More pictures.

Sorry about the delay! Here's the next album from the Christmas trip! Also a bonus album with some pictures of the first hints of Spring here in Japan.

Bali - Komodo Tour

Spring 2009

Fall/Winter update!

Obviously my intent to update here weekly has fallen by the roadside. Badly. Things have been pretty busy here with some activity or another each evening and usually more than one per weekend.

Winter has kind of jumped right on us. A week ago I was comfortably wearing short-sleeved sweaters and light shirts to work but now it is most definitely sweater season. There was snow on the mountains yesterday morning! It didn't reach quite this low but it was close! I suspect that within a week the kerosene heaters will be making their reappearence in the classrooms. The leaves hadn't even finished changing but they'll easily be gone within a few weeks now!

Um, yeah, I have to go do some photocopying now but last night I put together some of the pictures I've taken over fall with a few comments. My kotatsu (heater table with blankets) is set up now so I should be spending more time attached to my computer over the winter. Maybe I'll update more often :D Anyway, enjoy!

Fall 2008

Swimming!!

I went swimming tonight! Two hours with Heather, Ashley, Shana, and Yumiko! Who knew that the swimming/gym centre on Ono's southern tip was really nice? $4 for access to both. But you have to wear a swim cap (like all Japanese pools) and there's no free swim area outside the kids zone, at least in the evening. Also every hour the bell chimes and everyone gets out for 10 minutes to rest and then we all stretch together along with Rajio Taiso. We did the first one in that video, I've never actually seen the second one done. I object to jumping in a bathing suit so we didn't do that bit. But it was really good exercise and Ash and I helped Yumiko out because she's not a very strong swimmer.

New posting regimen.

Alright. Since my last post was in March I have decided to try and update once a week. These updates will probably be small and trivial but that's life anywhere.

A lot has happened since March, including a visit from Mom and Luke and Brenda, a new school year (Starts one week into April after spring break), a visit home, my town festival, and my first rock concert. I also have a new neighbor named Heather and I've officially started a new year of work. (Note: Heather and I went to Nagoya for a day, there are some pictures of what we did and us here)

Since Sports day is coming up for all my schools I haven't done a lot yet, but when that's finished I'll have more than enough classes to make up for things. I do get to watch them all practice the weird games they're going to compete in. These include 6-legged races, class vs. class tug o'war, relays, and mukade, which means centipede and is like a #-legged race but the kids stand one behind another with a rope to connect all their left feet and another to connect all their right feet. It's super-funny when they all fall over on each other for no apparent reason and you can always tell because the ichi-ni-ichi-ni (one-two-one-two) chanting turns into 'ooph!' and 'kyaa!' noises. I can't post my student's pictures on the net but I'll be taking pictures on Saturday so if I know you and you want to see a few leave a comment here or ask my parents to pass along the e-mail I'll send them.

Anyway! I am tired and it's late so I'm going to leave you with a couple pictures and sign out for the night.

My town festival! This is held in the street and parking lot between Town Hall and the Community Centre. This is about half of the strip of booths. From left to right the booths are: Takoyaki (fried octopus balls), Toumorokoshi (ears of corn with butter), Yakisoba (fried noodles with sauce and cabbage and meat), [from here it gets hard to see so I'm half-guessing] Shaved Ice, Goldfish catching (for pets), fruit on a stick (possibly covered in chocolate or candied), potato fries.


It's an Obon (festival of the dead) festival in my town so to help their ancestors have a peaceful year of rest they pray to their family 'haka' (gravestones), spend time at home with their family, and dance. This is Obon dancing. The central tower has professional dancers (or volunteers) who perform the steps to the different traditional dances and the rest of us dance in a circle around the tower as they play traditional music. There are also hired dancers/volunteers in the crowd to help out those unfamiliar with the dancing. Like kids. Or me. People also stand around the outside of the circle to watch.


I was woken up two weeks ago by what sounded like a helicopter outside. Well, go figure, it was. Albeit a small one that was remote controlled buy some guys you can't see to the left. It's spraying a rice field. Those trucks belong to the construction company below me. This is apparently what I got for sleeping in during the summer!

