Dear Japanese

Dear Japanese,

I have a love/hate relationship with you. I'd say it's not you, it's me, but to be honest, I think it's a little bit of you too.

I love that I can communicate to people in a place I've come to love, and that when I go back it feels like I haven't been away for so long, and that mostly I'm going back home.

I hate that you're difficult to learn, but not just because you're difficult to learn. Maybe I'm just complaining too much, but I'm in 4th year Japanese right now, and yet, I wouldn't call myself anywhere near fluent, and it's practically killing me, this Japanese class. So much of my time goes to studying you, and yet, I'm not studying you the right way or something, because I still struggle to understand the basics of what you're trying to tell me in the articles I'm reading. I hate that it's treated like any other language, when seriously, it takes something like 10 years to master (or so I'm told).

I love the way you sound, and that one of my strong points is that I can speak with only a slight accent. But I don't like the way you expect my Japanese to be perfect because of that (it's not! Far from it).

I know it's part my fault; I should immerse myself in more Japanese (I should be writing this in Japanese!) if I want to get better while I'm living outside of Japan. I should read the news more. Use subtitles less. I swear I'm trying. But it's hard to read the news when reading the articles for class takes a monumental effort of god to just get through once with a barebones understanding of meaning. Being able to recall the following class what the paragraph was about too, is nigh impossible when I'm struggling to remember the words.

Apparently, I just need to sit down and memorize vocabulary. Getting definitions in Japanese doesn't help when I have to look up the words used to define each word (doubling the amount of time it takes to understand what's going on). Also I've noticed a trend to use some of the same words (or to use the adjective form of a noun) to define things... which is incredibly unhelpful.

I also hate that sometimes, when I talk in class, I can't help but feel like the dumbest student of Japanese, like I should be back in Japanese one. And maybe I should be, but I definitely am better than starting off in first year.

I'm sorry I'm not sorry I can't remember some of the grammar structures I learned over 7 years ago (holy cow). I'm sorry I'm not sorry I don't know enough vocab to be caught up with the class.

Going to Japan was the absolute best thing for my Japanese; it restored my confidence in speaking, and it was surprising how much easier it was to speak when I wasn't worrying all the time about using the correct grammar, because who cared as long as I got my point across (that's not to say that grammar was completely unimportant, just that things flowed way easier when I stopped thinking so hard).

One of the important things I learned when I was there was from my Aunt, who told me that when she asked me "what?" it wasn't that she had misunderstood me, or didn't understand what I was saying. It was that she couldn't hear me properly, and that I needed to speak louder. Speak with more confidence. Speaking loudly = speaking with confidence, which is pretty true I suppose. That's why when you mumble, you get yelled at because a) nobody can hear you and b) it sounds like you don't really know what you're doing because you're not projecting confidence in saying the things you want to say.

Really, it's like that no matter what language you learn. The more confidence you have in speaking, the better you're going to sound and the faster (I think) you learn. Confidence was always something we were trying to get the students to cultivate by not worrying so much about their mistakes, and actually trying really hard to understand what they were saying.

I wish I was better at Japanese. One of my goals had been to get my japanese to the interpreter level, where you basically know everything and anything about vocabulary and grammar. That was probably a little ambitious of me, especially being outside of Japan. I wish I had more time to devote to Japanese, and I wish I found that perfect way to study this language of area I've come to really love. Learning this language has taught me so much, and shown me so many different things.

I think I've just needed to realize that learning 4th year Japanese is NOTHING like learning 3rd year Japanese. 4th year is hard. You're studying the academic equivalent of it. Even English words like that are hard and require vocab tests in high school and stuff.

I realize I might have made a mistake, taking fourth year Japanese. It seemed like the natural thing to do at the time. But I think I work best when I can go at a slightly slower speed (Stanford is seriously too fast and the knowledge never sinks deep enough for me to remember it long term). But what's done is done. It's not like I can quit now, though admittedly, there have been several days where I've been ready to just throw up my hands and throw in the whole towel to grad school (it's complicated, since my funding is tied to my language learning class, so quitting Japanese is kind of like saying hi I don't want your money here take it back) because of this one class. It's disheartening, to feel so stupid and to sit through class, knowing that you prepared maybe not as much as you could have, but as much as you could have given the time constraints on your life and the fact that you have other classes and need to take sanity breaks and write ridiculously long blog posts and that no, you shouldn't be working on Japanese for 4 to 5+ hours daily.

