Japanese festivals and Thanksgiving, oh my! part II

Wednesday was Labor Thanksgiving Day in Japan. It’s more like Labor Day and less like our Thanksgiving. They didn’t exactly have Pilgrims and Indians sharing a feast way back when in Japan. All of the ALTs in our area got together for Thanksgiving dinner at Krista’s house. She ordered a turkey online, and Ian built a smoker to smoke it. He woke up at 4:30AM to put it on and let it cook the rest of the day. I told Ian to try to be quiet while he prepared it so that I could sleep. That would have worked if our house was bigger. However, I heard every move he made. I heard him shuffling around in the kitchen, thump-thump-thump-thump as he walked around with his shoes on, and the door slam again and again as he went in and our. Around 5:30AM he came in and told me that the grate broke, so he had to rig one up with a coat hanger. When the store opened, he bought a new one. He also told me about a pesky little cat that kept coming back. I can’t say that I blame the cat because it smelled wonderfully outside, but the darn cat chewed up one of our kitchen towels because it smelled like delicious turkey! Grrrrr….

Ian periodically came back to bed to warm up before going back outside to check on the turkey. It was like snuggling with smoked meat. The smoke permeated his clothes, and I don’t think that smell is going away anytime soon! Despite the fact of being awake and asleep on and off all morning, we finally crawled out of our warm bed around 9:30AM. Since I was supposed to bring biscuits and gravy for the potatoes, I decided to have a trial run that morning. Plus, Ian requested that I make breakfast since he had been up since 4:30AM and was “starving,” so I made an American breakfast of biscuits, gravy, and fried eggs. We laid around the rest of the morning as Ian went in and out of the house checking on the turkey.

Ian told our friends that if anyone was interested they could come over and hang out at our house while he smoked the turkey (I think the offer was more directed at the guys in our group Only David and Krista showed up. David just got his motorcycle license and bought a motorcycle over here, so Ian was tickled to see and talk about motorcycles with David. They watched some TV while I walked to the grocery to get more flour, milk, and butter so I could make more biscuits. We counted and thought that about sixteen people were coming to Thanksgiving, but I wasn’t exactly sure how much to make. I made a triple batch of biscuits and a double batch of gravy. It was a ridiculous amount of food! I had a plate of biscuits piled high and a VERY full bowl of gravy that I was worried any slight bump in the road would send oozing over the side. When Ian pulled the turkey off the smoker, I was AMAZED. That was the BEST looking turkey, and I was so incredibly proud of him for cooking it. We had our hands full carting stuff over to Krista’s house.

I know I’ve said it before, but I love our friends. We have an amazing group here in Kuma-gun. Everyone brought a dish, and we had all of the traditional feasting items: turkey, dressing, steamed veggies, fruit salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, oreo truffles, chocolate walnut pie, cream cheese fruit fluff, and so much more! Brian made egg nog, and Rebeca brought a traditional Guatemalan fruit punch. We ate…and ate….and ate, and whenever we were completely full, we ate again. Everyone there was American except for four people. Michael is from South Africa, Ana from Portugal, Amanda is from Australia, and Yuusuke is from Japan. We showed them what Thanksgiving is all about….EATING! We were all stuffed silly, but it didn’t keep us from continuing to shovel in forkful after forkful.   We jokingly said what we were thankful for, and I think the best response was from one of my friends: “I’m thankful to the Japanese government for spending an exorbitant amount of money to bring us here to not do a lot of work.”  We all agreed to that one.   

After dinner, we celebrated David’s birthday. Ana had bought him a cake, and we sang happy birthday. The rest of the night, we talked and talked and talked. It was too large of a group to have individual conversations, so we formed little groups and floated between. Ana mentioned that she needed to start writing again. I told her that I was a creative writing major, and that got us talking. We decided that we are going to start a writing workshop for our area. Anyone who wanted to could join. Yay! I haven’t written anything in a LONG time, so this will be a good thing for me. We also talked about Christmas plans. A couple of people are going home, and others will be traveling around Asia. Ian and I agreed to host a Christmas party on Christmas Eve for anyone who didn’t have plans. We’re going to have a very traditional Christmas party….and by that I mean it’s going to be a PIZZA PARTY! Pizza here is NOT like pizza at home, so if you want good American pizza, you have to make it yourself. We had a pizza party in October, and it was a wild success. Ian made homemade crust, we bought sauce and provided all kinds of normal toppings (NOT corn or shrimp), and topped it with loads of cheese (unlike Japanese pizza). We thought that since Christmas won’t be normal this year, we might as well do something not normal.

The party broke up around 9PM. There were still plenty of leftovers, so everyone divided them up. I regretted making a double batch of gravy. We now have a TON of leftover gravy sitting in our refrigerator.

And that, my friends, was how we celebrated Thanksgiving in Japan!

Japanese festivals and Thanksgiving, oh my! part I

Hello all! By the time you read this, it will be Thanksgiving in America, so Happy Thanksgiving! I wish I could be at home to celebrate with you all, but since I’m not, I wish you all a wonderful and blessed holiday! Please eat an extra slice of pumpkin pie for me! Here’s a catch-up of the week so that I can get on to our Japanese Thanksgiving story.

Saturday:

Ugh. Saturday. I had to work on Saturday since the cultural festival was on Sunday. Everyone was busy running around practicing, working on last minute things, and setting up. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. It was the looooooongest day at work ever. While everyone else was busy, I was the awkward foreigner standing in the background unsure of what to do. It was like starting a new job. Everyone else already knows the moves, and you’re sitting there trying to not look scared. I hate that feeling. The morning was excruciatingly slow, but after lunch time seemed to go by a lot quicker.

