Kyoto Monday - it's finally here!

On Monday we woke up late (surprise, surprise) a little after noon. I was antsy to get moving but we were a little slow for my tastes. I mapped out a plan to go to some more temples in Eastern Kyoto. Sunday we were in Northeast Kyoto, so this time we were in Southeast Kyoto. There are a couple famous temples in roughly the same area, so we decided to see all the Eastern Kyoto attractions. We decided to eat breakfast on the road somewhere.

We took the subway to Sanju Keihan (downtown area from Sunday and center of town) and then took the Keihan train line south to Shichiju Keihan (7th Keihan station). Once we got out we spied a couple different coffee shops with breakfast, so we headed to one. Sarah was quite perceptive and noticed there was a lunch set for about $5 that included yogurt, a sandwich, and a drink. We all ended up getting it. I got a ham and cheese panini, and it was quite good. While in this cafe I was having flashbacks of being in New York with Gabriel, Nissim, or Carmen eating breakfast at a cafe. We were on the second story of the cafe, so we had a view of the street below and could watch people going by. Unfortunately this was Japan, so we didn't see many interesting people walking by.

Our first temple was up the street from the cafe, and we arrived there in no time. It is called Sanjusangendo. "Sanjusan" means 33. In the main temple building there are 33 spaces between the support pillars, hence the name of the temple. The main building is incredibly long and narrow for a temple (200 meters long?). The temple grounds are rather boring and devoid of life. The grounds are surrounded by a wall. Here's a gate in the wall (with Victoria on the right). I did get some humor out of this giant bell with a sign on it indicating that people shouldn't hit it. It looked so fun too.

Sanjusangendo is famous for its 1001 statues of Buddha. The temple is wooden, yet has survived about 750 years in its current incarnation. Originally it was built in the 1100s, but it burned down. Some of the statues were saved from the fire, and others were recarved afterwards. The statues are all gold colored and each one is slightly different. In front of the 1001 statues are statues of guardian kings from Hinduism and Buddhism. Here's a site with lots of info on Sanjusangendo. Really, there are a lot of statues. Taking pictures was forbidden, so I took a picture of the brochure instead. It is not that good of a picture, but it should give you an idea of what the hall looked like. The solitary statue is a giant Buddha statue (the 1001st statue) and it is very big. The statues on the right are the Buddhas with the guardian kings below them. It is truly an impressive sight. Apparently the rafters and ceiling were all painted and decorated originally too, but they have faded over time.

Victoria and Sarah both bought little fortune telling things in the gift shop. Victoria's fortune said she would be "Most fortunate," which made us wonder if anyone got the least fortunate choice that was supposed to be a possibility. Sarah did a different one, I think about a protector god or something like that.

We walked from Sanjusangendo to our next destination, the much more crowded Kiyomizudera. On the way there, we walked up a shopping street and got a picture of a geisha girl in training (with Kiyomizudera in background) coming down the street. There is a Japanese word, but I can't be bothered to look it up right now. There aren't many geisha left in Japan apparently (100-200?), and most of them are in Kyoto. It is quite expensive to pay one in a fancy restaurant (impossible actually), so we were lucky to see not one, but two. The second one was close to the temple, so I took another picture of her, several actually.. We arrived there kind of late because of our late start, so the sun was setting. Kiyomizudera was quite affordable (2 or 3 dollars) compared to some of the temples, and it was probably the most impressive. We had a gorgeous view of the sunset and Kyoto. Unfortunately, my camera doesn't do sunsets well. But before the sunset, the light was orange on some of the buildings, creating some nice shots (tower, buildings). We walked around the complex some. Sarah, Victoria, and I all enjoyed it, but it was crowded with people wanting to see the sunset. I got a good look at the temple tower with the sunset. For more information about the temple, please look here.