Anyways, here's my promise to you, Japanese. I won't give up on you, if you don't give up on me. Please don't give up on me, no matter how stupid I might seem at the moment, and even though it might seem like I'll never actually become fluent. I've always hated how, when I said I was interested in learning how to play the violin, the first thing everyone has ever said was "oh you're too old" meaning it was something out of my range and impossible for me to even learn how to play. Similarly, people (especially Japanese people) constantly say, "Japanese is really hard" in the sense that well, maybe you'll never master it. Despite the ridiculously long rant here about how hard Japanese is, I hate when people say that because it's always said in the context of "well you probably won't master it but it's okay because it's hard" which, sure, makes it more difficult (hence why I'm complaining) but surely if you persevere, even a foreigner can learn Japanese well, right?

Right?

Love,
Jess

Tourists at Stanford

One of the most surprising and different things about going to Stanford are the sheer number of tourists who visit the campus on a daily basis. This number, unsurprisingly, increases during the summer. I'm not talking about "knows someone who goes to Stanford so we're touring the campus since we're visiting them" or "prospective high school student who is probably not a senior but is probably a freshman, sophomore, or junior" or even "parents of a prospective student."

Oh no. I'm talking about literal tour buses (those big huge ones with a toilet in the back and cushy chairs) that arrive on campus with tour guides who wave around little flags and whatnot. A lot of them (though not all) are Asian (specifically Chinese). They walk around campus, which is kind of annoying since it's already crowded with campers for the summer and whatnot, but whatever, that's fine. They visit the big spots around campus like Hoover Tower, the Oval, Cantor Arts Center (which is admittedly pretty awesome), and Memorial Church (which I have NOT been to yet, though to be fair, I tried to go with a friend and it was CLOSED probably because someone was having a wedding in there, so I did try at least...). That's fine, whatever, those are awesome places around campus to go and among the "must see" kind of spots. Like, if you only had a limited amount of time to spend on campus, those places are the big ones. The cactus garden, masoleum, and angel of grief are really awesome, but they're also really far.

So I don't mind people going around and being tourists and looking at those things. Or well, I only get mildly annoyed when they block the entire road and make it impossible to bike through or around.

There is one thing though, that the tourists do that piss me off to no end though. And, I will say, it's primarily the Chinese tourists that do this (though I think there's a partial reason for this), which does not help the image of Chinese tourists. Our classroom is right next to memorial church. Tourists will walk by and glance into our classroom since we have the windows open for ventilation, as it can get pretty stuffy in the classroom (and it lacks an ac). What makes me want to kill someone though, is when the tourists actually stare into our classroom, and get their face super obviously close to the window and poke their head in. Um, hello? We are obviously in class. Also? WE CAN TOTALLY SEE YOU. There's no one way mirror, so we can see that you're staring at us and at our classroom and it's really really distracting and disturbing.

Like really really distracting. I can't sit on the whiteboard side of the classroom because I would seriously, probably get super pissed if I sat there since that side is the one that you can see from the window really well.

That's not even the worst of it either.

So when they stare, I just get really really annoyed. However, some tourists have pulled out cameras and taken pictures of us in our classroom while staring at us through the small gap in the window. What. The. Hell. Is wrong with these people. What corner of the planet is it okay to take pictures of students in a classroom as they're watching you without even asking if it's okay? SERIOUSLY. I mean, I think most cultures would find it rude if you went up in their home country, less than ten feet away from them, and take their damn picture while pretending like they couldn't see you.

Dear Chinese tourists: this is not okay. Dear other tourists: this is still not okay, no matter if you're in a different country or not.

I swear to god, if I catch someone doing that, there are two things that may or may not happen. One, I might pull out my phone and take a picture of them. This, however, disrupts the class. Two, I might get up, lose it a little bit, and tell the person to stop taking pictures because it's EFFING RUDE AND I DON'T WANT MY PICTURE TAKEN. Who takes pictures of students anyways? I mean, we're not exactly kids any more but still. It makes me feel like I'm on display in a little box; an uncomfortable feeling.

