Sakura means spring!

Ah, the sakura.  It’s all the Japanese talk about this time of year.  Sakura are the cherry blossoms and are very important to the culture.  They only bloom for a short period of time, and it represents how short our lives are.  This time of year, there are cherry flavored everything….chips, milk teas, snack crackers, ice cream, cakes, etc.  You name it, and Japan probably has a sakura flavored whatever!  The Japanese even having hanami, or flower viewing parties, in which people pack picnic lunches and spend the day eating and drinking under the cherry blossoms.  The trees are very beautiful….I’m not going to lie.  There are trees blooming by my school (below), and it’s gorgeous!  Krista’s village, Mizukami, is very famous for it’s sakura festival in the spring.  We went there this weekend, and it was absolutely beautiful!  Ian has all of the pictures from Mizukami, and I’ll get him to post some of them on here.

 

The weather has warmed up quite a bit, and it’s really beginning to feel like spring.    It’s spring break for the kids, but don’t get too excited for me.  At home spring break would mean a week away from school for all school employees, but here it doesn’t.  Teachers still have to come to school everyday even though there are absolutely no classes.  I’ve been spending my days pretending to be busy….cleaning my desk, studying Japanese, blogging, emailing, making my April English board, and all kinds of other busy work tasks.  I’m jealous of my friends who have enough vacation time to take time off during this week and next.  I’d love to go somewhere, but alas…..I’m stuck inside a school all day. 

After school on Monday, we headed towards Mary’s house.  She lives in Kuma village right on the Kuma River.  It’s beautiful there!  The village is carved into the mountains.  Ian wanted to take some pictures along the river with the sakura.  While he hasn’t posted those pictures yet, I got a few on my iPhone (below).  We found the perfect spot, and it was so incredibly pretty there!  I love the color of the water.  It’s clear-ish green.  We had dinner at Mary’s house and caught her up on episodes of The Walking Dead that she hadn’t seen yet so that we could all watch the finale together the following night.

  

Tuesday was my last day of nursery school with my current group of kids.  Those kids will graduate and go to the ES in April.  I’m not sure what they were excited about, but they were absolutely wild!  I was happy when I got back to the JHS and could just sit down and not have kids crawling all over me.    Tuesday night we invited Melissa B, Justine, Mary, and Krista over for dinner and to watch the rest of the season of The Walking Dead.  Ian cooked the kangaroo that he ordered and vegetables.  Krista and Mary brought over fruit, and Melissa brought snacks.  We devoured everything.  I’m not sure if we were just hungry or our appetites were voracious as we watched zombies eat up everything.    Justine stayed the night since she had made plans with Ian to go to the city the next day.  It was funny because she kept saying how she didn’t want to take our bed.  The bed she was referring to is a tiny twin size bed that I stopped using in August when Ian arrived.  Haha!  I guess she thought that we’d been cuddling up every night in a twin size bed.

I woke up Wednesday morning and tip-toed around the house in order to not wake up the other two.  Wednesday at work was actually a pretty busy day, and I was just wanting to be left alone!    I had an hour of free time at the beginning of the day, which I used to study Japanese.  At 9:30, everyone had to gather in the gym for a farewell ceremony for all of the teachers who were leaving.  Japan is on a rotation system.  All public employees get rotated in and around different offices so that they can have different work experiences.  Personally, I wouldn’t like it, but the Japanese are used to it.  Teachers have about a week from the time they find out until the time they have to leave as to where they’re going.  In that week, they have to pack up their school stuff (and home stuff if they are placed somewhere that is too far to commute).  From what I can tell, most teachers are just shuffled around in the gun.  I know that at the ES, though, one teacher’s placement was in Kumamoto City and one was as far away as Hiroshima!  I don’t know who makes the decisions about teachers or how they reach those decisions.  Three teachers are leaving Yunomae JHS, the nurse, vice principal, and one of my English teachers, Ms. Fuchita.  I’m sad about her leaving because she was always very nice to me and was enjoyable to work with.  At the ceremony, each teacher was given a bouquet of flowers and had to make a short speech.  After it ended, all of the students and teachers lined up to make a tunnel that the leaving teachers walked through as a one last goodbye.  Ms. Fuchita and Ms. Shimomura, the school nurse, were both crying.  Which leads me to ask once again….why does Japan do this?  Not only is it difficult on the leaving teachers to pack up, say goodbye, get used to a new school, but the staying teachers have to get used to new teachers.  Plus, this happens EVERY YEAR!  Every year, different teachers come and go.  I just really, really don’t understand that process. 

I had another hour to myself in which I worked on making the best farewell construction paper card ever for Ms. Fuchita.    When I gave it to her, we swapped addresses and emails to have each other’s contact info for future purposes.  Then it was lunch time.  All of the women eat together at a communal table.  I’m not a big fan of lunch time at the communal table because I’m a big ball of awkwardness.  I can only understand a little of what everyone’s saying to one another, and when they try to include me in conversations, they speak to me with very basic Japanese/English words, which makes me feel stupid.  I know it’s my fault that I don’t know more Japanese, but I really wish that I could silently eat lunch and enjoy reading my book at my desk.  I know that really makes me sound like a loner…  

After lunch there was a mandatory cleaning time.  All of the teachers had to clean a certain area of the school.  Ms. Fuchita said that I could go with her to the art room.  I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to do, but I swept the heck out of that room for an hour.  After that, I finally had time to sit at my desk and do whatever. 

Whenever I went home that night, it was really quiet.  Since Ian went with Justine, I had the house to myself for a whole night. It was really weird to not have anyone around!  I now know what every other ALT feels, and it’s pretty lonely!  Even if I’m in one room doing something, and he’s in another room, I still KNOW that he’s there.  I guess it’s practice for when he goes home to finish his degree, and I stay here.    I worked out in my flower bed until dark.  I feel like my neighbors might think that I’m crazy.  Since there are so many rocks in the soil, I have to hoe the dirt and then sift it (picture below).  We have makeshift implements for both activities.  Our hoe is more like a pick-ax, and our sifter is a BBQ grate.  Both work well, but it is quite a process!  I did that for about an hour and managed to pull three and a half pales worth of gravel from the dirt, yet I barely even made a dent.  In addition, I was barefoot.  I had shoes on, but dirt and pebbles kept getting in there, so I took them off.  You don’t see many Japanese running around barefoot outside because your feet should remain clean so that you can walk around barefoot or with socks inside.  After it got dark, I went inside to fix dinner and wash dishes.  I ate, made blondies to take to school, and cleaned the kitchen.  It was only 8:30 by the time I finished, so I sat down to watch a little TV and work on my English board for April.