The Micro Head 4ns/defspiral concert

Finally sitting down to tell you all about this one. Alright, so my second concert in Japan was for The Micro Head 4ns and defspiral. If you don't know them, don't worry about it.

After a harrowing event of trying to get the ticket online through the mobile website and then the PC website (still on the smart phone) and asking my friend IN CALIFORNIA to try and get it for me because it wasn't working for me... I was finally going to see them.

Like the DuelJewel concert, this was at Kashiwa ThumbUp, so I was familiar with the venue and general area. Being the end of November, it was a fairly brisk night, which I enjoyed. I got in line with a German exchange student, oddly enough, and we chatted a little bit, and during the second half of the show I ended up hanging back with her.

TMH4s were a pretty entertaining band but I didn't care too much for their music, just their drummer and bassist from the defunct D'espairsRay. They still had the parapara and sideways head whipping seen at the DJ concert, but it didn't seem as bad. There was also almost no MCing from either band, as opposed to DJ's concert being half MC just about. Another thing again was during the mini breaks was when the audience would banshee-shriek the members' names. One girl in particular screamed the drummer's name and tried her best to not sound shrill; she succeeded but sounded a lot stranger for it. o___o And more desperate.

defspiral came on next and the music was a lot better, but they also have a lot more experience under their belt (and band names...). Again, minimal MCing, and overall a very entertaining night. My German buddy went to get merchandise during the intermission and came back with the little Polaroids. Normally they're $5 but they made these $10 and Lucky pick. Ugh. After the show I went up to snag one of my own and some CDs, and I didn't realize the Lucky-pick part at the time. FORTUNATELY I saw the first picture was of the drummer, which was what I wanted, and after I got scolded I bought it happily. Wasn't even a terribly washed out photo, so obviously they learned how to take Polaroids finally.

Made my way home, washed up, and went to school the next day. ^_____^

School priorities

I am by no means an expert on what I’m about to talk about, so I would love to hear what others have to say if they know more on the subject!

But one thing I’ve noticed about my school in particular, and about schools here in general thanks to Japanese media, is that grades and behavior are not important. Attendance and test scores are all that matter. If you fail a class, you still may continue to the next grade. If you missed the vast majority of your classes, and you fail all of them as a result, you still step up to the next grade. Nobody is held back, though similarly nobody is advanced forward prematurely. Moreover, it’s nearly cause for celebration if a class has zero absences, and there seems to be tests every other week at certain points in the year, but when it comes to overall performance, if it’s below average, it’s not really a cause for concern, unless of course it’s a sudden change in behavior and they do take that into account (one would hope). I have a few students that don’t do any class work and probably no homework in any of their classes, and while I have no idea what their test scores are like, I know that most of my teachers back home would not let that fly, and would fail the students in question and not let them advance to the next grade level. But here they just ignore it and shrug it off with an, “It can’t be helped” sort of attitude, or worse they just laugh it off with a, “Kids will be kids” sort of attitude.

Once it's time to get ready for college entrance exams, however, THE PRESSURE IS ON. And once you're in the college, the pressure is OFF. And once you are ready to join the work place, THE PRESSURE IS BACK ON FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.  

Updates and observances

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve blogged but I get into phases of not wanting to type long entries, and that often influences my blogging and e-mail responding… Anyway.

Second trimester has started. We have a new schedule, which now leaves me dreading Mondays because it is not only back to back classes with little room for prep time after the weekend (there is also little prep time on Fridays), it has my two least favorite classes back to back. Oh, well. They've gotten better behaved, so there’s that.

Almost as immediately as it had set in, the horrendous summer that I never talked about at this point has left us, before September even started. Fall has struck, albeit fairly slowly. Once in a while, like today, it’s a little warmer, but nothing like July and August. I can now leave my window open to let the fresh air in, and I need to wear actual pajamas to bed and maybe even cover up with the top sheet. It even gets cold enough that I need to use the fleece blanket sometimes! It’s glorious, and only September! Being from Southern California, I’m getting an early winter!! Which has yet to come, and I’ll want more than a top sheet and fleece blanket I keep being told. I look forward to it, though.

As for general updates, I have purchased a PS3 and a TV, which have of course done a number on how I spend my evenings and weekends. That all being said, I bought an HDMI cable and can connect my laptop to my TV, which means I can sit at the desk and work on a large screen when I draw and paint. That comes in handy because during summer training, a fellow AET roped me and another into a comic tournament through Deviant Art, which has led to many, many hours sat at my desk scribbling away furiously once I’m off work. The deadline is fast approaching but I think I’ll be alright.

I also purchased plane tickets for Okinawa in November to visit my best friend for an early Thanksgiving, and plane tickets for California for Christmas with the family. Interestingly, the tickets to Okinawa were half the price of the international tickets. Also, I love being able to pay for things through the convenience store. There is rarely a fee for it, and it gives you a 48 hour window typically. Another thing that is done here is Cash on Delivery, which is absolutely fantastic considering the lack of credit cards and online banking. They exist, but they are not the norm.

Another thing that is not the norm in my neck of the woods is night life. If you don’t have a car and a designated driver, you pretty much can’t go out drinking past 11. The busses stop at 9:30, and the trains at 11:30. There is also a zero tolerance for drinking and driving, and that includes riding a bike. This means you can’t drink any alcohol and expect to do anything but walk home from the watering hole. When said watering hole is 4 miles away from your home, you’re rather limited. This is yet another reason I don’t go out on weekends, and instead opted to buy a PS3. ;D

With the departure of summer means that flu season will be upon us soon. I’m not worried normally but here is a whole different can of worms with regards to prevention. First of all, in having frequently occupied a bathroom at the same time as other women, I can safely report that the majority of them do not wash their hands most of the time. I’ve been told that this is because they believe that washing your hands too much strips your hands of beneficial bacteria. While that may be true, it also prevents you for slathering your coochie germs all over the place. Apparently a lot of the men forgo this, as well. What’s more, in spite of nearly everyone wearing medical masks year-round, it seems to be the norm to open the windows and let in fresh air and fresh germs during the dead of winter (which can reach 20°F), so that the kids don’t breathe in the “old” germs. I’ll be investing in some moisturizing hand sanitizer before long.

Other AETs and I have also noticed a distinct lack of actual cleanliness around here, with most everything simply being symbolically cleaned. Rags used for the daily cleanings are frequently not wet, and are almost never washed, leading to simply pushing dirt and germs around every day. Amazingly they can manage to sweep every day and there will still be dust bunnies everywhere. They also still prefer cleaning the floor with a filthy rag and the all-fours method, instead of joining the modern times and using mops or even cheap-ass dry mops. And good luck finding cleanser anywhere, even when you want to clean the bathrooms, which reek of urine and other foul odors on account of the prevalence of squat-pots, which somehow manage to smell worse sometimes than Port-O-Potties. Bathrooms of school gyms tend to be the worst kept thus far as I’ve seen.

But what matters is that we swished and pushed that dirt and those germs around together!

DuelJewel concert

So last night was my first concert in Japan! It required me to take a train to Kashiwa city, which is roughly 90 minutes away via train. This was my first time leaving Mito without supervision, so I was a little nervous. But I knew where the venue was, and what the train schedule was, so all was good.

I got dolled up, made sure I had cash for purchases, and headed to the train station. Spent the next twenty minutes fretting whether or not I was on the correct platform (not a whole lot of choices...), but finally the train arrived and I got on without a doubt.

I did wonder if the train would stop and I'd have to transfer, but in the end I didn't have to, and I arrived at Kashiwa station without incident.

I walked to the venue and checked the place out. They let you go upstairs to buy merch without a ticket, so I did just that, and then went to get something to eat at the grocery store across the way. Then it came time to line up and have the tickets ready. For some reason there were A and B tickets. The girls in front of me had A, and I had B, but they said I didn't need to switch lines. Then I saw them take out 500 yen. I asked what it was for, and they said it was the entrance fee.
Naturally I had stuffed my purse in a $3 single-use locker upstairs.

One of the girls was kind enough to spot me the 500, and after the event I made sure to wait for her to exit so that I could pay her back, which they did not expect.

