Let the games begin…..

Ian and I decided to have a little friendly competition.  He joined a self-motivating website, Fitocracy, which gives you points for your workout.  The points are arbitrary and do nothing other than hopefully motivate you to get more points.  ………that’s EXACTLY what it did for us!  Ian posted his workout on Facebook on Wednesday afternoon, and I saw it.  When I got home, I asked him about Fitocracy, and he told me how to get it.  I asked him how he got that many points, and my goal automatically became to beat his points.  I didn’t care what I had to do, I just wanted to beat him.  Therefore, I hopped on my bike and sped away for a little while which resulted in a 107 point workout.  Woot!    I achieved my goal.  Before the night was over, we got the ball rolling to have a little friendly competition.

We’re going to track our workouts for a month.  Whoever gets the most points at the end of thirty days wins.  Game on.  I don’t care what I have to do.  If it means riding my bike for two hours a day, I’m game.  Ian is so cocky and completely in disbelief that I can beat him, so I have a ridiculously strong desire to prove him wrong.  The kid is going DOWN!    I know how he operates.  He’ll go strong on this for a few days and then give up or forget about it.  That’s when I’ll step up and BEAT HIM!  WOOT!

So….exactly how serious are Japanese students when it comes to school?  This should give you some indication.  One of my JHS boys broke two (not one but TWO) fingers on his right hand.  They are his middle and ring fingers.  I’m not sure how that would be handled in a school in the States, but I’ll tell you right now that there is absolutely no pity for him in Japan.  Even though he has this HUGE bandage/brace thing splinting two of his fingers (It’s huge and obnoxious.  It’s probably about the size of a 4X6 index card), he’s still expected to hold his pencil and complete all of his work.  I watched him struggle to grip his pencil and write, feeling sorry for the kid the whole time.    Poor kid!   

This weekend is my elementary school’s sports festival.  Too bad a typhoon is going to blow through and potentially cancel it!    If that happens, I’ll feel really bad for all of the kids and teachers.  They have worked SO.  FREAKING.  HARD.  preparing for this, and I hate for one little act of nature to snub them.    Even now as I write this, I can hear them practicing across the street outside on the field.  I know that it will be rescheduled for another date, but I’m sure that all of the teachers and students are both excited and just really, really ready to have it over with. 

It is exactly one week from the date to when we pick up Margaret in Osaka!  Woo-hoo!!!  I’m really excited to have another visitor in Yunomae.  Just like when Mommy was here, it’ll be nice to show her around and have her be able to put names to faces and understand where we live and what it’s like to live here.  One week!!   

That’s all for now.  Enjoy the weekend.  For those of you in Paducah, enjoy BBQ on the River.  Please eat a BBQ sandwich, fried Twinkie, and cheesecake on a stick for me! *stomach growls*………

Chinese affairs

In case you haven’t heard, China and Japan are currently having a pretty heated argument between themselves.  It’s about a couple of islands in the middle of the ocean.  A Japanese business man privately own them, but then he decided he didn’t want them anymore, so he sold them to China.  Japan decided that since a Japanese person owned them, they should technically belong to Japan.  China said “Um, no.”  ……….and the argument began.

I’ve said it before: China and Japan don’t exactly get along.  Japan hates China, and China hates Japan.  I’ve talked about the racism that EVEN my elementary kids have toward China.  (For example, today the lesson in sixth grade was about countries of the world.  We played a game in which kids had to “be” countries.  The kids who were assigned to be China IMMEDIATELY got laughed at….ie….”HA! HA! HA! You have to be China!  That really stinks!”)  There’s a pretty long history between the two countries with some deep seeded hated. 

So what’s on the islands?  It’s got to be valuable if these two powerhouses are fighting over them, right?  WRONG.  The islands are tiny little spits of land in the middle of the sea.  Nothing is there.  No one lives there.  There are no natural resources. It is simply something for these two countries to fight over……and fighting they are doing!  If you’ve seen anything online or on the news, then you know Japanese sentiment in China is at an all time low.  It’s horrible.  There are MASSIVE demonstrations in some of the larger cities.  Japanese owned businesses are having the windows knocked in or even worse damage.  People driving Japanese cars (Toyota or Honda) are finding their cars beaten, turned over, or burned simply for just driving a Japanese car.  Chinese shops are hanging signs that read “Dogs are welcomed but no Japanese.”  It’s bad.  It’s really bad!  I haven’t seen anything like that here, (other than the blatant racism that EVERYONE seems to have toward China) but I do live in the boonies.  I’m sure there’s not a lot of demonstrating in the Chinese boonies either!

