zee UpDate
further travellings have yielded the following assortment of stories, ideas, epiphanies, and bollocks...our hero has mastered the art of blogging and is off on new amazing adventures
*see BELOW*
Journal of Japan (recap)
Aug. 1
It’s 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning in Tokyo, and the streetlights burn brightly in streets, accompanied by a passing car now and then and one or two bicycles…I’m in a well-lit Denny’s restaurant eating traditional Japanese food (i.e. noodles and tastiness), listening to American jazz music from the 40s…couples eat and talk quietly in a language that I want to understand so badly…several Japanese men are passed out completely in the botths, somehow avoiding knocking their dishes and drinks and food onto the floor (and the waitresses don’t seem to mind). One man is snoring softly, keeled over face first on the table…I’m trying to improve my chopstick proficiency, with limited success…but I can’t believe it; I’m in Japan! I’m actually here, in Tokyo, about to embark on the mission/adventure of a lifetime! And it feels great…
A crescent moon peaks through the clouds of a warm Tokyo dawn, lighting the way to my temporary home on the 26th floor of the Hilton Tokyo Hotel…
Aug. 2
Here I am, full of anticipation for a great many things…friends, experiences, even enemies, if needs be…my heart is ready to jump out of my chest, like someone with ADHD in a room full of distractions…
Aug. 3
Everything is slightly alien and exotic, yet at the same time comforting and calming…it is clean here in Shinjuku…the air is muggy and smells of trees and concrete…the streets are clean and even the homeless vagrants tie up their belongings into neat little packages and say nothing as you pass them by on the street, content to sleep in the summer sun, rather than beg for change…they have no home, but they still seem to retain their dignity
The people are short, but the buildings are tall…cicadas churn the air with noise and symphonic cacophony, mulching the air with their incorrigible acoustic cracklings, chords and choruses of white noise…and everyone is polite and bowing continually…
Aug. 6
For me, my apartment is fairly roomy (meaning it has some rooms in it…J), albeit with everything scaled down for someone of the average height of around 5’5”…although I live in a lower-income neighbourhood (the suburb of Warabi), where an apartment like mine often houses a family of 4…
I have found myself looking at the floor at lot, especially in public areas…too embarrassed to look people in the eye because I don’t know what they are saying and that makes me feel like an idiot; a kindergarten student who doesn’t even know how to play with the other children…I suppose I’m getting a taste of what it feels like for the literally millions of immigrants who come seeking a better life in North America, yet have no idea really what they’re getting into and what they might be up against (and who couldn’t express their anxiety or indeed any other of a host of emotions even if they did know what they were up against because their skills in the language of the new country the have come to are virtually non-existent)…none-existent at least for a little while…with the passage of time, it becomes gradually easier and easier to make one’s way around…and I intend to bypass (at least somewhat) the gradual part by studying every day…yaarr, not being able to speak the native tongue of the country in which one resides is infuriating and embarrassing…it seals you off from the world into a private world of one, populated by rambling inner dialogue and encourages anti-social behaviour…not good…yana vibration da…
Ps. I had my first earthquake experience last night! It was pretty damn sweet…fairly small quake though…but enough to set the building a-swaying slightly in the night…it felt like a dream, feeling the whole building rocking back and forth, slowly shaking from side to side…very surreal (like most of Japan!)…it’s just such a powerful force, and you feel it through your feet! Sweet sweet sweet…
Aug. 8
There is a neighbourhood cat in the danchi! So so so cool…and he’s super friendly and fun to pet…mreeowwwrr…my apartment is almost complete…I need internet hooked up, and a cordless phone, and a new bathroom mirror unit dealie, and then I think pimp-fest 2005 in Japan can really commence! Oh, and I have to finish cleaning my balcony…forcefully removed a mouldy, wet futon (which is more of a mattress than a futon from North America) that is more than three years old yesterday…hacked my way to victory with a kitchen knife (stab stab stab) and disposed of the severed appendages in the trash (winner: Grum, loser: mouldy futon)…now there is only slime and sludge to deal with out there…rescued a sweet glass door floor shelf from out there as well…yay me…the Japanese is coming along, slowly but surely…I have to give a little introduction speech tomorrow in Japanese, so we’ll see how that goes…I would imagine pretty well though…bought some plants today as well…Junglist Massif, wicked wicked…
Aug. 9