Massive Update 3/3

So since Christmas life has mostly returned to normal. School started up again and teaching was mostly same-old, same-old. The third-years all have their High School entrance exams (if they choose to continue with school, it's optional past Junior High although your job options may be limited) this semester and they will be finishing school soon. Only a few more weeks. So they are all slowly going crazy with studying or uncertainty about their futures or both. The rest of the kids are just getting stir-crazy because this is the shortest of their three semesters and they're going to be moving on to the next grade soon. Lots of energy in the schools.

I continued going to Japanese lessons, became more of a regular at Gifu Knit Club on Tuesdays, and sung karaoke, hung out, and watched a couple of new movies with friends. Despite this I think I was in a bit of a rut. Which probably wasn't helped by the kids draining more energy than usual. I didn't realize it until recently but I'd been here for almost 6 1/2 months. That's the longest I've lived somewhere without going on a trip home in about 4 years. Since I moved out of home to Prince George anyways. It was time to do something.

Since before Christmas I've been planning a trip to Cambodia with Yumiko. So by midway through January that was really starting to eat at my available brain-cells. Last week we finally pulled it off so soon I'll be updating about that with some pictures (as soon as I can convince my camera to recognize my 4Gb camera card) and a more detailed description of what we did and saw.

Dad's visit (aka Massive Update 2/3)

So firstly I'm going to link you to Dad's Deviantart account where he has a few of pictures from his visit posted.

I picked him up from the airport on Friday night after work on the 21st. It was a close thing since originally I'd miscalculated the time I had to leave for the train station but I made it in enough time to meet him when he came out of the customs gate. Both of us were a bit tired after we'd spent the hour or so riding the trains home so we just called it a night.

The next day we walked around my town and I acquainted dad with the wonders of hot, canned coffee from vending machines. We went to a Christmas party that night where he was able to meet some of my new friends and Yumiko's family. Over the rest of the long weekend we also went up the mountain to the large statues and the viewpoint over Ono-cho, got take-out from the onigiri shop (riceballs and assorted fried food) down the street, and discovered the farm-fresh egg vending machine. On Monday we celebrated an early Christmas and took a picnic drive out to a very large golden statue of a Buddha a ways up into the mountains. And of course since almost all shops are still open over the weekend and Christmas isn't a holiday we were able to do a bit of shopping here and there. I think we went to Tanigumi temple (20 minutes farther into the mountains) over the weekend, too.

Tuesday was my last day at school for the semester (I took the next day off) and dad came to one of my elementary schools as Santa for our Christmas Day. The kids loved him and had a blast! I don't have any close what I can do as follow-up next year. It was great though. And they really enjoyed the candycanes that dad brought since they don't sell those here to my knowledge.

Wednesday was mainly relaxing again although we did visit my Junior High in the morning and I took dad to meet my supervisor. During the evening we enjoyed a wonderful traditional dinner with the two gentlemen who teach me Japanese. It consisted of multiple courses one of which was a dish that cooked in small pots in front of us as we finished the previous dishes.

On the Friday we visited Inuyama castle. This is a beautiful old castle an hour and a bit away from my apartment by car and managed to escape the damage of fires and war. Actually it is often claimed to be the oldest castle in Japan, the current towers dating from 1537 and the original construction in 1440. The stairs are steep and tight but the view from the top floor is amazing. There's also a small museum to Japanese-style marionette dolls with the entrance included in that to the castle. A really nice place to visit. In the evening I had my standard Japanese lesson that Dad tagged along to and they'd brought some books in English while I practised reading and translated a bit of my current project book. Then we watched part of an opera.

The next morning we got to Gifu-city by car and train and boarded our bus to Kyoto. Kyoto is truly spectacular offering over 2000 shrines and temples within the city boundaries, all left untouched by the war although not always by fire and other acts of man and God. Just riding the city buses and listening to announcements in English and Japanese you can learn more than a dozen facts in a very short time. We visted the Pure Water Temple, the Golden Temple, the Silver temple, Ryoan-ji (the temple with the most famous Zen garden in Japan) where it was uncrowded enough for us to sit and watch the garden, and Kyoto tower. And a bunch of other, lesser but still beautiful sights and shopping areas. We ate delicious food and enjoyed the rain and the crowds and the sights in general. Dad finally found a Shogi board in the toy store at Kyoto Station.