Once in though, I was mostly confined to the back of the venue near the bar window. The entrance fee is good for one drink, possibly 2 but I didn't verify, and I got a Jack and coke. Probably one of the best ones I've ever had to date, too.

The show started and there was a lot of side-ways headbanging and para para with flashy glowy rings that would be right at home at a rave, but they quickly got put away after the first two songs. There was also a lot of log-winded MC moments, which are bad enough in English, but when you can't understand the language they're in, it's even worse. I picked up bits and pieces of it but for the love of music, dudes, I traveled 90 minutes and spent $40 on just the ticket to hear you guys play, not blather. If I had gone all the way to Tokyo, I would have been livid. My folks and I walked out of a concert once because there was too much MCing between songs.

Ultimately however it was a very enjoyable concert. I walked back to the train station and made my way home. The last bus was hours ago, however, so I had to walk home once I reached the home turf. 

Summer in Mito!

Summer has come! June and July were humid but mild, and I kept being assured that “summer was coming.” Well, it finally hit around mid July. Between the temperature and the humidity and the constantly beating sunshine, it often felt like it was high 90s or even over 100. My class is on the fourth floor and I have no fans in my room, and there was frequently no breeze to be had. When they didn’t have swim class right before mine, my kids were often quite miserable.

My weekends were often spent indoors with the curtains drawn and my AC blowing periodically, with me only venturing outside near closing time to grocery shop. Dishes were done minimally to avoid standing over a sink of hot water for an hour, and this was accomplished partly by switching to salads and sandwiches for most of my meals. Showers were taken 1-2 times a week and otherwise replaced with cold sponge baths to avoid sweating after cleansing. I was never one to wear ankle socks, but ever since July it has been the only kind of sock I wear. When out walking I huddle under a parasol, and I consume roughly three litres of water a day. I’d also taken up drinking barley tea, which tastes absolutely vile (think watered down coffee), because it was prepared in a cooler at school.

I went home the second week of August, coming back 9 days later. Roughly a week later, the horrible sweltering heat just disappeared. I couldn’t believe it. 

Fruit and vegetables

One thing I was told about food in Japan is that fruit and vegetables are absolutely amazing here! Seeing as I love fruit and vegetables, I was of course excited for this! One girl even went as far as to say that they are different here, and that while she doesn’t eat vegetables in America, she can’t get enough of them in Japan.

Imagine my surprise when, upon grocery shopping for the first time, I was met with wilted greens and fruit that costs more than meat.

Tubers and the like (carrots, potatoes, things like that) are of very nice quality and size, don’t get me wrong. Cucumbers are also fairly good in quality, as are tomatoes. Baby bok choy is usually fairly good in quality as well as affordable. Cabbage, too, is often very good looking and the price isn’t too bad (edit: it’s up to $3 a head like lettuce). I don’t buy onions or mushrooms or some other vegetables so I can’t compare.

Celery, however, as I’ve mentioned in another entry, is very hard to find. When you do find it, it’s very expensive. A bag of 2-3 stalks is around $1, and they are usually the yellowing, flimsy inner stalks. Lettuce, for a small, wilted head with already liquefying leaves, was $1.30 when I first started buying it. For the latter half of July and since, it’s been over $2.00 for the same head (edit: as of September it’s been roughly $3 a head). For $1 I can get a bag of 6 leaves of that same lettuce, but if I am patient and lucky at the same time, I can get that same bag for 20 cents.

How is fruit?

For about $3 I can get a small tub of pineapple chunks that I can stretch to two servings. I frequently wait for it to be half price before I buy it, however. The same with watermelon, which is now suddenly out of season.

Oranges and apples, on the other hand, can run up to $4 each. And that’s the sale price in some cases. This isn’t per pound, it is per piece of fruit. I love apples and oranges and tangerines and such, but I have yet to bother buying any since arriving here. That is a lot of money to risk on a piece of fruit that might not even taste that great. Bananas are also fairly prolific, too, but I don’t eat those at home at all, so I have yet to compare. At a passing glance, however, I can tell you that they are much riper and smaller than the ones I see sold in California.

Suffice to say that my fruit intake has been rather limited, and some of my fellow AETs are flabbergasted that I would snub my nose at expensive fruit. Truth is, when they’re affordable, I will eat apples every day just about. My favorite apples back in America average about $3 or more per pound, so I of course do not get them that frequently, but I know they are great. The apples here are nothing like the ones I normally eat, so I am not inclined to spend the money to try them.

Instead I buy vegetables, and I tend to get second helpings of them during lunch at school because they’re typically tasty! If I was more flexible in the kitchen I’d be more willing to try unfamiliar things on my own, but when it comes to trying new ingredients I’m fairly unadventurous.

That being said, when the price of lettuce shot up I was rather desperate for a home-made meal that was cold to eat and prepare that wasn’t a sandwich, since there is basically only one choice of sandwich meat here: Ham. Enter the okara salad recipe. I somehow stumbled upon a recipe for a crab and okara salad that was very simple to make, and seemed tasty. What is okara? It is the byproduct of soymilk. Once the milk is made, the leftover soy is basically a white powder, which is bagged and placed on the shelf for about 60 cents for 300 grams. That is dirt cheap in my humble opinion. I tried the recipe (found here) after finding the ingredients, and it was fantastic! I highly recommend a proper mixing bowl, however. I later acquired one after my trip home in August, and to add bulk to the salad I started buying the bags of shredded cabbage on a whim—I normally don’t like raw cabbage but at some point I started eating it when I’d find it used as bedding for my entrees in bentos, and it wasn’t as bad as when it’s in leaf form. Unfortunately I can’t always get the okara, as when I do manage to spot it on the shelf, there is only one bag. But it does freeze, so I’ve taken to buying it and freezing it when I can find it, just in case the mood strikes me and they’re out at the store.

Fun fact: My principal and vice principals were very shocked to find that I knew what okara was, let alone that I ate it more than once XD

Food and health

I was asked to talk about grocery shopping and eating in general in Japan, and I thought it was a good idea. Keep in mind that this is purely about my experiences in Japan (as well as what those experiences may be influenced by), and may not necessarily be the same for everyone else all over Japan.

First, what I knew about food in Japan before actually coming to Japan:

One of the biggest tropes and clichés I hear a lot is how healthy Japanese food is. Japanese people are so very healthy and they live forever and Japanese food is super healthy, it’s nothing like American food, it’s so healthy, if you eat like a Japanese person you can live forever! On and on about how amazing and fountain of health the Japanese diet is, but there isn’t usually anything specific about what is eaten outside of mention of sushi and rice balls.

Let me tell you a thing: They eat other kinds of food.

Let me tell you another thing: It is not all healthy.

First of all, take some time and consider what you think of when you think, “Japanese food.” I, personally, think of ramen, yakisoba, udon, piles of white rice, sushi, fish of all kinds and manners of preparation, tempura and other varieties of fried food, and tons of different kinds of sweets. Your list may be similar.

You know how much of that is actually healthy? The sushi and the fish. There are of course vegetables, eggs, fruits, soups, hamburgers (meat loaf on a bun), pizza, ham and pork as far as the eye can see, fried chicken, octopus, bread, this mysterious substance called konyaku that I’m told is from a plant but looks like it’s from an alien planet, tofu for days, and on and on. There is so much to eat here! Lots of things to choose from, so long as you have the stomach and funds to try new stuff that doesn’t look the least bit appetizing in some cases… But then you close your eyes and you actually try it and sometimes you find out it’s absolutely delicious! And yeah, some of it is actually good for you and you should eat lots of it.

But a very large amount of affordable and available food here is, much like in America, not healthy at all if not outright bad for you. Again, much like in America, food that is very good for you, is also very expensive and not always of very good quality.

“Why is it unhealthy,” you may be asking.

Because most of it is loaded with preservatives. I have been told you’re not supposed to drink the broth in ramen and udon. It’s advised to not eat yakisoba more than 2-3 times a week, if that frequently. These are some pretty basic staples of Japanese food as far as foreigners are aware, yet we’re told to consume them sparingly. Why?

Massive amounts of sodium.

