Rain
I thought I'd turned off the morning chimes, but they still came. I'll have to look into that more, or just change my sleeping pattern. Mum and dad called this morning at 7.45am, which was early, but it was very good to hear them again. I'm still missing home lots.
Hannah called soon after at 9.00am for 20 minutes on a phone card. Hers are better value than the one I got, but it's still quite expensive. Need the internet talk thing soon. I hate being away from Hannah. I know I say this a lot, but it's really hurting not being able to hold her. I think the worst thing is that I can't just speak to her whenever; we have to schedule our talks, which is lame. We then chatted on MSN for a bit longer.
A porter brought the schedule chart for our Linden Hall teaching up for us to fill out. It's a two week schedule, and I'm teaching 1st years on Monday (week 1) and Wednesday (week 2), and 2nd years on Friday (week 1). I tried to spread it out. Each session is 2 hours long, in which we teach English for 45 minutes. It starts tomorrow, though I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do. Hopefully it will be rained off, as there is an incoming typhoon, though it might miss. It's started to rain however.
I've found where we're staying on Google Maps finally: Cambridge House. It's the interesting looking building opposite SLOTZEBRADOTCOM.
I'm going to probably just play computer games today, and maybe learn a few Japanese characters later.
posted by Edd @ Sunday, September 04, 2005
3 Comments:
What age do the children start school in Japan? It all sounds very interesting. Do you get to teach the children on your own or with a Japanese teacher there too?
Edd:
See, you've got your Mom interested there ... next thing you know she will be other there by your side! I can tell she is itching to get travelling again!
By the way, had my first visitor the other day. Well, I went and had lunch with her over at the Ritz Carlton where she was staying and she charged it to her room (which was nice). A Welsh travel writer enroute to Muscat to recreate a journey she made down the coast of that country 50 years or so ago. Sounds very exotic ... nice to see and talk with her again for a couple of hours.
And then today I hear I'm to get a visit in October from an Aussie/American couple who live down in the Blue Mountains. Friends of a sister-in-law in Sydney. Small world.
When is the Maidenhead brigade coming to Dubai???
Steve.
Edd:
Thought you might be interested in this article:
Briton who gave Japan its anthem
By Colin Joyce in Yokohama
(Filed: 30/08/2005)
Nothing divides Japan, a country that sees social harmony as a supreme public virtue, more bitterly than its national anthem.
Nationalists force the song into Japanese public life, demanding that Kimi Ga Yo (His Majesty's Reign) be played at every school ceremony. Tokyo's local government insists that teachers stand and sing what is essentially a hymn to the emperor or face fines and suspension.
But a large minority associate the tune with the militarism and deification of the emperor that drove Japan to the catastrophe of the Second World War.
Even Emperor Akihito stepped into the debate last year, saying that it was "not desirable" that respect for the anthem be imposed on reluctant Japanese.
Almost completely forgotten, however, is that the origins of this contentious piece of music can be traced back to John William Fenton, bandmaster of Britain's 10th Foot Regt, 1st Bn.
Fenton arrived in Japan in 1868, the year Japanese modernisers overthrew the medieval shogunate and replaced it with a constitutional monarchy.
His regiment, later renamed the Royal Lincolnshire Regt, had come to protect the small foreign community in Yokohama from samurai diehards bitterly opposed to the foreigners' presence on their soil.
During his three-year stay Fenton established Japan's first military brass band, ordering the instruments from London and composing what was intended as its first national anthem.
Historians record that 30 cadets from Satsuma, in Japan's far west, were staying a short walk from the park where Fenton's band rehearsed and performed. Fenton also became the instructor for the Japanese group, whose average age was 19.
"He must have been an extraordinary man with great patience. He had to teach people who had never even seen or heard brass instruments," said Ryu Saito, a historian and president of the Yokohama Arts Foundation. "He brought them to the level where they were good enough to be Japan's first military band."
Fenton also convinced the Japanese that to become a modern nation state they needed a national anthem. He talked passionately to his pupils about the importance of God Save the Queen in British life and urged them to find a suitable poem in Japanese, which he would set to music.
Captain Iwao Oyama chose a 10th-century poem that prayed for the longevity of the "Lord", usually assumed to be the emperor.
The excited Japanese pressured Fenton to complete the score in less than three weeks and the band had just days to rehearse before its debut performance in front of the emperor in Tokyo in 1870.
Ten years later Japan replaced Fenton's composition with one by a Japanese composer. This version, still used today, was commissioned by one of Fenton's pupils and retains the same words.
Fenton's regiment left Japan in 1871 but he stayed for a further six years as a bandmaster with the newly formed Japanese navy and then the band of the imperial court.
His wife, Annie Maria, died in 1871 aged 40. Her grave is in Yokohama Foreigners' Cemetery. Fenton's fate is unknown.
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