Basuketoboru

Today has been highly productive, I think. Many things were accomplished, and I feel relatively good about things. One of the JTEs (Japanese teachers of english) is coming over to my place later to help me out with the internet. HOORAY. I'M SO HAPPY.

Plus, I have the day off tomorrow. Granted, it's a forced vacation and really, I'd rather just go to school (and play kyuudo) but oh well. Tomorrow will also be my "get stuff done" day. I have plans. Mostly housekeeping things, like getting my re-entry permit since I can visit things during daylight hours.

I also want to go back to korakuen garden. I've wanted to see it ever since Paul & Ava put up pictures and told me it was in Okayama. It's actually really really pretty, and I even bought a year pass to the gardens. I want time to go down there by myself and just relax, enjoy nature, and think. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's cool with friends, but I've always found something peaceful about gardens. Same thing with aquariums, during non-busy hours. It's just peaceful.

I had no idea I liked gardens and stuff so much haha. I mean, I know I love aquariums. I will pilgrimage to a city that has a great aquarium, just like how I'm planning on visiting the aquarium in Osaka as well as the aquarium in Okinawa. I'm really really excited for that one! X)

But gardens... as someone pointed out to me, I really like them haha. I won't quite make the trek out to find that awesome garden, but if there's one in town, there's an 80-90% chance that I will want to see it, and make the trip out to go visit it. It's weird. I don't... love flowers or grass really. But gardens are peaceful. In Panama, I even went out on an adventure to try and find the botanical gardens near Panama City. And holy crap, was that an adventure. We ended up going to this park area, hiking, finding red ants, taking a taxi out to the real botanical gardens, found out that it was more like a zoo with lots of green leafy things around it, went around and looked at the animals, saw wild monkeys, debated about taking the (supposedly dangerous) bus back, couldn't figure out when the bus was, ended up hitch hiking since we couldn't speak spanish and had no idea how to find a cab since it was kind of in the middle of nowhere, hitchhiked back to NOT panama city, ended up in the City of Knowledge, found other members of the scholar ship, and hitched a ride on the bus back with them to our ship.

Yeah that was an adventure. And an awful sentence and poor display of English. Oh well. :)

The point is, I like gardens, and some of them have given me very memorable... trips.

Oh yeah though. I got kinda sidetracked (something that is quite rare for me...). I finally got the nerves to ask if I could join the girls in practicing basketball! It took the foreign exchange student, Axel Lee (who was born in Singapore) to get me to follow him to the gym and shyly ask the girls team if I could practice with them.

Also, note to self, don't run without shoes for prolonged periods of time. It is painful. My feet sting, cause I was rebounding for them for a little bit and doing some of the drills with them. In my nice work clothes too haha. That wasn't smart. I think I'm going to have to start bringing an extra pair of shoes and change of clothes. Sigh... just when I thought things were going to get simple, I have to go and make it complicated.

I'm really excited though, because it's finally a way I can exercise. I'm horribly out of shape. Kyuudo club is also going to lend me one of their rubber bows (gomuyumi) to strengthen my arms with. Hopefully, between kyuudo and basketball, I will slowly yet surely get back into shape. I hope.

It kind of makes me think though. As JET participants, part of what sets us apart from others is that we're suppose to not only teach, but also... what's the word... propegate? Encourage? Encourage the exchange of culture between our own and Japan. That means joining clubs, because not only are we learning things, but, we also get more exposure to the students, and can start building relationships. Part of the whole cultural exchange is building relationships with Japanese people (and other foreigners!) I think. It's an important part of what we do. God my feet hurt right now. But the more that we can do, I think, and the more we can "hang out" or whatever outside of class in the clubs and stuff with our kids, the more... we're actually working.

This basically means, that unless we're staying in our houses all day, really, we're always working. Depressing thought? I'm not sure. But I mean to have fun with it. :)

That being said, I need to LEAVE WORK. X)

Frustrations

So, normally, I would feel bad about making this rant post at work. But I'm sooooooo annoyed right now.

Also, I swear, eventually, this blog will contain posts that AREN'T rants or "oops I forgot to post while I had internet."

But it's been two months almost. I've been patient. Really patient. I've been a good girl and not gotten all princess fussy. But two months. TWO MONTHS. You'd think I'd be able to be a little bit more patient at this point since I've already waited so damn long.

