Spring Vacation

The 19th of March was the graduation ceremony at my school.  It was interesting to experience how it’s done in Japan, especially the weeks leading up to graduation.  There was an assembly that was pretty much celebrating the 3rd years’ three years at the school, complete with games and prizes and two of the teachers (Takayangi and Terazawa) MCing.

There was a three hour rehearsal for graduation, complete with fake diplomas and fake speeches.  Another interesting thing is that students don’t find out whether they got into a high school until one of the last official days of school.  They put up a huge list of the students who got accepted to their school of choice and those who didn’t.  Earlier in the year they take a test to get accepted into high school – a two day trial of a physical exam and an interview – for public school and private school.  It’s considered more prestigious if they get accepted into a public school, whereas actually paying money to get an education isn’t looked upon so highly.  Not only that, but required education is only until junior high, so some of the kids won’t even head on to high school at all.

Graduation as a whole was long and boring, a whole lot of standing and sitting down and then standing for long periods of time for the students.  One of my girls fainted from standing too long.  Finally, the ceremony ended and the first years, second years and other staff stood outside the school to congratulate the students who graduated.  And then it was all over, we got special fancy bentos and I had to leave for a meeting at the Board of Education, which was a pain in the ass because I wanted to stay at my school longer.

After the 19th, it was officially spring break.  I hung out with my big sister from Tsuda, Minako, that weekend – we ate at the pizza place close to my house, went to caves, and explored a park before meeting up with Joanne and Marc for coffee.  I stayed with my friend Lindsey that night and the next day we went to a good bagel sandwich place near her place.

On the 28th of March, there was a ceremony for all the teachers who were switching schools.  I would’ve liked to stay longer – but I was going to Tokyo that day for a Mariners game so I missed the ceremony and the work party in honor of all the teachers leaving.  Pretty much all the teachers that I talk about, except all of English teachers but one, switched schools – Takayanagi, Fujita, Terazawa, and my vice-principal.  Work doesn’t go by nearly as fast without them.

Anyway, so the 28th I went to the Mariners game with some other people from Seattle.  It was a great game, and before I met up with alumni from Western.  Ichiro did well, 4-5, and the game went into extra innings.  Ackley hit his first homerun of the year, and I’m glad that I decided to go up to Tokyo for the game.  That night I had to rush to Yokohama on the last train out of Tokyo, to stay with my friend Jae.  In the morning I headed off to see my friend Dan who lives in Gunma.

After a long train ride, I made it and he showed me around his city.  I hung out with him until he had to leave for work the next day, and then I went off to Tokyo to explore before meeting up with my friend Mami for dinner and a drink.  Then I went to meet Nae after she got off work, Nae and I went to Kichijoji the next morning but it was super windy and rainy so we spent most of the day inside the malls there and in a cafe we discovered.  We went back to her place that night and watched figure skating, I was very impressed by the 17-year-old Japanese figure skater.

Nae had to prepare for her job interview the next day, so we just hung around her house.  Then I met up a friend and we strolled around Harajuku and Shibuya, before I went to Odawara to see Tanyisha one last time.  We went to see our friend Diana the next morning for ramen, an then we went back to Odawara to bake brownies and watch “The Legend of Korra.”

The next morning I went to meet Yumin and Yucche, but it was rainy and windy again – so I decided to head home a day early, not before getting cake with the two of them and eating Thai food!  I barely made it home in time to catch my bus home due to the shinkansen being delayed because of the wind.

I had one day to rest in Hamamatsu before my friend Chris came in for a visit – where we went to explore the Hamamatsu Castle park, ate delicious Mexican food, and went to hookah for a few hours, it was a good last day of spring break.

About a week ago, instead of going to see the festival going on in my city – I went with Joanne and Lindsey to Aichi prefecture to see a samurai festival, and cherry blossoms.  The festival was definitely interesting, and the cherry blossoms were very pretty.

