Hey! Mr Kot-tair!

I took a break from the blog but now I’m back. It wasn’t a conscious effort to go on tale telling sabbatical, I just got wrapped up in so many things that writing the blog never felt like a priority.

Last week I

Taught all the sixth graders at once, with help from a JHS Teacher.
We were getting them ready for their transition next year

Found our town's Christmas Tree
Santa rides a pennyfarthing on the top.

Hung out with some sprats

"Wine?"
"Bif"

Went to Ometesando Hills, a mall in Omotesando

Went to Takeshita St. in Harajuku

I had Thanksgiving with some other ALTs!

Cranberry sauce, veggies, and cornbread

Turkey, mashed taters, and stuffing

The Restaurant we went to for dinner

A bridal boutique near the restaurant

Hair Salon

In the floor at the Norman and D. Bar in Roppongi

In the wall at the Bar

The other day I fixed my bike. It had a flat tire.What an undertaking. The bike is put together like a puzzle, with many parts covering other parts; mostly the parts I need to get to.

I found this trash can at the JHS

Then I found this fall scene

Today is “Good Meat Day” here in Japan.
November is written as 11.
1 in Japanese is “ichi” or just “i”, so two of them is “ii” which is the Japanese word for “good”
2 is “ni” and 9 is “ku”. “niku” is meat in Japanese; hence, 1129 can be read as “iiniku” or “Good Meat”

I’ve been traveling to Tokyo, visiting friends, going window shopping, riding trains, working, watching movies (good and bad), and some days just relaxing.



I have not yet been able to purchase my plane ticket home. I have been having trouble finding a ticket I can afford. This is causing me great stress. I miss the ease of banking in America. For one, it has been three months now that I have been here, and I just this weekend got my bank account. That is too long of a period in my opinion. The bank accounts here are different than in America. Here they don’t have checking accounts because they don’t have checks. They don’t really have credit cards because a lot of businesses don’t accept them. This is a cash society. That’s all well and good until I need to buy something on the internet, such as a plane ticket, and I can’t because the card I got from the bank is just an ATM card, not a debit card. I will be receiving a debit card in the mail in 12 days, but that is one more card I have to carry around.
I am not sure as to the best place to exchange money, in the event I would like to send some home or take some home with me when I visit.

The stress is making me want to stay home and watch movies all day on my days off.

I should probably get out more, as long as it doesn’t cost any money…

Wowza! Nomikai!

Sunday

I had class today because of “Parent’s Day.” Basically my day consisted of not teaching classes and then sitting in a super long assembly. I had one class to teach and then not classes until after lunch, where I had one class, then we had an assembly for the rest of the day. The assembly was broken into two parts: Student presentations and The Speaker. Most of the parents watched the kid’s part, but during the break between acts they mostly dispersed. Lucky. The speaker talked for an hour and a half. I fell asleep often during his talk. A few of the other teachers did too, as well as most of the students. After school I went home, watched some movies, and had dinner.

Monday

I had no classes to teach today because the kids were studying for an upcoming exam. I spent the first period doing nothing school related, I tried to teach myself Adobe After Effects. It was really hard to learn from just reading, so I decided to wait until I got home and I could watch some YouTube videos about it.

Second period, I went over the lesson I am going to have on Wednesday. It will be a joint teaching effort from both myself and one of the teachers from the middle school. We will be teaching an English class to some sixth year students at the elementary school, to help them prepare to transition to the middle school next year. It’s an “English is fun in middle school!” kind of a thing.

I spent third period revising the PowerPoint presentation for Wednesday, as well as trying to print the slides out. I was unable to because of something I couldn’t understand. I was trying to print using a work computer, but everything is in Japanese so I can’t understand error messages very well.

Fourth period was spent in the teacher’s room doing nothing work. Or little to no work. It depends on what side of perception you’re on, I suppose.