On New Year's Eve we went back to Yumiko's mom's house for their New Years Party. Now, this was a more Japanese-style New Years so we mainly ate lots of food and watched TV until it was time to go visit temples. Then we had to wash our hands in cold water in the cold night air, lifted a rock to make a wish at the first temple, threw coins and small garlands for good luck, and lit candles. We also got to see the spectacular food and merchandise booths set up. After visiting two temples we went back to the temple near Yumiko's mom's house and rang the bell there. It was really fun but we slept in a lot the new day. Also conveniently Yumiko's mom lives close to the huge used/new anime and manga store so we were able to visit there twice during dad's visit.

New Years we decided to climb up the mountain the big statues are on. It was a beautiful climb but the was down took us a little further down than we wanted and we had to walk a ways back up the road to the car. The view was amazing though and we got to the top just in time to sit down and hear the town chimes go off. And when you're at the top of a mountain it means you hear five or more town chimes going off at the same time. It was a suprizingly beautiful sound. The entire thing must have taken two hours or so (?). We were tired after that!

I'm getting a little fuzzy on details here but I do believe that the day before dad left we visited Hikone castle with Keith and Yumiko. It's another beautiful old castle and dad and I got some pictures with the castle and town mascots (at different times). They like foreigners :) This castle also has some spectacular gardens that had a couple of cherry trees blooming even over Christmas.

On the morning of the 3rd dad finished packing up and we rode the trains back to the Nagoya airport. It was probably just about the right length but it was a really good visit. I can't wait until Mom, Luke, and Brenda come at the end of March!

(Dad if I messed things up please correct me. You're the one with the timeline XD)

Opera!

I can't remember if I mentioned the nice older gentleman I met totally by accident on the street a month or so ago. Probably not. Anyway he asked me to his house for dinner with him and his wife because he's a Japanese teacher and it turned out that he knew my predecessor's predecessor and her friends quite well! He and his wife are lovely and I started taking Japanese lessons with him two weeks ago. He's even giving me the lessons for free! (Well, we're exchanging English and Japanese, but he's taken a university degree in teaching Japanese.) He says he volunteers with a couple of Chinese ladies who are learning English, too.

He also invited me to their opera group which meets every other (I think) Saturday or so. I've always been a little interested in opera so I said sure ^_^ Turns out it was an awesome decision! One of his friends who is also helping teach me Japanese has been all over the world and to Vienna quite a few times. He loves Opera and has a separate workshop/relaxation building where their friends meet for their Opera club. Not only does he have a good sized TV but he has two humongous speakers which have amazing sound. I think it must be similar to actually being in an opera house and having an awesome seat. They told me that one speaker cost over two-hundred thousand yen. That's like twenty thousand dollars. For one speaker.

Anyway, I got to meet lots of awesome new people and afterwards I got to enjoy their end of year party with them! It was fun! And a few of the ladies are learning English so I can help them practice while they help me practice Japanese. I'm thinking I might even be able to pick up some of the speaking style that older people use here. I'm already learning bits of Gifu-ben (the Gifu dialect) so I might as well!

Yay hospitals?

Well my good news is that I do not have pneumonia! Yay! A cold I had (now whether this was the nasty hacking thing I had two weeks ago or the sore throat from last week or both is up for debate) irritated my asthma to the point where I had to go visit the hospital today because it felt like pneumonia. Not being able to breathe properly sucks.

Luckily Keith was able to come with me and translate so things went very easily. We waited for 1 1/2 hours and watched Keroro Gunso on Keith's PDA. Then a doctor listened to my lungs, I had a chest x-ray taken, and they put me on some air pump thing where I breathed in medicine to clear up my lungs for about 5-10 minutes. After another shorter wait they took my monies and gave me two days worth of powdered medicine.

