Random thoughts

Whoa! I forgot I changed my blog layout. I went to the blog and was quite surprised by the color scheme. What do you think?

Just a few things today. I took Caspian on a walk earlier. He's developed a bit of a hacking, choking kind of cough lately that we were afraid was due to his collar choking him on walks so we got him one that hopefully will be better. He seems to like it. Here's a picture of it in action.



Here is another picture from the walk. I'm glad that after all this time I still love to just gaze at Mt. Fuji. It's better to do this when I'm walking Caspian than when I'm riding my bike home because of safety reasons. Unfortunately that limits my lighting. This picture is actually lighter than real life. It was pretty dark when I took this. It was 4:55pm. Such is the life of living in a country with no daylight savings time.



Speaking of this great country we live in, we recently got into a discussion of how great the train system is here. Especially the Shinkansen system. Did you know that people are looking into the idea of building a high-speed train line in Texas. It would connect Houston to Dallas, Houston to Austin, Houston to San Antonio, Dallas to Austin, and Austin to San Antonio. They're calling it the Texas T-Bone. Check out the website! I think this would be a great idea for many reasons. High speed public transportation is a great thing and very convenient. Plus, this system would create a lot of jobs for people to build it, run it and maintain it and jobs are we need right now. In addition to that, it would jump-start the economy in Texas by greatly increasing tourism. Just think how much more often people in Houston would visit Dallas and vice-versa if there was a convenient way to get there that would save them money on gasoline. They go to these other cities, spend money at stores, restaurants, bars, etc. and then see the prices at their own stores, restaurants, and bars drop because people from other cities are doing the same. If train lines like that could be built all over the country, the US could save extreme amounts of money on oil and usage of oil would slowly but surely be decreased assuring that we could have enough for the future and decreasing our dependency on oil from the Middle East. Plus tourist money would be spent all over improving our own economy. The public transportation industry needs to be improved in the US. We cannot keep depending solely on cars and airplanes to get us where we need to go. Trains are the answer. Sometimes to move forward, you need to look back and see what worked in the past. That's my opinion.

Finally for today, here is a picture of some coloring I did while I was bored at work today. It is a family tradition of my family to color Christmas pictures and then write the date, time and temperature. I don't have any coloring books so I printed off something from online and colored it. I think it was actually colder than what this picture says but this is what my Accuweather iPhone app said so that's what I went with. Enjoy!

Fun with finals and more!

It's finals week at school this week which is always great. It means a few days of no classes so a lot of time relaxing at the desk. Of course it also means having a lot of tests to grade. Tests this week have been good, bad, and some in between. The usual. My favorite part of any of the tests that I wrote this term was a section in our ichi-nensei International Course test. We taught them a lesson on Australian slang to prepare them for their trip to Australia next summer. So for the test I wrote a paragraph full of Australian slang words and had them translate it into "normal" English.

Here's the papargraph with the normal English words in parentheses:

G’day! (Hello!) How ya goin? (How are you?) This arvo (afternoon) I was having a barbie (barbecue) in Brizzie (Brisbane) with my mates (friends). I was eating some Roo (kangaroo) and a Sheila (woman) came up and asked me if she could have some tomato sauce (ketchup). I had put heaps (a lot) of tomato sauce (ketchup) on my tucker (food) so I didn’t have any more. I told her “sorry” and she told me, “No worries!” (It's ok!) Then she said she wants to have brekkie (breakfast) with me tomorrow. Crikey! (Whoa!) You don’t believe me? It’s Fair Dinkum! (true!)

The students did pretty good on it although I doubt many of them really got it. Oh well, I was entertained at least.

Here's a funny essay that a girl wrote in another class that is about to go to Australia in March. The question was, "What are you nervous or worried about for your trip to Australia?" I hope you can read it.

I like the end. "I think miss you my long hair." It'll grow back, I promise.

