Mostly Deer

Monday was my first day back to regular classes at my high school.  I was kind of dreading it, because I had this (completely justified, I swear) fear that I`d forgotten everything about teaching and I was going to screw up, or my lesson was horrible and wouldn`t work with the students...  This is why I just shouldn`t have breaks, ever.  Objectively, I knew I would be fine, but there was still that panic in the forefront of my mind going, "You`re gonna crash and burn so bad."

I was fine.  I asked for feedback from the teacher after my first lesson, and he was really enthusiastic about it.  "I think it was much better than the lessons before!"  Ouch, dude.  Way to trample on my professional feelings.  I know I have no idea what I`m doing, and I`ve been making this up as I go since I got here, but I didn`t think I was doing that badly.  I mean, I`ve always thought my first year lessons sucked in comparison to my third year lessons, because I get to do the crazy stuff with my third years, but they don`t have that comparison to make.  On their own, I thought my lessons last term were okay.  Ah, well.  Maybe this will teach them to actually communicate what they want with the ALT.  (But probably not.)

With my crazy schedule this month, I`ll be teaching my Monday and Wednesday classes Part 2 of this lesson before my Thursday and Friday classes have gotten Part 1, so I`m all over the place with my lesson plans.  Since I did a Canadian World Heritage Site lesson for Part 1, I`m thinking Part 2 will be a reading comprehension exercise.  I`ll write a short travel journal entry, but out of order.  The students will have to put the sentences in the correct order, and then practice reading it.  Man, this is not an easy lesson to make materials for.  I mean, the Sphinx?!  Who, in their right mind, thinks something so far removed from their daily lives is a good lesson topic for students who have to be reminded that there`s an `h` in `where`?  And then.  THEN.  We`re doing the comprehension quiz (true and false), and the first statement is, "The head of the Sphinx will fall off in a century if nothing is done."  This is true, but none of the students know this because the word century is not in their vocabulary and wasn`t used anywhere in the passage.  The passage they`re being tested on says "one hundred years."  Ridiculous.  I heard a rumour that we`re using different textbooks next year.  I can only hope they`re more relevant than this.  Except then I`ll have to remake all of my lessons so that I have relevant activities.

Monday night and Tuesday night were horrible.  Out of nowhere, the weather decided to get super cold and ugly.  The wind was blowing so hard that my windows rattled, and every little thing the wind picked up got flung against them, so I didn`t really get much sleep.  At least Tuesday was a Junior High day at my special needs school, and that doesn`t really involve much thinking on my part, because the teacher there plans the lessons out so well.  You`d think the Elementary lessons would be the easiest, but the teacher for those classes has less English, so it`s harder for me to figure out what she actually wants me to do.  Wednesday morning I woke up to snow.  SNOW.  And it snowed pretty much all day, blasting around in ridiculously high winds.  I was less than pleased.

Thursday and Friday were team-teaching conferences for JTEs and ALTs together.  They were... interesting.  And some were definitely more helpful than others.  It was definitely fascinating to hear from other ALTs and JTEs about the activities and work they do in their classroom, and their students` skill levels.  Many of my students are definitely below par.

On Saturday I went to see a mountain on fire!  No, seriously.  Mountain.  On fire.  On purpose.  It`s called Yamayaki Matsuri, and it`s a festival that occurs every year on the fourth Saturday of January in Nara.  This means I got to see the deer again!  I haven`t been to Nara in about two and a half years, so I was definitely excited to be going.  And I dragged my friend Mary with me, so I wasn`t babbling at the adorable baby deer by myself.  It was COLD, though.  Really cold.  But we didn`t really care.  We had an enjoyable, relaxing day.  It`s about an hour and a half trip for me to Nara (Mary was already on the train, because it`s something like another forty minutes to an hour for her to get to me), so we sat on the nice, warm train and caught up, because we hadn`t seen each other pretty much since we met in August.  I found the greatest train snacks EVER (Kinako Ritz Bits Sandwiches)!

Our chat somehow came around to pizza (likely my fault), so we decided to search out pizza once we got to Nara.  Turns out there`s a Pizza Hut about a five minute walk from the station!  Huzzah!  Once we got there, though, we discovered it was strictly a take-out location, so we had to order our pizza and then head back out into the cold to find a bench somewhere to eat it.  The problem: it`s not really a thing to just eat in public in Japan, so things like park benches are really only found at bus stops, and something like wide, sit-able planters are few and far between.  Finally we found a bench in the area outside another train station, so we could stop and enjoy pizza-y goodness.  

The street leading up to the park and temple was peppered with festival food stalls, and despite being utterly stuffed from our pizza, we just had to get these chocolate-coated bananas.  Because reasons.

After that we strolled through the park, just chatting and bothering random deer.  I also heard the deer for the first time.  So, for anyone back home, the white-tailed deer that you see while camping or in your backyard sound a lot like sheep.  They bleat, okay?  Not so much the Shika deer (which is somewhat redundant.  The Shika is the only kind of deer in Japan, so the Japanese word for "deer" is "shika", but technically that word still only applies to the specific type of deer...).  The Shika deer squeak.  Not like short, high-pitched mouse squeak, though.  This is a long, drawn-out squeak like a dog`s squeaky toy being slowly squeezed.  Basically they sound like Wheezy from the Toy Story movies.  

So anyway, we chilled out in the park for a while, until we got to the point where we couldn`t really feel our hands or faces anymore, and decided to go warm up a bit.  It was still a little early for dinner, plus we were planning to grab festival food from a stall and that really wouldn`t help with the warming up, so we found a cafe that wasn`t packed and grabbed some hot beverages.  Then we dragged our rears out back into the cold for dinner (yaki udon, so basically hot noodles and cabbage with sauce), and found a spot for the fireworks and mountain-burning that would be starting shortly.  Around this time is when it started raining.  Partway through the fireworks, it started raining harder (and colder, I swear, and the rain was already pretty cold), so I stopped taking pictures and pulled out my umbrella since I could barely feel my fingers enough to operate my phone properly anyway.