Speaking of China, we fly through it both to and from Australia.  It wasn’t until AFTER we booked our tickets that we noticed that we have to change airports in Shanghai.  Since we have to do that, we have to obtain Chinese travel visas.    We’re going to be in China for less than twenty-four hours, but we have to have freaking visas simply for the fact that we’re changing airports.  If the Chinese visa was cheap and easy to obtain, (like our Australian visas) you probably wouldn’t hear me whine nearly as much.  The Chinese visa FOR EVERY OTHER NATIONALITY is $40.  HOWEVER, for Americans, it is $140!!       In order to get this visa, we have to physically go to the nearest Chinese embassy in Fukuoka.  The cost to get to Fukuoka with gas and tolls (not counting the actual visa) is easily $100.  We can only do that Monday-Friday…..therefore, we have to take time off from work.  It is $140 for the visa, and it takes four days to obtain.  You have to leave your passport in their office and pick it up four days later.  If you want to have the visa processed on the same day, you can, but that’s an extra $30.  Do you understand my frustration now!?!?    Ian did a little research and found out that he can take my passport and paperwork and hopefully take care of mine so that I won’t have to take off of work.  Melissa B. has Monday off of work, so they are going to Fukuoka together on Monday to try to tackle this beast. 

It is important to see the bright side of any situation.  For example, it doesn’t matter what type of visa you get.  It’s all $140.  If you get a year’s travel visa, it’s $140.  If you get a “transit” visa good for up to forty-eight hours in China, it’s the same price.  We said that if we’re going to pay that much money, we might as well get the year visa and go back some other time before the visa expires!  We also said that instead of spending the night in the Shanghai airport like originally planned, we’re going to hit up the city.  Even if we just go out for dinner, we’re going to enjoy China!  We paid for it, so might as well!    So…..not only are we going to Australia….we’re going to China over winter break.  Woo-hoo!

In other related random news, I took the train the other day from Yunomae to Nishiki and met Ian there after work.  While on the train, high schoolers always get on and off in Taragi and Asagiri.  Every time I ride the train to meet Ian, I get stares and giggles as if they’ve never seen a foreigner!  I know that they have to have an ALT at their schools….or at least in their towns.  So it seems like they shouldn’t have to stare…yet they do.  One kid was brazen enough to come up to me and said (in English) “Where are you from?”  I told him “I’m from America,” but I wish I would have told him that in Japanese.  It probably would have blown his mind!!   

Autumn has definitely arrived in Japan.  Ever since that last typhoon blew through, it’s been a lot cooler.  Ian and I have been closing the windows at night because it gets just a little too chilly for our tastes.  I’ve been hearing the it’s down to the mid-30s at home at night, and it’s not even close to being that cold here.  The lowest it has been is maybe 50 or 60.  In the morning the air is crisp, but then by afternoon it’s back to being hot.  It’s much better than the humidity of August and bone chilling wind of January, though!

That’s all for now, guys!  Thanks for reading and keeping up with our lives! 

Sports festival season

The end of September and beginning of October in Japan is sports festival season.  Last year, I spent three weekends back-to-back-to-back attending sports festivals on Sundays.  They’re fun, but they do kill a whole day.  This year I asked my supervisor if I get compensation time this year for going to them, (many ALTs do) but she said no, so this year my game plan is to just go for a few hours so that I can still have the greater part of a day to myself.  Last weekend was my nursery school sports festival, this weekend is my elementary school’s, and next weekend is my town’s.

The elementary kids have been practicing non-stop for the past three weeks for this event.  Seriously.  The JHS is right beside the ES, and often my JHS students are EXTREMELY distracted by the ES students practicing on the field.  Gack!  The kids practice during school hours, so classes will be canceled so that they can practice marching, running races and relays, their dances, etc.    The kids have even been staying later at school to practice, practice, practice.  This is a serious event!! 

