Thank the gods I like anime. In one of my kids classes we started the dreaded "What are your favorite coral reef animals?" The vocab is difficult, the structure is difficult and it only gets worse as the unit progresses. J-chan, you had to do these lessons, right?

To check if my kids understood the concept I asked them, "What are you favorite anime?" Yes, they understand the concept, especially after I told them that "I like Bleach, One Piece, and Hagane no renkinzutsushi (FMA)."

I had to reassure them that names of the shows was fine in Japanese. I'm very strict about no Japanese in class. But I wanted to see if they understood the concept.


BTW loving Ace in chains

OK, time for some quality Engrish.

When in the 100 yen shop (dollar store) with utopiantrunks getting yarn to crochet she asked if I knew how to knit. Well, I knew at one point. But do I still remember? So, I bought knitting needles so see if I could knit. Yes, I can, but not well.

But on the package there is some quality Engrish that I just have to share.

- The light and sharpends make knitting easy.

- Please enjoy blightcolo while knitting.

- Please do not use it in addition to an original use.

- Br fully careful of handling and keep it to the place where a child's hand does not reach.

OK, time for some fun pictures.





Last month in Takatsuki we had an art festival and there were paintings all over town. This was my favourite. Take note of the skeletons in the boat.





Fan girls shouldn't go shopping. What else can I say?





I went with utopiantrunks for some doll fun. I haven't played with dolls in so long. I had a blast.





Wheeee. That's how I felt.





And we had tea and cake with the darlings next to a lovely Japanese garden.





We then went wandering in the garden. Oh, I love Japanese maple trees.








And here are a few of the snowflakes I made this year.

Every once in a while I just have to shake my head and sigh.

One of the kids at work, not one of mine, but I do have her brother, is a little terror. Well, the little brother isn’t an angel wither, but I can handle him. But the sister… Oh my, she slaps people, including staff and teachers, won’t participate in class, won’t sit still, she has also pushed me and fwacked my boobs.

True, compared to her mother and Japanese women it may look like I have balloons stuffed down my shirt, but they’re real and when an 8 year old jumps up and slaps as hard as she can, it hurts.

In our classrooms we have tables with the legs folded up against the walls when they’re not in use. Most schools have safety straps to hold them in place, but not at my Monday school. My classroom is OK, the folded table is held in place with a stack of chairs and the table I use I don’t collapse it. If I want more room I just push it aside.

Today the ‘little darling’ pulled the table down nearly hitting the teacher and another student. The teacher sent her out of the class to sit for 5 minutes. I saw what the kids had done. I try not to kick my kids out of the class, but I agreed with the time out. I was about to call my kids to line up for class when this happened.

Now on this fateful day the staff had just put up pictures from Halloween. As I’m going over homework with the one kid who showed up I see her jump off the chair she was told to sit on and skip over to the window where the Monday pictures are hung.

There are a few emotions/expressions/trains of thought I expect to see from kids on a time out. Guilt. Boredom. Frustration. ‘Oh dear, I’m in trouble.’ ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ ‘When can I get back to class?’ NOT ‘Oh, don’t I look pretty in my costume?’

I’m not afraid to discipline children. Hey, I’ll do that even with the parents around if they’re not doing their job. It’s my classroom’ my rules.

So what do I do? I open the door and tell her to sit as if she were a dog. I have never seen her obey without hesitation or complaints or a fuss that makes my father look easy to get along with. Using gestures and vocabulary she should have learned in class I told her to sit and stay. Yup, I was treating her like a dog.

I go back into my class and kind of forget about her, but kept her in my peripheral vision to make sure she stayed put. I can’t forget the shocked look from the mother’s that were around. They’ve never heard that tone from me before. Why would they? I’ve got pretty good control of my classes.

When another one of my students showed up a couple minutes later I saw that the girl was crying, hard. Did I feel guilty? No. This kid has been a terror to her regular teacher. Then when the regular teacher broke his collarbone another teacher has come in. The new teacher is good and strong and disciplines well, and she still had problems with this one student.