Now school’s started up again, and the new teachers are alright.  I have a new English teacher, she’s super young, just graduated, but she’s very nice.  My vice-principal is nice too, but the work parties aren’t the same without my drunk vice-principal.  I also have three new ALTs living in the complex next to mine, I met them last week and they seem like very nice people as well.

Now it’s picture time!

A snow filled winter

It was essentially rainy all this past weekend, and yesterday it rained a decent amount, stopped and warmed up considerably.  It’s a nice change (though it promptly got colder today, and then clouded over and it looks like it’s going to start raining again).  Which is kinda sucky because I’m meeting up with my two friends from my college years, Amanda and Tanyisha, and going to what is probably the best theme park in Japan – rollercoasters here I come!  Fingers crossed that it doesn’t pour down rain on Saturday.

Anyway, a few weeks back I went again to Nagano for snowboarding.  As I’ve been told before, and what I’ve come to agree with, are the ski resorts in Nagano are really the best (with the exception of Hokkaido, which is obviously superior to any other resorts in Japan).  That said, there’s something about the snow at Dynaland in Gifu that was fantastic, even though it was considerably smaller than Hakuba – even still I think I like Shiga Kougen (where I went to in December) the best out of the three places I’ve been to thus far.

Anyway, it was a whirlwind trip – we left at 1am from Hamamatsu, arrived in Nagano at 530am-ish, and then hit the slopes around 6ish.  By the time 12pm rolled around, I was exhausted and falling down the mountain, I decided it was better to take a nap rather than risk a serious injury.  I went back out with the group around 2pm, and we took off around 5pm back to Hamamatsu.  The organizer of the trip, Hisato, was kind enough to drop me off in Kiga because I had to take the bus home otherwise (and it would be cutting it close), thus he saved me the trip back by driving our shuttle out to where I live and then continuing to take everyone else back to Hamamatsu station.

It was a definite fun trip, and I’m glad I went, but I don’t think I’ll be doing another trip like it for a while.

Photographic Evidence that Karaoke in Japan is awesome.

 

The selection that Japanese karaoke bars have never fails to amaze me.

So this is the new year…

I spent my Christmas making breakfast with friends – french toast, eggnog, sausage…It was tasty.  It even sprinkled snow for about 10 minutes or so!  We then headed downtown, where I chatted with the family back home for a bit, and then went to my Australian friend’s house for lunch.  I met their families, and enjoyed a well cooked meal.  By then I had to head back out to Hosoe to meet up with my co-worker (Tsuboi-sensei) and his friend (also a teacher in Hamamatsu, Nita-sensei) so we could head off on our ski/snowboarding trip.

The drive was long, and it was snowing considerably harder out in Hosoe than it was downtown (in fact, it wasn’t even snowing).  The whole drive out to Nagano, it was snowing.  We reached Nagano around one in the morning, and hung around until the ski lodge opened at six.   Tsuboi-sensei and I went out with his boss when the lifts opened at 9, and I found out I was quite rusty (that said, I didn’t start boarding properly until my second to last day on the slopes).  The place we went to, Shiga Kogen (志賀高原) was ginormous.  We went down so many runs, and not being used to snowboarding so much I had to rest a lot that day.  We got back around 430ish, and had dinner at 6.  The place we were staying at was awesome, they provided breakfast and dinner for us.  And all the meals provided were huge and delicious.

That first day, the weather got better as the day wore on.  The second day was pretty snowy, and third day was perfect conditions until it started clouding over that night.  The fourth day was pretty awful, and the last day was great.

I had a blast, the other people who went on the trip too were super friendly and nice.  There was a couple, the Boss and his wife, a youngish teacher (who is actually a coworker of one of my ALT friends), and another older guy along with Tsuboi-sensei and Nita-sensei.  We left for Hamamatsu on the 30th around 3pm, and got back around 9.