Last week and this week at the ES, I haven’t had any classes in the morning, so I’ve gone outside to watch the kids practicing.  It’s so funny to watch the progression of abilities.  For example, at the beginning of the festival, each class has to march onto the field.  The fifth and sixth graders are impeccable with their marching skills and look like little Army soldiers.  Their movements are crisp, everyone’s right legs and left lefts lift in unison, and their arms swing with absolute precision.  Then we get to the fourth grade.  They are less coordinated, but still pretty good.  The third graders following behind them are beginning to get a little less coordinated with some kids out of step.  The second graders following behind them try, but there is nothing militaristic about their march.  It’s mostly just kids walking, turning around to talk to their friends, waving at me as they pass, etc.  Finally…..the first graders (bless their hearts!) have absolutely NO organization to their movements and are lucky to keep straight marching lines.  It’s very interesting to see the amazing precision of the fifth and sixth graders and the general regression all the way down to the cute little first graders. 

Ian got a very strange piece of mail last week.  We have a mail slot, and I usually collect the mail as I come in after work.  Last week we received a letter from the Social Security Administration.  Yes, you read that right.  The AMERICAN SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION.  As in they mailed it from their office in Washington DC all the way to tiny little Yunomae, Japan.  Ian and I both had the same reaction: 1) OH NO!!  WHAT DID WE DO WRONG?!?!  2) HOW DID THEY FIND US?!?!  Both of us were completely confused, so we ripped open the letter only to find out that it was basically junk mail.    Whew!  It was a letter to explain how much Ian had paid into Social Security (……and how he would never see that money again…..).  We weren’t exactly sure why it was necessary for the SSA to mail us that letter all the way to Japan, but they did!!

I forgot to mention a great story from my eikaiwa last Thursday night.  In a previous blog, I described how we played Scattergories, and it was a great experience.  We also played a game in which one person pulled a question from a bag and had to answer it.  I wrote about a few of my favorite questions and answers, but there was one in particular that I forgot to mention.  The question was, “What made you want to learn English?”  Both older women in my class said so that they could communicate to foreigners and travel the world.  My younger student said that her ALT in JHS really inspired her.  She really liked her ALT and wanted to be able to communicate with her more, so she wanted to learn more English.  I was absolutely amazed with this response!    I can only hope that I am inspiring students to do the same.  I feel like A LOT of my students are very disenfranchised with studying English because it is so difficult to learn and the WAY the students are taught (through brute memorization) isn’t exactly easy.  If I can inspire just a few students to continue to study English and actually WANT to learn it, I feel like I’m doing my job!     

Last Friday in my first grade class, there were about fifteen minutes at the end of class that needed to be filled.  Mr. Fujiwara turned to me and asked for my idea.  While I hate playing it, I suggested Hangman because there is absolutely no prep work that needs to be done for Hangman.  It’s quick and easy.  They only downside is that I have to play with my first graders, a class of thirty-five with ONLY six girls.  To say that that class is full of pubescent teenage angst and hormones is and UNDERSTATEMENT.  I dislike playing Hangman because inevitably the letters S-E-X WILL INDEED be guessed.  Whenever I see the direction the letters are going, (for example S and E have been guessed) I MAKE SURE to pick a student who WON’T be stupid and guess X.  However, I think the kids try to spell other dirty words.  To me, it just looks like a random combination of letters, but whenever I hear giggles, I know that I’ve spelled a bad word.   UUUUUGGGGHHHHHH!!!  I HATE Hangman!  There is no winning to that game!!

I’ll stop here, but no worries!  I have a free afternoon and lots more to write about, so let’s hope that I’ll have the time (and ability to not get distracted on Facebook!) to complete another blog! 

