Day 52 in Japan - Pretending to be an adult again

After the last few days of being terrible examples of adult human beings, Sam and I actually did some of our chores properly tonight. We washed and cleaned and cooked, and ate a real meal for dinner for the first time in 4 days. We studied Japanese, and I even went for a jog while tomorrows dinner was cooking. I feel very virtuous and organised after all of that.

The aftermath of one of my English lessons - English Shiritori!

Something I am very happy with is that I have a mobile music playing device again! I took my iPhone jogging this evening, and being able to listen to my music makes such a difference! Both in terms of my motivation to keep running, and in terms of making me feel like me.

A little more Doctor Who tonight because Akashi Kita day tomorrow means that I will get a minor sleep-in (until 7:30!) - we are in the specials at the end of Season 4 and I keep thinking that every episode wil be David Tennant's last. Not quite there yet, though.

The sunflowers showing exactly what stage of summer
we are in - still there, but starting to droop and die
 a little. Note the grey sky in the background as well. 

Food Highlight of the Day: Pumpkin-flavored Pocky. I think that's all that needs saying. But as I'm me, of course I'll say more :P They were pretzel stick (as all Pocky are) covered in pumpkin pie-flavored yoghurt stuff. They actually were delicious. I will totally eat these monstrosities again! I suspect they are a Halloween thing, so I think I only have a few weeks to stock up.

Pumpkin-flavoured Pocky wa oishii desu.

Day 51 in Japan - Shimizu e jitensha de ikimashita!

I rode to my visit school for first time - uphill all they way! It normally takes about an hour by walk, train, bus BUT it only takes about 25 mins by bike. I thought it would take much longer so I got school way too early. I went for a ride around the school to kill some time. I found a little shrine by a big dam, and sat there for 10 mins. It was the most peaceful 10 minutes I have had in weeks. But of course it had to come to an end, and i got on with my day at school.

My little shrine.

The view sitting at my shrine looking
back towards my school.

Another busy day, and today I was teaching REAL classes for the first time! I had to teach direction phrases out of the textbook to 3 first year classes at Akashi Shimizu, work on retellings of ancient Japanese stories with my third year class, and talk to another third year class about Australian history. I am kind of used to it now, but it's still quite tiring by the end of the day.

After school, I had to record a speech with one of the ESS boys from Shimizu. He wrote a speech about his dreams, and his goals for the future. It was very sweet, and he did quite well recording it in only a few times. We had to wait around for a long time waiting for the teacher to come and find us both with the minidisc for the recording, so we ended up chatting for a little while. I think that being a high school student must be a hard job - the poor guy does school until 5 every day, and then goes to cram school, works a part time job or volunteers for a human rights group, is in track and field club, is the head of the ESS club AND cooks all the dinners and lunches for himself and his little sister because his parents both work until late! After we talked for about 40 mins, he was obviously sleepy, so I just let him sleep on the desk while I read over his speech.

I stopped by the "Recycle" Store for the first time on the way home. Which means that I went to the Op Shop. They are pretty much the same as our with one small difference - they stock VHS porn. See the photo below. There were about 7 shelves of this stuff! Hilarity ensued. Things that I thought would be expensive were cheap (fridges and washing machines that were fairly new-looking were about $250, brand new cute bento boxes for 50c to $1), and some things that I thought would be cheap were a bit pricey (e.g. $5 cutlery). But everything was pretty decent quality, and not very old.

Disagreeable women's various Chitai can be seen
(that's on the top video, by the way - I couldn't
come up with anything as wonderful as that).

Food highlight of the day: Delicious, delicious chocolates. I can't remember what they were. They were in a gold packet, and there were two individually packaged halves with nice bits of chocolate in each. They were about 2 cm X 1.5 cm of pure deliciousness - like a really rich chocolate ganache inside a milk chocolate shell. I think my brain is blocking the name, because it knows the dangers to my health and well-being that such knowledge could cause.