Last weekend after Kelly aced her GRE (!) we took advantage of being in Tokyo and ate at Outback Steakhouse. It was very much like the real thing. Not exactly but very close. The waiter spoke to us in English, and it's the first time since we've been here that we've paid our bill at the table. There was even a service charge (tip) which was kind of refreshing, not that I'm looking forward to going back to paying tips when we go home. Here's my meal:


That's definitely a Bloomin' Onion there. As greasy as always but oh so delicious. Outback special medium rare, garlic mashed potatoes, and cole slaw. A caesar salad preceded all of this.

Kelly about to devour her meal:


And here is the Santa Claus hanging out outside the restaurant. We thought he was funny so we took some pictures of his descent down the chimney.

Here Kelly tells him "Good luck!"


He goes down waving goodbye.


And down to make some little children very happy (or help out grilling steaks in the kitchen downstairs - one of the two.)


Finally, as with most places, the flu has been going around a lot lately. Many students have been out with it (regular - not swine.) Each day they write the names of the students out with the flu in blue chalk on the absent student board. Absent students without the flu are written in white chalk. And everyday in the daily information page we get on our desks there is some section reminding us that インフルエンザ (influenza) is still around so we should wash our hands and use rubbing alcohol constantly.

At the beginning of each month there is a section in the information sheet telling the average number of students that were absent, late, and left early per day for each month. This is what was in there today. For those not familiar with Japanese writing, 月 means month so ４月 means April and so on. The top line is absent, the middle is late, and the bottom is left early. Notice how the numbers have jumped the past few months.



That flu doesn't mess around. One thing I thought, however, is that those numbers are still a lot better than you would see at most American high schools. I mean, even in the month of November, 9.3 students were tardy each day. If a school in America had that number, imagine how ecstatic the principal would be. Hopefully things stay that way in Japan and improve in America.

The Yen

Bad news everyone. Today was a sad, sad day in the teachers' room of Yoshiwara High School. The 51 yen...is gone. Yes, someone finally decided that they needed that 51 yen badly enough to take it. I can only hope for the sake of humanity and all that I believe in, that the person who took it was the original owner of the money. If not, may God have mercy on us all. The spot where it used to be just was not the same. Here is a picture. WARNING: This is not for the faint of heart.



Brings a tear to my eye.

So now I'm thinking that I might put another 51 yen back there. How much would that freak everybody out? What do you think? Should I do it?

Tonight I made a good dinner if I may say so myself. I got the idea for the recipe from a student. We were doing a class on writing recipes in English. Most of the students wrote things like miso soup and scrambled eggs. But one girl did Salmon and Broccoli Cream pasta. The recipe she wrote and the picture she drew made me immediately want to eat it. So tonight I made the recipe almost exactly except I added garlic (of course) and substituted scallops for the salmon. I cooked the pasta and the broccoli together. Then I sauteed mushrooms and garlic. I then added the scallops until they were cooked. I removed the scallops and added some alfredo sauce (I still need to learn how to make a cream sauce from scratch) and mixed in the pasta and broccoli. I put the scallops back on top and garnished with rosemary. Served with some salad on the side, it was great. Kelly recommended that I do lessons like this more often.

In other news, I'm very mad at the Texans. Kris Brown is Houston's new Brad Lidge.

Never a dull moment

We've had an interesting past few weeks. Last week was full of Halloween craziness of course. Halloween has become a bit of a big deal around my school so I felt obligated to decorate and do some cool stuff. It's funny because I never really paid much attention to Halloween from about age 12 until last year and now all of sudden it's become a big deal. Emily and I had some students make decorations and were surprised as always by how creative they can be. We had ghosts and mummies and jack-o-lanterns and bats and spiders hanging all over the LL room. We pinned up our green cobweb thingy and some other spooky things and had a pretty nicely decorated room. It's nice to have a room on campus that nobody else really uses because you can do whatever you want and most people never even know. I didn't get any good pictures of the room or the decorations so these will have to suffice.





