long time, no write

Oh my goodness!  I’m so incredibly, ridiculously, insanely so far behind in this blog!    It’s going to take me a while to catch up, so please stay with me!  I’ve been a lot busier at school the past week, so I haven’t had as much free time, and then last weekend was very busy, and now half of this week is gone.  Blarg!  For some lucky reason, I don’t have any classes tomorrow, so if I don’t finish today, I should have plenty of time to catch up tomorrow.

Okay, so back to last, last weekend.  In the last blog, I said how we went to Beppu and stayed the night at Mary’s house so that we wouldn’t have to drive back so late.  We had planned to wake up on Sunday morning and go to church.  Despite the fact that after a long, long Saturday and us both being completely exhausted, we woke up early on Sunday morning.  Both of us were sick, and it really, really, REALLY would have been nice to just sleep in.  We had both woke up and blown several tissues worth of yellow-green snot throughout the night, (tmi, I know) but we tip-toed around, got ready, and loaded up the car.  When I sat down in the driver’s seat, I asked Ian for the keys, to which he promptly said that he didn’t have them.  We both had a moment of panic before tip-toeing back into Mary’s house and looking everywhere for them.  I went back out to the car and started searching through our bags and found them at the bottom of Ian’s backpack.  By the time we found our keys and got to church, we would have been fifteen minutes late.  Instead of walking in late like the big, dumb foreigners that we are, we just drove home.

We got home only to realize that our pipes had frozen again.  Oh, Japan, why must you be this way!?!?  It wasn’t that big of a deal since neither of us needed to use the hot water immediately.  We got online and skyped some people, and Ian made me take this personality test (link below).

http://www.ipersonic.com/test/step1.html

It’s silly, I know, but this was actually a great personality test that summed us up perfectly!  I always call Ian a dreamer whereas I’m the realist.  He always says that I’m a dream-crusher, but honestly I understand what’s possible and what’s not in life.  Spending Christmas in Australia….possible.  Owning my own light-weight airplane with my own personal landing strip behind my house….not possible.  Guess which dream is mine and which is Ian’s.    Anyway, this personality test told me that I’m a good natured realist.  It was basically me to a T.  Even the stuff that I didn’t agree that sounded like me, Ian gave me examples of how I am that was exactly what the description said. 

Fast forward to last Tuesday.  It was a GORGEOUS day outside.  It was that warm day still in winter that promises that spring is coming very, very soon.  Whenever I got home, Ian had opened up all of the windows and aired out the house.  I cannot tell you what a difference it made to have all of the doors and windows open.  We are so used to living in our one tiny little room with all of the curtains closed to keep the heat in.  It’s like we had a whole other house!   

I still didn’t feel well on Tuesday, but we had a little Mardi Gras party at our house.  Mary and Justine were the only ones who came over, but we all ate insane amounts of sugar.  Mary brought little bakery cakes, Justine brought ice cream and hot fudge, Ian made a caramel pie, and of course we had Coke to wash it down.  I attempted to made a drink that I had in Spain called “taza de chocolate”.  It is a cup of really thick hot chocolate with real cream on the top.  Bridget, my roommate in Spain, and I would always go get one after tests to make ourselves feel better.    Anyway, I tried to make it by melting down chocolate, but it turned out to be more like fondue.  Therefore, we did shots of fondue.  I think it’s safe to say that we were chocolate wasted!!  

My illness continued to plague me, so I went to the doctor on Wednesday morning and stayed home from school.  Since the flu has been going around at school, they gave me a flu test to make sure that I didn’t have it, and luckily it came back negative.  While I’m not officially sure of what it was, I was prescribed ANOTHER antibiotic (the third since coming here….I’m pretty sure that they’re giving to me like candy.) and three other medicines.  While the pharmacist always tries to explain to me how to take each pill, (He even prints off pictures for me!) the real way I figure out how to take a medicine is through Google.   As soon as I got back from the doctor, I crawled back in bed with Ian, and we didn’t get up until 2:30.  It was a good, good rest and exactly what I needed!  The rest of the day was spent curled up on our futon watching TV.

Okay, I’m running out of time, so I’ll stop here.  Just one more week to get through, and I’ll be finished! 

Over the river and through the woods…to Beppu we go! part II

Okay, so when I last left off, we were just arriving in Beppu.  Beppu is basically one big hill from the mountain all the way down to the ocean.  It was gorgeous.  The IC (interstate) cut its way through the mountains, so we could see all the way down to the coast.  On our way down into Beppu proper, it was basically one long coast downhill.  On the way out of Beppu, though, our cars were hating us. 

Luckily, our love hotel was right off the IC, and we had no problem finding it.  I’m not sure that I have described what a love hotel is or why we drove all the way for this one.  Love hotels are EXTREMELY popular in Japan.  They are pay-by-the hour hotels that people go to to do the dirty.  Since most people live with their parents until they are married (or even after that in a lot of cases), love hotels are a place to take your boyfriend/girlfriend to have sex.  I know that sounds sleazy and not a place that you want to go to, but everyone does in Japan.  They are SUPER secretive and SUPER clean.  In fact, they are so secretive, that there are individual covered parking spaces that come with a little flap that you can put over your license plate.  The entire time we were there, we never saw one hotel worker.  There’s not exactly a front desk or friendly maid pushing a cart down the hallway.  Most of us hadn’t experienced this aspect of Japanese culture, so we decided that what’s more romantic than taking your loved one to a pay-by-the-hour love hotel for Valentine’s weekend?    Sometimes, love hotels are themed.  We saw a Christmas one in Osaka, and I’ve heard of some crazy ones in Kumamoto, but the appeal of this one was that it was JURASSIC PARK THEMED!!!!    

