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.)
Friday, December 18, 2015
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
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 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.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
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.
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."
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.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
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!
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.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
A Disney Christmas
This past weekend was a long weekend, so I finally managed to get myself to the Tokyo Disney Resort. It`s been almost four months since I arrived and I hadn`t stepped foot onto Disney-related soil. I think that`s some kind of new record for me.
So Friday evening I ate my dinner, cleaned my apartment, and then showered and did my hair, basically like I would for a plane ride. Then I packed my bag, ran around the house three or four times, trying to figure out if I`d remembered everything I would need, and headed out the door just before 9PM. I got into Nagoya around 10:30, which was good because it gave me a long time to figure out where exactly I was supposed to pick up this night bus. Things I Don`t Recommend: Trying to find a highway bus meeting place in the dark, in a city you haven`t been to in five years, where they don`t speak English, and not having a really great description of this meeting place. But thanks to my broken Japanese, the Japanese printout of my bus ticket, and a nice station worker, I was able to find my spot with about fifteen minutes to spare. The problem was that this was also the meeting area for about five other bus companies, so you had to be really careful and listen closely to everything they were saying in Japanese in order to know when they were actually calling for your bus. But, I made it onto the bus, wired as hell, and proceeded to not really sleep for the seven hours we spent on the highway.
I got into Disneyland at about 7:15AM, and then waited for about half an hour to go through bag check because it bottlenecks like whoa. Ros had apparently had a great spot in the entrance queues with our tickets, but I persuaded her to get out of line and check to see if we could exchange our passes for a 2-day pass and get into DisneySea the next day (they were sold out when she bought the tickets in advance a couple weeks ago). I met up with her when she was at the ticket booth, the nice man in the booth said that was no problem, and there was excessive squealing, jumping, and grinning (from me; Ros just kind of smiled and rolled her eyes at me). Then we had to get back in the entrance line, much further back than Ros was originally positioned (WORTH IT), and wait for the gates to open at 8AM. We followed the throngs of people through the gates, got a locker for my overnight bag, and beelined it to get fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear. Once we grabbed those, we went and stood in the standby line for Star Tours. I got to do a version of the ride I don`t think I`ve done before, visiting Kashyyyk and an asteriod field before going to help destroy the Death Star. Good times. My favourite part is the wookie who is totally shaking his fist and telling us to get off his lawn as we leave the planet. I`ve decided to name him Carl. Carl the wookie.
We did a lot of back and forth across the park all day, due to the intense crowds and the times/availability of our fastpasses. I choose to believe this means we were totally okay to eat whatever the hell we wanted all weekend because we were wearing it off around the park. Anyway. From Tomorrowland we headed across the park to Adventureland, where Pirates of the Caribbean was, sadly, closed (that line always moves fast, and it was the first ride we ever did at Tokyo Disneyland, so it`s kind of a "must do"). The line for Jungle Cruise extended across most of Adventureland (not an exaggeration), so with an emphatic "Oh hell no," we instead elected to go over to the Enchanted Tiki Room. The Tiki Room at Tokyo is unique, because it`s been taken over by Stitch. They offer translation boxes into English, kind of like portable subtitles for the attraction, so Ros got one to test it out. It was entertaining to see which Hawai`ian phrases they would translate into English, and which ones they would leave in Hawai`ian. I think this is the first time in a long time that I haven`t wanted to bury my head in the sand following a Tiki Room experience.
Then it was time for the Christmas parade! Yaaaaay! This was significantly shorter than the ones I'm used to in the States, comprised of only five or six floats. But they were still very pretty, and full of characters. Ros was disappointed by the lack of Santa at the end of the parade (they made up for it the next day, trust me).
After the parade we wandered a bit, did some shopping, and took so many pictures of lamp posts. ...Okay, I took pictures of lamp posts. Ros rolled her eyes like the long-suffering friend that she is. Lamp posts are awesome. We then trekked back to Tomorrowland (for possibly the third or fourth time at this point; I wasn't kidding about the back and forth) to use our fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear. I got my ass handed to me for the first time in a very long time.
In World Bazaar (Tokyo's Main Street area, which has a glass roof over it) we came across a man from Vancouver who can play the piano while riding a bicycle.
