Do you remember...?

Generally, I look upon not having classes as a kind of holiday almost, since it frees up the better part of my day to do things like... sit at my desk... study Japanese... and wander around talking to students occasionally. I mean, it's a mixed blessing, since it often means I'm sitting for most of the day, don't have any club activities, and stand a good chance at being bored unless I can find something to do (and even then!)

I had only one class today, since the second years are on their class trip and my single first year class today was cancelled because another teacher wanted that spot, and since the other first years weren't having Oral Communication (my class!) my team teaching partner decided to keep it even. (I'm so jealous of Japanese school kids! A class trip sounds like so much fun. We didn't really do much as a class except for during senior year. Senior picnic at water world, and then grad night locked in the bowling alley together. I don't count the individual honors class trips we took to DC and Oregon, though those were amazingly fun. But I mean seriously, these kids get the chance to go to Tokyo or Hokkaido together for a week or something. Super. Jealous.)

I don't know how I ended up leaving work at SEVEN O'CLOCK. My normal working hours are until 4 o'clock! What's wrong with me?! This isn't even a singular special event. I often find myself at school (especially my base school) far longer than my technical working hours, whether or not I have club activities.

I missed having OC though. This year's group of first years at my base school are super fun! They have a lot of energy, and they're good kids. :)

Last week, as a reward (kinda) my team teaching partner and I decided that while they're working on making their menus (the unit we're on is restaurants! Ohohoho.) we could play some music to make it a little bit more enjoyable.

Little did we know what we were getting into...

Unfortunately, we only had my small iPad speakers to go off of, but oh man! I love the boys in my last class. I asked them what they liked. They said Lady Gaga. They asked me if I had telephone, and I said unfortunately no (fail at pop culture, self) but that I did have other songs, so we started with that. We played Born This Way and had a grand old time of it. The boys in the front started dancing, bless them. It was pretty awesome. They sang along too, and we had a fun little talk about what the words meant (since they asked, and I was more than happy to oblige). When Lady Gaga finished, I put on some Michael Jackson (they asked for We Are the World, which I also don't actually have, another failure on my part) so I played The Way You Make Me Feel, and then after that they asked if I could play Thriller (which they danced to).

The best part though, is that I had gone back to change songs to play a little bit of Earth Wind and Fire, since I swear Japan is full of stuff like the Carpenters and the Beatles, who are probably okay (I don't think I've listened to the Carpenters outside of Japanese classrooms though) but I mean like... very little soul, R&B, or funk or those kinds of music. Plus two weekends ago when I went to Kibichuo (which was awesome. I should really write about that sometime), we woke up with a song since for some reason September was in everyone's heads and hearts, so while we were making breakfast we played September on repeat and just sang and danced our way through breakfast. It was beautiful. Oh, but I digress. I put on September, thinking they probably wouldn't know it (since I had asked them if they knew Earth Wind and Fire, and they replied negative).

They totally knew September.

Well enough to kind of sing/hum their way through the whole song, while also dancing along.

Best. Class. Ever. I love these kids! They're so much fun. I'm going to be ridiculously sad when I have my last class with them. I'm already sad that I didn't have class with them this week!

Bullying in Japan

It makes me a little sad to say this, but this class of first years is the worst that I've taught so far (out of three different class years).

Don't get me wrong; it varies a lot by school, and at some of my other schools, the first years are a lovely bunch. But as far as kids with Attitude Problems, this year takes the cake. There's always been some students with motivation and attitude issues, especially at the technical schools. Generally (though not always) they're in the non-academic electricity/technology courses, since those are all boy classes (to be fair, boys at my academic school are a little rowdy as well sometimes). And the boys seem to aggravate each other, or one yankee kind of student will influence other students around him to be similarly bad (though this happens with girls too).

Hopefully things will get better though?

As an ALT who works in the countryside though, I've always considered myself lucky because my students have always been really nice, not like some of the horror stories I've heard students from around the cities talk about. No crazy boys punching each other or whatnot.

At least not until yesterday.

