Cartilage

So, last night we went out to dinner with Lok-Yin (the English speaker who works for the town office...she's from the UK), her husband, another JET teacher and a bunch of Japanese people who wanted to practice their English (we had met some of them before). It was a nice dinner. I would prefer chairs over the traditional tables, but it was fine. Basically, we just ordered a lot of small things off the menu and shared them at the table. One of the things was a dish of deep-fried chicken cartilages. They tasted good, but took a little getting used to. It was a bit like learning to eat shrimp tails. Different.

"How are you?" "I'm tired."

Mnnnarrrr. Another day of five classes. It started out as my lucky day today though - I got up a little late and didn't have time to grab breakfast, but I ran out to buy my drinks for the day. I remembered that I left my change purse at school, but in the bottom of my purse I found a random 150 yen! Enough to buy one drink.

The vending machine outside our apartment was, so I thought, kind of broken. You'd put in your money, it'd freak out and flash all these numbers at you, and then give you your drink. So I put in my money, it freaked out and gave me my drink, but didn't give me my 10 yen change, just beeped at me a lot. I glared at it, 'cause I was running late, and was like "Hey vending machine, what's the deal?"

Then I looked and all the little lights under the types of drinks were blinking, and the number in the place where the prices usually show (this is where the numbers usually freak out, too) said "7777." Apparently that's a random number generator, and I won. So I got a free drink.

I need new shoes. I've been running around school in these awesome slippers that Yiayia got for me a couple years ago, but they just aren't made for 7 hours running around on hard school floor. My feet are killing me.

Hmm, what else has happened lately...I went to PTA chorus class with Alex last night and met a lot of the parents of my students. They were kind of shy and I got stared at a lot 'cause I'm foreign but it was okay. The principal wanted me to introduce him to Alex, so I did. He's a fun guy. I have no idea what I'm going to do for these songs though - it's hard to both try to read the music and read Japanese without falling behind in the rhythm on either of them. Oh well, I'll try my best. :P

Today I got to read some of the comments children wrote in their English journals. A lot of them are writing things like, "Natalie-sensei is lots of fun" and "Natalie-sensei gave me a sticker! I was happy." It made me feel all squishy.

Incidentally, dinner was fantastic. <3

Garbage

So, for those of you who we haven't told about our list of garbage separation rules, here's how it goes:

-All burnable garbage that is a non-recyclable goes into a yellow bag and is picked up on Wednesdays. It is placed in the yellow grated box. Everything else is picked up on Tuesday and Thursday and is placed in a different grated box.
-Non-burnable, non-recyclable garbage is placed in a clear bag with red writing. You have to write your district name and family name on the bag (I'm assuming we either get billed for this or there's some religious thing involved in disposing of non-burnables...I have no clue). We finally got that much figured out and we're disposing an umbrella that looks like it was used in a fight with a brick wall.
-Glass bottles and recyclable metals are placed in separate blue bags with the appropriate box checked off to identify the contents (though the bags are transparent enough that one shouldn't need to look for the tiny identifying mark).
-PET plastics (the standard plastic for making bottles) must be separated from their lids and wrappers (which are made in a manner that removing them is convenient) and placed into a purple bag, with the appropriate mark.
-The wrappers and lids are then put into a different purple bag, along with most other recyclable plastics and plastic bags. Again, adding the appropriate mark.
-Thin cardboards (cereal boxes, etc.) and paper bags are placed in another purple bag along with the appropriate mark.
-Styrofoams that do not belong in the miscellaneous recyclable plastics bag go into a fourth purple bag.
-Corrugated cardboard, newspaper and magazines must be bound into separate stacks with recyclable plastic cord. Apparently, people get paid for these, but our apartment situation makes it difficult to know whose papers are whose, so Nat's coworkers/boss (I dunno which) want(s) us to take all of these things to be picked up at the school instead. I don't know how easy they think it is to bike four stacks of outdated magazines plus a stack of cardboard to the school is, but I think I might just put it out with the other recyclables.
-Hazardous materials (gasoline, kerosene, motorbikes, electronics and the like) are handled in a completely different manner. I don't know what that manner is, but it's completely different. The same goes for large amounts of brick, tile, stone or dirt.

