Happy Thanksgiving!

I actually celebrated Thanksgiving about 2 weeks ago at Emma's apartment in Asa (the next town over from mine... well, 2 towns over). We had a potluck dinner!

Teresa actually cooked most of the food... and it was REALLY good!

Teresa - from US (left) and Emma - from Canada (right).
Teresa is Emma's predecessor who lives in Ube now.


Ken - from Canada - making tacos (left) and Teresa's AWESOME pies (right)


From left: Meng (US), Zile (South Africa), Brent (US), Saranne (Australia), Me

On Thanksgiving Day Saranne, Meng, and I just had dinner after work at this place called Coco's.

Local News!

I completely forgot to mention some local news! Last Wednesday there was a shooting in Ube! Big news here. As of last week they still hadn't caught the shooter. It happened during the day at a Pachinko Parlor. The guy who got shot was a member of the yakuza (Japanese mafia)... so they suspect it was a yakuza-related incident. I was a little surprised... simply because most of the violence that happens in Japan involves knives and cutting rather than guns.

Anyway...

I'm friends with the home economics teacher at my commercial high school. Friends as in she talks to me during the day. Anyway, she gave me one of these cake thingys today that the students made. Being friends with the home economics teacher has its perks : )

I will finish this post with a picture of a squat toilet. I'd say 98% of the public toilets in Japan are squat toilets. Every now and then you'll come across a western style toilet. Only 1 of my schools has a western style toilet option in the teacher's women's restroom - and it is the fancy heated toilet seat kind! So if you plan on coming to Japan (ladies), practice squatting!...

It's getting cold(er), Sumo in Fukuoka, & Miyajima!

Let's see... what's new?... IT'S COLD. REALLY COLD.

I used to think that I wanted to live someplace warm, but that has now changed to someplace with insulation and central cooling/heating. Seriously.

Work is REALLY cold. The schools are all very open - which I loved... until it got cold! Now it's as if I'm teaching outside. They've set up these giant heaters in the staff room... but refuse to turn them on until December. Why? ... because why would you ever want to use a heater before December???

It's great that Japan is eco-conscious or whatever... but when it's hot, sticky, and unbearable outside - then it's hot, sticky, and unbearable inside... and vice versa in the winter - cold, cold, and unbearable outside and inside!

All the girls still wear their skirts to school. Now that would suck. At least I get to wear pants! I brought 1 set of long underwear in my suitcase and I need to buy more when I get the time. After all, it is still FALL... it's not even winter yet!

Over the weekend I purchased a mini halogen heater and I keep it right next to me all the time whenever I'm at home. My airconditioner units work as heaters and I've been using one of them quite a bit... but I'm afraid my electric bill is going to hurt this month. I've moved my futon into my living room in order to cut down on the amount of living space I need to heat. The only time I use my tatami room is to get stuff out of my closet. I've set up a little make-shift thingy to hang my clothes on to dry. They take forever to dry outside and I had my clothes rained on twice last week. Plus, one of my co-workers told me that she hangs her clothes indoors to dry in the winter because it puts a little moisture in the air. Japan is dry, dry, dry in the winter. I've already had 3 random bloody noses in the past 2 weeks... and it's only fall! Luckily I was at home.

Alright, enough about the cold. Last weekend (the 15th and 16th) I had to go to bunkasai - school festival - at my base school. My commercial school had their bunkasai the same weekend, but I didn't have to go ... well, I couldn't go... because I was required to go to my base school's bunkasai. It was alright. Saturday was full of performances - music, dancing, etc. It was kind of funny because some of the girls had some pretty provocative dances to the most vulgar music... seriously! The songs were in Englsih, so nobody knew what the words meant. They just liked the music, I guess. But wow, those songs were so vulgar! I actually had to sing a song in front of the entire school. My supervisor told me aboout a month ago... so I had a month to prepare. I sang the song "Yesterday Once More" by The Carpenters with my supervisor and the school band played the song. I was really nervous and wasn't exactly thrilled that I had to sing a song... but actually... it was a lot of fun! and I'm really glad that I did it. I didn't have to go to bunkasai on Sunday since I had to go to Midyear Seminar Monday while everybody else had the day off (because of bunkasai on the weekend). I would've actually liked to have gone on Sunday because that's when the students set up little stands and sold goods. Since my base school is an agriculture school they supposedly sold really good, fresh, cheap fruits, veggies, and flowers. I had planned to head over just to buy some stuff, but by Sunday I was exhausted and didn't feel like making the trek up there. Instead, I went to the cool secondhand store with Meng and we walked around the city center of Ube. The city center of Ube isn't really anything special... at all... but we walked along the canal - which I walk every Thursday on the way to my technical school - and I took some pictures. There's also a shrine I pass that I wanted to check out... so we did.

