Winding down

Well we officially have 24 days left until we leave. It's amazing how quickly the time is going by right now. We've got so much to do to get ready to go it's hard to imagine getting it all done. We have a long to-do list and we're slowly knocking things out one at a time. Somehow it'll all get done. I hope.

I started telling my classes in the past couple of weeks that I'm leaving. The reactions have been about what I expected. A large group "Ehhhh??" (which basically is Japanese for "you're kidding, right?) and then a few students who throw in some individual exclamations. In one class, a group of girls who are pretty big fans of mine said "No!!!" and then "I need you!" "I want you!" "I love you!" One boy brought his worksheet up to me after class and asked me to sign it. His reaction when I said I was leaving was, "Unbelievable." It's going to get harder and harder over these next few weeks, but I'm going to do my best to maintain my composure as long as I can.

This upcoming week will be my last week with a full slate of classes. The week after will be final exam week and then my last week I'll have just about 5 classes. My last class will be on July 15 with my last day at work being July 16. It's hard to believe there's only 3 weeks of school left.

Farewell party season has officially gotten underway. A bunch of us got together at Ashley's last night for a farewell party for our usual group. We had a Mexican themed party with lots of great Mexican food. Most of us aren't leaving for a few weeks of course, but the next few weeks will be so busy for all of us that it was most convenient to have the party this weekend. It's kind of crazy to think that in less than a month we'll split apart from all of these people that we've gotten to know and go our separate ways. It's very likely that we will never see most of them again. We'll stay in contact of course through Facebook and other random things, but over the years I'm sure the contact will be less and less, and then eventually we may never talk at all. It's funny how life works that way. But it's been great getting to know people from all different walks of life and backgrounds and parts of the world. It's been an interesting two years, and I'm glad that we could spend it with a good group of friends.

As Kelly mentioned on her blog, rainy season has been going full steam for the past couple of weeks. It's been pretty unpleasant outside for the most part. The worst is the morning rain. One of the worst ways to start your day is to put on a hot rain suit, hop on a bike, and ride 25 minutes to work. Then go inside and take off the rain suit only to find that you're soaking wet anyway from sweat. I've spent the majority of the last two weeks sweaty. You kind of just always sweat. It doesn't really stop. The school is still refusing to turn on the air conditioners in the classrooms because it's not July yet. It makes for really uncomfortable classes. None of the students want to do anything because everybody is so hot, and I've even found that I'm having a hard time focusing when I'm teaching. I lose my train of thought mid sentence or forget what part of the lesson I'm in. Rainy season is a strange animal. I'm used to hot and humid weather of course being from Houston, but the weather during this time of year in Japan is so different. It's much worse. It's hard to really describe it. I think you almost have to experience it for yourself to really understand.

So anyway, I was remarking earlier this week that though I'm still sad to leave my job and my students, rainy season is making it a little less painful. All I know is that in three and a half weeks, I will never have to ride my bike to work in the rain again. And that is a very happy thing.

Finally, here are some gems from the student classwork archives. There was a lesson in a book about Turkish cuisine and how it's a fusion of Asian and European culture. So I had them create a new food that was a fusion of foods from different cultures and then draw it on the board. Here are the two best:


An onigiri dog. This is a combination of Japan (onigiri) and America (hot dog). I think the ketchup and mustard is also a nice touch.


Sushi gelato. This one is Japan and Italy (gelato.) Tasty I'm sure. 36HR is always good for a laugh.

Happy anniversary...to us!

Today is our 4 year anniversary! We're celebrating by taking an anniversary weekend trip to Tokyo Disneyland! We're leaving in about an hour to go to Tokyo. We'll wake up tomorrow morning and head to Disneyland for the day. We both have off Friday because of our school festivals last weekend. We'll go to Disney Sea on Saturday which is Japan's extra Disney theme park. Orlando has Epcot Center and Tokyo has Disney Sea. I don't know much about it, so I'll have to let everyone know more about it after we get back. We're excited though. This is one of the things we've been looking forward to since we got here. I haven't been to a Disney theme park since we went to Disney World for Spring Break when I was 9. I'm not trying to hide my excitement.

I told some girls today that it was our anniversary. They didn't know the word anniversary, so I wrote June 10, 2010 on the chalkboard. Under that I wrote June 10, 2006. Then next to that I wrote Kory and Kelly and drew two lines connecting our names. Finally I drew a heart. That's when they finally understood and said "Happy Birthday!" I quickly informed them it was "Happy Anniversary." Then I told them that we're going to Tokyo Disneyland and one girl, Yuka said in perfect English, "Bring me a present please!" I couldn't resist this effort so I said "Okay what do you want?" "Candy." "OK what kind of candy." "The chocolate crunch candy that tastes like strawberry." So apparently Yuka knows her Disneyland candy. I told her I'd do my best. I love my students!

