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.