Sodium is measured in milligrams on nutrition labels. I have picked up a package of yakisoba and checked the nutrition. The level of sodium is usually over 1,000. Per serving. I picked up one package in particular, and they didn’t even bother with milligrams. It straight up said there were 2.1 grams of sodium. Fortunately that isn’t for the actual noodles but the sauces that they come with. If you opt not to use the sauce, you’d be fine. If you opted not to drink the broth, you’d be fine. I for one love the sauce and the broth. I don’t much see the point in eating noodles without the intended sauce or the broth; I might as well eat spaghetti.

I don’t need to explain why fried food is unhealthy (I hope), but it is everywhere here. Probably more so than in America (I’m from California, though). There is fried chicken, fried fish, fried vegetables, fried pork, fried beef, fried sweets, fried this, fried that. And it’s not all fried in tempura, which people would have you believe is the healthy way to fry food (pro tip: it’s not. It’s still breading, it’s still oil). It’s also fairly cheap, and very convenient. So, the next time someone makes a crack about how Americans fry everything, I will say, “Have you been to Japan?” About the only thing I haven’t seen fried here is fruit, but I’m sure they tried it.

“Well, the Japanese diet of fish and vegetables is absolutely healthy!” you cry. And I would agree with you: Fish and vegetables are damn healthy, but the combination is hardly a unique diet to Japan. You can find that sort of diet in a lot of places with a coast line and a fishing industry. Furthermore, people don’t eat just “fish and vegetables” anymore. They eat rice, and ramen, and tempura, and udon, and yakisoba, and fried food. They also eat tons and tons of convenience store food, which is, once again, packed with preservatives so that it can sit there all day waiting for some poor soul with no time, energy, or skill to cook food at home to finally stumble in at 10 at night to desperately scrounge around the 24-hour store for something resembling food, a substance they likely have not had since lunch time, if they had it all.

*I personally don't think I have a sensitive stomach, but the last several times I got food at a convenience store, it bothered my stomach and didn't stay in there for very long.

Often times you can find people snacking on starchy things that have almost no nutrition or protein to speak of and, if you know anything about proper nutrition and eating habits, you know that this is not healthy eating. We criticize fad diets and crash diets that exemplify such practices, and here we have an entire culture living it day to day.

Let me tell you a thing: Japanese people are not all healthy. They are run down, they are exhausted, they are sick just as often as we are, they are under tremendous amounts of stress and pressure from work, family, and society in general, the conditions that they frequently allow themselves to work under prevent them from doing much of anything outside of work (as far as teachers are concerned, anyway), and they don’t eat properly. And a lot of them are in fact fat.

Sound familiar?

Creeper Koopa

I’m going to deviate a little bit to talk about something funny that happened. One of the teachers, whom I’ve dubbed NA sensei, skipped lunch today and instead had to spend time talking with a student and their parent. Why he didn’t eat lunch after that is beyond me, but he seems to adhere to a strange diet regimen in the first place. At any rate, he starts passing out juice boxes to everyone, including me, he and I chat for a bit, and then go on our way.

Over the last two weeks or so, I’ve taken to calling him a creeper (to his face) because of the way he will sometimes approach me or walk by me or simply look at me: If we weren’t buddies, it could be construed as creepy or otherwise unnerving. Today I came to find that this whole time, he thought that I had been calling him “clever”. After my giggle fit subsided, I wrote down the two words and enunciated them so that he could hear the difference. Naturally, he asked what a creeper was. I handed him the dictionary (more like he snatched it from my hand when I found the page) and it said, “things that crawl,” and mentioned snakes and beetles. I told him that it was close but not quite, and left it at that.

Later in the afternoon he started beating on Yoko sensei, one of the English teachers, with an inflatable bat (she’s new this year so her sempais tend to pick on her like that), so I ran to her rescue. NA decided that this was a great time to try to find the translation, so he asked Yoko, “what is a coopah?” Yoko was of course confused, and I fell to the floor laughing when I realized what he was asking. I explained that he was trying to ask about the word, “creeper,” and she started laughing, too, much to NA’s chagrin. She told him simply that it was an American joke and kept it at that. I then told her that he thought I had been calling him clever this whole time, which she of course found funny, as well. NA then grumbled about us speaking English, or as Yoko later translated, “Stop speaking English!” since he couldn’t understand what we were saying and thus laughing about. I kindly patted him on the shoulder and said, “Sucks, doesn’t it?” and went back to my desk.

NA then took it upon himself to remind me that he was kind enough to give me a pineapple juice earlier, and I once again graciously thanked him for it, which got a few chuckles from the overhearing teachers, and a pencil thrown down in frustration and a disgruntled exclamation from NA sensei. XD

After he left, I drew a picture of Bowser, who goes by King Koopa in Japan, and left it on his desk to further add to his confusion on the matter.

I love my school.

Nature hike.

Yeah that nature hike?

It was horrible.

I wanted to murder things.

THAT IS ALL THAT I WILL SAY ON THAT.

Plus I had to miss a likely one-time-only concert that was three hours away. Why is that a big deal? Music and concerts are the main reason I wanted to come here. I can get anime and manga back home, but the concerts? No. Those are few and far between when it comes to Japanese bands.

Closing Ceremonies

So, I survived my first trimester teaching English in Japan. Today was the closing ceremonies, which is more or less just an assembly in the gym with a bunch of speeches and maybe a performance, just like back home. After the speeches, the brass band performed. That was pretty cool to watch and hear as all the sections came together after weeks of hearing each section practice separately. After that was the chorus club, with their angelic voices coming together for all of us to hear.

We were pretty much dismissed after that.

The 7^th grade teachers then had to give little speeches to the 7^th grade students, so we all made our way to the fourth floor and did our thing. I was told to prepare a “short” speech for them, and seeing as I was the last to go, I got to hear everyone else’s “short” speech, all of which were anything but “short”. 8| Then it was my turn, and I kept it short and in simple English, only to find that nobody was translating.

Me: *looks at Mr. Scissors* Aren’t you going to translate?

Scissors: *points to Mr. Shrimp, the JAPANESE TEACHER* He can do it :D

Shrimp: <_<…. “[Have a nice summer].”

Me: ….. Bah.

Not long after that, the kids all went home, and then it was lunch time for us. Bento time!

The whole rest of the week and half of next week I have summer training, including a nature hike with some students… “Wear comfortable clothes but no shorts and no long sleeves on account of the bugs and snakes.” In the middle of summer. There is no “comfortable” at that rate.

Neoguri

The same week as the Interactive Forum competition, a pretty hairy tropical storm started making its way through Okinawa. It got all the way up to a Class 5 Typhoon (Neoguri) as it blew through the tiny islands, causing quite a bit of damage and injuries. Reports put it as the biggest one in the last fifteen years. My BFF gave me a call to let me know about it, so I started making sure I had some supplies for when it did blow through the Kanto region. Come Thursday, I was getting e-mails about it from Sempais about how the enkai for that Friday had been canceled on account of the typhoon, how school was going to be canceled on account of the typhoon, how we needed to be ready for this huge typhoon that was headed our way. All this talk about this horrible, horrible typhoon coming our way, but teachers still have to attend school!!! One of the 9^th grade teachers got a fax saying that he had to go to the Board of Education (?) on Friday, and he of course was pissed about that. He made his displeasure known in Japanese, which was funny in its own right to hear, but I picked out a few words that made even me snicker. Because yeah, that sucks.

Everyone in the teachers' room was making a big deal about this typhoon, to the point where they would come up to me and tell me I should take a day off etc., etc., the traffic would be bad, the busses might even stop, yada yada… I told them that as long as the busses were still running, I'd probably still go, but I'd call if I wasn't able to make it. “You should really just take a day off.” I told Eikaiwa sensei about it and she checked with her kid's nursery school. She found out it, too, was canceled so she'd have to take the day off and stay with her kids. Well, that settled it: I asked for Friday off, as well.

On the way home I stopped by the Mega Donkey to get a lantern, just in case. I also filled up my empty water bottles with tap water just in case. I had a dozen cans of fish, just in case. I had a good supply of food in my fridge, just in case. I took some newspapers home from school to keep water out, just in case.

I felt ready.

I stayed up a little later than normal, keeping tabs on the course of the typhoon as I had been all week, assuring family and friends that I had stuff prepared and that I wasn't too worried, but finally went to sleep.