It was the first time I saw bullying in full force, beyond the usual taunting and picking on and mocking that will happen occasionally in the classroom. Literally, there were punches thrown and wrestling and forcibly restraining one student from moving and participating in the game we had been playing.

The "My Good Neighbor/Anyone Who/English/Ice-breaker Knock off of Fruits Basket" game can sometimes get a little crazy with students running and diving for seats, but I hadn't expected it to get this out of hand. Some of the students would, when one student stood up, would also stand up and grab the student so he couldn't sit down, and then throw the student away from the seat as they made a dash to grab the empty chair.

It was appalling and shocking. I didn't think the kids were this ballsy to be this mean and obviously violent against another student in the middle of class. In the middle of class. In front of two teachers! But no, they kept on going at it, even after we interrupted a couple times to tell them to play better and despite giving the bullies several warnings. I got so angry that I almost stopped the game in the middle and made them sit in silence and write for the rest of class. But this is Oral Communication class, so there's a part of me that doesn't support doing something they're going to have to just sit and write.

Part of me wanted to just kick him out of class. I wish there were some system like detention here, but to my knowledge, if there is one, it's never utilized. If the bully was doing poorly in school, I think I heard that it's a bit easier to kick him out because it's likely he'll drop out anyways. But this kid... his English grades are actually really good. It might just be that he's simply really bored in class, and taking it out on this kid is his way of alleviating his boredom and is also a kind of performance so that people give him attention. Still though, even if that's the case, it's unacceptable, the kind of things he's been doing in class. It's disruptive and dangerous sometimes. This kid though needed to be disciplined. Badly. It doesn't help either that both me and my team teaching partner are women, since I think men have it a bit easier when it comes to intimidating the rowdy boys into behaving. Those are excuses though.

I just felt so bad for the kid who was being bullied. I talked to my teacher afterwards, and she talked to the class's homeroom teacher to tell him about the appalling behavior of that one kid. His response was that that kid was always like that, and that the kid they were picking on usually got picked on. He's a small guy too. It made me feel even worse, though mostly frustrated because both I and my JTE were unsure about how to proceed from here on out. Both of us were disappointed with how the class with, so much so that we're probably not using that room again in our lessons since it made most of the classes overly relaxed, undisciplined, and quite rowdy (though personally, I think not having a desk and sitting in a circle had something to do with that).

Today though, I was talking to my sister and she suggested that we're just so used to obeying orders that when people - the kids - don't, we get annoyed and want to discipline them with things like "okay you're going to sit and write here for the rest of the class and so help me god I better not hear you say a word." Believe me, I would have loved to either kick the kid out, make the kid sit isolated in the corner of the room (I don't really think he'd listen to me though), give him and the other misbehaving kids a homework assignment where they have to talk about how the other person probably felt and factor that into their grades or something.

If my Japanese skills were better, I would talk to them directly. In my head, I imagine I can speak perfect Japanese and that I give them one helluva dressing down and somehow manage to intimidate them into not bullying this kid any more. Or to somehow make it so they could experience the same treatment they were giving this kid. ...I'm allowed to dream, right? I suppose though, I should dream instead that they realize that hey, they're being mean idiots and they apologize to the poor boy and become good behaved students.

...yeaaah, one helluva dream.

Afterwards, my teacher told me that the bullied student, while he had been thrown on the ground, wrestled, held back, probably punched, and teased during class, had a strong heart so he was okay. But I'm worried that it's not, that he's just putting up a facade. Even people with strong hearts break sometimes though. Some people pretend to have strong hearts around others but don't actually. I'm scared that they'll bully him so much that he will join the ranks of students who become a tragedy and a statistic, another suicide. I don't want that to happen, especially since he always seems so cheerful. Like really, he's a sweet kid. I wish there was something I could do to help him, but short of speaking to the homeroom teachers and designing classroom activities with this in mind (guess who doesn't get to do games anymore) I can't really think of too many ways to work within this system I'm an outsider in, especially when I can't fluently speak the language.

