HPV, Musical, Hamsters

TMI: Today will be my first shot of the HPV vaccine. I haven’t got my test result back yet, so here is hoping that I don’t already have what I’m being vaccinated against (in other words, let’s not waste 48,000 yen here). There are several strains of HPV though, so it’s still a good idea. Japan uses a different vaccine than the States, but it does the same thing.

 

A pamphlet at school put the bee in my bonnet: the nurse’s office’s monthly newsletter about keeping healthy included information about free vaccines for 1st year high school students. Which is a darn good idea, making a very expensive vaccine free. Cancer is crap, free prevention is awesome. As I said, it’s not free for me, but it is a very good idea anyway.

 

Recently, everything has been coming up Emily. Apart from last night’s very scary dream about my family in danger, I’ve been feeling pretty good. An expensive ski trip that I wasn’t so excited about was able to be cancelled. The musical seems alright. I’m studying everyday, and some of it is starting to stick.

 

My shamisen teacher told me that the pieces for the concert don’t have to be memorized (HOORAY!!) though of course the best players are already memorized. It’s better to memorize, she said, but if you have difficult parts, it’s better to look at the sheet music than to screw it up. Words after my own heart.

 

We interviewed all the hopeful students who want to go on the exchange program to France, and picked the 11 best ones (9 were guaranteed a spot because they acted as host families to the French students). When I say “best”, I mean the ones who scored the highest on the essay, application, and interview tests (all conducted in both English and Japanese). Really, they were all great students and should all go to France. It was hard to see a student desperately wanting to go, who got a good score, but didn’t get a high enough score to be in the top 11.
But… it can’t really be helped. I’m happy for the ones who made it, and I’m sorry for the ones who didn’t. I hope they don’t give up on their wish to go abroad.

 

 

Some pictures and updates!

The musical (Treasure Island) :

Last weekend the musical rehearsal was held in the gym of an elementary school in Mima, far out west. I didn’t much feel like spending the night on somebody’s futon on the floor, and met with reluctance when trying to organize a ride from nearby stations. The stations in that area had maddeningly inconvenient arrival times, something not taken into consideration when scheduling everything.

So in the end I decided the hell with it, I could get there on my own. I got up early, spent $10 on a train ticket, road the train for well over an hour, and arrived 1.5 hours early for rehearsal. Which was fine, because I had to walk (which only took 20 minutes) and then I could relax and read a book while waiting for everyone else.

Here is what a westerly train station looks like at 7:30 in the morning: (you can click pictures for big versions!)

Here is the cast (well, most of the cast)

When not on stage, everyone huddled in a mass of blankets around an electric heater. It was wonderfully sunny and warm outside, but this translated into freezing cold inside. We would scoot across the floor every 20 minutes in order to stay within the shafts of warm sunlight.

Our assistant director:

Billy Bones and the Innkeeper illustrating a classic interaction: a clearly last-ditch solution is offered to a customer in a “cute” way, and despite having “WTF” written all over her face, the customer is forced to accept it in the interest of maintaining social harmony. OH JAPAN!

In the elementary school hallway, there lived a fat hamster. I never saw him move out of his little wooden house/cave. Granted, he did live in a cold hallway, and it was probably warmer under all the wood shavings.

He had this sign:

“Don’t give him food!!”
Hamster: “Oh, a lot of food! I’m so happy!”….. “My stomach HURTS!”
“When you want to play with the hamster, let’s talk to a teacher!” (I’m guessing a bit on this one)

Then, unfortunately:

“On the night of January 6, Hato-kun went to heaven.”
Hamster: “Sayonara, everyone”

Poor old Hato-kun.

They’re back again!

The stoves have returned, in all their firey robot glory!

Spreading warmth and cheer and flammability throughout the school

They give off a lovely kerosene scent and make everything feel nice and cozy.

My desk is right near the staff stove, so I am always warm. Hooray!
Somehow, my heater at home just isn’t cutting it now. I’m confused and run the wall unit fairly often, but my electricity bill is exactly as it always has been. Hunh?

But never fear, I’ve got my fluffy blankets and excellent socks to get me through the winter.

Festival!

Let’s skip over Awa Odori for a moment and talk about some recent stuff.

Awa Odori happened of course, but pictures tell it better than words, so just hang on a bit.

First, here are some spectacularly unfortunate wedding dresses.
In Japan, when you have a wedding, you wear at least 2 or 3 different outfits; your fancy kimono, another fancy kimono, a fancy dress, another fancy dress… (also if you are young, you have to have the most hideous up-do conceivable but that is another story entirely)
There is this shop called “Bridal Core” that has a fantastic rotating window display. I think most of the dresses they choose to show are crazy (though the tartan ones were funny) but they do have very nice window displays. There are lots of extra props, the colors are always very good and the lighting makes it all show up nicely on my camera.

