October 26, 2008

Lazy Sunday

Last weekend was pretty busy - Chieko, a part-time teacher who used to work at Shima & might be coming back next year (yey!) drove me all about Ise shopping for apartment things, and we visited Naiku, one of two grand shrines in the city dedicated to the highest Shinto god & goddess (Naiku is the goddess shrine). Monday was my epic smash-and-grab run to Nagoya, which left me pretty exhausted.

So I declared this weekend a write-off, and I feel pretty good about that. It's not that I haven't gotten anything done - AJ and I picked up stuff for our various Halloween classes at the 100-yen shop yesterday, and I found the last pieces to my costume at Jusco, the Target of Japan - but I've gotten stuff done at my own pace, and with a minimal amount of getting out of bed & leaving the apartment :b

Today I absolutely needed to do laundry; it's one of those two-weeks-and-then-some laundry days. So that was my work for today, it's been all PJ's & internets & books & idle crafts otherwise. Unfortunately the weather people lied and it still rained a little bit today, but not hard enough to actually get the balcony
wet. It was a lazy kinda rain, the kind you're not even sure is there because you hear some leaves rustling, but it could just be the wind. Only there was no wind today. The world seems to be sleepy.

It FINALLY got chilly, too, which made me so happy I opened all my windows to welcome it ( > w < ) And I got to put on my brand new PANDA SLIPPERS --->
They are fuzzy little bear-cubes of happiness. I got them at this wonderful little local chain store called Party House, which is kinda like a K-Mart but about the size of a Wal-Greens. It packs an incredible amount of stuff into a small store, and it's all really cheap! As you can see, they have some pretty awesome finds, too, not just discounted crap. In fact those nifty-looking floor-cushions you see in the picture were also bought at Party House :3

Currently listening to: The Beatles ~ I Am The Walrus
I wanna watch "Across the Universe" now . . . but I don't have it
:c

October 21, 2008

Exhibit A

So all day yesterday I was under the impression that I had eikaiwa ("English conversation") at the community center, but after getting home I remembered that we'd adjusted the class schedule to allow for a Halloween party next week. Naturally, in celebration, I cleaned the hell outta my floors (I'm one of those people who lets cleaning go at the slightest hint of something better to do. Anyone who saw my dorm room last year can attest to this.)

In anticipation of the disarray that will likely overtake this past week's progress in tidying up, I submit for posterity authentic video evidence that my apartment was at one point in pretty decent shape (excepting of course the fugly pastel curtains that are still in my room; I will replace those by week's end, or may I be struck dead by lightning)


October 12, 2008

ARTery

From the second class got out on Friday, this has been a wonderful weekend for arting :D

During the school festival, AJ and I visited the Ikebana club in the meeting room next to the teacher's office. Apparently my predecessor had gone to their after-school sessions last year, so the instructor had asked AJ to introduce me to her and see if I was interested. Of course, the instructor is an impeccably polite, darling old Japanese woman. And you just don't refuse impeccably polite, darling old Japanese women. It is plain and simply impossible.


Thus, on Friday afternoon around 3:30 I was up on the 4th floor in a cozy little traditional tatami room I had never known existed before that day, sticking flowers in decorative ceramic holders and hoping I was doing it right. The instructor dutifully praised my first efforts, and then added a few more cuttings & rearranged the others a bit to make it look up to standard. This is exactly the kind of reaction I had been expecting, so I took it to mean that I wasn't completely hopeless but could learn a lot from watching her fix my fumbles. But she also actually went out of her way to remark on my sense of balance to another teacher who came up to chat, and that I consider a bit unusal even taking into account
the extra politeness afforded to me as a new class member and a foreigner. So here's the arrangement that got me started on the right foot (or right flower, as it were):On Saturday, I took a train into Mie's capital, Tsu, to meet up with several other JETs for a Stitch'n'Bitch. We gathered in the Mr. Donuts store right next to the train station, scarfed down delicious pastries, sewed and knitted and crocheted, and talked some trash about whatever was bugging us at the mo'. That is, in a nutshell, one of many possible iterations of a Stitch'n'Bitch, and if you are at all inclined to either passtime, I suggest you see if there is a venue for crafty crafters & sharp-tongued wits in your area :3 I made some progress on an anteater stuffie pattern I'm trying to put together. Sorry, no photos yet; it's under wraps until I can get the whole thing assembled and draw up a proper pattern to share with the world.

After Stitch'n'Bitch was done, me and a couple of the JETs from Iga (birthplace of the ninja! Man, my prefecture rocks so hard) went further north to the town of Komono, where we dined at a family restaurant inexplicably called "Tom Sawyer" and went to bed early to rest up for the town's half-marathon.

No, I didn't run. But I DID paint the faces of just about every child in the area. The lovely lady JET who works as Komono's coordinator of international relations (CIR) was running a face-painting table for one of her favorite charities; we asked for a 100-yen donation from people in exchange for our artistic services. I had volunteered via e-mail to help out, because it sounded like tons of fun.

Once word got out amongst the girls that I did Disney characters, though, it became like an assembly-line of bright, smiling faces all begging to have Stitch painted onto their left cheeks. I was moving too fast to stop and take pictures myself (sorry, Jenni! I know you would have been so proud of me!), but I think
maybe one of the other JETs working the table snapped a few photos during the lull in her commissions (I felt really guilty at times, like I was hogging all the adorable kids, I consoled myself with the fact that I got a metric ass-ton of moms to toss in their 100-yen coins for our charitable cause) Here's a group project I did for four girls who wanted matching flowers on their legs:
And the best part about this weekend is that it continues through tomorrow. Yay Health & Sports Day! . . . Ironically I will probably spend most of it in bed. But I feel entitled to that, really, after running around all weekend, and the weather has turned cool again so it's going to be great day to lay around & do nothing more physically taxing than putting a needle & thread through felt or pencil to paper.

October 7, 2008

Epic Fail


You may be wondering why there is a picture of trash on my floor with my beslippered foot next to it. The foot is to give you a sense of the scale of my failure at life, which is just millimeters short of cosmic.

The trash down there is actually all the mail that has been sitting in a box for the past 2 months or so.


The box of which I speak is at ground-level, by the set of stairs that I only recently started using to go up-and-down from the apartment. It is, apparently, the preferred alternative to the mail slot that empties into a different box inside my apartment door.
I was not aware of this until today, partially because nobody bothered to tell me "by the way, your mail box is here" when I moved in, but mostly because, as previously mentioned, I fail at life.

So BIG-ASS apologies to Drago, Maria, Jenni, and Jacqui for totally not acknowledging the things y'all mailed me back in August. And now I have solved the mystery of the missing internet bill . . . I am so glad I live in Japan, where the customer is, in fact, always right, even if they neglect a payment.