Merry Christmas!

This will be a short post, but I don't want to have too much stuff to talk about when I come back from my trip! I updated during the day on Monday, but I had a great night! I went to my 忘年会 (bonenkai, end of the year party) with Shinozaki. We went to a very fancy restaurant that was meant for weddings. The two youngest teachers in charge of the party came in down the stairs as if they were getting married, it was really funny! Also, the principal came about half an hour late and they made him come in with the youngest teacher down the stairs again. He walked her over to her seat and pulled it out for her before going to his table. It was great fun! I sat with the first year English teacher and the special education teacher. They're both really nice! The food was delicious and we played a 'Quiz Millionaire' game. They asked questions and we had cards that read A, B, C, and D. We had to hold up the right answer for each question. Our team didn't do so well, but we all got prizes! After dinner we went back to Kokura for 二次会 (nijikai, second party). I met Mike and he came with us, too! All the teachers were really excited to meet him and we all had a great time!

Tuesday was a national holiday, so Mike and I met Megan, Leah, and a friend of Leah's to see Interstellar at Cha Cha Town. We all liked it and afterwards we got lunch at a sushi place. Megan had a bit more Christmas shopping to do, so we headed over to Riverwalk. We ended up going to the temple near-by and on our way we saw a huge line of people by Riverwalk. We asked what was going on and found out there was a gospel concert starting at 5:00. It was 4:30, so we decided to grab a coffee and wait for the concert. It was about an hour long and really cool! There were about 100 people singing and the soloists were amazing! They had special lights, streamers, and even giant balloons that popped and let down a bunch of smaller, heart-shaped balloons. After the concert Megan and Leah's friend had to go home, but another friend of ours, Satoshi, came. We went to Konya-machi for dinner. We meet Kikumi and Shinki at a restaurant called 赤ちょうちゃん (Akachouchan). It had opened a few days before and Kikumi and Shinki hadn't been around to celebrate with the owners. We had the restaurant all to ourselves and it was delicious! I will definitely be going back! We went to meet Caol after dinner and had a few drinks at a Korean bar before heading home.

Wednesday I had my school's closing ceremony. There was no school lunch, so I went to sushi with the same teacher's I had sat with at the bonenkai. It was really nice seeing them outside of school (or a school event)! I left after lunch, but not before Mr. Kawai gave me a present. He even got a present for Mike. I'm not sure of the official name for them, but they're decorated Japanese badminton rackets. It was really nice of him to get them for us, I'm so happy!

Last night was Christmas Eve, so I went out to dinner with Marc, Tanya, Dan, Younglim, Juha, and Kyoko. We went to an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink Korean BBQ restaurant. It's a restaurant I really like and everyone else liked it as well! We had a great dinner and then went out to a sake bar where we met Leah, Satoshi, Patrick, and Caol. We didn't stay out too late, but we had a lot of fun! It was a great night!

Today for Christmas we're having a small potluck as my apartment. My friend Jake is coming over early to play some games before dinner. It will be a small gathering, but it should be a very cozy Christmas. Mike and I will Skype with my family tomorrow morning before heading off to Nagoya! We're so excited to go on our trip! We're all packed and everything. So merry Christmas everyone! I'll update again after my trip!

Mike's Here!

Merry almost Christmas!! I'm just three days away right now and even though I have to work on both the 24th and 25th I'm very excited for the holidays! Tomorrow is the last night of Hanukkah and it's also the emperor's birthday, so it's a national holiday for me. I'll celebrate by going to Interstellar with some friends, have a 回転寿司 (kaiten zushi, conveyor belt sushi) lunch, and have a Marvel movie marathon and do puzzles and play games at my place for the afternoon. We might also meet Kikumi for dinner, but she might have to work. I hope we can see her!

Last week at school went pretty quickly, it was mostly Christmas lessons and review games. All the classes made Christmas tree ornaments. They wrote an English Christmas or holiday message on side and drew pictures on the other side. There are only seven classes in Ishimine, so I made a paper Christmas tree for each class and they decorated their classes tree as they finished their ornaments. It was a lot of fun and the students really enjoyed it. We listened to English Christmas music and the students really liked checking out their tree after everyone finished and even looked over all the other classes trees.

On Friday I went out with Patrick to an 居酒屋 (izakaya, Japanese style casual food and drink restaurant). We didn't stay out late because we were both tired from the week, but it was really nice to have a little celebration of the last full work week of 2014.

Saturday I spent cleaning in preparation for Mike. I also got a beautiful Hanukkah/Christmas present from my aunt Debby and uncle Howard and cousins Molly and David. A home-made bag decorated with orange koi fish. I'm sure there will be pictures of it out and about in Japan in upcoming posts, so be on the lookout for that! Saturday night I took the shinkansen into Fukuoka for dinner before heading to the airport to grab Mike! His plane came in an hour late and we had a bit of a dash back to the train station. I had already bought shinkansen tickets to get us home quickly, but the last shinkansen leaves at 11:28 on Saturdays. With the delay, Mike came out of the baggage claim around 11:10. We caught the subway back to the main station in Hakata and got to the shinkasen just in time!

On Sunday Mike and I made royal icing with the ingredients my mom sent with Mike to me. I also had a ton of gingerbread cookies from my mom and I spent the morning decorating cookies. We finished just as my friends started arriving and we played board games well into the evening. Jake brought chocolate turtles his mom had sent him and we snacks on those and the more accident-prone gingerbread men that had arrived a bit beaten up. Eventually we decided to get some real food and went to てつ鍋　(Tetsunabe) in Kokura station for some delicious gyoza, 豚キムチ (buta kimuchi, pork kimchi), and 焼うどん (yaki udon, friend udon noodles). It was really nice and my friend had to catch the train home anyway, so being at the train station was great! It was a nice day.

Now I'm at school, but four out of six classes were canceled due to too many students having the flu. Tonight is my 忘年会 (bounenkai, end of the year party) with Shinozaki and I'm really excited! We're going out with our friend Marc, Tanya, Juha, and Kyoko for Christmas Eve and we'll have a potluck dinner on Christmas. The day after Christmas we will spend five days in Nagoya and be back in Kitakyushu for New Years. I'm not sure when the next update will be, since I will be in Nagoya next Monday when I normally update. I will try to update by the 30th, but I'm not sure! I will definetly have something up by the first week of the new year. Happy holidays everyone!

Getting in the Christmas Spirit

Only 10 days until Christmas and tomorrow is the first night of Hanukkah! I've been listening to Christmas music and really getting into the holiday spirit! Last Wednesday I sent off over 300 Christmas cards, made by my Shinozaki students, to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and picked up my shinkansen tickets for my trip to Nagoya! I also signed up for an information session about what to do after JET. There will be over sixty international companies looking to hire ex-JETs when our contacts end. Many of the companies, although international, will be hiring for people who want to stay in Japan, so I may not find anything for back home, but it's still a great opportunity and I won't know if I don't try! The conference is for two days in Chiba prefectures (near Tokyo). I'm really excited for this opportunity (and to spend some more time in Tokyo on a work trip)!

Last week I also started doing Christmas lessons at Ishimine. This is the last full week of school, next week there are only classes on Monday, so I'm getting to do Christmas activities with the classes now. I'm showing them a short presentation about how people celebrate Christmas in America and we're making Christmas ornaments to decorate paper trees displayed in the hallway. So far the students have enjoyed the lesson, but only one class has done it so far.

All last week I was helping the chorus club prepare for an upcoming concert, but on Tuesday we ended up helping out the chorus teacher. The next day in school was going to be a lesson on playing the 箏 (koto), a traditional Japanese string instrument. The koto's had to be set up and tuned before class, so the chorus club and I helped set them up. I learned out to tune the instrument and the students even taught me to play a short song. It was a lot of fun and one of the many reasons I always stay after school to participate in the club activities.

