The randomness of Japan

On Monday, one of my English teachers told me that all of the teachers had to go to the gym during break time. She said that it was an assembly because the third graders had a track and field tournament on Wednesday. It was basically a Japanese pep rally. Except, instead of cheering and silly games like pie the teacher or cross-dressing, it was more formal. The teachers sat on the edge of the gym while the students sat in the middle of the gym. There was a lot of bowing, speech giving, and a slide show of past track and field tournaments to watch. At the end of the “pep rally”, we sang a song. The only word I knew in the song was “Yunomae.” After the assembly, I asked my English teacher what the song was, and she said it was a school song. She said that last year, Yunomae JHS won all of the track events but lost most of the field events. I asked her yesterday how they did, and she said that they won most of the track events and won third place overall. Not too bad, Yunomae JHS, not too bad!

Wednesdays are my elementary school days. I’ve said it before. I love/hate the elementary school. I hate going there because I have NO IDEA what I’m doing. I’ve tried to pick it up and get into the swing of things, but it seems like each week is something different. This week, there was a meeting that I’m not 100% completely sure I was supposed to attend. The vice principal told me to go to the library to study….at least, that’s what I thought he said. I took a couple of things to work on, but when I got upstairs, the library was locked. I waited for a little while before going back downstairs. I noticed all of the teachers heading into the teacher’s room, and that generally means something important. I rarely see all of the teachers in the teacher’s room, so for everyone to be in there, I knew it was something important. I followed them in, sat down at my desk, and proceeded to listen to a meeting conducted in Japanese for the next thirty minutes. It was boring. Reeeeeally boring.

However, I absolutely adore the kids! My favorite time of the day is lunch and recess. Even though we can’t really understand one another, they love me and are willing to put up with the crazy foreigner. I don’t really know what started it, but we began making silly faces at one another. They really thought it was funny that I could overlap each finger on both hands. They were also very interested with what I ate, how I ate it, and what I thought of it. They were also fascinated with my earrings. Earrings here are a little frowned upon. You’re not a complete degenerate if you have your ears pierced, but not a lot of Japanese women pierce their ears. In fact, pierced ears are banned for students in most schools. My elementary students were so impressed with how I could pull it out and put it back in. They wanted me to do it time and time and time again! I’m pasty pale white, and I know that. However, here that’s a good thing. It looks like I moved to the right place! J Some of the girls were comparing my arm to theirs and rubbing the underside of my forearm. They really enjoy the paleness of the foreigner. I posted a video the other day on facebook of me teaching the kids “bisquick.” For those of you that didn’t play it in elementary school, it’s a hand slap game. Some of the girls remembered it from Sunday when I taught it to them, and they wanted to play it. Most of the girls were too scared to play the crazy foreign slap game, but the girls that tried got very good at it! When they tried to play it by themselves, they failed terribly, lol. I’m sure I played it at least fifty times. I was even getting tired of it!

Elementary school kids are FAST. Whenever you play tag with elementary school kids in the States, I feel like you have to slow down your speed…..like “Oh no! You’re going to get me!” but running half the speed you normally would. Here, you have to run as fast as possible because Japanese kids are QUICK. When we play tag, it’s basically a game of tag and be tagged by the foreigner. I get tired very quickly because:

a) I have to run at top speed. The kids don’t cut me any slack.

b) If I’m not being chased, then I’m currently “it.”

They show no mercy on the out-of-shape foreigner. ;)

Another thing that is funny about Japanese students is that they are PERFECTIONISTS. If they make a mistake on their papers, instead of scratching it out, they erase it and start again. There really is no concept of scratching something out in Japan. If I correct a student on spelling that is off by one letter, they erase the entire word and start again. For example, today a kid had “does’t” on his paper instead of “doesn’t.” He had plenty of room to squeeze a little “n” in there, but instead he erased the whole word and started new. They all have pencil cases that are well equipped with an arsenal of perfecting tools….pencils, black, red, and blue pens, multi-color high lighters, projectors, rulers, etc. The other day we played bingo in class, and the kids had to divide their paper in a 4 X 4 bingo card. They were ridiculously meticulous about measuring each square, making straight lines, and creating the perfectly even 4 X 4 square.

Last night, I had my night class. The kids are elementary school students and have more energy than me. It’s very difficult to keep their attention at anything for long! If I have a sit-down game, it’s not going to work. Therefore, last night I had several active activities planned. We started off with animals flashcards and reviewing animal names. Once we had gone through the fat stack of flashcards I had, we moved on to gestures. That was fun! The kids really enjoyed acting out different animals. After that, we played a relay game in which the kids were divided into two teams. I had the flashcards spread across the floor in the front of the room. The kids lined up (kinda) in the back. Ian called out names of animals, and one person from each group raced to the front and grabbed the flash card. We had a little break after that. Ian basically became a human jungle gym for the boys. They were climbing on his back, pulling on his arms, etc. Ian had the “cool” foreigner factor. J After we regrouped, we played duck, duck, goose….except we didn’t have flashcards of a duck or goose. Instead we played kangaroo, kangaroo, bee, later switching it to tiger, tiger, dog, and finally grasshopper, grasshopper, panda. Lol. It was fun. Since it was a running game, we had to bring our A game. There were a few times when the kids lapped me, and I had to be the “goose” more than once. There were a few times when the kids slipped or stumbled on the tatami mats, but they were having too much fun to cry about it. Last night’s class = success. Next week’s class…..who knows!

Beware of the concho

In the last blog, I sent out a big congrats to David Shoulta and Lucy Holder on their engagement. I’m VERY excited for them, and they are a perfect match…no joke.  David asked Ian to be the best man, and they wanted to know when we would be able to come home.  That’s right.  They were willing to work THEIR wedding date around OUR schedule.  Do we have good friends or what?  Ian doesn’t really have anything tying him down, so he can go whenever.  Lucy has school, so sometime in June or July was her best bet.  I explained the situation to my supervisor earlier in the week and asked when I could take vacation.  She said sometime after the 21st of July.  That’s when school lets out for summer here, and it’s nearly impossible to take vacation days during the school year.  That basically left the 21st (a Saturday) as the only date.  It was very stressful going back and forth between my English teachers, supervisor, and David/Lucy.  When I got home from work, Ian and I researched and found out that even if I couldn’t get off from work on the 20th, I could leave here and fly out of Kumamoto on the 20th, spend the night in Tokyo airport, fly out on the morning of the 21st, and thanks to the time difference, arrive at 9:38 AM in Nashville….plenty of time to make the wedding.  I would be traveling for about 32 hours straight, and it was going to cost more, but I would have made it!  HOWEVER, we found out later that night that someone had already booked the church for the 21st.  They booked it ONE DAY before David and Lucy called.    I cannot tell you how much this breaks my heart.  Every time I think about not going, I feel like tearing up!  I knew that going into this program, there were going to be hard times and that I’d miss important events at home, but this is really, really sad for me.  I know that a lot of my friends are going to be there celebrating such a wonderful and beautiful day, and I can’t go. 

I’ve got to stop writing about that, or I’m going to become sad!   On to something much lighter.  The other day during break time, I was talking to a couple of girls in the hallway.  Remember that I work at a junior high school, so the girls are very interested in knowing about your dating life.  Compared to other ALTs here, I get off easy.  Instead of being bombarded with questions like “Do you have a boyfriend?”  “What’s his name?”  “Do you like him?” etc, they know I’m married.  Every time I ask the girls if they have a boyfriend, they giggle and hesitantly say yes or no.  The other day, they asked me if I had a boyfriend.  I told them no.  I have a husband, Ian, and pointed at my ring.  They should have known that!  They asked if I liked him.  I said “ummmmm…..yes.”  lol.  Of course I like him!  I married him!  Then one girl said that he was very, very, very, very cute.    This made me giggle.  Then another girl rubbed her face mimicking a beard and said, “Very cute.”  Another girl touched her thumbs to her index fingers and put it over her eyes.  She said, “Big eyes.  Very cute.”  Everyone else agreed.  Ian’s beard and big eyes make him cute.  lol.  I went around the circle of girls asking who had a boyfriend or not.  Only two girls admitted to having a boyfriend, to which I responded with, “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”  Everyone laughed at the foreigner being silly.  I also taught them “omg.”  I would say something like “O.M.G!  Megumi has a boyfriend!  Eeeeee!”  Then, they taught me the Japanese version of omg.  It was a magical moment. 

Another random Japanese thing is the concho (sp?).  Concho is extremely popular with elementary school students.  It’s whenever a child takes his/her index fingers and puts them together and then pokes someone’s butt hole.  Not joking.  I think it’s based off of a cartoon character that does that.  At orientation, they warned everyone of the concho, saying that it will happen eventually.  I have been lucky to not have it happen……until the other day.  Some kid poked me in the butt hole.  I was shocked!  When I turned around to tell him no, he had already geared up to do it again.  Therefore, when I tuned around, he poked me in the girly area.    Whoops.

Well, I’ll end this like I end every class period:

That’s all for today!  See you next time!   

Playing catch up….again!