We're taught to mock people who are hikikkomori - shut-ins - because they stay at home all the time; we presume they are wasting their lives away playing video games and that they simply do not want to be social. I heard somewhere (I forget where exactly, perhaps a friend, perhaps a news article) that bullying actually plays a sizable role in the reason why some kids become shut-ins. They don't want to go to school any more. I don't really blame them too, if I was going to get picked on, shoved, punched, tackled, and mocked every day. It's put a new perspective on this hikikkomori thing that's come from Japan; it's a lot more complicated than it seems.

Creative minds

So somehow I ended up with a bunch of papers to correct at 10 pm on Monday night (the fact that I didn't do any work this weekend probably had something to do with it). A lot of my classes are doing "how to" projects/presentations where they have to write about how to do something or make something and then (most of them) present it to the class.

This was supposed to be with a recipe unit, but we decided to open it up and let them choose whatever they wanted to (especially at the schools where students actually have electronic dictionaries, or even Japanese/English dictionaries). Personally, I think food is the easiest, which is what we suggested to most students, and why I've had to read through a bajillion different "how to make curry/omurice/hamburg" papers, since I swear, those are two of the simplest things to make in the Japanese student repertoire (and in general). We set a rule forbidding them anything that was already written in the book, which thankfully meant that we didn't have to tell them that "How to make instant noodles/ramen" or "how to make spaghetti" were off limits. We did have to clarify to them, however, that "Tamago kake gohan" or, as my brother calls it, "Egg gohan" or as my students call it, "TKG" was way way too easy. TKG, if you haven't seen it before, is a raw egg, soy sauce, and white rice mixed together. So were rice balls. Sorry kids, too easy.

Some of them have been pretty good. One group wrote how to do this Chinese dish that I don't remember the name for, and another did freaking pescatore pasta. That was pretty impressive. Then again, that kid is one of the ones whom I'm pretty sure has a secret love for English (or at least, really genuinely tries in class, which I really appreciate. He's such a sweet kid too. Kinda a brown-noser - like I'm pretty sure he's on the student council, but he's really polite. And really like.... embodies the country boy feeling lol. I'm not saying that to be mean either! But I mean, seriously, any kid who makes their group look up all the words for the seafood in pescatore... yeah. I'm going to miss having him in class next year.) Someone also did how to do a jump shot in basketball, which I thought was pretty clever.

Others have been more... interesting. Not necessarily in a bad way. Among the interesting ones, there's "how to please a person with a dog" and "how to be a bad kid." We also had a entry for "survivor curry" - which I'm pretty sure was the group (which has another pretty smart kid in it) just kind of dicking around. Their curry included ingredients such as parrot (wtf?), potatoes, pork, and alligator. I don't even know.

We also let them have free reign at drawing pictures to go along with their recipes. Once again, the Design students have exceeded my expectations. Their drawings... most of them are really good or really cute. The hamburg one had a gloomy bear with a (human?) hamburger steak. Another had this really... interesting... comic almost with this guy and a human-faced steak in it. I'll have to see if I can get a picture of that, because that was really really interesting haha.

The first years this year are really really interesting though. I'm definitely going to miss them when they move to second year. I think the boys in the electronics class were genuinely really really disappointed we weren't doing valentines day, because I'm pretty sure they all were like "CHOCOLATE FROM JESSICA?!?!?!?!!!!!???!??!" since in Japan, V-day is a girls giving guys chocolate day. Silly silly boys. I'm giving everyone chocolate next week, hahaha, since it's the last class and a kind of belated v-day. I really like this group of first years. :)

