alright peeps, here are the entrails of the post i eradicated the other day! sincerest apologies for the moods of the past couple of posts, but fear not! THIS time, i'm all kawaii-ed up, fired up, and yakisoba-ed up (sidenote: yakisoba, will you marry me?)!
since i'm basically trying to squeeze just short of two months' escapades into one post, i'll steal dear kiwi tiff's blogging format and just go by date. mimicry is the highest form of flattery, grubby, don't hate me for jackin' yo style! shall we?
jan 4 - back to school, back to school, to prove to peeps that i'm not a fool. oh wait, except that i AM a fool and didn't know how to say "happy new year" (
akemashite omedetou gozaimasu), nor that it was customary to stand up, bow, and say this phrase every time someone entered the staff room. by the time i caught on, in the wise words of austin powers, that train had sailed. so i maintained my status as the rude foreigner. all in all, a typical day.
jan 5 - froze my
shiri off at school, despite my efforts to keep warm by wearing my fake-fur-trimmed uniqlo jacket (which also, incidentally, made me look vaguely like an eskimo floozy). got the results for my first japanese test - 96%! which normally would be considered a job well done. however, considering the test was open-book, it's actually just kind of embarrassing.
jan 6 - students back from winter break. welcome back assembly included eyebrow inspections. shaving your eyebrows (which is quintessentially cool, duh) is prohibited. kiddles who indulge in the forbidden razor fruit get a beatin'. seriously. they get hit. i don't like it. you would think having shaved eyebrows would be punishment enough.
jan 7 - i journeyed down to miyazaki city, where i met up with kibs for a dinner with his school's english teachers. as we jaunted to the restaurant, he revealed an amazing proposal he'd had up his sleeve--marriage! psyche. a trip to australia and new zealand for golden week (late april/early may)!! obviously i said HAI HAI HAI!
dinner itself was wonderful. initially, as is typical, everything was fantastically awkward. during introduction, i never know whether i should move to shake hands or bow, or both, so i usually wait for the japanese person to take the initiative. fatal flaw in the plan: japanese people NEVER take initiative. so there's a whole lot of hilarious confusion and much hand flailing.
once we'd all started tucking into the
oishii food, guzzling the
nama biru, and cracking jokes, everything loosened up and was really fun and nice. i love dinners with japanese people! they're just very happy and relaxed (after the mandatory initial 10 minutes of stiffness and timidity).
mashuu and i (okay, just mashuu) discovered that our waitress spoke some english, so after the other
sensei bounced, we invited her to come to karaoke with micah and us. she hemmed and hawed and eventually gave us her digits. a little while later, as we were belting out songs in our karaoke booth, she showed up, which i think surprised even her. the night was grand! after, matt and i slept in the mystery machine yet again, which happened to be parked in the
kencho (prefectural government office) parking lot. seeing as we're technically government employees, it seemed appropriate. and exemplary! everyone could learn from our devotion to professionalism.
jan 8 - woke up disoriented and shaking with cold in the mystery machine. made an executive joint decision to skive the miyakonojo world festa practice that afternoon, and instead bought a used nintendo 64 for only 2,000 yen each. played mariokart all afternoon in saito.
jan 11 - p.e. teacher brought homemade purple bean soup to the office. said teacher, plus tanaka sensei (music teacher, favorite!) and i crowded around the office's space heater to watch mochi squares go PIUUUUUUUU! i forget the actual japanese onomatopoeia for exploding mochi, but when i told the other teacher that the english word would probably be "poof," they almost peed themselves laughing. the soup and hot, gooey mochi were too good to bear. when i told the teacher it was delicious, he loudly declared, "GOOD SMILE."
even better, when i got home, a package from
doitsu (germany) featuring ritter and a letter from dear helen arrived, along with a package from home containing nick's homemade nutella. red letter day!
jan 12 - opening of bookworm, a tiny english bookstore, in nobeoka. met the owner, a lovely guy, and greedily scoured the shelves for potential buys.
in cold blood has my name on it.
