Sakura

So, the last couple of weeks have seen spring arrive in full, which has been nice.

The heater has been turned off, the windows opened, and the weather enjoyed. :)

The snow pack on the mountains is melting now too, so there's a constant stream of water going through the gutters that line all the streets, even though we haven't had rain in a couple weeks.

The rice paddies are being worked on in earnest now as well.

The sakura (cherry blossoms) have already come and gone. about a week ago they were coming out here at school, and today i noticed that several trees have lost all the blossoms. it has been really great to be outside when they are blooming to either see them or watch them fall. or even sweep them up. like light pink snowflakes.

i also went up to takato last weekend to see the sakura there. takato is suppoed to be one of the top 3 places in japan to see the sakura, and i hav eto admit it was darn good.
you can view takato photos by clicking here

and you can see iijima junior high schools by clicking here

the low point from the last week was hurting my back. last thursday i was doing something, no clue what set it off, by by the time i was leaving school it was getting bad, and all evening it got terrible. I was pretty much bed-ridden all night and had trouble moving. The next day i went in feeling decently better but still pretty bad. I was able to ask Kubota-sensei for some help in finding a chiro, and lucky me there was one right across street from school. I went there last thursday and it wasn't exactly as we'd think of a chiro in america, a lot less of the intense back-focusing exercises and stuff, but it helped. I have gone back again on monday, wednesday, and will go again tomorrow. I'm pretty close to 100%, and always feel better after i go.

also a bonus is that w/ my health insurance, it's pretty darn cheap to make the trips as well. Yesterday, i paid a total of $4.50 for my 45 minutes at the chiropractor. :D

also of note is that I'm stil having a terrible time remembering japanese names,a nd it just bugs me to NO FREAKIN' END that It's so hard :( I had the young english teacher promise to help me study them, and to recipricate I'm helping her study for her english teacher's exam this next summer. Which I did yesterday, and it was a pretty horrifying affair as I was having a terrible time helping her. For example, she took the practice test and checked her answers, but it just told her what was wrong, and not why it was wrong grammatically, so there were a couple that just left me boggled, and while I could theorize what was wrong, it was not only hard to explain, but seemed correct in the first place to me. that was a bad sign ahha.

I'm going to cook some mexican food tonight with friends, which I'm really really looking forward to. We had meant to do it last sunday but it had been pushed off due to bad scheduling on my part. (whoops!)

I found out i won't be heading to Iijima elem until nearly the end of May now because of, well, i really don't know why. No changes with Nanakubo though.

We're implementing some new curriculum for the elem's, as part of the new national endevor to drum up english study for the elem students, but I'm a little unsure about how it will work (read: completely unsure) and I'm a bit nervous.

i've booked my trip to korea to visit bethany (more like she booked it) and we're working on getting the hokkaido summer trip figured out as well. I booked dad's ticket to Japan last weekend too, which will be fun!

this last little tidbit is just for me, but after 9 seasons, I was finally able to take the perrenially terrible Idaho Vandals football team and turn them into National champtions. I started the dynasty with them last summer and it was pretty satisfying to make it to the top with them :')

Oops, my bad desu.

Yeah, So i've totally biffed and not been putting up lots of posts lately (it's been what, 3 weeks?) so i'll go ahead and drop a 'my bad' right here.

My last post mentioned the high schoolers taking their entrance exams. Since then, not too much has happened.

After the test, the school year was pretty much done, and the following week saw me with nothing to do at school and therefore i spent lots of time studying japanese and reading humor websites under the pretext of studying really hard.

We had closing ceremonies on the 18th of March, a long, serious event that I had a hard time getting much out of because I don't understand japanese. I caught bits n' pieces, but still.

We bid farewell to 5 teachers and the principal at the end of the year as well. Tradition in Asia sees teachers switching schools every 4-6 years (the principal was retiring). Kasuga was one of the teachers who was taking off (the head eng. teacher).

We had an enkai (drinking party) to celebrate the end of the year, which was lots of fun for me because i had 2 eng teachers at my table so I could actually carry on some decent conversation, as well as having fun speaking with one of the young history teachers who really likes english. Gotta love how the japanese use alcohol to grease the wheels of the social construct.

The party culminated with some pretty whacky things: including singing the iijima school song, then making a tunnel for the teachers who are leaving and singing a song to the tune of aud lane syne but with japanese lyrics. I sang with english lyrics.

Then, spontaneously, we decided to toss the kasuga into the air as a congragulations kinda thing. After tossing him, the teachers decided they wanted to throw the principal, who's cries of 'i have a bad back!' were met with laughter. The teachers opted to ignore the warnign and toss him anyway. That was sweet. Then they picked up the teeny secretary who's leaving and she got some serious hangtime.

I was laughing so hard and turned to the young english teacher and said 'man, i HAVE to tell people back home about this, because we never do this type of awesome stuff in america!' to which she replied 'yes, but you have to be careful! someone died from this just a couple days ago!' which made me laugh even harder and elicited an angry slap from my english teacher. 'that's not funny!', 'yes, it is!'

anyway, after some additional talking we figured out that i thought she meant they died mid-toss but she meant the drunk fools dropped the poor schmuck.

My initial plan was to be in Korea from March 27-April 5th (with classes startign the 6th) but i made the mistake of asking if I needed to fill out any forms or anything. Kasuga brought me back this mock sheet that the ALT before Jon made.

So i fill it out, say i'll be at school half the days, and in Korea the other half. the principal says that won't work (mind you, i'd run this by kasuga who said it wouldn't be a problem) because i needed to be there april 1st because of the new teachers rollin' in. so i was told that i was outta luck. particularly becuase the JET contract states that we have to be there on spring break like everyone else, and stare at a wall for the two week break. Awesome.

I was getting pretty exasperated while takling with kasuga about it. the convo went like this:

Me: Kasuga, the calendar I have here says that there's no school from the 18th until April 5th!

Kasuga: Well, that's a calendar for the PTA and Students...

Me: Oh, so is there a special calendar for teachers that I'm supposed to have instead?

K: well since we're civil servants we know that we'll have to be here on break...

Me: I DON'T KNOW THAT! >:(

so long story short, I'm spending my break at school, trying to look like I give a shit.

I had Daniel, a private eng teacher from Auz, stay with me for a few days after his contract was up and he had to move out but didn't have anywhere to go for a couple of days.

Two new english teachers, both women. 5 women teachers and me.