Yuko Sumino 由子

When I started teaching, my boss took me to one of his classes in a town called Seishin. I was an amateur assistant at the time so I was starting to get to know the classes and the students. When I first walked into that class, I met a girl who was sitting in front, near the teacher's desk. As soon as I saw her I gave her the biggest smile and said, "Hello! Nice to meet you. I'm Hitomi. You must be Elizabeth." Her real name is Yuko Sumino, but she told us to call her Elizabeth. Before I entered that classroom, I already knew a little bit about the girl's background. She instantly smiled back without hesitation and said, "Hello. Nice to meet you too."

Yuko is a shy girl, so she isn't comfortable with just anybody. So I was a little nervous before meeting her, but after our greeting, I knew we had a good connection. I honestly know nothing about down syndrome, but the more I went to that class, the more I felt nothing of the sort from her. We treated her like any other student and she acted like any other student. I enjoyed going to that class and seeing her big smile. She doesn't come to class every week, but that's because she's busy traveling from city to city, spreading her beautiful art upon Japan. Yuko has an amazing talent; calligraphy.

I know I made it sound like I wasn't going to get to this post for another week or so, but surprisingly I had time today. In the last blog post, I talked about us going to another event and that was going to see Yuko's exhibition. And I must say, I was very touched by the whole entire set-up. I was so happy to have went. The exhibition took place in Kakogawa (her birthplace), in a shrine.

In the tatami room, they had all sorts of her art on display, and a TV that showed Yuko's background story that had been broadcasted on Japanese television (NHK) a while back. We watched the entire story and got to know Yuko more. After that, Yuko and her mother presented a speech in front of all the people that had came. She even read a section of the speech in English. It was so moving that everyone in the room were in tears. We were so proud of her.

Here are some of my favorites of her work. Some are a little hard for me to translate. I can read and understand what she had wrote, but to put it in English literally is pretty difficult. Some Japanese sayings are better kept in Japanese, because sometimes English cannot make it sound just as beautiful or meaningful.

"To my loving mom, thank you."

"Smile is the heart that everyone has."

"I'm looking forward for tomorrow to come. I think that everyday."

「今日もきっといいことがある」
 "Kyou mo kitto ii koto ga aru." (There will surely be something good today too.), is one of Yuko's well-said sayings.

If there was one thing that I learned from Yuko, is that no matter how we were born into this world and no matter what crazy obstacles we go through, we should always go through it with a smile. Life isn't always going to be perfect, everyone has their ups and downs, and there are things that just don't go the way we plan it. We should cherish the life we have now as much as we can and not regret every little thing. You may think you're not unique, but everyone is unique in their own way. We all have at least that one thing that makes us really special. Embrace it. Yuko had been through a lot of hardships as a down syndrome. But now that she has many, many friends from throughout her journey, and because of all the loving people around her, she always looks forward to tomorrow with a big smile.

Akashi Park

Hi hi! It's getting chilly here in Japan. So, after my last blog post, it's been crazy. I got sick twice and I was in need for bed rest. I was in bed for 2 whole days. It wasn't that I was so bad that I couldn't get up, it's just everyone told me to not move and don't go to work. If I go to work, I'll be pushing it and I probably would get worse. So, I thought I shouldn't fight it and it was the right thing for me to get better first so I can go back to work in full recovery. But I'm back in good health and ready to get back on track with things!

Before I go any further with this post, I actually had two events going on this day. However, I want to make them in separate posts, instead of making a big mess in one. I don't exactly know when I will post the other part to this day, but I will get to it.

So, I went out with my squad to Akashi Park. This is actually my second time going, but we went mainly to see my little sister and two of our students perform in a marching band parade. You may see that I often say "little sister" a lot. Just to let those who don't know, I only have a big brother. While living in Kobe, I pretty much call all my friends, "my family" even when I've only known them for a year.

The marching band parade consists of all different bands from different schools around Kobe. It wasn't a competition or anything, but there were a lot of amazing bands. Unfortunately, due to that other event, we couldn't stay the whole time.

 

My little sister is named Yui (the one holding the cymbals), she's a junior high school student and is in her last year. Two of the students that performed with her (saxophone and drums) are her friends and they've probably been my students for almost 5 months now. I also treat them as if they were my little sisters too. I really cherish my students, so being able to see them outside of the class atmosphere and seeing what they love to do, it makes me so proud. I'm a huge fan of Detective Conan, so them being the opening of the start of the parade with that Detective Conan theme song was amazing~~~

I thought this little information here was something interesting that not many schools do. In Japan, it's pretty hard for elementary and junior high school students. However, I think it's like that in all of Asia. Even elementary and junior high school students have to take a club after school. And I mean, most of these clubs last until 7pm. 7PM!!! Poor kids. I had it a lot easier while going to school in the states. In the states, we chose whether we wanted to join a club or not. That was our decision. Usually most clubs either don't last that long or it's not everyday. As for Yui's club, she's in orchestra and they are required to go to club everyday...yes, everyday, that includes Saturdays and Sundays. Which is really sad because she's so tired everyday and as much as we want to hang out with her or talk to her, she's just doesn't always seem to have that energy. Thankfully, next month in November, her club will finally end! Though in high school she will have to enter another (and hopefully a different) club, at least she'll finally have a long break from that 3-year orchestra club and we can get that quality time we all wanted with her. \(^.^)/

Akashi Park isn't exactly a very, very famous place; however, it's where Akashi Castle is located. It's a very nice park. There are areas where it's traditional Japan. Can't compare to Kyoto, but it's still a peaceful place you would want to be. I'm not sure if it's everyday or every week, where they always hold an event inside the park. This day they didn't have a lot of food stands since it was more of the stadium area where they held this event, but usually the park would be jam-packed with many kinds of Japanese food stands. This event was not only for the marching band parade, but even for a chrysanthemum exhibition.