Afterwards we took a busier route away from the temple. Actually, it was so busy we got separated (okay, I stopped to buy omiyage and missed them at the next store). We reunited using our keitai (cell phones) and headed back towards Sanju Keihan. There was no train nearby, but we weren't that far away, so we just walked. We wanted to walk through the geisha entertainment district, but we missed the turn. It was really difficult to tell where it was from our map. We saw a temple on a main street that was all lit up and I got this cool shot of it.

We had some time to kill before Will was supposed to call us. He was supposed to be getting off work around 6. Alex, unfortunately wouldn't get off until after our train left for Toyama (9:15). Will didn't call us, so we found a place to eat. It was some Italian restaurant. The food was cheap, and of okay quality. Will met up with us at the restaurant, and we all headed back to his apartment to get our luggage. We headed to the train station on the subway. Victoria and Sarah were worried about missing our train, but I wasn't. This is a little strange since I am probably the most schedule-oriented and anal of the three of us. We arrived at the station with enough time to get some coffee to go at Starbucks and take the escalators up in the train station. The train station is built like a big V. In the bottom of the V are the train platforms. Escalators go up both sides of the train station and there are stores and restaurants all along the escalators. We took about 10 escalators up and could see quite a lot from the top. It was really nice. Sarah and Victoria started to panic about time once we got to the top and headed down without going to look at the view (which was great). We made it there with 5 minutes or so to spare. We were on the closest track, so it was very easy to get there.

The train ride home was uneventful, except that we were in a smoking car and sitting in non-adjacent seats. We all ended up moving together as people got off the train at different cities, but we didn't think about moving to a non-smoking car (we're stupid, okay?). As more people left the air quality improved. Unfortunately, Sarah was feeling bad most of the afternoon, and being in the smoky train didn't help. Almost as soon as we left the Kyoto area, we rain into pouring rain (it had been raining all weekend in Toyama and was dry in Kyoto) which was still going on when we arrived in Toyama. Nothing like a midnight bike ride home in the rain to say "Welcome home!"

Today music returned during lunch. We haven't had music for the last week or so, and I've been wondering why. Normally there is a radio show put on by the students during lunch, which includes music. I found out why yesterday afternoon from Mrs. Iguchi. She is pretty good at keeping me informed of all the bad things students are up to. A couple weeks ago she pointed out a student to me and said that he was crazy and dangerous. I've never seen him in class, because he rarely comes to school. Apparently he is sometimes drunk when he does show up. She said his parents are divorced and his mother doesn't take good care of him. He has to eat breakfast in a cheap restaurant every day because she won't buy breakfast foods for him. Well, he doesn't do that well in the school environment. He likes being here because then people will talk to him at least, but he exhibits bad behavior to get negative attention.

He didn't come to school during September at all, but recently he's been coming sometimes. Apparently a week ago he kept showing up during the lunch broadcasts and saying stuff into the microphone. I think he got ahold of the microphone at time outside lunch and made some stupid comments during class. Anyway, they just locked up the room so he couldn't do it anymore, hence no more broadcasts.

A couple days later he got bored and went down to the infirmary. I guess there was a first year student there whom he knew. He was being disruptive, so the nurse told him he had to leave and started leading him to the door. I guess he got upset and attacked her. Iguchi-sensei said that the he punched and kicked the nurse. The nurse got away and ran upstairs to the teacher's room and locked herself in the principal's office. I guess the student came into the teacher's room and started pounding on the principal's door, trying to break it in. Someone called the police, and I think maybe some teachers restrained him. Anyway, the police took him away and the teachers had a serious meeting after school about it.

His father is in a nearby prefecture, and he met with school officials. He said he was taking his son to live with him there and that he'd get him help, etc, that weekend. However, this Monday the student was seen hanging around outside the school, so the teachers don't know what happened with him going to Fukui. I guess some of the teachers, like the nurse, are afraid for their safety. But the really strange thing is that I don't think he's really going to be punished for attacking one of the teachers like that. Apparently in Japan minors are only given lots of warnings for bad behavior, as opposed to some sort of action to fix the problem or move the student to a special program. I think he can legally come back to school if he desires. Anyway, that's my crazy school. We're getting a reputation for having problematic kids now.

