Finished.

I am finally done with my masters program. Finally! I turned in my masters thesis on Friday. I was exulted as I handed the bound 87 page paper in.

I kind of snuck something in there, as an almost easter egg for my thesis.

I have every letter from A to Z in my works cited section. I managed to somehow cite something from every single letter. I had to look up citations just for V and X... maybe that was cheating a little bit, but I legitimately worked those in too.

I am so pleased with myself, it's silly. Almost more pleased than actually having finished.

It's weird being finished. Wonderful, but kind of weird. As I was turning it in, it felt like there was so much more I could have done on it. But there's little sense in worrying about that now.

I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.

A lot of people are asking what I'm planning on doing afterwards. I fully intend on getting a job, but I don't really know what yet. I don't really know where any of my paths lead right now, but I do know one thing. All my paths lead forward. I mean, I'm going to get a job. I'm going to apply to a bunch of different places. I have no one path that's yelling my name out right now. For all I know, one of them could lead to a job in neuroscience or something. That'd be super fun. But it might also lead somewhere else. And that's the exciting part about where I am right now. I don't know where I'm going. It's kind of scary, but at the same time, kind of exciting. I know wherever I end up, I'll be able to make the best of things, and be able to make do. It's a matter of how fast I'll get to where I'm going, and what kind of sites I see along the way I suppose.

Someone jokingly, when I responded that I didn't have anywhere specific in mind (I meant mostly anywhere that would hire me, for the time being) that I didn't really have a game plan (which kind of characterizes my life right now), asked if anywhere meant McDonald's. I got super pissed. I snapped, associating it with all the "lolz non-STEM" kind of jokes people make about how we won't be able to find jobs and stuff. And this person counted himself as my friend, and I was kind of upset that he made that because we don't really have that kind of relationship.

But I was thinking, it would actually be kind of interesting to work for them in like, a waste division or something. Where you figure out how to deal with the waste from their distribution, packing, etc, or deal with making their food healthier or partnering with local communities. Because I think McDonald's has the potential to make a large impact, so just because it's fast food that the higher class people distain for organic and non-GMO slow food, doesn't mean that we should completely write it off.

Anyways, I'm getting rambley. I only meant to talk about graduating for realsies this time, and how I can finally tell people that yes, I'm 100% done now and I've finally graduated and I'm moving on to the next part of my life. (Unemployment lolololjk, I'm going to have a kickass job somewhere even if I don't know where that is yet)

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!

Hello there rainy season and bugs

Ahh, things have gotten so busy as of late! Where does the time end up going? I suspect those boring moments in life steal them away from the more interesting ones.

I have a plane ticket back, though one slightly different than the one they approved me for. I suppose that's the problem with allowing us the freedom to choose our own flights and dates and times; we need to get it approved by a whole slew of people, taking something that's better done with a couple phone calls and making it more difficult. First we need to give the proposed flight quote to our supervisors. Then, it moves up the chain to the vice principal, and then the principal (at least that's how it works at my school). Then it gets faxed or mailed to our Board of Education - in my case, the prefectural office. Then they approve it, and fax it back. Then we're supposed to buy our tickets. But it needs to wait on at least four people - four people who are generally pretty busy.

Yet somehow, when we faxed the paper to the board of education in the morning, by the evening the flight on kayak.com was no more. thankfully though, I was able to find A similar flight - the same times even, on the same airline for the first leg - for just a little more money. Sooo I bought it, and I'm really hoping the board of education will say alright since it's only a little more expensive. Pain though, to use my American credit card when I'm getting paid in yen. It means I have to transfer more things, which honestly, I think is a huge pain in the rear.

It's why I haven't really sent money home other than physically bringing it back and selling it to people in the states who want yen.

On a completely different note, it's gotten disgustingly hot and humid. I've already turned on my air conditioner. As far as I'm concerned, summer officially started when they turned on the AC in The train and stopped automatically opening the doors at all the stops. Yet still, there are days - like today - where for one reason or another it's just really freaking COLD and it throws me off because I have no idea what to wear ahaha.

Humid, (and the occasional rain) means also that the bugs have returned in full force. It's kind of disgusting. You can't ride a bike anywhere without getting pegged by a couple bugs. Bugs up the nose, in the mouth (despite trying to ride with my mouth closed), in the eye (despite my small eyes lol). Ugh. But worse... is that the bugs have invaded my house!

They're also pretty fast. D:

Last week I had not one, but TWO centipede visitors.

One of them was this bug, called 'gejigeji' in Japanese. They're generally 'good' bugs since they eat other bugs and don't really bite or sting. Their name in English is "House Centipede." They're kinda non-aggro hahaha.

The other one...

I had another mukade in my house. D:　Longer body, black color, a little on the skinny side, and shorter legs. Yuuuuuck. Seriously, I was looking for pictures, but then I stopped because it felt like I was somehow going to summon another one just by trying to look for pictures of it.