Day 50 in Japan - Nesting

We started today by cleaning, washing and eventually rearranging most of our house. We reshuffled the whole lounge room to try to make the cable between the wall and the phone as short as possible (all to try to make our internet a little more reliable, which seems to have worked - no faster, but now more stable). Our lounge room is also much more liveable now.

The rearranging made it more obvious that we really need somewhere to sit, so when we headed to a homewares store called Nitori to pick up some sheets and towels, we got ourselves a little floor chair as well. It folds up and has a solid back - we can lean back into a chair in house for the first time! WOO!

On the way home from our homewares expedition, we stopped in to Saizeriya - the cheap Italian place where we got ourselves some delicious pizza, salad and DRINK BAR! We also ran into some kind of Sunday crazy-people-wearing-costumes-to-entertain-kids thing at My Cal Akashi, which seems to be our regular Sunday activity at the moment.

I think they wanted us to plant seeds?

The best view in Akashi.

After that late lunch, we headed home, watched the end of Doctor Who Season 4, and then got to some science work. I started reviewing a paper, which was supposed to be a short job. Unfortunately, I found some fairly significant problems with their work, and the review took quite a while, so I never got around to writing my own paper like I was supposed to. I ended up staying up quite late getting my science on - I bet I'll regret that in the morning...

Food Highlight of the Day: Snickers bar. Seriously, a taste of home was almost a shock to the system. All of the chocolates and sweets seem to be a lot sweeter over here, so having some chocolate that seemed "normal" felt a little odd and great.

Day 49 in Japan -That's a HUGE Bridge.

Today's To Do list:

1. Sleep in.

2. 10:30 am - First Japanese lesson with the adorable Kojima-sensei, our new volunteer Japanese teacher

Japanese lessons at the Akashi International Association
with Kojima-sensei.

3. Lunch in a food court in Akashi - burgers and icecreams. Buy a Mameshiba keychain. Take photos.

Mameshiba: Excuse me, but did you know...

4. Spot of stationary shopping.

5. Catch a train to Maiko to see the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, the largest central span suspension bridge in the world.

This is a big bridge.

6. Fight off creepy, toothless old man in the park who wants to touch my necklace and camera.

Like this but Japanese.

7. Take a million photos of the bridge, and be particularly impressed with its size and the thickness of its cables. Length AND width. Ha.

The cables on the bridge are THIS BIG!

Akashi-Awaji Bridge

I live in Akashi. If you live in Akashi, you have to have a photo like this.

Standing in the shadow of the bridge.

8. Be impressed with the hordes of fishermen and fisherfamilies, old dudes playing Shogi (like the chess guys in Wollongong mall, but I couldn't understand the swearing) and various other people braving the incredible heat to use the space around the bridge for their various purposes.

Shogi in the shade

9. Head up into the underside of the bridge to see the observation deck thing. Enjoy the air conditioning. Eat a rainbow ice/fruit/icecream concoction while overlooking Akashi city.

Doesn't this look like an FPS? It's the underside of the bridge.

This is Akashi from the bridge. That photo of
me above was taken at the point of the closest bit down there.

Rainbow ice (i.e. shaved ice with blue, green,
red, yellow, orange and purple flavourings, with
condensed milk, fruit and soft serve ice cream). Oh, and Akashi.

10. Then walk through the park, sit in the shade. Pretend to be a tree.

This is a good sign that it was too hot and
we didn't take enough water.

11. Train home, Skype, sleep.

Food Highlight of the Day: Did you see that picture of the rainbow icecream? It was DEFINITELY that.

Day 48 in Japan - I HAVE A KEITAI!

