I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but I have a student that only speaks Spanish. Every Friday a Japanese teacher who speaks Spanish comes to my school to teach him. So I ran into her a couple times and we got to talking in Spanish. She speaks English about the same as many of my English teachers, but she is awesome at Spanish. I had the best conversation with a Japanese person I have had since I got here in Spanish. I didn't really figure that would be the case. We talked about Japanese ideas about education, the Japanese recession, and the work ethic. It was really fascinating to hear what Japanese people think about such things. It's almost too difficult to speak to the teachers about it, because it would take too long and involves the use of big words.

The Spanish teacher also studied in Madrid, like me, and in Venezuela. In Madrid, she was a couple metro stops away from me, but I think she was there a couple years earlier. I haven't really pieced together the timetable yet. Anyway, it is great having someone to talk with occassionally or ask advice. She seems a lot more direct and open than most Japanese people, so that may be helpful when I have etiquette questions and the like.

Also, on another note, I discovered a place I can buy ginger ale. They have it at McDonald's and Mister Donut, but a local grocery store sells it bottled too. I'm excited because it is one of my favorite drinks, and it's pretty hard to find in Japan.

One more thing, it turns out Victoria has a friend in Sendai (Miyagi Prefecture) and so do I. I think they know each other but don't really hang out. I sense a trip to Sendai coming up...

Well, it is Sunday morning now. The welcome weekend is coming to a close. There wasn't much in the way of organization, so we didn't really do any welcoming type activities. In theory there were supposed to be group games, but since no one set a time or place for them, they just didn't materialize.

I think the owner got really pissed at everyone last night. Many people were still being loud and drinking downstairs around 2pm. I think the owner and his family live there, so they were annoyed that they couldn't sleep. I think maybe the organizers and the hostel people should've talked a little more about noise curfews and the like, just to avoid any ugliness. It's a really nice place and it would be a shame if we were unable to come back. Apparently we were banned from returning to last year's place too, so hopefully we won't build a reputation as horrible guests.

Sarah decided to wake everyone up around 2:30 when she came into the room. I think she was pretty drunk, but she managed to tell us all how she had been on the rooftop, and that she was going to an onsen so she had to borrow our towels. I would've much preferred that she just took my towel and told me in the morning. Then, later, she managed to kick over a half-melted bucket of ice onto her futon, resulting in lots of noise again. I still feel like I slept fine though, and today is a beautiful morning out at Toga. The sun is out today, which is a nice change since it was all cloudy yesterday.

One interesting thing at the hostel is that we saw a monkey outside in a tree. I don't know if it was a pet of the house it was next to, but when we all started staring at it, it got afraid and climbed onto the roof of the house. It was pretty cool, and qualifies as the first monkey I think I've ever seen outside of an enclosure. I wasn't able to get a picture though. :(

Right now I am back in Toga Village. About 60-70 JETs are here right now. We have taken over a great hostel. The thing holds a lot of people and has a basketball court and onsens. Onsens are like spas, but not so bubbly.

The basketball court makes you feel like a star since the goals are one foot too low. This results in some serious dunking. Also the court is much shorter than normal.

Also they have a computer lab full of brand new PC laptops and Macs. It is so much better than the computers at school. The laptops are all wireless and loaded with software.

It's actually dinner time now, so I have to go.

Pictures from Paul's trip are finally up on the website. I'll try to come up with some commentary about them over the weekend. Please go to http://www.duke.edu/~bi/japan/PaulTrip to see the pictures. Have a good weekend.

Grr... the internet connection at work keeps disconnecting. Also, blogger still isn't working 100%.

But enough of that. Here are some more pictures:

My apartment is small. Here are some pictures to prove it.


the kitchen


the living room/bedroom


the living room (looking the other way)


I also have pictures of the bathroom and the entrance hallway. Another important apartment feature is my neighbor Elita. She's really nice and quite helpful.

Here's a picture of my school office:


And some students near my desk:



I've also included more pictures from Tateyama: Erin on the bus, friends on top of the mountain, and one of the tallest waterfalls in the world, Shoymo Falls.
Please look at them at http://www.duke.edu/~bi/japan/AugustSeptember/

Pictures of my brother's place should be up soon.