Fear of God isn’t a big thing here in Japan. Fear of mother obviously isn’t there/effective. Hey, I’ve met mom. She’s in the class with little brother (he’s 3yrs old so a guardian is there for discipline. Discipline? Ha. Non-existent.) Fear of Carrie? I can hope that it has some effect. I can hope that she will be better behaved in class (I like her teacher) and hopefully my breasts will no longer be assaulted and not be pushed at the top of the stairs. Yes, very scary.

 It's Halloween.  I had 4 kids classes, two were my regular ones and then 2 event lessons.  Those two were a bit more of a challenge.  But my kids were great.  They had no problems with me in a costume, or doing very unusual things with ghosts, pumpkins, and witches.  And they were cute.  How cute were they?  This cute.



Because I had such little ones I wore my cutest costume; Pipi longstockings.  Everyone loved it.  Especially the hair.  I was impressed that one of the adults dressed up.  She's Kiki from Kiki's delivery service.  So my co-worker decided that she needed to have a broom.

      

Then in the evening I had 2 school parties in town.  One of the school director's challenged me to wear a different costume than from either Takatsuki school.  Good challenge, I don't like repeating a costume in a year.  So inspired from the mask I made yesterday I came up with a new costume.  After work I headed to the dollar store to get a couple of things and this is what I came up with.

    

The green man.  That's what I was going for.  Not poison Ivy.  I wore this costume out from home and my goodness I scared people.  I was fun.  I normally get stares here but tonight was special.  I had to walk under the train tracks there was a couple in front of me.  The guy happened to glance behind him and then there was me.  The snapped his head forward and told his girlfriend to look.  She does and gasped.  He asked if it was Halloween, I replied that it certainly was.  She murmured something like it was wonderful.  I thanked her.  Every one loved this one.  Simple, sweet can make some of the best costumes.

Here's the decore in my dining room.  Happy Halloween

 Another day, another costume.  This is my new costume for this year.  A Bleach Shinigami (death god).  It was another busy day at work.  I started with my Mini Kids, they didn't want to wear a costume.  Then I had a special event class with new, young students.  They were about 3 or 4 yrs old.  The girls were great and bold and had no problems coming in and interacting with me.  The boys were all in tears.  I just laughed.  My next class was with this darling girl.  It's a one-on-one with her.  Usually she's really good, but today she was half dead.  I'm not sure if she was tired or just put off by my costume.



My next class was the reason I wore this costume.  Those boys try my patience they don't want to be there, and they're always tired.  But they found out one week that I like Bleach, well I do have a Bleach pencil case.  So they will come alive and talk to me, in English, about Bleach.  I figured that this costume might get them more interested.  It worked.  It was the best lesson I've had with them.  No Japanese.  No silliness.  They worked hard and all participated.  They made masks.  The picture doesn't do them justice so I didn't upload it, but they looked great.  I made a Green Man mask.  And the kids asked me questions, in English, about the mask.  It was amazing.




This is my Junior High class.  They're nice, but they didn't get to do a special Halloween lesson, but they still had fun hats so I gave them candy.  It was nice to get a picture with their Japanese teacher too.  (She's the one in the witch hat.



My last adult class got canceled.  Hey, I don't mind, it gave me time to get out of my costume before I had to run for my train.  I asked the school director to take a full body pict of me as a costume reference.  To get all of me in the pict because I'm so tall she had to crouch down a bit.  I like the effect, it makes me look even taller.  It is kind of dramatic.  "I will protect you from hollows."

 Having gotten bored of all my Halloween videos that I watch every year I decided to watch Ghost Hunters for some variety.  Then I stumbled upon Ghost Hunters International.  Yeah, old castles and ghosts, what else could I ask for.  Thus far the most famous/monsterous castle has been the Frankenstien castle.  



Maybe it's because I've been watching Ghost Hunters, but mostly I didn't have very little kids today that I wore a spookier costume.  There was a prospective student in the office during one of my breaks she was a cute kid, about 6 or 7 yrs old.  She started calling me 'kumo-san', which translates as 'spider lady'.  Her mom shot back that I was a teacher and she had to call me 'sensei'.  The girl shook her head and said 'kumo-sensei' was strange.



I included this picture just because I of the older kid in the background with the scream mask.  



