Day of Rest

Today was supposed to be my day of rest... and well, I guess it was my day of rest. But by "day of rest" - when I thought about it on saturday - was supposed to be more like "day of productiveness and doing things like laundry and school prep and stuff."

Thanks to a giant huge (and still at large) bumblebee (yes I know they're mostly harmless) and this drama series called My Boss My Hero, yeah, that didn't really happen today. Oops. The drama at least is practicing my Japanese a little (I'm determined to get better and pass the N3 level JLPT! For the sake of enrolling at Stanford, sheesh, I need to pass this test since I told them that I had taken the test and I dunno, it'd be kind of shameful if I got there and was like "well yeah, actually I didn't pass the test..." so I'm going to try my hardest).

The bee though. The bee was one of those fatty ones, with the huge bodies like pompoms. I think it was about the size of my thumb up to the knuckle - the body. Like the size of my whole thumb. It was a big mofo! I actually shut the doors and ran to hide from it in my room for a while haha. Eventually, when I had to use the bathroom (it was trapped in the bathroom area) I went back to see if it was still there and found that it had kinda like... crash landed next to my laundry soap.

So yeah, no laundry got done today. Sigh.

Actually, shamefully, I didn't really go outside much. I just aired out my futon a little bit, which is a shame because today was actually really nice. I really should have gone outside! Sigh. Somehow it's nine pm, and while I did study a little bit on my Japanese, there were a bunch of things I didn't do. Saaaaaaaaaaaa.

Yesterday though, was fun.

I went in to Okayama for a cherry blossom viewing party, called "hamami." I also saw one of my former students at the train station. She asked if I remember her, and I told her もちろん - or, "of course!" since she was one of the really loud cheerful students in my home ec girls class. Really thankful though that she didn't ask me what her name was because yeaaaaaaah I wouldn't have actually known. I'm so bad with names!

The hanami party was really fun though. My friend Maeve organized it, and a bunch of us went down to the river area and sat under the cherry blossoms, drank, and had a grand old time. Hanami - which literally translates into something like "flower look" - is where you go for a picnic with friends or family in a place with cherry blossoms and enjoy both the beautiful flowers and the good company. Often times as well, people will bring portable BBQs -- or in the case that it's near a famous place, they'll have a place where you can rent one. Usually too, people will drink alcohol as well as they watch the cherry blossoms fall. It's kind of like a giant excuse to drink during the day.

It was especially fun though, because it was like a big group BBQ, so I got to see a lot of people whom I haven't seen in ages! That's why I really enjoy going to the AJET events and big group stuff, though my closer friends are also fun to hang out with. Even if there are going to be people there I'm not really fond of (and at times want to punch lol, but let's be honest, my bark is way bigger than my bite), the fact that I can see a bunch of other people as well make me look forward to going to more of these things.

So yesterday was basically a day of enjoying good company, a good view of flowers, and a tiny bit of daytime drinking to make the lights a little shinier hahaha. It's times like those that I feel like - despite being in the company of a bunch of foreigners - I'm truly in Japan.

Now that the winter doldrums have disappeared (mostly) spring and flowers and greenery (and bugs -- boo I'm such a downer!) have returned, and I've come to realize that I live in a very very beautiful place. In August, most people know (since I've been on a smallish bragging streak lol), but I'm leaving Takahashi to come back to California for graduate school at Stanford studying East Asian Studies, or basically, Japan and Japanese. I'm even getting paid for it! Actually, I've been trying hard not to brag, but every time someone says it inside me has a reaction like this:

I apologize if it's seemed like I was bragging. I'm trying not to. Sometimes when I'm alone though I giggle gleefully because oh my god Stanford is giving me money. 

Also, the slightly immature part of me that has a bunch of family and friends who are Cal alums and also got rejected from UC Berkeley want to say something like, suck it Cal, since omg, stanford, full ride. 

But that would be immature. Hee.

I digress. Since I'm leaving though, I've come to realize that I actually really really like Okayama and Takahashi, and not just -as when I first came here - "the scenery is beautiful" (which, really, it is). I've come to love the people here, the atmosphere, the students, the not-big-city feel, and of course, the scenery. And while I do prefer city atmospheres like Kobe and Seoul and San Diego (Tokyo and Osaka are a little too big for me) there's just a certain charm about Okayama that makes me happy to be here. Perhaps that's what rubbed me the wrong way about certain people in our prefecture, and some of the Interact ALTs here in Takahashi. They would count down the number of days before they were released from their hellish existence here, or would say things like that Okayama was ridiculously backwater and that the whole country thinks of it as a hicktown and how much they couldn't wait to escape. I guess this is how people from the midwest/south feel when us city folk poke fun at countryside places. I'd like to claim that it's different, but honestly, it probably isn't. 

I'm not going to lie - I really look forward to returning to burritos and cheddar cheese and chipotle. At the same time though, I'm sad that I'll be leaving my bug-infested second home. I really do love the people here. Everyone is so kind -- even the Chinese and Korean foreigners here, as much as I want to shake my fist at them for driving so damn fast and close next to me on my bike. Really, I've found so many small places here, and actually, I can get pretty much everything I need at Polka, albeit for a little bit more sometimes than I can obtain elsewhere. And Izumi is far, and there's no gym. And that I really probably would prefer to live in a city or suburb like Kurashiki or Okayama.

But still. I really do like Takahashi and Okayama Prefecture (and Niimi too!). The friendliness of the people and students and other teachers has made my experience wonderful and memorable, and I'm truly thankful for the opportunity to have lived here for my tenure on JET. I even like commuting now, up and down to Niimi, for all that means that a social life on Friday is impossible. Though maybe I'm biased since like, honestly the kyudo students make Niimi a thousand times more amazing. That's my favorite part about going to school, is getting to participate in kyudo and interact with students in that setting.