The next morning…

There was sunshine, intense heat and humidity, and a stillness only outdone by death itself.

The typhoon had been downgraded (upgraded, technically) to a Class 6, no longer considered a typhoon but merely a subtropical storm or some such, and had drifted south east onto the water.

I kept the curtains closed and stayed inside the whole day, much like I would have had there been an actual typhoon to hit. <_<

The end! 

Interactive Forum

I suppose I should talk about this since it’s something that all junior high schools do here.

What it is, is a speaking competition that pits students together in groups of 3-4 per round. They have five minutes to converse on a given topic, in English. Sounds pretty cool, especially as you review the topics for the 8^th graders. They have things like, favorite music, favorite subject, sport, school event, etc. Very basic topics that you’d expect junior high EFL students to be able to answer.

But then we get into the 9^th graders; topics. What do you think about video games for children? What do you think about junior high students having cell phones? What do you do to save the earth? And my personal favorite: What do you do to understand your classmates? As a language learner myself, I'm of the mind that these are high school level, if not flat-out college level, questions. I studied Japanese for a long time in college and I am not capable of holding a quality conversation in Japanese about such things. In fact, the last question about understanding one's class mates? I couldn't even hold a decent conversation about that in English. I had a lot of trouble helping them practice with that one.

One trick I told my four kids to go for was to allow the conversation to drift onto tangents, since that is something that normal conversations do. By the time of the actual competition, they and the other students managed to do that fairly well, with that question in particular, but then we came to find out, during closing ceremonies, that they aren't supposed to do that. “Please try harder to stay on topic,” we were told. I'm sorry, but conversations should not be so structured and rigid, I don't care if this is a competition. The entire point is to see if they can speak English coherently, and if they can wander off topic (as young people often do) and keep talking with each other in English, they are obviously doing that. So, that bit of feedback didn't sit well with me, especially since nowhere in the practice and info packets did it say to do that. These topics are awkward enough. I couldn't even fill the air for five minutes talking about what I “do to understand my classmates”, and it's my damn language.

All that aside, I did have a lot of fun prepping them for the Save the Earth topic, but unfortunately neither of my 9^th graders got to have that one. M-kun was rather disappointed about that, because he was looking forward to using my trump card should anyone mention global warming during the topic. Instead he got the cell phone topic. M-chan, the poor thing, got stuck with the understanding one's classmates topic. She did really well with it, and I made sure she knew how proud I was of her, because sadly…

M-kun was the only one of our four students to go on to the next round. He had vastly improved in his speaking ability during our minimal practice sessions, and obviously the judges noticed. His pronunciation still needs work, but he did a great job with leading and redirecting the flow of the conversation. When there was dead air, he was always the first to pick things back up and keep talking, and he had a strong voice and listened to the others very well.

I was a little surprised that M-chan didn't do so well in their eyes, but on the other hand there were quite a few students that had an edge on her, such as stronger pronunciation ability. Once we were all dismissed, I could tell she was a little upset about the results, so I did my best to remind her that it didn’t matter, we were all proud of her for going as far as she did and doing as well as she did. The other thing about her is, I know what she can do. The week prior, I had walked her home after school and she chatted with me, in English, about anime that she liked and how she was going to meet a voice actor in a couple weeks and how excited she was about it. None of the others kids so far has done anything like that. I drew one of her favorite characters on the back of her paper to try to cheer her up, and it made her smile. :3

All this talk about the 9^th graders and hardly a word about the 8^th graders. Here's why: At first, during practice, they showed interest in wanting to compete and do well, and they began to improve. The last week or so, however, that improvement disappeared and they didn't seem to care too much anymore. Come the competition, it was obvious that they were done. They didn't seem to care that they had lost; they were happy to be done with it. XP They did fairly well, and there were quite a few students that did worse than they, but yeah. They didn't care anymore.

As for how the school handled the whole thing… I'm of the mind that it wasn't a top priority to them. Some schools start practice in early May, and we didn't begin until June. We'd get 15 minutes after lunch most days, and 50 minutes after school (unless it was a Monday or the week of a test, in which case there was no practice at all). They could have used a lot more time, but we weren't given that, and in my opinion it showed. I figure they care more about sports events.

So, enough about my kids and the prep work. Let's talk about the actual competition some more! Ono sensei and I were to accompany the kids to the event. I was told to dress up like I do for my bi-monthly meetings, which meant pants and button-down blouse in July. And we stood out there waiting for the taxis (and one of the students) for a good ten minutes, in the sun… I could feel the sweat dripping down my legs and back and the day hadn't even started yet.

Nevertheless, we finally took off. I knew almost all of the ALTs that were there, but two or three were complete strangers to me. One ALT was the MC, and two elementary school ALTs were the judges, to avoid partiality. There were three rooms with 4 groups of students at any given time. Each grade had 3 rounds that alternated, and the set up more or less allowed for us to jump from room to room if need be to give our students support. After the first three rounds we broke for lunch, which was rather interesting: I had been told to bring my lunch to this thing, only to find out that there were bentos provided (and I'm assuming we had to pay for them). I sat down with our students, whom all had to bring their own lunches, and I overheard a teacher behind me saying how she looked forward to this bento each year. I could kind of see why: It was pretty fancy looking, but honestly I felt bad for the students and was happy to have my meager home-cooked meal alongside them. Seemed a little arrogant to make the students do all this practice and put all this pressure on them, and have the teachers eat a congratulatory lunch while the kids eat whatever they were able to throw together that morning. But I digress.

The final three rounds worked the same way as the first three, but we were fortunate in that, for the final pair of rounds, both students were in the same room and both Ono sensei and I were able to stay with them both and cheer them on (silently).

Once that was over, we all piled back into the main room for Closing ceremonies, but while we waited they decided to have an Interactive Japanese Forum with the ALTs. My students goaded me into the second, intermediate round, where I was more or less drowned out by the four guys as they talked about what they did during recess (which I don't have…). But whatever. The students got a kick out of it. :D

Then the feedback was given about how they need to work on their pronunciation and clarity (yep…), their volume level, listening skills, and finally staying on topic. After that, the winners were announced. None of the MC's students was going on to the next round, and while they were of course bummed about that, he saw it as a relief: No more practice! And I don't blame him. After getting a taste for this competition, I'm not all that impressed with it. I'd rather they focus on having a practical conversation with another person about things that interest them. Fifteen-year olds discussing saving the earth? How far do you expect them to take that? I encouraged mine to keep it local, like picking up trash and turning off lights and faucets. When they asked me about global warming, I gave them a crash course in terminology and what certain things mean, and gave them the phrase, “climate change”, and what it meant, as a way to shut down the competition. XD They both got a kick out of that. I was bummed they didn't get to talk about it at all.

Well, once the winners were announced and certificates handed out, we took a few commemorative photos and then called the taxis back. Headed back to the school and announced to the vice principal how well they did. All in a day's work! Heh…

Bath houses

Recently I was invited to go to an onsen, or a hot spring bath house. If you’re not familiar with this concept, it’s a public bath house (typically gender segregated) where you wash first, bathe and soak next, and then wash again before you leave. And everyone walks around stark naked. No towels except the kind you set on your head (the point of which I know not).

It was a spur of the moment invitation at 8 o’clock at night after dinner with a group of people I’d just met, to which my initial response was, “There’s one open this late?”

There was indeed.

The appeal was the nearby vicinity, the affordable pricing, and the fact that it had only opened a few months ago, so it was still “clean”. All things considered, I don’t think I’ll be wanting to set foot inside an older onsen…

With that in mind, we headed off and arrived at an artificial bath house that looked similar to a small shopping center. It even had a small arcade, and a café loaded with comic books to read. I don’t know how other bath houses operate, but this one in particular gave you electronic wrist bands that served as your wallet: If you ordered something from the café, for example, you scanned the wrist band and your total would be rung up at the cashier when you were finished with the entire experience.

After we were given our towels (you can bring your own or rent them) and wrist bands, we headed upstairs to the locker/changing room. There was a vanity area for drying your hair and applying face and hand lotion, and past that was the changing area where the sea of naked women began. As an American visiting a public bath house for the first time, this was of course a little unnerving. I am not used to such quantities of nudity, and what made it worse was the fact that I was the only foreigner there, so there was a slight fear that I would be stared at more than anyone else.

