Busy!! BUSY!! (Lazy. :( )

"Ok, Colin. 50 words or less, what have you been up to?"

Not a chance, but I'll try. :D (Post edit: The pictures are from Fugendake... it was a mountain hiking trip)

I know it's been a long time since a post, but I keep finding other things to distract me (Such as watching season 2 of Dexter... holy crap, AMAZING show... but... rated R as far as TV shows go... sooooo.. yeah). Here's an attempt to fill in what all has been going on since the Kyoto trip! Annnnnnd GO!

Friday, the 17th, we had the English Recitation contest. The three groups of students got to compete with all other schools in Kikuchi with their english skits. I think overall, they did... well. Not exceptional, but well. My ichinensei needed to LIGHTEN UP more and be more ENERGETIC!! My Sannensei did fantastic, but there were just others that did better... they read this story about a girl who died from radiation from Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped... sad, sad story (but after you hear it by 5 different groups, it starts to lose it's touch. How many times can that freaking girl die??? GEEZ!!! (...Too soon?)). My ninensei did a GREAT job and got 3rd place overall!!! Something like 13 schools total, maybe. It was great, because there was another ALT that was kinda... nasty about it. Insulting of my students, and completely stunned about it when they won (and was very vocal about their opinion). Whatever. It's not about the ALTs. Everyone did a fantastic job and the students all worked VERY hard, so it doesn't matter who won! (Annnnd let me tuck away "teacher-Colin" for the night)

The following Wednesday, The school had their culture festival. Basically, it's a day of plays and music stuff put on by the students. The english kids did their skits again for the rest of the school (I had to stand in for an absent student... it got a couple of chuckles from the student body when they saw a line of students in uniform, and then tall, lanky Mr. Sandall following them). The koto group performed (I wanna learn to play), the taiko drum group performed (I wanna learn to play... I didn't know the schol HAD a taiko drum group!!) and the marching band performed. (I wanna play...) scratch that, I WILL play. I got invited by the director to join them for their March concert. :D Hopefully it pans out and I get to rock out on some drums for the first time in over a year. They played Take The A Train at the concert, so I can only hope I get to play some jazz. :D ANYway, the culture festival was kinda fun. I got to see the students do things other than sit in their desks and fall asleep during english class.

Day 2 of the culture festival was actually Monday. It was a choral competition. All of the classes learn two songs. One that they sing with the rest of their grade, and another that just their class sings. here''s the format, though. The entire grade sings the group song first. Then, each class from that grade takes their turn on the stage... and they sing that song again, just by themselves. So... I heard 3 songs (one for each grade)... 6 times. 6 TIMES. Ah well. In any case, it was fun to get to listen into a choral contest again. The poeple I figured would win won, so that's a plus. I also got to throw out some Japanese conversation with teachers I usually only say "Ohayo gosaimasu!" to. A few came up to me and asked what I thought about being at a choral contest, since they know I'm a music geek. It was kinda cool to talk music again, not gonna lie. :D

What else is going on? My wednesday night Japanese lessons are going well, I think. Last week, my tutor wanted to know about my kyoto trip (in Japanese), so we talked about that. I think I carried about 1/2 the conversation staying in Japanese... but the interesting stuff, I had to break into English. (I got sick of saying everything was "sugoi." Note to self: learn more adjectives.)

I also started my Eikaiwa class, English Conversation class for adults, last week. It's on Tuesday nights, and it's going to be a lot of fun. I have 21 students registered for the class, but only 16 showed up the first night. Tonight, only about 14... I hope the trend doesn't continue. Anyway, I just gave them surveys last week to find out their ability levels... everyone seems pretty good at english, so it makes my job easier! Now we can relax and play some games and enjoy the conversation side of things! Like tonight... we had a pretty good discussion about Halloween in America. THEN we played this awesome party game called Alibi. I won't go into the details or anything here, but basically, 3 people have to think up an airtight alibi about a crime while the rest of the class asks them nitpicky questions, trying to get one of them to slip up in the story. It worked VERY WELL. And was a lot of fun. (and made me miss all those group games that my sister and her friends would play. I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! *tear* :( ) The class is going to be great, though, I think. next week, we'll get more structured and crack down some actual conversation, but I had to win them over in the first few classes being super-genki Colin-san!!

