Melissa-sensei: resident celebrity and clown

I have much to catch up on from the weekend and beginning of this week, but more than anything I want to blog about today while it’s still fresh on my mind.  The past couple of weeks I’ve really been trying to learn a little Japanese each day.  I might not be anywhere close to being good at Japanese, but if I can string a couple of two or three word sentences together, I often get my point across.  I’m understanding more and more of what my elementary kids say to me.  They usually are very excited when they see me, and they forget that I’m a dumb foreigner, so they don’t speak slowly (or evenly clearly sometimes!).  However, I still love them! 

Today was an exceptionally good day.  During my second class of the day, I had third graders, and we were doing self-introductions.  They had to make their own “business cards” and go around saying, “Hello.  How are you?  My name is ______.  Nice to meet you.” and collect as many cards as possible.  I guess I had a blonde moment, but I didn’t think to make myself business cards to hand out, and of course the kids ALL wanted to talk to ME.  We were supposed to play a game in which the third grade teacher played music, the kids were supposed to mill around, and whenever the music stopped, whoever was in front of you was who you were supposed to introduce yourself to and give him/her your business card.  I tore up pieces of paper and simply wrote my name on them to use as business cards.  It was pretty funny because instead of milling around, the kids just swarmed me.  I was literally in a sea of kids, and when the music stopped, I had twenty different kids shouting and trying to introduce themselves to me, and of course each of them wanted my “business card.”    Since I only hastily made a few business cards, kids started flipping over their own and wanting me to sign the backs of theirs.  At the end of class, the kids who I didn’t get to sign or who even wanted me to sign more of their stuff—textbooks, notebooks, hats, etc swarmed me again, shoving items at me and giving me one word demands: “Sign!  Sign!  Sign!”    I felt like I real Hollywood celebrity scrawling my name on item after item after item. 

In the hallway a couple of girls ran up to me, hugged me, and told me that I was pretty.  That’s enough to make my day!  Whenever I bent over to pick up a book, they stroked my hair and kept saying “KAWAII!” which means cute/precious/beautiful, etc.  After my last class of the morning, I went up to the fourth grade class to eat lunch with them.  All of the students wanted me to sit beside them, and after it was decided where Melissa-sensei would sit, I had a few minutes to play with them before beginning lunch.  For whatever reason, they have learned that I’m ticklish and continuously sneak up behind me to tickle my ribs.    If I catch them in time, I get them back, tickling them so hard that they wished they hadn’t begun that game!  All of my students are also very curious about my earrings.  Not a lot of people get their ears pierced in Japan, and often if they do, they buy a self-piercing kit and do it themselves.  Therefore, a lot of piercings lead to infections, and the students associate piercings with pain.  I like to freak them out by pulling out my earrings and putting them back in.  It’s like they’re mesmerized by that action.  Some of the kids will wince or look away as I do it even though I tell them it doesn’t hurt.  Today one kid was brave enough to put the earring back in my ear after I had taken it out.  I gave it to her to just look at, and then she asked if she could put it in.  I think she was afraid of hurting me, but I kept reassuring her that she wasn’t.  I tried to let another kid do it, and she started but then chickened out.    I just love to make the students laugh.  If I can do that by making a silly face, tickling, singing, or doing a crazy dance, that’s what I’m here for!

Recess was once again a blast, and I honestly wish that I had more time to play recess with the kids.  While I was eating lunch with the fourth graders, a couple of girls asked if I would play with them during recess.  These girls LOVE me.  I don’t mean to sound vain, but literally they do and have said so.  Everyone always wants to play with me!  Whenever a couple of second graders came into the same room where we were playing, the fourth grade girls basically told them to get lost because the foreigner was theirs today!    I thought we were going to play daikon-nuki, but the girls informed me that we were going to play 1,2,3,4 game instead.  I’ve never played this game, but said SURE!  Each corner of the room was assigned a number 1-4.  The person who was “it” had to sit in the middle of the room with his/her eyes closed and count to ten.  Everyone else had to run around as quietly as possibly to a corner.  When the person who was “it” reached ten, he or she then said either 1,2,3, or 4, and if there was anyone in that corner, they had to sit down.  The object was to knock out multiple people at a time, so you had to guess which corner most people were in.  It was easy enough, but I guess we were getting a little too loud because one of the teachers who was in the library next door came in and yelled at the kids.    I hate, hate, hate whenever this happens.  It’s such an awkward situation because I can tell that the kids are devastated by the shame the teacher is throwing on them, yet they have to sit there and take it.    We tried playing the game again in complete silence, but it kind of lost the fun, so I suggested to everyone that we move to the English room at the end of the hallway.  They agreed, and as we left, each kid wanted to touch some piece of me—hold my hand, hang onto my shirt, touch my leg, so we moved like an amoebus blob down the hallway.     

