About Me

Ikawa-cho Miyoshi-shi, Tokushima-ken, Japan
I was recently accepted by the JET program as an assistant English teacher in Japan for one year.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

blog,
on the last day i have to work before my 3 week vacation with my girlfriend, who gets here tomorrow, i not only have to teach three classes back to back to back in the morning, but in the afternoon there is an "evacuation drill" that takes up two hours. also my right tail light is out. i guess putting a rubber band around my wrist is going to help me remember to take care of that. however i did get paid today, and it was garbage day. you probably want to hear more about japan and japanese things? listen, i have to stamp some english notebooks with today's date. all of the english teachers agree that there is something very wrong with english education in japan. it is going to take them a while to come around and make it better. basically i think you need to use a language for something daily, and mostly "everyday life" becomes the required use of a langauge, but when you are learning it just so you can use it in class and pass a test, you really dont need to understand it at all.
great!

Friday, December 11, 2009

keeping you updated

hello blog,
the e-prime experiment is over. some people don't like it, and it takes a little too much effort for right now.
today i went christmas caroling with all of the other foreign english teachers in my city area. we went to nine schools and sang about four classic christmas songs at each. i had to wake up really early but it was better than a boring day at work. we went deep into the basically uninhabited foggy river valley, and then back into my part of town. i am so glad that i dont live an hour plus away from a food market. i had a very big, delicious lunch of pork and rice and beef udon, which was only around $8 and so satisfying. it was a good day, mostly because of the social interaction and because we made so many japanese middle school students happy.
tomorrow i am going to clean the entire house, bottom to top, do laundry, take care of some minor errands, and get ready for liz to get here on tuesday. anything i dont finish tomorrow can be finished on sunday. i am waiting to take a ton of wet laundry to the laundromat so i can sit there and finish reading paradise lost while my things dry. i ordered a super mario vidogame for my DS which i hope gets here tomorrow. i know now that i should have used amazon japan which everyone says is much faster, and you can even pay at a convenience store, which sounds too convenient.
so monday is the last day i have to go to work this year. chatting with everyone here just makes me more sure i want to leave in july. i dont know what i want to try to do when i get back to america but living alone is just too lonely! ah i cannot forget to pay my rent this month. i have a few weeks still. i worry too too much about money and it should not be a problem at all. i am just much more thrifty than everyone i know.
happy new year, everyone
great!

Friday, December 4, 2009

e-prime no matter how you judge me

dearest blog of blogs!
another week in japan has come to an end. i had a good time at karate today, sensei said to only use 30% of our power for sparring because of the tournament that i cannot go to on sunday becase of work. on wednesday, sensei broke 2 pieces of wood and a baseball bat with his legs. this looked amazing, and i have photos. they will be posted, all in good time.
i asked a few of my wonderful professors for their insights wrt President Obama's decision to send 30,000 more American soldiers to fight Al Qaeda in afghanistan. the responses i have gotten so far appear very thought-provoking and valuable. i will put some time into crafting my own official opinion. i wish Obama the best of luck but i go back and forth.
what can i say about japan that i have not already said? tomorrow will become saturday, and i feel thankful for a day off to clean up and do some minor chores. if my posts sound less than enthused or satisfied, then you must understand that i miss my home country and have been experiencing the zizekian notion of how my homeland and culture is experienced as totally contingent and arbitrary. it can feel stressful and upsetting sometimes, but like my dad says, this experience has no replacement and i appreciate the chance i was given every day. self control seems like the most difficult concept i have encountered, maybe even harder than being true to oneself. socially i feel totally deprived here, but that will all become okay once liz gets here and i get three weeks, the same amount of time i used to got to know her with initially, to spend with her again and relax. today i had my last day of the year at tsuji elementary school, the one near my house, where i teach with a japanese teaching assistant who writes all of the lesson plans. it can feel like a difficult environment to teach in, but utlimately i feel thankful for her presence, as i rely on it. i heard that the job market in america has suffered less than usual this past month? that bodes well for my chances upon returning to the USA, hopefully it doesnt hurt the strong yen.
i will to buy myself a christmas/hannukah (confused because of secular japan) present tomorrow in the form of a small video game. this week and a half will go by very quickly. i will now go read paradise lost, the end of which i slowly appraoach, and then retire for the night. in case i forgot to tell you, i received my blue belt, second level, in karate on wednesday. it looks cool, and i feel good about it.
great!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

this post has 4 karate pictures and one landscape. also i try out e-prime for the first time on this blog!