Today's day at school quite good. I (once again) forgot to order the school bento, so I braved the school canteen for the first time. It was slightly daunting, because I had no idea how it worked. I walked into a room full of kids, and watched for a little while to try to figure it out. There is a little booth at the side of the room, where you walk up and order things off a list. Unfortunately, the list is in Kanji, so I just listened to the boys in front of me and ordered the same thing as them. So I ended up with curry rice. Or at least, a ticket for curry rice. I then stood around for a little while looking confused, before some students took pity on me, and walked me over to the other side of the room, where I handed over my ticket, and got a HUGE plate of curry rice for about 230 yen. they offered me a spoon, which I thought was them being kind to a silly gaijin. So I politely declined and took some chopsticks instead. I then struggled with my sloppy curry and finally managed to eat it all with a few odd stares from the kids around me. I just assumed that they were surprised to see me in the school lunch room. (Can you tell where this is going yet?) After lunch, I put my plates in the stream of water, and then handed them over to the nice lunch ladies, and was just about to head out when a group of four girls approached me giggling. They finally managed to ask me why I used chopsticks to eat my lunch, and I said that lots of people in Australia can use chopsticks. They laughed, and then explained to me that in Japan, you always eat curry rice with a spoon, and that I looked very funny eating it with chopsticks. Damn, so much for trying to blend in! No matter - they laughed, I laughed, and they promised me that next time they saw me eating in the lunch room they would tell me if I was doing anything funny or wrong.


After lunch, I fancied a drink, so I stopped by our school's vending machine. There were three girls standing there, obviously alarmed but happy to see the new school gaijin. They were all nudging each other and trying to push each other forward to talk to me, so I put them out of their misery, and said hello. They were really happy to talk to me, and they helped me to choose my drink - a Lemon & Cider. Delicious! They managed to get out "I want to be your friend", and giggle a lot, and then chase a bunch of soccer boys over to talk to me as well. It was really nice to be out of the formal classroom setting, where the kids were willing to try to talk to me without worrying about an audience.


Anyway, all that stuff about school is just foreplay, because the main event of the day was... MY BRAND SPANKING NEW IPHONE.

We got a phone call last night telling us that my phone would be ready to pick up today. So, I met Sam after work and we rode our bikes up the hill, stopping to watch the beautiful sunset over one of the ponds that give Okubo it's name.

Hi Sam! Nice shirt. Now get ye to Softbank.

This is one of the "kubo" (puddles) that give Okubo
 (kanji meaning big puddles) it's name.

The sunsets here are really beautifully red and orange.

Got to Softbank and met up with our old friend Mai! She is so lovely, and I loved her particularly hard today, because she had my shiny new toy!! We sat there for a few hours, chatting about my new phone, her trip to Macau, her boyfriend, and planning to catch up for dinner on a double date in a few weeks.

Mai and mai phone (get it? Ha! I'm funny)

Afterwards, we had kaiten zushi. Just to make this day perfect.

Food Highlight of the Day: The lovely Mai just got back from a holiday from Macau with her family (her Mum and grandparents), and she brought us a present, which just proves how absolutely fantastic she is. She brought us fruit pastilles that were flavoured like apples and mangoes. Like, they actually tasted like apples and mangoes - not just like apple flavouring and mango flavouring. Delicious little sugar bombs.

Day 47 in Japan - Two Rights and a Wrong

Today's post brought you to you by the letter dot point.

- Shimizu Day! Always a tough day.
- 2 good classes, one bad one, and the bad one was REALLY bad. I now have a group of kids that I want to wait for in the carpark and beat up after school. Yay? Oh well, the rude and horrible kids in my bad class really highlight how lucky I am with the rest of my classes. I just have to keep telling myself that.
- One teacher didn't show up today - had a replacement teacher for that class. I got a compliment from the replacement teacher - he said that I was a natural teacher, and it made my day completely (that was before the crappy class).
- busy with speeches and lesson plans in afternoon - ended up leaving an hour and a bit late. AGAIN.
- kids playing on my way home - both at Shimizu, where little girls were playing on the monkey bars. Then again in Okubo near my house, where there were a park full of kids playing soccer near a "No playing soccer" sign. I wanted a photo of that, but as soon as they saw me, they wanted to pose for photos, and totally abandoned their soccer game.

- went for exploratory jog and should have taken camera - found lots of cool looking thingd. jog was through Okubo Matsukage and the cooler weather today made such a big difference in how far and how fast I could manage to go.

