Teeveeeeeeeee \o\

MY TV WORKS AGAIN. A week after Typhoon Melor plowed through the country's power grid like Godzilla without his morning coffee, I can watch my local stations static-free and see the Friday night Engrish movies again!

Obviously this is the post-storm recovery item of chief importance in my town. Which is kind of remarkable, considering that THIS is the view of typhoon #18 as it made landfall directly above my peninsula:
See that faint white outline underneath all the angry sky? That is Japan. See the wee-tiny dot in the middle of the red-zone? That's me hiding out in my front entrance because it's the only spot without the potential for susploding glass flying everywhere. Fun times and great sound effects.

Actually there was a point of damage that matters a lot more to me than the little picture box I use maybe 4 hours a week at most - the shortcut from behind my apartment building to school that winds through a little forested hillside.This is what it used to look like ( ; _ ; )

The before and after shots here don't even begin to convey the swath of destruction back there. It's very sad that I no longer have a plan-B for when I sleep in past 7:30 or forget a bunch of stuff and don't make it out the door until 8:15, but I'm thankful it all went down into the ravine and not onto any of the houses surrounding this hill on three sides. Who knows, with pretty much no property damage, maybe the city or whoever oversees the land back there will get somebody to clear off the old road. It'd be a shame if whoever gets my job next year won't be able to enjoy the sights and smells of the woods and 10 minutes shaved off their walk to work.

Typhoooooooon /o/

Despite the season's 18th typhoon having been downgraded from a Category 1 (of the sort that blew directly through my city last year) to a Tropical Storm, it looks like it's gonna pack quite a punch.

This "storm" has a diameter well over half the length of the Japanese archipelago. It is literally covering a good 60 - 70% of the islands right now.

From the warnings scrolling across the top of my wee-tiny TV screen, I have gathered that my prefecture will have the special privilege of receiving 60 cm of rain (that's a good two feet, Americans). The second-highest number I saw throughout the entirety of the warnings was 20 cm, so we are clearly #1. Go us! On top of that, our coastline (and technically I am in a coastal town, even though I am surrounded on all sides by mountains; there is an ocean inlet that runs almost up to the train tracks a mere mile or so from my apartment) can expect 9-meter waves.

Last year my biggest concern was wind blowing out my big glass patio sliding doors. This year the hubbub around here is obviously the water levels, but given that I'm on the second floor I'm not TOO too worried. Talk about the office has it that we're definitely-maybe showing up for work tomorrow (please see Japanese Work Ethic), the only question is whether or not the students get sent home early.

the good with the bad

Soooo the September rain that had been strangely absent all month came today, and it was misery-season again. I was, in fact, all set for today to be the worst day of the term, more because I would very much like to believe that there won't be any more really bad days than because of how it actually turned out. In the morning I skipped breakfast because my stomach was giving me trouble, then promptly got hunger pangs during my first- and second-period classes. Was all set to collapse by the end of first-year communication. Because of the heat, though, I didn't get any trouble from students today, just sleepy-moans :T

Throughout the rest of the day I was constantly replaying a song on my iPod, convinced that I would have to know the lyrics by heart at 3 pm. See, yesterday a couple students came into the office and wanted to know if one of us ALTs could sing a couple English songs with their band for the bunkasai (school culture festival). The festival starts Friday, so that means whoever volunteered would have 3 days to learn it and practice with the students. They ambushed AJ first, but he's doing a lot of music stuff with our jazz-man vice principal already, so I offered to fill in on one song. It's by a band called Ellegarden ( "L-garden" ) that essentially is the Japanese incarnation of Blink 182.

Practice after school meant I would have no time to nap and recuperate from my daylong stomach problems before my 2-hour eikaiwa class at the community center tonight. But I'd wanted to get in on some bunkasai action like I did last year, and as I'd thought it was too late already this actually was a nice surprise. As it turned out, the students weren't practicing with their band today anyway; we're meeting tomorrow after classes end. No 13-hour gauntlet for me, hooray! I took the shortcut down the hill and through the forest back to my apartment and promptly passed out on the floor until it was time to warm up some soup for dinner.