Today's lunch was an interesting experience. It seemed to be calamari with the typical vegetables that seem to come with every meal, normally bean sprouts, seaweed, cucumbers, or lettuce. Normally we have some combination of those four vegetables. However, part way through the meal I realized my white bean sprouts had little silver dots on them, which I realized were little eyes. Turns out they were little white fish instead of bean sprouts. I still ate them, but it was quite surprising. They didn't really taste like much, however.

All the teachers went to a meeting, so I am left alone again. It seems to happen once a week. I think the Japanese really like meetings a lot. There are 2-3 teacher's meetings on average. I guess with all the schedule changes, they have to keep up somehow. A girl students just came to the office and lost all ability to communicate. She just kept saying, "uh, uh, uh" and occasionally uttering the name of one of the teachers. I eventually got her to say something more substantial in English. Though she could've said it in Japanese and I probably would've gotten it still. It was pretty funny, but I was a little worried she might wet her pants or something.

One weird thing in Japan is the bathrooms. I really like the toilets with heated seats, bidets, automatic lowering lids, and everything else under the sun. However, the Japanese style toilets are quite annoying. They are basic squat and go to the bathroom in a big hole type of things. I still don't understand how that would ever be the preferred method of going to the bathroom, but I have noticed that many of the Japanese teachers will use the Japanese toilet instead of the western one. Maybe it forces you to go quicker since there's no heated seats to encourage you to stay for awhile.

I don't mind the occasional Japanese toilet, since many of them are being phased out quickly. What does bother me is that many times there is a lack of privacy while going to the bathroom, especially for men. When we took the train to Kyoto, I was really surprised at the toilets. There was one locking toilet with a closing door that was co-ed. There was also a urinal for men in a small side door. This door had a big window however, so anyone who wanted to could see you peeing. They also decided that putting a lock on the door was a luxury, so there was no lock either. It was more than a little weird watching people walk by while I was peeing.

This is not the first time I've used urinals that are visible to people passing by. It happened in Kyoto at some of the shrines, and at random restrooms in Toyama too. One of the worst times was on Mt. Fuji. The bathrooms on the mountain are just pit toilets in shacks normally. At the very top there was a bathroom, but it was set up really strangely. As you walked in, there were urinals on both sides. To get to the pit toilets you had to keep walking. These pit toilets were for men and women. So women had to walk by all the men peeing to get to the bathroom. I just don't understand it sometimes.

Yay, my computer came back to me last Friday. Hopefully everything is fixed. Since the problem only occurs occasionally, I can't immediately tell. The repair explanation was written in Japanese, so I don't understand it well. I need a computer person who speaks Japanese and English. Maybe I'll bring it to Mr. Okamoto at one of my elementary schools. He speaks English well and is the computer person there.

Anyway, this week I only have five classes total because exams are Friday-Tuesday, so no one wants classes before the exam. I should have time to finally write about Kyoto Monday.

Yesterday was just gorgeous. For some reason the sky was without clouds, and the weather was nice. Then today it rained all day again. Doh! I wish I had brought my camera with me when I went up the top of the city hall tower. I could see quite a long way, plus the mountains are snow-capped now, so they are quite beautiful.

Sunday in Kyoto take 3.

The six of us (Sarah, Victoria, Will, Alex, Akemi, and I) ended up in a vegetarian restaurant in the Sanjo Keihan area. Will and Alex are vegetarian, so they were quite familiar with the restaurant. We don't really have vegetarian restaurants in Toyama (ditto for most of Japan), so it was a different sort of experience. There were many foreigners in the restaurant, including Nadia (again!) and a couple other Toyama JETs. The portions of food were a little small, I thought, but the food was good. Or at least that's what everyone else told me. I ended up not getting my food until about 15 minutes after everyone else had finished eating.

