Once again I’m going to complain about the Japanese work ethic. I’m at work today with absolutely nothing to do. Literally. There are no English classes today because Mr. Fujiwara is at a conference in Yokohama, yet here I sit at my desk at school, “working.” I actually have gotten a few things that needed to be done completed today, but still. *sigh* It’s a gray and dreary day, and I’d much rather be at home snuggled up with a book and cup of tea instead of sitting here pretending to work.
So what went on in Japan-land this week, you ask? After the hustle and bustle of last weekend, we played it pretty low key this week. The winter weather is starting to creep in on us (unfortunately 
). While it’s still not cold yet, it’s getting there. It’s still warm enough to wear short sleeves during the day for the most part, but I don’t dare to bare that skin at night. We pulled out and started using one of our winter blankets. Ian put the panels separating our rooms back up so that we can close off rooms and conserve heat. We’ve been drinking hot tea and making soup more often. It’s much more difficult to push back the covers in the morning. All of these things make me really sad. I hate, hate, HATE winter here and don’t wish for it to rear its ugly head.
A funny story to blog about for this week is our unexpected nightly guests. When I got home from work on Monday, I went outside to hang up some Halloween decorations that we used at the festival. A couple of the neighborhood kids saw me and asked if it was for Halloween. I said yes. They seemed very excited. Fast forward to about 7PM that night. There was a knock at the door. Neither Ian nor I enjoy answering the door here. We never know what’s on the other side of the door, and answering it often opens a Pandora’s box. I asked Ian if he wanted to get it, and he said, “I think it’s your turn.” I stumbled to the door, opened it, and was utterly surprised to see about ten of my neighborhood kids in costume shouting, “TRICK-OR-TREAT!!!” at me. Whaaaaaaaaat??? I don’t know if they got the days mixed up, assumed that since I was hanging decorations it meant that it was the magical trick-or-treating day, or if they assume that they can just show up to the foreigner’s house any day of the week in costume and expect to get candy. Since we had so much candy left over and the kids went to the trouble of dressing up, I gave them some candy. For the rest of the week, Ian and I lived in fear that we’d have kids knocking on our door screaming “TRICK-OR-TREAT!!” It didn’t happen again until Thursday night. It was only two kids, but I simply opened the door and said, “No Halloween. Sorry.” I’m really, really, really hoping that I didn’t dig myself into a hole!
Last night at my eikaiwa class, I decided to continue on with Halloween lessons and American traditions. I had the bright idea to do face painting and painting pumpkins. For anyone out there thinking that this sounds like a good idea, just know that it wasn’t. I failed. I used the leftover paint from the Halloween festival, and thought that it would be a fun idea. However, the kids were kind of babies about it. Once the paint dried, it did kind of pull on your skin, but it wasn’t any big deal. It wasn’t the best smelling paint, either, but once again…no big deal. However, the kids didn’t like it. Pretty much as soon as we were finished with face painting, they went to wash it off. Ugh! What a waste. After our break, we painted pumpkins, and that also didn’t go so well. I honestly should have printed off some examples for them, but I didn’t think about it. Even though we know the types of things that should be painted on pumpkins, that’s not typical to these kids, so they didn’t paint scary faces, characters, or anything like that. Instead the painted Japanese words on the pumpkins. 
Since I didn’t have any classes today, I’ve been tooling around the office trying to look busy. My only task today was to help the 1st and 3rd graders prepare for their speeches since the speech contest is next week. I’m impressed with the improvement my 3rd grade girls have shown, and I make sure to compliment them on this. Japanese students are so used to being beaten down and told that they’re doing things wrong that I want to compliment them on things they do well! Once we were finished, one of the girl told me in half-English, half-Japanese thank you for helping her with the speech and that the reason she was so good at it was because I had helped her. 
Kid, you seriously just made my day! That was the sweetest compliment ever! 
In other news, the new ALT in Taragi is finally here! After Rachel’s abrupt leave in August, Taragi was without an ALT until now. It’s always exciting to get new people in the gun! Her name is Devin, and she’s from Georgia. Hurray for another southerner! We’re all a little anxious to meet her to see what she’s like. We’re going to meet her this weekend, and while I can’t speak for everyone, I’m excited!!
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