Eventful Yet Relaxing Week

It's been a pretty easy week this week. Mid-terms were going on so there were no classes. Monday was a public holiday so on that day we slept in and then went and had sushi for lunch. The rest of the day was spent lazing around the house sleeping and doing whatever. Then on Tuesday Kelly had the day off because she worked on Saturday, so I took a day of paid leave since there was only testing going on at school which doesn't require my assistance. So we went to Shizuoka to get our multiple re-entry permits so if we want to leave the country we will be allowed back in. We heard about a good Mexican restaurant in Shizuoka and we were going to go check it out. It was raining so we bought some umbrellas at the train station and headed into the city. The map we had turned out to be very inaccurate but we eventually found the place after about 30 minutes of looking all around the area and of course it was randomly closed at 1pm on a Tuesday. Very disappointing. The sign out front said closed Sunday but said nothing about Tuesday. And it even said Tex Mex on the door which is exactly what I needed but alas, it was not to be. So we went and had ramen and gyoza. Always a good substitute. After that we went and got our permits done and headed back to Fuji. We would've gone to see some stuff in Shizuoka if not for the rain.

Tuesday night I finished reading a book that I started on Monday. A very quick read for me who usually takes at least a few weeks to read any book whose title doesn't start with "Harry Potter and the..." The book was called The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I strongly recommend it. It is a great story that gives a little boost to your outlook on life. Certainly a fictional view of Heaven (for all we know) but very well written with a great view on the meaning of life. So anyway, check it out if you haven't already. It's by Mitch Albom, the same author as Tuesdays With Morrie.

So back to the week, Wednesday I went back to work, planned lessons for next week and played in a teachers badminton tournament. I haven't played badminton since elementary school but I had a blast. It's amazing how you can play a game with a bunch of people who speak a different language than you but once you get started, you just play. Ahh sports, the universal language. My partner, Ito-sensei and I lost both of our games but it was still fun. I'd like to do it again sometime. Then I spent Thursday planning more lessons and grading Oral Communications I mid-terms. It was a listening test about everything we have taught so far this term. We recorded the listening part ahead of time and they played it over the speakers in their classrooms. There were questions from my self-introduction on there. In the recording I mentioned Kelly's name several times and then asked the question on the test, "What is Kory's wife's name?" In my lesson I had talked a lot about Kelly and also mentioned and showed pictures of Kerry and Amanda. So the options were A. Kerry, B. Amanda, C. Kelly, and D. Lucy. Now remember that Japanese students have problems with the L sound because there is no L sound in the Japanese language. So they usually use the R sound for words that require an L. Hence the constant confusion between Rs and Ls. So anyway, Andrea and I graded a total of about 240 tests and we discovered that somewhere around 85-90% of them marked A. Kerry as my wife's name. So there you go Kerry, you're now a girl and my wife apparently. I have to admit that I kind of expected that to happen, but the rest of the test was so easy that that was really the hardest question on there. So I don't feel too bad.

And finally today we had school excursion day as an end of testing week reward for everyone. I went with the first year students. We went hiking to some waterfalls on the Izu peninsula. It was pretty fun and an easy hike. I got to talk with some students a lot so that was very enjoyable. They love practicing their English with me especially in a non-formal setting so it was good that they could break out of their shells a bit. I made hiking buddies with a couple of girls and may have accidentally promised them I would eat lunch with them at school next week. It was neat though because at first they would ask me a question and then I would answer and then they would discuss their next question with each other and decide how to say it in English and then ask me. But eventually as we found out more about each other, we started actually having a conversation, which was nice because that's pretty much what my role is here. Conversational English. So it was good to see it come to fruition a bit.

Here are some pictures from the trip:

The 16HR students on the bus before we left school:













The "haunted" tunnel we walked through:



My new best friends:














Some waterfall pictures:





































My Wasabi ice cream I tried for the first and last time:













Some of the 16HR guys:













Back to regular classes next week. But then Halloween is coming up and the kids love that. Hopefully I'll have some good pictures to share of that too. That's all for now.