I got ready to go to Tokyo that night, and took off around 11am for downtown on the 31st.  I got to Tokyo around 4, after running into a friend of mine (Nathan) on the shinkansen.  Instead of going straight to the hostel, I went to meet up with some friends from Hamamatsu at Meiji Shrine (明治神宮).

Nathan and I went to go meet up with Joanne and Marc at the hostel, but told Lindsey (one of the people we met at Meiji Shrine) that we’d see her again later that night.  We caught dinner at Burger King, after we all got settled in, went into Shibuya, then met up with Lindsey in Shinjuku a little after midnight.  The New Year was spent in transit on the train. :/

The awesome part about new year in Japan is that the trains run all night, essentially, so we got back to our hostel around 6 in the morning.  I got up and met up with a friend of mine, Tatsuhiro, that morning.  We had lunch at a sushi place in Ueno, and walked around Akihabara where we met up with Lindsey.  Lindsey and I were planning on meeting up with Marc and Joanne for dinner at a prison themed bar, so we went off to Ikebukuro to make a reservation, while Tatsuhiro headed back home.  I met up with my friend Dan for a little bit, before going back to Ikebukuro for dinner.

The following day, I met up with Amanda, my old roommate and coworker, in Kokubunji where I used to go to school.  We explored around, caught up, and I got to see my old residence.  We ate at the ramen place by my dorm, had cake from the best cake store, had coffee at my favorite cafe, and had a blast.  It was great to see her and catch up.  After, I went into Shinjuku where I met up with my old students from 2007.  It was great seeing all of them and find out what they’ve been doing since they graduated.

 

The next morning, I met up with my friend Tomomi and her boyfriend for Korean food in Shin-Okubo.  We had coffee in Shinjuku, and then I met up with Isamu, Dan, and Isamu’s girlfriend in Harajuku.  Isamu showed us all around Harajuku, and it was super crowded because many people wanted to go to Meiji Shrine.  After walking around, I met up with my friend Sayuri for dinner.

On the 4th, I met up with my friend Aya, who I met at Tsuda, and we had Vietnamese food and then took a walk to Tokyo then got coffee at an adorable cafe in Kichijoji.  I had a great time hanging out with her.

 

Then I met up with Marc and Joanne for dinner.  We ended up going to an izakaya that charged us every time we placed an order, which was super ridiculous.  Then we met up with Simon who had just arrived back in Tokyo from London.  We got him food at CoCo’s, an awesome curry place open 24 hours, and then went back to our hostel to crash.

We got up, checked out of our hostel and went to an arcade for a bit, and then I went off to meet up with Matt, an old coworker, Tatsuhiro, and Miho and Tomoe – two of my students from 2006 – for lunch.  We had ramen at an amazing place, and then hung out at a cafe for a bit before I had to go home.

It was a busy trip – but I’m glad I got to see so many people.  January has been pretty relaxing after the busy beginning of the year.  I went to another rugby match last weekend, and this past weekend I went snowboarding again with a huge group of people.  It was a blast.  This time we went to Gifu, south of Hamamatsu, and it was a significantly smaller place but still excellent conditions.

Work party

Second post in two days!  Wowza.  Hahaha

Yesterday was the last day of the quarter, and thus my last day of work for the rest of 2011.  The students had an assembly, and then they pretty much went home if they didn’t have band or sports practice.  Since I could either sit at my desk all day or wander the school, I decided to wander.  I said bye to some of the kids leaving and watched some of the teams practice.

Work finally ended, and I went home to get ready for the end of the year party that night (boonenkai, 忘年会).  I had to walk to the school to pick up a shuttle to take me to the 旅館 (ryokan, Japanese style inn) but I got confused, and missed it.  So I took the train out there, and one of the teachers picked me up at the station.  When we entered the room, most of my teachers and staff were there and they all clapped for me, and they kept on apologizing to me.  One of my teachers even told me to go up to my 教頭先生 (kyootoosensei, vice-principal) and ask for my fare for the train back, I think he was joking.  I hope he was joking.