welcome back, blog.
(note: here you can read about e-prime, something i heard about which i have decided to try as an experiment. this post has been composed, to the best of my knowledge, entirely in e-prime, and i will continue to try to do all of my writing in this language.)
december has finally come. does this mean winter has started? it feels cold outside, but it still feels more like autumn. i took a picture of a mountain after i went food shopping the other day. i spent more money during that food shopping than i have in any other since i got here. here you can see the picture. the leaves change, and japanese people sincerely love to talk about how much they appreciate looking at the changing colors.

the rest of these pictures i took before a karate lesson about a week or so ago. my left foot has almost reached its normal status again. i might not even have to favor the other one in karate tonight. i did get kickced in the nose last week, which did not feel like fun at all. i learned that the nose piece demands constant protection. every time before my karate lesson starts, the lesson for the little kids ends, and if i get there early enough i can watch them spar. i got some action shots here which you may enjoy.

sometimes they really go crazy and i like to watch such small kids use so much enegry. yamamoto sensei stands with his arms folded, giving criticism and encouragement.

those white things on their arms and legs, the supporters (sah-poh-taas), help absorb the impact of feirce blows. even with those on, a good fight can still hurt. and no, i had no head protector when i got hit in the nose. we don't use those. it would have been very nice to have had one then, i imagine.

here you can see the rest of the kids lined up, waiting their turn. those green shirts with yellow writing look great; they say seikoukai (the type of karate) on the back in yellow and "full contakuto karate" in white on the front, which i find funny.

and here you can see a closer shot of some kids hanging out. the japanese peace sign, or victory sign, has become ubiquitous. the boy on the right, sensei's son, seems young but will become strong one day.
and that would exhaust everything i have to show you today. yesterday i bought 2 bus tickets to and from osaka for christmas week, and even though i felt nervous about carrying on a conversation in japanese, i still got a compliment on my language ability, which felt great. today for lunch we ate a big piece of brown bread, watery vegatable soup, milk, an orange, and what the japanese call "american dog", which you would recognize as a "corn dog". i received two because i come from a foreign country, and the baseball coach laughed at this. i will probably eat gyoza and edamame for dinner. liz gets here in under two weeks, and it will feel so nice to not work and relax for a while.
great!

Sunday, November 29, 2009

thought i would get a post up here for you

blog,
what is up? i am just having a great time, stamping english notebooks, getting cups of coffee served to me. my foot is almost back to 100%, i can just about normally climb and descent a flight of stairs. this is three weeks after i hurt it, which makes me think i must have broke or bruised a foot bone. a bunch of other kids are out with the flu again this week. last week it was second graders but now it is mostly first graders. i have two second grade classes to teach (middle school) and then i go to the elementary school in the mountains where i will have two classes to teach. the sumo tournament on kyushuu ended yesterday, hakuho beat asashoryu and got the emperor's cup, setting a new record of wins in a year with 86, beating asashoryus old record of 84. excited for badminton tonight, going to dress properly and get some smash hits in there. oh, i just got a little meat cracker handed to me?i hope it goes well with black coffee.
ran this through the japanese test kitchen last night. it went ok. i really dont feel like blogging about it though.
more i feel like complaining. next friday i have to go christmas carolling. im expected to know when and where i have to go, but nobody told me (anything) and i havent gotten any emails about it, just word of mouth through robbie another english teacher at karate. things like this make me want to be unemployed for years, or at least get away from the office and classroom environment.
i bought a lot of vegetables and meat this weekend: bacon, ham, burgers with cheese already inside them, chicken, jumbo shrimp for tempura, blocks of beef for curry, green peppers, spinach, asparagus.
i have taken some random pictures here and there, so they will be posted in good time. i need to start carrying my camera with me everywhere i go. only two weeks until liz gets here. i should finish up the japanese test, it is incredibly hard but i only have like 35 questions to go. it is due the tenth.

so i hope that within the next 7 months, the dollar gets even more destroyed then it currently is, taco bell comes out with some new wonderful product, maybe unemployment shrinks to under ten percent, and hopefully the economy grows by an possible amount. and all of my friends get places of their own.
so i am also expected to have a "notice" in japanese, about christmas carolling. i JUST got the fowarded email from my friend adam, who was nice enough to include the "someone forward this to russell bc i dont have his contact information" part of the email. i say to them, it says they are going to come here at 11:30. this is not good enough. of course i am expected to have this because they had it last year, i guess when the told my predecessor things. i still get called his name by just about everyone every day. so i guess i can pay that foward by having whoever comes next year, hopefully a girl, get called by my name.
great!