We continued playing 1,2,3,4 game for a bit, but then it turned into “Let’s inspect the foreigner.”  It’s amazing how those kids can both raise and lower my self-esteem at the same time.  After everything I’ve just said, it seems like they would only boast my confidence, right?  They’re cute, and I know that it’s innocent, but they grabbed my arm and stomach fluff and said that I was fat.    It was more like “Kimochii!” which means “pleasingly soft”…….but we all know what they meant.  It wouldn’t be such a big deal if I didn’t already feel a little fluffier lately, and now I have kids confirming it.  Dislike.  They pointed at my stomach, and I thought they asked me to show it to them, so I lifted up my shirt a little bit.  (I have a hairy belly, which I used to be very ashamed of, but now I just accept it as a piece of me.)  All of the kids had this look of horror on their faces, and I swear to you that a few jumped back in fear.    Then, once they got used to it, they wanted to pet it and pull on the hair.  We quit that game pretty quickly, but they kept trying to pull up my shirt to pet the belly hair.  Attention children!  The foreigner is NOT a petting zoo!

Since we were playing in the English room, the dreaded blue mats that I blogged about last week came loose, and I spent all of cleaning time and some of fifth period re-connecting them.  It REALLY bothers my OCD if they come loose!  At first a couple of girls tried to help me to put them back together, but a) it honestly works better if just one person does it, and b) I could tell that they needed to go back to class.  I told them that it was okay and that I’d finish it by myself, and they debated about it for a moment before agreeing.  They all told me “arigato” (thanks) and gave me a hug before leaving.    Japanese elementary kids are cute enough to make me want to start having my own kids……almost.

Conclusion: I LOVE ES DAYS!  You never know what’s going to happen!    

I’ve got a feeling….

I forgot to mention in the last blog about my little adventure last Wednesday night.  The weather has been incredibly beautiful here, so I decided to take my bike out for a spin after work.  I wanted to time myself to see if I could start riding my bike to work on Tuesday mornings since I have to go from my house to the BOE to both nursery schools, and then the JHS.  I knew that it only takes ten minutes to ride to the BOE, but I was very surprised that it only took me five minutes to ride from there to my first nursery school and about seven minutes to the next nursery school.  Except for rainy days, it looks like I’m going to ride my bike to work every Tuesday!  After timing myself to those places, I decided to try the Kumagawa cycling road.  It’s a pedestrian/bike path that runs from Yunomae to Hitoyoshi, and it’s like a Greenways trail.  Ian and I knew it was here, but we just discovered it a few weeks ago.  It’s a nice paved pathway, and I rode all the way to the other side of Taragi, but due to the sun going around, I had to turn back.  I really enjoyed it because it parallels the river on one side and the train track on the other side.  Don’t get too excited…the only trains ever on the track are the Kuma 1 and 2—a private line that connects Yunomae to Hitoyoshi.

On Thursday I found a new way to hang out with my students during break time….go to the library!  I usually stroll the hallways or end up in a classroom looking for buddies who actually are willing to speak to the foreigner, but on Thursday, I ended up in the library.  Most of the students were already reading or looking for a book.  (There were a few goof-offs, but it seems like every library no matter where you go there are at least a few.)  I went down to the teacher’s room and grabbed my third Hunger Games book to read.  I’ve been spending my break time in the library ever since!

Thursday afternoon Ian had an interview for the job I previously posted about.  Well….it wasn’t so much of an interview as a meet and greet.  I called him around 2PM to wish him luck, and he was nervous.  I really didn’t understand why.  If Ian Reed can do one thing right it’s talking to people.  He’s got the gift of gab, and knows how to smooze.  I’m socially awkward in a lot of situations, but not Ian!  He’s just as comfortable talking to one person as he is talking in front of a room full of people.  Besides, if he got the job… good, but if not….it’s no big deal.  It’s not like we’re counting on this job so that we can have insurance or something.  Ian said that the guys were extremely nice and just wanted to chat with him about anything and everything.  They talked to him about Golden Week plans, showed him the factory, and introduced him to the lady that he would be working with.  Although they didn’t say if Ian got the job or not, Ian felt VERY positive about it.  Since that wasn’t the official interview, they asked Ian to come to the city for a formal interview on Monday.  (More about that in coming blogs.)