Oh. Sunday, I climbed a mountain. And by climb, I mean hiked... hiked really steep trails over rocky terrain, but still. STILL. It was fun. I went with Kuroda-san and this School board/mountain climbing group. I was the youngest there by about, oh... 10 years. I think the average age had to have been about 50, and if you took me out, it raises to 60. I had no problem keeping up. ;) (I'm going to hate young upstarts like me when I get that age... now all I need is a porch, a lawn, and neighbor kids to yell at to stay off) At the top, we had a spectacular view of the active volcano right next to it. Unfortunately, it was raining, so all morning, we watched the clouds pour in and fill up the valleys. Not to mention, it was COLD. Basically, imagine this group sitting at the top of a mountain n the pouring rain with sack lunches huddled under raincoats, but smiling proudly. That was us. Though I did get to ride the ferry over to Nagasaki prefecture! That was neat! I guess 17 or 18 years ago, the volcano erupted and flooded the port town with lava, so while on the ferry, you're watching this mountain and seaside town get closer and closer, and you start to see the trails the lava would have taken. Pretty spectacular ("sugoi!" *sigh*), says I.

After that, a small group went out and had some Yakiniku (yaki-niku = "cooked/burnt - meat"). It's that type of restaurant where they give you all the raw stuff, and you grill it at your table. It was fun, and DELICIOUS!! ("Tottemo oish-katta desu!") Let's see.. other strange food I've tried. Oh! Sukiyaki. ("Suki = like," and yaki was covered earlier... can you figure it out??? (Hey, wait, I thought teacher-Colin went to bed!)) I finally had sukiyaki. Basically, you have a pan/hot plate thing in the middle of the table that you cook things in. Each person has a bowl that you crack an egg into... you mix the egg around... then, you chopstick out some stuff food the pan (yes, I used chopstick as a verb) and dip it in the raw egg... then... you eat it. Raw egg and all. Ok, at first, I was nervous, but it was actually quite good! There's a video that might be showing up soon that one of the other ALTs took of our first bites, so I'll keep you all posted, if you're interested in seeing us shove the stringy messes into our mouths. ;)

Ok, I think that about wraps up the major events of the week (or two). I'm getting excited to start Halloween lessons this week with the sannensei. Sadly, no costume for me, but eh. We'll have fun. :) And there's a rockin' ALT halloween party this weekend that is supposed to be one of the biggest events of the year. Man, I love Halloween (and I really wish Japan celebrated it more... dangit).

Things at school have been... good. I continue to love my ninensei classes, continue to feel awkward in my sannensei classes, and continue to feel annoyed/frustrated at my ichinensei classes. Such is the gamble that is the JTE. Ah well. C'est la vie! ("wtf, french now??" I know, I know. Shut up.)

Okay, fine. I'll rate.

Since I highly doubt any of them will magically stumble upon this blog, I've decided to give the skinny on the teaching situation I'm in... the good, bad, and ugly (you love cliches, and you know it). This, of course, comes after a particularly weird day...

So amidst the flurry of ramblings so far, you've probably gathered that things aren't always entirely peachy amongst my JTEs (refreshin' yer memory... 'japanese teachers of english,' or else my 'cooperating teachers'). Well, wait, lemme back up... amongst them, it's fine, since they rarely work together... I guess it's amongst me and them... and the support teachers. And not so much them... more me... because of them. See the "It's not my circus" post to get a sense of things...

Have I circle-talked enough? K. Well, basically, the scoop is that I work with three teachers: One for the ichinensei, one for the ninensei, and one for the sannensei. There's also a support teacher that "floats around" (more detail on the quotes later). I can safely say that 1 and a half of my 3 main teachers completely rock. 1 being the ninensei teacher. I love working with her. She's always got her head on, knows what's going on in the class, effectively teaches the english to the students, and does her very best to let me know what I need to do (AND SHE ACTUALLY USES ME AS MORE THAN A HUMAN TAPE RECORDER!!). She's amazingly hard working, and can usually be seen running in and out of the staff room with an arm load of folder bins, still managing to smile and say, "Hello!" as she dumps them off on her desk, only to turn around and toss some posters and a CD player at a line of students that have followed her in to help carry things back upstairs. Then off she goes again. I completely respect her as a teacher because she really seems to be in it for the students. And she's totally confident in her own ability, too... we actually have conversations outside of the required, "Ok, so for class 2-4 today, I would like you to..." The only complaint is that sometimes I feel like I let HER down, either by asking too many questions or taking up too much of her time.

Let's talk about the half, shall we? The sannensei teacher has good control of her classroom, it seems. She's always got a good plan in mind and usually implements it fairly well... even if I'm not necessarily included in this planning. The impression I get, though, is that she isn't confident in her english ability. Therefore, we rarely talk except for the usual dialogue above (I'm not retyping it... seriously, it's, like, 9 lines up there). Even if I don't always know what's going ON in the classroom (since she speaks mostly in Japanese to the students, other than a few routine phrases that shoot out every class period), I relax because I know she's got it under control. There have been a few times where she'll suddenly pass me the ball and I'll have no choice but to stand there blinking until I get sacked. One story comes to mind... I asked what we were doing for the next period, and she told me lesson 5-1. We get up to the room, go through the routine opening ("Hello everyone," "Hello, ___-sensei and Andy-s... uuhh... Mr. Sandall" "You're getting closer... Good morning, class."), and while the class is settling down, she looks at me, "I made mistake... we are doing 5-2 today." Oh... great. Ok, I can fake it... she won't throw random stuff at me, right? Wrong.