Sunday:

Sunday was the cultural festival. I wasn’t exactly sure of what was in store for me, but I knew that it wouldn’t be like Saturday. I could sit back and enjoy watching the students perform without feeling awkward. Ian came with me, and we had to be at school at 8:15AM. A lot of people from the town, parents of students, family members, etc. came to the festival.  The students had displays of their artwork. There were handbags that they had sewn from old clothes, calligraphy of kanji characters, posters that the students had made about each class, poems about each student and his/her picture, drawings, and inkans made from soap stone. (Inkans are personal seal stamps used in Japan. Instead of signing your name on a formal document, you use this stamp.) The inkans were beautiful! At first, I thought they were chess pieces, but one of the teachers turned it over and showed me the Chinese characters engraved into the stone. I never had to work with soap stone in high school art class, but I know how difficult it is to make tiny details, and there are A LOT of details in some kanji.

The festival was basically one long variety show. It started off with a traditional Buddhist ceremony in which girls in kimonos danced around with bells. I’ll post pictures and/or videos sometime soon. There were also taiko drummers and more dancing. The band played a few songs. I don’t want to sound biased, but the Yunomae JHS band is phenomenal. Those kids can play the heck out of their instruments! After the band played, the students who I helped practice English speeches in October gave them, and then it was time for me to embarrass myself. My English teacher told me that all of the teachers had to go on stage to singing a song. She asked me if I knew the song. It was in Japanese, so of course I didn’t. She told me to just move my lips to make it look like I was singing. I’ve heard that mouthing “watermelon” and “strawberry” to any song makes it look like you’re singing. Apparently, that only applies to English songs. That didn’t work for me, so I had to resort to “blah-ditty, blah-ditty, blah-ditty.” Embarrassing moment #98,793,487,594,767 in Japan. I asked Ian how it looked from the audience, and he said it was hilarious. Sometimes, you just have to laugh at yourself! After lunch break, each grade had a sing off. It started with the 1^st graders (really 7^th grade) and progressively got better. The last group to go, 3-2 (really 9^th grade) was AMAZING. They sang in perfect harmony. Every note was spot on. It was a beautiful song. They won. Other groups sung as well. One group sung “Hail Holy Queen” just like they did on Sister Act. It was too funny!

After the singing, there was a play. I’ve seen the kids practice the play, and one scene I’m pretty sure was about the bombing of Hiroshima. The tone of the scene was very somber, the background sounds were of planes, and I heard “Hiroshima” and “America” a couple of times. I know I shouldn’t have, but I felt really awkward during that scene. I know they weren’t, but I felt like everyone in the room was staring at us.  A more cheerful scene in the play was a glow stick performance. Five boys danced to a song with different color glow sticks. I’m not giving it justice with this lame description, but it was really cool. I think Ian really enjoyed the festival, but his favorite part was probably the attention. That was his first event at the JHS. Most people have seen him around town, but that didn’t stop the JHS girls from swooning over the exotic foreign man on Sunday. Whenever we walked around the gym, they would follow behind giggling. Ian said that he made the mistake of smiling at one of them, and she completely stopped in her tracks. LOL!!

Monday:

Since I had to “work” on Sunday, I had Monday off. I was very excited to not have to get out of bed that morning because it was COLD. Last week and this week, it has really turned cold. I think the low has been near freezing. That’s not that big of a deal at home where you go from one heated building to another, but in Japan, it’s not like that. They are VERY energy aware. They don’t have central heating or insulation in Japan. I’ve heard winter is MISERABLE. Our house is small enough that if we wanted to heat the whole thing, we could, but it’s rather expensive. Usually, we close off one or two rooms and only heat the bedroom/living room and office at night. (Needless to say, if we need something outside of those rooms, we quickly dash to whatever we need and back into the warmth.) We have huge black curtains over the windows which radiate the sun’s warmth during the day. At school, I sit in my layers and shiver. I’ve been wearing tights under my pants, and I finally broke out my cuddle duds that my aunt sent me. There are two heaters in the teacher’s room, but they haven’t been turned on yet. The hallways, gym, and non-used classrooms aren’t heated. It’s cold now, and I have absolutely nothing to look forward to. It’s only going to get worse.

Tuesday:

Tuesday was what I like to refer to as a “sandwich” day. It was sandwiched between two days off. As I said, I had off Monday, and then Wednesday was a national holiday. It was Labor Thanksgiving day. I went to my nursery schools that morning and attempted to give a Thanksgiving lesson. We made hand turkeys, but I don’t think they quite grasped what it was. They don’t have turkeys in Japan, so it was difficult to describe what turkey is to five-year-olds in a language they don’t understand. They traced their hands, colored, and cut them out, but none of them looked quite like the example turkey that I had. Oh well. They still had a good time doing it. During lunch at the JHS, usually music is played over the PA system. On Tuesday, I recognized some of it. The first song was the song we sung at the music festival in Hitoyoshi. Only on Tuesday it was in Japanese. It was weird, but I also heard Christmas music in Japanese. My kids laughed at me as I sung the English lyrics of “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” over the Japanese lyrics. During break time, I whipped out my cards, and we played “babanuki,” which is Old Maid. When I got home from work, I don’t know if it was the holiday the next day or what, but I was hyper. I wanted to go for a walk to get rid of the excess energy, but since it’s so cold, it’s so easy to just come home and stay nestled in blankets. Krista came over that night for dinner and to discuss last minute Thanksgiving plans at her house.

I’ll break this into two blogs so that it’s not terribly long. Please read the next one to see how we celebrated Thanksgiving in Japan!

catching up

I really have a lot to catch up on! It’s been a week since I last updated, and I really don’t know how I allowed all of that time to slip by. It’s not like I’ve been busier than normal or anything. Oh well.

Saturday:

Like most Saturdays, I have the best of intentions to actually do something around town, in the mountains, or anything other than lay around the house. My mission failed. It was such a shame, too because the weather was crappy all week last week, and it was BEAUTIFUL on Saturday. It would have been a wonderful day for a hike. However, I started the day like I do many Saturdays by seeing who was on skype. One thing always leads to another, and before I know it, it’s early afternoon, and there’s not quite enough time to drive into the mountains for a hike. Instead, Ian and I spent the rest of the day catching up on our Thursday night shows (The Office, Parks and Rec, etc.). Thank God for Hulu!

