Bethany's Visit to Japan

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So, Friday came and went, and around 5:40 or so I left school to go pick bethany up from the bus stop. I just had to follow the road next to school to the west and I'd eventually reach the highway and I could pick her up. I reached the circle K and picked up something to drink and double checked that I was going the right way. I then went out and continued to make my way there. Well, it was just passing 6 at this point, and bethany's bus was supposed to get in at 6. I was bummed that I was now going to be late, mainly because it was SO MUCH FURTHER THAN ANYONE HAD TOLD ME. Seriously, I was walking down a nearly deserted road to get to where the highway was. LAME. So I finally got to the highway, and went down on one side, because I didn't know which side she would be on. Well, I make my way down to the road/stop (making sure to duck the eye-level spiders going nuts building their webs for the nighttime bug-feast.) and plop down on the stairs to wait for a bit. Well, after a minute, I realize that Bethany probably got dropped off on the other side becuase she was heading to the north. So i begin to make my way back up all the stairs to go to the other side, and as i get to the top I look across to the other side (having not seen anyone) and see the outline of a person who looks like bethany. I then ziip across to the other side real fast because she'd been waiting. And lo and behold, she was there, and all sad because she had been dropped off early and it really was kinda in the boonies. Poor dear!

We made our way back to my apt. (which took about twenty minutes) and cooked some spaghetti for dinner. The food was good and the garlic bread was fantastic! :-) Bethany was also excited because she got some red wine finally too. We also watched some Robin Hood Men in Tights as well (oh Mel Brooks, what a character you are!) before bed.

The next morning we woke up bright and early (yay teacher's schedule lulz) and had a nice breakfast (i love my american breakfasts. i can handle the japanese food, but for b-fast, it's eggs, bacon, OJ, and toast, damnit.) We then made our way to the train station so we could head to Matsumoto for the afternoon. We made it there without incident and made our way around the town for the afternoon. we started by snaggin a map and made our way up towards the castle. We took lots of pics on the way, looped around the castle (while snagging pics) and then started to head for the art museum. Along the way we saw some beautiful cherry trees and just admired the city.

Oh, we also stopped at a chinese restaurant and snagged some lunch there. good stuff! :-)

The art museum was much better than I had anticipated. Some great sculpture work as well as some really unique artwork (lots of it modern) done by natives of Matsumoto. Some of theme were world renown too. We made our way back towards the station afterwards to catch our train to Ina to meet up with Kasuga-sensei.

We get to the station on time, and made our way down to catch our ride. Then I re-checked my schedule and found out the train that had just left (as in we could have caught it, but didn't) was actually the one we wanted, and I had mixed up the time in my head. GRR! So i found out when our next train was (both checking online w/ my phone, woo japan!, as well as around the station) and called kasuga to tell him we'd be half an hour late.

It wasn't too big of a deal though, although we did only have three minutes to switch trains in Okaya, which was a bit hectic, and I lucked out by making sure I asked and found out which platform we were going to, because the one other time I had done this transfer, I had gotten on a different train, and there was a train there again, so I would have just gone to that one. Whew!

We then met up with Kasuga in Ina, and proceeded to go to his place. It was actually much further away from the station than I had expected, which was a bit weird. On they way we chatted and I'm excited that I should be able to FINALLY get my car here in a couple of weeks, but I have to seriously start looking for one now :-p.

At Kasuga's place, we met his wife and a friend, as well as Kasuga's two sons (I DIDN'T KNOW HE HAD A SECOND!) and had an AMAZING dinner. I love having dinners in Japan, because there's always a ton of different things. We had sushi, nigiri, tonkatsu, a stew, and tons of beer / chuhai.

We also broke out bethany's souvenier gift for Kasuga, which was Soju from Korea. We all marvelled at how much easier it was to drink than the sake, and ended up clearing out a bottle of it. By this time everyone, and Kasuga in particular, was pretty outta it. We finally called it a night though, but it had been a fantastic time! :-)

The next morning Kasuga left early (before we woke up) to go to a mallet game thing or something, and his wife was nice enough to take us to Komagatake mountain (near Komagane city, which is north of Iijima by about 10km) It was a fairly long ride and we were really appreciative of her to drive us that whole way! We got there, and bought tickets for the bus ride to the ropeway, and then the ropeway (cable car) up to the high part of the mountain, where we coudl then walk.

