It is fairly difficult to believe I have already been here a third of a year. It doesn t seem like it s been that long. I guess that s because there always seems to be something going on. One week, it is Halloween/school festival, the next is the mid year conference, the next is the Isahaya conference, and it keeps going. In fact, in the past seven or 8 weeks, I ve only had one full work week. We have had 2 national holidays recently, 2 conferences, the school festival, the City festival, exams, a marathon, and possibly something else. I constantly have time off of work. And it s a bit strange. I would like to have a work schedule with a few more classes, but I love when class gets canceled for whatever reason.

I didn t do anything for Halloween. I had planned on going to Omura. Instead, I went to the school festival during the day (it was on a Saturday, so I had the previous Thursday off) and then went home and fell asleep. The school festival was okay. The largest chunk of it was each class singing a song in a choir competition. There were 2 songs available. Six classes sang one song, six to the other. It all sounded the same to me. There was also an acapella group. They were decent enough, until they were struck with a fit of the giggles. The art projects on display were really cool. There are some talented little artists here, I ll give them that. The culmination of the festival was the fashion show. A few girls here made their own evening gowns in a sewing/cooking/home ec class. They were working on their outfits for quite a while. The entire student body was going nuts during the show. Everyone was taking pictures, boys were whooping and the such. It was good time. The dresses turned out really well. Some of the girls made kimonos ( http://www.japan-promotions.co.uk/images/kimono_r_large.jpg). I don t know too much about them, but they looked nice. The best part of the festival for me was the tea ceremony. Each student in our school is supposed to be part of a club. We have sports like basketball, soccer, archery, kendo, and we have brass band and drama club, and we also have tea ceremony. The girls (I don t know if the class is officially only for girls or not, but only girls join) learn how to perform a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. These little gatherings include hundreds of little rules like how to properly hold the ladel, how to wipe the pot off, how many times to stir the whisk, how to rotate your tea cup before drinking from it, how to display the cup when you re done drinking, how to bow, it goes on and on. The teachers told me the tea at these ceremonies is really bitter, adn they don t much like it. I thought it was fine. I was told to drink it slowly, so I did. About 4 minutes later I discovered that I was the only one with tea left and everyone was waiting for/staring at me. I immediately downed the second half of my cup. I quite enjoyed the whole process. In all, it took a little over ten minutes. The only problem was that during that entire ten minutes, we had to sit in the seiza position (http://www.dharma-rain.org/zazen/zazen-photos/Seiza-side-2-l.jpg)

The town festival is known as the Misogoro festival. It is not that big of a deal. Basically, one street in our town (a nice brick road) gets little decorations, and lots of food stalls. Misogoro was a giant who saved our town from a deadly noodle inundation way back when. Our town made too many Soumen noodles, and it threatened people s lives. Luckily, Misogoro arrived, and he brought his appetite. He ate all of the noodles and saved people from their delicious deaths. Then Misogoro walked to the sea, kept one foot on the main land, put another on a small island, squatted, and made a new island. To celebrate his heroic behavior, the town has a festival where one can eat all the soumen one wants, for free. I also had 2 hot dogs, 2 hamburgers, a chicken burger, 2 cokes, a steamed bun, and a candy apple (ew). It was a good time. I almost bought a super famicom addition to the old time famicom (original Nintendo in USA) that only came out in Japan. It was $20, and had I not spent the last of my money on a hotdog with cabbage three minutes earlier, I would be its proud owner this very day. I missed the big day of the festival, when my school s brass band marches down the street and Yosakoi (http://www.yosakoi.com/Pictures/Yosakoi2006b.jpg) dancers do their thing down the street because I was in Nagasaki City for the midyear conference.

There is not much to say about the midyear conference other than it seemed a little unorganized, a little useless, and cost me a lot of money (mostly on various ethnic foods that can be found in the city, so it wasn t a complete loss). The days of the conference were filled with all of the Nagasaki Prefecture ALTs (about 160, I think) listening to a bunch of nonsense (mostly. To be fair, there were a few informative bits) by day and then partying at night. What else is to be expected when you stick a bunch of recent college graduates in a foreign country and allow them to meet in a big city after having spent several months in the middle of nowhere around no one who speaks the same language.

I missed part of the other day of the festival because I had to work on the weekend (so everyone had the previous Tuesday off). All of the students in my school (and some of the parents) walked around town with giant tongs picking up garbage. Luckily, it was a nice day. I walked to several areas of town I had not seen previously (a nice little path running between a cemetary and the ocean) and had a good chat with one of my JTEs (Japanese Teacher of English). He s a good fellow, that one. I talk to him quite a bit now.

