I realize now that I live in inaka.

I went to school yesterday and had another great day! I gave my introduction to the last three classes and met some more students. The class I had lunch with had one of the cool flags from the Undo kai:

I like the ninja cat on the bow

I had a pretty tasty lunch and then noticed a bad pattern. After lunch I get very sleepy and I usually have the rest of the day free from teaching, so I try to look busy at my desk, but it is hard. It's hard because when one thinks of a busy person, one usually doesn't think of a guy asleep at his desk. I try reading the lessons, I read them over and over because they are so simple, but I start falling asleep while I'm reading. Luckily, one of the English teachers came over and gave me some papers to grade. I don't know when a teacher has ever been grateful to grade papers, but I made history that day. I finished them up and saw that I had slit the throat and bled out an entire hour's worth of time! With the taste for blood now in me, I got up and roamed the teacher's room, like a Bengal tiger after a savage decimation of an Indian village, looking for any stragglers. Finding none, I went to the restroom.

The restrooms in the middle school stink.

There are squat toilets in the restrooms and they smell like a pit of death after a flood at the Westminster Kennel Club Annual Dog Show. There also isn't very good ventilation so the smell doesn't really have a place to go, except my olfactory gland. The restrooms in the elementary school don't smell bad at all. At all. They have huge windows and the boy's side only has one squat toilet compared to the middle school's two plus a regular toilet. The restrooms at the elementary school are weird though, in that the restroom is one big room divided in half for the girls and the boys with the stalls in the middle. One cant see into the girls side, or vice versa, but if one really wanted to you could look over the top of the stalls and see into the girl's side. This always makes me nervous when I use the restroom there because I don't want any students looking over into the boy's side while I'm scratching-the-cat-behind-the-ears.

After school I helped the President of the Student Council with his speech, making sure he pronounces "th" "r" "ritual" and "nce" as in "patience". He is really smart and we work well together, so he's not having too much trouble. He draws little symbols by the words to help himself remember the correct sounds he should make and he draws little faces in profile to illustrate tongue placement.

Where my linguists at!? Tongue Placement! What?!

After I left school, I booked it home to change and get to the train station. I need a bike. The station is 30-45 minutes away from my apartment, by foot. I left the apartment at ten to six and needed to catch a 6:10 train. I had to run most of the way. I got there on time, a little early at that, and went to the station agent to buy my ticket. I had looked up my stops and which lines to take, so I kind of knew where I was going, but I didn't explain it to the agent properly. Instead of taking a local train and switching to a rapid train later, I bought a strictly local train ticket.

Did you know the future is here?

3D video is yours!

On my two hour train ride I decided to keep myself occupied by sketching. I don't usually sketch but I'm pretty happy with the results.

Wearing a medical mask because of illness

Sleeping man

I also wrote a poem about part of my journey:

So Many Bugs

Wind blows

back and forth across

the bugs come and go

land and die

my justice is swift

another bug lands

*flick*

flop

Without the wind would they still fly?

I wasn't allowed to board the express train so I was ten minutes late meeting my friends. I met up with some of my ALT friends from my orientation in Kashiwa and we went to have Okonomiyaki. I was also met some new ALTs and my British friends girlfriend. Everybody was really cool and we had a great dinner.

Okonomiyaki!

I stayed the night at one of the guy's apartments, which was nice because that meant I didn't have to catch a train, but he only has his one bed so I got to sleep on the hardwood floor. I'm achy. I slept quite a while for a guy sleeping on hardwood and awoke around ten and caught the train home. I got on the wrong train and went one station towards home and then headed back to the initial station I started from. Then I got on the right train and made it home.

Art

Taking it easy today and then doing it all again tomorrow!

inaka means countryside and if I didn't paint a clear enough picture, I live in a geographical anomaly, two hours from everywhere.