I looked over and saw something moving out the corner of my eye, and it turned out a mukade had decided to crawl into my backpack. Nearly grabbed a lighter to burn it, but that would have destroyed my house maybe. Boiling water was not an option either, because I had electronics in my backpack.

Thankfully, I still had some of the kill-by-freezing bug spray that goes down to like. -82C I think? Sorry, -85C, or -121F. It took about a minute of panicked hyperventilating and spraying nearly the whole can for it to stop moving. Still in my backpack. Right up against the lip of the bag too.

Removing it... yeah. So you know that non-harmful one earlier? It was in my bathroom while I was taking a shower. I waited for my friend to come over to my house, and she helped me kill it by drowning, and then did what I couldn't; removed it with disposable chopsticks. Bless the woman, she also removed the dead bee that's been sitting on my window sill for a good month or so.

So yeah. Removing it was a challenge. I thought about vacuuming it up, but the irrational fear part of me was like, "WHAT IF IT'S STILL ALIVE? WHAT IF IT'S JUST IN A CYROGENESIS KIND OF SLEEP WHERE IT'S BODY IS HIBERNATING?" also the reason why I was like, nooo picking it up with chopsticks.

Eventually, after much shaking with my Mt. Fuji walking stick (nice and long) it kinda came to the edge of my bag, and I grabbed a broom and kind of swept it into the dust pan, put on my shoes, went outside, and hurled that thing far away from my house. Retrospect says I should have dumped it in the river.

I suppose I'm getting better at killing bugs, even if I still scream at them. Even then, I think that's gotten a bit better now too. I don't scream as loud... sometimes. I still hate being surprised, so when I'm surprised by a bug in close proximity to my person, I'll still jump and scream. But like, it's better than before, I suppose.

Yesterday at school, I had an interesting conversation with the teachers at one of my school, how there were a tooon of words to talk about rain. And that rainy season was finally here, with yesterday being the first good rain. It actually dropped the temperature by a good... 8-10 degrees Celsius. Which is a big difference, something I keep forgetting. 19 is a bit on the chilly side, especially if you don't bring a jacket! Not just any jacket though, because it was still humid, so the rain jacket I brought with me stuck and clung and made me feel kinda gross.

I did make a soup last night. Chunky and creamy tomato potato soup. Nom. Relatively healthy too, I think, in addition to being really filling! And when you add a little bit of feta cheese... ah, heaven. I think this is why I love the autumn and cool weather, and I don't mind winter too much. Soups. Hot foods.

That being said though, I love cold foods too hahaha. Actually, I bought some zaru soba (I think that's the cold stuff? Maybe? Ha! I don't actually eat it that often... maybe this is my second time) that's matcha flavored, so I'm excited for that.

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.

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. : )

Okinawa Part II (& the Great Teacher Shuffle)

Okinawa Part I in case you haven't read it yet. :)

The second day we got up and hit up the local Family Mart on our way to the car rental dealer, OTS. Oh my god. Family Mart has these amazing rice balls that are pretty much like spam musubi - but they were spam rice sandwiches. Spam and egg (some with miso) sandwiched between rice and nori. Oh my goooood amazing. Anyways, after our foray into the convenience store, we headed on over to the rental place and sat down with the lady, who helped us - with our limited Japanese and the occasional assist from the lady next to her who spoke a little English - and managed to get ourselves a car for cheaper than the coupon price. I'm still not entirely sure how, since they told us that it was high season so we couldn't actually use the coupon. But I'm not complaining.

Our car was a bright blue... car. I forget the model. Hyundai? To be honest I didn't really pay attention to the model. My friend, the lovely Miss Melody has a car in Kibichuo (cause it's like, super boonies and puts my complaining that Takahashi is small to shame) so she, bless her, offered to drive us around and stuff. The plan that day? Aquarium and the Pineapple Park, both of which were near the city of Nago, north of Naha.

A word of advice for anyone who goes to Okinawa: if you intend on leaving Naha proper (which has pretty good public transportation), rent a car. Your life will be a billion times easier, since there's a bunch of stuff around the island that you can't reach easily via bus alone. There's a bus that goes to the aquarium, but if I remember correctly, it takes about three hours (by car it took us about two-ish hours), and it doesn't go to the Pineapple Park, which is on the way back to Naha.

So anyways. We hopped in our car, stopped at another convenience store, and were on our way! It's amazing how fast time flies when you're in the car talking to good company. I'm afraid I wasn't the best navigator, since we missed our turn a couple times since I was reading the wrong turn on the iPhone GPS. Sigh. The GPS that came with the car was really cool though! It had an automatic gas/parking lot/conbini locator. Couldn't quite figure out how to input places though, since the system was all in Japanese. Either way, all of us really liked the car -- especially our driver, since she was used to driving a small K-car that doesn't have much power (and has a top speed of somewhere around 80 km/hr). It was pretty nice.