For some reason though, it is way harder, and way more frustrating to wait right now. They finally came to my house and got the internet connected. I thought I would be able to set it up pretty easily, since I was able to do that fine at home. But no. Japan has a F'IN' CRAZY AS SHIT Internet set up. Seriously. If anyone EVER tries to tell me that Japan is super advanced in technology so naturally everything in Japan is superfast easy to use wifi, I think I might start to giggle hysterically. It's so not. While the speeds are definitely fast, the set up, the process, and the attitude towards wifi here, ESPECIALLY in not the cities (which, asides from the sprawl that is Tokyo, Japan is probably mostly made of). I never thought I'd be able to survive this long. But a lot of the teachers and students don't have internet at home. If they do, generally internet is wired. Granted, it's blazing fast, but Japan's still tied up (bad pun yes) in wires.

It's that ARG I'M SO CLOSE feeling that's really frustrating. Unlike in the states, you don't just plug things in and they work. Or even, plug things in, determine connection, and it works. They leave you with a modem, and another box thing. This other box thing is completely foreign to me. I've never seen it. All my "hey I set up internet back in the states once" training goes out the window. I'm f'in' clueless.

So I went to bed last night a little angry.

I had this... oddly realistic dream too. Jeana was in it, as well as some family and some friends. I don't remember the details, but I do remember that I was constantly getting left behind. Like, I'd be a minute late and they'd just LEAVE. I'm sorry, but it's kinda annoying when people leave right on the dot. lol. Talk about cultural differences of time. I mean, I'm all for waiting a minute or two, but I can understand when time is of the essence and you must be exactly on time. But unless you like, warn me early about it...

I like, literally just kept missing them too. I was like, OMG JUST WAIT ONE MINUTE AND I WILL CATCH UP. I had to take a *taxi* to try and rondevous with them, and it cost me a fortune!

I think I woke up at that point.

It was raining this morning. I really need to buy a real umbrella. For all Okayama calls itself "the sunshine prefecture" sorry, you ain't got shit on San Diego. Actually, it's probably raining more often than it did in norcal too, for all I haven't been here for very long.

Apparently, I failed at getting entries up while I had free internet in Hiroshima. Oops. Everyone was pretty wiped at the end of the day, and I spent my valuable time all on... you guessed it, facebook. Stupid stalking timesucker of a website.

I'm at my school right now, the one in the mountains, and I gotta say... it might have thundered and lightninged yesterday morning, but today is absolutely gorgeous. It's crisp, cool, and beautiful. My favorite kind of weather. It reminds me a lot of the bay. <3

I got to hang out with the high schoolers today. That was pretty fun, albiet a little on the boring side. I watched them make paper. I got a gift (hooray!). We ate lunch. I didn't drink my (whole) milk. I played wataiko and zenitaiko with the kids.

Zenitaiko is actually really interesting. It's a traditional type of performance taiko, except you're not actually hitting anything. All you're hitting are the sticks you're carrying, the ground, and sometimes yourself. My palms were sooo sore after that. But they're basically sticks that have 5 yen coins on the inside so that they shake, and you smack them together and rattle them and -coolest of all- flip them. Yeah I'm all sorts of awful with that.

It's fun talking to the teachers though. I'm learning more and more japanese words every day. I probably should uh, be more enthusiastic about teaching the kids English words, but I can't help but want to learn Japanese words for things while I'm here. I feel like we're doing more of a trade; I'll teach them the English word, they teach me the Japanese one.

I didn't expect this to bug me so much, but there's this one teacher who -swear to god- is always on the laptop at school. It's kiiiinda annoying because that's the one I want to use. And she is on it every single time I have a break. It's like arrrggg can't we share? I mean, I can go on some of the other ones, but that one is the least awkward to go on. I don't know if I'm in the way for these other ones, and sometimes I feel like I'm on the wrong computer, or like, the comptuer is really really really slow.

Last night I had a house party. :) that was pretty freaking sweet, but man, was there a lot to clean up after. THankfully, my friends are awesome and helped clean up. <3 the people I know!

Hiroshima

I'm in Hiroshima! The hostel I'm staying at has free internet!

That being said, I don't know if I'm actually going to be at my hostel long enough (or be awake enough) to properly get an entry done or a newsletter done. Probably not, at the rate we're going haha.

It feels so different though. I'm turning into a country girl haha.

Homesick

Alright, I admit it, I'm a little homesick. And I mean sure, I miss people. Friends, family, food buddies. I'm well on my way through stage two right now in the Great Cycle of Culture Shock. I've learned about this cycle like... formally three times now. The Scholar Ship was probably the most thorough about it though.

In case you haven't had the talk, I mean, you probably know what culture shock is. Going into ANY new culture. And I mean any. Culture shock varies in degrees, and varies with each person of course, but it's a cycle. You have the honeymoon phase, where things are faaaaaaantastic. Most people go through this. Unlucky people don't, or have a super short one. Things are looking up.