That's not even including all the wonderful foreigners I've met over here -- my fellow JETs, as well as the Japanese people I've met as well!

I won't miss the work though hahaha. I'm not super fond of lesson planning and it's kind of tiring to be this organized all the time with my classes, so I don't think I'll miss that very much. Maybe a little, after I leave and stop doing it. But what I'll miss the most I think, are the friendships and connections with people here. Those kinds of things though, I suppose, are the kinds of things that - given a little effort - can span over distance though, it's not quite the same as being here in person.

Ahhhh I'm getting so sentimental! Still have three more months! Guess we gotta make the most of it then, hm?

Okayama Adventures

Normally, I don't get to go to places that you need a car to get to (since that means relying on the kindness and time of the people around me who do have them). Today though, I went with one of my teachers (whom I'm losing in the spring due to the Great Teacher Shuffle, sadface) to an onsen in the eastern part of Japan called Notoro Onsen Tenkuu no yu 「のとろ温泉天空の湯」って。It's up in the mountains - the highest onsen in Okayama, according to my teacher. It had three baths for the women: two indoors and one huge outdoor bath that had a super amazing view of the mountains.

Oh yeah, and it was snowing. HECK YES. So we had the view of the mountains, trees covered with snow, and it was outside. :) The only thing that wasn't super awesome was the little worm thing I found on my teacher's arm from the wood haha. That was kinda gross. I blame it on the warm weather (despite the fact that it's getting colder now for some reason!).

I love onsen though. We ate lunch, stopped by a 「道の駅」"Michi no Eki" or "road's station" that sold a bunch of kinda rural things haha. I bought strawberries and veggies and zucchini seeds for really cheap. I was thinking of growing zucchini again (or trying to at least haha). Who knows how that'll go...

The last place we visited (before the supermarket anyways) was one of the three sets of caves in Okayama. I forgot the name. But there are two famous caves in Niimi City: Ikura-do and Maki-do. Ikura-do is accessible via train, while you must drive to maki-do.

We went to a different one. It was called 「備中鐘乳穴」（びっちゅうかなちあな）"Bicchu Kanachiana." It was really really pretty inside, and kind of hidden in the middle of the mountains. Like seriously, we had to drive up the mountain and then walk down to the cave. We were walking and suddenly, it was like WOAH there's a huge crack in the earth WOAH cave. I was so busy looking down (trying not to slip) that I didn't notice the entrance until really late and was so startled I nearly fell. XD


Inside was simply amazing. It's so crazy to think that inside these mountains are caves like this (I was warned not to go exploring in this area, since there were more of these kinds of hidden caves here). To me, seeing these caves is like looking at those amethyst rocks - the ones that look plain on the outside, but on the inside is just, woah. SPIKY. And beautiful.


My teacher was really surprised that I liked these kinds of things though. She told me that ALTs who like caves are kind of rare, and I think was really amused that I was constantly like "WOAH NATURE" and "OMG BEAUTIFUL" to everything along our drive to and from the onsen and inside the caves haha. 

I'm working on the post for the Philippines, but it's kinda long haha. Oops. Maybe sometime this week (I hope!). Also sometime I need to post about 大味 since I think it's an absolutely fascinating topic.


Also, facebook reminded me that today marks the one year anniversary for the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami disaster. I've been so impressed and so touched by the compassion, the hope, the whole... feeling of the entire country banding together to help out this one area. That area is still in need of help, make no mistake. It's been a long year (or short year) and there are still people who have no jobs, no livelihoods, who are still missing... 


Stay strong Japan (and everywhere that has been affected by large scale earthquakes, tsunamis, and disasters).

Queen of Bad Luck

Well, that was the worst string of bad luck I've experienced in a while. I guess I'm lucky that it was only bad luck for like... getting back home and not something worse like losing my wallet, or bad luck with my graduate school applications (which, I am very happy to announce, I have finished applying for!). I mean, I guess that's pretty bad luck anyways... but as they say... it could've been worse. I could have broken something or not healed as fast.

But yeah. I got discharged from the hospital Monday... but my journey didn't end there.

So, I wrote that entry at the hospital on Sunday night/early monday morning because I had very little to do. It was actually a good thing I was awake that late and writing because they came in to take my blood pressure, heartrate, and temperature while I was writing that. At 2 am! Crazy. But when I woke up in the morning, my fever was actually not as bad - practically gone. Breakfast was this congee/jook stuff that wasn't too bad, since they used like... actual chicken soup or something. And! They actually gave me a couple pieces of cantaloupe. This was big, since fruit was on the forbidden list. My stomach didn't make too many weird noises either. The doctor came back and told me that it was possible for me to get discharged that day, and that the customer service downstairs would help me get everything in order and rebook my flight and stuff. I had to pay an extra hundred dollars because they weren't able to find the same booking class I made the reservation in, but at that point it was like... ugh, I just want to get back.

So they made my reservation for the same flight I had missed: the 1am flight on Tuesday. This meant I was going to get back sometime around Tuesday afternoon. The whole morning was spent in correspondence with my prefectural advisor and emails to my teachers and supervisors and family and friends (one of whom kindly called my supervisor for me, since in Japan, monday was a national holiday... so nobody was going to be checking their emails until Tuesday when it was too late.) So people knew what was going on. I had to deal with things for insurance and stuff, with getting paper work. Once they knew I was going to get discharged, things like medication and paper work started to slowly but surely trickle in.

One of our family's friends who was working and living in Thailand came to visit me with his driver and stuff. He kindly offered to give me a ride to the airport if I could leave that afternoon when he visited, but at that point I didn't have all the paper work I needed, and they said taxis were fairly cheap so I just opted to take a taxi to the hospital since there was a protest happening near his wife's workplace, which was going to back up the traffic for two or three hours. Super sucky.