As we drove up, we drove along the coast and maaaan I forgot how much I love living near the ocean! Clear blue the whole way up - gorgeous colors that made me nostalgic for San Diego. We stopped at a 道の駅 「michi no eki」Or station of the road, or in just English, road station/rest stop. They sold a bunch of discount tickets for the places around there, so we picked up tickets for the pineapple park since the rental car place had sold out of those.

Then it was off to the aquarium... after a quick stop for lunch. We passed this crazy spiral structure along the way (I don't remember what we theorized it was, but it turned out to be a "dream" house or something and was supposed to have a field of orchids, though I don't know if they were in bloom) and right outside of it was a place we thought specialized in vegetarian food (we also passed a taco rice stand on the way). Though it didn't actually specialize in vegetarian foods, they were able to make omurice vegetarian (Okinawa, as it turns out, is much more vegetarian friendly) and Mel and I crossed our first "Okinawa must haves" off our list:

Soki soba and papaya tempura

Soki soba is an okinawan specialty (though I'm not sure if it's the same as okinawan soba). The noodles are a bit thicker, the kamaboko was a bit tougher (and huge) and it was served with delicious pork and soba. It was alrightish; I much prefer taco rice. I think I could eat that stuff all day and night! But the papaya tempura was delicious. I think it was made with a non-sweet kind of papaya or something (didn't know they had that) because normally I dislike papaya (it reminds me of vomit) but this was amazing.

Anyways. Bellies full, we went to the aquarium (where I promptly lost a hair clip I had just purchased. Sigh. This is why I can't have nice things.) and wandered through it. They had a touch pool with loads of sea cucumbers and a couple of chocolate chip starfish. Those were cool. Sea cucumbers are so squishy, which is weird because they aren't like that at all when you eat them.

These are my favorite. ^_^

The aquarium at Okinawa, the Churaumi Aquarium, is really really huge. So freaking awesome. The main attraction is a giant tank that holds not one, but two whale sharks along with a number of giant manta rays. God I love giant mantas. They're so graceful and powerful when they swim. ^_^

There was also a pretty cool exhibit about sharks, and they had a bunch of shark jaws and stuff, along with preserved sharks and other interesting tidbits about them. Outside, they had a manatee tank (manateeeeeeeeeeeees!) and a sea turtle enclosure that also had a makeshift mini beach for the turtles to occasionally go up on. That was pretty cool. I got lots of pictures of turtles. They're one of my favorites to take pictures of.

Right as we were leaving, it started to rain, lightly at first. As we neared the car, it started to come down a little harder, until by the time we were out of the garage in our car, it was downright pouring. Crazy, how good our timing was.

Our next stop was the pineapple park, a place that grows pineapples and takes you on a tour in these crazy pineapple cars. The tours were pretty informative, even if they used very uh... scary pineapple dolls and had a video of these very unhappy looking/bored girls doing this pineapple dance. Sadly (or thankfully) there are no pictures of this frightening scene, because they prohibited cameras past a certain point since they took your picture there in order to sell you the creepy pineapple mascot picture later on. It still makes me kind of shudder.

So the pineapple fields were really interested and they had a whole bunch of different plants other than pineapples (plus a bunch of different types - I had no idea there was more than like... one kind of pineapple...) but what I wasn't expecting was what we saw after the tour had finished.

A room full of seashells. All sorts of seashells. Like holy wow, that's a lot of seashells. There were gorgeous conch shells, and lots of different colored scallop shells, and abalone shells, and other shells I don't know the name for. Some would twist and turn, while others shone brilliantly, and even more had spikes or holes. Personally, I really enjoyed that room, but it was really random hahaha.

The pineapple park also had an omiyage or souvenir area with a wine cellar and sweets (and also vinegar, which was kinda random). The best part about this part... that while the restaurant had already closed (wtf) the gift area included about a billion stations to sample things before you bought them. Like pineapple wine, both reds and whites as well as dry wine and sweeter wine. The passion fruit was my personal favorite (and also the most expensive, so I bought some to ahem, celebrate my parent's anniversary with when they visit).

Seriously though, that place had more samples than costco, and the best part was, the people would sometimes encourage a second or third sample (to help you make up your mind of course...) The guy who was serving the wine cake (super rich and delicious, btw) was like "HERE HAVE TWO~" Who am I to refuse that? hahaha.


We finished up the omiyage place and I arranged to have some of the wine and heavy things sent to my house (very convenient, that. Much better than having to take it on the plane with us... which I did with another wine haha) then enjoyed a completely fantastic cream puff with pineapple chunks.


Man does Japan know cream puffs - or shuukuriimu (shu cream), from choux à la crème. They're a billion times better than the cream puffs we usually have in the states (you know, those small soft things). In Japan they're quite large and sometimes have a crunchy almost exterior (at least on the top) and ohhh they ar delicious. Actually desserts in general, they're really really good at. Parfaits especially. Mmm. Waffles. I never thought of waffles as dessert until I came here. Belgian waffles. Oh god, they do them better than Americans do. But it makes me giggle to think that every time I have waffles for breakfast, I'm actually having dessert. Heheheh.


