Never really thought of myself as a blogger before... but it seems to be the trend of late, so I thought I'd give it a go. Apologies in advance for the boring content you will endure as I capture my life in size 10 Arial font (for the most part, anyway).
So without further ado, Let's blogging!
Today is the last day for the school nurse who has been here since April. To say thank you, all the teachers went out for yakiniku (Korean BBQ) last night. I realised that in the three years I have been here, I have never taken a photo in a yakiniku restaurant, so I took my camera with me and took a few photos.
For dessert, I had orange sorbet served in a frozen orange. Very cool, very tasty.
And yes, that is a plate of tongue in the second picture.
I am in a meeting at work at the moment. We have them every second Monday starting from 3:10pm. The first few meetings I tried to pay attention and tried to follow what was going on by reading through the agenda. After about 10 minutes I got tired/bored/distracted and ended up surfing the net for the remainder. Now, I know to prepare some "activity" for myself to do during the meeting. Today's activity: draw a fish for shougakkou class next week.
The other problem with these meetings is that they run past my finishing time. My day ends at 3:55pm. It's currently 4:05pm and the meeting shows no sign of coming to an end anytime soon. Sometimes Kyoutou-sensei sneaks up to me and tells me I can leave whenever I want. I might try to make eye contact with him soon and see if he gives me the "ok" to crawl out of the staffroom.
But I haven't finished my fish yet. Will work on that some more.
That is what I have heard from every teacher here at school from the moment I arrived this morning. I didn't even know the score of the Aust v Croatia game, so I assumed we had beaten them. I just said "thank you", though and came straight to my desk, turned on my computer and logged into the SMH.
Ok, so we didn't beat Croatia, but we drew with them, which was enough to put us through to the final 16. Woah. Good on you boys! And it was enough to cause the teachers to congratulate me.
Australia hasn't played in the world cup for 32 years, and now we are down to the final 16. Australia never ceases to amaze me how it can always rise to the occasion, and achieve what some people may consider to be the impossible.
At the Olympic Games, Australia was strong in the baseball, Japan's adopted national sport. We managed something there that wasn't really expected. And now we are in the knock-outs of the World Cup, preparing to face Italy.
An ex-student came to visit the school yesterday. She had just gotten back from a 10 day school trip to New Zealand. It was cool to see her. She has changed so much since I taught her two years ago. Very much a grown-up high school student.
I still teach her younger sister at the Junior High. She said she heard from her sister that I was leaving in August, and that she bought me a farewell present in NZ: a little sheep key ring.
It really is going to be hard to say goodbye to all these amazingly wonderful people.
The latest in sports drinks here in Japan - Thorpedo. Ian even makes an appearance in the TVCM, showing off not only his swimming ability, but also his ability to talk underwater.
Japanese people seem to love him. I was at a dinner last night when a lady I had met earlier in the week approached me. She told me that her daughter, who was sitting a few tables away, heard that I was from Australia and wanted to know if I knew Ian Thorpe. I told her to tell her daughter that yes, we are quite good friends. She called her daughter over, and told her that Ian and I go way back. She was so excited! I pulled out my mobile phone and said "Shall we call him?" That was when she realised something was up.
I decided the little purple car I'm buzzing around in at the moment needed a name. The sounds of "V" and "B" are difficult for Japanese people to distinguish between, and therefore some people hear Vivio as Bibio. I told my friend I was on a quest to come up with a name for the car. She thought long and hard about it, and then told me: In Japanese, "bi" means beautiful, and "o" means man. So "beautiful beautiful man". Not bad, not bad. But it's a bit long. The whole idea of a nickname is to shorten the original name. So I decided on Viv.
Anyway, I was driving Viv home on Tuesday at about 10pm when suddenly, the blinkers stopped working. They were working fine before, but when I went to indicate at one intersection - nothing. Not even a hint of trying to indicate my intended direction. Checked to see if they worked using the hazards - yep, hazarding was an option. (Is hazarding a word? I have been using it ever since I have been driving in Japan, because drivers here use their hazard lights all the time. So much so, there needs to be a verb for it.) But the poor drivers behind me; if I did hazarding at every intersection, they'd have no idea where I was going.