One of the strangest things about Japan is that in restaurants they serve each dish when it is prepared, not all at the same time. This means that people sometimes, such as for this dinner, get their food at radically different times. Anyway, this put me in a pretty bad mood since I was starving after walking around all day long. We didn't really eat a solid lunch either (just snacks), because we were worried about shrines and temples closing on us in the afternoon. Anyway, my food finally came, but I ended up still hungry because the portion was a small.

At dinner, we were seated at a small half-circular table with the flat side of the half-circle pressed against the wall. It was a rather tight squeeze for the six of us, and I ended up next to the wall. By itself this wouldn't have been to bad, but Will was seated next to me, and he is really tall. Our legs were engaged in a fierce battle for legroom with each other and the table legs. I think it is fair to say that I was utterly defeated in this battle. Unfortunately, the restaurant was a little loud, so I had trouble hearing the people across the table from me, pictured here. I could hear Victoria and Will's conversation, but it involved stories from university, so I wasn't really able to participate much.

After dinner we went upstairs to a bar, which was even more noisy than the restaurant. I was still hungry so I thought I'd order some yaki-tori (skewered meat). However, it never came after 45 minutes, so I managed to ask the waitress in Japanese, "Where is my yaki-tori?" At least it makes me feel like I've learned something since arriving here that I can say that much. The waitress went to go check and came back and said something I didn't understand, except that they had messed up and forgotten about me. Ten minutes later I finally did get the yaki-tori, but it wasn't really that great anyway.

At the bar, I ended up on the end again, but sitting next to Victoria this time so I at least had someone to talk to. Here's a picture of us at the bar, including a tasteful t-shirt in the background. It was, like many bars in the world, smokey and loud, and not really my type of place. I was glad when we left at 11:10 or so. I really needed something sweet for energy and a pick me up, so we went searching for ice cream shops. However, most of them decided to close at 11, so we kept finding closed ice cream shops.

Finally I spied a crepe shop which had sweet crepes, some of which even had ice cream. I was excited and went to get a crepe, but then someone spied a photo booth nearby, and said we should have a group photo taken. Photos booths are quite popular in Japan, and are more complex than some video games in the US. They produce these tiny sticker pictures that you can put in books and such. You can change the background and add funny shapes and everything. They're fairly expensive, but fun. Of course, when we come out of the photo booth, the crepe shop has just closed. At this point I'm pretty upset and close to tears. I'm really tired and all the forces of the world were conspiring to keep me from having a positive evening in Kyoto. So I went back to Will and Alex's place and went to sleep. Victoria came with me to keep me company, which was nice. We pretty much passed out, because we didn't even notice when the other four came back to the apartment around 2:30am. Apparently they were pretty drunk and quite loud, but neither one of us remembers waking up then. So ended Sunday in Kyoto. I'll write about Monday later.

Okay, this is take two for writing the second part of Sunday on the Kyoto Trip. If you think this one is not very good, I assure you that the first one I wrote was much better. This time I'm writing it outside of blogger to make sure that I'll still have the text if something goes wrong on blogger's end.

Anyway, so last time, I forgot to include that after the temple walking tour, but before we went up to the lookout at Eikan-do, Sarah stopped to take part in her favorite pasttime: taking pictures of many different things. This time some children playing at a day care right next door to the temple grounds were her subjects.

After we descended from the tower, we left Eikan-do and started on the actual Philosopher's Walk. It is a gravel trail that goes beside a small stream and through many nice looking neighborhoods. There are many tea houses and cafes beside the trail, along with random gift shops. We even saw a charity yard sale on a side street right off the trail. As always, we ran into a couple JETs from Toyama that we knew.

We passed several temples that we could've visited, but we were a little worried about the time. We wanted to make it to the temple at the end of the Philosopher's Walk, Ginkaku-ji. Ginkaku-ji means Silver Temple, or something like that. There is a very famous temple in Kyoto that is called Kinkaku-ji, or Golden Temple. The exterior is completely gold-covered, so it is impressive to look at. Ginkaku-ji is like a sister temple or something. It was supposed to be completely covered in silver. However, the lord that was paying for all this silver died after the temple was built, but before it was covered in silver. In the above picture you can see one of the original buildings of the temple (rare in Japan, since they are wooden buildings) on the left. On the right you can see the newer temple buildings, whose roofs are painted silver, I think mostly to keep with the name and original intent. You can pay to tour the newer buildings, but the old one is off limits. I didn't bother to tour the buildings since the tours were in Japanese, and the buildings were pretty new.