Monday, November 23, 2009

a basic post

about to end my fourth month here, i sometimes still get called Eric, the name of my predecessor at this job, by my students. once this happens, it isn't long before the teachers get confused and call me Eric too. i really don't make an effort to remember anyone's name, becuase there are too many students and faculty, plus i am terrible with names in the first place. but this makes it extra disheartening when i get asked again if i am going to stay on for another year and i say no, because i miss my girlfriend, and because i am homesick. "are you enjoying japanese life?" i guess so, but probably not enough. maybe there is a job in america waiting for me where i will be called some version of my birth name, where i will spend less than 75% of the time sitting at my desk entertaining myself (but hopefully not much less than that). there is also most likely a very interesting piece that has already been written by a dozen people i have never heard of called "english education in japan is a poorly worded, agrammatical joke that makes no sense" which i could rewrite in my sleep, but i wouldn't ever bother to. mayuko did get a 100 on her english exam though, so that made me feel okay. today is tuesday, and i do not have english conversation group (four women chatting in japanese, me talking about my life in english), so i get to relax and finish watching the season finale of curb. being so well paid to do so little here must be doing something bad to my sense of self-worth, to my overall value as a person, but i won't be able to tell until after i'm done here. i do get to watch sumo tournaments, which last 15 days and are awesome. also, i am thinking that i probably broke or bruised one or more bones in my left foot, because wednesday will be two weeks since i hurt it at karate, and it still is not near 100%. i can almost walk, and not quite climb or descend the stairs properly. it is just messed up. hopefully it will be fine again in 3 weeks when liz gets here.
the sense of disappointment that i got from saying i would only stay 1 year is the same as the guilt i was made to feel when i told a woman at my conversation group that liz and i are going to osaka and maybe kobe. nowhere else? that's it? why not kyoto? because, that's why.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

i have to keep you updated

dear blog,
i feel like i have been slacking. honestly there is not much to say. i live a fairly boring existence here. my life outside of school consists mainly of preparing food and eating, doing laundry, and cleaning my house. i bought a couple prebreaded shrimp to fry up into tempura. a piece of fried chicken i bought at a convenience store after work yesterday basically gave me a heavy allergic reaction; i should have known something was up when pure liquid grease came out after 2 bites.
i just made a reservation online for 5 nights at a nice looking hotel in osaka so i can have somewhere to sleep when i go there with liz in december. i am very existed to do all kinds of walking around and shopping and looking at things and not having to listen to broken english.
a look at the influenza board reveals that 17 students, mostly second graders who were away on a school trip, have the flu. so everyone has to wear flu masks, which is ok because they warm up your face nicely.
monday is the emperor's birthday so i get a day off. i am going to try karate tonight, since it has been a week since my foot damage. i will remember not to do any serious kicks with that foot. it is almost better, and i can tell it should be fine again soon.
great!

Friday, November 13, 2009

60th post

hi blog,
it rained a lot last night.
what do you do when a japanese elementary school student starts crying? you have a few options. some would say that your best bet is to just ignore him or her. elementary school in japan is a tough place and you might want to let these kids adjust on their own. maybe you want to run over, interrupt the lesson, and provide some comfort. when there is another teacher in the room, this usually becomes their job. if you play any kind of game with winners and losers in a 4th grade or younger class, it's basically a surefire bet that someone isn't going to be able to take the heat and is going to weep. but life is tough, and you can't always win, especially at bingo! so i try to not let it get to me, but it does anyway.
i hurt my foot at karate practice yesterday. robbie, another american english teacher, sustained the same wound last week when he got his kick blocked by sensei's knee. so when i went to kick robbie, he "payed it forward", and now i am limping around. I am taking tylenol and keeping some ice on my foot, but i am basically a handicapped person for the next few days. it is good that i dont have to work until monday. i think it will be back to functioning walking capability by then. so don't worry about me. the only problem is that i had this long list of things to do this weekend. let me share some of it with you:
- clean house
- set up kotatsu
- gather recycling
- study japanese
- buy tissues
- put new cds in car
- read paradise lost
the only one of these i can still easily do is study japanese, which is not fun. i can't read paradise lost because i accidentally left it at the elementary school around the block, which wouldnt be a problem if i could walk, and if i knew whether or not the school was open today. i ran out of tissues when i had a cold last week, and a tissue is a very important thing to have in japan. i will probably be able to get some of these things done tomorrrow, which is sunday.
obama is supposed to give a speech from tokyo about american asian relations today. if you catch it, let me know what you thought. i am watching it right now.
great!

