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.