Catching up

It's finally time to resurrect the blog and I've got some catching up to do. After returning from Japan I kept myself extremely busy playing in California. Here is the month-by-month replay.

April - One week after returning home, which was spent gorging myself with burritos and pizza, I drove down to Santa Barbara to stay with my favorite philosophizing surfer, Kevin (The Philosurfer Manifesto). He hosted a killer private surf-camp and accused me of being good luck because my arrival usually coincides with that of good surf.

I also got a job in my old lab at SF state. It was really sweet deal but I had to plan on couch surfing in the city for the whole summer, which I did, thanks to Gavin, Caitlin, Karina, Tyler, Billijo, Nan, Young-jin, Sandy, Chris, and Bea.

May - I took a trip up to Yerington, NV with Dad and Grandpa for a little high-altitude desert motorcycle riding. I don't have much to say about it, except that it totally kicked ass.

The following weekend I went back to the desert (Movaje) to support a family friend, Jim. He started desert racing this year and plans to do the Baja 1000 in 2 years. Unfortunately, Jim broke down and couldn't finish the race, but not before I got to go for a ride at 70 mph over a rocky dirt road with 3-ft-deep trenches. And then we drank a lot.

Can you guess where I went the weekend after? That's right... the desert. I went to Saline Valley (inside Death Valley national park) with my good friends Dave, Laura, and Nan. The main attraction was the hot spring oasis, but we also got to play on some dunes, found a cold spring, and drove (slowly this time) on some really rough roads.

The last weekend in May was the first of MANY trips to the houseboat.

June - June had two good trips and a visitor from Japan. The first was Hawaii to see some friends. I got in plenty of surfing, hiking, cliff jumping, and socializing. But I just realized that I accidently erased those pictures. bummer.

One day after returning from HI, I went back to the desert for another of Jim's races. This was a 400 mile race that took over 8 hours! This time he got 3rd (out of 8) and there was much less drinking.

The day after getting home from the desert I picked up a friend, Sari, who was visiting from Japan. We had an extremely busy week which included touring SF, the houseboat, Yosemite, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the county fair, and my parents' 4th of July BBQ. She owes me big time.

July - Houseboat and lab work. That's it.

August - Boston! I took a flight out in early August and immediately started meeting people. Everyone I've met has been extremely nice and helpful... so now I'm just going through the process of separating the friends from the acquaintances.

That just about wraps up the summer. I've got more to say about Boston, but I'll save that for the next post.

Don't wanna go

I'm down to a week and a half before I go back to California and I'm starting to miss Japan already. It probably helps that I'm essentially on vacation now and don't have to wake up and go to work every morning.

A big reason why I don't want to leave now is that I'm in the middle of a Japanese learning spurt. I've just become really comfortable with everyday conversation and I've even learned a bunch of common kanji . As a result I can actually read a few signs.

As an example of my progress in Japanese, I had a nice conversation with an old guy in an onsen (hot spring) today. In the locker room he asked me "dochira?", which means "which side?". My experience in Japan has taught me that he was really asking "Which country do you come from?". Then we kept talking for a while about traveling. It was nice becuase I've had very few onsen conversations.

On a completely different note, a few elementary school kids made me extremely uncomfortable. I'm usually at ease in onsen because old guys don't stare too much when you're walking around naked with them. But today 2 young boys and a young girl came in (I guess the separate "men's" and "women's" baths don't apply to children) and made it quite obvious that they'd never seen a gigantic naked white person before.

A ceremony for me?

Today there was a farewell ceremony at my small Jr. high (only 55 students!) for all of the teachers leaving the school... which is a group of people consisting entirely of me. 

I wasn't given any warning about the ceremony but at least I had a well-rehearsed farewell speech in English and Japanese ready to go. Unfortunately I choked pretty hard during the Japanese part because I was distracted by the kids laughing at my accent (Note to self: don't laugh at anybody's accent). 

So even though I was only here of 6 months and was just one of many ALT's that these teachers and students have encountered, it made me feel really good when they took the time to gather in the gym, write me a thank you note in English, give me flowers, and include me in a small part of Japanese culture. 

Sorry for the picture of a picture. Being illiterate, I'm not in the mood to go to 7 eleven and try to figure out their scanner. Click on the picture for a larger view.