My fav pict today.  My student in my second class is all by himself as his classmate dropped out.  He's a really great kid and works hard.  Since he's the only one in the class if he's there and I'm ready early we start early.  Because we started early the staff wasn't up at the end of class to take our picture.  I put my camera on the table and this is the outcome.  He did a great job carving his pumpkin.  I miss large orange pumpkins.

 Yesterday was my day off and I went to Japanese class, had lunch out, and went grocery shopping.  When I was going through the bakery area to get an apple pie when I found this.  A halloween collon.  They had 3 different flavours, chocolate, ponto (no idea but it's white), and custard.  I went with the custard. 




Today at work since I figured that I mostly have boys I could get away with dressing as a pirate without terrifying any of them.  Even though some of them are really, really, little kids they handled the strange lesson, strange decorations in the classroom and most of all their strange teacher.  This picture isn't my youngest class today, but I love the one girl with the Jack-o-lantern head.  Her mom is the one peaking out behind her.



Beyond my normal 3 kids classes I had a special event.  The kids were not regular students so their English wasn't great, but we had lots of fun.  And, hey, another kids class means one less free time lesson.  I'd much rather teach kids.

Here's an extra pic of my costume.  I kept wanting to break out singing, "I used to be a farmer and I made a living fine..."

 So, it was our first day of Halloween classes at work.  Here's this year's incarnation of my gypsy costume.



To day I got to make a trick or treat bag, a fire monster mask, a butterfly mask, and a halloween book.  I had fun and most of my kids did too.  I had little witches, a white tiger, a ballerina, and a princess in my classes.  Here's one of my classes, they are a good group that works hard.



I got to scare one of the junior high students.  I was coming out of one room she saw me and backed up to give me more room.  Then she noticed the costume that she swore out loud.  My Japanese is good enough that I knew what she said and I laughed at her.


That's all for now.  The next day I teach is on Wednesday.  New photos then.

 I spent part of silver week with naye.  Went to Ama no hashitate, looked at spit of land upside down through my legs.  It really does look like it's a bridge to heaven.

While in Maizaru I found this strange boat all by its self.




And it inspired the following poem.



There is no river
There is no lake
The sea is far away
And yet here's a boat

Surrounded by the cries of kites
And the howling wind
Long forgotten, left, abandoned
Alone in the grassy field

 My darling turtles like their dried shrimp now.  So happy.  The shrimps are supposed to have lots of calcium which is good for their shells.  Well, I fed them and then sat down to eat my own lunch.  Soon they were going after the food, and actually eating it.  Not trying and then spitting it out.

At one point Raphael got a fairly large piece and Donatello grabbed the part that was sticking out of the more timid turtle's mouth.  Oh, how cute, they're fighting over their food.  I'm not worried about Raphael going hungry, he still got lots to eat.

Sorry naye  that it has taken so long, but as promised here is the poem Shadow World that I was talking endlessly about in Hokkaido.

SHADOW WORLD

 

Between dusk and night

Between blindness and sight

That is the shadow world

 

The one dying its red blood flowing

The other strong full and white

As is in the shadow world

 

Sight blinds the senses

The moon deceives the path upon my feet

 

One cannot find the way home

Shadows only lead to other shadows

 

Blinded by the light

But needing the light to see

That is the shadow world

 

 I had specifically asked when I was looking at apartments if pets were allowed.  I was told no.  I sighed and said it would have been nice to have a fish.  That was OK, same with turtles and insects.  Ah, I don't want insects in my house.  So after much deliberation and some advice from Debi I got a couple of turtles.

( My little darlings... )

 So I have finally gotten around to showing some pictures of my new place.





This is my bedroom, yes it is tatami.
And here is the after shot.



The long tapestry is actually an obi that a couple of my private students gave me.  The paintings I got in Beijing.  I am trying to keep this room nice and keeping with a Japanese/oriental theme.



My barren empty kitchen/dinning room.
And then full.  Even though there's lots of stuff in the room it doesn't feel cramped or crowded.  It helps that I've taken the doors off the other bedroom/living room so it's very open and feels big.








Here's the other room.  I haven't fully decorated it yet since Debi was living there until the beginning of the month.


Coming soon... Turtle pictures.

