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.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

its time to blog

gentle reader,
tomorrow will be the date that marks my time in japan becoming a full two months. it has gone by somewhat fast.
a giant, probably 7 inch long dragonfly hit me right on the head today as i sat in this office at this desk, and then hovered directly in front of me, between my face and this computer's monitor, for about 4 seconds, before buzzing around and flying away. i was terrified.
today's lunch was rice with pickles, miso soup and a piece of fish covered in gray mustard. since i am a foreigner, i got two pieces of fish. i thought it tasted better than some of the other school lunches i have been given, but when i asked the students if it was delicious, they did not agree. when lunch is eaten, music is always played through the speakers for the students to enjoy. it's either fast, emotional j-pop at the middle school or instrumental, light versions of "isn't she lovely" and "close to you" at the elementary schools. I had today and yesterday off at the elementary schools, but i have to come in to the middle school to train mayuko for the prefectural speech contest in tokushima city next sunday, where i hope she wins so we can go to tokyo.
i have karate class tonight, and hopefully yamamoto sensei will have a new set of chin guard supporters for me, as the washing machine totally destryoed one of the velcro bands on my original set. we didn't have karate class this wednesday because of the holiday, so i hope i am not going to get sore or anything.
oh, awesome. they are turning on the air conditioning in the office. it has been so hot all day, thankfully they have decided that now is the time, at 1:30.
i like it here. i like the reliability of the food quality, the nauseatingly formal kindness and overt niceness that everyone treats one another with, i have even gotten used to the habit of excessive bowing, at all times, for all reasons. it's important that i feel like an anomaly all of the time, which i have felt like less and less. the students are very warm and, in their own words, when you ask them how they are, "happy", for the most part. i like knowing that when the sun fills up my room, because i have no curtains, it is doing do before it greets anybody that i know. i like watchin the sumo wrestling tournament on tv from 3 until 5, where the yokuzuna (grandmaster) always wins without fail, because if he lost it would be an outrage and if he doesn't win its a shame, so the spectators would throw their seat cushions onto the ring, but this can't happen. i like the feel of the money, the 1 and 5 dollar coins, the exactness of the change. i even like the extremely, some would say dangerously narrow streets.
but i miss america, more than almost anything, and i want to go home very badly and start a real life there.

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