Hello again!

Hi!

Sorry it has been such a long time between posts. I haven't been getting up to many big adventures lately. Now is the season of goodbyes for the Kochi JETs; each year in July a number of ALTs leave Japan and move back to their home countries. Most of the girls I hang out with regularly are leaving soon, so we've been spending the weekends together.

Last week we had the farewell party for ALL the leaving JETs, which was quite a large group. It was held at the New Hanky Hotel beer garden. The beer garden is basically a food and drink buffet on the roof of the hotel. You pay a flat fee and can eat and drink as much as you like, though the food leaves something to be desired. Still, it's a good opportunity to say goodbye and have one last celebration with the leavers. The beer garden was followed by karaoke, though I only stuck around for about an hour of that.

In exciting news, just recently editing of the Genki 2012 video was completed! It is now available on YouTube. Genki 2012 was the one with Pita Pan and a famous Kochi painter. I was part of Pita Pan's musical group, the Lost Voice, and I also choreographed a battle dance with my friend Sasha, who was Tinkerbell. I don't recommend watching the whole thing since it's rather long and there are no subtitles, but I'll list a few of the best moments for you to check out if you like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oO_nGuJLLuE

At 17 minutes 30 seconds, there's the Lost Voice introduction song. I have a solo section in this one. It's kind of a rap about our characters. The first guy, Chris, is singing about how handsome (and vain) he is; I sing about sleeping all the time (which was my main characteristic); Amber sings about how much she loves food, and Julie sings about being the leader of the Lost Voice.

At 32 minutes is Hook's lament. Hook, who is the president of a pirate corporation, sings the story of how Pita Pan cut off his hand and fed it to Katsuo Ningen (a creature with a severed fish head on a human body). It's actually all a lie, but it's very emotional. It's in the enka style, which is a melodramatic style of music mostly popular with old people in Japan. Matt's singing is great, but I think the real star here is Suzy, who dances Yosakoi while wearing a cardboard box on her head.

At 47 minutes is the battle dance. The first music you hear is radio taiso, a morning calisthenics program that used to be aired on the radio. The students are forced to do it as a warm-up before Sports Day as well. The joke is that Hook's assistant put on the wrong side of the cassette, so what you were actually hearing was Hook's "Smiley Smiley Good Morning Mix". After that, the fight between the pirates and the Lost Voice begins. Although the song was edited to be relatively short, I'm pretty sure Sasha and I spent at least 20 hours together choreographing this dance, and God only knows how long combing music videos for steps we could use. In the end, though, we were really happy with it.

At 1 hour 15 minutes is the finale dance and bows. This was choreographed by Lisa, our producer. The music is a K-pop song called "Neverland"; I felt especially clever for finding this song. It's by U-KISS, which is the group that a few of us saw in concert in Hiroshima about a year and a half ago.

Anyhow, I'm really excited that the video is available now, so I hope you'll check it out! If you only watch one thing, please take a look at the battle dance!

Other than that, there's not a lot of news to report. I think the most interesting thing coming up soon is English Camp, which I get to help with for the first time. It's a 2 day camp for some high school students, and I'm really looking forward to it. Most of the planning is being taken care of by Ashley and Andy, but I get to pick out two activities to run, and for one of them I'm going to teach some cheerleading. So I'm looking forward to that.