Yeth Now.

I'm making myself post 'cause I don't do it enough. So I'll give my impression of the weekend, too. :)

Yes, the dinner party went great! There were more people than we thought there were going to be. The night was a mixture of English conversation, more English conversation, explaining English conversations in Japanese, fixing the ceiling in our tatami room, and eating a lot, a lot, a LOT of food.

Most of the people at the dinner were our English conversation group friends. Those that were not attended the conversation classes in Kaya, and we knew everyone who came. Curiously, one of the women was Catholic! I talked with her excitedly. I'm not Catholic, but Christians are rare enough in Japan that it's best to stick together.

As Alex said, Brett and Shawn are from New Zealand. We had this big long conversation about Chinese miners dying in New Zealand, having their bodies shipped to China, the ship crashing, the coffins floating back to New Zealand and being found by some Maori, and everything that ensued. But after we had this conversation, we glanced around and noticed that the Japanese attendees all had that blank goldfish look in their eyes. So I went about the daunting task of translating the entire conversation into Japanese. It was fun, but it was a challenge...

We ate a ton of food, like Alex said. There was...let me see if I can remember it all...

-Of course, the fried eggplant and skordalia. This went over really well. Everyone thought the skordalia was delicious, and Alex was so cute in his little headkerchief cooking-man style. <3 I noticed people putting the skordalia on EVERYTHING. It was cute.
-The spanakorizo. Alex made tiny little flowers out of cut slices of carrots and dressed each little bowl with one. People loved this. I don't think there was a single scrap left. I overheard some people mention that it tasted familiar. Maybe it was the shiso leaves?
-Homemade Spring Rolls. They were full of carrot, lettuce, and ...something else I can't recall but was a green vegetable, I promise. They were very refreshing.
-Fried Spring Rolls. These had meat and bamboo shoots in them, and had the traditional Japanese Mirin-Shoyu-Sake flavor to them. They kind of reminded me of tiny, savory crepes.
-Sushi. <3 Someone brought some sushi. It was delicious. Just a big variety platter of various nigirizushi (the long ones with the fish on top, not the rolls).
-Kara-age? I think? Small fried chicken pieces. These are really good, but I didn't eat much of it 'cause there was so much other stuff.
-Dango. Japanese breaded meatballs on a stick.
-Tiny grilled chicken wings.
-Shrimp-on-a-stick.
-Raw squid. I didn't eat any of this because I don't really like it, but that was fine - I was totally full by this point anyway.
-An absolutely delicious chiffon cake. It was flavored with tea.

So I think that's everything but we ate a whole heck of a lot so I might have missed something.

About the ceiling...our ceiling is made of about four or five really long panels that lay parallel, flush with one another, lengthwise across the ceiling. The one farthest from the window was sagging in the middle. We'd tried to fix it when we first moved in (since the panels are all notched and not set up with nails) but gave up.

Brett noticed this, and decided it needed to be fixed. So everything was moved around, couches were relocated, and about six people stood up on the couches to shift the board back into place. It was hilarious.

We didn't get to bed that night until like 1:30. I didn't want to do anything on Sunday, but I'm trying not to be a stupid stick-in-the-mud so I reluctantly agreed to do something the next day when pressed.

After the time was straightened out, we were off to Miyazu! We went to Mipple! Finally! I didn't buy anything since everyone seemed eager to rush along, but at the same time people were suprised I didn't buy anything. I was like, "whateva". :) But I noticed they had toaster ovens there. Once we get a long table to act as a counter I am SO getting one of those.

We ate lunch at a restaurant in Mipple (which by the way is a huge shopping complex. Well, huge for Japan) and I felt a little shy since I wasn't wearing socks....so I was walking barefoot in this restaurant. I'm gonna have to start keeping socks in my purse.

After we left Mipple we went walking on the beach. Shawn and Brett went swimming. I wished I could swim, but I satisfied myself with wading. Unfortunately the water got...a little...affectionate, and I soon was sporting "I'm-not-potty-trained-yet" fashion. I was soooooo embarassed! But you know...one of the pieces of advice I've heard from JET that's struck me the hardest is "don't be afraid to embarass yourself." This is really hard for me. But if I think about it, it makes it easier. So off we went to the cafe.

We had that great conversation Alex mentioned. The lady at the cafe/station was super nice. She actually made all the cakes herself. And I had this peach drink that was absolutely great, but I drank it way too quickly. I always drink way too quickly.