In retrospect, I should have realized that she'd want me to exercise the grammar point. I should have known that just by glancing at the book, I would have seen that the point was "His name is James, but his friends call him Jim." But since I'm still the new guy and still learning the way these teachers work and the way the books are set up... I was left with no choice but to have the following conversation in front of the class. "Mr. Sandall, what do you call MacDonalds in America?" "Umm... MacDonalds...?" And she just kinda stared at me, visibly thinking "Umm... crap... what do I say now?" She kinda smiled and tried again, "What do you call MacDonalds in America?" I reply more confidently this time, "It's just MacDonalds." Score, Colin. You TOTALLY got that one right! Again, the blank stare. She turned to a student and asked, "What do you call MacDonalds in Japan?" The student glanced at the book and said, "Oh! Eto... we call MacDonalds 'Mac.'"

I smashed my head against the door frame, trying hard not to laugh at my own idiocy. But the moment had passed. I knew the answer to every single question from that point on, but she never passed to me again for that period. :D Between classes, I could only laugh, shake my head, and apologize. She laughed, too, and said it was okay, since we didn't have time to talk about it. I said, "Yes, but in case you were wondering, in America, we CALL it MacDonalds. And we also CALL Kentucky Fried Chicken KFC. I understand now." And we laughed. But I nailed it that next period. (Congratulations, Colin, you just passed middle school esl.)

Anyway, we have a lot of miscommunications, but nothing terribly serious, and nothing that doesn't get sorted out within a few moments. ...which brings me to exhibit C.

This is the teacher I heard about before I set foot in the building. I had recieved a warning by way of Tim from the old ALT about this guy. Only I didn't realize how frightened I should be. I think at one point, I said, "I haven't seen enough evidence to really call him a bad teacher, per se..." well I take that back. I have. This guy is terrible. Sure, he's shown improvement over the time I've watched him, but not much, and he's still leaps and bounds behind the other staff. Speaking of other staff, remember the quotes from earlier? Told you they'd be back. The support teacher, the nicest lady in the world, "floats around," or at least she did last year. This year, she's been asked to go to every single ichinensei class to help teach. This teacher has had parents come to the school complaining about him, he's had the principal and the vice principal down his throat for as long as he's been there, and his inability to teach is what the support teacher told me one day was a "public secret." (And I really was completely serious when I said she was the nicest lady in the world.) All the other teachers know he's not good, but there's nothing anyone can really do about it.

So why all the hub bub? The guy speaks amazing english. Really, he does... he's probably tied for best english speaking teacher, if not actually having first place. Does that mean he's able to explain anything that much better? Oh, don't be silly! Of course not! Then that would be TOO easy! It's okay, though. To be fair to all languages, he can't explain much better in Japanese, either (The support teacher told me). He teaches out of order (how can they understand the dialogue if they haven't learned the grammar point yet?), he constantly misplaces things (leaving me to tap dance while he goes back to fetch his flash cards), he lacks control of his class, and even fears his students. I've seen students openly stand up to him in class and he does nothing... one student refused to work, and while he tried to get the student on task, the student simply gave him an insulting expression... this caused the teacher to do what any good teacher would do... er, wait, no... the... the opposite... my bad (I think someone flipped my note cards around). He just looked shocked, and turned around and went back to the front of the classroom angrily... He didn't say a word about it. In another class, I noticed a student was off task. Since I wasn't sure exactly what they were supposed to be doing (Nihongo ga wakarimasen, remember?), I pointed the student out. The teacher said to me, and I quote, "Oh... haha... yes. He should be working. You should tell him. I don't want to go back there. He... he sometimes makes fun of me."

I'll give you a few spaces to really let that one sink in.



Pick up the jaw and let's continue on. Anyway, routinely in class, the support teacher finds herself having to step in and reteach the lesson of the class. I can literally hear students going, "...ooooohhhhhhh....." when she finishes. Of course, this is after they've spent 10 minutes fumbling through a worksheet.