I had eaten a bit too much at breakfast (after having a bit too much to drink the night before) and so the curvey road with all the switchbacks made me a bit queasey so it was nice to get up to the ropeway.

Kasuga had lent both bethany and I coats, since it was supposed to be pretty cold up at the top. Where the bus stopped, it wasn't so bad, but further up it got colder. So we walked around the bus stop area for a while, and bethany and I both had to use the restrooms up there, which were just outhosues basically, and squatters. Lol.

Well, then we got in the ropeway, but while we were waiting we talked with an American and his family. Paul was from Boston and has been living in Japan for over 30 years now, and actually has a store not too far from Iijima! Sells wood-stoves for cooking. Interesting guy, nice too. But didn't think bethany and I had it in us to do the hiking. we proved him wrong! we ended up keeping pace with him on up the mountain later! :-D

So then we got on the ropeway and made our way up to the next stage of the mountain. It was a beautiful ride on up, and beign able to do this at this time of year was fantastic: the leaves were changing colors, the weather was perfect.

Once we got up the higher part, we began to actually take a shot at the hike. It had a nice flat lead-in to get you used to walking on it, and then the real hiking began, which was basically climbing up rock-stairs for the next hour. The thinner air (we were about 9000 ft up at the ropeway base) made stops much more necessary. It was tought, but I forgot how much I love doing hikes in Japan. There were lots of people doing this, going up and coming down, and we'd always be saying things like 'good afternoon!' 'good luck!' 'be careful!' etc to everyone as we went by. Really nice. :-)

We ended up getting to the top in just about an hour, which shocked me because at the 45 minute mark I thought we had another 45 to go, but we made good time! :-D it was pretty steep for that last bit, but we did it! We took a break and caught our breath at the top. I absolutely adored the view up there! it was so darn beautiful, and was like during a flight, but with plenty of time to admire the view.

We could also see Mount Fuji off in the distance, even though it was 1 1/2 prefectures away, and stood out in contrast with the 'alps' that we were in and among. We then made our way over towards the last ledge / mound that made the actual crest, but realized that we didn't really have it in us to do it. It would have been another 20 minutes or so, and the view wasn't that much different ( I don't think).

so then we began to make our way back down, which was actually as easy as you'd imagine it would be. I didn't even have time to be scared to death of the heights and the walking along ridges where if i fell over i would pretty much be a goner, because I was too busy making sure I didn't take a wrong step. We ended up making it down in about 15 minutes or so, and then walked on an alternate path, but then had to climb back up to finish off the hike, which was killer! We also talked to a guy who was here for his first time, and we said how it was so beautiful and moving. It's so cool to be able to use even tid-bits of conversational japanese! :-D

We then made our way back down on the ropeway (only had to wait for 20 minutes) and then were able to catch a bus that went straight to the station. as we were making our way down the mountain I tried to get a couple of pictures of the sun hitting the sides of the mountains. we also saw wilk monkeys! That was so cool! :-) they were just running around along the road and suff!

We made it to the station, and only had to pay an extra 2$ for the ride all the way there, totally worth it! :-)

We waited at the station for a while and relaxed and basked in having a great day. On the train, bethany went out like a light (of course!) before we got home. Back in Iijima we stopped by the grocery store and picked up some more goodies. Back at home we made dinner (karaage-don), streched out and relaxed after such a busy day, and bethany fell asleep at 8:30. PUNK!

Monday morning we made our way around Iijima and I got to show bethany my quaint little town. That afternoon we went to the Jr. High school so show her that as well. :-) It was a fun time and the 3rd year class 3 gave us a private concert too! It was so great!

That afternoon bethany went home a bit early while I met with the principle of Iijima elementary school (since I haven't started there yet, just Nanakubo). Afterwards I ran home and snagged my new tickets for trash bags (FINALLY) and then picked up some stuff for dinner. We had delicious hamburgers Monday night while watching Knocked Up. Decent movie, but I wanna kill Rogan at times.

Tuesday we relaxed and biked around town. the bike ride was a blast! :-) Riding down the mountainside was SO much fun! Felt like I was 8 again, and it's always cool to look out over Iijima valley and see the city. We then went home, had lunch, did some transfer work for bethany's laptop (since it's old and she's scarce for space) and then took a walk taht afternoon too. We rounded out the night with some more delicious spaghetti and watched 'the usual suspects'.