In preparation for all the craziness during the holidays, I took last Friday to myself. After school I biked over to Cha Cha Town and had a nice dinner. I played some games in the arcade and even won a little prize. Gone Girl came out here on Thursday, so I went to the movie theater to see that and really liked it. In fact, I'm going to see it again tonight with some of my friends who wanted to see it, but couldn't come on Friday. It was a very quite night for me, but I had a great time!

Saturday I went to a Christmas party with some other JETs! My friend Caol booked Habit, a really popular burger restaurant, for a party and ten JETs came for dinner. We had a secret Santa as well. My secret Santa was Nate. I got him two little bottles of foreign liquor and a small box of chocolates. As it turned out, he was my secret Santa, too! I got four bottles of beer all from different countries and none of them Japanese. It was a great present! After exchanging gifts we all stuffed ourselves, Habit makes huge burgers! Megan and I had brought little tarts for dessert and passed them out to everyone. After dinner we went to karaoke and sang lots of Christmas songs. It was a great night!

On Sunday I got up early to head to Wakamatsu. Ishimine's chorus club was performing in a brass concert. The concert was fantastic! It started in the early afternoon and the first half was the Kitakyushu Philharmonics playing with the Wakamatsu brass band. They were playing only songs that had been suggested previously. Their songs ranged incredibly going from a disco Christmas medley to songs from the American Godzilla movie soundtrack (complete with Godzilla roaring over the speakers) to Arabian music. Everything was played fantastically and I loved it all! The second half of the concert was the choirs. The chorus clubs from Ishimine, Futajima, and Takao junior high schools and Wakamatsu high school all sang together. They opened with Joyful Joyful from Sister Act II and many of Ishimine students had solos. I worked with them all last week on their English pronunciation and their singing in general and they all did amazingly! Some of the Futajima students had solos as well and also did great! They sang a total of five songs, two with an orchestra accompaniment. Of course they sang ありのままで (Ari No Mama De, The Japanese version of Let It Go). They finished with Carmina Burana selections which was really well done. There was an encore as well and sang a really high tempo pop song before the orchestra finished with a very up-beat version of When the Saint's Go Marching In. The students stood on the second floor above the exit to the building and sang Silent Night in Japanese as people were leaving. I stayed to see all my students at the end. It was also really nice to see the students and a few teachers from Futajima there as well. I gave my Ishimine students little candy canes as congratulations before heading home.

It is a long bus ride back to Kokura and the bus wasn't coming for about twenty minutes. I was really lucky, though, and while I was sitting at the bus stop I heard someone call my name. Mr. Teshima, the chorus teacher, saw me while he was driving by and offered me a ride back to my apartment. I was very grateful! It was nice to talk to him and get to know him a bit more outside of school.

Last week was great and this week is shaping up to be even better. I have Christmas lessons and games in class all week and Mike will get into Fukuoka airport on Saturday! I'm so excited!!!!

Another Short Post

This will be another short post. My week was very fun, but pretty uneventful. I had many Christmas classes at Shinozaki and will be sending the cards to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital on Wednesday. Other ALTs are using my Christmas card activity in class, I'm glad I can make something everyone likes! On Friday we had an assembly for the last two periods of the day. It was a concert that included many styles of music in different instruments from pan flute to piano to taiko. Many of the songs that had words were also done in Japanese Sign Language and the group included many people with mental handicaps. All the music was great and I think the students really enjoyed it!

After school on Friday Megan came over for dinner. We watched some movies before bed and the next morning we went to Hakata for some Christmas shopping. I got a few things from the Pokemon Center and a gift for my secret Santa. She got a lot of stuff, much more than me, and we had a really delicious lunch before heading back to Kokura. In Kokura we went to Aru Aru City, an anime mall behind the train station. There was a pop culture festival going on and we saw a lot of people dressed up in costumes! We played some games at the arcade there and I got a few books. That night I had dinner with Patrick and met up with Canadian Dave and Chris. We went to the Turkish restaurant before heading to a sports bar to watch the Newcastle v. Chelsea game. Patrick and Dave were pretty bummed about Chelsea losing, but Chris and I just enjoyed hanging out. I also played darts for the first time at the bar. I got one bulls-eye, but Chris still beat me.

Sunday was very relaxing. I slept in late and then went over to Marc's apartment. He just got a Wii U and the new Smash Bros. game, so Caol, Megan, and I all went over to play. We spent the day gaming and watching TV. It was a lot of fun! This weekend I'm thinking of going to see a movie on Friday (Gone Girl comes out then and I want to see it). Saturday I have a secret Santa party, and Sunday I will clean everything so it's ready for when Mike gets here the following weekend. Probably another week of not-so-much excitement, but soon I'll have lots of trips and fun things to talk about!

Thanksgiving!

Happy first day of December! These months have been going by so fast! Last week was pretty exciting and thankfully my weekend was very relaxing to make up for it. The beginning of the week was spent getting ready for Thanksgiving. I cleaned my apartment and even cleaned my closets (which they really needed after all my shopping two weeks ago). I was preparing the food for Thursday and making sure everyone else knew what they could bring to help. It was a lot of hard work, especially in my little kitchen with a borrowed oven, but it was well worth it!

On Thursday I was running around crazy making sure everything was ready. It was a beautiful day and I was very anxious to leave school to finish preparing. I got to work right away finished up my cleaning. I had just started cooking the vegetables and sausage for the stuffing when Patrick showed up with a bottle of wine and helped me finish the preparations. My friend Dave had cooked the turkey for me the previous day (my borrowed oven was too small to fit it) and I had picked it up the day before. So when all was said and done I had made cranberry sauce, apple cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing, and green beans with almonds. Leah brought a salad and Caol brought mashed potatoes. I heated up the turkey that Dave had cooked and got pumpkin pie and ice cream for dessert. It was a great meal! Thirteen people ended up coming over for dinner around 7:00. That meant that there were fourteen people in my tiny apartment including me. Thankfully it was less of a squeeze than I had originally thought it would be and I'm just so happy I invested in a small table and two chairs for my balcony. Everyone had a great time and it was even better than last year! The last few people left around 11:00 and a huge thank you to Bec who did many of the dishes before leaving. I do miss my family around the holidays, but it was an amazing Thanksgiving with the people in Japan who have become a second family to me.

In true American fashion, the day after Thanksgiving I was doing Christmas things. My classes at Shinozaki are making Christmas cards that we will send to the children at St. Jude Children's Hospital. We have to start early so that the students have time to work and there is time for the cards to get back to America. I did this activity last year with Futajima and they liked it so much they are doing it again with Juha, their ALT this year. The students are really enjoying it and there have been some great cards made already!

As fun as it was making Christmas cards with the students, I was glad when the school day was over. I was still tired from Thursday. I had a quite night of eating leftovers and Patrick came over to watch a movie. We saw Edge of Tomorrow and although neither of us knew much about it before hand, we both really enjoyed it. Saturday again was quite. I stayed home most of the day and we out to meet Marc, Tanya, and their friend Dan for dinner. We ended up getting 食べ放題 (tabehoudai, all you can eat) 焼肉 (yakiniku, grilled meats). It was really nice to see them and I got some errands done. Sunday I stayed in all day. I was going to meet Megan and go into Fukuoka, but she was feeling a little sick and the weather was terrible. It's been a great week!

熊本

I had a great week! Well, a great weekend anyway. I talked about SDC last post and the rest of my work week was pretty boring. The students had tests all day, so there were no classes for me to help in. Friday I went with my teachers to 若松中学校 (Wakamatsu Chugako, Wakamatsu Junior High School) in the afternoon. All the Junior High School English teachers and ALTs in the Wakamatsu and Tobata wards came to observe the lesson along with many people from the Board of Education. Everyone gathered in the library after and discussed what we liked about the lesson and what we'd change. The ALTs left a bit earlier than the Japanese teachers, but it was a good discussion. I didn't do much with the rest of my Friday, but it was nice to relax.