Oh, that kind of reminds me of something else I noticed in class. So there's this Brazilian kid whose English is actually really decent and even - dare I say it - good. Probably the best pronunciation in class. He started off the year as a kind of wild and loud kid who didn't always come to class, but recently I think he's changed. He's still loud, sure, but he actually gets the other kids to shut up, unlike the really loud kid in the back of the room who's just constantly shouting things about sex out (though I'm not entirely convinced he knows what he's saying). At least the Brazilian kid is polite when he talks to me, and actually does the work and stuff. So when my JTE - who is amazing - noted that the Brazilian kid was going to be absent and commented on how the class was actually going to maybe be quiet today since he wasn't going to be there and how we might actually get stuff done, I was kind of shocked and defended the student a bit by pointing out that this other kid was even louder so our class was not going to change. The fact that it's been done several times when this kid is absent makes me wonder if the kid just made a really bad first impression, or if it was actually because he wasn't full Japanese or even Japanese looking. I know he's actually pretty smart and probably understand most of what I say. I'm pretty sure he's pretending that he doesn't always. But whatever. He doesn't draw penises (boys are pretty much the same everywhere I guess) on the fogged up window and actually tells the other kids to shut up when others are presenting, so I don't care. It's just kind of unfortunate that he carries this kind of image with the teachers though, cause I'm pretty sure if he were in an American high school, he either be on the honors track, or he'd be one of those really smart slacker boys.

Either way, I'm going to miss everyone I've met this past year when I leave Japan.

It's so weird to think about only having about six months left. D:

Festivals festivals festivals!

This weekend is a festival weekend, for some reason. I'm going to (or will try to go to, at least) not one, not two, but THREE festivals in only two days.

Three festivals in two days?

Challenge accepted.

This first festival was today. It was my Takahashi technical high school's open festival day (there are also performances and stuff but that is usually on a weekday). They had stalls and cares and a haunted house and displays and crafts or things the students made that you could buy. 

And so. Much. Food.

Once again, I purchased more food tickets than my stomach had room for, because it is so freaking hard to say no to students you actually like (and want to like you). Thankfully for my waistline, the portions were all Japanese sized (that is to say, tiny) so having two cookies and some juice meant having a small cup of milk tea (like teacup size... A small tea cup) and two cookies about the size of half dollars.

Basically, I ate my way through the whole festival, since I lack the desire to not be able to sleep at night (no おばけやすい, haunted house, for me). I could probably be coerced into that if I had a copious amount of alcohol in my system. But I was at school, so I didn't. 

So what kind of food did they have at the festival? There were a lot of repeats from the other festivals...

Yuzu ice cream daifuku (ice cream wrapped in mochi)
Yuzu pound cake
Two country ma'am cookies (country ma'am is a popular cookie brand here, like nabisco)
Oden (I got set A which had daikon, or Japanese radish, konnyaku noodles, and a cabbage roll, which is just cabbage wrapped around meat. The cabbage rolls are pretty tasty. But. It had no chikuwa (fish paste) or the other things I don't like in oden! It also came with this Yuzu flavored pepper paste stuff that was AMAZING.)
Curry and rice
Milk tea
Black tea
Cold green tea
Chocolate churro
Plain churro
Kinako dango (mochi balls rolled in this peanut-y powder)
Azuki dango (red bean paste mochi balls)
Mitarashi dango (mochi flavored with a thick soy sauce and sugar sauce)
Chicken yakisoba

I ate the dango and yakisoba after I got home. But I also bought bread they had made (how could I not!) and an apple pound cake. I'm saving those for later. The bread has cheese and BACON in it. I'm excited.

Other foods they had but I didn't eat:
Frankfurter and juice (despite this being sold by one of my favorite classes, I really don't like the frankfurters here. I really want to... But every time I buy one it just turns out to be a disappointment since the casing is usually ridiculously thick).
Caramel popcorn
Zaizen (I think,that's what it's called... It's mochi in red bean soup. Not the biggest fan of red beans)
Udon
...these pancake things with custard or chocolate or red bean paste in them
And
Deep fried takoyaki (takoyaki are balls of dough with pieces of octopus in them. You should google them if you don't know what they are. But these were deep fried and the line was always at least 30 minutes... So I bought a ticket but ended up giving it to my team teaching partner instead cause I wanted to go home and work on my grad school app)

I also missed out on eating at one of the cafes. THERE WERE THREE CAFES. WHY WERE THERE THREE CAFES?! Seriously... I think they were all run by the design classes. There was one themed around Christmas (there were a lot of christmas themed things... It made me kind of sad...) run by the third years, and the second year's was called Hayabusa, after the... Space thing. They built a model of the satellite and had the movie running. It was pretty.