Right. Anyways. We finally left around the time the park was closing (they closed the shop at the front that sold boba... I wanted to buy some so I was super sad). After we thought that maybe we'd be able to get to fruits land and they wouldn't be closed, but alas, they too had closed. Their shop hadn't though, so we went in and browsed around (and sampled things) and I picked up an amazing mango soft cream before we finally left to head back towards Naha.


Before we went back to Naha though, we decided to make a pit stop like... somewhere along the coast. So instead of taking the express way all the way back, we got off a bit north of Naha and headed towards a place that looked like there were a lot of restaurants (at least it said that on our map). We got a little lost (I pointed the wrong way to turn... oops), but eventually we saw this giant, brightly lit, colorful ferris wheel and decided that we were going to head to that place.


Turns out that place was American Village, a place that had as many lights as the Vegas Strip almost. Everything was brightly lit, and we quickly parked our car (thankfully the rain had stopped) and walked over. There were loads of marines there as well (I mean, with a name like that it should have been a duh) and some of them tried to join our conversation about how cold it was but we just kind of... ignored them haha. We stopped first at this store called American Depot, because I had left my jacket at the hostel and was actually kind of cold (it had gotten really chilly).



We spent some time in the store, me hunting in the men's section for a sweater or sweatshirt since even though this was American Village, this was still Japan, and my friend hunting for something for her boyfriend :) They had a bunch of like... sweats stuff and like, comfy loungey sweatshirts that you wear when you're at home alone or having a crap day or something that I almost bought. The sweatshirts were all kind of expensive (as sweatshirts/sweaters are wont to be). Thankfully though, it being Japan, I found this really cute looking polka dot sweatshirt that zips up super high and is just pretty cool overall. According to Mel, my style is casual sporty cool? lol. I hadn't thought of it like that, but I guess that's pretty accurate? I don't really do girly, since I don't really have the figure for that, and generally it's been too cold (recently anyways) or too hot (I sweat enough to drown, which is not the best for things like skirts and dresses. Ugh.). That's just me kinda complaining though haha.

There were so many delicious places in American Village (like curly fries and chili fries! OH MY GOOOOD) but we eventually decided on a Taco Rice place (did I mention I LOVE taco rice?) and that place did not disappoint. The food was amazing. Like seriously, I think I could eat Taco rice every day (and be ridiculously fat).

After feeling like we were going to explode (yet still wanting more taco rice) we walked around for a bit before deciding that we were tired and that the hostel seemed like a rather attractive place (oh and that we'd have to get parking, which was kind of a pain but there were loads of parking lots all over).

Day three started with us retrieving and returning the rental car, which happened to conveniently be located at the ferry port. Catching a ferry out to one of the local islands was pretty easy (though slightly more expensive than I had imagined) and we luckily were there right as the 10 o'clock ferry was taking off. We grabbed a quick lunch from the conbini (did I mention how awesome the pork sandwiches at conbinis are? Well they are.) and it was off to the beach we went!

The island we went to was called Tosomethingshima, and it was a suuuuper tiny place in the Kerama archipelago. Not so tiny though, that there wasn't a bus waiting at the docks to take us to a tiny white sandy beach named Aharen Beach (which also had a small port area). Since it was so tiny, it basically was also going to come back once - some time around 3, so that we would be back in the port in time for our return ferry. The weather was kinda cruddy though; cloudy, kind of chilly water, but occasionally the sun would peek through for a nice treat. There was a really nice (if slightly pushy) old man who kept trying to sell us hot showers after we were done with our time on the beach. There were also a butt-ton of stray cats around the area that kept mewing at us for food.  


We passed the other beach - named after the island - and wow, just wow. It was absolutely gorgeous. Probably should have picked that beach, but there were also far less shops/potential kayak/snorkle rental/scuba places around there. I really wanted to go diving, but I kinda got there too late... so I settled for snorkeling instead (which turned out to be super fun anyways).


When we first arrived to the beach, there was hardly anyone else there, so my friends and I lay out our stuff and they prepped for a nice relaxing sun bathing session while I went up and rented snorkeling equipment and asked around about kayaks. They said the kayak guy was out on a tour, so I went down with the snorkel stuff back to where our things were...


...to find that many people had since returned, including a really loud group of teenagers who set themselves up literally right in front of us. The swimming area at this beach wasn't actually that big (and the water was actually a tad chilly) so I wasn't super comfortable taking off my swim shorts (I had a two piece on but yeah, my legs could be used as a source of light in a dark room). Instead I sat with my friends and enjoyed what sun there was until the kayaking man returned. It was really funny, because I tried to ask him in Japanese about renting a kayak and he actually asked me if English was okay and I breathed a super huge sigh of relief at that point haha.


