Off line Jo

Sorry about the lack of blog recently but the server at work is still down, probably will be until Wednesday so I will be back online then...

Friday night out yay!!

Another shot of my shoes! And also, behind that the seriously steep stairs leading up to R's house. It's almost like climbing up a ladder! Friday night I went out with R and his girlfriend and a girl I went to high school with who also used ot teach in Kamogata a couple of years ago. Shes come back for 10 days to visit and do some bizzo for the BOE and that. She's thinking about coming back to live again I think. It was so much fun to have another Aussie around. There was a BBQ for her on Friday arvo, put on by the mayor's wife and friends. I basically used the time to start drinking early and had a very liquid lunch indeed. A few of the other gaijin from the area were there, including the irritating couple from America. Luckily I run into them only occasionally. He is alright... I think. You never really get a chance to speak to him because she will jump in and answer every question for him. The other JETs refer to her as J's Spokesman. Thankfully she seems not to like me so doesn't bother talking to me at all, the only good thing about her. For some reason they continue to be invited to all these events and everyone seems to tolerate them pretty well so it was good to hear another Aussie's opinion on her which was "That chick's got her head stuck so far up her own arse it's not funny". Yep, just as I thought.

We threw a bit of a frisbee around and ate a few sweets items including some dark chocolate TimTams which K had brought with her from Oz. Yummy. I caught a lift home with my neighbour and then headed into Okayama where I wasted a few hours in an internet cafe before meeting up with everyone again and heading to a birthday dinner. I didn't really know the birthdya girl, but I knew most of the guests so it was all good. We headed out to the Aussie Bar after that, picking up a couple on the way. They were American marines, out off base for the weekend. K bought herself an All You Can Drink stamp and proceeded to use it to get all of use free drinks all night. I also managed to wrangle a couple free beers out of the barman, and a little keychain thing that has Guiness written all over it. Nice work. At one point I noticed R struggling through by himself with the male marine we had somehow collected so I went over to see if I could help him out and managed to scare the marine away after which R says "Can't thank you enough for saving me from Captain America there" and we proceeded to play a very lengthy and unnecessarily unskillful game of darts to ensure there was no returning to whatever it was marines talk about. My good deed for the month completed. Oh, they were nice enough I guess, it just seems that they never have anything interesting to say. They are on base constantly so really all they have to talk about is army stuff - unfortunately of no real interest to anyone else.

There was also a random incident when a very Mormon looking fellow gave the birthday girl (who recently got married) the eyeball on his way to the bar, and then came back later to chat. He wasn't drinking and was extremely polite and well-spoken and said he wasn't an English teacher, but couldn't really explain what he did do here. When he left to go to the loo we all asked "Is he a Mormon?" And one bloke said "No, but he's definitely some variety of Christian>" which made us all laugh loudly and discuss how you come to that decision. When he came back he walked straight past us back to his mates and we realised later on that you can pretty much hear everything that's going on from the toilet so he surely overheard us! Oops.

Yes it's a holiday again!!

Heyo. Server was down at work yesterday so I couldn't access the internet at all which was So frustrating. Today is Culture Day, which is yet another public holiday. I am in Okayama just checking my mail and waiting for all the beer I drank this arvo to wear off... i went up to this camp site for lunch with a group of people to see K, who I went to high school with. She used to work in Kamogata like me and is back for 10 days. It's good to see her, she is looking really well. It is always great to catch up with a fellow Aussie, much easier to make conversation and such. Maybe tonight we will go out on the town - we'll we what happens. For now I am just chilling out here. Better go get some ice cream...

Where did manners go?

Yesterday was Halloween. The kids walked into my year 6 class in the last period yesterday with their hands out saying okashi choudai "Give me lollies." Yep, cos that's how it works. They didn't even say it in English, they were just being rude in Japanese. Even if I did have lollies, which I clearly didn't, I wouldn't have handed them over after a demand like that! I just laughed at them and they were heaps disappointed. It really annoys me how much the kids here just expect things to be given to them, or bought for them. And if they don't get it, they are certainly not afraid to ask for it in as impolite a manner as possible. You can see it when they are in kindy before school manages to tame them and then it comes out again in year 5 or so when the kids start testing the school rules. The kindy kids are very demanding and gimme gimme all the time. As soon as I walk in there they start pulling things out of my hands, touching everything and opening boxes without being invited or asking if it's ok. They have absolutely no concept of asking before touching another person's property. Yuck. Call me old fashioned but I like a kid with a certain degree of respect for other people.