As for the classes, we had Halloween parties in our International Course classes and our Elective English class. The activities varied. We did a mummy wrap (always a crowd pleaser,) pin the wart on the witch, scarecrow stuffing, and pumpkin basketball. For that we had some little soft pumpkin toys that the students had to shoot into trick-or-treat jack-o-lantern buckets full of candy. If they made it they got 2 or 3 pieces of candy, depending on which one they made it into. Not many made it, but everyone got 1 piece for trying. We also did an activity with two classes called Mummy Body Parts. We had boxes at the front with stuff inside. The students had to reach inside and decide what body part was in each box. We had tofu for brains, udon for intestines, canned asparagus for fingers, little quail eggs for eyes, yarn for hair, and jelly for snot. It was pretty gross and smelled pretty bad though, so we nixed it for the rest of the classes.

I did my jack-o-lantern carving again. Here is this year's creation. I also dressed up again this year. Please none of the "where's your costume?" comments.

Last weekend we went to Tokyo to watch a Rugby match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the Australia Wallabees. These are the national teams for their countries. It was a great time. We sat with some Kiwis so we were going for the All Blacks and they came away with a victory! We also got to see them do the famous Haka before the game. This is a tradtional Maori war chant that they do before every game to psych themselves up and intimidate their opponent. I guess it worked. Here's a picture from afar of them doing the Haka.



And since that doesn't help with understanding the Haka very much, here's a video so you can all see what it's like. Note: this is not from the game we saw.



As for the rules of Rugby, I can't help you much with that. I did a crash course a few days beforehand and got to where I had a basic idea of what was going on by the end of the game, but for the most part it all looked like chaos to me. I guess that's probably what football looks like to most people who aren't from America.

Yesterday I had a unique class. Our school had a visiting dance troupe come and perform for all of the first years. The principal thought it would be neat to have them sit in on a class. The interesting thing about these people is that the group consisted of Chinese adults and Australian children. So along with some supporters like directors, parents, brothers and sisters, and other random people, I had my class of 20 students plus about 8 Australian kids, 3 Australian adults, 16 Chinese young adults (20-23ish) and another 5-7 older Chinese adults. And we all took part in an English Oral Communication class. It was pretty fun yet very crazy. We were able to get everyone involved, even the Chinese girls who for the most part could not speak English. I gave stickers to them if they answered just like I do with my regular students and they were very appreciative. All in all, it was good experience. And one that I'd prefer not to repeat.

And for the crazy things I see every day section of this blog, here are a few pictures of some posters in the teachers' break room at school. I can't figure out why they're in there, but I don't really try.

This one is about safety on the streets.


As you can see, they advise you to wear your seatbelt, wear bright shiny things when you are out at night, and watch out for drunk drivers if you are an old lady crossing the road. Here are some close-ups of the faces.


His seatbelt clearly is very comfortable.


She definitely sees the shiny things and thinks they might be aliens.


Not only is he a red-faced drunk but apparently he was blowing bubbles in his car right before this photo was taken. I love the fact that his can says "BEER" in English.

And the next poster...


As you can see, these mikan are very hot. Of course they are! The kotatsu, and two heaters are running at the same time. What's wrong with these people? Not only are they running up their electric bill and harming the environment, but they're ruining some perfectly good mikan. Mikan don't taste good hot!


Poor little guy. I know how you feel.

Picture Time!

Here are some random pictures from recent weeks/months I wanted to share:


Caspian got some bread at the beach. He had no idea what to do so he just held it in his mouth.



This is my group's poster from English camp. Our groups name was "Kory and Funny Company"



Caspi got a new toy from my parents. This is pre-destroy.



The sunset from our first night at Goza Beach last month.



Kelly played with fireworks.



We rode on some boats.



This sign is in the bathroom of an Indian restaurant in Numazu (not our Indian restaurant.) Nothing makes me want to travel somewhere more than a picture of endless sand.



I went to another Shimizu S-Pulse game. S-Pulse won 1-0. A pitcher's duel.



Apparently somebody's been sleeping overnight at school. Working too hard, or trying to save money on rent? I guess we'll never know.



Caspian has taken to sunbathing lately.



Our annual ichi-nensei hiking trip was last Friday. Here's part of the group eating lunch.



Hiking down a long set of stairs.



Cool, old bridge. Note: this is not the wobbly bridge that I decided to jump repeatedly while crossing, making about 10 girls scream for their lives.



Obligatory waterfall shot. Not a recycled picture from last year but might as well be.



