Something called a spring rider

It's 11:35 pm Saturday night. I have 25 minutes to write this week's entry.

It's been a week now since I've been back from Tokyo and I work this week. Monday was a meeting with other Hioki city ALTs; Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all office days; and Friday was my first day at a school in this new year.

Unfortunately, the school didn't have any classes for me that day and asked me only to grade students' winter vacation English homework.

Not so unfortunately, there was a lot of it, so I actually busy at work for the entire day doing this.

Part of what the second year students' homework was that they had to talk about their town and what's in it. Most students drew maps.

My mind was officially boggled when a student wrote that a park nearby her house has many "animal chair."

I wondered what animals chairs could possibly be and looked at her illustration and realized that she was referring this sort of thing.

I thought to myself: What IS the word for those?

I pulled up an internet browser and looked up playground on wikipedia. It turns out it's called a "spring rider"

I can't remember ever hearing those called ANYTHING much less "spring rider".

I was conflicted- I could see no way around correcting this student's paper with something that probably no one really knows. BUT- if you're talking about a parks, "animal spring riders" is probably a bit more helpful than "animals chairs", so I went with it.

It's so funny when students throw things at you that you really don't know what to do with.

Another 2nd year student wrote that the past tense of "teach" was "peach." I am fairly certain this person was trying to see what they could get away with rather than really thinking they had the correct answer.

In the homework of a 1st year student, she introduced a friend of hers. She wrote: "She likes piano. She is piano." I thought that was amusing. :) Anyway, I crossed out "is" and put "plays" figuring that was a pretty safe guess.

Good to be back to work after 2 weeks of much needed vacation.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year in Japan!
I won’t be able to post this until tomorrow morning, though, but it still won’t be 2009 in California yet.
My New Years Eve was pretty unevenful. I spent my last few hours of 2008 on my computer downstairs plugged into the Internet while the older of the two of my host brothers (now 8 years old) watched pokemon episodes recorded before.
My host mother pretty much pried the remote from his hands so that I could watch the New Year programming at around 11:50 pm.
They showed footage of various shrines around Japan and people out there already to do their first temple visits of the year.
The clock in the living room said that it was 12, but it was early. Something within me (probably something very American) completely refused to accept it until the correct time became 12. (haha) Then, my cell phone, the TV, and the website I was looking at for the time all said 12. It was a quiet evening, but I still felt really happy about it being midnight New Years day like I always do. It’s silly because I am awake at midnight ALL of the time, but it was nice.
Then, I watched the 8-year-old roll around on the ground in a sort of a hyper, sleep deprived stupor and then went up stairs to plug in my phone, put away my laptop, and start getting ready for bed. Just as I was about to start charging the phone, the Japanese word for New Years just randomly showed up in the blue light display on the outside of my phone. I wasn’t expecting that at all. My phone is really just too sweet. (Actually, it gave me a special greeting on my birthday, too. :) ). I sat down on the bed to start writing this blog and I realized I could hear a temple bell (gong???) ringing. The same sort of sounds I heard from the television were happening all about the same time all around this country.
Anyway, these were small things, of course. But now I really feel like it’s the start of a pretty good year.
Happy New Year, everyone.
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

On vacation

Those are beautiful, beautiful words.

I like my job a lot, but I really felt that I had to get away for a bit to try to recollect strength and think of different ways to approach all that is my Japanese life.

I've been staying with my former host family from the Chuo summer program last year. My host mother asked me to teach English to the older of the two sons, who is now 8.

It is REALLY nice to be able to teach someone what I want and how I want. For example, I really like to use computers as a teaching aid, but classrooms simply don't have that kind of nifty technology. Not to mention I can teach English correctly as I know it instead of having to change things due to what the teacher is working with.

It's nice.

I have to test him again on this later, but the 8 year old memorized a pretty good length self introduction a little while ago.

"My name is Ryou. I am 8 years old. I like hamster. Do you like hamster?"

And yes, he does know what each part means. :D

Tokyo is nice. It's been good to just hang around and meet up with people. I've been taking it easy.

At the same time, I found that I really do like Kagoshima. I've found myself talking about different aspects of Kagoshima life with people and found that I really, truly enjoy it.

I also know that deciding to go to Tokyo was an awesomely good idea.

Christmas was uneventful except for a party I went to later on in the day. Uneventful Christmases are pretty standard for me, so it was no big deal.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. :)

Winter clothes and packing

I realized recently that I really like buying winter clothes. Especially buying warm socks and sweaters. It makes me wonder just what I am going to do with myself once the weather starts to warm up again.

I suppose that's the only real good part about cold weather- keeping warm.

I'm headed up to Tokyo on Sunday. It won't snow there, but it is colder there than here. Being bad at really knowing temperatures just from hearing the numbers, I don't really know what to expect.

So, I am thinking in my head how to pack my bag. I won't be really able to pack until Saturday because I have to do laundry first. I also need to buy souvenirs to give to people in Tokyo. I need to study the domestic flight baggage policy better, too.

I'm definitely worrying too much.

As you might've been able to tell from the last entry, I kind of have a strange perception of time these days. The days seem to be moving slower (probably because I am looking forward to Tokyo so much) and I am used to them moving so fast. I thought when I wrote the last entry that it would be the last one before going to Tokyo.

But I have a feeling I am going to feel much better once I get on the plane.