Usually, we don't have enough of any one of the recyclables to take out every time (we can only buy big purple bags, while the blue and yellow come in both big and small sizes). The burnable garbage, since it is only picked up once a week, unlike the others, has been forgotten twice. Hopefully, we'll find our rhythm real soon.

Moving on to the subject of food, I managed to get some whitefish at the grocery store and made a fish soup. I also found some okra and slow cooked it with some chicken and vegetables. For both, I've been perfecting my homemade tomato sauce techniques. Having a mortar and pestil is helpful when canned tomato sauces and pastes are nowhere to be found. I may also get around to making a salsa sometime, if I can manage to find any sort of hot peppers....and tortilla chips. Well, maybe not.

Tonight's dinner includes a lotus root salad...unless I ruin it. I sure hope not! I like lotus root salad. My Japanese cookbooks are here, though (thanks, Mom!), so I shouldn't be ruining too many more meals. *shakes fist at the bitter melon*

Nonstop.

Today I had five classes, right after one another. It was fun and exhilarating, but holy crap am I tired. One of the teachers said, "It's a rule that JET teachers can't teach more than three classes every day, I think..." and I was like, "PFFFFFF WHATEVER" and he seemed pretty elated about that.

The kids seem endlessly fascinated with the slippers I wear in school. They're like crocheted ballet slippers with rubbered bottoms for safety. They also seem to be warming up to me and talking to me a lot in the halls. I taught two girls how to say "What's up?" and the proper responses. I'm getting "kawaii sensei" from more than crazy Kawaii Girl now, so that's kind of fun. They also seem really amused when I say I like takoyaki.

The last class I had today was the handicapped class. There were only two students in it, but they were adorable and it was fun. There was lots of praise, encouragement, shouting, clapping, and stickers. As it should be.

I had quail eggs in my bento today. Surreal.

And I'll close from an excerpt from the summer English diaries I'm grading...

"It was too cold to swim. So I went to the hoehouse."

Addendum:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX! <3

I was correcting papers just now. Here are the highlights.

"I goes to remove natural water."

"I had Chicken Lunch at tweleven."

"I had cornfreek for breakfast."

CORNFREEK

Classes and Papers

Yesterday I had my first day of actual classes.

The school day started with a big opening ceremony to open up the semester. As part of this, I had to do a speech, in front of the entire school. It was supposed to be in English and in Japanese, but what ended up happening is I stood up there and stammered in both languages for like thirty seconds to 300 blank stares. The teachers told me my speech was great, but I was like, "Ahaha...kay."

I'm getting really close to the brass band club. One of the girls came up to me shyly in class and said, "We're playing a song that's from a really famous Japanese movie. Will you come and listen?" And I was like, "Of course!"

I have a VIDEO of it. >:D I've been toting my camera around. Hahahaha! I'll have pictures soon!

Afterwards she quietly snuck up to me again and said "I'm really happy that you came." It was adorable.

My second grade class was NOISY. During my self-introduction lesson, they were all loudly talking to each other and not paying attention...still in summer vacation mode. I tried to get them to pay attention for a while and then just quietly trailed off, watching them. They sensed something was amiss, since I was just watching them with a little smile on my face, and quieted down. So I was like, "Okay, are we ready for class now? Great!" and went on with my lesson. They weren't entirely inclined to pay attention until I handed out some puzzles and told them the first person to finish both of them would get a quarter. HAHA BRIBERY.

Third grade was exactly the opposite. They were DEAD. This class was after lunch, so I got all sorts of dull stares. One kid, front and center, was literally conked out on his desk, fast asleep. Front and center!! In the back, I don't care, but....when you're sitting up front? That's gutsy. At least they seemed to generally get things, and did a good job, though they weren't very responsive. But that's about par for the course for third years.

Oh, by the way, when I reference first grade/year, second grade/year, and third grade/year, I really mean seventh, eighth, and ninth. These kids are in the 12-16 range - middle school.

I was correcting papers today and got to see some really adorable English. Some of my favorites...