Sunday, November 8, 2009

there might be ten pictures in this post

hi blog,
i have two hours to kill here at work, so i am going to tell you thinks and show you pictures. maybe you want to see and hear about the festival that was at the school around the block from my house on saturday. why they had this festival i do not know, from what i can tell it was a generic all-purpose neighborhood festival. it had everything you could expect or want.
you better know they had the brass band from the school down the street to kick things off.

also the kindergartners got to join the parade with their own little shrine thing made out of paper. this was the best shot i could get of them.

there were grandmas making yakisoba, which is delicious.

and lots of little stands selling snacks like yakitori, takoyaki, shaved ice, etc. and even toys too. as you can see here, since there is no right to bear arms in japan, merchants are allowed to sell realistic toy guns to small children, and everything is okay.

here is more evidence of the sale of real-looking toy guns. i had a lot of fun explaining to everyone that these can't be sold in america, because some people do have real guns, and if the cops see you with a realistic fake one they will probably kill you by accident. also, two of these boys have hot dogs.

do you know about mochi? mochi is a very thick, sticky goop or paste made from pounding rice for a very long time. when japanese people look at the moon, they see a rabbit pounding mochi instead of a man. there were guys making mochi at this festival. with each smash of the hammer rice particles and water would go flying everywhere, and after every three smacks a fourth guy would zip his hand in there with water and manipulate the mochi, each time narrowly avoiding the hammers.

the kindergartners, with their amazing hats, seem to enjoy watching this.

and then, unbelievably, in what must be the creation of a lifelong memory, the kindergartners were given a chance to pound the mochi, three at a time. it was wonderful to watch.

here are some happy elementary school girls.

i ate a hotdog, two sticks of akitori, and then this bowl of udon. i was very full.

i have more pictures but i thought these were the best and they are all i am uploading for now.
i have badminton tonight. i get paid this week. i should probably clean the house soon. liz is coming to japan in mid december and staying until january. i think we are going to go to osaka and just hang out and travel, we will see. it will be good to get off this somewhat boring island.
great!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

a post about what i am up to

dear blog,
hello. did you know that it is getting very cold in japan? well, it is. and this is enhanced by the facts that my house has no central heating and no insulation of any kind! so i asked my predecessor how to work the big gas heaters that are sitting in the closet. he said something about getting the blue tanks outside filled at the gas station, and then using a pump to get them into the little metal tanks in the heaters. also he said they smell when turned on, but mrs kiuchi who speaks okay english said she got used to the smell of gas heaters and now likes it. i found a kotatsu in the closet yesterday too, it is a big table with a blanket over it and a heat lamp underneath that you plug in and sit with your legs under it so it heats you up and winter is bearable. i have a half day today because i worked on sunday, so i am going to check out the gas heater situation. maybe i need to get a new pump at the hardware store. maybe i need to go to the gas station to fill up the gas tanks. also, i have karate tonight, which is good because this saturday there is a karate meeting and then we are going out for nabe, which is a big japanese soup pot with many different ingredients.
my girlfriend is coming to visit me for a few weeks in decemeber, so i have to ask the principal for those days off. maybe we will go to a hot spring. maybe we will sleep in the main room with the regular heater because the gas ones are weird. i dont know any of this yet. i do know that i am excited to eat a lot of gyoza and have some company.
i have some cool pics to show you. the first one is from the day all of us foreign teachers went to northern tokushima highschool for halloween lessons. some people dressed up, and the students were cool, but i only took one good picture, and it is of the river as i went over it in a train.