Though speaking of taking pictures of kids, maybe it is a cultural thing after all. There's a student in our class who's from China, and we were talking about how cute Japanese elementary school kids are and stuff, and somehow we were talking about them walking home and stuff and the Chinese guy casually mentioned that he would/wanted to take a picture of the elementary school kids, and justified this by saying that of course he would ask the child first.

We pointed out to him that a) they're still kids so asking them doesn't really do much b) he's a stranger and c) he's a man taking pictures with little kids and oh yeah, d) society kind of frowns upon this both in the US and in Japan because these kind of actions are things that pedophiles do. I mean, I will not disagree that those kids are really freaking cute, but to go up and ask them to be in a picture with you? SUPER SHADY. You never know with intent, and it's not the same as going up to someone with a dog and asking them if you can pet it (though I have seen times when there's a cute kid and there might be a comment of "you're kid's cute" but I feel like people generally don't ask to hold the baby, and they certainly don't go over and pick up the small child. Those kind of things get you arrested.

On a more random note, we had a pretty cool cultural event on friday. We did tea ceremony, which was super interesting to do though I think I got too embarrassed by my Japanese slash the woman didn't understand what I wanted to do slash I didn't think about passing my cup to the other person to pour slash I used the wrong form to ask and then lost confidence but whatever. Sadly though, the lunch place we were going to get bento boxes from was closed for renovation, so we had to order from a different place. I'm kind of sad now that we canceled that one culture day so people didn't have to come in and commute and blah blah. That cost me excellent free food that we missed out on two weeks in a row. But I guess I shouldn't complain, since free food is free food... but they had good tasting hamachi. Sigh.

Only two more weeks of classes. If that tourist peeping business happens again, I'm requesting to change classrooms. :x

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.

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.

Conversations

Wednesdays are my ridiculously busy days, but one of my most enjoyable ones. Usually anyways. All my first year classes are on wednesdays, and I usually really enjoy teaching my first year home economic girls. They're just so... energetic. All the time. But they're always alive so they're always pretty fun to teach. The others... sometimes they're kind of dead. Sigh.

After school though is cooking club. Normally, it makes me really happy to join cooking club; even after a bad day with cooking club (and food) things are okay.

So I dunno what was up with today. Maybe it had something to do with how my teacher said she had to stand in the back of class in order to discipline the kids - which I get, but it makes it really hard to attempt to do team teaching. She's been leaving a lot of things sometimes up to me... and sometimes she doesn't listen when I talk so I ended up repeating myself... three times in class today. Sigh. What're you going to do about it though. Nothing.

Today's recipe was butter corn and cheese in hamburg(er). Hamburg(er) (or hambagu) here in Japan is only the hamburger patty, no bun. No nothing. It's usually eaten with corn. When I heard that I was excited. But the girls who I'm on the cooking team with... one of them is an awesome second year, and one is a sweet girl who's a first year. The third girl... I don't know. I don't think she likes English. Or me. Sucks for her though.

The task they gave me was cooking the butter corn, which was hardly a task at all. You dump the corn into the buttered frying pan and add a pinch of salt and a shake or two of pepper. Then you warm the corn up. The end. Seriously it's ridiculously hard to screw up unless you're not paying attention and you burn all your corn. I'm probably making mountains out of molehills but it was like "seriously, you're going to give me THIS task?"

I felt like I was just the potwasher or something. I asked if I should mix the ingredients for the hamburger, and then they told me that they wanted to wait for the onions to finish... and then one of the girls ended up mixing the hamburger while the onions were cooling anyways. I was kind of like... arg. I might not be able to speak Japanese, but that doesn't mean I can't cook. For the love of christ, please give me something to do other than the dishes. I don't mind doing the dishes. But when that's all I'm doing... I don't care if I'm getting tasty food out of it, eventually it becomes kinda annoying if that's the only contribution I'm making, especially in a club about cooking food.

*

In class today we did analogies. I was under the impression that they had done similes as junior high school students, yet the review activity we had intended on doing for only a little bit of time ended up taking up most of the class. I'm not sure how. And for some of them, it was like they had never seen it, while others understood relatively okay.

I had a hard time explaining why, when we use "like" in our analogies, we don't normally use adjectives.