Saturday we had a small game day in Kitakyushu. I cleaned my apartment in the morning and Dan and Juha came over around noon. Marc joined us soon after and we played some new games Juha had gotten in Tokyo. Tanya and Megan came over in the evening and we had a great time playing games with the five of us! Once it got late everyone but Megan left. Megan and I stayed up a bit later drinking tea, talking, and watching movies before finally going to bed. We went to bed earlier than last week because we knew we had to get up early the next day.

Sunday Megan and I woke up at 8:30 to have some breakfast and meet Marc and Tanya at Kokura Station at 10:00. We met up right outside the monorail gate and went to get our round trip shinkansen tickets to Kumamoto! We grabbed some more breakfast snacks the hour long ride before catching a 10:26 train. We drank our coffee and before we knew it we were getting off at Kumamoto Station!

None of us had been to Kumamoto before, but thankfully a very nice woman working at the station gave me some maps and directions about where to go and how to get there. We started by catching a cable car to the city center and stopped at Starbucks to have a coffee and plan out our day. We walked over the the castle and it was amazing! The grounds were huge! The people working at the castle telling people where to go were all dress up as ninjas and there must have been an event going on because there were at least fifty people cosplaying characters from different anime. They all looked professional and many had professional photographers with them. It was so much fun to watch! I even got pictures with Rurouni Kenshin, Naruto, and Sasuke! It was really amazing and fun to see them all walking around, we couldn't have picked a better day to visit! We walked the entire grounds of the castle before going inside. Inside the castle was a museum of the castle's history. There were diagrams, models, and items from different eras. We even went up to the top for a beautiful view of the castle grounds and Kumamoto city! We did a bit of おみやげ (omiyage, souvenir) shopping before leaving the grounds.

We'd been walking for a while, so we found a park close by and stopped there for about half an hour. The weather was beautiful and resting it the shade was nice. When we felt a bit rested we started off again in search of the science museum. It was only about fifteen minutes away, but it turned out to be closed. Thankfully, right across the way was a tea house and garden for us to explore. The garden was full of Japanese maple trees that had just finished turning beautiful shades of red, orange, and yellow. We wandered around the garden until the sun started to show signs of setting. We found a way to the shopping area of the city near where we had started the day and walked back. It took about half an hour and we were very hungry by the time we made it. (It only dawned on us then that we'd been so busy walking through the castle we'd skipped lunch.) We found a nice しゃぶしゃぶ (shyabu shyabu) restaurant and before long we'd stuffed ourselves. We shopped around for about an hour before heading back to the cable car to go back to the station. Marc, Tanya, and Megan bought some last minute souvenirs from the station before we got back on the shinkansen and headed for home. We parted ways once we got back to Kokura and I feel asleep right after getting home. It was an amazing trip and I can't believe we had so much fun in just one day!

Monday I enjoyed sleeping in. I hadn't done much shopping in Kumamoto, but needed some new winter clothes. Megan and I had talked the day before and we decided to meet up at the Gap to finish up the shopping we had left. Gap was having a lucky coupon sale and I ended up getting the highest coupon available, 50% off everything! I didn't find any jackets I liked, but I got two nice scarves, some basic sweaters for work, and some nice warm socks. We went to Aru Aru City next for some anime shopping and I got three Japanese books before heading over to Cha Cha Town where I found a great jacket! Megan also found a great jacket, which completed our shopping! Cha Cha Town was packed because the character Jibanyan from the games/TV show Yokai Watch was performing on stage. We decided to get lunch before the show finished and I'm glad we did! The restaurant filled up very quickly fifteen minutes after we sat down. We had a great lunch at a 回転寿司 (kaiten zushi, conveyor belt sushi) place. We both went home after lunch and I did a lot of cleaned before Kikumi came over. We went to Costco together for me to get some final things for Thanksgiving.

Now I'm just getting everything ready for Thanksgiving. A lot of people are coming over on Thursday and I'm so excited, even if now I'm running around crazy making sure everything is ready.

Illuminations and SDC

Sorry! I know I'm a few days late with this. I stayed two nights in Fukuoka and didn't bring my computer with me, so I couldn't update until now. Last week was, again, not too exciting. The school days were pretty normal and I didn't do much but relax in the evenings. I did have a nice surprise on my way home Friday after school. I caught the earlier bus home (club activities these two weeks are canceled for students to focus on studying for tests) and got to Kokura station just in time to see something going on by the Christmas tree they had set up earlier that day. There were a few people crowded around, so I decided to check it out. It turned out a small orchestra of about ten people were setting up. They started playing just as I reached them. They played only a few songs before packing up and leaving. It was a really nice end to the week and I was very lucky to arrive just in time to hear them!

Saturday was also a great day. I went out to lunch with Marc, Caol, Megan, and Katsuya. After lunch we went shopping for some warmer clothes since it's gotten a bit colder here and Megan and Marc both didn't bring many warm clothes. We ended up spending almost five hours having lunch and shopping, so Caol and Katsuya had to leave to meet some more friends for dinner. Megan and I had originally planned to watch movies all night, but Marc was still waiting for his wife Tanya to get out of work. Tanya also needed to do some shopping, so Marc was staying out at Riverwalk. We stayed with him until Tanya showed up and got some ice cream and coffee and even planned a trip! I'll go with Megan, Marc, and Tanya on a day trip to Kumamoto next Sunday!

Megan and I went back to my place for dinner and walked through the Riverwalk illuminations (thousands and thousands of Christmas lights) on the way. It was my first time seeing them this year and Megan's first time ever seeing them! After dinner we ended up going back out for a few drinks with Caol and Leah before finally settling back at my place to drink hot chocolate and watch our movies. It was a great day!

On Sunday I met Juha at 大手町 (Otemachi) to catch a bus to Fukuoka. Our bus took us right to Tenjin, where we met our friend Jake. It was only about 1:00, so we found a place for lunch. We ended up at a really small Spanish cafe and their lunch was excellent! We were waiting for a parade to start but we still had a bit of time, so we went to a Finnish coffee chain called Robert's Coffee. Juha was very happy to go, but I think it made him a little homesick. After our coffee and little desserts, we headed back to Tenjin station to catch the parade! It was the first (hopefully annual) pride parade in Fukuoka city! It was very small, they only walked in one lane of the road on one side, but it was fun! There were lots of people dressed up and music was being played, everything from Taylor Swift's Shake it Off to the 妖怪ワォッチ (Youkai Watch) theme song. It was short, but very fun!

After seeing the parade, we went to Yellow Submarine, a big gaming shop. Jake got some more games and dice. He had a punch card and ended up getting ￥2000 off another purchase only usable that day, so he got God's Gambit, a card game he really likes. He already had a copy, so Juha and I played rock, paper, scissors for it. I won and got the game! I'm really excited, it's a lot of fun! Right now it's only in Japanese, but a Kickstarter was funded to make an English version. It's already fully funded and I'm not trying to promote it, but I'll link to it here because it's the best description of them game right now in English. After the game store, we all went back to Jake's to play games. Our friend Greg joined us as well. Juha and I stayed the night at Jake's because in the morning we had a conference in Fukuoka. Jake lives much closer to the conference than Juha and I, so we stayed there and saved about an hour each way on the commute.

Monday and Tuesday every JET in Fukuoka province and many Japanese Teachers of English attended the Skills and Development Conference (SDC). Over two days there were two keynote speeches and five workshops. Although a lot of it was review for and other already certified teachers, I did learn some things I'm excited to implement in my schools. One teacher, Ms. Hori, from Ishimine also attended on Monday and we had all the same workshops. It was really great getting to attend with her and talking about how we can bring some of the things we learned into Ishimine. Last year none of my teachers came to SDC, so it was really nice to have her there and it made me very excited for my next few weeks at Ishimine!

None of my teachers attended on Tuesday, but Ms. Sugiyama, a teacher I taught with last year from Futajima, came. It was great seeing her again! She even gave me, Juha, and Dave a ride back to Kitakyushu. We talked the full ride home and even made plans to go to Beppu together again when Mike is here. Last December she drove my family down to Beppu for the day and last time Mike visited she drove us to some museums. Since I don't teach with her much anymore, I haven't gotten the chance to see her much, I'm really excited!