jan 13 - had a bad class, namely because i saw some kid giving me a once-over, fixating on my boobs, whispering to his crony, then his mate staring at my boobs. my eyes widened, they saw that i saw that they were peepin like proper
hentai, and they looked at the floor in shame. AS THEY SHOULD HAVE.
jan 14 - road tripped down to miyazaki city with tracey for a drink-and-food-filled evening with jetlings. we managed to drive down a one-way road that was clogged with pedestrians, prompting multiple japanese people to scurry around, helping us back up 50 feet to get to the main road. made it to the restaurant in one piece, though, and enjoyed the cheap, delicious eats and free-flowing beer. after, we hit up a kiwi-owned joint called "the bar" for some more imbibing. pool tables, 500 yen
namabiru, and jetlings galore--instant hit. that night, predictably, matt and i slept yet again in the kencho parking lot.
jan 21 - chilblains on my toes due to my insistence on wearing "footknickers," a term devised by limey sam to describe the lacy, skimpy affairs i use as socks. all day, my feet would be like ice blocks at work, then after work i'd jump into a boiling shower. apparently, this is bad for your skin. who knew?
also, while on my bike, i saw a crow on a telephone wire up ahead. i had a premonition that it would poop on me, so i swerved to the left. poop hit the ground INCHES from me. gotta love female intuition.
jan 22 - world festa in miyakonojo. i came late, and walked into the auditorium to catch all sorts of dance and music performances. after, i got to peruse my fellow aussie, kiwi, limey, jamaican, and irish jetlings' booths. i also got to watch my favorite irish duo--matt and john--sing some ditties, which was great! especially since two old people sitting in the front row fell asleep, which matt kept pointing out in jest and irritation.
after the festa, a group of us went to a nearby indian place for some tasty curried grub. dinner finished, matt and i went and parked the car in the parking lot we'd be calling home that night, then embarked on a 45-minute walk to our friend jackie's place. on the way, we stopped to buy some wine, which we drank out of the bottle on the deserted streets as we sauntered along. we hung out at jackie's for a while, then hit up a bar swimming with jets and japanese alike. i somehow got roped into sitting with a big group of japanese guys and gals. after exhausting their english and my japanese (which took all of 3 minutes), they did what all japanese people do: resorted to calling me "CUTE-O CUTE-O" and tried to get me drunk. good times!
we slept in the car in the parking lot. no surprises there.
jan 25 - essay highlights:
I respect Beyonce because she is my hero. She is the most rich woman in the whole world. She is the ideal woman.
If I were a President of my school, I would speech students in a very short time at gym. In my school, the President speech us for a very long time. It makes me bored because to speech too long.
(she's right. seriously, people here can wax poetic for HOURS.)
jan 26 - essay highlight (and perhaps the highlight of my life):
Person who influenced me is Lilly, ALT of my school for two reasons. One is because she is always smiling anytime. For example, when I am tired, her smile always makes me happy and relax. I respect her that she can make people happy. The other is because she does her best for anything. When she was asked to check a lot of essays, she tried to finish it as soon as possible for us. I learned from her the importance of doing one's best with a smile.
i. die.
jan 27 -
shinmoedake erupts in southern miyazaki. miyakonojo peeps get hit the hardest, with thick clouds of ash and windows that shake for hours. the volcano continues to erupt sporadically for the next few weeks, enveloping a sizable chunk of miyazaki in ash and even making windows in my apartment (maybe 80 miles away) vibrate violently. NB - miyakonojo is still covered in ash.
that night, trots and i drove down to the city to stay with carmen before the big mid-year seminar (mandatory for all miyazaki jets). we had a lovely dinner with her and her boyfriend carl, then hit it early.
jan 28 - awoke to a post-apocolyptic world of grey ash. with face masks on, we managed to get to the seminar (late, since we got rather terrifically lost). the seminar was good, professionalism was developed, etc. plus we ducked out for a conveyor belt sushi lunch!
