Day 191 in Japan - Sick Day.

Today was not one of the top days in Japan, but it was memorable as my first sick day! Yes, after various sniffles and minor infections and stuff through the year, today was the first day that I had no choice but to stay home. My alarm went off at 6:45, and I tried to swallow, only to realize that I couldn’t really get my throat working. It was really, seriously sore and I had no voice. I waited until 7:30, then called my teacher to try to tell him that I wouldn’t be in, although he could barely understand me over the phone. He was lovely and told me not to worry, and that he would take care of everything for me. Thanks, Mizuno-sensei! You are a champ. I went back to sleep for a bit, then dragged myself to the supermarket for some throat lozenges, painkillers and something to take down my temperature (it was over 39). I think that the walk to the supermarket did some to take the temperature down – it was -3 at 8:30

Didn’t do very much for the day. My throat felt a lot better with a few throat lozenges, eucalyptus lollies and cups of earl grey tea tipped down it, but I still couldn’t speak. Sam thought it was wonderful (although he worked all day, so he only saw me in the morning and the night, when I felt my worst). I actually felt a little guilty at about 2 pm, once the Panadol started to bring down my temperature and I felt like I could have worked, but then I tried to Skype Mum and Fletch and couldn’t talk properly. There is no way I could have got through yelling at 4 classes at Shimizu today. Right? (assuage my guilt, blog gods) I took it easy, slept a lot, watched a lot of Veronica Mars, and tried to look through some of my latest photos. I pretty much stayed under the kotatsu and had a bath and drank hot liquids – all of the things that Japanese think that you should do when you are sick.

Food Highlight of the Day: Vegemite toast and earl grey tea – my traditional “sick day” foods.

Day 190 in Japan - Cold Cold Day!

Today was one of the coldest days we have had on record. It was under -1 all day, and we had a light dusting of snow in the afternoon. We really didn't do too much today. Overnight it is supposed to get to -7 in Akashi, and much lower not very far to the north of here.

Day 189 in Japan - Brazillians for all!

Did my usual Saturday morning cleaning routine, and then had a really good Japanese lesson with Kojima-sensei. After the lesson, I met up with Sam and went jacket shopping, to try to get him a coat. He’s been putting off getting a coat for a full, very cold, month now, so we went and tried on a bunch of really nice jackets near Okubo station. We ended up buying a cool jacket with rounded bits at the bottom of the front hem. It was a nice jacket and all, but I’m pretty sure that the reason he said yes to that and no to some of the others was that there was a really cute and cool looking girl working at this store who agreed with me that it looked nice on him.

After our shopping, we met up with a bunch of other gaijin in Kobe for a night out. Arjun’s younger brother was out from Perth for a quick visit with his girlfriend, so we went out for a night of Brazilian nomitabehoudai. The meats were absolutely delicious! I had never had Brazilian-style food before, and I will definitely be going back for seconds (and thirds, and fourths…). I sat with Dan and Simon and Trudie, and I loved their company. I miss talking shit over beers and food, and tonight filled a little hole that had been developing in my heart. It was over all too soon, and people had to run for their last trains as usual. We had a bit of spare time, so we went into Sannomiya with ye olde Australian posse and went to an awesome 70’s bar with a grumpy bartender, brilliant record collection and a 500 yen seating charge (what, me tight?). I got to talk to the guests of honour (Jai and his girlfriend) a little and got in a very decent gin and tonic before it was time to shuffle for the last train. Midnight is just too early to leave a nice night like this!

Soccer was on TV when I got home – Australia vs. Japan for the Asia Cup. We watched to full time – it was 0-0 all the way to the end, and then I fell asleep. Apparently, Australia lost as soon as I closed my eyes. Not looking forward to talking to my soccer boys on Monday.

Food Highlight of the Day: Chicken hearts on skewers at the Brazilian restaurant. It wasn’t the most delicious food I ate, but it was the most memorable.

Day 188 in Japan - Tori Dorichious!

Awesome day at school! After a long morning of teaching, I had an extra double period with my science class where they were giving more of their speeches. They have been truly wonderful so far - I am very happy with their chosen topics, their powerpoint presentations and their English speaking. They have also been listening to all of the other presentations like champions. They are great.

After school, Sam and I went to Tori Doru - a nearby yakitori chicken place. It has my favourite karaage (fried chicken) in all of Japan, so we went, drank umeshu, ate karaage and had a really nice night out. Ahhh, Fridays.

Food Highlight of the Day: Japan/the world's best karaage - Tori Doru karaage.

