First last

Yesterday was the first of my last days at a school. Yesterday was my last day at Makami. I've just read over my first impressions of the school. They were apt. I commented on doing 6 lessons in a day. I did indeed to 6 lessons on almost all days at Makami, and they were indeed exhausting. However, it was still a great school. Of all my schools, Makami had the best average behaviour. They were my best 6s, and I had some awesome 5s too, as well as one year 5 class that was a little more difficult, but not too bad. The little kids rarely saw me, but were lovely and always wanted to say hi.

I felt really sad saying goodbye to the kids after our final lessons. In one class, a girl stuck paper tears onto her face to show me how sad she was too. We played games and had fun since it was the last lesson.

Then, after the usual 6 lessons, it was time to say goodbye to the teachers. That was also really hard, as again, I had the best average working relationship with the teachers. I got on really well with all the teachers, and we had some fun times, in the classroom and out. One of them is coming to Australia (Perth) for a year, so I'm hoping I'll be able to catch up with her when she comes to check out the East coast.  Also, there were so many other teachers at that school who always wanted a chat, and were interested in what I was doing.

The principal was taken by surprise, he didn't realise it was my last day, and made me make a speech just after 5, which was when he found out. I only managed to stumble out a couple of lines before excusing myself, I was feeling pretty teary. Then I chased down each of my homeroom teachers for a culturally questionable (but in my mind absolutely necessary hug), and just walked out waving and saying goodbye, with everyone waving back really enthusiastically. I managed to make my way out of the room, before bursting into tears.

Next week I've got to do this another four times. It's going to be hard.

Sick sick sick, and sick of being sick

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. Last week I had a really nasty cough, which I haven't yet managed to shake, although it is now less severe. This puts me now at 1 week mild cold, 1 week something nasty, 1 week runny nose etc coming of the something nasty, a weekend of actually feeling pretty well, followed by week and counting of bad cough. So basically now, over four weeks straight of being sick, and with me still being surrounded by scores of sick kids at school, I'm not exactly optimistic at my chances of avoiding the next one.

In the meantime, while I didn't actually miss any school last week, getting through each day was an effort, and instead of my planned sight-seeing on the weekend, I stayed home and tried to give myself a chance to recover. I'm not sure how much it helped, because I'm completely wiped out after work today. Hence I haven't done much worth blogging about (which sucks, because I'm running out of time), and haven't had much energy to blog with anyway.

On the bright side, I managed to win a "Room Steamer" as a lucky door prize at an event a few weeks ago. I stuck it in the cupboard, thinking it was a pointless appliance I didn't need. However, it is actually very good for reducing the tickle in my throat such that I can sleep without too much coughing. Also, Hunty is wonderful as always, has somehow managed not to catch anything off me, and has cooked most of the dinners lately.

A month of kyushoku - part 3

And the third week's food is here to tempt your tastebuds...


13 February

The plate was oden. It contained tofu, carrot and daikon (a mild raddish) which were all ok. There were also quail eggs, rounds of processed fish, and konyaku (appropriately known in English as Devil's Tounge). These parts were not edible.

The greens had dried bonito (a kind of fish) mixed through them, which completely destroyed what flavour they had. The rice had a small proportion of of whole wheat, mixed in with it, which doesn't taste as good as plain rice, but I suppose it must be healthier. There was actually a long narrow whole fish served up on the rice, but I accidentally gave it away to Dave before I took the photo.

Rating: 1/5


14 February

The vegetables were rather uninspired, the rice was curried but a bit dry, the creamed soup was rather nice.

Rating: 3/5


15 February

Vegetable soup with bits of pork. Weird fry of corn, carrots onion and bits of highly processed sausage meat. Plain bread roll. Nice.