Food Highlight of the Day: Today's feature food is the delicious vermicelli noodle mayonnaise "salad" that they put into bento here. It's cooked very thin rice noodle mixed with a little bit of vegetable of some kind (not very much), and a LOT of the delicious eggy Japanese mayonnaise. And they call it a salad. A salad *chuckle* (that is a Gimli joke).

Day 46 in Japan - Japanese TV!

I forgot one vital thing about yesterday - WE GOT A TV!!! One lovely lady from work donated her old television to us - she is so cute and lovely and she is my new best friend (now that I know the TV works :P). We didn't really get it working yesterday, although we made a stop at the hundred yen store to try to find some cables to plug it into the wall. We hit autotune, and let the TV do it's thing, and then lost interest and went to bed.

Today, we have actually had the time to watch some TV. And, oh boy, does Japanese TV live up to my expectations! Started with kids TV when I got home from school - very random and odd, but not really that different to the random oddness of kids TV at home. It wasn't until about 7 or so that the real gold appeared. The first show that caught my attention, and probably still my favourite, was called (something about escape) DERO! It's a show where celebrities get locked in rooms, surprising things happen and they have to solve puzzles in order to escape, or something scary happens to them. YES IT IS. Tonight there was a guy in a pink vest who's famous, a couple of boy band members (is JOY a boy band?), and a member of AKB48 (a 48 member girl band) trying not to fall down well shafts, solving kanji riddles, and escaping from locked rooms while chained up. Pure viewing gold.

A scene from DERO! My new favourite Japanese TV show.

After DERO! we channel surfed a bit, and eventually found another TV show to appeal to my delicate sensibilities - it combined three of my great loves - Antiques Roadshow, the hundred yen store and cross-dressing. In the show there seem to be a bunch of people standing around a table, choosing things to buy at the fake hundred yen store. All them men are dressed as old women (always funny), and they have to try to pick the things that are worth 100 yen from the things that are actually valuable collectibles or antiques. Television just does not get any better than that. I couldn't find it's name anywhere, so I will have to keep watching television randomly hoping to find it again.

I... I think this is a dating show? I just don't know anymore.

The other thing that has really made me happy about Japanese television is the ads. They are every bit as cliched, terrifying and brilliant as the snippets that we get in Australia make them seem. Pretty much every ad is noteworthy for some reason. The brightly coloured sets with cows singing about wanting you to eat them. The slow motion chip-eating with old man voices and young girl faces. The man playing cello in a room in a serious and dignified ad for melon bread. I hope that I never get used to it and that I am always as awed with Japanese television as I am right now.

In terms of work, today was a little gentler than yesterday, although I had my first ESS (English Speaking Society) club meeting. I will have 3-4 ESS culbs to run per week! So I have to think of at least 2 x 2 hour activities (and recycle them at my other school) per week to do with these poor bored students. I think that it will be a big challenge, and we may end up watching a few movies before the end of the year. And I am pretty sure that I won't be getting my daikyu (time in lieu) to make up for the extra 8 hours per week I'm now required to be at school. I asked today, and just got a lot of "well no one ever has before" (although my predecessors had only 2 ESS meetings per week), and "other teachers don't get any time off", and I think I'm just going to have to do it. I will keep asking, though. My classes today were quite good - I have now taught 9 classes at Akashi Kita (putting me halfway through my self-intros), and 5 classes at Akashi Shimizu. Oh, and my bento lunch was DELICIOUS! But it was a stolen bento - I ordered a small lunch but ate a large one accidentally (I thought the other containers were just the large rices for the people who ordered them). Oops! I apologise profusely and paid the lady the difference between the lunches. Dumb thing number fifty for the month.

Delicious stolen bento - the only thing I didn't
eat was the fishy stuff at bottom right.

Food Highlight of the Day: Tonight's dinner was brought to me courtesy of a very thoughtful Sam, who walked to MacDonald's to get us some tired gaijin food. I had a tsukimi (moon viewing) burger - egg, bacon, cheeseburger patty and cheese with a sauce that is best described as orange. It was delicious, totally unhealthy and lazy, and I regret nothing.