Then comes the dreaded stage two. The most obvious part of the cycle. Things suck. Things go wrong. Things are frustrating. It's like PMSing on your period. You get tired of things. You're not as happy as you were before. Sometimes, you suck to be around.

Really though, it's like menopause. You have your good days, your bad days. No hot flashes though. Or it's like brainwaves. When you're measuring EEGs, and looking for waves, when you look at the big pattern, they look like curves and stuff. But, upon closer inspection, these hills and valleys are actually made up of smaller hills and valleys of their own. It's a rollercoaster. Just cause you're headed down doesn't mean you can't also go up for a little bit before going back down.

But anyways, I digress from what I wanted to write originally. I miss people, but most of all, I'm homesick for food.

I've been looking at pictures of food with every self intro I do, and menus, and oh my god, bacon food truck and bacon popcorn. I crave bacon popcorn. And hotdogs. Proper hotdogs. Or Costco hotdogs. I'm so hungry. Hotdogs and bacon just aren't the same over here. The bacon, while tasty, is limp. I'm a fan of crispy bacon. The hotdogs... aren't the same. Their casing is a little tough to chew through. I miss hotdogs. And garlic fries lol.

FOOOOOOOOOD. I wonder how it became to be such a big part of my life. I'm pretty sure I can say now, with certainty, that I am obsessed with food. Friends like Viv don't help either lol.

In Shape

I might not lose weight in japan, but I sure as hell am going to be more fit by the time I leave.

And I complained about the hills in San Diego. HA.

I swear I'm always finding myself living on a hill of some kind. My house is on a giant hill. Going to the train station rocks (I can book it there in about 5 minutes if I try) but going back? 15 minutes at least, with the last half of it going all uphill.

I'm also going to have stronger leg muscles I think.

So there's that. it means every time I leave home I have to climb a hill to get back, and then I'm all gross by the time I sit down at home. Winter's going to be fantastic.

Then, in Niimi, both my schools are at least half an hour away. North campus is up a giant hill that puts Peterson Hill to shame. I swear to god, that hill never ends. You start going up and then it will plateau for a little bit... and then go up again. Tease. Then you reach the campus and you're like, HOORAY I'VE MADE IT. ...and then you have to go up another super steep hill with ALL THE STUDENTS watching from the window.

Fantastic. They're going to know me as "that sweaty foreigner."

At least the walk back is downhill, I guess. Still doesn't change the fact that it's really freaking far.

I wouldn't mind it so much, except for the fact that my train doesn't quite come in on time for me to walk there. Like, I'm late by 5-10 minutes. If I wanted to get there on time, short of buying a bike (unsure about the buses - going to check them out for my one other school where they actually want me to be on time) I need to catch the train that leaves AN HOUR EARLIER. So that I'm not ten minutes late. WTFFFF.

Unhappy Jessica is unhappy about her commute.

Whatever though, it'll get better haha. I'm sure of it.

Really, it's a nice walk. Very pretty. Just holy crap, that hill.

And the stairs. All of my classrooms are like, on the third level. And these are no small stairwells. I swear, between the stairs and the hills and the walking I'm gonna be in great physical shape. I'll make sure of it. Because walking up the stairs next to my 60 year old JTEs and panting as I walk into the classroom is undignified and mildly embarrassing.

GANBARU~

Atarashi Friends~

So, for at least a month, I hadn't seen any traces of any other foreigners in Takahashi. I had heard, from some of the JETs up north in Niimi, that there were other ALTs (assistant language teachers) from this private company called Interact. I hadn't seen anyone though.

On Sunday, I met not one, not two, but FOUR foreigners living and working in Takahashi.

I guess it's true that when they say when it rains, it pours!

It made me super happy though, because I finally have people within like... ten minutes from where I live. I don't have to take the train to the next city 30 minutes away to find people to do stuff with. I have bar buddies, so I don't have to go to bars by myself. HOORAY.

Three of the people I met were part of Interact, and they told me that there were actually three more guys (they were all guys) in various places in 'takahashi.' 'Takahashi' because the city is actually a conglomerate of smaller villages and towns that got absorbed into what is known as Takahashi. In reality, there's central Takahashi (aka downtown), the places across the river, and a whole bunch of places that are too far to reach without a car or motorcycle. It's kind of like how San Diego has the neighborhoods of La Jolla, Pacific Beach, Kearny Mesa, Ocean Beach, etc etc. They're still technically San Diego. But you need a car to get to them. The difference is, in Japan these places are more like villages, small pockets of houses and buildings nestled in the mountain foothills. But, they didn't live in Central Takahashi like I do. MOst of them are a little bit further out in the country side. And I thought I was rural... some of their schools only have 8 kids.