Lunch today smelled really good. They always bring lunch in to the teacher’s room and serve it up for the teacher’s. They also have a faculty member eat a meal before the rest of the school. I’ve heard this is to see if a food-borne illness could affect the entire school.
Looking out the window, staring at the grey skies, noticing the light drizzle, the roof tops, the power lines, and coupling it with the frigid air; memories of my first trip to Japan in the winter of ’91 came rushing back. Along with the memories came a good feeling from the remembrance of such a happy time. : )
Fifth period I taught and then sixth period was free. I spent the remainder of my workday trying to translate five sentences from English to Japanese. It was really hard. I did all five sentences and then asked a teacher if they were right. They weren’t. I then sat at my desk and used Google Translate to check my attempts. I never once got it right on the first try.

I got a new version of Microsoft Word. This new version has an updated spell-checker and it is pissing me off. It is constantly telling me not to use the word “really” as a modifier, not to use the word “basically” to start a sentence, not to use contractions, and for some reason it thinks the single letter “o” is an acceptable word. There are other words it allows when it shouldn’t, but I can’t remember what they are. I usually find them when I am typing too fast and I put a space in the wrong place, breaking up a word. The spell-check doesn’t catch it for some reason. I can understand how using “basically” to start a sentence would be a faux pas, but I’m not doing it constantly, nor am I writing a paper for an institution of higher learning. It recognizes everything else, why can’t it see that? Office 2007 is a humbug.

After work I went home and changed. I was going to a 飲み会(nomikai, Drinking Party) with the elementary school! Yippee!

飲み会 was crazy fun! We went to a really good restaurant that isn’t too far from my house. We had a ton of food:

After dinner, we went to karaoke. I picked the opening song, “Shima Uta” and everybody liked it. We sang and sang.

The only downside to the evening was the constant cigarette smoke. I need to take a shower. Ugh.

I watched two flicks

I saw the "A-Team" movie. It was pretty crap. It played a lot to the lowest common denominator. Explosions for no reason, a hot girl wearing revealing clothing at inappropriate moments, stupid dialog.

Then I saw "Sorcerer's Apprentice". Didn't do much better. I didn't like the guy playing the apprentice, Jay Baruchel. He seems to play the same character over and over again, just like Michael Cera. I didn't like how quickly the love interest believed everything she was told as soon as she was told it. I also felt the film makers made a glaring omission of fact during a critical scene. Granted the movie is about magic, so I understand I should take it too seriously, but they still goofed pretty big I think. There is a scene where a sorcerer is summoning an undead army from all across the globe. Waves of grey smoke fly across the planet to graveyards and begin to raise the dead. A plume flies to a graveyard in New York and unearths some skeletons. A plume flies to Italy and animates some crypt fiends. Another plume flies to China and right over the Great Wall to a cemetery somewhere in the countryside. Wait. What? Flies over the Great Wall? Flies right past it? The Great Wall is the biggest cemetery in the entire world! The length of the wall is one big mass grave for all the people who died while it was being built over the course of about 1000 years! If you are going to raise an army of undead zombies, wouldn't the Great Wall be like the Super Walmart or graveyards? It would have everything you need. A one stop shop. But no, the plume goes right past it and heads straight to a rinky dink cemetery in the middle of nowhere that has probably 35 gravestones THAT DON'T EVEN LOOK CHINESE.

Suspension of disbelief Fail.


edit: Also the characters in the film talk about getting drunk for a birthday the main character just had, but he says he is only 20. Disney supports underage drinking? It's okay because they are college students? For shame...

I only have one day off this weekend!

Wednesday

It is freezing cold here! I no likey.

I spent a good two and a half hours trying to install Photoshop to someone’s computer last night. Finally, it worked, but then the Office suite wouldn’t install properly. Compounding our troubles with the installations, the operating system was all in Japanese. I couldn’t read all of the words so I hoped I didn’t mess anything up on that brand new computer.

Did I mention the cold?

I was having a hard time felling my fingers. They were so cold they were almost transparent.

I was handed a paper filled with kanji that I couldn’t read, BUT I had a new app for my phone that allowed me to look up kanji and it gave me somewhat of an understanding of what was going on with the paper.

