TNT!: Sado Island and other such entertainment

SADO ISLAND

Took a 'lil trip with other Gaijin from Fukushima-ken to a beautiful island called Sado. It was a lil expenso - quite a bit more than a road trip in Aotearoa, but damn worth it.

If you get a chance to go to the Earth Celebration, I'd recommend it - it is beautiful and my only regret was that we only went to one night of the festival - I couldn't afford any more than that anyway and we spent the rest of our time adventuring other parts of the island.

Earth Celebration = a festival to celebrate and enjoy music and the earth. The concerts were held outdoors walking through temple grounds, up a steep encircling path into a park on a hill. Surrounded by trees and with a very peaceful and respectful crowd all sitting on the grass where they can listen to the sounds of traditional Japanese music (and also some very funky beats with Japanese rhythms). The sky above us, a half yellow moon rising and stars clearly in the sky (but different layout to what I'm used to so, that was kinda, weird) and entertaining musicians on the stage. Some musicians were placid and deep, placing themselves in the middle of the stage with lights directed at them to play their instruments (of which were mainly Japanese, so I couldn't tell you what they were sorry), others were accompanied by dancers in Japanese style acting out to the music in patterns and movements, other musicians still, were dancers and entertainers themselves, dancing and rhythmically moving to the music of their instruments and even their dancing creating the music itself! And I only went to one night of the festival!

Apart from the concert, there were stalls selling some damn good food and clothing and jewellery, and well, actually everything. I wanted to buy a crap load!! but alas, the string on themoney purse must be a little tight for the time being.

The other festival goers were a mixed lolly bag - from other Gaijin (of which was about 50% of the whole crowd I reckon) to Japanese families to Japanese Hippies - who looked very funky and 'down wit it'.

Sado island itself was real sweet, the beaches were not what I had imagined existed here - beautiful beautiful blue clear water with seaweed and an aliveness that scared me. It was too hot to be too precious, and so I braved it with the jelly fish quite a bit and only came out with a few stings from tiny ones. Have to admit and I was a complete sook about the whole jelly fish thing. Not really ever encountered them before and freaked out every time I saw one!

At one beach, a cave and passage way to another side was found and so we braved it (I took a lot of coaxing!) and swam out to water that was so so deep and clear. Found on the other side of the passage a resting place and an area that comes close to being as choice as Wilkies Pools (for those who know it).

We did the tourist thing and found some glass bottom bucket boats and got taken out by Japanese Women, that was fun :) Also tented right beside a big group of Japanese men who decided that the best fun of the evening would be to play on the drums and put masks on and dance to us for quite a while - all in fun and games :)

Had a blast and big ups to the others who took me - the other foreigners in this area are amazing and I don't know what I would do without them!

Next blog, I'll tell you about the English Speech Competition Training and how the sentence "The sun was bright with a slight breeze" might forever be etched into my skull. Am going to see Brad in Ayase this weekend!! yay!!
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Live. Love. Breathe. xx tj