Hello all.  I’m sorry that I’ve fallen into this rut where I only write every few days.  My bad.  I guess blame half of it on laziness and half of it on American trash TV.  Yes, that’s right.  I’ve started watching trash TV.  I miss watching American TV, and it seems like the only shows I can watch online are the trash shows.  A lot of networks won’t let you watch shows outside of the USA.  It’s considered “out of region.”  Blarg.  I think I’ve already admitted to watching Teen Mom, and now I’ve adopted Toddlers and Tiaras.  I found full episodes on You Tube.  If you’ve never seen an episode, watch it.  It’s ridiculously scary that moms allow their children to do that.

First, I wanted to say congratulations again to David and Lucy.  David proposed to Lucy on Saturday and skyped us shortly after.  Actually, Ian was on facebook, and David messaged him saying, “the date you guys come home this summer just got a little more important to us.”  Ian immediately called me over to the computer, and we called him.  I’m so happy for them! 

One story that I forgot to tell the other day was about a really horrible driver.  Saturday, we were walking to Family Mart, the little convenience store in town.  We got to the main intersection in town and noticed something was off.  There was a car driving down the sidewalk.  Only in Japan would this seem normal.  We continued to watch the car wait on the sidewalk for the light to change and then cross the street in the PEDESTRIAN WALK.  Once the driver crossed, he continued to drive on the sidewalk for probably about two blocks until he reached his destination.  Actually, I think the only reason he stopped is because he ran out of sidewalk to drive on.  I wish with all my heart that I would have taken a video of it.  I thought about it, but then I didn’t want to be the obnoxious foreigner.  It was really funny.'

On Sunday, we went to the elementary school sports festival. What a fun day! I feel like I’m doing this backwards because I usually write the blog and THEN post pictures, but I guess it doesn’t matter. It was our first big festival together. I never really know what to do or where to go during these festivals. Sunday was no exception. All of the teachers were organizing students, so I couldn’t just march up to one and say something like, “Hey! I’m the big, dumb foreigner. Tell me where to go!” When in Japan and you don’t know what to do, stand around and look confused until someone approaches you and tells you where to go and/or what to do. It works most of the time.  It worked for us. At first, we were just wandering around, but one of the office ladies approached me and gave me a map of where to sit and what events would happen throughout the day (oh, how I wish I could read Japanese!). Most of the events involved running. There were A TON of relays. The little first grade relays were the cutest. By far! They had no idea what they were doing. It was adorable.  Other events included teams racing up a bamboo pole. The participants had to latch multiple ropes on the top. They were ridiculously quick. Another event that we like was the big red ball race. Each team had to roll/bounce a GIANT red ball through an obstacle course. At one point, one team’s ball bounced on one of the tents, and they had to wait for it to fall down, lol. My favorite event for the day was synchronized exercise. I know it sounds lame, but it’s not. It’s really awesome. Several blogs ago, I described a “PE” class. It turns out that it was synchronized exercise practice. It starts off slow, but soon the kids are doing all kinds of lifts. It’s really fun to watch. It ended with a HUGE human pyramid. Their human pyramid would put any human pyramid we have in the States to SHAME. The top two rows stood up completely. Please check out the video I have posted on facebook!

After the sports festival, we walked home. Our neighbor, Mr. Fujimoto, saw us walking and called us over. We haven’t talked to him in a while, so we went over and talked to him. Him and his friend were cutting up some kind of fruit and making some kind of sauce for….something. Mr. Fuiimoto is really nice, and despite the fact that we can’t speak Japanese, we had a pretty good conversation.

One day, Ichifusa, one day!

Hey gang.  As I left off, we had another enkai on Thursday.  Japanese people get ridiculous at enkais.  Ian boasted that he got drunk with the mayor, lol.  People open up, act, and talk about things that they NEVER would in the office, and the good thing about enkais is that all is forgotten the next day.  So if one of my co-workers gets ridiculously drunk and makes a fool of him/herself, nothing is said the following day at work.  It’s as if it never happened, lol.  I talked to one of my English teachers a lot at the enkai.  Other people joined us.  Ian and I taught them to say “y’all” and explained that it’s a southern combination of you + all.  Ian was saying that we are southerners and have a southern accent, and they were like, “oh, rearry?”  At one point in time, I had to get up and use the bathroom.  I had never been to that restaurant, so I wasn’t sure where they were.  I got into the main hall and found what I thought was the bathroom.  There were two doors with kanji above them.  I had a 50/50 chance of getting it right.  I went into the bathroom, and to the right was a curtain area, left a sink, and straight a toilet.  I used the bathroom and afterward peeked behind the curtain area only to my horror to find a urinal!  Yep, I was in the men’s room!    I very quickly left before anyone came in. 

Yesterday, I had the day off.  I enjoy three day weekends.     We decided to have a lazy day yesterday and hike Mt. Ichifusa today.  Therefore, we didn’t do a lot yesterday.  I washed a couple of loads of laundry and cleaned around the house.  One good thing about such a small house is that it doesn’t take very long to clean!  We took an afternoon walk around town before deciding to drive to Taragi to go to Natural, a really good bakery, and the 100 yen store (basically a Japanese version of the dollar store).  Everything at Natural is delicious.  Yum!  We decided on eating ice cream before buying bread to take home.  Their ice cream is homemade.  I had mango, and Ian had rum raisin.  There was this nice little porch area outside, so we went out there to enjoy our ice cream.  Sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy your life, and that was one of those moments.   

Today, after skyping home this morning, we went to Mt. Ichifusa to try to climb it again.  Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the top.  I’m willing to dedicate every Saturday to climbing that darn mountain until I make it to the top, but Ian’s a little less anxious about it.  It is a really hard mountain to climb.  The “path” is okay until a certain point, and then it just becomes extremely steep with rocks and roots as your pathway.  You definitely have to pay attention to each step.  It’s not exactly the friendly gravel or dirt paths of LBL.  We kept meeting people on our way up asking us if we were going to the top.  When we said yes, they would glance down at their watches and say something that we believe was something like “you don’t have time” before the sun sets.  It was about 3PM, and the sun doesn’t set until about 6:15PM, so we made it as far as we could before turning back.  That’s not exactly a mountain that I would want to be on at night.  We did see a pretty good view of our mountain valley through the tree line.  I asked a passing hiker if Yunomae was in the valley, and he said yes, so I know it was our little valley.  It’s a very strenuous mountain to climb, but come hell or high water, we will climb Mt. Ichifusa sometime within the next year!

I’m looking forward to next weekend.  Our friend, Brittany, will visit us.  She’s been with the JET Program for the past two years and spent September walking around the island of Shikoku on a pilgrimage.  We always wanted to visit her while she was in Japan, but it seemed like things always got in the way of us coming to Japan.  However, things happen for a reason, and now we’re here!  It’s  going to be really good to see her.  We don’t have big plans for the weekend.  Since she spent the past month basically walking, we’re going to see what she wants to do.  There are a lot of cool and fun things to do in the area, so we’ll see, or we might just enjoy having a lazy day and catching up! 

Tomorrow is sports day at my elementary school.  I’m not 100% sure what that includes, but I’m sure I’ll spend the day watching/participating in sporting events. 

Wet and Wild part II

It's Silver Week, and I think I forgot to mention that.  That means that Monday was Respect for Elders Day (no work!), and Friday is the Autumn Equinox (no work!).  It's a three day work week.  What could go wrong during a three day work week??  :)

I mentioned the typhoon blowing through in the last blog.  We feel fairly safe from typhoons here.  However, yesterday morning we were rudely awoken.  My alarm went off at 8:20 AM, and I was just laying in bed.  I think I've mentioned the PA box that's in our house.  Our town occasionally makes announcements through it, and it goes to everyone's house.  Even if we didn't have it, we would still be able to hear our neighbor's or the big projector ones that they have throughout town.  Yesterday morning around 8:30 AM, it let out this horrible siren sound similar to a tornado siren in the States following by an announcement that we had no idea what was.  You know that generally when the sirens goes off in the States, it's time to get somewhere safe in a hurry.  While tornadoes wouldn't reach us here in the mountains, if there were tornado-like winds, our house would be on the ground.  No question.  We don't even have an interior room to go to in case of strong winds.  It was a scary moment for us.  We jumped out of bed and raced to the windows to see if there was any mass panic outside and/or to see if anyone was doing anything.  Nothing happened, and we assumed that if something bad was about to happen, some kind and considerate Japanese person would come knock on our door and tell us to run.  ;)  Ian got online and did a little research to find out that we were under a wind, rain, and flood watch.

I had to go to the BOE yesterday morning, and I asked my supervisor if I needed to make preparations for the typhoon.  I felt like they were kind of giggling at me, like "Look at the foreigner!  She's worried about a little typhoon.  hahaha."  She told me that it would just be rain.  And that it did.  It seriously rained ALL. DAY. LONG.  It was a hard, driving rain.  At the end of school yesterday, the principal called all of the teachers into the teacher's room and said.....something.  Nothing like that has happened before, so after the announcement, I asked my English teacher what he said.  She said that after school club activities had been cancelled and that possibly morning classes would be cancelled.  I was really confused now.  My supervisor told me it was just a little rain, but my junior high school would potentially cancel classes.  I really wasn't sure what to expect.