One thing that is famous at Ginkaku-ji besides the original building, is the silver sand patterns. In the photo from above, you can see the lines of sand in the center of the compound. There are two sand sculptures there. The one you see is supposed to represent waves on a body of water. Here's a close-up of it. The other one (not pictured here) is a big mountain of silver sand that is supposed to be Mt. Fuji. They are both fairly impressive, but what impressed me more is that it seems like all the grains of sand are perfectly in their place. I wonder how often they have to re-rake the sand to keep it so neat. The Mt. Fuji sculpture is a near perfect cone.

After seeing the sands, the trail led around to a little garden area, where I surprised Victoria with a picture. The trail climbed up to give us the view of the temple from above. Finally the trail led back down to near the historic building, which wasn't very impressive to look at it, except that it is supposed to be old. One thing that is more impressive is the 20+ foot walls that you have to walk through to enter and exit the temple area. The walls were stone for about 5 feet and then tall bushes were neatly trimmed to form the rest of the wall. Behind the bushes was a thick bamboo forest. On the way out through this area, Sarah and Victoria found a really cute Japanese baby strapped onto some man's back (I can only assume his father's). We got permission from the father and mother to pose for a picture with the baby. This was a much more amenable idea to me than Victoria's constant plans to kidnap cute Japanese children to dress in bumblebee suits and keep as her own, so I agreed to it. You can see part of the bushes behind the picture.

It was getting late, so we headed back to the subway. Unfortunately we had to walk all the way back, because there is no subway or train near Ginkaku-ji. We headed back to Sanjo Keihan (where we walked around and had dinner Sat. night) instead of returning home, because we were hungry. Sarah was feeling dizzy and needed someplace to stop. Near the metro station at Sanjo Keihan, there is a Starbucks, so we went there. I'm not a big coffee fan myself, but Sarah was really missing a good cup of coffee, so Starbucks was the next best thing. :)

I got a hot chocolate and a chocolate scone, which I haven't had in awhile. It was nice to feel like we were in a little bit of home. The menu was in English, the staff spoke English, and there were many foreigners there. Just seeing a menu with English was a nice change, because that just doesn't happen much in Toyama. My favorite restaurant in Toyama, a Nepalese restaurant, does have an English menu, so that should tell you something about the powers of a menu in English.

We got a call from Alex that she had finished work and would meet us at Starbucks. So we hung out there for awhile. We ran into some Toyama JETs at Starbucks, including Nadia. Once Alex came we walked along some of the shopping area, stopping in some stores. We eventually found our way to an eight-story book store which has a whole floor dedicated to foreign books. We spent awhile there, and Will finished work and met us there. A Japanese friend of theirs meet us there also, Akemi. She came from another area nearby. We all went out to eat after Victoria finished trying to buy all the English books in the store (she was a lit major).

More tomorrow. I've got more interviews now.

Okay, I'm fairly pissed right now. I just spend 30 minutes writing more about the Kyoto Trip, and blogger had an error and lost all the text. Grr... I'm going to go somewhere else now. I'll try rewriting it later.

I have about an hour to do nothing, which has pretty much been the theme today (doing nothing, that is), so I figured I'd hog the staff room computer and write up some stuff about the trip. The only other teachers who are here are the three teachers without homerooms. They happen to be some of the best English speakers too, which is nice.