Before he arrived though, I had the chance to eat lunch and shower. Lunch was a chicken patty thing with two potatoes (I think that's like... one of the only main dishes I had those few days) and also pork wonton soup, which, to my surprise, was actually really freaking tasty. They gave me fish sauce to add to the pork wonton broth (which was like all the broth I had before, which is to say, it tasted like water). But the fish sauce? Oh my god. It was like magic. IT MADE IT TASTE AMAZING.

Showering was more interesting, since I was still attached to the IV drip at that point. I had to call the nurse in to ask her how I should shower, if she could just disconnect the IV drip from the bag for a little bit and then... she disappeared. I got super worried, because I thought she was going to take the IV out of my hand and then put it back in when I finished. I don't think I could have done that again, put the IV back in my hand. I mean, I had a hard enough time doing it when I was half conscious and sick and kinda in pain already, but now? I was like, no way.

Luckily for me, when the nurse returned, she told me that I didn't actually need the IV anymore, so she just took it out for good. It left a huge bump in my hand, and is still a little sore when I press on it now or stretch my hand. I also have a little dot there where it went in. My bruise from where they drew blood has finally disappeared too. I think I almost passed out when they drew my blood, cause I could feel myself get lightheaded and start to do that ah-ha-ha-nervous-laughter kind of thing after they were pulling blood for a few moments. Part of me panics a little, but usually I'm able to keep it under control unless they pull blood for too long.

The shower was really really nice though, since I hadn't showered since I left the Philippines (though other than being sick, it's not like I really did anything...)

Eventually, I got all my paperwork that I needed for insurance stuff - it turns out that we JETs *are* covered when we travel abroad, through both the national insurance as well as an additional JET insurance, which is good, because my bill was *not* cheap. I was also told that my hotel was not one of the cheapest hotels - er, and by hotel I mean hospital, but inside kinda felt like a hotel. People spoke English there and it was super clean and nice. And there was the clinic visit, the ER visit, the hospital food, the room itself, the doctors, the ambulance... yeah, thank god for insurance.

Right though. So after I got discharged, I went to the airport since they said that I wouldn't really have much time to explore the city on my own, plus at that point I was more concerned about getting home than I was about looking around. Plus, I decided that it probably still wasn't a good idea to eat like... street food with my stomach, so I elected to stay at the airport after checking in. Read or something.

I did get to hang out with my friend though! She actually came to the airport to visit me :) That made me super happy. She also helped me go on a manhunt for my baggage, since we weren't sure if it was in Thailand, Beijing, or in Osaka since it had been checked all the way in theory. Eventually, after being let back in to baggage claim, we managed to find it and they brought it out for us. THank goodness! We had dinner together (and I got some pad thai, which she pronounced to be not actually pad thai but hey, I wasn't super picky at that point) and waited until I could check in for my flight before parting ways. She was one of my friends from my study abroad program, The Scholar Ship. I hadn't seen her in five years, so it was a super special treat to be able to see her again.

At 1 am, I boarded my plane from Bangkok to Beijing and decided I was going to sleep for most of it. ANd sleep I did, when they weren't serving us food (which actually wasn't half bad). But when I woke up, we had landed... in Taiyuan, about 6-7 hours away from Beijing, where we were supposed to be. Nobody knew what was going on, but eventually, my seat buddy, who spoke Chinese and English, found out and then passed along that we were unable to land in Beijing due to "fog" (I don't think it was just fog...) so we were going to chill there until we got cleared.

So we sat there. For three hours. THREE HOURS. They gave us these biscuit cookie things... but they weren't letting anyone off the plane. By the time we were actually cleared to leave, we still had an hour of travel to do. By the time we got into Beijing, it was already 11:30 am.

My connecting flight to Osaka was supposed to be at 8 am.

We got put at the very end of the terminal... and holy christ, Beijing's airport is HUGE. There are actually two (or three?) terminals, and I was lucky in that I was in the same terminal... but I swear, it's like a half mile to where the transfer area is. I almost ran to the international transfers counter, where they told me (after having to wait ages behind this really slow couple) that my plane had already left a while ago. I was like, wtf.

They rescheduled me for another flight, one that left at 4. I really should have asked them, or someone, if I could reschedule my flight to the one that left two hours earlier. I went to the gate to see if there was anyone, but I only saw that the flight was delayed an hour and there was still nobody at the gate, an hour before it was supposed to fly. So I decided I would get lunch since that'd at least probably boost my mood, and send off a few more emails and check train times.

Lunch was really tasty. I didn't have Chinese food... kinda. I had suejiao, or boiled dumplings. They were pretty tasty :3 and I had lasagna, since who knew when I was going to get that again. It was hella small though. And they had a charger area as well, so I was looking up train times and emailing people while I killed time. I figured an hour difference wasn't too bad, though my flight was going to maybe not get me back in time to take the last train to Takahashi.

After lunch, I went to check the boards again since I had no idea where my gate was and started walking towards there.... and then I checked the board again closer, only to find out my flight had been delayed an hour as well.

I started to panic. I pulled out my computer and checked the train times again... only to find out that now, instead of missing the last train back to Takahashi, there was a very real chance I would miss the last train back to Okayama. And the flight I was thinking of asking to transfer to was in its final boarding call, so basically, I couldn't make that flight.

I think at that point, I got really down because I was like, what do you mean, I can't even get back to my home prefecture? We were slightly delayed in getting off the ground as well because a couple people were late and also I don't know what.

We landed in Osaka and I practically ran off the train and to get my bags and everything and through customs. By the way, bringing cans of food and oatmeal in to Japan? Totally doable. Worth hauling a heavy suitcase everywhere. Now the problem is... do I hoard it, or do I just eat it whenever I feel like it? Decisions.

But I got out and ran to the train station and decided against buying a shink ticket since I wasn't a hundred percent sure when the train left and all, or if I would have time. I decided on taking JR for some stupid reason, and got on the first train that left there since it was cheaper.