One thing that really bothered me yesterday is the indirectness of the Japanese.  My English teacher gave me a task: create a game for class.  There were no further instructions.  The concept we were going over was "does."  For example, "Does she play soccer?"  "Yes, she does."  I typed up a little worksheet with three columns.  In the first column was a list of questions, the second column a happy or sad face, and the third column blank to be filled in. For example:

Does Melissa-sensei read kanji?              :(     No, she doesn't. (What should be put in the blank space.)
Does Meg like Canada?                            :)    Yes, she does. (What should be put in the blank space.)

The students would walk around and ask each other the questions.  The first three people finished are the winners.  I printed it and showed it.  My English teacher said, "Maybe we could play memory game."  (Ugh.  Anytime a Japanese person says "maybe" it means that something is wrong and needs to be fixed.  The Japanese don't really say no.  It's very impolite to flat out say "no" to someone, so they beat around the bush A LOT.)  I wasn't sure how that connected, but he told me to print out pictures of the phrases used.  For example, in the last example, I would print out a picture of Canada, and we could play memory.  So, I found six little images, copied and pasted, and asked him if they were okay.  My English teacher said to make them bigger.  I asked if the bigger images were okay.  My English teacher said to now put the name and verb on the same page.  For example, I would have "Melissa-sensei/read kanji" so that students could form the question "Does Melissa-sensei read kanji?"  I added the noun and verb, printed, and asked if it was okay.  My English teacher told me to now glue the paper to construction paper so that it would stand out better.  This whole situation consumed about an 1-1.5 hours of my life.  I get so frustrated with the back and forth.  I miss American directness of this-is-what-I-want and this-is-how-I-want-it. ;)

Last night, we ate dinner at a friend's house.  On the way there, we couldn't believe how high the rivers were!  I've never seen them so high!   We all pitched in and made a wonderful and delicious feast of spaghetti, garlic bread, salad, and dessert.  Ian made the best sauce.  Even in Japan, you can still have good spaghetti sauce.  :)  We joked that it was a hurricane party.  Someone from the New Orleans area told us a few weeks ago that pre-Katrina, hurricanes were a joke.  Instead of worrying about them, everyone had "hurricane parties" in which you would bring a lot of booze and have a party at someone's house.  We had a fine hurricane party last night....minus the massive amounts of booze.

Today was my elementary school day.  I'm still not completely sure what I'm doing over there, but I found a schedule on my desk.  Yay!  At least now I know where to go and when.  The kids are seriously the best.  I love them!  Today, I definitely had the "cool American" factor.  Classes were better, and lunch/recess was the BEST!  I ate lunch w/the fourth graders, and they were so amazed with everything I did.  It was great.  :)  When I first got there, they hounded me wanting to talk to me.  Kids were showing me their homework, hats, cards, and artwork.  I went back downstairs to get my iphone for it's camera purpose, and the fact that I had an iphone increased my cool factor by at least 100 points.  :)  All of the students were asking for me to take their picture, take their picture with so-and-so, take another picture of so-and-so with who-and-who.  It was adorable.  Lunch itself was also a hoot.  Easily the most fun I've had at lunch.  The boys kept trying to play tricks on me, but I would catch them in the act, lol.  Something that made me laugh out loud was the boy that sat next to me.  At one point in time during lunch, he stood up, went over to the door leading to the hallway, bent over pointing his butt toward the hallway, farted, and returned like nothing had happened.  How can you NOT laugh at that?

After lunch, the cool American got to sign autographs.  That's right.  All the kids brought their hats, folders, pencils cases, or whatever over to me to sign.  I don't know how many times I signed my name today!  When it was time for recess, a couple of girls hung on me, wanting me to go to recess with them.  I had to go change my clothes, so they followed me to the teacher's room to get my clothes, then to the locker room to change, and then outside.  It was adorable how they tried to teach me how to play games.  They were so animate in describing the games, but I had no idea what they were saying.  At the end of the instructions, they would ask, "okay?" as in "do you understand?"  Even if I said no, how would I have learned other than attempt to play?  We played tag, hide-and-seek, and another game that was like red light/green light.  For some reason, we only played one round of each game.  I don't know what you all did during recess way back when, but I remember playing tag, hide-and-seek, or red light/green light for the entire recess time.  I got bored switching games, so I started climbing on the jungle gym.  I hung upside down by my knees, and they were amazed.  :)  Recess time has and always will be my favorite time of the school day, lol.

Tomorrow night we have another enkai, which is a drinking party.  I've heard a lot of other people say that they also have enkais tomorrow, so I think it's something about the fact that no one has to work on Friday.  :)  I don't care.  It means that my Thursday night class is canceled, so that makes me super excited! 

Wet and Wild

I know the title of this post may get some giggles, but it's referring to the weather.  It's been ridiculously rainy for the past couple of days, and it REALLY makes me dread the rainy season.  :(  Another typhoon blew through, so we've picked up A LOT of rain from it.  All of the rivers are raging death traps, but the Japanese know how to take care of massive amounts of water.  They're used to the rainy season, when it basically rains for a month straight, so they have spillways.  For example, yesterday when I went to work the irrigation ditch near our house was the highest I've ever seen it.  However, when I got off yesterday, it was the lowest I've ever seen it b/c I'm sure they opened a spillway somewhere. 

Anyway, onto more fun topics.  On Sunday, we went to the drunken horse festival in Kumamoto.  How does this NOT sound fun?  ;)  The original festival was to celebrate some victory over Korea.  They would get the horses completely drunk and parade them though the town.  After the parade, they would cut the heads off and eat the meat, lol.  Now, it's the people that get completely drunk, and the horses are just for decoration.  After we went to Mass, we took the back roads to the city.  The expressway here is a toll road, so we thought we'd be crafty and avoid it.  I think it added about 45 minutes to our travel time, but it was a BEAUTIFUL trip!  The road was twisty, curvy, and hilly through the mountains, but it provided amazing views.  We loved it.  One bad thing about here is that we never really have any idea of where we're going, and we don't have GPS.  We have google maps, which work pretty well, but whenever we're in a large city like Kumamoto and we're two lanes away from the right hand lane we're supposed to be in to make our turn, it gets stressful.  I'm not a big fan of city driving, but couple that with a foreign city and not knowing where I'm going, and we have a recipe for a disaster.  Ian couldn't drive b/c he accidentally left his wallet at home, including the license.  :(  We finally found parking and walked around the park area. 

Neither of us has explored Kumamoto, so even on foot we we're not exactly sure where to go.  In the park, we saw some horses and people dressed up, so we knew we were in the right area!  There wasn't much going on, so we walked down the street to a shopping center where we actually found post cards!  It's a miracle!  Watch your mailboxes b/c you may have one on the way!  :)  After that, Ian wanted to go to a restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms. It's actually a really good Thai place, and someone explained the name.  A certain percentage of sales goes to prevention and sexual education in Thailand.  After lunch, we wandered around to the parade area and just happened to run into other ALTs.  The beginning of the parade was pretty boring, but then it became very interesting very quickly.  I'll post videos tonight or tomorrow, but basically they paraded groups down the street.  Each group consisted of a big horse followed by 50(ish) marchers.  The marchers would stop and dance in front of us and of course high five the cool foreigners.  :)  Of course most of them were drunk, which really added to the fun.  Following the marchers was a big booze cart.  I'm not lying.  There was water and tea in it, but I'd say that the majority of the liquid in that was definitely alcohol.  The Japanese do enjoy their alcohol.  Even though it rained, we still stayed.  It was waaaaaay too much fun to leave!

Later we went to a shopping area with some friends and ate dinner.  We were going to eat at this ninja restaurant, but I really didn't want to get home so late. (Kumamoto is 3 hours from Yunomae.)  We will do it sometime, though b/c it's supposed to be really cool.  It's very well hidden, and you can't find it unless you know where you're going.  Whenever the servers come to the table, they just appear like a ninja.  We've only heard good things from this place.  :)  We took the back roads back, which was a little nerve wracking considering that I don't have experience driving that road, it was dark, and I was driving on this tiny, curvy, hilly, backwoods road.

On Monday, we went back to Hitoyoshi to meet some friends and do some shopping.  Ian found the "Best Buy" store (remember, we don't actually know the names of stores, so we call them what they are in the States), and we bought a laptop case for my new laptop, which is much smaller than my old one.  We also went to a Daiso (equivalent of dollar store), the "Spencer's" store, home goods store (Ian bought me a leg pillow....sweet!), and a thrift store.  Ian thinks he found his Halloween costume at the thrift store.  He tried on these horrible looking shoes that actually fit him, and then our friends convinced him that he should go as a pimp for Halloween.  He also found a ridiculously awful shirt and pants, but I doubt the pants would fit.  Asian men are tiny.  When we got home, he was so excited b/c he found a "pimp cane."  We're not exactly sure what it is, but it's been by our coat rack and looks like a cane.  He told me I could match his costume and go as a  ho.  Yes, that's exactly what I was wanting to go as.  :S  I'm actually thinking about going as a witch, but nothing is finalized.