We left for Kyoto on Saturday because Sarah and Victoria were working on Saturday. Unfortunately their schools had their choral contests on the Saturday of a three day weekend. That meant they got Tuesday off, but I didn't so we had to take a shorter trip. In the end, we found out Sarah didn't have all of Tuesday off because they forgot to tell her that she wasn't contractually obligated to go on Saturday. So she still had to go visit her elementary school on Tuesday afternoon, which wasn't the best situation. Victoria got a full day off though. Anyway, we left around 6pm on Saturday evening, and it is about a 2 and a half hour journey there. Unfortunately our train was stuck at a station halfway there for a whole hour. This is pretty serious in Japan, since trains often run on time to the minute. We arrived at Kyoto an hour late, but we were able to call ahead to Victoria's friends to tell them we would be late.

Two of Victoria's friends from college, Alex (female) and Will, met us at the train station and let us stay on their floor (it's Japan, everyone sleeps on the floor). It was nice and quite affordable, of course, to stay with them since they knew their way around town and it was free. That night we dropped off our stuff at their apartment and eventually went to get a late night dinner. We went to Sanjo Keihan (third station on the Keihan train line), which is a big commercial and nightlife district. I think it's basically the center of the city. We went to a small Korean restaurant (seats 9 people) and all squeezed into the only booth in the place. One of the ladies who worked there spoke English pretty well, or at least understood it. If we said something about if we should ask for bowls, ten seconds later she would drop off some bowls, because she had overheard us. The food was very good. I think that was my first time having Korean cuisine, so it was a nice experience. Alex and Will had been to the restaurant several times in the last couple weeks, so the ladies knew them quite well. They promised them an English menu the next time they returned, but they were handy enough with the menu that it wasn't necessary. I don't think I even looked at the menu. We just let the two of them order for us. I had a really spicy cabbage dish that was great, but made my stomach hurt the next morning. The best part was a pancake-like thing. It was very good.

After dinner, we walked around downtown Kyoto, which was quite hopping. Toyama is pretty quiet at night, except in the strip club/red light district. We ran into Nadia, a fellow Toyama JET, wandering around on her own and later, a whole crew of Toyama JETs going to a nightclub. It was pretty late for us, so we went back and collapsed. One disappointing thing was that Alex and Will had to work during Sunday and Monday, even though they were holidays. They work for NOVA, which is a private English conversation school that has branches throughout Japan, including Toyama. I think NOVA has to be open especially on holidays and weekends, because that is when many students can come during the day.

Sunday morning we decided to go on the Philosopher's Walk. One subway station away from the one that we were at is a series of large temples and shrines that form a nice walk by a little river. We were slackers, so we didn't get going until after noon, but we wanted to relax and enjoy things too. The first temple we went to was Nanzen-ji. It had collosal gates (pic of Sarah and pic of Victoria) outside the grounds. There was a brick aquaduct built in part of the temple grounds. I guess it provided water for some of the temple area. I didn't go into the main temple area because it was a little expensive. I did go into the temple garden/pond area though. After awhile, I started getting bored, so Victoria and I went on to Eikan-do, which houses a famous statue of Amita Buddha. Sarah climbed up a trail leading up the mountain away from the temples.

Eikan-do had much prettier trees (and pond) than Nanzen-ji. They had lots of Japanese maples that were bright red. Eikan-do had a walking tour that allowed you to go through the main temple buildings and finally to the famous Buddha statue. The catch was that we had to take off our shoes. It wasn't raining in Kyoto like it did all weekend in Toyama, but it was just as cold. After walking around in my socks through all the buildings, my feet were a little numb. But we did get to see some cool statues, and some screen illustrations. They asked people not to take a picture of anything inside the temple, so I don't have any pictures. Apparently the story behind the famous statue is that a priest was walking around the temple when one of the Buddha statues came to life and started walking in front of him. He stopped to gawk and the statue turned its head to admonish him for being slow. To commemorate this experience, a statue was built of the buddha with its head turned. It was pretty neat, but not all that impressive. Monday would prove to be the day of impressive Buddha statues.

After the tour we climbed up to a hillside shrine that is part of the complex and looked out over the city.

I'll finish telling about the Philosopher's Walk later. I have to go help with more interviews this afternoon.