We went over to Splash Mountain and jumped on as single riders, so that we wouldn't have to wait in the ridiculous line (frankly, I'm surprised Ros even goes on this ride after we got relatively stuck in the line for three hours the first time we were there. I have yet to live that down). Then Ros decided that she wanted popcorn. You cannot possibly comprehend the lines for food this weekend. People waited in line for an hour for popcorn. I think Ros only waited maybe 30 or 40 minutes, though. Only. In the meantime, I ducked in and out of the shops in Adventureland. While I was waiting for Ros after I finished shopping, a boatload of pirates rolled up and started playing instruments. Literally. They came in on a boat on wheels with instruments. It was awesome.
We had fastpasses for Haunted Mansion (Nightmare Before Christmas holiday edition; I swear someday I'll ride that ride when it's normal), so we did that. Ros also thought that "it's a small world" had a special Christmas version, and it didn't really have a line, so we rode that. It did not have a Christmas version. It was the same torture it always is. We did some more shopping, and I got an early Christmas present in the form of an Elsa tiara that I kind of fell in love with (and a girl needs to own three tiaras, you know). Towards the end of the day, we headed over to Toontown to check out the holiday decorations on the characters' houses before parking ourselves by the Partners statue to wait for Once Upon a Time, a nighttime projection show on Cinderella castle.
We had a late dinner at Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall before I headed out early to check into my hostel. I was exhausted by this point, so I pretty much just signed in and went to bed, since I had to be up by 5:15AM the next morning anyway.
With my hair braided over my shoulder and my Elsa tiara firmly in place on my head, I was back out the hostel doors by 6AM, ready and raring to go for our day at DisneySea! Again, this mostly consisted of me running around like a madwoman, taking pictures of all of the Christmas decorations, especially those on lamp posts. I was convinced to let go of my desire to ride Toy Story Mania, because the line for getting fastpasses takes about an hour. Instead we headed next to it, to Tower of Terror, to get fastpasses for that instead. This day was a lot of back and forth across the park again, earning our meals while avoiding all of the craziest lines.
I got to do a few attractions I'd never done before, which was really cool. We accomplished a lot in that first hour of the day, when most of the park's population was waiting for Toy Story fastpasses. We did Magic Lamp Theater on the Arabian Coast (Agrabah), which is a combination live show-3D movie. Very cool. And easy to understand, even if you don't really speak Japanese! There was one point where one of the actors made a joke that I swear no one was laughing at except Ros and I. But we're used to that.
More line avoidance came in after that, this time in the form of watching a Christmas show we stumbled across taking place on the path around the giant lagoon-thing at the centre of the park (like EPCOT). The Disney characters were discussing the meaning of Christmas amidst song and dance (Donald insisted the meaning was "presents"). Towards the end of the show, we found out why Santa isn't in the parade at Disneyland. It's because he's in this show next door at DisneySea, riding a giant Christmas boat-float around the lagoon.
By doing copious amounts of walking and having Ros ask every cast member at every restaurant we came across, we managed not to wait for more than an hour for anything all day, including food. I was sort of set on the croquette sandwich they have at Mermaid Lagoon, because we have them every time we go there and they're delicious. But we got in line and then it just stopped moving. My blood sugar was getting low, and I was getting cranky, plus we had won tickets to an afternoon show in one of the theatres (hurray!), so time was kind of a concern. Ros convinced me that we could let the croquettes go, too, and we went to this sandwich place in the American Harbourfront. I now have a new favourite eatery at DisneySea. The sandwich I had was amazing. Smoked salmon and shrimp on a bagel with avocado sauce and cream cheese - yum!
The show we saw, Big Band Beat, was phenomenal. I'm a fan of old-style jazz (go away, Michael Buble), and that's all this show was, along with a Christmas segment that was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see, being at Disney for a holiday celebration. Also, Mickey plays the drums. Not even kidding.
We rode some more rides after that, including my personal favourite, StormRider. Then it was time to stake out decent places for almost an hour and a half for Fantasmic, which I've never seen in Tokyo. I stayed to guard our spots while Ros made a trip back to the American Harbourfront for hot chocolate and Olaf sugar cookies.
From a technical standpoint, Tokyo's Fantasmic is the best. But I think I still like the American ones better overall (with California winning out very slightly over Florida because they have a Peter Pan segment, and their dragon is better).