It had threatened rain allllllllll day on Thursday, and it finally started pouring down about thirty minutes before me leaving work….meaning that I’d have to ride my bike home in the rain.    Since Ian was in Nishiki for the interview, there wasn’t even the remote possibility of him picking me up.  It’s only a short five minute ride from my school to my house, but still.  It stinks getting soaking wet in that short amount of time!  As I was riding home, a bus passed me.  It’s strange to see a bus on that road because it’s not a very populated road, and generally there are more pedestrians than cars on it.  Regardless, I could hear it approaching me and waited for the inevitable puddle to splash up on me from the bus tires.  However, the bus actually SLOWED down as it passed by me to avoid that situation.  Only the Japanese would be courteous enough to do such a thing!  I know that the scene would play out quite differently in the States: driver maintains speed, huge puddle splashes on biker, passengers of the bus press their faces against the glass and laugh at the poor biker.  Try and tell me that’s not what would happen!

Since Ian was in Nishiki when I got home, I put sweats on and curled into bed to read my book until time to go to my Thursday night class.  I was enjoying my last Cadbury egg when there was a knock on the door.  I contemplated not answering it (You honestly never know who’s behind that door or for what purpose.  It could be kids wanting to play, a door-to-door salesman, neighbor trying to tell you…..something, or even a Jehovah’s Witness.  We’ve had each of those and more.)  I decided to answer it and was pleasantly surprised to see the delivery man holding out two packages for me.  As soon as he left, I tore into them to find TWO WHOLE BOXES of Reece’s eggs courtesy of my mom, sister, and brother.  Literally, TWO.  WHOLE.  BOXES.     I should have taken some for the teachers at school or given some to my Thursday night class, but instead I hoarded them.  We gave a few away to our friends, but the rest we ate like two big fatties. 

Ian wasn’t back in time for my Thursday night class, so I went to it alone.  I knew that I was going to have new students, but please bare in mind the horrible, HORRIBLE stories I wrote about from my prior Thursday night kids, so I had no idea who I was getting, how many, or what they’d be like.  I prayed for the best, and guess what?  I GOT IT!  I have four girls in that class, and they are AMAZING!  They all love me and actually WANT to learn English.  No more penis drawings….yay!!!!  Even though they know me from school, I gave them a self-introduction, showing them maps of Kentucky and Paducah, my scrapbook, wedding album, and other random pictures from home.  That lasted about thirty minutes, and after that we took a break in which they wanted to play with my phone.  I showed them the Talking Tom app, and they all loved the high pitch echo that the app spits out.    That might be very conducive to learning English, and I might incorporate that into lessons later.  After break time, they each gave their self-introduction by learning the phrases “Hello.  My name is _____.  I like ______.  I can play ______.  Nice to meet you!”  Whenever it was time to go, they helped me pick up the tables, and we left without anyone running around, tackling, slapping, screaming, or flipping the lights off and on.  I’ve got a feeling that this is going to be a spectacular class, and now I won’t have to dread Thursday nights as much! 

Not a lot happened on Friday.  I will tell you that I realized that I’m starting to speak Japanese English.  lol.  Things that I NEVER said on a typical basis at home I find myself saying all the time.  For example, the kids are taught that Americans say “Hello.”  Not hi, hey, what’s up, or anything else.  Just hello.  That’s what I find myself saying all the time.  They’re also taught that Americans say “good morning” up until noon.  While it is technically still morning until then, at home I usually stopped saying that around 10:30 or 11AM, but now I’ll say it right up until noon.  Another thing that they’re taught is “oh no!” whenever someone drops or spills something, and I definitely have picked that up!  Sometimes I even find myself pronouncing words like a Japanese student would.    Please try hard NOT to make fun of my English when I visit home this summer!  It might have been premature since we didn’t TECHNICALLY know if he had it or not, but we celebrated Ian’s job on Friday night with a pizza, Coke, and movie.  Plus, I FINALLY finished my flower bed.  All the horrendous rocks are gone, and the only thing left to do is buy seeds to plant and to keep the weeds at bay….which is a never ending process! 

Okay, I’m done for now.  I have the rest of the afternoon and most of tomorrow free, so hopefully I’ll get completely caught up!  Only five days to write about!

Let’s play adventure!

There is a show on ABC about fairytales.  It’s a little cheesy and corny, but darn it if we haven’t started watching and enjoying it!  We’ve watched all of the available episodes of the first season and are anxiously awaiting for more to air.  I slightly feel silly for watching it, (and even made fun of a couple of friends for watching the “fairytale show”) but it’s actually pretty good!

In other news….Japan is SERIOUS when it comes to education.  I’m pretty sure I’ve made that point clear, but just in case, here’s another example.  There haven’t been classes in the afternoons this week because the homeroom teachers have to visit every student’s house and make sure that he/she has a proper “study area” set up there.  I’m not lying.  Each afternoon, the homeroom teachers put on their business suits and leave to visit student’s house.  How crazy is that??

