September 8th

Last week work was a bit boring because I didn’t have a huge amount to do over the first half but by the end I had more than enough prep for this weeks introduction classes to keep me busy all day.

L stayed until Tuesday morning when she headed off on her Shikoku pilgrimage. It was really nice to catch up with her, too. We did some shopping and exploring and she wandered around town some while I was in school. On Saturday we went to Gifu and watched the cormorant fishing. That was really cool! We couldn’t get a boat seat (last weekend before school, of course) but the view from the edge of the river was pretty awesome and they’ve got stone steps leading down to the water to sit on.

Monday was the opening ceremony for my middle and elementary schools. I attended the middle school ceremony in the morning and gave a little speech and then I did my health check at town hall before heading to Naka elementary to have lunch with one of my second-year classes and give another little speech to the students there. I got a bit of prep done with my Naka teachers for the next Monday I’m there, too. The rest of the week was my introduction lessons in various classes. I think they all went alright but I’m happy that I only have one class left to do. I changed things bit by bit over time but it was still 16 repetitions of the same lesson. I think I’m going to like doing the different lessons for different years better.

This week and next week we actually have shortened classes because all of the students are preparing for the school sports festival. It’s going to happen on the 15th and the whole school is divided into three teams: red, blue, and white. I’m on blue team, but luckily the teachers don’t have to participate, only oversee. They play a lot of very strange games, most of them races, like seven-legged races, mukade (house centipede) which involves a series of students standing behind each other with their left and right ankles attached to two ropes running down the row. Both of these involve a lot of falling over so far. They’ve got other games like jump rope with entire classes, a tire pull where one student sits on the tire and three pull him/her with a rope, and replay races. It’s so fun to watch and I can’t wait until I can see the actual event. It’s an all-day Saturday thing.

Some of my kids are little brats (for example: two third years were having a water-gun fight during cleaning time and then another kid caught one of them with a water balloon inside the dining hall) but a lot of them are really sweet. A lot of the girls are little darlings. Unfortunately I think some of my third-years may have had a hand in my bike wandering off before I finished at school on Friday. I need to talk to my Principle on Monday to see if he can do anything. I also discovered yesterday (after the bike thing) that I’d left my car light on last Monday so I had to ask Ryan and one of his friends to help me out with some jumper cables. I need to buy some of my own. Anyway, we got it going again and I had a lovely drive around town and got to relax a bit and then had coffee with Ashley, Alice, and Brendan. After that we hit up an arcade and then a used stuff store before coming home.

I think the best part of the whole things is that although I was pretty pissed -- I mean, I was warned by a teacher but I didn’t think they’d take it the first week so I though I had a bit of time to buy a new lock – I just can’t be too upset over it. My cat Velcro came home (in Canada) and I’d prayed so hard that she would be okay and not dead and the fact that she’s safe and home is more important than any stress about objects.

I’m hoping things start to calm down a bit soon. This week a big typhoon hit Japan but luckily it passed safely to the north of Gifu so we had nothing to worry about. Sadly a few people died in Tokyo from roof tiles (they’re usually ceramic and heavy here) being blown off roofs and flooding rivers.

Today I’m mostly lazing around and relaxing. Just because I can.

Addition: In an extremely happy extra, I have officially moved onto a new belt loop as of today. I’ve lost an average of 3 pounds in the past three weeks and have noticed some lovely new definition to my calves thanks to my recent biking activity. Now if I can just start eating healthier I hope I can see many more improvements over the next little while!