Fin.

A great Saturday and a busy week ahead

I finally went to Kelly's favorite onsen yesterday after a year of hearing her talk about it. It was pretty amazing indeed and I can't believe it took me this long to go. I sat in every bath they had on the men's side which included: regular hot bath, herb tea, green tea, two other herb baths, sulphur, grape, salt, and carbonation. My favorites were the salt (because I floated), carbonation (because I was covered in bubbles), and the yellow herb (because it smelled good.) I also sat in an extremely hot sauna for a few minutes and then immediately went and sat in an ice cold bath. Why? I don't know. But it was invigorating!

Before the onsen we had gone white water rafting with a big group of people down the Fuji River. It was pretty fun and brought me back to my youth group days and our canoe trips. The rapids were few and far between but it was still fun. We also jumped off a cliff into the water at one point. This was the highest point from which I had jumped into water since I jumped off the high dive at our local pool when I was a kid and had extreme pain in one of my ears. I was nervous that it would happen again which is why I hadn't done it in so long, but there was no pain. It was pretty nervewracking though. Standing on a cliff waiting to jump off with 30 people watching you is quite intimidating. I'm glad I did it though.

School is in full swing right now. I spent a lot of time last week getting some 3rd year girls ready for their university entrance interviews. They were on Saturday so I hope they did well. I've got a busy week ahead of me this week because I have two tests to write as well as the listening dialogue that goes along with them. Then we have to record the listening part and get it to the teachers by Thursday. In the meantime, I have a lesson to plan and a presentation for our Mid-Year Seminar to put together. I haven't started on any of these tasks so I guess you know what I'll be up to in my free time this week.

I signed up this week to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test - Level 4. That's the beginner level and I think I should do well as long as I study enough. The test is in December, so I have time but I know it'll sneak up on me if I'm not careful.

Finally, for anyone who is curious: awhile back I wrote about 51 yen that was sitting in the teacher's kitchen at school. Well, it is still there just waiting for someone to claim it. Here is a picture of the infamous coins, looking lonely and forgotten:



Maybe everyone is scared to take it because that guy on the fan is watching. Probably.

English, Japanese, vision, weather, books, and friends = this blog post :)

I've been sitting here trying to think of something interesting to write. It seems that my lack of blogging lately might be due to the fact that things have gotten very routine for me so things don't seem as interesting to me anymore. I need to remind myself that that's not the case for most of the people who read this and also remind myself that I need to really appreciate what's around me. So anyway, here are soem random snippets from recent days.

• I had my school's English camp a few weeks ago. It was the ichi-nensei International course class - 41 students. There were ten ALTs there altogether including Kelly. We were in Gotemba which is on the other side of Mt. Fuji from here but still in Shizuoka prefecture. It was a lot of fun and very tiring as I was pretty much in charge of running the camp since I planned the whole thing. I was really proud of the kids and I even told them so. They did great and tried really hard and we all had a lot of fun. I absolutely love this group of students. I've found that at the end of the day, the one thing I love more than anything here is my students. Pretty different from before, huh?
• I started taking Japanese one-on-one tutorials last month at FILS, a place for international sharing here in Fuji. I meet once a week with a guy named Wake (wah-kay.) It's been pretty interesting although I wouldn't say my conversational Japanese has gotten much better. He teaches me a lot, but we never practice what he's taught me. I think I might ask him next week if we can practice a bit more. I'll also be starting the Intermediate Japanese language course soon which will get me back into studying. I'm planning to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in December. I'll probably take the level 4 (the easiest one) although I'd like to shoot for level 3. But I've got a ton of kanji to learn if I want to try for level 3 so I probably should just keep my expectations realistic.
• I've been on my last pair of contact lenses for quite a while now, but I can't order new ones because my doctor refused to let 1-800 Contacts send them to me because my prescription is old. So I'm kind of in limbo right now. I've started wearing my contacts while I ride my bike to work since I can't handle being outside without sunglasses on and then I change into my glasses when I get to work. This is the first time I've worn my glasses at work here so a lot of people have been very surprised. The students notice, but when they can't think of how to ask me why I'm wearing glasses they just hold their fingers in circles up to their eyes to look like glasses. This is my cue to explain why I'm wearing glasses. I've gotten good at recognizing these visual cues.
• The weather has been cooling down over the last week. It's not what I would consider fall weather but it's definitely not hot summer weather anymore. I only fan myself for 5 minutes when I get to work now instead of 10. I'm very ready for fall.
• I'm currently reading a book called The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. He's one of Japan's most respected authors. This is the 2nd book by him that I've read. It's a slow read and I'm a slow reader so since I checked it out, I've re-checked it once and am about to have to re-check it again. I'm not even close to being halfway through. In the meantime, Kelly has read 6 books.
• I've had a recent bout of homesickness earlier this week after talking to my two best friends James and Adam on Skype last week. Adam was in Corpus Christi visiting James so I called them up and got to talk to them. It was the first time I had actually talked to Adam since before we left and only the second time for James. So that was fun and a good reminder of some good times and good friends.

