So I have had a craving for chocolate-chip cookies since about this time last week. Over the weekend I decided to do something about it and bake me some fluffy gooey goodness. Trouble is, there is no oven in my apartment.
You see, the Japanese don't believe in ovens. And much like fairies, ovens everywhere fall down dead when a large concentration of people steadfastly refuse to believe in them. It's very sad.
Because of the ethereal oven-death-zone which encases this country, Japanese microwaves have evolved to partially fill the niche of those fantasmagorical kitchen appliances which, legend has it, sometimes fit entire turkeys AND the side dishes in the same compartment. However, microwaves with baking functions are of course still microwave-sized. Thus it took me pretty much all afternoon to bake about four dozen three-quarters-sized cookies in my little microven (alternately, "ovrowave") on my wee-tiny dollar store cookie sheets which I held onto with wee-tiny polka-dotted dollar store hot pads. If only my feet had sprouted hair and my apartment building had shrunk and become partially encassed in the grassy hillside, I would have made a pretty fine hobbit on Sunday afternoon.
Here are the results of the first batch, which were undercooked by about one minute and 10 degrees Celsius, and which scrunched up like wet paper towels when I tried to remove them from the sheets:
And here is a good sample of the subsequent batches, which turned out just wonderfully and were very much appreciated by my co-workers today at lunchtime:
I also took a couple action-shots of the cookies in the nuker, just so's I could prove it to you all that everything I have said about Japan, ovens, and fairies is completely true:On a somewhat perplexing note, the dough didn't smell at all like the cookie-dough I would make with my mum back in the States. I don't know how to explain it. Maybe it was the butter I used, or the eggs, or the flour, or the brown sugar, but something about that dough just smelled overwhelmingly Japanese to me. Only people who have eaten authentic Japanese food for any amount of time over two weeks will really understand what I mean by that, but I guess one of the subtle differences is that despite having a crap-ton of sugar and chocolate bits in it, the dough didn't smell sweet. Neither did it smell flour-y. I think it smelt of egg and oils mostly, which may be a function of the astronomically lower level of preservatives in everything out here in the countryside. Perhaps the natural odors of the raw foodstuffs come through more strongly without them? I don't pretend to understand food chemistry at all, so that's just a shot in the dark. Anyway, eerie foreignness of smell aside, I would say that this endeavour was a resounding success. And my fellow teachers agree. I just hope I haven't set too high a bar for myself on baked goods to pass around the office.
September 29, 2008
September 23, 2008
Ooooooosaka!
'Kay, so this is a tad belated, but I blame the typhoon for my tardiness. Essentially I blame the weather in Japan for everything.
OH SNAP CHUNICHI DRAGONS JUST SCORED A DOUBLE!!
...sorry, my favorite baseball team is playing tonight, and they're trailing by 2 in the bottom of the 9th. They really need this. I'm tired of watching Nagoya's home team lose. I should really be rooting for the Hanshin Tigers, since they're Osaka's team and everyone around these parts feels more loyalty towards them than the Dragons, but Chunichi was my home team while I was studying at Nanzan. Also I just like being contrary.
Anywaaay, last weekend was extended to 3 days on account of Japan having the coolest old people in the world. No, seriously, they get their own holiday - Respect for the Aged Day - and their holiday gets me a day off of work. Everybody wins! Nicoli and I thought it was a pretty good idea to take off to Osaka for the long weekend, since neither of us had ever been before and we've both heard such great things about it. Plus, it's one of Chicago's sister cities, so that automatically makes it cool.
We made reservations at a place called Capsule Hotel Asahi Plaza Shinsaibashi. That's right, "capsule hotel" - they're usually geared towards businessmen who want cheap lodgings, but this one has some space for women as well, and is quite popular with foreigners. It's located in Shinsaibashi, very close to Amerika-mura ("America Town," center of amazing shopping and general hang-out zone for the hip youngsters, the young hipsters, and the freaks & geeks of the city) and just a hop-skip away from the most famous takoyaki (fried squid ball) stand in all of Osaka.