Consider a simile that is trying to convey "she is pretty"

She's like Marilyn Monroe.

...that's a proper simile... right? I feel like we would also say "she's like Marilyn Monroe - a timeless beauty." (would we?) The question though, is do we say:

She's pretty like Marilyn Monroe.

According to the example we had on the worksheet, and my initial response, I told my teacher no, and so she wanted to know why not. I told her that it was because that's the nature of a simile; you should be able to tell from the noun what she's like, otherwise it's not a very good analogy! Yet, I realized later that we do elaborate on the analogy after the noun sometimes, like "Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know which one you're going to get" or whatever. That doesn't mean it's a bad analogy per say, but I couldn't think of how to convey this. I guess I should say something like "sometimes you're not trying to only use an adjective to compare things"? Or, "that's what "as...as..." is there for?

I don't know though. Maybe most of this is just hot air I've been blowing.

Mountains

Misty Mountains of Takahashi

Here's a picture from our mountain climb yesterday. :) It took us threeish hours to get up and down the mountain (or well, more like two hours total to go up and down since we practically flew down the mountain).

I'm so. Sore. My legs and my butt. See where that fog is at the bottom? That's above where we started. I'm pretty sure it was over 2 km, and that was 2 km going up. Worth it though, for the view.

The reason why my post yesterday-slash-this-morning-slash-before-I-went-to-bed was because I had planned that parfait outing for the ALTs (and people in Okayama AJET) and ohhhh my goodness, it was like HERDING CATS. Which is to say, it was ridiculously difficult. I forgot how hard planning stuff for people in my age range is! 

Personally, I blame it a little on facebook and the Internet. Not that other things are not to blame (or ourselves). But with the ability to say attending or maybe... a lot of us now (myself included) will stay maybes until the last moment or will say they're attending but then at the last moment will change their mind and drop. Some people send messages, some don't, but it feels like this era of "Me" has really come around. If you don't feel like going, then don't. 

Don't get me wrong, I do this too. And people have their reasons for not going; I don't think I can really judge whether reasons are good or bad (though I do have my opinions). The people who contacted me yesterday, I understood why they weren't coming out. I don't (really) blame anyone for not coming out yesterday. It just made me a little disappointed and frustrated, but not at anyone in particular.

But like... I dunno. It was crazy planning this thing. There was also a small hitch - this needed a reservation for the restaurant. Things without reservations, it's alright if people drop at the last minute and stuff, but things with reservations are a whole different beast. Reservations need something more definite than a maybe, more definite even than an attending. 

When I first made the reservation there were 16 people who had told me yes I'm going to be there. This was also a good 3 weeks before the event itself - which another problem itself,  person pointed out. We set these things so far in advance and then sometimes forget about them as life happens day to day. I'm definitely guilty of doing that. That's why I try to write as much as I can down. Sometimes unforeseeable things happen. People get sick, people have to go in to work, people don't feel well. That's all well and fine. 

I made the reservation and then a few days later, I rechecked the event and the number had jumped to 23. 23. That's a difference of SEVEN people. For the small restaurant we were going to... that was a lot. Even in American sized restaurants, that's a whole extra table (or two). We don't have big restaurants in Japan really, let alone in Takahashi. There was also a festival going on at the local university, so they told us we couldn't change the reservation.

After that, it was a kind of hellish planning nightmare. Since I was expecting everyone to show up, I kind of panicked and told people that hey, we don't actually have space for 23 people. In retrospect, I should have just said nothing, and I'm sure people would have just dropped on their own. But I said something and asked people if they were going to come or not - and if they weren't, if they could let me know so that we know who all was going to come. I kinda dropped the ball as the organizer, since I wasn't completely sure who had signed up when.

But like magic, people found other plans. The numbers started going down, until we reached the magical 16 that we needed. That was a couple days before yesterday. However, when I checked the list on Friday, for some reason it was down to 14 instead. And then two people actually contacted me and told me they weren't feeling well and wouldn't be able to make it. 12. 

It also rained yesterday, which may or may not have had something to do with it. Then two people just didn't show up, which put us at 10 people total.

10, down from 16, down from 23. I don't understand. 