I think I'm going to stop here and make this two blogs so that it's not ridiculously long.  Don't forget to read part II! 

Let’s blogging!

Hey gang.  I know, I know.  It’s been a while since I’ve updated, so sorry!  I have a lot to catch up on.  The title of this blog is in honor of Ian.  He suggested it.  A lot of printed English here isn’t exactly English…..it’s Engrish.  You’ll see signs, shirts, shop windows, etc with blatant and horrible grammatical mistakes.  One of the popular ones is “Let’s…….” followed by a gerund (-ing word).  For example, “Let’s walking” would mean “Let’s go for a walk.”  “Let’s camping” means “Let’s go camping.”  Oh, Japan!

First of all, the rain.  When it rains here, it rains!  basically all of Friday and Saturday was nothing but non stop driving rain.  It sucked on Friday.  I was sooooo ready for the day to be over so that I could commence my wonderful three day weekend, but the rain just drug it down and made me sleepy.    I did have a really good lunch on Friday.  Lately, the students have been very non-responsive when I talk with them at lunch, so it goes one of two ways:  either we both sit there and stare at our food while we eat, or I jabber away in English while they pretend to not hear me.  On Friday, I tried a new strategy.  I played the game “teach the foreigner Japanese.”  I pointed at things and told them to tell me what it was in Japanese.  As I struggled to memorize words or figure out what something meant, I think it helped them.  They saw that I’m not some big scary American and that I have flaws, too……like my lack of Japanese language.   

Like I said, it’s been raining and raining and raining here.  There’s another typhoon down in Okinawa that is slowly making it’s way toward our island, so we’re getting A LOT of rain off of that.  Once again, no need to worry.  A typhoon will never reach past our mountains.  The most we’re going to get is rain and non-threatening wind.  It’s kind of like how the aftermaths of hurricanes in the gulf sometimes blow up to Paducah.  Generally, by the time they’ve reached Kentucky, they are nothing more than thunderstorms. 

Saturday, we had planned to hike Mt. Ichifusa again and make it to the top, but we didn’t even leave our house b/c it rained all day.  Saturday was a big, fat, lazy day.  I called it our “American day” b/c we really did nothing but sit around and be lazy.    I woke up and made pancakes….not that box stuff, but actual from scratch pancakes.  Go me.  We skipped lunch and spent the afternoon doing nothing.  Ian was on the computer, and I watched episodes of Teen Mom.  Don’t judge me.  I judge myself already.  I hate myself for liking that show.  Ian was feeling a little blue, so we decided to make big, fat, greasy burgers for supper.  I had to walk to the super to buy some beef.  While there, I got a few other things, one of those things being garbage bags.  Garbage here is weird.  You have to sort it like crazy to recycle, and non-recyclable trash gets burned.  The recyclable trash we put in a black bag, and I take to a recycling station and drop off.  The burnable stuff goes into a red bag and set outside only on Tuesday and Friday mornings.  It has to be in the red or black bags.  This isn’t like the States where you put your trash in old Walmart sacks, card board boxes, or whatever.  Anyway, we were down to one red bag, so we had to figure out where to buy more.  I found more black bags, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find the red bags.  I circled the aisle several times and finally went to the cashier to ask for help.  He was checking out someone, and whenever I stepped up, he walked away.  I thought, um…..okay, I guess I’ll just wait.  However, somehow magically he knew exactly what I wanted!  I have NO idea how he knew that I needed red bags, but that’s exactly what he returned with.  I was surprised at his Harry Potter magical all knowing skills!  Japanese people are amazing!    That night, we made burgers, drank Coke, and ate fried potatoes.  Thank you, America for delicious fatty food!

I would like to take this time to mention the stereotype of how Asian drivers are bad drivers.  As it turns out, that stereotype is true!  Ugh.  They will pull out right in front of you, slam on the brakes, drive on the sidewalk to avoid a light, park in the middle of the road, basically park anywhere regardless if it’s on a blind curve or hill, drive up to 40 kilometers over the speed limit, and other ridiculous things like that.  It’s horrible.  Seriously horrible.  I’m getting more used to it, but I feel like you ALWAYS have to bring your A game when driving.  Look away for a second, and it could be bad.

Sunday was a pretty big day for us.  We woke up early to drive to Hitoyoshi for church.  Mass starts at 9AM, meaning we have to leave Yunomae by at least 8:15AM.  It was a bigger congregation than I thought.  We were a little late, so we snuck in the back and sat on the tatami mats.  The ladies that we sat next to were usher-like people b/c they got us two stools to sit on and missalette-like handouts.  Yes, the order of Mass was the same, but we had no idea what the readings or homily were about.    It’s what I imagine Mass to be like pre-Vatican when it was said in Latin, and not many people were fluent in Latin.  Speaking of pre-Vatican, a lot of the old ladies wore veils on their heads.  You don’t see that at church in the States!   Something that I thought was interesting is that instead of shaking hands at the Sign of Peace time during Mass, Japanese people bow to one another.  lol.  Oh, Japan!  When Mass was almost over, a lady approached us and asked us to write down our names and where we were from.  She then went to the front of church and introduced us to the congregation.  We saw two ladies that we worked with at English camp at Mass.  They’re both Filipino and married to Japanese men.  They’ve lived here for a long time but still complain about how difficult Japanese is!  We talked to them after Mass and other people who wanted to come up and introduced themselves to the foreigners.  I actually saw one of my students and her parents!  We also met the priest, Fr. Michael.  He’s from Ireland, so he’s fluent in English and Japanese.  He’s lived here for a while.  While Mass itself was pretty boring since we had no idea what was being said, talking to everyone after Mass was quite entertaining.

Well, I was planning to catch up, it’s a little after midnight and bed time for me.  Chances are it’ll just rain again tomorrow, so I won’t be able to go for my nightly walk and will have plenty of time for writing.

It's a love/hate relationship

I was at the elementary school yesterday.  I concluded that I have a love/hate relationship with my elementary school.  I love the kids.....they're wonderful!  However, I absolutely and positively hate not knowing what's going on for most to the time.  Blarg.  After last Wednesday and my big fat failure at the elementary school, I went in with a positive attitude yesterday.

Shortly after I got to school, I was ushered outside for....something.  I'm still not certain what it was, but it seemed like a practice for the sports day which is on September 25th.  Anyway, I was able to quickly change my clothes, but I had worn my flip-flops to school, so I didn't have my tennis shoes and a hat.  (The Japanese seriously protect their skin.  While everyone else had on long sleeves, pants, hats, and arm gloves, I was the dumb foreigner in a t-shirt and sunglasses.  I never wore a hat at home, but if I'm at school and outside for an extended period of time, I wear a hat just to reduce the number of "Melissa, where's your hat?" questions.)  I had to call Ian and ask him to bring them for me, lol.  The students marched around the dusty baseball/soccer/track/all purpose field and then did this dance thing.  I participated, but I was the big dumb foreigner that had no idea what to do.  The dance was fairly simple, but that didn't stop me from screwing up.  :)  This outdoor practice thing lasted for most of the morning, so I didn't have any classes.  

I love the kids here.  The girls are really sweet.  During one of the breaks during the practice, a couple of girls came up to me and wanted to hold my hand.  :)  During the break period today, I got to play with the kids.  There's a stream that runs through the playground area, so lots of kids use it as part of the playground.  They can get their feet wet, jump across it, or toss rocks in.  I chose to do the latter, and several others joined me in this venture.  The kids kept getting bigger and bigger rocks to splash, so eventually the game was becoming a little too wet to play.  ;)  Instead, we had to switch to "let's jump over the stream," which lasted until the foreigner got too tired, lol.  Then, a couple of boys approached me to play soccer.  I agreed, but it basically became "kick the ball as hard as you can and watch the foreigner chase it."  :)

Yesterday was pretty boring because I only had one class.  It was a fun class because we played another scavenger hunt game, and elementary school kids LOVE  to get up are run around.  I cannot emphasize enough how much more active they are.  At the JHS, there's always a problem of students falling asleep in class.  I have NEVER seen an elementary school student fall asleep in class, lol! 

Last night after my evening stroll around the neighborhood and supper, Ian and I watched Wall-E.  Neither one of us had seen it, and when we went through the random DVDs left in our house, we found a Wall-E DVD case but no DVD.  It was a big disappointment because we both had never seen it and tried to watch it one night only to open up the case and see nothing in it.  :(  Yesterday, Ian bought it on itunes, so now we can watch it anytime we want along with a few other movies that he downloaded.  We tried to have a double feature and watch Thor as well, but I feel asleep during it.  :(  Perhaps we will try again to watch it after my night class tonight.

Tonight is my Thursday night class, blarg.  It went a lot better last week, but that doesn't mean I will stop dreading it.  It's just that whenever I get off of work, I want to be off, you know?  I don't really want to go back to another class.  Anyway, my shining light at the end of the tunnel is that tomorrow is Friday, and it's a three day weekend.  I don't care where you work or what job you have, you still look forward to three day weekends!  :)

Holy crap, I live in Japan!