Okay, I think I sorted out the problem. For some reason my template wasn't being found by blogger so it couldn't publish the pages. I reselected my template and republished and everything seems to work now. I didn't even realize it wasn't publishing until someone pointed it out to me.

Well, for some reason blogspot.com does not seem to be updating when I post to it. Hopefully one of these times a post will actually get published. Obviously you won't see this until then.

I have more images up on the website again. http://www.duke.edu/~bi/japan. Feel free to check them out. Also, the old ones were moved into a folder called AugustSeptember, and many of the new ones are in there also.

I'll get pictures of the trip to visit Paul up soon.

I want to talk about omiyage briefly before I go home to make dinner and return to play basketball. In case I haven't mentioned it, I play basketball on Wednesday nights with some local teachers and other JET program participants.

Omiyage is a ritual giving of gifts to co-workers. When you go away from your job on vacation, or often if you just take a vacation, you are supposed to give omiyage to your co-workers when you return. It's a way of saying thank you for doing my work while I was absent. There is a lot of guilt associated with taking vacation in Japan, so they must make amends when they return. Since August was a time many teachers took vacation, I have received a lot of omiyage from them. I even gave out Jolly Ranchers from America when I first arrived. They don't have those in Japan, though many American products are available.

Omiyage is almost always food, at least at my school. I get tons of little cakes or biscuits or weird things that only pass as food in Japan. For instance, once I was given a cookie. However the flavor appeared to be some kind of fish. As you might imagine, fish cookies taste really bad. Lots of omiyage is centered around something famous in a particular town. And by famous, I mean that the town in the last ten years decided it would start marketing itself as a source of this item. At least, that is the case for many small towns. Paul's town is famous for figs now, so they sell boxed figs, fig cookies, and many other interesting products. We went to Izumo, a bigger city near Paul's town, that is actually famous for an old shrine. At many stores you can buy cookies with pictures of the shrine on it. Omiyage is normally individually wrapped (everything in Japan is, even cookies in boxes at the store), so you just give one to each person. One of my friends said it was the only thing keeping the Japanese economy from complete collapse. They have to spend money on the omiyage.

Anyway, I find it fascinating, though I have decided to only give omiyage when I am away on vacation trips, not just on a weekend trip somewhere. I think I'll be travelling more than the average Japanese will. The good thing about omiyage is that it often has an English description on it. For instance, one of them says " Tokyo Banana. People gather to TOKYO from here and there with memories of their home. And then, Tokyo gets the everyone's home town." I think it is referring to the rampant growth of Tokyo, swallowing up other people's nearby towns. However, it's not really clear. I also had one that said "Sesame Peanut Cookie" on it. So at least you have some idea what you are eating first. I am often not so lucky in restaurants. I employ a close my eyes and point strategy.

I had a great time last weekend. We drove down to visit Paul in Shimane. It was fairly expensive though. The tolls were about $110 each way, plus the car rental was about $180. Still, I think it was much cheaper than taking the train. Paul has a nice house and his town has a wonderful beach. The weather Saturday was gorgeous so we went swimming at the beach. The beach was not crowded (15 people) because Japanese people don't really like to go to the beach after August, even if the weather is nice. The water was very clear, and it stayed shallow for quite a long distance.

Driving on the left side of the road is not as difficult as you might expect. After telling yourself to be careful for the first couple hours, you start to relax. In fact, by the end of the trip it seemed almost natural to me.

I took some pictures of Paul and his place, so I'll try to get those up soon. Also, when I have more time I will write a big long post about it. Recently I've had trouble updating frequently because of internet problems at school. Also, I've been quite busy because English club is meeting weekly now, so I have to plan things for them to do. I started teaching my first non-introduction lessons today. That also has me a bit nervous. I was surprised how quickly the time passed during class though.

Finally, it looks like English Club will happen today. It was moved to today from Tuesday, and will apparently be on Wednesdays normally. It is quite confusing to me, but I think I just need to start coming Wednesday afternoons. I need to think about a plan for an activity for next week. I don't even know how many people there are yet, but I imagine I will find out shortly. Students are supposed to come get me and bring me to the club classroom soon.