Now I'm back at school. There are tests for these three days and no classes, so I am just catching up on work. On Friday I'll go to 若松中学 (Wakamatsu Chugakou, Wakamatsu Junior High School) to observe a lesson in the afternoon. Juha and Ms. Sugiyama will be there, too. I'm excited to be on the other side of an observation lesson and I'm really looking forward to it! Saturday will be more board games with Juha, Dan, and maybe Megan and Marc. I'll also hopefully get a little shopping done, too! Sunday I'll meet Megan, Marc, and Tanya and we'll all take the Shinkansen down to Kumamoto for the day. Monday is a public holiday, so I'm going with Kikumi to Costco to do some shopping for Thanksgiving and the rest of that week will be devoted to getting everything ready for Thanksgiving. I might update a day late next week because of the holiday. Sorry again for the lateness of this post! I'm getting very excited for Thanksgiving and everything else I have coming up!

Nothing Much

Sorry, this will be a very short post. I only updated last Wednesday and not much has happened since then. I had a short, but very nice week at school (only three days because of how my holidays worked out). Friday I sang with Kikumi's band again and it was a lot of fun. We played with some other bands from Tokyo, although not the same ones as last month. I didn't stay out too late, though. Saturday I mostly lounged around and cleaned. My friend Megan came over in the afternoon and we watched movies and ordered pizza. She even made warm apple cider from scratch. It was a a great way to spend a rainy Saturday. Sunday I did some errands before visiting Kikumi for a few hours, but mostly just laid low.

I'll probably be laying low for the next few weeks. Illuminations (tons of Christmas lights) were put up on Friday, so hopefully I'll go see those soon, but I'm saving money for my upcoming trips. Next week I'll be staying in Fukuoka for a two day conference. The conference was a bit boring last year, but I can stay in Fukuoka with my friend Jake. Dan and Juha will probably stay with Jake as well and we play board games at night. I'll also be hosting Thanksgiving again this year. I even special ordered a turkey I can introduce my Japanese friends to real Thanksgiving food. The last weekend in November I will go on a weekend trip with my gaming friends, we rented a cabin and I'm really excited for that. Mostly, though, I'm looking forward to December when Mike comes to visit and I have trips to both Nagoya and Hokkaido!

Halloween, Culture Festival, and the Zoo

Sorry this post is two days late! I've been doing a lot and my days always get thrown off when I have a weird work schedule (I had school on Saturday, but Monday and Tuesday off). I have a lot to tell you about this week! First Halloween night, then my schools culture festival, and finally going to the zoo with a private English school.

Last week was pretty uneventful during the school days. The classes were cut short for the students to prepare for their culture festival. On Friday the students only had two classes and the whole day was spent setting up the gym for everyone and getting the final touches ready for the culture festival the next day. Some teachers and students stayed at school until 10:00 at night running plays! I stayed a little overtime to help the students, but went home around 5:00. Friday was also Halloween and I promised Kikumi I'd help her out with a Halloween party at her bar, Orange Door. I opened with another girl around 9:00 and Kikumi came a little after 10:00. A bunch of my friends came all in costumes and we had so much fun! I didn't stay all night since I had to be at Shinozaki at 8:30 the next morning, but I had a lot of fun while I was there! Kikumi ran a deal for free karaoke with drinks, so the bar was full of costumes and singing. It was a great Halloween!

The next day I got to Shinozaki bright and early to help direct parents to the gym for 文化祭 (bunkasai, culture festival). Last year I went to Futajima for their culture festival, so I was really excited to come to Shinozaki this year and I had a great time! In the morning the festival opened with a play by the student school council about a statue that comes alive to help people. After the play our principal and a few students gave some speeches before the third year students' mosaics were revealed hanging throughout the gym. The students had taken pieces of paper and covered them in colored squares. Then when you put all the students' papers together, they formed a huge picture! It was so cool to see them finally finished and hanging up. They made pictures of Ghibli movies, One Piece scenes, a huge one of Nara to commemorate their school trip, and even one of the principal! After revealing the mosaics, it was time for singing. All the students had participated in a chorus contest and the top two classes from each grade sang their songs before each grade as a whole sang together. It took about an hour and a half, but the students did a great job! After everyone finished singing, my students from speech contest all gave their speeches memorized in English. Behind them was a projection of the English and Japanese translation for people to follow along. All the students did great and they even said thank you all together to me and another teacher Ms. Usui at the end for staying with them after school practicing for the weeks before the speech contest. I was so proud of them! The morning ended off with a play from the drama club.

After lunch we gathered back in the gym for the second half of the culture festival. It opened with a presentation from the second year students about their work field trip to Oita to work on farms for a few days as work experience. I hadn't heard much about it before and it was really nice to see all their pictures and hear about what they did. Second, the recorder club performed a few songs. I was very surprised when the last song they played was Stars and Strips Forever! I didn't think people played that outside of America. I asked around, though, and none of the teachers knew the song or knew it was American! I a lot of the students I'm close with are in the recorder club, so I loved seeing them so happy and performing! My favorite part came next, a talent show. All the third year students got to take part and do anything they wanted. There were a lot of dances, a beat boxer, some break dancing, and even some pretty intense yo-yo tricks! The students had a blast and it was so much fun to see them really in their element. They ended with an a cappella song and shooting streamers at the other students at the end. Everyone was so happy and it was so much fun! We ended the second half of the day with the teachers song, 負けないで (Makenaide, Never Give Up). All the teachers and I sang the song for the students before the final speeches of the day. I had so much fun at culture festival!

That night the teachers had an 宴会 (enkai, work party) in Kokura. We went to a しゃぶしゃぶ (shyabu shyabu) restaurant. The food was delicious and it was 食べ放題 (tabehoudai, all you can eat)! I might have eaten way too much, but it was so good! After dinner we went to 二次会 (nijikai, second party) at karaoke. We had more snacks there (although I don't know how people were still eating, I was stuffed!) and sang a bunch of songs we'd heard throughout the day at culture festival as well as some new ones. I'm not sure why, but was sang a lot of anime theme songs including songs from Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Evangelion, and Yokai Watch. It was a lot of fun, but after nijikai I went home. It was an exhausting few days between Halloween and culture festival.

The next day I relaxed mostly. Jake and Juha came over around noon and we played board games for most of the day. It was nice to do something not so active and we played until about 9:30 PM. It was just the three of us, but we managed to play probably around six or seven different games and even a new game I'd never played before.

Monday was a national Holiday, so no school's were in session. A private English school in the area that I'd worked with once before took advantage of the day off to take a field trip to 到津の森公園 (Itozu no Mori Zoo). They had previously contacted me and asked if I could get three other people to come so they would have four ALTs at the trip. I went with Patrick, Leah, and Caol. The zoo is about a 15-20 minute bus ride from me, so we all met at the bus stop and went together. We met the teachers at the zoo and went over the plan. The smaller children (ages 3-6) would come in the morning. There was a picnic area the school had rented a space in and we would meet them and play some games there. After that we split into four groups (one ALT per group) to do around the zoo and answer easy English questions about the animals. (i.e. How old is the giraffe? What's the elephants name? What colors are the birds?) After an hour of seeing the animals we'd meet back up at the picnic area for lunch. The students could go home and we had lunch for an hour (bentos provided by the English school) and then had free time for an hour. We spend our free time looking at the other animals, riding a mini monorail, and eating ice cream. We even saw an exhibit with raccoons! I never thought I would see a raccoon in a zoo. We met back up at 1:45 and the the older students (ages 7-9) came around 2:00. We did the same thing with them, although with slightly harder questions. We finished around 4:00. It was a great day! None of us had been to the zoo before and this was a great opportunity to get a free ticket in (and make a little extra money). Leah came over after and we made dinner together before she had to go home. It was a great day!