A lesson on pierced ears…

Last Tuesday there was a demonstration at school for the science teacher.  Demonstrations are like classroom observations.  Sometimes it’s just one person from the BOE observing, sometimes it’s just the teachers at the school observing, and sometimes it’s a whole group of people from the BOE IN ADDITION to all of the teachers at school.  I hate demonstrations.  I hate watching them, and I (even worse) hate having to perform one.  (I have one next Monday.  ) 

I digress—here’s the thing about demonstrations.  Since all of the teachers are in the same room watching one teacher’s lesson, what happens to all of the other students at the JHS?  ……they continue to have class!    Whatever class they were scheduled to have, they have it.  For example, if they were scheduled to have math class, the math teacher gathers together work for them complete and leaves them alone to do it.  Here’s the crazy thing…..THEY ACTUALLY DO IT!!  Imagine how well that would work in the States!!  Spoiler alert:   IT WOULDN’T!  A) Teachers are NOT allowed to leave students alone in class, and B) students would sooooooooooooooooooo not work for the entire period.  They’d see it as goof off time and play around instead!  Say it’s not true!  In Japan, I’m sure that there were a few class clowns or sleepers in those classes, but you better believe that they did indeed do the work they were assigned!!

The demonstration was conducted completely in Japanese—duh.  I didn’t know exactly what it was about, but I knew it was some science experiment.  Halfway through the demonstration, the guy from the BOE came over to me and asked where I was from (in Japanese).  I responded (in Japanese).  He then tried to continue a conversation with me but soon realized that I had NO idea what he was saying.  He then switched to English, saying  "What do you use for this experiment in America?”  and then wrote down on the paper the name of the chemical being used: pulmeric acid.   A few things were wrong with this conversation.   A) Even though it was in English, I have no idea what pulmeric acid is or what it does.  B) I only had a vague idea what the experiment was about.  C)  Even if I could understand the Japanese and follow along with the demonstration, I doubt I would be able to tell this guy what we use in the States.  I hate math and science.  Therefore, what did I do?  I said, “The same.  Pulmeric acid.”  He nodded and wrote something down.  Hopefully this will not come back to haunt me. 

I ate lunch that day with my first graders at the JHS.  I have a love/hate relationship with that class.  Sometimes they’re awesome, and sometimes I want to run from that class screaming.  That day was a good day.  I was playing with my earring, and I noticed one of the kids staring.  I asked him if he liked my earring.  He said yes.  Then I took out my earring and pretended to pierce his own.    He backed up soooooooooo far away from me that I thought he was going to fall out of his chair!  I told the kids that I got my ears pierced when I was six, and they DID NOT believe me.  Their minds were blown.  (In Japan, students aren’t allowed to wear jewelry to school.  The EARLIEST a kid can get his or her ears pierced is after high school when he or she is eighteen.)  They turned to their homeroom teacher and said something like:

Students: “Melissa-sensei said that she got her ears pierced when she was six in America.  That’s not true, is it?”

Teacher: “Um, yeah.  If that’s what Melissa-sensei says, then yeah.”

Students: “EEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH?????”

Me:   

That afternoon after school, I went to the grocery.  I’m not sure if it was national “Smile and Wave at the Foreigner Day” or what, but it seemed like everyone and their mother was smiling and waving at me.  It was sweet and nice…and always makes me feel welcome in town.  However, I’ve been here for over a year, and I’m still amazed at the amount of people and students who are surprised to see me at the super market shopping, riding my bike through town, or whatever.  Yo, guys….I live here, too!!  

It’s almost lunch time here, so I’ll end here and try to churn out another blog this afternoon so that I can get caught up.  I hate being in this perpetual state of catching up!!

WINNING!

Not to sound like Charlie Sheen, but I was totally WINNING! at my eikaiwa (Thursday adult night) class last night.  I feel like I finally found my groove in that class.  Hurray!  I have three students in that class.  The first is an older lady who doesn’t know a lot of English and mostly speaks in Japanese.  The next is a lady who works in some shape or form for the BOE.  Although she is active in both my adult and children classes, I think she’s also there to make sure that I’m actually doing my job.  She’s really nice, and I’m glad that she’s there because she often acts as a go-between and translator if there’s a language barrier.  The last student is relatively new.  She’s a little younger than us, speaks English pretty well, and is really sweet.  Since April, I’ve tried a few different ways of communication in class, but the standard was to pick a topic, print out a handout with some questions about that topic, and answer the questions in class.  Conversation would generally stray off topic, but there were a lot of awkward pauses, and sometimes conversation was very strained.  I would have to make small talk……something that I’m not very good at. 