If this were just us climbing the mountain I wouldn't care. But it was also a reservation for eating parfait, which I did care about. I cared about keeping our reservation (though we were kinda really late for it - my fault since I can't estimate time well). One person kindly offered to pay for her share despite not eating it, but one person's share, since we all were splitting the cost, wasn't much per person. It would have been like, an extra hundred yen or something. 

Six people's shares though, that adds up. Also ten people to eat that giant bucket thing was definitely not enough people. I *still* feel ill today. Lord only knows how ill I would have felt if I hadn't hiked beforehand. I think I spent the rest of yesterday with a giant headache too, until I ate some real food. Actually yeah, that was a bad idea. The ice cream was my biggest meal for the day. Go being an adult. Such a bad idea.

Anyways. That's the end of my rant. Today is going to be fun; I'm going to a concert. It's going to be AWESOME. My first Japanese concert. :D The group is called Rockatrench. They did the opening for Mei-chan no Shitsuji (Mei-chan's butler). It was ridiculously cute. Obviously, they are a japanese rock band. I'M SO EXCITED.

Monday fail

Apparently, monday has something against technology.

My friend's computer died just as she was sending her phone in to get repaired.

My time capsule is still dead.

And today, around midnight, I discovered that my refrigerator and freezer are broken and probably have been broken for a while. Out of all the meats that I had in the freezer (and I had a bit) there was maybe one bag that I wasn't skeptical about being bad. THe rest of them had defrosted and started to turn colors on the sides. Even if they were good... they wouldn't have been good for much longer since they had already melted in the freezer. So much waste.

But yeah, I managed to save some ground beef and had a really really really late dinner. At 2 am. Wee.

I'm mostly annoyed that all that meat had to be thrown away. Meat here is *expensive*. Augh. I think I threw away at least 20-30 dollars in meat today. ~_~ Not to mention the rest of the stuff.

I have a little nonsensical theory as to why it happened. It's because I had bought ice cream and hadn't eaten any yet. Clearly, a sign that I shouldn't buy ice cream (or, as someone on facebook pointed out, that I should eat it faster next time).

On the plus side, I finished reading American Gods today. Very good book.

Dearest Sensei

Dearest sensei,

What gives? Last week you were on board with this idea of having a dialogue for Halloween. You even asked me to make a sheet and stuff, and were excited when I showed you it. But today, you came up and asked for the other worksheet I had prepared earlier, photocopied that, and then informed me that for today's lesson, we were doing the normal listening warm up and then the numbers worksheet.

Uhhh, that's not what we talked about last week.

So forgive me if I'm mildly annoyed that you did not tell me about this last week, and that you decided to switch plans last minute rather than tell me no. I don't really care that you told me last minute and decided to change plans (okay, well maybe I care a little). But the biggest reason is that you told me to do more work and prepare things, and I DID, and THEN you changed it AFTER I did all of that. Not cool dude. At least don't tell me to do things if you're planning on changing the plan last minute to something way not as fun.

Love, Jess

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I don't even get to give the kids candy. :< That hella sucks for them, cause my other two classes are totally getting candy. Man, I wonder if he's pissed at the kids or something to change like this.

At least I get to give the kids Halloween stickers. Lord knows I have a billion of those to get rid of.

But! I won't let this ruin my week since it's a Monday and all. I mean, I still have all week. Halloween is this weekend. Then NaNoWriMo, aka, the descent into insanity, starts.

EDIT::

Well. I am properly mortified. So it turns out, that this whole rant... was untrue. He DID want to do the Halloween thing. There was a miscommunication, where I thought he had said that we were doing the numbers worksheet first. So I didn't think we were going to talk about Halloween, so I didn't bring any of the pictures or anything. Imagine how embarrassed I felt after he said we were going to do that and I didn't have pictures. I forgot to bring the candy up with me the second time too, so I had to run down to the teachers room TWICE in one lesson. That was embarrassing.

Sooo yeah. The lesson was pretty fun, even if for half of it, I listened to a tape recorder and my sensei speak English phrases from the book.

Frustrations

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

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

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

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

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

So I went to bed last night a little angry.

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

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

I think I woke up at that point.

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

In Shape

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unhappy Jessica is unhappy about her commute.

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

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

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

GANBARU~