Hopefully, I'll feel much more present for my next entry.

Not much to say

It's Saturday here, a little more than 15 minutes before it's Sunday.

I haven't posted anything yet this week. Not because I haven't wanted to, but rather I was unsure of what exactly to say.

Life has been pretty uneventful.

I'm going to Tokyo on the 21st and I will be there until January 3rd. I am glad I made a decision about what to do for Christmas and New Years. As the days roll by and the holidays get closer, I realize more how difficult it will be for me to be away from California.

I didn't really expect to feel like that. I thought that at most I would miss my family's tacky gift exchange. I learned otherwise when I was standing in line to mail Christmas packages to people back in California and I found myself getting a little upset.

What was kind of funny (in a not so funny way) was yesterday while I was at one of my middle schools, one of the English teachers came up to me and started talking to me about how Christmas is such a family holiday overseas, like in the US and England. He kept talking about how it is so important for people overseas to be with their families and I wished he'd realize that I -am- a person from overseas away from my family and that he would just stop talking about it.

But- feeling weird and a little bit upset on and off about being away from the holidays, doesn't mean that I am not ok or that I wish that I wasn't here. I won't regret being here in Japan instead of the US, either.

I am glad that even though I thought my first Christmas away from home wouldn't be too big of a deal, I still arranged for myself to go somewhere so that I can distract myself with meeting people and moving around. I guess it turns out I'm pretty good at watching out for myself even when I am not 100% sure what's going on in my head.

So, if anyone wanted a psychoanalysis about how I feel about having this first Christmas away, here it is. I don't really want to say anymore because I don't really want to think about it more. There's no point to that besides getting upset because that won't change things. I want to stay in and enjoy the present.

This is rather mushy and probably something that should rather go on my other blog.

Something relating to this blog, however, is that since I will be out of town for about 2 weeks starting the 21st (Sunday), there might not be weekly updates here. I know I'm not very reliable about them yet, anyway.

2 minutes until Sunday. I'm posting this.

伊集院ラーメン Ijuin Ramen

This is a story about ramen.

Sorry if this blog isn't written so well. I wrote it rather quickly.

As some might know, I've had a vicious cough lately and my nose has been rather stuffy. During these times, I tend to prefer spicy food, hoping that it will clear up my sinuses.

Yesterday, when the end of my work day was approaching, the idea of having spicy ramen popped into my head and really appealed to me. I thought about it even more and decided that I wanted to try to get the ramen to go and eat it at home. Not feeling well and barely having a voice, I didn't really feel up to sitting in a restaurant.

There's two places for ramen here in Ijuin and one of them I knew for certain had spicy ramen. So, on the way driving home from work, I looked at the sign in front of the shop and was able to read in that short time that the shop opens that 5 for the evening.

So, I walked to the place at 5 and then was able to read the sign even better. The opening time was not 5, but rather 5:30. Further, the shop doesn't even open at all on Tuesdays.

I decided to go to the super market and buy things to try to make my own spicy ramen, but as I was walking around the store, I realized that I was really really hungry and tired. I ended up just buying premade food for dinner and gave up on ramen for the day.

Today, as the work day was wrapping up, I decided to go by the ramen place at 5:30 and ask if I could do take out as I had planned the day before.

I got there and asked, but they couldn't sell ramen to go.

I decided to try the other ramen place, Ijuin Ramen. I went into the shop and asked about taking ramen to go. The two guys in the shop said I could. It turned out they gave me a regular bowl from the shop and asked me to return it when I can. They covered the bowl with plastic wrap in hopes that it would stop the broth from spilling. They put that, along with chopsticks and a spoon on a tray for me. When I was still uncertain about how it would hold up in the car, they got out another case for me.

I was so surprised that they did that for me.

I think some readers would probably say that this kind of hospitality is "typical Japan", but I honestly don't think that's true. Sure, people here are very kind and helpful a lot of the time, but, like in any other country, an experience like that is very rare and awesome to have.

I drove home, careful of the ramen in the back, hoping that no matter what I do with my life, I go about it thinking outside of the box and going out of my way to make something work for someone the way they have their heart set like those guys did for me.

Oh, and the ramen was delicious.

More little fish and something about a tree

Today I went to one of my elementary schools that I hadn't been to in a while. I got out of my car and realized this was my first time being there since the hot weather died down and the cold weather began.

As I was walking up to the school, I thought about the desktop picture on the computer that I usually sit at. It is a picture of a tree in the schoolyard. The leaves in the picture were yellow because the picture was taken in fall/winter. I thought it was funny that the picture was on the desktop because it was the exact angle and view of that part of the schoolyard that someone using the computer could see if they just looked over the screen and out the door. So, as I changed into my indoor shoes, I was thinking that because the leaves had probably changed colors again, the image on my screen and the real life one would be really similar.

What I didn't realize is that because it is no longer hot out and it is actually becoming very cold each day, they don't leave the door open anymore. So, they can't see the real life tree from the computer at all except for glances when people go in and out.

Is that why that picture was used for the desktop???????

:)

It turns out that I am okay with eating small fish whole with school lunch if it's served on rice. I figure that's because if it's on rice, it's easier to pretend it is something else I eat on rice. Plus, these small fish taste better than the other small fish.

I shot hoops (basketball) with some elementary school students today. It was fun.