Day 187 in Japan - "To suck"

Got to school a bit early and then went on a bit of a photo mission around Akashi Shimizu.

It was a fairly quiet day at school. One good thing happened in class - one of the girls came across the phrase "this sucks", and asked me about it. I explained that it was colloquial, and then tried to exaplin about the verb "to suck". I drew a picture of a dummy, a lollipop and a straw, and used them examples one by one - "You can SUCK a dummy", "You can SUCK a lollipop", "You can SUCK a straw". She got it, and the other students actually understood as well. Then the boy next to her said "chin chin" (which is a slangy Japanese word for penis). So I feigned ignorance, and said "Yes, he can suck a chin chin". The class absolutely fell apart laughing, and I was quite happy to make this kid the butt of jokes for a change, as he normally picks on several of the other quieter students. And I'm pretty sure that most of them will remember "to suck".

At supermarket on my way home, there were two very cute little kids (probably about 4 and 6 years old) running around saying hello to everyone. Like EVERYONE - I could hear them running up and down every aisle, yelling "Konnichiwa" at the tops of their voices. I was like "Oooh, they are coming up my aisle, and so I got a big smile ready and turned around to see them round the corner, their jaws drop, and them change from a crazy run to eyes down politely walking past me until they were two steps past my trolley. Then they resumed their game, and said hello to every single other person in the store. It was pretty funny, but I still wanted my hello.

Food Highlight of the Day: Made some delicious steaks for dinner.

Day 186 in Japan - Happy Australia Day!

One particularly momentous event happened today. I handed in the form to say that I would not be re-contracting for the 2011-2012 period. I wrote a note for my principal explaining that I didn't want to leave, and that I really like being here, but that I have to head onwards for the sake of my science career. It's true, too. I miss science and I want to get back into it. So it's time to figure out what is next, and enjoy the hell out of my last 6 months.

Even thought today was Australia Day, we didn't do anything very Australian. I told all of my kids that today was the big day, and made them all say "G'day, mate" in class. For homework, they had to say it to someone else. I wonder if any of them did it? I kinda doubt it.

Anyway, other than that, Sam and I had listened to the end of the Hottest 100 countdown on the internet and had a special Australia Day supper - Tim Tams and Milo. Nothing else very Australian went on. They were very good Tim Tams, though - we did the sucking up warm milo through the biscuits to make them go melty thing. Ahhh, the taste of home. 

Food Highlight of the Day: A Tim and a Tam.

Day 185 in Japan - Kita to the Rescue

Today was a pretty uneventful day, but Akashi kita definitely rescued me from my Shimizu funk of yesterday. I had my lovely science class and the start of their speeches about scientific topics, which were so much better than I had expected that I get a tiny proud tear in my eye to think about it. I also had an extra ESS club to prepare for the speeches coming up. Again, the students have been working so hard, and I think that they are coming along nicely. One boy in particular, who is normally pretty quiet and uncommunicative, has been working on putting some real emotion into his speech. He is really making leaps and bounds of improvement! I love these students!!

Food Highlight of the Day: Cabbage. There is so much cabbage in Japan in winter. So. Much. Cabbage.

Day 184 in Japan - Not a Shiny Happy Day

After a decent week last week, Shimizu returned to it's usual poor form today - the last class ended with a boy trying to wrestle me for a textbook. I ended up scratching him when he tried to rip it out of my hands, and I made him stay after class to apologise to me for a full 10 minutes. He was laughing the whole way through it, and I wanted to punch him in his stupid face. But I didn't (although it made me not at all sorry that he got scratched). Otherwise it was the usual pain of unhelpful teachers, silent students and trying to keep on top of the lesson planning for the next few weeks. Yippers.

To make my day just a bit worse, Fletch found out today that he 99% can't come to Japan this week. I have been really looking forward to seeing him on Thursday, but his visa hasn't come through in time, so unless it miraculously appears, he won't be making his flight.

To make myself feel better, I bought a salad on the way home, and spent my evening finishing reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in a hot bath. I finally finished it up at about 1:45, which is WAY too late for a school night, but I regret nothing.

Food Highlight of the Day: Ham.

Day 183 in Japan - Lazy Kobe days...

Today Jodie, Fiona and I were planning to go to go to Wakayama, but the two of them had gone skiing yesterday, and their legs really didn’t feel up to it (I can’t say I blame them – I felt half buggered and didn’t even have the day of travel and exercise as an excuse). We decided instead to go to see a movie in Kobe, and do some quality hanging around.