It wasn't until I was on the train that I checked the times and stuff. I had come in a couple minutes too late for the subway line that would have gotten me to the shink station in time, so getting back tonight was kind of impossible. The trains that I could have caught wouldn't actually get me to the station in time. One train got in two minutes after the train left. There was only a train that went back to Himeiji, still a good hour and a half away from where I was.

So knowing this, I decided to look for a place to stay, and messaged the people on our Okayama AJET group asking for suggestions and found a place that wasn't too far from the train station for a not ridiculous price. They had free breakfast too. I decided to go there and decided that I was going to try to catch the first train back, which would have gotten me back to school actually on time for work, maybe.

By the time I got to the hotel and checked in, it was already like... 00:45, but I was feeling super gross so I decided to take a shower after getting a little settled and sending off some emails to people so they had an update on what was going on. When I got out of the shower.... I discovered that the water was stuck or something, and it wouldn't actually turn off. It wasn't a small trickle either. I'm talking like, gushing water. It had two settings. Gushing, or torrential gushing downpour. Not the kind of thing you want to keep running, so I contacted the front desk and they told me that I would have to change rooms. At 2 am. By the time I actually got into bed, it was 2:30, and at that point, I was like, no way am I going to be at the train station by 5:45 to catch the 6 am train. I actually tried to wake up at 6:30 to catch the next train... but I woke up and then decided that sleep was a better idea for my body, and went back to sleep.

The trip back to Okayama, thankfully, was rather non-eventful. I'm okay with that. I got back, ate lunch, and then went in to work since I had to talk to some of my teachers and get stuff sorted out.

Longest. Trip. Back. Ever.

So, if you count the days I was sick, from when I was supposed to be back...
I was supposed to get back to Takahashi Sunday around 1pm. I didn't get back until Wednesday around 1pm. It took me three extra days to get back.

Hot damn.

Never flying through Beijing again though, if I can help it. It's not worth saving that much money to get dicked over that hard and for that much stress. I'm not overly fond of Air China either and their old planes.

I'm just happy to be back.

Oh, also I turned in my paper work for my recontracting. In a way, it was kind of easy since I had already made the decision to apply to graduate school a long time ago, and the deadline for the papers was long before I would find out any results.

Bittersweet. It feels like I have a limited amount of time here. It makes me sad though, because the people here are just so... awesome.

Midyear Workshops

December feels like it's moving way too fast.

In about five days, I'll be back in California for my friend's wedding, as well as for Christmas. It would be a lie to say I wasn't excited...

...but at the same time I'm like "OH GOD NOT READY TO LEAVE JAPAN YET."

This past week (and by week, I mean wednesday, thursday, and friday) we had our midyear seminar (or, to go by the new name, "ALT skill development conference"). It was three days of seeing a lot of people I haven't seen in a while, and it was kinda weird actually seeing so many foreigners for three straight days in a row and hanging out with people three days in a row. I mean, that kind of stuff just doesn't happen very often. Usually I'll see people on the weekends at best. One of my friends was kind enough to put me and another girl with a 1.5 hour commute up in her house for the past few days (since we went to Kobe the day after - more on that later!).

At midyear, I was selected to be one of the speakers (an honor, really, as much as I complain about how much work and stress it caused hahaha) for a topic about "Team Teaching Positively." It was only given to the senior high school JETs, which was less than half of the overall JETs, which was nice. Everyone's Japanese Teacher of English (JTEs) was there as well, since our teachers attended the conference for the first two days, and my workshop was given on the first day as the last workshop.

I was really surprised that it went off quite well, since I felt a little under prepared for giving the workshop since I was constantly glancing at my notes since I hadn't the time to memorize the general outline of the presentation. All the feedback that I got from everyone else was positive (though some small part of me can't help but wonder if they're just being polite and not criticizing my presentation) and during the workshop itself, when we divided into pairs to make mock-lesson plans, groups were actually pretty enthusiastic and actually wanted MORE time to work on their things and needed MORE time during the group work. We were actually over our time by about twenty minutes. Twenty! But people wanted more time to share stuff, and thankfully the workshop before ours ran really really short. I'm taking that though, as a sign that people at least didn't think the workshop was boring, and that (hopefully) they got something out of it. And possibly even liked or enjoyed it. I know I thought it went pretty well. Hooray! Even our Coordinator of International Relations, who joined in as an ALT because we were one person short.

Super props to my JTE though, since she was giving the workshop with me! I mean, it's hard enough getting up there and speak in front of a bunch of your peers in your native tongue... but she did it all in English. I'm super proud of her. :D I really enjoy working with that JTE, and she's nothing but supportive of me, so I'm really really lucky that she works with me. Thankfully, I've had little to no problems working with her and planning the lessons. Like really, she's one of the best JTEs I've had.

This brings me to the next thing I want to talk about. Well, rant, really. I'm still not happy about it. The first workshop, the one before mine, was supposed to be about Problems with Team Teaching. In theory, we were notified at least two weeks in advance, since we had to turn an outline of our workshop in to the prefectural board of education by November 25th, while the seminar itself wasn't happening until the 9th.

I don't understand then, how the presenter managed to talk about absolutely NOTHING RELATED TO TEAM TEACHING. I honestly couldn't tell you what the point of her presentation was. The only things I got out of it were: Different grade levels have really similar interests but different things they're worried about; Use pop culture in the classroom; the opposite gender is on JHS people's minds; my group was really not creative and really kind of Gold/Green groups (aka, had really strong personalities and had to Make Lists First and Use Bullet Points before we could even THINK about drawing pictures); If You Use Pop Culture For Lessons Things Will Probably Be More Interesting. I guess I should elaborate. For the workshop, we were split into groups by trying to find the animal we were given without talking (save for animal cries, but I got a kangaroo so I just looked for everyone else who was jumping). Then we were told to "use our imaginations" to draw a student from X grade (ours was 3rd year senior high school - they ranged from 1st year Junior High to 3rd year senior). This took the entire time, along with doing a presentation and her small conclusion at the end of the workshop.

