Last night... or, should I say, this morning... we got back from a three day road trip to Kyoto. Since this month is going to be full of witnessing and no fundraising, we did a majority of it during those three days. The fundraising method was clowning- no problemo for me, I thought, since of course the work we do at the house includes alot of clowning and ballooning- for free, of course, at say, old folks' homes.
I was in for a surprise.
I wouldn't say I did horribly- in fact, I made quite a bit of er.... money, to put it very frankly. But it took a bit of getting used to.
Picture a crossroad- say, three times as busy as Shibuya Station Mae at rush-hour. Then, in the midst of the busy crowd of severly mixed nationalities three fully made-up, ballooning flaunting dressed up weirdos burst through with pouches bursting with balloons and sticks and PR sheets pinned to their chests.
Two of them are very big breasted.
The team is me, Mimi and Seiko. (14, 18 and 19) We are three out of 10 or so clowns who are out to sell balloons to support themselves. Make money, basically.
Our team rocked.
But still, picture again a city girl who barely speaks enough Japanese to witness well, much less become a sales-girl. This girl starts to get out of herself a bit, you know, feeling around to see what she should do, how she likes things etc... then realises, hey! Japanese start to warm up to you if you speak English to them and say they're really good at speaking it back! So this girl, this clown, she starts to work up the courage to say hello really, really loudly to people passing by, and if there are people that stop for more than two seconds to say hi back to them in broken English then hey- she'll start out on a paragraph of broken Japanese that says, in simple terms; "We're doing this for volunteer work and could you please help with a leetle donation?"
And what do you know, this girl is starting a little business.
So picture this for another two days. The girl is maybe doing a little better with her lines, you know starting to get a little faster at saying she needs a donation with every balloon she makes, and hey she's even starting to be able to make flowers without having to ask her partners to pray for her every time she does! And she's helping alot with the finance bit. Maybe making about 10 to 15 a night.
The matsuri ends for the clowns at 11:00.
This girl, along with an Auntie, the Auntie's son, and a good friend she'd made goes home to a small house belonging to a sweet couple named Joseph and Rose. Picture the girl and her team tiptoeing into the house, which of course is dead silent, and heading straight for the kitchen/dining room where they gorge themselves on delicious pizza.
No time to get jealous, now. *wink*
Then they collapse, after a deliciously cold shower, onto clean sheets in an airconned room.
After the FIT center, they're in heaven.
Sweet sleep till 12 hours later, where they gorge on...more pizza.
NOW you can get jealous.
So that's how it went for three days.
And how much did you think we made?
Enough to buy pizza for another month.
Good night.
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