Drip:Leak

Today I was called away from work because apparently something in my house was flooding the downstairs residence's apartment. I learned of this problem yesterday, when my BoE asked me if it was ok for them to go into my house while I wasn't there and inspect the situation with the landlord. Of course it's ok...this is a problem and needs to be fixed!! Unfortunately, my house was/still currently is in a disastrous state. Clothes, boxes and god knows what else I've collected in my almost 3 month stay here have really turned my apartment into a disaster zone. Of course I apologized profusely in advance for its state and my supervisor apologized right back because he was asking to enter my "private residence". So my supervisor and the landlord entered the premise, found nothing unusual and then left. When I asked about the visit he repeated that they had found nothing unusual, but someone would have to check it out more closely later.

"Well, is there anything I should do? Turn the water off...or not do laundry or anything?" (I had no idea what part of my house was flooding into the downstairs apartment, so I blamed the washing machine.)

"No, no, do laundry...(and here slight hesitation)...maybe clean up a bit? But it's fine, because you live by yourself."

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I felt ashamed, until two seconds later when I realized that it is my apartment, and if I am to have guests over, the place would be much, much cleaner. Me and my apartment know that. I need my space to be however it needs to be, with no pressures about always keeping it tidy or anything, because that's kinda stressful (to me). If live with someone else, then I'll worry about that again. (RIGHT BROTHER?!?!)

But I think that problem is now fixed. A bolt under my sink was juuuust loose enough to cause the problem. I guess the just have to replace a wall...(maybe not the wall, but they are definitely doing some sort of replacing down there. BANG BANG HAMMER HAMMER...SAAAAAAAAAWWWW)

What I really wanted to blog about though was this festival that I went to a couple of weekends ago. By the standards of the festivals that I had previously gone to...this was like a friendly get together. It was in Honjo, a city about an hour away from Yokote. I had originally only wanted to watch the festival, take pictures, and enjoy the company of the other ALT's, but because I showed at the same time as those participating, I actually joined the festival.

This festival consists of two parts. One is to play taiko, flute or to scream some random Japanese word that has no meaning (obviously at different times...but that'd be badass if someone could do this all at the same time.) The other part is to carry around the mikoshi (portable shrine). I've "played" taiko once in my life, tried to play "the lion sleeps today" on a bamboo flute and as I'm a girl I can't carry the shrine. So that left me with screaming the Japanese word, which sounds a lot like "Sore!". So wham, wham, fuuuu, fuuu, and then screaming SORE! This may sound boring, but it is actually really fun! Reason??? Cue ALCOHOL!

As all of this is going on, some of the families of the people who are participating, as well as people who live in the area set up a little food/drink station for all who are festivaling. So we festival for about 10-15min and then take a break, eat their food and drink a can of beer or a cup of shochu and then festival and repeat! Luckily there were "girl sized" cans of beer which I happily drank. There was also lunch as well as an after festival snack that was served.

Being there, participating in the festival was very amazing. I felt overwhelmed at their kindness towards me. They let me participate, drink and eat their food, and just enjoy that moment with them. Me, who has no real connection to them whatsoever. Maybe they let me because of who I went there with, or maybe because they thought, "hey what's one more foreigner to this already super gaijin group!?" Or maybe it was something else entirely. Either way, they let me participate, and then in our various levels of intoxication asked me if would play with them next year. I don't know whether they meant it or not, but they sounded sincere and that's good enough for me. It's tiny little events like this that really make me like and completely enjoy being in Japan. I can't imagine something like this ever happening in America. I don't know why...

I have all of these errands that I've been meaning to run for the past two hours, but instead I've been doing this (ish. There was a twenty minute break to take sunset pictures...SO MANY pretty sunsets here!!!) Probably should go do that now...probably.

P.S. I LOVE the er hu. Look it up. It's such an awesome instrument...二胡
我真的喜欢二胡...かな？もう...中国語ぜんぜん忘れてしまった!