History Haikus

Somehow, I have managed to survive the first quarter of graduate school. Taking twenty units was super dumb, but somehow I managed to meet a lot of awesome people, have fun, and generally stay somewhat-sane, even if I did practically shut myself in my room for the last two weeks of school.

But it's all over now! Hooray! That's the good thing about quarters I guess. Before you know it, it's over.

Speaking of over, one of my neighbor boys is graduating this quarter, so he's moving out tomorrow. So sad! His program was only 4 quarters (only!), so he's departing. It's a shame though, because he was super chill; totally not what I expected from a guy in Pike haha. Maybe I judge people just a little based on those things. But D was super sweet, and part of our neighbor dinners :) Also made amazing stuffed bellpeppers. Funny, how despite only knowing the boys next door for a quarter, I feel like, actually comfortable with them. Really, we lucked out. It'll be interesting to see who moves in next door...

But yes, so, for my history class (Modern Japanese history), since we had to memorize when certain major events were (I was told we were just supposed to know generally important things, and I guess I've never really thought of dates as important), I created some haiku to help me remember lol.

Hooray for history haikus! Especially since it turned out I didn't really need to remember them after all. Sigh.

(On the effects of the cold war)
1-9-4-7
Key to economic rise
re- all the old things!

(on the Hibiya Riots)
Hibiya riot
Angry in 1905
government target


(on Mori Arinori)
champion of wives
no basic human morals
no more concubines

(on the New Constitution)
1-9-4-7
Controversial number 9
right to unionize

(on the reasons for the Japanese economic miracle)
zaibatsu leaders
Lucky Korean War boom
Dodge Line deflation

(on salariimen)
emerged in Taisho
Salary Man family
70s real life

(on the Rice Riots)
In 1918
Wartime inflation of rice
bottom-up riot

hooray for history!

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!

Eeny Meeny Miney Moe~

Catch a tiger by his toe
If he hollers let him go
Eenie meeny miney moe~

What do we even call these things? Counting rhymes? Today in English club we had a fun kind of cultural exchange. The students were talking about counting/deciding rhymes from their hometowns - more on that in a bit - and they asked the other teacher if she knew any, which allowed me to ask them what the heck they were talking about (I thought they were talking about tongue twisters or something). Then they explained what it was and I was like "aaahhhhhhhhhhhh got it" which led to them asking me, which in turn led to me teaching them (and I'll admit, a small bit of showing off how fast I could say the rhyme) how to say the first half of the rhyme.

It was actually a lot of fun! I suppose that's what English club is really about - having fun using English.

I learned something too though. According to my students, each of the areas (generally separated by junior high school) had a different rhyme. Or well, the first half is the same, but the second half is different. I was super surprised! I mean, most of the people in the states I know use some variation of Eenie Meeny miney moe (most commonly the one above, followed by "my mother said to pick the very best one and it is not you" though I know there are more variations on that) but I've never quite heard of it so separated by region like what I heard from my students today!

It really makes me wonder why that happened. Perhaps it had to do with how originally, each of these small junior high school areas were a different village and different region, and how they wanted to differentiate themselves from each other. Why this manifested itself as a counting rhyme... I'm not sure, but Japan sure does like to differentiate each of its regions from each other, what with regional specialties, regional food, regional souveniers and so on. I suppose the US does that a little bit... with the food at least, but I feel like it's not to the same extent as here in Japan.

I mean, I'm from Concord and Berkeley. I have no idea what food we'd be famous for. Berkeley is famous for... I guess Vegan food? Or ethnic food? But that's not quite the same as how Takahashi's food is Yubeshi (and more recently tomato yakisoba or something), or even how Osaka is known for deepfrying stuff on sticks (among other things). I think Walnut Creek was probably famous for Walnuts. Gilroy does garlic. But seriously, that's it. Am I not paying attention or something back at home because I'm used to being there? The students here seem to know their foods though, even if they're from the countryside.

Anyways though, counting rhymes and tongue twisters and English club. We have five new members! ONE OF THEM IS A BOY. HOOORAY. One boy, fourteen or fifteen girls. Yikes. But I'm so happy we have so many members now! When I first got here there were like... not many. Maybe six or something. I forget. It was small though.