This weekend I will go to visit my brother Paul in Shimane prefecture. Sarah, Victoria, and I rented a car and we are driving there Friday night. Hopefully we can arrive between midnight and 1am. We really don't know how long it will take to get there, so hopefully it won't take too long. Monday was a holiday this past weekend, and it is also a holiday this coming weekend. So we chose this weekend to go visit Paul. They seem to have a decent amount of holidays in Japan, at least one a month where no one works. I figured out that we can take expressways to about one hour from Paul's town. Then we have to take a local highway the rest of the way. The expressways are the fastest method of travel by car, but it is quite expensive to travel on them. I think the highway fees might be 80 dollars each way. The car rental comes to $175 for the three days plus insurance. This seems reasonably priced to me. One of my friends is going to Hiroshima for the weekend and her train ticket round trip is about $250. I think with three or four people taking a trip that driving will be cheaper than taking the train, but not as much difference as you might get in the states.

We'll come back Monday morning so we have a little time to get things settled in Toyama before heading back to work on Tuesday. Hopefully we will have good weather this weekend, because one of the attractions of Paul's place is that it is next to the beach. If it is too cold, this won't be that nice. In Toyama recently we have had a cold spell, so I hope Shimane does not have the same front right now.

Paul said something about a dinner on Saturday for local JETs that we might be able to go to. I am worried it will be one of those expensive ones, because S, V, and I will pay our own way. Normally I am not so worried about money here, but spending a lot on the trip makes me not want to spend as much. Sunday is also supposed to be the Sports Day for one of Paul's schools. I don't particularly want to go to another Sports Day all day, so we might do something else if Paul wants to go there.

Paul and I have also talked about visiting Okinawa for Christmas, but I was looking up prices for the plane tickets, and it looks horribly expensive. A round trip ticket on United's web site was between $850-950. It is cheaper to fly home, or to Australia. I need to go to a travel agent to see if there are better prices or what. That is just too much money! I think a ticket to Thailand is around $350.

Today I taught the first year students at my junior high school for the first time. They were much more talkative and interactive than the older students. Also, when I had games, many of them jumped right in, while I had to force the older students to get up out of their desks.

I found that I could not cover as much material in the classes because the students need everything simplified quite a lot. It is probably a good thing this is the case though, because otherwise the class might have ended too early today. At least for tomorrow I will have a better idea of how long things will take.

I ordered some shoes off the internet today. I really should have brought more tennis shoes, or at least bought new ones before I left. Instead I must pay for customs and international shipping. The scary thing is that shipping two pairs of shoes over here (total cost is around $130) will be cheaper than buying one pair in Japan. Tennis shoes are really expensive here, for whatever reason. Also, trying to find shoes in my size is a nightmare. I am about a size 12, but I often need a wider shoe, so I go one shoe up a lot of the time. 12s are difficult to find, but 13s are impossible. I did find one pair of 13s, but it was really ugly. The guy did pretty much offer to sell it to me for $90 when it was priced around $160, but I just didn't want the shoes. Online shoe-buying is a little risky though since I don't know if they will fit well or not. I hope it works out.

One thing that is really strange at school is that classes don't ever start when the bell rings. At home you generally think of everyone being seated and quiet when the bell rings so that class will start. In Japan, the teachers do not head towards the classroom until the bell rings. This means that the classes never start when they are scheduled to. I would not find this so weird except that most things run on time to the second in Japan. Trains always arrive at the station when they are supposed to. So why classes start at different times, I don't know.

Also, I may have talked about this, but the schedules here at work are really hard to follow. Often the Japanese teachers have trouble figuring out when they are supposed to be teaching their classes. They at least have the ability to read the kanji on the schedules and listen to the announcements at the beginning of the day. I am not so lucky. It is quite common for them to rearrange classes without purpose. For example, two thursdays from now, the periods will all be backwards. 5th period, 4th period, 3rd period, 2nd, 1st. Why? No good reason that I can tell. All the times are the same, just the classes have been moved. The leadership just likes keeping the teachers on their toes I guess. This means that sometimes I come into school to discover a class has been moved or canceled. It's just not a good system to use.