Tuesday was not a holiday, but Shinozaki had the day off to make up from coming into school on Saturday for the culture festival. It was a beautiful day, so I cleaned my apartment and took a bike ride in the morning. Patrick also had the day off, his culture festival was on Sunday, so I went to his apartment after my bike ride. He was cleaning a bit as well, but when he finished we took decided to take advantage of the nice day again and took a walk. We didn't go anywhere in particular, just walked. We ended up in 小倉南区 (Kokura Minami Ward) and our short walk turned into a few hours. When we finally got back we relaxed for a while, just watched some TV and made dinner. I went home early to be up for school again today.

This week will be fast and there's not much exciting happening. Some friends are coming over for dinner tonight and I might be singing again on Friday. Over the weekend, however, I'll probably just lay low. Last week was very fun, but I'm ready for a little down time.

Getting Ready for Halloween

This was a great week! I had dinner with various friends throughout the week despite being at my far school and getting home late. Nothing super exciting happened during the week, but that was okay because I had a packed weekend!

I woke up early on Saturday to get ready for the Halloween party in Fukuoka that night. My friends were coming over for dinner, so I mostly cleaned and did laundry in the morning. Once my apartment was presentable I dyed my hair and made a few small alterations to my costume. Leah came over early to help me cook and to finish off the last bits of her costume. She helped me do the last few bits of cleaning and helped me get dinner started before everyone arrived. We had a lot of fun getting ready together and finished dinner just as everyone arrived. We ate pretty quickly before catching a train into Fukuoka. Even at Kokura station before leaving for Fukuoka, people wanted to take pictures of us all in our costumes. It was great! We took two pictures, one with a groups of girls about our age all dressed as devils, and two little kids dressed as princesses wanted to take a picture with just me. We met two more of our friends on the train and had seven of us all together when walking from Hakata station to the area we would be in, closer to Tenjin.

We went to an event called Night Walker, a bar crawl in Fukuoka where everyone dresses up. We saw so many amazing costumes! People but a lot of effort into them and they all looked amazing! We saw everything for Iron Man and Captain America to Where's Waldo to zombie Sailor Moon. Everyone was dressed up! We saw Pikachu and the full cast and titans from Attack on Titen. We saw a headless horseman ride an actual horse down the street and we saw all the Mario characters ride scooters and tricycles playing Mario Cart music. It was so much fun! Our group eventually split up and I spend the night hanging out with one of the new JETs Megan who I really like. We found some small dance places to hop between before meeting back up with Leah, Becca, Chris, and eventually Patrick. It was a great night that I wish I had more pictures of (my phone died pretty early on).

Sunday my professor from Hofstra, Kanatsu, stopped by! He's on sabbatical this semester and studying the nuclear power plants around Japan. He's staying a few cities over for a few days, so he came to Kokura for dinner! Patrick and I met him at Kokura station and had so much fun hanging out with him and talking. We took him to Booties, and Irish restaurant that serves the best fish and chips made from pufferfish. Kanatsu really liked the restaurant and the three hours we spent sitting and talking and eating flew by so fast. It was so great to see him and we had such a nice time!

After dinner I went out with my friend Kikumi. Her friend had just opened a restaurant, so we went together. Since I had just eaten I only nibbled, but the food was great! Kikumi and I talked a lot and she asked me to perform with her and her band again in two weeks, so I'm very excited about that! I'll also work at her bar on Friday for Halloween, which I'm very excited for! Although it will have to be an early night for me because the next day, November 1st, is my 文化祭 (bunkasai, culture festival) at Shinozaki. I'm very excited for the culture festival and the week ahead!

Caramel Apples and 手巻き寿司

This week started off with a care package from home. I got some goodies and everything I needed to make caramel apples! My week was pretty slow because my school has started getting ready for their culture festival in a few weeks, so there were only four classes a day instead of six. I didn't do much during the week, I got dinner with some friend on Wednesday at a Turkish restaurant and Patrick came over on Thursday. Although my week was uneventful, it was a great week.

Things picked up on Friday when I had both a small English party with some students and a girls night in at my place. At school I made caramel apples from the supplies my parents sent. In Japan people don't eat caramel apples, the closest I've seen is りんご飴 (ringo ame, candied apples), which is a hard candy shell around an apple like you find at carnivals. It's usually found during festivals, but I've never seen one with caramel. I made the caramel apples in the home economics room during the day and after school met with the students who had participated in English speech contest. We had a little English party with one of the English teachers at the school. I cut up the apples and let all the students try some. They really enjoyed the caramel apples! We talked a bit in English and listened to English music before heading home.

I ran to the grocery store on the way home to get some sushi grade fish. Because Leah and I had picked up some nice sake in Kobe, we wanted to have a little dinner party and pair it with some sushi! Leah came over a little early to help me prepare and we made a nice plate of fish and vegetables. Megan came over a little later and we had 日本酒 (nihonshu, sake) and 手巻き寿司 (temaki zushi, hand-rolled sushi) for dinner. I've had 手巻き寿司 before and love it, but I'd never been the one to host it before. It was a lot of fun and it was really nice to have a bit of a girls night!

On Saturday I met Leah for lunch before going shopping. We're both working on our Halloween costumes, so we went out looking for costume pieces and craft stuff to make any parts we couldn't find. It was a beautiful day, so we walked from my house to the restaurant for lunch, then across the street to Don Quixote (a variety store), then to Kokura station to check out Aru Aru city, then back to my apartment, stopping in stores along the way. Leah found some good stuff at Don Quixote and Aru Aru city, and although I found stuff at other stores, the ￥100 store turned out to be the store I found most of the stuff I need!

Saturday was also Juha's birthday, so I met him for a night of pub quiz! Our team was Juha, Kyoko, Leah, Megan, and me. Later on more of our friends came to join us. We bought Juha is favorite beer and did our best to answer all the questions. We didn't place, but still had a lot of fun! Afterwards we went for hamburgers and then over to karaoke. Despite it being Saturday night we got a room right away and sang our hearts out until it was time for everyone to catch the last train or bus home. Megan ended up coming home with me to watch some movies before we finally went to sleep.

Sunday was pretty quiet. I made breakfast for Megan and I in the morning and we watched one final movie before she had to go home. I spent the afternoon cleaning and relaxing until I went over to Kikumi's around four thirty. She'd gone to Costco with some friends who were craving tacos. They bought taco meat, soft tortillas, jalapenos, and even real cheese. A bunch of people came over and we all helped prepare everything. It was Kikumi's first time having tacos and she really liked them. It was nice to sit around the table and talk with everyone.

This week I'm hoping with go by quickly because I have a Halloween party on Saturday in Fukuoka! The party is called Night Walker and I went with Patrick and Emily last year. More of my friends will be coming this year and I will have a costume, so I'm really excited! So far I only have one part of my costume done (I made it from the things I found in the ￥100 store). Can you guess who I'll be?

Kobe and So Much More!

My last few posts have been a bit short, but this post will probably be pretty long! This week I've celebrated a birthday, seen an eclipse, been observed during a lesson, performed with a band from Tokyo, and taken a trip to Kobe. It's been quite a week!

Thankfully Monday was an easy day that let me get ready for the week ahead. Tuesday I had a a nice surprise fourth period when the PTA made duck and leek soba for all the teachers. They even made a mochi and red bean dessert that was incredibly delicious! It was a great surprise and a really nice way to interact more with the teachers at Ishimine over some really incredible food. At school I continued to get ready for my observation lesson and change the ALT boards before heading home to start dinner. Tuesday was also Patrick's birthday and he came over to my apartment to celebrate. I splurged on steak and made some green beans and mashed kabocha to go with it. It was a nice, very relaxing night with nice dinner and wine.