The last eikaiwa class I did wasn't so successful - in fact I would say my recent dental work at a Japanese clinic was less painful - so I wasn't expecting a great turnout. 7:30 came and sure enough the only two people who showed up besides the organizer dude were two of the older men. One guy is a retired English teacher and pretty chill, but the other is a Grouchy McNaggypants who has been dogging both my and AJ's classes with complaints and ill humor for the past couple months, pretty much expecting us to make him fluent in English in 2 hours ever two weeks with no preparation or active effort on his part.

Great, I thought, well I guess I'm being punished for all my past slacking-off on lessons. But over the next 10 minutes three of my favorite adult students filtered in, and I had prepared an easy but fun lesson this time, which they all took to surprisingly well. In no time the mood in the room turned from awkward as Tom Cruise speaking at a pathologists' convention to relaxed and groovy. Afterwards the woman who has sorta become my Japanese grandma drove me back and gave me some homemade lemon cake. Luckily I'd baked cookies over the weekend, which meant I could give her some okaeshi straight away :3

All in all, despite waking up wishing I could just spend all day in bed, the day has taken a nice upswing. And it's the longest, hottest day the week will throw at me, so whatever other setbacks and speed bumps pop up, it's still a gentle downhill run to the weekend.

cooling off

This morning I stepped out of my door and it was...cool. And breezy. And...and not humid! And apparently the temperature, at least, is going to keep up its good behavior. This is not a drill! Misery season is officially over :D

That being said, of course the ONE day I actually wouldn't mind some hot summer weather, it's going to drop below 20 C and rain heavily. On Saturday a bunch of JETs are heading up to our prefecture's tanfastic water park / amusement park / outlet shopping center, and I was looking forward to gettin' my swim on in those pools. But I guess if I stay in I can take care of some much needed fall cleaning, and maybe...bake? Cookies sound awesome right now.

Just had the second lesson-planning meeting of fall term, and it definitely went better than the first. Experience, both during the past year and the past week, have taught me what pitfalls to look for in the first-year students' textbook lessons (confusing vocabulary, grammar or verb forms that are just tossed in at random and never explained, etc.), and I think I am getting a lot better at generally jazzing them up with engaging activities and visual aids.

Also! Soma FM has a new station, and I love it. "Suburbs of Goa" keeps me sane during the days when Creeper-sensei doesn't have nearly enough classes to keep him out of the office and out of earshot. I have a feeling it will also be very useful when proper flu season starts and everyone steadfastly refuses to blow their damn noses, opting instead to become perpetual snorting machines because somehow that's more polite and less disgusting. Right.

Yahoo had up a list of "Office Do's and Don'ts" that they snagged from CNN the other day, and it really made me pine, if not for America per se, then at least for a professional culture where everyone understands that it's NOT okay to kick off your shoes and prop your rank-nasty feet on the desk edge right next to your neighbor's face, or constantly belch and grunt and hum tunelessly (actually the more accurate term would be "tonedeafly," but I'm pretty sure that's not a word. Well it is now), or leave your phone at your desk all day without setting it to vibrate so that everyone gets to hear the nauseating pop song you set as your text message notification over and over and over again.

Yeah, it's the little things that get to you. But all in all this term actually doesn't look too bad - second-year culture kids are well taken care of with Grammar-sensei so no worries there; I have a fairly solid plan for third-year culture & they're good students to boot; and first-year classes are at least working out better than last year, if nothing else. They're really benefitting from Grammar-sensei's English class, so we don't have to hold their hands quite as much. I don't teach the class from which some students will move up to 2A Culture next year, but I would hazard to guess they'll be pretty alright. The total number of students enrolled for each year has been going down, as well. While that doesn't bode well in terms of Japan's aging population, at least it means smaller invididual class size, and that's better for everybody.

nenkyuu

"Nenkyuu" is the regular paid time off that we can take throughout the year. I took it today three hours into the morning because apparently all the other teachers decided that this was the day to take off, so the office is empty and dull and my work computer's maddeningly slow.