Sometimes I have these moments when I'm like, "holy crap!  I live in Japan."  I had one of those yesterday in class.  It wasn't anything big, and nothing really happened to make me think that, but it was just a overwhelming "wow" feeling.  :) 

Next week is Silver Week, and I'm excited!  It's two three day weekends in a row, and it'll be a nice break.  We don't really have big plans for either weekend.....yet.  We want to budget and be responsible, so if we do anything, it won't be too big.  It stinks that if we go anywhere, it's double the cost, so if a beach party weekend cost 2,500 yen (Remember, that's yen not dollars!), it' actually 5,000 yen for the Reeds.  :(  We had to pay a lot of start up fees....you know how much it costs to move somewhere with the initial fees.  We're beginning to level out, but we still need to transfer money back to the States soon.  Regardless, if we do anything over Silver Week, it probably won't be anything huge.  We're thinking of going to the Drunken Horse Festival in Kumamoto on Sunday.  Why the heck not??  ;)

I mentioned yesterday that it was the harvest moon.  My English teacher explained that it's not a huge holiday in Japan, more so in China, but it's like Flag Day in the States.  As in, someone might mention
that's it's Flag Day, and you think, "Why yes, it is Flag Day," and carry on about your day.  My English teacher told me that you're supposed to eat bean paste to celebrate the harvest moon.  Bean paste is not as terrible as it sounds.  I like it.  It's put in a lot of sweets.  Ian says that it tastes like sugar and nothing, which is actually a really good way to describe it.  :)  Last night after dinner, we had our bean paste cakes to celebrate the harvest moon.

Another thing that we did last night was play barber shop.  :)  Ian needed his hair cut but was afraid to go to an actual barber shop here.  I told him I'd cut it.  I've never cut hair before other than my or my sister's bangs every once in a while when we were younger.  However, Ian trusted me to do it.  I made a deal with him that if I screwed it up, he could shave it all off.  We moved the desk chair into the shower area.  That first snip was the trickiest.  I didn't think I was doing THAT bad of a job.  Granted, it was taking much longer than it would for a regular barber, so Ian suggested that I use his beard trimmer to get the sides.  The only bad thing about that was that it got the sides waaaaaaaay too short, so we had to shorten it on top as well.  It doesn't look too bad, but Ian's hair is definitely shorter than normal!  lol.  I probably cut off a pound of hair.  There was a lot in the shower area, and it took us a good 15 minutes to sweep and vacuum up all of the hair. 

Today I went to one of my nursery schools.  I love Tuesdays for that reason.  Good Lord, nursery school kids are adorable.  Today we reviewed colors and played two games.  The first game was a relay race.  All of the colors were on the floor in the front of the class room, and I would call out a color.  One person from each team had to race to the front of the class room and grab the card.  Sometimes it was two close to call, and that's where janken comes to play.  Janken is rock, paper, scissors, but Japanese people use it to solve ALL of life's problems.  Can't decide who actually got the card?  Janken for it.  Having problems deciding who's going to clean the lunch trays?  Janken.  Wondering who will be the first to present a dialogue in class?  Janken.  I heard that in some small village somewhere, the mayor's race was so close that they couldn't decide a clear winner, so they used janken, lol.  It will seriously solve any problem in Japan!  The next game we played was fruits basket.  Holy crap, kids go crazy for fruits basket.  It's a really fun game that you can play to teach anything: colors, numbers, foods, animals, etc.  We played with colors.  Each kid gets a color: pink, black, blue, or yellow.  Each student has a chair except for one.  That person is in the middle and calls out a color, for example pink.  All the kids with pink have to run and steal someone else's chair.  The person that doesn't have a chair calls the next color, etc.  The person in the middle can always say "fruits basket," which makes EVERYONE get up and steal someone else's seat.  This game is fun, but it often turns to mayhem.  Refer to my videos posted on facebook.  :)

Tonight we had two tasks to do when I got off of work: go to the post office for the third time and try to send Landon's birthday package and pay a bill.  Both were interesting tasks.  Ian tried twice to send Landon's package yesterday but failed due to the language barrier.  I told him I'd go with him today and hopefully two heads are better than one.  I sent the package on the counter and simply said, "America."  The ladies were very nice and had us to fill out the customs form and pay.  It was pretty quick and easy.  Paying the bill was a little more tricky.  Every other bill automatically deducts from our account, which is nice.  For some reason, our power bill didn't deduct, and my supervisor gave me the paper copy to pay.  In Japan, you can often pay bills at the ATM, so we went to the bank.  We had absolutely NO IDEA which kanji to push, so we waited until the lady at the ATM beside us finished her transaction and asked for help.  After a failed attempt, she told us we'd have to go to a combini (think7-11) to pay.  Weird, right?  So we went there.  There was an ATM, so we went to that and selected English instructions.  The machine falsely advertised because it said that no English instructions were available.  Fail.  Instead, we asked the cashier for help.  She very easily checked us out at the register.....it was like a weight was lifted off our shoulders!

Which leads me to my last point.  It's weird.  Here, if I don't get my eight hours, I'm seriously dead the next day.  At home, I could get six hours and be fine the next day.  The other day, I got seven hours of sleep, and I had bags under my eyes.  Bags!  Ian and I concluded that the reason sleep is so important here is because it's MENTALLY draining here.  We have to constantly think--figure out what someone is saying, where to go to find ________, how to get to __________, what ________ means, etc.  We are CONSTANTLY thinking and processing things, so our brains REALLY need at least eight hours of sleep to just turn off for a while.


That's all for now.  It's getting late, and I still have a few things to do before I go to bed. 

Now I'm caught up!

Okay.  I swear I will finally get caught up.

Thursday-After my horrible day on Wednesday, things calmed down and went back to normal on Thursday.  I was back at the junior high school.  I'm finally beginning to figure out my role at the JHS, which is nice.  I really like one of my English teachers.  She's very pleasant to talk to and VERY helpful.  The other day, she was looking at my English board and asking me questions about my life back home, American holidays, etc.  Today (Monday) was a minor celebration for the harvest moon.  The office lady was trying to tell me about it, but I had no idea what she was talking about, so she went and got my English teacher.  She explained the ENTIRE history and cultural festivities about it.  She's awesome!  Anyway, that night I had my stupid night class.  Blarg.  This is the class that I HATE!  Ian went with me, and I cannot tell you HOW much BETTER it was!  I think it was partially that Ian was there to help, partially that I figured out how to deal with kids, and partially that I wasn't taking any shit from anyone.  When one kid starting running around acting up, I'd point at him and say something like, "STOP!"  It turns out that authority does indeed translate in any language.  :)  That class was about 800% better, and on our walk home, we stopped for a Coke to celebrate.

Friday-  I really can't think of anything big and/or interesting that happened on Friday other than Friday night.  I had to stay a little later at work b/c some kids had to come and practice vocab words with me.  Japan has a very indirect society, so the Japanese don't always say what they need to say.  For example, I was supposed to get off of work at 4:20, but my English teacher asked me if a couple of students had come to practice vocab words with me.  I told her no.  I didn't even know that they were supposed to come!  She asked me what time I left, and I told her.  It was already 4:00, and this was basically our conversation:

Her: "It will be difficult for them to practice with you before you leave.  They are in homeroom now......."
Me: (knowing that this is the indirect Japanese way of asking me to stay) "Would you like me to stay late?"
Her: "I think that would be nice."

Once I got home, Ian and I were like fat American blobs that night.  He made some AWESOME curry for supper.  I never thought I liked curry until I got here, but it's freaking delicious and soooooooo easy to make over here b/c they sell all ready-to-make easy packets at the grocery.  After that, I don't know what made me search it, but I found episodes of Teen Mom on MTV.com.  Before you judge me, know that I already judge myself.  :(  I HATE myself for watching that show, but dang it!  It's like a train wreck that you just can't look away from.  I'm pretty sure we killed brain cells watching those 7 episodes.  Ian admitted to liking it.  Well, not liking it, but agreeing that it's a train wreck that you just have to keep watching!  Plus, we were just tickled to be watching American TV.  A show like that would NEVER work in Japan.  They don't really have any issue w/teen pregnancy over here. 

Saturday-Ah, I love Saturdays.  We woke up late.  I made hashbrowns and eggs, and I got to skype both of my sisters.  Ian and I had planned on hiking Mt. Ichifusa on Saturday, which is the closest big mountain.  We left around 12:30 and arrived around 1:00.  Our poor little car was definitely making some unfriendly noises going up the mountainside.  The hamsters running the engine really sounded like they were ready to give out.  Not only that, but the road was this tiny little one lane road with drop off on one side and mountain rock on the other side.  Not a lot of wiggle room if we met someone, you know?  We drove up as far as we could and got ready to hike the rest.  At the beginning of the trail was a beautiful waterfall and stream area.  Ian had a good time climbing around it.  :)  The trail up was definitely not fun.  It had just rained, so the mostly stone pathway was wet and slippery, the dirt parts were muddy, etc.  We got all the way to this temple area, but we weren't sure where the path was after that.  There was a tiny little narrow pathway behind it, but a big log crossed the pathway, so we weren't sure if that was the Japanese way of saying "please do not proceed, honorable hiker."  :)  Instead, we went back down and found a gravel pathway to walk along.  It took us around the side of the mountain but not up.  Ian said his knee was starting to hurt, so we had to turn around. 