I made potato soup on Monday night, and it tasted like home!  Too often I feel like we have either rice or noodle dishes, and I get so tired of the same thing, but things that were easy to make in the States aren’t always so easy to make here.  Prime example: mac and cheese, an American quick-and-easy staple.  Even if I could find macaroni for mac and cheese, I wouldn’t have the cheese to make it.  Anyway, we often eat curry, and it comes in these two pack bricks.  All you have to do is cook the veggies and meat, add water and a brick, and let it simmer before serving it over rice.  Easiest meal ever!  There are also cream stew bricks.  I cut up and boiled my potatoes, added seasoning and a brick, and ta-da!  I had the best tasting potato soup that I’ve had in a while.  We grated a little gouda (that we specially ordered online) on the top.  Ahhhh….it was thick, rich, creamy, and delicious!

Tuesday at lunch I ate with my JHS first graders, my former sixth graders who I hated.  I think JHS has done well for them…..it tends to crush spirits.  They seem less jerky and annoying, and much more straight-laced.  I still have students in that class that I absolutely don’t like and probably never will, but for the most part, it’s MUCH better.  Anyway, lunch was funny.  I’m pretty sure that one of the boys was making fun of me, but then he spilled his milk.  Karma sucks, doesn’t it?    It went EVERYWHERE.  I helped him and another teacher clean it up, and I’m pretty sure that the other teacher was saying something like “How are you so stupid to spill your milk?”  Oh, Japan!  For whatever reason, the kids like to use the word “crazy”, so they’ll use it to describe anything.  Crazy girl.  Crazy boy.  Crazy cat.  Crazy bear.  I was joking back and forth at my lunch table and calling one of the kids a crazy kangaroo.  He called me a crazy monkey.  I called him a crazy koala.  He stepped it up and called me Lady Gaga, so I called him Michael Jackson and then Obama.  (Japanese kids love Obama!)  He looked at me and basically said the equivalent of “I’m not Obama” as he turned around and pointed at his friend.  “But this kid is!”  The other student nodded and was like, “Yep, I’m Obama” because (just like Obama) he’s tall, and his ears stick out.    HA!  HA!  HA!  Apparently, that’s this kid’s nickname, and as strange as it sounds, he actually does look like an Asian Obama.

The weather has been absolutely beautiful, so on Tuesday night Ian and I went on a little walking adventure around town.  We were going to walk to the cycling trail (which we recently found) that starts in Yunomae.  It goes all the way to Hitoyoshi and follows the Kuma River.  However, Ian suggested that we walk to the pretty bridge place.    We don’t actually know the name of it, but we’ve wanted to go there since we got here.  I went on a couple of walking treks when I first got here to find it but was unsuccessful.  From the pictures we’ve seen, it’s a quaint old stone bridge with beautiful clear-green water underneath.  It was actually rather easy to find once we opened our eyes, and the best word to describe the place is magical.  Ian has all of the pictures on his camera, so I have none to post, but trust me.  It’s a gorgeous little hidden haven.  The bamboo provided plenty of shade, and slightly upstream from the bridge, the stream is shallow and falls on rocks, so you can hear the water rushing over those, and there is a waterfall on the other side of the bridge.  The clear-green water pools right under the bridge.  Although it’s probably deeper, the water is so clear that you can see four or five feet down.  In addition to the natural beauty, someone fixed a rope swing over the stream to swing off of during swimming season.  I told Ian that that place would be a wonderful picnic/swimming area to spend a lazy Saturday sometime this summer.  It’s perfect, and I can’t wait for one of the dog days of summer so that we can go swimming there!

On Wednesday, I taught my first classes at the ES of the year.  Several of the teachers are new, and the ones that aren’t have been shuffled around.  For example, the former second grade teacher is now the fifth grade.  My sixth grade teacher is new.  He’s very polite but rather shy…until he gets into the classroom.  Then he becomes a ball of energy that the kids seem to enjoy.  My fourth grade teacher is friendly, nice, and amazing.  But most of all HE SPEAKS ENGLISH.  HE LIKES ENGLISH.  HE WANTS TO SPEAK ENGLISH TO ME.    He told me that he spent time in Montana and used to be a JHS English teacher a few years back.  Even in class, he used way more English that any of the other teachers do.  He did surprise me by telling me that I’d be doing a brief self-introduction in class on Wednesday.  I told him that the students already knew me, but he said that there were a few new ones.  Luckily I was able to call Ian and ask him to bring my picture album and family tree so that I wouldn’t have to make up my self-intro on the fly.  Yay!  In addition to the teachers, all of my new classes are great.  The first graders (my former nursery school students) are tickled pink to see me at the ES and call out my name and giggle anytime I get remotely near them.  Now that my former jerk-head sixth graders are at the JHS, I don’t have to dread going to sixth grade each week.   