Another weird thing about Japan, not just in school but everywhere, is that they are really rude with doors. They never hold doors for anyone. Often you are walking in a store right behind someone and the door just swings back to hit you. The person just doesn't want to pass it on gently. I've had doors closed right in my face as I was walking up to them at school. I don't think anyone does it to be mean to me, because I have seen them do it to each other too. They are such a polite culture, always apologizing for everything and saying please and thank you. However, they don't respect each other with doors. I think maybe they don't understand the concept or something, because once I held a door open for someone after I walked through and he just kind of stared at me and then moved past me, instead of taking the door himself and passing it on.

Today I taught elementary school again. Last Friday was my first day teaching at elementary school. I taught at Horikawa Minami Elementary School. This means South Horikawa. The school has many students, about 500-600. I will switch between teaching at three different elementary schools. Each has their own plan for how the teaching should work. At HM, I will teach each class one time. They will only see me once, so I guess I better cram a lot of English into each lesson. I think they just hope to introduce the students to the idea of liking English. I taught a first grade class and a third grade class. The first grade class was so cute. As soon as I came in, the class leader said "Stand up!" and all the students stood up to say good morning to me. Then they said they had a present for me, and one girl played the piano while the others sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." It was really adorable. Their teacher knows English quite well, so they actually knew more than the third graders. It was a lot of fun. We did body parts and sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." We also did "I am tired, hot, cold, angry, fine, etc." The third graders got the same lesson.

Today I went to Sogawa Elementary School. It is very tiny, and has only 96 students in the whole school. The building is actually quite big, with 4 floors. I am surprised that it is such a big building. Maybe it used to be a bigger school. Many of the rooms were empty when I walked by them. The staff was quite friendly, but of course very small. I think there is only one teacher for each grade, 1-6. Also, there is a nurse, a janitor, an office lady, and a lady to help a student with a mental disability.

At Sogawa, I teach two classes. One class is 3rd and 4th grade combined (34 students). The other is 5th and 6th grade combined (29 students). I think the lesson went okay, but I couldn't get the Old MacDonald rhythm right. I think I need to listen to some tapes for kids. These same students will see me about once a month, so they will actually get to know some real English. As it is, they know quite a lot. The elementary kids are much better to teach than the junior high kids since they love all the games, songs, and they will volunteer to talk.

All the little kids don't wear uniforms like the junior high kids do, but when they go to and from school, they wear yellow hats. I think it is to help make them more visible. It makes them look really cute, so I love it.

Next week I will return to Horikawa Minami to teach different 1st and 3rd graders. I might do a similar lesson but this time I need a good game to play too.

Tonight is Sarah's birthday. I made her a pseudo key lime pie. They barely have limes here in Japan, so they certainly don't have key limes. I just used regular ones instead. I think it will turn out okay. I made a coconut cookie crust instead of a graham cracker crust, so I hope it turns out okay. Also, you are supposed to use grated lime zest (think the green outside of the lime peel). Instead I had to cut it by hand, so it was not very fine. Instead of mixing with the eggs well, it appears like there are pieces of spinach in the middle of the pie. It tastes fine though, just looks funny. Limes are about 2 dollars each here though, so the pie became quite expensive.

I have English club after school, then Japanese lessons at night, so I will be quite busy and can't really celebrate her birthday until around 9. Well, gotta go to English club

Last night was my welcoming party/ back-to-school party. It was really strange, I thought. It wasn't really much of a welcome for me. I think I got to go for free instead of having to pay, which is nice. But I'm not really sure if that is even the case because someone could still come up to me and ask me to pay. The fee is around $50. The teachers pay it automatically each month, but I don't. So it is more of a shocker for me when one of these things happened.

I arrived at the hotel at around 6:30 and picked up a random seat number. We were seated according to our Sports Day team. So I was seated at the blue table, next to some teachers who didn't really speak English well. Why they went for a random seating assignment with me I'll never know. I guess they just didn't think about it. After some speeches, we started pouring drinks. The tradition is to not pour yourself any drinks, but instead to go around pouring drinks for other people as a sign of respect. Luckily Sarah had an enkai on Saturday and explained this to me beforehand. So I had to keep telling everyone that I didn't want any beer since I don't drink alcohol. Most of them were quite willing to pour me an orange soda instead. This was just fine with me, and I drank about three-fourths of a liter of soda.