We met up and headed into Mint Kobe - I have never been into this building before, even though it is right near Sannomiya station. It was super fancy, even though it was a little complicated to navigate. We got ourselves to the 9th floor to buy our tickets for the Green Hornet, managed to get  ourselves seats for the 3:30 session thanks to the good English of the lady behind the counter, then explored some of the underground tunnels around Sannomiya station (which I didn't even know existed - thanks Jodes!) to find some lunch. We found a nice little French bakery, with beautiful pastries, decent coffee and French radio playing. 

We got ourselves some popcorn for the movies (it is still expensive, but not as bad as in Australian cinemas), and saw the Green Hornet. We all quite liked it - it was a funny and fun superhero movie. I definitely walked away with a crush on Kato (I think Jodes and Fiona did too?). When the movie finished, we wandered around some of the bigger department stores in search of a diary for Jodes, so I actually got to see Loft and Tokyu Hands for the first time. Tokyu Hands (a kind of DIY department store) was really cool - they had these series of 100 Hint cards to tell you how to do all kinds of random crap - from making cocktails to applying eye makeup to changing your bike brakes to hanging a picture frame. I got some of the cards on bike maintenance, because I think my poor old pushie needs some love. After shopping, we went for dinner at a 280 yen izakaya then all headed home. It was a nice lazy day, without trying to achieve anything too ambitious or even very practical. And I liked the movie.

Food Highlight of the Day: Frozen strawberries filled with condensed milk for dessert at the izakaya.

Day 182 in Japan - OMG, I'M HALFWAY!?

Today marks just about half of my time in Japan. 365 divided by 2 is 182.5, and so somewhere about halfway through today I hit the official middle of my time in Japan. It was a very practical day – I cleaned a LOT, washed, and prepared for Fletchy’s arrival on Thursday (I AM SO EXCITED!). I had my Japanese lesson with Kojima-sensei, and we covered います (いる)and あります (ある)- the existence verbs for animate (former) and inanimate (latter) things. I have done this before, so it went very easily. Afterwards, we went for coffee and bakery goods, and Kojima-sensei gave my a lovely warm jacket. It was so nice of her, and it put a huge smile on my face that wasn’t wiped off for the rest of the day. I walked home from the station with a spring in my step! As Sam was working, I kept up the cleaning when I got home, and even kept up some studying (I wrote out a big vocabulary list for all of the CLAIR books so far). So I felt like I had a nice productive day, even if it wasn’t a very exciting way to mark my “halfway” milestone.

Food Highlight of the Day: The nachos that Sam and I made with REAL DORITOS! おいしかったです!

Day 181 in Japan - Hyakunin isshu (百人一首)

At Akashi kita today we spent the afternoon playing a traditional Japanese card came – “Hyaku nin isshu” (百人一首 - literally "100 person poem"). There is a famous old poem that was composed by 100 different people, which is read one line at a time. A group of people crowd around a table covered in 100 cards, each containing the second half of one line of the poem. The first person to recognize the card grabs it, and at the end, the person with the most cards wins.

I was asked to read out some of the cards (5 to be exact), which I thought would be a total blast, and happily agreed to. It was all fun and games until I heard the other teachers practicing their cards this morning. The cards were written in old Japanese – kanji and hiragana, but I didn’t think that would be too much of a problem, because I got my cards on Wednesday, and wrote out how to say them all in romaji. But apparently you don’t just read the words out – you half sing them in a lovely rhythm. Uh oh. There was no way that I was going to be able to master that in the next 15 minutes. Instead, I learned the Japanese word for “nervous” (おろおろ) instead, and apologized about my bad Japanese IN bad Japanese, then read my cards in my bad Japanese. The students were very nice about it, and I got a few congratulations, but I think that I made it harder for them to understand. My difficulties aside, it was a brilliant afternoon! The kids had a really good time, I saw a different side of a bunch of my teachers who read the cards in a lovely traditional Japanese lilt, and I got to do a whole lot of talking to the students and taking photographs. My science class won (GO 1-9!!!), and one of the students got 50 cards! That means that she took half of the cards, even though she was in a group of about 8-10 people.

After school, Sam and I had a quiet Friday night in. I was keen to go to karaoke, but it was too cold and we were too lazy, so instead we just played “Guess the Song” from my iTunes library, and sang along while he played Civ 4 and I read Harry Potter.

Food Highlight of the Day: Mini Wagon wheels! I don’t know what the are called in Japanese, but they were definitely mini wagon wheels.