I should probably mention right now that Osaka is reknowned for takoyaki and okonomiyaki (there is no accurate way for me to explain what this is. Not quite a pancake, not quite a pizza, it is the most delicious thing that will ever clog your arteries and probably take 4 months off your life). It's also famous for producing hilarious comedians, being the first city in Japan to display neon signs, and as a key stronghold to 16th-century warlord Oda Nobunaga in his endeavours to unify Japan under his rule and end the Civil War Period. He didn't succeed, but his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, did. Hideyoshi built Osaka Castle, which unfortunately doesn't survive in its original structure, but is stunning nonetheless:Nicole and I visited on Sunday, with one of our old friends from Nanzan, Fig, in tow. Turns out Fig is doing JET in Kyoto, so she is very close to Osaka (envy! >:O) She met us in the city after we arrived on Saturday, and many adventures ensued, including buddying up with a random German girl. We were browsing through an Elegant Gothic Lolita outlet shop called Body Line when we noticed another person of European descent eyeing up the dresses. Her name was Julia, and she was on a several-weeks vacation, gallavanting about the entire country on her own. Apparently this is the thing to do in Europe, because my Swedish friend has done it at least twice in the past couple years. So we all wandered about together for the remainder of the night, eventually settling on a place for dinner on Dotombori (THEE food tourism street in Japan. If you visit Japan and try Japanese food only once in your life, let it be at a restaurant on this street. You will thank me and yourself after you have come out of the food-coma). We thence stuffed ourselves stupid. Here is but a meager fraction of what all we four consumed:
And this is me with Julia. None of us exchanged any contact information with her, so most likely we'll never see or hear from her again, but she was a fun lady nevertheless and made our stay that much more interesting.
On Sunday we met up with Eli ("Elly," she just spells it differently), a fellow Mie JET I met at Tokyo Orientation who swiftly became Nicole & my partner in weekend-in-the-city crime. It was on Sunday night that we tucked in for some famous Osakan okonomiyaki. Best. Dinner. Abroad. EVER. Afterwards, we met up with Allison, a lady Eli knew working for JET in Osaka. She'd been here a year already, so she knew all the good places to visit for shopping, supping, and shenanigans. Unfortunately my camera died Sunday night, so I didn't get a lot of pictures from the rest of our trip (;___;) LAME. But Nicoli has quite a few on her camera, so hopefully she'll get around the e-mailing them to me soonish.
Nicole said something on Sunday night that I think sums up Osaka pretty well - "The amazing shopping, the crazy-awesome-friendly people, the delicious food that will probably kill you, the crazy drivers that make up their own rules - no wonder it's Chicago's sister-city!" Also there is an art supplies store that Eli found called Kawachi which sells, among other things, oil painting supplies, specialty papers, and a sh*t-ton of Copic Markers. Eli and I will definitely be heading back to O-Town before the year is out. It's officially my favorite city in Japan.
Oh yeah, and Chunichi lost to Yakult 2 - 4 ( > . < ) Get it together, Dragons, or I'll dump you for Hanshin!
OH SNAP CHUNICHI DRAGONS JUST SCORED A DOUBLE!!
...sorry, my favorite baseball team is playing tonight, and they're trailing by 2 in the bottom of the 9th. They really need this. I'm tired of watching Nagoya's home team lose. I should really be rooting for the Hanshin Tigers, since they're Osaka's team and everyone around these parts feels more loyalty towards them than the Dragons, but Chunichi was my home team while I was studying at Nanzan. Also I just like being contrary.
Anywaaay, last weekend was extended to 3 days on account of Japan having the coolest old people in the world. No, seriously, they get their own holiday - Respect for the Aged Day - and their holiday gets me a day off of work. Everybody wins! Nicoli and I thought it was a pretty good idea to take off to Osaka for the long weekend, since neither of us had ever been before and we've both heard such great things about it. Plus, it's one of Chicago's sister cities, so that automatically makes it cool.