Therefore….I tried a new approach!!  One of my TEFL units mentioned turning everyday fun games into learning games.  Their examples were Pictionary, Monopoly, Scrabble, and Scattergories.  I.  Freaking.  Love.  Scattergories.  Why I never thought to play this game before is beyond me!!!  I used to play this game with my sister, Amanda, a lot, and my gosh…we were competitive with one another!!  We’d really stretch our answers with some of the categories and give answers that would get us double or triple the points just so that we could beat one another. 

Since I don’t have the actual game here in Japan, I created my own version of it.  I used simple categories like “food”, “foreign cities”, “boy’s name”, “five letter word”, “something in this room”, etc.  Then someone had to draw a letter.  Whatever letter we got, we had to think of a word that began with that letter for each category.  I didn’t explain the rule about doubling the points by coming up with a power word (for example: “food” with the letter C = chocolate chip cookies = 3 points) or that if two people have the same answer, the point doesn’t count.  Actually, we didn’t even keep score.  It was just fun to play! 

I set the timer for five minutes and told them to get as many categories as possible.  If they didn’t finish or couldn’t think of a word, it was fine.  I told them to just do their best!  ……and I was really surprised with the results!  It was difficult for them, but it was a GOOD challenge.  Everyone had a really good time!!!  Bonus: since I was playing with non-native speakers, it made me feel like a rock star.    Even though we weren’t keeping score, I was rocking out each round. 

We played three rounds of Scattergories before taking a break and changing games.  Next, I had prepared slips of paper with conversation starters on it.  For example, I had questions and fill-in-the-blanks such as “Who is your role model?” and “If I had 1,000,000,000 yen, I would….”  One by one, each person was required to answer the question that she chose.  Then we went around in the circle and answered that question.  Three questions that I found especially fun were:

1) “What is your favorite thing about Yunomae?”:  All responses had something to do with either the nice people or the scenery.

2) Responses to the “If I had 1,000,000,000 yen, I would…..” statement all revolved around traveling, so we all agreed that if one of us obtained 1,000,000,000 yen, she would take all of us on a trip around the world. 

3) “What is your favorite season?”: There were four people last night, and four different responses for this answer.  The oldest lady said winter, the other lady said fall, I said summer, and the other girl said spring.  Together we made the four seasons!

After that class, I seriously felt on top of the world!  I FINALLY figured out how to stimulate good conversation!  I’m saying goodbye to the little printouts with questions and hello to fun new games!  Scrabble, Apples to Apples, Kuma-gun version of Monopoly, and anything else that I can think of….watch out!  Here I come!      

The wind huffed and puffed but didn’t blow our house down!

Greetings, loved ones.  I have neglected my blogging duty this week.  Monday was a holiday, and Tuesday and Wednesday were busy days at school.  Sorry!  So there’s lots to catch up on…..

First, the weekend started off amazingly.  Ian, Melissa, and I were looking for cheap tickets to Australia for winter break last week, and the lowest we could find were about $1,100.    Not exactly cheap.  (However, whenever you consider the fact that flying from Nashville to Sydney, Australia is right at $3,000/ticket, it does indeed seem like quite the discount!)  Melissa and I were having a good rivalry of who could find the cheapest ticket.  I found one for $1,139, and then she found a $1,128 ticket.  I found a $1,118 ticket, and then she found a $1,116 ticket.  Grrrr….friendly competition!    Friday morning she emailed me and found the cheapest ticket yet.  It was something like $1,105.  I HAD to use my competitive spirit and BEAT her!  A simple search on Kayak, Travelocity, and Vayama resulted in the best price….$785.29.  I couldn’t believe it!  I double checked the times, dates, and cities flying to and from just to make sure.  The only downside was that we wouldn’t get back until January 7th (a Monday) and would have to take another vacation day for that.  I immediately emailed it to Melissa and Ian, asking them to look at it and make sure that I was seeing things correctly.  Melissa replied back with a simple email: “BOOK.  NOW.”    Between Ian, Melissa, and I, we emailed each other back and forth about thirty times that morning confirming that each of us could get off the additional day and that everything would work out.  The first thing I did when I got home on Friday afternoon was to whip out my American Express and charge three plane tickets to it.  HURRAY!  WE’RE GOING TO AUSTRALIA!