I suppose this post comes after a weird day... I had two ichinensei classes today, and both went terribly, and by that I mean "as usual." The teacher and the support teacher were all but fighting in front of the class while I stood off to the side being genki and happy, and continuing on in my little tap dance ("Not my circus... not my circus... not my circus..."). Later that afternoon during a free perioid, as I was trying to prep for my adult ekaiwa class tomorrow night (details later), they were in some sort of heated discussion in the staff room. I heard my name get dropped a few times, but didn't try to pick out any other words and just kept my head down. I went to the copy room to make some worksheets, and when I came back, the conversation had moved to my desk... they were standing at my desk, continuing the argument, and using my text book to point things out (it was the closest text book, which is why I assume they were at my desk... I hope... *gulp*). I found other projects to work on away from my desk and killed some time. I looked back about 5 minutes later and the vice principal had joined the fray... all still standing around my desk. Tell me that's not unnerving.

So about the time the period was over, they finally wrapped up the conversation and I was able to get back to the safety of my little metal fortress. But still... I wasn't able to talk to either of them the rest of the day, so I don't know what went down... nor do I think I want to know what went down. Just smile, nod, be happy, do your job, and all will be well. :)

Ok, so, aside from all this rambling, I don't want you to get me wrong. I completely love it here. Sure, there are some downsides, but that's the hazards of the job, I suppose. Every ALT has a "that guy" at their school, so I'm in good company. We all just manage and enjoy the fact that we're in freaking Japan.

...and marathon Scrubs on days off...

KYOTOSAKA EXTRAVAPALOOZAGANZA!!!

Strap yourselves in, folks. I hope you ate and have cleared your schedules for the afternoon, because this one's a doozy. (Edit: Sorry, I can't get the pictures and captions to line up... basically, if it's on the left, it goes with the left picture. Right, it goes with the right picture. "Thanks, Colin... I think we could have figured that one out." Hey, you don't know what type of people read my blog...)


Oh man. OH. MAN. Wow. I just had an awesome weekend. What, you say? It's Friday again? I know, I know. Give me a break. Got back on Wednesday afternoon and was too burned out to do anything productive... and then I hit a busy patch for a couple days, but now, here I am! I don't want to make this post too disgustingly long, so I'll touch on the high points and throw in some pictures... if you want details, you've gotta ask. :D (To make the pictures bigger, click on them)

So, for those who have read this far and are still going, "what the heck is he rambling on about? This is stranger than usual..." I just got back from 5 day trip to Kyoto and Osaka with Tim and Kana. See, ALTs have this thing where we can only work 20 days a month. October had 22 working days, so we're required to take 2 days off... Tim and I swung it to get those on the end of an already 3 day weekend (since the students were on break and we'd have to go to work, anyway), and then planned this massive vacation. Go, team! It worked out nicely because they both have friends in Osaka and Kyoto. But you know what else is in Kyoto?

Temples. Shrines. Classic Japan. The exact reason I wanted to go. Call me a nerd, but I'm into that history stuff. I've heard a lot of people say they are bored of that stuff, or that they got sick of Kyoto, but I don't think I could ever.

So, Day 1. We headed off from Ozu at about 1:15 to catch the 1:45 train into the city and connect with our 2:55 tickets to Fukuoka... in Fukoka, we connected with... THE SHINKANSEN!!! Bullet train, yo!! Yes. It IS fast. Not as blazingly "OMG WTF" fast as I was hoping, but still, a nice change from the local trains. We got into Kyoto and grabbed a couple more local trains, finally meeting Ben at about 8:00. (Ben is the friend of Kana and Tim's whose house we'd be invading for our time there)













Shinkansen fun!

The stairs in this house are scarily steep...

We went out for some dinner and some conversation and pretty much had an awesome time of it. Afterwards, we opted to take an easy night before hitting Kyoto and so rented a movie and hung out at Ben's. (Sukiyaki Western Django... weird, weird, weird movie... but strangely awesome)

Day 2. Ben swore by some shrine that had big orange gates, and remembering a little about it, we figured it would be as good a place as any. So we headed to Fushimi-inari shrine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fushimi_Inari-taisha ). Basically, it was a lot of walking up a mountain, but there were plenty of things to see. Massive orange gates, little orange gates, medium sized orange gates... basically, if you hate the color orange, stay away (in fact, don't even come to Kyoto... Orange seems to be a famous color, I guess). The path was peppered with shrines and such that people stopped and prayed at ("Throw donation, pull rope to ring the bell, clap twice, pray, leave... repeat at next shrine"). Very very cool. And even funnier that Ben accidentally color coordinated with the gates. (Look on facebook or photobucket for that photo)












Ooo, look at the gates.
1000 of these little ones...

You could buy little gates to write things on
and then leave them at shrines along the way...

