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. :)