 Finally in my new place.  Very happy.  utopiantrunks  came over on saturday to help me unpack.  Thank you ever so much.  We got so much done.  We cleaned the old place on Sunday morning and got our deposits back in cash.  Joy.  I went out and bought an A/C with mine, it gets delivered Tuesday morning.  Now I can finally start thinking about summer vacation.

 Okay, I know I live in one of the hottest and most humid areas in Japan, but seriously, it's hot here.  Some clues, or You know it's hot when, or It's so hot...

- My house slippers melted, no joke.  The glue holding them together melted.
- The native trees, that should be used to the weather here, are wilty.
- I take ice cream out of the freezer, and trust me we have it set cold, is mushy in about 30 seconds.
- This morning I look at the weather forecast and am relieved that the temp has come down a bit, the projected high, only 30.  Only 30.  Well, it is a reprieve because all last week we were at 35 and up.

But the weather doesn't look so coopertive for the move, rain, oh well.

 Or - Slowly Moving Forward for Moving

Things are starting to fall into place.  

- I've got my lease agreement.  
- Confirmed my movers are coming.
- Gotten rid of some of the things I don't want.
- I have a growing pile of boxes in my room.
- I have most of the non-essential, day-to-day items packed away.

I still have a lot to do, but I'm getting there.  

 When is/was the rainy season in Japan?  

What the weather men called the rainy season was very dry.  Hardly any rain and what did fall was pretty light.  A week or so ago the same weather men said that the rainy season is over.  What kind of weather have we had?  Lots of heavy rain.  Argh.

Oh Japan.

My father complained that I hadn't written anything new, but figured that it was because I was busy moving.  This is the reply I sent him.

 

Yeah, sorry that there's nothing new on my journal, but going crazy with the housing situation.  Everyday seems to present a new headache, but also some progress.  Sigh.  And trying to decipher the extra super polite Japanese is not fun.  I'm a foreigner, I don't care about being spoken to in honorifics, I care about communication, and I care about actually understanding people and getting my house.

Some of the current headaches:

- The old housing agent keeps changing when he wants us out.  First it was the end of the month then August was ok, now it looks like we're back to the end of the month.  I want to move out on the first weekend in August that way I don't need to take time off work.  I can pick up keys and do last min stuff on sat after work then have the movers come on Sunday.

- I need a guarantor to get anything other than a rat hole in this country.  Since my friend moved last year and used work, I figured it would be no problem, right?  Wrong.  Apparently they changed their policy and don't do that anymore.  What?!?  If they don't help their teachers get places they won't soon have teachers.  Argh.  But I got a call at work yesterday that they have filled out the housing form and sent it back to the housing agent.

- Cleaning out the house.  This place has been a work rental place for many, many years.  I'm not sure how long, but I did find a magazine from 2004.  Each teacher just left things like dishes, books, magazines, decor that they figured might be used by the next tenants or were too lazy to move or throw out.  We of course hadn't gone though it because we figured the people moving in would want the library and stuff.  Well no longer a teacher's house so it all has to go.  I have found a couple of co-workers that are interested in taking some of the things off my hands.

That's kind of what this week (and it's only Thursday) has been like. 

I'm going to go have my shower, sort through all out Tupperware to make sure what I keep actually has lids and they still fit, wash the curtains I'm going to take and then go up to the realtor.

Carrie

How do I know this?  Well, on Sunday when I went to the ice dance party down in Namba I ended up dancing with one of Japan’s national skaters and I think I held my own fairly well.  He was a really good dancer and so easy to dance with.  I don’t think I have ever enjoyed the American waltz that much.  Even the simple Dutch waltz was a joy. 

He did dance with most of the other girls, but I was the one he danced with the most.  Why me?  I’d love to think that it was because I was the best, but no (well, I certainly was one of the best) I was the tallest.  This amazingly talented ice dancer is taller than me.  Because of my height I was the easiest to dance with. 

Not only was this wonderful guy a great dancer, he was also very polite, spoke fairly good English, and was very good looking.  Needless to say, I had a blast. 

We were doing the American; it was easy and so relaxing.  It dawned on me that this is how a waltz should be.  I was having so much fun and it was so natural that I wasn’t even thinking about the steps.  I just relaxed and looked longingly into his wonderful gentle eyes.  Oh, I’m in love.

I hope he comes back next month.