200th post! Happy Birthday Blog

Just now at lunch the 2 boys who I lost my rag at in class yesterday came in and apologised to me for being shits. They were talking and talking and talking all through my class. Apparently they were forced to write a page about what they did, take it home and have their mums look at it and decide what they should do to make it up with me. And their mums decided that they should apologise to me, they decided they should do what everyone said but they aren't really sorry. That's ok, next week when they talk in class I can just kick em out again. Easy.

Get your ire out

There is a teacher at the school here who is the special yelling man. When a kid has been particularly naughty and the homeroom teacher gets sick of them, they bring them down to the staffroom and get the science teacher, Takato, to yell at them. I find it hilarious that he can just go off at them, get really angry, and he doesn't even know what they've been doing! He hasn't been in the classroom having his class interrupted, so how does he manage to get so angry just like that? And then afterwards he'll just sit back down at his desk and tap away at his computer as if nothing happened. It's weird.

We just had a year 4 boy in here who has left in tears. You can bet your bottom dollar that by the time he comes to me in 3rd period he'll be just as naughty as ever again though.

Cough up Nam!

So based upon my ravings about my time in Vietnam one of my co-workers has decided to go there during the term break. Uh hum, Vietnamese Tourist Board, I think we need to talk. I just hope that she bloody likes it because if not I will be in all kinds of trouble. Although of course the same things don't appeal to everyone so I can always jump on that liferaft if any trouble occurs. Maybe not everyone enjoys taking their life into their hands everytime they cross the street? It was fun for me though. Anyway, it has also just made me exceedingly jealous that someone is getting outside of Japan. It's now, what, a mere 4 months until my contract is up and I can leave here. And if every goes according to plan I will have the finances to just chill for a while instead of racing back and looking for work. Until I am so poor that even the Centrelink office can't believe it I'll just potter around. Before coming to Japan I was on the old Newstart payment, switched over from the Youth Allowance I was getting while studying. You have to go for a bunch of interviews and that to determine that you are poor enough to qualify. At this interview they asked me "if you took everything you own and put it out onthe front lawn, how much do you think you would get for it?" Haha, that was funny. I don't have a TV, a stereo or computer or anything related to kitchen (cept a blender, it's quite shiny and stuff too) and at that time my car was stalling constantly and no one in their right mind would have bought it. The woman was very disappointed with my answer, as if she couldn't believe that anyone could survive without a computer, or a tv or cutlery! Actually that's the good thing abut share houses, you don't need any of that stuff. She kept suggesting things I might have that I could sell, but even so the -$45.67 in my bank account was more than enough to qualify me as a financial cripple.

The job seeker diary thing is quite fun. Every 8 weeks or so you have to go in and submit the thing and supposedly they call the people you have been looking for jobs with to make sure you have actually been submitting a resume. But I was looking for work in Japan so all I had to put on the form was e-mail addresses for Japanese people and I am sure they just thought, oh that's just too hard. But by the time I got to that point I was already leaving the country so it was all good. The best bit about the whole experience was when I went in for the required "job skills assessment". This meant some girl who was probably just the same age as me and had just graduated herself sat down and looked at my resume and picked faults with it and then looked up in her database for jobs I could apply for. Trouble is that her database didn't have much in the way of work in Japan and she was rather embarrassed to admit she couldn't do anything for me.

Quiz time

It's been raining HARD over here the past few days. I can't do my washing cos there's no way it'll dry so I'm starting to recycle things. Hmm, how dirty can that T-shirt be anyway? Already I am sick of the cold and it's not even that cold yet. At least not compared to how cold it will be in a few months! Yesterday I fiddled with my TV to see if I could get any more channels on it. My neighbour upstairs has 13 channels and he doesn't even watch them. I only get 2 and they both suck. I did find 3 more channels eventually, including the NHK channel that some bloke tried to make me pay a fee for last month. He doesnt need to know that I can now watch it. So with my newfound channels I was able to escape the volleyball world champ re-runs and boat racing and watch a tops Charlie Sheen (or CHARLES SHEEN as he was credited at the end of the film) thriller about a firefighter hero type who goes a bit mental and tries to kill his neighbours. It was heaps funny, especially watching it in Japanese. In the evening I watched the quiz show that's always on Sundays. They get a group of celebs together and ask them school exam questions to see if they can pass. The maths ones are always heaps fun. This weeks was; a group of students numbering more than 15 but less than 30 sit in a circle and number off 1,2,3,4... the student who says 17 is the same student who says 59, how many students are there in the circle? 34% of primary school students got this right in their exam.