Saturday night, all of the other ALTs in our area planned to get together for a girls/guys night. There are about ten girls in our area and four guys. I sometimes feel sorry for the guys because they’re swimming in an estrogen ocean surrounded by all of us ladies. The guys went to Brian’s house for a BBQ. The girls went to Ana’s house in Hitoyoshi for a fondue party. It was absolutely perfect. We sat around, ate chocolate, and gabbed about any and everything. We started out with dipping fruit in the chocolate, but when that ran out, we turned to anything we could find, lol. After talking for a while, we watched a movie. Several people had cultural festivals the following day, so they didn’t want to be out too late.  After the movie, we decided to wrap up girls night. I called Ian to see if they were nearly done with guys night, but I could tell that they….weren’t. While on the phone with Ian, the girls devised a plan to crash guys night. I told Ian that we were going to watch one more movie, and I’d call him back after that. Tee hee. All of the girls piled into cars and drove twenty minutes to Brian’s house. We decided to park down the hill from his house and walk up so that they wouldn’t see us coming. What we hadn’t planned on was the guys standing outside watching us come up. Surprise ruined! Once we got there, I was convinced that guys just need to be around guys every once in a while. I could almost feel the testosterone floating in the air. Guys just need to hang out so that they can pee in the woods, make fires while drinking beer, and eat red meat. We didn’t intend to stay so late, but everyone was having such a good time. We didn’t leave until 1:30. I felt bad for Brian’s neighbors. We were being ridiculously loud. That’s what happens whenever you put a bunch of foreigners together!

Sunday:

Sunday morning, I woke up a little later and made Ian’s “breakfast casserole.” He created this recipe, but it’s not half bad! It also takes SIGNIFICANTLY less time to make than regular breakfast casserole.  We combine rice, scrambled eggs, an onion for flavor, a little butter, salt and pepper, and cheese. It’s delicious, too!

Sunday night was our singing festival in Hitoyoshi. We had to be there by 5:00, so we left Yunomae around 4:00. We had a quick practice before the festival began and then waited until 6:30. It started with a couple of kids playing the piano. Oh my goodness…those kids were amazing! Their fingers DANCED across the keyboard. Despite the fact that they were only junior high or elementary students, they were fantastic! Our group didn’t perform until 7:30. We were only on stage for about two minutes. For as much preparation that went into the festival, all of the practices and working on pronunciation, it seemed almost not worth it only being up there for that short of a time. We contemplated leaving right after our performance but decided to stay for the whole thing. I got a little bored watching group after group sing. It’s not that they weren’t amazing….because they were….but I’m not much of a performing arts person. It ended around 9:00, and when we left, all of the old people we sang with told us over and over and over thank you.  It really made us feel special and to know that we’re making a difference here.  Part of being here is to promote how nice Americans are.  We don’t all fit the loud, ignorant stereotype.  To celebrate we all went to Everest (the Indian restaurant I’m always raving about) for naan.

Monday:

To me, Monday almost seemed like a vacation day. I had Tuesday off, so it was sandwiched between two off days. I didn’t have school on Tuesday because the cultural festival is this weekend, and I have to work. They gave me last Tuesday and next Monday off as compensation. Normally, I go to nursery schools on Tuesday morning, but since I had Tuesday off, I had to go to them on Monday. By the time I finished with nursery schools and got back to school, it was a little after eleven. I had one class before lunch, and the rest of the day was practice for the cultural festival. Pretty easy. That night at home, Ian spent the night installing a new radio in our car. I didn’t think it was a necessary purchase, but he did….and our old one was a little jank. We had to hold it a certain way or it made this horrible static sound. While he did that, I made dinner. I feel like we eat the same thing all of the time. It’s either rice or noodle based. On Monday night, I made fried chicken and home fries. It was a true American supper.

Tuesday:

Tuesday was my day off, and I had made several skype dates for that morning. What I didn’t realize is how long those skype dates would last! I skyped eight people in five and a half hours. It was a lot, but most of the people I talked to I don’t speak with very often. When I finally peeled myself away from the computer, it was nearly 3:00PM! Another day wasted to skype. It was another beautiful day, so I went for a walk which I knew would eventually lead me to the super for groceries. I was walking down a little side street to connect to the main road when I saw a semi approaching me. The road I walked on was barely wide enough for one car, let alone a semi! He continued down the road until he got to a curve that he knew he couldn’t make, so he had to back all the way back down the narrow road. That’s something you don’t see every day!

Wednesday:
It was back to work on Wednesday, and it was my elementary day. At recess, we played tag like usual, and some of those boys are sneaky, sneaky. They would gang up on me and tell me that someone else was it whenever the kid approaching me was really it. Crafty kids! Wednesday afternoon, I sat in on a cooking class. They “cooked” hot water, and then we made cocoa, tea, and coffee. I had cocoa, and some kid offered me a cup of green tea. I don’t really like green tea (it tastes like hot boiled grass), but I drank it with a smile. Somehow, I also got stuck with a cup of coffee. I HATE coffee, so whenever the kids asked me what I was drinking, I let them have a sip. The rest I dumped down the drain while no one was looking. Shhhh…

Thursday:

My Thursday morning walk to school was a little weird. It was VERY foggy yesterday morning. I couldn’t see fifty feet in front of me. Usually, when I walk to school, I meet at least one car or person, but yesterday I didn’t, and it was completely silent. It was like being in a zombie apocalypse movie. I honestly wondered if the world had ended, and I just hadn’t gotten the memo. Once I got to school, I saw cars in the parking lot and heard students, so I was assured that it was business as usual. We had two actual class periods yesterday, and the rest of the day was dedicated to festival practice. (It’s going to be weird to go back to normal scheduling next week!) I try to busy myself during the day, but it goes one of two ways: either time crawls by or one thing leads to another, and the day is over. I might have finished a few things, but I have ten other new things that I should have taken care of. Last night for dinner, we had BBQ. Ian wanted to test out his new cooker before we do the turkey next week, so he BBQ’d pork. It. Was. Delicious. He made homemade BBQ sauce for it and mashed potatoes as a side. We invited Krista over to partake in the feast, and she agreed that it was a very welcomed taste of America.