  The fireworks were pretty spectacular, but the mountain on fire was kind of anti-climactic.  All of the pictures we`d seen for the festival showed honest-to-god mountain on fire.  So we went there expecting the monks to come with a few torches and for the mountain to kind of go "fwoosh".  It did not.  The monks all stood on the mountainside (which seems really unsafe when you`re about to ignite the thing) with their torches of sacred fire, and the mountain was ritually lit up using some sort of system that was impossible to determine from where we were standing. 

Many people were heading out, so we went and got Mary a baked potato (it`s a thing here, baked potato as a street food in the winter), and then came back to see if the mountain was more spectacularly on fire yet.  It wasn`t.  Given the rate at which it seemed to be burning, it wasn`t likely to be burning well until probably at least 9 or 10 at night, and there was no way we were staying that late in the cold and wet, plus we would miss our trains.  So we called it a night, and headed back to our homes.  Overall, I would only recommend this festival if you`re actually staying overnight in Nara, so that you can actually witness mountain on fire. 

NOTE: This was posted two weeks after I wrote it, because I got, like, the plague.  Nothing interesting has happened since then, though, so you haven't missed anything.

Mochi, with a Pinch of Stardust and Potions

FOR MAUDLIN INTROSPECTION, BEGIN READING HERE.

So this week sucked.  Not because of anything going on here, mind you.  Life here is the same as usual.  But the world lost two great artists, David Bowie and Alan Rickman, within a few days of one another, and that`s a sad thing.  Both of these men were very much ingrained into my teenage years thanks to Labyrinth and the Harry Potter films, and while we still have those, it`s an incredible downer to know that these men will no longer dazzle us in new ways.  As I said to Ros last night (before I vowed never to check my Facebook or Twitter before bed ever again, because upsetting news before you try to sleep just makes it worse), if someone else dies shortly or one of my unwed celebrity crushes gets engaged, no amout of ice cream will fix this.

That comment really made me stop and question myself for a few minutes (well, honestly I`m still questioning).  Normally, I have all the emotional capacity of a Vulcan nearing Kolinahr.  The only emotions I achieve easily are frustration and anger (excitement, if a Disney park is involved).  Most of the time I`m just this five-foot package of almost Zen-level contentment, emotionally neutral.  I laugh easily, sure, but I don`t have ...  Hm.  I don`t have a lot of deep attachments, I guess is the best way to put it?  Either positive or negative.  So when I actually feel really upset about the deaths of these two people whom I was familiar with only because of their work, whom I had never met...  It just seems really weird and out of character for me.  Then I think about all the other times something like this has happened, and how I was affected then, too.  Why am I so hung up on these people who I have never met, will probably never meet (the live ones, more of the celebrity crushes, I mean; obviously I will never meet the dead ones)?  Objectively, I get celebrity culture and the way it works.  It stems from fantasy, escapism, things like that (Woody Allen`s The Purple Rose of Cairo does a great job of demonstrating this).  But to find myself wrapped up in it to the same extent is just... odd.  I mean, I live for fantasy, and I spend more time in my head than I do in the real world, but...  No, maybe that`s exactly it.  Maybe I`m more attached to fantasies, to people I have no real connection to, because I spend more time with them than I do with real people around me in the real world.  Huh.  That`s... somewhat depressing, and perhaps a little scary.  Maybe I should work on that.

TO SKIP THE MAUDLIN INTROSPECTION, BEGIN READING HERE.

Leaving my introspection behind (if I ignore it, it`ll go away), the rest of this week has been pretty awesome.  Saturday was grocery day, nothing particularly exciting there.  On Sunday, I went to Ise because they were doing some New Years-related activities all weekend.  I was interested in seeing the mochi pounding event because mochi is everywhere at New Years in Japan, and I`ve heard many people over the years talk about mochi pounding. 

For anyone who has seen Big Hero 6, this is Mochi:

But the cat is actually named after a traditional Japanese food.  Mochi comes from mochigome, which is a very sticky rice.  So basically the rice is cooked, and congeals, and then is ceremoniously pounded into a paste and then shaped, usually into a small ball or dumpling-type shape.  The texture is probably somewhere between a prepared bowl of instant oatmeal and a balloon.  It also doesn`t taste like much on its own, because it`s just rice, so it`s usually filled with something, coated in something, or served in something to make it palatable.  Most common are mochi filled with bean paste, mochi with kinako (soy flour, with a taste that very much reminds me of butterscotch or peanut butter.  I`m moderately obsessed with it), and mochi in sweet red bean soup. 

So back to Sunday.  I arrived in the folk village in Ise in time to catch the end of a taiko drum performance, which was really cool.  I love listening to these drums. 

After that, I meandered the shops for a while, and headed over to the shrine for a visit, and to pick up the hamaya. Literally, hamaya is "demon-breaking arrow", but basically it`s a charm to ward off misfortune and attract good luck in the shape of an arrow.  It usually also has a charm with the Chinese zodiac animal for that year.  So I did all of that, and made my way back to the village area to see if I couldn`t find this mochi thing.  I hadn`t seen the events schedule when I was there for the drums earlier, which turned out to be because I was standing right in front of it with my back to the stupid thing.  When I got there, I had just missed the last demonstration (they were finishing the line of people for free mochi), but there was another one starting in a bit less than an hour.  So I grabbed a steamed dumpling from a vendor (I think it was pork, but it might have been chicken; all I know for sure is that it was delicious) and took a seat near the front of the pavilion to wait.  My friend Jaclyn kept me company through the wait via Facebook messages.  As the performers/mochi pounders were setting up, one of the men from the group was looking through the audience and choosing children to come up and participate in the mochi pounding.  This was awesome, and adorable, and I was excited to see the tiny children using the giant mallet because that would be even more adorable...  And then he saw me.  Me, the lone, pasty, dark blond/light brown haired foreigner right near the front of the crowd.  And I was chosen.

Mochi Guy:  Please.  Please come. *gestures*
Me: Uh...  *deer in headlights look*
Old Lady Next To Me: Go, go!  *giant smile on her face on my behalf*
Me: O....kay?

So I pounded mochi.  I wish I had some good pictures and video of the professionals, but it was difficult from where I was standing at the side of the stage with the small children (and let me tell you how awkward that felt).  You`ll have to make do with a YouTube video of the process. 

(PS, this is actually the group I saw, just in a different place.  The old guy turning the mochi and handling the water is the one who called me out.)