this next cool picture was taken after i heard loud yelling and carrying on outside my door one day over the weekend. i went outside and saw this, so i ran back inside and grabbed my camera to document it.

basically what you see here is a shinto procession where they carry a golden house shaped shrine box, in this case "the biggest one in tokushima" (said a guy to me) from one shrine to another. it transports a little god and they have a competition where they ram these things into eachother, or something. it was crazy. the streets were lined with little paper things as you can see here, in a picture i took as they went by.

here is what an auditorium full of japanese middle school students wearing facemasks look like, incase you were wondering what was really up in japan all of the time.

notice the extremely cool looking uniforms for the boys. these pics are from the sunday i had to work, when we went to the next town over to see a kyogen play, which is a farcical comedy type performance usually given between more serious noh plays. i didn't understand much as it went on, but it was somewhat entertaining. here is a picture from some of the action during the second act.

there you go. tomorrow there is another team teaching demonstration in the next town over, so i have to come back here to get a ride to it after teaching at the elementary school in the morning. i can't figure out what lunch is today. it says a piece of bread and milk, and also mayonnaise, ham and egg.
great!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

keeping you updated one post at a time

what's up blog,
i am just sitting at my desk in the office today. it is midterm test day, so all i have to do today is read some english prompts out loud for the listening part of the test. thought i would make a most since i have checked every website that i know about and read all of the interesting news that i could find today. joe lieberman is a real jerk, isn't he?
yesterday i went to an english middle school teacher's conference in komatsushima, a little bit south of tokushima city. there was a mock class demonstration that i watched. i had a lot of problems with the way they did things and i could have taken the demonstration as a good lesson of what NOT to do in my english classes. for example, they played background music while the students were chanting phrases, which i thought was miserable. also he assisant language teacher (foreign teacher, my job) basically just stood there the entire time. however, after the lesson, i turned to my teaching partner and said that the only thing i liked was that the girl doing my job was wearing jeans, and that i should be able to wear jeans, which made my teacher laugh a lot.
after the $8 standard bento lunch, the linguistics professor who gave the talk after mayuko's prefectural speech contest gave a two hour and change talk about different aspects of language and what we need to do to be effective language teachers. he said we have to go beyond the purely grammatical and syntactical, into the social and discourse and strategic uses of language. stuff like giving information in a logical order, putting paragraphs together, saying the right thing at appropriate times, and body language were all covered. there were lots of activities and games for the foreign teachers to do with the japanese teachers. for example, the best ice-breaking game was for a teacher to communicate their phone number with a key that read 1 - Lake, 2 - Rake, 3 - Lice, 4 - Rice etc etc since japanese people have an incredibly tough time with the difference between these noises, which is caused by the fact that the english alphabet and its noises is never formally taught. english education starts in middle school (next year it officially will begin in 5th and 6th grade) with no formal phonetic training. one teacher asked a question about phonetics and how we should teach it, since it isnt on the program at all, and the professor said to start young. another teacher asked how all of the lovely theory applies to testing, and the professor said it really didn't, so teaching it would be difficult. it was a fulfilling day where i got to meet some other english teachers.
i have been going to badminton on mondays and karate on wednesdays on fridays, which is good. i have karate tonight! also i have been slowly doing the JET program's advanced level japanese lessons, which can be frustrating but good. due december 10th is a standardized test of 50 questions, the first of 6 such tests that are given throughout the year. if i get them all in on time and get at least 70% of the answers right, i get a certificate that says i passed the course or something.
friday i have to get up early to catch a 6:30 train to the city, where there is another foreign teacher conference, this time for hallowe'en where we all have to give hallowe'en themes lessons. i have no costume and no idea for a costume, so i will probably just wear a tracksuit and pretend to be cool.
i have to work this sunday, because there are classes in the morning and we are going to a cultural presentation, something kabuki related, in the afternoon. for this everyone gets monday off, but i have to go to the mountain school monday afternoon, so i still have to do that, and to replace that work i am getting wednesday afternoon off. tuesday is National Culture Day so that is a holiday and everyone gets off. next thursday is another class demonstration in another city, so i need to go there in the afternoon. it is a busy, confusing 2 weeks. but then october is very done with and november will have some of it gone already. can you tell i want to come home yet?
tonight i think i have to go buy some more recycling bags, i forgot to buy the one for cans so they have just been piling up in the sink. also the karate tournament application is due today, and that costs $25. the train ride to the city is about $30, and that may or may not be reimbursed. i broke a $100 on lunch yesterday, so i think i can get the recycling bags, some bananas, the karate thing, and the train ride all without having to take out some more money. but this sounds risky and difficult, plus the lunch on friday is another $8 standard bento. so i will probably have to get some cash later or tomorrow. oh well.
japanese people rarely drink water. its always green tea, coffee, soup or sugar drinks.
today lunch is sugar covered bread with a little omlette and vegetable soup. one of the less impressive lunches i have seen. curry and fried are more appreciated.
that is everything i can think of for today.
great!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