Tuesday muesday

Last night I had a little meeting with B about the speech we are supposed to make in December which is now only 6 weeks away. No more progress. We have extended our deadline until next Monday now. Yeah, that's totally gonna work! AND that means it is only 5 weeks until the JLPT, for which I have not received my rego card yet... does this mean I will have to wait until next year? I hope not. My excitement about studying has worn off somewhat and it's been at least a week since I so much as glanced at a kanji flashcard or looked at my grammar exercises. It's just so DULL studying alone. Actually, it's kinda dull doing everything alone. But today it is the 31st, which means that in exactly 5 months I can come home! YAY. Let's all drink to that (when you get home, I am not suggesting you drink on the job, unless you think you can get away with it of course).

My first robber!

Last night the most exciting thing ever happened. I came home from R's house at about 11pm I think, a bit tipsy after an afternoon of beers (and the worst film to ever make it to the big screen but more about that later) and went straight to bed after setting myself up with an ample supply of water to stave off any hangover possibilites. Just when I was drifting off into slumber I was brought back to my senses by what sounded like someone walking around above me. There is currently no one living in the apartment above so obviously these noises were a tad concerning. My brain was reluctantly coming out of dream land so it took me a few seconds to figure out that the sound of a sliding door wasn't the cupboard in the apartment above, it was the screen door on my window about a foot from my head. Just as I realised this I heard the wannabe crim trying to open the glass door, attempting to come inside the house I guess. Just yesterday arvo I had been lolling around on the floor in the loungeroom where I set up my futon at night and had spotted these little squares right down the bottom of the sliding door frame. I pressed them - cos I like pressing buttons - and a little block that is desgined to enable you to leave your window open for ventilation while securing the window from being opened from outside popped out. Oooh, I thought, how cute. So I ran around the house to all my windows and popped this little button, thinking not of my safety, but just having heaps of fun with this very satisfactory little popping noise it made. And bloody lucky I did too because if this person had come by any other day that I have been here he would have been able to just slide the door open and waltz right in since I often leave the windows and that door ajar for the fresh air when I am at home, and even when I am not. I reckon this guy thought I was not at home because he was quite noisy really, although I guess he wouldn't have expected me to be sleeping in the loungeroom with my head a foot from where he was planning on breaking in. He was quite persistant, trying the door back and forwards several times but it kept getting stopped by the little safety catch. I lay there listening to him struggle for a few moments and then just decided somehow to do something rather than just lie there and wait for it to be over. I leaned up and pulled the curtain covering the door aside and was face to face with this bloke balancing on my railing, as I opened the curtain I kinda growled "Fuck off!" at him, without really seeing him, just a black figure and he got a huge fright, fell backwards off the railing, stumbled over himself a few times and ran off into the dark, turning a torch on when he was a few metres up the path that goes across the field behind my house. I like to think that he was more scared than I was, especially if he thought no one was at home. I didn't see his face because it was too dark and I wasn't really seeing anything, just looking, it all happened too fast. After he left I lay on my futon listening to my heart thump away for a while, contemplating what might have happened if I hadn't been obsessed with pressing buttons. After a few minutes I got up and went around the house checking all the other windows and closing them all the way. For about an hour I lay there with my ears pricking up at every noise before eventually falling asleep. In the morning I checked outside my window and there was a pair of my undies on the ground, he had clearly been after a souvenir. Lucky he didn't get them because finding undies to fit my massive foreigner bum is not easy here! He must have been an amateur though cos after unclipping them from my clothesline he had dropped them down in front of the door which is very hard to reach without actually climbing right down in there. I have no idea why he tried the window, perhaps he thought I had less daggy undies inside? This morning I considered going to the police and telling them about it, but knowing how inefficient they are, a task like that would likely be very time consuming and I didn't want to waste my Sunday morning telling them the same story over and over again, especially considering that they obviously weren't gonna catch the person who did it when my description of the culprit would be "a black figure".