You only get a minute and a half to think about it by the way so be fair and admit if it takes you longer than that!

Shoe talk

White shoes are the school uniform. In Japan the kids walk to school in white sneakers then change them for inside shoes when they enter the school, which are just rubber soled canvas numbers with a bit of elastic over the top of your foot. And they also have yet another pair of these canvas school shoes for use inside the gym. I have school shoes myself because I don't own enough real shoes to have a few of them just sitting around at school all the time. It's quite annoying having to take your shoes off all the time. My classroom is carpeted so we have to take our shoes off to go in there too. The kids just wear their socks in E-time and mostly I do too because if I wear my school shoes and step on their feet, which is easy when they crowd around me like they do, they don't like it too much. Plus, they love looking at my toe socks with the bright colours. And it's kind of ridiculous to be changing your shoes all the time, especially when it's really not helping keep anything clean. Your socks get dirty from hopping around outside when you put on your school shoes, and then again when you take off your school shoes and wander along the hallway to get inside the English room. If you are going to walk on tatami mates then definitely take off your shoes beacuse the hard soles rip up the straw, but other than that, why bother?

Unfit for work? Yep.

Year 1s being vegetables. Potato, carrot and Japanese radish daikon

Year 4s being French. Nice work.
Yesterday I started drinking with my neighbours upstairs at 1pm and didn't stop until 11pm. I was 15 minutes late for work this morning because I woke up at 8:20. I must have turned my alarm clock off in my sleep. I had slept in my clothes so am still wearing the same thing I was yesterday. I reckon I am still drunk. When I got in I sat at my desk for about 10 minutes just trying to orientate myself and think straight. I had kindy classes. It was actually ok because we are just practicing the songs for the concert next week. Afterwards when I was leaving I decided for some reason to stop in at one classroom and just make stupid noises in front of the kids for a while and they LOVED it. I must be drunk. Seriously, I just wandered in and stood there and they were sitting on the floor cross legged just looking up at me waiting for me to speak and I just cupped my hands over my mouth and started nattering away. I reckon they thought I was speaking English. They were dying of laughter. And then I just started numbering them in order of noisiness afterwhich they told me I was ichiban urusai (the noisiest). Dunno where that came from!

Yesterday the menu was sangria. A LOT of sangria. We watched Kath and Kim! It was very very funny because we were all very very drunk. And in the end I vaguely recall having a very proufound conversation about something or other during which I had a new thought about something very interesting - but I can't remember what it was! More public holidays like that one I say. Oh and I ate THE most delicious food I have ever had in Japan. Peruvian dish that my neighbour made, he told me how to make it and it sounds really easy but I bet I stuff it up. I made vego pasta and people actually liked it! Yar. Tonight we're going out for food and drinks after my neighbour's speech at the BOE. It's gonna be a messy weekend :)

All done!

The year 1s dressed as little devils - they just look like little dancers to me! The year 6s didn't do a play like the year 5s, I figure they were too hard to organise what with their attitude problems so they just sang 3 songs and a few of them hit things with sticks up the front.
This is one of my favourite year 1s, he's always heaps happy to see me.

The plays all went off without a hitch, somewhat surprisingly. Actually all the year levels except 5 and 1 just sang rather than perfoming anything. I took about a bazillion photos which I will try and upload and send in an album to people later on. I couldn't get too close to the stage so most of them aren't too detailed but it might give you the idea!