Wednesday I left school early for an ALT meeting in Kokura. Even though it meant less preparation time at school, I needed to be in Kokura for band practice that afternoon and leaving Ishimine early was a big help. So, after my ALT meeting I went straight to band practice at Heart Key for a few hours. I love hanging out with everyone and it was a nice break for me before before meeting back up with the ALTs and Kitakyushu Board of Education staff for a welcome party for the new JETs. We went to a nice restaurant on the third floor with a great view. The moon that night was a big, orange harvest moon and during the course of our enkai we could see the eclipse that was happening! It was so cool to have good food and drinks, be surrounded by friends, watching the eclipse. Even after the enkai I walked home with an ALT I haven't had the chance to talk with much. It was great getting to know her more and I hope to hang out with her more during this year!

Thursday I finished putting up the new ALT boards and making sure they were perfect and finalized the plans with my JTE for our observation class the next day. That preparation plus teaching four classes made the day fly by and before I knew it I was out of school and on the bus back to Kokura. I met my friend Caol at Tetsunabe for dinner after getting back to the station to celebrate with him. A year ago, when we were both new JETs, he started having some health problems. The doctors thought he might have cancer and for about two months they ran all sorts of tests on him. I was one of the few people he talked with about it and thankfully his health problem was not nearly as serious as the initially fears. This was the week last year when his results come back negative for cancer and we decided to have dinner to celebrate a year of good health. We stuffed ourselves with gyoza for dinner and went sang two hours of karaoke. It was a great night and I'm glad to still be so close with him even if we see each other less than we did when we first arrived.

Friday was probably one of my busiest days in Japan so far. In the morning, I spent equal time teaching, cleaning, and finalizing the observation class plan. After lunch my JTE and I set up stools in the back of the classroom and desk outside with perfectly printed lesson plans for the observers. twenty minutes before class other elementary school and junior high school English teachers and higher ups from the Kitakyushu Board of Education started arriving. While my JTE finished up the last of the cleaning I showed our visitors the English boards I worked on. Some even took the worksheets from the boards to use in their own schools! By the time the bell rang and class started, a little over twenty people from other schools and the Board of Education were sitting in the back of our classroom. The class went smoothly (although it was a bit difficult with so many people watching us) and I think the students enjoyed the lesson as well. After the class we had a big meeting in the library where the people who observed us commented on the lesson. There were some good suggestions to improve the lesson and lot of helpful feedback! There was also lots of things people liked about the lesson and the overall everyone thought the lesson was good. By the time the meeting was over, school was also ending and I was lucky enough to get a ride back to Kokura from my supervisors.

After getting home I quickly got ready to go back out. I changed and got to Swing21 by 6:00 for a mic check. I met the other two bands and they were incredibly nice! We had a quick dinner before opening the doors for people to come in. Leah came and even got to sit with me in the performers corner. The concert was just amazing. I don't even really know what to say about it. It was a small venue, but there was about 60 people packed into the the little room! Everyone was having a great time and the energy was fantastic. We even got to sing along with the band from Tokyo! You can check out me singing with my friend Kikumi with the band Orange Key on YouTube (I come in for the second song about halfway through). Chris and Becca also came and we had a blast listening to the bands play. We went to Kikumi's bar for an after party and got to talk with the band from Tokyo a lot. It was just so much fun! We made sure not to stay out too late though so we'd have plenty of energy for Saturday.

The next morning I got up and had breakfast with Leah before we took the shinkansen to Kobe! We found our hotel close to Shin-Kobe station and realized we were right next to an herb garden and ropeway. We decided to go there first and I'm so glad we did! It started with a ropeway that took us up Nunobiki mountain. We weren't sure what to expect, but we found out it was Japan's largest herb garden with about 75,000 different herbs and flowers and fourteen different gardens. We spent the entire afternoon there looking at the flowers and the view of Kobe from the top of the mountain. We could even see Osaka! There was an Oktoberfest going on as well, so we had lunch up there. There was even a small museum and an herbal footbath! After hours of walking around the gardens we went back down to our hotel before going to Harborland for dinner. We had a delicious dinner outside in beautiful weather looking out across the Port of Kobe. We ended the night by riding the Ferris wheel near the port and getting a beautiful view of the city before calling it a night.

The next day we found a little cafe to get some breakfast. We walked around before heading to Sannomiya station where we found a great place for lunch and had world-famous Kobe beef. It was the first time I've seen a teppenyaki style restaurant in Japan and it was better than I ever imagined! We had grilled vegetables with the steak and there was garlic, salt, pepper, and wasabi for seasonings. Everything was just so good!

After lunch we walked to the Port of Kobe where we saw an Indian festival and the Kobe Port Tower. We were going to catch a loop bus from there to go sightseeing, but realized we already walked the entire loop that morning! So instead we walked to Kobe station and caught a train a bit farther out to the Hakutsuru sake brewery and museum. It showed how sake has been made since the Edo period. It was a small museum, but was really interesting and the (very small) free samples at the end were great! We got a few different bottles to take home and even tried sake ice cream! It was a bit strange, but very delicious!

By the time we got back to the hotel it was almost dinner time. We took a little down time in our hotel before walking back to Sannomiya station. There were many restaurants and stores in that area and we walked around until we found something that caught our eye. It wasn't fancy, but we had a nice little table and a lot of little dishes of our favorite Japanese foods. We had sashimi, maguro (tuna) and avocado, butter and garlic grilled mushrooms, and more! A typhoon was coming up and although it wouldn't hit until the next day, rain was supposed to start in the evening, so we headed back to our hotel right after dinner. The rain held off for our walk back and we decided to grab a drink at a little bar near our hotel. We sat and talked for an hour or two before going back to our hotel. It was the perfect end to our trip.

The next day our shinkansen ticket back to Kokura wasn't until 2:26 PM, but with the typhoon coming we were worried the shinkansen would get shut down. We caught a train earlier in the morning and found seats in the unreserved section. There were delays between some stations, but we got back to Kokura and got home before the wind or rain got too bad. I stayed inside most of the day, but was invited to Marc and Tanya's for dinner. The weather had calmed down by then, so I went over. Tanya made some delicious food and we talked and played board games until I had to return home. It was the perfect, relaxing end to a very busy (but incredibly fun) week!

I had an AMAZING week! I don't have too many plans from now until Christmas, so I'm excited to see what the next few weeks bring!

Speech Contest

School this week was a bit slow because of mid-terms, but I still had a great week! I had my second 女子会 (jyoshikai) outing with my female co-workers from Shinozaki. We went to a great restaurant close to Kokura station. I'm very close with one of the English teachers, but it was nice to talk to my other co-workers. There are many new teachers in Shinozaki this year that are really nice and it's been great getting to know them a bit better! One teacher is even trying to learn English in her free time by listening to English lessons on her iPod. I invited her and some of the other teacher to my place for dinner sometime when we are all free. Obviously we will speak mostly in Japanese, but we can speak some English for her and other teachers who are interested in practicing English! The teachers taught me some Japanese tongue twisters and we all had fun trying to say them. I taught them one easy one in English, but it was hard to say quickly. We also played with our phones. The teacher I was sitting next to was demonstrating Siri on her new iPhone 6. We would both ask Siri a question, her in Japanese and me in Enlgish, and compare the answers we got. It was a lot of fun! After the 女子会 I went to visit Kikumi before going home. I've been really busy at school and I hadn't gotten a chance to talk with her in while, so it was nice to see her! We sang a bit of karaoke before I had to head home.

For the last month I've been staying after school every day to help my students prepare for the English speech contest. I had seven students participating between my two school. The students worked incredibly hard and the contest was Saturday. All the JET ALTs were judges, but we were split up in a way that makes sure we are not judging our own students. The contest is divided into three categorizes: skit, original speech, and recitation. There are three speeches the students can choose for the recitation section. This year I was judging the original speech section, which was much better than the recitation section I judged last year. It can get very boring listening to the same speech over and over! All the speeches I heard were really interesting and although none of my students were in them, I still had two students in my group who I was close with during English camp this summer. Neither of them won, unfortunately, but both of their speeches were great!

