Merry Christmas!

What do the Japanese do to celebrate Christmas? The opposite of what most Westerners do. You know New Years? That's their Christmas. Parties, hanging out with friends, big romantic dates. In Japan, New Years is the big family holiday where they visit shrines or temples. Oh, and apparently chicken is a thing, for Christmas not New Years. Fried chicken. KFC fried chicken to be specific.

He's a plump old man with a white beard and a red suit. That's basically Santa, right?

I forgot to mention the cake. 

Yeah, cookies aren't really Christmas fare here. Cakes are the Japanese Christmas sweet. You literally have to reserve your chicken bucket. That's how popular fried chicken is for Christmas.

So what did I do this Christmas day? Besides finally updating this blog, I watched a bunch of movies, did laundry, and baked cookies! I figured out how to do some baking in my microwave and the cookies came out delicious!

Crunchy on the outside, gooey inside, and chocolate everywhere!

I also found a church in Tokyo that does an English Christmas Eve Candlelight Service. It was a nice service with a bunch of my favorite Christmas songs. And it was in the middle of Harajuku, so the street decorations were gorgeous.

And then there was  a motorcycle gang dressed as Santas.

Because Japan.

And tomorrow I'm Skyping with my family on their Christmas Day! 

Merry Christmas to you all!

Teacher Stuff

It's finally the end of 2nd term. We had our closing ceremony on Monday and tomorrow's my last day of work since I took the 25th and 26th off. Not that I attended the ceremony properly. The 3 1-4 teachers, Jeremy, and I snuck out of the gym and into the athletic teachers' office and managed to have a meeting to discuss the schedule and ALT workbook for the 3rd term.

That's an excellent example of what the past month has been like. Getting ready for exams and evaluating presentations and debates was immediately followed by marking essays, and grading tests, which was in turn followed by figuring out what to do next term. I managed to squeeze teacher's meetings, sending out Christmas presents and cards, and some time for myself somewhere in there.

I'm pretty excited about the 3rd term for our first years. We're doing a unit on Narrative Writing, so I get to teach them about story arcs. Hopefully, we'll be able to encourage their creativity too. One of the 1-4 teachers is pretty disparaging about their imaginations, but their final skits (advertising an amusement park, restaurant, or tourist attraction) including some interesting ideas. Although there were the rather boring Starbucks and McDonalds, one group advertised 'Sakado Land' and another invented an aquarium with over a million visitors a week. They have creative potential; we just need to give them some space to let it out and experiment with it. The second half of next term will be devoted to the basics of speech writing and giving to help prepare them for 2nd year English Exoression, which focuses on debate. It sounds like a return to boring formulas, but we've tweaked the presentation portion for that to make it a bit more interesting. Hopefully, it works out they way we think it will.

So, tomorrow I'm printing out the workbooks and journals and cleaning and reorganizing my desk to get ready for the break and next term. Speaking of break, I'm headed to Thailand for a week! My friend, Victoria, and I are hitting both Chiang Mai and Bangkok. So that'll be another country off my travel bucket list, as well as a week of warmth before the coldest part of Japan's winter.

I'll end this post with some pictures of what teachers do during finals. Hint: it's mostly sitting at desks and looking at piles of papers.

Preparing a quiz game for the Gaigo (foreign language) Open House. 

Me, all dressed up for the Gaigo Open House. I even got a cool neon arm band, identifying  me as a teacher at Sakado High School. Got to impress those junior
high kids and their parents!

3-4 (my third year class) English Expression essays. We don't see this class next term, because they have university exams, so this is their final English writing project. They put a lot of time and effort into these. I'm really proud of the topics the picked and managed to write about. I also have a much more massive appreciation for all my teachers. 

I don't remember which class these tests are from. There might actually be two tests here. One piled in the middle and the other set spread out on top for grading. The clipboard in the middle of the two desks has the answer key as well as example answers/criteria for the writing portions. 

Train thoughts

I love the way Japan does rivers.

They're always surrounded by lush green. Sometimes manicured with perfectly placed boulders for benches, sometimes wild tangles of grass and plants, sometimes miniature forests of trees and bushes. Almost always there are walkways placed to take advantage of the views, and allow access to the nature, as well as a path to flow back to concrete civilization.

The views are especially compelling when seen fleetingly out the window of a train, rushing over a bridge high above the riverbed. It never fails to make me wish to get off at the next station and wind myself back along the tracks, so that I may pause and take in the scene again at my leisure.

Happy Pocky Day!