The one run by the first years had one of the male students (whose english is pretty okay) in a dress and long brown wig. The poor thing looked MISERABLE. Some male students wear drag and girls clothing proudly and seem to be even more excited about wearing a skit and a wig than they do in their own clothes... But this kid was a poster child for unhappiness and embarrassment. I wonder if he lost a bet or dare or rock paper scissors... Or was being punished. But their theme was a manga cafe, so they had a bunch of people,dressed up in cosplay. It was really cute.

Yeah, the design kids usually have amazing things. They also had a life sized model of the wolf from princess mononoke- the one that she rode. Like, you could ride the model if you were a small Japanese person. It was really really good.

Oh I should make a note, that here, juice is sometimes used the same way 'soft drinks' or 'pop' is used or 'cold beverage.' IE, orange juice, soda, cider, calpis, and  sometimes tea are all included in this category. It still throws me off sometimes.

But yeah. That was my school festival. A lot of fun. I think the students were happy I came? They seemed excited... Especially when it came to selling me things lol. 

But now I am off to an all night karaoke... For charity! ALL YOU CAN KARAOKE FOR THR CHILDREN. And tomorrow there are two festivals I will attempt... Providing I can catch the first train back, get at least an hour of sleep at the karaoke place or McD's, change, and get out the house again. One festival is on the way to the station and the other is out in Yakage. Weeeee. Full weekend go! I guess it's a good thing I basically have a holiday on Monday... I still have to go to school, but I have no c,asses. And it's my base school. So yeah. Excellent.

And I mean, I'm doing cultural things, so like... That's a good thing to be out all weekend for, yeah?

Halloween!

Oh my god it's November already. WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN? I could have sworn it was still October last time I checked. That's probably why I haven't posted for a good half month (which, I suppose isn't too bad when you look at how long it's been since I've written a newsletter...).

The thing I've been the most busy with recently - in addition to studying for the JLPT and working on applications for graduate school - has been Halloween lessons. Since Halloween fell on a monday this year, we did all the lessons a week early, though I'm told by one of my Japanese teachers that a bunch of kids turned up on Monday and tried to trick-or-treat with her.

I almost feel bad for the ALT who will be replacing me eventually... these kids are all going to attack the person and try to trick-or-treat with them haha.
I really do enjoy giving them the candy though. Saying that makes me seem kind of creepy, but I swear it's not like that. I didn't do it as much this year since I got swarmed several times, but candy has been one of the best motivators to get them to speak English. In addition to teaching them the phrase "trick or treat" I also usually asked them a question. This year, in honor of the business I was giving Japanese dentists, the question was "What's your favorite sweet?" The kids who had better English had to answer in proper sentences heheheh.

There was also a Halloween party I went to with a bunch of other ALTs Friday night (since having it sunday would have destroyed us all). It was super fun, and I actually made my costume for that this year (though only a handful of people knew my costume, which made me kind of sad. I guess I'm used to having a bunch of really really nerdy friends lol). The costume was a white mage hoodie - a surprisingly easy thing to sew together (though technically, I cheated and glued the triangles on since I lacked the time). It was by no means good or perfect - the seams were laughably crooked and I forgot to save fabric for a liner for inside the hood so you couldn't see the seams, and completely forgot to sew down part of the triangles - but it still was pretty alright. I used the sewing machines at school, since my school has a dressmaking room for the home economics girls. Doing everything was actually kind of fun, though a little tedious. Hopefully, eventually I'll get pictures up. I wore that costume to my monday school and some of my kids thought I was santa. That made me even sadder. But I guess on the plus side they said it looked really cute?