Then we started eating food, all of which was very expensive. They had many kinds of fancy sushi and sashimi. My favorite dish was tomatoes and eggplants topped with raw tuna chunks. It was delicious. They also had beef, which never tasted so good. I guess after not eating beef for a month I had forgotten how it tasted. Much of the food went uneaten because we started playing games soon after dinner started. We had a mini-sports day with games for the teachers. It had a funny opening ceremony making fun of the students. There was also a big scorecard on the wall. The first game involved team members drinking beer then running around a bat to get dizzy and running around the room. It was funny, but I couldn't really participate. The second and third games were both Japanese word games which involved rhyming and music. It was interesting to watch, but I didn't know the words. I learned some vocabulary though. The fourth game was supposed to be something I could participate in, but they canceled it because it was too late.

Then they had an awards ceremony with funny gifts. My team got second so we all got chewing gum. They also had a special award for me. It was a stuffed shark. It is quite cute, but I don't know why they gave it to me. It was about the only thing they did for me during the ceremony. Also there was a poster with the words Happy 56th Sports Day! on it or something similar. In the corner someone drew a picture of Snoopy and wrote the words "Welcome Brian" in Japanese kana. Hardly a great welcome, but I don't really want anything big anyway. The English teachers want to take me out some other time also. That should hopefully be better. However they often do not speak in English around me, so maybe that won't be any better.

I'm not disappointed I went to the enkai, but I just wish I had felt more included. I think many teachers at my school make an effort to talk to me, which is great. Some of my friends say their teachers don't even talk to them hardly ever. I think once many of them started drinking they kind of forgot that I didn't understand anything that was going on.

A particularly humorous moment during the enkai was half-way through when my supervisor came over to talk to me. He said it was not good for people to drink too much soda, so it is not good for people to not drink at enkais. He has made it clear before that he would prefer I drink at the parties. This particular excuse was laughable. I asked him if he meant Japanese people do not like to drink sweet things, and he said it was bad for all humans to drink so many sweet drinks. I thought it was really funny that he was telling me how dangerous it is to drink soda instead of lots of alcohol! I did manage to convince him that drinking alcohol was probably more dangerous. I don't know if he was kidding or just had a really lame excuse to try to get me to drink.

Well, Sports Day finally took place. Sports Day was supposed to be on Saturday, but it rained the night before so they called me up at 6am to tell me it was canceled. Then, of course, it is cloudy but doesn`t rain the whole day. So my welcoming party/ school opening party was postponed also. Then Sunday I woke up early in the morning to the sound of rain, which I thought was someone taking a shower. I quickly realized that Sports Day would be postponed again. So today, Monday, we finally had Sports Day. I really wanted it on the weekend, because there are some things that can only be done during weekdays. I wanted to get some of those things done without having to take any vacation.

Sports Day was exciting. I'll try to get some pictures of it up later, but all the students were very enthusiastic and good at the events. My team, the Blue team one. I was on the blue team, but I didn`t actually do anything for them.

I ran in the 1500m race. I did pretty well considering I didn`t practice. I got 5th or 6th, and pretty much crushed the other two teachers who ran too. Some of the students were very good, and many of them seemed to make it their personal goal to keep up with me, so that was nice.

I also ran in the 1600m men`s relay after lunch. Many of the teachers ran 50m or 100m. The vice-principals and principal all ran too. It was quite humorous. I was the third leg, and I was supposed to run 100m. Everyone was really excited when I got the baton. I started out sprinting as fast as I could, then I quickly realized that I almost no traction. The track is basically packed sand, so as the day went on, the sand had become quite loose, especially on the curves. I realized this right on the curve and almost immediately fell down forward. I just got up and kept running, but all 1500 people let out a big gasp all at the same time when I fell. It was quite funny actually. The teacher team lost in the end, but we were already behind when I got it anyway. It was lots of fun though. I wasn`t alone in falling down though, several boys fell down on the curves during the relays.

Anyway, tonight I have an enkai (big party thing), so I must go shower and stuff.