Amazingly enough, there was no open staring. Less amazing but still worth noting, nobody approached me and tried to test out their English skills. Everyone kept to themselves or their little groups that they’d come with, much like my group did. I will admit that while I wasn’t truly staring, I did observe the different shapes and sizes of bodies around me (I’m an artist; it’s what we do…).

After washing and soaking in one of the hot tubs, the four of us took a dip in the children’s pool, playing with the massive amount of rubber duckies (I’m not kidding, there were all sorts of sizes of these rubber ducks in the children’s pool) and squirting each other with them like the mature adults that we were. For as late as it was, there were a considerable number of young girls milling about with their moms. I found that interesting.

When we’d finished demonstrating our collective mental age, we then stepped outside (open air) to where the acid baths were. There were three varieties, all of which had the water temperature gauge in the corners. Each pool had only a few degrees centigrade difference at most, but it was still noticeable. Keep in mind that this was a lukewarm summer evening, as well. The first, the largest pool, was specifically labeled as the low concentration acid bath. I took care not to get my hair wet with it, as well as to keep my gold necklace above the water line, just in case. There was a large screen TV at the end of the pool with a drama of some sort playing.

We sat there for a few minutes and then moved over to the silk water tub. Unlike the acid bath, the silk tub had micro bubbles and a murkier appearance. It was slightly warmer than the acid bath, and the tub was raised and thus much smaller. It’s so named on account of the water’s ability to leave your skin “silky smooth”, and it did just that! My skin felt very soft after getting out of there.

Afterwards we moved to the individual buckets. The water seemed like normal bath water and not acid or silk water, so I am not entirely sure what was so special about these. But when I say buckets, I mean giant vase-like things that you climb inside and sit in, spilling water over the edges and letting it pour back over you. The placard talked about the history of these things, saying that at one point they were used for bathing but later became torture devices or death traps, because they were made of iron and heated with open flame. The placard made a point to assure us that such a thing was not a concern now! These were made of ceramic and not heated over an open flame! If I had had my phone as well as been allowed to use the camera function (expressly forbidden, as you might guess), I would have taken a picture of it.

Then it was off to the saunas. We first went into the salt sauna, which was a small room with plastic chairs and a basin filled with salt in the middle. As one might expect with a sauna, it was hot and steamy inside, and it smelled like salt, which just about smacks you in the face as you walk in. You can then take some salt from the basin and rub it over your skin to exfoliate, etc. Once we had done that, we rinsed off and went to the steam sauna, which was much larger and had tiered floor seating so that you could watch TV while you broiled. We only managed to stay in there for a minute or two, as it was much warmer than the salt room. The gauge, I believe, read 60 degrees Centigrade, which is just ridiculously warm. For comparison, the warmest of the baths was about 42 degrees. Between it and the humidity, I felt as if I was broasting in there and could barely breathe.

There was a pool of cold water (about 16 degrees) but we opted not to use it. Instead we got some water to drink from the locker room cooler, and then washed the bath water off before going to get dressed. Once dressed and dry again, we went downstairs to the café and got some dessert. We all got ice cream of some sort, but there was quite a variety to choose from, alongside actual food and meals. What’s more, by the cashier and the arcade is a very small produce section. (!!) Other than needing a place to sleep, it’s very possible to live there quite affordably, it turns out.

After paying, we made our way out and headed home. All in all, it was a very relaxing experience. Getting used to the nudity happened quickly, although it’s still fairly unpleasant to think about. That being said, I’d look forward to going again with the girls. :)

General observations

Some observations about life here in the last month:

·         Early teens think it's funny that the white girl likes tonkatsu.

·         There is substantially more litter around than initially led to believe, especially on trash days.

·         Crossing signals can be very [technologically] primitive here: I have 4-way stops in my area that make all 4 signals green or red at once, instead of 2 and 2. This makes waiting to cross a long waiting game at certain intersections, especially as you watch your bus drive by ahead of you to the stop you're attempting to reach, which brings me to...

·         Whoever said public transportation here was stellar and perfect was a filthy rotten liar: My buses are not on time half the time; while they're not typically late, they're usually early because they blow past stops if nobody is there and nobody says they want off, which gains them about 15-20 seconds per stop. Have several stops like that, and you're arriving at your destination several minutes earlier than expected, much to the surprise of anyone that was expecting the bus to arrive a few minutes later. This is great if you're already on the bus, but if you're counting on it being there at 7:32, and get there at 7:31 to find out it flew through at 7:27, you're not going to be happy. Also, at stops with large amounts of arrival times, there is no way to know which arrival time is for which bus route. So that 7:32 bus might not necessarily by the 11 bus you want, but instead the 23 for 7:36 that turns left down the road, but since the 11 bus went through early anyway, it wasn't going to be your bus to begin with.

·         Running late? Blame the bus. Chances are if you had been on time to your stop, you would have missed the bus you were trying for, and the one after that, because they were early, so you would have had to wait for the one that you ended up taking anyway when you got there late.

·         And finally on this, there are the very rare times that the bus driver won't switch the stop announcement soon enough, meaning if the fare zones line up just right and he delays the stop announcement, you end up paying more than usual at your stop. Honest. I'm not joking. This happened to me. In fact it has led to my employer thinking I'm an idiot that can't read the fare grid correctly.

·         The trains, however, are pretty fricking cool.

·         The general consensus has been that old people are typically more xenophobic and the younger generations are more open to foreigners, but my personal experience has been that younger people (my students not withstanding) try to pretend I (and anyone else) am not there, whereas the older generations are very eager to help me out whenever I ask (How do I read this kanji? Where do I buy tickets for the train? Does this bus go to this location? How in God's name do I get to this bank from here because I clearly have no idea where I am at this point?). This doesn't apply to clerks and store employees, though: Regardless of age, they do what they can to help me, as well. WITH ONE EXCEPTION, but that was because I wanted to fix my appliance with a $4 part instead of buy a new one.

·         Asking for directions here will garner lots of pointing and gesturing, sighs of complacency, and, "Do your best,"s in response. Not because you obviously don't understand what they're saying, but because navigating anything here without GPS sucks balls, and they all know it.

·         Most everyone I've done this in front of has been very impressed that I know to serve myself from buffet-style meals with my chopsticks flipped over. No surprise here: I learned it via working in a Japanese restaurant. It's not something anyone tells you to do when teaching you how to use the chopsticks.

·         They are however fairly insistent to get you to use chopsticks the Japanese way, which hurts my fingers, so I don't do it.

·         My neighbors don't keep 9-5 jobs like I more or less do.

·         For a country plagued by humidity and mold issues, they don't design apartments (or at least not mine) with moisture elimination in mind: My washer drain collected water that grew mold despite frequent use. My shower takes 3 days to dry out if I don't squeegee it, because the water will not go towards the drain otherwise.

·         Lots of important things close early, despite the country having a reputation for people working long, horrendous hours. Banks close at 3pm and are closed on weekends, for example, with hospitals supposedly closing at noon?? But the post office is open 7 days a week. Go figure. Thankfully my grocery stores are open until 9:30 or 11, depending on which I go to.

·         If anyone tells you that Japanese food is healthier or in smaller portions than American food, tell them to actually go there and eat for a week. I admittedly eat less than I used to but I can still pack it away when inclined, and I find myself full (not just satiated) nearly every time I go out to eat and order one single entree, usually a la carte. Further, unless you're literally eating just fish/meat and vegetables, no, this stuff is not "healthier" for you than American food. It's greasy as sin, has more sodium than is recommended in a day per meal (I had a Japanese nurse tell me that the food is a huge contributor to the hypertension problem), and half the time they don't believe one needs protein with the meal so much as more starch. Eating yakisoba? Have some rice. Already have rice? Have some pasta. Already have pasta? Have some bread. Have bread? Here, have mochi. Oh, I guess that needs a little bit of color... Here have a half ounce of protein and a handful of vegetables (including potato!).