We also had an "English in Takahashi" day the thursday before halloween. English club basically takes over one of the small shops owned by the schools in the covered mall area and does activities. Last year we played Simon Says for like... the whole time (I, for the record, am awful at Simon Says). This year, since it was so close to Halloween, we decided to do Halloween things. I wanted to carve pumpkins but those were kind of expensive, so we found crafts online instead.
Using pipe cleaners, we made little pumpkin finger... things... and spiders. We also used construction paper to make pumpkins and then we glued faces on them. There was also candy, and I went in my witch costume that I no longer have. Oh, and this water color thing I brought back from the states and some Halloween tattoos. Originally, I had intended for the kids to take like... one or two tattoos back with them, but there was kind of a communication error and they ended up taking a whole page of tattoos. Part of me was like "ARGGG NO WHY" but then again there were only 3 kids who came this year, which, I suppose, is still one more than last year. Yeah though, my Japanese Teacher of English really likes to start just giving things away and I was like noooo I have other uses for these. Oh well though, hopefully the kids are enjoying them. They were pretty cute, even if two of the kids there were brothers of one of the kids who does the Exchange Diary with me.

For all of my classes except for the one actually on Halloween, I wore a witch's hat, mantle, and orange feather boa to work. It was a lot of fun, and the reactions I got from people - both students and teachers alike - were amusing. It kept surprising people. They'd turn the corner, see me, and gasp, "BIKKURISHIMASHITA" which is basically shouted out "I'M SURPRISED." There's no swearing, just stating that you're ridiculously surprised. But yeah, that was fun. Sadly though, I only have the mantle from that costume now. The hat I forgot when we visited the orphanage for Halloween on sunday and the feather boa... well it was coming apart anyways, so I gave it to one of the girls at the special needs school. When I wore it there, she was just so fascinated by that that she played with the boa for the better part of an hour. I wish I could have given her a new one, since this one was constantly losing feathers (and they'd make her go pick up the feathers). Those things were from either Daiso or the cheapo section of Toys-R-Us, so I really didn't mind. I'm glad the feather boa has an owner who doesn't care that it's losing feathers. She just looked so happy when she was playing with it... how could I say no? I couldn't.

Halloween in Japan though... is really a kids thing and a retail thing, I think. All the candy goes Halloween themed. But there's not much more. A student told me that houses in Japan are a little small, so having parties at them... not so great actually. After seeing a couple of my friend's places, I can see why. THose places are *tiny*. My place isn't, though sometimes I wish it was. It's not like people come over to my place. I should probably fix that, but seriously... we usually either go into okayama city, or I'll go to the guys' places because they have video games or whatnot.

But anyways.

I'm stealing this idea from one of the other JETs here: NaBloWriMo. Since I don't have the time to be writing a whole entire novel during this month with studying for the JLPT and with applying for graduate school (which, ahem, I should be doing now, rather than writing this blog post) the goal is a blog post a day! And to get the godforsaken newsletter out at some point in time. Yeah. Yeaaaaaaaaah.

LET'S WRITING.

Hotaru Matsuri

Tonight, I went with some of the ALTs in Takahashi (and one from closer to the city) to a local firefly festival in this area of Takahshi known as Nariwa. Technically, until a couple years ago, Nariwa used to be its own town proper. Then Takahashi, giant sprawl that it is, kind of swallowed up Nariwa. But even still, a lot of the things are kind of distinct about it, and you kind of need a car to get there proper.

They were holding a firefly festival along one of the riversides in this absolutely gorgeous area. I'm quite sad that I didn't have my camera on hand to capture the gorgeousness of the area; nestled between mountains, the firefly festival area is considerably more rural than where I live. There are loads of rice paddies in tiered hills with traditional style houses. There's also a river that's mostly overgrown with grass where we watched the fireflies. Some of the roads were about as wide as my friend's (tiny) Kei-car and had no guard rails and lead to a steep drop into a flooded rice paddy.

The festival itself was held at one of the middle schools (that I don't teach at). They had festival snacky foods, but I had come from my friend's birthday celebrations in Okayama city prior to this, so I wasn't super hungry. They had the usual though - takoyaki, fries, crepes, karaage, meat on a stick...

The area it was held in is also famous for this dance story thing about a monk who has his holy water stolen by demons who then transform into a giant 8-headed snake. Kagura... I think it might be called? I forget. Either way this town is famous for that, and you can find statues and other references to the dance all over the area. They performed the dance in the gym for us, and afterwards were throwing out snacks and mochi. Like, hard mochi in plastic bags. Like, potentially dangerous if you weren't paying attention and got beaned in the face by one. As it was, everyone (adults included) were scrambling to get the food so if you weren't careful, you might find yourself elbowed by a sweet looking grandma.

