singing children and burning mountains

the communication with the village people (or actually it's called shuho-town) is so active that it there is hardly time to rehearse my songs. one whole day we spent in the primary school where i was given 20 children, all about 7 to 8 years old. they were all in neat school uniforms and with well combed shiny hair but oh, so sweet and lively! they learnt niko niko maa maa very quickly and even showed real interest towards the land of moomins:) but the best part of the class was when i asked them to show me their songs...and soon we were playing together the "elephant song" (yksi pieni elefantti marssi nain...) and "stone, paper, scissors". in the end they all played mouth harmonica concert for me. after the class was lunch time. i was waiting in the teacher's room while the children were preparing the class room for the meal. when they caught me by the hand for lunch, everything was neatly organized in front of me: miso-soup, bowl of rise, fish, half a banana and a bottle of milk. it was fascinating to see the children eat everything and in the same time asking me to produce animal sounds...i had to be cat, sheep, dog and horse all over again. and while all this was going on, the directress of the school was praising my ability to use chopsticks and a local tv-company was filming close-ups of my eating skill. as a farewell present i got about dozen drawings about me and my japanese translater.
i just hope these children would stay so genuine and lively and not get stiffened up by the modern japanese society as they grow up.
an other communal event was the "yamayaki" or the "burning mountain" which took place this morning. every february since 700 years the village people burn the old grass on the akiyoshidai limestone plateau. the meaning of this ritual is to keep the plateau bare but help the new grass grow healthy. we scattered around this huge area on a circle and set the grass burning all in the same time. the wind was pretty strong and we had to be active hitting the too wild flames with branches to prevent it to escape to the forest. but these people know how to do it; in the end the fire was obediantly eating its way toward the center of the circle. we could just simply observe the fire performance and the black stony soil which the fire left behind.

for the ones who have followed my blog i have to confess that this week i missed the next meeting with the iki iki ladies! they had been waiting for me and i didn't come. i feel bad that i let them down but i still hope there will be a chance to meet them again.