Starting close to home, the Shika no Mori aka the Contemporary Poetry Park is beautiful. Every season in Japan, something is blooming. In spring and summer, it's flowers. This time, the trees take the stage!
School grounds are absolutely gorgeous, too. My schools don't really decorate for the fall so much (except the special education rooms in some buildings...which I love!), but with trees surrounding every school, nature does it's best Martha Stewart.
Last weekend, I took a little trip to the shore to see the eastern coast of Japan in fall. This area was hit very hard by the tsunami and it's still recovering. But the people here are incredibly determined! They've continued to make the best out of the situation and some schools are still going strong.
And of course, the ferry is still in good business!
I was really missing the festive atmosphere in American schools, this Halloween. As a kid, I loved wearing my weird costumes to class! As a young kid, you get a bit of a holiday and spend eight hours coloring, playing games, making crafts and eating candy. As a slightly older kid, you might have Halloween themed lessons (remember those math classes where you do equations to plot a picture on a graph?) but you and your teacher still wear your costumes. Then you get to college and all bets are off.
But in Japan? I don't know what the primary schools are like, but in junior high, it's just another day at the office. The wacky teacher might wear a funny hat, the creative types accommodate the American foreigner by wearing orange and black, and enthusiastic teachers rush over to your desk to show you the themed activities they have for their class.
I previously wrote about my ideas for Halloween costumes you can wear under the radar and a few people have asked me what I ended up wearing. I debated myself a little and settled on being a Minecraft Creeper!
Just kidding. I was a superhero(ine) incognito! Happy Halloween!
No comments:
Post a Comment