But because I was obviously alone there, one of the other guys in the group offered to take photos for me when it was my turn.  I`ve heard people say it`s really difficult to do (pound mochi, I mean, not take photos of me).  I didn`t find the actual motion of the pounding difficult.  My problem was trying to keep a proper rhythm up with the song they were singing and the man in the front, whose job is to reach in and turn the mochi between pounds.  On a regular day, I have all the rhythm of a drunk, deaf chicken.  With a heavy mallet in my hands and a hundred unfamiliar eyes staring at me?  Yeah, that clearly wasn`t going to happen.  But no one died, I didn`t send the mallet flying, and I didn`t seem to do worse than any of the small Japanese children, so I`m calling it a win. 

The mochi we pounded was then served as two different flavours.  The first (which I originally thought was bitter green tea, but according to my supervisor is some kind of local seaweed variety) was gross.  I already don`t like mochi very much, and adding to that some nasty kind of water plant?  Not cool.  Plus it was green.  The second piece, though, was kinako, and that was alright (see aforementioned obsession with the stuff).  Overall experience? Pounding mochi is fun, but I still don`t like eating it.

Monday was a holiday already (Coming of Age Day, to celebrate all of the people who have turned 20 in the past year), so I relaxed, did my laundry...  Normal boring weekend-type things.  On Tuesday I was at the hospital, where I taught the kids about New Years in Canada.  Which was extremely underwhelming to them, I think, because we don`t really do anything, you know?  Not like here, with all of the tradition and gravity they have.  I brought pictures I found online from downtown Toronto, showing the rink at Nathan Phillips Square, and the fireworks at midnight, but I had to explain that that`s not really a normal thing outside of big cities, and that my family doesn`t really do much.  I also had to explain that there aren`t traditional New Years foods in Canada (obviously, though, I`m partial to a New Years pizza).  I told the English teacher at the hospital, Itou-sensei, about my adventure in Ise, and she said I should have tried it in the red bean soup!  I nearly threw up a little at the thought of it.  She also said that it`s apparently popular to put in minestrone in place of noodles.  This is a much less disgusting thought, but I`m still going to stick to noodles, thanks.

Wednesday and Thursday were not particularly exciting.  I`m working on a special project that I`m not allowed to talk about yet, but it mostly involved sitting quietly, and being paid to read or knit.

I didn`t have any normal classes today, since it`s my first day here this week, and my lesson for next week is already planned.  The topic is a bit dense (the Great Sphinx, and the damage being caused by the rising salt water table), so I want to wait to see how well they do with this lesson before planning the next part of it.  I had my first lesson for the students going to Australia in the spring today.  We covered what they would need to know to clear Customs and Immigration (my specialty!  Yay!).  We have seven students going, plus the art teacher who doesn`t really speak English (I have extra lessons scheduled with him, starting at the end of the month, so that he can at least read through his introduction speech when he arrives). They seemed to enjoy the lesson, which was good.  It was straight from the traveling-student-textbook, though, so it didn't really require much prep from me.  But having a tiny class like that, where they're all genuinely eager to learn because the need to use it is imminent... Yeah, that was pretty great.

And that`s about it.  I might go back to Ise again this weekend, because they`re doing lion dances in the folk village, but I probably won`t.  I`ll probably just end up being lazy and staying home.  Maybe I`ll watch Labyrinth and Harry Potter...

Holidays in Japan

I meant to write this during  the holidays, just after New Years, to encompass both of the holidays.  I got distracted.  Frankly, everyone should be used to that by now.  It`s ingrained into my nature as much as the sarcasm and tea-drinking.

Please be advised that the following post is mostly going to be about food.  You might want to grab a snack before continuing.

So rather than being a lonely hermit for Christmas (we`ll get to that later), I decided to play tagalong with Ros, helping her to invade our friends Lina and Roland up in Hokkaido.  Classes for me ended on the 22nd, and the 23rd is a national holiday (Emperor`s birthday), so we flew out on the 23rd and met up at the airport in Sapporo.  After lunch at one of the airport restaurants (PIZZA! 100% legit wood fire pizza!) we made our way out to Lina and Roland`s place on the outskirts of Sapporo.  We had some time to veg and catch up (Ros was there for Halloween, but I haven`t seen them since 2013), and then we went to their part-time job location for a Christmas potluck. 

Things you need to know (or remember, if I`ve already told you) about Japanese Christmas before we continue:
1. In Japan, Christmas and New Years importance/traditions are basically the opposite of Western culture.  Christmas is the day you go out and party or just hang with family/friends, and New Years is the important time for family and fancy foods and gifts (monetary).  Businesses are all open and do a good turn on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Wikipedia says that 84-96% of  the population are Buddhist or Shinto, so being closed on those days would help pretty much no one.

2. Turkey is rare in Japan in general, and turkey for Christmas is relatively unheard of unless you know a Western person, or really like Western films.  Chicken is the name of the game in Japan, particularly of the fried variety.  KFC takes pre-orders for Christmas, and if you`re not wise enough to do this, you might be waiting around for two to three hours for a bucket of original recipe.  Good luck with that.

Lina and Roland work part-time at a farm/stable-type place that runs English camps as well (guys, feel free to correct me if I`m wrong about this), owned and operated by a dude named Steven and his Japanese wife, Aya.  There were about 20 of us in this big, wooden farmhouse dining room around a couple tables pushed together that were pretty much covered with food.  Most of the people in attendance were Japanese, but almost all of them spoke great English, and they were all extremely welcoming and friendly.  It felt really home-y.  Roland and Lina brought (and Ros and I helped carry) some traditional Western food to throw into the mix (Japanese contributions included rice balls, sushi, and chicken wings), including a full turkey.  The Japanese people went nuts.  I`m reasonably sure that most of them had never seen a full cooked turkey in real life before.  They all whipped their phones out and were clamoring around, taking pictures.  It was great, if a bit bizarre from the viewpoint of someone who has turkey dinner upwards of three times per year.  After dinner we played bingo, and I won a candle!  (More importantly: a candle wrapped in bubble wrap.)  Definitely a great way to start off the holidays.

 Adorable Christmas rice ball brought by one of the potluck guests.

