A week of milestones

Last week (as the title suggests) was a week of milestones.

Tuesday was our second anniversary.  It seems crazy to think that it’s been two years already!  We got a couple of cards in the mail, including pictures from my sister that were drawn by my nephews .  My other sister, Amanda, sent us two UK wildcat T-shirts since the second anniversary gift is supposed to be cotton.    My parents sent us a 6-pack of Reece’s.  Mommy knows how much we love Reece’s, and it was a lovely gift, but…….the summer heat didn’t think they needed to be kept in their original shape.  Chocolate melted ALL over the inside of each wrapper.  We had to put them in the refrigerator to re-solidify them. 

What did we do for our anniversary, you might ask.  I hate to disappoint, but it wasn’t anything big or flashy.  I had to work on Tuesday.  I told my second graders at the JHS who I ate lunch with that it was my wedding anniversary, and they clapped for me.  I showed them a few pictures on my IPhone from the wedding, and they seemed sincerely intrigued.  Then I asked if they had girlfriends/boyfriends.  That is always a fun conversation to have because ALL of them VEHEMENTLY deny it, but inevitably someone snitches and tells me the equivalent of “Yuki’s lying! Yuki has a boyfriend!” which leads me to ask who it is.  One of the kids will sneakily point his or her finger to another student across the room while poor Yuki looks absolutely horrified and vehemently denies it.    That game went on for a little while, and for the students who didn’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend, I paired them up together and suggested marriage.    They were really grossed out by that, and as I said “How about you with……you?” and pointed out future partners, they would wrinkle their faces and shake their heads as if to say “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!  NOT HIM/HER!!!!!”  It was a really fun lunch!

That night we had our anniversary dinner—Ian made baked spaghetti, and I had prepared a cake.  Unfortunately, my cake was still a little gooey in the middle, so it sank.    It’s so hard to tell when rice cooker cakes are finished or not!!  We used one jar of the delicious buttercream icing that Ian’s Aunt Margaret sent us, and it really made that cake superb!  Yum!  After that, we watched a movie, and that was our night.  It was honestly a little lame because we didn’t do much. 

Another milestone that I passed is that on June 13th, it was EXACTLY one month until I’ll be home!!!!       I am ridiculously excited about this and think about it at least once a day.  I’ve been making a list of the things that I want to do/see/eat while I’m home.  I know that time will probably go by very, very quickly, but I CAN’T.  WAIT.  The final milestone of last week was that as of July 14th, it is exactly one month until David and Lucy’s wedding.  Hurray!  I’m so happy and excited for them!

You all know how I love to share my dreams, so I wanted to tell about one that I had last week.  I dreamed that I was back in Mr. Anderson’s 7th grade science class at my current age.  We were taking the final, and Mr. Anderson always liked to move the desks around all willy-nilly so that no one had the opportunity to cheat.  I dreamed that he pushed mine against the wall.  After the finals were distributed, I was flipping through the pages looking at all of the questions and couldn’t answer a single one!  Even though I’m twenty-five years old, I couldn’t answer one question on the 7th grade science final, and I was freaking out.   

On Thursday, I had my eikaiwa class.  Last week was elementary students, and I had more students show up than ever before!  Everything was going well, and at the break time one kid leaned into me with a marker in her hand.  I said okay, so she drew on my cheeks.    On one side, I had a Japanese flag (below, left) and on the other was a heart (below, middle).  She allowed me to draw on her cheek (very bottom), and another girl allowed me to “paint” her nails with a marker (below, right).  (I don’t know what kind of ink was in that marker, but I really had to scrub to get it off!!)  When class is finished, I always wait around in the parking lot for the parents to pick up the kids with Hiromi (the Japanese lady who helps me with the class).  After all of the kids left, she went back to her car and called me over.  She had got me a sweet anniversary gift.    Hiromi is really good with arts and crafts and had made an artificial flower arrangement.  It was very sweet of her!! 

