far, far away

Busy lately

I haven't posted in the last few days. It's been fairly busy at work. The build up to Winter vacation was filled with tests and meetings and parties.

I am now on vacation! Phew! It's about time. I'm about 6 months in now, nearly halfway there. I've only taken one vacation day and two sick days, not too bad, but I could really use these two weeks off.

Last night was our work party. It was lots of fun. It's always great to kick back with my co-workers, who are usually so quiet and reserved at work. Most of the teachers went to karaoke after dinner and drinks and it was great. Sang a couple of Christmas songs even.

I put up a ton of movies that have been sitting on my cell phone for weeks. Enjoy.

Going to Tokyo in a few days, can't wait. The weather report looks very promising.

If any more free Kimono come up, I'll keep you in mind Becky ;-)

Movies, Mochi, and Michelle (naked)

It was quite a busy weekend. On Saturday Shell and I thought we would see a movie. We both wanted to see Harry Potter and it's still playing here, so off we went. Buying tickets was pretty easy, I even understood when the English version with Japanese subtitles was playing. Tickets were about $17 a piece, so don't complain about your $10 trip to the movies. Food was a bit cheaper than back home, but overall the whole deal cost about $50.

In my opinion, this Harry Potter movie was the best of the four. My opinions aside, the movie experience in Japan was very nice. You get to pick your seats when buy your tickets, great idea. The seats were super comfortable and the theater super clean. Weird moment at the end of the movie, the credits started rolling and I began to get up, but then I noticed the lights hadn't come on and no one else got up. The Japanese sit through the credits, crazy.

On Sunday we went to see my host family. It was quite a culture filled day. First, we did mochi suki. Mochi is rice that's been beaten over and over again with the big wooden hammer. It eventually gets super sticky and then gets formed into little patties. Shell and I got to do that, it was pretty neat. The manager of the museum was very nice and spoke decent English. He gave us a tour and had his secretaries make up tea and warm mochi.

Then we were off to my host mom's brother's house. They've always been nice to me every time that I've been there and today wasn't any different. My host mom's sister-in-law gave Michelle a Kimono, which was pretty crazy. It's fairly old, but was worn only once and its made of silk. They usually cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. Lucky Michelle.  Michelle even ate octopus. I was impressed.

Next, we went off to Costco. Nothing special, but I bought lots of stuff in bulk.

Later we went to an onsen. An onsen, for the Japan impaired, is a public bath or hot spring. I've been before, but Michelle had never been before. She was a bit nervous, understandably, but ended up enjoying it in the end. It's very relaxing, once you get over the naked people.

Even got a ride home from the host parents. Good weekend.

Two things

Ya ya, I said I would post more, I didn't, so sue me. The pictures are up (they've been up for a while), so check them out. If you're ever in Japan, be sure to check out Kobe, great little city.

I came across this the other day, appears that I'm screwed. Ehh, I figured it was coming one way or another.

Kobe Part 1

Shell and I went to Kobe (no one seems to know where in Japan I exist, so place names will be linked to Google maps from now on) today, a first for both of us. We went to see the Luminarie, a giant light display that commemorates the victims of the Great Han-shin Earthquake. I was thoroughly impressed with Kobe. It was somehow quaint for such a large city. I'll post more tomorrow, I'm tired now. Check out the moblog for some Kobe pics.

You're kidding, right?

No, I'm not and that's the crazy part. The following is just another example of how weird the Japanese education system is.

Earlier this week three first grade (7th grade if you're living in the US) boys were caught smashing pencils in a vice in the shop class room. These three boys are frankly little bastards. I have all three of them in one class and they make the class awful more often than not. They don't bother me so much, but they really give me JTE (Japanese teacher of English) an incredibly hard time.

The Japanese education system leaves almost no room to discipline such class room disturbers. No real such thing as detention or suspension. Expulsion would take something crazy, I'm talking stabbing another student crazy. And no matter what a student does, they are never thrown out of a class. It might sound crazy to us (I personally think it is), but the Japanese believe that every student has a fundamental right to sit in a class. So your sleepers, talkers, trouble makers, and various other haters of the school system stay in the class regardless of what they might be doing in that class. Crazy. I know.

Anyway, back to the pencils. You would think smashing some pencils in a vice wouldn't be such a big deal, wouldn't you? Well, ok, they were some other kid's pencils, still no a huge deal, right? Wrong!

I saw the three kids getting chewed out in the hall way by my JTE. I've never seen kids even get yelled at before, so I figured they did something crazy. The next morning, during the daily teacher's meeting, it was a topic of discussion that took up most of the 15 minutes. Today I found out that while the three student's homeroom teacher went to each student's house for a parent conference, another teacher stayed at the school with them, until 11:00 pm!! All because they smashed some pencils.

Now, I don't particularly care for these three students and I think they had something coming for a long time, but over pencils? Come on. That's nuts! That's just Japan for ya...

I got nothing

Don't worry, I'm still alive. I've just got nothing.

Shell and I are trying to save up some money for a trip to Tokyo at the end of the month, so we haven't really been going anywhere. Just taking walks around town and such. The trip at the end of the month should be pretty cool though. 4 days, 3 nights. We've been planning and I'll post when we've got it down.

Work is work. Heh.

That's all.

Ya win some and ya loose some

Turns out that the elementary school teachers weren't really up to no good. I had my lesson on Wednesday and, even though I was never told about it, they made a lot of the changes that I had requested. We changed rooms and, most importantly, the teachers helped me out a lot more. They helped control the class and explain what I was trying to do.

The lesson went great. We went over numbers from 1-20 in English and then played bingo. Simple, but effective. The kids had lots of fun, which is usually what I care about the most. The teachers seemed pretty pleased as well.

Today was a little different, heh. I was riding high from my success the day before and went into my kindergarten lesson expecting the best. It was the better of my two classes too, but they just weren't into the whole English thing today. A lot of the kids just sort of ran around in the back of the room. The game went badly, to say the least, so I scrapped it after playing it just once. This left a huge chunk of time. Not a good place to be in with a room full of 5 year olds running around.

I made it out alive.