Rating: 4/5


16 February

 The rice had bits of meat and vegetables mixed in, the soup was a simple vegetable and pork soup, and the mung bean fry was edible

Rating: 4/5


17 February

The vegetable soup was ok. The bread roll was made with rice flour, which makes it really soft. These bread rolls are a rare treat, and are very popular, though personally I prefer the standard ones. To the right is a mandarin flavoured jelly. I ate in the classroom, and stole a girl's jelly when she wasn't looking, and then blamed it on another girl, who was kind enough not to dob me in. It was hilarious (don't worry, I gave it back).

In case you want a close-up of the fish bowl, see below. I gave mine away without tasting it.

Rating: 4/5 (only because there was jelly)

A month of kyushoku - part 2

Week two of this series I was sick a lot. I stayed home Tuesday, and Monday, Wednesday and Thursday I went home before lunch. Thus unfortunately, I only have one photo.

10 February

Soup was a vegetable soup with bits of pork. The bun had bits of sweet potato in it, which worked pretty well. The other thing was deep fried minced tofu with grated vegetables, I think. It wasn't too bad.


Rating: 4/5

I'm in a commercial

Some of the girls I teach are convinced that I look like the woman in this commercial. Because she's a blonde foreigner and so am I...?

For the past 2 lessons, they've been making me repeat the lines she says, and do the same hand gesture. They find it hillarious, and keep saying how alike we are. Considering that I can hear a really strong and horrible accent in her speech, I'm not sure that's a good thing...

Illumination

Last Saturday night Hunty and I travelled to Nabana no Sato, a resort village famous for its Winter lights displays. The disadvantage of going to see a lights display is that you have to be there at night, and this one was not exactly close. We left home at about 12:30, and got there with just enough time to have some dinner before it got properly dark. It should have taken us about three hours, but it took more like four as we missed some connecting trains. It turns out that when you cross between JR West and JR East, the rechargeable card that we use to avoid purchasing train tickets ceases to work. You can use it either in the West or East, just not to cross the border. We used it to cross the border, which cost us a connecting train. Also, the information I had managed to find on the Internet about the village wasn't accurate. The site is way off the tourist map, so finding English language info on the net was difficult. It turned out we needed to catch an further train rather than being able to catch a bus where I thought we would.

Anyway, we got there eventually, and had a lovely time walking through the extensive gardens and enjoying the lights. It was incredibly beautiful, the only problem was the number of other people also out enjoying the lights.

The most magical part of the evening was a tunnel of lights, probably 100m long. Unfortunately, it was packed with people, but it was still a great experience.

Another light tunnel

For the trip home, Hunty persuaded me to pay double and take the Shinkansen (bullet train) home. This made it a very expensive night out, but I'm glad at least Hunty had some sense, because by then it was late, and I was starting to feel pretty sick. The trip home took less than two hours.

Flu

All of last week I had an annoying but on the whole bearable cold. Then Saturday evening I started feeling really nasty. I spent all day Sunday in bed, then Monday dragged myself to work. I only lasted two lessons before I had to go home. I didn't feel well in general, but my weakest part was my voice. It just packed it in and decided that it wasn't going to contribute any more.

On Tuesday I just stayed home. I thought that by Wednesday I'd be ok, but I wasn't really. Fortunately my kids weren't all that well either. Two of the four classes I was rostered to take were off sick. The teacher in charge of my roster looked at me and decided not to roster any new classes in to take their place. I taught the classes I was on for, and went back home again to sleep. Before I went though, I taught a double class of year 2s, which involved pretending to be energetic while dancing to Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes. My acting even fooled me for a while, but after that class was done, I was completely wrecked.

On Thursday I managed to last out three classes before I was sent home with a temperature (or fever, as they like to call it). This also involved 3 classes of year 3 at once, also doing Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes. At least this time I had a microphone.

On Friday, I actually lasted out a full day of six classes, although I made the homeroom teachers do most of the work. I had no choice, otherwise my voice would have carked it within an hour or two. I slept at my desk during lunch, and was still reeling with exhaustion by the time I got home.

I'm finally feeling like I'm getting over it, although my voice is worse than it was yesterday, no doubt due to overuse. With any luck, I might be able to go out a bit later this weekend and play with my new camera some more.