Well, I got drafted to help students with an interview test and that took all afternoon, so no more writing about Kyoto before I send away my computer. I just hope it gets fixed and sent back to me. If they just took my computer, I don't know what I'd do. I'm definitely sending it registered mail with insurance though to help make sure it will be okay.

I finally got my act together, so it looks like I will be sending my laptop to Tokyo for repairs. This is pretty inconvenient, since they don't offer the overnight service I can get in the U.S. However, I need my laptop fixed, so what else can I do? This will probably result in no more new pictures for the next couple weeks, along with less posts, since I'll be sharing a computer will all the other teachers. I'll try to post something about Kyoto today, and more spread out during the week. It will be more difficult since I won't be able to write stuff at home.

Today was the last Halloween lesson, which is nice. I was getting a little sick of that lesson. I've also done several 2nd-year lessons involving "I think..." and "When __, I ____." I don't know that the lesson is that good, but the students are getting some practice speaking, which is good since in one of the classes the teacher doesn't speak English. It's not that he doesn't want to, it's more that he's not very good at it. He doesn't do things all the other teachers do, like greet the class in English before beginning. He gives all the instructions (even simple ones) in Japanese, which is starting to bug me. At least conversations with him keep me entertained. If I tell him something, it appears he understands me, but he really doesn't most of the time. He is good at repeating words that I say back to me, which gives the impression of comprehension. However, it is often the case that he has merely recognized a word that I said, not the whole thing. He also often doesn't recognize when I'm asking him a question. I don't know why this is the case, but he can't recognize it, so he thinks I am telling him something instead of asking him. Anyway, it keeps me entertained.

I've also started entertaining myself by torturing kids in the hallway. I walk beside them and tap them on the opposite shoulder and they always look the wrong way. I think it's great! I don't know if anyone does this in Japan. Maybe I'll start a whole fad among all the kids.

Today I got a little frustrated with one of my teachers. Last week she asked me to come up with a list of "When I am sad, I cry." type of sentences. I made a lot of them and left them on her desk Thursday along with another activity she asked me to write. I put a note on them asking if they were what she wanted. I never heard from her again until I tracked her down this morning (finally) and she said that she hadn't read them yet. She then looked at it and told me that almost all of it needed to be redone in the next couple hours before the class. Plus she wanted me to come up with a came involving the sentences she had me make. She had previously made me think that she had a game in mind. It's the first time I've really taught with her, so I was taken aback quite a lot. I ended up with a pretty rough lesson plan that we scraped through. Hopefully I can improve it before tomorrow's lesson. Some of the things were too difficult. It can be tough to know the skill level of the different classes, especially the first time you teach them.

Videos and DVDs are pretty cheap to rent here, I think. There is no price difference in most rental places between new and older rentals. Plus my place has a deal some days where you can get 5 DVDs or videos for 1000 yen (8 dollars). I found out Sundays are half-price for anime (cartoons) rentals and dates that end in a 1 or a 5 are half off everything ($1.40/rental). Getting a just released DVD for $1.40 is a pretty good deal, I think. Today ends with a 1, so I might take a trip to the video store to get something for this upcoming week.

Kyoto pictures are now up. I'll try to write a whole story linking them up and all that. You can see the pictures now at: http://www.duke.edu/~bi/japan/KyotoTrip/

An interesting fact: pumpkins in Japan are green and smaller than pumpkins in America. From what I can tell, the skins are not as tough either, because they are often served in tempura with the skin on. That's about all I've learned from the Halloween lesson I've taught a million times now. I'm still teaching Halloween lessons, even though it is after Halloween. It's a pretty easy cultural lesson to do, and the students like seeing me in my superbrian costume.

I feel a little sorry for the female students, because their summer uniform and winter uniforms are about the same. The girls all have to wear knee-high skirts, despite the fact that it is freezing outside. The guys get to wear coats and long pants, so it hardly seems fair. I haven't noticed the girls looking particularly cold or anything yet, though.