Day 180 in Japan - I did a lot of work.

At Akashi Shimizu today, I was left with only one class. Now that the third year students are just about finished (they are currently doing some final exams), and I didn’t have my fortnightly class, I had the day pretty well to myself. I got to plan the upcoming lessons, prepare the quizzes, and even started work on the Review lessons, as well as finishing some marking for Akashi kita, and writing my “ALT Goal Management” review. It is nice to be so productive when I’m at Akashi Shimizu, but it makes me feel a little bit resentful when I hear other ALTs stories about being bored at work, or watching some of the JTEs go off for their fifth 10 minute cigarette break for the day. I really want to get some Japanese study done at school, and I know a lot of other teachers have hours spare every day to kill, but I can never seem to find even 10 minutes. I know this is a bit “Waaaaah”, and I try not to feel hard done by and instead just be proud of my worth ethic (or over-inflated sense of guilt), BUT today it annoyed me a bit.

Food Highlight of the Day: Remembered to buy some instant coffee stuff for school - it wasn't great, but it was warm and sweet and woke me up.

Day 179 in Japan - Wow, I am a teacher, aren't I?

More classes, more marking, and lots of practicing with the ESS students for the upcoming Recitation Contest at school today. It was a really good day, and I am SO impressed with the capacity of my ESS girls' brains. They can just remember these big slabs of text in another language very quickly. Whether or not they retain them well is another matter, but I am really happy with how they are going.

Sam ended up working all day today (everyone here seems to have the flu at the moment), and so I finally got around to doing some of the cleaning and rearranging that needs to be done in preparation for Fletch coming (in T minus 8 days!). Nothing much of note happened tonight, except that Sam found NACHO CHEESE DORITOS in a supermarket nearby, so now we are planning a Nacho night. Yeah, quiet day.

Food Highlight of the Day: Chicken salad I cooked for dinner – chicken seasoned with special Kyoto meat salt stuff.

Day 178 in Japan - Happy Birthday, Mum!

Today was Mum’s birthday, and I thought about her all day. I told all of my classes that it was her birthday, and made them all say “Happy Birthday!” to celebrate. It was a pretty frantic day at school, because I had to use every spare moment outside of class to prepare for this afternoon’s Science English class. Today, we had to give our example talks about scientific topics, and the other teacher decided at the last minute that we should make them Powerpoint presentations to encourage the kids to do the same. Mine was on “Arsenic loving bacteria”, and I found it hard to keep my pace slow and even when giving a presentation on something scientific that I like. I also had a lot of marking to finish, marks to record, internet to sort out (our internet stopped working because we didn’t fill out a form that we didn’t know about – the perils of not being able to read the language of the country that you are living in), and then my principal asked for a meeting in the middle of it all. Whoa!

After all of that, I was ready for a rest when I got home. The weekends chores still remained largely ignored, as I sat under the kotatsu and watched 5 episodes of Castle back-to-back. I called Mum, heard all about her birthday in Gerringong (and imagined going along with them for lunch, swimming with her in Boat Harbour pool, helping to fix the canvases over the broken roof at Werri), then probably beat her to bed, despite Japan being 2 hours behind Australia.

Food Highlight of the Day: We had KFC for dinner after Sam came home from his Japanese lesson. We figured that if the Japanese eat KFC to celebrate the birth of Christ (KFC is a traditional Christmas food here), then we would eat it to celebrate the birth of Christine (my Mum).

Day 177 in Japan - Goodbye Ibunka class :'(

Today was the last class I will have with the third year (3年生) Akashi Shimizu culture class. This is a good and bad thing – I am probably as happy as the students that I won’t have to try to get them to join in activities that they don’t want to do, but I am sad that I won’t get to see these 23 students that I quite like (as people, not necessarily as students) any more. I ended up giving the class my email address to keep in touch if they would like. A lot of them wrote it down, and said that they would like to write to me. I am not sure if I will ever hear from them again, but I hope that I at least run into them at kaiten sushi sometime.

I tried something a bit fun in my first year (１年生) classes today, and it worked well in 3 of my 4 classes. The other class is very hard to control – there are two ADHD boys who are pretty disruptive, and most of the girls refuse to talk unless they are one-on-one. Sadly, the class that failed a bit was last, so I came away feeling a bit useless, until on the way out of school I talked with a few of the students who were running laps around the school. They were actually happy to talk to me, and we chatted in English for about 5 minutes. I felt a lot better after that.

