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.

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!