When we pulled up to the hotel, there were all kinds of dinosaur statues, jeeps, and netting on the outside.  We were honestly like kids in a candy store.  “Look at that!”  “Wow, that’s so cool!”  “You guys, come SEE this!”  Since these love hotels are so common and secretive, Japanese people don’t really understand our infatuation with cool ones.  Mary basically had to twist Hiro’s arm to come, and as us giddy foreigners climbed up on the dinosaurs to take pictures, we could tell that Hiro and Ikumi were shying away from the camera.  When we went inside, we were able to choose our rooms via a computer.  There was a huge flat screen that had images of each themed room.  When you chose what you wanted, you simply clicked on it.  Then, the dinosaur statue started growling, lights flashed, and the elevator door opened.  Ian and I called dibs on the “Jurassic” room.  It was actually a REALLY nice hotel room.  The bed was actually soft, (For some reason, every Japanese bed/futon I’ve been on is stiff and hard.) there was a huge Jacuzzi tub, and lots of free things like a hair brush, tooth brush, etc.  The room was decorated kind of jungle themed, and (bonus!) the lights would flicker, and there were growling dinosaur noises when we pushed a button.

When our time was over, we weren’t exactly sure how to pay.  We got our things together and tried to leave……except the door was locked from the outside….as in we couldn’t get out.  As if she had a camera on us, Mary called and asked if we knew how to pay.  Of course we said no.  Ian had to call a hotel worker on the phone and say something like “Okay, we’re finished.”  You know those little vacuum suction tube things they have at the bank drive-thru?  They had one of those in the room, so we put our money in it.  It went to wherever, and after the person on the other end received payment, the door was unlocked.  Ian and I met back up with our friends and drove down into Beppu for an early dinner. 

We had to leave around 4PM so that we could get back to Kumamoto in time for the charity auction with other ALTs that night.  The way back was…..special.  We didn’t go the same way we came.  Our original way was definitely better roads, but it took us the roundabout way.  On the way back, we took more direct country roads.  I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t concern me that we were on tiny little mountain roads with it snowing.  The snow only stuck in places, but it was a little scary.  It ended up taking up a lot longer to get back than what we thought, so we were very late to the auction.  Mary and I decided not to go in since there was a 2,500 yen cover charge.  That’s about $31, and it got you all-you-can drink and snacks.  Since neither of us drink and are cheap, we decided to wander around the city for the next hour and a half and gab about any and every thing.

After the auction, we piled into our cars for the last leg of our trip….returning to Hitoyoshi.  I drove that leg.  It was weird to be on the IC without cruise control, (Most Japanese cars don’t have this feature.) and I didn’t realize how difficult it is to maintain a speed without the help of cruise!  When we drive around here, it’s no big deal to not have it because here it’s all stop-and-go traffic or mountain roads that you really don’t want to use cruise on.  I slept like a rock that night.  We finally made it back to Hitoyoshi a little after midnight, and thank God we decided to stay with Mary instead of going the extra fifty minutes back to Yunomae.  We were all pretty exhausted.

…….and that was our whirlwind trip to Beppu!  I wouldn’t mind going back there because it was really pretty, and I feel like there is a lot more to see there than just a love hotel.  Someday, Beppu, someday!

Over the mountains and through the woods…to Beppu we go! part I

Sometimes you just feel like a nut.  Yesterday was one of those days.  Despite the fact that February is over halfway over, I JUST realized yesterday that I misspelled the month.  Blarg!  Instead of having it the right way, F-e-b-r-u-a-r-y, I wrote it as F-e-b-r-u-r-a-y.  Februray.  I’m so incredibly awesome at life….NOT!  I thought that maybe, just maybe, one of my jerk head students had played a trick on me and moved the letters, but when I went back to pictures that I had taken right after I put it up, sure enough it said Februray.  I feel like an idiot!  At least next month is short and easy to spell.  If I screw up March, there’s more wrong with me than previously thought. 