Granted, some of the girls in English club... I wonder why they're there, other than because they want to have parties all the time. It was like pulling teeth to get some of them to speak English! I mean, not even hard English. We asked them just to say one thing that they like - and these are third years, so I know they know how to say chocolate and candy. But they didn't want to! Me and the other teacher were like "... this is English club.... ne? NE? NE?!?!?!?!"

Sigh.

That's only some girls though. Others are a little less resistant to it, and some of them even want to speak it more! :) Yay! I've been trying to focus on doing cultural things though, and now that my Japanese is a bit better, it's not so bad. Before though, when I had no idea what they were saying, English club was suuuuuuuper boring because the girls would just chatter away in Japanese.

I'm trying to remember what our high schools do in Japanese club, other than watching anime. I don't think Northgate had a Japanese club. We had an anime club.... but yeah, we watched anime in that. Plus I don't want this to just turn into a movie watching club, though sometimes, certainly, it's fiiiiine.
Actually, my mom gave me this Easter themed movie she thought I could show my students, which was sweet. The movie didn't have Japanese subtitles though... so unfortunately, over half of the students would be completely lost. I thought about showing it to them anyways... but personally, having watched animes and dramas and movies without the subtitles and only a mediocre understanding level, things are kinda like... eh. Not as enjoyable, since you're constantly like, "wtf is going on."

Maybe some day though. Maybe. : )

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?

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:

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.

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.

Gastronomic Cultural Exchange

Today, my vice principal told me something interesting about Japanese food and Japanese cuisine, which explained a LOT of why it can be frustrating to order food here in Japan.

He explained that when it came to making and cooking Japanese food, a chef makes sure to make a dish that can appeal to all the senses - including a sixth sense which he termed as "inspiration" (his English is really really good). He continued on to say that it was important to make things that taste good, smell good, feel good, look good, (and sound good?) but also go well together. Japanese people are a part of the natural world, he told me, and there's a desire to use natural ingredients and so on to stay part of that world, so the chefs make sure to pick things that go well together in the natural world; all the ingredients must match just so. This ties in to the Japanese idea of "wa" or harmony.

This also lends to the popularity and importance of seasonal and regional foods. Regional foods emphasize the locality and the whole "one with the area around you" thing, and foods that go well together in nature probably occur around the same time and place, so seasonal foods get a bonus here as well.

But because of this emphasis on having the right foods in the right combination, Japanese culture tends to shy away from using substitutes in their dishes, which in turn leads to, in some restaurants where they've got serious chefs anyways, distain towards anyone who wants to customize their dish since they're in essence "ruining" the dish by changing it so that the ingredients aren't in perfect harmony. It's hard for people from other cultures to see this though, since we often don't have that background of "all ingredients must exist in the right proportions in harmony together with the natural world." Instead we place a priority on "I want to have a dish that fits my tastes and by god I'm PAYING for this and I'm the CUSTOMER so I have RIGHTS."

Or something like that.

That's what I thought anyways when I first got here. Maybe not in those words. But I was often confused and annoyed when we went to restaurants that were like "sorry no, we can't 'just not add chicken' to this" or "sorry we can't leave out the peppers" or "sorry we can't take out the tomato for you" even though they were making the dish from scratch and could indeed very easily omit adding in the peppers or the tomato. Instead it was this idea that the ingredients must go together when they serve it (probably) that informed their refusal to acquiesce to our requests.

Actually, it's a lot more along the lines of those infamous Italian or French chefs who also refuse to customize orders that I've occasionally heard of, who go into a rage or a fit when someone even thinks of asking them to make a simple omission, or to substitute tofu for chicken or whatever. Substitutes and omitting ingredients harms the purity of the dish, or in the case of the Japanese, the harmony of the ingredients, nature, and the dish.

How's that for culture clashes and exchange? 

* 

On a more random note, I'm correcting compositions on one of the tests that my academic students took. It's supposed to be between 40 and 60 words but so far... it's pretty dismal. Out of ten points the highest has been a ten, and it's not like I'm being a hard grader. They've just failed epically at responding to the prompt, which was "you met a person at the mall whom you fell in love with. Describe their appearance and what they look like." 

Not too hard, we figured, and we had just done a unit on describing people, body parts, and clothes. So in theory, they had all the tools they needed...