On the way home, I picked up my Amazon order at a convenience store. One nice thing about living in Japan is that convenience stores (“conbini”) are really… convenient. I have paid bills, bought bus tickets, concert tickets, soccer tickets and bought a LOT of hot and cold coffee from conbinis, but today was my first COD (cash on delivery) experience at a Lawson (one chain of convenience store here). I took in my customer number and password number, punched them into a machine, got a receipt, walked to the counter to hand it over, paid my money like I had just bought it from the store, and walked out happily with my new books about using Japanese particles. All in less than 5 minutes. No wonder Japan is not a credit card-using society, when it is that easy to buy something online. I ordered the books on Wednesday or Thursday last week, they were ready to pick up on Friday, and it took my 5 minutes today to get them. Oh conbinis, how I will miss you!

Food Highlight of the Day: My 7-11 sandwiches for lunch!

Day 176 in Japan - Epic Bike Ride!

With Jodie staying over, we all woke up a little late today. I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in bed for a while, and it turns out Jodie was listening to her audio version of Deathly Hallows in bed waiting for us to wake up as well! We hung around the house for hours chatting before we decided to make a move, and actually ride the bikes up to Jodie’s place in Gakkuentoshi. According to Google maps, the route was about 12 kms, so about midday we decided that we needed to make a move if we wanted to get there and back before the sun set. Checking the weather report, we realized that we might be idiots for attempting it today, but convinced ourselves after our pastry-based brunch that if we were too uncomfortably cold, we could always turn back.

We actually had a really pleasant ride through Nishi Akashi, the northern outskirts of Akashi, through western Kobe, then up through north Tarumi to Gakkuentoshi. I have chucked up the map of the path we rode below. With a quick conbini stop for toilets and extra foot warmers, it took us about 2 hours to ride at a fairly gentle pace. IT was nice to see some new territory again, and we were rugged up enough to not notice the subzero temperatures. The only real killer part came at the end, when we had an enormous hill to climb to get to Jodie’s apartment block. We all got off and walked our bikes up, and were rewarded with a nice view over the valley that Jodie’s base school (Itawdani kita?) site on top of.

Sam and I realized that we didn’t have long to spend at Jodes’ place if we wanted to make it back home before the sun set at 4:30 or so. We scarfed some of Jodie’s Almond Chocolate (Cadbury!), and then started the ride home. The wind was against us, and it seemed to have gotten about 5 degrees colder while we were inside, and Sam and I just kept our heads down and pedaled until we hit the outskirts of Kobe. Once we were on the main road, and had a bit of shelter from the buildings around us, we started to enjoy ourselves again. We found a HARD OFF – a second hand hardware, software and audio shop, and spent a really enjoyable 15 minutes warming up while marveling at Japan’s awesome second hand games and consoles. Sam bought Sonic 1 for 105 yen, and a spare Mega Drive controller for 200 yen.

By the time we reached the outskirts of Okubo, it had started to lightly snow. It was such a beautiful sight to see the orange sun dropping low in the sky with tiny bits of snow floating around in our hometown! Of course, I stopped to take about 30 pictures.

By the time we got home, it was 6 pm on a Sunday, and I hadn’t cleaned, shopped, washed or done any of the usual weekend chores. I was also completely buggered, having just cycled for about 4 hours, so I chucked on a quick load of washing, made toast for dinner and didn’t do any housework. I had a bunch of marking to get done for my Science English classes, so Sam finished Sonic 1 while I corrected speeches about current scientific topics. And it was marvelous.

Food Highlight of the Day: Cadbury chocolate after a 2 hour ride.

Day 175 in Japan - Lessons and Pubs

Today was my first day back in Japanese lessons for the year, and I could not for the life of me remember when it was supposed to be. I knew that we had changed it, but I couldn’t find my Japanese teachers phone number, and she didn’t reply to my emails, so I just decided to strike out for Akashi and wander around to kill time if necessary. In the end, I had enough time to sort out my study notes, do a little bit of revision over a cup of tea, and then met with Kojima-sensei for my regular 2 hour Japanese lesson at the Akashi International Association (1 on 1 lesson with a lovely teacher for 2 hours for 250 yen!). I wrote a story in Japanese about my holiday, and she was so happy with it that she photocopied it to take home and show her husband (I assume they will stick it to the fridge to remember my awesomeness). After the lesson, I had a coffee and some bakery goods with Kojima-sensei. She is so lovely, and I will miss her when I leave Japan.