We made reservations at a place called Capsule Hotel Asahi Plaza Shinsaibashi. That's right, "capsule hotel" - they're usually geared towards businessmen who want cheap lodgings, but this one has some space for women as well, and is quite popular with foreigners. It's located in Shinsaibashi, very close to Amerika-mura ("America Town," center of amazing shopping and general hang-out zone for the hip youngsters, the young hipsters, and the freaks & geeks of the city) and just a hop-skip away from the most famous takoyaki (fried squid ball) stand in all of Osaka.
I should probably mention right now that Osaka is reknowned for takoyaki and okonomiyaki (there is no accurate way for me to explain what this is. Not quite a pancake, not quite a pizza, it is the most delicious thing that will ever clog your arteries and probably take 4 months off your life). It's also famous for producing hilarious comedians, being the first city in Japan to display neon signs, and as a key stronghold to 16th-century warlord Oda Nobunaga in his endeavours to unify Japan under his rule and end the Civil War Period. He didn't succeed, but his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, did. Hideyoshi built Osaka Castle, which unfortunately doesn't survive in its original structure, but is stunning nonetheless:Nicole and I visited on Sunday, with one of our old friends from Nanzan, Fig, in tow. Turns out Fig is doing JET in Kyoto, so she is very close to Osaka (envy! >:O) She met us in the city after we arrived on Saturday, and many adventures ensued, including buddying up with a random German girl. We were browsing through an Elegant Gothic Lolita outlet shop called Body Line when we noticed another person of European descent eyeing up the dresses. Her name was Julia, and she was on a several-weeks vacation, gallavanting about the entire country on her own. Apparently this is the thing to do in Europe, because my Swedish friend has done it at least twice in the past couple years. So we all wandered about together for the remainder of the night, eventually settling on a place for dinner on Dotombori (THEE food tourism street in Japan. If you visit Japan and try Japanese food only once in your life, let it be at a restaurant on this street. You will thank me and yourself after you have come out of the food-coma). We thence stuffed ourselves stupid. Here is but a meager fraction of what all we four consumed:
And this is me with Julia. None of us exchanged any contact information with her, so most likely we'll never see or hear from her again, but she was a fun lady nevertheless and made our stay that much more interesting.
On Sunday we met up with Eli ("Elly," she just spells it differently), a fellow Mie JET I met at Tokyo Orientation who swiftly became Nicole & my partner in weekend-in-the-city crime. It was on Sunday night that we tucked in for some famous Osakan okonomiyaki. Best. Dinner. Abroad. EVER. Afterwards, we met up with Allison, a lady Eli knew working for JET in Osaka. She'd been here a year already, so she knew all the good places to visit for shopping, supping, and shenanigans. Unfortunately my camera died Sunday night, so I didn't get a lot of pictures from the rest of our trip (;___;) LAME. But Nicoli has quite a few on her camera, so hopefully she'll get around the e-mailing them to me soonish.
Nicole said something on Sunday night that I think sums up Osaka pretty well - "The amazing shopping, the crazy-awesome-friendly people, the delicious food that will probably kill you, the crazy drivers that make up their own rules - no wonder it's Chicago's sister-city!" Also there is an art supplies store that Eli found called Kawachi which sells, among other things, oil painting supplies, specialty papers, and a sh*t-ton of Copic Markers. Eli and I will definitely be heading back to O-Town before the year is out. It's officially my favorite city in Japan.
Oh yeah, and Chunichi lost to Yakult 2 - 4 ( > . < ) Get it together, Dragons, or I'll dump you for Hanshin!
Labels:
baseball,
death-by-fooding,
okonomiyaki,
Osaka,
random Germans
September 19, 2008
Japanese Work Ethic
There is a Category 1 typhoon heading for Shima.
I am still at work. That is all.
I am still at work. That is all.
September 7, 2008
Good News for Tomo
Today I left Tomo in the shower room with all his toys and effects to try and get him used to being alone in there. I'd done the same thing Saturday night while I went grocery shopping, and he didn't seem to mind all that much past the initial protests at losing his main source of warmth and cuddles.