I finally got a new fridge last night. On Wednesday the electrician came to do the estimate. The air compressor was broken, so it would have cost as much to fix as to replace. So City Hall sent me a fax yesterday that said they would buy a new one, but that it would take 2-3 more days to fill out the paperwork and stuff. I sent back another fax saying it was pretty unreasonable to make me wait a week to get a refrigerator. They told me at first there was nothing that could be done. But then right when I was going home, Kawanishi-sensei (my city hall supervisor) called to say they were on their way with one. They met me at my apartment and now I have a brand new refrigerator. Yay! Also, it is slightly larger than my previous one.

Japanese t-shirts are quite funny, mostly because they all contain English, but often it is quite non-sensical or at least strange for a t-shirt. I saw one of the English teachers wearing a shirt at school that was just filled with insults and curse words. It basically was the type of shirt we would tell students they couldn't wear. I don't know if the English teacher really understood the meaning of the shirt or not, but no one else seemed to mind. Once I saw a girl whose shirt had on the back a detailed set of instructions about how to stop severe bleeding. The English was correct, but it was just strange to see on a t-shirt not made by the Red Cross. Sarah bought a funny one that says "A dream that softly was dreamed" or something like that. Another shirt extolled the virtues of daschunds. Why? I don't really know.

They also have some great drink names, like "Calpis" which sounds like "cow piss" when you say it. "Pocari Sweat" is one I mentioned before too. It is like gatorade, but strangely named.

This morning I found out both my junior high classes today were canceled. This came as quite a shock to me. The apparent reason is that it is raining. I think rain is a good reason to cancel outdoor activities, but not a good reason to cancel indoor ones. Oh well. This week is training for Sports Day, and I think they are concerned that later it will be raining much harder. Right now it is only raining lightly. So the activities that were planned for later in the day were moved up, crushing classes. Sometimes I wonder about the emphasis they place on Sports Day. This whole week has been running races, practicing opening ceremonies, and doing cheers. This is okay, but I think sacrificing learning for Sports Day is a little strange. At least I have more time today to psyche myself up for elementary classes.

Tomorrow will hopefully be Sports Day, but if it is raining, they will postpone it to Sunday, then again to Monday if it rains Sunday. Sports Day is a big day of running and group games. Plus there seems to be a lot of cheering. Everyone is divided into four groups, all of which are named after a local mountain and has a color. My group is Tsukerugi, I think. We are the blue team. They want me to run a race or two, so I might end up running the mile (it's been a little while...) and the 100m relay. Apparently there will be a teacher team for the relay, so they chose me to be the lead runner. I don't know how fast the other teachers are, so I have no idea how we will do. They have many interesting games which they play. The have one strange one where three guys hold up another guy who is standing up. Then they carry this guy to go attack others. If the "fighter" steps down (or falls) or has his headband snatched by the other team, then he is out. They don't just have one group versus another though, they often have 8-10 teams on each side charge at each other and it gets really crazy. It's the type of thing that we wouldn't play because of the lawsuit when some kid falls and hurts himself.

Another fun game is like tug of war, sort of. There are about 8-10 poles lying flat in the middle of the field, and the two teams line up on each side of the line. Then they all race out to the center and try to drag as many poles as possible back to their side. It is pretty frantic, and has a time limit. So if a pole is being pulled by both teams and not going anywhere, it is likely time will expire and no one will get that pole. The team with the most poles wins.

I hope it is cloudy and does not rain tomorrow. That would be ideal, since the weather can get quite hot here, and I have already gotten burnt once.

On the day we have Sports Day, there will be a party for teachers that night for the start of school. These parties are called enkais and are often very expensive. Many teachers will probably get quite drunk by the end. At the beginning it is very formal and ceremonious however. After the big one for all teachers, I think the English teachers will go do something, either another party or maybe just a dinner since I do not drink. Yamamoto-sensei will explain the details to me later on today.

So those are my selected pictures. If you want to check out more, there are more pictures from the trips at http://www.duke.edu/~bi/japan/

So I finally got some pictures uploaded onto the web. Here is a picture from the top of Mt. Fuji with Sarah. That's the sunrise in the background. It lasted all of a minute, so the timing was good on the shot.


Coming down Mt. Fuji it cleared up a little, so I took a picture of Sarah with the blue sky in the background.