Monday and Tuesday (the 17th and 18th) was Midyear Seminar for all Yamaguchi JETs. It was held at Yuda Onsen which is famous for foot onsens - or foot hotsprings. Seminar was surprisingly not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I actually got some good ideas from it. Monday night a bunch of us went out for dinner and drinks and then hung out at one of the many foot onsens. It was a lot of fun!


This past weekend was a three-day weekend. Monday was a holiday because of Labor Thanksgiving Day - which is actually every November 23rd - but since the 23rd was a Sunday, they made Monday a substitute holiday. Saturday morning I made my way to Fukuoka to go to the Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament. It was a lot of fun! I've seen sumo on t.v. and it gets boring after awhile, but it's much better in real life with the atmosphere and everything. Afterwards a bunch of us made our way to Hard Rock Cafe Fukuoka and paid a lot of money for some western food... but it was good! We ended up staying out all night and those of us who didn't book a hostel for the night caught the first train home around 6am.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Sunday I was exhausted from the day before and slept basically all day. I did wake up to make my way over to Trial in order to purchase my mini heater and another pillow.


Monday I went to Miyajima with Nia and Meng. Miyajima is one of the places I absolutely wanted to visit while in Japan. It's a World Culture Heritage Site. It's a town on Itsukushima Island located in Hiroshima Prefecture. It's famous for Itsukushima Shrine which is known as the "floating shrine." I think you can figure out why from the pictures! It was a rainy day, but we really wanted to go see the fall colors. I plan on returning again - it's not too far from Yamaguchi. Actually, it's basically on the border of Yamaguchi Prefecture and Hiroshima Prefecture. I'll for sure be back!

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The good... and the not-so-good. The frustrating.

I love going to the technical school every Thursday. The atmosphere is really welcoming and a lot of teachers make an effort to talk to me - whether it be in English or Japanese. I really enjoy going there. The English teachers are great. But anyway, on Thursday the p.e. teacher came up and was talking to me for awhile. It was really nice... even though I confused the word for weekend with hobby... and answered with a response to one of her questions that just did not make any sense... and then realized what I'd done, ha. Oh well. Then the librarian/teacher of something was talking to me about this author whose book I'm reading right now. She doesn't like this particular author... she despises him. It's kind of funny. They think it's really strange that I enjoy Japanese literature. I guess it's really hard for them to read since it's kind of old... but when it's translated into English it's really not that hard. But anyway, I hope the gym teacher talks to me again next week. She seems like one of the younger teachers... with the potential to be a lot of fun outside of work!... but I'll just have to wait and see. It'd be nice to have more Japanese friends in Ube.

One more thing that I meant to mention in the previous post: when I went to Sun Park mall last weekend I had to change trains at this really small, local train station. Anyway, since the station is so small you have to give your ticket to/pay the conductor before you get off the train. Well, I just told the conductor that I was switching trains and that this wasn't my final stop so I didn't have to pay twice. That was fine. But then this woman gets off without paying and he had to chase her down. She seemed really ditzy and couldn't grasp that she was supposed to pay the man. She seemed really lost and confused. But anyway. While that was going on I was waiting for my train to come. So while the conductor is trying to get money from the woman, the train that I had just gotten off is just sitting there. This man on the train gets out of his seat, walks over to the window, pulls out this nice camera... and points it directly at me. Come on now. Can you be any more obvious? No. I thought it was really rude... and from the looks of these 2 high school girls sitting on the train - they thought so too. As soon as I saw his camera was aimed at me I got out of my seat and walked down the platform - but I'm pretty sure he got his picture of me. That just really irritated me like no other. Now, had it been at a festival and I was dressed in some weird clothing, or something, then it would be different. Or even if he were discreet about it. But seriously? Living here has definitely given me a new perspective on what it's like to be "different" in a place that is so homogeneous.