When I got back to Okubo, I met up with Jodie at our place. We were considering riding her new bike to her place this afternoon, but as the sun was already getting low, we decided to give it a miss, wait for Sam to finish work and go to an izakaya instead! It ended up being one of the more expensive izakaya trips – I think for the amount of umeshu (plum wine) we drank, we would have been better off with nomihoudai (all you can drink). But we got to take Jodes to our favourite izakaya, had a lovely night out, a lot of karaage (my favourite fried chicken!), and even managed to convince Jodes to stay the night. Sam showed off his Sonic 2 skills while we feigned interest, then we all headed to bed.

Food Highlight of the Day: The walnut bread I shared with Kojima-sensei.

Day 174 in Japan – The Bright Lights of Himeji

First lessons of the year started at Akashi kita today, and they are going over really well. I get the kids to do a “Who Am I” game to guess different countries. Like “I am in Northern Europe… (here is a picture of a green rolling field)… I am part of the UK…(here is a picture of a shamrock)… My main languages are Gaelic and English… (here is a picture of the flag)… I AM IRELAND!”. As I give mystery prizes (chocolate/biscuits) to the students who win, the kids get really into it, and it makes the bitter pill of having to do speeches using the same vocabulary much easier for them to swallow. Anyway, after a really fun day of teaching, I realized that it was actually a Friday, and I had no plans! Not unusual, but today I actually felt like going out and socialising, so I invited myself along to a night out in Himeji with Dan, Christine, Pav, Adam, Jessica and the-girl-with-the-hair-whose-name-I-don’t-remember-and-I-don’t-care-for-much.

We went to a place called “Milk Ramen”, whose specialty was… Milk Ramen. It was actually really nice – like normal ramen, but kind of creamy, and even more filling than usual. Also had these vegetable gyoza that were surprisingly good for a vegetable version of a traditionally meat-based dish. Afterwards, Dan took us to one of the best cocktail bars I have been to in Japan – Not Blue. It was a really classy and nice traditional cocktail bar, although I think all of us loud gaijin kinda ruined the mood a little. But I had a brilliant gin and tonic (Tanqueray! Not 10, though), and a Moscow Mule that was almost as good as the Mules served in (that bar I went to with Anita and Kevin – chuck in a link). Thankfully, Dan was keeping an eye on the time, because when Sam and I walked with him to the train, we only just made our last train home. Phew! I thought we had another 30-60 minutes. It was a really nice night out, and reminded me that I should hang out with the Himejans more often. I miss them!

Milk Ramen. Surprisingly meaty and delicious.

Food Highlight of the Day: would HAVE to be Milk Ramen.

Day 173 in Japan - Welcome to Term 3!

Today I was back to my first classes at Shimizu.

My third year girls really don't want to listen at all now - today was the second last class and they know that they have no reason to work anymore. But they are talking to me more now that they don't have to, which is nice. So while they aren't really doing any of the work that they are assigned in class, they are probably speaking and listening to more English than they have for the last 3 months!

My other first year classes were really quite good, actually. I think that over the break, there were a lot of New Year's Resolutions made to study harder and be better behaved in class... I wonder how long this will last!?

After school, I went for a quick shufti to the nearby shrine/temple to take photos of the New Years mikuji (fortunes from a shrine) tied to strings. Four boys of about 4-5 years old were playing hide and go seek in the grounds while I was there, and they looked at me like I was some crazy awesome thing that they had never seen before, paused for a second, then one of the raised his finger, pointed at me and yelled "Ahhhh, Gaijin" like they yell "Ahhhh, Gojira" in the movies. Ahhh, living in Japan...

Omikuji (New Year's fortunes) tied to strings in our local shrine.
You tie up the bad ones to  try to make them not come true.

Our local shrine in winter

Food Highlight of the Day: Super nice fresh bananas. Are they in season or something? They are really good at the moment. 

Day 172 in Japan - Winter Holiday Tests Begin!

At school I actually got to study Japanese - I have heard tales of this "spare time at school" phenomena, but I have never really got to experience it myself. I finished my lesson plans for first week, and had a bit of time left over to study :O It was all because the students have their holiday tests today - that's right, the students have to study independently over the holidays here, and are tested on what they learned when they come back to school!

Leaving work in the daylight!

After school I was a good adult and went shopping and bought serious adult groceries. Then Sam came home with lots of non-adult groceries and we ate those instead - curry pan and cake for dinner!

Food Highlight of the Day: The chocolate mousse cake that Sam brought home was the best chocolate-ish cake I have had in Japan. Most of the chocolate cake looks good, but tastes meh - this was the real deal!

