Weekend update #4
I haven't posted weekend updates #2 and #3 yet, but those primo spaces are being saved for the Nikko and Kyoto trips I haven't blogged about yet (which happened 1 and 1 & 1/2 months ago respectively; well done, Mandy, on being timely).
This past weekend was rather interesting so you're going to have to hear about it. On Friday night, the weather finally cooperated in coordination with the every-so-often 'open nights' the observatory near our house has on weekends, so after school (since it gets dark at 4:30pm here now), we headed up a peak to our local observatory. I love being able to say that. So random. Anyway, this is something I've always wanted to do; have a chance to view anything and everything through a real research telescope. Besides wishing I had been the only person there with unlimited scope-viewing time, the experience did not fail to disappoint. The open nights are run completely by volunteers (who DO know what they're doing), which blows me away. When we first arrived, they had the telescope focussed on the moon. The scope has 4-5 different viewfinders (that I remember seeing), so in one lens the scope was focussed close-up on one of the seas of the moon. It's the closest I've ever seen the moon by far. One of the volunteers told me to try to take a picture through the scope,...so I did. It turned out blurry, but you can tell it's a close-up shot of the moon nonetheless. Photos will be posted on Yahoo. In another lens you could see the entire moon and again, it was the best view I've ever had of the whole moon. The clarity of the thousands of impact craters and the debris-spray was amazing.
My night would have been made with the moon viewing and just watching the telescope and dome move positions (right out of "Contact"), but it got even better. Next, we viewed Uranus. It was only a tiny dot, but it was an obvious blue color, which the volunteers were really excited about. And even as a little dot, it's a thrill to say you've seen the second furtherest planet from the edge of the solar system (I learned that night also that Pluto is more or less officially not considered a planet anymore, which I think is bogus because now the association saying to remember the order of the planets doesn't work :-) ). Next came a globular cluster, a double-star in the constellation, Andromeda (one star was very orange, the other white) and a nebula in the Orion constellation. Nothing to sneeze at (HA!). I definitely hope to be a regular on open nights.
Saturday, Bill, Kerry (another American JET assistant English teacher from a nearby town) and I went to the Chichibu Night Festival with two of our acquaintences from the Board of Education (the office that hired me). The festival was in a town about 1.5-2 hours drive from my town. Apparently this festival is one of the "Big 3" night festivals in Japan. Unfortunately I didn't find out until we got there that Sunday is the biggest day for the festival, which means it's 5 times as crowded as Saturday. You'll have to look at the pictures to get a true idea of what goes on, but the two main draws to the festival are the fireworks and the "floats" that are pulled through the streets that face-off and battle each other on taiko drums. On Sunday I think they have something like 10+ of these floats facing off, but on Saturday, there were only two floats that were kind of doing a pre-battle 'joust.' The floats would start at opposite ends of the streets, then be pulled towards each other and when they reach a common intersection, they pass each other, head towards the opposite end of the street, then turn around and head towards each other again, or they turn around at the intersection and head back to their own end of the street, where they again turn around and head back in to square off against each other again at the intersection. They didn't really drum battle (the drums were played in a regular beat, along with chanting while the floats were being pulled), which was a bummer because I love me a good taiko. But, I did help pull the float! The floats are really heavy wooden structures that rest on wheels. Two gigantic twine ropes are attached to either side of the front of the float and about a hundred people, both "professionals" and festival-goers each grab a spot on the rope and help pull the float down the street. It was quite fun, except that I was the only one from my group that allowed themselves to be swept up in the float-pulling hoopla and half-way down the street I started wondering how I was going to find them again in the throngs of people, especially seeing as how my cell phone was in the bag I left with one of them in order to not take up extra space on the rope-line. :-) In the end it wasn't a problem, but a lucky ending it was indeed!
On Sunday, I joined a group of people from my JET program for an orphanage Christmas party. It was a fun experience, although I quickly realized I was in the minority of partipants that didn't speak Japanese. Luckily you don't need to know Japanese to color pictures of Santa, cut snowflakes, play soccer or sing Christmas carols. Kerry (the friend from the nearby town) would be the one in the Santa suit in the photos on Yahoo. Boy did that go over well with the little ones, and was hilarious for us foreigners as well!