We had our night class last night. For the first time since I started, it was a good class!! I had given up on this group, but last night they didn’t act up. There were minimal times when I had to tell them to stop and give a stern look, but for the most part, they were good! I was sooooooooooooo happy! I don’t know what we did right with that lesson, but I’m going to bottle it and use it every week now! The lesson revolved around countries, which is what they’re doing in class. One of the activities was a worksheet in which they had to fill in the blanks and draw pictures. For example:

I want to go to _________.

I want to eat___________.

I want to play _________.

One kid made me laugh because his said:

I want to go to Australia.

I want to eat kangaroo meat.

I want to surf.

HAHAHAHAHA! He had a picture of a kangaroo and an arrow pointing to another picture of a steak. Fabulous, kid! When we got home, Ian’s computer had finished downloading all eight Harry Potter movies, and we watched the first. I haven’t seen it in a while, and it was fun to go back and re-watch the very first one.

I know that was really long, but that was a very abridged version of this past week. Congrats to all of you that actually read the whole thing and got to this point!

another wonderful blog post

Hello all, and welcome to another wonderful blog post.

One thing that I forgot to mention in the last blog was our shaken.  Shaken in Japan is a mandatory check-up on your car every two years.  Generally, the older your car is, the crappy it is, and the more you have to pay for shaken.  Our shaken is due on November 17th, so we had two options: buy a new car or pay shaken and continue to drive our crappy little one.  At first, we knew we wanted to get a new car.  The word “crappy” doesn’t completely describe how…..special our car is.  However, through the past couple of months, it has grown on us…..like a fungus.  When Brittany visited us, she told us that she had the very same car as us.  She said that despite its crappiness, she only paid a couple of hundred dollars for shaken, and her car didn’t even have wheels at the time.    We know our car sucks, but we’re only going to be here for another year or two, so we didn’t want to buy another car.  I told my supervisor that we would pay shaken, and she made an appointment for us.  When we got our car back, we were VERY surprised of its condition.  It’s white!  This whole time, we thought that it was a dingy yellow color but no.  It’s actually white!  In addition, they cleaned that car WELL.  For the first time in however long, it was vacuumed.  I feel sorry for whoever had to do that.  We haven’t vacuumed it since we got it in August, so I’m sure that whoever did it probably thought that those foreigners are MESSY!!    In addition to just the cosmetics, it runs soooooooooooooo much better.  Instead of sounding like a wheezy old man when it starts, it’s normal.  Instead of engine being run by one hamster wheel, I think there are multiple hamsters for better control now.  I wouldn’t say that it’s like a new car, but we can definitely tell a difference, and we like it!

Last week was a bit dreary and cool.  It started off beautifully.  At the beginning of this weekend, I was wearing a short sleeve blouse and skirt to work.  By the end of the week, I was wearing a sweater and khakis.  Monday and Tuesday were BEAUTIFUL days, but Wednesday it got colder.  This is the first week that I actually had to get out my winter clothes.  On Thursday, I wore a long sleeved blouse to work, and it just wasn’t quite enough, so on Friday, I wore a sweater, and it was nice and warm.  Despite the temperature, that doesn’t stop the school from opening windows and leaving doors to outside wide open, and no one seems to mind that.    Wakarimasen!

Friday was a bit weird.  Right after lunch, I came back down to the teacher’s room to check my email before playing games with my students during the break time, and an alarm went off.  It sounded like a fire alarm.  The vice principal and I were the only people in the teacher’s room at the time, and he jumped up and went to the hall.  I wasn’t sure if it was a fire drill or actual fire (or even IF it was a fire alarm), so I followed behind.  There were students out in the hallway covering their ears, but no one seemed like they were in a rush for the door.  A lot of the teachers crowded around some sort of electronic box in the teacher’s room.  One of the office ladies made a call to what I think was the fire department to tell them NOT to come to the school since it was a false alarm.  I have no idea why the fire alarm went off, but it did, and it was loud and obnoxious. 

During the break time after lunch, I usually roam the halls looking for students to talk to or play games with.  On Friday, I saw that some of the 3rd (really 9th) grade girls were playing some game on the board in which they drew pictures.  I always enjoy watching them draw because everyone here is a fabulous artist!  If they ask me to draw, it’s always fun because I’m horrible, so they laugh at me.    I’m not exactly sure of the rules for the game, but I’m guessing that it was a word association game.  While they played that game, I scanned the room for someone to play with me.  There’s one girl in the 3rd grade class who is ridiculously quiet.  She NEVER speaks to me (no surprise) or any of the other students.  Honestly, I’m not sure if she has friends.  I’m not sure if she’s excluded, or she’s just really shy.  She was sitting at her desk timidly watching the other girls play, so I motioned for her to come over by me.  I think she had a moment of panic as I waved her over because it took her a minute to realize that the big, scary foreigner was actually wanting her and not the person behind her.  I taught her tic-tac-toe, and we played that on the board.  She didn’t grasp the game at first, so I’d have to set her up to win, but by the time we were finished, she was good.  We played for nearly twenty minutes.  I was getting a little bored with it, and I don’t know what she was thinking, but I didn’t want to stop because that might have been the only time she was invited to play with someone.  If she was bored to tears, but continued to play since the big, dumb foreigner made grids on the board so be it, but if I made her day, that makes me happy!   

Friday was national Pocky Day!  What’s pocky, you ask?  Pocky is a Japanese candy.  It’s similar to chocolate covered pretzels.  I saw several friends’ statuses were something about Pocky Day.  At school, one of the math teachers walked in our English class to hand out pocky to everyone.  Ian and I thought that since we’re in Japan, we should definitely embrace this holiday.  Friday night, we had big, fat Friday!  I walked to the super market and bought pizza, coke, and pocky.  We ate the whole pizza (Before you make judgments, the pizza was probably only ten inches in diameter.), drank the 1.5 liters of coke, and ate two small boxes of pocky.  All-in-all, it was a great night. 

interesting experiences

First, my JHS’s cultural festival is on November 20^th, so every afternoon, classes are canceled. Instead, the kids work on cultural festival projects. On Monday, I was the only teacher in the teacher’s room all afternoon. Generally, when something like that happens, it’s because I’m not where I’m supposed to be. I asked my English teacher about it, and she said I could roam around the school and see what the kids are doing. For two hours each afternoon, I walk around the school in and out of different classrooms and watch students make posters, cut out pictures, create murals, and write poems. I think they’re going to have this cultural festival practice every day until the festival.