It was raining and I wasn’t looking forward to riding home in the cold rain. :(

I went home in between schools to change my pants and put on some warmer clothes. My pants were too thin and they got wet on the way home, so they had to be changed. I put some sweat pants on under my fresh slacks and I was warm for the rest of the day! I went to the middle school and finished authoring the DVD I was making for Ookubo-sensei and then I went to watch the boy’s table tennis again. Right before work ended, I  was gifted with one of these delicious chocolate scones:

And also a pancake treat with red beans inside of it. This is aparently Doraemon's favorite treat. It is pretty tasty...

This Country Ma'am cookie is, on the other hand, just okay.

I went home and burned a copy of the DVD while I watched Japanese TV. The show was really interesting but rather eclectic. I would get into watching something and then it would change to a different story. A thing about three boys who wanted to become tumblers, maybe join a male cheer squad; a group of high school students who were paired off with famously talented TV artists in order to create some funny computer animated shorts; and some middle school kids who wanted to become anime voice actors. These vignettes were interlaced with a game show. The contestants were high school kids that were split into two teams of four. They were stood in front of a table with a small cardboard screen placed upon it, behind which was a plate of food. The object of the game was to guess what the food was behind the screen while the host wafts the scent toward the teams.

The next show was a quiz/challenge show. A group of people were placed in puzzles and asked questions to which the correct answer got them out of the puzzle. There was a “bomb” wire snipping game. Each of four contestants were in their own, tight, air-duct type space. In front of them were three tubes and each tube had a cap. Twisting off the cap revealed a wire that was color-coded to the contestant and to an answer to a question. The contestants had ear-pieces and could talk to each other, but couldn’t see each other. When a question was asked, they would discuss what the answer was and the person who’s color was the same as the question had to cut the wire and hopefully stop the timer on the bomb. Oh, did I forget to mention the timer on the bomb. Yeah. They had 2 minutes to answer three questions. If someone clipped the wrong wire, their air-duct was flooded with fog and they were out. There was another game where a woman was in a pit of little foam BBs and she was sinking. She had to answer a certain amount of questions in order to stop from sinking, somehow. Another game involved three people and seemed like it was straight out of Saw. The people were chained to the floor and the ceiling was slowly coming down upon them. They had three boxes with locks on them and they had to figure out where the keys were for each successive box as they raced against their certain demise. They got all the boxes open and were rewarded with a screwdriver. They removed a panel from the wall and were presented with three buttons and a video screen. They were told there existed a button at the end of an air-duct which would stop the ceiling from smashing them into pancakes. One of the contestants had to shimmy down the duct and push the button, but there was some plexiglass in the way. I couldn’t understand what made the plexiglass so difficult to move, but the guy who went to move it failed. They were crushed. Game over.

I wish there were more shows on like these, on a regular basis. I only ever find them randomly and sometimes they are not on at the same time on the same channel the next week.

After the DVD burned, I watched “Performance”. Made in 1970 and starring Mick Jagger, the film is about a gangster in hideout from his boss. The gangster went a little too far and became a liability. He was to be murdered but he escaped from his would-be murderers and went to live in a different part of town. He went to live with Turner (Jagger), a rock superstar who has writer’s block. Turner lives with a German chick and a French chick. They do drugs, have sex, and try to make music. It was an interesting flick and Mick Jagger’s first film.
The German girl is played by Keith Richards’ at-the-time girl-friend. She and Mick actually had sex on film instead of simulating it, which made Keith understandably mad. Mick and Keith were to write a song for the film, but after the incendent, Keith refused. He literally just sat in the back seat of a car and didn’t talk to anyone until the film wrapped. Mick had to finish writing the song by himself. Right after the film wrapped, Keith forgave Mick, and they were friends again.

Then I went to bed.

Thursday

The days keep getting colder. Hooray for that.

I am growing increasingly more excited to get home. I can’t wait to see my family and just relax around my house.

It’s 12ºC. That’s too cold no matter which system of measurement you chose to use.