Anyway, on to catching up about last weekend.  We had an incredibly busy Saturday since we drove up to Beppu and back.  As soon as I got home from work on Friday afternoon, it was a rush to get out the door.  We had to pack and run a few errands before leaving for Mary’s house.  We had planned on meeting Justine, Melissa, David, and Ikumi at 8AM to leave Hitoyoshi, which would have meant that we needed to leave Yunomae at 7ish, so Mary made dinner for us and let us spend Friday and Saturday nights at her house.  Despite the fact that we were only gone for two nights, we packed a ton of crap.  Our entire back seat was full.  Granted, half of that was our bedding, two twin size futons and blankets, and it’s not like we have a huge car.  Let’s just say that some might call it a clown car……

Mary made cream stew, which was delicious and hearty on a cold winter night.  We watched a movie and went to bed to try to get a good night of sleep before our long day of travel on Saturday.  Mary’s house is RIGHT off the 219, which is one of the most heavily used roads in our gun, (pronounced “goon”….it’s like a county) and I’m a pretty light sleeper, so I usually hear everything.  Plus, I’ve been pretty congested, so I had to blow my nose several times throughout the night.  I woke up with mucus coming out of seriously every hole on my face—it was leaking out of my nose, my eyes had crusties, and my lips were chapped from breathing through my mouth.  We woke up around 7AM in order to have more than enough time to get ready.  Mary made us breakfast, (how sweet of her!) and we met up with everyone.  Ian and I rode with Justine and Melissa.  It was Justine’s first time to take her car on the IC (basically an interstate).  Most of us here have what’s known as a K-car.  They’re cheaper to maintain, but they have a significantly lower powered engine.  At full speed on the IC, that poor little car sounded like it was giving it all it had! 

We stopped in Kumamoto to pick up Mary’s boyfriend, Hiro.  Also, in Kumamoto we got off the IC and took two lane roads the rest of the way.  We got separated from Mary a time or two, so we had to pull over, but we eventually got our caravan back together.  The trip to Beppu was absolutely a hoot.  Melissa, Justine, Ian, and I acted like idiots the entire time, which really made the trip.  I told you a few blogs back how Ian and I like to shake our car when we’re at a stop light.  We tried it in Justine’s car, and she had only slightly better shocks.  We were able to rock that car pretty darn well.  An old man in the cross walk looked at us and just laughed. Hopefully, seeing a car full of foreigners acting like idiots made his day.  When he looked back at us, we waved, and he chuckled and waved back.  There was also a bus full of kids that saw us and waved.  At first it was just one kid who noticed us.  We could tell that his reaction was something like, “Sweet!  A car full of foreigners!  Hey everyone, look at this!”  because as soon as he saw us, he turned around to other kids on the bus, and soon all eyes were on us.    We also thought that we witnessed a murder.  We had slowed down to a crawl and at first thought that it was the semi in front of us that was being so slow.  Whenever we rounded a corner, we realized that it wasn’t.  There was an old person riding his or her motorized wheelchair on the road (Honestly, there are sidewalks!  Why would he or she do this?!)  The roads we took were sooooooooooo not safe.  They were little two lane mountain roads with twists and turns, but this semi truck driver decided to pass the motorized wheelchair.  All of us had the same reaction of “no, no , NO, AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”  as the truck passed by the old person.  He seriously had to have been about three inches away from hitting this old person.

It was a really pretty drive to Beppu.  Like I said, the roads went straight through the mountains, and it snowed a lot, which added to the scenery.  Luckily, none of it stuck to the roads, but some of the roads were still pretty questionable.  We used our Iphones to guide us, so we knew that we were never lost, but a few times, it took us on these 1.5 lane roads, and we were pretty sure that we were going to end up stranded in the woods and become characters in a horror movie…..which prompted our next conversation.  We were trying to decide that if we ended up being chased by a ax-wielding murderer, what would the kill order be?  We all decided that David and Hiro would probably go first since David’s half Mexican, and Hiro is Japanese.  Minorities never last too long in these types of movies…..  Justine wouldn’t last very long either since she’s blonde.  Blondes, regardless of actual brain function or not, never make it to the end.  Ikumi would probably last a while and be one of the last.  Despite the fact that she’s Japanese, she’s smart.  We felt like she would know what it takes to remain alive.    The rest of us were just kind of hodge-podged around in the middle.  Since we were going up and down, up and down, up and down these mountain roads, I’m not sure if it was that Ian and I were extra congested or what, but my ears were popping like crazy!  A couple of times, one side needed to be popped but just WOULDN’T, so I lowered my jaw and wiggle it to try to pop them.  Melissa looked over at me one time and had to do a double take because she thought I was having a stroke!  haha.  Every time I had to pop my ears, she said, “Please don’t do stroke face!”

I think I’m going to end it here.  I’ve barely begun our adventure, so stay tuned for the rest!

hair-do, judo moves, and pen pals

Wednesday was my elementary day, and that’s always a day for laughs and crazy things to happen!  My schedule was a bit different this week, and I’m never a fan of that.  I’m good at normal.  When things are different, if there’s an assembly, or all of a sudden I’m the only person in the teacher’s room, that’s when I have a problem.  I felt awkward the whole day I was at the ES. The schedule had me off because I kept showing up to classes fifteen minutes early.  I normally have classes all morning.  However, I had the first two periods free.  I noticed that the schedule was running about fifteen minutes behind because teachers would come back to the teacher’s room in between classes about fifteen minutes after the normally scheduled class should have started.  During one of the breaks, I caught the first grade teacher to tell her that fourth period was English class.  I didn’t have the opportunity to talk to her last week about it, so I thought I would then.  I’m not sure if I read too much into it or what, but it almost seemed like she gave me a “well, duh” response.  Usually, all of the elementary teachers are very nice, so maybe I really did read too much into it.  I don’t know.  Then, during class, we went over fruits and played fruits basket.  She kept telling the kids NOT to run and to be quiet.  Telling kids that while playing a game in which they are required to run around and change chairs kind of kills the mood.

