$70 plate of spaghetti

My parents both work for the school district and I did too for like a year. I remember last year my parents were complaining about having to pay $13 each for the meal at the retirement party for my dad’s school. I think it might have partly been because they were on a diet and couldn’t eat a lot of the food at the meal anyway, and the other part was they both work for the school district, so they don’t have a lot of money! Anyway, in Japan they have parties for people leaving the school too. The only difference is about $57, and I don’t mean minus. So I went to the going away party for my school last night, so I shelled out the measly $70 from my wad of 100s and tried to eat as much of the food as I could. When the secretary saw that I wasn’t eating much, she got them to make some spaghetti for me. Of course it was the average Napoleon meat sauce that Japanese seem to love so much, but it was still better than the raw fish that I gave to the teacher sitting next to me. If they had a retirement party in Albany that you had to pay $70 to go to I don’t think anyone would go. What I learned from this year’s party: I’m not going to next year’s. For that matter I don’t think I’ll go to the graduation party either. It wasn’t that fun and it was $60. I’ll still to the board of education parties. They’re cheaper and more fun. Next week we’re having an overnighter at a hot spring. Weird thing is that it’s on a weeknight. They always have stuff on weeknights. How does everyone make it to work the next morning???

Another thing I don’t like is that a ton of people change positions around this time of year. I don’t understand WHY!! Why take teachers/office workers who have been at a school for 3 years and know what they’re doing and trade them around with other teachers/office workers who don’t have a clue about the position? I work at the town hall and the junior high school. My favorite person at the town hall and my favorite teacher at school are both leaving. I would have no problem if it was like the head of the English department or the principal, or the head of the Board of Ed….or my supervisor. All the head people are not my favorite people……why is that???? Oh well, maybe next year…….

I LIKE TOKYO!!!

I had sooooooooooooooooo much fun this weekend….

I saw the Broadway play of Lion King on Saturday and it was awesome, except for losing the use of both of my legs because the $115 seats were so cramped…….

In a lot of ways you could say that the Lion King is a very New Age-y story, but I saw it in a different light this weekend.

Let’s say Mufasa is Jesus/God, Scar is Satan, and Simba represents us. When Simba is young he listens to Scar’s lies instead of obeying his father Mufasa, just like we often give in to temptation and sin. But just like Mufasa sacrifices his own life to save Simba, Jesus gave his life to save us. But many times we lose the way—like Simba did—and forget about God and what it means to follow Him. Finally Simba realizes that he has forgotten about his father and who he was meant to be and he chooses to go back to his family and friends and rescue them from Scar’s power. We can chose to live a comfortable life and sing “Hakuna Matata”(spell?) for the rest of our days, but if we really want to be a follower of Christ and save our family and friends, we’re going to have to go out of our comfort zone.

This might sound a little corny, but it really spoke to me because the Lord has been talking to me about this very topic recently and I know I need to get out of my comfort zone and talk to people if I want to affect anyone for Christ. I think you could probably find God in any story, but it’s interesting to look. J

A Day in the Life

For those of you wondering, what does an ALT do?? Well, for me there are basically 3 kinds of days: school days, office days, and school/office days. For the next two weeks I have mostly office days, so I’ll tell you about those. For an example, here is what I did today with no exaggeration.

8:22 ~ arrived at work and wrote a text message to my friend about this weekend.
8:30 ~ started studying Japanese
(9:00 ~ bathroom break)
9:20 ~ made signs for my English bulletin board at school.
(10:00 ~ bathroom break)
10:10 ~ erased all the pictures on my camera that I didn’t need.
10:20 ~ checked my Excel spending records for the month and made sure all the numbers were correct and predicting how much money I’ll have saved by the end of my time here, for the 100th time.
10:35 ~ named all the pix on my computer that I hadn’t named yet.
10:45 ~ pre-wrote some e-mails so that when I get home tonight I can quickly send them instead of procrastinating 2 weeks and then not sending any e-mail at all.
11:15 ~ start writing some blog entries so that when I get distracted by my new favorite drama I can just copy-paste it in there.
(11:30 ~ yet another bathroom break, must be the drugs they gave me)
12:00 ~ lunch time! Eat (1½ tuna sandwiches, apples), medicine, sleeeeeeeep! I had a headache today, so I couldn’t play ping pong with the club. Zannen!
1:00 ~ lunch is over. What am I gonna do for 3 more hours?????!!!!!!!
1:00 ~ cross out everything on my list of things to do that I’ve done.
1:05 ~ start playing spider, switching the screen any time anybody walks by, like it matters.
2:30 ~ write a couple blog entries for my Japanese blog….
(3:00 ~ bathroom break)
3:05 ~ go to the bank, remember that I haven’t paid the doctor from Tuesday!
3:10 ~ go to the doctor to pay.
3:40 ~ get back to the office start writing this entry and somehow 20 minutes has passed.