that night, kibs and i began to get ready for "snowball," a much-anticipated
nomihoudai (all you can drink) dance that everyone was attending. the theme was "hosts and hostesses," and though matt originally had planned on going as a hostess, my dress was too short for his lengthy irish gams. instead, while sipping on some screwdrivers, i straightened his hair to make him appear more like a japanese host. well, i sipped too much, and remember nothing of the rest of the night. i'm sure i had a fabulous time!
the next day, both of us were feeling too fragile to do much of anything, so we drove back to saito and slept all day. that night, we went to a fellow jetling's japanese play. it seemed to be good, but since we couldn't understand anything, we nipped out after intermission and went to get slurp-licious beef udon. i LOVE beef udon. the noodles are thick, hot, and nourishing, the broth is oily, deep brown, and salty, and the beef slices are thin and tender. everything about it is lip-smacking good. mmm! we downed our bowls, and made it back just as the curtain fell. we congratulated all the actors on a job (presumably) well done.
and the next day, we went for a little drive around saito. we found this.
kawaaiiiii, ne?
we also happened to find a dam, and i took this dam picture.
and kibbeh looked like Jesus.
jan 31 - dude showed up to install some tv thing that i didn't want but apparently am required to have. i opened the door, he glimpsed my pale-face mug, and proceeded to drop all of his tools, some of which then clattered down the stairs. spluttering apologies, he gathered himself and bumbled into my room. i pretended to make tea for 10 minutes as he worked, then thanked him as he scurried out in obvious terror.
feb 3 - students had to run relays all day long. not sure why. i'm sure at NDA this would have resulted in rioting and vandalism. but the kids seemed to have fun, and i banked on the opportunity to scarf some of the pork bone soup the parents brought to feed the runners. it was dang good.
hilariously, as i cheered on a group of boys that was running past, a good-looking first year that i teach ran past. he refuses to speak english and generally looks angry, but i always guessed he was one of the cool kids. as he went, the girls all sighed, "
oosaki...kaaaakkkkooiiiii!! (oosaki...so coooool!). figures that the moody sourpuss is the school heartthrob. some things are universal.
that night, adheesh and tracey and i were kindly invited by our dear ramen-shop friend tatsuya to his house for dinner. bearing small gifts, we showed up a house filled with gorgeous-smelling clouds of
nabe steam. nabe is basically soup that has all sort of stuff chucked in.
on the left, tripe nabe. on the right, seafood nabe. both were luscious!
it also happened to be a holiday called setsubun, when a member of the family wears an oni (demon) mask, and everyone else throws peanuts at him to help drive out bad spirits. tatsuya donned the mask, and while laughing, his wife threw some peanuts to demonstrate.
how cute are they?
another dude at the dinner brought these custard-filled delights for dessert. it was truly a feast!
unfortunately, i was feeling more than a little under the weather, so once i got home that night i poured myself into bed and slept like a log.
too much like a log. the next morning, i woke up at 8:20. i'm supposed to be AT SCHOOL at 8:15. i screamed a little, called my supervisor in a frenzy and told her i'd be there ASAP, and managed to screech in at 8:40. i immediately went up to my vice principal to apologize and bow deeply. he waved it off, saying it was all right, but i really felt terribly.
all the more so because that day was the day of my performance evaluation. and of course it was the only day of the entire duration of my contract that i'd been late. good impressions, i maked dem.
it ended up being dandy, though. that afternoon, in quiet terror, i shuffled into the principal's offce and sat down at the huge round desk with the two respectable gentlemen, kyoto sensei and kocho sensei. they are both lovely. they asked me how i found my students, seiun, the teachers, etc., and gave me very kind feedback.
the best part? when kocho sensei, who speaks only a few words in english, managed, "you....are.....excerrent....ALT," and gave me a toothy smile. oh, japan! despite my complaints, i love you so!
...and so ends the recap of the dawn of the new year to the eve of the hokkaido extravaganza. keep your eyes peeled and your ears perky, cause when we meet again, we'll be buried 5 feet deep in snow and drowning in beer. until then, lovedoves!
relieved to be done writing this plop,
riri