We grabbed some dinner at Horizon Bay (the character dining half of the restaurant was already closed, so we had normal dinner) and generally enjoyed being indoors and out of the chill coming off the ocean through the park. After that was a bit more shopping on our way out. Ros came with me to find my bus stop, and I boarded to head back to Nagoya overnight. I slept a lot more on this trip than the one there. I'm not sure if it was because I didn't have the excitement of Disney waiting for me, or if I was just so exhausted that I didn't care about my comfort and surroundings anymore. Likely the second one. We pulled into Nagoya just after 6AM, and I hopped on my train back home.
I'm definitely looking forward to my next Disney vacation already, but never on a long weekend again, and never without a couple dining reservations in place.
So Friday evening I ate my dinner, cleaned my apartment, and then showered and did my hair, basically like I would for a plane ride. Then I packed my bag, ran around the house three or four times, trying to figure out if I`d remembered everything I would need, and headed out the door just before 9PM. I got into Nagoya around 10:30, which was good because it gave me a long time to figure out where exactly I was supposed to pick up this night bus. Things I Don`t Recommend: Trying to find a highway bus meeting place in the dark, in a city you haven`t been to in five years, where they don`t speak English, and not having a really great description of this meeting place. But thanks to my broken Japanese, the Japanese printout of my bus ticket, and a nice station worker, I was able to find my spot with about fifteen minutes to spare. The problem was that this was also the meeting area for about five other bus companies, so you had to be really careful and listen closely to everything they were saying in Japanese in order to know when they were actually calling for your bus. But, I made it onto the bus, wired as hell, and proceeded to not really sleep for the seven hours we spent on the highway.
I got into Disneyland at about 7:15AM, and then waited for about half an hour to go through bag check because it bottlenecks like whoa. Ros had apparently had a great spot in the entrance queues with our tickets, but I persuaded her to get out of line and check to see if we could exchange our passes for a 2-day pass and get into DisneySea the next day (they were sold out when she bought the tickets in advance a couple weeks ago). I met up with her when she was at the ticket booth, the nice man in the booth said that was no problem, and there was excessive squealing, jumping, and grinning (from me; Ros just kind of smiled and rolled her eyes at me). Then we had to get back in the entrance line, much further back than Ros was originally positioned (WORTH IT), and wait for the gates to open at 8AM. We followed the throngs of people through the gates, got a locker for my overnight bag, and beelined it to get fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear. Once we grabbed those, we went and stood in the standby line for Star Tours. I got to do a version of the ride I don`t think I`ve done before, visiting Kashyyyk and an asteriod field before going to help destroy the Death Star. Good times. My favourite part is the wookie who is totally shaking his fist and telling us to get off his lawn as we leave the planet. I`ve decided to name him Carl. Carl the wookie.
We did a lot of back and forth across the park all day, due to the intense crowds and the times/availability of our fastpasses. I choose to believe this means we were totally okay to eat whatever the hell we wanted all weekend because we were wearing it off around the park. Anyway. From Tomorrowland we headed across the park to Adventureland, where Pirates of the Caribbean was, sadly, closed (that line always moves fast, and it was the first ride we ever did at Tokyo Disneyland, so it`s kind of a "must do"). The line for Jungle Cruise extended across most of Adventureland (not an exaggeration), so with an emphatic "Oh hell no," we instead elected to go over to the Enchanted Tiki Room. The Tiki Room at Tokyo is unique, because it`s been taken over by Stitch. They offer translation boxes into English, kind of like portable subtitles for the attraction, so Ros got one to test it out. It was entertaining to see which Hawai`ian phrases they would translate into English, and which ones they would leave in Hawai`ian. I think this is the first time in a long time that I haven`t wanted to bury my head in the sand following a Tiki Room experience.
Then it was time for the Christmas parade! Yaaaaay! This was significantly shorter than the ones I'm used to in the States, comprised of only five or six floats. But they were still very pretty, and full of characters. Ros was disappointed by the lack of Santa at the end of the parade (they made up for it the next day, trust me).
For anyone who cares, these are the same deer used in the Christmas parade at Disneyland in California (the ones at WDW in Florida look like moose and are vaguely terrifying).
After the parade we wandered a bit, did some shopping, and took so many pictures of lamp posts. ...Okay, I took pictures of lamp posts. Ros rolled her eyes like the long-suffering friend that she is. Lamp posts are awesome. We then trekked back to Tomorrowland (for possibly the third or fourth time at this point; I wasn't kidding about the back and forth) to use our fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear. I got my ass handed to me for the first time in a very long time.