Here is a picture of Victoria on the bus at Mt. Tateyama.


Marcus and myself at the top of Mt. Tateyama


Toga Drama Festival


Toga Fish Festival

The funniest thing about today has been the stretching. I got up early this morning and looked across the street at the construction site. This happy little kid-sounding music is coming from the site. All the big, burly construction men are stretching together and doing a little exercise. It just seemed really out of place. Then today at school, during the Sports Day (think field day) practice, all the school started stretching together to this happy little classical tune. It was quite funny. I had to control myself so I didn't burst out laughing.

Okay, I've had a nice little run of bad luck since yesterday afternoon, so I need some good luck soon. Yesterday morning was the opening ceremony for the fall semester. The students were all back from vacation finally. I was told to prepare a short introduction in Japanese for the students. I got to school extra early to make sure I was prepared, since I was a little nervous. I was wearing my nice suit in the 38 degree celsius weather. What fun! The assembly happened in the gym, which is also not air conditioned. Another JET told me that a girl passed out during her assembly from the heat.

I was told to wait in the teacher's room but everyone else went to the gym. It was all the same to me, but it felt a little weird to be all by myself. Maybe they wanted to spare me from the Japanese speeches and the stuffy gym atmosphere. Finally at 9:15 someone came to get me and brought me to the gym. All the teachers were sitting on one side of the gym, with the students sitting on the floor in the middle. In front of everyone was a small stage with a podium. The head kyoto-sensei (vice-principal) led me to the opposite side of the gym from all the teachers. So basically I was on the other side of the stage, with some students between myself and the teachers. Then he left me sitting there in a chair by myself. Soon the kocho-sensei (principal) got up to introduce me, and apparently I was supposed to go up with him, but no one signaled me or anything. I was pretty determined to stay fixed to the chair unless someone told me to move. So finally someone motioned that I should go up on stage.

The speech went fine. I didn't feel very nervous about talking in front of everyone, even though there were 1200 students. I even gave a short version of the speech in Spanish and the whole thing again in English. The kids were paralyzed with fear. I asked them how they were doing and they just gave me blank stares, even when I repeated it. My supervisor told me they are told not to say anything during speeches normally. Oh well.

Shortly after the speech, the assembly ended and I went back to the office. Right around 3:20 my supervisor comes into my office and tells me he wants me to teach lessons the next day. I was pretty floored since I asked him all last week if I would be teaching lessons and when. He responded that he was not sure and would let me know later. He told me yesterday to ask the second year teachers when they wanted me to teach this week. It turned out they are just doing tests this week. So I went back to my supervisor and he said that I should teach third year students this week instead. I only do self-introduction type activities for the first lesson for each class, so that is not a big deal, but I did not have enough of it ready.

So I'm stressing out about teaching a class tomorrow and I go home to make dinner. I open the refrigerator and it is really hot inside. The freezer is completely melted too. All the food I bought was spoiled and had to be thrown away. It was really frustrating. So I thought about the lesson for the next day and cooked dinner at Victoria's place instead. At least that way the leftover food from cooking could be saved. Plus it is nice to have someone to commisserate with.

This morning at work it took me a while, but I got someone to call the city hall about the fridge. The refrigerator is a loaner from city hall, so they are expected to fix it for me. However, their response was less than ideal. They are having someone come out and look at it tomorrow evening. However this person is not going to fix my refrigerator, just get an estimate. Then sometime later the city hall will fix or replace the fridge. Maybe if I am lucky I will have a new one by Friday. When this happened to me in the US in June, it was fixed the next day. How I miss that type of easy service.

I had about two hours this morning to get together some pictures and a little quiz for the students about my self-introduction. Then it was showtime, but the students were late getting to the classroom because they were outside. So the class did not last the 45 minutes it was supposed to. It was closer to 35 minutes instead. Things seemed to go pretty well though. I think it was a little boring for the students. I was surprised that many students did not understand what was going on at all. Their English can be pretty bad sometimes. There was not enough time to finish the quiz, so I do not know if it was too hard or if it was just the short class.

Tomorrow I am supposed to teach the same lesson to 2 different classes, so maybe I can improve it some.