On our way to the other event, we stopped by a little store called Akashi Takosen. Takosen is short for "tako senbei" which means "octopus rice crackers". Here they also sold tako banana castella (octopus banana castella) which we bought for a snack. They're yummy! No, it literally doesn't have the taste of octopus in it, it's called tako banana castella, because the shape of the castella is of an octopus, but the flavor is banana. It's popular here. Akashi is famous for their takoyaki. And I must say, they have amazing takoyaki! If you don't know what takoyaki is, they're like these balls that are made with wheat flour batter and inside consists of pieces of green onion, tempura scraps, octopus, etc. There are all kinds of versions. I'm not exactly a fan of octopus, but I can always consider eating Akashi's. All my friends here are mostly kansai, but I still can't get used to kansai food. It's not that it tastes bad (I can tolerate it), but it's something I wouldn't want to eat all the time. I guess I'm an Aomori-Okinawa kind of girl, but who knows! Maybe I can become a Kobe girl someday! Give me another year or so lol.

Training Room

I thought I'd take this time to share my workout routine. I've been an active person since high school. In middle school I wasn't so active. I didn't do much during middle school, mainly because I was a very shy person and often closed myself off from the real world. I really didn't like that about myself at that time. But once I got an 'image change', you could say that that gave me a boost. And when I entered high school, I gained confidence. Once I entered high school I became very active. From Freshman year to Senior year I have done gym, soccer, security class (which consists of A LOT of working out to the point where I would often go to the restroom to puke), hip hop dance, and believe it or not; folklorico. Folklorico is a Mexican folk dance that never in a million years thought I'd ever take. I only took it because I needed a different physical curriculum at the time and I asked a friend if she could suggest me to any and she suggested me to folklorico. I was the only half American half Japanese girl in there while everyone else were Mexican! It was rather embarrassing, but everyone was so nice and it was surprisingly a lot of fun. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't the thing I wanted to do most of my time in high school, so I stuck to hip hop dancing as much as I could.

Those days were in America. Now that I'm in Japan, I feel had to find different ways of being active. I've already been in Japan for a year and a half now. Last year, I would workout after dinner EVERY night. I would also go the park about twice a week to run on the track. I had a tremendous amount of stress at the time, and exercising was kind of my only escape at the time and it also helped me sleep. This year, I've changed it up a bit. Now that my work schedule is very busy and I'm literally going town to town, it's hard to workout every night when my body is so exhausted already. However; since working out is sort of my hobby, I pushed myself to at least go to the gym 3 times a week. I love working out and I don't think I could ever stop!

So, the gym I'm currently going to is in the same building as one of the places I work at, which is super convenient! In order to get access to the gym, you have to take a lesson so you can get an official ID card with your name on it to go to the gym at anytime. Though you have membership with the ID, you have to go to the office to pay ¥300 for two and a half hours, and you receive a number badge. This badge is sort of a pass to get you in, and for the office people to keep track of how many people are in the training room at the time.

After receiving the badge, I go up a floor where the locker rooms and the training room are located. The lockers are ¥10, and the locker rooms come with showers and a sauna.

Once I get into the training room, I always do stretches on the mat before I start using the machines.

I use all the machines in the training room, but when the room starts to get jam-packed with people, I only start to stick to my favorite ones. I like being on the bicycle for about 30 minutes to evenly shape up my legs. I prefer to use the bicycle that leans back so it also has a better and easier workout for when I'm nearly pulling my legs up to my abs.

This machine (totally forgot the name) twists and turns your waist by standing in one place on a platform and using the handle bars in front of you to move just your top half left to right. It feels great, but try not to go too fast or your head will be spinning~

Another favorite. I always like machines that really do ab work. I think this machine is called the roman chair(?). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I love this thing! I wish I could have this at home. It's a really good abdominal exercise. Not only do my abs feel the burn, but so do my thighs. There's a step where you can either lower or higher yourself to whatever position you're comfortable with. I try to get to the highest point for better results. It's a little scary when you higher the step, because when you lean forward, you feel there's a chance of you falling. There are bars on the side in case of that ever happening.

The machine I use between every other machine is the belt vibrator (it sounds weird, I know). I wrap the belt around my waist, under my bottom and all along my legs. It helps lessen the tension in the muscles after every workout on the machines. It's pretty rough when you put up the speed, but it feels so good (yes, sounding weird again lol).

Last favorite is the treadmill. I forgot how hard running is sometimes. I tend to only run 30 minutes straight and have to turn down the speed on the machine to go to walk mode for a bit and slowly make my way back up to running again. I do this as my last workout before leaving, so I do this for the rest of the time remaining. Not exactly a lovely view we're seeing while running, but it's nice watching the clouds.

Once I'm done with the machines, I go back to the mat and do my final stretches. I don't know about most people, but I always get sore after a workout if I don't properly do stretches. After that, I head to the locker room. And after I'm done, I go to the vending machine and always drink oronamin c. It's refreshing and it's like a senzu bean drink (sorry, DBZ fans would know). I do drink water while working out, but once I'm done, I kind of need that energy drink boost for me to continue the day.

The only workout machines I currently have at home is a horse riding exercise machine and the wonder core.