  

I wrote in previous blogs about how nice the weather was even though it is currently rainy season.  Last Friday proved me wrong.  IT. RAINED. ALLLLLLLLL. DAY.  It was just that heavy driving rain that NEVER STOPPED.  It was miserable.  It started on Thursday night and didn’t end until Sunday morning.  There was no break…..just HEAVY.  DRIVING.  RAIN.

We had a wonderful weekend, but I think I’ll end here and save that for the next blog.  Continue reading, my dear blog followers! 

A sense of despair mixed with hopelessness…

Good day, fellow blog readers.  I haven’t written a post this week because (as I’m sure most of you know) Ian and I have been in the city attempting to get our Japanese driver’s license.  I’ve still got to write about last week and this past weekend (both of which were great!) but now I want to write about something that is fresh on my mind.  Also, writing it down is cathartic.  Even though I want to cry/scream/set the Menkyo Center (Japanese DMV) on fire/take the next flight home, etc when I think about the driver’s license process, writing about it is a way for me to deal with the ridiculousness of it all. 

I burned through two days of vacation on Monday and Tuesday attempting to get my license (yep, VACATION DAYS).  Ian and I drove up on Sunday night and stayed at Rebeca’s house.  She lives in Nishihara, a very easy twenty minute drive from the Menkyo Center.  We had to be there by 9:30 that morning so that Ian could do his paperwork and take the written test since he couldn’t last time.  This time for his proof of residency, he had one of his previous employers write a letter stating the dates that he worked there.  They ALMOST didn’t accept it, though.    Once he got through the paperwork, he took his vision and written test.  After he came back from the testing rooms, he told me “You’d seriously have to be blind and just stupid to not pass either of those tests.”  I agree!!! 

The course that day was course one.  We both walked the course during the lunch break, memorizing it, mentally telling ourselves where we should turn on blinkers, remembering the procedures for the crank and S-curve.  I felt less nervous that day but still pretty anxious.  There were three other people taking it with us, one other ALT, Joel, a young Japanese girl, and some Vietnamese guy.  The driving instructors split Ian and I up to avoid the confusion of there being two Reed-sans.  In my car was Joel, the Vietnamese guy, and me.  The guys went first, and I had to wait and watch.  That period of waiting was really stressful.  Even now as I’m reflecting on my emotions at the time, I’m feeling anxiety.  First up was the Vietnamese guy in my car and the Japanese girl in Ian’s car.  My gosh……to watch both of them take the test was PAINFUL.  I’ve learned to notice the ridiculous things that the instructors pay attention to, like not hugging the curb and could tell that they weren’t going to pass.  The girl curbed it going into the S-curve (automatic failure), and the guy ran the red light.  They let me ride in the car when Joel took his test and then we switched seats.  My palms started sweating at this part.  I thought that I had done a decent job with the test and feeling pretty good once I got out of the car.

Ian was already waiting for us back in the cubical area where they tell you the results.  He knew that he hadn’t passed because he had crossed the center line.  He said that all was going well, but then he had a brain fart and tried to drive on the right side of the road like we do in the States.    (This is how stressful it is!  You forget silly common sense stuff like driving on LEFT side of the road!) 

The Vietnamese guy got his results first: failure.  Joel was second: even though he messed up once or twice, he passed.    Good for him!  I was last: failure.  This time the guy told me that I checked my mirrors TOO much and wasn’t hugging the curb enough.  I didn’t think I would cry again, but I did.  It’s just so disappointing to think that you did a good job on something only to have someone come back and tell you that you failed!    It was even more embarrassing this time because the other two guys were sitting there watching me bawl like a baby.  The Vietnamese guy was sweet and offered me a piece of gum.    We had to fill out a bit more paperwork and then got the heck out of there.  (I’m pretty sure that there is a perpetual cloud that hangs over the Menkyo Center.  Each time I’ve been there, the weather has been crappy.  I don’t believe that the sun EVER shines there.)

