The clock is ticking...

Well tomorrow is the day. It's currently pouring down rain in Fuji and has been all day, but if the rain stops during the night as it's supposed to, 200 high school boys and I will be running a 10K tomorrow. I know it seems silly to be getting all worked up about 10K. It's not like it's a real marathon or anything. But considering that I have never done anything like this before, it'll be a big accomplishment if I complete it. And if I start, believe me, I will complete it.

I'll also be making good on the promise I made to some students last year.

Well today was a holiday, National Foundation Day. No idea what it celebrates. We spent the entire day indoors, Kelly reading her book, me playing Playstation, while it rained outside. You can't do much more with a Thursday holiday anyway.

Wish me luck tomorrow! If I survive, I'll tell you all about it!

Thinking about the old days...

Exciting day here at school today. Today was the last day of exams for our third year students, so they officially have the time from now until graduation (March 1) off. The time in between is used for students to make up classes or tests that they need to graduate. So today there were about 250 giddy third year students cleaning out their homerooms for the last time and packing up their stuff. They were very excited.

It reminded me of when I graduated from high school coming up on 12 years ago. I remember the day pretty clearly. It was a Friday. I had been exempt from all of my exams except one which I requested to take on that day during 7th period so I wouldn't have to come back the next week and take it. I took the exam, which I bombed (don't tell my dad,) and when I finished, my teacher let me leave. I remember walking down almost every hallway relishing the fact that I was finished. I knew I would likely never see those hallways again (which would have been true no matter what since the school has been completely remodeled.) Then I made the way out to my car and headed home. It's hard to believe that I have not entered the main part of that school building, old or remodeled, since that day. I think the last time I went on campus at all was about 8 years ago right after I graduated from college when I went up to give Mrs. Childress her Tommy Act II score back. She was retiring and had just left for the last time so I missed her. A bit anticlimactic I guess.

Well enough reminiscing. I had my last classes with the few third year students that I teach last week. I handled myself pretty well although I think if I had said any more I might have choked up a bit. I don't think I'll handle myself quite as well when I'm leaving in July. These students that are graduating have been a great class, but I don't have quite as strong a connection with them as with many of the students who I will be leaving behind when I go. It's going to be tough. But no thinking about that now.

Well as you may have heard, Kelly and I both passed our JLPT. For those who are unaware, that's the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. There are currently 4 levels and we passed level 4 which is the beginner level. But that by no means takes away from the accomplishment. It was tough. Surprisingly, I had my highest percentage on the listening section which is what I was most worried about going in. My lowest was grammar - no surprise. I plan to keep studying even after we leave, and depending on where we end up I may consider trying for level 3 next year. We'll see.

Well, one week until the 10K. I'm getting nervous, but I'm ready to get it overwith. I'm shooting for a time somewhere from 56 minutes to 1 hour. The pace I usually run at puts me in that range, but I usually run on a treadmill that sets the pace for me. It's going to be much different running on my own. I'm hoping the gameday adrenaline kicks in though. I've said from the very beginning that I absolutely do not want to finish last. Last year, the last student finished at about 1 hour and 5 minutes, so I think shooting for 56-60 minutes should be okay. I saw some students doing running practice in P.E. today and I think I can take 'em. Today after school I'm going to the gym to do my last long distance practice run. I'll do a couple of shorter ones next week. Today I plan to run 9km. So by the time most of you read this, my legs will be jello.

Kelly just put up some pictures on Flickr. Some old, some new. Go check 'em out!

First blog of the new year...my bad

Well I got fussed at by my mother this morning about my lack of blogging. We can't have that, right? So here we go.

I'm at work now killing time until my next class. Right now I'm teaching a lesson to my ichi-nensei on "How to Do Things." I'm not actually teaching them how to do things. The lesson is on how to tell someone how to do things. So I'm teaching use of things like first, second, then, next, after that, finally, etc. I have an activity at the end where each student has one step of a task and they have to find the other three classmates who have the other three steps to that task and then put them in the correct order. When they're finished they read the steps out loud for the class using those sequence words. I've taught it once and it went well. Hoping it goes well for my classes today.

This is the third week back from the break and I'm finally starting to feel normal again. The first week and a half I was still in post-vacation mode and had no motivation to do anything. I wasn't looking forward to my classes and didn't want to plan lessons. But now that things are back into a real routine, I'm feeling good. The weekend comes much faster the busier you keep yourself. That's a lesson I wish I had learned a long time ago.

I've started a new workout routine these past few weeks. It's not a New Year's resolution thing because I was going regularly before. I've just started working out harder and longer. No more taking it easy on myself. I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm trainging for two major things. I'm planning to do my school's 10km marathon next month. I'm nervous about it, but I think it'll be really good for me to do. Also I'm taking part in a 100km hike in April for charity. It's the Oxfam Trailwalker where you work in teams of four and together complete a 100km hike in 48 hours or less. I'll write more about that later. It's a very big deal and I'm really excited about it.

Finally, as many may have seen on my Twitter or Facebook, we have officially told our schools that we will not be recontracting for a third year. So what this means is that we will be heading back to the States at the end of July. It's bittersweet because we really like living in Japan, but we think it's time to move on. As of now, we're not sure exactly where we'll end up, but we know we'll be flying into Houston sometime at the end of July.

Well, gotta go to class!

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.