The even cooler thing about meeting these other ALTs is that they all had cars. Hell yes baby. It's like freshman/sophomore year of college all over again. OMG YOU HAS A CAR CAN I BE YOUR FRIEND????

Haha, seriously though, that's not why I want to be friends with these people...

I also met another girl through this company called Amnity, which is an after school English class. One of the girls I was helping at school also goes here, and gave me the number of this chick from Amnity. So I figured what the hell, I have no friends here, and sent her an email.

Turns out she's a super fun chick from hawaii. Sweet.

Oh, on a side note, I taught one of my classes to say 'that's sweet' haha. I giggled.

It was really amusing, meeting all those foreigners, because I met them all in one day. It was the day I decided to bug bomb my house, so I was killing time at the department store Polka in the 100 yen section.

That's when I heard it. Those magical words. I don't remember what they were. But, more importantly, they were in English. I feel like kind of a stalker, but I followed them through the 100 yen store and finally stopped them and asked if they lived in Takahashi.

I was practically jumping with joy when they said that they did.

The same day, I got an email from the Hawaiian chick. Saturday I guess, is the day to find foreign people.

Name change

I'm changing the name of this blog, because I think this new one is a little bit better.

It's called, The Spirit of Adventure

Is it a rip from Up? Why yes, yes it is.

But it's because I love the movie and I think it's better than Wilderness Explorer. I'm not exactly going and climbing massive cliffs and exploring lush jungles (yet haha).

Special post from yonago!

Thanks to the internet that comes for free with this hotel, I bring you... the post from Yonago, where it's currently raining CATS AND DOGS. I mean, holy crap. It's POURING.

I hope it won't do that tomorrow... otherwise weeell, i'll have to rethink just wandering around attempting to find something to do. >.>

Tonight's been fun though. I had two dinners, on accident. I was wandering around looking for something to eat, and I stumbled into this ramen place with pretty decent ramen but better gyoza. That was tasty. And then I wanted to get this dessert I saw on the way over (and figured hey, I deserve it since it's RAINING and all) and went into the restaurant, which turned out to be an izakaya (japanese tapas bar) and then they went and got the waitress who could speak english for me and the menu in English... and I couldn't find the dessert on it and I was like uhhhhhhh and she was standing there so I just ordered tofu (which, btw, was really freaking tasty). And a chuhai since it felt um... right? Hahaha...

Chuhai is kind of like a wine cooler cocktail thing. It has chuhai in it (which is kinda like vodka) and soda and is really freaking tasty. I had white peach (which was a bright pink drink) and calpis, which was actually pretty tasty.

But I really wanted to get dessert, so I ended up eating two things of tofu, two chuhai, and dessert. Welcome to second dinner lol. I feel like a fatty. So full...

And then, the hotel I'm staying at has an onsen (really small hot spring bath) so I figured I'd go try it. It was pretty nice, and I had a whole conversation with this lady in the bathroom. My japanese still needs work though hahah.

Oh High Schoolers...

Today was my first day at Kita-kochi, which pretty much means North Campus. It's a trade school (ie, non-academic) so most of the kids aren't going to university, and will probably have very little practical use for using spanish. Kind of the same way someone who learns Spanish will find it useful if they live their whole lives out in a place like Walnut Creek or Danville or say... Ohio. Granted, English is probably a little bit more common than Spanish is in those places, but honestly, it doesn't really seem like it when I'm out here. Sure, there are words in katakana. But then again, who really knows where those words come from anyways? We have plenty of loaner words in English.

Despite the fact though, that I pretty much taught the same exact lesson (or rather, gave the same exact presentation) each class was very very very different. Today I did three classes in total. One was mixed, one was all boys, and one was all girls. The mixed one got a relatively moderate reaction; that class was alright, I didn't feel like I massively screwed up and it was relatively fun. That was the first "do you have a boyfriend" question I got since I started the q&a session at the end. They said they didn't believe me hahhaha. I think they might have even called me a liar. This, I found highly amusing. There was a girl at the end though who came up and asked me which anime I liked. She was kawaii~ :D I'm really glad she came and asked questions, since she looked a little shy.

The second class, not a single peep. That was the all girl class. I did get them to chatter a little bit when I showed them Snorlax and talked about Disney. Just a little. Small victory for Jessica!

The last class though. Oh man. That was actually kind of fun. I had to be loud (which for me, is no small feat) because this was the class full of boys, and they kept coming in late... but they had pretty good responses during the presentation and actually came up with questions. Granted, the questions they came up with...