Yeah. Nothing to do with team teaching AT ALL. In fact, her JTE pretty much introduced himself AND THEN STOOD TO THE SIDE THE WHOLE TIME AND DIDN'T SPEAK FOR THE REST OF IT.

I guess I'm kind of annoyed because I know I put a lot of effort into making my workshop. I put effort into creating it and making sure my JTE could share part of the presentation since it was a presentation about team teaching. We didn't get any feedback from the BoE... but seriously, how did this girl's presentation even get through?! How did this girl become an ALT if she can't even give a workshop that's on topic?

Perhaps I'm being too harsh. There was also a mix up of time; she thought that she had gone over in time or something, because she apologized at the end. So perhaps she got the workshops mixed up? Maybe she was given very little notice to make this workshop? Maybe there was miscommunication about the topic and the time?

Either way though, even if there was short notice and communication failure, I still think it's not that hard to make a workshop that's at LEAST on topic. Even if she thought her workshop was about I-don't-know-what-the-hell, and she didn't get the schedule from the prefecture (which she should have) she should have seen on the day of that her workshop was going to be on "Problems with Team Teaching" and panicked and either changed her workshop or at least said something before her presentation about the change of topics.

Hell, I would have been willing to come up with a freaking workshop over lunch and I'm willing to bet it still would have been better.

I think I'm also annoyed/angry because that workshop had real potential to actually be useful. I was looking forward to talking about problems with team teaching, as well as solutions to said problems. Like how to approach your JTE about being used as a tape recorder. What JTEs think is the best way to solve the lack-of-time-to-talk-to-you problem. The not-being-used-in-the-classroom problem. Or I don't know, SOMETHING useful.

I am disappoint. D: But I guess at least my workshop went well-ish, and the people at the JHS/Elementary seminars heard workshops on the right topic.

The rest of it was alright. There were some good workshops, but there were also some bad. One talked about "Self-Access Learning" which is basically a pretty good way to go about teaching a language to students who have a high level of motivation and provides a framework for doing self study. It encourages the use of materials the student finds interesting and the teacher is there to guide the students by offering ways to evaluate learning, strategies, and material sources. It would work really well with students who choose to take a language, or at a university setting. But for a bunch of students who are required to take English? No. It would end up with a bunch of students who aren't doing anything but pretending to study. Maybe. And he was telling us that we should implement this kind of study, and asked us where we thought we could do something like that. Us high school teachers were lucky, since we at least have English Clubs/English Speaking Societies, but at JHS and Elementary? Or at Technical high schools? Fat chance. It's not a realistic expectation, so that workshop was not helpful at all since we couldn't really use anything he talked about. Shame, because there was another workshop that should have been two hours instead of this one.

The speaker was also using really academic language to give the workshop, which would have been alright if he were only talking to native speakers of English (aka, us ALTs). However, the JTEs were also in that workshop, and there were some teachers whose English wasn't super strong; academic English was far too advanced for them. I guess it was probably a good thing that my other JTE didn't come with me, because I'm pretty sure that would have shattered her confidence in speaking English. Having watched Tale of Genji today in Japanese and having understood only when they say things like "wake up" or "goodbye" or "good night,"my Japanese confidence got pretty shattered as well.

Guess I'll have to work on that. Sigh.

Ahhh I'm leaving too soon! NEED MORE TIME.

Village Hidden in the Leaves

The weekend of the 8th and 9th (a three day weekend for us here in Japan - I got Monday off too!) I went with a friend to explore the northeastern part of Okayama, a part of my prefecture that I had never ever been to before. It's not like I've had much reason to go up there. Tsuyama City is the largest city in that part of the prefecture, and getting there is not easy. You can drive there if you have a car, of course, and that makes things a billion times easier. It still takes about 70-90 minutes though, and that's with taking the ridiculously expensive expressway (like a toll road).

But for those of us without cars, we are left with a couple options. One is the bus; I'm sure there's a bus that goes up to Tsuyama from Okayama, and possibly even from Takahashi. Second is the train. There are two trains that will go to Tsuyama. One of them is from Niimi (which, in itself is 30-40 minutes away by train). That train leaves not very often, and takes a ridiculously long time to get there. I think from Takahashi it's at least three hours? That basically goes across the northern part of the prefecture, probably in a one man train. I bet it's gorgeous. The second train requires getting to Okayama, and then taking the Tsuyama line up there. From Okayama it's somewhere between 40-60 minutes depending on if you get the train that skips some of the stations or not, and about 1400 yen, one way. So like, to get there from Takahashi is a little under two hours, if you get your connections right.

However, our destination was not Tsuyama. Oh no. My friend, who's a huge Naruto (a Japanese comic about ninjas) fan, wanted to visit this town called Nagi, since the author of Naruto was born there, and based the Hidden Leaf Village off of his hometown. I was there mostly for support (plus I generally enjoy exploring the prefecture, and I had never been up this way). She wasn't sure if they had anything for the author there, or were trying to capitalize on his success with Naruto and turn it into a tourist destination. Either way, we figured that we would take the train there and, should it turn out that it was just another little rural inaka town that we would bring our Japanese study materials and study at a conbini or restaurant or something.


View Larger Map (B is where Nagi train station is. A is Nagi proper. If you zoom out once, you can also see where it is in relationship to Tsuyama. If you zoom out two more times, you can see where it is in Okayama prefecture. Also, for reference, I live in Takahashi City)

Our first sign that the town, at least near the station, had nothing to do with Naruto, was that we were the only two people to get off at the tiny station, which was basically a small platform surrounded by a vast amount of forest. You know in Narnia (the first movie) how the kids get off at a train station that's really empty and in the middle of nowhere? Yeah. That was Nagi Station. There was the one train track running towards it and away from it.