But reading them kinda makes me wish I had a pitcher of sangria next to me. Or a can of beer. Some of them are really amusing to read though. Some students wrote stories about how they met the person of their dreams (and some pointed out that they already had a boyfriend or girlfriend and I was like... how sad! Why would you write that your dream person that you fell in love with had a significant other already!?) like about what they were doing and about their attributes and how they looked kind because they were helping old people or had found the author's ring... 

Part of me feels kind of bad for giggling at this (lord knows my own mistakes are pretty awful and widespread) but some of them are most amusing.

I shall leave you with one of my favorites so far:

"The boy was special face and nice hair. I was surprised it. I think that very very cool. If he is human, it is great."

Precious, precious, wonderful students.

History

So when I was talking to one of the students whom I do exchange diary with and one of my JTEs, the topic of world history came up, since the student was studying for a test. So naturally, I asked about what kind of world history they were studying, and the student replied that he was studying Chinese history.

As someone who took loads of Chinese history courses, naturally, I was interested to find out what period they were studying. But when I asked what time period they were studying, he told me "gi" and I was like "...what?"

I've never heard of that dynasty, and they were confused because they were like "well, but that's the kanji for the period and kanji is Chinese writing, right?" to which I replied "yeah but well, we used romanized versions of the words using the pinyin system. They mentioned that they were studying the three kingdoms period, and I was like "oh yeah, the Wei, Wu, and Shu" since a) it's a pretty famous period and b) there are like, over 7 games made about this time period.

They had no idea what I was talking about, even when I tried to pronounce their names with a more Chinese accent.

Later, I found out that the "gi" they were talking about was actually the Wei kingdom, I think, since I was looking through a chinese history site for something that matched a kanji that was pronounced "gi" (the state of Wèi 魏, I found). So yeaaaaaah they don't really sound the same. The Japanese might use the kanji, but I feel like we use the pronunciation. They were going off the on-yomi reading, which generally is the Chinese reading of it, but I have the feeling that wasn't actually how it was pronounced anyways.

From what I've noticed too, the Japanese don't exactly have a good track record for pronouncing things the correct way all the time either when they katakana-ize certain words like "coffee" or "sandwich."

They also asked me what I studied about Japanese history, and I told them I knew woefully little. Basically, there's the Edo period. It happened. Lots of stuff happened then. Stuff happened during the Meiji Era, and also Commodor Perry and WWII. And that was about the extent of my knowledge on Japanese history (short, I know, but I studied China in college). They were kind of surprised that we didn't learn more about Japan in world history and stuff.... and I told them that we learned mostly European/Middle Eastern history, the history of the Americas, and China since China's history is really long. We don't actually learn much about the rest of Asia, India, or Africa in world history in high school (or if I did, I was asleep).

Yay history!

Class Types

I love my students in the agricultural classes. :) I don't know why but all three of the agricultural classes I teach in Niimi are full of just the nicest kids. They're english isn't the greatest (it might actually be the worst out of all my classes) but the at least usually make some effort in classes (even if it's all in Japanese) and most importantly, they don't look so dead in class. 

Those classes, in my opinion, are the worst. Worse than the classes with the rowdy kids (who have all tended to be boys, with the exception of two of my home ec classes). Like, they might be loud and some might be hard to control, but at least the class is alive and full of energy. We might not get through all the material, but I know that in my loud classes, I can usually count on the really loud kids to try and answer thing (even, or especially when they don't know the answer). I actually enjoy the loud classes now, mostly because I get such a good response from them. It's frustrating sometimes, but it's really nice to have students who actually want to answer things, even if it means them screaming your full name at the top of their lungs (my third year home ec girls do that, much to my dismay). 

The quiet classes on the other hand... The quiet classes, you sit there waiting for someone, anyone to answer. Even when you call on a student, in the class I had today they would just sit and stare at their desk, not speaking a word, not even in Japanese. At least some of the other classes would answer in Japanese. But no... These girls would just sit there and stare with this awkward silence that you would have to endure unless you picked someone else... And then the whole cycle would repeat over again.

It's not like that class wasn't smart; on the contrary, they got the best English score. And I know some of them knew the answers. But everything we did, from the activity to the worksheet to the questions... A brick wall of awkward silence. I've only seen them really alive when we play karuta, the card game where you have to slap the correct flash card on the table first. Otherwise... Silence. I'm kind of curious if we could get them to move more by having more activities that force them to stand or to do some kind of action or something. Who knows. You can lead a horse to water... but you can't make it drink.