Alright, so I’m hammed and it’s 1:30 am…hahahahaha…drinking around Japanese people is hilarious…they make even less sense and they laugh even more...I had my first Japanese speech today, and it went pretty well…getting nervous about teaching my first class in 3 weeks though…spilled neer on my tatmi by accident…man,k those things are great…they don’t absorb anything…hurray! So I found a place that seels beer for 80 yen (at least in October)…today the beers were only half price because I have a members’ card…word up to that fine state of affairs…hehheheheh…I thought about contactinv Maki today…and I am down to my last 1000 yen…this is not good…I ihave tons of p[imp shtuff, but I now have to deal waih tna almosat ocmplete lack of funds ldeft…agh agh agh…must secure funds…otherwise no eating…and no anything else…and dammit, no pay for at least 3 weeks from now…I’M *expletive*d…wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee…maybe if I close my eyes it will all go away…nope…I still have no money…yay yay yay…dammit, have to wake up in like 5 hours for a Saitama orientation (which means a bunch of redundant bollocks)…oh boiy oh boy can’t wait…oh, the workout facilities here suck…although I did meet some extememly skilled martial arts guys…one guy was 53 and didn’t’ look over the age of 25 as hee kicked over his head with ease…*sundry remark*…I can’t WAIT to be that good…alright, time for another Sapporo, and then perhaps bed…but maybe it’s too hot for bed…too much sweating to sleep properly for sure…might have to run the air conditioner, but alas, no funds for said endeavour…I feel that I am quite Mozartian in the way that I am living outside my current means (without the musical genius part)…wheeee!! But it’s so fun, and I still have so much of Japan to see before I really begin to teach any classes…tryo to find some decent metal and some jungle or drum and bass…it seems doubtful at this point, but I’ll definitely keep trying…woot woot woot…*cuss*, I need internet hooked up…
Aug. 11
Hahahhaha…I’m retardeea…met some right decent people…most of them Californians wheeeeeeeeeeee but they hold theire liquior about as well kas a rock holds water…ubt hey seem pretty much awesome from what I can tell…lots of entertainment value per son with the Californians…although a lot of Americans on the Programme are unforgivably retarded...just asking for the stabs…trendy eeeediots and after any women that will let them…their idiocy is terminal...now I’m listenting to tunes at almost midnight after almost grtting a keitai and hearing all kinds of interesting stories from Zgeorge about his oife , his Japanese girlfriend, and his hom ebnack in Ottawa…woot woot wlehhh…a good guy for sheez…alright, time for a nother beer from my midget fridge…hope they’re cold…
Found some contacts (DJs) for minimalist techno and drum and bass…pretty solid *curse*…aaaseo she ecxcellent …lots of good dancing and tehs hes oiis is wher slsome silly fun girlie dancing as well…solid night, and ettitng even solider wiwht the one man jam!
Founda a cat on the away home…alll furry and asweome…pet pet…purr purr…hurray!
Sometime in late September:
Sensei Grum: “What do you want to be in the future”
Student: “scotch tape”
…right, FAIL.
I had one student tell me that he wanted to be a sea monkey (found out later after much deciphering that he intended to mean oceanographer). Ah, the wonders of teaching…
Oct. 13
Okay, so Japanese kids (elementary school) are the cutest things in the world (gakusei wa totemo kawaii desu)…big eyes and always grabbing and jumping and shouting and being excited about everything…
Me: “minnasan, ohayogozaimasu!” (good morning everyone)
Students: *scream, shout, fall over, jump up and down, looks of disbelief, throw things*
and any combination of the above
Man, it’s sooooo fun and eeeasy to get the kids all frantically excited to the point where they are standing up leaning over their desks and falling over forwards…and I love the kids because they are so honest when they ask things, or laugh, or do anything…they haven’t yet learned how to lie properly (and that’s pretty wonderful)…if only the rest of the world could be more like kids…
Nov. 18
Went for sushi today with 2 of my teachers from Kishikawa…soooooooo cool! Although we were both completely crippled (linguistically speaking), so a rather interesting set of conversations transpired
I learned that Samurai spirit means to fight and never give up…man, this old teacher is a super cool…he’s into kendo and makes fun of his students because they are weak and give up all the time
I also learned that angler fish liver, a special kind of sushi, is horrendously vile
I also learned that sushi is comprised of the strangest assortment of “foods” imaginable…much of it convulsively repulsive…it is not merely fish…although there is much of that variety too…the place we went was wicked though, and the sushi all comes out on little plates on a conveyor belt like luggage at the airport, only smaller and more edible and the conveyor belts snake around the entire store…
Nov. 20 (or thereabouts)
So we were playing a gesture game in class today (the students would be given a word in English, and they would have to use gestures to express the word and I had to try and guess what they meant). Endless hilarity culminated in the final gesture (please clap your hands), in which the student as earnestly as possible asked me “please crap your hands” at which I nearly fell on the floor. Nobody knew why I did this though, until I had a lengthy and disjointed kaiwa (conversation) with the other Japanese teacher, at which point the students all nearly fell on the floor. It was a good day.