This past weekend was rather interesting so you're going to have to hear about it. On Friday night, the weather finally cooperated in coordination with the every-so-often 'open nights' the observatory near our house has on weekends, so after school (since it gets dark at 4:30pm here now), we headed up a peak to our local observatory. I love being able to say that. So random. Anyway, this is something I've always wanted to do; have a chance to view anything and everything through a real research telescope. Besides wishing I had been the only person there with unlimited scope-viewing time, the experience did not fail to disappoint. The open nights are run completely by volunteers (who DO know what they're doing), which blows me away. When we first arrived, they had the telescope focussed on the moon. The scope has 4-5 different viewfinders (that I remember seeing), so in one lens the scope was focussed close-up on one of the seas of the moon. It's the closest I've ever seen the moon by far. One of the volunteers told me to try to take a picture through the scope,...so I did. It turned out blurry, but you can tell it's a close-up shot of the moon nonetheless. Photos will be posted on Yahoo. In another lens you could see the entire moon and again, it was the best view I've ever had of the whole moon. The clarity of the thousands of impact craters and the debris-spray was amazing.
My night would have been made with the moon viewing and just watching the telescope and dome move positions (right out of "Contact"), but it got even better. Next, we viewed Uranus. It was only a tiny dot, but it was an obvious blue color, which the volunteers were really excited about. And even as a little dot, it's a thrill to say you've seen the second furtherest planet from the edge of the solar system (I learned that night also that Pluto is more or less officially not considered a planet anymore, which I think is bogus because now the association saying to remember the order of the planets doesn't work :-) ). Next came a globular cluster, a double-star in the constellation, Andromeda (one star was very orange, the other white) and a nebula in the Orion constellation. Nothing to sneeze at (HA!). I definitely hope to be a regular on open nights.
Saturday, Bill, Kerry (another American JET assistant English teacher from a nearby town) and I went to the Chichibu Night Festival with two of our acquaintences from the Board of Education (the office that hired me). The festival was in a town about 1.5-2 hours drive from my town. Apparently this festival is one of the "Big 3" night festivals in Japan. Unfortunately I didn't find out until we got there that Sunday is the biggest day for the festival, which means it's 5 times as crowded as Saturday. You'll have to look at the pictures to get a true idea of what goes on, but the two main draws to the festival are the fireworks and the "floats" that are pulled through the streets that face-off and battle each other on taiko drums. On Sunday I think they have something like 10+ of these floats facing off, but on Saturday, there were only two floats that were kind of doing a pre-battle 'joust.' The floats would start at opposite ends of the streets, then be pulled towards each other and when they reach a common intersection, they pass each other, head towards the opposite end of the street, then turn around and head towards each other again, or they turn around at the intersection and head back to their own end of the street, where they again turn around and head back in to square off against each other again at the intersection. They didn't really drum battle (the drums were played in a regular beat, along with chanting while the floats were being pulled), which was a bummer because I love me a good taiko. But, I did help pull the float! The floats are really heavy wooden structures that rest on wheels. Two gigantic twine ropes are attached to either side of the front of the float and about a hundred people, both "professionals" and festival-goers each grab a spot on the rope and help pull the float down the street. It was quite fun, except that I was the only one from my group that allowed themselves to be swept up in the float-pulling hoopla and half-way down the street I started wondering how I was going to find them again in the throngs of people, especially seeing as how my cell phone was in the bag I left with one of them in order to not take up extra space on the rope-line. :-) In the end it wasn't a problem, but a lucky ending it was indeed!
On Sunday, I joined a group of people from my JET program for an orphanage Christmas party. It was a fun experience, although I quickly realized I was in the minority of partipants that didn't speak Japanese. Luckily you don't need to know Japanese to color pictures of Santa, cut snowflakes, play soccer or sing Christmas carols. Kerry (the friend from the nearby town) would be the one in the Santa suit in the photos on Yahoo. Boy did that go over well with the little ones, and was hilarious for us foreigners as well!
posted by Mandy | 8:58 PM
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