I suppose that's it for now. Gwynn suggested that I set a weekly blog day like Kelly did. I haven't decided what day that will be yet, so I guess I'll surprise you.

See you!

What's my Age Again?

So despite the fact that I turned 29 last week, I have a new boy-like obsession. I've never really been into cars or toys or toy cars. But earlier this week I made my daily stop at 7-11 for breakfast. I have become a semi-coffee drinker. I say semi because it's not like other people who have a coffee machine at home and make coffee and sit and have their morning coffee every morning. I just stop at 7-11 and buy a can of coffee every morning along with the sandwich, pastry, or onigiri that I eat for breakfast. It's usually sweetened a bit as well.

So anyway, I went in earlier this week and looked at the coffee selection when I noticed a free prize on top of the Boss Rainbow Blend coffee. I didn't even look at the prize in my morning stupor. I just grabbed a can and headed off to work. When I got there and pulled the coffee out of my backpack I discovered a toy car was the free prize. I was only slightly interested until I realized that it was the kind of toy car that you can pull back and then let go and it will go forward at amazing speeds. All of a sudden I was very interested.

I looked at the thing that came with it and found out that there are 9 different cars in total. I have since become a Boss Rainbow Blend coffee addict. I have 6 of the 9 cars. Here they are:



I plan to get the other 3 soon and then have races down the hallways at school with my students. I'm sure it will annoy the other teachers, but after being here a year I find that I don't care about that one bit. It's gonna be fun!

In other news, we've been working on a website lately. I joined the Shizuoka chapter of AJET (Assocation of Japan Exchange and Teaching.) We are basically in charge of planning events and bringing the JETs of Shizuoka together. I am the Shizuoka AJET webmaster. Kelly designed the website and is teaching me how to manage it. So far it's going really well. You can check it out here.

Next week is my school's camp and then school starts back up again the week after that. I'll be glad to get things rolling again. Though I've enjoyed the break from classes, the days go much faster when stuff is actually happening. Plus, I miss my students! :)

See ya!

A month of fun and changes

So apparently Kelly and I have switched good blogger statuses. Sorry about that. I mean, good for Kelly, but sorry I've been so absent lately.

Kerry was here a couple of weeks ago for about 6 days. It was a short visit, but it was great to see him. I felt like we spent the whole time doing the same thing that we do whenever everyone visits...eating. But there's a lot of good food to eat, and when you have only a short visit to fit it all in, what do you expect?

The night Kerry got here we went to a baseball game in Yokohama. The Yokohama Baystars vs. the Chunichi Dragons. It was a fun game. A very old stadium, much smaller than the Tokyo Dome where we saw a game back in April, but it had a lot of character and great fans. Chunichi came out on top which was not surprising because Yokohama is apparently a pretty bad team. But it didn't deter the fans around us from cheering until the bitter end. Although, seeing as we didn't particularly care about either team, we left after the 8th to beat the people back to the train.