I took a walk north up the Ise road (the road that goes to
. . . surprise . . . Ise) to visit Masako-san, from the Tuesday night English class. She wasn't home, but her husband said he would tell her I stopped by. On the way home I took a different route along narrower roads that branch off haphazardly west of the Ise road, around houses and garden plots. It's a very lovely little neighborhood, running up to the street that connects to my apartment building's long and lonesome driveway. As I don't really have a neighborhood per se, I think I'll take some pictures over there later.
Anyway, back at home I was about to start dinner when someone knocked on the door. It was Masako, who had just gone home, heard the news from her husband, and felt so bad about missing my visit that she drove back to my apartment to bring me sweeties - mini croissants, a jelly donut, and what appears to be some kind of large, puffy, nut-filled bun. I introduced her to Tomo, told her the story of how I got him as best I could in Japanese and some English, and she then told me that she knows the lady who wanted him.
Turns out they are very good friends. Masako called her up right on the spot, and I'm pretty sure she pulled a classic Japanese move and subtly guilted her into agreeing to take Tomo that very instant. I heard her saying in Japanese that the kitten looks very small and pathetic (pathetic is actually not a good translation of "kawaiso," but there is no one English word for the mixture of adorable and pitiable that this phrase implies), and that he will be alone in the apartment while I work during the week. In Japanese, insinuation and inferred context, not actual words, make up the main content of speech. So if one reads between the lines, that was a pretty strong admonition.
At any rate, once Tomo's new mum saw him, she was overjoyed to take in such a little cutie (n___n) All things considered this weekend has worked out spectacularly well. I can now go to work tomorrow without anxiety over my little buddy, and after he gets used to his new home I can visit whenever I have time - it's a good hike into town from my place, but so is the grocery store, so I should be able to walk it easily.
One last picture to try and better illustrate just how wee-tiny and precious he is:
I took a walk north up the Ise road (the road that goes to
. . . surprise . . . Ise) to visit Masako-san, from the Tuesday night English class. She wasn't home, but her husband said he would tell her I stopped by. On the way home I took a different route along narrower roads that branch off haphazardly west of the Ise road, around houses and garden plots. It's a very lovely little neighborhood, running up to the street that connects to my apartment building's long and lonesome driveway. As I don't really have a neighborhood per se, I think I'll take some pictures over there later.
Anyway, back at home I was about to start dinner when someone knocked on the door. It was Masako, who had just gone home, heard the news from her husband, and felt so bad about missing my visit that she drove back to my apartment to bring me sweeties - mini croissants, a jelly donut, and what appears to be some kind of large, puffy, nut-filled bun. I introduced her to Tomo, told her the story of how I got him as best I could in Japanese and some English, and she then told me that she knows the lady who wanted him.
Turns out they are very good friends. Masako called her up right on the spot, and I'm pretty sure she pulled a classic Japanese move and subtly guilted her into agreeing to take Tomo that very instant. I heard her saying in Japanese that the kitten looks very small and pathetic (pathetic is actually not a good translation of "kawaiso," but there is no one English word for the mixture of adorable and pitiable that this phrase implies), and that he will be alone in the apartment while I work during the week. In Japanese, insinuation and inferred context, not actual words, make up the main content of speech. So if one reads between the lines, that was a pretty strong admonition.
At any rate, once Tomo's new mum saw him, she was overjoyed to take in such a little cutie (n___n) All things considered this weekend has worked out spectacularly well. I can now go to work tomorrow without anxiety over my little buddy, and after he gets used to his new home I can visit whenever I have time - it's a good hike into town from my place, but so is the grocery store, so I should be able to walk it easily.
One last picture to try and better illustrate just how wee-tiny and precious he is:
September 5, 2008
Surprise LOLcat, invisible mommy :(
So ever since I knew I was going to be in Mie Prefecture, close to Nagoya, I kept joking that I should ask my host family if they'd like to give me their cat, Kira. They didn't pay much attention to her, and she grew to adore me so much that she would be in my room every morning at 7 am demanding a tummy-rub, and when I left to go back to the States she was forlorn for weeks.