Today is November 11th, or 11/11, which means it's Pocky Day! If you don't know what pocky is, you are missing out on one of Japan's best snack foods. See below for picture reference.

My contribution to the pocky pile: chocolate and sweet potato.

Enjoying the leftovers!

I met up with some JETs for dinner in Kawagoe. We followed the resident Kawagoen to Nomad's Diner. We were served eggcelent burgers and fries. I definitely recommend the egg and bacon cheeseburger! The milkshakes were a little off. They were served after the meal like most drinks in Japanese restaurants. Both the vanilla and chocolate ones had some sort of nut chopped very finely and mixed in. The vanilla ones also had raisins. None of us could figure that one out! We then enjoyed our pocky. Everyone brought different flavors, but there were a few kinds of chocolate. I enjoyed the coconut ones and the ones that were heart-shaped and strawberry flavored.

On our way back to the station we took purikura! We had fun, as always, at these Japanese style photo booths. Here are some of the results:

 

All in all, an excellent Tuesday night!

The Making of a Costume

The materials have been gathered. 

The pieces have been cut and pinned.

The dress fits. 

The seams are sewn. The dress still fits.

Sleeves are added.

Snaps are added to the top of the back seam.

The hems are sewn.

An apron is tied on top.

A hair ribbon and light make-up completes the look.

Alice and Maleficent enjoy the party in their fabulous handmade costumes.

Halloween

I have never celebrated Halloween as much as I have this year. I taught a lesson on it at my visit school, used it as a theme for two classes at my base school, and talked about it for English club. I also attended my first real young adult Halloween party. October has been crazy busy! In between the Halloween stuff, I also participated in a volunteer day in Iwaki, Fukushima, had a Japanese version of Tinker Day, and volunteered at the JET booth at the Saitama International Fair.

My Halloween class for my visit school was taught 7 times, because that's how many classes there are. I started out with a worksheet with pictures of traditional Halloween items, pumpkin patch, Jack-O'-Lantern, costumes, haunted house, etc. Students worked in pairs to write the English word, in katakana if they didn't know the English spelling. Pumpkin patch was thrown out in favor of pumpkins as soon as I started making my way around the classroom, checking on their progress. I explained pumpkin picking using the word field as they already know and understand that word. Trick or treat bag was also reduced to candy bag. After they wrote down their guesses, I made them say the answers as a class, which was harder in some classes than others. Once I threatened to pick students one-by-one, the class usually went ahead and answered. After they answered correctly, I wrote the English word on the board and had them practice saying it. Then, I gave a brief explanation of the item and its use in American Halloween celebrations. Haunted house was very easy to explain. I first reminded them of the haunted mansion ride at Disneyland. And if that didn't get a big response, then I brought up obakeyashi, the Japanese version of a haunted house. These 'scary mazes' feature prominently at all school festivals.

The second activity was a Trick-or-Treat dialogue. The JTE and I demonstrated the dialogue, helped by my witch costume (black shirt and skirt and 100 yen witch's hat) and candy bag. Then the students practiced with each other. If they did the dialogue with me or the JTE, then they got real candy.

At my base school, the first year gaigo class is now learning how to express opinions and negotiate. Last Thursday's class was on making plans, so we went ahead and made it Halloween themed. Each pair had to pick costumes and whether to go to a party or go Trick-or-Treating. They had to write up a quick skit and perform it.

For English club, we had Halloween charades and made masks and bats out of construction paper.

The Halloween party was hosted by some JETs in Kawagoe, 6 stops down on my train line (also where my visit school is). It was pretty fun. We had lots of food and drinks (both alcoholic and non), thematic music, and towards the end some very trippy cartoon shorts from the 70s and 80s. A Witch's Night Out was the name of the strangest one. I made my costume for that one. I'll post pictures of it in a separate post.

All in all, my Halloween spirit has been thoroughly exhausted! Halloween isn't celebrated the same way here, but they know about it and are interested by it, which makes it a useful teaching tool. It does have some similarities to other aspects of Japanese culture. Obon is the festival of the dead. It's celebrated in August, but also has superstitions and lanterns associated with it.

Food Observations

It make look the same, but ordering from a subway in a shopping mall is a sometimes fraught experience. First off, the menu is a bit different if course. Small salad shrimp seemed to be the featured meat, at least the day I was there.

Then there are the misunderstandings that happen in any restaurant, such as ordering a ham and egg sandwich and just getting the egg, because it's loud and the server missed the first part. And sometimes you run into one of your students, which is odd in and of itself, but made worse when you still can't figure out how to tell them you only want lettuce. I'm used to getting stares in The States when I don't have a lot of toppings, but here I got looks of semi-panic. Probably because the poor girl wasn't sure if I really didn't want any toppings (who doesn't want more toppings??? Crazy American!) or if she wasn't understanding my request for something.