On Christmas Eve Lina had to work, so when we finished watching Gremlins, Ros, Roland and I went to do some shopping in downtown Sapporo before meeting up with Lina at the station.  We also had ramen, because Hokkaido is famous for it or something.  I don`t know.  Whatever. 

Photo of Ros's ramen, lovingly stolen from Ros.
 


Once Lina had joined the party, I was subjected to two hours of karaoke (not my favourite thing to participate in, but watching them is entertaining).  Dessert was involved in this karaoke adventure, so my caramel nut parfait (Ros and I are still trying to figure out where exactly the "nut" part came in, because we couldn`t find any) made up for any trauma my off-key singing may have caused to my ego.  We left karaoke as the sun was setting (aka, just after 4PM) and made our way towards the TV tower, where the big light display and German Christmas market was set up.  This was so much fun!  We walked around and enjoyed the lights, window-shopped at all the little booths selling Christmas decorations, and drank hot chocolate (or hot spiced wine, but I`m not really a fan of hot wine, so chocolate for me). 

 We also met Santa, because these things are necessary.  Once we were finished there we headed to Nuts, a popular cafe, for some nachos, fries, and wraps, and to work some feeling back into our fingers. 

As per Lina and Roland`s tradition, we stayed up until midnight on Christmas Eve, and then opened gifts before heading to bed.  In theory, this is so that you can relax and sleep in on Christmas morning and then have all day with your new stuff, but Lina had to work again, so that really didn`t work out for her.  But we did wake up to snow on Christmas!  There was already some on the ground, but it snowed pretty much all day on Christmas Day.  Mid-morning, we headed to the car to pick up Lina, along with another friend, Miki.  It started snowing harder while we were waiting for Lina to get out of work.  Once our raiding party was complete, we moved on to conquer Costco!  Yes, you read that right.  Costco.  Japan has Costco.  It is glorious.  First of all: PIZZA.  Available at the Costco cafeteria thing is honest-to-god, greasy, cheesy, fast food pepperoni pizza.  (Do I have a pizza problem?  Yes.  Deal with it.)  Also available at Costco: basically everything you can get at Costco in North America.  It was fantastic.  And apparently you can have things shipped as well, so I`m debating the merits of getting a membership.  I`m pretty sure the closest location is at least a two hour trip away.  Anyway, not the point.  So we grabbed some lunch, and then shopped for Christmas dinner, as well as some other necessities, and then grabbed a takeout pizza from the cafeteria on our way out.  It was really snowing by the time we got out, to the point where it was sometimes hard to see the road.  But we made it (obviously).  Another of their friends joined us at the apartment for dinner, and we had an evening of Die Hard, Wii games, pizza, BLT pinwheels, chicken wings, and canasta (with me playing over Miki`s shoulder while knitting, because while I don`t enjoy the game, I understand it).  Not even remotely a normal Christmas by my standards, but still a lot of fun.

Roland had work and Lina had a party to go to the next day, so after chatting with my family, Ros put the two of us on a train to Otaru.  It`s a town that re-invented itself as a tourist location, apparently, famous for music boxes and glassware.  It was super weird, because I`ve never been in a place before that was such a juxtaposition.  Standing in Otaru, you feel that you are simultaneously in a traditional Japanese town and a quaint European craft village. 

It`s insane.  The music box shop is absolutely glorious, and I could probably spend at least half a day in there alone (not to mention, a lot of money).  We stopped in a sushi place Ros recommended for lunch, and then continued on to the vast number of glass shops in downtown Otaru. 

Photo lovingly stolen from Ros.

 

We also got samples at the chocolate shop(s) along the way - the same chocolate shop has, like, four locations in a three-block radius, I swear.  In one of the glass shops, I found a product that was screaming my name so loud it`s a wonder I didn`t hear it from outside.  ...Not literally, obviously; that would be weird.  But it was perfect.  It`s a steel bookmark, and dangling from the top is a metal-and-glass charm in the shape of a streetlamp.  I`m reasonably certain the only way you could ever make a product more perfect for me is if there was a hidden Mickey somewhere on it.  When we could no longer feel our fingers (a running theme for our time in Hokkaido), we stopped into a dark, barn-like cafe for a hot chocolate. 

After that, more shopping, and then a warm-up in the cafe above the chocolate shop for tea and cheesecake. 

Some final bits of shopping, a trip to the canal to see it lit up with Christmas lights, and then back on the train to Sapporo to meet with Miki for another Hokkaido specialty, soup curry.  Apparently the place we went to is the best place ever and has already ruined me for having soup curry anywhere else, ever, according to Ros and Miki.  I can believe it, because it was delicious.

Also lovingly stolen from Ros.

We were lazy on the 27th, just kicking around and watching anime and strange Japanese game shows with Lina and Roland until the early afternoon.  It was their anniversary, so they were going to the movies in the evening.  We all headed out for burgers and fries, and then to the Sapporo Factory (mall) so that they could get their movie tickets and we could kill some time at the arcade before Ros and I headed to the airport.  I`m pretty much useless at an arcade, outside of basic-level DDR and the occasional shooting game, but Roland has some scary skills with a claw machine.  On his first try, he managed to hook the ewok that Ros and I had tried for earlier (Ros actually doing things, and me backseat-clawing).  I am now the proud owner of a fluffy, fluffy ewok to cuddle during times when I miss my fluffy, fluffy dog named after an ewok (or the other fluffy, fluffy dog named after a Gremlin, but he doesn`t usually stay still long enough to be cuddled).

