Japanese Trail Mix, Friends Back Home

This, folks, is the equivalent of Japanese trail mix.  You see peanuts and OMG yes that's fish in there with their beady little eyes.  I'll even eat the natto now in the school lunches but this stuff I'm really just not interested in eating, especially when it's so easy to not eat it and just hide it, meaning to throw it out later.  Beyond this, there isn't really anything that appears in the school lunches that I don't/can't eat.  I eat the natto when it appears to try and get a taste for it, which I don't think will ever happen, but maybe I'll at least be able to stomach it eventually.  It's part of my fight to get Japanese people to see that foreigners can and sometimes do appreciate Japanese things... just not their trail mix.

I get this in real life when I go back to the states.  Thanks Chiem Ay... er... Jin Ay.  I love my friends back home.  Even if I don't have many left, and even if they're scattered so I don't really have a "group" anymore, I still love them all.  I'm happy that they think of me and are willing to do things like this.  This is from one of my favorite Final Fantasy games, 3 in the states and 6 in Japan.  I used to know that game inside and out.  I miss my own school days.  High school and elementary school anyway, not so much middle school.









外国人【がいこくじん】 (gai/koku/jin) foreigner

Speech Contest, Headway with Students, School Lunch

Just realized I haven't reported on the speech contest results!  So this year all my students won something at the Motoyoshi speech contest which was cool.  For the recitation my students got 2nd and 4th, and for the composition my students got 2nd and 3rd (two students got exactly the same number of points so there were two 3rd places here).  The student who got 2nd in composition got to go to the Sendai prefectural speech contest, but she didn't win anything there, sadly.  I'm pretty pleased with my speech contest results actually!

Over 2 years:

8 students competed
7 students won prizes

2 students went to the prefectural contest
1 student won a 3rd place prize

The prefectural contest this year I think was a bit below the level of talent that appeared last year.   Some student from Sendai usually wins the top prizes and it was no exception this year.  But of course, like I mentioned last year, some students have a "limit" to their abilities, and it's mostly the ALT's job to bring out that limit.  I felt we were able to bring out that limit in my student, and even if she didn't win anything, we should be proud because we achieved her limit, which is really what is important I think.

Despite my lack of things to say to students I'm trying to force myself to say random things and I think it's been working a little so far.  The 1st years in one of my schools are finally warming up a little more to me which is good.  Same with the 3rd years in my other school.  I'm looking forward to seeing what the new first years will be like, but that's some months away still.

Every Thursday they put bread in place of the rice for school lunch.  I don't really like bread to begin with so it's tough when I like the rice paired with the soup as much as I do.  When they don't put fish stuff in the food I like it pretty much all the time.  Sometimes they put natto in which I do eat to try and get used to it, but I doubt I'll ever come to like it.

There's a BBQ tonight with 2 girls in nursing school.  It needs to go well.  I am still single and it sucks.

英語弁論大会 (eigo/benron/taikai) English speech contest

Jazz Festival and Way Underage Alcohol Servers

It's been an interesting weekend.  First on Friday we went to see half a Pokemon movie and all of District 9, after which I don't really remember except I'm pretty sure we were drinking somewhere.  Then on Saturday we went around and looked at a T-shirt festival they had going on in various places in Kesennuma.  It was poorly advertised I think so not many people were around, but it was still cool.  They hung shirts out that people had designed and we got to design our own shirt and keep it for free.  Then on Sunday it was a BBQ in Oshima followed by beer pong and A's American Darts Bar.  Monday was a Jazz Music Festival where we punked some white people into believing I was Japanese.  Good times all in all.

I had two of my 6th graders run up to me and offer me sake (Japanese rice) from a big sake bottle.  It's a little amazing.  They don't think anything of it here!  Unfortunately I couldn't drink it because I had to drive in a couple minutes and the legal level here is 0.00%.  That's right, not even a sip!

酒【さけ】 (sake) (n) alcohol; sake