I also ate lunch with the first graders.  Everyone was silent for most of the time, and I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t know if we were SUPPOSED to be silent.  I hate those kind of lunches because my elementary kids, unlike my JHS kids, will actually talk to me!  I said before how ALL of the food at school lunch MUST be eaten.  Since a lot of kids have been sick with the flu, there have been remaining shares of food leftover which must be eaten.  I watched one kid drink five, yes FIVE milks.  Those bottles are 200 mL EACH.  That’s 1,000 mL of milk!!  I’m almost certain some one had a tummy ache later!

Since it was raining, we couldn’t go outside and play.     At first, we were running around, but I think one of the teachers got on to some of the kids about being too loud, so we had to quiet down.  I started braiding one of the girl’s hair, and then everyone descended on my own hair and wanted to play with it.  Ha, ha.  I took it down, and I was really beautiful after they finished with me….let me tell you!    Check it out:

  

I also had a kid try to pull a judo move on me during recess.  He pulled my shirt and wrapped his leg around mine.  If he wasn’t only a first grader and six years old, he probably would have knocked me flat on my feet.  He’s kind of a trouble maker, but I need to watch out for that!!!

On Thursday, I had big plans for my eikaiwa (night class).  Since it’s mostly 6th graders in that class, I have been wanting to do a pen pal lesson for a while.  Two of Ian’s cousins and one of mine said that they’d like pen pals, so I went for it.  I made a cool power point presentation to show my students a few pictures of the cousins.  I typed up a form for them to write in English (even with Japanese instructions!).  It was easy stuff that they already know like “Hello.  My name is _____.  I am _____ years old.” and daily schedule things like “I get up at _____.  I go to school at ______.”  What I underestimated was my class.  A couple of them did a good job but the rest just goofed off.  They started writing it in kanji. (To be fair, I didn’t tell them to write in romanji.  I ASSUMED they would write an English letter to American pen pals in romanji.)  The first half of class was dedicated to getting them to fill out the paper.  We took a short break and then they had to copy the paper onto two letters, one for my cousin and one for Ian’s cousins.  While I know it could have gone much worse, they were still a little rowdy about it.  Plus, they were supposed to draw a picture of themselves to accompany the letter.  Apparently, one of the boys has a green and yellow face with pointy elf ears.  Another one has a square head, buck teeth, and spikey hair.  Another one has a fat freckled baby face and only has a single gray hair coming out of his head.  At least, these are the pictures of themselves that they drew.  Do you now see the maturity level that I have to put up with!?!?!

Unfortunately, I had to deal with all of that on my own because Ian was sick last night.  Usually when I get home from work, I call out, “hey sweetie!” when I walk in the door, and Ian will say something back to me.  When he didn’t say anything back to me yesterday afternoon, I went into our bed/living/dining/multi-purpose/rec room and found Ian curled up in bed with a baseball hat covering his face.  I asked if he was okay, but he said that he had a horrible sinus migraine.  For the rest of the night, we had to dim the lights waaaaay down.  I feel like both of us have been trading germs back and forth all week.  I started out with a runny nose and cough, then Ian got it…which turned into a sinus migraine, and now I have congestion again.  Arg!  Spring, please hurry up and get here!

Valentine’s Day in Japan

My Valentine’s Day festivities began on Monday night.  In Japan, it’s tradition for girls to buy guys chocolates on Valentine’s Day.  Weird, huh?  Then on March 14th (known as White Day) guys buy girls chocolates, and usually their chocolates will be better and cost more than the original gift they received.  If you ask me, it’s messed up and backwards.  Can’t we all just agree to stick to one day?  Anyway, I usually make treats to take to school for the teachers on holidays, and I decided that chocolate chip cookies would be good. 

We had to go to Hitoyoshi that night to meet Melissa, Justine, and Shara for dinner.  We’re all on the beginner level Japanese classes that the CLAIR office in Tokyo provides for JETs, and we have monthly tests to complete.  The tests are open book, open note, open friend, so we get together and go over our answers together.  The books aren’t that great, and it’s VERY difficult to learn from them, so it’s actually great that we have each other to rely on!  Since it was the night before Valentine’s Day, Melissa B. got each of us a chocolate bar.  She is always so sweet like that!  She’s from Washington state, but I swear that she has southern hospitality bred into her.  For example, when we had our Christmas pizza party, she couldn’t come because she was going home for the holidays, so she made us a cheesecake to say sorry for not coming.    She goes waaaaay out of the way to make people happy!!  Anyway, that was a sidetrack, but my main point was that it was really sweet of her to give us chocolate!