The next morning we got up and had breakfast together, packed up, and went to the bus station. We ended up being early (and the bus was a bit late) but it worked out fine. I said good bye and bethany was off for korea again.

I ended up getting a call from her a couple hours later on a train for the airport worried sick that she wasn't going the right way, but things worked out and she got home ok. Thank goodness! :-)

be sure to check out the pictures! They're gorgeous!

lame!

my post i had written up for friday afternoon never went up, and now is gone. super lame! :'(

this is an intermediary post until i get up the stuff about bethany's visit. yar!

Health and Sports Day? WILDCARD SUCKAS!!

So, Friday I made my first trip the Nanakubo elementary school in the small town next to Iijima. I had been worried going into the day trying to figure out exactly what I was going to do with the students, and even after reading up on the elementary school sections in my Planet Eigo book, I was still a little unsure what I wanted to do. Luckily, it dawned on me that I could just do my self introductions for the students using my pictures and stuff! Unfortunately, I couldn't bring my school laptop with me to the school, so i was looking around for a sony usb-miniusb cable so i could transfer the pictures to my memory card and bring them with. Well, after 10 minutes of looking I still had not had any luck, so I gave up and worked on uploading them to the internet so I could download them at the school and use it there. The principle came by at just past 1:30 and pick me up. On the way there I had a good time talking with him about how much I like Iijima and how there are similarities between here and home. At school, he introduced me to the vice principle I'm assuming, because he had a nice office too :-p (or maybe the vp picked me up). I talked with him about where I'm from, what life is like back home, yada yada yada.....(seinfeld joke). I then met the teacher of my first class, the 3rd graders (this is a small school, so I was with the entire 3rd graders, 26students).

I also loved how every student's first reaction to me was to point and say "DEKAI!" which literally mean's 'It is huge!'. LOL.

I went to class and they had a projector and laptop set up for me, I went to my e-mail to start getting the pictures, but unfortunately, i didn't have an e-mail! i checked a few times, and even combed over my old e-mails to see if I stil had the link from when mom had first sent it to me, but to no avail. So I had to scramble and decide what I was going to do instead. I settled on doing family introductions using the chalkboard and snagging some pictures from facebook as an alternative. I only had a few on facebook, but it was enough to get the points across.

As for the classes themsleves, I had forgotten completely just how much fun working at a Japanese elementary school is. Holy cow. The kids are downright adorable, and really super energetic. I loved giving my presentation to them, and they were great. I had some time left before class ended, so i decided to bring up the fact that I had a girlfriend. Whew! They went bananas! Which was just as well, because it gave me lots of stuff to talk about since they had so many questions. "When did your love begin?" "Is she from America?" etc etc. After class, I said goodbye to the students and had a short 'tea time' break, before starting my second class. The second class was lots of fun as well, and I love how relaxed elementary schools are here. The students were pretty rowdy (it was friday after all!) and such, but at the same time, they weren't disruptive.

example: at one point, the teacher was at the front of the room with me and we were talking, and one of the more rambunctious students stands on her desk and hops on the back of the teacher, who catches her and is givnig her a piggy back ride, and he doesn't even pause in his talking. AWESOME.

There is such a great atmosphere that I think is conducive to learning. Greatness.

After my second class, I started to make my way back down towards the main office, but half the class decided to follow me. Well, that being the case, with a pack of hungry wolves at my heels, i started to walk faster, so did they, not too long, and then i'm running down the hallway with a huge pack of kids doing the same, ahah. they slowed up a bit as we hit the stairs, and as we got to the bottom, i was being assaulted by the inevitable barrage of finger poking, and one squirt even had the audacity to attempt a kancho. no way jose. I then was able to abate some of the attacks by showing them patapon on my PSP, which they loved, and before long i had them all singing 'pata pata pata pon!' with me. awesome.

Afterwards, the principle showed me where the train station was (since I'll be using it to get home from now on, which is kinda lame, becuase the train comes nearly an hour after i get done w/ classes, but it'll probalby take me 30 or so to walk to the station.) It's only 2$ to get home though and will take about 10 mins on the train, so that's not a big deal.