Some of my other classes are like that too, some of my academic ones. So silent. Quieter than one of the Silent Sisters. Generally this is after gym or something, but sometimes it's not and you're just like, jeeze people, work with me here. The weird thing though, is that they're perfectly glad to talk to me outside of class... but inside class, they're quiet as clams. 

*

One of my schools is doing their culture festival this weekend, and it is, by far the festival that has had the most money spent on it, the performance stage actually has extensions, and the sound system... is no joke. They've got two massive speakers on either side of the stage, sophisticated sound control for all outputs, and a ton of mics. 

And then, there's the lighting. Most of my schools (ie, all the others) use spotlights that need to be manned by a student or someone and have an external disk they can rotate to change the color of the light. Jounan, the school with the amazing sound system, has full sets of lights on either side of the stage. I think there were like, twelve lamps in each set? The lights are controlled remotely, allowing for really gorgeous color changes. At the back of the stage is another long lamp that changes the color of the background. In the foreground, across the gym from the stage was another set of spotlights that had enough power to turn the gym into a brightly lit arena with the three lamps alone. It was AMAZING. I mean, it looked like they were going to put on a small production or something. These lights were nicer than the lights at the concert venue I went to. 

I am super extra sad that I can't see their stage performances. From what I saw from the preview, they looked kind of amazing. I'm super excited for their culture festival though. I'm going Saturday morning. Last year... Was nothing short of amazing. They can build ridiculous things out of cardboard, tape, box cutters, and paint alone... So combine that with access to things like proper wood and stuff and real tools (since they're a technical school) and holy lumberjack batman. 

For their sports day festival, as a banner, the third year design students made a dragon. A freaking dragon. It was AMAZING. The second year design students made models of Thomas the tank engine... That could be worn by people. They were probably larger than some of the students who made it. Those were also amazing (and a little creepy too - I mean, Thomas' face without the engine behind it is just WEIRD). 

This, combined with how some of the students will actually talk to me (even if it's in Japanese with bits of English thrown in) is why I've come to really like my technical schools, even if their English isn't supposed to be as good. Whatever; some students use more English outside the class and speak it more than my academic kids. Maybe it's because they're not expected to be so great so they're not as embarrassed to try and make mistakes. 

They're also not afraid to, in word association games, go from sunny to summer to sea to bikinis to SEXY hahaha. Though I have the suspicion that's not limited to just them.

Today, one of the students who is really eager to learn English came and talked to me in the staff room. :) IT MADE ME SO HAPPY. He's also one of the most eager students who's doing the exchange diary that I started as well.

He wants practice for the interview test he's hoping to take to get into a good university, but since that's not until Novemberish I figured we could start a little bit more slowly. So today, we talked just about casual things. Basketball, our families, pot stickers... I also introduced him to the wonders of blackberries and confetti cake. Oh, and Dr. Pepper. It was a jelly bean flavor (I brought back jelly beans as souvenir gifts) and he was like, "What's Dr. Pepper?"

"A soda," I told him.

"What flavor?" he asked in return.

To that, I could not come up with an answer. The only thing I could think of was "Well, it's kind of unique... it's not like coke or pepsi... but it's a cola... it tastes kind of like Dr. Pep- oops..." Licorice? Is that the flavor of Dr. Pepper? I don't know. I don't drink Dr. Pepper; I was never fond of the taste.

Also that gymnasium comes from the Greek word which meant "exercise naked." Thanks Dictionary.

These are some of my favorite parts of teaching here in Japan. :) Just being able to talk to students and exchange ideas and opinions. I suppose eventually we'll get to the deeper stuff, but for now, I'm perfectly fine with talking about food. I just noticed that all the things we talked about were food (and basketball). Go figure. :)

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.

Ah, nostalgic bittersweetness

And oh hey - a surprise almond!

Today was the graduation ceremony for my base school, Takahashi Senior High school. It was quite different than high school graduations in the states; for one, it's in March since that's when the school year starts and finishes. Everyone else is still taking exams (or grading exams, in my case). The entire school (which is only 3 grades) attends the ceremony, and it's given the proper respect due to any ceremony in Japan. Moreso, since there were even rehearsals for this yesterday (which it was "suggested" I go to by some teachers and not by others).