They played some games, one of them was having to guess someone’s name, and then a verb that ended in “ru.”  I had no idea so I just sat there and watched my teachers get progressively more and more drunk (when I arrived, my vice-principal was already drunk by then).  They had one for me – mostly about how I have to ride my bicycle in bad weather.  They really get a kick out of that fact.

We played Bingo too, and the teachers act pretty much exactly how the students do when we play during class.  I won a blanket.  It’s really soft and comfortable.

The food was so good, but there was so much of it that I couldn’t eat everything.  Everything was super tasty though.  And one of the teachers gave me a mandarin orange and whiskey drink, because where we were drinking is famous for its mandarin oranges (mikan, みかん).  After the first party finished up, a few of the younger teachers (and a couple older teachers, including the vice-principal) invited me to the “second stage” drinking party.  It was cute, my vice-principal came up to me and asked if I was going to it, and I said I would.  And then he asked if I understood, and I said I did.  Then he asked how you say it in English, and I taught him – and then he started going around to everyone asking if they were going to the “secondo stejji” (セコンド・ステッジ) party.

After that party ended, one of the teachers drove me back home.  I always have a blast whenever I hang out with my teachers – and they all get along really well so that helps too.  There’s a group of youngish male teachers who get along really well – a math teacher named Takayanagi (he’s one of the coaches for the baseball club), an art teacher named Fujita, and a social studies teacher named Terazawa (he’s the director for the band) – who all were all joking around and teasing the vice-principal all night.  The three of them make me laugh all the time.  Takayanagi and Terasawa sit at the same group of desks that I do, so they’re always playing around.

Terazawa always plays around with a student who comes into the teacher’s room all the time to ask for keys to open specific rooms.  Once the student came in, and instead of saying the usual – “pardon me for interrupting you while you’re working” (お仕事中失礼します), the student said “pardon me for interrupting you playing games on the internet.”  Terazawa got angry and made the student say to him, “pardon me for interrupting you studying on the internet.“

And then last week as I was leaving a classroom, a student went up to Takayanagi was was either teasing him or mock fighting him and the next thing I knew Takayanagi had set down his textbooks, cornered the kid against the wall and picked him up and held him over his head.

The three of them get along with the students well, and they’re always playing with them.  Work is always entertaining with them around.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The last month or so…

It’s been a while, so I thought I’d do another photo update.

+ I went out to the north of Hamamatsu (pretty much in Nagano) to see the autumn leaves, and some creepy bridges.  It wasn’t the best day to spend trekking about in the wild (kinda rainy) but I had a good time anyway.  After I got back from the North, I ate some delicious Spanish food with a friend of mine but by then my battery had died so I got no pictures of the deliciousness that was.

 

+ Then before we knew it, Thanksgiving was upon us.  I went up to my friend, Marc’s, place up in the mountains with some of the people from my training group.  We made a huge feast together, and of course I made mashed potatoes.  This year I also attempted to make eggnog, which was a huge success!  Upon our return to Hamamatsu after the weekend, we discovered that Hamamatsu was one of the hosts for round two of the Volleyball World Championships.

 

+ We ended up meeting some players from the Brazilian volleyball team!

 

+ As it’s getting closer and closer to New Years, that means it’s time for one of my most favorite Japanese treats: strawberry daifuku!

 

+ The first weekend of December, I went up to see my friend who lives in Odawara (小田原) to celebrate her birthday early (as she’ll be in the UK for her birthday at the end of the month.  I had a great time seeing her city, and seeing her again after two years.

 

+ This past weekend, I was invited to a rugby match by my bar owner friend, Marty.  Hamamatsu has a pro rugby team, and a soccer team, they both share the same stadium.  We, the Yamaha Jubilo, ended up losing to the number one team in the league.  But it was still fun regardless.  I also got the opportunity to go back to the Spanish restaurant I mentioned earlier.  We had their fantastic paella as well as various other tapas.  SO GOOD.