We spent the next few days in Fuji and the surrounding areas. We went to the beach in Atami one day (the only day it didn't rain.) Kerry and I then went on to Tokyo where we met up with a few of my friends. We stayed in a capsule hotel which was a cool experience. The capsule was small, but not as small as I always imagined it would be. Certainly not as small as the drawers that Kramer had the Japanese businessmen sleeping in on that one Seinfeld episode. We spent the next day going around Tokyo and seeing some different things, shopping, and people watching. We went out that night in Shibuya before getting chased by the rain back to Shinjuku where we played some pool. Kerry left the next day and hopefully was able to track down his luggage at Narita Airport. I only took a few pictures while he was here. You can see some on the Flickr site.

After Kerry left, I went on the Fuji Rock Festival for 3 days. This a big music festival in Niigata, Japan (nowhere near Mt. Fuji despite its title.) Fuji Rock is considered to be the Lollapalooza or Glastonbury of Japan. I had an absolute blast. We camped out at night and listened to live music all day. It was my first music festival and it was absolutely one of the most fun weekends I've ever had. I got very little sleep, got rained on several times, walked in a ton of mud, and enjoyed every minute of it. Among my favorite bands I saw were Oasis, Simian Mobile Disco, The Melvins, Ben Harper, Franz Ferdinand, The Airborne Toxic Event, Jimmy Eat World, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Shibasushirazu Orchestra, Diplo, and Weezer. All in all a great weekend.

My new teaching partner, Emily arrived last Wednesday. I'm looking forward to getting to work with her. A lot of the new JETs have been arriving and I'm really excited about meeting them. It feels like when a new freshman class would come into the theatre department at ACU. There's so much gossip going around that I feel like I know them even though I haven't met them. So finally on Friday night we'll get to meet some of them. Then next week I'm working at the new ALT orientation so I'll get to meet a lot of them there. Should be fun.

Last tidbit: Now that Andrea has left, I have suddenly become the person that two of the girls at school tell all of the gossip to. I never knew what I was missing out on before. I now know who is dating who, who nobody likes, etc. Useful information. :)

Busy busy bu...oh sorry I got distracted by all of my work.

Yeah so the last two weeks have been the busiest of my time in Japan. I've had plenty of extremely busy days or two days but these weeks have been the kind where I get to work and don't have time to sit still, much less check my e-mail at work. Which is saying something since I have an iPhone and can check e-mail while I'm going to the bathroom. Not that I ever do that...

I'm not sure what's made me so busy. I think it's the combination of finishing up classes for the semester, writing tests, recording listening tests, tutoring students for speaking tests, planning for orientation, planning for English camp, grading tests, and checking essays. When everything piles up on you suddenly you're like, "Whoa, what happened?" But the funny thing is, I don't mind it. I think I found myself with the ability to do as little work as possible so much in the last few years that actually having a lot of work to do has been a nice relief. I like not having to think of work to do. When I have to find work for myself is when I stop working. But I've worked overtime almost every day for the past two weeks and it's great. Not to mention the fact that people have taken notice, which never hurts. Not saying I prefer to work overtime. But...you know.

We had an area schools softball tournament on the 4th of July. It was a teachers' tournament. I played left field and batted cleanup for my school. I probably should've batted leadoff since I went 5 for 8 with 5 singles over our two games and our leadoff hitter hit like 5 homeruns. Oh well. We won our first game 12-0 and I was 3 for 5 in that game. Then we lost our second game 12-9. I was 2 for 3 in that one. I made a pretty costly error in left in the second game. The bases were loaded with one out. Our pitcher had already walked in two runs and the batter hit a sharp ground ball single to left. It should've been a simple one run single but I went after it to pick it up quickly from the side to keep an extra runner from scoring. I didn't use good fundamentals and the ball went straight under my glove and rolled forever. Everyone scored (it reminded me of little league because there were no fences) and like 8 runs ended up scoring in the inning. We scored a lot and made it close but we couldn't catch up. It was interesting playing with people who speak a different language. They use English terms for a lot of stuff in softball/baseball. This includes thing like, "Nice pitching", "Nice batting" "Nice play righto" "Nice play Thado" (that's third.) But at one point there was a run down between second and third. Now being the knowledgable baseball guy I am, I knew that more running, less needless throwing is always better in a rundown. So our shortstop gets the ball and doesn't see that one runner is standing on third and another runner is running to third. So I start shouting There! There! There! Second Second!" And he's like, "Huh?" Then he sees him and we start the rundown. So the other guy is still standing on third and the shortstop is about to throw to third and I'm thinking that's an error and run waiting to happen so I yell, "No! Run! Run! Run!" But this guy doesn't speak English so I should've been yelling "Hashitte! Hashitte! Hashitte!" Fortunately people spend a minimum of 6 years learning English in Japan and this guy is relatively young so he knows "run" and runs him down and tags him out to end the inning. It was fun though. It took all Saturday afternoon but playing softball was not a bad way to spend the 4th by any means.