Also, it was a rainy night... and the wipers started doing some funky business on the windscreen too. It took them 3 attempts to get across the windscreen each time. "I can't see! I can't see! I can't see! Oh, I can see!"
So I took Viv to the doctor on Wednesday morning. They fixed the blinkers, but the wipers... Now, I only have high speed wipers. Well, no that's not true. I can use all the speeds of the wipers, it's just that I have to put them on high speed first, let them do their thing for one cycle, then take them down a notch, let them do their thing again for one cycle, then take them down a notch until I get to the desired speed.
For the first time in a long time, I slept in my house onFriday night. Had an awesome dinner with J-kun at Danbeena in Kasakake before retiring home for some much needed rest.
On Saturday, I had the welcome party for the students from Arizona who are doing homestay with families in the city. The reception was ok; good food and drinks. But the highlight was the taiko performance at the ends. The kids got a go at banging the drums afterwards - I'm sure the performers regretted letting them do so straight away.
Once the festivities were over, it was straight to Tokyo for a rehearsal with my Oneesan for our duet. The rehearsal went well, and we were pretty confident we would be ok for the real thing.
Went and checked into my hotel, and then jumped back onto the train to head into Shinjuku to meet up with some boys for a few drinks. Only problem was - the train I needed for the last two stops had stopped moving. Someone jumped in front of it and halted the entire line. So I took a taxi to Shinjuku and met up with my friends there.
Stayed there for a few hours, chatted to people who have lived in Australia before and who know people I know, and then went home to the hotel.
Up at 9:30 and back into Shinjuku for a lesson with a Yamaha Electone Demonstrator. She was awesome, and gave me some really good tips for my upcoming concert on 29th July.
Then I met Oneesan in Ginza and we went to the competition hall. We were number 29 out of 43. It was the ensemble section of the Electone Stage, so 330 people partipated in total. Was huge!
We played pretty well. Ok, so I made some mistakes, but even the best guys do, right? We had fun, and people seemed happy with our performance.
Then I came back to Gunma, and got back to my place around midnight.
I mentioned in a recent post that I don't eat pregnant fish. Well, today, we had pregnant fish for lunch. And because some of the staff are away today on business trips, there was more to go around. I had 3 of these battered whole fish (yep, heads and tails too) filled with their little eggs inside.
I ate with the Year 5 students and they asked me why I wasn't eating the fish. I explained that I don't eat pregnant fish. So one girl decided to show me how much she loves them by biting off the head and crunching away. She smiled while doing so, and showed all these little yellow eggs all around her mouth and on her lips... If she was trying to show how good it tastes, she was going the wrong way about it. All she did was make me want to vomit and confirmed my dislike for pregnant fish.
Yesterday was a sad, sad day. I drove my CRV for the last time in Japan. It is currently being deregistered so I can prepare to send it to Australia.
So for the next two months, I am driving a rental. It's a yellow plate car which means it has the engine of a lawn mower. And it's two doors. And it's purple.
It is manual, however, which is kind of fun. Though when you do 80km/h, it doesn't feel very safe. The whole thing shakes and buzzes like it's about to blow.
I think I'd prefer safety over the fun of a manual. Ah well, I guess it's only 2 months...
Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round, or listened to the rain lapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight, or gazed at the sun into the fading night? Do you run through each day on the fly? When you ask "How are you?" do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head? Ever told your child, "We'll do it tomorrow." And in your haste, not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch? Just call to say "Hi"? When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift...Thrown away... Life is not a race. Take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.
I don't think I have ever posted pics of the school lunch I eat every day, so today I took a photo. And here it is.
Today we had rice, miso soup, some kind of vegetable salad and two pieces of squid. Oh, and two apricot-halves.
I'm not a fan of squid, but because I eat with the students, I try to eat whatever is put in front of me. I actually managed the two pieces today.
However, I draw the line at a few things that turn up in school lunch every now and then. I don't eat fish with heads, I don't eat pregnant fish, and I don't eat natto.