It’s 4:00, so only 15 minutes more ‘till I’m free. I hope the weather stays nice; I gotta ride my bike home!

Anyway, that was my boring day, a very typical day for me, as well as many of my ALT friends. Seven hours of trying anything to keep myself busy. Next week I’ll probably do more lesson planning…dum dee dum♪ Now only 10 minutes left!!!

Let's Kissing!!! (aka Let's Not Kissing!!!)

What is with kissing on Japanese TV? Let’s take a typical scene of a Japanese couple sitting on a bench. The guy nonchalantly puts his arm around the girl (translate as: the guy quickly puts his arm around the girl and jerks her toward himself so that the girl is wincing with pain). They stare at each other until the girl recovers from the shock and then they lean in for the kiss. The one amazing kiss they have been waiting 12 episodes for. To prepare for the scene, the actors must put superglue on their lips to make sure that their lips are stuck in the exact same position for the entire awkward 2 minute kiss. No movement is allowed whatsoever. Wouldn’t want the kiss to be too natural, people might forget it’s a soap opera and think it’s real life or something. My suspicion is that there’s some kind of regulation that forces TV couples to kiss like aliens. It’s probably called “the owner of the sexiest lip and another owner of the sexiest lip must alien kissing rule” or something like that. Now I’m not saying that all Japanese TV couples should go all out and French kiss or anything, but why not start with just a peck? There’s no movement involved in those. Plus, aren’t first kisses usually short ones?

Let's Partying, ok?

On Tuesday, when I came down with the dreaded influenza, my supervisor was driving me home from the doctor and the flowing conversation ensued.

Supervisor: “Do you think you’ll be able to come to tomorrow??”

Me: being the hardworking ALT that I am I assumed she meant could I come to work the next day. “I don’t know……”

Supervisor: “I really hope you can come. It’s going to be really fun.”

Me: Hai? Work, fun? I guess if you’re talking about lunchtime when we play ping pong on the 6th floor, then yeah, it’s fun. Anyway, I figured out she was actually talking about the goodbye party that the office was having for those BOE members who were changing positions. Who cares if I can’t make it to work, as long as I can get lung cancer at the party after, right? I didn’t go.

Yamagata!

I always find it interesting when my little prefecture of Yamagata is on TV. Tonight they were showing on TV that there was a beauty contest in Tendo. What exactly was the contest? It was called, in English "The owner of the sexiest lip" contest. After putting on lipstick, contestants kissed a piece of paper from which judgest chose the owner of the sexiest lip of course. If only I had known, I would have entered my own sexy lip.

Influenza and boys

★Having the flu in Japan is almost the same as not having a cold in Japan. The only difference is that if you have the flu, you get 50 apples.

★Um, is it wrong to think your 13-year-old boy students are hot? How about if they're on TV? Takuya from Tensai Terebi-kun is soooooooooooooo cute! I wish I were 15 again! (and Japanese......) Wait, no I don't! Ahhhhhhhh!!!

Let's English

So I've been concentrating a little too much on my Japanese blog.....it's consumed me....I was drowning in the sea of Japan....anyway I thought I'd start on this blog again so that ppl at home could see what I've been up to since I never e-mail them. My other blog was fun, but writing to an audience that doesn't see anything weird about there not being any slurpees at 7-11 gets a little frustrating after awhile!!!