After the softball tournament I went and met up with Kelly and many people at our friend's house for some 4th of July festivities. We did some grilling and listened to lots of music and had a good time. Americans were outnumbered by non-Americans (including English, Scottish, Irish, Kiwi [that's New Zealand], and Japanese) but no matter. America's birthday was celebrated and respected by all. There was a lot less America complaining than there would have been if George W. Bush had still be president that's for sure. Everybody loves Mr. Obama. And a nice, loud rendition of the Star Spangled Banner was sung as well. Nice. And loud. In tune? No.

I'm looking forward to Kerry getting here soon. He gets here in 10 days as a matter of fact. So far on the schedule for his 6 days here are baseball, karaoke, Tokyo, and food. Pretty standard. I wanted to go to a Yomiuri Giants game (the Yankees of Japan) while he was here. Unfortunately they're playing the Hanshin Tigers which would be awesome expcept for the fact that the Tigers are the Red Sox of Japan and therefore the game is very very sold out. So we're probably going to see the Yokohama Baystars instead who can probably be considered to be the Pittsburgh Pirates of Japan. Oh well. They're playing the Chunichi Dragons who we saw play the Giants in April and who Tom Selleck played for in Mr. Baseball. So it should be fun if not necessarily crowded.

Hope everybody's doing well and had a good 4th. We're looking forward to rainy season ending, which is awful. Hopefully only about another week. At which point it will just be hot. And no, Houston people, don't talk about how we should be happy to get rain because it's just been hot with not enough rain there. You don't want me to wish this your way. Trust me. You like being able to breath, don't you?

Finally, here are a couple of pics from our karaoke night with the Haseltines:

Claire wasn't feeling karaoke at first (as you can tell by the microphone laying on the table) but she found her groove eventually.


Jeff and Gwynn sang a few duets I had never heard in karaoke before. Including songs by Bread and Elvis. But they were great!
Not pictured is Jeff and my duet of "America" by Simon and Garfunkel. My harmonies were questionable.

Here is a picture of me and Kelly after the Yoshiwara Gion Festival. It was our first festival wearing jimbei and yukata. Bunny ears courtesy of Jeff. :)


Peace!

Future Comic Book Authors

Just a short one tonight. I wanted to share some funny things some students turned in. Only in Japan do you take pictures of your students' work.

In our 2nd year English class, we are doing a lesson on Problems and Solutions. The 2nd year classes have been a bit boring so far this school year due to several things. The textbook is not very good for one thing. Also, we only have each class once every other week and since there are two ALTs, I actually only see each class about once a month. We used to see these students every week. Finally, there is something that happens when students become 2nd years. They seem to lose all of their excitement and energy. The classes with them become almost painful.

So I decided with this lesson to try to give them something creative to do. So instead of just talking about Problems and Solutions, we are having the students draw their own 3-frame comic strip about a problem situation and how it is solved. Some are pretty basic, but some are very creative. There were two from a class today that I thought were really funny. So I took a picture of them to share! Here you go...

The problem:

Notice it says "Lun over the person" at the top? It never gets old.

Tension mounts:


The Solution:


Glad to see everything worked out okay. I like how the one guy is breathing a sigh of relief. I think I would too.

And the next one...

The problem:

Cat is plump. That is definitely a problem.

What's he gonna do???

Oh, of course!

The solution:

Now that's one good-looking cat!


These made me happy. :)

Happy Memorial Day!