That afternoon the teachers made their rounds to the students’ houses, making sure that even the young ones have proper studying space at home, so I was left in the teacher’s room with just the Vice Principal and one other teacher.  We actually had a pretty good conversation.  The VP asked me where I was going for Golden Week, and I told him Yakushima and Nagasaki.  He said something to the equivalent of “You know that those are on the opposite sides of the island, right?”    Yep, I know.  I told him that I was going to Yakushima during the three day weekend of Golden Week and to Nagasaki during the four day weekend.  He asked if I had to work the two days between, and I said yes.  He laughed and said the equivalent of “That sucks.”    The other teacher, who sits to my right, told me that he took his motorcycle to Yakushima once.  I said, “You have a motorcycle?” and he proceeded to tell me that he wants a Harley, but it costs too much.  I told him that Ian has a Suzuki motorcycle in the States and showed him a picture.  Both him and the VP were baffled as to why an American would own anything other than an American made Harley.  Ha, ha. 

Shortly after our conversation, the VP took off his shoes, propped his feet up on his desk, and started clipping his nails.    I couldn’t believe it!  I’ve seen teachers do weird things at their desk (massage their head with one of those giant metal contraptions, sleep, etc), but that took the cake.  I was weirded out by it, but the other teacher didn’t even give it a second thought.  Weird.  Since I had the whole afternoon to do nothing, I went up to the English room, which moved to the other end of the hall at the beginning of the school year.  Instead of desks, the students have blue square mats that interconnect to sit on.  My OCD often gets the better of me, and the dang blue mats are a prime example.  I guess whoever moved them to the new room didn’t interlock them well because after my morning classes, they were starting to shift and come unlocked, which I CAN’T STAND.  Therefore, I spent the next thirty minutes diligently making sure that each blue square was securely interlocked to its neighbors.  No….I’m not obsessed….

Well, this blog is fairly long, so I’ll stop now before going onto another day.

lazy weekend

Ian and I got a little overambitious this month.  Usually each month we send 100,000 yen (depending on exchange rate, but about $1,600) home for savings.  This month we thought that we were financially stable enough to send back two months’ worth.  The month started out okay, but now as I am less than a week from the next pay day, it feels like we are scraping the bottom of the barrel.  We’ve been able to still do a LOT on our shortened budget, but it feels like for the past week, we’ve had to count each and every penny.    We still have a couple hundred dollars in our account here, but we really don’t want to withdraw anymore until payday.  We have a HUGE five kilogram bag of rice, and we laughed and said that if we run out of food, we’ll just live off of that:

breakfast: rice with a little milk and sugar on the top

lunch: rice balls

supper: rice with a little salt, pepper, and cheese for flavor

I am really amazed at what we CAN do on just one salary and still manage to save, which makes me wonder just how much more we could do (or save) if we both had this job!   

We had very few plans for the weekend, which was extremely nice.  I love to travel and experience things on the weekend, but every once in a while, you just want a weekend at home with nothing better to do than sit around!  The past couple of weekends we’ve been off to here, there, and yonder, and it kind of wears you out!  We had several skype dates with friends on Saturday and Sunday morning.  It has been a while since we talked to a lot of our friends, so from the time we woke up until about 2PM, we were on skype.  Krista stopped by that afternoon, so we all had leftover curry and watched The Hangover II together.

Saturday night we met Melissa B. and Justine at Café Gusto to check answers to our Japanese test before mailing it off on Monday.  Mary text me and asked if we had any dinner plans, so I invited her to join us….which was actually a really good thing because she ended up checking our tests for us.  Yay for people who can speak Japanese fluently!

After dinner, we went to an event that Michael had worked very hard to put together.  It was at a tea shop, and a few of us native English speakers volunteered to meet with people in our area to practice speaking and exchange our culture.  We broke down into small groups of two English speakers and about six Japanese speakers.  I was in a group with Shara, and Ian was with Ana.  The first forty-five minutes was spent speaking English, then a break, followed by forty-five minutes of Japanese.  The English time flew by.  We went around and said our names, how old we were, and other basic self-intro facts.  There was one lady who was Korean and worked as a Korean-Japanese translator in Seoul before moving to Japan and marrying her husband.  Her English was phenomenal.  When we switched to Japanese, it was horrendous.  Shara’s Japanese is good, so she was able to communicate while I just sat there like the big, dumb idiot that I am!    My one, two, or three word sentences just weren’t cutting it.  It was fun and interesting because they were asking me questions about being married, American traditions, and when I was going to start having babies.  In Japan, you start pretty much as soon as you get married.  (I’m serious.  I know women my age who already have two or three kids.  SCARY.)  They don’t understand “waiting” to have kids.  I tried to explain that I don’t want to have kids in Japan.  I want to wait until I’m home and have family around.  I think the only reason they accepted this is for the waiting-to-have-family-around aspect.  Oh, Japan!