I actually ran into a couple of my students at the festival, and two of them hung around to talk to me in this Japanese-English kind of hybrid. It was quite fun actually, and the kids were sweet. It was really fun talking to them too, outside of school. I got to dispel the "you're with boys therefore boyfriend?" thing yet again, but this time, I explained to them that the other ALTs in Takahashi were all dudes (no joke) so that if they saw me with a guy he was FRIEND ONLY since there were lots of guys out here. Thankfully, they understood. Hopefully they will spread this to the other students so that the first years aren't constantly thinking I'm dating a bunch of different guys haha. Ha.

Anyways, the fireflies were gorgeous! I don't remember ever seeing fireflies (though I suppose it's entirely possible since we used to go to Minnesota in the summer), so I counted this as my "first firefly seeing experience."

And wow. They're absolutely gorgeous. They also stay sufficiently far away so that I don't get freaked out. There were tons along the river. Some floated high in the air, their lights easy to see against the backdrop of the forest-covered mountain/hills. Others floated just off the road, making it slightly dangerous for those who were trying to catch them. It was so serene though; we were in an area with not many people, so it was really quiet, and you could just hear nature all around you. It was in a super rural area, so there were little to no lights around to compete with the fireflies (though the moon was pretty bright).

Absolute gorgeousness. I can see why they put a level like this into Katamari, and how well it's paired with the music on that level.

Mu-friggin-kade

Mukade are the poisonous (giant) centipedes in Japan. While there have been stories about people dying from these bug bites, most of the stories end up with people getting sick and horrendous scars.

Either way, I don't want one of those things touching me.

I found one in my sink today tough. Anyone who's seen me and bugs interact (more like me running away from bugs) knows that I scream. Loudly.

Thank god that they don't move as fast as cockroaches. Or jump. Or fly. I think I would have cried if they did.

I got back home and I was being all productive, doing my laundry, washing the dishes in my sink... when I noticed something moved from under my dishes. That something looked like mukade legs.

Naturally, I freaked out, but stopped just shy of being completely useless. THank lord I found it in my sink. I turned the water to almost the hottest (the hottest would have just been a small trickle, and I wanted full on like, lots of water) and sprayed it so that it slid back under the frying pan, and kept the water on so it couldn't come out. Every so often I would fill a cup with more water and pour it around the sides, just in case.

I had heard somewhere that you're supposed to boil it in water, and figured, that no way in hell was I getting close enough to pick it up. Pouring boiling water over it was going to have to suffice - and someone said later that it's actually what you're supposed to do. We ridiculed this at first, saying "we'll never have the time to boil water if there's a mukade in our places." Ha. Ha. Ha.

God bless hot water boilers. Scalding water in less than a minute. Beautiful. I poured it around the drain thing and refilled the pot and boiled more water.

I didn't see it after a while, so I was hoping it was dead. By hoping, I mean, some rational part of me figured it was dead but the more dominant, completely irrational part was like OMG IT'S STILL ALIVE. I also have that kinda small problem that well.... I don't want to get within arm's reach of the thing, let alone touch it. So I left the water running (god my bill is going to be high this month) and ran to fetch one of the students that live either across from me or the boys dorm. After cautiously checking my shoes for more mukade, I ran outside, looking slightly hysterical. There were two girls just kinda sitting there checking their cell phones. I don't remember which school they went to. I know they're not first or second years at Takahashi. They might be from Jounan (the other school I teach) but I'm not sure.

