Christmas and New Year

It may be a little late but here is our description of what Christmas and New Year are like in Japan...

Christmas in Japan

In Japan Christmas is not a very big celebration. Shops and some other places have Christmas lights, but shops are open and people still work on Christmas Day because it is a normal day.
At lake near by they have a big Christmas tree and lots of Christmas lights and a Christmas market which we visited.

Children in Japan instead of having a stocking may get a big present from Santa. There isn't special food like Mince Pies and Christmas pudding, but they do have Christmas cake, but Christmas cake in Japan is a soft sponge cake and has lots of cream.

Japanese New Year

On New Years Eve we went to a Buddhist temple. We went to the temple just before midnight. At the shrine we rang a huge bell and had a drink made from fermented rice, and is a bit like thin porridge.
The day after new year we got money as a present from family and relatives. Children in Japan get money at New Year as they don't get much for presents at Christmas.

We also had a big family meal with lots of different food.

Just after New Year we went to a Shinto shrine. We put some money in a box and got a good luck charm to keep us safe. Lots of people in Japan do this and the temple was very busy.

High speed Linear motor train

In Japan they are developing the Linear motorcar. The Linear motorcar is a high speed "Linimo", a Linimo is a magnetic train that doesn't have wheels but hovers, it is also called maglev.
We went to see the test track at Otsuki, it is currently 42km long. They will try to extend it to Tokyo before the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, One day it will go all the way to Osaka, which is hundreds of kilometers.
First we saw it outside, it was gone in a second and was very loud. it was so fast we couldn't even see it properly. Then we went to the exhibition center so we could see different models of it more clearly.
When we saw the Linear motorcar, it went 300km/h but it can really go up to 500km/h.

Ekiden

Recently we went to the Tokyo-Hakone Ekiden. An ekiden is like a relay marathon and instead of a baton the runners use a sash. They only allow people who are at university to do it. It is an annual event on the 2nd and 3rd of January. The race is over 100 km each day. It is a popular event to watch in Japan.  The crowds cheered when the runners came running. There were 23 teams taking part. This year was the 90th time they did it. We got up at 6:30am and got there at 8:30am. We used 2 trains to get there. The weather was sunny but cold.

Days Off

Alex

I know in England you recently had half-term, but in Japan we don't have half term holidays, but instead there are lots more bank holidays. In September we got the 14th and 23rd off, October we got 14th off and  in November we got the 4th off. We also get some other Mondays off, but that is because sometimes we have to go to school on Saturday.

In my free time I like to read Manga. Manga is a bit like a comic but between 100 and 400 pages long. Most mange come in a series. My favourite manga is Naruto. The main character is called Naruto. Naruto is a Ninja, he isn't always successful, but he never gives up. Naruto is set in the past.  I Like manga because it's got good pictures and the storied are good, I also like to try to draw the pictures.

Joe

One of the things I enjoy doing in my free time is woodwork. It needs good concentration and you're not allowed to be too crazy. I have made a sign for a play house. First I sawed some wood in the right angles and made the shape of some letters. Then I got a wooden board and nailed the wooden shapes I made to the board. 

We also went to an Autumn festival at a country side park. In the craft area we made butter knives out of wood. There were sanding machines to sand the rough wooden shapesinto the right shape. after that we sanded by hand with sandpaper to make as smooth as possible. Finally we painted olive oil onto the butter knives and then we had finished making the butter knives.

Other things we did at the festival were saw with a two man saw and pottery. Joe made a mug and Alex made a candle holder.  We also made a leaf horn to blow, to make it you get a firm leaf about 8cm long Wrap it around a straw ans put sellotape around the leaf. You then take the straw out and slightly squeeze one end of the leaf. Then blow the squeezed end of the leaf- It's very loud!

School Sports Day

At the sports day we are divided into red and yellow teams. Alex was on the red team and Joe was on the yellow team.

When we did the tug of war the red team won twice.

There was also an event called the Hurricane. The Hurricane is an event where 4 people hold a pole and run together carrying it in front of them, they then have to go round some cones. The yellow team won that race.


There were also some dances in during the sports day. There was a dance called the Soranbushi, it is a traditional Japanese Fishing dance from an island in Japan called Hokaido. It finishes with a human pyramid Here is a video of us taking part in the dance.














We were at the base of the pyramids.


There was a relay race which our cousin was in. He was so fast that because of him he team won.
There was an 80m race. Alex came first in his group and Joe was second is his race, the reason was because there was a faster person in the inside lane.
There was an event called the Suzuwari, it is a bit like a piñata, there are no points or prizes, but you have to throw balls at a big tub to make it burst, and then streamers fall down from it.

The sports day was on a Saturday and lasted most of the day, everyone had a picnic at lunchtime. We got Monday off because it was on Saturday.

Sea and Mt. Fuju

On 21st September we went to the seaside where we can see Mt. Fuji. We also went to an Aquarium and a small museum about historical animals.
At the aquarium there was a tsunami simulator outside, It was about half the size of a tennis court, and it explained how a tsunami happens. There was a dam which hell water and they lifted it up to make a fake tsunami to flood a model town.
At the aquarium there was a big tank and there was a 2m shark but it was very slow at swimming.  There were also many other types of fish. I think there were clown fish in most of the sections.

At the museum we saw some dinosaur bones, of T-Rex, stegosaurus and an ankylosaurus, some bones were real, but we think some of them were copies.

At the beach there were lots of birds of prey flying around. Mount Fuji look small because it was far away, but really it poked above the clouds.

Typhoon!

Today it was a bank holiday in Japan and there was also a typhoon. The wind speed reached up to 40m/sec (90mph) and it was very rainy.
The wind woke us up because the wind was howling a lot. The trees with thin trunks nearly fell over. The house was very hot because we had extra thick shutters on the windows.

Normally the river is very calm and clear water but today the water level raised up 2m high and it was very rapid and brown.

We were bored because we couldn't go out and TV was mostly news about the typhoon. But we were kind of excited too, because it doesn't happen that often and it was the first time we have been in a proper typhoon.