I didn`t get back into Osaka airport until after 10PM, at which point it was too late to get trains all the way home, so I had booked myself into a capsule hotel at a spa/bath place in downtown Osaka.  Capsule hotels are...  I think the easiest way to describe them, generally, is a cross between bunk beds and a piece of honeycomb.  For me, it`s really no different than most of the dorm-style hostels I stay in, because I usually just sleep with my backpack at my feet in my bunk anyway.  The capsule areas are divided for men and women, just like the baths, and mine in particular had multiple rooms for the capsules (my room had only four capsules in it).  If you`re familiar enough with me and my physical capabilities, you`ll know that I`m utterly lacking in grace/co-ordination and a total klutz.  In my first experience with Japanese bunk beds, back in 2010, I slipped on the ladder and twisted my ankle.  I haven`t gotten much better since then.  Japanese bunk bed ladders are completely vertical, either part of the frame or flush against the frame rather than angled against the frame, and usually have a gargantuan gap between the last step and the floor.  Capsules are, like, the next level up in difficulty.  There were three steps sticking out, like that tree fungus stuff, with grip bars at the top, and then about a four-inch-wide ledge along the bottom of the capsule opening, with a grip bar over the top as well.  So it`s after midnight when I arrive at the hotel, the lights are off in the main room area because people are sleeping, I`m using my cell phone as a flashlight to figure out which capsule is mine, and then when I figure it out, I have to Lara Croft my way into it.  Somehow I managed to do this more than once without injury.  I had planned to check out the baths in the morning before I left, since it was included in my hotel fee, but I barely got any sleep that night, so I just packed up and headed home as soon as I got up and moving.

I did a grocery run the day after I got home, and then didn`t leave my house again for three days.  To all of my Japanese acquaintances (and likely some of my Western friends as well), this is extremely odd, since it means I spent New Years alone.  There are many traditions involved in Japanese New Year`s celebrations, too many to list, but one of the most popular is the first visit of the year to your local (or preferred) shrine for charm burning, charm aquisition, and a prayer for the coming year.  So not only was I not with other people on this important people-holiday, I didn`t go anywhere.  To the Japanese, that`s basically like saying you spent Christmas alone in your apartment, eating leftovers; odd, and kind of sad.  But I enjoyed the quiet.  I could sleep in, read, and knit to my heart`s content.  I could also drink copious amounts of tea, including the peanut butter cup tea from David`s Tea that I got for Christmas and is really, really nice.  No one expected me to show up to something, to put on socially acceptable clothing, or to even speak.  For a socially awkward introvert like myself, it`s exactly the kind of recharge I needed after enjoying a more social Christmas holiday.  In a nod to some of the Japanese traditional New Years foods, I made a Thai coconut curry soup that included shrimp.  I also had a glass of wine in deference to Western traditions.  Yay.  (I basically stopped caring about New Years as a holiday when staying up until midnight became a regular thing, and not something to be excited about.  For me, it`s often a time to be lazy, and to either lose marginally at Solitaire Frenzy to the majority of my family, or lose spectacularly to my sister and brother-in-law at Settlers of Catan.)

After that, I alternated between relaxing and getting all of my necessary adult errands I`d been putting off taken care of (stupid bills).  I also went out to lunch with the science teacher who speaks English.  We went to the Nepalese curry place up the street and around the corner from where I live, and he showed me pictures from the trip he and his wife took to Bali.  I now want to go to Bali (but not in the cave temple that looks like a very literal Hellmouth).  Nepalese curry place had soup curry.  Ros and Miki were right; I`ve been spoiled for any place other than that restaurant in Sapporo.  I also had a good laugh when he was so excited that they saw squirrels on their trip!  He had pictures and video and everything.  Squirrels are a rarity in Japan, rather than the plague that they are back home.

January is going to be a very busy work month for me, with a number of meetings booked and extra language classes beginning for our students going to Australia at the end of term. 

Star Wars VII, A Review

Well, I just got home from seeing Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.  I'm still reeling.  This was such a great film, for so many reasons.  This was definitely a labour of love for JJ Abrams, and it shows.  It really shows.

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THERE ARE SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT.  I HAVE ALMOST ZERO FILTER, SO CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.  I HAVE NOT READ ANY OTHER REVIEWS, OR ANYTHING ELSE PERTAINING TO THIS MOVIE, SO EVERYTHING WRITTEN HERE IS MY OWN THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS.

First, I'm not sure if it was just my theatre (hoping it was), but we jumped directly into the crawl.  Where was my "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."?!?!  That was disappointing, but I stopped caring once the goosebumps started on my arms partway through the crawl.  I'm sure that the people around me thought I was nuts if they saw me grinning through the planet and ship shots.

Anyway, I won't give a full play-by-play of my thoughts and feelings because, as much as I'm sure everyone would be utterly fascinated by that, we'd be here forever.  So, moving on.  But not too far, because the first thing to take a stab through my intense internal fangirling was, "Why can Poe understand BB-8 without a translator or screen?"  Later this was followed by, "Why can Rey understand it, too?!"  I'm still stuck on this one.  I mean, yeah, sure, Han can understand Chewie, but that's different.  Chewie's a living thing.  There's, like, intonation and stuff to his groans and roars.  I'm pretty sure there's a finite number of beeps and whirs that a droid can make.  Is it enough to make up a language?

That's...  really the only problem I had with this movie.  There were some contrivances, sure.  Like Luke's original lightsaber.  Maz Kanata's answer to Han's question about it, in my mind, amounts to, "We wanted it in here, but we didn't know how, so we're just going to say we don't have time and avoid explaining it altogether."  But overall it was well-done, and so I don't really care.  If it didn't have some cheese and fancy coincidences, it wouldn't be a Star Wars movie.

So the First Order basically amounts to space-Nazis being led by Voldemort.  That's really almost all I got out of them.  And really, we were beat over the head with the Nazi parallel during the speech when they blew up the Republic, but it made for a really great visual, so I'll let the cliche slide.  But can we just take a moment to consider how much more likely the Dark Side would be to succeed if they would stop making giant space Poke-balls?  I mean, seriously.  And stop putting your weaknesses where people can access them!  Real reason why the Dark Side fails: they just don't learn.  I caught (broken pieces) of a conversation a group of guys were having on the way back to the station, and it amounted to the remark that no one on the Dark Side was using the title "Darth" as they had in the past.  My theory on this is that, previously, there had always been at least one Sith lord who could carry on the Darth title and name the second one.  With Return of the Jedi, both Sith were taken out at the same time, which means that this new pseudo-Sith order had to start on its own, and they just didn't feel comfortable naming themselves "Darth."  They're humble like that, y'know?  And I'm curious as to where Voldemort is actually holed up, since he wasn't on the Poke-ball planet with everybody else.