After this, we went to Higashi-honganji temple. ( http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3920.html <-- This is a fantastic website about Japan) It's a temple that's literally right in the middle of Kyoto. Kind of neat in that it was massive and had some amazing architecture... but unfortunately, they didn't allow photos of the interior. It was just a large tatami room, anyway. It was still cool to hang out in there and wonder about people in it over the hundreds of years it's been around... Oh, the main building was being renovated, so the outside was covered... but we gained access through Amida Hall, the smaller (but still huge) building next to it. Not a lot of pictures, though.

Ta-daa!! This is the entry gate.

You wash your hands in this... and Ben's picking it's nose.

After that, we went and found some dinner after wandering back through Kyoto Station (oh my gosh, it was massive AND amazing! Especially at night!) and decided to go to the top of Kyoto tower. I got some good night shots from there, so that's always a plus. After that, a quick trip through the gift shop (where I bought a keitai charm... this little dude that hangs off my keitai (cell phone)) and we headed back to Ben's to get some sleep for...

Day 3. Ben had to go to class, so Kana, Tim, and I were on our own for the morning. Since the Kyoto Imperial Palace site was close to the school, we decided to start there. ( http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3917.html ) Much to our chagrin, however, it was closed because it was a national holiday (Sports and Education Day, or something... what?). Though we did get to take some pictures from the outside. Not too many. It was kind of neat wandering around the area, though. The massive gravel paths lining the walls were cool, and the whole area was in a park. We did manage to see some cooler parts of it, though...

One of the gates leading into the main palace portion.

After this, we headed over to maybe the second coolest place we saw: Kinkakuji, or "The Golden Pavillion." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkakuji ) This. Place. ROCKED. It's a temple that was built a long time ago and was plated with gold leaf. There's a cool photo spot across the lake from it (The "Post card shot.") but then you follow the path to go right up next to it and realize that EVERYTHING is a "Postcard shot." It was very crowded, but the path was set up to where the mass of people didn't get in the way of the experience. Enough of my jabbering. here's some pictures.

Look, ma. I've turned into a 15 year old japanese girl. :(

They even have gold plated rain gutters. How posh!

After this, we met back up with Ben and decided on another place to go check out. We headed for what I later found out was recently voted the top visitor's destination in Kyoto, and is well deserving of it's #1 place on my favorite spots: Kiyomizu-dera, "Pure Water Temple." ( http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3901.html ) Maybe it was the fact it was sunset, or maybe it was the location, but this place was amazing. You start off with a walk up the winding roads below through shops and throngs of people, while the whole time there is a massive pagoda staring you down from the distance in the trees. Finally, you get there. Lots of cool, old buildings, lots of shrines and good luck charms, lots of amazing views of Kyoto on the horizon... Not to mention the place is famous for it's terrace, a rather impressive structure to both stand on and look at from a distance... again, words don't do this one justice... and neither do these pictures, but let me try.

Again with the orange?
This pagoda was what was looming in the distance.

The balcony. Incredible. You really
have to be there to understand why. :D

After this, we headed to a smaller part of town and hung out in this cool shrine/park type place for a little while. Then we headed to the Gion district to try and spot an apprentice geisha (no luck :( ) and ended up hanging out in front of this classic theatre for about an hour just talking. We voted for some pizza for dinner ("Pizza Little Party" won out over Pizza Hut) and called it a night.

On Day 4, we pretty much got up and headed into Osaka. We left Ben (*tear*) at the train station to go to class, and jumped on the subway line to get into town. After spending some time deciding what to do on the rainy day, we opted to first and foremost buy some cheap little umbrellas. Secondly, we headed to the Osaka Aquarium! ( http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e4004.html ) It's a cool aquarium that you start at the top of, and then spiral down around the main tank in the middle. It was about half things I'd seen at the Henry Doorly Zoo, but about half were brand new animals!! Live!! ("I'm a big fan of your previous work... as a cub...") I'll spare the pictures on this one, but I finally got to see a manta ray (The thing seriously had about an 8 foot wingspan) and a whale shark! Sugoi!!

After spending the day there and also wandering around parts of down town, we found ourselves headed to meet Shiro-chan, one of Kana's good friends, to show us around for the night. But first, a quick stop by the Glico sign in the shopping district of Osaka. I guess it's a pretty famous sign that everyone gets their picture taken next to. Eh, when in Rome... But overall, the area was fantastic. Lots of huge billboards and advertisements that spared no expense. And somehow, it managed to preserve that "Japan" feeling. After this, meet Shiro-chan, check into our hotel, and then head off to Rock Rock, a great metal club.

By this point, I was running out of room on my camera, so I didn't get a lot of pictures... not that there was a ton to take a picture of. Though I guess the highlight (and one of the last pictures I managed to fit in) was that a member of Slipknot was also at the club. This club was about the size of 1 and a half dorm rooms and about 30 people were crammed in at one time... looming over the crowd, of course, was me and the Slipknot guy (...and his scary bodyguard...). I snagged a few pictures and even got to shake his hand on his way out, but I really didn't know who he was (since... ya know... Slipknot wears masks... and I'm not an avid fan... only a casual one). I did some research, though, and found out it was Mick, the lead guitarist (and guy with the coolest looking mask).

