Cock-a-doodle-do

Today was testing at chuugakkou, so it was the acceptable day for me to go to Takasaki to get my re-entry permit for my visa (so that when I go somewhere, I can actually come back into the country....why do they not give us with the visa, I ask?). Anyway, it's a good thing that one has to go to Takasaki to get it 'cause it gives ALTs excuses to leave work and shop, woot!

I woke up at 6 to catch the train....that was interesting ;) I rode my bike to the eki (station), and what did I find? A ROOSTER. Yes, a motherfucking rooster was just chillin' where you park the bikes at the Yabuzuka eki. Um, if that isn't a sign that I live in the inaka, I don't know what is. The most amusing thing is that the locals just walked by it like it was a normal occurrence. "Ah, yes, there's the bike parking lot, there's the rooster, there's the train...." It was even weirder than being mooed at by unseen cows while biking to the station once (one doesn't expect to meet cows in Japan).

Anyway, I trained for about seven million hours, then got to Takasaki and booked it to the immigration office, where I discovered 20 gaijin in front of me, sniff! That wasn't very encouraging, but I only had to wait a little less than an hour, which wasn't bad at all. I do have to say that government workers are slow in any country. Seriously, I don't know what they were doing, there are literally only five things that are done there, so you'd think they'd be really good and quick with those five tasks since they do them every day? Who knows!

Fortunately there was some sketchy lady at the third window who didn't take ticket numbers, but if you went up and gave her your stuff, she would just do it? It took me a while to figure this out, but I gave it to her and got it done within five minutes. I still have no idea why she was doing that, but I'm not complaining, considering they were on number 10 when I left!

So, what does Jeff do when he is done with his business trip by 10 AM? Go shopping, of course! And shopping, I did, deeamn! I definitely enjoyed being in a proper city! I miss it! I made up for the crazy 6 am by getting some oishii Starbucks.....mmm....I wish they had the pumpkin spice lattes here (mmmm), but a caramel macchiatto was enough to make me happy!

How to be even happier when drinking Starbucks? Get pastries from a bakery! I got melon bread (hello, it's necessary for existence), and tried my first andonatsu, which is a donut with sweet bean paste inside (k, in English it sounds gross, but...yeah). Anyway, it was fucking good, so now I have yet another new addiction, sigh.

I then proceeded to spend WAY too much time Vivre (department store). I took my sweet time and ended up with: 2 belts (one normal-ish, and one Japanese-ish), 2 pairs of sexy new underwear, a pair of the most comfortable (and cheapest!) pajama pants in the world, a leather bracelet thing that is totally not me, but I am making it me, hmph!, honey body wash and a loofah (I have NO clue how to spell that). This is the second loofah I have bought in a month, but fortunately I didn't mysteriously leave the bag somewhere like I did at Aeon. I still have no idea where that loofah is, but hopefully a poor person with lots of dry skin found it. I'm sure it changed his or her life forever. Oh, I also bought a ring, too.

Maybe it is a fortunate thing that I can't fit into any Japanese pants because I kept eyeing the most Japanese style-type of pants ever and wanting them really bad. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but a) I bought like five pairs of jeans before coming and b) they are expensive here, so it's good that I am too huge for this country.

Found a Korean place (well, a very Japanified Korean place!) and got a HUGE lunch special for 600 yen. That helps me pay for some of the shopping! It was good and muy filling, woot.

Did a bit more window shopping, then forced myself to leave the city before I spent my entire salary. It took more than two hours to get back, so thank god for keitai and iPods! I used up my entire keitai battery by 4:00 today. It can last me two days at a time, so I must have used that thing a lot today!

Anyway, here are random pics of the day, thanks to my keitai...


.........so strange


Mmmmm!


My an donut



The cutest pastries EVER! These are of Totoro. If you haven't seen Totoro before, you need to fucking rent that shit NOW!



What does one do when eating by himself? Take pictures of his food!


And, by popular demand, a crappy picture of some of my students running from the imaginary fire on Tuesday....

Lessons Learned From Tonight

1. While Yabuzuka may be a smelly town, and the normal ride to Nitta may be even smellier, the shortcut to Pete's house is somehow even smellier than the two combined. The whole bike ride literally smelled like I was biking through a bag of flaming shit. Yes, not appetizing, but the ride wasn't, either!

2. When bored on a bike ride, just start making up songs and sing them to yourself.

3. When singing gets boring, just start talking to yourself about how the ride is going, and any other thoughts that may be in your head.

4. I love me some Ota ALTs!

5. How does one deal with the lack of cheese in the Japanese diet? Make up for it every Wednesday by eating about 10 pounds of cheese, with or without bread to put it on.

6. Japanese pastries are amazing.

7. When horny, just hump Veronica. She will partake in it with no question.

8. When horny, back your ass into Veronica. She will partake in it with no question.

9. Wine makes your body forget that it's sick.

10. Follow your instncts and don't trust any bottle of wine with Japanese writing on it, no matter what the price. Even a 1000 yen ($10) bottle of Japanese wine will taste like over-sweet grape juice.

11. No matter how many pastries and how much cheese, bread, pasta, salad, and ice cream one has had, there is ALWAYS room for Country Ma'ams (especially when microwaved).

12. Listening to Rent makes biking uphill for 45 minutes a lot easier to handle.

13. (just 'cause it needs repeating) I LOVE MY OTA ALTS!