The only downside is that Ian has to work on December 24th, so we can’t leave until the 25th.  However, it actually works out better that way because the flights are much cheaper.  We’ll just spend Christmas a little differently this year…..on a plane!    (Next year, though, I PROMISE we’ll be home for Christmas!)  Our flights take us through Shanghai.  Woot!  While I doubt we’ll leave the airport, I guess I could technically say that I’ve been to China.  We have an overnight layover there on the way back, and we thought about spending the night out on the town, but Chinese visas for American citizens are a pain in the butt to get.  Not only would we have to jump through a couple of hoops, but travel visas for China are EXPENSIVE.  For every other nationality it’s $40.  For Americans it’s $140.  I don’t know why, but I do know that none of us want to pay that amount so that we can spend just one night out on the town.

After my happy, happy, joy, joy time of buying tickets, I decided to use that happy energy for a walk.  I laced up my shoes, grabbed my headphones, and went outside.  I felt a drop or two of rain and contemplated if I actually should go or not.  After deciding yes, I rounded the corner of my house only to see a giant black cloud rolling into town and decided to simply turn around and give up.  I plucked a few weeds from my tomato garden (I have many more little green tomatoes ripening!! ) before the pouring rain drove me in.  I actually thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t an idiot and gone for the walk because I would have been SOAKED.  It was a HUGE thunderstorm preceding the typhoon with thunder and lightning.  The thunder was so loud and fierce that it shook some of the windows.  Crazy!!

On Sunday we went to Kumamoto City for the Drunken Horse Festival with Margo, Melissa, Mary, Yuusuke, Hiro, and Ikumi.  Originally this festival was a celebration of some Japanese victory over Korea. The people in the parade would get the horses drunk, march them through the streets, and then slaughter them at the shrine.  Things are a little more tame this day and age.  The horses are no longer drunk nor do they die at the end.  Instead….the whole parade is an excellent excuse for parade-goers to get completely wasted.  Everyone in the parade is completely drunk and continues to drink throughout the day.  In fact there are three sections of each group that parades by:

1) the horse, decorated with ropes, robes, ribbons, and other things

2) the group—people who have volunteered their day to dance and be excited about being in the parade

3) the drink cart—literally a cart full mostly of booze and an assortment of tea to refresh the people marching in the parade

The horses were really big and sometimes unruly.  Despite each horse having several men trying to control them, several times they bucked, and a couple of the times the horses would get dangerously close to the crowd while acting up.  Everyone would rush backwards to avoid getting too close.  It was a little scary a couple of times.  I actually heard that every year at least one person is killed in this festival (from alcohol poisoning or unruly horses, I honestly don’t know!) 

The parade marchers were a lot of fun.  Since we were foreigners, they actually paid us more attention than the rest of the parade goers.  Of course, all of the Japanese goers were very passive and inactive……whereas us crazy foreigners were dancing and clapping, so really it’s no wonder that we drew a crowd!    Everyone was wanting to come over to us, give us high-fives and teach the foreigners the words and dance moves to their chants.  It rained off and on during the festival, and when it started raining, we’d pop open our umbrellas until it slowed to a drizzle and eventually quit. 

We decided around 8PM that we’d had enough festival time and went to meet up with a few of Ikumi’s friends, Nan and Sho.  We made new friends, hurray!  They both were really nice and spoke English flawlessly.  Ian bonded with them almost instantly after learning that both of them were into photography.  Each of them whipped out their cameras and began to compare, saying what each one wanted and what the next component of their cameras would be.  *sigh* Boys!