·         Not everyone here is a genkan-nazi. I have been to two schools in this city, and the general consensus at both is that it's okay to step outside in your indoor shoes to get to the next building that's 10 feet away. Had to run outside in your indoor shoes for a fire drill? Just wipe them off real quick and you're good to go. 

·         Lots of advice blogs mentioned that women's sanitary products didn't get much floor space in stores, but I have found that to not be the case. In fact in some stores they get more shelves and displays than back home! Tampons are not a thing here, however. That part still holds true. What is common to see, though, is basically incognito Depends for monthly needs.  

·         Where the hell is all the eel sauce? There's tons of it in the Japanese supermarkets in the States. Can't find it to save my life here.

·         Don't come here expecting to eat celery: A stalk. A STALK. Not a bunch. A single freaking stalk. Is $1. And that's if you can find it.

·         Milk's pretty tasty here, and about the same price as back home. Eggs, however, are pretty damn cheap! I can get 10 for $2, sometimes less!

Happy Mother's Day!

Some updates

Tuesday I had my internet hooked up. The modem, anyway. Tl;Dr: I had to sign into the internet the next day on my own, which was fine. I can computer. :D And thenceforth I was no longer a slave to the Guest network. Still need a wireless router, but that can wait until my next paycheck, becaaaaause...!

I also have a bed on the way! After the modem was installed, Sempai 1 and 2 took me to the furniture store to look for a bed. Found a display model that was damaged so I got that for about $40 cheaper, and then a mattress. That will be delivered on the 24^th though, so I'm still on the air mattress in the meantime. Things will be a little tight with a bed instead of a day bed which I wanted, but I couldn't find anything that I really liked like that. This one uses every inch of its footprint as additional storage, however, so I can put bedding and seasonal stuff under the mattress and sleep stuff in the drawers. It's pretty cool. There's also an outlet in the headboard. There was a larger model with additional headboard storage, but my apartment is pretty narrow. :/

I also have a shelf in the kitchen, and another bookshelf that Sempai 00 was getting rid of and let me have. Not sure what to do with it or where it will go, but I have it. Might use it for dishes. Actually I wonder if my drum will fit in there... In any case, THANK YOU FOR NOTICING ME, SEMPAI.

Four day weekend!

Let's talk about last weekend, first!

Namely, the fact that my laundry room flooded! Why? Because the spin cycle knocked the tubing off the drain. YAY. That was fun to clean up. I learned that my washer made use of a convoluted draining system that basically left standing water that managed to grow mold despite having a resident do laundry regularly here prior to my arrival.

I gutted that as soon as I found it. Poured some vinegar in the reservoir and got as much out as I could, but there is still some. I cleaned the drain basins with a sponge that instantly went into the trash after, of course, as they were grey and brown with all sorts of ick. They're now sitting in the broom closet never to be used by me. The green tube that Sempai #4 and I bought but didn't use was then shoved into the drain hole, by-passing the reservoir, and connected to the washer. That also got knocked off via the spin cycle, which is what caused the flooding, so I needed another solution.

Sempai 0 (Sempai to even the sempais!) took me to the other side of town to see if we could get a part that I was missing, but after about a half hour of translating and asking and confirming, the clerk did not want to order a $4 part for me, insisting that the entire machine was broken and I needed a new one. Well, that pissed off Sempai 0 and we walked out, going to a hardware store and finding putty! For $5.30. For $5.70 I got double the putty so I got that package instead, plus a 4-tier shelf for the kitchen for $30. More on the shelf later.

After pulling the washer out yet again to get under it and see what needed to be done, I had to do the putty asap or else I couldn't use the toilet or shower. XP It didn't take a lot of time; I used half the putty in the box to make sure that the outlet tube was secured to the chassis of the washer, and the green tube was secured to the outlet tube. That thing ain't goin' nowhere, no how. I'll give it a test run on Tuesday when I'll be home.

Speaking of Tuesday! I'll have fiber optic internet hooked up Tuesday afternoon! :D SCORE.

Back to the shelf. Took some figuring out but it didn't require tools to assemble. It's made of steel, and the top shelf is basically eye-level for me. It fit perfectly in the little nook between the shoji doors and the fridge (I had measured prior to buying!), and it got my soda, chips, water, and other things off the floor, plus the food off the counter top! I was so excited to have it finally! THANK YOU, SEMPAI!

And today at the Mega Donkey I bought a small shelf for the water closet, which basically wedges in between the two walls?? Having a second person to hold it steady while I tightened it would have been nice but oh well, I got it done. It now holds basic water closet necessities so I don't have to go the broom closet or the sink in the other room.

Also I have pink toilet paper. Why? Because I did not want blue or green.

And finally, today, right as I was leaving for the Donkey, my second care package arrived from Mom! Yay, more clothes! @_@ And more mouth wash, and shampoo. The clothes were the big thing. I only had three pairs of pants, apparently!! Now I have plenty. :D Thanks, Mom!

Monday after all

After getting lost and asking directions multiple times (everyone was very nice about it, by the way! I got lots of, "Be careful!" and, "Oh crap uhm... *directions* Do your best! ^^;"), I finally found the bank (on foot), only to be told I needed my hanko to pull out money without a bank card. My hanko that's at school so that I don't lose it or forget it when I clock in each morning...
The best part is, in my getting lost on the way to the bank (there are no street names here), I ended up in front of the school and it was open for whatever reason. I probably could have gone in and gotten the thing had I known.

So I am limited in my funds at the moment... Which will make furniture shopping and paying for the enkais rather difficult. I know I still have about $100 but I need to pay Sensei for the after party I went to on Saturday :| Maybe Sempai 1 will know what to do.

Did another load of laundry before I left, though, only to discover that the spin cycle knocked the drain hose off the drain... resulting in a flooded washroom. Not sure what to do to fix it. Sempai 4 had suggested tape but I don't think that will cut it. I'll try to get pictures of it tomorrow so my friend can show her dad and maybe get some advice.

At Don Quixote, however, I bought a foot stool that is in fact not quite tall enough for the cabinet's top shelf... But it gets me closer, at least. I can use it for the closet and get the taller one later. I also bought some alcohol (squee!), and a squeegee for the shower since it was not designed very well. It takes three days to dry on its own, and as such I've been apprehensive of showering regularly. The squeegee will make a huge difference, though, and that will be a relief come the summer. Today was fairly muggy with the rain coming in for the week, and summer will only be worse. I can smell the mold and mildew getting ready...

I encountered a small handful of my students while walking around; the first group was a bunch of boys looking at trading cards and there was an air of, "Aw, crap, it's sensei..." as I approached. All the girls I encountered, however, were fairly excited to see me, and had they not been on their way to something or I to the Mega Donkey, I would have chatted with them. I'll find out if word gets around school that I wear earrings, but I don't think any of them are old enough to even know what SKIN was, never mind why it's a big deal to SKIN fans that I have a T-shirt with the band logo on it. *evil chuckle* (4 big Japanese solo names formed a band and they only had one show, and it was in America. You could feel the butt hurt from across the Pacific.)

I also had lunch at Lotteria to take advantage of their Shingeki no Kyoujin/Attack on Titan campaign. I got the clear file today, but my next target is the hand towel, and then the fry bucket. I was impressed by Lotteria's fries! They're just like home. The cheese burger I had tasted and looked a lot like the McD's cheeseburger, just a different sauce. It was a small meal, but for $5 I was fed to satisfaction and I got a clear file that's normally about that much money, if not more. The cashier was very nice about helping me order, as well, using slow Japanese as she pointed and gestured.

Speaking of people helping me out! I mentioned this on Facebook but not all of you are on there:
Mom had sent me a box but it arrived while I was at school, and I was left a Failure of Delivery notice. While it was rather obvious what was needed of me, there was no way I'd be able to make the call and set up a time for re-delivery on my own. I had been told to go to Conbinis for missed deliveries, so I took the notice to the 7-11 at around midnight, after the enkai, when everyone was asleep and everything else was closed. The two clerks pored over the notice to figure out what to do and explained it to me as best they could, but then figured it best if they just made the call themselves. They went through the automation for me and set it up for a Sunday delivery. T^T So kind of them!

Time off!

Just a quick play by play of my time off that I haven't really covered yet.

