Shucchou

Yesterday was an amazing day for three reasons: 1) I got to sleep in for 2 1/2 hours, 2) it was SUNNY and WARM and 3) I didn’t have to go to school! WOOT! Tobu ALTs had an orientation kinda thing in Tatebayashi in the afternoon, so I managed to skip out of all of shougakkou, which was wonderful, as I needed a break from it. I love shou, but I was totally in need of a week off! Woot.

The orientation was at Scott’s school in Tatebayashi, i.e. the nicest school I have EVER seen in Japan by far. Holy shit, it is an amazing school, I’m so jealous! It’s only three years old and has solar heating, heating in the hallways, wide corridors, nice bathrooms, TECHNOLOGY, is clean, (sort of) doesn’t look like a prison, etc etc etc! It is fucking amazing. Most schools in Japan were built like the day after World War II and have NOT been updated nearly enough since then (or at all, it seems!), so it was like being in a whole different country. It is weird that in a country with so much unneeded construction, that they never build new schools. I don’t get it.

Anyway! Um. Orientation. So, we watched Scott’s class (um, his students are creepily good, and apparently are even when there aren’t like 20 scary gaijin staring at them), then discussed the class and team-teaching in general. I found it amusing that this is the second day of the orientation….when was the first day? Oh, yes, SEPTEMBER. The dude in charge mentioned “day one” multiple times in his speech, and fuck if I can remember that far back!

The orientation was fine….a bit boring, but not as bad as some. Also, that BOE dude was full of shit. I know everyone who was there knows what I’m talking about!

After orientation Cindy and I were thinking of going to Mexico (a very simple name for a Mexican restaurant) for dinner, until we saw how unbelievably sketchy it looked. So, instead Mami drove me, Cindy and Angie to Ota (thanks, Mami!!!) to meet up with people for yummy-ass sushi at our favorite kaiten place. A couple of beers and lots of sushi later, we all didn’t want to go home and face the fact that we had work the next day (it SO felt like a Friday), so we went out for unneeded dessert at Typhoon. It was cool because we got to watch the Olympics on a huge projection screen. At first downhill blah blah skiing was really exciting, until we got to the motherfucking 35th person, at which it was NOT EXCITING AT ALL. Hello, were they just letting random tourists go down the slopes?! Bah. I want some bobsledding and skating up in hea!

Anyway, eventually we faced the fact that we had to go home, as it was a school night (sniff sniff), and the night ended. Boooo work! But yay fun day.