Anyway, the club/party was amazingly fun... and we stayed out amazingly late (don't tell Mom...). But wait, you say. Did you mention Hotel, Colin? Why yes! Yes I did! To be even more touristy, we opted to stay in... wait for it... wait for it...

A capsule hotel!!

Surprisingly roomy, amazingly comfortable, and an excitingly fun experience! If what you needed wasn't in your room (as in showers and food...) you could just throw on your jinbei and lounge around in the lavish dining area or head to the private showers! Seriously, if we'd been there a few more days, I would have had no problem staying here again and again.

But unfortunately, Day 5 brings about the end of the trip. Because of the way the train tickets worked out, we couldn't really work in Kobe (bummer) so we just opted for an early return and an evening to relax. All in all, a fantastic trip. I'm very glad I went, and actually kind of sad that I didn't gte to spend more time there. We saw less than half of what Kyoto has to offer, and I feel we only scratched the surface of Osaka... but there is much more to see and many more places in Japan to visit. But slowly... very slowly... I am working on complete "Japanification" of myself. In fact, just check out these souvenirs I bought!

SIZE 30 GETA!! THOSE SHOES!! THEY ARE SIZE 30!! Do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to find size 30 shoes in Japan, LET ALONE GETA???

Ever notice Kyoto and Tokyo are the same syllables, just reversed?

Ladies and gentlemen, I now hold in my hand the tickets required to get me to Kyoto this Saturday. Well, I assume they're tickets. Since I can't read most of it, I'll resign to calling them "magic slips of paper that transport me to enchanted faraway places." ("mspttmefp," for short) Tim, Kana and I met up in the city last night after my Japanese lesson to head over to the station and buy the shinkansen tickets (Bullet traaaaiiiin!). Again, I must clarify. They set up buying the tickets, I stood behind them like a drooling idiot admiring the floor tiles until they prodded me and said, "Colin, Money. Now." Anyway, the point is we got them. And our 5 day trip to Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe is READY TO START! we'll spend Saturday night through Tuesday morning in Kyoto, Tuesday morning, take the hour train ride to Osaka and stay there until Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning, it's off to Kobe to see a couple things, and then grab some Kobe beef for lunch, and then we hit the train and head back to Ozu that night. I'm expecting some fantastic pictures, since, you know, Kyoto has a lot of that "classic Japan" look going on. (Work it, honey!)

Our english recitation contest looms ever closer, though... specifically, it's the Friday after we get back from the trip. So, 2 more days to practice with the kids before they perform. Are they ready? yes, no, and I don't know. Yes, because a few of them are phenomenal. No, because there are a couple that I have not even worked with once. I don't know, because I haven't been to anything like this before, so I don't know the expected level of each grade... I THINK we're doing great, but who knows, really? I guess the point is that they're really great kids, and we have fun working on the speeches. To resolve the language barrier, and also get them to relax a little more, I've resorted to goofy gestures and over exaggerated expressions. It seems to be working with a lot of them, so... sugoi! I hope. :gulp:

Also, some of my students are dirty. The ninensei were working on a worksheet where they have to introduce a person and use the word "looks." As in, "This is Ichiro. He looks happy because he will play baseball today. He loves baseball. (etc. etc.)" I was walking around the classroom reading sentences, helping out here and there, and I stumbled across a students response (One of the class-clown types... generally a really good kid, but he needs to stay focused!!). He wrote one about the teacher: "This is Ms. Matsuzaki. She looks beautiful." I chuckled and motioned for Matsuzaki-sensei to come read it. She laughed, too, and told the student that he gets 10 bonus points, then walked away. I patted him on the back, laughed, and gave him a thumbs up, then walked to the other students. When I came back around, I checked to see what progress he made. *ahem*

"This is Ms. Matsuzaki. She looks beautiful because she is easy."

I stopped. I re-read that. I looked at the student's smiling, proud expression. I suppressed laughter. I smiled, said "good job!" and walked away. Because she's EASY?? Really?? I know he didn't mean it the way it came out, but it was hilarious, either way.

The next couple days, I started checking the other classes worksheets as they came in. So, I was sitting at my desk checking sheet after sheet and making marks and corrections all over... and stumbled across another one. "This is Maki. She looks happy because she is easy." And then another one. "This is Saito. She looks excited because she is easy." (My personal favorite right there)

I could not figure out if there was something I just didn't get, if the students were making jokes, or if Ozu really IS full of scarlet women (and raaagtime!! Shameless music that'll grab your son, YOUR DAUGHTER with the arms of a jungle animal instinct, MASS-TERIA!! ...er... I mean... 'scuse me).