Yesterday at one of my nursery schools I had a very interesting experience. One of the boys grabbed my boob. Twice. I’ve heard from other ALTs that it happens. The kids are amazed at the size of foreigners’….areas, so they want to touch them. I was in shock that he actually did it, and before I could say anything, he did it again and ran off giggling. I’m sure he knew exactly what he had done and that it was wrong.

We had a salesman come to our door last night. I didn’t exactly realize that he was a salesman until later on in the conversation or else I never would have answered it. I’m not sure why, but Ian and I bought agree that when people come to our door, it’s going to go one of two ways: 1) easy or 2) hard. Easy is when they realize we don’t speak Japanese, so they back off and leave. Hard is when they realize we don’t speak Japanese but continue to speak more and faster as if it’s going to magically change things. Ian was making dinner, so I was the lucky one to answer the door. He started saying things like “earring”, “necklace”, and “ring”. I didn’t know what he wanted, so I pointed at my ring and earrings, and he nodded. He whipped out a piece of paper that had different kinds of jewelry on it. Whenever I saw the prices beside them, I realized what was going on. I said no a couple of different times, but I don’t know if he wasn’t understanding me or I wasn’t saying the right thing. Regardless, he finally gave up and left.

I have made monsters out of my elementary kids. Ever since Halloween, they think that every time they see me, I will give them candy or a treat. Today, I didn’t know what some of the kids were saying to me until they stuck out their hands in full begging mode. I showed them on the calendar Halloween, October 31^st. I told them that trick-or-treating and asking for candy is okay on that day but anytime else no. I’m not sure they understood. I suppose I’ll see if they still ask next week when I’m at the elementary school.

Ian and I have to go to Hitoyoshi tonight for our singing practice. This is the last practice since the festival is on Sunday. It’s very repetitive to sing the song over and over and over, but working with the old people has been fun. Plus, it means that we get to see our friends and hang out with them for a bit as well, so despite having to physically go to Hitoyoshi, it’s been a fun experience.

This is probably the shortest blog I’ve ever written. It can be done! I don’t ramble all the time! I’m going to stop here. Ja mata!

This weekend

Before I get into the weekend, I wanted to catch up on Friday. Friday morning, I had four English classes, so from the time I got to school until lunch time, I had class after class after class. In my 1^st grade class (which would really be 7^th grade in the States) they were practicing cursive. This was a very interesting concept for me. I was taught cursive in elementary school. I remember my teachers saying that we HAD to learn cursive because we’d HAVE to use it in day-to-day life. Once I got to middle and high school, I realized that not many people actually used it. Most people printed instead of using cursive. I asked my English teacher here if it’s normal to teach the kids cursive. She said yes, but it’s not always easy to find time to do it. I told her that in the States almost no one teaches cursive anymore. She asked me why, so I explained how it’s considered “old fashioned,” and most people print. In addition, with word processors and texting, there’s no need to write in cursive.

Friday evening, I had to catch up on my Japanese studying. I didn’t do thirty minutes on Wednesday or Thursday, so when I got home at 4:30, I had to do 1.5 hours of studying, and I did! It didn’t even really seem too bad. I actually continued studying until about 6:30.

Saturday morning, we woke up and skyped people like normal. We made plans to go shopping with Mary in Yatsushiro, so we drove to Kuma-mura, her village, and met up with her. We had never been to her house before, and we weren’t EXACTLY sure where it was, so we had an adventure getting there. First, we went up the wrong road and almost backed over a shrine. That would have been horrible! However, we got back on the right track and met her at her house. There is one main road that runs from Kuma-mura to Yatsushiro, the 219. It only takes about an hour. We’ve been that way before, and it’s an absolutely gorgeous drive. The road follows the Kuma River, so on one side of the road is the beautiful clear-green rolling river, and on the other side is lush green mountain.

Ian and I didn’t have any particular reason to go shopping other than we wanted to get out of Yunomae and hang out with friends. Mary wanted to Christmas shop for her family. When we got to the mall, I was amazed at the amount of Christmas decorations. I thought I was going to be able to escape the whole “let’s put up Christmas decorations right after Halloween” scene that every other mall in the States does, but apparently they do that in Japan as well! They don’t even celebrate Christmas here, but that doesn’t stop them from having fully lit Christmas trees, big blow up snowmen, bells, and Christmas music playing. I was shocked.

That night, we stayed with Mary at her house. We went to Mass in Hitoyoshi on Sunday morning, so instead of driving an hour back to Yunomae only to drive back to Hitoyoshi in the morning, we stayed the night. She had warned us that her house is loud since she lives off of the 219. She wasn’t joking! I don’t know how many times I woke up through the night because I heard a truck or loud car. In addition, Ian didn’t place the valve on our air mattress on correctly. Gradually throughout the night, air leaked, so by the morning, we were slumped together in the middle.

Sunday morning, just like the last time we went to Mass, we were the only foreigners there (other than the Irish priest). We had to stand up and introduce ourselves at the end of Mass again, and everyone was interested to see us again. I think I mentioned it last time, but Mass is a little different in Japan. Instead of shaking hands during peace time, they bow to one another. Also, most of the women still wear the veils on their heads. After Mass, instead of coffee and doughnuts like in the States, they have green tea. I guess it’s a little bit healthier than greasy and sugary doughnuts.  Everyone loitered outside of the entrance and sipped green tea for a bit. We did that as well, and people tried to come up and speak Japanese to us, but we couldn’t understand them and told them sorry.