Our bad luck wasn’t quite over yet.  Last week we found out that Ian didn’t have the proper paperwork for his job, so we had to go to the Immigration Office in the city to sort it out.  Since Ian is here on a dependent visa, he’s allowed to work up to twenty-eight hours per week without a work permit.  That’s no big deal because he works less than that, so we thought he was okay.  His employer didn’t say anything about additional paperwork, so we assumed all was right in the world.  Nope.  Ian has to get “permission” from the Japanese government to work.  After waiting in cross-town traffic for an hour, we were told at Immigration that the paperwork wasn’t complete and that he needed to go to his employer and get a contract stating the dates that he would work.  Luckily Ian’s employer’s office is just a block away from the Immigration Office, so we walked there. 

His boss, who is a very nice guy, said something like “Oops.  Yeah, we should have made you fill out that paperwork.  Our bad.”    He printed off a contract and gave Ian another paper to take back to Immigration.  The bright spot of all of this was that I got to meet Ian’s co-workers.  His boss is very nice, and the other two co-workers seemed so incredibly happy to have Ian working with them.  Nishiki would be quite a distance for them to drive to teach these classes, and Ian is always willing to do more work when they ask him to.  One of the ladies in the office spoke fluent English AND Spanish and tried to speak with me in Spanish.  It was a COMPLETE brain scramble for me to speak SPANISH to a JAPANESE lady.    The words coming out of my mouth were this hybrid Spanish/Japanese/English combination.  It seriously hurt my brain.   

We drove to the mall to do a little aimless wandering/souvenir shopping to kill time before dinner.  We found a great tea shop and were browsing through the teas when the clerk asked us if we wanted to try some of the tea.  Most of it was green tea (which I think tastes like boiled grass ), but she offered us this green tea that was cold and sweet.  It was actually really good!!  Without giving away too many details, I will say that we bought a few things in that store for one lucky member of our family.   

Our plans that night were to meet Rebeca and Yuusuke at Reef Burger, but our bad luck seemed to follow us even there.  It was closed.  The owner had left a note on the door saying that he was taking a catering delivery that night.    I felt bad for Rebeca and Yuusuke because they drove about forty-five minutes out of their way to get there only for it to be closed.    We went to a sushi conveyer belt restaurant close to Reef Burger.  While I’m not a big fan of sushi, the restaurant was pretty cool.  If you ordered something, it was delivered on this express conveyer belt by a sliding horse thing.  It was awesome.

Day two at the Menkyo Center didn’t prove to be much better.  This is how much stress is placed on me to get my license: I’m finding gray hairs in my head, several pimples have formed little red dots on my face, and (bonus!) I have a fever blister. Ugh.  We didn’t have to be there until 11:30 since all of our paperwork was taken care of.  Before we walked the course at lunch, I went to the bathroom where I got a total and complete stare down by some lady.  I’m not sure who she was or if she was slow, but she was STARING at me like the little kids do.  I wanted to tell her to take a picture so that it would last longer. 

The Vietnamese guy from the previous day was back again, and we talked to him a bit, saying how ridiculous this whole process is and what we’d have to do to pass.  He told us that that day was his SIXTH attempt and that if he doesn’t pass by the end of this week, his job would make him move. 

It was just the three of us taking the test that day, and I was first.  I really thought that everything was going well.  I was putting on my blinker in the right spots, checking my blind spots, and everything else….until I curbed it ever so slightly coming out of the crank.  I felt the car go up on the curb, and before I could stop and back up off the curb, the car was already off.  It was barely even on the curb.  However, that was automatic failure.  It was like my world crumbled at that moment.  I KNEW I had failed, and it was COMPLETELY my fault.  Once again, I couldn’t control it, and started bawling in the car.  I think the instructor felt bad, but he killed the engine and told me to return to the parking area.  I was in tears when I got out of the car.  I was angry at myself.  It’s one thing to do a good job and then be told that you failed, but to know that I actually DID screw up devastated me.  