On our way back, we stopped at this lake and dam area.  I've heard that that area is beautiful when the cherry blossoms bloom.  There was a really cool suspension bridge hanging over the lake, so of course we walked across that and down onto a peninsula that jutted into the water.  Ian is a boy.  I have concluded that when around water, big sticks, rocks, etc, boys will forever be boys.  He showed me a really cool trick.  Since there was a peninsula, it protected the inside area from the river current, so it was very still.  He found a long piece of bamboo driftwood and said that if you scrap the bottom of the still water, you can release methane gas from the gunk decomposing on the bottom.  As it turns out, it was true!  Bubbles popped up!  We enjoyed the little peninsula area for a while.  We threw rocks in the river, wadded, found some pretty marble and granite rocks, and left as the sun sank.

On Saturday night, we got together with some friends.  I realized how SMALL our house is compared to other friends.  Seriously, out of all of the ALTs in our gun, our house is by far the smallest.  :(  Other people have two or three bedroom houses or actual kitchens, but we have a house that is slightly smaller than our old apartment in Paducah.  Anyway, it was fun to hang out with everyone.  Gosh, we talked about anything and everything!  Some conversations were completely random and stupid, but we all had an awesome time!

Sunday- Well, we had planned on getting up and going to church in Hitoyoshi and spending the day there, but......we didn't.  We flip-flopped back and forth on whether to go to church or not, but we finally decided not to.  It's just that there's no way in heck that we'd have any idea what the readings are, and we really don't feel like we'd get anything out of it.  We'll go, but we just didn't go on Sunday.  Instead, we slept in.  I made a delicious big American breakfast that morning....biscuits, eggs, and gravy.  Yay for America in Japan!  It turned into a nearly two hour long process b/c I couldn't get the dang oven to preheat, and then I ran out of milk, so Ian had to run to the grocery so that we could finish breakfast, lol. 

We did go to Hitoyoshi that afternoon.  We wanted to explore it a bit more.  We've been there, but we really haven't taken the time to explore it.  Our first stop was the "Walmart" store.  We really don't know the name of many stores here, but we kinda make up names for them.  :)  For example, in Yunomae, there is the "happy fun store" b/c there are smiley faces on the side of the building.  We have no idea what the store's name is, but we call it that b/c of the smiley faces, lol.  Anyway, at the "Walmart" store, we probably spent two hours just walking up and down the aisles looking at stuff and thinking what we needed for the house.  I bought a pare of scissors for Ian's hair.  Yep, I cut it....more about that later.  ;)

We went to McDonald's again.  I wasn't really that crazy about the idea, but Ian wanted big, fat, greasy burger, and fries did sound pretty good.  It's always an adventure when going out to eat.  There's a lot of pointing at items and saying the Japanese equivalent of "please."  lol.

We ended our day by touring the ruins of Hitoyoshi Castle.  It was actually really cool!  There weren't any buildings left, but the steps up, up, and up and the stone walls were still there.  We walked around, and watched the sun set over the river.

When we got back, we settled in for the night.  I called home on skype, and got some pretty interesting news.  I've been nagging my parents to get their passports so that they can come and visit me.  Mommy wants to, but she doesn't want to come alone.  I can't say that I blame her.  The last time she flew was in the 70s, and I feel like a thing or two has changed since then.  :S  Daddy's been a bit more stubborn about the deal.  Before I left, he told me that he doubted he would come over here, but last night when I said that he should visit and asked him if he thought any more of it, he basically said maybe.  I know that maybe isn't yes, but it's one heck of a step up from no!!  Family members and friends reading this, peer pressure him to come!  I know he'd love it over here.  It's basically a page right out of National Geographic, so it's right up his alley! 

Whew!  Hopefully you've read this whole thing and made it to this party.  Sorry for the word vomit, but I had to catch up.

A down day

I'm a slacker, I know.  It's been several days since I've updated.  I would say that I've been busy, but that would be a lie.  Yes, I have been working full time, but I still have plenty of time at night to blog, but two things either happened: 1) Ian decided to be a computer hog, or 2) I decided to find other things to do than blog.  Anyway, I'll try to briefly catch you up on things that have happened since Wednesday.

Wednesday- Oh, Wednesday.  It was a very dark day for me.  I had to go to the elementary school.  I'm only at the elementary school one day a week, so I don't know the people or my role over there near as well as the junior high.  I knew it was going to be an awkward day.  I suppose some of it is my fault b/c the last time I was there, I should have asked for a schedule of classes, what time classes begin, and other important questions.  When I first got there, I was the only teacher in the teacher's room.  At the junior high school, someone teaches a certain subject.  The math teacher only teaches math, the science teacher only teaches science, etc so the maximum number of classes they'll have in one day is four, and then return to the teacher's room.  At the elementary school, a teacher will teach all subjects for an entire grade.  Therefore, it doesn't seem to be uncommon for there to be an empty teacher's room.  This can be very problematic for me since I have no idea what I'm doing there. 

I found the vice principal and asked for a schedule.  He kinda explained to me my schedule for the day.  I'm not sure if the vice principal wants to practice his English, is very interested in the foreigner, has a crush on me, or what, but he REALLY enjoys talking to me.  His English is.....interesting, and my Japanese is non-existent, so communication is special.  Here's an example of our conversations:
(Blah, blah blah=Japanese that I don't understand.)

VP: blah blah blah blah blah New York blah.
Me: Oh, New York!
VP: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah money.
Me: Money, yes.
VP: blah blah blah music blah blah blah.
Me: Music.  I like music.

Yeah, it's awkward.  Why can't everyone just speak Am-murr-i-can? lol.

Here's another thing that was weird about the day.  I had NO IDEA what I was doing in the classes.  I wasn't even sure who my English teachers were last week when I was there, so I wasn't sure who to speak with about lesson plans.  Gah.  In addition, last week, I asked if I should bring materials for a self-introduction (maps, my scrapbook, American money), but the answer was no.  I brought them just in case, and guess what was asked of me?  A self-introduction!  However, the classes were really fun.  I love elementary school students!  They're still really excited about English, and it's pretty much fun and games.  Junior high English is a lot more rigid in structure, and the students are MUCH more bored/and/or don't care about English.  Elementary school students are MUCH more fun!

After my classes, I thought I'd get to go back to the teacher's room and lesson plan, but I was invited to some sort of dance practice.  It was soooooooooo cute to see the kids try to dance, but have no idea what they're doing!  I kinda feel like that sometimes here.  I actually feel like a baby sometimes b/c I can't communicate to others, and I don't understand others.  I also was invited to a PE class.  Wow, the things that they did would never fly in the States.  Instead of our typical push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks, it was more like watching a cheerleading practice.  They were doing lifts, making human pyramids, and all kinds of crazy things like that.  Then, they had to make pairs and do certain exercises that would never by allowed in the US b/c someone would say that it was "gay". 

Since I wasn't familiar with the schedule or routine in the elementary school, a couple of times students had to come to the teacher's room and basically be like, "Melissa-sensei is supposed to be in our class now."  Awesome.  It always boosts your self-esteem whenever a fifth grader knows more than you.  :( 

The final straw was lunch time.  I've been eating school lunch, and it's great!  On Wednesday, a kid had to come and get me and tell me it was lunch time and to come eat with his class.  Once I got up to the class, fortyish fifth grade students were patiently waiting on me to arrive.  Everyone had his or her nice tray of delicious looking food in front of them.  In Japan, you have to wait until everyone is present and ready before anyone begins eating lunch.  The student showed me where to sit.  It was the only place that didn't have a school lunch tray.  I suppose the homeroom teacher automatically realized something was up b/c he came over and said, "blah blah blah blah blah bento."  A bento is a little lunch that you bring or buy at the store.  I said, "school lunch?" and a look of horror ran across his face.  He told me, "one minute" before he raced off down the hallway.  Apparently, I was supposed to bring my lunch that day and had no idea.  I was mortified.  Forty fifth grade students had to wait on me as they had their lunch sitting right in front of them staring them in the face.  Pretty sure I made some enemies that day.  When lunch was over, I returned to the teacher's room.  Apparently, word had spread that the dumb foreigner didn't bring her lunch.  The vice principal told me, "blah blah blah blah lunch box blah blah."  I have never done this before, but I went into the rest room, locked the stall door, put the toilet seat down, and had a good cry.  :(  I really didn't want to show my face.  I sent Ian a text to have pity party materials ready when I got home. 

Needless to say, I'm not too excited to go back to the elementary school on Wednesday.  I feel like a big fat failure there.  :( 

Ian did have pity party materials ready, which was awesome.  He had gone to the super and bought a pizza, coke and fanta (so we could make spetzi!), and two chocolate bars.  It's true.  Chocolate really does help most situations.