Here we go! Off to a Disney adventure!

The beginning of the end

Do you ever have one of those days where you just wake up feeling low? Well I'm having one today. Here's why: Sometime late last night or when I woke up this morning, it finally hit me that we're leaving Japan in a month and a half.

The past three days were great. We had our school festival this weekend, so I spent all day Saturday and Sunday at school. It was a great time. There were performances by a lot of the clubs and all of the culture clubs had rooms set up all over school displaying things and selling things. The sports clubs sold food and there were big crowds of people from all over - parents, friends, former students, random people from the community. It was a big festival and a lot of fun. I walked around school going into the various rooms and talking to and taking pictures with students. I bought some things and made donations to some of the charity fundraisers. I spent a lot of time in the English club room where we were doing a fundraiser to raise money for Oxfam. We had a student doing a magic show and we gave away some bags with treats for everyone who donated at least 100 yen. In total, English club raised 20,747 yen (roughly $200) for my Oxfam Trailwalker team. I was very proud of them. They worked really hard this year and did a great job.

So the festival was a lot of fun. All of the students and teachers were happy and having a great time. There was just a positive feel in the air.

Yesterday was the annual sports festival that falls on the last day of the school festival. On this day, all of the homerooms compete in various athletic competitions. There are 100 meter sprints. There is a homeroom relay where every member of the homeroom runs 100 meters of a relay. There are about 40 students in each homeroom, so as you can imagine, it's a long relay. They have class jump rope competitions where all of the students in each homeroom jump rope with a giant long jump rope. There's tug-of-war, 5 people/six legs races, a girl's dance, human pyramid building, and all kinds of other crazy events. It was so much fun! We did a teacher relay as well where a bunch of the teachers compete with a bunch of students in a relay. I ran 1oo meters in that. Just like the festival, everyone had a great time. It's really neat to see how much pride the students take in their homerooms. They all tried their best to succeed.

After the sports day, there was a talent show to close out the three-day festival. Most of the performances were just ok, but they had fun and the students watching enjoyed all of them. One group of about 12-15 girls did a 10-15 minute dance routine. They closed out the show and they were amazing. It really looked like they had been practicing for a long time. I actually did a secret performance in the show as well. Secret as in very few people knew I was doing it until the curtain came up. I have a student who plays guitar, and I approached him a while back and asked if he'd like to do a song with me in the talent show. He agreed and we decided to do "Change the World" by Eric Clapton. He played and I sang. It went really well and the students all loved it. I've been wanting to sing for them for a long time, so I'm glad I got the chance to do it. I was happy to be able to perform with him. I think it meant a lot to both of us. I'll try to post a video of it on here soon.

So, after all of that, I woke up this morning feeling the post-festival let down. It's like the feeling you get after a vacation. You've been looking forward to it for so long and you have so much fun, and then it ends and you go through a few days of feeling a little glum.

But in this case I kind of view this as the beginning of the end. There are no more big events left at school. Just a few weeks of classes and then finals and that's it. It'll be over before I know it. I'll be up on the stage giving my farewell speech to the students in no time. It's going to be a hard month and a half. I decided a while back that I would start telling the students that I'm leaving after the school festival. Well, now school festival is over, and that time has come. I'll probably start letting them know next week. Not looking forward to it. Cue the tears.

So anyway, that's what I'm feeling today. Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow to go to work I'll be feeling better. I know that it's probably the best thing for us to go home now, but right now the thought of leaving Japan is not a happy one for either of us. It's going to be tough.

My take on the Jim Joyce call

I'm sure most if not all of you that read my blog are at least vaguely aware of the Jim Joyce incident. If you aren't let me lay it out for you.



In Wednesday night's Detroit Tigers vs. Cleveland Indians game, pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from completing a perfect game. (For those unfamiliar with what a perfect game is, check out the Wikipedia page.) On what should have been the final out of the game, first base umpire Jim Joyce blew a call and called the runner safe when he was clearly out, thereby costing Galarraga the perfect game. It would have been the 21st perfect game in major league baseball history, the third this year, and the second this week. But now because of that call, it stands in the books as a one-hit shutout. Galarraga faced 28 batters and retired 27(+1) of them.



You can watch the play here.



I read about what happened before I saw it because I was at work when it happened. I watched the replay during my lunch break and couldn't believe it. I thought that it would at least be a close call -- a "bang-bang" play. But it wasn't. I can't imagine what Jim Joyce was looking at. The only thing I can imagine is that he was looking at Galarraga catching the ball rather than the base. I don't see how else he could have missed the fact that Galarraga clearly beat the runner to the base. It wasn't even close. And in that situation, with that much on the line, it needs to be a lot closer than that to even consider calling him safe.