Saturday (or was it sunday?) I cleaned up my apartment (always a good feeling) and enjoyed a good lunch. This kinda made up for the fact I was woken up at 9am by a pneumatic drill going on the construction site all of 20 ft from my window. ugh. To pass part of the afternoon, I decided to finally take some time and have a bike ride around part of town. I decided to head towards the mountains to the west of town, since there is a section that i can see from school that i've always wanted to head over too. I made my way towards it, which was actually pretty easy, as the road i live one heads right up towards it. I followed it, all up hill, for about 20 minutes before i passed underneath the major highway that goes near town. on the other side of the highway is a small village / nook of town. I made my way up into here, and paused at a fork in the road. one way went right up into the forest and looked pretty much like a driveway. I was catching my breath when a truck came up and turned towards this small road, i smiled and waved, and the woman drove by, and then abruptly stopped and got out. she then drug this plastic strip and jug across the road and strung it up to block it. really subtle lady. I took off before she finished so she didn't get the wrong idea, but whatever. I continued to make my way up through town, and it was getting pretty steep here, so it wasn't exactly the easiest. I ended up leaving the little section of town and took a small one lane road farther up, it went through a section of cool, dark forest and then popped me out on the other side in the bright sunlight with farmland. I had reached where I wanted to go! Yay! I snapped some pictures and such as I had been doing, and the view out over the valley was beautiful. Of course, the ride back down the hill took all of 5 minutes, but whoo-wee! I was 8 again and that was awesome!

Yesterday I found out that my microwave doubles as an oven, and I almost started a fire when i cooked my frozen pizza (better than i expected though!) because i used the special paper things so it gets a crispy crust when you micro it. whoops!

I went for another bike ride yesterday and ended up meeting up with Stephanie-san (aka mayumi, one of the brazilian students) and her mother. I walked with them as they took a walk around the west side of town, and I had a fun time talking with them in english, japanese, and taking crack shots at some spanish words since they are similar to portuguese. I then walked with them to where they live, and it's only a couple of blocks from where I am. It was really fun, and cute that the mom, who's japanese, barely speaks any since they're from brazil.

I also got my lesson plan tidied up between yesterday and this morning for playing the '6 differences' flash game with my class. I'm looking forward to playing it tomorrow with them (esp. since we covered the grammar points and practiced them today. )

Today is going well, it's been pretty easy, and now it's lunch time. I'll be doing some cleaning throughout the week to prep for bethany visiting, and other than that, I'm having a blast!

Has it really been a week already??

Wow, I didn't realize I had been falling so far behind on my blog posts, whoops! Well, It has been a busy week, so I'll make up for the dearth of posting by giving you a long and varied post today! :-P

So, last Friday was the all-Nagano JET conference held in Matsumoto. I luckily found out on Wednesday (I may have mentioned this) that it was actually Friday and not monday as I had originally thought. Man that would have been so weird / embarrassing to have shown up several days late and to have no one there. Ugh.

So I was very happy to find out Thursday evening that Jesse was willing to pick me up on his way to the event (although I had been under the impression that we couldn't drive), because it would save me a lot of time + it would be nice to chat with people on the way up. Well, Jesse / matt / nobu all are a bit pessimistic in regards to things related to JET, and since all but Nobu are employed by jr. high schools, techinically JET has no jurisdiction over them. So we were about 30 mins late to getting there, which was funny, because neal called just as we were getting into the parking lot and matt picked up and was saying things along the lines of "oh, we're just passing Ina, I think (30 mins away), this things starts at 1 right?" etc. Which was hysterical because we could hear Neal getting a bit worked up. Then we pulled in and he was standing up the stairs to welcome us. turned out we had missed practically nothing, so I honestly didn' feel bad in the least. (As they like to put it, they're already corrupting the new ALT :-P) Also, Jesse had sworn he was going to wear a bathrobe, but it was still funny to see him in flannel and old / torn jeans, especially after all the BS about needing to be dressed up and such. I of course was in shirt and tie, but whatevs!

So the first thing we did was go to a 'learn what it's like for your students to learn a new langauge', and was split into Chinese and Korean. I got to learn korean for an hour, and it was really fun, but honestly, the session was complete BS. For starters, NONE of the ALT's there have classes taht are taught solely in english, the teachers resort to Japanese all the time. Furthermore, the teacher went really fast on purpose w/ the new words we were learning to make it a bit overwhelming, which also sucked. On the bright side, I learned some adjectives in Korean! (although the pronunciation is hard as hell to do, so unlike japanese!! You're incredible for tackling this language bethany!)