After Mass, we went to the daiso (basically a dollar store). Surprise, surprise, we found a whole aisle of Christmas decorations! We had plenty of time to kill before meeting up with other friends for lunch, so we sat in the parking lot and skyped a couple of friend back in the States. We ate lunch with Mary, Katakin, and Melissa B. at the Indian restaurant that we love. It has the BEST food, and the owners know us. If there’s a big enough group of us, they usually give us free cheese naan. We stayed there for a long time just talking and laughing and having a good time. After lunch, we went to a hardware store so that Ian could buy stuff for his make-shift BBQ pit. It’s a little bit ghetto, but it’ll work.  He bought a large terra cotta pot, grates, and a small portable burner to act as the heating agent. He’s going to smoke our turkeys for Thanksgiving.  Everyone agreed that smoked turkeys would be better than oven cooked turkeys.  Plus, ovens here are NO WHERE near the size of ovens in the States.  Generally, the largest ovens are the size of toaster ovens, so we had to have a larger space to cook our turkeys.

I think this is a good place to stop. As usual, thanks for reading, and please continue to!

Nihon update

Hello dear blog-readers! I believe the last that I wrote about was Halloween. Wednesday, like every Wednesday, was my elementary day. I say it every time, but I love those kids. I feel like the environment at the elementary school is so much more lax. I could be wrong, but the teachers don’t seem as stressed, and the kids actually like English and attempting to speak it.

I made Halloween candy bags for ALL of my co-workers. On Monday, I was actually at the JHS, so I gave them out there. Tuesday, I went to the BOE for my ten minutes that I go every week and gave them out then, and on Wednesday, I was at the ES, so I gave them out then. I was really happy about the way it happened, too. When I walked into the teacher’s room on Wednesday morning, no one was in there, so I was able to lay a little candy bag on each person’s desk. Then, I went to the office ladies and school nurse to give them a bag. The office ladies gave me a snack cookie in return. How sweet! One by one, as teachers came back to the teacher’s room during the day and saw the candy on their desk, I explained that last Monday was Halloween and wished them “Happy Halloween!” Everyone seemed genuinely thankful for it, which made me very happy in turn.

Another big hit for the day was my little plastic bat and spider rings. I had about a million of them leftover, so I’ve been pawning them out to students. They. Loved. Them. I gave each person in my first class (5^th grade) a ring, and the rest of them I gave out at recess. More about that later.

I sat in on the 1^st graders PE class. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do (as usual), so I probably looked like a big, dumb idiot. I’m never completely certain of when it’s okay to laugh and goof around with the kids and when they need to be serious, so I have to be careful. If it was up to me, I’d love to laugh and make faces at them all the time. It’s a very fine line to ride because there are times, ie walking to the gym, when I think it would be okay to have a less formal attitude, but the teachers are very strict about making sure the kids are in straight lines, no talking, etc. Sometimes the perfectionist attitude in Japan kills me. For example, I was helping the kids drag out mats to place on the gym floor. They were heavy mats for 1^st graders to be moving. I was lining them up and asked the students if they were okay. They shook their heads. I tucked in the handles and scooted the mats as close as possible and again asked if they were okay. The students shook their heads. The reason they didn’t like the way I placed the mats was because the mats weren’t lined up EXACTLY on the gym floor line. I’m not even kidding.

I ate lunch with the 5^th graders on Wednesday. The last time I ate lunch with them, it was my big epic failure day at the elementary school in which I didn’t realize I had to bring my lunch, so the teachers had to piece together a meal for me while the entire 5^th grade waited on me. I felt horrible and was afraid that they would hate me for forever. However, on Wednesday when I ate lunch with them, it was absolutely not true! There were about four kids at any given moment trying to get my attention and ask me a question in a very loud voice. “Melissa sensei, do you like….?” “Melissa sensei, do you have….?” “Melissa sensei, do you know…?” It was like playing twenty questions….but more like one hundred. :S

At recess, I made sure to take the leftover rings I had to give away. The kids basically attacked me trying to get them, lol. Some kids had three or four on their hands and kept rearranging them on their fingers and then showing me. For some reason, it was “gross Melissa sensei out” day on the playground. I’ve mentioned before that there is a small creek that runs through the playground, and the kids like to play in it. Two girls had found frog eggs, picked them up WITH THEIR BARE HANDS and tried to give them to me. When I accidentally squealed in fear, it made them want to give them to me even more. Another boy snuck up behind me, tapped me on the back, and shoved a fresh water crab in my face when I turned around. I REALLY screamed at that, which the kids all thought was hysterical. The first two girls returned with pond scum/algae from the creek dangling off of sticks. I kicked it off their sticks and ground it into the dirt. Disgusting!

After recess, I had a class of 3^rd graders. Since I’m just the assistant teacher, I never feel right taking charge of a class. It’s not my responsibility, and I don’t want to step on any toes. The actual 3^rd grade teacher is the one who speaks most of the time, and I’m there to pronounce words and make it fun. Those 3^rd graders were ridiculously hyper! I kept saying “SHHHH,” but it would only work for a brief time before they were back to talking loudly and moving around. I spoke to the teacher after class about how hyper the kids were. She said that they get very excited about English. It’s a class that they only have every once in a while, it takes them out of their routine, and they get to play games, they like it, so they always get very excited for it.

Thursday was a national holiday, so I had the day off. It was national culture day. Ian and I had plans to go hiking, but then the weather called for rain, so we canceled. Instead, we did nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was wonderful. I made pancakes for breakfast, and we had breakfast in bed. After that, we never got out of bed. We turned on hulu and watched it ALL DAY LONG. We didn’t change out of our pajamas or pick up the futon. Our brains might have turned to mush, but it was worth it. We’re definitely caught up on all of our TV shows! In order to keep up with my promise to myself to do thirty minutes of exercise a day, I walked to the super last night for groceries. I found the app “I heart radio” and downloaded it. It allows me to access major radio stations in the USA. I can’t get Paducah’s radio stations, but there are some out of Nashville, Louisville, and Lexington. It’s nice for two reasons: 1) It allows me to put a little pep in my step while walking. 2) I get to listen to American music (yay!) and hear news stories.

