most of our time congregated outside it talking.
This would be hardcore nuisance behavior in the US, but two weekends worth of the same very recognizable foreigners (we've gotten to know the Lawson employees too) and there've been no complaints or visits by the cops. I mean, we are legitimately providing that store with a very tidy profit--it's certainly not as though we don't buy anything, and out behavior certainly isn't anything Japanese people don't do too when they're drunk (I need to reiterate that the Japanese are NOT in any way shape or form polite, courteous, restrained, or consciencious when they're drunk. They're raucous, obnoxious, loud, and they weave in and out of traffic unabashedly). Nonetheless, I feel like a bit of a troublemaker.
After getting fairly trashed off Lawson's finest, we set out looking for an 'izakeya,' a traditional Japanese style bar. I figured this was going to fail from the get-go, on account of us being one big horde of twelve foreigners who'd never fit in a single bar and would be horribly out of place if we did, but the others were insistent about it. We tried a couple places with no luck--all of them wanted to give us a private room to drink ourselves silly without disturbing everyone else. Exactly the sort of objection I was predicting.
Eventually, we just congregated at a trendy bar and accepted the private room deal, but I was getting tired and it was turning into a "izu the cold, wet rag of emo and sniffliness " drunk evening rather than the "izu the giggly and entertaining" drunk evening I was hoping it'd be. I bowed out before drinks were bought and shared a taxi with a friend.
I'm actually getting kind of tired of Goryoukaku drunkenness, more of which occurred Saturday night as I'll tell you tomorrow. I'm sure Sapporo will be the same too. As a weekend stress reliever, it has its ups, but it's expensive and kind of repetitive. I prefer an evening of playing video games or watching a movie or just chilling at someone's apartment, you know, anime-kai style. Call me square.
So that was Friday. Tomorrow, you can read about me climbing a mountain, hanging out with very prim, flustered private school girls speaking English at a barbeque, and then hanging out with very rough, drunken hipster guys speaking Japanese at Goryoukaku. All in the same day.
Author's note: this was written about a month and a half ago. Izu is now back stateside.