Then we went home. It was late afternoon. We were utterly exhausted.

And then I went to school this morning YAAAAAY! But I've been having hot and cold flashes, and some of the teachers noticed I was looking kinda iffy. I don't really feel good. But I'm not really sure what to do about that, as far as taking nenkyuu (paid leave) or something. But then again, the culture festival is this weekend; significantly featuring the English recitation contest, which I have been asked to help the students with every day.

So I'll hang in there and wait for Sunday. (Saturday's the Culture Fest, so I'm workin'.)

Sports Day Debauchery

Whew....Oooookay. I've been putting this off for way too long. Post, Natalie! Post!

So originally we were supposed to have Sports Day - tai'ikusai or 体育祭 - on Saturday the 12th. This would be a day of work for me, and then we would have the following Monday off as a vacation to make up for it.

It rained on Saturday. So it was canceled, and we instead had Sports Day on Sunday.

It rained a little bit in the morning, but not enough to justify canceling it again. The kids were adorable. They all ran around in teams of about 100 kids....well, here, let me explain how the blocks work. Each grade is separated into three classes. There's First Year - Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3, Second Year the same, and Third Year the same. The first year classes are each about 31 students, the second year classes about 32, and the third year classes are each around 35 students.

The teams, red block, blue block, and yellow block, were made up of every grade's class one, class 2, and class 3. So for example, Blue Block was made up of classes 1-1, 2-1, and 3-1. And so on.

Sports Day started with a massive relay race. Every single kid in every single block ran the relay around the track, passing the baton from kid to kid to kid to kid. There were some insanely fast kids! My little special ed boy especially tore up the track.

Then, there were other sports, like tug of war, group jump rope (like fifteen kids at a time jumping rope! The same rope, yes.), caterpillar racing (About twenty kids standing in a line, with ALL of their feet tied together, their hands on the person in front's shoulders -- hilarious!), a sort of pole race where five kids ran carrying a pole, and had to spin around cones like clock hands, a sort of six legged race where one person was wearing a basket and the other two had to dump fuzzy balls into the basket (of course, when they bent over to pick things up, everything would fall out...), and a lot of other fun stuff. The kids were a lot of fun to watch - they were all wearing little headbands of their block colors - these are known as hachimaki. They were all very competitive, but at the same time they all encouraged the team that was running behind. If Red Block was falling behind in the race, everyone would start yelling "Aka ganbatte!" (Red, do your best!) and "Aka faitoh!" (fight-oh -- heehee) and it was all very adorable.

Okay, I interrupt the post here to say that Alex is an AWESOME COOK. He just brought me a beef and vegetable stir-fry he made with very authentic looking rice and pickles. OM NOM. I love it. Okay. Back to your regularly scheduled post.

Also during the Sports Fest, there were PTA events. There was PTA tug of war, which was hilarious, and PTA tamaire (玉入れ - Literally translated as "Put the ball in the thingie"). I was on the PTA tamaire team. Now, this SOUNDS like basketball, but actually it's very, very different. There were five teams. Each team stood in a circle, a student standing in the middle. The student was holding a fifteen-twenty foot pole with a very long and skinny basket at the top. I know you're thinking "Okay, how is this not basketball?" Well see this basket is about two and a half feet deep, and the rim of it is about...nnh....the circumference of a large grapefruit. Or a small cantaloupe. Whichever you prefer. There were beanbags scattered all over the ground, and, in a set amount of time, you're supposed to get as many beanbags into the basket as possible. The basket has a bottom so they don't come out. Now, the way the Japanese PTA people did it was grab big handfuls of beanbags and chuck them all into the air at once.

I'm a wimpy little weakling though so I couldn't chuck the beanbags nearly high enough that way. So I grabbed an armload and started winging them into the air as fast, hard, and accurately as I could.

Against all logic our team (consisting of misc. parents, me, the art teacher, and the music teacher) completely creamed the other teams. I'd like to think that I made some kind of contribution with my "You're doing it wrong" tactics, but I think I only got like one or two in.

Plus, it was fun, because everybody chucking these things in the air, they would just land on everyone, so I'd be lining up a shot and BAM beanbag to the face.

The students got a HUGE kick out of me playing tamaire though. I could hear them absolutely screaming from their little tarps where each block was sitting - "Natari-sensei FAITOH!"