I did notice that the doctor's computer console had English for words like heart and lungs and although he spoke no English he typed things like wheeze and no (heart) murmur. I thought that was pretty strange. Also I got a card that contains all of my information at that hospital so next time I need to go I can just present my card! How awesome :D

When all was said and done we went to Yumiko's mom's house and I got to meet her mom and see her sister and niece again! Her mom is such a sweetie and fed me food that's good for sick people like tea and umeboshi (sour, sour dried plums). I also got to meet her mom's three cats and dog. And Yumiko cut my hair for me! (She was a full-time hairdresser before she started teaching school) I'm so happy! She layered it and shaped it around my face. And all because I helped her learn to knit. She's such a sweetie!

And I just realized that tomorrow is going to be the last time I see half of my Nishi Elementary students until the New Year. That's really disturbing!

Rainbows and tea.

As I was driving out of the parking lot (elementary today so it was too far to walk) from work today I had to park and dig out my camera because I saw this spread across the sky in front of me:




I haven't seen a rainbow this lovely in ages! And the combination of rainy day and sun on the harvested rice fields. It took my breath away! A lovely conclusion to a really, really good day with my cute kids. All of my lessons went smoothly and everyone had fun. I feel satisfied with myself :)

I took the whole weekend off to myself and rested and recuperated. I actually didn't leave the house at all for two days. I'd feel bad but I feel so much better after some dedicated jammie time with the cat that I have no guilt. I made raspberry pancakes and managed to get my oven to produce a lovely 'cheesecake' from a packaged mix I bought a while ago. It was really more of what you'd get if you added cream cheese to a normal cake mix but it was still good and didn't burn!

Actually since it's been getting colder I've gotten out my kerosene heater and figured out how to work it. It seems to be quite nice, and though I have to keep my balcony door open a crack when I use it it's warm enough that if I'm in front of it I can't feel the draft from the door. I'm working on finding the right blanket for my kotatsu, too. That's a table that has a heater attached underneath. You put a blanket between the struts where the heater is attached and the removable tabletop and sit with your legs underneath where the heat is contained by the blanket.

My one other concession to the coming cold was to purchase an 'electric pot' which is basically a kettle that heats the water up but instead of letting it cool after heating it holds the water at a near boil for as long as it's plugged in. So now I don't have to use expensive gas heating water repeatedly when I'm enjoying a few pots of tea over the evening or a weekend day.



Unfortunately my schools also lack central heating so I am going to have to look at knitting some fingerless gloves for classes. I already have a pair of leg warmers under construction for skirt days.

Because I am a total geek I need to show off the awesome 'potion' drinks I found when I went to my Circle K to pay for my Amazon order yesterday. (Clicking on the pictures makes them bigger) As the cans say it's the 10th anniversary of Final Fantasy this year which means some neat kitsch like these! ^_^





Today I also saw a fantastically large (almost two inches long) hummingbird moth! He was flying around in my school and when I followed him he came within a foot of my face twice!

I got to watch a Chorus Festival practice run for one of my 1st year classes. They're really good! I'm looking forward to the finals even though I have to miss the competition.

Little visitor

So when I got home from school today I saw something squiggle into my genkan (in Japanese houses the entryway is always at least five inches lower than the rest of the floor to catch dirt and small invaders) as I opened the door. Turns out it was a little gecko whom I managed to catch and take some photos of. I considered keeping him as a bet but decided to let him go because I'm not sure if the local pet stores have heated rocks and worms. I'll have to look into that. These guys live all over my building in assorted sizes and colors.





I've been taking more time out for myself recently so not as many adventures. But I did visit a friend in Gifu city and had a Go lesson yesterday. More info on Go here if you don't know the game. And I successfully took the bus to Gifu city and back yesterday for a Go lesson. It was exciting. I like the Gifu station bus stop a lot more than the Ogaki one. Much easier schedules to read.

I've also turned 24 since my last post! On my birthday I went and got some tasty ice cream parfaits with Alice and Ashley after their Japanese lessons. And on the weekend Yumiko and a bunch of our friends had a potluck dinner and then went out to karaoke, the birthday standard here.

Yakiniku is awesome. Says the vegetarian. But it really is good, I like watching the meat cook and eating all the grilled veggies my tummy can hold. Especially the mushrooms. I got treated after helping with another teacher's Halloween party on Saturday.

