Say whaaat?

Today my friend Aki took me to a local university open day kind of thing to see a SIGN LANGUAGE SONG.

I myself was a bit confused as to how sign language actually classifies as singing as you may also be wondering....what with all the silence and all!

As it turns out, the people singing were of hearing ability and sang to aloud to music while they...er well... also sang... with their hands.

And it was one of the most beautiful and inspiring things I've ever seen.

Of course hearing the words of the song made no difference to me as it was all in Japanese, but my deaf friend tells me the key to learning sign language is imagination. And that's one thing I've always had in plentiful supply :)

God it was just such an enlightening experience though. I mean there's this WHOLE WORLD out there that we hearing people just have no idea about and yet everyday deaf people have to acheive the same tasks as us.

Like when they are waiting at the train station and if there weren't mini electronic schedules down on the platforms they wouldn't know when the next train was or where it was going because they can't hear the announcements.

And the more I thought about it, thats kind of what living in Japan has been like for me. I can hear, but when I first arrived in Japan I didn't understand a lick of what the announcements were and every excursion involved me using some form of my own personally invented sign language in order to communicate with the natives.

SOOOO I'm going to start learning Japanese and American Sign Language while I'm here (Japanese sign language is as different to American sign language as the spoken Japanese (Nihongo) is to English) and continue to learn ASL when I return home to New Zealand.

I'm hoping if I start learning now I might be able to use in future for working with disabled children, which is what I've decided I'd like to do.

Amazing how some things in life just fall into place so easy if you're meant to do them isn't it?

I dunno if there's much money it, but they say if you do what you love then you'll be successful and at least I'll enjoy every day at work and that's important to me.

Anyway, that's my big news for today, the Uni festival itself was great - everyone stares even more now my hair is shorter and very curly again, but that's ok coz they're all sooo nice to me because of it :)

Tried Chinese and Korean food today too and am working myself up to try Octopus balls when I head down to Osaka at the end of the month - can't believe how brave I'm getting - I never would have tried these such things when I first got here!

Not as brave as my friends who ate live beating cobra heart and drank snake bile in Vietnam though - they didn't serve that in the town we went to... unfortunately!

Oh remind me to tell you the stories I've heard about toilet conditions in China one day too - all I can say is I'm damn glad I came to Tokyo!

Righto, I've got to get to bed coz i'm off to the motoshow at the crack of dawn tomorrow and it's a national holiday so it's gonna be a madhouse, but the kind of experience that can only be had in Tokyo!

Honestly, it's hard to explain the crowds here unless you see them yourself, but I've my crash helmet and shoulder pads all packed and ready to wear tomorrow if that's any indication! :)

Take Care and enjoy your week,

Smiles
Fernleaf

p.s. did you know that there are actually full on deaf music concerts? Well there are in Japan at least. It's for both hearing and deaf, but the words are signed by the singers as well as sung aloud. Amazing.