That being said, the place was absolutely gorgeous. They had pine trees and other trees that we don't have on the western side of the prefecture as much. The train ride was also really pretty. We saw a festival going on... but that looked like it was a good hour walk to get there from the station. We passed it at first and were like 'oh hey let's go to that festival!' and then we just kept going... and going... and then we passed this really pretty bridge and were like 'well I suppose we can walk there since the trains are going to be pretty sparce...' ...and then we kept going and finally, probably about a half hour walk away (so really, not too bad) we got to the station. We were the only ones who got off.

The station itself was in a place that was nowhere near any kind of buildings other than the board of education and a couple of houses dotting the small river it ran by. They all looked empty, and possibly like they weren't in use. Of course, it being the weekend, there was a fair chance they were in use, just simply closed. It being the inaka, there were spiders EVERYWHERE. Those huge yellow and black stripey spiders that get to be amazing sizes had managed to populate the area in the absence of people. It's kind of funny, since I don't actually mind those spiders, so long as they aren't in my house. Usually they just chill up in their webs and they don't really move. I haven't seen them jump or move like... ever. So I don't mind going up close to look at them or take pictures, especially since we have them everywhere in Takahashi as well. My friend though, being from Okayama city, was creeped out by them since they're kind of large, and I don't think they have many of them in the city.

Clearly though, from looking at the map, we missed Nagi proper by about... three hours. Three hours and twenty minutes, to be exact. That's how long it would have taken us to walk to the central part of the city, where presumably, there are things like the post office and maybe a restaurant or conbini, or at least vending machines. Oh well! Can't help that. The chances of us going back there are pretty slim, though, it was really really pretty. If we had a car or something, I'd be down for going back. But yeah. No car.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to do much exploring either. When we got off the train and walked down the steps from the platform, the first thing we did was check the time schedule for trains going back to Tsuyama. The next one was in half an hour, and the one after that was in not one, not two, not three, but FOUR HOURS. From what we saw, even if we walked to the festival, we would still end up with time to kill. And from our minimal exploring, there was no place we could actually sit down and study at, save the station. The station was actually a really nice building; probably the nicest in the area. It had a little bench area, as well as a book area (no Naruto though) and a sign telling you that the nearest thing from the station was about 1.5 km away. Hooray.

Also of interest within the immediate vicinity of the station was a signboard with a map of all the historical sights of the area. More interestingly, there was also a list of the village areas with a household and population count. They weren't very high. I think most ranged from 6 households (16 people) to somewhere around a hundred or two.

Most interesting though, was the fact that not only were these things written in Japanese, but they were also written in English. Clearly, this meant that, at some point in time, there was (and perhaps is?) an English speaker out in that area. I'm not sure why they had a sign in English about historical landmarks near the station, but to me, it hints that people - tourists - come to this area for one reason or another (though I hope for their sakes they come in cars, despite the sign being almost right next to the station). The bigger question is, what happened?

Well, we both agreed that we did not want to wait for the train in four hours, so, despite having just got there, we would leave on the next train in half an hour. Kinda lame but... oh well? It was about 12:30 when we got there, and we were expecting to be able to find like... something where we could at least get food. I don't think I even saw a bathroom around the area. We hadn't eaten lunch, nor had we brought anything with, which was kind of stupid of us. The next train left around 1 o'clock and the train after left around 4:30. It was going to take an hour to get back to Tsuyama (and thus, food). So we could either eat around 2 o'clock... or around 5:30, unless we happened to get really lucky and somehow stumble upon food (chances were looking pretty slim though). Taking this into account, it wasn't that hard to decide on the earlier of the two trains, since we were both pretty hungry. We had left Okayama sometime around like... 9:40, which meant that I had left Takahashi that morning sometime around 9 o'clock (though, that morning I had been really really dumb and missed the 8:10 train and had to wait for the 9:05 express train to get there on time). Needless to say, we had eaten sometime around then and were reaaaallly hungry. That part, we hadn't really thought about until then. Oops. Had I the chance to do it again, I would have made a point to bring something for lunch, even if it was just stuff from the convenience store.

With that time frame though, we pretty much had only time to wander around close to the station before we had to wander back again. Missing that 1 o'clock train was not an option. I wanted to walk to the bridge, but alas, no time.

That's basically the story of our really really short trip to Nagi Town. The outskirts of Nagi town, anyways. We eventually made it back to Tsuyama, where our priority was getting food. One of my teachers is from Tsuyama, and we had talked about how Tsuyama had lots of 'B-Rank' restaurants.

B-Rank restaurants have nothing to do with the American restaurant hygenic rating system (though, I'm willing to bet that the majority of B-Ranks here would get like... a B or C from that). Instead, B-Rank restaurants are like... one step below fast food restaurants. They're not fast food places like McDonald's, since you can't always take things to go. Usually, you eat at the restaurant. But the food is ridiculously fast, sometimes faster than the fast food service I've received!) And what's more, it's really good, and generously portioned. These are places like the ramen restaurants, or rice bowl (donburi) places like Yoshinoya or Sukiya, or like the okonomiyaki restaurants that Hiroshima and Osaka are famous for. You get your food really fast, and generally, you don't take that long to eat it. That's what a B-Rank restaurant is. Chipotle would probably be a B-Rank restaurant, though I'd wager that most Chipotles are larger than even normal restaurants here. For some reason, places are just really really tiny (even in the larger cities).

Anyways, Tsuyama is supposed to be famous for those kind of restaurants. The city, next to the station, is kind of grungy, and well... my teacher said that the city really comes to life at night when people are out drinking (and going to these B-Rank places after/while drinking beer) and during the cherry blossoms bloom. So we started to look for these places.