I've always wanted a kitty, but mum is none too fond of them, so we had a couple dogs throughout my childhood and then we moved to a third-floor apartment on the north side of Chicago. Not the best environment for large dogs, which are the kind my dad likes especially. Practically speaking, what with figuring out how to take care of myself adequately in a foreign country, a cat is the last thing I need here in my little teacher's hovel distracting me from my teacherly duties such as prepping future lessons outside of class.
Well, mother nature abhors a vacuum, and apparently she felt the absence of felines in my life has gone on long enough. For no reason in particular, I decided to take the shortcut home from school today. Usually it's an overgrown deer trail leading back into a bug-infested fen which sprouts an old disused concrete road that goes through a forest and comes out behind my apartment building. The city workers occasionally go through and mow down all the weeds, though, and this weekend they did a stellar job with the non-forested areas of the shortcut. Anyway, it connects with the school grounds by way of a small footpath behind the baseball field. So I was headed down that way, when I spied a tiny orange-ish something faintly mewling on the blacktop. Thus was a little bundle of trouble dropped into my life by the hand of Chaos, who always likes a good laugh.
I don't want to pretend that I have the authority to name him (as T.S. Eliot makes abundantly clear, no humans may know the secret names of cats), but I've been calling him "Tomo" in my head. As in "tomodachi," or "friend," which is what he desperately needed when I found him. He was half-soaked, probably more than half-starved, scared, and hardly strong enough to stumble over to me when I held out my hand. Neither mommy nor siblings nor potential owners were anywhere in sight. I think it most likely that the heavy rains we've been getting washed him down from the mountains in one of the drainage ditches and he crawled out of the little stream that runs into a gully back in the woods next to my shortcut home. I took him back to the school office to get him some milk and a warm towel, and to look up the closest animal hospitals / shelters. Of course, everything in Japan closes at 3, and though the office ladies and the male teachers alike avowed that he was the most adorable thing ever, they didn't want him to be their problem. I'll admit I was pretty smitten with him from the start. So the landlord to my building, who works for the school, drove me home with Tomo bundled in the towel and basically said "Good luck, hope you figure something out."
My mom will probably be very relieved to hear that, with the help of AJ and Ayumi, and a former teacher from my high school who lives just down the road, I did figure something out. Tomo will spend a week at my place, and then go to a kindly older woman, the mother of one of my adult English students in the class at the community center AJ and I teach every other Tuesday. She will most likely spoil him rotten with love and affection and make him into a fat, dumb, and happy housecat.
I keep telling myself that this is the way it will turn out over and over again to fight down the frequent spikes of panic over my total inexperience with caring for abandoned kittens. If this is even a smidgeon of what new mothers feel like, I am for sure never having babies. Anyway, AJ and Ayumi have a cat, so they generously donated some cat necessities to Tomo. Chief among them being the kitty litter, without which he would literally hold in his dirty business until it killed him. That's one among the many interesting and harrowing facts I have learnt about kittens in the past several hours since getting home, putting Tomo in a box lined with old towels, and going "Crap, what now??? O___O"
Tomorrow he goes to the vet to assess his general health and probably take a chunk out of my wallet. I'm gonna wait out the week and let his owner-to-be get him all the shots and everything, but I'm willing to bet even a routine kitty check-up in Japan doesn't come cheap. Plus if he's picked up any mites during his stint in the great outdoors, I'm gonna want those gone before I bring him back into the apartment. He may be the cutest little fuzzball in the world, but it's gonna be a whole lot easier getting rid of him if it turns out he has brought parasites into my living space.
I've always wanted a kitty, but mum is none too fond of them, so we had a couple dogs throughout my childhood and then we moved to a third-floor apartment on the north side of Chicago. Not the best environment for large dogs, which are the kind my dad likes especially. Practically speaking, what with figuring out how to take care of myself adequately in a foreign country, a cat is the last thing I need here in my little teacher's hovel distracting me from my teacherly duties such as prepping future lessons outside of class.