A few weeks ago I was riding my bike to the train station in order to catch the train to the technical school. The police were sitting at a corner... watching traffic, I guess. As soon as I passed them they started up their car and started to follow me. How do I know I wasn't just imagining this?... because they followed me all the way to the train station which is a dead end! I pulled my bike into the bike park and they went on their merry way. A lot of foreigners get stopped... I'm just waiting for that... The police seriously pull you over simply because you are a foreigner. Come on now.

This is what my friend Mike had to say about similar experiences, in general:

"I'll admit, the longer I'm here, the more I appreciate America. The rampant racism, the lack of humor (funny humor anyway), the stares, being talked to like I'm a retard, being stopped by the police for being foreign, being overcharged for being foreign, being denied entrance into a shop for being foreign (all of this has happened in about a course of a month). I'm growing increasingly bitter, but it's our job to prove to Japan that they only make up 1.9% of the world's population, so I appease most people with a smile."

*****I don't exactly agree with the "it's our job to prove to Japan that they only make up 1.9% of the world's population" statement... but everything else is pretty accurate for many foreigners in Japan*****

Don't get me wrong, not ALL Japanese people are ignorant jerks - afterall, I do like this country. It's just been really interesting to see things from a different perspective - as the "outcast in society" I guess you could say. It's just really eye opening coming from a place where I "fit in" to a place where I stick out so much. It makes me think twice before looking at somebody who is "different"... a.k.a. staring. Some people go their whole lives being stared at - people missing a limb, these days - Arabs living in the US, or anybody with any kind of physical "disorder". For me, I know that I'll eventually end up living in a place where I no longer stick out. I really feel for those people who have to deal with this kind of discrimination and adversity their entire lives.

I would like to say though, that despite all of this negativity that comes along with being a foreigner in Japan - there are also a lot of perks that come with it. A lot of times you're treated like a celebrity, given special treatment (good treatment), etc etc etc - simply because you are foreign. It's just shocking when the not-so-pleasant situations come up as well.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's all balanced out in the end... and more times than not, we're treated better for being foreign. It's just that the "bad" things come as a shock because I'm (we're) just flat out not used to it.

So yeah, that's all I have to say : )

UBE... & Onoda

Well, it's Sunday night and once again - I have a 3 day weekend : ) Although, I didn't realize it was a 3 day weekend until Friday afternoon. Friday was a weird day. It was the 90th Anniversary Celebration of the founding of the school (Ube Nishi High School - my base school). I had this confused with the school festival... it was definetely not the school festival. It was kind of pointless actually. Everybody assembled in the gym. It was all done up for this special event - flowers on the stage, the floor completely covered with mats so the students had chairs to sit on instead of the floor. Since there were mats we didn't have to change from our indoor slippers to our gym slippers. I'm serious. You can't wear your indoor slippers in the gym... why? I have no idea. Also, there are slippers that you have to change into in the bathrooms. But anyway. There were speeches by important people for about 45 minutes and the playing/singing of the school song. Then a professional orchestra - consisting of 4 people - played for about an hour. Everything was over and done with by 11:15am. All the teachers got a fancy Japanese style lunch - complete with sashimi (raw fish). ..... Then that was that. There weren't any classes the rest of the day and nothing else was planned. WEIRD. But whatever. I'd also like to point out that EVERYONE - teachers and students - wore their nice jackets... yet I was not informed of this. They could've just said, "hey, by the way, wear a jacket on Friday"... but no. I was the only one not wearing a jacket. Oh well. I had a sweater on. It looked nice anyway.

I found out that the school festival at Ube Nishi is actually next Saturday and Sunday... which is when the school festival at Ube Shogyo (my commercial high school) is. ... and I'm expected to go to both. Ok. I'm actually looking forward to going though... I hear they're a lot of fun. The reason I have tomorrow off is because of the school festival at my base school next weekend. The following Monday is also a day off - but the midyear Yamaguchi JET seminar is next Monday and Tuesday. That's crap. I totally just got jipped out of a day off next Monday! Also. Since Ube Shogyo's school festival is also next weekend - this Wednesday is a day off for them... and Wednesday is when I teach there. BUT, instead of me having the day off as well, I have to go to my base school. Now that is crap. But whatever. My supervisor said there's a class he teaches on Wednesdays that is dissapointed that I don't get to teach them since I teach at the commercial school on Wednesdays... so they're at least excited that I'm teaching them on Wednesday. But still...