Back in the cubical area, the guy was nice but politely told us the results of all three driving tests today: failure.  Ian and the Vietnamese guy weren’t close enough to the curb, but I, of course, was.    All of us were emotionally wrecked.  I was crying, Ian was angry, and the Vietnamese guy hung his head in disappointment.  I know that it was immature, but I felt very justified in doing it.  On one of the papers I had to fill out, in tiny little letters at the top of the page I wrote: FU.  I doubt anyone will notice it, but it definitely made me feel better.  Ian later confessed to me that while walking the course, he dropped a booger there.  It’s the little things that allow us to get back at the Menkyo Center…….

After that, we went to the Immigration Office again with the new paperwork where we got MORE bad news.  The office will send us a post card within two weeks time to confirm our address.  Once we get that, Ian needs to return with the post card, more papers, and his passport to the Immigration Office to confirm his employment.  That would totally be fine IF IAN WASN’T LEAVING THE COUNTRY NEXT FRIDAY.  Hopefully the post card will come early and Ian will have time to go back up to the city, but if not, I’m not sure what we’ll do. 

After alllll of that, we were just angry/disappointed/sad/resentful/pissed at the current situations and hardly talked at all on the way home.  Neither of us wanted to say anything and just wanted to get home.  We made plans to eat dinner with some friends that night, knowing that hanging out with them would definitely comfort us.  Being able to complain about Japan, this process, and all of the ridiculousness of it with people who are going through the same thing and understand our frustrations was exactly what we needed. 

Anyway, I know this was a long post, but there are was a lot that I needed to say.    Ian’s going back to try again next Tuesday with Melissa B, and I’m going next Friday for my final attempt.  That will be my last vacation day for the year, so if I don’t get it then, I have to wait until I have new days in August.  I could use a prayer right now, so if you think of me, please say one!

Another wonderful weekend!

After the horrible day that we had dealing with the driver’s license test, we had one amazing weekend.  On Saturday morning, I rode my bike to pick up something that I’ve wanted to have to breakfast for a long time….cereal.  Not the only option of corn flakes or chocolate corn flakes but the “snack” cereal that I was talking about a few blogs back (picture below).  Ian and I had a wonderfully delicious chocolate cereal breakfast while we Skyped David and Lucy.  We talked to them for nearly two hours and switched to Jessica, who we haven’t talked to in a while.

Ian had to go to work that afternoon.  Originally, I was going to ride to Nishiki with him and hang out with Justine, but Rebeca and Yuusuke were spending the night with us that night, and I needed to prepare dinner and pick up a bit.  They drove down for a rafting trip that Krista had planned.  (Ian wanted to go, but he had to work, and I wanted to save the money for next month when we’ll be home.)  While Ian was at work, I cleaned the house (after we got home on Friday night, we threw our things everywhere) while watching episodes of Toddlers and Tiaras. (Please don’t judge.  I already hate myself for doing that.  )  Ian was supposed to be home by 5PM or so, but he went to Justine’s house to help her put in her new screen door.  Therefore, I went ahead and started dinner, fajitas.  Ian’s Aunt Margaret sent us a couple of packages of tortillas last week, so we saw it fitting to use the crap out of them. 

We had originally said we’d have dinner at 6PM, but Rebeca and Yuusuke didn’t finish their rafting adventure until about then, and they were an hour away from Yunomae, and Justine actually beat Ian home!   Even though we ate a little later than planned, it was a fabulous meal that we all enjoyed.  We watched Snow White and the Huntsman afterwards.  I have heard really good things about that movie and was looking forward to watching it…..however, we got a very crappy copy of it.    I liked it, but everyone else was a bit disappointed with it.  I’ll admit that Kristen Stewart is a crappy actress and tends to just stare at the screen, but I still thought it was good.

Sunday morning I woke up early despite the fact that I didn’t have to go to work.  I really hate doing that!  On the mornings when I want to sleep in, I can’t, and on the days that I can, my body won’t let me!    Ian calls me an old person, but I’m a light sleeper, so when I see the sunlight (which starts rising around 5:15) I wake up.  I usually wake up a couple of times each morning before I actually get up.  Anyway, I tossed and turned in bed for a bit, unwilling to wake up the other sleepy heads, so I turned my computer on and played around on it until everyone else woke up. 