As a lifelong baseball fan, every time I watch the play, it makes me want to cry. Though many people I know don't quite get it, I see baseball as an absolutely beautiful game. The design and the uniqueness of the game is amazing to me. I see beauty in a close call at first. The fact that the field is designed in a way that a slow grounder, if fielded properly will almost always result in an exciting close play at first base is just one of the things that I find to be wonderful about baseball. And a perfect game is one of the most amazing accomplishments that a baseball player can achieve. It's a once in a lifetime performance by a pitcher with amazing teamwork all around to preserve the perfection. To see it end on a mistake like that is heartbreaking.



I feel so bad for everyone involved in the situation. I feel bad for Galarraga. I feel bad for Jim Joyce. I feel bad for the batter Jason Donald, who knows that he was out, but will go down as the one who broke up the perfect game. It's a situation that is just so unfortunate. I have a great deal of respect, however, for Jim Joyce who, after watching the replay after the game, went and found Galarraga and tearfully apologized to him. He's been a big league umpire for 21 years and he openly admits that he just blew the biggest call of his career and cost Galarraga a perfect game. Umpires know they're human and that they make mistakes, so you won't hear one say something like that very often. You have to respect him for that.

Bud Selig won't reverse the call and give the perfect game to Galarraga. I don't like that decision, but I can understand it. If you go and start reversing calls the day after games that could open up a big can of worms for situations like that in the past and future. Although if there was ever a time to do it, this would be it. What I don't understand is why baseball is so reluctant to use instant replay. This is 2010. We have amazing technology at our disposal. To waste it is ridiculous. People say, "Oh baseball is a sport with so much tradition. We can't ruin the purity of the game and of the human nature of the game by resorting to technology." I find that argument pointless. We can't fight against the progression of our society and the tools at our disposal. Football and basketball use instant replay with great success. Calls are reversed that should be reversed and stand that should stand. Baseball needs desperately to join its counterparts in the 21st century and start using instant replay.

Armando Galaragga should have had a perfect game on Wednesday night because Jim Joyce should have been able to use technology to reverse his mistake, his human error. It's just such an unfortunate circumstance.

The Ends Have Come

After spending most of my Sunday writing a paper, I am now officially halfway finished with my first course for my Master's Degree in Education from ACU. This paper I wrote today was a challenge as my brain just wasn't having it, but I worked my way through it and produced what I would consider to be an acceptable essay.

The course has been quite a beast up to this point. For the degree program I'm basically taking one course at a time. There are 10 altogether. The one I'm taking now is called Negotiation and Mediation. It's been interesting. There was always a stigma in my mind about online degree programs. I think that's the same with most people. When I tell people I'm earning my Masters online the response is usually something like, "So...like Devry?" I can't speak for some of the online Bachelors degree programs like Devry and what not, but I can say this - judging from the first 4 weeks of this class, this ACU online degree is legit. I've worked extremely hard. Kelly can attest to that. I spend several hours reading and writing each night, and my Saturdays and Sundays are almost completely devoted to doing school work. I don't know what this will bring for me in the future, but I now know that once I get my M. Ed. degree it will be just as legit and hard-earned as one I could have gotten by going to school on campus. Maybe even more so because I have to balance a day job in the meantime. I'm feeling really good about it at this point.

One of the interesting things about it is that since we're not in a classroom, the professor has to be creative about how he teaches. There has been a lot of group work and a lot of videos. This past week, there was a podcast featuring a mediation simulation. I thought the voices of the actors sounded familiar. After a few minutes of trying to place them, I realized that it was Adam Hester and Gary Varner from ACU theatre. After all these years, those two are still contributing to my education.

Well it's series finale season in the world of TV. This year is going to be especially tough as my two all-time favorite shows will be having their series finales on back-to-back nights. Lost, as everyone in the world knows, has its finale Sunday night. We'll be cutting off all communication wih the outside world starting tomorrow morning so as not to be spoiled. We're going over to Dion's tomorrow night to watch the finale with a small group of devoted fans. I've been a dedicated follower of Lost ever since the very beginning. I remember being at the lakehouse and seeing a commercial for Lost and thinking, "That looks kind of interesting. And it's got the hobbit from The Lord of the Rings, so I guess I'll watch it." I watched the premiere with my mom a few weeks later, and I remember getting to the end of the Pilot episode and thinking, "Wow. That was awesome. And what the heck killed the pilot?" I can't believe it's coming to an end. It's going to be crazy.