This weekend I stayed in Ube. Friday, a bunch of us went out to dinner and then went for drinks afterwords. I stayed over at Meng's and slept on her couch - the tiniest couch in the world!... because there wasn't room on the floor to put out her extra futon... because she JUST got back from visiting the US and her crap was everywhere. ha. But at least she has a couch! Man, I'd take that couch over no couch.

Yesterday I went to this super store... kind of like a mini Walmart... called Super Trial. They get most of their products from China - so it's SUPER CHEAP. I found this peice of cloth for only 399 yen, so I bought it to hang on my wall in my tatami room. I found this padded futon thing there for around 3,000 yen that I would've bought had I not ridden my bike there... or had a car to take it in. My futon is pretty thin... and a little uncomfortable sometimes... so I'm totally going back to buy it. It beats buying a completely new futon which starts at around 7,000 yen. Meng has one of these padded things and it's so comfortable. So next time... I'm so buying it. I also purchased what I thought was Dove lotion... but ended up being body wash when I got home. Note to self: read the ENTIRE label before purchasing something. I just looked at the bottle, saw the word moisture, and assumed it was lotion. Nope. I was looking for contact solution too... but couldn't find it. Weird. I still need contact solution.


Today Meng and I ventured over to Onoda to hit up Sun Park Mall - a really big, fancy, mall in the middle of nowhere. A few weeks back I rode my bike there... from my apartment... and it took about an hour one-way. Anyway, it's really new - just opened this summer... or at least was newly remodeled and majorly rennovated this summer. It's home to 1 of the 2 Starbucks in all of Yamaguchi Prefecture - the other is in Shimonoseki... which is the biggest city in Yamaguchi. Once Halloween came and went it got all decked out for Christmas. There's Christmas all over that place. But it's nice. I like it. Patricia met up with us and we had dinner at this really good okonomiyaki place. It was good.

I found this website where I can watch basically any tv episode I want. It's nice because it streams on your computer and you don't have to download ANYTHING. My friend Nathan told me about it and now I'm hooked. I can even watch the new episodes of Grey's Anatomy and The Office! There are tons of movies to choose from too! Last night I watched Juno AND Across the Universe. After I finish this entry I'm gonna watch Kung Fu Panda!

It's pretty cold in Ube now. Ok, well it's warmer than if I were in Indiana... but there's no such thing as central heating or climate control in Japan. I heard that as it gets colder, it's not uncommon for it to be colder in your apartment than it is outside... I am not looking forward to it. I have two air conditioning units that also work as heaters... but that's probably the most expensive way to heat up an apartment. I have a kotasu... table with a heater under it... but I don't have a cord to plug it into the wall... nor do I know if it even works. I've been using the heater in my bedroom at night when I sleep... but it is so hard to get out of bed in the morning! Seriously. Once I walk into any other room in my apartment - IT IS SO COLD... because only 1 room benefits from the heater. At work it's even colder. Those buildings are not insulated AT ALL... not to mention... the rooms aren't heated... AT ALL. I have noticed these old school heaters sitting in the corner of some classrooms - so perhaps they use them when it gets REALLY cold outside. I feel bad for the girls. They have to wear their skirts to school year round. Now that would suck. It's going to be an interesting (cold) winter...

OBAMA!

I shook his hand in April at Little 5!

Side note: Obama is the name of a city in Fukui Prefecture, Japan.

Halloween, Saga Intl Balloon Fiesta, & Karatsu Kunchi 2008

Well, the speech contest was 2 weekends ago. Out of my 4 students competing - 3 of them got top prizes. One of those 3 (the senior) really had her heart set on getting first because that would mean she could compete in Tokyo... but she didn't get first... and she cried. She did a really, really good job though. Had it not been for the girl with the boring story, but good pronunciation (thanks to some intensive summer course), I think my girl would've gotten 1st. Oh well. They all did really well.