Anyway, these terrors were there last week:

lol

We had our cultural festival!!
I’ll show as much as I can… (we can’t post student’s photos online, so the only students you’ll see will be the sort of non-descript masses. Or the backs of their heads, etc. Sorry!)

Happily the only photos of me are with students, so I can’t post them. I had the stupidest hairstyle EVER that day, but didn’t realize it until I saw the photos. SAD.

First of all, here is English Club’s bazaar. Look at all that swag! Hot damn!

Thank you Maggie for all the donated candy. Thank you Terrina & James for all your country goods (Scotland and Canada each got their own special corners of the table)

Our courtyard was decorated all fancy with the class flags (made new each year. New paint spatters in the parking lot each year) and the school flag. This year’s theme is  ヒマラヤほどの城東祭　たのしいこと　たくさんしたい　(To the Himalayas! Joto Festival! I want to do lots of fun stuff!)

In the courtyard there was a stage where various bands played. They ranged from girls in yukata playing Jazz, kids dancing like crazy people, the requisite Blue Hearts covers, and my own favorite, a cute girl who sang cute songs in a cute voice but would occasionally roll on the ground and scream in a sort of death-metal way.

This is one of my favorite students, from the high level English class (third grade). She is leading me to her food stand, where I will buy delicious yakisoba (like lo-mein). The food stands are awesome because of the crazy names and themes students pick.

I also ate two kakigori and a fried-bread ice-cream (not pictured… it was not delicious. Sorry students! But there was too much fried-bread. I thought I was going to have a heart attack)

DID I MENTION, the students all design and wear these totally awesome t-shirts?!!?! They are so cool. Their homeroom teachers get one too, and I waaaaaaaaaaaant one so bad… but which class? I can’t really align myself with any one class. Not even the high level CE classes, because there are other classes that I genuinely LOVE (maybe a tiny bit more than CE but I never said that). This year I got the polo shirt that all the teachers can order. So that’s that.

In each classroom they students prepare… something. It can be a display, or an activity that you pay for, or a game or raffle or whatever. This year I tried my luck kicking a sandal at water bottles to win a prize. I was fail (and I accidentally hit the ceiling, the students, the wall, etc with my slipper. Oops).

There was a dress-up room, a fortune telling room (which didn’t make sense, because everyone was just sitting around playing Trump), chemistry club’s magic show, creature club (biology?) had animal anatomical models, a photo display, used clothes shop, and my personal favorite…

Alice’s Wonderland!!!

They made their class into a sort of fun-house that told the story of Alice in Wonderland.
Ok, it was a little bit budget.
OK, it was a lot budget.
But it was really cute and they had worked really hard.
Apparently at one point, they had a person inside the catepillar, making it wiggle on the floor and so on. I’m sorry I missed that.

Here is our shop at the end of the day: totally cleaned out. YEAH!

Pick & mix candy… started at 5 for 50 yen, then 10 for 50, then 20 for 50. Hahahahaha.

Two second year t-shirts. They belong to the second-year boys in English Club. How awesome are those shirts?!!?! The brown one is supposed to have stitching crossing the pink bit. The boys in that class wore wolf ears and tails, and the girls had red shirts with red (riding) hoods. How cute is that!?!

The running man on the blue shirt is an iconic image from Osaka. But his box head is all students.

La-de-da, what else.

Here is some student ikebana on display. They used a staple. Is that ok?!

OH
I bought these books from library club. On the left is stuff written and published by students. On the right is Romeo and Juliette, taking place in “Neo-Verona” with weird illustrations of Tybalt holding the reigns of a flying horse and magic swords and all sorts of crazy stuff.

Whaaaaaat.

The sky was lovely at the end of the day.

Poems like whoa

Trying to get my english club to write english haiku, their homeroom was practicing Hyakuninishu in the background. It’s a card game where you 100 famous old Japanese poems on cards, and the last 3 lines of each poem are written on another 100 cards. As the caller reads random poems, you have to slap the card with the right ending lines. The 1st grade students are having a giant contest next week, and they get really noisy slapping the cards and squealing.

I wrote this haiku in honor of a particularly noisy girl, and I’m pretty dang pleased with it.

hyakuninishu
bikkurishimashita
ano koe de

hyakuninishu
it surprised me
that voice

And that’s a Japanese poem, baby.

Good Times

Tonight I bought a cool shirt that says “FISH AND CHIP”, with a heart with the American flag in it. HA! It’s got long sleeves so it’s perfect for the weather. I wore it, and took some of the most hilarious purikura I’ve ever taken.

Purikura is short for Purinto Kurabu (Print Club). It’s a magical photobooth where you choose from a zillion different frames and styles, take about 8 photos, pick the best ones, and then step into another little booth to decorate them with doodles and stamps and backgrounds and all sorts of crazy things. Then you print them out and cut them up and stick them on things!!