Another unexpected great day

Last Friday started with the graduation ceremony for my favorite junior high school. The graduation ceremony was similar to American graduations in many ways; they called each student for a diploma, the band played music, parents and other important people came, there were a few motivational speeches. But there was a huge difference in the atmosphere. Overall it was very formal (parents and teachers wore black suits/dresses), you could have heard a pin drop throughout most of the ceremony, every movement was rehearsed and preformed with military-like precision, and NOBODY was smiling. It was a very serious occasion.

I've never taken graduations seriously at all, so I spent most of the 2 hour ceremony fighting back laughter at the sight of 9th grade girls crying as if it were a funeral. I felt bad, but I couldn't help it. Fortunately I managed to keep my internal laughter hidden.

Then I had to teach some elementary classes in the afternoon, which would normally be a total drag, but it was my favorite elementary school so I didn't mind. At one point I had a severe giggle attack when I realized that the 1st graders would mimic ANYTHING I did. I started doing some pretty silly stuff and they were as happy as hell to follow along. First grade Japanese kids may be the cutest beings on earth.

Later in the evening was the graduation enkai (party) for my favorite Jr. high. It was another Japanese dinner with a 2 hour open bar. I got to sit with the principal and the vice principal, who I really like. They tried to teach me a few dirty words in Japanese (all of which I immediately forgot), and made fun of the look on my face when the restaurant brought out a BBQ'd tuna head. I was anxious to try it, but I guess my shock was obvious as the waitress mixed up the eyes and brain and face muscles and scooped it into bowls for everybody. It wasn't bad.

Lastly, the cool, young social studies teacher invited me to dinner at his house before I leave. Awesome! I hit it off with him a few weeks ago during the ski trip when I found out that he's done a lot of traveling, most of which was by himself. I guess his parents want to meet me too!

That didn't last long

Last week I said I was going to watch my spending but this month I've already signed up for another school enkai (party!) and gone snowboarding. I went on Sunday with Rob (snowboarder from Sacramento!), Joe (skier from Colorado), and Amy (from England). We had a great time... here is the video I made.

My February

It has been an interesting month. To start things off, I received a painfully small paycheck at the beginning of the month so I had to cancel some trips and budget for the rest of the month very carefully.

The first bit of fun I had was during the first week at Franchesca and Kelsey's wedding dinner. Congratulations! There was some joking about how informal the dinner would be, which I took too literally. As a result, Matt (the only other American) and I were the only two people wearing jeans. This event was another 2 hour open bar, so I was again determined (along with Matt), to get my carefully budgeted $40 worth. I called in sick the next day.

Pictured from left to right is Josh (?), Franchesca, Matt, Kelsey, and yours truly.

Things were slow until last week when my friend, Phil, came to visit from San Francisco. We spent the week having dinner with friends I've made here (actually, they're not really friends, but girls that put up with my limited Japanese speaking abilities in the hopes that I'll teach them English). Here is Phil, me (doing my rock-n-roll face), and 3 of the English leeches.


And here are a few pics from our drive down the coast.






Then we had some AWESOME snowboarding. It snowed most of the week and it was the best day of snowboarding I've ever had.




So with some carefully budgeted fun and lots of top ramen I made it to payday (today) with 351 yen. Even though I splurged on groceries after I got paid a regular sized paycheck today, I'm going to try to watch my spending again this month so I can have a little more than 351 yen left at the end of the month ;-)

Settling in

I was trying to figure out why it's taken me almost a month to update the blog and I finally came up with an answer. It's because I'm starting to feel at home here. I've settled into a routine with work and socializing so there have not been any big surprises this month. I'm also getting used to all of the weird little differences in Japan and as a result they're not weird anymore. So nothing lately seems noteworthy enough to write about.

To recap the last month, I spent about a week after my Tokyo trip resting (by myself). I did a little exploring and went to an old onsen (hot spring), which was amazing. Then I spent the last few days of my vacation hanging out with friends. Since the vacation ended I've just been working, going to the gym, and occasionally meeting with friends. Even my weekend parties have been regular... it seems I've had 2-hour all-you-can-drink dinners every weekend. I usually can't remember much from those, so I always assume I had a good time ;-)

But something entertaining happened today. The students had to write 3 sentence stores. The subject of one story was the school secretary, who didn't seem to like me at first. She was always minimally polite and never friendly (but after two months she started to lighten up). Anyway, the student's story went like this

"Mrs. A is stronger than a tiger. She ate one yesterday. Mrs. A is the strongest person in Japan".

I think that's pretty good for a 9th grader.