Nov. 24
Today was the best day of work (and I use that term loosely) ever. I taught two classes and then the kids had a kodomo matsuri (children’s festival)…They designed all these cool games in each classroom, one involved throwing origami ninja stars at a cardboard target, another one these fenced off a corner of the room, filled it with ripped up newspapers, and hid some brightly-coloured shuriken and you have to mess around in the newspapers to find them…so cool…another one was an obake house (haunted ghost house!) where the kids made cardboard tunnels all the room under all the desks and you have to crawl through it while the kids hit the walls and scream ghosty sounds at you and put ninja objects (balls of duct tape and popsicle stick swords hanging from the underside of the desks)…hahahhahaha…I got paid to play ninjas with kids and win origami prizes and shoot invisible kamehamehas and basically play all day…ah, just another day at the office…
Nov. 25
Okay, so recess at elementary school consists of the kids running around outside on an entirely gravel playground (ah, fun…after all, no one would ever get hurt on GRAVEL). Often they run around while the school’s outside speakers blast trance music and disco shit. Mostly the kids just boot around screaming “kamehameha!” at each other and pretending to be super saiyans. On a side note, the kids all refer to me as “DragonBall-sensei” or Super-Saiyan sensei”. Heh, it’s pretty sweet.
Also, many of the kids have a strange tradition of getting the foreign language teachers to sign various articles of clothing. Thus, I sometimes spend the last 5 minutes of several of my classes signing multitudes of boshi (hats) and bits of paper for alternatingly sheepish and maniacal elementary school students whose response to anything I do, write, or say, is “wa! Sugoi!!” (meaning, “whoa! Amazing!!”). Sometimes they scream “kakkoii!!” at me, which means “cool!!”
Note: All students, when entering the teachers’ room, must say “shitsureshimasu” upon opening the door, lest they risk the almost certain consequence of being berated and beleaguered by the couchou-sensei (principal). Loosely translated, the phrase basically means “I am scum”. The students must also say this upon leaving the teachers’ room.
Earthquake update: the count is now up to 6 since I first arrived…sweeeeeeet…
Nov. 28
So today, unbeknownst to me until I had to participate in it, was earthquake drill day. Wheeeee! The bell rings and all the kids rush for their little earthquake hats. These are comfy, ridiculous-looking tea-cozy or over-mitt type garments that make them all look like little sand people from the Star Wars movies. Most of the kids don’t know how to put them on and they mostly run around bumping into things.
Then it was fire extinguisher practice time! The earthquake police shout some incomprehensible stuff at the kids who then make a dash for a bunch of fire extinguishers. Then the kids yell some incomprehensible stuff (to whom, I have no idea) and aim their weapons at a well-placed construction cone (a simulated fire). The kids screw it all up though, shooting the fire extinguishers all over the place before finally getting them all trained on the well-placed construction cone (a now-extinguished simulated fire).
It was then time to go inside for Japanese fire drill! The earthquake police slash firemen filled an entire room with smoke and the kids had to crawl around the room and find their way out. Ah, Japanese fire training…these kids are ready for anything…anything, that is, other than having to meet an actual foreigner (we are aliens after all…officially, I mean…I have a card that says “registered alien” on it…it is my ID card). I suppose that’s one of the principal reasons I am in the schools; to try and acclimatize the wee ones to the presence of somewhat who is not 100% pure blood Japanese.
December 19:
so when you walk past someone who is in your way Japan, you must say excuse me and chop. Much like a judo chop, only less dangerous and more silly…multi-chops are even better, affording you even more leeway in the politeness department…hhehehhehe...all about the chops! one of my fukushiki kids made my day today: we were colouring christmas pictures and I told her that her opicture was sugoi (wonderful)...she began to smile and flap her arms around and then gave me a hug (she has down:s syndrome)...I love my fukushiki class (special ed class)
Earthquake counter: 7
*alright, so this thing is finally up and running…I have forgotten and neglected to post many many things, which way come back to my memory sometime soon and if it does, I will try to post it up…basically Japan rocks, and I get paid good money to rock out with kids.