"I like animals. But I hate the zoo." (PETA, here we come!)
"I play my sister every day." (Dude, she got PLAYED!)
"I walked euphonium." (...wha?)

And my favorite was a conversation I had yesterday in the hallway with a handful of girls...

Them: "HALLO!"
Me: "Hello!"
Them: "How are you?"
Me: "I'm pretty good! And you?"
Them: "YESTERDAY!"

Dogs - They are here and they wear shoes.

So, while I watch obnoxious Japanese children's shows, I shall make my first post to our blog. I'm still learning about how to live in Japan and I probably won't know everything even after our first year is out, but it's been a month and we haven't starved, so I'd say we're doing good.

While I knew that Japan has a lot of exciting new vegetables and even meat options in their grocery stores, I completely forgot that several of our common vegetables might be more difficult to find. At least on a daily basis. Our closest grocery store is only a short walk away, which is nice. Sometimes they don't have potatoes, red onions or some other bit of produce, but the store stocks fresh food, daily and discounts most meats and vegetables after dinner time. Some foods last a bit longer, so they only buy a stock of them once or twice a week. It's a small grocery store, though. We live in a rural area, so it's understandable. Just inconvenient, sometimes.

All this to say that I've been trying to learn how to cook some of the local vegetables so that I can still cook dinner if I go to the grocery store and can't find what I'm looking for. So far, I've attempted gobō (Japanese burdock) and goya (bitter melon) with varying results. This is primarily due to my recipes telling me very little in the matter of preparing the vegetables.

Gobō looks like a two to four foot long, extra-skinny, white carrot. It is typically sold and stored caked in mud (to help preserve it). To prepare, one washes away the mud and scrapes the skin away with a knife. It is important to scrape, not peel, the skin, as the nutritional value of the gobō is very close to the underside of the skin. That and gobō is very skinny. Peeling the vegetable could very well leave you with nothing. The gobō must then be placed in lemon water, salt water or some other solution to keep it from oxidizing. Next, it is the parboiling. This is important, since gobō is a bit woody. After that, you can do whatever you want with the gobō, so long as it tastes right. The recipe we used involved balsamic vinegar (a harder to find vinegar around here, but not as impossible as red wine vinegar). It was a bit vague in telling me how much of the vinegar went in and whether it was supposed to be a side dish or the main course (not as much as I put in, and not the main course). It was good, but next time I'll use it as a side dish and be slightly more conservative with the vinegar.

Goya looks, upon first glance, like a warty cucumber. It is regaled by the Japanese as being extremely healthy...and extremely bitter. It is sold when it is fully grown, but has yet to change color to be a ripe, bright orange. If you tried to eat it when it turned orange, no amount of cooking would remove the bitterness. We were given one of these by a woman whose husband grows them in his garden. We hadn't figured out what to do with it and it ended up rotting just as I found a recipe...so I went out to buy a new one so that we could at least say we tried a goya, even if it wasn't her goya. So, what our recipe never told us was that when you prepare a goya for cooking, you cut it open and remove all the seeds and pith and then slice the remaining shell into very thin, half-moon slices. Then, you soak the slices in salt water and "scrunch" them slightly. This helps remove some of the bitter oils. Most of the recipes involving goya will have you pan fry it in some way. When doing this, you must make sure that the goya is thoroughly cooked. I wasn't quite sure what "thoroughly cooked" meant, with goya, so it ended up being undercooked and a horribly bitter dish. Next time, I will keep what I have learned in mind.

I found some broccoli the other day and was extremely satisfied to make a boring chicken and broccoli stir-fry.

Today, while going to the grocery store (they had white peach juice and melon bread today!), I passed a tiny, long-haired dachshund, slowly tottering after its master. On the way back, I passed a rather large weimaraner that appeared to be walking in a rather odd manner. When I got closer, I realized that the dog was wearing shoes. I wondered whether this dog's owner felt that the traditions requiring people to wear shoes outdoors and keep them off while inside should apply to their pet as well. After all, the same dirt that would be an a human's feet would be on a dog's feet as well.

With all that rambling done, I must now go make dinner.