That's Ros on the left with 43,100 and me on the right with only 14,200. I'm slightly ashamed.
In World Bazaar (Tokyo's Main Street area, which has a glass roof over it) we came across a man from Vancouver who can play the piano while riding a bicycle.
We went over to Splash Mountain and jumped on as single riders, so that we wouldn't have to wait in the ridiculous line (frankly, I'm surprised Ros even goes on this ride after we got relatively stuck in the line for three hours the first time we were there. I have yet to live that down). Then Ros decided that she wanted popcorn. You cannot possibly comprehend the lines for food this weekend. People waited in line for an hour for popcorn. I think Ros only waited maybe 30 or 40 minutes, though. Only. In the meantime, I ducked in and out of the shops in Adventureland. While I was waiting for Ros after I finished shopping, a boatload of pirates rolled up and started playing instruments. Literally. They came in on a boat on wheels with instruments. It was awesome.
We had fastpasses for Haunted Mansion (Nightmare Before Christmas holiday edition; I swear someday I'll ride that ride when it's normal), so we did that. Ros also thought that "it's a small world" had a special Christmas version, and it didn't really have a line, so we rode that. It did not have a Christmas version. It was the same torture it always is. We did some more shopping, and I got an early Christmas present in the form of an Elsa tiara that I kind of fell in love with (and a girl needs to own three tiaras, you know). Towards the end of the day, we headed over to Toontown to check out the holiday decorations on the characters' houses before parking ourselves by the Partners statue to wait for Once Upon a Time, a nighttime projection show on Cinderella castle.
Heffalumps and Woozles taking over Cinderella Castle.
We had a late dinner at Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall before I headed out early to check into my hostel. I was exhausted by this point, so I pretty much just signed in and went to bed, since I had to be up by 5:15AM the next morning anyway.
With my hair braided over my shoulder and my Elsa tiara firmly in place on my head, I was back out the hostel doors by 6AM, ready and raring to go for our day at DisneySea! Again, this mostly consisted of me running around like a madwoman, taking pictures of all of the Christmas decorations, especially those on lamp posts. I was convinced to let go of my desire to ride Toy Story Mania, because the line for getting fastpasses takes about an hour. Instead we headed next to it, to Tower of Terror, to get fastpasses for that instead. This day was a lot of back and forth across the park again, earning our meals while avoiding all of the craziest lines.
I got to do a few attractions I'd never done before, which was really cool. We accomplished a lot in that first hour of the day, when most of the park's population was waiting for Toy Story fastpasses. We did Magic Lamp Theater on the Arabian Coast (Agrabah), which is a combination live show-3D movie. Very cool. And easy to understand, even if you don't really speak Japanese! There was one point where one of the actors made a joke that I swear no one was laughing at except Ros and I. But we're used to that.
By doing copious amounts of walking and having Ros ask every cast member at every restaurant we came across, we managed not to wait for more than an hour for anything all day, including food. I was sort of set on the croquette sandwich they have at Mermaid Lagoon, because we have them every time we go there and they're delicious. But we got in line and then it just stopped moving. My blood sugar was getting low, and I was getting cranky, plus we had won tickets to an afternoon show in one of the theatres (hurray!), so time was kind of a concern. Ros convinced me that we could let the croquettes go, too, and we went to this sandwich place in the American Harbourfront. I now have a new favourite eatery at DisneySea. The sandwich I had was amazing. Smoked salmon and shrimp on a bagel with avocado sauce and cream cheese - yum!
The show we saw, Big Band Beat, was phenomenal. I'm a fan of old-style jazz (go away, Michael Buble), and that's all this show was, along with a Christmas segment that was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see, being at Disney for a holiday celebration. Also, Mickey plays the drums. Not even kidding.
We rode some more rides after that, including my personal favourite, StormRider. Then it was time to stake out decent places for almost an hour and a half for Fantasmic, which I've never seen in Tokyo. I stayed to guard our spots while Ros made a trip back to the American Harbourfront for hot chocolate and Olaf sugar cookies.