Obviously I have weekends off. The night of going to my school for the first time we had an enkai but I bowed out a little early because I was broke and couldn't afford the second party. Slept in and on Saturday we got my washing machine hooked up and functioning. Also found out how far the Akatsuka station and the Yamashin were from my apartment, both of which are within walking distance, and so is  the Mega Don Quixote! It's just in the opposite direction. XD But on Sunday I went exploring and found it without much trouble; if you go in the correct direction it's very hard to miss! It earned it's prefix of "Mega," to say the least.

I also went to church first on Sunday, and had lunch with my Sempais after not seeing or hearing from them in a week. I missed them!

Monday after school and our meeting, a group of us went to Costco in the neighboring city and loaded up a minivan with groceries and bulk items. I was quite satisfied with my haul, but still had not found any furniture items, like a bed or a shelving rack for the kitchen.

This past Saturday was spent at school, for PTA purposes, and there was an after party involving said PTA. And then another after party, and I went to this one. It was very interesting! We went to an izakaya across the street (Japanese bar that had all you can drink), were everyone let loose and got super chummy. I was even told to not bother flipping my chopsticks over to serve from the plates, but bravo to me for knowing so much about Japanese culture! I was also told I needed more alcohol because I clearly wasn't relaxed enough, but being a Gaijin and brand new and with parents around, I didn't want to take any chances. That being said, though, the principal himself invited me to his home for a BBQ next week, and this happened before we had all started drinking! If that sounds like a big deal, it's because it is, in general. But he's a very kind person and likes to joke with his staff during working hours, and while it's still a big deal that he invited me and I'm of course honored that he already thinks so highly of me, I'm not entirely surprised? I've never once felt intimidated by him, which is something that we've been kind of led to expect of our superiors. I was certainly surprised at his friendliness when I met him!

But by having school on Saturday, we have Monday off, which means I get a three day weekend while most of the other AETs are not so fortunate. *dance* I spent today doing laundry, chatting online, and then I went to find the recycle shop by Akatsuka station on foot. They didn't have furniture I could use at the moment, but I did stumble upon a limited edition of MUCC's Shangri La album. :D Then a quick stop at the grocery store to get eggs, meat, and yakisoba stuff for dinner that I ultimately did not make; just reheated curry from the other night. Oh and on that note, I've been asked by a few Senseis what I have for dinner "every day" which is rather curious in my opinion. I got smart with one of them and said, "I eat food every day!" because, let's face it, I don't eat the same thing every day. I eat curry enough that I have to try to not eat it when I go out, so that I truly don't get sick of it (My solace is that I make it a little differently than the places I find it at do, such as including lotus root and not throwing in eight pounds of onion quarters... But I digress.), but I don't have it for dinner every night.

Tomorrow will involve more laundry, and a trip to the bank to pull out some dinero. Might swing by Don Quixote, as well, and if I have the time, maybe get a massage across the street from the apartment. Sempai, if she has time, will take me to other places for furniture shopping on Tuesday. If not I'll wait for her to get back from her trip for Golden Week.

Also I just applied for fiber optic internet... :| I finally won't be dependent on data and wifi leeching.

I hate children.

No, seriously. It's been my mantra since I was a snot-nosed kid. Now I'm a snot-nosed adult.

I just wrapped up my first week at school. I have 4 English teachers to defer to, and I sit next to the head English teacher. I'm constantly mispronouncing his name, which turns it into "Scissors" in Japanese. On Friday I called him that in front of his class and they all erupted into giggles. I think it might become his nickname before long, though...

As far as classes go, I am only in the English Conversation class with one other teacher, and she sits across from me. This of course makes planning lessons, etc., very convenient. While some AETs have multiple schools, I only have one, but I thus far have only had 4 classes a day or less. This is in part due to the half-day schedule for the home visits that teachers do here, and three of the English teachers are doing said home visits this week.

I have 4 classes of each grade, for a total of 12, plus two Special needs classes. When I interviewed for Interac, I was asked how I felt about the possibility of working with special needs kids, and I was honestly apprehensive at the idea because I had very little experience with the mentally handicapped in general, never mind teaching them. I was apprehensive here, too, especially after meeting one of my sempais' students that has Down's Syndrome, but I was told to expect to have one disabilities class if not more. Well, I met my kids, and their main instructor told me that the majority (of less than 10 kids) of them are in fact retarded, one has ADD, and one has Aspherger's and PDD.

I'll be honest: They're probably my favorite group of kids. I get emotional at the idea of working with them so closely, and hopefully being a positive influence in their lives. One in particular had written that he didn't like English because it was hard to learn, but if it could be made easier he'd like it more. I met him after reading that, and after class he conveyed that he felt a little better about learning it with me.

I sat with their teacher on Friday and asked what sorts of materials and topics I could use to work with them, because my teaching games resource, while a wealth of ideas for elementary-level minds, mostly has games that require lots of kids. I have 5 or less in either of these classes, and while that's great for conversation purposes and giving them adequate time with me, I can't play many games with them! I want them to have some fun with me. So I had to find out what I was working with, and sensei was ecstatic that I was ready to jump in and work with her kids. (And she's such a dear; she loaned me an elementary level Japanese book after she saw I could read Japanese and some kanji T^T)

I spent lunch this week eating with the 7^th graders, moving from group to group each day. Some talked around me, one didn't say anything at all (even to each other) until I probed them all with goofy Japanese, but the group on Friday was happy to talk to me in Japanese. We even got the whole side of the room to dance to one of the songs playing. ^_^ Next week I'll be in a different 7^th grade class.

Finally, I roamed around after lunch and checked out some of the clubs. My favorite is the art club, but right next door is the chorus club and they're all very excited to have me sit and listen to their lovely voices. On a side note about that, Friday morning they were walking the hallways together and they greeted a teacher, their voices harmonizing like they were singing. So adorable! I also helped out with the gym clubs, after which I played some with the table tennis club. But I always end up at the art room, which has illustrators, painters, sculptors, and etchers. They're talkative but not too lively, which is perfect for me. And VERY creative! I love to just sit and watch them work. One girl in particular started writing my name with a brush, and then her friend did the same in much prettier writing, and the first girl got discouraged at her own skill, especially with how nonchalant her friend was about her own talent. But I have the paper the first girl did, sitting on my desk for all the teachers to see. She also began painting a spacescape with meteors and stars, and she ran out of ideas to add. She then handed the paper to me and asked me to add to it, which I eagerly did. She kept pooh-poohing her picture, but I think it's beautiful (sound familiar, anyone?). I'm also a sucker for spacescapes, but she did a nice job besides. If she ever decides she doesn't want it anymore, I'm snagging it!

That's all for now. I have laundry hanging outside now that my washer is hooked up and usable. :D I need to wash my colors and darks next... My laundry is racist; Whites first!

Too much, too fast.

Where to begin! Well, I've been here in Japan for all of two weeks (I landed on the 10^th?), and it's now the 25^th. I have survived a great many things thus far!

My first day in Mito was a big one. First we went kitchen shopping, then some furniture shopping, had lunch, then went to the grocery store. I didn't think much of it until I remembered something horrifying: Very few of my trusted brands were anywhere to be found. What's more, I'm a voluntary diabetic (which basically translates to I need protein with every meal) and I'm in a land of starch with starch as a side dish, and some actual animal-based protein thrown in for a garnish. I don't do well with a piece of toast for breakfast and nothing else; I will want to kill things within the hour. But after some navigating and recommendations from my sempais, we were ready to check out, and that's where I started to lose it: Did you bring enough reusable bags? No? How many plastic bags will you need? They're 3 Yen a piece. That's not a lot, but I've never shopped before and have no idea how big bags are here, thus how many I need is a huge mystery, plus I need to figure out how to pay when I only have $200 in Yen on me for the week, oh but it's ok I can pay with my American Visa, wait I'm spending how much on food and household cleaning items??? Oh, my God, is that a lot? I have no idea!!!! BREATHE

I made it outside before I needed to cry.

