So it’s been a while. I logged in to my site earlier this evening to find that I have over 4,000 comments– all spam. So I’ll be turning off comments for a while, til I can get that cleaned up. Not much has been going on around here. Work has been good. Busy, but good. I am actually applying to be a classroom facilitator tomorrow– if I’m accepted I’ll teach classes to new partners and newly promoted shift supervisors. I have to give a presentation tomorrow, and then I’ll find out if I’m in! Tina’s doing well– she survived her first major round of exams for the year, took a day off, and is already diving right back into things. But the real reason I wanted to post today was that I found that Google Maps covers Japan! I’m not sure how long they’ve had it (I think a while), but here is a map of my old neighborhood. (Satellite map– I lived near the big green park in the middle). One of the cool things, though: those tiny icons are convenience stores! You can see three Circle K’s in this map, all of which I use to frequent. Speaking of old neighborhoods, the green area in the middle of this map, with the lake in the middle, is my old Oxford stomping grounds. This is fun– I might update later with maps of other places I’ve called home. Anyhoo, ciao for now!

I finally put up most of the photos that I had been meaning to upload– something like 13 new albums. It took a good part of the evening, but now I have over 1000 pictures online! I have no idea how much space I’m using on my web server, though, so some might have to be deleted in the next day or two. We’ll see.

This weekend my my first foray into actually cooking in this apartment. Jennie had a potluck, and I figured that I should actually make something to bring, instead of just grabbing some chips from the store. I have all these spice packets and things that Tina left me, but the directions are indimidating– cut, mix, fry, stir, drain… so many instructions! But I picked the easiest sounding one, a korma curry mix, and gave it my best shot. It turned out a bit too oily, but other than that it tasted pretty darn good, if I don’t say so myself. I bought a bunch of nan to have with it… yum! Overall, I was quite impressed with the food everyone brought: pad thai, Jamaican chicken, potato salad, garlic eggplant… quite a good showing. I’ll definitely have to try some more cooking on my own though. But the mess sucks– I think I used about every dish I own trying to make the curry. Maybe if I stick to making just one thing a week… watch out, here I come– ready to step in right where Martha Stewart left off!!

Black Ships and Samurai: an online exhibit featuring some 200 Japanese and American graphics depicting the 1853-1854 mission by Commodore Matthew Perry that led to the opening of Japan to the outside world. Cool!

貴子、千恵、円香 : ハロー！ 元気ですか？週末はどうでしたか？ 僕は、ベルシティ 行った。 楽しかった！ see you!

So instead of announcing new pictures, here’s some stuff for y’all to listen to. First, the funniest sound ever (thanks Meg!), and next, a song NOT by Wally Pleasant, but still an ok song.

And a quick update before I go to bed (it’s late!): went skiing this weekend and had heaps of fun, even though it rained all day Sunday. Finished up my last elementary school visit last Friday, and I’m going to miss it more than any of my other schools. Tomorrow I go back to my main junior high school, and I’m really not looking forward to it. Chris broke up with Shoko. Not much else going on, I guess. Good night!

So finally, after a year and a half of teaching English, I’m starting to feel like a real teacher. It’s weird– I have no training, no prior experience… no home rooms, no students to be responsible for. Almost all of my students, in fact, can barely communicate with me. But still, I’m starting to feel like I know what I’m doing when I stand in front a of class, that I can anticipate how certain activities will work with a particular class. Even my estimates of how long something will take are improving. No more rushed games, or five minutes at the end of class with nothing to do. For the most part

This is my last week at my current school: an elementary school that I spent a month at last year and a month there this year. It’s been incredibly nice to be back there: my ratio of kanchos (i.e. ass pokings) per day is significantly less than any of my other elementary school experiences– almost (but not quite) non-existent! The kids are so great… it’s just so much fun to be back. But it’s required me to be a bit more creative, because all the fun, crazy stuff that I always do, well, I already did it last year.