Then we all got a little brand-new roll of Saran Wrap for our exertions and were sent back to our seats.

After Sports Day, the teachers had a party at an izakaya in nearby Nodagawa. We all took a bus to get there. That threw up a flag to me. A flag that said "Oh hey, people aren't going to be driving home from this."

Now, I have to get one thing straight right now because my family read this thing. I am really not a drinker. I can't really drink too much, and when I do I just fall asleep before anything exciting or amazing happens. However this also means I fall asleep before I can drink enough to get myself in trouble, so that's good.

That having been said.

Drinking is an intensely important part of Japanese business culture. Japanese workplaces are all incredibly formal. It's the after-work parties, the izakaya or enkai, where people really loosen up, get to know each other, and talk frankly.

So I was very culturally acceptably tipsy.

I didn't expect Japanese beer to actually taste good, and not awful like American beer! After a couple of those, an umeshu (plum liquor - very sweet! ...very strong...), and a shot of this weird white sweet rice sake that apparently is famous in the reason, I was having a little trouble walking...but apparently no trouble speaking Japanese.

By the way, I have very intelligent friends when it comes to drinking, so, Mother, I was very careful to drink lots and lots of water, at least one glass of water per drink. This way I didn't really get overly in trouble when people kept ordering alcohol for me. Of course, this made the Japanese teachers laugh at me. "Mada omizu!?" (You're ordering more water!?) they'd say, and I'd answer by holding up my drink in one hand and my water in the other hand and saying, very seriously, "Baransu wa TAISETSU." (Balance is precious) which of course made them erupt in peals of laughter at how SERIOUS BUSINESS I was.

Also, miraculously, while ...indisposed, I had to go to the bathroom several times, which is what happens when you drink a substantial amount of alcohol and five glasses of water over the span of two and a half hours...and when going to the restaurant's bathroom, I found, to my horror, it was a JAPANESE SQUAT TOILET.

For those of you who are unaware of the full horror of this revelation, here is a picture for your reference.



That's right folks. It's a porcelain hole in the ground.

You're supposed to pull your pants down (Girls too!) and squat over the thing, do your thing, and finish up. I'm always too scared to try them because I have this phobia of, you know, messing up and all the consequences that entails.

But you know, this isn't the sort of thing to worry about when your impulse control is already suffering.

Apparently I can use them just fine, even when I'm having trouble walking. I was pretty elated. I don't think I could do it sober.

But I mean the izakaya wasn't all JUST drinking. We ate a ton of food too. The way it works, is that you get a bunch of family style dishes and pass them around. We got a couple small pizzas, had some spicy marinated shrimp stuff, a bunch of stuff I didn't recognize but ate anyway (because that's how I roll!), tempura, chicken, french fries (!?), and....

wani.


Wani is Japanese for crocodile.

I dunno where they got it or if the teachers were just playing an elaborate trick on me, but it was actually really good. It tasted uncannily like chicken though. When I got home I asked Alex about that and he said that he'd heard the same thing. Surreal.

We got dessert at the end; I got a cute little piece of chocolate cake. One of the other girls got apple sherbet. It came in a frosty little frozen apple that had been hollowed out and filled with the sherbet. I immediately regretted my decision.

Other highlights of the night were me teaching everyone how to tell someone they're good looking in four languages, a double-jointed contest, and trying on each others' glasses.

We took the bus home in high spirits and boy oh boy did I crash.

The next day was a vacation. I was happy about that. But I wasn't hung over at all, thanks to all the water I drank.

Today I went back to school. One of the English teachers' children came down with the swine flu (!! seriously!) so he wasn't in today. Everyone was really busy. It was fun. I often prefer busy days to the not-busy ones, because I have a lot to do and a lot of classes to attend, and I'm not left sitting in the teacher's lounge like a lump.

After classes I went to visit the band again. Since the Sports Day is over, I have time to go see them again. The girl who asked me to come was there again, and we talked excitedly about classical composers for about fifteen minutes. She likes Chopin and Mendelssohn. My heart practically flew away.

As Promised

Okay, I finally uploaded/fixed up the pictures I took!! Yay! So if you want to take a look, here they are.

If you want to see the whole image, you have to right click and choose 'View Picture' since this is only showing half and I DON'T KNOW WHYYYYYYY



This was my lunch that I took a picture of that one day. The main-looking thingie is a croquette, which had potato, ground meat of some sort, and cabbage inside it.