It turned out though that we weren't supposed to drive after all, but i guess several people had driven, so it wasn't a big deal. After that was lunch, so we went to a mexican restaurant that Jesse knew, and it took a while to get there (we parked in a conbini parking lot, totally illegal), and found the place. It was really good food, particularly the Loatian style rice we had as a side, as well as the Bohemia beer w/ lime, so much better than corona (hecho en mexico!). The guys were going to matsumoto castle in the afternoon and bailing on the conference, but I wanted to go back, just to be a good student.

Well, they dropped me off back there (an hour after the lunch period had ended) and I was OH SO LUCKY to catch the tail end of the winter survival session that was mandatory for first years. Holy ugh. Basically, anyone that has 1) lived in the country and 2) lived in a place that will see cold temperatures didn't need to go to this. I wanted to roll my eyes so many times at the BS advice they kept giving out about what to do to avoid broken pipes / frozen contact lens solution etc etc. It seemed pretty obvious everyone there had been born and raised in arizona. blech.

It was nice to go to a multimedia demonstration that worked on how to properly integrate computer/projector/movies etc etc. Also, we went to a games in the classroom presentation for elementary / junior high teachers, and that was very great, and I picked up some games that I will no doubt be implementing in the classroom, hopefully as soon as this friday (when I have my first afternoon at the nanakubo elementary school).

After the event was done, I left with the group to go to the AJET enkai. It ended up being a complete blast! The food was very good, and they were pretty darn good about making sure we had plenty to drink, which is remarkable for the one poor woman who was in charge of getting us our drinks. Hats off to her. I met lots of new great people who are here doing JET and it was a lot of fun at the enkai talking with them etc.

Afterwards, we made our way home, with Nobu driving. jesse drove me home, although he had been sleeping on the way back. Although Nobu and I were a bit wary at first that he wasn't up to driving, he actually was fine, so no worries. :-P

Saturday and Sunday were pretty much uneventful days, with me doing cleaning around hte house, working on wasting time etc etc.

Monday wasn't a particularly busy day or anything, but I enjoyed the nice weather and such.

Yesterday, tuesday, was a teacher's meeting for the teachers in the Kamiina-gun area. So Jesse picked me up again and we made our way there. There were a total of about 8 ALT's or so, and when we got there, I felt like I was in another time zone. Or, as lauren put it, it's like a paralell universe, because all the schools are vaguely alike, but have slight differences.

so we got there for registration at 8:40, and nothing was starging until 9, so the ALT's all sat around in some random classroom and passed the time for a bit. Boring. Amanda was giving us the info about the event, but it was a bit redundant. We were going to work with an advanced english class on giving presentations with the teachers there. So first, they send us in to talk with the students, just the students and the ALT's. Well, we had all of enough time to have them perform the skit before they 'sent the monkeys back to the cage', which was completely pointless. Then, after another 15 minutes, we went back and had the 'actual' practice with the students, except they performed and we gave feedback, but with 50 japanese english teachers in the room too. The poor kids looked like deer in headlights, and all the teachers were standing there taking notes and BS. After that, each group did their actual presentations one by one, and then the ALT's gave their feedback to the group in front of everyone. The work with the students was a great time, very rewarding, and it was unanimous that the ALT's loved it. As soon as it was done, we were sent off to talk with each other for an hour about what we had learned or some crap, but it was basically a lame excuse for the teachers to 'throw us back in the cage' and forget about us for an hour while they went and talked about the presentations, which was again a load of bollux because they had done absolutely nothing in regards to working with the students. terrible. Well, it took us all of 10 minutes to actually cover all of the meaningful stuff we had to say, but we made sure to play the part and cover the board with all of this text about what we had been saying to give a nice strong illusion that we were seriously discussing the agenda etc. After that was lunch and in the afternoon was a several hour meeting only in Japanese where the new curriculum would be introduced and discussed. What this meant, was that we could bail on the event as of 10 after 11. So we made our way to a great indian restaurant for lunch, where I had amazing indian curry with a side of nan (fresh bread, which totally reminded me of Turkey. man, how i miss turkey.) I also tried a beer from Thailand, which was surprisingly delicious, I need to keep listening to Matt's recommendations! Afterwards we went across the street and bowled for a couple of hours, but towards the end our hands were really sore so we just sat there and watched the subtitled harry potter movie they were playing on the TV's. Hah.

