Argh

Why do all Japanese girls smoke??  Smoking is seriously the MOST unattractive thing I can think of a girl doing.  It is a deal breaker no matter if she is perfect in every single other way.  I know they don't all smoke but yeah.  Sigh...

タバコ  (tabako)  (n) (uk) tobacco (por: tabaco); cigarettes; (P)

First Snow!

The first snow of the year fell today early in the morning, but it wasn't until later in the night when it really started coming down.  It didn't stick, but it was still pretty.  I wish, even though it sucks to drive in, that a lot of snow would fall on Kesennuma.  It probably won't, just because that's what just about everyone says, but it would be nice.  Now I need to get snow tires.  Kesennuma is a little silly because it requires snow tires even though everyone says that not much snow falls.  They can be expensive too I've heard.  Such awesomeness!

I finally got my rice cooker after almost 4 months.  Took long enough, now I'm just waiting on my sofa and cabinet.  Maybe in March!

By the way, I am still looking for a reason to stay a second year.  If I find one, I wonder if I could balance a 2nd year with the new business that my friend will make in the US.  I am supposed to find love here, if the Geibikei rock in the hole thing is true!

初雪【はつゆき】 (hatsu/yuki)   (n) first snow (of season)

Geibikei, Olympian, Fukushima and Rasengans

This picture is of a place called 猊鼻渓 (geibikei) gorge and it was cool.  We went down a boat and it sucked because we were forced to sit in the middle and we couldn't see much of anything.  We had to take the stones in the picture below (you could buy 5 of them for 100 yen, or something around a dollar) and try to toss them into the hole.  I got 2 of them in, the one you see below which means "love," and another one meaning something like "good relations."  I'm expecting to get a girlfriend in the near future because of it.  Stupid blog uploaded the stone picture sideways.  Argh...

Afterwards we went to a cave that had shrines and bats living in it.  Very cool, except I had a hard time getting a picture of the bats.  Those bastards.

We had a Japanese Olympian and former graduate of one of my schools, Sugawara Chieko, come to our school.  She hasn't won any medals but she's going to London for the next games to try and win gold... I guess that's obvious huh.  She's a fencer if you're interested, although you're probably not.  It was cool she came anyway.  She had some cool speeches and talked about her dream during middle school.  She didn't have one.  She just went through her middle school life.  But she encouraged the kids to think of their dreams.  I didn't really have a dream back in middle school either.

On the 12th of November I went to Fukushima for an event called 松明あかし taimatsu akashi.  They burn big pillars of wood that they had paraded around earlier in the day.  It was awesome to watch everyone really get into it and enjoy themselves, seemingly forgetting about the situation Fukushima is still in.  When I get to school I'll try uploading a video.  I'd tell you what the meaning behind the burning of the pillars is, but I never found out and am too lazy to look it up.  After I got back to Kesennuma I only glowed for an hour, so it wasn't too bad.

Japan has borrowed some Chinese characters for use in their writing, called Kanji (in Japanese).  It's different from a traditional alphabet in that each "letter" is actually an entire word, which means there are a LOT of Kanji.  Most people's names here in Japan are written in Kanji, which means, because each character is a word, that each name has a meaning that is pretty easy to guess (more or less).  One of the students who writes me letters has the name Sumika, which is written as 純花 and means something like "pure/genuine flower."  When I wrote her back, I told her that her name was very pretty and that my name didn't have a meaning (yes, I know that's sort of a lie, you history buffs).  She wrote me back and this is what she said: "Your name has dust in it.  That means gold powder, right?"  Sweetest 7th grader... I mean sweetest girl ever.  Yeah, if only my name actually meant that.

First click here and watch some of this.  You don't have to watch all of it.  Now, what you just watched was part of a pretty big anime/animation/comic/manga called Naruto.  He's doing a move called 螺旋丸 "Rasengan" which means Spiraling Sphere or something like that, sort of like a Kamehameha if you watch DBZ or a Hadouken if you know Street Fighter.  If you know neither, screw you!  Anyway, I have been giving my students this move for a while now for fun, and one day as I was walking into class a kid in the front goes "ready, set..." and then the ENTIRE CLASS stuck their hand out and yelled "RASENGAN!" at me.  It was the most awesome thing ever and I wish so badly that I could have gotten it on video.  I naturally gave the class one back and I think I scared the Japanese English teacher a little bit.