*see BELOW*
Journal of Japan (recap)
Aug. 1
It’s 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning in Tokyo, and the streetlights burn brightly in streets, accompanied by a passing car now and then and one or two bicycles…I’m in a well-lit Denny’s restaurant eating traditional Japanese food (i.e. noodles and tastiness), listening to American jazz music from the 40s…couples eat and talk quietly in a language that I want to understand so badly…several Japanese men are passed out completely in the botths, somehow avoiding knocking their dishes and drinks and food onto the floor (and the waitresses don’t seem to mind). One man is snoring softly, keeled over face first on the table…I’m trying to improve my chopstick proficiency, with limited success…but I can’t believe it; I’m in Japan! I’m actually here, in Tokyo, about to embark on the mission/adventure of a lifetime! And it feels great…
A crescent moon peaks through the clouds of a warm Tokyo dawn, lighting the way to my temporary home on the 26th floor of the Hilton Tokyo Hotel…
Aug. 2
Here I am, full of anticipation for a great many things…friends, experiences, even enemies, if needs be…my heart is ready to jump out of my chest, like someone with ADHD in a room full of distractions…
Aug. 3
Everything is slightly alien and exotic, yet at the same time comforting and calming…it is clean here in Shinjuku…the air is muggy and smells of trees and concrete…the streets are clean and even the homeless vagrants tie up their belongings into neat little packages and say nothing as you pass them by on the street, content to sleep in the summer sun, rather than beg for change…they have no home, but they still seem to retain their dignity
The people are short, but the buildings are tall…cicadas churn the air with noise and symphonic cacophony, mulching the air with their incorrigible acoustic cracklings, chords and choruses of white noise…and everyone is polite and bowing continually…
Aug. 6
For me, my apartment is fairly roomy (meaning it has some rooms in it…J), albeit with everything scaled down for someone of the average height of around 5’5”…although I live in a lower-income neighbourhood (the suburb of Warabi), where an apartment like mine often houses a family of 4…
I have found myself looking at the floor at lot, especially in public areas…too embarrassed to look people in the eye because I don’t know what they are saying and that makes me feel like an idiot; a kindergarten student who doesn’t even know how to play with the other children…I suppose I’m getting a taste of what it feels like for the literally millions of immigrants who come seeking a better life in North America, yet have no idea really what they’re getting into and what they might be up against (and who couldn’t express their anxiety or indeed any other of a host of emotions even if they did know what they were up against because their skills in the language of the new country the have come to are virtually non-existent)…none-existent at least for a little while…with the passage of time, it becomes gradually easier and easier to make one’s way around…and I intend to bypass (at least somewhat) the gradual part by studying every day…yaarr, not being able to speak the native tongue of the country in which one resides is infuriating and embarrassing…it seals you off from the world into a private world of one, populated by rambling inner dialogue and encourages anti-social behaviour…not good…yana vibration da…
Ps. I had my first earthquake experience last night! It was pretty damn sweet…fairly small quake though…but enough to set the building a-swaying slightly in the night…it felt like a dream, feeling the whole building rocking back and forth, slowly shaking from side to side…very surreal (like most of Japan!)…it’s just such a powerful force, and you feel it through your feet! Sweet sweet sweet…
Aug. 8
There is a neighbourhood cat in the danchi! So so so cool…and he’s super friendly and fun to pet…mreeowwwrr…my apartment is almost complete…I need internet hooked up, and a cordless phone, and a new bathroom mirror unit dealie, and then I think pimp-fest 2005 in Japan can really commence! Oh, and I have to finish cleaning my balcony…forcefully removed a mouldy, wet futon (which is more of a mattress than a futon from North America) that is more than three years old yesterday…hacked my way to victory with a kitchen knife (stab stab stab) and disposed of the severed appendages in the trash (winner: Grum, loser: mouldy futon)…now there is only slime and sludge to deal with out there…rescued a sweet glass door floor shelf from out there as well…yay me…the Japanese is coming along, slowly but surely…I have to give a little introduction speech tomorrow in Japanese, so we’ll see how that goes…I would imagine pretty well though…bought some plants today as well…Junglist Massif, wicked wicked…
Aug. 9