We grabbed some dinner at Horizon Bay (the character dining half of the restaurant was already closed, so we had normal dinner) and generally enjoyed being indoors and out of the chill coming off the ocean through the park. After that was a bit more shopping on our way out. Ros came with me to find my bus stop, and I boarded to head back to Nagoya overnight. I slept a lot more on this trip than the one there. I'm not sure if it was because I didn't have the excitement of Disney waiting for me, or if I was just so exhausted that I didn't care about my comfort and surroundings anymore. Likely the second one. We pulled into Nagoya just after 6AM, and I hopped on my train back home.
I'm definitely looking forward to my next Disney vacation already, but never on a long weekend again, and never without a couple dining reservations in place.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
In Which Virtually Nothing Happens
Virtually nothing has happened in over a week. I`m really not an interesting person. On Thursday (12th), though, I surpassed my NaNoWriMo word count from 2011 (the last time I participated), thus making my current project the longest thing I`ve ever written. 2011 clocked in at 14,818 words before it got abandoned.
I suppose I could share with you an "Engrish" funny from this week? "Engrish" is what we call really awful translations, the kind that either makes zero sense or has funny spelling errors... That kind of thing.
Like that. The kind of thing that, as an English speaker, just makes you sit back for a second and go "...What?" So, my first year class this week is doing proficiency test type stuff in groups. I give each group a card that has a picture of five people, and they have to tell me what each person is doing. They discuss it as a group, and then write sentences on the board. They`re doing fairly basic stuff. One of the pictures is of a girl throwing away a can, a man taking off (or putting on) his jacket, a man mopping a floor, a man watering a flowerbed, and a woman cooking what appears to be sausages. In Japan, sausages are generally called wieners. This is a problematic word for the Japanese on multiple levels. First, they have issues with many words beginning with "w" ("woman" becomes "ooman" when spoken). Second, there are no words in Japanese that end with a consonant other than "n", so a word ending in "r" comes out as "ah" when pronounced. Third, plurals don`t exist in Japanese, so these are often problematic for Japanese speakers learning English. Taking all of these points into account, on Thursday I got this gem: A woman is cooking vienna. ... Uh, no, kids. Vienna is a city in Austria. Intriguing mental image, though.
The weekend was also full of nothing. On Saturday it was rainy and gross and I felt exceedingly apathetic so that all of my writing attempts failed. I studied Japanese for a while, and spent the rest of my time reading or knitting. Sunday was much more productive for me. I finished the second unit of my Japanese studies, passed the unit test (after four tries, because I still don`t understand particles), and surpassed 20,000 words in my novel! Go me! I probably could have actually been even more productive with my writing, except that I went to Starbucks and got a dark mocha frappuccino. Anyone who knows me knows that it`s a bad idea for me to have that kind of caffeine, and an even worse idea for me to have it combined with sugar. I had all of these ideas whirring around in my head after a while, but I couldn`t concentrate on any of them long enough to actually type them in my document. And then the twitching started. So I called it quits for the day, went home, and ran the first Week 5 plan of the Couch to 5K program. This is a big deal, since I developed major foot pain due to needing new shoes and hadn`t been running in nearly three weeks.
I did some marking on Monday. Last week I had the kids write about someone who inspires them, since their textbook was talking about a famous Japanese singer, Angela Aki, being inspired by Sarah McLachlan. Most of them were idols, actresses, and pop groups, but one girl wrote about Demi Lovato and her messages against self-harm. It was a very well-written paragraph, and I was really impressed! I also met up with Nakamura-san on my way home from school, so we had a nice little chat while we walked with her dog for a bit.
Tuesday was a lesson about the weather with my lonely high school student at my special needs school. Having just the one lesson meant that I had pretty much all day to work on my novel. I finally passed 25,000 words!
Last Thursday, we were talking about the students` future jobs. One girl said she wanted to work at the Jaws attraction at Universal Studios Japan, because it`s her favourite and she already knows the entire pre-ride spiel. The class pretty much demanded that she perform it for them, which she did, on the condition that I do a Disney one next week. I explained that I was a waitress, but I knew a lot of the rides by heart. I was hoping they had forgotten about it by this week, but they didn`t. So I did a skipper greeting from Jungle Cruise because I love that ride. They understood most of it (I could tell because they were laughing rather than "wow"ing).