The answer came later. I was telling this to Tim during the train ride into the city and he kinda chuckled and said, "Ooooh... no no no... Ok, that's because the word for 'easy' is 'yasashii.' Yasashii ALSO means 'nice.'" Oh. OOOOOHHHHHH... Here I was, thinking my students were perverts and in reality, they're just complimenting each other... eh, I guess another one of those lost in translation things. But I refuse to have the lesson where I explain what that phrase actually means in America... who knows what kinds of things the students will say to me in the halls after that?

...speaking of which, I think my pirate crew is moving on to another gag... or at least another group of sannensei have found a new phrase. "Because I love you." This has taken the shape of all different phrases... "Sandall-sensei, do you love me?" "I love you!" "I will do it! Ok! Because I love you!"

My greatest fear is that these phrases will combine forces. "Mr. Sandall! I love you because you are easy!"

*sigh*

The Ozu Bike Tour!

I was bored today... took me a few hours from filming to completion, but here it is.

I decided that since not a lot of people will be able to come visit (read: almost no one... *tear*), I'll bring the PARTY TO THEM!!!

I now present an amateur video, The Ozu Bike Tour!!

I got as much as I could with my limited recording time, but I managed to miss some big things, as well. So if I make Ozu seem like a tiny little town, sorry. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke5y9TccS6w

Japan: 2, Typhoon: 0

That's right. For the second time, the threat and worry of an imminent typhoon turned out to be for naught. The sucker passed south of us again. Except this time, we didn't get the awesome weather that accompanied the last one. :(

Anyway, it's been a long week, and lots of random bits to go on about... so let's get crackin'! (Or... crackuhlackin'... if you're into that sorta thing) And it should be noted that I'm watching this cool show right now, while typing this... there are about 12 people dressed in flamboyant clothes walking around a city... there are also 3 or 4 (I can't figure out how many) guys dressed in suits and sunglasses walking around like weird cyborgs ("hunters") trying to catch the 12 people. Like a giant televised game of tag... there's a timer ticking down from an hour, and a money counter going up... it's some weird reality TV game show... nice. :D ANYway...

Strap yourselves in... this is a long one.

After my Friday night spider escapades, I called it an early night to get up at 6:15 AM ON A SATURDAY!! I had to be to the school at 7:20 to meet my ride to go with a student to an English Recitation contest in Kumamoto. It was a pretty good morning and I'm really glad I went! The contest was part of the school's culture festival (Ours is coming up soon... I can't wait!) so the first part of the morning was to go watch the students put on an english play. They did Cinderella with a little bit added onto the end, and it was HILARIOUS! The students acted great, the costumes were delightfully over the top... man, good stuff. I sat with a bunch of other ALTs and they helped translate the few jokes that flew over my head. After the show, we headed back to the contest room and watched 14 students from all over Kumamoto Prefecture perform their speeches (the same speech 14 times that we've all practiced for the past 2 months... I swear, if I hear about Peter getting home from school late ONE MORE TIME...). It was a solid win for Kikuchi Gun, though... First, second, and third place all came from my gun, so all the Kikuchi ALTs celebrated. MY STUDENT GOT 3RD PLACE!!! WOOO!!!! (Not that I did a lot to help her... the girl was pretty much awesome before I got there, BUT I GAVE HER A FEW POINTS OF ADVICE, DANGIT!!)

(Somewhere I missed it... they're down to 8 people... the hunters are catching the contestents... eesh. And everytime it shows the people in the jail who have been caught, they play COWBOY BEBOP MUSIC!! "The Egg and I!" SUGOI!!)

The evening was great fun. I thinkk I'm getting better at Tennis... well, I KNOW I'm getting better, because it's hard NOT to improve from "terrible" after almost 2 months of it... I still feel like I'm the weak link, but my "accidentally awesome shots" are getting more and more frequent (like from once a night to... twice). After that, I headed up to a little ramen shop with a few friends and finally had some real ramen. That stuff is GOOOOOOD. I don't think I can go back to the instant stuff! (Don't give me that. YOU knew what this was all along, Top Ramen... )

...6 people left... 20 minutes to go... 272,000 yen at stake...