Alright, so I’m hammed and it’s 1:30 am…hahahahaha…drinking around Japanese people is hilarious…they make even less sense and they laugh even more...I had my first Japanese speech today, and it went pretty well…getting nervous about teaching my first class in 3 weeks though…spilled neer on my tatmi by accident…man,k those things are great…they don’t absorb anything…hurray! So I found a place that seels beer for 80 yen (at least in October)…today the beers were only half price because I have a members’ card…word up to that fine state of affairs…hehheheheh…I thought about contactinv Maki today…and I am down to my last 1000 yen…this is not good…I ihave tons of p[imp shtuff, but I now have to deal waih tna almosat ocmplete lack of funds ldeft…agh agh agh…must secure funds…otherwise no eating…and no anything else…and dammit, no pay for at least 3 weeks from now…I’M *expletive*d…wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee…maybe if I close my eyes it will all go away…nope…I still have no money…yay yay yay…dammit, have to wake up in like 5 hours for a Saitama orientation (which means a bunch of redundant bollocks)…oh boiy oh boy can’t wait…oh, the workout facilities here suck…although I did meet some extememly skilled martial arts guys…one guy was 53 and didn’t’ look over the age of 25 as hee kicked over his head with ease…*sundry remark*…I can’t WAIT to be that good…alright, time for another Sapporo, and then perhaps bed…but maybe it’s too hot for bed…too much sweating to sleep properly for sure…might have to run the air conditioner, but alas, no funds for said endeavour…I feel that I am quite Mozartian in the way that I am living outside my current means (without the musical genius part)…wheeee!! But it’s so fun, and I still have so much of Japan to see before I really begin to teach any classes…tryo to find some decent metal and some jungle or drum and bass…it seems doubtful at this point, but I’ll definitely keep trying…woot woot woot…*cuss*, I need internet hooked up…
Aug. 11
Hahahhaha…I’m retardeea…met some right decent people…most of them Californians wheeeeeeeeeeee but they hold theire liquior about as well kas a rock holds water…ubt hey seem pretty much awesome from what I can tell…lots of entertainment value per son with the Californians…although a lot of Americans on the Programme are unforgivably retarded...just asking for the stabs…trendy eeeediots and after any women that will let them…their idiocy is terminal...now I’m listenting to tunes at almost midnight after almost grtting a keitai and hearing all kinds of interesting stories from Zgeorge about his oife , his Japanese girlfriend, and his hom ebnack in Ottawa…woot woot wlehhh…a good guy for sheez…alright, time for a nother beer from my midget fridge…hope they’re cold…
Found some contacts (DJs) for minimalist techno and drum and bass…pretty solid *curse*…aaaseo she ecxcellent …lots of good dancing and tehs hes oiis is wher slsome silly fun girlie dancing as well…solid night, and ettitng even solider wiwht the one man jam!
Founda a cat on the away home…alll furry and asweome…pet pet…purr purr…hurray!
Sometime in late September:
Sensei Grum: “What do you want to be in the future”
Student: “scotch tape”
…right, FAIL.
I had one student tell me that he wanted to be a sea monkey (found out later after much deciphering that he intended to mean oceanographer). Ah, the wonders of teaching…
Oct. 13
Okay, so Japanese kids (elementary school) are the cutest things in the world (gakusei wa totemo kawaii desu)…big eyes and always grabbing and jumping and shouting and being excited about everything…
Me: “minnasan, ohayogozaimasu!” (good morning everyone)
Students: *scream, shout, fall over, jump up and down, looks of disbelief, throw things*
and any combination of the above
Man, it’s sooooo fun and eeeasy to get the kids all frantically excited to the point where they are standing up leaning over their desks and falling over forwards…and I love the kids because they are so honest when they ask things, or laugh, or do anything…they haven’t yet learned how to lie properly (and that’s pretty wonderful)…if only the rest of the world could be more like kids…
Nov. 18
Went for sushi today with 2 of my teachers from Kishikawa…soooooooo cool! Although we were both completely crippled (linguistically speaking), so a rather interesting set of conversations transpired
I learned that Samurai spirit means to fight and never give up…man, this old teacher is a super cool…he’s into kendo and makes fun of his students because they are weak and give up all the time
I also learned that angler fish liver, a special kind of sushi, is horrendously vile
I also learned that sushi is comprised of the strangest assortment of “foods” imaginable…much of it convulsively repulsive…it is not merely fish…although there is much of that variety too…the place we went was wicked though, and the sushi all comes out on little plates on a conveyor belt like luggage at the airport, only smaller and more edible and the conveyor belts snake around the entire store…
Nov. 20 (or thereabouts)
So we were playing a gesture game in class today (the students would be given a word in English, and they would have to use gestures to express the word and I had to try and guess what they meant). Endless hilarity culminated in the final gesture (please clap your hands), in which the student as earnestly as possible asked me “please crap your hands” at which I nearly fell on the floor. Nobody knew why I did this though, until I had a lengthy and disjointed kaiwa (conversation) with the other Japanese teacher, at which point the students all nearly fell on the floor. It was a good day.