ホルモン焼きうどん、Grilled Horumon Udon

We found a couple places all advertising that they sold the B-Rank food Tsuyama was famous for: Hormone Udon ホルモンうどん。 Hormone is... well... Hormone are a mixture of organ meats that are supposed to give you more stamina. Typical ingredients include things like the heart, the liver, tripe, kidney, and stomach. Mmm. I've tried a couple things, like heart and tripe and stomach, but generally, I found out what they were after. Some of them aren't too bad either. So like... I'd advise trying it before you ask what it is. Seriously, it's how I get through Japanese meals sometimes. Generally if you try it and don't like what you eat, people will let you alone without giving you too much of a hassle. I promised my teacher that if he took me to a hormone udon place, I would at least give it a try (especially if there was beer to wash it down with).

Needless to say though, with just me and my friend there (and I tend to be one of the more adventurous eaters in my friend group here), we decided to forgo trying Tsuyama's famous B-Rank foods. Instead, we walked to the Tenmaya store (whose sign we saw from the street) across a bridge (with these HUGE fish! You could see them quite clearly from where we were standing on the bridge, a couple stories above the river), and into the building, hoping for food within the department store. I think we failed at finding stuff, because we could only find one family restaurant and the things they sold in the grocery section of the store. Oh, and a bakery. Eventually, we ended up eating at the bakery, since they not only had sandwiches (ham and blue cheese~! SO DIVINE) but also savory breads and things like (smallish) Japanese pizza slices that weren't that bad. I also ordered minestrone soup (which came from a bag), and I kid you not, it tasted like I was eating spaghetti-O's, minus the pasta. Really really weird. They also had a gelato place we hit up after that. Japanese gelato places are super fun, especially since they have things like matcha (which, as gelato kind of tastes like sweet grass) and seasonal foods like sweet potato and chestnut.

Yeah though, we didn't see too much else there so we decided to go back in to Okayama instead, where there were things to do (and eat).

We also went to the gardens that weekend, but I think I'll save that for a post when I can add my pictures in too!

Nerd Day

This weekend was pretty awesome, I gotta say. It had the right amount of active and nerd in it. :) I already talked about Sunday's whitewater rafting adventure, but Saturday was a lot calmer and hurt far less.

Saturday was my nerd day with a fellow JET in Okayama city. ♡ I came into the city on Friday night and stayed the night at her place. I actually came in that day so that we could study at Coco's, one of my favorite family restaurants here (it's seriously fukken delicious). Our reasoning was that because they have a drink bar, we could just stay there and utilize the drink bar as long as we wanted to and study Japanese. Their drink bar is pretty nice; it has a coffee machine as well as loose leaf teas. ♡ loose leaf! It was a very productive night.

We did come to the realization that yes, we were studying Japanese on a Friday night (and not only had looked forward to studying on a friday night, but were also having fun doing so). Kinda lame, I know, but ♡ nerds I mean, we also chatted, but a lot of what we did was study (after dinner, of course). The place was close enough to her house that we were able to take advantage of it not being disgustingly hot outside for once, and walked back to her place.

The next morning, we were back again at Coco's for their morning "baikingu" or viking or buffet style breakfast. Yeah we were there probably less than twelve hours ago, but I mean come ON breakfast foods! ...not particularly like, gourmet breakfast foods, but they did have tasty curry and tasty breakfast breads and jam. And the drink bar. And it was all only 700 yen. ♡

After that, we decided to walk over to the Oriental Museum, since they were having an Egypt and mummy exhibit going on (which was the ultimate reason I had come into Okayama). First though, we stopped at the prefectural library, one of my favorite places in the prefecture. ♡ You can check out books from the prefectural library via your local library (or in my case, my high school library) in the interlibrary exchange program. It's pretty awesome. But you kind of have to know what you're looking for sometimes. That's why I like to browse when I can, and since we were passing by and had a bunch of time to kill...

I swear we hit the jackpot. Or I hit the jackpot. They had back issues of Bon Appetite (though fat lot of help that does us here in Japan where we can't get half the ingredients), but more importantly, their English language selection is pretty vast and really varied. They have a really decent social sciences section too; lots of stuff on gender studies, but also an impressive collection of academic books about food and culture. Hell. They even had the Food and Culture reader by Counihan. It was massive. I practically wept with joy; as it was, I became a library fangirl almost instantly.

Either way though, I found enough literature to keep me busy until probably at least december; and that's if I'm constantly reading everything I check out in a timely manner.

The first two books I picked up were Afternoon Tea and Foodways and Folklore (Thursby 2008). Afternoon Tea is a cute (short) book with lots of pictures that briefly talks about the origins of tea and then primarily focuses on the origins of tea customs and practices in the West (ie, England mostly). It was a very interesting, if short read that I finished when we decided to kill more time after visiting the museum at a cafe, reading and drinking tasty tasty tea. ♡ The other book is pretty interesting as well. It's a bit longer, and is more academic. There are countless numbers of articles and books I can grab references from, and it's interesting to read. It focuses on the food and foodways of mostly America, which, at the moment, I find incredibly fascinating. My views of what American food is (and isn't) has changed a lot since I've left for Japan. I used to mock the way Americans, in Japanese manga and anime anyways, are portrayed as always loving hamburgers (and sometimes fries, shakes, and apple pie). I only agreed with maybe one of those things as American - apple pie. To me, before, American food was ridiculously complex and near impossible to define because there were so many variations, so many immigrants, and so many regional differences that there was no one or two things that could be defined as "American food" (turkey, apple pie... and maybe BBQ style foods were the only ones I could think of).