Driving back that night wasn’t a lot of fun.  The typhoon was passing through, but fortunately it wasn’t a direct hit, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.  The weather wasn’t really bad until we hit Yatsushiro.  From there it was a little crazy.  From Yatsushiro to our exit at Hitoyoshi, there are a little over twenty tunnels to go through.  Some are longer than others.  It was weird going in and out of them because we would go in one and it’d be pouring rain.  We’d come out on the other side, and the rain would be a drizzle but the wind would whip the car around.  We’d go in another and come out, and the weather wasn’t too bad.  We’d go in another and come out, and it would be back to pouring.  We just never knew what was waiting for us coming out of the tunnel!  The fact that the IC (expressway) is elevated off of the group really wasn’t helping.  I feel like it was MUCH windier up higher than it was on the ground.    We thought that when we got to Hitoyoshi, the majority of our weather problems would be finished.  However, the road home was covered with leaves, twigs, and other debris.  I had to take the corners slower because we never knew what was on the other side.  I rounded one corner, and thank God that there was room to pull around it because a giant bamboo shoot was lying in the middle of the road!   

When we finally got home safe and sound, our weather problems still didn’t stop.  I had left open our hall and kitchen windows.  Nothing got wet, but the hall window screen had blown open, (exposing our house for any and all critters to come in ) and even though wind doesn’t generally blow in through our kitchen, (it’s on the opposite side of the house) a couple of things were knocked over in there.  All night long the wind howled.  Ian and I joked and said that we were going to sleep in ready-to-run clothes.  As in….just IN CASE the wind blew down our house, we’d be ready to run.  I woke up a few times hearing the windows rattling from the wind, but by morning, all was calm and back to normal. 

I’m going to stop here, but continue to read because I’ve got plenty to tell! 

The miracle of the fish and loaves…kind of….

Greetings loved ones.  Today’s blog is going to be about random ins and outs, so prepare for the ADD-ness. 

First, I like rice cakes, and I’m proud to admit it.  Rice cakes here really aren’t anything like the rice cakes at home.  I think most rice cakes at home are a) labeled as “diet” food, and b) usually have a sweeter flavor.  Here they are a common snack food and are salty.  There are no sugary rice cakes in Japan.  Not only that, but they are about a third of the size of an American rice cake and come in two packs.  They are so common here that there is an entire aisle in my grocery store dedicated to just that….rice cakes.  If you would have asked me a year ago if I liked rice cakes, I would have given you an extremely blunt answer: NO.  I hated the salty, airy, ricey taste, but every time someone offered me one, I would smile, gladly accept, unwrap the packaging, and pretend that it was my favorite snack in the world.  I guess rice cakes are an acquired taste.  I now like them….love them even!  I enjoy the saltiness and airy crispness.  It’s weird how your tastes change, isn’t it? 

On Thursday in class, Mr. Fujiwara wanted me to prepare a short game to play in class.  I prepared one of my favor go to games, the interview game, and tailored it to the lesson of the day.  I forgot how many kids were in that class, so I assumed while making copies.  I made thirty-five copies, thinking that would be enough.  Whenever I got to class, I did a quick head count.  I counted thirty-seven students.    As I was passing out my papers, I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and just knew that I was going to look like a fool, have to run back downstairs, and make two more copies.  However, it turned into a fish and loaves of bread miracle!  I was so surprised when I had finished passing our worksheets and I had EXTRAS in my hand.  What the heck!?  That sickening feeling disappeared completely.  Silly me, I had miscounted.  There were actually only thirty-four students! 

The past two days, Ian has been working in the city.  He had to be in Kumamoto at 9:30AM on both days, meaning that he had to wake up before six and drive there.  Since I’m a light sleeper, I heard him get up and tossed and turned until he left.  Yesterday he had to work in the city until 11:30AM and then come back to Nishiki for his 2:30PM class before heading home at 4:30.  It was seriously a long day for him!  I think that’s the longest work day he’s had (outside of the house….he does a lot of work online) since we moved to Japan.  I could tell he was tired when he got home last night!

This weekend, there’s a HUGE typhoon coming.  I can’t understand everyone’s conversations, but if I had a nickel for each time I heard “typhoon” today in the teacher’s room, I’d be one rich girl!  From what I’ve seen, it’s going to be pretty much a direct hit with Kyushu.  No worries, though!  My mountains shall provide protection against the storm’s wrath.  The sirens (that sound like tornado sirens and freak me out every time!) might go off, but never fear.  The most we’ll get from the typhoon is a lot of wind and rain.  Happy weekend, everyone!