Thank the world for helpful old ladies! The woman behind me asked, in pretty good English, if she could help me. She looked askance at me when I told her I didn't want anything else, but at least conveyed that request to the server.

Other things, however, remain the same. Club activities, at least the ones I've participated in, usually involve a snack time where everyone brings something to share. I'm both happy and very amused that some snack foods are eaten the same way I grew up eating them. Chip Star chips (Pringels) are made into duck bills before being eaten, and Tongari Corn chips (Bugles) are placed on fingers to make claws or witches fingers and then consumed one by one.

Chip Star reference photo

Quiet Weekend

So, I haven't posted anything recently. I have two drafts on here and two or three ideas for other posts. But I've been super busy; it's speech season after all. And every time someone mentions that I haven't posted in a while, I feel guilty about it, and then I don't want to think about it. So I don't. Which means I don't finish my drafts or start new ones. Long story short: the more you ask for, the less I'll give you.

Moving on.


I had a pretty crazy week, so I made no plans for the weekend. I spent Saturday doing laundry and some home chores, but mostly being lazy. I woke up earlyish on Sunday and Skyped with my parents and grandmother. That was fun. Then I went out and ran some outside errands. Then did a bit of shopping.

I finished earlier than planned, so I finally stopped at one of the two cat cafes in Crea Mall in Kawagoe. It was a really nice place. Petting cats is super relaxing. I wandered around the small space a bit. But I spent most of my 1/2 hour watching this one younger cat playing, trying to get a ball out of a maze. When he stopped and started to bathe himself, I picked him up and plopped him in my lap. He didn't seem to mind, so I sat and pet him till my time was up.

The door sign

Cuties!

On my way home, I decided to get off at Wakaba station and see what movies were playing. It turns out, I got here 10 minutes before Guardians of the Galaxy starts. As I've been meaning to see it, I bought a ticket, and now I'm sitting in the theater waiting for the lights to go down. I should probably turn my phone off though, don't ya think?

Bunkasai Day 2

I'm so exhausted right now. I'm into my 8th day of work in a row at the moment. And have been surprisingly productive despite the urge to giggle at everything.

But the weekend was fun.
Saturday ended with a wonderful performance by the dance club and also some of the finalists from the class dance contest. But most importantly, the workbook and journal for the second years was finished and copies were made! I had a big hand in making most of the second year materials, with input from others of course, but it was still a proud moment for me to see the finished copies.

On Saturday, I watched the guitar club's performance, met a bunch of former students who came back to visit, and went to the tea ceremony and flower arranging clubs. Several of my students are in the guitar club and one is in the tea ceremony club. She was able to explain the ceremony and what we were supposed to do in English. My advisor, the main English teacher, Kato-sensei, is in charge of the flower arranging club and asked us to come visit. They were very nice and showed me how to make a bookmark. Kato-sensei later brought me a small bouquet, which I added to my desk decorations.

We get tomorrow, Tuesday, off as a substitute day for working on the weekend. The other teachers get Wednesday off too, but Jeremy and I go to our visit schools on Wednesdays. Instead, we get to pick a different day, sometime this term, to take off.

I'm planning on sleeping a lot tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll get some cleaning done too, because my apartment needs it.

Bunkasai!

Bunkasai (school festival) has started. Jeremy and I wandered around a visited many of the classes. We played some games, which I mostly sucked at. My hand/eye coordination has never been great. But, I did manage to win some things, my favorite being the yoyo I fished out of a kiddie pool.

Here's the lion the students made to decorate the gate at the school entrance

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This is one if our classes, the 2-4 (2nd year 4th class) class' room, where I won my yoyo.

And this is my yoyo.

The students have all worked very hard the past few days to make their events. All the rooms are crazy decorated and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.

I may have to come to work on a Saturday and Sunday, but at least it's an interesting way to spend a weekend at work.

HELLO!!!!

I have internet! Isn't that exciting? WiFi and everything too! :D

I've written a couple of things these past 3 weeks, so those will be going up soon. Otherwise, I'm doing good and settling in pretty well. I'll before settled in later today as my predecessor is dropping off the last of the stuff I bought from her later today. So, I've got to go and make sure the place is cleaned up a bit. I'll try and get some pictures up soon too.