Well, mother nature abhors a vacuum, and apparently she felt the absence of felines in my life has gone on long enough. For no reason in particular, I decided to take the shortcut home from school today. Usually it's an overgrown deer trail leading back into a bug-infested fen which sprouts an old disused concrete road that goes through a forest and comes out behind my apartment building. The city workers occasionally go through and mow down all the weeds, though, and this weekend they did a stellar job with the non-forested areas of the shortcut. Anyway, it connects with the school grounds by way of a small footpath behind the baseball field. So I was headed down that way, when I spied a tiny orange-ish something faintly mewling on the blacktop. Thus was a little bundle of trouble dropped into my life by the hand of Chaos, who always likes a good laugh.
I don't want to pretend that I have the authority to name him (as T.S. Eliot makes abundantly clear, no humans may know the secret names of cats), but I've been calling him "Tomo" in my head. As in "tomodachi," or "friend," which is what he desperately needed when I found him. He was half-soaked, probably more than half-starved, scared, and hardly strong enough to stumble over to me when I held out my hand. Neither mommy nor siblings nor potential owners were anywhere in sight. I think it most likely that the heavy rains we've been getting washed him down from the mountains in one of the drainage ditches and he crawled out of the little stream that runs into a gully back in the woods next to my shortcut home. I took him back to the school office to get him some milk and a warm towel, and to look up the closest animal hospitals / shelters. Of course, everything in Japan closes at 3, and though the office ladies and the male teachers alike avowed that he was the most adorable thing ever, they didn't want him to be their problem. I'll admit I was pretty smitten with him from the start. So the landlord to my building, who works for the school, drove me home with Tomo bundled in the towel and basically said "Good luck, hope you figure something out."
My mom will probably be very relieved to hear that, with the help of AJ and Ayumi, and a former teacher from my high school who lives just down the road, I did figure something out. Tomo will spend a week at my place, and then go to a kindly older woman, the mother of one of my adult English students in the class at the community center AJ and I teach every other Tuesday. She will most likely spoil him rotten with love and affection and make him into a fat, dumb, and happy housecat.
I keep telling myself that this is the way it will turn out over and over again to fight down the frequent spikes of panic over my total inexperience with caring for abandoned kittens. If this is even a smidgeon of what new mothers feel like, I am for sure never having babies. Anyway, AJ and Ayumi have a cat, so they generously donated some cat necessities to Tomo. Chief among them being the kitty litter, without which he would literally hold in his dirty business until it killed him. That's one among the many interesting and harrowing facts I have learnt about kittens in the past several hours since getting home, putting Tomo in a box lined with old towels, and going "Crap, what now??? O___O"
Tomorrow he goes to the vet to assess his general health and probably take a chunk out of my wallet. I'm gonna wait out the week and let his owner-to-be get him all the shots and everything, but I'm willing to bet even a routine kitty check-up in Japan doesn't come cheap. Plus if he's picked up any mites during his stint in the great outdoors, I'm gonna want those gone before I bring him back into the apartment. He may be the cutest little fuzzball in the world, but it's gonna be a whole lot easier getting rid of him if it turns out he has brought parasites into my living space.
September 4, 2008
Re-Wired
So even though my instructions were all in Japanese, and despite the infuriating fact that Japanese and American Mac menus have different configurations when it comes to System Preferences, I managed to successfully get my laptop hooked back into the interwebbernets without blowing it up.
This post right here is being written from the comfort of my own apartment, where I steadfastly refuse to wear pants indoors until the temperature consistently stays below 20 C. HOORAY! More than you wanted to know.
Speaking of the apartment, I've made some improvements so that it doesn't look quite so dreary and empty of all warmth or comfort. According to the terms and conditions of my contract, my new curtains are technically a no-no because I didn't ask the school if I could put them up. But I really doubt the superintendent is going to evict me for taking down those fugly pastel floral sins against interior decor that pained my eyes on a daily basis before I threw them in my closet. As for that cluttered box in the corner, anyone who has ever lived with me can tell you I just don't feel at home until I've made an ungodly mess somewhere about the premises. IT BEGINS.