Classes are going well but everyone has been on a shortened schedule again for the past three weeks because Ono-chu is gearing up for their annual Chorus Festival. I'll miss the main day thanks to a JET conference in Gifu (not happy but it's non-negotiable) but I'll get to see the top class from each grade and when the whole school sings together. And I've been treated to the lovely sounds of my students singing before and after classes everyday.

Some of my students brought a cold into the school a few weeks ago, too, so I caught a nasty cough and a dripping nose cold. Half of my teacher's room is already sick and the other half is getting there too so I'm not alone. Luckily as a foreigner I'm not expected to wear one of the cloth masks (like surgeon's masks) that everyone else wears when they're sick.

Things are cooling down so I might get to use my kotatsu soon. I bought some kerosene for m space heater a few days ago with Ryan. But luckily it's still holding at around 20 degrees at the peak of the day and around 10 at night so my winter quilt is still a bit too warm still.

Anyway, that's all I can think of right now.

Yay!

So I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon wearing a happi (happy) coat, walking around in a very large circle, and helping a huge band of drunk foreign and Japanese people carry a gold mikoshi (portable shinto shrine)while screaming... some word? and being followed around the street by a cart of booze. I had OJ. Because I had to drive home and I am cool that way.



It was heavy!!

We were only one small group in the giant circle of groups of drunk Japanese screaming, carrying and spinning mikoshis and drinking their hearts (or stomachs) out from the many booze carts.




Afterwards I stood in a crowd and was pelted with mochi (a rice cake made by pounding rice into a paste) by men standing in towers. I have learned that I am quite adept at catching small heavy things when they're flying at my head.



It was so interesting, and so fun, and so absolutely unlike anything I have ever done before. I'm doing it next year for sure!

Yay, weekend!

Well, I tried to make cookies with my new toaster oven (with convection ability, which means a fan to blow the air around, ooooh) today with mixed results. I can turn out either slightly burned or totally white cookies. I think I almost had it perfect once but I let them got for two minutes under a higher setting to brown more and the edges burned. *le sigh* I will get the hang of this though! Next project will be scones. Unsurprisingly the challenge was finding the ingredients to bake with. I took a picture. Thank goodness I can read hiragana and katakana! Brown sugar and raisins in particular were difficult. Luckily the import store had the big bag of raisins and I was able to find (the sugar section in general and differentiate it from the salt section) brown sugar near the white sugar.

This week went okay as far as classes go. I'm back on the ball with planning activities ahead of time. I did my first special (as in kids with special learning needs, so positive context) class and it went well, too. I love them, actually, they're really sweet kids. And most of them are really smart and like English class.

I visited with Yumiko last night and afterwards we went to her house and I talked with Keith,too. He gave me some awesome recommendations for an electronic dictionary to buy since my DS version can only go so far. He's also lent me some textbooks since he's already passed his JLPT (Japanese Language Profeciency test) level one, which means he's fluent enough to work for a Japanese company.

Oh, also, with my Amazon.jp order this week I finally got the right version of the translation and notes guide to go with my Japanese textbook. The first one I bought had all the Japanese words written in the English alphabet. I think it's better to be able to recognize them when written in normal Japanese letters, too, so I had to get this new one. (I also now have all of the 'Catwings' books by Ursula K. Le Guin which makes me really happy, too.)

My brain has finally let out enough useless info that I can read again. I've gotten through five books since arriving. This is a record for the past few years. It's so nice to not worry about stuffing my brain for exams anymore!

Anyway, I'm off to do some knitting or something else to relax!

My first earthquake.

Happened just as I was starting to fall asleep last night. According to Yahoo Japan's Weather Information service it was only a 1 (out of a possible 7) but was a Gifu earthquake! I very much hope that they're all so small while I'm here! It only rattled my house like a train was going by for a couple of seconds and then nothing more.

I don't think it's a really big event though, it was the 10th earthquake in Japan since October started (Yesterday was only the 3rd) and almost every single one is only a ranked as a 1 or 2.

Update!