I made toad-in-the-hole for breakfast as we plotted our day: swimming somewhere.  I tried to text and call Mary, Melissa B, and Justine to see if any of them wanted to go as well, but none of them answered their phones!   Rebeca started studying Japanese, and Yuusuke was helping her with that while Ian stalked Melissa and Justine via Skype to get ahold of them.  One of the town announcements went off, and both Rebeca and Yuusuke were surprised that we had our very own announcement box in our house.  We told them that we had unplugged it because it was annoying going off all of the time!  Plus, we always joke and say that the announcements are probably silly things like “The women’s club will not meet tonight.  Attention: the women’s club will not meet tonight.”    Yuusuke actually listened to the announcement and said that monkeys had been seen in the area and was warning people not to engage them.  (Monkeys might seem cute, but I never, ever, EVER want to be close to one.  They will seriously tear your face off!!)  I know that there are monkeys living in the mountains around here, but I’ve never seen one in our neck of the woods.  Krista, who lives about five minutes away from us in Mizukami, said that she saw monkeys on her roof the other day!    Ha, ha!

Once Justine and Melissa came to Yunomae, we loaded up the cars, took some snacks, and went out to have a lovely swimming day.  We had two options: the pretty bridge place (not actually sure what the name is) or the lake.  Although the pretty bridge place is beautiful and has a rope swing, it’s a pretty popular spot for swimming, and we didn’t really want to be the loud, obnoxious foreigners coming in and ruining other swimmers’ day, so we went to the lake.  The lake is actually more of a big pond fed by a mountain stream off a tiny gravel road.  Had I not gone there with my ES students on a field trip when I first got here, I would have NO idea of its existence! 

It was a GORGEOUS summer day for swimming.  Even though it’s rainy season, we’ve been extremely fortunate with the weather.  I thought that rainy season would be a hard driving rain all day, every day.  With the exception of a few days, it hasn’t been at all like that, and actually the rivers and lakes are very LOW for this time of year.  Even though it was hot, the water was still a little chilly.  We swam, skipped rocks, ate snacks, and then explored.  Justine captured some tadpoles in a water bottle and said that she was going to raise them until they turned to frogs.    Melissa, Rebeca, and I laid out on the rocky beach while the boys attempted to damn the river.  (Why do ALL guys try to do this?!?)  At one point in time, Ian was bent over standing on the edge of the river.  I could not help myself.  I seized the opportunity and shoved him in.    We all laughed about it, but I immediately regretted it because I KNEW he’d do the same to me.  I tried to run away and beg for forgiveness, but he caught up to me and threw me in the river.  However, the joke was on him because as he threw me in, I dragged him down with me, and he hit his knee on a rock in the river.

Whenever we finished goofing off, we decided it was time for a meal and made our way back to Yunomae to one of the few restaurants in town, Tokumaru.  The food there is delicious, relatively cheap, and they make the BEST curry bread!  Melissa was being her typical courteous self and pouring water for everyone, but we were being sarcastic little brats and drinking it as fast as possible so that she’d have to continuously pour.  This backfired on me because when she realized what was going on, I started laughing mid-swallow, which caused me to choke.  I spit my water out in my cup and proceeded to gulp for air for the next couple of minutes.    It was a little scary and funny at the same time because I was simultaneously thinking that I was dying and laughing.    Our sweet waitress noticed that I had spit up the water, and she brought me a new glass without having to ask for it! 

After we enjoyed our dinner, everyone went their separate ways, and Ian and I went home.  I decided to pick up—wash the dishes and a load of clothes, fold the ones that had been hanging—and then cap off the night with a double feature and try not to think that another wonderful weekend was over and it would be back to work on Monday.    Living over here would be so much more fun if it was a constant vacation!