Chuck Norris Jesus

OK.  So….holy jeez.  I’m a little (OK…A LOT) behind, and this is probably just going to be word vomit, but here goes…..

The week before last week was the last week of school.  Japanese schools end in March and begin again in April.  I know it’s different, but that’s just the way it is.  Another thing that us westerners find strange is that teachers get rotated around in the schools.  Some higher up somewhere decides who stays and who goes.  At the end of the school year teachers are called into the principal’s office one-by-one and told if they are staying for the next year or are being transferred to a different JHS in the area.  The maximum number of years that a teacher can stay at any given school is seven, although most teachers get bounced around within three years.  In the two transfers that I have been through only about half of the teachers that I originally met when I first can are still at Yunomae JHS.  This transfer system has its pros and cons, and perhaps another day I will blog about those.

Since four teachers were being transferred this year, the end-of-the-year drinking party was a celebration for them.  I don’t particularly like going to drinking parties because I don’t drink, and they are quite expensive.  However, I generally have a good time and am in a good mood after I leave.  I was asked the week before if I could go to the end-of-the-year party.  I hadn’t been to a drinking party in a while, so I said yes.  I asked how much it was, but the teacher who asked me to come said that she wasn’t sure yet.  (It turned out to be 4,000 yen/person.  GACK!!)  She told me that there was a bus that would take us from Yunomae to Hitoyoshi, where the party was.  Party bus, baby!  This thought caused a sinking feeling in my stomach.  When there’s a bus, it usually means that it will be a night of partying, and you probably won’t get back until late, and since this party was on a Tuesday night…….  Don’t be naive and think that just because it was a work night that meant that festivities would end at a reasonable hour.  Oh nooooo.  The Japanese are wound so tightly that when they party, they party HARD and LOOOOOOOONG.  It’s nothing to be out until the weeeeeeee hours of the morning singing karaoke and drinking and then (of course) go to work like normal the following morning.

Ian, me, and two other teachers were the only ones who took the party bus the whole way.  The bus stopped in Asagiri and Nishiki, picking up several teachers who lived there before we arrived at our destination, a beautiful resort and onsen in the hills of Hitoyoshi overlooking the sakura and river.  I could honestly slap myself for not getting any pictures that night because the view was amazing!  Plus, we were served a delicious multi-course meal including traditional Japanese foods of: sashimi, tofu, nabe, whole fish (eye balls and all!), tempura, and so much more.  Everything was absolutely delicious!  By the time we left, we were stuffed tighter than ticks! 

Taking the party bus actually ended up being our saving grace.  Some of the teachers asked if I was going to the after party, but I said that I couldn’t because I had to take the bus back to Yunomae.  About five teachers went to the after party, and everyone else went their separate ways.  Ian, one other teacher, and I were the ONLY people to take the party bus back, and that other teacher got dropped off at her house in Nishiki.  I was so surprised that we were the only two left for the majority of the journey!!

One would think that by moving to Japan, where Christianity is not even CLOSE to being a predominate religion, that things like Jehovah’s Witnesses wouldn’t be a problem.  ……right?  WRONG!  In the year that we’ve been here, we’ve gotten two or three creepy religious flyers in our mailbox, the latest being a creepy Jehovah Witness flyer that has a Chuck Norris-looking Jesus surrounded by a multitude of people.  The only reason that we know that this flyer is for the Jehovah Witnesses is because several of our friends got the SAME flyer printed in English.  Margo’s name (in English) is on her mail box beside her door, so they clearly realized that she was an English speaker and left an English flyer in her box.  Mollee said that she was home both times that they came by.  At first she tried to play the dumb foreigner card so that they would go away, but once they realized that she spoke English, they gave her the English flyer.  She said the second time that they came by, she tried to throw them for a loop and spoke only Spanish.  However, they pulled out a flyer printed in Spanish!!  How many languages do they have printed?!?!

On that Thursday I had my final adult eikaiwa class.  Just like my kiddie class the previous week, we cooked.  I gave them the recipe for Ian’s famous homemade marinara and pizza crust, and together we made delicious pizza!  I only have three students in my class, and one emailed me to say that she wouldn’t be able to make it.  Another ran late, so at first it was just me and the older lady in my class.  As we stood there together chopping onions and peppers for the marinara and kneading dough for the crust, it reminded me of baking with my own mother.  Mommy never really let us help out in the kitchen that often, so when she did it was a treasured moment.  Just being there alone in the kitchen with my one student (who is the same age as Mommy) made me a little nostalgic.

Okay, gang!  This catches me all up from the week before Spring Break.  Now all I’ve got to do is tell about celebrating Easter and how I spent my Spring Break.  *sigh*  I’m so far behind……..