That’s all for tonight.  Tomorrow, I’ll write about the weekend.

Halloween in Japan part III

Sunday was our friend, Rachel’s birthday, but we were out of town, and she had to do something for school, so we decided to celebrate it on Monday. Kim sent us a funfetti cake mix in her Halloween package, so we told Rachel and Krista to come over on Monday night, and we’d have a Halloween/birthday party and make the cake. I gave Rachel and Krista a ride home from the competition. Krista went back home to get a quick run in, and Rachel and I went for a walk around Yunomae while Ian made dinner. We ran into several students on their way home, and we could tell that they were absolutely dying to know who Rachel was. It’s really funny, and other ALTs have said the same thing. Since all the ALTs in Kuma gun (pronounced “goon”…it’s like a county) lives in a little town, the townspeople know their own ALT. However, if they see a foreigner with me, all of the sudden they want to know who it is, where he/she is from, are they my family?, what’s their favorite color?, etc, etc, etc. On Tuesday, I was grilled time and time again by students asking who my friend was with me on Monday night, lol.

I mentioned a few blogs ago how we were allowing kids in our neighborhood to trick-or-treat. I had a friend translate what I wanted to say, made a flyer, printed it, and put the flyer in each neighbor’s mailbox. I said that they could trick-or-treat from 6PM-9PM. There are about twelve houses in our little rice paddy neighborhood, but not all of them have kids. Ian was terrified that we’d have masses of children begging for candy outside our door. I reassured him that it wouldn’t happen since we only gave out flyers to a few people. However, at the end of last week, some of my junior high kids were asking about it. I was starting to get a bit worried that word traveled fast and Ian’s nightmare was possible. Rachel and I were almost back from our walk when Ian called me and told me to hurry home. When I asked why, he said that he just handed out candy to about thirty junior high students, and it wasn’t even 6PM yet. Yikes! I rushed home and changed into my witch costume.

I’ve never had trick-or-treaters. The Wurth household is situation back off the highway, and the road is too dangerous for trick-or-treaters anyway. When I was at Murray, I always went to parties on Halloween, and last year at the apartment we didn’t have a single trick-or-treater. Therefore, I was VERY excited about trick-or-treaters this year. Every time there was a knock at the door, I was probably just as excited as the kids. The first hour was the busiest. In the flyer, I said that they didn’t have to dress up, but a lot of them did. It was precious! I gave them candy, placed a Halloween sticker on their cheek, and let them select one of those cheap plastic bat or spider rings or vampire teeth that Kim had sent in her package. The teeth went quickly. I took pictures of some of the trick-or-treaters, which are already on facebook.  It was cute when the parents walked over with the kids because they wanted to take a video and get picture of me giving out candy. For these kids, this might be the only time in their lives that they get to do something like this. I’m not sure that all of the kids understood exactly what trick-or-treating is. One group of kids gave us candy bags. We graciously accepted them and then gave them handfuls of candy, lol. I noticed that a couple of kids double dipped and came back a second time. One group simply knocked on the door and waited for me to give them candy. When I told them to say “trick-or-treat,” they looked terrified, but I gave them candy anyway. I had a wonderful, wonderful time with the trick-or-treaters, and I’m definitely doing that again next year!

Yesterday, I had to go to work early since someone was going to pick up my car to have the shaken done. Shaken is a mandatory procedure in Japan every two years on cars. Basically, I have to have my car inspected at a shop, and they tell me if it’s still “road worthy.” If it’s not, I have to fix whatever they tell me is wrong with it. Yesterday, they took my car and gave me a loaner car. It’s equally as crappy as ours but maybe a little newer. It takes a few days for them to complete the shaken procedure.  My supervisor told me that it could cost up to 10,000 yen (about $1,200), but I’ve also heard that most of the time it’s a couple hundred dollars.  I’m hoping that it’s only a couple hundred!

I went to nursery school and junior high yesterday. At the nursery school, we played “duck, duck, goose” but without the duck or goose. Instead it was “hippo, hippo, zebra,” “dog, dog, pig,” and “monkey, monkey, kangaroo.” To do it this way increases their vocabulary and keeps their interest for longer. I also pawned off several plastic rings on the kids. I had an entire bowl of rings left, so I’ve been handing them out right and left to students, and they LOVE it! After nursery school, I spent the rest of the day at the junior high. I might have opened a can of worms with the trick-or-treating thing because now I feel like students think that any day they can come up and beg for candy. Yikes. I didn’t have any classes yesterday because the students were taking tests. I did get to interact with them at break time, though. I’ve got a group of 3^rd grade girls that like to play cards, so on Friday we played Old Maid, and yesterday I taught them Spoons…kinda. I don’t have enough spoons at home to bring, so instead I use chopsticks. There’s no shortage of chopsticks in Japan! They really enjoy playing cards with me and I with them. Yesterday, I got off of work at 4PM…..and I was able to leave at 4PM. It was wonderful. I don’t have to stay and practice English for the competition anymore! Yay!

Despite the fact that there are about a million little pieces of leftover candy sitting around the house, I have decided that now would be a good time to better myself. I’m going to make time to both work out and study Japanese for thirty minutes every day. I need to start working out. I don’t have a lot of motivation, but I know that if I just get up and out of the house, I can do it. That’s the hard part. I also need to start hard core studying Japanese. I feel like my life here could be one million times easier if I knew Japanese. Japanese is not one of those languages that you can just “pick up.” I’ve heard it’s one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn. I know it sounds weird, but I’ve gotten to a point where it’s normal for me to not understand anyone. Japanese to me is just background noise. I live in my own little unable-to-understand bubble, which is very dangerous. When I come back to the States, I’m going to be blown away by being able to understand everyone! Yesterday was day one for my plan, and I did it. Ian and I worked out a little together. We pushed the table out of the way and made each other do push ups, squats, and other inside exercises. After that, I did one lesson on Rosetta Stone and one lesson in my JET Japanese self-learning class.