I was thinking last night about different American holidays that I've missed this year or had to work on. And when I thought about all of them, I realized that I almost feel more upset about working on Memorial Day than any of the others. I worked on Thanksgiving which was strange of course, but we did celebrate it with people a few days later, so it wasn't like I missed out on Thanksgiving altogether. I didn't work on Christmas and although I wasn't with my whole family or family-in-law I was still with Kelly and Caspian and we had a family Christmas. I worked on Labor Day but that wasn't a new thing. I've worked on Labor Day many times and used to have football practice on Labor Day every year. But Memorial Day was always one of my favorite holidays. I liked it because it kind of marks the beginning of summer. There would usually be only a little more school left or it would be completely out. I spent many a Memorial Day weekend at the lake swimming and jetskiing. It was a good way to get my first suntan (or burn) of the summer. The food is good, it's relaxing, it's warm, and altogether a great day/weekend. So, it was a little disappointing being at work today. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever worked on Memorial Day. Thinking about all of the people who will be spending the day grilling, watching baseball, swimming (unless it's raining of course) etc. makes me a little jealous. But, it's like I tell Kelly quite often when we think about things we're missing back home, we have a whole life worth of Memorial Days to enjoy, but right now we're enjoying Japan. I don't always say Memorial Days of course, I fill in that blank with whatever fits the situation. Kind of like an English class.

But I guess the main thing I realize with missing Memorial Day is that there is no clear marker for summer here. I will keep working all summer and am actually at the beginning of a pretty busy few weeks. So while the random weeks here and there with no classes that I spend just sitting at work are a nice break from the regular class schedule, nothing beats summer vacation. I'll have to get my summer fix in different ways I guess. We need to get to the beach before rainy season starts.

Well, I guess this post hasn't been very deserving of the exclamation point in the title. But I do mean it. To all of you lucky people out there with the day off today, Happy Memorial Day! Have a hot dog, take the jetski for a spin, and watch the Astros lose for me.

Our apartment

We don't make claims of liking our apartment that much. In fact, we're pretty open about the fact that we don't like it. It's old and not well cared for. Really the only positives are that it's cheap, close to Kelly's work and bigger than our other option, which is my school's apartment. Nevertheless, it's our place and as I was talking to my friend James on Skype the other day, he mentioned that he hasn't really seen many pictures of our apartment to the point where he knows what it looks like.

So, earlier this week I walked around taking pictures of the apartment with my phone and now I will share those with James and all of you. (Warning: I did not clean the apartment at all before taking these pictures.) So here you go. This is what we see every day...


What we see when we open our front door and walk into our apartment:


The front door from the inside. And our new shoe shelf. Makes the genkan much tidier.


Turn right after entering and you see the guest bedroom. Otherwise known as "the place where we throw all of the stuff that we don't have room for anywhere else and then try to clean and make livable when someone is staying over." Those clothes would usually be hanging outside to dry, but it was pouring down rain the day before so I hung them up inside.


Our wardrobe:


Turn left after entering and you see the bathroom area:


Behind that door:


The shower (across from the sink):


Turn right after entering (and after the guest bedroom) and there is the kitchen. That bag hanging is the recycle bag for プラ: Pura - everything plastic you could possibly imagine. We don't have a trash can for it yet.


The kitchen sink. And some newly purchased Dr Pepper.


Open the shoji doors on the left side of the kitchen and you have the living room:




The underside of the kotatsu table:


Turn left when you enter the living room and you see the bedroom:


Our futons (without sheets)


The view from our bedroom window. That's Mt. Fuji in the distance:


The view the other direction:


The door you saw in the kitchen leads to this, the balcony (equipped with washing machine and clothes line):




The view from the balcony:


Kelly's school, also from the balcony:


Go out the front door and you have the stairs. We're on the 3rd floor:


Fuji-san from the stairs. Getting harder to see every day as we near the summer:


The other direction:


Our local neighborhood rice field. Since I took this the field has been flooded because apparently that's how you grow rice. That's also how you attract thousands of frogs to croak all night long.


So there you go! I hope you enjoyed the picture tour. No more writing for tonight. Goodnight!