Rescue Mission

Not many updates lately. Sorry about that.

The past few days have been devoted to a very important happening. Yesterday Kelly and I made a trek to the Tokyo area, not for a weekend checking out the coolest city in Japan but for something even more exciting. Caspian finally arrived in Japan! After months of preparation and worry and tons of e-mails going back and forth between us, Gwynn, Animal Quarantine, and who knows who else the day finally came for him to arrive. We got to Narita around 3:30pm and his flight was scheduled to arrive around 4. We first went to Animal Quarantine who immediately sent us to the American Airlines Cargo office where we had to turn in some forms and get some other forms and wait. After we got the forms from them we went back to Animal Quarantine who checked the forms and then sent us back to American Airlines. At this point we met a Japanese couple who happened to speak good English. The husband was actually raised in Dallas. How about that for a small world. They were picking up their cat so we went everywhere together to make sure none of us went to the wrong place. When we got back to American Airlines we went up to the next floor where we handed in some more forms and then all got into a van to go back to Animal Quarantine and in the back of the van were two kennels. One with the cat and one with our Caspian! I had to sit in the front seat so I couldn't see him but I heard all of the high pitched squealing from both of the girls in the back seat. Once we got to Animal Quarantine again I finally got to see him, and they let us take him out. Kelly got him out and held him while they scanned his microchip. He was visibly shaking from fear because he had no idea what was going on. Definitely glad to finally be out of the kennel I'm sure but it was short lived because we had to put him back in and go fill out more paperwork. We did that in the Animal Quarantine office while they checked him out and then we went to Customs to fill out even more paperwork. I impressed everybody by pulling out my hanko instead of signing my signature (at least I imagined that they were impressed.) For those that don't know, a hanko is a red stamp that is used in Japan as your signature. It's your name in kanji. Anyway, after customs we all walked back over to American Airlines cargo where we paid and finally were officially reunited with Caspian. About a two and a half hour process altogether. We bid farewell to the other couple and thanked them for translating everything for us. We were definitely lucky to have run into them. Once we got out of the cargo facilities we finally let him out of the kennel and let him walk for a little bit. We fed him and gave him water on the sidewalk (in his bowls, not literally on the sidewalk) because he obviously needed them. We then set off for a long trip back home. We finally got back to our apartment around 1:30am. Train times are really screwy here. He was stressed out and didn't like having to stay in his kennel on the trains and in the stations with so many potential petters around. I also didn't like having to carry his kennel around everywhere because though he is a very small dog, the whole unit became quite heavy. But we all got home in one piece and we're doing good. Many thanks go out to the Haseltines for helping take care of him until he was able to come. It may not be as exciting for him here but we are certainly very excited to have him back. We feel complete with him.

So anyway, that is the story from our end of Caspian's coming to Japan. A world traveler! In other news, we went to a local musical that one of Kelly's students was in today. It was definitely interesting and even entertaining despite the fact that we understood very little of it. I could pick out a few words including a very touching moment at the end where the main character said to her mother, "Okasan, gomennasai." (Mother, I'm sorry.) The dancing was very good and the staging was good enough that we could basically understand the plot. Definitely different from American theatre though. Including the opening where two characters asked the audience to be kind to them (Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu) and the end after the curtain call where one actor offered a formal thanks and bow to the audience along with an echo from the entire cast (Domo arigato gozaimasu.) Of course that kind of goes back to the prologues and epilogues that Shakespeare wrote into some of his plays, proving once again that theatre is a universal art form no matter what language it is in. But all in all it was very enjoyable. And the theatre was close to McDonald's so we got dinner there afterward. Always a good thing.

Edit: I just realized that some of you who didn't know us before Japan might not know who Caspian is. Check out our pictures of him to get up to date on our baby:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/koryandkelly/sets/72157604692137436/