a few pictures before i go home

blog,
i have two pictures for you. the first one if of the giant spider that lives by the takoyaki shop in a big roadsign. it is very big, i am not kidding. if you hold your thumb and index finger apart at their maximum distance i would say that this spider is about that big. you do not want to find this thing in any part of your house. this is a female, because the females are the big ones. they keep triple layer webs, one main layer and two less intricate layers behind and in front.

this next picture is much nicer. it is just of the yoshino river. i took it when i was walking across the bridge to buy some snacks at the convenience store. it was a very nice day.

what else do you want me to take pictures of? i am trying to upload some videos on youtube but it is not working at all right now because i think i have to convert these AVIs to MPEG4s.
great!

let's see if i can make a post without firefox crashing more than three times

so blog,
it has been a few days since my last post. i thought i would keep you up to date this morning.
everyone, and by everyone i mean roughly more than half of the teachers and students i work with, is wearing white cottony facemasks that simply can't do much fo anything against any kind of airborne infection. as paranoid hypochondriacs, they seem to have mastered the art of the self-induced placebo effect. since japan is a country where people rarely touch and instead opt for the bow, in terms of swine flu, which they call "new type influenza", they really have nothing to worry about. but all of this worrying keeps them healthy anyway. i can't take anyone wearing the mask seriously, so i wont be donning one myself.
let's see. i didn't win a single game last monday at badminton, and only four women came to my english discussion group last night. this is okay though, because 3 days will mark the third full month that i have been here, which is exactly a quarter of a year. this means i almost half way done with half of my job here. i decided a while ago that i don't want to recontract for another year, because thinking about american food makes me delirious even now, and i miss too many other people and things.
today he first graders have a speaking test, and it is my job to grade half of them on pronunciation, volume, fluency, and accuracy. it is going to be a rough situation since most of them prefer to talk to a point an inch in front of their face while looking at their own feet. but english is crazy and sounds mostly like nonsense, and they dont have any choice at all in learning it because it is on every high school and college entrance exam.
it has been getting quite cold since autumn started. my house has, in addition to no central heating of any kind, no insulation of any kind, so i have to heat my bedroom with a space heater a few hours before i go to bed, and i can't leave it on all night because i don't want to burn down the house, so it is always very cold by morning.
if my left leg feels at tight and achey as it does right now, i will be skipping karate tonight to let it heal up more. i think it is still bruised from last wednesday's karate where all that leg did was kick people and get kicked.
in better news, today there is yaki soba for lunch.
i took a few pictures the other day, i will try to get them up by this afternoon.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

i just finished a bag of dried squid

oh my blog,
right now, there are people on tv totally eating big cooked centipedes.
great!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

always drink water

oh blog,
i taught two classes today and even posed for the school yearbook. i don't have anything left to do today but sit and look busy for a few hours, so i thought i would make a blog post.
i took some pictures the other day at a festival at the rest stop across the river. the rest stop is called "oasis" and has a little room with nothing but twelve different vending machines, and a big market, and a stage for people to dance on where everyone can watch. they do these dances so the tour buses always bring people to sit and relax.
some middle schoolers did a drum show, which was neat.

here is the view of the river from behind the rest stop. there are some boats and people are getting on for a ride.

one of my first grade students was there with his family. i got to take this picture with him, which was followed by him hitting me in groin.

