Catching Up

So once again I been a bad blogger. Work has been crazy lately, it seems, so I haven’t had any time to write while I’m here. Today isn’t so bad, so I will summarize the last week or so….

Friday night was nice and relaxing…I went to Nacchan’s for a yummy-as-usual dinner, then went home to watch RENT THE MOVIE, yo. Got a little help from Myra-chan in order to do so, sankyuu! Anyway, some wine, white chocolate, and Rent? How could a Friday night be any better?

I still don’t know how I feel about the movie. It is good because it is Rent, but I don’t think it is necessarily a good movie? Columbus is just a bad director, he has no sense of what works on film. He also cut parts that were important, and changed things that shouldn’t have been changed. But the cast was really good (except for Adam who doesn’t know how to act), and some songs were really good. I liked it, but didn’t love it or anything. I need to watch again with lower expectations and see how I feel. We’ll shee.

On Saturday I met up with Veronica at AEON and saw Harry Potter again. Fuck, that movie is damn good! I am on a HP high right now, so I bought my THIRD copies of HP 3 and 4. I bought them in the US, then bought them here when I wanted to read them in 2000, but all of those copies are in the States, so I bought ‘em while I was at AEON. I have quite the HP collection going on, apparently. Saturday night, I didn’t do much, since I had to wake up at bloody 4:50 the next morning!!!!

Stupid Japanese proficiency test! Woke up bloody early, took the 5:51 train from Yabbers, met up with Emily (thanks for keeping me awake! I fear I may have missed a transfer or two without her) and ended up at Saitama University with plenty of time. The first two parts of the test (vocab/kanji and listening) made me unexpectedly confident (did I mention I didn’t study AT ALL?), but then it all went downhill during reading/grammar. There was fucking FUCKED UP grammar on that shit, yo. Who knows what the hell that shit was. So, yeah, there is NO way I passed that test. It was all Scantron, but for some reason everyone has to wait 2 1/2 months for the results? Only in Japan.

After the test I was exhausted and braindead, but excited because I got to meet up with Natsumi and Adam! Natsumi was one of my RAs at Senshu last year, and she is muy cool, yo. Adam is her boyfriend who is teaching English in Saitama. I met up with them and had my second gingerbread latte of the day (SO happy they have them here) and did a bit of Uniqlo shopping. It was really fun to see them, but we will def. have to do it again when I’m not exhausted.

Sunday night I slept harder than I have in MONTHS. I was like dead pretty much.

Work has been crazy this week. Tuesday I had five classes AND had to help students with speech contest stuff. Yesterday I had five classes at shou and had to come back on my one period off to help students. Today is my first non-busy day, yay.

Apparently Yabuzuka is becoming aware that they have a Japanese-speaking ALT, which I am not amused about! I have to do a 90-minute presentation about America in Japanese in January. I don’t care about the fact that it’s in Japanese, but I don’t know what to talk about for 90 minutes in ENGLISH. What the hell?! So, er, if anyone has any bright ideas for that, let me know. I get to use pictures and stuff, but I don’t have THAT many pictures from home that aren’t “Here is Jeff drunk! Here is Jeff drunk and giving someone a lap dance! Here is Jeff getting a lap dance from a drunk friend!”

Embarrassing gaijin monkey story of the week: I have to be Santa Claus at the Public Hall (I don’t know how to translate that word) next week! Cindy, I hope it is better than the scary Santa suit we saw in Maebashi. God it is going to be embarrassing. I’m sure it will end up being fun, tho, as I get to give 3 year-olds presents. I will be sure to have someone take pictures. Ugh.

K, this post is long enough, and now I am all caught up! I still have to post a shitload of pictures, but that will happen after the trip to Lake Haruna
this weekend.