On the way home, I realized that I wouldn’t have nearly as much time as I would need to make chocolate chip cookies, so I decided that mini chocolate chip pancakes would just have to do.  We didn’t get home until around 9:15PM, so I immediately started whipping up a double batch.  It took a while for several reasons—they were tiny pancakes, I had it so low that the flame went out and I didn’t realize it a couple of times, and I was trying to make them in a frying pan and wok.  At 10:45 when I finally finished, I plated and saran wrapped them.  I had two plates for the JHS, one for the BOE, and a few that were leftover for us to nibble on.  (I didn’t make any for my ES because I’m only there once a week, and it’s on Wednesday, which wasn’t Valentine’s Day.  Does that make me a bad person?  Now I feel guilty.  Blarg…..) 

Tuesday morning I had to go to my nursery schools.  My first nursery school was the one that only has about ten students.  My days there are hit or miss.  Some of the things that I plan to do are really best with bigger groups, so it doesn’t always work out, but on Tuesday, it was perfect!  At my second nursery school, there was a haunted house.  I know that sounds really weird to have on Valentine’s Day, and honestly I’m not sure why they wanted to have it then, but that’s what happened.  They had told me not to worry about planning an English lesson for the day but just to have fun with the kids.  That I did.  The haunted house was in one of the classrooms.  It wasn’t very long or scary, and some of the teachers had dressed up to scare the kids.  When I got to class, they were just starting it.  One of the teachers was at the back of the classroom allowing a few kids to go through the door at a time.  The willing participants went through and came out with a bag of candy.  The unwilling participants cowered at the back of the line in tears.  At most, I had four kids crying on me, and none of them were in too big of a hurry to reach the front of the line.  Several kids, despite getting bags of candy inside the haunted house, were BAWLING after it.  It was the saddest/funniest thing.  I hated that they were so scared about it, but at the same time, it was ridiculously funny at how pitiful some of the kids were acting.  All of the teachers were laughing.  I think some of them took a little pleasure in shoving the kids into the haunted house.  I had to take one girl through because she WOULDN’T let go of me.  The whole five minutes that we were in there, she CLUNG TO ME, and when one of the teachers jumped out and scared her, she accidentally kicked me in the ribs.  One of the kids got lost in the haunted house and was beating on the front door from the inside wanting out.  We could hear him crying.  It was just so pitiful!  /  Do these look like the faces of happy children?  Nope!

Ian and I really didn’t do anything special on Valentine’s Day.  I told him that we didn’t have to celebrate on just one day because to me, every day together is like Valentine’s Day for us!  (insert awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww here)  j/k.  We really don’t celebrate it normally.  We might get each other a little something, which is what we did on Monday night.  We agreed to split a box of chocolates and buy a bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup (a treat and one heck of a find here!).  Tuesday after school I guilt tripped myself that I hadn’t done anything special for Ian.  I didn’t think about it until I was leaving school, but I should have made him a Valentine’s card at school, I could have let my JHS girls who absolutely swoon over Ian make him Valentines, we should have planned to go to the Italian restaurant in Hitoyoshi, we should have made fondue…..the ideas were rolling!  It was too little, too late though.  I tried to find him some chocolates at the store, and they did have a whole Valentine’s display of chocolates, but for some reason, none of them seemed good enough.  Instead, I decided on a common everyday-run-of-the-mill box of Pocky (tradition Japanese candy….think chocolate covered pretzels). 

Ian made dinner, and we did watch the movie Valentine’s Day on Valentine’s Day (awwwww), but it just seemed like we should have done more.  I feel like being here and out of the swing of things, we’re never really sure how to celebrate holidays.  We ate noodles on Thanksgiving, Christmas just seemed like another day, we waited for someone to count down for New Year, and now we don’t know what to do on Valentine’s Day.  What’s next??    We did cap off the night by looking at what Ian called “food porn.”    I’m not sure why, but I started browsing the Pizza Hut website, and we drooled over the deep dished, cheesy, pepperoni goodness of the pizzas.  We switched to other websites, but it was all the same—foods that we miss from home.  Attention those of you reading this: If you can figure out how to ship a Pizza Hut pizza here and make it taste the same as freshly delivered, we would be ENTERNALLY grateful.   

I hope everyone had a special Valentine’s Day whether you did nothing like us, had a romantic dinner for two, or sat at home and ate chocolates all night.

pancakes and the flu

Ha, ha.  I know the title sounds weird, but rest assure everything will be explained!  Last Friday night, we went out to eat with Justine, Shara, and Mary.  Justine suggested this restaurant that had a big water wheel in front of it.  There was even a place where guests could wash their hands and feet (for purification) before entering just like they do at the temples.  At first we were sat at this HUGE table that could seat probably twenty people, but we felt ridiculously spread out, so we asked to change tables.  The second table was much more our size, and (bonus!!) the floor beneath the table was heated for our foot warming pleasure.    I ordered the nabe, which was delicious.  Nabe is a traditional Japanese soup that is warm, delicious, and PERFECT for a cold February night!  We sat and talked about anything and everything for a while.  Mary had to drive to Kumamoto that night to meet up with her boyfriend, so she left, but the rest of us decided that our next mission was driving into Hitoyoshi for ice cream.  Baskin Robbins is very overpriced but very delicious.    I had a February special, french toast ice cream.  It was really good, and what was even better is that I accidentally dropped some on my scarf, so I smelled like french toast for the rest of the night.  mmmmmmm…..