Right Shoulder Destroyed

So a few days ago... actually I think it was Wednesday, I was playing ping pong with my students.  They had waxed the floor a few weeks ago and it was SUPER slippery.  I managed to slip and fall and somehow my right arm got twisted around in an awkward position and BAM, the same accident that happened almost 10 years ago to my left shoulder to end my breakdancing happened to my right shoulder.  It's still super sore and I am still fairly in shock that it happened.  Really now?  I just need to stop doing sports... which probably won't happen until I physically can't anymore.  On top of that, the jolt from landing on the floor knocked some screws loose in my head and gave me a migraine.  As a result, I missed a yosakoi (a type of dance) the next day.  Super!

Thanks to my school's bunkasai (culture festival), I found a song I really like called 「旅立ちの時」 "Tabidachi no toki" or something like "When I Begin My Journey."  Take a listen if you want, it's pretty cool even if you can't understand anything.  I know I can't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92kzhYQbbMA

Went to a place called 猊鼻渓 "Geibikei" over the weekend.  It was sweet, but I forgot to upload pictures so I'll write about it next time.


恋愛よ、もうすぐ俺のものになるぜ


旅立ち【たびだち】 (tabidachi)   (n,vs) setting off (on a trip)

Porn Mags, Bunkasai and Letters

The other day I refrained from calling a student by her name, and it turned out I got lucky.  In the next class over, same grade even, is a girl who looks JUST like her.  Very little differences, although I think one has a smaller head. I would have gotten the name wrong if I had tried.  There are a couple of kids in one of my middle schools who I swear have twins, either in different grades or just different classes and I can't tell some of them apart unless I see them with their friends.  It's a little scary sometimes.  I've been trying hard to remember as many students' names as I can, but there are so many and I don't get to see them every day.  If I'm lucky I've got around 3% of all my students' names down.

My teacher had her 7th graders play a game the other day where they had to ask me questions and elicit either "yes" or "no" as the answer.  One team would be the "no" team and the other would be the "yes" team.  The standout annoying kid in the class asked two questions.  One was "Do you want our English teacher?" At first I looked at the Japanese teacher, expecting her to tell the student to change the question, but instead she just looked at me said "Say no, no, no."  Ok then!  The next question he asked was "Do you read porn magazines?"  Again I looked at the Japanese teacher to see if she would have the student change the question.  She just looked at me like "How's he going to answer?"  Teachers are also able to touch their students a lot more than in the states, and it's completely normal.  There are two girls who try to pinch me on the side of my abdomen.  When I can't escape and they succeed it's really awkward, because I don't want to try and grab them back in the same place because it's weird, but I also don't really want to discourage them because they are so personable with me now, compared to before.  Strange times man.

My schools had a culture festival the other day, and it was awesome.  They put on some plays in the gym and displayed art and crafts in their classrooms.  They also displayed posters describing various things about their culture, such as words in their dialect and stuff about the major earthquake that happened on 3.11.

Brass Band Club Woot!

One of the performances put on by the band club.  After this, one of the girls went to the mic and thanked the 3rd years for their time in the club.  She started crying as she thanked them.  The camaraderie between students is much tighter in Japanese schools than it is in American schools.  The Japanese education system might not be so great, but I would choose them over the states' schools just due to how close all the students are.

I'd upload more pictures but I still can't get my stupid internet to work even though it came last week.  So in the meantime I'm still using my phone tether and that one picture took like 10 minutes to upload for some reason.

One of my students who writes me letters is so cute.  Her favorite foreign movies include "Herry Potter" and "X-Man."  Her favorite food [sic] are piza and cheezeburger, and so on.  Her favorite singer is Hanna Montana, and so on.  She puts the date on her letters.  It was just a few days ago, but it's humbling to look at it and realize that in a few years I'll find this letter again, read it, and think "dang, that was a long time ago."

文化祭【ぶんかさい】 (bunkasai)  (n) culture festival; arts festival