The next piece to puzzle out is Rey.  My standing bet is that she's a Skywalker, but I'm trying to figure out how.  Originally I thought they might have actually gone the Jacin-and-Jaina route, and that Jacin was Kylo Ren while Jaina had been taken to Jakku and renamed.  This was reinforced through all of Rey's interactions with Han.  She was totally going to end up being their daughter.  But still no one was saying anything, even after Leia showed up, and then they pulled out the name "Ben" (Which, seriously, why? Han thought he was crazy, and then the old fool got dead; Leia barely knew him, and when she did, it was as Obi-Wan), so that theory went out the window.  My next theory, which is my current working theory even though it has holes so large you could fly a plane through them, is that she's Luke's.  She was left on a desert planet, she's a good pilot, strong in the Force, and has at least some connection to Luke since she had the weird lightsaber flashback memory thing (I'm just letting that one go).  We never saw her family, and there's an obvious cinematic reason for this beyond "We didn't want to pay more people."  But there's a noticeable lack of "OMG DADDY" levels of reaction from Rey at the end.  So, is he not her father?  Is he her father and she was hiding that secret?  Is he her father and she didn't really know who he was but she kind of already knew because the Force told her so she wasn't shocked? 

Han's death was.... well, I saw it coming, but I was in denial until the end.  I really, really hoped I was wrong about that one.  I can understand why it had to happen, story-wise, but Chewie without Han is like a jam sandwich.  Sure, jam's tasty, but it's a little weird to be eating without peanut butter.  Chewie partnering with Rey is going to take some getting used to.

Mostly I'm still processing, but I just read an article about Oscar Isaac being worried that people would come out of theatres hating Poe, so I'd like to take a moment to address his character.  First of all, I love him.  He's adorable.  In so many ways, in my mind, he's what we would have gotten if Han Solo had been played by Bruce Campbell.  Thought I think that comparison also has something to do with why Han had to die.  You can't have two of the same character type in the same movie.  Sure, Poe has infinitely more integrity and moral fibre than Han, but they're still the wise-cracking, smart aleck pilot at the end of the day.  I'm excited to see how his character develops from here.  (Also, it was really obvious that he wasn't dead.  If he was dead, we would have had a body.  It's how these things work.)

Alliteration Week, or Christmas Carols and French Food

Elementary school students are adorable, and I love all of them.  Particularly the ones in my Grade 1-4 class, because they get to do all the fun stuff.  Grade 5-6 has to actually do work and, like, count and stuff.  We get to sing in Grade 1-4!  ...Which, admittedly, is a lot harder when you`ve got a cough and are wearing a mask, but having 10 small children excitedly yell-singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" is entertaining anyway.

I had to drop The Chipmunk Song from my first year lessons.  I am displeased.  The only recording I could find to use was the one from the 60s, and it`s a bit harder to understand the voices, I think, as a non-native English speaker.  I know the one my family has on cassette that has Santa and the Chipmunks telling the story of Alvin and his golden echo harmonica is clearer, but I couldn`t find that version anywhere.  We only had time for one song in my class on Wednesday (they had exam stuff to go over), so I did Let It Snow, because it`s easier and shorter than Where Are You, Christmas?  The kids seemed to enjoy it, but I had a hard time convincing them to sing along after we finished the fill-in-the-blank lyric sheet.  I also changed the `Letters to Santa` to a Christmas vocabulary game, at the teacher`s request, so we had a Christmas word spelling race.  It`s so much fun to watch their teams freak out on the person spelling at the board.  Like when I gave them the word "present," and one team is screaming at their speller, "No, S, S!!! Not Z, S!!!"  Good times.

Wednesday afternoon there was a teachers` meeting at 3:00.  I don`t attend these because they`re entirely in Japanese and don`t affect me in any way whatsoever and therefore it would be pointless, so I stayed in the teachers` room by myself.  Normally these don`t take place until 4:00 anyway and Morita-sensei just tells me to leave early, but I couldn`t this time, so I was stuck by myself in the room, with a wall clock that puts my old one at home to shame and has me singing the Potter Puppet Pals` Mysterious Ticking Noise in my head ("It`s a pipe bomb!  Yaaaay!") because that`s what it sounds like.

Despite the fact that my draft isn`t actually finished (like, "gaps you could fly a plane through" unfinished), I`ve started editing my novel.  I`m hoping it will help organize or solidify the thoughts running through my head about what still needs to be written, and force me to focus on what is needed versus what is completely unnecessary and doesn`t warrant continued thought.  I`m working in three colours.  Green is for additions (though I`m not even really working in that colour yet unless I absolutely have to), red is for corrections, and purple is to note something that needs to stay in, but desperately needs to be rewritten.  Sometimes "rewritten" means "this is just a bit off and could be said better," but sometimes it means "what the bleep were you drinking when you wrote this?"  It`s... interesting, to say the least.

On Friday I had both of my favourite 1st Year classes, and we had a lot of fun with singing and spelling.  Also, I did a short "Christmas Quiz" to see how many things they knew/could guess about Christmas in general, Christmas in Canada, and my family`s personal Christmas.  My favourite question is:
"In Mel`s family, she and her sisters usually open their stockings:
a) In the afternoon
b) At 3:00 in the morning
c) After breakfast
d) After dinner."
So of course the kids like to pick b, because it`s the craziest answer and they think there`s no way it`s actually the right answer.  And then they freak out and are all like, "Eeeeeh?!?!" when I tell them that they`re right.  The JTEs think it`s hilarious when I proceed to explain the whole thing.
"Your stocking gets filled after you go to sleep.  So, my sisters and I wake up every Christmas at 3 AM (without an alarm, somehow we just know to wake up then), go through our stockings in the dark so that we don`t wake anyone else up, put everything back in the stocking, and then go back to bed until 7 o`clock!"

I also had my geekiest half hour at school to date.  Due to the impending Star Wars Episode VII release (which I desperately need to find an English-audio-playing theatre for, because there`s no way I`m missing that on opening weekend), I chose an ESL article about Star Wars Day on May 4th.  The thing is, Tetsuro has never actually seen Star Wars, so he had a lot of questions about the things mentioned in the article.  Despite that, it was a really great lesson, and we somehow managed to get in a good back-and-forth, which is good because when he told me that he hadn`t seen Star Wars ("Seriously?!?!?!" I said in my mind) I was afraid this would turn into Mel`s Star Wars Lecture.  But the article mentioned enough specific things (The Force, Darth Vader, blue milk...) that he could ask specific questions, rather than just, "So, what is Star Wars about?"