Check out this crazy page for one girl’s example of her purikura.

If you ever visit me in Japan (I’m looking at YOU, family!) we will take purikura.

Purikura is super fun, and I don’t know why I don’t do it more often. OH WAIT YES I DO. It’s because I never think to, and when I do, I’m usually by myself. There is a kind of idea… that doing purikura by yourself, and having a picture album full of pictures of yourself alone is kind of a sad thing. Well yeah, but it’s also good to just take a photo by yourself… I get to take excellent series photos, and can make all the decisions about poses and decoration.

And then I get to keep all the photos, too (except for the ones I give away). I thought it would be funny recently to “attack” someone with purikura, and so I took a series by myself and then left them for this person to find (Ok, it’s my gentleman friend. HA! I love saying that). The first set I took was a little disjointed, but the ones I took tonight tell a funny story. I can’t wait to use them.

Now, I have a lot of funny ideas for purikura photo series. I need to get a stuffed dog for the next one, and write a little story line that can be done in 4-6 photos.

Hurr hurr hurr.

Let’s see. Today, I taught at Rogakko, and it was awesome. I did arts and crafts all day, with the 2-3 nensei in Jr. High (8th/9th graders), and the 5/6 nensei in elementary school. We made paper pumpkins and talked about Halloween and decorated a Christmas tree with Halloween cutouts. HAHA! I also had kids finish up their Halloween mobiles and paper maché pumpkins.

Lunch was a delicious piece of fish with skin on. At first it looked dry, but when you bit in, it was sweet and fishy and just the right amount of juicy. MMMMM. Couple that with a bowl of rice, miso soup, and a carton of milk, and you have a perfect lunch. WAY TO GO, JAPAN.

Seriously, I love the food here so much. I can’t believe the things I eat, but it’s soooo good.

The rest of the day I spent studying and preparing for classes. Tomorrow and Thursday, I have no class because of exams. Study party! If I was really smart, I’d take a day off and clean or go get my re-entry permit, or do something productive. But actually, I think that I have a day off coming up soon… a substitute holiday for a weekend I’ll be “working” (going to the school festival. Heck yeah!).

My English club is having a Halloween party on Friday, and on Friday night, I’m heading out west. Saturday morning, we’ll drive even more west, rent bikes, and bike for something like 70 kilometers across the bridge/island system that gets you from Shikoku to Hiroshima prefecture. Oh my yes. They say it’s a 4-7 hour trip one way. I’m super excited, despite having no “serious” bike experience.

I mean, I ride a mamachari. It only has one gear. A mamachari is a “Mama Chariot”, the bike with the big honkin’ basket in the front, and the really 1950′s design. It is the bicycle version of a people carrier, because you can put at least 2 kid seats on it, or put your friend on the back shelf bit (if you are lucky enough to have a shelf on the back). I feel like I should be wearing penny loafers and a pleated skirt when I ride mine. OH WAIT. That is what all students wear every day (and they ride mamacharis). Yup, pretty perfect, Japan.

That’s my days lately. And now, to the store to get potatoes for potato soup!!!

Tuesday

Today at Rogakko, I taught the students the story of Dreamcatchers, and we did arts and crafts. Later, we had a Ballet workshop with the entire school.

Lieutenant, please file today under “Super Special Awesome”.

Other great stuff:

I climbed the Bizan in the dark, and was not eaten by wild dogs.

I learned how to play a song from “The Little Mermaid” on the ukulele.

The weekly home-cooked meals and ladies-only movie nights have begun again at the Shogakko Queen’s house. Viva! The Queen, the Fashionista, the Kiwi, and myself gather for delightful evenings. Ho har har.

Daniel Radcliffe is apparently going to star as Dan Eldon in the movie about Dan Eldon’s life.

The Wizard of New Zealand has a great wikipedia page.

I get enough sleep every night despite crazy dreams, because I am not up till all hours of the night worrying about things.

In a sudden burst of creativity, I started scrapbooking and making collages again (see: Dan Eldon).

The new JETs came, I realized how much more capable I’ve become as a person, and, aspiring after the archetypal French Girl, to realize that I can only improve and grow.

In other words, it can only get more fabulous!

In other news…

So the more I read about the things happening in Iran, the more it was seeming that as a number of countries (read: the US) have some interest in the situation, their fingers were perhaps pulling the strings behind the spontaneous outbreak of a color revolution.

At first, that made me feel crabby, because a revolution of the common folk is again chalked up to sticky fingers manipulating the populous and in turn, the bloggers who have been (therefore) mindlessly spreading the information about the Iranian people. It cheapens honest people’s efforts to get the word out about something they believe in.

Then I thought about it a bit more. A comment from someone here in Tokushima was that “is there any country that could have a revolution now a days that you would not [speculate] was the US covertly overthrowing the government?”