I think that’s a good note to end on.

Halloween in Japan part II

Hey gang! Happy Halloween from Japan! Last time, I left off with Thursday. Friday was another busy day for me. After work, we had singing practice in Hitoyoshi and then a Halloween party to attend. After work, I quickly walked home, changed into my witch costume, and Ian and I left for Hitoyoshi. We met up with friends before practice and ate at the delicious Indian restaurant that we like to go to. I was so happy that some of us agreed to dress up in our costumes. That was the best! I loved the shocked looks on Japanese people’s faces when they saw me dressed up like a witch pretending to ride around on a broom. After dinner, we made our way to practice, and it was the funniest moment ever to walk into the room and see everyone staring at us. We said “Happy Halloween!” and then they understood why the crazy Americans were dressed up. We practiced the song that we’re singing for the music festival a couple of times, and then we had a break time. The director asked us to explain Halloween and the customs and traditions behind it. We explained about jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treating. I just so happened to have my bag of candy corn on me, so we went around the room and “trick-or-treated” the old people. Then, one of the ladies hobbled up to the front of the room and gave us each a piece of her own candy. It was so sweet! I’m really glad that I’m participating in the singing festival. It sucks to have to go the practice every week, but the people are very nice and always so curious about our culture.

After practice, one of the other ALTs in our area had a Halloween party, so we went there. We had a blast! No Halloween party is complete without a dancing banana, a drunk Winnie the Pooh, and a pirate “sword” fight among other shenanigans. I love all of the other ALTs in our area, so put us all in one place, and it was an absolutely great time. It’s so funny how we’re so loud. I guess the stereotype about loud Americans is true.  Japanese culture as a whole is so much quieter than any of us could ever wish to be, so whenever we get together, we revert back to our old selves and try to outtalk one another.

Saturday morning was wonderful for us. Last weekend, we really didn’t get to talk to many people on skype, so this weekend, we made sure to set up skype dates. In the end, we talked to eight people through five calls. Usually, by the time we’re off of skype, it’s early afternoon, which kind of stinks since half the day is gone, but I always feel like it’s worth it. I’m not homesick, and I think frequent skype calls REALLY helps with that. Plus, a lot of friends we don’t get the opportunity to speak to very often, so it’s always very, very exciting to get caught up with their lives. I’m starting to go off on a tangent here, but please bare with me. It’s a little weird being over here. We love it, don’t get us wrong, but it feels like we’re standing still while everyone else at home continues to move on with their lives. I clearly knew the world wasn’t going to stop turning just for us, but I miss home most when I know that I’m missing out on events at home. For example, my sister and her kids were at home last weekend, and it was weird not being around with them. I have friends that are getting married, having babies, and whatever else while I’m just….here. I sometimes feel guilty for being here and so far away from home because I feel like I’m missing out on too much.

On to happy stories…the rest of Saturday afternoon we basically goofed off. I got caught up on my Thursday night shows online—Vampire Diaries, The Office, Parks and Rec, etc. Saturday night, we rode up with a few other friends to Tamana in northern Kumamoto for a Kumamoto-wide Halloween party. It was bigger than the smaller and more intimate little Halloween party with everyone in our gun (pronounced “goon”) the night before. While there were amazing costumes—lady Gaga, cross dressing, Mario, etc, I really enjoyed the smaller party from the night before better.

Originally, we couldn’t get a room at the hotel beside the venue, so we brought pillows, blankets, and even our tent in case we had to sleep in the car/outside.  Apparently, several people were going to do the same thing since the hotel was booked.  We laughed about it and said that we’d start the “occupy Tamana” movement.  However, we were able to sleep on the floor in one of our friend’s hotel room. We had a space, but going to sleep was another story. Several people in our room, including Mr. Ian, had….enjoyed themselves at the party. Therefore, some people in the room were laughing, giggling, talking, and acting silly until very, very late, and we probably didn’t go to bed until 3AM.

Sunday morning, we had to be packed and out of the room by 10AM. There was an onsen (hot spring) at the hotel, and originally we planned to spend the morning at it, but we didn’t. Instead, we went on to Kumamoto City. Our friend who drove wasn’t feeling well, so I offered to drive. That was very weird. In general, I don’t like driving other people’s cars. In addition to that, I was driving on the Japanese version of interstate, which I haven’t done in three months, AND it was raining. We ate lunch at a fabulous little burger place that we heard was the best burgers in Kumamoto. I’d like to see someone top these burgers because they really were fabulous! The owners were so happy to have foreigners in there. They catered to us and even brought us ice cream for dessert. They told us that it wasn’t something that they did regularly, so we felt very special!

Monday was Halloween. I didn’t get to dress up for work, but I did celebrate it. I brought treat bags to work and passed them out to all of my co-workers. Everyone was very happy to get them! That afternoon, I had to go to the English competition for our gun (once again, pronounced “goon”). It was held in Asagiri, and all of the other ALTs went as well. We’ve all been practicing with our students very hard…coming to school early, working through break time, staying after school to practice EVERY syllable so that our students could win the competition. All of the ALTs sat together, and I seriously think that we were more competitive with one another than the students were with themselves.  Each of us was talking smack about how our students were going to win the whole thing, lol.  I asked my students if they were nervous, and they said yes, but they did such a good job. I was proud of them! They had very strong and loud voices, and I feel like their pronunciation was one of the best they’ve ever done! The competition got very repetitive very quickly, though, because most of the students recited the same dialogue. After a three hour competition, we found out the winners. Unfortunately, Yunomae didn’t win anything. (From what I’ve heard, it’s a double edged sword if your school wins. If the students win, they advance to the prefectural competition in the middle of this month…..and you have to continue to practice with them.) Still, I couldn’t have been happier of my students! Some of the other ALTs brought candy and little gifts for their students, and I wish I would have done that. At least next year, I’ll know.

I’m going to stop here for the night, but know that the best is yet to come. My next blog will be about kids coming to trick-or-treat at our house. It was precious! Stay tuned.