After Ros helped me navigate the horror that was buying a ticket in advance for Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Friday night, I did virtually nothing else with my weekend.  A lot of knitting and watching Christmas movies.  It was glorious!

Tuesday this week was my high school students (which turned into singular student, because one was out with stomach trouble).  Just before my lesson, one of the other high school teachers came rushing over to my desk.
Teacher: Mel-sensei, please come with me to the music room!
Me: ...Now?  (thinking, okay, my lesson is about to start in 5 minutes...)
Teacher: Yes, please come!
Me: Okay...
So I followed her up to the music room, where my student is playing Jingle Bells with the music teacher, using actual bells.  And we had to wear Christmas headbands while we listened, because Japan.  I was highly amused.  I was also awkwardly the centre of attention at one point (I think it might have been earlier that morning), when the same teacher had walked by my desk and saw what I was doing (studying Japanese).  She was like, "Mel, you`re studying Japanese?!"  This exclamation then brought three additional teachers over to my desk to see what I was studying.  There was some discussion in Japanese going on about what was actually on my screen at that moment, most of which I didn`t understand, but I did catch someone saying, "That`s difficult even for Japanese people!" which made me feel a lot better, because I just wasn`t getting it.

Wednesday was a kind of year-end cultural assembly?  I don`t know how to describe this thing.  The whole school went to see a play, but not like Panto or any kind of Christmas play.  It was just a play that they got to see because it was the end of the year and this is a special schedule time?  ANYWAY.  So, we went to see this thing.  It was almost two hours of me sitting there, not knowing what was going on.  There were three boys, and an old dude from Hokkaido, and some other characters that I had no idea what was going on with, and then the old guy died.  Whatever.  I got a bit more of the story from my supervisor after.  It`s based on a famous Japanese novel called "The Friends," and it`s about three boys who are fascinated with the idea of death, and want to see it firsthand, so they start spying on this old dude, hoping that they`ll see him kick the bucket.  They end up being friends with him, and then he does, in fact, kick the bucket.  But this is also not the point of my story.  The play was at the Cultural Centre, so I had to take the train and then walk to the Centre.  I walked with Haruna (from my third year class and English club) on the way there, but on the way back, I was just among this sea of students.  Then I hear someone calling my name, so I turn around, and one of my female JTEs is yelling to me from across the street.  The following conversation takes place at a crosswalk across a busy street while we`re waiting for the light to change (which took forever):

Okuda-sensei: Are you going back to school or your apartment?
Me: School.
Okuda-sensei: Would you like to have lunch first?  With me, Hatori-sensei, Nagamatsu-sensei (the one who sits across from me in the teacher`s room), and the Home Economics teacher?  We`re having another girl`s lunch today.
Me: Okay...
Okuda-sensei: It`s a little bit expensive.  Maybe ￥2000? Is that okay? It`s French food.
Me: Sure!  Wait.  Let me check.  (I had topped up my train card that morning, and I couldn`t remember what was actually in my wallet.)  Yeah, I`m good. 
All of this, including small talk about the noisy street, opening my backpack, finding my wallet, checking my wallet, and then putting it back away, happened long before the light changed.  We still had to stand awkwardly on opposite sides of the street for a while before I could join her.  I love it when my teachers stop me on the street to invite me for French food at a semi-fancy restaurant at the Prefectural Art Museum...  So random.

Lunch was delicious!  My tuna/chickpea salad thing would have been pretty tasty, but this was so much better.  Instead of cold chickpeas and soda crackers at my desk, I got to have a relaxing three-course meal for a reasonable price.  The lunch set included either soup or salad (I had the soup - I have no idea what it was, but there was crab in it), fish or chicken (I had a lovely fillet of some kind of white fish that I`m pretty sure was poached, and there was lemon juice involved at some point because I could taste it, and then it was topped with toasted bread crumbs and herbs), and either coffee or tea (tea, obviously).  For a bit extra, you could add dessert, which we did.  It didn`t say what the dessert was, so I was expecting maybe a mousse, or (god forbid) creme brulee (I was really hoping not) or something.  What we ended up with was a plate of four desserts (that`s each, not for sharing).  There was a scoop of mango ice cream, a roasted banana with spiced nuts on top (not my favourite), a slice of chocolate orange cheesecake, and a slice of chocolate/matcha (green tea) cake with raspberry compote.  Don`t get me wrong, they were small slices, but still.  That`s, like, an afternoon tea spread.  I`ll have to go back sometime so that I can take pictures of these things.  I didn`t want to do it with my teachers, because that felt odd, but if I went with a friend I`d be cool with it.

I Want a Hula Hoop

Wednesday was a meeting with all of the Mie ALTs in the afternoon wherein we were walked through papers we had already been sent, and that made perfect sense if you actually bothered to read them.  Which I had.  Multiple times.  (I was bored.)  One of them was about the big two-day conference we have with both ALTs and JTEs coming up in January.  So basically we had a meeting about a meeting.  And then we did a workshop exercise that was fairly useless because it revolved around grammar, which I don`t teach.  Whatever.

Thursday I started work on my Christmas lesson plans for my 1st Year classes (because I can).  I can`t remember if I already mentioned this or not, but one of my JTEs told me that previously they`ve done fill-in-the-blank things with Christmas songs, and then learn to sing them.  She said that when she last did it, they used Band Aid`s "Do They Know It`s Christmas" and the Mariah Carey song that shall remain nameless for everyone`s sakes (for those of you who just ended up with it in your head anyway, I`m sorry).  I have to talk to the teachers and find out how exactly they did this, since we discovered in August that the equipment in the Language Lab (LL) doesn`t really work...  I mean, we have a CD player, but that will only work if I can get one of the teachers to burn a CD with files that I give them.  Given that they took to basic network functions in the computer lab like a fish to merchant banking when we were in there for my self-introduction lesson, I`m thinking that isn`t likely.  So, I`ll either have to hope that my phone/school laptop is loud enough, or we`ll have to see if we can get the computer lab again, and I`ll have to run them through there, because I think there are large speakers hooked up to that system?  At the very least there`s a tv...  Anyway.  I want to do Faith Hill`s "Where Are You, Christmas?" because it`s still kind of a popular song on the radio at Christmastime, and the language and melody are simple enough that the kids should be able to pick it up without too many problems (though I might switch and do NSYNC`s "Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays" because reasons).  For the other song....  Yeah, I`m making them learn "The Chipmunk Song." 