 

This is my last week of work for 2011, and tomorrow is my last day at work.  After that, I have a 忘年会 (end of the year party) with my teachers, which I’m pretty excited about.  And then it’s winter vacation, and I’m off of work till the 6th of January!

These guys greeted us at the trail head

Chorus Contest

I had the pleasure of attending my school’s Chorus Contest, each class chose a song to sing.  Thus there were six songs per grade, and each song was amazing in their own right – obviously some classes were better than others.  For each song, there was someone playing the piano (except for one class that did it a capella, and they were super good), conducting, and introducing the song.  The contest was not only for which song was the best, but for which conductor did the best, and which pianist did the best.

 

I took video of the classes I like the most, but unfortunately I can’t post them up because of the student’s privacy.  I took so many pictures and video at Sports Day too, but the only ones I can post up are ones where you can’t tell who the students are.  Anyway, you’ll just have to take my word for it that the kids were superb.

After, some of my teachers and I met up for a party in celebration that the contest was done.  We went to a Japanese restaurant called Atsumi, and when I sat down I was greeted with a plate of random seafoody things.  It was a pretty classy meal, as the following pictures will show, and the dinner was only made classier due to my teachers deciding we’re all going to Tokyo Disney Land together (a few of the teachers practically talked about Tokyo Disney Land all night) and some of the teachers were track suits in the restaurant.  Though that’s the perks about being a teacher, you don’t have to wear a suit all the time, you can wear track suits, or track suits under your suit, if you want to.

Course 1 - fish sperm (I think), oyster, other fishy things, and egg soup thing

The teacher sitting next to me, explained the bean looking thing at the top of the picture as: “Fish, make baby.”  I think we’ve deduced that it’s fish sperm.  It certainly doesn’t look like eggs.  All of it was quite tasty.

Course 2 - the orange stuffs is "uni" or sea urchin

I really enjoyed this course.  I tried “uni” for the first time, I didn’t really like that – or the raw shrimp either.  But both were still quite good.  My teachers were impressed that I knew what “uni” was.

Course 3 - fish and angler fish, the Japanese foie gras

Angler fish, I forget the Japanese word for it, was called by my teacher: the Japanese foie gras.  And it was pretty tasty.  My teachers explained angler fish to me by putting their arm beside their head.  My friend and I have a weird obsession with angler fish, so I knew immediately what they were referring to.  The other fish was good too, whatever it was.

Course 4 - Blowfish karaage

This came out and all my teachers started telling me it was “fugu,” which means blowfish.  They explained blowfish to me by puffing up their cheeks, but there are so many tv shows that mention fugu in the states, that I already knew the term.  This was super tasty.

Course 5 - a tasty soup, I think it was pork meat. Didn't taste fishy.

Love the soups here, without fail for kyuushoku (school lunch) there’s always a soup of some kind.  This one was especially good, the broth was light and tasty, the pork was good, and the vegetable in with the pork meat was very good.

Course 6 - a normal salad, with beef, mushrooms and tomatoes

The dressings here are super tasty too.

Course 7 - I don't know what this was. It was described to me as chewy.

My teachers had some difficulty explaining this one to me.  I still don’t know what it is.  I didn’t really like it though, it had a jelly consistency, and those kernels were like rice only not cooked all the way.  It was kind of tasteless, but not at the same time.  The taste was just off.

Course 8 - Rice with fish and a broth

At this point I was getting super full, I had a bite of this one though and it was super tasty.  They served this with the dessert, so obviously I ate the dessert over this course.

Course 9 - dessert! The ice cream had chocolate powder, there was a raspberry roll cake, and the cookie was very tasty.

I didn’t much care for the creamy thing in the bowl, but the ice cream was good.  And the cookie was SO GOOD.