And that`s it for me for now. I`m excited for tomorrow night because I`m heading to Nagoya after school to catch an overnight bus. I`M GOING TO (Tokyo) DISNEYLAND!!!!!!! It`s been two years since I was there last, and I`m stupidly excited to see the Christmas decorations. TTFN!
I suppose I could share with you an "Engrish" funny from this week? "Engrish" is what we call really awful translations, the kind that either makes zero sense or has funny spelling errors... That kind of thing.
Like that. The kind of thing that, as an English speaker, just makes you sit back for a second and go "...What?" So, my first year class this week is doing proficiency test type stuff in groups. I give each group a card that has a picture of five people, and they have to tell me what each person is doing. They discuss it as a group, and then write sentences on the board. They`re doing fairly basic stuff. One of the pictures is of a girl throwing away a can, a man taking off (or putting on) his jacket, a man mopping a floor, a man watering a flowerbed, and a woman cooking what appears to be sausages. In Japan, sausages are generally called wieners. This is a problematic word for the Japanese on multiple levels. First, they have issues with many words beginning with "w" ("woman" becomes "ooman" when spoken). Second, there are no words in Japanese that end with a consonant other than "n", so a word ending in "r" comes out as "ah" when pronounced. Third, plurals don`t exist in Japanese, so these are often problematic for Japanese speakers learning English. Taking all of these points into account, on Thursday I got this gem: A woman is cooking vienna. ... Uh, no, kids. Vienna is a city in Austria. Intriguing mental image, though.
The weekend was also full of nothing. On Saturday it was rainy and gross and I felt exceedingly apathetic so that all of my writing attempts failed. I studied Japanese for a while, and spent the rest of my time reading or knitting. Sunday was much more productive for me. I finished the second unit of my Japanese studies, passed the unit test (after four tries, because I still don`t understand particles), and surpassed 20,000 words in my novel! Go me! I probably could have actually been even more productive with my writing, except that I went to Starbucks and got a dark mocha frappuccino. Anyone who knows me knows that it`s a bad idea for me to have that kind of caffeine, and an even worse idea for me to have it combined with sugar. I had all of these ideas whirring around in my head after a while, but I couldn`t concentrate on any of them long enough to actually type them in my document. And then the twitching started. So I called it quits for the day, went home, and ran the first Week 5 plan of the Couch to 5K program. This is a big deal, since I developed major foot pain due to needing new shoes and hadn`t been running in nearly three weeks.
I did some marking on Monday. Last week I had the kids write about someone who inspires them, since their textbook was talking about a famous Japanese singer, Angela Aki, being inspired by Sarah McLachlan. Most of them were idols, actresses, and pop groups, but one girl wrote about Demi Lovato and her messages against self-harm. It was a very well-written paragraph, and I was really impressed! I also met up with Nakamura-san on my way home from school, so we had a nice little chat while we walked with her dog for a bit.
Tuesday was a lesson about the weather with my lonely high school student at my special needs school. Having just the one lesson meant that I had pretty much all day to work on my novel. I finally passed 25,000 words!
Last Thursday, we were talking about the students` future jobs. One girl said she wanted to work at the Jaws attraction at Universal Studios Japan, because it`s her favourite and she already knows the entire pre-ride spiel. The class pretty much demanded that she perform it for them, which she did, on the condition that I do a Disney one next week. I explained that I was a waitress, but I knew a lot of the rides by heart. I was hoping they had forgotten about it by this week, but they didn`t. So I did a skipper greeting from Jungle Cruise because I love that ride. They understood most of it (I could tell because they were laughing rather than "wow"ing).
And that`s it for me for now. I`m excited for tomorrow night because I`m heading to Nagoya after school to catch an overnight bus. I`M GOING TO (Tokyo) DISNEYLAND!!!!!!! It`s been two years since I was there last, and I`m stupidly excited to see the Christmas decorations. TTFN!
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Dear Abby, The Force is Not With Me
So I did a lot of nothing on Tuesday (thank you, random Japanese holidays). I got my target word count in for my novel for that day, almost finished my knitting project, did some reading, laundry, and got some groceries. Basically it was like having an extra Saturday (I`d say Sunday, because I had to work the next day, but Saturday is the day I usually do all of those things).
Wednesday started with more of the direction marking that I`d been putting off because it was so painful, and then my one class of the day. They were the same as they always are, nothing particularly exciting to report. I also planned my conversation class lesson for the next day (Health and Advice), including a Dear Abby worksheet for them to complete.
