A JET wedding!

Today it was rainy and stormy all day. I’ve said before that storms in Japan are so cool. Usually at home we get one flash of lightning and a few rumbles of thunder but here my whole house shakes. It was a great day for staying home and watching movies.

On the other side of the Pacific, just to prove that ALT relationships can have a happy ending, Angela and Jason were getting married. Congratulations! May you have a long and happy life together!

The first of many goodbyes...

Tonight was the BOE farewell party for the 11 ALT’s who are returning home this year.

I know most of them still have 8 weeks left here but I know they will be so busy and so this party always gets me upset. It has been hard enough in the past when one or two close friends were leaving but I feel very close to so many people leaving this year that it will be twice as hard.
The one difference tonight was that instead of drinking, eating and chatting at the party, I was hosting it with Natsuko. I was so nervous and my grand plan of keeping wine with me at all times to steady the nerves did not work out as I was so busy.

Thankfully everything went fine until the leavers starting giving their speeches and, of course, they started crying which made me start crying. Tears everywhere! The only thing left to do was head to Daiei, stock up on supplies and head to karaoke. There is no better way to end an enkai and Kitty clearly agrees!

The Day The Music Died

When I arrived at the office today Erich told me that Michael Jackson had died. As Erich is a bit of a joker I didn’t believe him at first so I was shocked to find out it was true. Undoubtedly he gave us some unforgettable music. Anyone else remember strutting their stuff at the school discos? Oh those were the days!


Despite all the rumours about his drug abuse, the child abuse allegations, his scary surgeries, I find it hard to believe he was a bad person. Maybe I’m just naive but I wonder if the fact that he didn’t really have a childhood when he was young, made him want to be a kid when he was a grown up. I guess we’ll never know now. R.I.P Michael.

A good day

Part of the challenge of volunteering at the orphanage is that you never know how many kids are going to show up, or what mood they will be in. It varies so much from them really getting into something or not wanting to do anything at all. Thankfully today was a good day as Dawn had bought supplies for all the kids to make a mosaic. We had everything from paper to beans and they thoroughly enjoyed it. Here are a few of my favourites.

Shopaholic...or not!

I don’t think I will ever be one of those people who love to shop. It’s great at Christmas or if you know exactly what you want and where to get it but walking aimlessly from shop to shop is not my idea of time well spent. However when I was told there was great shopping to be had at Tosu, I decided to give it a try. Carrie, David, Tommy, Dawn and I were heading to Costco and decided to drop by Tosu on the way.

It was hot, hot, hot and the shops were crazy expensive. Needless to say I didn’t buy much; just a few T-shirts to keep my supply going. A few hours later we were walking up and down the aisles of Costco spending our hard earned cash on a few luxuries.

I’m not sure what happened in the hours in between but David and Carrie ended up having dinner at my house and we all ended up playing cards and drinking wine. I also remember laughing at Carrie at 3am because she was drunk, shortly before passing out myself.

Hmmm….. random, drunken evenings are always fun!

Most Valuable Player

During a lunchtime game of handbase (baseball played with a soccer-sized ball and no bat) I was named MVP. Three years ago I would have no idea what that meant but having so many American influences around me can come in handy sometimes.

A busy day...

I got my wish to go back to Isshin a little sooner than I imagined. Today I went to Gofuku, taught three classes and then walked to Isshin during fourth period. At Isshin I ate lunch, played with the kids and then taught two classes in the afternoon.

If the rumours are to be believed then visiting more than one school per day may become a regular occurrence. Apparently the city is losing three ALT positions next year and we are all getting more schools.

Not sure how I feel about that but we’ll just have to wait and see :(

A familiar face

It’s always nice to welcome back an old JET and today it was Allen’s turn. A group of us met at one of our favourite hang-outs, Yokobachi, for food, drinks and a general catch-up. It was great to see him again and the conversation covered everything from third nipples to UFO machines.
After taking our time over dinner we decided to head to Sanctuary (formerly known as Skanctuary but they refurbished and it’s not so bad now) for some dirty dancing just like old time. Good to see you Mr. Allen!

Feeling the love....

Working at Isshin elementary school full-time would be amazing. The school is just a 5 minute walk from my apartment and the kids are lovely. The supervisor is a little manic but I could live with that.

Today I got to teach the 5th graders and eat lunch with the 3rd graders. They were so cute and had written lots of messages all over the blackboard to welcome me to their class. One boy, who I suspect can speak very good English but was just very shy, finally plucked up the courage at the end of lunch time, to give me the letter he had been working on. Kawaii! The only downside was that it poured with rain all day and so we couldn’t play outside. The kids didn’t seem to mind as they ended up giving me a tour of the school instead. I can’t wait to go back!

Fireflies!

This morning we drove to Aso to watch the junior high school basketball tournament. A lot of girls are into basketball because they don’t have netball here. In fact, they don’t have netball in America! I was so shocked – I used to love netball!

Dawn has been driving me crazy to go and see the fireflies and so after watching the tournament we decided to drive to Kyoushi to see if we could find them. As we were making our fourth/fifth turnaround (we had just driven past a sign that I was sure said “fireflies”), Dawn let out a shriek. There outside the window, flying over the rice field, was one, lonely firefly. We were close!

Ten minutes later we were walking through the pitch black forest following a whole group of them. We even had one fly right to us and stay with us as we walked around – we named him Philippe and you can hear the fun we had for yourself.

Happy Birthday Mum!

Today is my mum’s birthday. She would kill me if I told how old she is so I guess I’ll say

HAPPY 45TH BIRTHDAY!! Ha ha

Tonight Cherese invited me and a group of teachers from her school over for dinner. I knew I had to call mum and wish her happy birthday and the teachers all kindly agreed to sing to her too. She was very pleased! After all not everyone can say they’ve had people from three different continents singing to them at once.

What's in a name?

Today I arrived at Kasuga elementary school an hour before my class started and so the principal and I sat in the teachers’ room and had a good old chat over some rather awful coffee. We ended up talking about names and he was very interested to know what my name meant and why my family had chosen it. That then led into a discussion of family names and their meanings. It got me thinking about Japanese names. From the kanji I am able to read it seems that the Japanese take their names from the places they used to live. For example:

Yamaguchi – 山口 – mountain mouth
Kimura – 木村 – tree village
Shirokawa – 白川 – white river
Tanaka – 田中 – middle rice field

Things like this always fascinate me so I thought I’d share it with you!

Bento Boxes

Today I got to visit Akita-nishi elementary school and although the classes went very well, lunch was by far the highlight of the day. We didn’t have school lunch and so everyone had to bring a packed lunch. This is very rare and elementary and junior high schools and so the kids see it as a real treat. I could feel the excitement building as I entered the 5th grade class and sat down to eat. Usually after we say “itadakimasu” everyone starts eating but today they took time to admire each others lunches and begin swapping and changing things they didn’t like. I’ve never seen them happier! They were also very shocked when they saw that my lunch did not include bread or potatoes. “But I thought foreigners always ate bread and potatoes!?!,” they cried in amazement. I guess I just didn’t play my role as token foreigner very well today after all…

If I got to take this to school everyday, I would be excited too!