But I think that’s one of the things that has made me feel like I was actually teaching these kids something, instead of just playing silly vocab-based games. I mean, I certainly didn’t “teach them English” but I hope I taught them something that they can use if they ever meet an English speaking person. Obviously some kids couldn’t care less about learning about English, and that’s pretty frustrating. The sixth graders at my current school are a perfect example of that– most of them won’t repeat a thing I say, and they don’t even try to play the games I have for them. I mean, come on… what 11 year old doesn’t want to play a game?!? But all the other kids make up for it. One of my big lessons this year was teaching “What ____ do you like?” This afternoon, I had a group of girls following me around trying to think of what they could ask me that I like. Soooo cute. And so… I don’t know… just relieving I guess, to see that they listened, and understood, and were applying it.

So I checked out blogger tonight, where I saw this link to Ms. Frizzle’s blog, written by a teacher in New York. While I have basically nothing in common with Ms. Frizzle, I could relate to a lot of the things she wrote about: her students, the administrators, etc. And I think that’s what made me think that I feel like a real teacher. I mean, I have a very comfy, posh job compared to most teachers– I don’t have to do too much, other than be fun and crazy and speak English. But man I know what you’re saying.

p.s. Mom– I’m ok. I’ve just been busy, and tired

I just started a month of visiting Shinmachi Elementary School today, and man, is it nice to be back. I was there for a month last year at about the same time, and being back really made me think about my time here in Japan. It was weird walking in to the school and have everyone recognize me… the teachers and kids were so nice today! Especially compared to Seiko (my main school for the year) where I feel like I still haven’t been completely accepted. I had four classes today, and they all went pretty well. I’ve actually been kind of worried, because I feel like I can’t do my normal elementary school lessons, since I did them all last year. I don’t know how much the kids remember, but doing all the same things would be pretty boring, I think. So I’ve gotta think of five new lessons’ worth of games and materials. The kids have been really good so far… they all remember me, and they seemed excited to see me again. I even got to play some dodgeball! It’d been a while, but I was pretty much unstoppable. Of course, I was playing against eight year olds.

I had a pretty good weekend, too. On friday I went out with Chris and Tsubasa and our old boss Mr. Imada. It was fun to see him again. Whenever he drinks, he switches in and out of English randomly: he’ll be talking with another Japanese teacher and all of a sudden start blabbering on in English! Good times. We ended up going to this yakidon place… basically, a bunch of pig parts on a stick. See, yakitori is a pretty popular food here: skewers of chicken, some veggies maybe… kind of like Japanese shish kebabs. Good stuff, and usually pretty cheap. But the place we went to on Friday specialized in pork. Well, pig, because we had so much more than pork. I have never eaten so many parts of any animal before, let alone a pig. I think we just ordered whatever they were cooking that day, but we ended up with plates of liver, gizzards, cartilage(!), intestine(!!), and of course just plain meat. It wasn’t that bad, but weird textures combined with knowing what we were eating made it… not so appealing.

Once, on an island nation far far removed from the rest of the known world, lived a young Jabba. His mother was not a Jabba– that is a story for another time. This is why he was known as Quasi Jabba. Quasi Jabba had many friends. His two best friends were Shane (aka Guy Flash) and Chris (aka the BALD). One day, Quasi Jabba went drinking orange juice with Chris and Shane. See, on this remote island nation, drinking orange juice was the way best friends demonstrated their friendships. So they drank to their friendship, they drank to their health, they drank to their mothers (well, mostly to Chris’s… mostly), and they drank to them drinking orange juice together. Those were happy times. One day Quasi Jabba was very sad. He had no way do effectively deal with his sadness though, and it was thus manifested as anger. He busted all in up on Shane and Chris, and in a great shaking fury shouted “Do you know who I am?” And Chris and Shane thought this was hilarious, and they laughed. Quasi Jabba didn’t like their attitude one bit, so again, and even more angry this time, he inquired, “I’ll ask you one more time… DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” S and C, as they were affectionately known at that point, replied haughtily, and in unison, “Quasi Jabba, sit down and stop talking so loud. We’re trying to have a civilized conversation here.” Well, Quasi Jabba wanted nothing to do with a conversation of any kind, civilized or not. He took out what looked to be a glowing baseball bat. It lit up his face in the scary kind of way that people do with a flashlight under their face when they’re telling ghost stories, but more greenish. And he said, “I am the one formerly known as Michael Jordan, but only during the part of my career when I retired and tried to play baseball. Remember that?” He was very mad. C and S, as they were still known at this point, thought “Holy crap.” Quasi Jabba countinued. “And this is my light bat. I will use it to vanquish you, or at least try to hurt you really bad.” For those who don’t know, a light bat is confusingly heavy. It’s so named because it’s a light saber that looks like a baseball bat. Shane and Chris were scared, but they fought hard. Quasi Jabba foolishly unleashed his initial attack at the BALD. While the BALD absorbed the freakish attack, and indeed begged for more, Guy Flash found a toy light saber. With this crude but effective weapon, and with Quasi Jabba sufficiently distracted by the invulnerability of the BALD, Guy was able to annoy Quasi Jabba. A little poke here, a little poke there, and Quasi Jabba was finished. He scampered off into the darkness. Chris and Shane celebrated their victory with a round of fresh orange juice. Quasi Jabba, for the time being had been defeated, and the island nation would sleep easy that night. And that’s how things happened, back then. To be continued…