To be brief, since I have to leave for a year end party pretty soon, here's a summary of the major differences I found between American, public high school graduations and Japanese public school graduations (with n=1):
1. No cap and gown for Japanese school kids. They wore corsages with their uniforms. Then again, we don't have uniforms.
2. Holy decorum batman. Everything had a ceremonial sort of order to it.
3. Bowing. If you went up to speak, you bowed at least 4 times: to the official people from the prefecture/PTA, to the official school people (principal, VP), to the flag of Japan, and to the audience. This of course, meant that as an audience member you could NOT sleep your way through the ceremony, because it requiring constant bowing and standing.
4. No diploma awarding. Graduates' names were read off and then one representative (from the academic classes, and one from the home ec class) went up and got something from the principal. That was it. No one else had to walk up to the stage.
5. Everyone else (the other students) had to attend the ceremony as well, and participated in singing stuff.
6. Auld Lang Sang was sung. In addition to being the "we're closing" song for department stores and supermarkets, it's also the graduation song. It has lyrics in Japanese. You should wiki it if you want to find out more. It's called "Hotaru no Hikari" or the Firefly's light. I almost laughed so hard when I heard them playing it the first time.
7. The audience members also wore corsages.

Afterwards, the students milled about and stuff, and I went back to grade more papers (I'm bustin' through these things baby). But like, afterwards, as I was grading and stuff, a couple graduating students came up to me with their yearbooks and asked me to sign it. X) I was super touched by this, since I only had one class (3-1) and some of the students weren't from that class. Some were though, and I was still super pleased that they came around to say bye and ask me to sign their yearbook. ^_^ This made me ridiculously happy, and I'm not sure why. I even took a couple pictures with some of the students. There were two students whose name I remembered (lols) and I wrote extra long for theirs. :D

The most surprising though, I think, was this one boy who came up to ask me to sign his. So this kid right. Every time I ran into him at school, he was always kinda jokey and stuff. The last time I ran into him, he had his bike and he was like, "you want to ride?" and he motioned to the back of his bicycle (where the little rack thing is). I kind of lol'd and made some sort of excuse on why I couldn't (they weren't untrue, either, but yeaaaah lol, riding on the back of a student's bicycle... yeaaaaaaaah. No.) But yeah. That pretty much sums up the kind of interactions I've had with him. Mostly I just laugh it off, but he asked me to sign his yearbook still and I was like "aww :)"

It makes me kind of sad that I'm not planning on staying a third year, since then I'd get to see the first years I taught this year graduate. I will get to see them as third years though, I guess. But it still makes me a little sad inside knowing that I won't be able to see this group off. Three years is a little too long for me. Places to be, and all that. Like grad school. Hopefully.

Brrrr It's Cold (In Here)

I said there must be some playas in the atmosphere~

Please don't hate me for making that reference. I already kinda hate myself for it. But haters gotta hate. :<

I've been really bad about typing/journaling/making newsletters/blogging lately. At the start of the new year, I told myself, "Self, it's a New Year. You should write at least one post a week."

And have I done that yet?

No. No I have not. So I'm going to try to be better about that. And not just posts like this one about how "oh, I'm bad about posting" but actual stuff. Starting now.

I've never lived in a place this cold before. Even when I was out traveling, I don't think Shanghai or Hong Kong ever was this cold when I was there during TSS. Other than that, I've lived in the bay area or San Diego. Sometimes I visited Tahoe, and I was in DC when it was snowing, but it's never really felt as cold as this. It's definitely... interesting, to say the least. My electricity bill is SUPER expensive. It's stupid. But how else am I supposed to stay warm? I've been using this reasoning to justify paying for my trips into Kurashiki or Okayama; at least then, I won't be paying to keep my house warm.

I'm sure forgetting about my kotatsu and leaving it on does not help at all.

Oh, speaking of that, I forget that before I came to Japan, I had no idea what a kotatsu was. Basically, it's a table with a heater underneath (that never gets hot enough to actually burn you really, with most models) and a removable top (so that you can put a blanket underneath it).