I kayaked out to the small island in the bay (which was pretty much the only place I could kayak, since he warned against kayaking to the eastern part and northern part of the bay as well as behind the small island) and beached myself there, dragging the kayak up the little hill of sand well away from the water. It was like a mini pinnensula and bay there, and I was stupid enough to land near the edge, which meant that waves were washing up to the beach from behind me AND from my side. Not helpful in trying to get out of the kayak without completely flipping. Somehow I managed though. The bay was a much calmer place, so I stripped down to my bikini (in blissful privacy, since I was the only one on this small island and I couldn't blind anyone but the fish) and went out snorkeling into the small bay.


Wow. Just wow. I wish I had bought an underwater camera. There was an amazing amount of fish in that small bay, and I spent nearly an hour just swimming around there. It was interesting too, since there were small pockets of warm water that (thank god) fish tended to be found around so I was able to watch fish while staying warm. Conversely there were pockets of ridiculously cold water. Those sucked. There were decently large fish down there, brightly colored pastel fish (I think parrot fish?), large ones that looked like the Hawaiian state fish, small, brilliant bright blue fish that lived in the coral and rocks, hidden fish, sea cucumbers (oh god so many sea cucumbers) and loads of other fish.


My favorites though, were: 1. the weird four armed starfish I saw. It was a periwinkle blue. 2. The angelfish I saw swimming around in pairs. So very pretty! I was like EEEEEE GILL~~! 3. The clownfish I saw. They weren't your movie clownfish (they only had two brown stripes) but they were chilling in this jungle of sea anemone arms that looked like something out of a postcard/national geographic picture. That was freaking awesome. 4. The... abalone? Clams? I don't know what they were. I think I knew but right now I can't remember what they're called. Giant clams? They were kind of small. But they came in such bright mottled colors - purples, greens, blues, and I even saw an orange one - and they would shut any time I tried to get close. Their colors though were absolutely glorious.


I really love the underwater world. It's so beautiful, and every time I go diving or snorkeling, I feel like I've entered into a completely different world than our own, and I'm stunned and awed each time by places that have preserved this beauty. When I was diving in the philippines, it felt like I was swimming in a national geographic video or something. It was beautiful, mysterious, and I don't think words can sufficiently express how much awe I felt in looking at the coral shelves from below them. Or well, here's my best approximations: "Woah.... This is Nature."


Brilliant, I know.

Oh right, I forgot, I haven't actually typed out the Philippines yet (working on that...) and that I'm talking about Okinawa! Right. So. The rest of our day was fairly uneventful though - we got ice cream, went back home, showered, went out to the Kokusaidori street. Went towards an izakaya we had heard about from our hostel, but decided to go somewhere else instead. They had amazing amazing food. We also looked around this book store with the most amazing English section I've seen in my LIFE. They had academic books! Like, two giant rows of books with books on English on both sides! Manga in English! My neuroscience textbook! MATH and science texts! A used book section! Oh right. So that was kind of eventful.

We managed to knock everything off our "to eat" list at this izakaya restaurant. They had avocado pasta for our vegetarian friend, so that left me and Mel to go through the meat. Oh god we ordered so much. We got kaarage (Japanese fried chicken, which is really different than our fried chicken) that was as big as my palm. They were HUGE.  We got agubutu (agu pork) which was my favorite favorite favorite. Rafute pork, which was super tender and fatty pork. SOmething else... uh, I don't remember. Really good fries. They tasted like curly fries! Mm. Curly fries. A tomato and something else al fresco kind of thing that was also delicious and had tons of avocados. I think there's a small chance I raised my cholestorol and blood pressure that night and added to the likelihood that I'll die from a heart attack, but the food there was soooo good. They also gave us some goya champuru which - I found out later - is tofu stir fried with veggies (in this case goya, or bittermelon. It's really really bitter unless you cook it the right way) and pork that was probably spam (or some knock off). It was super tasty. NOMMMMM. I love okinawan food.

After that night, we did a it more omiyage shopping, and then went back to the hostel and woke up and did last minute omiyage shopping haha before heading back to the airport. I grabbed a few more pork sandwiches - and some taco maki (taco rice in sushi form!) for later that night/as snacks and found out my friends were going to the conbini for their lunch. I was super hungry though, and there were loads of awesome looking places, so we went to check them out. Sadly they didn't have many veggie friendly things - but there was an A&W (actually, there were a lot in Okinawa!). And it had CHILI CHEESE FRIES AND CURLY FRIES. OMFFGGGGG. Yeah. Needless to say, I got that for lunch haha. Dude, A&W is super tasty. Why don't we have more of them?

Our flight back to Takamatsu actually got delayed a bit, so we had some time to kill at the airport (which was fine - none of us were in a rush and we were still well earlier than our last trains). Other than that, the rest of our return trip went smoothly and uneventfully (especially since the bus didn't leave the airport until most of the passengers had gotten their bags).

Oh, there was giant plastic udon on the conveyor belt at the airport (since that's what Takamatsu is famous for). That was... interesting. And different. But kind of a nice quirky touch to the end of a fantastic trip.