Today was a big test day for the students, so I more or less had the day off while at school. I basically did japanese practice and wasted time, but it was enjoyable, of course. :-P

Monday, I finally raised the issue of my car with Kasuga-sensei and explained the situation in detail to him, and asked him if he'd convey my thoughts to Kyoto-sensei (the vice principle). I think I did a really good job of saying how I wanted to keep the BoE in my good graces but at the same time, I was going to get a car, regardless of what they said. Kasuga did a great job of getting my points across, and I learned that Kyoto-sensei actually had nothing to do with me getting the car, and the general consensus at school was that everyone was boggled as to why I couldn't have a car, considering just how difficult it was to do anything here w/out one.

I found out today that the BoE relented, and I will be able to get a car, but only if I get collision insurance (or whatever the japanese equivalent is). This made me lol, because they're still trying to dictate to me, even though they have no authority too. I'll consider it though, if it isn't too expensive and will keep them happy.

I also got my bike today! It's quite a looker, and I'm really happy to have it, although it's use will be moderately limited here, just because i'll be regaled to sometimes riding to school or around town, but not a whole bunch else. Which is a shame, because the rumor is it cost close to a grand. which is just insane. Maybe I'll understand that as I take it for a ride today, hah. Unfortunately, Kyoto-sensei asked me to wait a couple of weeks before I actually get my car, to give the BoE the impression that I've made an effort to get around using my bike, so they won't feel like it was a bad investment. Hurr. Can I bike to komagane? nakagawa? home with my groceries? nope! Oh well, I'll do my best to avoid burning the bridges though. I am looking forward to taking longer excusions around the area now though! Maybe this weekend I'll head over towards the mountains! :-D

Also, I got a tip-off today from Jesse that somone is selling their car on the Nagano-onelist. it's a 2000 suburu impreza (the same car matt has, and it's nice), and all they are asking for is 800$. Hot dang. I'm totally for this car, but I'm working through finding out some more info about the car and making sure there's nothing bogus about it, but I'm really psyched about potentailly getting this car, particularly becuase it's a nice 4-door sedan. Yay! i hope it works out!

This afternoon there was another teacher's meeting, which of course I can't understand, so I went ahead and did this blog entry during it. :-P I'm going to help Kasuga-sensei do some grading for a while, before I make my way home and then go grocery shopping too.

I also was able to pick up Jon's weedwhacker, so I'll give my lawn a good cutting this weekend, which it is in dire need of.

Well, that wraps it all up! I'll try and be more diligent in the future with these posts. Hah! :-P

Also, a highlight from the weekend! I bought this awesome new veggie slicer, and enthusiasm while cutting a carrot + my own inattention = this next picture!


goodbye a chunk of my index finger!

Whew! I fun couple of days!

whew! It's been a silly couple of days, but I've loved it! So, Monday, I woke up late, because I had been up writing that last blog entry, and I get dressed and start to head off to school. Well, it's cold and rainy, and since my umbrella broke last week in a strong wind/rain storm, this smaller umbrella left a bit to be desired. Anyway, I'm moping my way to school like a zombie, but then get there and realize that it seems awfully empty. I try the doors and they're locked. So then I go around the back towards the gym, because the gym isn't built right into the school, and there's an open air entrance. Well, I start making my way in there, and I hear some students saying my name, so I turn around and go up to them (it was the girls from the 1-1 class who are adorable and really nice) and I ask them if we have classes today. They tell me we don't, that it's vacation. So I make my way to the teacher's office just to be sure, and upon getting there, find one of the teachers who's shocked to see me there. I confirm with him, that since the Seiryusai was on Saturday, we got monday off. I was pretty eccstatic, and didn't even mind getting soaked on my left side walking home in the cold and rain.

I proceeded to just relax and have a nice war day inside on Monday, which included a thorough cleaning of my apartment and just loving the fact that I could be a bum again.

Tuesday (yesterday) wasn't particularly intense, with classes with the teacher's being light and easy. Since it was the last day of September, it was my last day of eating lunch with the 3-1 class. I laughed, was thanked by the class for joining them, thanked them back, and received and gave new nicknames to one of the students in class. We had been explaining the english and japanese names of foods early on, and he had loved the word 'dumpling', so now I called him 'shumai-kun' and he called me 'dumpling-kun', which everyone else thought was hysterical and we laughed pretty hard too.