It looks a little like this picture:

Note, that's not actually my kotatsu, but I don't have any good pictures of it right now. Maybe I'll put some up later or something. but it keeps your bottom half/legs sooo warm and sometimes I like to crawl in underneath and lay on my belly with my head poking out. So freaking warm. It's quite lovely. I might get a better, thicker kind of carpet/blanket thing to go underneath if I keep doing that. I've fallen asleep under it quite a few times as well haha...

Right now I'm huddled under a blanket with three layers, sitting at my kotatsu. I'm thinking of crawling in sometime soon, cause it's what... about 7C in my house. Cold. T-T

Hm, also today, I got to use the observatory at my school for the first time. Yeah, my school has an observatory on top of it. It's actually in quite a good position; the school is on a giant hill, so it overlooks most of the city. The view from the observatory is absolutely wonderful, just as good as if not better than the view from the hike to Bitchu Matsuyama Castle since there are no trees to obstruct the view. The observatory has a giant telescope and can rotate (!) and they finally got it fixed. I noticed that the observatory was open when I was wandering around campus, so I wandered over to where the observatory was and the sensei in charge was kind enough to let me look around and told me to come back at quarter to six, when it actually was darker.

So I did, and wow. It was so cold! BUT IT WAS SO COOL. They had fixed the telescope and were looking at Jupiter; you could see Jupiter even during dusk because it was so bright. When I looked at it through the telescope, you could actually make out a couple of salient features, as well as the four Galilean moons (Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa). I even had a student tell me in English about this. :) It was sooooo amazing. I was practically dancing as I left the observatory. That's probably one of the coolest things I've done in Japan, and it makes me like my base school that much more.

Seriously, if they split my position up again into its two original ones... Niimi and takahashi, I'd have a damn hard time picking where I wanted to live. I used to be bitter about having to commute to Niimi all the time since the trains suck and it takes an hour and a half to get to Okayama (and there are so few trains to begin with). But, I love being at Kenko no mori and Niimi South campus, AND they have kyuudo. I love going to kyuudo club. The kids there are so awesome.

On the other hand, Takahashi High school isn't that bad. The teacher are really cool. I know more of the teachers there. I'm part of cooking club. Most of the kids are nice. There are monkeys. Wild monkeys. And an observatory.

It would be a difficult choice. Thankfully, it's not one I have to make, though admittedly, when I first got here I was really frustrated with having that many schools and being split between two cities.

I'm alright with that now though.

Current feelings about recontracting: 65/35 staying/going

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh High Schoolers...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least it makes a good story, I guess?

Food club

There's a FOOD CLUB here! OMG~ I'm so excited! :D :D :D :D I am slightly worried though, that it will conflict with the English Club, which is my priority club since really, I'm here for teaching English and so on and so forth. Plus Suga sensei is the main one on that.

Also on the note of food, I need to really start bringing my lunch more often. Or I should. Cause I'm spending a good 500 yen every day on buying lunch at school which, I suppose, isn't too bad but still. I feel bad about buying my lunch all the time. One of my super-pred (since I'm assuming it wasn't Andrew) left me a bento box buuut I think I'm going to throw that away. I wish I knew where there was like, a goodwill or something here.

That being said though, the food that we can order through school is pretty tasty. Your standard range of foods: bento boxes (which I don't care for very much) yakimeshi (fried rice), curry, yakisoba/udon, udon... but I'm sure I'll get tired of it eventually. It's just that it's way too hot to cook right now. And bento boxes are small. Like seirously. The teachers next to me all pretty much bring their lunches and they're so tiny! I'm like, I would need to eat FIVE of those to not feel hungry. Maybe when it cools down, I will attempt to bring my lunch to school every so often.

It's been super hot lately, to add to the misery that is muggy humid weather. I don't hate much but this is just awful. That, and heat attracts bugs. Yesterday, on top of the excruciating humidity, the temperature was 37 C, which is about 98 F. 98 F is hot on it's own but then you add in the fact that you feel like you're being smothered by some intangible yet tangible thing out there every time you step outside... Oh and the sweat. It just doesn't stop. It's disgusting. I live in fear that someone will try to shake my hand (gotta love bowing) or touch my arm or shoulder or back or something (doesn't matter where) and they'll be all "EW GROSS IT'S ALL WET."

Yay humidity.