Tuesday

So, it's been a few days since I last updated.  Sorry.  One night I posted pictures, and that took up a lot of time, and then Mr. Ian seems to have been a computer hog the rest of the nights.  I cannot wait until my laptop gets here!  I guess I could blog on my iphone, but something tells me that it wouldn't be fun, and my thumbs would probably kill me after that!  So here's what's happened since Monday:

Tuesday- I love Tuesdays.  Not only do I get to wake up later, but I get off earlier, and I visit the nursery schools.  One down side of my iphone is that if I forget to completely exit out of skype, it still says that I'm online.  Therefore, I had two people try to call me before 7:30AM that morning.  Blarg!  The first unfortunate caller was Kim, and I just hung up on her to stop the loud ringing (sorry, dear!).  The second caller was my sister, Christina.  I gave the phone to Ian and said, "Make it stop!"  lol.  Once I actually woke up, I was able to call both of them and chat before I went to work.  I think it's silly, but I have to go to the BOE for fifteen minutes before I go to the nursery schools.  It's just enough time to get nothing done.  However, it was a wonderful surprise to go to the BOE and see a care package from my sisters.  Thanks again, Christina and Amanda!  After that, I had two nursery schools to visit.  I love the kids.  They are all so cute!!  I don't even care that they pull on me or get snot on my flashcards.  :)  I played two games.  We reviewed numbers 1-10, and the first game we played involved the kids lining up at the end of the classroom with the numbers 1-10 written on the board.  I would call out a number, and the kids would race to the board to slap it.  Wow.  I really should have rethought sending 15 hyper pre-schoolers racing toward the board.  One girl fell and skinned her knee.  I swear I thought the board was going to break!  Needless to say, we didn't play that game for very long.  The next game, I put cards on the floor with numbers 1-10 written on them.  I would call out a number, and the kids had to grab all of the 5s, 2s, or whatever number I called.  One kid started crying b/c he never got to slap a card.  I resolved that problem by sneakily scooting a 7 beside him and calling out "7!"

After the nursery schools, I went to the junior high school.  I'm still not 100% completely sure of my role there.  It's so different here b/c in America, we're used to a boss saying, "Here's what you need to do.  Get this to me by the end of the day." or whatever.  Here it's like you have no idea what to do unless you ASK.  Sometimes my English teachers will give me a task, but generally I have to ask if I can help or what I should prepare for class.  :)

After school on Tuesday, we planned to meet up with Krista to go swimming in a nearby river/lake area and dinner afterwards.  The water was FREAKING cold, but we got in anyway.  lol.  Ian tried to dam the river like he always does with waterways.  Krista and I walked to the lake area and threw rocks in.  There's something cathartic about throwing rocks.  :)  It gets dark here about an hour sooner than at home b/c Japan doesn't have daylight savings time, so we left around 5:45.  Krista told us about a restaurant in Yunomae, and it was DELICIOUS!  Ian and Krista had curry, but I got some fried egg chicken thing over rice.  It almost had a sweet taste to it, which was great! 

Darn.  I was going to play catch-up, but then Ian needed the computer for other purposes.  I promise I'll play catch-up tomorrow b/c it's Friday!  Yay!

I knew today was going to be a good day.

I knew today was going to be a good day when I woke up and could vividly remember my Vampire Diaries dream.  Make fun of me as you will, but it is a deliciously wonderful show.  A big shout out to Morgan Hillard for reminding me about it.  Since we talked about it yesterday, that's probably why I had the dream.  :)

Today was the first Labor Day that I've worked.  The US could learn a lot of things from Japan, but one thing Japan could learn from the US is not to work on Labor Day.  I made peanut butter cookies to take to work today.  They seemed to go over pretty well.  Everyone is amazed that I put peanut butter in cookies.....perhaps because peanut butter comes in tiny little jars, or that it's about $5 for that tiny jar, or even that peanut butter isn't really used that much over here. 

I had to use the office computer today.  I cannot wait to get and use my own laptop again.  Ugh.  The office computer has a Japanese keyboard.  It's sooooooooooooooo much different.  For example, I would try to type something, add in a contraction only to have it show some random hiragana.  The contraction button is actually the same button as 7.   Instead of the ampersand, the contraction is there.  It was all weird and turned around like that.  Also, say I wanted to do a simple task like copy and paste something.  Nope.  Can't.  Every direction is written in Japanese.  Say I want to use Word to type something.  I have no idea.  Not only is Word written in Japanese, but the programming is different.  Blarg.  Needless to say, I CANNOT WAIT FOR MY LAPTOP TO ARRIVE!!

I only had two classes today.  We played a review game for past participles.  I had made a scavenger hunt.  Students had to go around and ask the questions in the boxes, such as "Have you been to America?" "Have you taken the train to Hitoyoshi?"  "Have you heard of President Obama?"  "Have you seen Mt. Aso?" etc, and respond with "Yes, I have" or "No, I haven't".  If the person answered yes, then they signed your box.  It was a fun activity.  I got to play, so I was racing around the room asking questions along with the kids.  Kids are really shy here.  I had to basically pounce on some kids because I could tell that they were trying to avoid me like the plague.  lol.  The question "Have you been to America?" I put in there so that they would HAVE to ask me a question, but you would definitely be surprised at the number of students who would prefer to have an incomplete worksheet over ask Melissa-sensei a question.  After the scavenger hunt, my English teacher asked the students questions about me and my life in America as sort of a quiz to see how much they remembered.  One of the questions was "What state is Melissa-sensei from?"  No one EVER wants to be called on in Japan.  EVER.  No one really volunteers answers.  Every time my English teacher calls on someone, he or she wallows around in his or her seat before standing up, taking a few minutes to compose an answer, and responds.  I heard one of the girls in the front row mutter "Kentucky" under her breath.  I motioned for her to speak up, and she looked horrified and shook her head.  lol.  It's just so different that NO ONE will EVER volunteer answers!

This afternoon, I worked on my English board.  I have a special bulletin board beside the library for English related things.  My plan is to post things about each month on the board.  For example, this month is Labor Day and 9/11.  Next month will be Halloween.  November will be Thanksgiving, etc, etc.  I also have a "featured foreigner" section on my board.  A big shout out to Brittany Fiscus for giving me that idea!  In my "featured foreigner" section, I will display a special person in my life at home in the US.  This month is Ian.  Yes, I know he's not currently in the US, but I assumed that this will allow students to get to know the other mysterious foreigner in town a little better.  *Bonus: if you come and visit me in Yunomae, I will put your picture on the board and make you my featured foreigner for the month!!*  I also have a "Melissa's mail" section in which the students write me letters.  They don't have to be big or long or anything special, but if they want to write me a note, they place it in the giant envelope, and I will write back to them.  So far I have no letters.  :(  Hopefully the idea will catch on!

I'm on the prowl for post cards.  I promise to send them as soon as I can.  We really haven't been able to locate them anywhere.  I asked a few friends where to find post cards, and they said that they're in touristy spots......which explains why I can't find then in Yunomae.  :)  We're going to Hitoyoshi on Sunday, which is the closest largeish town to us.  It's about the same size as Paducah.  We're hoping to (maybe) find post cards there.  I promise that they're on the way.....eventually! 

Beach Party Weekend

Hey gang.  When I left off in my last post, I was telling you about the typhoon.  It didn't hit anywhere near our beach, but that didn't stop it from affecting our weekend.  Krista picked us up in Yunomae around 12:45, and it was very breezy here.  The entire way there, the wind blew through the trees so hard, not to mention the rain.  Blarg.  Rain is the last thing you want to see on your beach vacation weekend.  It took about 1.5 hours to get to Ashikita, and luckily it wasn't raining at the time.  We were a bit early, so we decided to explore the beach.  We wandered by our bungalows on the hillside, down a questionable "pathway" to the ocean, and when we got out of the trees and onto the actual beach, holy crap!  Standing beside the ocean, it seriously felt like we were going to get blown away.  The wind was so strong!!  We were at a pier, and we walked along a sidewalk to get to the beach.  We're pretty sure the beach there was man-made b/c it wasn't very big.  The view was beautiful, though!  Across the way, we could see the islands of Amakusa.  Despite the cloudy sky and rough surf, it was still gorgeous!

We assumed that we had killed enough time, so headed back to the bungalow area to check in.  We met a few other ALTs in the parking lot and asked if we were going the right way.  They said yes and that we would know it when we got there (with sly little smiles on their faces).  We pulled up to the bungalows, and music was blasting from one, people were standing in the parking lot doing stupid things, and some guy swung off of light pole.  Ian affectionately named it "Little America."  hahahahaha.  It's a good thing that we had our own little isolated area because if we had any neighbors around, I'm pretty sure we would have scared them off.  :)  We got checked in and changed and went back to the beach.  This time, we actually got in the water.  While the current didn't seem that strong, it definitely pulled us down the beach.  None of us were stupid enough to go too far out in the rough surf.  Ian and I decided to dig a hole.  It's pretty much what you do at the beach, right?  Someone asked us if we were digging a hole to China, but Ian said, "No.  I'm digging a hole to America."  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Get it?  We're on the other side of the world, so now we have to dig a hole back to American, not China!