The best thing to come out of the tea shop workshop was Ian’s job.    One of the ladies was asking him where he worked, and he said that he didn’t have a job.  She told him that one of her associates was wanting her to teach a few business English classes at a factory in Nishiki, but she was just too busy, so she called the associate and let him talk to Ian.  All Ian had to do was register on a website, and the guy called him first thing on Monday morning.  He set up a time to meet/interview Ian…which is tomorrow!  We don’t know the full details, and it does depend on a few things.  Ian said that he’s going to be honest and tell the guy that a) he can’t really speak Japanese, and b) he has non-refundable tickets to America for a whole month this summer.  If the guy accepts that, then little Ian has a job!    The job isn’t full time, which is fine.  Since Ian’s here on a dependent visa, he can only work up to twenty-eight hours a week.  From what it sounds like, they are really needing someone to do this, so hopefully it will all work out!  

On Sunday as we were skyping David and Lucy, we found out that Daniel is engaged.    Seriously…it feels like so many of our friends have gotten engaged recently.  I guess we’re just all growing up, but it seems like all of our friends are getting married, buying houses, or having kids (or all three!).  It’s WEIRD.  At the same time, Mr. Reed and I are kind of frozen in time.  As long as we continue to travel, we won’t be having any kids (unless God decides otherwise…) or buying a house.  Thank God that we can at least scratch “get married” off the checklist! 

Since we were in Kagoshima for Easter weekend, we didn’t get to have a big end-of-Lent-eat-all-of-the-sugar-you-can-find feast, so we did that on Sunday night.    Justine invited Melissa B., Mary, Hiro, Ian, and I over to do that and watch Hunger Games.  We had fondue, fried Oreos, Calpis marshmallows, cookies, doughnuts, cream puffs, funnel cake, and washed it all down with Coke.  Talk about a sugar high!!  That was the best dinner I’ve had in a while.    As far as the movie goes, I wasn’t too impressed with it.  Granted, it was a copy with Dutch subtitles, so I would like to see the actual thing and then judge if I like it or not.  Plus, the camera work was really shaky, and at times, it was extremely difficult to figure out what was going on.  When we left, Ian and I took the 43 home.  The 219 runs straight from Nishiki to Yunomae, but there’s a ridiculous amount of traffic on it.  We have been meaning to try the 43 since we realized that it goes to Nishiki, but we never did.  I feel like if we were in a hurry, it would definitely be better since it doesn’t have the traffic of the 219, but at times it narrowed down to a one lane road and was much curvier than the 219.

Anyway, that was our lazy weekend!  In the next blog I’ll catch up on events from this week!  

It’s a new year…which means new fun.

Since it’s a new school year, I have new nursery school students.  My new students are the younger nursery school kids who never really saw me last year.  It’s both a blessing and a curse.  It’s a blessing because I can repeat my lessons now, but it’s a curse because they are new kids, and I have to explain how to play each game.  I have two nursery schools now (the third one closed down), Jikou and Tobu.  Jikou was my favorite nursery, but now the kids are just so-so.  I’m not sure if they just haven’t warmed up to me yet, are uncomfortable with English, or what exactly, but they are quiet.  It’s such a change from my last group of kids there.  Plus, they don’t understand the games, so I have to explain the best I can in my broken Japanese.  For example, yesterday we played Duck, Duck, Goose, and the kids had absolutely NO idea what was going on.  Whenever I couldn’t explain well enough, the nursery school teacher stepped in and tried to explain, but the kids still seemed really lost.  Two kids cried, and several of them wouldn’t run.    Blarg.  Epic fail.  At Tobu, I still have several of my old students since the preschool class there was a combination of four and five-year-olds, so they remember and understand the games and generally just seem happier.

Last Wednesday, I went to the ES.  Since it was spring break, I haven’t had recess and played with those kids in three weeks.  I’m pretty sure they bottled up extra energy just for me!    It was raining, so we didn’t get to go outside and play.  All I had to do was step outside of the teacher’s room, and I had kids swarming me.  We went upstairs to some classrooms that are never used, and I soon became a human jungle gym.    I had kids hanging off of me, climbing, tickling, pinching, and pulling on me.  Twenty excited and hyper kids is NOT a fair fight against one out-of-shape foreigner!  Even whenever I collapsed to the floor, they still continued to climb on me!  We finally started playing daikon-nuki, a game that I previously blogged about but didn’t know the name of.  This game is simple and fun.  It involves all of the kids lying belly down on the floor and holding hands while two other kids try to break them apart by pulling on their feet.  I always have to pull the kids apart because no one can even move me, and it’s not really a fair fight.    I love that game, but by the end of it my arms were sore from pulling kids apart. 