Nov. 24
Today was the best day of work (and I use that term loosely) ever. I taught two classes and then the kids had a kodomo matsuri (children’s festival)…They designed all these cool games in each classroom, one involved throwing origami ninja stars at a cardboard target, another one these fenced off a corner of the room, filled it with ripped up newspapers, and hid some brightly-coloured shuriken and you have to mess around in the newspapers to find them…so cool…another one was an obake house (haunted ghost house!) where the kids made cardboard tunnels all the room under all the desks and you have to crawl through it while the kids hit the walls and scream ghosty sounds at you and put ninja objects (balls of duct tape and popsicle stick swords hanging from the underside of the desks)…hahahhahaha…I got paid to play ninjas with kids and win origami prizes and shoot invisible kamehamehas and basically play all day…ah, just another day at the office…
Nov. 25
Okay, so recess at elementary school consists of the kids running around outside on an entirely gravel playground (ah, fun…after all, no one would ever get hurt on GRAVEL). Often they run around while the school’s outside speakers blast trance music and disco shit. Mostly the kids just boot around screaming “kamehameha!” at each other and pretending to be super saiyans. On a side note, the kids all refer to me as “DragonBall-sensei” or Super-Saiyan sensei”. Heh, it’s pretty sweet.
Also, many of the kids have a strange tradition of getting the foreign language teachers to sign various articles of clothing. Thus, I sometimes spend the last 5 minutes of several of my classes signing multitudes of boshi (hats) and bits of paper for alternatingly sheepish and maniacal elementary school students whose response to anything I do, write, or say, is “wa! Sugoi!!” (meaning, “whoa! Amazing!!”). Sometimes they scream “kakkoii!!” at me, which means “cool!!”
Note: All students, when entering the teachers’ room, must say “shitsureshimasu” upon opening the door, lest they risk the almost certain consequence of being berated and beleaguered by the couchou-sensei (principal). Loosely translated, the phrase basically means “I am scum”. The students must also say this upon leaving the teachers’ room.
Earthquake update: the count is now up to 6 since I first arrived…sweeeeeeet…
Nov. 28
So today, unbeknownst to me until I had to participate in it, was earthquake drill day. Wheeeee! The bell rings and all the kids rush for their little earthquake hats. These are comfy, ridiculous-looking tea-cozy or over-mitt type garments that make them all look like little sand people from the Star Wars movies. Most of the kids don’t know how to put them on and they mostly run around bumping into things.
Then it was fire extinguisher practice time! The earthquake police shout some incomprehensible stuff at the kids who then make a dash for a bunch of fire extinguishers. Then the kids yell some incomprehensible stuff (to whom, I have no idea) and aim their weapons at a well-placed construction cone (a simulated fire). The kids screw it all up though, shooting the fire extinguishers all over the place before finally getting them all trained on the well-placed construction cone (a now-extinguished simulated fire).
It was then time to go inside for Japanese fire drill! The earthquake police slash firemen filled an entire room with smoke and the kids had to crawl around the room and find their way out. Ah, Japanese fire training…these kids are ready for anything…anything, that is, other than having to meet an actual foreigner (we are aliens after all…officially, I mean…I have a card that says “registered alien” on it…it is my ID card). I suppose that’s one of the principal reasons I am in the schools; to try and acclimatize the wee ones to the presence of somewhat who is not 100% pure blood Japanese.
December 19:
so when you walk past someone who is in your way Japan, you must say excuse me and chop. Much like a judo chop, only less dangerous and more silly…multi-chops are even better, affording you even more leeway in the politeness department…hhehehhehe...all about the chops! one of my fukushiki kids made my day today: we were colouring christmas pictures and I told her that her opicture was sugoi (wonderful)...she began to smile and flap her arms around and then gave me a hug (she has down:s syndrome)...I love my fukushiki class (special ed class)
Earthquake counter: 7
*alright, so this thing is finally up and running…I have forgotten and neglected to post many many things, which way come back to my memory sometime soon and if it does, I will try to post it up…basically Japan rocks, and I get paid good money to rock out with kids.
posted by -Jubei- at 7:24 AM
3 Comments:
fix your spelling, fool.....and then fix yourself.....which is pretty much impossible to do
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Heya i am new here, I came upon this chat board I find It quite useful and it has helped me out a great deal. I hope to give something back & guide other users like its helped me.
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