During the closing ceremony of speech contest the winners were announced. None of my students won a prize, but when I saw them after the announcements they were all proud of themselves for participating. I couldn't watch them compete because I was judging in a separate room, but the teachers took videos that I watched later and I think they all did really well. I had cute notebooks and pens that I gave to all my students as a thank you for working so hard with me over the last month.

Since the JETs were all together at speech contest, we decided to meet up again after going home and changing out of our suits. I went out with Patrick, Chris, Leah, Rebecca, and Juha to do the monothon. The monothon is a tradition among the Kitakyushu JETs where you walk the length of the monorail, about five and a half miles. We meet at 企救丘 (Kikugaoka), the station farthest out, and walked under the monorail back to Kokura station. We made a lot of stops at various places, which made the walk take almost three hours. It was a ton of fun even if my legs were sore the next day!

This week I am crazy busy! Tomorrow (10/7) is Patrick's birthday and I will be making dinner. Wednesday is both a rehearsal for my singing gig on Friday and a welcome party for the new JETs with the members of the Kitakyushu Board of Education. Thursday I'm going to karaoke with my friend Caol and Friday is my performance at Swing21! Saturday I leave in the morning with Leah to spend my long weekend in Kobe. Because of the long weekend I will most likely be a day or two late in updating this blog, but it should be a pretty action packed post so stay tuned!

Game Day

I know I said these would get longer, but I'm sorry to say this will be one more short post. However, next week I will be at speech contest and the week after will be my performance and Kobe trip, so these should liven up soon! This week I spent late at school every day helping the student practice for the speech contest on that will happen this Saturday (10/4/14). This week I will be doing the same and I'm so excited for the contest to be over so I don't have to stay late anymore! I will also be judging half of the original speeches, so I'm excited to here what the students from around Kitakyushu came up with!

This week like I said was fairly uneventful. On Friday I went to Swing21, the jazz bar I'll be performing in next week, to run through our set. It was a lot of fun and I got a chance to talk more with everyone. After rehearsal I met up with Patrick, Leah, and the two new JETs Chris and Becca at a Turkish restaurant. Even though I've been here over a year now it was my first time going. The food was delicious! The owner is from Istanbul, but can speak English and Japanese. We talked with him a lot about the different cultures and asked him questions about Turkey. We ended up staying at the restaurant for hours just hanging out after a long week of stay late at school to help the students with their speech contest practice. It was really nice to relax and learn a bit about a new place!

Saturday I mostly stayed in and cleaned. I could have gone out with some friends but I'm trying to save a little extra money for my Kobe trip coming up. Sunday I went into Fukuoka for a board game day! It was also my friend Jake's birthday, so we had a little cake for him and a few of us went out to dinner afterwards to celebrate. I played a whole bunch of new games including one called Rampage where you are a monster and you get to destroy buildings and eat people by dropping you monster token on little buildings and people. It was so much fun! We also played a deception game called Blood Bound where we all knew our own character, but no one else's. We had to figure out the ranks everyone else was, who was on our team, and who was the one neutral person and then try to capture the other teams leader. I ended up being a special character that acts like one team, but is secretly on the other one. I ended up not only interfering with an attack and saving my real teams leader, but I also captured the other teams leader winning the game for my team! It was a complicated game, but a lot of fun! I also tried a new Japanese game that was similar to Uno, but with more effect cards. All the cards ere worth point values and can be discarded or played for effects on the table in front of you. The only catch was that any card played had to match the color or number of the top of the discard pile, like in Uno. At the end of the game you count the number values of all the cards in your hand and on the table in front of you. If you are the first to lose all your cards, you get no points even if there are cards in front of you. The person with the least points after three rounds is the winner. I was in second place both the first two rounds, but ended up winning at the end of the game! It was a lot of fun! I also played some games I've played before like my favorite Betrayal at the House on the Hill and got to introduce some new people to a game called Takenoko. All in all it was a great time!

Sorry again for this being a short one. Next will hopefully be more exciting and even if it's not the week after I'll be able to talk about performing at Swing21 and spending the long weekend in Kobe!

Planning Ahead

Thankfully my tough week is behind me and this last week I've had a great time at Shinozaki! I even went out with one of my teachers to a pub quiz on Saturday. The quiz is in English and the pub is owned by a British husband and wife. Although almost everyone who plays is foreign, there are some Japanese people who come to improve their English. We came in 3rd place with 38 points, the winning team only had 42 points, so we were close! I hope to go back next month and maybe next time we can win!

As this week came and went it's really started to dawn on me that this will be my last year. Patrick and I are both talking about how we will eventually pack up our apartments and what we'll do once we get home. We're also talking about all the places we want to visit before we return home. With that in mind I've made a bunch of plans for the coming year and I couldn't be more excited!

My first trip will be small, over a long weekend in October. I got a shinkansen and hotel deal through a local travel agency and will be heading two hours up to 神戸 (Kobe) with Leah! I'm really excited to explore and try some real Kobe beef! There's also some gardens I want to check out as well as a museum and a sake brewery. I'm excited to spend some time on the boardwalk and generally hang out with Leah in a new setting. That's only three weeks away so look forward to some pictures from Kobe soon!

December and January will also be a busy time. Mike will be visiting me during Christmas and New Years. We don't have any plans for those days yet, but in between we will be visiting 名古屋 (Nagoya). Nagoya is between Osaka and Tokyo, but I don't know too much about it. There are supposed to be great museums, gardens, and shopping there as well as a beautiful castle. We'll catch a shinkansen up on the morning of December 26th and come back to Kokura on the 30th. I'm really excited to explore this new city with Mike! We're also going to catch a train to Nagashima Spa Land and ride the longest roller coaster in the world!

The first full week of January I have plans with Patrick to visit 札幌 (Sapporo). Both Patrick and I are really excited to see the snow again and hopefully go skiing or snowboarding. Sapporo is the largest city in the northern island of Hokkaido. We'll stay in Sapporo, but take the train around Hokkaido to make sure we see a ton of things! This trip we'll make by plane, but with the Japanese travel agencies we could get a deal on the plane and hotel together. My Japanese exchange teacher, Mr. Kanatsu, grew up in Sapporo and his family still lives there. Mr. Kanatsu father worked for many years as an English teacher and might be able to give us a tour of Sapporo, which would be so cool!

Those trips are all booked already, but Patrick, Caol, and I also want to head down to 沖縄 (Okinawa) in February. We are looking into it now, but figure we have a lot of time to book something! I will also be taking a trip at the beginning of April with Mike and my family! We'll meet in Tokyo and travel around. We don't have a set plan yet, but we might go to 高山 (Takayama) and from there visit 白川郷 (Shirakawago).

Next week I promise I'll go back to more exciting entries with pictures, but last week was pretty uneventful. I have the day off tomorrow for a national holiday and I'm not sure what I'll do yet. Tonight my friends are coming over to play board games and I'm really excited! I'm so excited for all these trips, I'm definitely going to make the most of my last year here!

A Tough Week

I know I'm updating a little late, I'm sorry. Between Sports Day on Sunday and my whole week I needed a little time before I could write anything. I had a great time at Sports Day and I loved seeing all the students so happy and it was nice to hang out with the teachers outside of class. I went out with the new JETs to see a movie and we went to the beer garden for it's last night of the season. I had a night off (my Sports Day enkai was canceled), so I spent some time reading at the top of Riverwalk, playing arcade games, and even getting a lucky 50% off coupon while shopping. It should have been a great week, but unfortunately this has been my worst week in Japan so far. I know I usually only post positive things on here as my experience has been overwhelming positive, but I want to take a bit of time today to talk about the not so great sides of living and working in Japan.

My new school is very small, which can be good and bad. Since I teach all the grades in the school, I am able to have a relationship with all of the students because I can see all of them almost every day and it's just easier to keep track of 200 students instead of the 550 at my other school. I know all the students first and last names, their clubs, and their English level. The downside can be that with such a tight-knit school community already in place, it can be hard to find where you fit into that. I've worked really hard to find my place with the JTEs and thought I had found my place in the school. I help with class, make the ALT boards, and really feel like a teacher there. I go to five out of six classes a day, which means only one break period for preparing materials and marking papers, but it's good to always be doing something! I got to chorus club after school and absolutely love working with those students and the teacher is always incredibly friendly. He's been traveling and even knows a little English. It was an uphill struggle when I first got to the school, but I thought I'd finally figured it all out.