I didn’t have any classes that afternoon, so I just stayed at my desk.  However, the principal came up to me around 2:45 and said that the teachers were having a meeting at 3:00.  I said okay, but what I didn’t realize was that this was a subtle hint for me to leave.  He was trying to gently tell me to get the heck out, but the Japanese are Japanese, so they won’t be direct about it.  I didn’t really think anything about it.  Sometimes at the JHS I just have to sit through meetings, so I thought the same thing would happen.  However, I heard him on the phone and saying my name.  He had called the BOE to see if it was okay for me to go there while they had their meeting.  My ES principal doesn’t speak English, and I barely speak Japanese, but I finally understood that he was telling me to go to the BOE.  lol!  I got kicked out of the ES and banished to the BOE.  And it just so happened that that was the day I walked to school, so I had to walk to the BOE.  Luckily, it was a beautiful spring day, so I enjoyed a nice twenty minute walk. 

Thursday morning I woke up with an awesome dream fresh on my mind.  It was about my cousin (who shall remain nameless).  I dreamed she was a midget and getting married.    Her dress was ridiculously white and puffy with lots of beads and glitter.  For whatever reason, my ninety year old grandmother was walking her up the aisle, but my cousin passed out halfway up.  As she tumbled to the floor, she pulled grandmother down with her.    Everyone rushed over to check on Grandmother (who was fine), and they continued to walk up the aisle, but my cousin kept fainting during the entire wedding.  I LOVE random crazy dream!

I had three classes on Thursday, and all of them were really fun.  I’m not sure if Mr. Fujiwara is attempting to make class more fun, it’s just the beginning of the year, or what exactly, but we’ve been playing a lot of games in class.  A basic pattern of class is the following:

15 minutes- review homework, repeat after Melissa-sensei

20 minutes- learn new info, repeat after Melissa-sensei, practice reading

15 minutes- game time!

We’ve played board races, spelling races, translate into English/Japanese races, and it’s been a lot more interesting than classes were last year.  I think I’ve only had to wake up one student, and compared to last year, that is a VAST improvement. 

Thursday afternoon I went upstairs for something, and I caught a group of students looking at my English board.  This always makes me very happy!  However, when I went over to talk to them about Easter bunnies and eggs, they suddenly pretended like they weren’t looking at the board.  I get it…..the “too cool for school” routine.  Whatever. 

Friday was a very awkward day at school for me.  All teachers and students were supposed to go hiking as a beginning of the year bonding experience, but sadly it rained.    Therefore, we had to play ice breaker games in the gym.  I’m not a big fan of ice breakers in English, let alone in a language that I don’t understand!  Blarg!  It started off with boring speeches from the principal and vice principal.  Then each sports club (kendo, baseball, tennis, judo, brass band, track, and volleyball) had to put on a little intro and persuade the new first graders to join their club.  By far the volleyball team’s performance was the best.  They chose three teachers to play against the team, and it was quite comical!  The rest of the day was filled with games that I didn’t understand but pretended to, and then lunch and break time were nice.  Everyone ate lunch together in the gym in big circles.  I ate with a mixed group of first, second, and third graders.  Several of them offered me candies and chocolates, which absolutely melted my heart!  It really makes me feel super special when my students do things like that!  During break, everyone stayed in the gym and played.  Most tossed around volleyballs, kicked soccer balls, or shot basketballs.  I was with a group of girls stretching, and one of the third graders was ridiculously flexible.  She could completely spread her legs in the splits position and then lift her body up by her hands.  Crazy!  I also tossed around a volleyball for a while with other girls.  As I spiked the ball out of our loop again and again I think they realized just how bad the foreigner is at sports……..

Friday night was a wonderfully lazy night.  Ian went to a beer pong party at a friend’s house, but I had absolutely no desire to go, and I was skyping my brother and sister that night.  As soon as I got home, I put on sweat pants crawled into bed.  Heck yeah!  It was a nice rainy evening, so I watched movies for the rest of the night until bed time. 

I’ll catch up on the weekend in the next blog.

Be careful what you wish for…..

Last week I made a big mistake.  I fed the neighborhood kids.  You know how you shouldn’t feed stray cats and dogs because they’ll just keep coming back?  Likewise, never feed neighborhood kids……they’ll just keep coming back.  The previous week, I was working in the flowerbed, and a couple of the neighborhood kids (who are also my students) saw me and stopped by to play/chat.  I used some of the rocks in my garden to draw tic-tac-toe and hopscotch on the asphalt.  When we bored of those games, I went inside to get Ian to come out and play.  I noticed the box of Easter goodies that Kim sent us sitting on the bed, so I grabbed a box of Peeps to share with the kids.  They were tickled pink with them, and when it was time to go home, they went.  I was so happy to have had a play date.    We went to Kagoshima all weekend, and on Monday afternoon when I was working outside, the kids came back again wanting to play.  I did again for a little while.