If you've never been on your own or can't think back that far, it's ridiculously overwhelming to fill your kitchen from nothing, especially in a new culture with different food and different grocery store customs and layouts. Sure, my sempais gave me a few items like plates and silverware and a few edible items, as well as some absolutely filthy pots and pans. But I had no way of using these things; I needed kitchen tools! Cutting boards, knives, serving and stirring utensils, sponges and towels! I had none of these things! And I needed actual food!! I couldn't think straight. I had to get food for multiple meals, and the proper ingredients (Curry? Vegetables and meat! Hold up; what vegetables are here and are they expensive? Cereal requires milk but I don't know what milk is like here. Eggs and bacon requires eggs and bacon and maybe some oil and seasoning... Ok that's easy enough. Want some fruit? How quickly will you eat it? Do you really need that item right now or can it wait a week? Meanwhile, keep the size of your fridge, kitchen, and cooking surface in mind!!!!).

I've been here two weeks and I still have not acquired butter, for example. It's taken me three trips to the grocery store to find it (and when I did find it I felt like an idiot). Did I buy any? No. Why? Because I don't know which brands are actual butter and which ones are yellow plastic.

And for all of that, I still don't have a bed that I'm not borrowing, or proper shelving because I had to browse before I could commit to anything. Hopefully sempai can help me with that this week or next. I also don't have curtains yet, or a footstool to reach my overhead cabinets, but I can go get the foot stool this weekend now that I found one within walking distance and have money. :D

Training! (back dated)

I start training this week, but unfortunately training mostly involves "getting to know each other" games and all the culture rules and how to be Japanese (but don't be too Japanese because there is supposed to be culture exchange, as well!) and never ever do this or that. Every now and then discussions about actual teaching crop up, but there was nothing about how to live in Japan until Thursday when we went over the "Life Manual" that would have been nice to have in our welcome bags from the previous Friday night when we were taken to our apartments. (You don't need to use your microwave to make food, right? Cuz we won't give you a guide to that for another week. And we hope you brought enough clothes to last until you get the washing machine guide! If not, hopefully there's a coin Laundromat nearby...) And don't get me started on how to operate the bus system here, because they never got started, either. (But make sure you have enough presents for all of your school's staff! AND WE DO MEAN ALL!)

Overall I am not terribly impressed with the way the program has been run this year, and it's probably my displeasure with this that will likely get me in trouble with the Board. If it was only a few years old, it would be one thing, but they have been at this for decades, and this year was very badly put together; even they admit that.

On Friday (the 18th) we were taken to our schools for the first time and we got to meet everyone. I was finally able to see where my school was (I'd searched for it on Sunday and never found it) and know for sure how to get there via bus and walking. I also had an enkai that night, and I ended up being late to that because I didn't know when the buses left my area at that time of day. It was a lot of fun, though. I enjoy the staff at my school very much, both sober and inebriated, and I look forward to a great year with them.

Leaving in about 6 hours.

BBIAW!

Yes, I'm nervous.

2 more days to go.

I now have a box of clothes that I'll want right away, so that will be with my toiletries and the grammar books and maybe crochet stuff if Mom can find a big enough box. My justification for so many clothes is that I'm fat and won't be able to buy anything that I need there.

My IRS form 6166 finally arrived today (almost a month beyond the 6 week turn around time), so I won't get double taxation. Yay for that!

Sempai said I have a fridge, a couch, and a washing machine in my apartment, and if I did the address right, I found my roof top. XD It's too far from the street to see the front, though. Looks like a decent enough building, though. I also managed to find a collection of places to check out/eat at/shop in bookmarked on Google Maps left behind by someone that was probably in the JET program, so that will come in handy, I'm sure.

And as far as international communication goes, I have Skype, Kik, Viber, and of course the Facebook.

Huge news!

So, I had the orientation back on the 15th (and I was ten minutes late!), and while I got a lot of information and had some questions answered, there were new ones that needed answering. And that meant more waiting. Meanwhile I'm taking care of stuff out here and don't have time to blog about it all. Things are getting answered, though.

But here was the run down:

• Most new AETs get Elementary schools, but I got a Junior High I found out just the other day.
• New AETs get Sempais to show them around the first weekend. I talked to mine for a couple hours via Skype and we're both excited to meet one another!
• Used cars are super cheap in Japan, so I got an international driver license. 
• I bought a Japanese smart phone for the AU network, so now all I have to do is get an account with them.
• Mito still has not told us what time we need to be at the airport, so the 3 Californian teachers finally just went and bought their plane tickets. We're all on the same flight, and we leave April 9. We'll all be in a hotel for a night.
• Our apartments will have some furnishings, but not many. The intent is to ensure everyone has a bed, at the very least. Sempai has at least offered me an air mattress in case I don't get one. 
• I was super excited about there being a COSTCO in Tsukuba (about 1.5-2 hours away) but Sempai informed me that there will be one in Hitachinaka, which is much closer! 
• Two of my friends came over and helped me practice pack for the trip. I have 2 suitcases planned out as far as outfits and shoes and toiletries, and I also have a box set aside for stuff that I won't need until Fall/Winter. What's more, I have a box set aside full of toiletries and grammar books that I'll want sent ASAP. 
• I also found out that I had to buy presents for a bunch of people, with the recommendations being to get candy. For about 50 people. Because I don't have to shove enough into 2 suitcases. 
• Singapore Airlines weighs your carry-on, and 15 pounds is my laptop, Nikon, and external hard drive. I am, however, entitled to a purse and a laptop on top of the carry-on, so if I can get a laptop case for the one, I should be fine. (I have a laptop and a netbook)
• Things for which I have no room and will need to wait: My stuffed bunny, my wind chimes, and crochet stuff. I was going to take some posters and animu figurines with me, but there's no way. So, the Attack on Titan figurine for which I waited 5 months to get, will have to stay home for 2 years. Unless some kind soul gets it to me. And some of my other ones. :D 
• I technically know which school is my home school, but I can't find it on the map and the address they gave me doesn't get me anything, either. I also do not know my apartment address yet. 
• It's also very likely that my breaks won't be long enough to take extended trips. :( I was hoping to visit home and Australia over the summer. We'll see, though. 

I think that's everything? 

One step closer.

I went to pick up my visa and passport yesterday.

Now I need to get my 6166 form from the IRS, and then my plane ticket, and finally a Yakan Shoumei for my medication. As well as a six month supply of said medication.

If you have any questions about the process of any of these documents, leave a comment and I'll go over what I did.
For that matter, if you have any questions about any step of the process of becoming a direct-hire ALT in Japan, comment away and I'll be happy to go into detail. :)

Meanwhile I'm constantly checking my e-mail for the green light to purchase the plane ticket...

Certificate of Eligibility

My CoE arrived in the mail the other day. YAAAAAAAAY!

Wait... What do I need that for?

Well, the CoE is the document that I need to bring to the embassy and basically exchange it for a work visa. The CoE won't let me into Japan to work; I had to fill out a form and have that sent to Japan on my behalf, wait for the CoE which arrived from Japan, and now I can take that (pretty fancy) piece of paper to the Japanese embassy in Los Angeles and say, "Hey, I qualify for a work visa. :D" This does mean handing over my passport for a few days, which is a little worrisome, but it shouldn't be an issue.

And I was going to do all of that today, and kill some time in Little Tokyo with a friend, but California decided that this weekend would be a great time to have heavy rain for four days. So it will have to wait until Monday.

Beyond that, I am waiting to get the green light to purchase my plane ticket. So far the only thing we know is that they want us at the Narita airport on the 11th of April. After that is the orientation where I can find out all sorts of information about being an AET, about Mito, about my apartment hopefully...

Still slowly going through my room and clearing things out, packing things in the suitcases that I don't need now but will need in Japan, deciding what to take to feel like home... So much to do, and a lot of it has to wait until I get info from the Orientation. :(

Orientation!

Orientation is scheduled for March 15, in La Palma. :D

*excited*

Still gotta mail that form to the IRS... @_@

Meanwhile I'm making lists of what to pack, what to box, and what to have ready to ship to me, since my folks have it in their head to move to Arizona sometime while I'm away. O_____O

Concerns: Having 115 pounds to take with me, plus dimension constraints of the luggage. For the most part I have everything figured out to take with me, but I'm dieting and losing weight fast, so a lot of things won't fit by the time I leave... Which means more clothes shopping for summer. Hallelujah.