My walk to school on a nice, sunny day~

I'm discovering that I suck at being a teacher, but mostly only because I lack experience and training. It should get better with time. Maybe. After my first class with any particular activity/topic things go a little smoother but the first one is usually rough. When a class goes well and the kids have fun though... Oh, that's a nice high. It's worth staying for.

Hm, I haven't done a lot of travelling recently but I think I should be looking into doing more. Or at least more exploring. I've been hanging out with lots and lots of people but not doing much exercising or just plain looking around. I haven't even gone hiking although there are tons of places to do that near me. I am going to go to Tanigumi temple for Momiji viewing (enjoying the fall colors in the trees) though. Turns out it's actually a really famous place to go hike and watch that. Who knew? I do want to go north to Toyama-ken to do some hiking though. They have a lovely looking two-day hike on a pair of mountains (some info here) that I want to check out sometime. Perhaps in May.

Let's see... So I haven't become alcoholic from stress like so many other expats (click word for definition), yay me! I'm actually usually a DD now. I was a little worried about a major personality change but it doesn't seem to be. Or not in that regard, at least.

I saw my first hummingbird moth today!! (And guess who looked at her camera and then left it on her table this morning?) It was feeding off one of the bushes outside my school! It was only about two inches long but it was beautiful. I got so close, too! I'm going to take my camera every day from now on. Just in case. I think George, the huge spider living over the stairs to the teachers room, is dead though. It's sad. We were friends in that, 'you exist and I exist, that's nice. Please don't touch me.' sort of way.

I have also successfully paid for and received my order from Amazon.jp. You can pay at convenience stores here and I managed to understand the delivery lady when she called so I'm feeling pretty good about my infantile listening and communication skills right now.

Oh my that was random.

(I'm working on a potential photo gallery program. Hopefully I'll be able to post lots of pictures if it pans out.)

Recent life...

Yeah, I'm no good at this updating thing. I did actually try to upload pictures but my internet is having none of this constant connection stuff tonight so I couldn't make the program work. This is just going to be a 'what have I been up to' post.

So... I think I mentioned how amazingly awesome my middle school's sports day was? The elementary one I went to last Saturday totally blew it out of the water. Here they not only make the parents and grandparents participate in a lot of the games but the PTA has to play a game, too! It's so funny watching adults running around a field trying to guide giant inflated balls.

Sunday I went to Tokyo for the day with Keith and Yumiko and four of their friends. One was an ex-ALT but the rest were Japanese and couldn't speak any English. Practice day for me! We took the bullet train to Tokyo in the morning and then ate at Subway (it was so good, I haven't had it since I left North America) before heading to Tokyo Game Show 2007. This is a huge, huge video/computer game convention where you can try out games before they come onto the market and check out the booths of different game companies. I was very please to see a large Canadian booth there.

I spent most of the time there with Patrick, the ex-alt, and the Japanese girl who came with us who's name absolutely escapes me. But it was cool! She likes a lot of the same kinds of games I like so we were able to chatter away in some Japanese and bits of English and gestures. We visited the Square Enix booth (they created the immensely popular Final Fantasy series) and just generally wandered around. It was my first experience seeing cosplayers (people who dress up like characters from games or books) and their costumes and hair were just amazing. I was so impressed. I am absolutely going to go to more cosplay events with a friend from Nagano who's into that.

After the Game Show we went to Akihabara (geek and technology central in Tokyo) and went to a maid cafe. The Japanese girl really likes the costumes and wanted to visit one. Maid cafes are resturants where you can go and be greeted by girls dressed in stylized maid outfits who will then serve you a meal or drinks. Often they are mainly visited by guys going to see pretty girls in costumes with less than chivalrous motives. It's part of the job to talk with the customers. I think the girls were all very pleased to have some visitors who just wanted to talk with them for the sake of talking. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures (a very good rule with the clientele they have) so I can't show you what it was like.