Okinawa was super awesome though. Definitely want to go again!


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

On a different note, right now is the time when teachers change schools: The Great Teacher Shuffle. I've yet to find out what my situation is like at my Niimi schools, but most of the teachers I like (whom I teach with anyways) are staying at my schools. However, I'm not teaching with the same lady as last year at my visit school, and we don't know yet at my base school. Oh also one of my favorite teachers is leaving to participate in a teacher exchange program with Southern Australia. SUPER SAD FACE. He was the one I talked to the most probably, and who was the easiest to talk to since he was super laid back and also his English was super. Plus I taught with him the first academic year I was here, and he's constantly explaining things to me about Japanese (and I explain things about English to him - or at least, try to). So I'm really sad about that, but I guess I'll be moving on in less than half a year anyways. As the Japanese say, "しかったがない" or, "it can't be helped."

This also didn't get posted as soon as I had wanted it to, so I'm sitting here in a BRAND NEW SPANKIN' DESK. They actually had four extra new desks (all the third year teachers got new desks) so since I'm now sitting in the rows that are touching the 3rd year desks.... I got an upgrade! (Honestly though, I was kind of annoyed that like, I had to change desks because I liked my old one and I also liked the fact that I didn't have to empty out all of my drawers!) The teachers were all really surprised with how much crap is in my drawers... and the funny thing, is that a lot of it isn't actually mine (really, I should just chuck them, but I can't help but feel that one day they'll come in handy or something, or that my successor can use them for ideas or use them or something).


Also, I swear, my entry about the philippines will probably happen around the time I actually get those pictures uploaded.

christmastime

I'm still having a hard time believing that I'm in Osaka and am flying out of Japan back to home for a bit (and Christmas) before spending new years with my friend Maxine in the Philippines. It just feels so... surreal. I've finally gotten excited about going back (for the longest time, I wasn't. I'm still kind of like, aww, I miss Takahashi.). And what am I excited for?

Driers.

Man, I feel old saying that.

You know what else I'm excited for?

Elevators everywhere. Now I really feel old. But seriously, two of the five stations I was at today had no escalator or elevator, meaning I had to haul my suitcase up and down a flight of stairs. While I try to go by the golden rule of "don't pack what you can't carry" it's still a giant pain in the rear.

*

I'm actually kind of sad I don't have more time at my schools. Today we were doing christmas lessons in all but one class (we watched Marmaduke in that class instead, which actually wasn't too bad). I wore reindeer ears! They're little clip ons I bought from the dollar store, and they're friggin' adorable. Oh man.

Today was also a little stressful due to the ridiculous procrastination ability I have; I was still packing this morning and afternoon. Plus during 7th period, I went with my JTE to go buy stuff for English club, which was actually happening at my house. I suppose it's good, because my living room was pretty clean for that and was left in an even cleaner state.

Japanese people cleaning = no joke. My students... woahhhh. I mean, my version of clean was like, make sure the dead bug gets swept up, make sure there are no horrible stains or huge crumbs lying around, pick up the house, make sure you can see the majority of the table...

My kids managed to outclass me. Sigh. They came in and the first years, bless their sweet hearts, had nothing to do so they asked where the broom was and they started to sweep around my table and stuff. Every parent's dream - getting your kids to do their own cleaning. I suppose that's what you get when your culture has institutionalized cleaning in education, and doesn't actually have janitors to clean up after you at school. And then they wiped down my table. I felt kinda ashamed. My mother would probably kill me.

But I had thought it was clean with it you know... being picked up and all. Sigh.

Despite the huge amount of stress it added, I'm glad we had English club at my house. I made frosting from powdered sugar (thanks Jessi for the tip!), milk, and vanilla. It turned out pretty good! We used the frosting with graham crackers and the students went about making a gingerbread house with the zillion different candies I had bought for them. It was a lot of fun! I think (I hope) they enjoyed themselves. Sadly, there was no time to eat them, so they put the gingerbread house in the International Room (where I hope many people see it and go, "oh wow, English club is AWESOME I want to join!"

Hopefully they'll eat it soon though. Dunno how long that stuff lasts.

*

Speaking of clubs - I absolutely love my cooking club members. Yesterday I was helping a student out with speech contest practice (pronunciations, stresses, etc) and it took much longer than I expected, cutting in to my club activity time. I don't mind though, because I like doing these kinds of things. I mean, it's essentially what we were paid to come over here to do, so usually I'm more than happy to help students out with that.

But alas, by the time we finished, it was already like... 5:30, so they had finished making their food. As we walked by, the students saw me, flagged me down, and told me that they had left mine on my desk. What sweet girls! I got to my desk in the staff room and indeed, there was a little.

so much love to the students

ONE APP DOWN

New goal for the new year: don't fall asleep under kotatsu as much!

EDIT: this never ended up getting posted for some reason, so I'm backdating this one :)

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.

Brain = 'asploded

The JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) was today. Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh ugh.