It has come to my attention that I don't have a lot of pictures of Shima / Isobe yet, so I will try to remedy that over the weekend. There was a JET outing to Nagashima Spaland (a local water park) planned for Saturday, but it has been raining on-and-off for the past week, and this weekend is supposed to get ugly again so I'm staying home. I should clarify that "raining on-and-off" in Shima / prettymuch all of southeastern Japan means "End-of-Days-caliber downpours for several intervals lasting at least 3 hours each and brief spots of sun in between." I remember lots and lots of rain when I first got to Nagoya two years ago, but not the subway-flooding that was reported there last weekend. Apparently this is a record-setting year for rainfall outside of "the rainy season." AJ tells me that, actually, most of the rain Japan sees comes outside of "the rainy season," and the weather forecasters always do their best to sound surprised and slightly indignant, but no one seems keen on copping to the fact that their parameters for seasonal weather patterns are just plain outdated and need to be changed. Oh, Japan.
The weather hasn't dampened the spirits of my students, though, I'm happy to report. All told I have 6 distinct classes, although one of them is just a smaller group of the same students. 1A and 1B are my first-year English classes, and they're, well, your typical freshmen (except Japanese students don't enter high school until the 10th grade, so by American standards they would technically be sophomores). Slow to warm up and too shy most of the time to give an audible response. The 1A class is more advanced, so they show a bit more enthusiasm.
I have three third-year classes, but my 3A Culture class is pretty much a group of six girls from homeroom 3A getting extra credit for spending an hour goofing off and maybe incidentally learning something. The big 3A class is Reading, and they're a bit of a rowdy bunch, but they do well enough with group activities. They seem to like me well enough to listen to me most of the time, and they're the least shy about volunteering answers on an individual basis. 3BC is a Reading class that AJ and I teach together; there are about 40 students, and the Japanese teacher assigned to the room with us half-jokingly and half-fearfully refers to them as "the monster class." He hangs in back shushing the boys occasionally, and AJ and I are left to our own devices. We're not really held accountable for much more than keeping them occupied for an hour a week.
2A Reading is the only class I haven't taught yet. If my other upperclassmen are any indication, they'll probably be a fun bunch. Shima-ko isn't really a high-performing school, as you may have guessed. I think only about 20% of the students plan on going to college. Many families in and around Isobe live in farming communities, so after completing high school a lot of the kids stay at home to help keep up the rice fields. There aren't a lot of jobs in available in this area, and those that are open usually don't require college degrees. I've even met a guy my age working as a translator in Ise (next city up the road to the north; actually qualifies as a real city, too, although it's not as large as say Tsu, the capital of Mie) and I'm pretty sure he hasn't gone to college. He's one of the younger students in the community English class AJ and I teach every other Tuesday night. I'm pretty sure he only comes to swap music with AJ, though; his level of English is way beyond most of the people there.
Still, it's nice to have mature students who come to class because they want to. Switches it up a bit. And there's a very motherly older woman, Masako, who lives not too far down the road from me and who has questioned me at length about my favorite Japanese foods. In Japan, this is as good as saying "Come to my house and I will cook dinner for you." So I know where I'm headed after work tomorrow (n__n)
I will leave off with a picture of the wee-tiny little crabs that wander all about the town wherever there are drainage pipes leading to the river. They could fit quite comfortably in the palm of my hand, if I were stupid enough to try and pick them up. This little guy is regaining his composure after a tense face-off with a crawfish about twice his size. It was the cutest narrowly-averted-epic-battle I have ever witnessed. Much waving of claws and sideways dancing.
This post right here is being written from the comfort of my own apartment, where I steadfastly refuse to wear pants indoors until the temperature consistently stays below 20 C. HOORAY! More than you wanted to know.
