17 April 2005
Last
Updated: 12/04/05
Today there was a festival. A "supermarket" festival. With food stalls, games stalls, Anpanman, and some rather odd gaijin singing "Hello, hello, hello, how are you?" and doing animal impressions. You see, although it's a Sunday - and a bloody gorgeous one at that, weather-wise - Tom and Helen still had to work...
I don't really understand it myself, but apparently because the EEC run classes at Hearts supermarket, and because Hearts had a presence at the festival, there was a kids English Corner, and two 30 minute performances by Tom and Helen.
Oh, did I mention that this was a "Supermarket Festival" for children. Kids. Everywhere. Screaming. Running around. Crying. Trying to break my camera. And their rather harassed parents trying to buy up all the good deals on bean sprouts and miso paste.
Ah yes, how I love screaming, snotty, rampant hoards of children. :|
(At the bottom of the page are some photos of the Japanese countryside)
|
|
And over in the English corner we have... |
|
...lots of kids playing with toys, learning English the fun way |
|
|
|
A, B, C, D, E,
F.... |
|
The Show!
Helen and Tom's rendition of "Heads, shoulders, knees and toes" (with Fumie's help in the background) |
|
|
|
Where are you from? |
|
The audience |
|
|
|
Time for another
song... |
|
Oooo...sensei, pick me, pick me! |
|
|
|
The seven steps
song... |
|
And finally, time for a story... ...Brown Bear |
|
|
|
Audience
participation |
|
The hard-working crew, and a few victims pose for photos |
|
|
|
After the very fraught and hectic festival (and I'd been sitting outside, under a tree, reading "Brideshead Revisited" for most of it), Tom and I decided to wind-down by going for a bike ride...
...we stumbled across the Prefectural Library... (and they have English books...!) |
|
An obaachan planting out some crops |
|
|
|
|
|
Flooded rice fields - the preparation for planting has begun, and soon the muddy brown landscape will again be lush and green (but the weather will be bloody hot...oh well, can't have everything!) |
|
|
|
A wound-down, slightly fluffy Tom...
Glad it's all over, babe? |
Back to April's photo index