Day 171 in Japan - Back to the Daily Grind...

Today was the first day back at work after the winter break. So, we had an Opening Ceremony at Akashi Kita - now that the novelty has worn off, it's a bit boring to stand in a hall listening to speeches that would be boring even if I could understand them... particularly when it was so cold my toes got first numb and then painful. I didn't had too much school work to do, but I prepared for my first classes that will start on Friday, and started to get some ESS activities lined up.

The pond in the middle of my school was frozen over this morning.
This was  taken in the afternoon, after a full day of sun.

Tonight, we had dinner with Mai at ramen restaurant. Missed catching up with her! It has been quite a while, because she also went travelling a little over the winter holidays. We won't see her for a little while again, because she is off to Belgium and Amsterdam with her mother for a week or so coming up, so she'll be very busy. We were really glad that we went to our local ramen place with her, because apparently there are a billion options when you order ramen - do you want "deep taste" or "not deep taste" (nope, still don't get that one), onion or no onion, fatty pork or lean pork, more oil or less oil, more meat or less meat, etc. etc. We wouldn't have made it through that ordering process, that's for sure!

Food Highlight of the Day: Kotteri Ramen - Mai exaplined it as "deep" ramen, and kottori means thickly, richly, heavily. It was a nice thick broth with good tasting pork. Yum!

Day 170 in Japan - Cup Noodle Museum with Atsushi!

Today was Coming of Age Day in Japan so everywhere we went today, we saw lots of kimono and suits. It was a really nice day to be out and about - everyone was a bit exciting, and everything seemed to buzz with energy just a little bit, even though it was freezing cold. It was also a public holiday! And it probably explains why there were festivals on all around the place last night.

Today, we FINALLY met up with Atsushi Sakuda - my friend from Osaka University who had visited Melbourne for a few months. We've been playing phone tag with him for the last few months, but he has been finishing up his thesis, so has been understandably occupied. But he handed in his thesis last week, so together we met with him and his girlfriend, Yuko, to celebrate a little. We met in Osaka, went for our first real sushi restaurant experience (we have been to kaiten sushi - sushi train - many times, but this was the first classy restaurant we had visited), and then decided to visit the Cup Noodle Museum in Ikeda (Osaka). We learned all about the nearby invention of instant ramen, saw some awesome videos, watched other people construct their own personalised ramen (selecting the flavourings, vegetables to add, meat bits, colouring their own containers, and finally sealing and preserving the noodles), and generally didn't understand much of what was going on around us. Most everything was in Japanese, so we were lucky to have Atsushi along to point out what was what and explain things to us. It was still a really cool experience - who can say they have been to an instant ramen museum!? It started some light snowing on our walk back to the station, and we ended up going for coffees and bread at a nearby nice little bakery in an interesting mall.

Yuko, Atsushi and Sam at the Nissin Cup Noodle Museum

This is part of the make-your-own cup noodle exhibition, but it was too packed to do. But you can choose your own flavour, choose your own fixin's, design your cup etc.

The fixin"s chart for your noodley design (is this pastafarianism meets intelligent design?)

Two fools, one cup noodle.

(About half of the) Timeline of noodles all made by Niisin since the 1970's.

Colourful noodles.

Food Highlight of the Day: Not noodles, actually. At the classy sushi shop, and the maguro sushi was excellent! Complemented our celebratory beers perfectly.

Day 169 in Japan - Den Den Town (Town)

After a bit of a sleep in (after my strenuous day yesterday of doing nothing), Sam and I headed into Osaka. I have been feeling guilty lately about having spent 3 multi-day trips exploring Tokyo, and only having been to Osaka once, even though it is practically next door to Akashi! So it is one of my New Years Resolutions to see more of the heart of Kansai. Today, we started with Den Den Town - the Osakan version of Akihabara, the anime and electronics district of Tokyo.

We met up with Jodie and Fiona at Osaka station, then wandered the streets near the station looking for food. We didn't find that much food, but instead accidentally wandered down the Love Hotel roads, finding nothing but bad Engrish and dodgy photos lining the streets. We ended up giving up and getting Nakau more for somewhere warm to sit than for the sake of our stomachs (it was really cold here today - we all felt colder than we actually had at the snow!).

Sign in the Love Hotel area. I mean, what more do you need?