Basically, the only day I really properly studied for it was yesterday, where I spent the majority of my day indoors in my pajamas studying or working on finishing my application.

Two applications down, lots more to go. Sigh. The next is due on the 15th, so I have a small breather. I need to open up my other applications though.

I got my ass kicked (again) by the JLPT. The grammar and reading section... was just wow. I don't remember it being that hard last time. Last time I took it, I finished the grammar and reading with time to spare, but this time... I'm not sure what happened. I kept zoning out during it, and I don't actually remember that part of the test. It's like one big giant black hole in my memory. After that test... oh man. It had felt like someone had kicked me in the intellectual balls.

The listening section wasn't so bad though. I'm so thankful that we ended the JLPT with that instead of grammar, cause it was a bit of an ego/mental capacity boost. Have you ever had your brain just shut down when you're reading too much that you can't understand? Yeaaaaah that happened in the middle test.

It was a little frustrating though because there were hella people cheating who weren't being punished at all. They would have their test books open, and in a test like this, time is very very precious. The proctors kept waffling on giving them yellow cards, so a lot of people got away with looking at the questions, to my annoyance.

Afterwards, to celebrate (and/or drown our woes) we went to the new mall and the buffet place there that had steak (!) and also a chocolate fountain (!!!!). Oh god, chocolate fountain. <3 I only dipped bananas though... but they were amazing. It made me miss Sixth College a little, since our college has an annual chocolate festival, where student fees are put towards excellent use and free chocolate and chocolate fountains.

I think I set a new record for the number of mikan (clementines/tangerines) eaten in 24 hours. Because oh man. I ate so many. When I study I can't help but munch on something while I study and usually I chew gum... but I haven't really found any gum that I like here in Japan.

This week is midyear seminar! I need to give a presentation for it. Ahhhhhh....

And then two weeks from last friday, I come back to California! WEEEEEE. I'm excited.

On a related note, the topic of recontracting came up. Seeing as how I'm applying to graduate schools this year, I'm probably not going to recontract, but it made me think. If I don't get in to graduate schools, would I still want to stay another year?

Who knows.

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.

Good things start with C

Like Calligraphy and Cooking Club. :D

(Ack, I've already managed to fall behind... I won't let this challenge defeat me even if it means I have to post twice in one day! I shan't let it fall further behind than that! ...shan't is a fun word to say. Totally going to say it more often.)

Anyways.

Wednesdays are my awesome days, mostly because of what comes after school. School itself... well... Wednesdays are my first year classes at my base school - usually they're so-so. I only have three, so I can't really complain too much about having a heavy workload. It's just that usually, that's the first time we do a lesson (I feel so bad for my class who gets that first lesson... we're usually still working out the kinks). They're good kids though so... usually it goes alright. It's just that sometimes, they're so dead.

The last class of the day is a handful as well. It has the class with the really loud boy hahaha. But it also has the class full of the kinda smart boys; I don't know much about the relationships of the students in the class, but I'd bet that a couple of the kids with glasses who are the eager to please ones are kind of nerds. I think they get teased quite a bit too, or at least, one of them does.

Yesterday, my team teaching partner caught one of the students doing work from another class in our class, so she took it away. The paper was some advanced math homework (like, extra homework) so I'm assuming that the student was one of the good students. She was super angry, and didn't really want to give it back to him right away, since she thought it would mean the students wouldn't take not doing other class's homework in our class seriously. I mean, I was a little disappointed that it was one of the better kids, but I've been there before so like... yeah.

This kid though, I think it was the first time he'd been scolded by her like that, and the math paper was really important. So he was super down the whole class, and I think, actually started to cry during class at some point. I felt so bad for the poor kid! I don't like when people cry. I don't really know how to respond to crying people, whether they're my friend or they're a stranger or acquaintance. Sigh.

But yeah, the worst happened after class when he tried to get his paper back. She didn't want to give it back to him right away and wanted to talk to him but I guess he was crying too much to actually talk. The other students, who had been teasing him before, were also up there telling my partner that she should give the paper back. Since I couldn't hear what they were saying, to me it just sounded like they were trying to butt their heads in and be there so they could watch the other kid cry. So I'm not exactly sure... whose side they were on?

Dunno, if it were me, I'd take away the paper and give it back with punishment. Like an essay or something, since there isn't really detention here.

So that's my last class of the day, one of my academic ones.

The third class (that I have second, right before lunch) is my home ec girls. Boy are they loud ones. But they're super fun and they're always willing to volunteer, so despite how loud they get and how slowly we go in the class, I really enjoy them.

After school though, is what I really enjoy.

Cooking club meets on wednesdays, so I usually join them and have a kind of small(ish) Japanese one portion sized meal early on around 5pm. Yesterday we made gyoza and tenshindon, a Japanese Chinese dish that's basically an omelette over rice with thick sauce on top of it (we concluded yesterday that the sauce reminded us of mitarashi dango, these mochi balls covered in sweet sauce). SO TASTY.