I had a lot of fun eating new Japanese food, and of course chatting with my teachers.  They were asking me things about home, and what I like and what not.  I mentioned that one of my favorite movies is Star Wars and one of the teachers started talking about how there were supposed to be nine movies.  It was like we bonded. haha  I also mentioned Lord of the Rings, and we discussed what series we liked more between Narnia, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

I really enjoy my teachers a lot.  They put up a front that they’re serious and what not, but really they’re all just kids inside grown up bodies, especially when they started discussing Tokyo Disney Land.

This girl was so good at conducting! She got third place - she's only a first year, and her brother got first (he's a third year).

A hula lesson

My librarian came strolling up to my desk last week Friday and invited me to a hula event the school was putting on the following day.  Not knowing what to expect, I biked out to the school.  There were baseball games going on (the baseball coach who sits next to me in the teachers lounge noticed and waved hello), and I was unsure if the event was still going to happen.  But I went upstairs anyway, and saw a bunch of housewives, a few of my teachers and my vice-principal.  I greeted my vice-principal and jokingly asked him if he was going to join in too.  He shook his head adamantly and said he was just there to watch, and introduce the event.

So still not knowing what was going to happen, if it was a performance or a lesson, I quickly figured out it was a lesson.  And immediately I decided that if this happened every weekend, I would go again – if someone else was teaching the lessons.  To sum it all up: the teacher was a dick.

But I’ll elaborate.  He started class off by saying, “we’ve wasted enough time already, let’s get going!”  And then proceeded to talk for another ten minutes at least.  Mostly about Hawaii, and how everyone should go.  For a second, I thought he was going to whip out travel brochures and sell us plane tickets out there.  Then when he finally began teaching us hula, it was like he expected all of us to know how to do things already.  He didn’t help those who were struggling that much, just made fun of them.  And when we were trying to make light of the situation he would chastise us for it.  I’m sorry, dude, I’d much rather enjoy myself than do all the steps properly – especially because some of the people had never done it before.

Then at one point he stopped us all and then told us that his older group of dancers were better than us.  Blah blah blah, same old shit.  I didn’t understand most of what he said, but I could tell he was getting irritated with us.  At one point he yelled at me for not following instructions, but I just kept on doing what I was doing because I seriously couldn’t understand what he was telling me.  He was a pretty impatient little man.  And quite easily irritated.

He also at one point started dancing the hula.  He wasn’t very good.  I mean, I gotta say – if I’m going to learn to dance the hula, I want to learn from a woman (because then they for sure dance what we were learning, not saying that men can’t dance the hula because they can – but they dance a different, manlier version), for one, and someone who is actually good at it.  I mean, if you’re going to be a dude dancing the female hula, you gotta at least be able to shake your hips like you tell us to.

I learned much more from the two ladies assisting him (without saying anything, I should add), that I just tuned out the short little man in the front barking at us.

That night, after the lesson ended, I met up with my friends Lisa (who lives in the same city I do, and actually the apartment complex right next to mine) and Lindsey.  Lindsey got a package from her mom of pumpkin products so we made pumpkin parmesan sauce pasta, and pumpkin pecan pancakes.  It was an amazing meal.

I went into the city afterward with Lindsey to meet up with some friends.  And then Sunday I met up with Lindsey again to go out to the biggest mall in Hamamatsu for a futon (finally!).  The package was so big that I paid them to deliver it, and I should be receiving it on Wednesday.  I am pretty excited for this.

This coming weekend, I’ve decided I don’t want to do our usual song and dance (which really does consist of going to a club and getting wasted), and I think I’m going to head to a live house (a club that plays live music) – I’ve been itching to go to a concert and there are a few live houses in the vicinity, all which play rock music, and not the crappy pop that I hear every weekend.  No joke, this past weekend the DJ played the same, or a variant on the same, Black Eyed Peas song four times in a row.  Needless to say, I need to switch it up.  No more “clubbing” in cramped bars for me for a while.  Especially if I like the live houses, I’d much rather be there than yelling over loud pop music.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

運命だよね (It’s fate, yeah?)