Speaking of being at Baskin Robbins, I forgot to tell a really funny story that happened there a few weeks ago.  Our car has really, really, really bad shocks, so we can seriously make it shake back and forth just by leaning left and right, left and right.  We sometimes find it funny to pull up to a red light and wiggle our car around just to see the reaction from the Japanese people beside us.  We’re idiots, we know.    Anyway, one night several weeks ago after eating our ice cream and leaving, we decided to show Melissa B. just how bad our shocks were by shaking our car.  There was a pre-school age kid coming out of Baskin Robbins, and when he saw us wiggling our car, he had the most horrified look on his face.  He froze and watched us for just a second before creeping backward into the safety of the store.  BWAHAHAHAHA!  We all laughed so hard and said that we had probably traumatized that kid.

On Saturday, we had our pancake party.  Basically, I sent an email out on Friday saying that Ian and I were going to make pancakes for dinner on Saturday night, and if anyone wanted to join us, they were most welcomed.  We had four takers: Justine, Melissa B, Ana, and Michael.  I made a double batch of pancakes, half normal, and half chocolate chip.  Melissa B. brought strawberries and syrup, Ana and Michael brought pancake glaze (like condensed milk), Justine brought Coke, and Ian made fried bananas.  We stacked our plates high, slathered them with all of those toppings, and ate until the pancakes were gone.  Perfect!  We tried to watch a couple of different TV shows and video clips, but all of us were a bit distracted by just talking to one another, so we ended up watching nothing.  ha, ha.  Ana and Michael left around 10, but Justine and Melissa decided to stay the night.  We finally had enough attention span to watch a couple of WWII era Looney Tunes episodes.  Ian warned us that we’d probably be shocked by them.  OMG, those were scary at how racist they were!  Let’s just say that the things Bugs Bunny was doing would NOT work in today’s day and age!  We finally wound down from our sugar high and went to bed around 1:30.  It was like a big slumber party trying to cram all four of us with the futons into our one heated room.   

On Sunday, I woke up pretty congested.  Truth be told, I felt pretty icky all day.    I was running a little fever, and Ian even used me as an electric blanket.  As we were watching TV he said, “Let’s cuddle! …….just don’t breath on me, okay?”  Oh, Ian!  He really knows how to make me feel loved!  After Justine and Melissa left that morning, we skyped a few people at home and basically spent the rest of the day in bed watching TV.  I feel like whenever we move back to the States and have greater responsibilities, those are the days that I’m going to miss the most.  We never had days like that at home because we never had the same days off together (and if we did, we felt obligated to do more important things) and our jobs demanded so much more from us.  Here, it’s whatever.  I rarely have to take any work home, and if I do, it’s something like cutting out pictures to post to my English board.  Really difficult.  Sorry, I’m getting a little sidetracked…..

Anyway, the flu is among us here!  ! ! !  Since I didn’t feel very well on Sunday, I went to bed early.  Luckily, I did not have the flu (and hopefully won’t get it!).  I woke up Monday morning feeling groggy and congested but nothing like the flu.  It has really crippled the JHS.  Last week, it went around the second grade class, and this week it’s getting the first graders.  A lot of people around school are wearing surgical masks (pretty common in Japan) to prevent illness and the spread of germs.  I don’t understand a lot of what’s being said in the teacher’s room, but I do know the word “flu,” which is the same in Japanese, and it is being said A LOT.  The teachers had a special meeting yesterday to discuss it and which students were absent.  I was blown away when I went to class and saw that half the first and second graders were missing.  It was really weird for a large class of 40ish to be whittled away to 20-something.

Even though it’s Valentine’s Day today, I’ll write about that next time.  I’d hate to make this blog too long winded, and I feel like it’s approaching that mark!

a weekend in Okinawa part III

This will be the third and final part about our weekend in Okinawa.  On Monday morning, we woke up and packed our things.  Unfortunately it was raining, so we had to lug our things in the rain to the nearest monorail station.  Our flight wasn’t until 2:30, so we had a few hours to play around with.  We didn’t get too wet on our walk, but the greatest concern was having damp clothes and THEN going home to cold, cold Kumamoto where those wet jeans suddenly become freezing jeans.  We dumped all of our stuff into two lockers and decided to divide and conquer and meet back up for lunch.  Amanda wanted to go sit and relax in Starbucks for a while, Justine, Mary, and I wanted to do a little tourist shopping, and Ian and Melissa B. wanted to try to find a bar that was showing the Super Bowl (remember that we are 15 hours ahead of the US, so kick-off was at 8AM our time).

Luckily the rain stopped.  I bought a few touristy things—a t-shirt, a glass blown from Okinawan sand, chopsticks for a friend, and omiyage to bring back to my co-workers.  Melissa B. and Ian were unsuccessful at finding a bar that was showing the Super Bowl, but they did find a great cactus themed restaurant where we had lunch.  Everyone was so tempted as to what we should order because this bar had everything—pizza, burgers, tacos—everything sounded good!!  I think most of us settled on a big, fat, greasy burger (bottom right).  One thing that I did get to try at the restaurant was goya.  It’s a bitter gourd vegetable that grows in Okinawa.  It’s supposed to be super healthy, but not many foreigners like it because it is so bitter.  I didn’t mind the taste.  It wasn’t my favorite, but it’s no where near as gross as natto!