From the week of August 10th

I put the finishing touches on the worksheet I've spent most of the afternoon putting together a little before 4pm. I save it in my folder on the teacher's public server and print out a copy. I look over the sheets one more time, then add them to the small pile of other things I've printed out in the last two days. This one is an information gap, pair exercise to practice giving directions. There's another worksheet in the pile to practice describing a room, as well as a draft of a tentative class schedule for the upcoming term. I write out a short note describing these, as well as the partial bits of things I left saved in my folder so Jeremy can pick up where I left off tomorrow.

It's only Thursday, but I am taking Friday off as one of my four days of summer holiday (natsu yasumi). I put the note and pile of papers in the center of Jeremy's (my fellow ALT and sempai (senior) JET) desk, next to my own, and spend the next few minutes fiddling around, cleaning my desk, and mostly waiting for the clock to hit 4:10, so I can get started on my weekend.

The office is ridiculously empty, and only one teacher looks up as I head to the door. We trade the traditional leave-taking phrases. Osakini shitsureshimasu (Excuse me for leaving before you.) on my part and Otsukaresama deshita (Thank you for your hard work.) on hers.

I make my way down the stairs to the entrance without running into anyone else. I grab my outside shoes out of my locker, which is still labeled with my predecessor's name, and quickly switch shoes, leaving my indoor ones in the locker for next week. Then it's a short walk to the bike area. My purse and tote are wedged into the basket. Then I go through the increasingly familiar routine of unlocking the back tire, kicking the kickstand up out of the way, and backing it out of the row of bikes, past the row of cars, jumping on, adjusting my skirt, and pedaling for the school gate.

A quick check for cars, and I'm across the street, and under the railway bridge. From the bridge to the main road is my favorite part of the ride to and from work, because the street is lined with rice fields which are dotted with the occasional group of crows or an egret and the wide blue sky and afternoon sun are clearly visible. It's a bit of a strange sight for me, seeing as I'm used to corn fields towering above me, but a beautiful view all the same.

I cross the main road and ride past the Lawson's (a chain convenience store), and then turn down a narrower road to take 'the back way' home. The first time taking this route, I felt lost in a maze of winding streets with hidden curves and random crossings. But I've got it down now and while the road I follow twists and curves, it is technically the same road, and I think of it as straight in my mental map of the area. I catch the scent of incense soon after turning. The bigger of the two cemeteries along my route comes into view, and sure enough there's a couple of cars parked on the street. It's the week of Obon, the Festival of the Dead. That's the main reason the office was particularly devoid of life this week, most of the teachers took it off to go home and spend the holiday with family. Extra cars and incense have joined me in my travels to and from work this week.

Jeremy also took part of this week off, but for his natsu yasumi, not Obon. He had the heads up that office would be dead. But the empty office gave me the chance to figure out stuff on my own, and try my hand at working with the curriculum. He'll be in tomorrow and hopefully what I've produced in the past few days will past muster and actually be useful.

I pass the second, much smaller cemetery, and that's my signal to look for my turn off. Then it's through a short tunnel under a busier road, watching carefully for cars from all sides. Now I've reached the green slope that runs up to the paved river walk/bike path. I follow along this slope for a few blocks and then practice my dismount. I feel more graceful every time I don't fall on my face while doing that! After wheeling my bike to it's spot, and doing the unlocking routine in reverse, I head into my slightly-cooler-than-outside apartment and immediately turn on the air con. I'll sit under the fan until I don't feel like a puddle of sweat. Then I'll start on dinner.

Morning Routine

I wake up with curtain-filtered sunlight in my face. My hand pats around on the tatami mat next to my face until my phone is located. A push of a button reveals that the sun is still lying to me about the need to be doing things, so the phone is turned off again. I roll over, kicking the last bit of blanket off my feet. Getting up and turning the air con back on is briefly contemplated before my brain shuts off again.

An hour or so later, the wake up alarm on my phone goes off, and I obediently, roll up onto my feet. I pad out of one room, and onto the wooden floored 'Western Style' room. This is the room with the almighty air con, which is promptly turned on and up. A visit to the bathroom is the next stop, then to the fridge for bread and jam. I go through the increasingly familiar routine of turning the hood on, flicking on the gas, and pouring a bit of water into the grill drawer thingy. Within a few minutes, my toast is toasted and jam is then applied. I pour myself a glass of juice, grapefruit this week, and head back into the now cool room. My plate and cup are set in the middle of the desk, in between a pile of papers and a pile of electronics. I turn around and slide the door to the kitchen closed, to keep the cool air contained to the room I'm currently occupying.

