EARTHQUAKE

I totally forgot to mention this! We had a very minor earthquake this morning, but it was strong enough for me to actually feel it! I was just drifting back off to sleep this morning when i felt a rumble, i kinda got bucked up in my bed (like i was in a bumpy car) and i hear several of my doors slam like they do when they move sideways against the ruts they're in. it then continued lightly and barely perceptible for another 10-20 seconds, and then was gone. sweet!

meeting time = japanese practice

So there's another meeting right now, and while my japanese is pretty bad, i'm pretty sure that they're talking about the performance of individual students to everyone. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a 'headsup, this student will need support in the future' or if its about the 3rd years who are getting ready to take their entrance exam to high school or what. Ay yi yi.

on the bright side, i've gotten to work on my japanese pretty much all day. good, i needed it.

I was reading sentences to help students study for their test tomorrow, and one of the sentences came from one of the book's dialogues about E.T. and the sentence was "they flew as high as birds" or something like that and I ended up saying "as high as a kite"....Freudian slip?

also I've been noticing some stuff after watching several different anime shows. If you are willing to say that anime can give you a look into japanese cultural views because it's not as constricted as other shows because it's animated and often off the wall, well then...yikes.

Since WWII most Japanese have become pacifists, which makes sense having had two nukes dropped on you have millions of young men dead in china and asia. On top of that, nukes often play into the...subconscious of japanese popular culture, often randomly making appearances in anime for some sort of disaster. But furthermore, oftentimes the USA is portrayed as some belligerent bully. One show I finished up had the USA's military working in conjunction with a large corporation spreading a virus around the world that the USA had the antidote to so it make money / gain influence. Another show just skipped the pretensions and just chose to be xenophobic by having Britain and America join together with other english nations, for the 'New Empire of Brittanica' and conquer the world, subjugating japan and renaming it Sector 8. WTF? For a nation that's so international, it seems pretty weird to have such negative images. I guess the anime creators just got lazy and fell back on easy prey: big scary pondering America.

yesterday one of the first year classes studied how to write in cursive; and exercise I found superfluous. It was really difficult for the students, and the teacher even mentioned that they'd really only do it for signing their name. hell, I haven't used cursive in over a decade, once the teacher's told us it wasn't mandatory anymore. Oh computers, what a lifesaver you are.

Tomorrow is a test day, so basically I have to come to school and I have no classes all day. I wish I could take a holiday for it since I don't have ANYTHING to do, but I don't wanna burn one of my 20. Even worse is that had it been ok, I could have just gone to kyoto a day early. Sigh.

On the bright side I've been getting lots of work done in regards to studying japanese. :-)

woke up this morning: 39F in the rooms that aren't my living room. Yowza.

weirdest dessert ever at lunch today: almond chips and dried fish. i'll snag a picture tomorrow. just left me a bit dazed.

I was pretty tired today at work, and I'm not really sure why.

I played a trivia game today with some of the students, it went well and was lots of fun.

additional random thoughts

japanese don't make hamburgers for themselves, or at least now how I make them. My poor spatula can't squeeze the grease outta the meat, it just bends. weak spatula or AWESOME BURGER??

i wore blue jeans to school for the first time today. i did not receive any bad looks. i think i'll do it only on the days i'm going to the elementary schools

i got into a bit of a row with kasuga at the end of last week becuase i wanted to stay at a ryokan (japanese style hotel) but the ones i had looked at were already booked. The one additional one i had i had the option of going to was also booked, so kasuga went ahead and called another one for me. he had mentioned that they are expensive (more than a hotel, which i knew) and the new one he ended up calling did have room. I asked him the price, and he said 12400 yen (~130$)...per person.....per night. I was like, kasuga, i can't afford that, i'm sorry. and he got a bit exasperated saying 'i told you they were expensive!' I just apologized but I wanted to say "if someone said they wanted to buy a new car would you automatically suggest a ferrari?" bleh. lol.

I got caught buying a PSP game at the electronics store on saturday. i also picked up an inverter so i can listen to music in my car now. yay!

season 2 of the wire is awesome. I'm really enjoying it. I also saw the pilot of battlestar galatica, also a great show. good to have lots of TV to watch.

Celebrating 2669 years of uninterrupted lineage!

Today was National Founders Day, the day that the mythical first emperor of Japan was crowned in 660 b.c. I celebrated it by waking up late, having Indian food for lunch and bowling. Awesome.

I also found out I was accepted to the University of Maryland's Master of Public Policy program. Now I have to decide if I want to defer or not. Wah!

Found this today, Calvin & Hobbes comic that nailed the current bailout issues on the head, 15 years ago.

also, this is my car :-D

whee skype!

oh, I also had meant to mention these things:

1, with the advanced english 3rd years on friday, one of the students was talking about how one of the students in her class 'has the body of a boy but the heart of a girl. his nickname is pink-chan, and he's-' at which point kasuga jumps in and goes 'a gay!' then I had to field another couple of questions about homosexuality in america, which of course I can't really speak about. It's happened one other time with kasuga and I always try and make it known that I don't think it's a big deal and do what I can't to show that I have no problems with homosexuality in the hopes that at least some of the students can see it. it still kinda boggles my mind that on one hand japan can have a very negative view of it in general while a whole genre of manga targeting 14 year old girls is about young boys who become lovers (or at least are over-emotional about each other to the point of it appearing to be romantic)

the other thing is that I finally set my skype options to 'skype me' so random people could talk to me. Just late this last week a chinese man who teaches chinese to english speakers (and vice versa i believe) added me. On friday after work I did a vid chat with him and some of his students and showed them part of my apartment and talked with them. That was really fun and cool. the guy seems nice enough but the deficencies in his english (his english is good, just not flawless) makes me go 'huh?' sometimes at trying to figure out exactly what he's trying to communicate. But it's fun!

PICTURE UNRELATED

Whew! What a hectic week it's been!

Friday was a good day though, and this weekend was really nice, if uneventful.

So Friday, I had been working on coming up with an idea for another activity / game to do with the most advanced 3rd years. I incidently had read an article in the Daily Yomiyuri the day before where readers had written in and said how they used the paper to help teach english. I had read how one of the readers had his students get into teams and would call out a word or describe a picture and have the students search the papers for it. That worked really well and the students had a great time doing it. :-)

In the afternoon at nanakubo elementary I played a card game with the students where they could practice their numbers. The students loved it and had a great time. Going back to the teacher's room they teachers said that they could hear the students laughing all the way over there.

The weekend was uneventful then, but I did have some fun driving around the area here and finding some beautiful views. Good stuff. :-)