One of the students from my conversation class told my supervisor that she wouldn`t be in class on Thursday, but not to tell the other teachers because she was going to call in sick. I told her that in English we call this "playing hooky," and told her about when I had to go into London to have my braces worked on as a teenager, and sometimes Mom and I would go shopping after before going back to school (Love you, Mom!). This led to a discussion about dental or orthodontal work, wherein Morita-sensei learned a bunch of new vocabulary and can now probably go to the dentist in an English-speaking country without a problem.
(Side note: we went over the lesson plan and I told her about Dear Abby. She`s now slightly addicted, and reading the website for English practice. I find this hilarious.)
My life has become all sorts of boring. I don`t really have much to share with you guys lately. I think a lot of it has to do with me being used to my life here now. There are probably many things that I just consider a normal, everyday occurrence, where if you were here, you would go, "Wait, what now?!" And part of it is also that I haven`t really been doing much lately.
We had English club for the first time in a couple months on Thursday. We had an open conversation meeting, so I took the chance to tell them about the novel I`m writing (with mixed success; I was telling them the bare bones version, so as not to confuse them with a lot of plot detail, but I think things still got lost in translation). I asked them what kind of novel they would write if they were going to write one, and got three very different answers! Mayu said she would write a crime/suspense novel in a contained environment like the Titanic (I told her about Murder of the Orient Express, and how it all takes place on a moving train). Haruna said she would write a high school slice-of-life kind of story (and I taught them the phrase `slice of life`). Tetsuro, the boy who I`m doing conversation lessons with and who has just decided to join the English club, said he would write a love story between two people in their 70s who have always been single and gave up on love. I`m actually really intrigued by that last idea, and might try to do something with it for next year.
Friday I had my conversation lesson with Tetsuro. Last week we chose to read an article about water on Mars (I will not think of Doctor Who, I will not think of Doctor Who), and how that increases the likelihood of life on Mars. So when we got together, he read the article out loud and then discussed it. That led to me telling him about Mars One, and then we speculated on aliens in other solar systems and galaxies. It was a really awesome half hour, and I`m looking forward to next week! We`ll pick a new article on Wednesday. He`s got quite an imagination, so I think I might suggest a short story (like, a one-page sort of deal) that we can read. I`ll have a look to see what I can find.
Saturday was spent grocery shopping, writing, and knitting. For a little while, anyway. I will admit that I spent most of the day reading on my iPad and watching YouTube videos (particularly the "mean tweets" segment from Jimmy Kimmel). Nothing particularly productive. I did manage to hit 10,000 words in my novel, though! Sunday I was like, "I'm going to crack down and crank out a huge number of words for my novel! Plus I need new running shoes, because the old ones are killing my feet. The shoe store is in the same plaza as Starbucks, so I'll bring my writing, buy my shoes, and then grab a coffee (not-actually-coffee, because I no longer allow myself to have coffee, it's a bad idea) and do some serious writing!" It rained all day. Hard. So instead, I decided I would knit and watch some Star Wars. Apparently the universe didn't like this idea, either. It took about 15 minutes of arguing with my laptop to get it to play A New Hope, and after almost a half hour of arguing with it about The Empire Strikes Back, I've given up. Part of it, I think, is that this Lenovo sucks and I never want to own one again. But I think most of it stems from the fact that I had to bring the bonus discs with me, which have enhanced CD-ROM contents, because I'm a horrible snob. I have never watched the first disc of my trilogy. This is because the first disc is the digitally remastered, "let's add things that make no sense" version. The bonus disc has the original theatrical version. I always watch the bonus disc. But usually from my DVD player at home. I didn't even know it was enhanced until I started fighting with it on here. So now I am stuck Star Wars-less until I can figure out how to win this fight.
I had one of those nights last night were I just lay there, willing myself to go to sleep, but it doesn`t really happen, so I`m utterly exhausted today. We were informed at our morning teacher`s meeting today that one of our teachers passed away suddenly on the weekend from SAH (aneurysm), so that didn`t really help my mood, either. I didn`t really know him well, but he was the first math teacher to approach me when the exchange students were here, so I did work with him. He was nice.