I met with the principal of the Nanakubo school that's one town over, since the 2nd week of October I start going to two different elementary schools. He covered the schedule with me and how I'd get there (i'm going to ride in his car w/ him there, and then take the train back). He seemed very nice and I think it'll be lots of fun working with the elementary school kids. It's part of a new law passed that elementary school kids have to have a total of like, 20 hours of exposure to english before entering jr. high. I read an interesting article on it in the newspaper a week or two ago.

I also woke up early Tuesday morning and went to school early to join the band for practice. I got there a bit later than I had hoped, but I always love showing up and spending time with the kids, because everyone is just so damn nice. I'm really going to miss the politeness of this country. When I got there, they were doing small group practicing, so I joined up with some of the low brass, and I have to say, not only are they amazing, but I realized how much I missed playing the baritone. :-) The students introduced themselves and then we practiced. Yay! Near 8, we went to the main room and I totally caught the music teacher I had not told I was coming off guard being in the room. But she's cool so it was fine. :-P For some reason, still unbeknownst to me, this school loves having me get up and say something for groups. This was no different for the band. I was totally blindsided by this, but I told them how I was so impressed by how good they were, and how I had taken a video of their work and shown you guys back home, and how impressed you were. They really liked this :-)

After school, I picked up some ingredients I needed to finally sit down and cook an American meal. Lemme tell you, I pulled out all the stops for this one. I did this a couple of times at Kansai, and it was a welcome change of pace (in terms of food) to have mashed potatoes and a cheeseburger for dinner. But let me tell you, this cheeseburger turned out to be one of the best i've made, ever. :-P

Garlic and pepper on the meat, sautee onions, mushrooms, red and yellow peppers, bacon, and a fried egg on toasted bread. I practically wept as this touched my tongue: Behold, in all it's glory:


Today was a rainy day again, but it was more drizzle than anything else. :-P At school, first period, I played a game with Kawai sensei's 3-f class, and we played a game I played at kansai to work on numbers. Everyone gets some cards, and goes in order counting from 1-13 and then repeating as they drop cards down on a pile. if the number they say matches the number on the card, everyone slaps the pile. this game was fantastic, and always has an element of violence that goes into it that people love too. This was borne out as I proceeded to hit hands with another kid and both of us bent our fingers back. Yewoch!

I then had a class with Kasuga sensei with the lvl one kids, who have big english test coming up that Kasuga is trying to get them prepped for. Unfortunately, this meant lots of rote drilling with the kids today, which was kind of a bummer. I did do a crude introduction of my family though, with pictures I drew, which they got a kick out of. I heard them practicing saying 'read and write' so much that I was joking that it sounded like 'peas and rice'. I then also had class with Kasuga's advanced english students, who will have an open class here in a couple of weeks.

Unlike Bethany's issues with a 'staged' class, this one will be genuine. :-P Kaori also gave me a painting she did last year and talked about it today for the class. I was so happy! :-D I made sure to frame it and hang it up in my apartment, and an old frame Jon left me works perfectly! :-)


I found out today that Bethany was able to get a flight to Japan, and that she has some extra days off, so that she'll be here for 5 days! I'm so happy! :-D

This then prompted me to ask for a couple of days off in a few weeks, and then Kasuga, my vice principle Kyoto sensei, and one other teacher all finding out I have a girlfriend, which was hysterical. I explained to them how she's teaching english in Korea, and she's not team-teaching like I am, but is on her own!

The best part of all this, hands down, was kyoto-sensei, who's a nice guy, but normally has a serious / stern look on his face, go wide eyed and say in an enthusiastic voice 'mitai!' which means 'i want to see (her)!'. I was laughing so hard. Kasuga was like, 'oh! that's why you were asking me about bus schedules!' lolol.

I also found out this afternoon that the all-nagano-ken JET meeting I had sworn was on Monday is actually on Friday. Whoops! Oh well, I'm glad I figured it out now than on Saturday, especially since it's mandatory. Lolz.

I signed up to go to an all you can eat-and-drink (yes, alcohol) place afterwards, which will be a ncie way to kick off the weekend. :-)