Bringing Halloween to Japan

Wednesday-

Oh, Wednesday! I had my health check-up on Wednesday. Every employer in Japan is required to give their employees a free check-up every year. I went to school like normal on Wednesday and had three classes in the morning. I had two classes of second graders, in which I got to talk about Halloween. I forgot to bring my Halloween decorations to class. I had a cape and witch hat that I was going to wear, but I left them at home. Regardless, I read my story that I wrote, complete with gestures and print outs. The kids really seemed to like it, and it was fun!

I didn’t get to eat lunch with the kids or play at recess since I had to go to my health check-up. I met my supervisor and two other ladies at the BOE. We drove to Taragi to go to the hospital. The check-up thing was pretty cool and efficient. There were different stations set up. There was a main waiting room that we waited in until our name was called. The first thing was to meet with the doctor, who looked in my throat, eyes, and pushed on my stomach…..I guess to make sure my organs were in the right place. He could speak a little English and asked where I was from. I told him America. He asked where in America. I said Kentucky. It’s always easy for people to understand Kentucky since KFC is the number two most popular international fast food chain in Japan!

I felt a little bit like a child because I had to be directed from one place to another and told what to do. I had my height and weight measured, had urine and stool sample tests, blood pressure taken, blood work done, chest X-ray, EKG, hearing, and vision tests done. All of this was for FREE. I love universal health care! We all know how much that would have cost in the States!!

Everything was good and great until the blood work. It’s no secret. I don’t like blood or needles, and I will pass out nine out of ten times. I was prepared. I had it accurately translated on my phone to say “I do not like needles or blood. I may faint.” I showed my supervisor, and she said “Oooohhh.” When the nurse called my name, I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t look at the needle or blood, and I was okay almost until the end. I started getting hot, my hearing was getting dim, and my vision was going. I leaned on the table, and nurse asked if I was okay (in Japanese, of course). I pulled out my phone and showed her the translation. She suddenly had a look of panic in her eye, slapped a bandaid on my arm, and whisked me away to the next room where I could lay down. I felt bad because she was a very petite woman, and I was putting about 90% of my body weight on her. I never completely lost consciousness but came pretty close. She left me alone for a few minutes and returned with the doctor. He said “You not like doctors?” I told him that I didn’t like blood and needles. They let me lay down for a little while until I felt normal enough to stand on my own two feet. Walking back into the waiting room was embarrassing. Everyone stared at the foreigner. Blarg.

The last station was to go back to the doctor and hear the results of each test. Everything came back normal for me. The doctor was a really great guy because he had printed out information about Kentucky. He was reciting facts about Kentucky, that the capital is Frankfort, the largest city is Louisville, the population is 4 million, etc. He had a map printed out and asked me where I was from. I showed him Paducah.

We didn’t get back to Yunomae until 4:00PM, so I only had forty-five more minutes of work. By the time I got back to the school and settled in, it was time to leave!

Thursday-

Thursday was another normal day like Tuesday. My supervisor text me and asked me to bring my passport to the BOE so she could copy it. I asked my vice principal if I could go during the break time, and he let me. I rarely drive to school, so I had to walk home (seven minutes). Ian drove me to the BOE, and on the way home the most disgusting thing happened. We were following a truck down our little side road, and the truck narrowly missed hitting a snake. Ugh. That was the first snake I’ve seen here. It was huge, and of course, Ian swerved TO HIT it. I screamed. I thoroughly hate snakes. My dad always told me that they’re good because they eat mice and other critters. I like my mom’s ideas about snakes better. She always says that the only good snake is a dead snake. I’m not sure what happened to it, but when I walked back to school, it wasn’t smashed on the road. Ian thought it was funny to hiss at me and try to scare me the rest of the day. I kept telling myself that there aren’t that many snakes here, and the only reason we saw that one is because people have been harvesting the rice paddies. They probably disturbed its habitat, and it was looking for a new home.

I’m going to try something for Halloween. I’m not sure how well it’s going to work out. We live in a little neighborhood in the middle of a rice paddy. There are about fourteen houses. I thought that we could be the cool foreigners and bring Halloween to Japan. I want to allow the neighborhood kids to trick-or-treat at our house. I would like to open it to the whole town, but I don’t want to spend 1,000 yen on candy to give away, lol. There’s a decent amount of kids in our neighborhood, and I think they would enjoy it. The difficult part is explaining what exactly I’m doing. Halloween isn’t really celebrated here, so people aren’t very familiar with trick-or-treating. I’m in the process of creating flyers. I’ve been using google translate for help, but I have to be VERY careful to translate properly. I have to translate it to Japanese, copy and paste the Japanese, and translate it back to English to make sure that it’s a smooth translation. Once I have the flyers printed, I’ll put them in each neighbor’s mailbox (no, it’s not a federal crime here), and hopefully we’ll have trick-or-treaters for Halloween!

Thursdays are always my least favorite day. I really don’t like my night class. Yesterday, I had to stay after school, so I got home at 5:15 and left to walk to class at 6:30. Ian and I decided that the class really wouldn’t be so bad if two boys were gone. They are the trouble makers and instigators of the hyper-ness. I tried playing Pictionary last night. That lost their interest reeeeeeally quickly. They just started running around the room and stacking up the seat cushions. We moved onto a running game in which a vocabulary word was called and one member from each team had to run to the board and smack it. The first person to do so won. That also lost their interest very quickly. I thought running would be good, but instead they wanted to sit down or throw coke bottles at one another. I seriously dislike those boys. We had a break time, and I brought snack crackers. The lady in the class brought persimmons. They were really big, but very sweet. After break, we played spoons. I taught them this game last week, but this week it went much better. They actually didn’t want to stop playing. I told Ian that maybe next week, we should just play cards, and MAYBE that will keep their interest. I know that in two weeks I’ll have a Halloween lesson for them, so we’ll paint oranges (pumpkins aren’t really over here), make masks out of paper plates, bob for apples, etc. Hopefully that will gain their interest a little more!