Wednesday started with more of the direction marking that I`d been putting off because it was so painful, and then my one class of the day. They were the same as they always are, nothing particularly exciting to report. I also planned my conversation class lesson for the next day (Health and Advice), including a Dear Abby worksheet for them to complete.
One of the students from my conversation class told my supervisor that she wouldn`t be in class on Thursday, but not to tell the other teachers because she was going to call in sick. I told her that in English we call this "playing hooky," and told her about when I had to go into London to have my braces worked on as a teenager, and sometimes Mom and I would go shopping after before going back to school (Love you, Mom!). This led to a discussion about dental or orthodontal work, wherein Morita-sensei learned a bunch of new vocabulary and can now probably go to the dentist in an English-speaking country without a problem.
(Side note: we went over the lesson plan and I told her about Dear Abby. She`s now slightly addicted, and reading the website for English practice. I find this hilarious.)
My life has become all sorts of boring. I don`t really have much to share with you guys lately. I think a lot of it has to do with me being used to my life here now. There are probably many things that I just consider a normal, everyday occurrence, where if you were here, you would go, "Wait, what now?!" And part of it is also that I haven`t really been doing much lately.
We had English club for the first time in a couple months on Thursday. We had an open conversation meeting, so I took the chance to tell them about the novel I`m writing (with mixed success; I was telling them the bare bones version, so as not to confuse them with a lot of plot detail, but I think things still got lost in translation). I asked them what kind of novel they would write if they were going to write one, and got three very different answers! Mayu said she would write a crime/suspense novel in a contained environment like the Titanic (I told her about Murder of the Orient Express, and how it all takes place on a moving train). Haruna said she would write a high school slice-of-life kind of story (and I taught them the phrase `slice of life`). Tetsuro, the boy who I`m doing conversation lessons with and who has just decided to join the English club, said he would write a love story between two people in their 70s who have always been single and gave up on love. I`m actually really intrigued by that last idea, and might try to do something with it for next year.
Friday I had my conversation lesson with Tetsuro. Last week we chose to read an article about water on Mars (I will not think of Doctor Who, I will not think of Doctor Who), and how that increases the likelihood of life on Mars. So when we got together, he read the article out loud and then discussed it. That led to me telling him about Mars One, and then we speculated on aliens in other solar systems and galaxies. It was a really awesome half hour, and I`m looking forward to next week! We`ll pick a new article on Wednesday. He`s got quite an imagination, so I think I might suggest a short story (like, a one-page sort of deal) that we can read. I`ll have a look to see what I can find.
Saturday was spent grocery shopping, writing, and knitting. For a little while, anyway. I will admit that I spent most of the day reading on my iPad and watching YouTube videos (particularly the "mean tweets" segment from Jimmy Kimmel). Nothing particularly productive. I did manage to hit 10,000 words in my novel, though! Sunday I was like, "I'm going to crack down and crank out a huge number of words for my novel! Plus I need new running shoes, because the old ones are killing my feet. The shoe store is in the same plaza as Starbucks, so I'll bring my writing, buy my shoes, and then grab a coffee (not-actually-coffee, because I no longer allow myself to have coffee, it's a bad idea) and do some serious writing!" It rained all day. Hard. So instead, I decided I would knit and watch some Star Wars. Apparently the universe didn't like this idea, either. It took about 15 minutes of arguing with my laptop to get it to play A New Hope, and after almost a half hour of arguing with it about The Empire Strikes Back, I've given up. Part of it, I think, is that this Lenovo sucks and I never want to own one again. But I think most of it stems from the fact that I had to bring the bonus discs with me, which have enhanced CD-ROM contents, because I'm a horrible snob. I have never watched the first disc of my trilogy. This is because the first disc is the digitally remastered, "let's add things that make no sense" version. The bonus disc has the original theatrical version. I always watch the bonus disc. But usually from my DVD player at home. I didn't even know it was enhanced until I started fighting with it on here. So now I am stuck Star Wars-less until I can figure out how to win this fight.
I had one of those nights last night were I just lay there, willing myself to go to sleep, but it doesn`t really happen, so I`m utterly exhausted today. We were informed at our morning teacher`s meeting today that one of our teachers passed away suddenly on the weekend from SAH (aneurysm), so that didn`t really help my mood, either. I didn`t really know him well, but he was the first math teacher to approach me when the exchange students were here, so I did work with him. He was nice.
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