This is the view from the music room. You can see Amanohashidate on the horizon, the line of pine trees. It's actually just a very thin strip of land, but we're directly facing the bay that it crosses, so...



Some of my students! They're so cute.



The kids are practicing dances that they made up for the Sports Festival. Each class practices together in the hallway. Now they practice outside so they can spread out.



Here's the school band. I love them. <3 They're playing the theme from Ponyo (In Japanese, not the stupid (so I hear) English version), the theme from Lupin III, some Star Wars, and a bunch of other stuff that I think might be too tough for them....but good on them for trying!

Also, yesterday was my first day teaching at Ishikawa elementary school. It was so freakin' adorable. One kid kept asking questions about American food. "How big are American hamburgers?" "Are American hamburgers better than Japanese hamburgers?" "How big is American pizza?" "What do you like on pizza?"

The teachers tearfully shook both of my hands in theirs and thanked me fervently after the classes. One of them said, in Japanese, "I think the students are going to get very close to you very quickly." And the other said, "You're a fun and interesting teacher. I'm very happy to work with you." I was a little taken aback but blushed a lot and thanked them. They seemed to stare at me in absolute awe when I was speaking Japanese with them...I guess the elementary school program doesn't really require its teachers to speak English well, since it's not technically an English class, but English practice... so they were all immensely relieved that I could speak Japanese.

On the way downstairs after class, I saw two little first graders, who couldn't have been older than seven, dressed all in white with little chef hats, working together to lug a huge pot of food up the stairs together. It was the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Then when I got back, I was watching the kids practice for their sports festival. One of them was sitting aside, and I asked her, "How are you?" to which she promptly gave me a pathetic look and said "NO."

I couldn't keep myself from giggling.

"How Are You" is translated to them as "Ogenki desu ka?" which is literally asking "Are you healthy?", to which the logical answer would have indeed been "No." I sat with her and talked a little bit - I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her, but she said something-byo (-byo means 'sickness' so I could really only figure out that she was sick) so I left it at that.

Kyoto and More Bugs

Well, Friday I had an orientation in Kyoto that I had to go to. It was actually kind of fun. I like Kyoto. It's a big city with a lot going on, but it's less...overstimulating than Tokyo. It's still pretty overstimulating though.

After the orientation classes we walked around in the shopping districts. I got Alex a birthday present (His birthday is Sept. 2nd - No I'm not going to say what it is! He reads this thing!) and stopped at a 100-yen store to pick up some essentials that we didn't have around the house, but were just common things, like a bathroom stool and a little lunchbag for my bento box. It has English on it. It's grammatically OK, but it's all cute and stuff.

So after the shopping was done, I wasn't going to walk around with the couple of guys, 'cause I wanted to take the train home that night, and there aren't many trains that go to my local station at night because I'm out in the middle of nowhere. So if I wasn't on the train from Kyoto by...like...6:30, I wouldn't be able to get home. So I said goodbye at the nearest subway station and headed down to find my way. Turns out the subway line I took doesn't go to Kyoto station, and doesn't connect with any other lines that DO go to Kyoto station. But I had like an hour and a half, and the road I was on went straight down to the station, so I figured I'd just walk.

Bad idea.

I walked, and I walked, and I walked, and I walked. and I walked. AND I WALKED. I met some people at a big intersection, and approached them, asking them in Japanese if this road goes straight to the station. They were astonished by my Japanese and said yes, it did, but it was a little ways yet, and asked if I needed to catch a train urgently. They said they were headed down that way as well, and they would walk with me. Turns out they were Korean tourists and had just come from Okinawa, so they were flabbergasted that an American had managed to learn Japanese. It was cute.

So I walked some more with them, the pace picking up near the end...long story short, I was walking/speedwalking for that entire hour and a half and ended up sprinting to my train. But I caught it! I was bummed out though because Kyoto station is an awesome place to shop, and I was hoping to do some looking around at the import store, Jupiter. (I craaaaaaave mexican food!)

Over the weekend, we had a couple of my students prank our apartment, you know, the ringing the doorbell and running away thing. It happened like three times, so I hid out on our balcony after closing our door somewhat loudly the last time, and when they crept back up I popped up and was like, "Miemasu yo..." (I can see you...) They freaked out, fidgeted, and were like, "Natalie-sensei! ...er...Nice to see you!" *FLEE* I talked to Sekiguchi-sensei (one of the English teachers at the middle school who lives in the same apartment building) and she laughed. Since everyone who lives in that complex pretty much works for the school system, it's a common playground for the students.

