Cultural Cockroach

Yep, as Alex said, we had the culture festival this weekend. :) It was great! All the kids really did their best.

I had to stand up and do a speech in front of the entire school and the parents that were there after the English Recitation. I was insanely nervous; my heart was pounding in my ears. But after the speech, a bunch of the teachers came up to me and told me how beautiful it was (wat? I just told them that the kids worked really hard, and their parents should be very proud of them. I guess that's high praise?) so after that I was a little disappointed that more of the parents weren't around. You know, once I made sure I didn't completely ruin it.

I was working at the brochure table for most of the rest of the day, handing out programs and greeting the parents. I got to meet a lot of the parents this way, and got a lot of blank stares. It was fun. XD

The Snow White play was actually a little operetta, which was adorable. My favorite second grader (one of them) played the lead, and it was so funny to see all the little kid singing vocal arpeggios and really, really hard parts!! All of them were girls. That was cute too.

During the intermission periods, Alex got to meet Kawaii girl and What's Up girl. Kawaii girl said, in a very demanding tone, "I love her." and grabbed my arm. Alex responded by grabbing my other arm. It was hilarious. At the end of the little confrontation, Satoko declared herself Alex's rival. The other students were in stitches.

The PTA chorus got a heaping helping of NAT PROJECTION POWER. I was in the Alto section, right next to the blasting men. The Altos actually got the melody for part of the song (a situation which, as a chronic Second Violin, I'm utterly unused to) and the music instructor kept pushing us to sing louder. I didn't want to drown anyone out but....I can only be told to be louder so many times before it's time to Unleash the Beast, so to speak.

So I projected. And suddenly the Altos were loud enough, as suddenly the rest of the Alto section raised their voices to blend in, and I pushed my voice to be audible over the men.

The men still won, but we were audible, so I was happy.

The other song we sang was this weird samba song that was sung very rigidly. With whistles. Tambourines. And a set of bongos. The Japanese crack me up.

So when we got home, we were both pretty zonked out. But over the weekend....

At least, I think it was on Sunday? Anyway.

I was lying on the floor playing computer when I felt SOMETHING CRAWL OVER MY LEG.

I froze. "Okay...something just crawled on my leg." I matter-of-factly stated to Alex. "Something significant." I caught my breath and calmly turned around.

There was a MONSTER COCKROACH about the size of my thumb. Granted, my thumb is kinda small, but still... DANG that thing was big. And fast. I sprang up and turned on the light and it ran and hid. I asked Alex to grab a container or something I could smack down on top of it, and we got this plastic measuring cup he never uses.

So I moved and shifted everything, warily kicked things, and made loud noises in the vicinity I thought it was, but it didn't show itself. I turned the light off and settled in to wait, staring at the room while I went about my business.

Finally, it came out! We sprang into action, and it ran back into hiding, but we saw where it went - behind the music shelf, which we kind of checked halfheartedly before, since it's really the only feasible hiding place in the room. Alex moved the shelf and out it came and I smacked the cup down on it.....

...catching it right in the midsection.

Its head and forelegs were outside the cup and its back legs, wings and tail were inside. I was like, "eew." But when I went to slide a piece of paper underneath it to throw it out, it started batting at the paper like a cat. It was still okay! I was shocked and fascinated. It was kicking its legs and batting its forelegs as if nothing was wrong, and having this huge cup crushing its midsection was just some inconvenience. This did pose the problem of what the heck we were going to do. If we moved the cup, it was a sure thing it would just scamper off again. But we needed to get it out of there. I wasn't about to just grind it into the tatami.

So we came up with the idea of the Gokiburi Guillotine. Gokiburi is Japanese for cockroach. We got a big magazine, opened it up, and slid it under the front half of the cockroach. Then we closed the magazine. And pressed on it. The results were crunchy and unfortunate, but the cockroach wasn't moving any more.

We checked the house really thoroughly and are certain it must have just snuck in through my bag or something, because there aren't many places for critters to hide in our place. So I'm not worried about an INFESTATION or anything. But still, that was nasty.

On a much more pleasant note, I got the best present ever yesterday. One of the students shyly gave me a piece of paper, on which she'd idly doodled a sketch of my face. It was flipping adorable. I have it magneted to our fridge. <3 Once we get a scanner at K-Stanky I'll put it up.

Oh god! What if the Japanese eat cockroaches? I DO NOT LIKE WHERE MY RECORD IS HEADING.