While I eat my breakfast, I peruse the internet on my phone. Smartphones are awesome. I can hold the internet in one hand. And that's not even all it does! Technology is great sometimes. Eventually, another alarm goes off, reminding me that at some point I have to get dressed and leave the house. I laid out my skirt and shirt combo yesterday, so getting dressed takes approximately no time at all. The next task is to fold the futon and blankets, and put them along with the pillows away in the closet. Once that's done, dishes are dropped in the sink to be washed later as I'm feeling a bit lazy today. Then it's into the bathroom for teeth brushing and face washing. And when I say bathroom, I mean a little room with a bath tub, a moveable shower head, a little sink, and some tile to stand on in front of the sink. All behind it's own door, so quite literally a room for bathing in. The toilet is in a separate little room next to the bathroom, behind it's own door.

I have some time for reading before I need to head off, so I do so until the leave the house alarm chimes. I grab my bags, turn off the air con, and head to the door. My walking shoes are slipped on as I step down into the little entrance way directly in front of the door. I unlock both locks, before squeezing out the door, turning around, and locking it again. My bike key is slipped off the keychain as I walk to my bike. My bike is inherited from Sarah, my predecessor. Originally I didn't like it much, as it is bright pink, but I soon grew to love that obnoxious color, as it is easy to spot wherever I park it. It's not much of a problem here at home, the bike parking area for the apartment building usually only holds 3 scooters/motorcycles and 3-4 bikes, but at school or at the grocery store, it's nice to walk out and be able to spot my bike in the sea of gray and silver.

I unlock the bike, throw my bags in the basket, and wheel it out from under the awning. I jump on and adjust my skirt a bit, as the bike starts to roll down the slight incline into the street. I make a wide turn out into the road and take off on the 10 minute ride to school for another day of work.

Flight Playlist

Takeoffs and Landings by The Ataris - played first and last and inbetween because it's amusing

Around the World by Daft Punk repetitive and surprisingly soothing

Boys of Summer by The Ataris

Summer of '69 by Bryan Adamsg

Sunshine and Summertime by Faith Hill those three because summer

Living on a Prayer by Bonnie Jovi played at the halfway point

Planes by Yuna because I clearly enjoy accuracy in my music selections

Those were the standouts. Certain songs were specifically avoided so as to not tempt the fates:

Crash World by Hilary Duff

Both Trouble by Neon Jungle and T-R-O-U-B-L-E by Travis Britt

and Bulletproof by La Roux

Inbetween bouts of sleeping and music listening and music listening in attempts to sleep, movies were watched (Captain America 2 and Thor 2 and most of Noah).

All in all, it was a decent 13+ hour flight.

3 AM Epiphanies

I have been a ball of anxiety this last...well, week really. Yeah, the last week has been the hardest. I mean, I think I'm allowed. I'm packing up my life and flying/shipping it halfway around the world. Breath. Breathing is good. Deep, slow, steady breaths, like a doctor is checking your lungs for tuberculosis. Which is a thing that still happens. Who knew? But more on that later. Back to the breathing and the anxiety.

Right, so I haven't had the most routine of sleep patterns this week, but it's only the last three days that I've been waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back  asleep. I LIKE sleep! So, that just adds a layer of frustration on top of the bundles of nerves and excitement.

So, at 3 am this morning, the morning of my departure, I wake up and go to the bathroom. I run my hands through my hair while on the toilet and regret not taking a shower before I laid down. Then, the most magical of thoughts happened: I am awake. I could take a shower now. So I did. While I was drying my hair, I realized I hadn't used any of my own shower things, 'cause they were all packed up ready to go the next day. I'd used my sister's and the guest stuff. As my sister is fond of saying, "Mind Blown." I didn't really care what sort of products I used, and I had enough in small 3oz bottles to last me a week, which would be plenty of time to figure out local equivalents. So, I got back in my pjs and headed upstairs and proceeded to dig out all the gels, liquids, and aerosols from my soon-to-be checked luggage and replaced that space with my massive collection of DVDs, which I didn't really need in my carry-on, which then, shockingly, had a ton more space. And I felt better. Much better. My checked luggage was probably still going to be overweight, but it was a much more necessary weight, and I was no longer afraid of my carry-ons being rejected for size. Which I didn't even know I was worried about, until I wasn't worried about it anymore. My brain is sneaky like that.

After I took some time to savor that awesome feeling and eat a peach, because hey, it might be 4 am in Illinois, but in Tokyo dinner time was nigh. And I was hungry. And peaches are good. And then I decided I was still awake, and maybe I should get on that blog thing I've been meaning to do.