My conversation with the two girls in front of the dorm went something like this:
Me: 男の人がありますか？　「Are there any boys here?」 (yeah, I realize now I totally used the verb for inanimate things. Oopsie).
Girls: Eh? なぜ？「Why?」
Me: 台所でむかでがあります！SINK の中で。「There's a (MOTHERFUKKIN) mukade in my kitchen! In the sink! OMFG」
Girls: ... *run to put on shoes* (I thought they were gonna go to get the boys) *run over to my house*
Me: EHHH? 大丈夫ですか？
Girls: DAIJOUBUYO~
Me: O_____________O 皿の下で！「It's under the dishes! I'M REALLY SORRY IT'S SUPER DIRTY」
Girls: *run inside after customary "Sorry for intruding on your house but Jessica forgot the japanese word ness"*
Me: 一番下！！

(Note: the above is a paraphrasing of what happened)
At this point, they were lifting up the pot and pan that was in my sink (I hadn't done dishes for two days) and I caught a glimpse of mukade and SCREAMED super loud. The girls were quick to assure me that it was dead. They were all, "IT'S DEAD IT'S DEAD." I think that's what 死ぬ means anyways. I still freaked out. I think this amused them. I think they might have said "dead" in English too.

Then they picked it up with (my favorite pair of) chopsticks and asked if I had a tissue. There was a moment where they debated where to put it. I kinda motioned towards where the paper towels were. They wrapped it up and I think took it with them, bless their souls. I'm so thankful they didn't put it in my garbage can. I think they figured since I had freaked out at them picking it up and just from looking at it that leaving it inside my house was probably not the best idea.

Ugh, the idea of being able to feel the body through the paper towels grosses me out though.

But yeah. That was my mukade adventure that I never want to have again (though if I have to find mukade again I'd rather it be in my sink where I can pour water over it). I mean, I never want to have any mukade experiences ever again. Unfortunately, I don't think that will be the case. They said mukade come out with rainy weather. It's rainy now. Crap.

I'm stuck in this weird limbo of I really want to clean but I really don't want to clean because I might find more bugs which means that it would be better to clean, じゃろ？

Looks like I'm sleeping in the mesh tent again tonight.

Superstitious

Now, normally, I'm not much of a superstitious person. I don't believe in ghosts or zombies or magic or anything like that... but at the same time, I won't go into a haunted house, scary movies will have me not sleeping for weeks, and stepping on a grave is very very very bad.

There are a couple of other things I do believe in though. Being able to jinx/bacchi yourself is one of them. The phrases that invite bad luck, like "what else could happen" or "what could go wrong?" or "it can't get any worse".

I also believe in test luck. Lucky underwear? Sure. Can't hurt. I don't think it'll do much really... but like I said before, can't hurt.

As some people know, I took the GRE (Graduate Record Exams - you need them for grad school in the states) in Osaka this past weekend since that was the closest location they offered it. Basically, I was studying this entire past week like a mad person when I wasn't procrastinating or working (which was often...). Paying for it turned out to be a really good motivator to study more.

So I was at my academic high school (Niimi South) on Friday, and I had gone to ask the kyuudo kids if there was any practice on tuesday since I couldn't stay for practice that day. Stupid studying. And I was talking to one of the students and we got into this conversation how both of us reaaaally don't like to study for tests lol. He's a nice kid. :) We have a similar dislike for math and studying English lol (though his English is pretty good, so I dunno what he's talking about). I swear, he looks like every single stereotypical smart boy in an anime who personifies the Japanese "theme" like Andou in Yumeiro Patissiere (see right).

But I mentioned that I was ahhhhhhh stressed and he was like "relax relax!" and he held out his palm and traced the kanji for person "人” three times in the middle. And then he pretended to eat it. And I was like... "what?"

This, he explained, was how you get rid of stress while you're studying. So I asked him if basically you ate people to feel more relaxed, and he said yes, and (as a friend pointed out later) who am I to argue with a Japanese student's study method? Especially one at an academic school? I guess it kinda worked; I generally felt silly enough to where the stress would lower a little lol.

I got my results back for the verbal and math. It's not bad, but I'm not sure how it weighs against the programs I want to apply for. I know my math is fine; I'm not applying for one of the hard sciences. So a 740 is fine. I'm more worried about the verbal score; I got a 650 and I haven't received my essay score yet. That's kinda lower than I wanted. >_< And if I'm going in to a social science... well... my verbal matters a lot more. Arrrrrg.

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.