Today I saw a massive, beautiful dragonfly at school. Turns out it's called an "oniyanma" and is what the Yanma pokemon is named after. I was amused.

Turns out the Japanese eat these too. I hope to god I don't have to make an entry about that.

Okay, back on topic.

So here we are in Japan.

Alex and I left the U.S. on August 1st. I spent a three day orientation in Tokyo before heading to my assigned area - Iwataki. Iwataki is actually one-third of a larger town called 'Yosano'. But Iwataki, Nodagawa, and Kaya (the two towns to the south) were all three so incredibly tiny that they merged into Yosano a few years ago.

Lots of interesting things have happened that I wanted to write about but just didn't have the time. Hopefully now I'll be able to keep track of everything more easily, and therefore be able to have this blog to remember upstairs.

This morning I asked the music teacher, Ms. Fujimura, where I could buy a violin. I have a violin at home, but it'd be cheaper to just buy a cheap school-grade violin than have my regular one shipped carefully over to me by air-mail. She got all excited. She asked if I could sing, too. The English teacher informed me that she wants to play a duet, piano/violin, at the Culture Festival coming up next month. When she asked me if I can sing, I said I could, but my range was kind of weird....I'm sure it came out in Japanese as "My singing stovetop is unusual." (The Japanese word for stovetop is ガスレンジ (gasurenji - "Gas Range") and the word for microwave is 電気レンジ (denkirenji - "Electric Range") - of course the word for an electric stovetop is 電気ガスレンジ　(denkigasurenji - "Electric Gas Range" - classic) so when I talked about my singing range and used the word 'renji' I'm sure it wasn't the right choice!

The last couple days have been ...buggy. Even before the bee-eating incident. The previous day, I had to save the brass band from a marauding bee (Not just any bee, but a legendary Japanese suzumebachi - check it out on Wikipedia for the full horror. This is also the kind of bee that I ate) and had the unique opportunity to gently hold a Japanese emerald swallowtail butterfly after it kept smacking against the classroom window and let the gorgeous little moron outside. Those emerald swallowtails are absolutely everywhere. I love it. And they're about the size of my hand.

We also have some pretty massive spiders around. The garden spiders are actually kind of pretty, but the ones that hang out outside our apartment are pretty nasty. I'd freak out if one of them just popped up anywhere, since, they're still spiders and they're still huge. But I'll see if I can't get some pictures.

Alex and I got a gorgeous camera for our wedding - an Olympus SP-510UZ. The problem is, most of our camera memory cards were SD cards and this took an XD card - until recently I had my own little digital camera, and we used the old one usually because it could use SD cards. But after we sold it at the garage sale, we discovered that our awesome new camera only had capacity for 16 pictures without any sort of card.

So last night Toshiko, one of the ladies from the eikaiwa (English Conversation) group - an adult group of friends who gets together at a local izakaya (a sort of restaurant that just brings a bunch of group dishes and alchohol. It's a restaurant perfectly suited for getting together and hanging out) and talks and gossips and laughs in English - took us to an electronics store. Toshiko is absolutely hilarious. The store is called KS-Denki (Denki = 電気 - Electric Power) but when people say it it sounds like they're saying K-Stanky. We bought a 2 gig memory card for the camera and now have capacity for about 1100 pictures. Woowoo!

What else, what else. Alex made a really good dish last night with tofu, egg, and goya (Japanese 'bitter melon' - Wikipedia it, it looks freakish!). It was a great experiment. It was a little...bitter...but goya is always bitter, and next time we'll just cook it for longer. It's really good for you though, so that's fun.

Today I'm ordering a bento lunch. This school doesn't actually have a school lunch, so most of the teachers order one from a nearby restaurant. The restaurant employs mentally handicapped people, so that's pretty cool. I'll try to take a picture of the bento to show everybody. Yesterday's was pretty cool.

I think that's pretty much all for now. One of the students keeps screaming "KAWAIIIIIIII" when she sees me, following up with "SO CUTE" or "SO PRET-TY" in adorable middle-school English. She'll be fun in class when it starts.

I think I'm going to keep track of the stuff I talk about in the tags. Like posts with Japanese words and stuff in them I'll tag 'Japanese vocab' and cooking posts I'll tag as 'Japanese Food' or something. <3