The first was the "do you have a boyfriend" to which I responded LOLNO. Then they asked how old I was. Then they asked which guy in the class was my type. LOL. So I looked very thoughtful. And then I looked at the boys. And then I smiled and said, "Secret."

Oh first year high school boys. You make me giggle. I hope they don't actually think I like one of them. That might be bad. But after that, the one very talkative boy (who was asking most of the questions) got up and did this little swagger walk and flipped his hair before sitting back down to laughs. And then got up again. And swaggered his way over to me, put out his hand, and said "NICE TO MEET YOU."

I think I nearly died laughing. Especially when he went back to his seat, and promptly slid out of it because the chair had slidden back or something. That had the whole class laughing.

All in all, not that bad. Despite doing "first days" at the other schools, I still get a little nervous when it's in front of a new group of 40 faces. Lord help me, I don't know how I'm going to remember their name.

Oh, that reminds me. Speaking of boys, one of the other JETs came over to visit Takahashi's castle on the weekend, and me, stupid me, thinking that the school would be deserted (like it would be in America) decided to walk through it so I could show him the school (which is rather charming).

Yeaaaaah. There were so many students there. I think some of them I taught. I'm pretty sure some of them were in classes I taught. The first thing that went through my mind? "OH CRAP."

In a couple of seconds, they confirmed my fears, and undid what hard work I was trying to do at staying under the gossip-boy-talk radar.

"BOYFRIEND?!?!?!?!!?"

Both of us yelled out "NO" almost immediately, though I think I was a bit quicker than he was at firmly denying it. The quicker you deny it, the faster they get over it and stop right?

Silly me. I have younger siblings. I should know better.

"LOVER?!?!?!?!?!" was what followed. I think I nearly died of embarrassment. Needless to say, we did not go that way on the way back.

At least it makes a good story, I guess?

Today I had to give my speech to the students and teachers from my base school, the school I've been hanging out and bumming internet off of since I came here. So like, these teachers KNOW me. And these kids have seen me. I live right next to the school.

So what did I do? I practiced. I even had it written down and practiced from that. Then what did I do? I IMPROVED HALF OF THE SPEECH. Seriously, major mind blank right in the middle. I think I rambled and said dumb things. I think I was too quiet.

It's not like this was the first time I've spoken in front of a large crowd of students, but it was the first time I had already stood in the classroom in front of a good quarter of them, perhaps, or had seen elsewhere.

Yeah way to botch it Jess. The other English teachers said it was really good, but I'm not sure if any of the students actually figured out what I was saying. Maybe. Hopefully? I had originally planned on doing it in Japanese and English (more like English with brief amounts of Japanese here and there) but the kencho-sensei said pretty much everything I was going to. So yeaaah. Oops. That's what prompted the whole improving thing.

Ahhhh well.

Afterwards, I had no class, but instead spent time making posters about myself lol. Seriously. There are like... four or five posters with my pictures on them. BTW, Jeana, your picture is there, large, front, and center lol. The one with the duck. :D They think it's cute haha.

I swear though, it was more work than being up in front of the class room almost haha. I'm SO TIRED. And hungry. Two posters were posters of FOOD. Not my idea, actually. Suga-sensei's. So hungry because of it.

I also made a 25 minute video of pictures and short videos of me and friends and family lol. I didn't think it was possible to go on for so long about me.

This also prompted cleaning out my computer, because I'm desperate for more space. Seriously, I don't know what's eating up all this space. I cleared out two or three gigs worth just from deleting old mail and attachments from Finder (not entirely sure if that'll screw up something else but I have my backups...) and deleting program supports of programs I'd already trashed. Woo. I'm sure there's a bunch more in iTunes, especially since I downloaded a billion different podcasts haha. I think I have 5 gigs or something there. o_O I kindddd of want a new computer haha, but not until I leave JET. My next large purchase, I think, will be an external hard drive. That, I need.

Seriously though, where is all the space on my computer going? >_<

In other news, I've been cooking a lot at home. I think being stuck out here in Japan has made me want to cook more, to have foods that are a little more familiar to me since - lets face it - food is a central part of my life. What did I bring from home in addition to pictures? The family cook book (half of which I cannot use, due to lack of oven or lack of ingredients).

Which reminds me. If anyone has recipes for things that are cooked with basic ingredients (not things like Lawry's season salt - I'm planning on getting my hands on those soon!), rice cooker recipes, or microwave/stovetop recipes, I WOULD LOVE THEM. Seriously. Anything. I'm so down for trying to cook new things. Hell. I'm even making tortillas out here. So send them recipes my way and I will love you forever~ :D