Another day at shougakkou

K, so my post every Wednesday is always the same. "Today is Wednesday, which means shougakkou! We have an ALT dinner party tonight!" And yep, that's the same thing as this week, hehe. As always, I dreaded coming to school today, as I haven't been sleeping enough the last two nights, but it has turned out to be a good day, as it always does at shougakkou. The kids are always so happy to see me that it's impossible to be in a bad mood here. I can't imagine doing it every day, but once a week is really fun.

There is a family that lived in Oregon living somewhere in Yabuzuka, and their two kids (well, there might be more, I dunno) go to Yabushou....I met the younger brother two weeks ago, and he was really young when he was in Oregon, so he can speak English way better than most shougakkou kids, but not great. However, I met the older sister today (she is a 6nensei) and she is fucking awesome at English. She has the American accent and everything! So that was both strange and cool to hear in the classroom. Plus, what are the odds of Oregon people being in Yabuzuka???

Today I have five classes, all of which are self-introduction, followed by fruits and vegetables. I calculated (yes, I was bored), and realized that by the end of next month, I will have done my self-intro about 70 times. Um, that is crazy. And I will have done fruits and vegetables about 40 times. Um, that is also crazy. Needless to say, I know my fruits and vegetables in English by now. It is kind of a pointless lesson, as half of the words in Japanese are Engrish anyway, so they already know orenji, banana, appuru, sutoroberii, etc. So, I trick them by throwing random-ass vegetables in there, muahahaha.

Tonight the weekly dinner is at Pete's, which will be fun. This damn cold is sucking all of my energy out of me, but I refuse to be anti-social!

Um, could Cindy and I please get a round of applause for choosing to go hiking on Saturday? How productive and exercise-y are we? I think we are secretly just doing it so we can eat as much as we want this weekend and be like "oh, I went hiking, its okay if I eat that third bowl of ice cream!" Hee hee, you know us and our motives...

Anyway, the Totoro theme song is playing, which means class should be starting soon. That is the coolest way to start class in the world, I fucking love that song. I could wake up to that every morning and not curse my keitai like I do with whatever damn alarm song I have it on right now. Tonari no Totoro, Totoro.......

“Are you going to run from the fire?”

So after being productive and making an audio CD for the midterm test on Thursday, one of my JTEs suddenly asks me, “Are you going to run?” to which I of course was very confused. She cleared it all up by asking, “Are you going to run from the fire?” Um, what?! Apparently there was a fire drill planned today that I wasn’t aware of, so 6th period consisted of running as fast as possible from the school, pretending it was on fire.

I am amused that in America, the land of chaos and individuality, we are all told to walk calmly in fire drills (‘cause, ya know, everyone would be very calm as the school burned down), while in Japan, the land of order and collective-ness, everyone is taught, “Every man for himself! Who cares if people are trampled, run from those flames as fast as you can, bitches!”

I didn’t feel so bad for not running ‘cause like 2/3 of the kids barely even moseyed away from the burning building. We then got lectured from a fireman for 20 minutes for not running fast. I hope they didn’t notice me taking pics of the fire drill with my keitai, ‘cause they probably wouldn’t approve, hehe. Sadly, I took the pics too sneakily, tho, and they didn't turn out, hrm.

Free time….talkin’ ‘bout free tiiiiiiime

Boy, do I have a stressful week! Yesterday was a holiday (I celebrated “Health and Fitness Day” by sitting on my ass ALL DAY LONG) and today one of my classes was cut and another one was cut in half (that is bad grammar, I think, but meh). Tomorrow I have shougakkou, which is legitimately tiring, then Thursday I don’t have to go to work! The students are all having their midterm tests, and I should be there, but instead I’m going to Takasaki to finally get my re-entry permit for my visa. I’m gonna get there early so I can get that done by the morning, then shop for as long as I want! Then Friday I have a normal day, then it’s the weekend, yay!

It’s a good week to have it easy, tho, because somehow my cold is getting worse, despite resting and drinking tea all weekend. Crazy Japanese colds!

Anyway, yeah, I’m beginning to understand what it’s like for ALTs who have nothing to do all day long. I really don’t know what to do with myself! I am catching up on month-old E-Mails, but I’m almost done with that, and I have 2 1/2 hours left. I refuse to study for my Japanese Proficiency Test, dammit! If I don’t think about it, it won’t happen, right?

P.S. Holly, just so you know, the title of this entry is sung to the tune of "Night School," hee hee.

Wandering

Today I went wandering around on Route 50 on my bike, as I had to get out of my damn house (I've learned there is only so much TV a human being can watch in a day!). I found a cool, funky bookstore/music store/toy store place that has a mix of Japanese and foreign stuff. It also had a lot of marijuana-related things, which was weird, as half of the customers were like 10 years old. Anyway, amongst all of the foreign merchandise, I was surprised to find.....


Home Depot mugs?! Um, who would pay for one of these? Amusing.

Ingredients for a good three-day weekend

Necessary items for a 3-day weekend:


A second bed set up in the living room so when you get out of one bed, you can crawl into another.


Bittorrent, for all of the American TV you could want


Even more American TV


Mint julep facial mask (thanks Van and Cindy!)


The Rent movie soundtrack


SNACKS


My new addiction: instant bibinba (sounds gross, but you must try it to believe it)


Mmmm, karaage (sadly I devoured three pieces before I could take this picture)


Money saved by not traveling!