Also, the windows are all closed and the air conditioners are set at 27 on low speed. It is a dry & breezy 26 C outside. Sorry, office, you fail at life.

There's a nice breeze coming in through my balcony door, and outside a couple of the rice fields are already being harvested. I don't quite trust this mild spell - I KNOW I remember being sweaty and gross well into Septemer last year - but it's pretty nice to not have to run the lung-fungus-inducing aircon all day. Gotta get back to working on essays, but first some observations:

Every old man driving a kei-truck looks like the guy from Waking Ned Divine (sigh...okay Grandpa Joe from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but seriously, you should see David Kelly in other things)

Parasols are useful for defense not only against the sun, but also against oosuzumebachi ("big sparrow bee," the most giantest of Asian giant hornets, which happen to live in the mountains around my town). I know this because on Monday one flew INTO my parasol, got angry with me for being in its way, and was summarily smacked down with said instrument. Then I RAN LIKE HELL.

Dirty dishes are like goombas to my Mario - I just walk away from the sink for a second and when I go back again they've respawned. Unfortunately they don't make little bloopy noises; I would probably clear them more often if they did.

Thyme looks kinda sad when it's in a bit pot all by itself.

the fall frenzy begins

Wow. Meant to type this up last night, but I zonked at 8:30 and only woke up around midnight to turn off the kitchen light. Such is JET-lag (hurrhurr see whut I did there).

After getting back from a tanfastic vacation in America-land (getting TO 'Merika was a different story entirely, but it worked out in the end, obvs.) I found myself waking up at 5 in the morning to typhoon warnings, earthquake dispersions (although apparently I'm the only doof who didn't feel a thing even though it was a 3.0 in my area), and Orientation for my prefecture's newbies. Suddenly I am a sempai lolwhut?

It's kind of amusing how the process of giving advice makes you feel like you actually know things. And at the same time it seems like this year's group is so much more on top of stuff than I remember being. Still and all, going into Orientation as a second-year was actually a good experience. Listening to the general talks a second time provided a way better setting for reflecting on my performance over the past year than that done-in-10-minutes evaluation sheet the supervisors hand out in February at the office. And when I got bored I could outline this term's classes on the back sides of handouts :b And then I took the bunch from my area out to lunch and it was good tiems, they're all very relaxed & groovy.

So, first day back at work today. We're still on "break," but from now 'til December it's the busiest part of the year, and I'ma have to stay on top of lessons, fun things like sumo tournaments, paperwork, etc. I will probably be a little crazy manic/short-fused for a while, especially during the next abominable two months of heat & humidity. I don't have the glamour of Japan-novelty to protect my spirits this time, so my plan is basically to stay indoors as much as possible until October and then get a ginormous infusion of genki from the cooling-down of everything.

At least now sunburn isn't such a big concern - the weather pattern from here on out looks something like Typhoon --> rain, Post-Rainy Season Rain --> rain, Humid As Hell --> clouds & mist, Another Typhoon --> torrential rain, repeat repeat repeat, Autumn (read: last week of October / first week of November) --> rain

alive

Just came into my mind that I hadn't posted in a while. So here I be, overall not much the worse for wear considering it's coming up on a year since I moved across the Pacific with zero training and very little idea of where I would be heading afterwards. I've learnt well enough on my feet to be an actual teacher for a few of the brighter crayons in the box, and I've better ideas about this time next year, as well as ideas about the having of those ideas. One thing you get a lot of in an inaka town connected to other inaka towns by slow-winding train tracks is time to think. And to do things. As much as this position can grate on me, I appreciate being able to work and live at pretty much my own pace.

My pace at the moment dictates milk & cookies time and a book.

8 days 'til I get to drop in for a visit stateside ~/o/