Anyway. This past weekend was another 3-day weekend. Yep. Monday was a national holiday for Culture Day. Friday I hurried home after work and caught a train to Asa - 2 towns over - in 0rder to catch a shinkansen (bullet train) to Saga Prefecture for the weekend! Saga prefecture is where I stayed the first time I ever came to Japan. Instead of a 4 hour local train ride I made it there in about 2.5 hours. Ian and his friend picked me up at Saga station and then we went to this apartment complex that houses about 6 or 7 Saga City JETs. They refer to it as "Gaijin Ghetto" (gaijin is Japanese for foreigner). It actually seems like a lot of fun. The Saga JETs were really nice and really fun. They set up a "bar crawl" among the apartments... which basically meant everyone went from apartment to apartment and hung out. It was fun. We eventually made it to some bar in Saga to finish out the night.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

On Saturday, Ian and I headed over to the 2008 Saga International Balloon Fiesta. I remember looking up Saga on the internet before I went there 6 years ago and read about it. My host family told me about it too when I was there. So I think it's really cool that I made it : ) Anyway - there were a lot of people there... a lot! Along with lots of good food... AND the Honda Asimo Robot was there! I guess all the cool balloons - like the ones in the shape of anime characters - are displayed in the morning, but we didn't get there until the afternoon so we missed those. But it was still cool! There were well over 50 hot air balloons in the air at one point. One of the contests was that the balloons had to try and drop a marker as close as they could to this giant red X and whoever got the closest won some money. We left after that contest because I was meeting up with Tomi at 5:30pm for dinner. Tomi was the woman in charge of the LABO group that I attended in Saga back in the summer of 2002. Ian came along and we had dinner at her house with her, her husband, and her son who is now 17. She made tacos! I'd like to point out that I taught them how to make tacos that summer : ) She also made some noodle dish and curry rice. It was a nice time. I would've liked to have met up with my actual host family, but they were busy. I guess one of my host brothers actually lives and works in Nagoya now, the other one is in high school and works at a yakitori shop, one of my host sister's is studying in America, and the other one is in beauty school in Fukuoka. My host mom happened to be in Fukuoka that night, so it didn't work out. But I hope to see them when Yumeko (the one studying in America) comes back to Japan to visit in December.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

After dinner, Ian and I made our way to where he lives in Yamauchi, Saga. It took about an hour by train. It's really pretty where he lives. Sunday we woke up and went to some small shops in his town - including a really good bakery. We decided to head back over to where the balloon festival was going on to see if there was anything new happening... but we got there and it was basically the same. We met up with his friend Karl who was at the balloon festival and hung out for awhile. Then it was off to Karatsu city for a really famous festival - Karatsu Kunchi!

It took about 1.5 hours to get to Karatsu. We met up with somemore Saga JETs and watched the floats go by from a car park - it was cool! It was a really fun night. I ended up sleeping at Ian's friend's apartment (Charlotte from Scotland) with some other people. Monday morning we all walked around for a bit to see the floats again. I remember when my host family took me to Karatsu in summer 2002. They took me to see Karatsu Castle - which is really cool and worth seeing - and they also took me to the museum that holds these floats all year. I remember them telling me about how once a year the town takes these floats out of the museum and parades them around the city. Well, I honestly never thought I'd actually ever be back to Karatsu to see it... but there I was. I think that's pretty cool.

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Ian and I eventually left and made our way to Fukuoka City in Fukuoka Prefecture - a stop for me on the way back to Yamaguchi. The main reason we went was to check out the Apple Store. It was cool. We also checked out this temple that seemed surprisingly new - as opposed to ancient like most of them. After that I finally made my way back home to Yamaguchi.

It was a really fun weekend : )

Oh, and before I forget - here are some of my students from my base school who were talking to me as I waited for the train after work on Friday. They're typical Ube Nishi High School (a.k.a. Nishi-kou) boys - complete disregard for the school uniform... but they are nice boys. The one standing next to me was showing off his 10, yes 10, earrings. I'm not supposed to tell the other teacher's that he has his ears peirced... because that is definetely against school rules. But it's not like I'd tell the other teacher's anyway... ha.

Side Note: It's election day back in the US!... a few of my JTE's have brought it up... but only in the "who do you think will win" type of way...