Anyway, yesterday arvo I was at R's house and we drank beer and made okonomiyaki which was mega yum. We also watched a film called Alexander which I had previously never heard of. It had Colin Farrel, Angelina Jolie and was directed by Oliver Stone and we thought we would be guaranteed at least a half decent show with this kind of talent involved. But OHMYGOD is was so awful. I would go so far as to say it was on par, if not worse than Daredevil. Actually it is probably worse because I'm sure they spent a massive amount of money on this film. If any of you have seen this film I am sure you know what I am talking about. The script was just terrible, you never had any idea what the hell was going on, who was talking about who, or why. The characters had a tendancy to make these little soliloquys, but it was just illogical rambling and never made any sense, they would say one thing and then contradict themselves 2 lines later. The most ridiculous part of the film was when Alexander faces off against an Indian on an elephant with his little black horse! Yep, they have the horse and the elephant rear up in front of each other in slow motion, it is supposed to be all serious and stuff cos this is when Alexander gets jabbed with an arrow - and we were all in tears of laughter at the ludicrous sight of a horse and an elephant facing off. I didn't know that elephants were quite so bloodthirsty as they have been made out in this film! One guy gets skewered by an elephant tusk!! And possibly better than that was the point when, during battle, a few of his generals ride up behind Alexander and tell him some bad news about the right flank and all he says in reply is "AAAAAAARGH!" and then the next scene begins "8 years later". What the fuck?? I wanna try that at work. A Japanese teacher comes up to me all polite and stuff asking me if it's ok to change a class time and I just scream in their face. It's giving me the giggles just thinking about it!

ONLY see this film if you really really want to waste 3 hours of your life or if you are tipsy and feel like a good giggle. Also quite mirthworthy is Colin Farral's hair and his boyfriend's big googly sex eyes. They should put it in the comedy section at the video shop.

Sing a song

Today I went over to the kindy as per usual. This week though they wanted me to help them with some English songs for the kids to sing at a concert they are putting on for the parents at the end of November. They told me about this on Wednesday and asked me to pick songs for them. I have no idea about songs for such little kids, sure if they were native speakers no worries, but I dunno how hard it's gonna be for them to learn say Twinkle Twinkle Little Star do I? The teachers picked out a song for the bigger kindy kids and the little ones out of the selection I presented. The little kids are doing Twinkle and the bigger ones are doing this song called Colours, (you'll never guess what that ones about!). So they line the kids up in front of me and say "there you are" and I am supposed to teach them to sing these songs - with actions. I dunno, I just make up gestures as I go along, and because I am just making them up I don't pay much attention to them and the second time we sing the song maybe they are different. So the kindy teachers have to step in and tell me to do the same gestures every time. And then when I finally get that sorted out they tell me to do different gestures, ones they have already prepared earlier. Why didn't they just tell me about these gestures to begin with? Would have saved me a lot of time and been less confusing for the kids. They continued to do this throughout the whole morning, asking my opinion on something, setting it up like that, and then just coming through and changing everything to the way they wanted it in the first place. Why didn't they just organise the kids themselves? Why did they ask my opinion if they weren't gonna listen to it? And why would they think I even care which way the kids wave their arms first? As far as I am concerned it doesn't matter, they could wave their legs if they wanted to, as long as they are having fun. She kept making "suggestions" and then looking at me for confirmation that it was a good idea and I felt like saying to her "I don't care!! Just do whatever you want so I can get out of here!" Never has singing songs been so freaking hard.

The upside of all this frustration was that I didn't have to do my normal classes so I just skipped back to the primary school when I was done with saying twinkle twinkle little star over and over and over and over. When I got back to the E-room there was a year 3 girl in there whose name I can't remember and she was just hanging out. I got her to play the piano for me and she was really good, dunno how her little fingers stretched that far but she was playing chords and everything. We hung out at recess and it was fun. She is the type of kid who is just happy to sit and watch you do your thing, she doesn't need constant attention or to be touching things all the time so it was fun. I don't mind if she comes in and plays with the stuff in the cupboard because I know she will put it back afterwards and won't break it. My Friday afternoons are pretty easy, the last 2 classes are years 3 and 4, they are the most well behaved ones. And they generally tend to be better because I am in a happier mood, it being Friday arvo, and I have practiced the games with the other year 3 and 4 classes during the week, ironed out any problems with games and organisation so it's much smoother running.

Tonight there is a speech at the BOE, a woman from Ghana I think. They have decided ot start charging people for going now, 300yen each. Apparently the money goes to the speaker, so if I do eventually get cornered into a speech myself, which has been threatened many times, at least I will get some compo for it. But then again, anyone who knows me also knows that paying 300yen to listen to me talk for an hour is a huge rip off so perhaps my audience will be very small!

In explanation of my technicolour blog entry today; As Sloth requests so shall he receive.