If the preceeding story made no sense to you, I really do apologize. It’s just that Chris and Shane are attention sluts and they begged my to write a story about them featuring Quasi Jabba. So that’s that.

I had a pretty fun weekend, though. We had our mid-year seminar on Thursday and Friday, and it was actually not 100% boring. I had to give a speech on Thursday, and although it wasn’t great, I don’t think it sucked. Friday night I went out with a bunch of people from outside of Tsu and had a really good time. We went to Steph’s place afterwards for some nabe. Good times. Saturday was a pretty lazy day. And then today was a blast. We went to Kyoto for a once a month market. I went with Shane, Steph, Kevin, Meg, Avery, and Karah. So much fun… they’re a funny bunch. I didn’t end up buying anything, although everyone else came back with some goodies. Kimonos, old war manuals, a sword, a box of old pictures, old movie posters, some old prints… tons of really cool stuff. There was festival food for lunch– yum! In the evening we had a great Italian dinner, followed by shopping at the Gap and Muji, and then wandering around the super cool Kyoto station. Good times… but I’m super exhausted. So go ahead, read the story of the Quasi Jabba one more time, and keep an eye out for more new stories!

Did anyone feel this earthquake? More info here. Crazy… I’ve only felt one earthquake here in Japan, and it was pretty small.

We had a huge windstorm today… one of the windiest days I have ever seen. Don’t know if it made the news, with all the fancy graphics and snappy titles, like it would have back home. It was durn windy though. My school is a 15 minute bike ride due west, towards the mountains. The wind always blows down from the mountains towards the sea… in other words, directly opposite of the way I ride to work. Luckily this morning it was only raining on the way to work. The wind started picking up shortly after I got to work (thoroughly soaked) and it didn’t let down all day. It was so loud! I was excited for the ride home though– as long as it didn’t rain and the wind didn’t change directions. I was in luck… it was almost like a free ride home! I was in second (out of three) gear coasting on my bike– the wind was pushing me so fast I couldn’t peddle fast enough! I tried to coast to a stop for a red light, but I actually started gaining speed… pretty crazy. On the way home, I saw that one billboard had been blown down and another had some panels blown off it. Crazy day. It’s finally calmed down now though.

So today marks my first week back from America… things have returned to normal pretty quick, although things still feel a little out of whack. I feel like I’ve lost the patience to talk to my teachers and students in a way that they can understand, for example. Today in one of my classes some kids were goofing off, so I came came up to them and started talking like they were my friends. They kind of stared at me blankly until one of them tried to imitate what I was saying. Comedy gold, I tell you. I just walked away, not really knowing what to do with them. And at home, I haven’t got used to being back in my apartment yet. I haven’t really gone grocery shopping, so I end up eating crap for dinner because it’s too cold to go out. I was gonna go to the gym tonight– that would have helped, to get out– but then there was the aforementioned tempest. Anyhoo, at least me work schedule isn’t too demanding… I had one day of classes last week, four this week (yesterday was a national holiday), next week my school has exams for half the week, and Thursday and Friday is our mid-year conference. Then I have a full week before I’m off to elementary school. So not so bad, all around. I just wish it was a bit warmer.