Later that night, we BBQed.  There were nice BBQ pits in front of each bungalow, so basically each cabin grilled out.  We had a feast of meats and veggies.  Delicious.  At this time, the booze began to flow forth like milk and honey, so EVERYONE was getting rather wasted.  The night progressively got more and more interesting.  :)  Without going into too many details, there was a banjo sing-a-long, illegal fireworks on the beach, and some pretty deep conversations about the meaning of life.

I really did not enjoy sleep last night.  The futons were NOT cushioned very well, so it might as well have been like sleeping on the ground.  :(  In addition, we went to bed around 1 and woke up around 8.  However, the worst part of the night was the 4 AM mukade attack.  Disgusting.  Mukade are poisonous centipedes in Japan that everyone hates/fears and are hard to kill.  Someone noticed one in the bedroom earlier in the night, but nothing further came of it.  I had also seen one outside by the BBQ grill.  Four people slept in the bedroom and another four in the living room space (including the Reeds).  Around 4 AM we hear a scream followed by several potty mouth words and a series of smashing sounds coming from the bedroom.  The mukade had crawled across one girl's face, was flung across the room, began headed for the other sleeping people, and was immediately beheaded.  Imagine trying to sleep after that.  Every little itch or twitch my body had I was petrified was a mukade.  We also killed two cockroaches in the cabin.

All in all, the weekend was very nice.  We had a great time!  One downside of being fourteen hours ahead of the States is that Monday always comes sooner.  :(  I don't care what country you live in.  You're still going to dread Monday. 

(Say it just like Nemo.) First day of school! First day of school! First day of school!

Hey gang.  Yesterday was the first day of school.  It was definitely.....different.  There were a lot of ups and downs.  For example, an up would be that both opening ceremonies at the junior and elementary were MUCH less stressful than I thought they were going to be.  :)  Yay!  I don't have any idea what anyone said, but I was able to give my speech in English, so that was awesome.  After the opening ceremonies, there was cleaning time.  A wonderful thing about Japan is that there are no janitors at the school.  The students are the janitors.  Everyday, there is a "cleaning time" in which the students clean the school from top to bottom.  It really helps b/c they won't make messes or discard trash in the hallway b/c they know they'll have to clean it up later.  Anyway, on the first day of school, cleaning time was longer and in the morning.  I told my English teacher that I didn't have any clothes to change into, so she let me go home and change.  :)  When I got back, I asked what I could do and was handed a broom.  I swept everywhere....including the men's locker room.  Oops.  Apparently I wasn't supposed to go in there.  My English teacher pulled me out and said, "That's the men's room" as she pointed to the kanji sign.  Oops.  I was just trying to clean!

I had three classes yesterday, two eighth grade classes and one seventh grade.  My English teacher told me that the eighth grade classes were taking tests the next day (you have to remember that it is mid-semester in Japan), so the tone in those classes were much more serious.  I gave my self-introduction using maps, my scrapbook, coins, and other American items.  It's so much easier to do that with native speakers.  I got a lot of blank stares.  I think the next time I give my self introduction, I'll have to jazz it up....make a power point or something....maybe make a game out of it.  After I gave my intro to the eighth grade classes, it was back to studying as usual.  We had a review sheet to go over, and I had the task of pronouncing the words on the page.  My seventh grade class was much more fun.  They didn't have the test, so my teacher allowed me to give the self-intro for the entire class period.  After I gave my presentation, the kids asked me questions.  I got things like, what's your favorite Japanese food?  What's your favorite book?  Who's your favorite singer?  Do you know Japanese? etc, etc, etc.  Then, I had the opportunity to ask them questions, so I asked, where should I travel to in Japan?  What Japanese foods should I try?  etc, etc.  It was a lot of fun to go back and forth asking and answering questions!

One thing that is VERY different than the States is the school lunch.  There is no cafeteria here.  Instead, the kids eat in the classroom.  They organize their desks into three long row-like tables.  The students are responsible for serving one another.  They put on the lunch lady garb of hair net, apron, and face mask and dish up the daily special.  School lunches are HUGE, and you're expected to clean your plate.  I felt ridiculously full after lunch.  Also, the only drink served with lunch is milk.  I wouldn't mind that so much, but a) it is warmish milk....ick, and  b) it's whole milk....ugh.  One of the down periods of the day was lunch.  While the food was excellent, the conversation wasn't.  The other tables were chit-chatting, but the table w/the foreigner was DEAD SILENT.  I tried to initiate conversation, but it didn't work.  *crying* The kids were mean to me!!!  :(  lol.  Whatever.  Today's lunch was better.  I ate in a different classroom, and I ended up playing thumb war with the boys.  One of the boys totally creamed me, but another boy I beat.

Last night, I had my night conversation class again.  Please remember that last week, I didn't even know I was teaching this class, so I had nothing prepared.  This week wasn't much better.  I tried!!  I had lots to do, but the kids in that class almost drive me to drink.  There are four boys in that class that are wilder than bucks.  I don't know Japanese, so I can't say things like "SIT DOWN!" or "BE QUIET!"  Last night, they were doing handstands and judo move on each other.  I made them sit down, but it wasn't a few minutes before they were acting up again.  I asked my supervisor today if Ian could come to my class w/me.  She said yes, so hopefully two versus eight is better odds.....hopefully.

On a much lighter note, we're headed to the beach tomorrow!  Woot!  All of you people in Kentucky who are 11 hours away from the gulf coast, I just wanted you to know that we are a mere 2 hours (at most) away from beautiful beaches.  I don't want to brag, but.........  ;)  PS, if you've been keeping up with Japanese weather, then you know that there's a typhoon approaching the coast.  No worries.  a) Never, ever, ever worry about us if you hear about a typhoon in Japan.  We've got soooooooooooooo many mountains around us, that a typhoon could NEVER reach here.  b) Yes, we are headed to the coast tomorrow, but the typhoon isn't coming in our direction.  We're on Kyushu, the southern island, and the typhoon is headed for southern Honshu in the Osaka area.  It's been breezy and cloudy here all day, but no need to worry....I promise!  If you're really interested, here's a link to a map of the projected path of the typhoon:


http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/wp201115.html#.TmChjhrKN_Q.facebook

Hitoyoshi

Alright....on to finish yesterday's story.

I was at the elementary school yesterday.  A common question to get here is "What sport do you play?"  I'm like....er....um....I don't really play sports.  Instead, I usually say volleyball, badminton, or hiking.  It so happens that my English teacher at the elementary school is the volleyball coach, so when I told people I liked volleyball, they were like, "OMG!  You HAVE to play since so-and-so is the coach!!!"  Apparently, I'm joining the volleyball team.  I will play the position of handicap for the team.  ;)

Yesterday was a flurry of activity at school.  Since today was the first day of class, everyone was running around trying to get last minute things completed.  It was crazy!

Last night when I got home, Ian asked me if I wanted to go to Hitoyoshi.  I was like, "Why?!?!"  He said that he had found the nearest Catholic church and was wanting to confirm his findings.  I really didn't want to go b/c I wanted to go for a walk instead, but I'm glad we went.  It takes about 40-50 minutes to drive there.  Ian had google maps lead us straight to the church.  It's fairly easy to find, so we're going to try to go at least every other weekend.  We think (I say think b/c everything is written in kanji) Mass is at 9:00AM on Sundays.  After visiting the church, Ian said, "I kinda want a big, fat, greasy burger."  I haven't had a burger since I left (it has officially been a full month.....yay!), and I agreed that it sounded good.  We found a McDonald's.  I know it's horribly stereotypical for the Americans to go to McDonald's in a foreign land, but when you want a burger, you want a burger!  It makes sense, but it kinda sucks for us b/c McDonald's is kinda expensive.  We probably spent $15ish just on the two of us.  We didn't really get anything special, but whereas McDonald's in the States is cheap food, McDonald's here is a little bit more expensive.  After supper, we walked across the street to what we called "Walmart".  It was fabulous!  It had everything we could need.  We really can't get a lot of things in Yunomae.  Actually, we were blown away by the size of the grocery side.  Our little super market is Yunomae is probably half the size of Supervalu in Paducah, and I feel like that's being generous.  We finally found flour.  We weren't sure it was flour, and we wanted to make sure that we were buying flour and not a sack of corn starch, so I used my phone to translate the word for flour and went up to the first person I saw to confirm that the bag we had in our hands was flour.  Success....it was!   I'm sure I've complained about the.....specialness of our car.  Let's just say that it smells like the 80s and the hamsters running the engine are on their last leg.  :)    On our drive home, we were stopped at a red light.  We kept hearing a noise and thinking, what is that??  It seemed to be coming from the concrete bank and woods to the right of us.  Ian was the one to finally figure it out after a couple of lights and this mysterious noise following us that it was our car.  Yep, our car makes some pretty horrendous noises.  lol.


I know I should continue to write in order to get caught up with today's first day of school events, but I'm beat.  I promise...tomorrow I shall get caught up!