oh, i went zorbing on monday, which was appropriate because monday was national "health and sports day". zorbing, so you dont have to look it up, is when they strap you in to a giant plastic sphere-within-a-sphere and roll you down a hill. there are two options as to how you want your zorb; you can either take it dry, with a harness, or take it "wet", which means the ball gets water in it and you get soaked, without a harness. i took the harness route, which is okay, but i will have to wait until it gets warm again to zorb wet.
here is a picture of what it looks like when someone is going down the hill.

you just spin around and around and bounce until you hit the padding at the bottom of the hill. here is the view from the top.

one ride is only 700 yen, or little more than $7. it was fun and cool but the bouncing was a little hard on my neck, and right before it ends i felt like i was spinning way too fast.
i am thinking about going to okinawa for christmas.
i think i am going to have some instant yakisoba with microwave chicken pieces for dinner tonight. next week there is an academic conference which will i believe be mostly in japanese, and the week after on halloween i have to go to the city for a foreign teacher conference. but those things will be over very soon.
great!

Sunday, October 11, 2009

post to a blog

hello blog,
i just went to a small festival at the rest stop across the river. watched nice dancing, ate some sacks. i even had a yogurt peach tea.
this spider is just about everywhere. now you know what it looks like. there are at least ten of these on my house right now. hopefully the cold will kill them soon, because they are scary.
tomorrow is national health and sports day, so i get school off but there is still badminton club, which i am looking forward to.
i got to hold a cute two month old baby.
great!

Friday, October 9, 2009

recent events

blog readers,
today, at the office of an elementary school i was offered four cups of coffee, where i accepted and drank three of them.
i am having some computer trouble. right now i am operating in safe mode, which is very convenient, except i cannot do anything that requires sound. so skyping becomes impossible, which is a problem since skyping helps me feel closer to people i am very far away from. i am waiting for an english speaking (i know, right?) acer representative in tokyo to call me back and help me troubleshoot the problem. i have a vague idea what could be wrong, and i really just want to send the computer in and have them fix it, which will probably cost money, since it doesn't sound like i am covered even by the foreign travel warranty.
in other, better news, there was no 5th or 6th grade class today because those students went to a sports day at another school, and when the teachers got back, there were 2 large sized hokka hokka (takeout restaurant nearby) bentos for me.
great!

Monday, October 5, 2009

actually

blog,
sadly, i was just informed that in the event of a "super typhoon" which will cancel school for all of the students, "teachers must work", and i would still be expected come in here. great!

stuff and things

oh blog,
here are some of those pictures i told you about.
but first! i got invited to badminton for adults by the lady who sits next to me in the office at the elementary school near my house who is also in my english conversation group. her english is pretty good, in fact. so last night i went to badminton with my gym clothes and new gym sneakers, which i had never worn. we practiced for a half hour and then got split into teams where we played a bunch of other teams. the vice principal is so good that he can play doubles alone and win all of the time. i was paired with a nice woman, and we lost our first 3 matches, including the third against the vice principal. but then we somehow won the last 2, 15 to 14 and 15 to 13 respectively! it was a lot of fun and i think i am going to go back every week. it is good not to be interacting with only schoolchildren.
and now, you may look at some digital photographs.

this is a scuplture of a dancing man on a bridge over the river in tokushima city. doesn't it look nice? that's because it is.

here is a water tower or some other type of feature that has, surprise, illustrations of some dancers on it.

i call this one "would you like something to drink?" there are nine vending machines lined up in a row, because you are probably thirsty already.

and here is a picture from the morning before i went back to tokushima city for the prefectural speech contest. it's like 6:45 AM and there are two old ladies talking about things. what are they talking about? you can see the rice fields, which are everywhere.
so those are the pictures i have to show you.
there is a "super typhoon" called Melor, Typhoon #18, headed directly for japan, directly for this island. it is supposed to be here tomorrow and it is supposed to be horrible. if you don't believe me, you need to look at this:

and probably read this too. if i am lucky (or unlucky?) i will get a call at around 6 AM tomorrow telling me that school is cancelled and that my services (stamping english workbooks with the date, repeating sentences, being cheerful and have people call me "young" all day long) are not needed.
lunch today is milk, rice with some little vegetables in it, a miso type soup with carrots, tofu, some other stuff i dont understand, and a piece of what looks like salmon with maybe some egg cooked over it, sprinkled with bread crumbs in a tin foil dish. today's lunch does not look like it is going to get higher than a 7 on my lunch scale of 1 to 10, 10 being delicious.
that's it for today. keep tuning in for more blog updates.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