We took one last group shot (above left) before hopping on the monorail and heading back to the airport.  We actually met a group of American basketball players on the monorail.  It was so funny to see them because by Asian standards, we’re tall.  However, these guys were REALLY tall.    At the airport, all of us lamented about the fact that we were going back to the cold and that our short vacation was over (bottom left).    I told Ian that we HAVE to go back to Okinawa.  I felt like we were barely even there and definitely didn’t have enough time to see or do everything that I wanted to.  We have a three day weekend followed by a four day weekend at the beginning of May (known as Golden Week).  I wish that I had enough vacation days to take off the couple of days between the two weekends, but I’m burning a lot of vacation days to come home this summer, and then I have to make sure and save enough days for the whole driver’s license process.  Anyway, I told Ian that we should think about coming back to Okinawa on the four day weekend.  Originally, I wanted to go to Hiroshima, and there are tons of places the I want to go to in Japan, but I really, really want to go back to Okinawa at some point in time!

 

In wasn’t fun AT ALL to come back to the cold.  We actually landed in the overcast skies of Fukuoka, and even before we got off the plane, we knew it was cold.  It just LOOKED cold.  We layered up while waiting for our baggage.  It rained the whole way back to Yunomae, which really didn’t help the mood.  :  Until next time, Okinawa……until next time!

the best break ever!

Okay, okay, okay.  So I said that I was going to finish my Okinawan tale this afternoon, but in true ADD form, I’d like to get sidetracked to tell you about how I spent my break time today.  I like my third grade girls at my JHS.  Last week when I was hanging up my February English board, several approached me and were asking me questions about the pictures of my family.  I asked them if they wanted to see more pictures, and they said yes.  I couldn’t do it on Wednesday since I’d be at the elementary school, and they couldn’t do it on Thursday because they had to go to Taragi for a high school entrance exam, so we planned on Friday.  I brought my wedding album to school on Friday and anxiously looked forward to showing it off during break time.  However, they had some meeting on Friday during break, so we said Monday.  I forgot that I’d be in Okinawa on Monday, so when I saw them on Tuesday, I apologized and asked if they wanted to look at it, but they had another meeting.  Once again, I had elementary school on Wednesday, so here we are today.

They loved looking at it, and I loved them looking at it!  At first, they crowded around and squealed or shouted “KAWAII!!!” at every picture. (which means cute/precious/adorable/cool/awesome.  It’s basically every Japanese person’s favorite adjective.)  I’m the first married ALT to be in this area, so anytime I mention my wedding or Ian, I get giggles and smiles.  They also told me that I was “beautiful!  beautiful!” in the pictures.  I pointed out each member in my family and Ian’s family, and made them guess ages.  My oldest sister, Christina, who is 31, apparently only looks 25.  Both of my parents, who are 61 and 62, only look 50, and for my other sister, Amanda, they were pretty dead on.  They said 27.  She’s 29, almost 30.  They also said that we looked like twins.  We get that even in the States, so no surprise there!  They also looooooooved the winery and sunset pictures and laughed at the picture where I’m hiking up my dress to walk across the grass.  I had to explain to them that my dress was huge, and I gestured hiking up and carry a load of dress.  I asked them if they liked my dress, and they all nodded and said, “yes!  beautiful!”

When we got to the page with the cute little flower girl (Ian’s cousin, Maya) and ring bearer (my nephew, Landon), they squealed and pointed at picture after picture.  They asked me where the pictures were taken, and I said Kentucky.  I had to explain some pictures, like the flower toss with gestures.  They asked me if I loved Ian, and when I calmly said, “a little,” they laughed.  There were several other funny moments, like when they said Ian looked like Michael Jackson or pointed to the statue of Jesus in the background and said that he looked like Ian.  They also said that Ian’s grandfather looked like Col. Sanders, and apparently my grandmother slightly resembles Lady Gaga………  When I asked them when their wedding is, they kind of looked away.  I asked “tomorrow?”  “next week?” and they giggled again.  One girl said “yesterday.”  Haha!  I asked her where her ring was, and she made the motion that she had pulled it off and threw it.  She said “river.”  I loved that!  I pretended to dash out of the room and to the river to find it.  Gosh. I feel like she’s going to break a lot of hearts if she’s already throwing away imaginary wedding rings!   

Moral of the story: I like my students.  Some of them are straight up jerks, but it’s experiences like this that make it completely worth it!

a weekend in Okinawa part II

One thing that I found funny about Okinawa is that no matter where we went, shop owners and other locals always said things like “You’re not military, are you?”  95% of the foreigners in Okinawa are either soldiers or military families, so we asked how they could tell we weren’t.  They said that since we could speak Japanese (me, more or less ) and said things like “please” and “thank you” in Japanese, they knew we weren’t military.  Yeah……Okinawans don’t have the best views of the American military presence there.