I'd found my place among the students, teachers, and even office staff, but apparently I had not found my place with the upper administration. Leading up to Sports Day there were many meetings, all of which I was asked to leave for. The staff meetings are held in the staff room where my desk is. I'd never before been asked to leave any staff meetings at any school I've ever been to. They moved me to a break room in the back. It has a fridge and table and only connects to the staff room, so to get out I would have to cross back into the staff room to get to the hallway. They even left the door open between the two rooms so I could hear everything. I was pretty mad, but figured it was a one-off thing. I asked my teachers about it and they said at that school all the ALTs always left the room before staff meetings. I told them I would like to be included and they said that was fine.

A few days later there was another meetings that I was asked to leave for. My teachers were not in the room at the time, so when I was asked to leave, I said I wanted to stay for the meeting. I was told my Japanese was hard to understand and to move to the back room. I moved, but I was starting to get pretty mad.

Two days later I came to school at my normal time and walked into the staff room to sit at my desk only to find a morning meeting taking place. I went to my desk to put down my bag and the meeting was stopped and I was told to leave the room. I felt insulted and humiliated in front of the other teachers, so I left. I went to the room with all the copiers and colored paper and just didn't know what to do. I was torn between crying and screaming and just leaving and never looking back. Instead I thought about my first period class and how I was now unprepared. I had made an easy version of the game apples to apples to print out and play with the students because they'd been working so hard on sports day practice the teachers wanted to play a game with them that still reviewed their new vocabulary words. Unable to print (the computers and printers are in the staff room), I started cutting up red construction paper and writing the words on them. I kept my mind on the task at hand, making sure I was prepared for first class. I went to five classes that day and although it was so much fun playing games with the students and seeing them laugh at the different combinations of words, I never calmed down. By lunch I thought I would have felt better, but I didn't.

I had talked to both my JTEs (Japanese teachers of English) and both said it was uncomfortable for them, but they were unable to do anything because they were outranked. As frustrating as that answer is to me, I understand it's an important part of Japanese culture and I didn't want to ask them for more help than was appropriate. With that idea in mind I contacted the Kitakyushu Board of Education. I talked to my supervisor and told her what happened and she assured me she'd to everything she could to help, which was very reassuring.

I was pretty dejected and all I wanted to do was go home, but it was my last academic day at that school before English Speech Contest and I'd promised the three students participating I would work with them as I had been doing all week. It was nice to see the students and I think their speeches really progressed over my two weeks with them. Their English teacher also came in to watch them that day and thought they sounded good, as well. After working with the students I had already missed my first bus home and the next one wouldn't come until 6:17, so I went to catch the last hour of chorus club. It cheered me up a little to work with them and they were glad I had come. At the end of club the students and gather with the club teacher downstairs for quick feedback and to say goodbye for the day. The teacher is usually unable to actually go to the club, so normally I only see him at these goodbye meetings. This day was no different, I didn't see him until after the meeting. We usually talk for a few minutes after the meeting about what we'll do over the weekend or how the day was, but I was still so upset about the morning I just wanted to leave. Thankfully he stopped me before I could go and pulled out some note cards. He'd written down what he wanted to say in English and read it back to me. He didn't bring up the morning at all, but told me since the third year students have finished with clubs and now only focused on their high school entrance exams he was glad I was at club every day. He doesn't have to worry about the students because he knows I'm there helping them. He said thank you. I said it was no problem and headed out to my bus. At the bus stop I cried for all the nice things he'd said and for all the anger, hurt, and embarrassment I'd felt from that day.

This was a pretty extreme case, but being excluded is one of the most common complaints I've heard from ALTs around the country. Whether it's from JTEs not bringing you to class or the general atmosphere of 'you don't belong here' in a staff room. Every ALT at some point has felt excluded. As a foreigner living in Japan this will extend out into your daily life as well. My parents remember being in Kyoto at a restaurant and being put on a different floor from everyone else. When I went to a restaurant in Kokura with my friend Caol and his parents we were also sat away from everyone else behind a sliding door. At the time we always laugh about it, but after a year has gone by it gets harder and harder to laugh. Little thing begin to add up and to feel discriminated against by my own school community was very hurtful.

Thankfully I do have a great community here. The chorus teacher and other teachers stood by my side in small ways. My friends let me complain to them and Patrick let me play his video games at his apartment until well past either of our bed times. The Board of Education also came through for me. A phone call was made to the school and although I'm not sure exactly what was said, it helped. The vice principal apologized to me and I attended the next school meeting and made sure to pay very close attention. Despite these discouraging instances, I will continue to do everything I can to make the most of my experience here. I know this is a fairly negative post, but this is just one part of my experience here. Overall I still love Japan and am excited to continue teaching here. This was a tough week, but I did the best I could and I'm excited to move forward.

Dinner Party, Songs, and Sports Day

What a great first week back at school! I've seen all my classes in Ishimine despite the ongoing sports day practices and so many of the students were excited to see me back in school! I only have a few classes a day because sports day is coming up this weekend, so most of the day is devoted to practicing. I've been very busy while the students practiced making two new English boards, summer vacation activities for class, marking papers, and even making stickers! I haven't been able to go back to chorus club yet because after school I've been helping students prepare for the English speech contest in the beginning of October. Today I will be able to help with speech contest and go to chorus; I'm really excited to go back! As much work as I'm doing, I'm very happy to be back at school with the students.

You may remember me talking about English speech contest and sports day before, they were the first things I did at Shinozaki last year. I've now been in Japan over a year and it's very weird doing things for a second time, especially when the two new JETs talk about how confusing everything is. I don't feel like I've changed, but suddenly I'm the one helping the newbies with the same questions I was asking a year ago. I know what will happen at sports day, what I'm expected to do, and how to help the school prepare for it. I also know the speeches for the English speech contest and good ways to get the students to pronounce the words correctly and put the correct intonation into a sentence. I'm giving the advice instead of receiving it. Although I certainly don't know everything, it's nice to be able to help the new JETs, especially since I had great support my first year.

To celebrate the new JETs first week in the schools, I had an お疲れ dinner party. (お疲れ, pronounced otsukare, is a word we don't have in English, but is used very often in Japanese. Literally it means someone who is tired, but is used to complement or thank someone for working hard.) The two new JETs came as well as eight or nine others. Other JETs, friends, and even some of my coworkers came to celebrate. It was a lot of work for me, but was well worth it and incredibly fun. Also, people leaving and coming to a new place and job can be stressful, but I was so happy the new JETs and old JETs were all hanging out together and getting along. I'm also really glad Kikumi could drive me to Costco to get enough food for everyone and Patrick and Gigi (a cat who is taken care of by my neighbors, but often visits my apartment) who both came over early to help me cook and clean. It was great fun and I can't wait to do it again!

I'm also getting very excited for October! Not only will it be Patrick's birthday, Fukuoka Halloween Night Walker, and a visit from Kanatsu, but I will also be singing at a jazz club! My friends band, Orange Key, will be singing at Swing21, a local jazz club. A band, りぶさん (Livsan), is coming down from Tokyo to play and Orange Key will play as well. My friend Kikumi is the singer for Orange Key and is going to sing all English songs, but wanted some help, so I'll be singing with her! I hope my friends can come see it, but because りぶさん is a professional band there will be a cover charge. Hopefully it won't be too much and everyone can still come see us! I'm so excited to sing and see the other bands, especially since as a performer I won't need to pay the cover charge! I met the band yesterday and although it was my first time rehearsing with them, I had a lot of fun!

That's about it for this week. Next week I'll let you know how sports day went! I also have a lot more trips in the works, one of which is already booked, so once everything is finalized I'll be posting about those as well!