I thought it was cute, and they seemed really, really happy to get to play with me!  How could I break a child’s joy?  ……but it got very old very quickly.  On Tuesday, Ian text me at school around 3:00 saying that they had just knocked on the door and asked if I could come out and play.  He told them that I was still at work, so they came back thirty minutes later and knocked again…and again.  When I rode my bike home that afternoon, they were sitting on my front step waiting for me.  It dawned on me then that I had made a mistake by feeding them.    We played hopscotch and had running and bike races around the block.  I shouldn’t have let them, but they used my iPhone as a timer.  Plus, I showed them how to get American radio stations, and they asked for Lady Gaga music.    As if some silent alarm went off, it was time for them to leave around 6:30 and go home.  It reminded me a lot of 1950s America when kids would stay outside and play until dark.  The parents didn’t worry where they were, and the kids knew to stay out of too much trouble.   

On Wednesday afternoon, Ian said that they were back knocking on the door earlier in the afternoon, and he had to tell them that I wasn’t at home.  One time they even opened the door and stepped into the house to call my name.  (This is perfectly acceptable to do in Japan.  Your genkan, (entryway) is considered to be public property.)  They knocked on my door as soon as I got home, and I couldn’t tell them no.  That afternoon they drug me to the back parking lot of our neighborhood to play this kick the can game.    I was confused about what to do with the situation.  I don’t mind playing with the kids….in fact, I love it!  Recess is my favorite time of the week!  However, I DON’T want to do it EVERY day after school. 

When the kids rolled around after school on Thursday, I told them that I couldn’t play because I was having a friend over.  In truth, Melissa B. was coming over for dinner, and I didn’t have time to play.  They seemed downtrodden but okay with that answer.  Whenever Melissa arrived, she said that the kids were asking her if she was “the one.”  She asked us what that meant, so we told her the whole story, and she said that giving them ANY candy was a big, BIG mistake!  She had done the same thing, and she now has to lock all of her doors AND windows so that kids won’t try to get in.    She finally had to tell her Vice Principal (who lives near her) about it, and he took care of the problem.  After hearing that, I was a bit scared.  However, it rained the next day, and they didn’t bother me once over the weekend, so HOPEFULLY it’s all okay now!   

As for non-kid related news, this Saturday (21st) is my grandmother’s 90th birthday!  My family is having a big party for her, and I’m sad that I won’t be able to make it home.  I guess a Skype call will just have to do.    Ian and I have been very, very busy working on her gift.  Since Ian got the new camera, he has become quite the professional photographer and taken numerous beautiful pictures.  We used those pictures to make a photo album for Grandmother.  Ian found this program online in which he could create a professional album, and I don’t want to toot our own horn, but it was absolutely wonderful!  We were both extremely happy with the finished product.    In addition, we’re in the process of making a video for her, but it won’t be finished until after her birthday, so it will just have to be late!

I had to attend three ceremonies last week, an opening ceremony on Monday at the JHS followed by an entrance ceremony at the ES and JHS on Tuesday.  What would Japan be without its ceremonies?    You cannot simply begin the new school year.  Each school must have an opening ceremony to officially announce the beginning of the new term, welcome new staff, and make a lot of boring speeches.  Then, each school must have ANOTHER ceremony to welcome the new students.  This entrance ceremony is as big of a deal as graduation, and in fact operates like a reverse graduation ceremony.  All of the town officials come to it, and everyone is decked out in their best suit.  The JHS entrance ceremony was so-so, but the ES one was adorable!  I wish that I would have brought my iPhone to it so that I could have taken a few pictures, but I guess there’s always next year.  My former nursery school students are now first graders, and they were the ones being featured in the ceremony.  PRECIOUS!  All of the boys had on their “Sunday best” suits.  It was a tiny little suit jacket and tie on top and black polyester shorts on bottom.  The girls had big puffy dresses.  They all looked like tiny professionals!  ADORABLE!  My goodness, trying to get those kids to sit still long enough to have a serious and formal ceremony was an act of God!  Several sixth graders and the teachers sat beside the class to make sure that no one acted up, but there were still a few that I couldn’t help giggling at! 

At the JHS ceremony, all of the teachers had to go up in front of the student body and town officials.  The Vice Principal read each teacher’s name and what subject he/she taught, and the teacher had to bow and say “Dozo yoroshiku onegaishimasu” (the equivalent of “It’s nice to meet you.”)  It’s a simple phrase that I learned last August when I first got here.  After the ceremony was over, a group of girls came up to me and were like “You can speak Japanese!!!” and asked me to repeat it time and time again.  Ha!  I told them that no, I can’t REALLY speak Japanese, but they were just tickled pink that I could say that. 

This is long.  I’ll stop.