Today is actually a nice day for once. Yesterday became a nice day by the afternoon, but of course I was way to busy to actually enjoy it. On Wednesdays I have English Club (4-5), then Japanese lessons (5:30-7), and finally basketball (8:30-10:00), so I am very busy. I want to go bicycle to a new shop I saw once but couldn't go to. Hopefully I'll be able to right after school. I might go buy a futon also. My bed is horribly uncomfortable (springs in my back), so I was thinking of covering it with a futon. That way I could also take it off and put it on the floor for any guests who come. Currently I have a comforter on top of my mattress, but it is getting colder and I think I would like an extra comforter on top of me, rather than using it for padding. I found a futon for about $50, which is the cheapest I have seen yet. I think it's probably worth it.

I've made it my passion to go explore all the foreign food stores I can. There are about 5-6 in Toyama from what I can tell. The most convenient is also the most expensive and smallest by far. They tend to have lots of different items though. My current preferred one is moderately close to my house, and very large. They have alcohol and other beverages from around the world. They also have some foods too. My recent discovery is that they have inexpensive cereal there. It is brand-imitation German cereal (fake frosted flakes, etc.). Normally cereal is 250-300 yen ($2-2.50) for a 210g box. The German cereal is 100 yen ($.85) for a 250g box. I need to stockpile some cereal because I won't be able to bike to the store all the time. They also have a variety of cheese for okay prices. I am a little disappointed that the only root beer they have is Dad's (just like the expensive store), however it is only $.65 per can.

One store I want to bike to on a nice day is another foreign foods store I drove by.

Wow, Kyoto is so nice, especially in comparison to Toyama. I'll try to write a detailed explanation of our trip, but unfortunately my laptop is really acting up now. About every 10 seconds the backlight goes off until I close the lid again. It is just silly, and needs to be fixed (correctly this time, I hope). It's still raining in Toyama and apparently yesterday was the first time it snowed in the city this winter. I think that water covers something like 80% of the world's surface, and 1% of that water is in Japan.

However, in Kyoto it barely rained at all, so that was really nice for our trip. More about Kyoto and pictures later.

Today at elementary school, I was teaching classes about Halloween. It's amazing how quickly they can pick up English when it involves candy. They all figured out how to say "Candy, please!" without my even telling them. They were pretty cute doing trick-or-treating examples.

We're going to Kyoto on Saturday. Hopefully it won't be raining so much there. This whole week it is supposed to rain in Toyama. Darn mountains and sea! I'll hopefully have more pictures and stuff after the trip.

Our tickets were about $120 round-trip for a 2.5 hour journey. It's not horrible for Japan, but it still seems really expensive for a pretty short trip. We had no problem getting tickets going there, but return trip tickets were nearly all sold out. We have to sit in the smoking section in separate seats for the return trip. It's a national holiday, so I think many people are going to Kyoto on Friday and returning on Monday.

If it doesn't rain tomorrow I'm going with Iguchi-sensei to Shomyo Falls, the largest waterfall in Japan. It is not wide like Niagara Falls, just really tall (number 4 or 5 in the world, I think). The leaves should be changing color now and it is supposed to be quite nice.

I don't remember if I've mentioned the following things, but Japanese people seem rude to me with the following things.

1) I'm crossing the street between two lights. Cars are stopping at red lights in both directions. I think many cars in America would waive you on. Here the cars will just keep going until they are completely stopped at the light, even though there is no where for them to go.

2) They want to get me something to drink at the elementary schools. However, they don't ask what I would like to drink. So they bring me coffee or tea, very often not something I want to drink. It seems strange to me that they don't ask what I would like, or if I would like a drink at all. I think it is just their way though.

3) I am about to walk through a door behind someone and the door is slams in my face. They don't hold doors for anyone. Quite often they don't even seem aware that someone else is coming through the door. I held the door for someone the other day and he got really flustered. He kept saying thank you profusely.

I don't think they're trying to be rude, but it is just my perception of what is polite or not. They undoubtably think some things I do are rude too. But of course I'm not trying to be rude either.