Saturday night, we tried to research and find out the best way to get to the aquarium, which is pretty far away from Naha.  Churaumi Aquarium is 90 km (about 55 miles) from Naha, so in theory it would only take about an hour to get there, right?  WRONG!  We left our hostel around 9:15 on Sunday morning and didn’t arrive at the aquarium until around 2:30.  It was a debacle.  We walked to the bus station but had to wait for the right bus for at least thirty minutes.  Then, the bus had I don’t know how many stops and hit traffic several times.  Granted, the views from the bus were great (pictures below), but it took a reallllllly long time.  We took it until the end of the line and then switched buses.  However, we had a layover for about an hour, so we walked to a little restaurant for lunch and returned.  That bus finally took us to where we wanted to go, the aquarium!  Before we went in, we made sure to check out when the last bus back was.  We had two options.  We could either take the shorter route back, which left at 4:00 (giving us barely any time) or the longer route back, which left at 6:30 but would take an extra hour.  We opted for the longer one that would give us more time at the aquarium. 

 

The aquarium was a ton of fun.  One thing that I regret is not having enough time to see everything.  The aquarium is just a part of a whole park there, and we barely saw anything.  There were huge flower sculptures (below), which reminded me a lot of my mom and grandmother.  They would have LOVED to see those!

 

The biggest attraction at the aquarium is the whale shark tank.  When we were going into the aquarium, one of the workers told us that the whale shark feeding time was in fifteen minutes, so we bypassed several exhibits to go to that tank.  THEY.  ARE.  HUGE.  Please notice in the picture below just how big they are in comparison to the people standing below the tank.  The glass on the tank is something like a foot thick.  Whale sharks may seem scary, but they’re mostly harmless to humans.  Granted, they could probably kill someone with a simple fling of the tail fin, but they are mostly peaceful creatures.  To be able to watch feeding time was very cool.  We could see the food go in, and then particles of food and air come out of their gills. 

     

We went back to the exhibits that we passed by after feeding time, and I wish that I could post more pictures in this blog, but check out all of them on Ian’s facebook or mine once I post them.  The picture above is one of the shark exhibits.  Yep, we’re standing in the jaw of a great white.  Outside of the aquarium are other tanks for animals.  There were manatees (below left), sea turtles, and dolphins (below right).  The manatee tank was fun to watch because one of the manatees would swim right up to the tank wall and twirl or smile its hairy lip at us.    The sea turtles honestly looked to be about 400 years old, and the dolphins were quite active.  We were able to go right up to the dolphin pool….as in close enough to be splashed on. 

 

After the aquarium, we split up.  Ian, Justine, Melissa B, and I wanted to go to the beach while Mary and Amanda grabbed a snack.  To be able to stand on an Okinawan beach is one of the things I definitely wanted to do while I was in Japan, so I can safely cross that off of my list now!    Despite the beaches being absolutely beautiful, Justine told us that the beaches on the main island are actually considered to be “dirty” by Okinawan standards, and if you want to see a REALLY beautiful beach, you go to the southern islands of Okinawa.  I don’t know.  You be the judge.  Do you think this beach looks dirty?

 

Ian got some REALLY fantastic beach pictures, so please check them out on facebook!  The four of us are really just a big bunch of goofballs, so we were taking really silly pictures.  For one, Justine and I ran toward each other shouting each other’s name like the final scene of a bad romance movie (bottom left) (btw, Justine has the PERFECT name for running and shouting in this fashion).  In another picture, Melissa B decided that it would be a good idea for the girls to try to pick up Ian, however, what she failed to realize is that I’m a weakling.  I couldn’t support my half of Ian, so she crumbled under the weight, which made Ian crash down on her, which pulled me down on him.  I rolled over and right into a wave, haha.  What makes this even better is that Justine captured the whole thing on camera (bottom center).    The whole side of my pants were soaked and covered in sand (bottom right).  We laughed and laughed and laughed.

   

Unfortunately, we had to leave so that we could catch our bus back.  As we were waiting, one of the cab drivers approached us with a deal.  At first, we thought he was just trying to get our money.  (Japanese cab drivers are notorious for taking the long way around for foreigners so that they’ll have to pay more.)  However, he told us that he would take us all the way back to Naha for only 4,000 yen each.  Since we paid about 3,200 for the buses to take us there, that really wasn’t too bad of a deal.  Plus, it would shave an hour off of our commute, so we took the deal.  Our cab driver was actually really nice.  He didn’t speak much English, but Amanda was able to translate for us.  He was seventy and had been a cab driver for at least forty years in Okinawa!  He told us about his kids and grandkids.  The traffic was completely and utterly ridiculous on the way back, so it took at least 2.5 hours to get back, but when we got back to Naha, we decided that tacos for dinner was the best option.  Since there is such a huge American presence in Okinawa, there are foods there that we haven’t had since we left the States…..like Mexican.  We all thought it was funny because we were in and out of the taco restaurant in about thirty minutes.  All of us SCARFED down the delicious tacos in a matter of minutes (bottom left) and then decided to go out for ice cream at a funny named place call Lick Bit (bottom right).  By the end of the night, we were all so fat and full.  It felt great!

      

Okay, that’s all for this blog.  I have one more to go, and then I’ll be all done with our Okinawan adventure!  Stay tuned!