I`m an evil, evil person, and I really love this song, and because this is Japan I`m pretty sure the kids will love it almost as much as I do.  For the last few minutes of class, I`m going to have them write "Letters to Santa," for writing practice and because I think it`ll be fun to see what kinds of lists they can come up with.

Something weird that I`ve noticed about myself lately is that apparently, while I still don`t like people on the whole, I require a certain amount of human interaction daily.  I`ve realized recently (ie this week) how I check my phone rather obsessively for Line/Facebook messages, or comments on my Facebook posts.  That`s a huge change from the girl who used to leave her phone on silent and forget to check it for 12 or more hours at a time (making me the worst possible person to ever have as an emergency contact of any kind).  So my theory is that I have a certain amount of communication I have to reach each day or something, and I`m not reaching that quota here the way I would back home, because there are very few people around me that I can actually have a conversation with.  ...Does this count as some kind of self-discovery?  Have I become the cliche of one of those twenty-somethings traveling around the world to "find themselves"?  I hope not.  Next thing you know I`ll be wearing thick-framed glasses and drinking lattes or something.  Or, god forbid, doing yoga.  And enjoying it.  But I still dislike people as a general rule.  Still a relatively asocial badger over here.

Friday night I started with a scratchy throat, and it was somewhat unbearable on Saturday.  Luckily I did all of my shopping on Thursday night, so I didn`t have to go out at all over the weekend.  I just spent the weekend praying it was only a cold, and that it wouldn`t turn into something that required a trip to a doctor.  I`m a little terrified of having to visit a doctor while I`m here.  On Sunday my throat was better and it had migrated up into my nose, blocking it completely and turning me into a Neanderthalic mouth-breather.  Yay.  Most of you are aware that I get sick rarely these days, so when I do, I basically turn into that guy with the man-cold in the Nyquil commercial.  I`m just a big baby, buried under blankets and whining (to myself, since I live alone) about how much everything sucks.  On Monday, Morita-sensei was taking the afternoon off, and was like, "You should go home and rest.  Really, no one cares.  Take time off!"  But I didn`t want to dip into the rest of my paid vacation yet, because I might need it in the spring and it doesn`t reset until the beginning of August, and and if I took it as sick time I`m pretty sure that I would actually have to go to the doctor`s to get a note.  It`s just a cold, and I`m just a giant baby.  I`ll live.

November Showers Bring December Flowers

My first year classes were cancelled last week because the teachers wanted to get in an extra grammar lesson before the end of term exams next week, so I`ve been alternating between marking, writing, and reading.  The homework I have on my desk is based on the proficiency test class we did.  They have a picture of people at a crossroads doing various things, and they had to write at least four sentences telling me what the people were doing.  Most of them were writing things like: A woman is buying a hot dog.  A man is buying a shirt.  A man is using a computer on a bench.  Things like that.  The thing that I didn`t notice is that the image I used shows everyone on a mobile phone.

A few students noticed this, and I would get sentences about people using a phone.  But one student decided to basically make a story out of it.  This is what I got (grammar and spelling corrected):
Everybody is using a smart phone.
The dog uses a smart phone, too.
The baby doesn`t use a smart phone.
There is a person walking with a smart phone.
Walking with a smart phone is dangerous.



This PSA has been brought to you by 1st Year, Class 2.


I had my relay race on the weekend.  I was absolutely terrified, because I`ve never run a relay before, I didn`t really know where we were going, and the teacher who was giving me a ride barely speaks English.  Thankfully she`s friends with my supervisor, who told me that she had been to Tokyo Disney the same weekend I was, so we had something to chat about in slow, tiny-vocabulary sentences.  ...Not that I wouldn`t have been able to pick up on the Disney thing on my own, because as soon as I got in her car, Holy Minnie Mouse, Batman!  EVERYTHING in this car was Minnie.  There were plushies on the dash, floor mats, seat covers, steering wheel cover, air freshener, visor clips, kleenex box cover, seat belt cover thingy...  Yeah.  It basically looked like Minnie Mouse had exploded inside her car, which was hilarious and oddly comforting.  We spoke for about half an hour about Disneyland and DisneySea (she met characters all day, while I did attractions), and then I think she got too nervous to try to speak any more English, because she remembered that she had the Tangled DVD in her car, so she put that on in English.  I sang along, while she hummed and occasionally sang in Japanese.  It was fun.



The race itself was interesting.  We didn`t have a baton for me to fumble (thank god), but instead passed a sash from runner to runner.  There were five of us on the short course team, and each of us had to run a 600m circuit through part of a park near the F1 track in Suzuka.  I was most definitely not cut out for this kind of thing.  All of the Japanese runners are basically SPRINTING the 600m, whereas I would take about 5-6 minutes to run something like that normally, because I train for distance, not speed.  So I was running faster than normal, the air was quite cold, and about a third of the way into the course there`s a giant freaking hill.  So I think I dragged my team under a bit, and developed a spectacular cough for the rest of the day, but we didn`t come in last (14th out of 17), so I consider it a win.



The next set of homework (that the JTEs collected for me in their grammar classes) was writing a passage about their favourite singer/group.  I love the bluntness of Japanese school students sometimes:  "My favourite singer is Michael Jackson.  Among his songs, I like Billie Jean the best.  His singing voice is cool.  But he is already dead."  ....Yes, yes he is.


Tuesday was a Junior High School day at my special needs school.  I had three classes back-to-back in the morning, and then in the afternoon we planted winter flowers in the school`s planters.  Because that`s a thing.  Winter flowers. 

We drew "team" names randomly from boxes, so there would be two teachers and two students in each team.  I ended up with (I think) the math teacher, and two of my second year students.  I really liked the way our planter turned out!  We ended up with almost all white flowers, which started out as coincidence when we were the last team to reach the first couple items for our arrangement, and then we decided it was a design choice and selected white for everything else where white was an option.  It was a lot of fun, and I hope we get to do this again in the spring!