American food is complex in that sense; that there's a lot of people who make up "America" and defining one thing over the other is really hard to do. However, after spending more time here in Japan, American food - to me - has come to mean "stuff that you can eat only in America and can't really eat anywhere else and also is pretty popular plus foods that lots of people eat and that the rest of the world thinks we're weird sometimes for eating plus stuff that people in America have eaten for friggin ages"

American style breakfast is, I think, pretty unique. Proper breakfast anyways. Slow, weekend breakfast. A full breakfast I guess you can call it. The British have quick and not so quick breakfast too, but the contents are vastly different. Here in Japan... some students have told me they have miso soup and rice for breakfast. Others have natto, and still others will have just bread (pastry bread from conbinis) or rice balls for breakfast. Sometimes, I too have rice balls for breakfast from the convenience store. I don't actually know if people eat pancakes or waffles for breakfast here (though waffles, often with ice cream or fruit and whipped cream, are a popular dessert). The closest thing I've seen to an american breakfast is the "breakfast set" some cafes offer: toast, salad, and coffee or tea and maybe eggs. Maybe not eggs. Oh yeah, salad for breakfast is a thing here (and sometimes, french fries are too).

It's funny though, cause yesterday in the car ride home, to stay awake I talked with the driver and we pretty much made ourselves ridiculously hungry by talking about the foods that we loved to eat. We went through like, top three desserts, top three chocolate bars, top three cakes, top three ice creams, top three savory foods, top three burgers, foods for your last meal, top three people you'd eat your last meal with, where you'd eat your last meal at... yeah, we were pretty much starving by the time we got back. We even stopped at a rest area because my friend had such a huge craving for chocolates (he has a huge sweet tooth to make things worse). This is sometimes a downside of talking to me.

Anyways. The museum exhibit was pretty cool. There were even things in English that we could read (I think the exhibition came from London) and they had two mummies and a couple sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?) on display. It was freaking RAD. They also had these gorgeous Egyptian style dresses, but those were kind of expensive (about 14,000 yen, or ~$150 which... isn't actually that much compared to a formal style dress). They had this area too where you could smell frankincense and uhhhh... something else. Some kind of wood - not sandalwood but uhhh... something else that was really earthy smelling. I forgot. But I sweartogod I've smelled frankincense somewhere else - and not at a funeral home or crematory.

After, we killed time at a cafe and read for a while until it was time to go to a Book Exchange that someone in AJET was starting. Brilliant idea. If only I hadn't just gone to the library. So much reading to do~Good thing classes haven't started yet. I meant to go back home earlier, but a couple of new JETs came and I was like ahhh I want to say hello since they both live pretty close to where I am. I totally meant to go back and make swedish meatballs. I'm doing that today, actually. I ended up eating dinner hella late (omnom curry from Coco Curry House~) so I wasn't hungry at all by the time I got back home, and so ended up not making them. I get tired kind of early now. But yes. That 24 hour block was kind of amazing. Like I said, saturday (and friday night) was like, my nerd day. ♡

You need slow (but still productive) quiet days like that sometimes, I think. Recharge the soul and the mind!

Orphanage Visit

And now for something completely not food related, I swear.

One of the things Okayama AJET does is organize visits to the local orphanage in Okayama City. It's seriously one of the most fun and mutually-beneficial things I've done, volunteering wise in my life, I think. The visit was fun for pretty much everyone, and required only us to be able to make it into Okayama. I completely forgot which day it was on, but it was some time over the weekend. Sunday. It was Sunday, October 24, the weekend before Halloween weekend. So of course, our visit was Halloween themed. One of the dudes organized a bunch of Halloween games for the kids to play and a couple of us brought things like stickers. Oh man. So many stickers.

Eventually, I will get my album of this up. The kids were really really really cute. And wow. So much energy. If that's what teaching at elementary/preschool is like, I don't think I would have the energy for that. I think we spent a good hour minimum running around. Actually, we probably spent more time on that since the first hour we were there we pretty much played several games of tag with the kids (all independent of each other. It was more like, a kid or group of kids chose you to be 'it' and you chased them). At first, a bunch of us were super shy (others dove straight in) but eventually, I think everyone was involved in at least one game of tag. And seriously. I haven't played tag since like... middle school at least, and quite possibly elementary school. I forgot how much continuous running tag requires too. I was tired after several rounds.

We also played variations of tag, including "stuck in the mud" which was hilarious simply because there were us huge adult people and these tiny kids, and it required you to dive through people's legs to unfreeze them...

Some of the larger dudes made a tunnel. I kind of shied away from unfreezing anyone lol, cause I was like, ummmmm no not happening. There was this really adorable little kid who was sitting on the sidelines and would run out and unfreeze people. Super duper cute. :)

What else did we do... let's see...

There was a game that, I swear, was exactly like sharks and minnows except for not in the pool. That was fun. So much running. So much confusion at first lol.

We played 'telephone' or 'chinese whispers' with halloween too. The second round we got all tangled up in our section, but, as we discovered, it became hard to pass on. But man. It was funny. I might have deliberately "misheard" whatever the kid sitting next to me said, especially since I knew what the word was supposed to be...

The game we ended on (and when we finally got to pass out all 209348235 stickers we had brought) was with Heads Up 7 Up. It had a different name, but I forgot what that was. I had a small girl sitting in my lap. X) I was like YAY when that happened. It felt so... maternal lol. Even though I have no sense when it comes to taking care of or really, what to do with kids. I am not a good babysitter cause I have no idea a) how to hold babies b) how to get kids to stop crying and c) what to do with crying kids. Eventually, at the end we just started handing out stickers left and right. Some kids were *literally* covered in stickers. One kid's arm was covered in stickers. It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

The other fun thing about the visit is I got to see a whole different side to a bunch of other people that I usually don't get to see, since whenever we hang out, generally it's not work related (or even if it is, it's not teaching). It was a more playful side to everyone, because well, most of the kids were really young (like elementary age I think; I'm bad at recognizing what age people are or what level in school they are if they're younger than high school).

That day might have been raining, but it rocked kinda hard. Like those kids are fantastic. There weren't many older kids, but there were a whoooole lot of younger, crazy, high energy, super genki little ones. It made me kind of wish I taught younger kids too. It seemed like they had fun. We had fun. I've never run that much in my life for that long hahaha.

I will most definitely be going back on the next trip.