On Monday I slept in very, very late and then Yumiko and her friend Chiho showed me a new mall where they have a store that sells both nice yarn and knitting needles! This is the first store I've found with such things. I was really excited. And there's an import store that sells Walker's shortbread there. They have real Canadian maple syrup, too, but it's about $20 a bottle. Since I almost never had it in Canada I can most definitely do without! The shortbread is wonderful~ In the evening Yumiko and Keith had Chiho and I over for okonomiyaki, which is kind of like a giant omelet except there's no cheese and you mix everything in before you pour the egg onto the large griddle. You make it on a griddle in the center of the table where you're going to eat so you can talk and watch it cook. It was delicious! There was only shrimp and veggies in the one Yumiko made because she's vegetarian, too.

Sunday I slept in again and then did a massive house cleaning. Keith told me that it's okay to throw away paper and cardboard products in the burnable if you make sure it's in 10x10 cm or less pieces. So my arms kind of hurt from tearing up all the paper/cardboard I've collected on my own and from guests. But my house is clean! Or at least, it was before I made dinner. As soon as I find places to put all my little knick-knacks I can actually take pictures of my house. And just when I was starting to think about dinner Ashley called and invited me over for dinner with her, Alice, and Brandon. It was really nice and relaxing.

I have discovered that my nighttime nemesis is indeed the Japanese mosquito. The little jerks have the normal, irritating bite that itches for 10 minutes and swells for about 1/2 an hour. Unfortunately, when the swelling goes down I and the rest of the foreign ALTs I've talked to get a little pink welt that's occasionally itchy/painful and persists for 3-5 days. Thank goodness it's getting cold enough to keep my balcony doors closed at night. See L, I told you they weren't as nice as you thought.

What's been up with me recently:

Firstly: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!

I hope you had an awesome day!

Hm, well, where to start. Once again it's been a huge amount of time since I've updated properly (btw, I did upload all of my entries written before I got my internet, I just dated them properly. They start at 'Tokyo') or uploaded pictures. No pictures yet but I will update.

Well, the best news I have is that my bike came home this week! Some of my kids found it at the shopping centre downtown and phoned the school on Tuesday. The best part is that they're some of my little brats in class. I'm so proud of them! It's still up in the air as the whether they, other kids, or graduated students took it. I actually am more and more suspecting the graduated students since they came by and buzzed the school on loud scooters the next afternoon. They're bored and not going to high school so... But, honestly, I don't really care and since everything is fixed everything is forgiven.

Um, so L has come and gone this past week and I'm really enjoying both the ability to sleep in and my me space. Not that I mind having company, it's just my house is 1-person sized. And I'm tired from all the sports festival prep for the last few weeks and the final culmination that occurred Saturday.

Teaching is really fun so far because I'm actually allowed to either a) lead most of the class on my own with support from my JLT, or b) wander around and talk with the kids in the back or who are misbehaving when I'm not needed immediately by my JLT. My English Passport scheme to bribe my children into wanting to at least participate in my classes seems to be working for the most part as well. I know intrinsic (internal) motivation is better than extrinsic (external) but when they're being forced to learn a language in high school the intrinsic won't be there most of the time anyway. Actually, I'm finding I love the little wanna-be gangsters the best in class because they keep things fun. I'm also discovering that I have a terrific internal goofball that comes out in class so I can play well off of my students no matter what they're doing.

My squishies (elementary students) are also absolutely amazing and I love them to pieces. Those days are going to be the most tiring but the most fun, I think. Most of them are still totally into playing games and lunch break is friggin' awesome. But I have to find more durable clothing and not wear my nice shirts. The kids are going to trash my clothing. I need to look into getting guys shirts.

Hm, well this post was actually interrupted by about six hours. I went to Gifu with a friend and when I hit up Uniqlo I discovered that they have clothes that fit me! T-shirts, long-sleeved shirts, and polo shirts! Admittedly in the largest men's size they carry but I'm still ecstatic. I didn't think it would be so easy to find elementary-appropriate clothing! And the best part is that guys clothing here comes in girl's colors, too. Pink, purple, light blue, you name a color and you can find it in the clothing section somewhere. Sadly the shirt that said, "Eat more turkey, be perky!" with the picture of the chef carving up the turkey wasn't there in my size. Uniqlo is cheap, too, most of my shirts were around 1000 yen (~$10). (Thank you Tanya, you were right, that store is amazing).

Anyways, I should be working on what I'm going to do in class tomorrow so I'm going to sign off now.