Gyoza are ridiculously hard to fold though. Mine looked awful haha.

I also had this interesting conversation with my partner and one of the students about Chinese history, where we had no idea what time period the other was talking about. They were using kanji, and I was using romanized-via-the-Pinyin-system Chinese names. Maybe I'll write about that next.

Wednesday nights after cooking club, I get a ride to calligraphy class at this old lady's house in Takahashi with one of the other ALTs who actually introduced me to the classes. They're really calming and relaxing (though last night a bit frustrating since I couldn't figure out how to get the stroke right).

Calligraphy, as it turns out, is hard. But at least I get a tangible kind of thing that's made by my own power... unlike flower arrangement where I just have no idea what I'm doing and I don't know why one form is better looking than the other and the teacher comes over and rearranges most if not all of my flowers so they look better.

Jeeze, I didn't know that still bothered me.

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.

Halloween!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But anyways.

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

LET'S WRITING.

Mad World

First, on a random note. They're making croquettes on TV on Cardcaptor Sakura (super oldschool!) and it's making me hungryyyy and I kind of want to fry something in oil now like how they're doing it on tv. *_* Mmm... like maybe riceballs. Oh man. Like the ones we had at South Campus's culture festival! It was AMAZING!

It's also kind of interesting, some of the characters on tv are ridiculously pale. I didn't notice that before I came to Japan and saw how some of the women here try to keep themselves really pale by employing long sleeved shirts and leggings in the middle of freaking summer. Crazy people, I tell you.

Anyways, on a more serious note and Japanese stereotypes (well, really high school stereotypes), this week at one of my schools, there was this girl who the teachers told me couldn't talk. I assumed that she had lost her voice or something, so I asked if she was sick. She, of course, didn't say anything; neither did the teacher. As she reached out to grab something, I noticed that her arm was bandaged, from mid-arm to her palm like a wrist protector thing. Naively, I thought it was because she was ill and had to get shots or something there, so I told her "I hope you feel better soon!"

As she walked away, I asked the teacher if she had a cold or something or had lost her voice or something, and what the bandages on her arm were for. She replied that this student was indeed a little sick... mentally. According to the teacher, they were there because she had tried to cut her wrists.

I couldn't believe my ears. My first instinct was to try to hug the girl, since she was one of the girls whose face I recognized and whose English was pretty decent. She was nice, did her work, and did it well, so I was really surprised that she felt driven to do that. I don't know anything about the student's lives at home, and I don't visit this school very often, but in class she never seemed like anything was that wrong. It also seemed like she had friends in class, but then again, what do I know outside of oral communication?

It was kind of scary that one of my students had almost killed herself. I can remember being in high school; not one of the most pleasant times in my life, and while I might have had musing and thoughts, I never actually got *that* close to doing the deed. But I've got an idea what it's like to drop that low. I wanted to tell this student that she wasn't alone, that no matter what's going on right now in her life it will get better later on. That I can almost promise. That she was an amazing person (and her english was really good!) and beautiful. That I'm glad for the chance to have been able to teach her.

They told us at one of the orientations, half jokingly half really really not, that it does happen and that we should be careful about using the game "hangman" cause once someone did that and one of their students had actually recently hung himself. It still makes me really sad to think about though, and makes me wonder about my other students. Other than that I don't really know what to think or how to react, apart from just going on (since seriously, I won't be back at that school for maybe a month, or at least two more weeks). I really do hope though - if I were religious, I would pray - that she find happiness in unexpected places and that whatever was bringing her down gets better.

On a more upbeat note, I finally shot arrows at the range today! A whole three arrows! Just in time because I'm not going to shoot for a while since they have exams, which means no club activities for two weeks. Sigh. But two of my favorite kyuudo students helped and kind of coached me with where I should aim. I ran into them on the train coming back one day with some other ALTs, and they told me that it looked like they had to really work up the courage to come talk to me. I was super touched haha. We talked for like... a while until I had to get off the train (and I found myself wanting to ride all the way to the next station so I could keep talking). When they wear their hakama, or kyuudo uniform, I swear one of them looks like a Japanese character straight out of an anime.

I still missed, despite the help aiming. The second arrow I shot nearly hit the roof, it was so high. But HOORAY I FINALLY ACTUALLY SHOT MORE THAN ONE ARROW AT PRACTICE.

They told me too, that one of the words on their quiz that day had been "aim." One kid told me that he definitely had not put that as his answer hahaha, and asked me to teach him more words lol. If only I were at that school more often. I love the second years there, especially since there's a bunch of them in kyuudo. They're a bunch of goofballs, but they're also kind. This year's students are interesting too, but I just feel like last year was more... responsive. And understood English better. This bunch is lively, but I spoke to them today and got the blank stare wall. That was... fun. But they enjoyed the game we played at least! Shame I can't just keep playing games the whole time. Oh well!

Finally though, IT'S A THREE DAY WEEKEND WOOOOO~

Time to be... broke haha.