I’ve been thinking about how lucky I am to have met the people who I am working with currently, and how lucky I am to have a great group of other ALTs.  I can’t help but wonder if my situation would be the same if I were in Hokkaido.  Apparently, the Hamamatsu Branch is one of the best to work for within Interac.  Hamamatsu thus far has been a great location too, apparently it’s one of the windiest (if not the windiest) cities in Japan.  It doesn’t snow much, I’ve heard, but it’s super windy.

There are many Brazilians and Filipinos living in Hamamatsu.  You realize that instantly after you spend a day walking around downtown Hamamatsu.  After working at the English Camp, I found out there are quite a few Jamaicans here as well.  It’s nice to be in a place that has  an international community as well as a Japanese community.

My locale, Hosoe in the North Ward, is apparently pretty famous for certain things.  There is something called a “sekisho” (関所), or checkpoint where travelers from other towns would stop in during the Tokugawa period of Japan.

There’s also one of the largest and most famous caves in Japan, Ryugashi Caverns (竜ヶ岩洞).  And another, not as well known cave called Washizawa (鷲沢風穴).  I definitely plan on checking these out soon.

Also where I live is apparently Miyakoda Hiking Course, a roughly 19km hike around the area.  According to WikiTravel:

This “19 km hiking trail” is actually a route on the roads through the area. While quite confusing to the non-Japanese speaker, it does take one past Washizawa Cave, winds up in the mountains a temple, bridges,a waterfall, and finally to Takisawa Observation Platform. A new highway being built across this area seems to have altered some roads and creates for a challenge in route-finding. Be prepared to trek 25-30 km as the 19 km length assumes one does not get lost.

Also, as Japan has many festivals throughout the year, the big festival in my area is called the Princess Road Procession (姫様道中, “Hime-sama Douchuu”).  Also from WikiTravel:

The first Saturday and Sunday of April, early afternoon. During the Edo Period this road was a popular excursion spot for princesses. This matsuri re-enacts what the procession was like, with actors in full authentic dress of samurai, maids, servants and, of course, the princess with her palanquin.

There are so many outdoorsy things to do, not to mention an airforce base fairly close by that has a museum, and the Honda plant is here as well.  Starting from November, I am definitely going to begin exploring my city a bit more thoroughly.  And I also want to go to Nagoya – apparently it doesn’t cost much to get there, and go see my friend Nathan who lives in Izunokuni (a bit to the east of Hamamatsu, on the other peninsula).  Of course, hopefully another trip to Tokyo is doable, and I definitely intend to go further south – go see my friend Kana in Kumamoto, and go to Fukuoka, Kobe, Osaka, and Kyoto.  I want to go to the west coast of Japan too, as I have never been there before, and of course hit up Okinawa and Hokkaido.  I want to see the Snow Festival!

In a way, I’m happy I decided to wait until August to head off to Japan.  I can’t imagine life without the people who I’ve met and trained with.  Not to mention, it gave me the chance to work at Pelmeni with fantastic people, and granted me experience of working in the education field.  The month that I subbed as a paraeducator was amazing.

Not to mention the fact that my schools that I am working at now are fantastic.  They’re accommodating and understanding and friendly and funny, and the students are wonderful.

I’m lucky to be living in such a beautiful place, and with the people who I’ve met.  Yes, there are times I wish that I were up in Hokkaido, but honestly now I can’t imagine living anywhere else for now.

Previous Post

This gallery contains 37 photos.

Being an ALT has been a lot of fun thus far, but there are its not so shiny moments too.  Last week, I was with the 2nd year class 2 students, who I was told was the worst group of students at my junior high school.  I heard this from the previous ALT, and even [...]