Sunday morning brought our second Kikuchi Gun trip into the Kikuchi Gorge. It was kind of a nice nature walk, but nothing ramarkably spectacular (though the 2 pictures in the post are from there... click to make them bigger). Though, the car I was in went to the higher parking lot that's free, but requires more walking, and got seperated from the lazier rest of the group. So we had a good time with just the four of us wandering around the forest/mountains. Eventually, we found the group and had a big picnic near a stream (in a little pavillion area with modern toilets... yay nature) and chatted for a while. That was pretty much the end of that, so we headed back to the cars and went our seperate ways. It was good the have the evening off to relax. I watched some english TV shows (thank you, SurfTheChannel.com) and saw this awesomely scary spanish horror movie called REC. (The upcoming movie, Quarantine, is the American remake... but do yourself a favor and watch the original one, instead. The trailers for the remake look like it can only ruin this perfect gem of a movie)

6 people, 15 minutes, 360,000 yen... and they're adding more hunters while minimizing the play area. INTENSE!!! Oop... 1 more down. 5 people left.

Monday was a fun day, but it was busy. First of all, I woke up to pouring rain... and since it's illegal to bike with an umbrella up (and since I probably would kill myself trying), I had to walk to school. The morning was busy, and I was looking forward to having some free periods to make up some games for classes later in the week, but it turns out that the last half of the day was a big assembly (Oh the things you miss in the meetings when you don't speak Japanese... :D ). The assembly was awesome, though. A travelling theatre group was hired to come in and perform Don Quixote. I was expecting some little tiny production, but it actually was pretty awesome. we went into the gym to find the front 1/4 of it taken up by their massive, multi-layered set that spanned the length of the gym. The windows were covered (the walls are all glass, so this was a big effort) and the play began. I knew the gist of the story of Don Quixote, so I was able to follow the play pretty well. but I couldn't help but chuckle at how "Japanese" it was. All the knights and princes, and all that stuff looked like characters straight from a Final Fantasy game. The comedy was largely physical humor, and the actors did some amazing acrobatics during the sword fights. The audience laughed, they cried... and a good chunk of my pirate crew was called on to stand in as soldiers in a scene, each of them given lines to deliver. :D

3 people left... one got caught, one actually finished and made it to the phone... and there are 7 hunters out now. 5 minutes left, and 483,000 yen at stake... OO, OO, PURSUIT!!!! oh man oh man oh man... HE RAN INTO ANOTHER HUNTER!! 2 HUNTERS ARE CHASING!!! GAAAAHHH BAM got him. 2 left. Man, that was exciting... can you feel the excitement???

Monday night was great... I got to go shopping!! Finally I bummed a ride to Jusco and picked up all sorts of foods to stock my kitchen. I shall survive on Bentos no more!!! Now I just need to decipher how to make everything... (I think the bilingual cook book I bought last night can help me with that!!) Anyway, I was so excited about having food that the next night, I ACTUALLY COOKED!! Hooray for Yakisoba!! Easy to make, and good, too! (Just not terribly good FOR you... "yaki" - fried, "soba" - a type of noodle... yeah)

oh man... 20 seconds.... 2 left... they;'ve dodged the hunters... just make it to the phone.... THE PHONE...hey, wait! They don't NEED to go to the phone?? They just have to out last the hunters?? Nice!! 2 winners walk off with over 500,000 yen!! (And it's occuring to me that this is a sort of Matrix themed game...)

Last night, I had another english lesson. It was fun, but tiring... reading hiragana/katakana for an hour and a half straight while trying to pronounce it all is hard work... afterwards, I was feeling like my brain was going to 'splode... but all the ALTs there were feeling the same way, so yay. It'll be one big pile of ALT brain mass (wtf, really, Colin? Did you really just say that?). The other ALTs all had to bail on dinner, so Tim and I walked over to Shimotori to try out this Sri Lankan curry place tha he said I definitely needed to try. The stuff melted my face. Seriously. But it was awesome. :D

After dinner, we went to a few shops quickly before driving back home. And walking around downtown Kumamoto, we played a fun game of, "Guess who paid for their date?" Oh man, the prostitutes were out in full force, and the guys weren't even hiding it. Everywhere you looked, there were business men as well as average middle-aged men walking around being closely followed/accompanied by younger girls who looked dressed to go to homecoming (I'd say prom, but come on. They're not THAT classy). As a fun side note, if you want to anger a girl, walk up to her and say, "Ikura desu ka?" (We had to resist the urge to mockingly ask a large group of the homecoming queens this... "How much?" But feel free to use it on friends who don't speak japanese! You'll insult them, and they will have NO IDEA!! It's pronounced "ee-koo-rah dess kah" just to make sure you do it right! (You're welcome!))

We made it back to the parking garage and drove down the 8 floors (yes, we drifted... this IS Japan, after all) to head home.

I think I covered all of it... I left a few things out I wanted to say (to save you from being here longer than you already have been... Gomen nasai) so I'll catch them another time. Basically, my students continue to be awesome, and a certain teacher continues to be terrible... but more later!