Setsubun

Friday (the 3rd) was Setsubun. In simple terms, Setsubun is a bean-throwing ceremony/festival performed on the day before the first day of Spring. As an aside, this means that we are now officially in Spring, something which I'm not buying. At any rate, Setsubun involves bean throwing, both out doors and at people to chase away the evil spirits. Our host father every year organizes for the AETs to take part in the Setsubun ceremony at one of the local shrines.

When we left our apartment for the shrine, a bit before six, it was about 7 degrees in our apartment. That would put the outside temperature at only a few degrees above zero. Despite this, all the priests taking part in the ceremony took part in a ritual cleansing outside, wearing almost nothing. The cleansing process probably took about 10 minutes, with chanting, repeated washing, and more chanting.

After we had finished watching the washing, it was time to dress up,

Only Jess's pants were the right size

and then we followed the priests into the shrine for the main ceremony. During the ceremony, we sat directly behind the priests. I felt conspicuously on display, and tried to keep a reasonable posture, not fidget, and keep looking towards the front. I slipped up a few times.

The ceremony itself was great. I had no idea what was going on, but for the most part, I just relaxed and enjoyed the sound of the chanting and intoning, making no effort to understand. The changing combined with rhythmic drumming and the odd gong was strangely beautiful. However, I admit that due to the length of the ceremony, my mind tended to wander a bit, and I also thought about this:

although it seems that I was the only person to do so.

Towards the end, the chief priest tapped each of us on the head, each shoulder, and on the back with a special implement that I have no idea what to call. I assume this was meant to banish the symbolic demons we had on our arms.

Then came the highlight, as we were each handed a box of beans to throw at the audience.

After all the official business was finished, I was assured that it was fine for me to photograph the shrine. I hadn't previously had the opportunity to get up close to a fancy shrine before, they're usually closed off to the public, or no photographs allowed, so I may have run a little wild with the camera for a while.

A month of kyushoku - part 1

Every school day, we are provided with a school lunch, called kyushoku. All schools in Takatsuki have the same lunch on any given day, so it's common for us to exchange messages like "My day just got better, it's curry rice today" or, more commonly "Feral" or "How can they be enjoying...".

This month I'm going to provide a daily picture of what we've been fed, along with a brief description. Below is week 1.


1 February
We had training on the first, so no kyushoku that day. Three cheers for an oreo milkshake and chips.

2 February

The soup had both pork and a mild processed fish product in it. The
 bowl that looks like it could contain fried chicken balls actually contains a rice product coated in powdered soybean. I'm not sure if this one falls under mochi or dango, but at any rate, either one is really sticky and chewy, and I'm not particularly fond of it.

Rating: 3/5

3 February

The yellow flecks in the rice are millet grains. Millet does not enhance the flavour of rice. The fish was sardine. I was hungry, so I tried it, but immediately spat it out again and felt like retching. The soup was ok, but there wasn't much to it.

Rating: 2/5

The little packet beneath the milk contained dried beans. They were bland, but edible, thought they needed salt. I'm not sure that I was actually supposed to eat them though, apparently the kids were throwing them around, as a part of the Setsubun tradition.

Heavy Rotation

AKB48 is an extremely popular Japanese girls idol group. They hold the Guinness World Record for the world's largest pop group, with 59 members spread across 4 teams, as of September last year, which to me means that most if not all the members are pretty easily replaceable. The kids I teach, boys and girls alike, seem to love AKB48, and they're popular enough with the adults as well.

One time when my supervisor Dave had come to watch my lessons for the day, a couple of year 6 girls brought over a picture of a dozen or so AKB48 girls in short skirts and see-through shirts with brightly coloured bras underneath. They wanted to know which one Dave thought was the most attractive. He repeatedly told them that the girls were wearing too much make-up, and he didn't like make-up, and various other excuses not to judge the attractiveness of girls with an average age of 16-17; the students weren't buying it.

Watch the below clip at your own peril. It contains very pop-y music, and lots of girls dressed up in lingerie acting incredibly cutesy.