Speaking of the apartment, I've made some improvements so that it doesn't look quite so dreary and empty of all warmth or comfort. According to the terms and conditions of my contract, my new curtains are technically a no-no because I didn't ask the school if I could put them up. But I really doubt the superintendent is going to evict me for taking down those fugly pastel floral sins against interior decor that pained my eyes on a daily basis before I threw them in my closet. As for that cluttered box in the corner, anyone who has ever lived with me can tell you I just don't feel at home until I've made an ungodly mess somewhere about the premises. IT BEGINS.
It has come to my attention that I don't have a lot of pictures of Shima / Isobe yet, so I will try to remedy that over the weekend. There was a JET outing to Nagashima Spaland (a local water park) planned for Saturday, but it has been raining on-and-off for the past week, and this weekend is supposed to get ugly again so I'm staying home. I should clarify that "raining on-and-off" in Shima / prettymuch all of southeastern Japan means "End-of-Days-caliber downpours for several intervals lasting at least 3 hours each and brief spots of sun in between." I remember lots and lots of rain when I first got to Nagoya two years ago, but not the subway-flooding that was reported there last weekend. Apparently this is a record-setting year for rainfall outside of "the rainy season." AJ tells me that, actually, most of the rain Japan sees comes outside of "the rainy season," and the weather forecasters always do their best to sound surprised and slightly indignant, but no one seems keen on copping to the fact that their parameters for seasonal weather patterns are just plain outdated and need to be changed. Oh, Japan.
The weather hasn't dampened the spirits of my students, though, I'm happy to report. All told I have 6 distinct classes, although one of them is just a smaller group of the same students. 1A and 1B are my first-year English classes, and they're, well, your typical freshmen (except Japanese students don't enter high school until the 10th grade, so by American standards they would technically be sophomores). Slow to warm up and too shy most of the time to give an audible response. The 1A class is more advanced, so they show a bit more enthusiasm.
I have three third-year classes, but my 3A Culture class is pretty much a group of six girls from homeroom 3A getting extra credit for spending an hour goofing off and maybe incidentally learning something. The big 3A class is Reading, and they're a bit of a rowdy bunch, but they do well enough with group activities. They seem to like me well enough to listen to me most of the time, and they're the least shy about volunteering answers on an individual basis. 3BC is a Reading class that AJ and I teach together; there are about 40 students, and the Japanese teacher assigned to the room with us half-jokingly and half-fearfully refers to them as "the monster class." He hangs in back shushing the boys occasionally, and AJ and I are left to our own devices. We're not really held accountable for much more than keeping them occupied for an hour a week.
2A Reading is the only class I haven't taught yet. If my other upperclassmen are any indication, they'll probably be a fun bunch. Shima-ko isn't really a high-performing school, as you may have guessed. I think only about 20% of the students plan on going to college. Many families in and around Isobe live in farming communities, so after completing high school a lot of the kids stay at home to help keep up the rice fields. There aren't a lot of jobs in available in this area, and those that are open usually don't require college degrees. I've even met a guy my age working as a translator in Ise (next city up the road to the north; actually qualifies as a real city, too, although it's not as large as say Tsu, the capital of Mie) and I'm pretty sure he hasn't gone to college. He's one of the younger students in the community English class AJ and I teach every other Tuesday night. I'm pretty sure he only comes to swap music with AJ, though; his level of English is way beyond most of the people there.
Still, it's nice to have mature students who come to class because they want to. Switches it up a bit. And there's a very motherly older woman, Masako, who lives not too far down the road from me and who has questioned me at length about my favorite Japanese foods. In Japan, this is as good as saying "Come to my house and I will cook dinner for you." So I know where I'm headed after work tomorrow (n__n)
I will leave off with a picture of the wee-tiny little crabs that wander all about the town wherever there are drainage pipes leading to the river. They could fit quite comfortably in the palm of my hand, if I were stupid enough to try and pick them up. This little guy is regaining his composure after a tense face-off with a crawfish about twice his size. It was the cutest narrowly-averted-epic-battle I have ever witnessed. Much waving of claws and sideways dancing.
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