Then we headed towards Den Den Town (real name Nipponbashi - "den" or でん or 電 means electricity, so it's called Den Den Town due to the high concentration of electronics stores and general nerdy shops around).. We caught a few subways with the kind assistance of Fiona, and eventually emerged from Ebisucho station into the most pee-smelling place I have been in since I came to Japan (with the exception of any school toilets, which always reek). We wandered down what we guess was the main street, and continued poor Fiona's education in the otaku (nerd) arts. Lots of decent little electronics stores (little niche places - think computer fair stalls in shop form, with more odd things and less RAM), our own local SuperPotato (which was my awesome retro game store in Akihabara), and heaps of nerdy anime stores.

Why, Japan, why?

We wandered into quite a big manga place later in the afternoon, and accidentally found a buttload (pun intentional) of porn! We were innocently walking down a kids manga aisle, and then everything around us started to turn flesh coloured. Then pink. (use your imagination). We kept trying to get away from some of the more embarrassing covers, but it didn't end! We got further and further into the weird pornish manga stuff, and by the time we emerged, Fiona was blushing as pink as the areolae/labia we had been surrounded by. Sam and I also toured Jodes and Fiona through an arcade near Namba station (where we emerged from the nerd district), and saw a guy who looke exactly like a Japanese version of my cousin, Lachlan. Scarily so.

Den Den Town random anime shop.

Shoppers in Den Den Town

YES! I want to collect this franchise.

I Can't Believe It's Not Lachlan!

We went for a quick coffee and bagel (yeah, bagel- that's how cool we are) in a big shopping complex to the south of the station, and saw a big festival going on. We aren't sure why it was happening, but Sam and I also saw some other bits of matsuris from the train on our way home.

Matsuri at Namba (Nipponbashini?)

Matsuri in Namba,

Food Highlight of the Day: The Den Den Town waffle street vendor place we visited halfway between Ebishucho station and Namba was delicious (Jodie's blackberry jam one looked the best, but my chocolate was great too), and the guy running it was ridiculously friendly and helpful. I think this is totally going to be a tradition whenever we visit Den Den Town (which will happen again, I swear!)

Osaka Waffles? Den Den Waffles? They were special for some reason other than their deliciousness.

Day 168 in Japan - Couch.

I did nothing today but sit on the couch. It was wonderful. I stayed in my pyjamas all day. I watched Castle. I read Harry Potter (almost done with Half Blood Prince). I ate peanut butter from the jar. I nursed my blisters, and caught up on my internet. There's nothing to see here, except for a contented and rested person with peanut butter smudges around their face.

Food Highlight of the Day: Toasted cheese sandwich.

Day 167 in Japan - Home is the Skiier Home from the Slopes

Our train was relatively early this morning, so we got up at a quite reasonable hour to go out for breakfast at the nearby cafe, and actually had a nice coffee and some good eggs for breakfast!

Afterwards, we lugged our bags through the snow (via taxi) to Hakuba station. I had the most picturesque train trip that I have ever been on, with the little old train winding it's through the snowy mountains and sleepy little snow villages. Met a new Japanese friend, who had spotted me trying to study Japanese and gave me a hand, and got some Japanese lessons off Shane, my new hero (blah blah blah nakerebanaraimasu = you must do blah blah blah).

We got off the train in Matsumoto (still in Nagano Prefecture) and went to visit a famous nearby castle for a few hours. It was a beautiful place for some photos. While Jodie and Fiona went for an look inside, I wandered in the park with the boys. A slightly crazy-looking man (who was definitely a gaijin, although he was a gaijin with pretty decent Japanese) kept giving us bread to feed the pigeons and koi that were swimming in the castles moat. The koi weren't so bad, but the pigeons were really going nuts for the bread, and we were trying to just get rid of the bread as quickly as we could so they'd leave us alone, but the nice (crazy) man kept giving us more. Eventually we escaped the birds and the man, and walked around the park for a while. We ate Italian food from a really friendly restaurant (HUUUUGE spaghetti dish for Jodes and I), then went to find where our bus was departing from.

The whole gang at Matsumoto Castle

Horrible gaping / I don't know why but I just / Don't like these dumb fish (a haiku for koi)

Simon, with a rat of the sky

Matsumoto Castle with the lovely mountains of Nagano in the background.

A CAULDRON of lunch.

Then started the 5 hour bus ride home. Got some more Japanese lessons from Shane, ate a lot of chocolate almonds (thanks Jodie!), crocheted a hat and finally got back to Osaka at about 9:30. We all said our goodbyes Oceans 11 style, with each person peeling off at their respective train line and stop. Got home at about 10, ate toast and fell into bed.

Food Highlight of the Day: Giant pasta for lunch. Sausage, bacon and broccoli.