I taught another class by myself today, 5th year students. They were wonderful! When I don’t have another teacher with me, I seem to have more fun…
Today was a pretty good day. We had チョッコ 揚げパン for lunch and I was invited to my first 飲み会 at the elementary school! やった！The lunch lady gave me three チョッコ 揚げパン to take home. Oh Boy! Then she gave me a bowl of milk jello with fruit

The learning never stops around here. I found out the name of the mountain to the east of my city.

It’s called 筑波山 Tsukuba San or Chiku(ancient musical instrument)Billows Mountain . It’s 877m high and it is made up of two different parts the north part is called 女体山 Nyotai San or Woman’s Body Mountain, while the south part is called 男体山 Nantai San or Man’s Body Mountain. Then I found out the first character in the name of my city, Chikusei, is the same as the first character in Tsukuba. Chikusei City is written 筑西市, which means The City West of Tsukuba Mountain. The last character is 市shi, which means city. From the fourth floor of the school, one can see 日光Nikko. Nikko means sunshine. Nikko is a really pretty city, I’ve heard, and I just found out the mountain is a volcano.

After lunch, the health teacher came to class and gave us all an instruction on tooth brushing.

After school more 揚げパンwas distributed. I thought I might be losing weight earlier this month. With all this candy-food, I don’t think it’s the case anymore. As I typed this, more candy and cookies were thrust upon me.

Tonight when I am home, I plan on watching 雲じさん (Kumoji-san)。Kumoji is a portmanteau of “kumo” meaning cloud and “oyaji” meaning old man. Kumoji-san is an old man cloud that flies around Japan and points out places of interest. I’ve watched the show about Chiba and the show about Haneda-area Tokyo. They are really interesting and I can’t wait to see the next episode. The only problem is, the show is usually on at 9 on Thursday nights, yet last week it wasn’t. I hope this week it is!

Friday

Well, I didn’t end up watching 雲じさん last night. I instead watched one and a half movies. I saw “Cat People”(1982) with Natassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell in its entirety. It was a kind of a remake of a film from 1942, but it really wasn’t. What is was, was a weird flick about a race of half human half black leopard people; changelings. It was fun to watch because of two things: Ed Begley Jr. and the David Bowie score. Otherwise, it’s a throw away film. Unless you like gratuitous ‘80s breast shots. Then it’s a film that will live up to your standards.

The other film I watched, or began rather, is “Perfume.” The movie takes place in France during the 1700’s(?) It’s a movie about a guy who can smell everything. He can smell everything and categorize it in his brain, he can pick apart scents and describe their composition, and he can smell things from very far away. He wants to use his gift to create perfumes or essential oils that capture the scent of people he loves so he can never lose the smell; he wants to create smells that last forever. He is very simple and has never had a formal education, but he did study for a while under a famous perfumer from Italy. He finds his way to a town famous for its flora and the perfumes that are created thus, and it was here that I stopped watching. Bedtime beckoned and who am I to resist?

Work today was somewhat uninteresting at the start. I had one class then a break then two classes then nothing. At lunch I ate with the first year students. When the camera comes out, every once and a while one of the kids will see it and ant me to take their picture.

The girl on the right really wanted to have her picture taken but she couldn't get anybody to join her in the shot. Finally she got her friend to join in. Right after lunch was cleaning time, so I stuck around and helped them clean. I swept and scrubbed the floor. Those poor kids tried and tried to explain something to me but I couldn’t figure out what they wanted to say. After that, I helped a teacher record some speaking bits for an upcoming test. That was easy and I had a fun time. We used my iPhone for sound effects!

Here is the view of the north from the third floor of the school.

That's a grave yard in the foreground and the senior high school to the right.

I went and played table tennis with the girls today. I am still horrible, but I am showing imporevment.

After school I went home and watched the end of "Perfume." It was a good movie and I highly recommend it. Before I got home I saw this:

I went to Gusto, a 24hr Coco's style restaurant,  to study Japanese with Paul and Sunshine. We were there from about 7 to 11 and I think we got a lot of studying done. It was really fun!