I accidentally broke my glasses. The just snapped in half as I was folding in the arms one night. A replacement pair cost me 16,000 yen (exchange rate as of today: $1 US = 88 JPY). My national insurance did not cover this. I was slightly less than amused about that. On a side note, my school takes out $30 from my paycheck every month to pay for parties and entertainment. We have, as of yet, not had a single party. I am even less amused by this. Not having a work party in a stretch of four months is awfully uncommon in Japanese schools. For example, Jacky s school seems to have at least one a month, possibly more. Anway, purchasing the glasses was a bit of a task seeing as how limited my Japanese is and how non-existant the ladies’ English is. The eye test involved a lot of pointing and me using phrases like “That one is good. But, this one…more…is good.”

Isahaya conference was fine. Nothing to mention there. Driving home, which normally takes about an hour took about 2.5 due to an incredible storm + rush hour traffic. Luckily, I made it home safely and then walked to the bar with a few friends. Most bars here close at midnight. We have found one, run by a rather friendly lady, that is willing to stay open as long as we are willing to drink. It s a perfect symbiotic relationship if I ve ever heard of one.

My town s Lions Club is involved in some sort of student exchange program. They sponsored four students from Malaysia to come over here for a few weeks. They only went to school for one day. I m not sure how they are spending the rest of their time. I was put in a chaperon position because they speak English and do not speak Japanese. Boy do they ever speak English. They were 16 years old and were as close to fluent as one can be. They started studying English in kindergarten. Malaysia does not have foreign teachers to teach English. It is all Malay teachers. I was a bit jealous. Anyway, they were really surprised to discover that I m also a Lion (in every manner except technically). I brought over a bunch of Lions pins when I came here. I gave the Malaysian kids (also not technically Lions, they are Leos, the youth club) some of the pins. They seemed really excited. I thought it was pretty cool. They then discussed how strange it is to travel all the way to Japan and meet an American who is in the same club they are. I m not going to lie, I think it s pretty sweet.

The day before was the school marathon (not technically a marathon, but what is technically anything it is called these days?). The boys ran 10 K, the girls ran 5 K. The fastest time was somewhere around 35 minutes. Well, most everyone ran. One student, whom I have nicknamed, ‘Elvis,’ walked the whole way. Elvis looks like a wrestler, or a strapping farm boy, or some guy who does something that requires him to have a wide stature and big muscles. However, Elvis is one of the laziest students I know. My student on the inside tells me he likes to fight on the weekend. He is in the office every week being yelled at for this or that. It never phases him. He just plum doesn t care about school. He missed a random days a while back. I figured he was up to no good. My JTE tells me he was probably helping his dad the fisherman. He has started doing work in my classes, which some of the teachers seem surprised by. This is probably because he is one of the few students who is not too shy to talk to me outside of class. As a result, I ve joked around with him a bit (he doesn t speak any English, but is good friends with Mai, who is one of the best English speakers in the student body (and is also my student on the inside (you know, the one who gives me all of the gossip), don t tell anyone) so she translates for us. So, I have noticed he writes down the stuff he s supposed to write down in class, and he no longer tries to take naps. Not that I let him get away with that before. My prefered method of preventing that is sticking my finger in the sleeping student s ear. But now, he doesn t even try. He and is friends still don t do anything when it comes to pair work, though.

My JTEs let me write the test for the second year students. This is exam week. I finished writing the test, I think they are pleased with it. I know they are at least thankful that I could take some of the work off of their plates. They all seem really busy. Busy with what? I don t know, but busy none the less. Since I finished the test, I have nothing else to do for the next few days. I ve been studying Japanese a bit (I admittedly found myself not studying as much as I would like for a stretch there).

About 15 – 25% of my middle school was out with the flu yesterday. Everyone in the building except the principal, vice principal and me were wearing face masks. My principal just brought it up to me here in the high school. He was wearing one, asked me, “You re not sick?” I m wondering if this was his Japanese (read: Indrect) way of telling me to wear a mask. From what I ve been told, Japanese people don t ask for things directly, and they avoid giving yes/no answers if at all possible. They just suggest things, and you are supposed to interpret that as a command. I don t really work that way, and I m certainly not wearing one of those masks if I have a say in the matter.

A large portion of my high school student body has been in trouble for smoking. My student on the inside says about 50% of the student body smokes, and a large percentage drinks. I m not sure if this is indicative of other Japanese high schools.

I will be judging an English competition this weekend. It s at an English Academy. One of my friends has a friend who either manages or owns the place. She asked him to judge the competition and find some friends to help him. He asked me, I said yes. I m looking forward to it. I will go to see the new Tarrantino flick this weekend. It finally came out here. I m told movie tickets in Japan are super expensive. I ll report back later. The closest movie theater is more than an hour away. I m going to one about 1.5 hours away because this one is right next to an Indian restaurant. Spicy food for the win.