And here it is. I don’t know what’s really going on behind the scenes, as it were. While I think it’s important to know what governments are up to, what we’re forgetting here is that while we marvel or speculate over how and what has happened in terms of turning this revolution into a more global cause across the internet, people die on the ground. Who cares who the players are when the pawns die for them? I don’t need to hear one more conspiracy theory that removes focus from the fact that someone somewhere is standing up for something.

Maybe it’s a masterful work of international politics. Maybe the people are manipulated into wanting what the player wants. Does that invalidate their wants as a people? When we forget about them as a people and see them merely as means to an end, then yes, it does.

And on a different note (because Iran really is difficult to put into good words) today is Tuesday, and I love Tuesday. Tuesday is the day I go to Rogakko. Rogakko is a always a day of small classes, lunch with students, and enjoyable class activities.

Today for example, we used kid’s doctor toys to act out conversations in a hospital (Senior High School 3rd grade). Then (SHS 2nd grade) we played a game about taking a bath that I had drawn up the night before (using my phone bill as a straight edge: take THAT, fiscal responsibility!) Later, (SHS 2nd grade, Academic course) we did one-on-one reading and past participle work. Lunch was curry rice.

I love Tuesdays!

Lastly, a cool thing that happened today was when I sat down to study Japanese. I recently bought two new study books, geared towards Grammar and Reading, and Vocabulary and Kanji for the JLPT Level 3 (which I’ll take in December). And lo, it all just clicked today in my Grammar book.

I really enjoy these particular books because they give you kanji within the readings and examples, but only give you the furigana (telling you how to read each kanji) the first couple of times. After that, you’re expected to remember what you’ve read. So I’m working harder. I’m remember more, because I’m expected too.
The other thing is, the examples and general explanations are all in Japanese. All that my workbook says for a grammar point is “While …ing”, to tell you what the point means.

It’s all because of my reading intensive Japanese lessons, and because I started playing attention to when my JTE would explain English grammar points in Japanese.

That’s about all I have for today. It rained the most amazing ocean-storm style rain last night, and I’d like to go outside today before it rains again.

The English Ninja Strikes Again!

Currently Rocking the Heck Out To: Gavin DeGraw
Current Activity: Cleaning up after houseguests/1 am apple fritters/midnight hilarity

Yesterday I was correcting papers, and I saw this sentence:

“I think “mottainai” is down charbache important”.

I looked at it. My JTE looked at it. We scratched our heads. I wrote a question mark (What the heck are you trying to say, kid?) and was putting it in the corrected pile when I stopped, and with a mighty slash of my pen, changed it to say the following:

“I think “mottainai” is important for reducing garbage”.

HA. YOU CANNOT FOOL THE ENGLISH NINJA!

It’s a sign you’re getting good at this when you can take completely incomprehensible made-up stuff, and figure out what the writer was trying to say.

Editor’s Note: “mottainai” is a sort of catch-phrase used by the Eco Friendly movement, which basically means “What a waste” or “It’s wasteful (to do whatever)”. Used in a sentence, “I think using a plastic bag instead of a My Bag is mottainai”. Or “All you did on your day off was sleep? Mottainai”.

Weeds

This post is dedicated to my Dad, who gave me the appreciation for gardening.

No, I didn’t garden today. But I did go outside and attack the sports field with a hoe for 40 minutes with the rest of the school.

Saturday is our undokai at Deaf School, our sports festival. For preparation, we have to remove all the grass and debris from the gravel track and field at the school. So after school, all the teachers and students raided the shack in the corner of the school garden. We got buckets of trowels, small scrapers, and weirdly enough, tiny scythes. I got a hoe with a long handle, and we all went at it.

My hands remember holding the handles of rakes, hoes, shovels, and scrapers. Can’t say I remember such an attack on grass before. I certainly can say that I was responsible for a great deal of it though. Come on, students. I was your age recently. I know what it looks like when people are goofing off instead of weeding, but are trying to make it look like they are weeding.

I got sunburn and a monstrous back ache.

Rather that than sitting at my desk all afternoon.

Subconscious

I woke up today, Sunday, glorious Sunday, at 6 am. As I went to sleep (glorious sleep) at 1 am, I think to myself that maybe I ought to just stay in bed for a bit more. And so I do, laying there, idly turning over some thoughts that had visited me in my dreams.

In particular, I try to answer a question posed to me by a dream character. She was rather insistent that something be explained to her, so I try and form a nice answer to her question.

In one of my favorite books, “Carter Beats the Devil”, the main character dreams up an illusion that launches his career in magic.

This morning, I dreamed up a worksheet activity practicing “Which person” and “Who”. My god. I cannot escape this job sometimes.

(But I did jump out of bed and write down the worksheet design and instructions in a notebook. It’s a pretty good worksheet).

Oh, subconscious brain. What the heck is up with you?