In addition to that, 24 will have its finale on Monday night. Though I feel 24 has declined in quality drastically over the past few seasons, I've been a devoted fan for a long time. I didn't see the first season when it aired because I was still at ACU and a theatre major has no time for watching TV. But when I was living with Andy the next year, he recommended that I watch an episode of season 2. I did and I was hooked. After season 2 ended, Andy and I went back and watched all of season 1 on DVD that summer. I believe that season 1 of 24 remains to date one of the best all around seasons of television ever. They've jumped the shark a bit since then, but I'll watch the finale this week and bid farewell to a great series and an awesome character.

I've been having a lot of dreams about Lost and 24 lately because of these finales. There's going to be a big void when the Jacks in my life (Bauer and Shephard) are no longer around. I'm going to have to find some new TV to watch. Any recommendations?

In honor of the 24 finale, here is an example of how it is popular even here in Japan. You ever wondered what Jack Bauer eats during his 24-hour days? The answer: Calorie Mate.

Food and drinks

In my final few months in Japan I want to start posting some pictures of random things that I eat, drink, see, etc. regularly. Here are a few for this week:

First, here is a coffee drink that I bought from a machine at work. In Japan, you can buy all sorts of drinks from vending machines. It's not just cokes and sports drinks, but coffee, chocolate drinks, orange juice, tea, flavored tea, etc. This is Kilimanjaro Blend Coffee, or キリマンジャロブレンド. It's a sweet coffee that I get every once in a while when I'm feeling extra tired in the morning. During the winter, it came out of the machine hot.


This is one of my favorite items from the bread stand at work. It's a cheese bread puff thingy. When I get it I just point at it and say, "Kore." (This) It's pretty delicious and most definitely bad for you.


This is a new dessert they've started selling at the bread stand. I didn't know much about it, but I saw the strawberry icing and I was sold. It's a pastry and it had some type of cream cheese type substance inside. Very nice, but only a once a week indulgence.


This is one of my favorite drinks to get from the machine. It's mikan juice. Not 100% but still very good. Mikan is mandarine orange. This is what I buy when I want to be refreshed but need more sugar than water or tea can provide.


That's all the food and drink pics for this week.

Here's a funny picture though. I've been reading my textbooks for my first course in ACU's Higher Ed. Master's Degree program. Caspian decided one night that he might like to get his Master's degree too.


Happy weekend!

Spring has arrived! (finally)

Kelly has posted a bunch of Trailwalker pics on Flickr. Check 'em out if you haven't yet, and if you have, check 'em out again!

Almost two weeks removed from the Trailwalker I can look back on it as a really good experience. It almost kind of seems like the whole thing never happened. Like it was all one big dream. On of the most amazing things about the whole experience is how I never really felt tired the whole time. I was tired physically of course, but never sleepy. And my mind was completely alert the whole time. It wasn't until we crossed the finish line and went into the cabin and sat down that it really hit me. I was asleep shortly thereafter.

Physically I'm mostly recovered. There's still one spot on the back of my left heel, the achilles really, that hurts. But other than that, it's like it never happened. I've even gotten back into my regular running and working out routine. And it's very nice to have my weekends free from hiking and things like that. I feel like a normal person again.

We just finished up Golden Week. The weather was absolutely beautiful. By far the best weather we've had since probably October. No rain the whole time and warm. I even busted out my shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops. It's funny because many people in Japan believe that you shouldn't start wearing short sleeve shirts until June, no matter how hot it is. It can be 80 degrees on a beautiful May day and if you're wearing short sleeves, they'll ask you, "Aren't you cold?" But we gaijin don't always adhere to these "rules," so on Sunday I was on the train going to Dion's house for a barbecue wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Everybody was sitting around in their long pants and light jackets and sun hats staring at me like I was crazy. And I just stared right back. It's springtime people! Enjoy it!

I didn't do much during Golden Week. As I said we had a barbecue at Dion's. Kelly and I rode around town one day taking advantage of the nice weather. We went to a really good sushi place on the other side of Fuji called にこにこ (Niko Niko.) And on Tuesday, John and I went to Tokyo for a Giants game. That was fun as always. The Giants won 5-1 over the visiting Swallows. Heroes of the game included 阿部 (Abe) the 1st baseman, ラ三レス (Ramirez) the left fielder and ゴンザレス (Gonzales) the starting pitcher. As you can see, the Giants are very multicultural.

Back at work now for a short 2-day post-Golden Week work week. It would be nice if they could make up another holiday and actually turn Golden Week into a week instead of a 5-day weekend. But it's Friday now, so we're almost finished. No major plans for this weekend. I think we're going to some sort of classical concert in Shizuoka tomorrow. Should be fun.

Well, back to grading diaries!