The Results

blog,
we did not win the speech contest. we are not going to tokyo. we did get "a very good result" which means a big certificate and a big box with a big trophy in it, which mayuko deserved, and now we do not have to practice anymore. this is kind of ok because the tokyo contest is 3 days long. we went out to eat with mayuko's family at what i feel like is the japanese equivalent of denny's without actually being denny's, because they have denny's here, it just wasn't called that and had japanese food. we all had variations on a little piece of hamburger meat which they call "hambaagoo" - mayuko and her dad got the one filled with cheese. i really don't want to get into the content of the speeches, but mayuko had the best pronounciation out of just about everyone!
how do you celebrate having the best banana of your entire life? i think i just had this banana. it was the perfect ripeness, perfect number of honey spots, best firmness, no rotty parts at all.
but to balance out this good thing, a bad thing has happened. do you know the rubber inside slippers i have been bringing around from school to school; well the right one has apparently shrunken substantially in my car. a yahoo! answers search provides the idea that rubber shrinks when COOLED, which would mean that it got very cold last night in my car and that wearing it on my warm foot should help it to EXAPND again, but it is very tight and uncomfortable right now.
i got invited to play badminton at school here tonight at 8 with some teachers from various schools. i do not have my own racket, and i dont think i have played badminton in several years, but it can't be too difficult to hit a little "shuttlecock" over the net with one of those things.
anyway, i am going to the elementary school up in the mountains in the afternoon today, and i heard that rachel, the company provided teaching assistant/lesson planner is also going to be there, so i probably won't have to do much work myself, which is ok. although i was told to make a powerpoint (i have the word "ski" written next to this) and "bring cards of acitvities" of which i have none. let's hope rachel has good ideas.
gotta help teach a class or two before lunch. at this point teaching means slowly and clearly reading something and then having it repeated back to me upwards of five times in a row, with the hope that the kids either memorize it or get an idea for how it sounds.
there are a few photos on my camera that didn't get uploaded for some reason. they happen to be the best ones that i took. look for them some time in the near future, between now and when i come back to america.

Monday, September 28, 2009

more pictures

hi blog,
here are some more pictures that i took of tokushima city last weekend.

this is what the city looks like when you get out of the train station. there are palm trees, and on the right is sogo department store, which is extremely large. i think the foreign food store might be in there, but when i looked for it i could not find it. i am determined to find it again. it is called Jupiter.

here are some kids waiting to cross the street on bikes. notice the blue and yellow raised walkway in the distance; some streets are too busy to cross on foot, so the only way to get to the other side is via these things. also, there is a mountain.

there are images of dancers everywhere in tokushima, since the awa odori is the only thing everyone can agree is awesome all of the time. these are sculptures of a woman and a boy dancing on mail boxes.

there are some dragonball figurines in the front window of this store.

all decent restaurants know to display plastic renditions of their most popular dishes in the winsow. i had the "mixed fry set" for lunch, which is in the middle on the right. it was delicious.

this is a sculpture in a park. they are not dancing. if anyone knows what is going on here, i would love to know.

a boat goes by on the river.

this is a cool looking eatery front.

keep walking and you will see the cable car airway to the top of the mountain. i took the ride, $10 for both ways. here is what i saw.

getting up there...

pretty high now. the mountain casts a shadow.

just check out the view from the top of mount tsurugi.

not bad.

look at the bridge in the distance.

how about the other side of the mountain? no city.

i would not advise driving on this bridge.

there is a pagoda on the top of the mountain.

there is also a little shrine.

you want to walk down/up the mountain? be my guest.

what's that on the small white building at the center of the photograph?

is that...?

could it be...?

nothing to worry about, he is in a good mood.

and then i had dinner at a kaiten sushi, where you pick your 100-300 yen plate off a little track and get endless green tea. they even had an english menu, which was impressive. i have to go back here, since it is my favorite thing to eat, ever.
that's it!
i helped edit some of the older kids' english sentences today. they have a written exam coming up and its very important that they follow the rules and not get anything wrong. they must write 15 word minimum answers. everyone was pretty nice to me today. it looks like it is going to rain a lot very soon. i am going to make curry for dinner tonight. did you like the pictures? did i miss anything? email me for questions and comments. thanks.