Hi Everyone!
o sashiburi da ne! (long time no speak!)
Here is why: things have turned to routine here, and that is what this e-mail is about. Steve, can you please load this onto my site - I have to figure out how to work my own website - ARGH! For the rest of you, there have been two more updates to my website (besides this one) - check it out - Steve and I have sweated blood for that thing!!! :)
I hope that all is well - e-mail me to let me know YOUR daily routine!
The snows have come, and my car doesn`t have winter tires. There is a huge drop in elevation from my town to the ones around me - with very steep roads and very sharp turns. The result is that I have been mostly trapped here in nowhereville renting videos until I go crazy!
Well, OK, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but sometimes it feels like that!!! On weekends, when I can be a bit more leisurely about things, I can get out and about. The beginning of January saw me driving a car load of friends to the closest town we could go to for ice cream and the best burgers in the world - Mos Burgers (they even have rice burgers: a patty of meat in between a "bun" of rice!). This town (Kaibara town) was 1.5 hours away. We had a grand old time though - going anywhere out here is a road trip! We even found a BP gas station - the only self-serve station in my prefecture - and it kept things like Dare Maple Cookies in stock. I can`t believe we went wild buying groceries at a gas station! The next day we did the usual: we gathered at someone`s house in Wadayama (the most central locale - only 40 minutes from me), cooked dinner, and rented videos.
The weekend after that we went to a "city" of 100 000 people called Toyooka to see what kind of shopping they had there. Toyooka is about 1.5 hours from me. We found a section of the department store that was dedicated to American candy, so we made off with diet Dr. Pepper and Fuzzy Peach candies. There really wasn`t much else there though! It was all about the "road trip", though, and we got our fill - the ski traffic was so bad coming back that it took me 45 minutes just to get three kilometres away from Sara`s house in Wadayama!!! Luckily, I knew a short cut and made it back to my place in no time - I felt like a local!!! Wait! I AM a local!!! The next day, a bunch of us came to Sara`s place and guess what? We cooked dinner and watched a movie. The difference here is that one of my friends (who shall remain nameless) went to Malaysia over Christmas and got a few bootlegged DVD`s of first run movies there - so we have "Ali" and "Memento" and even "Lord of the Rings"!! Heck, most of these haven`t even cme out in Japan yet! Mind you, we have to watch them on her computer.....
Last weekend, we decided to explore a town 40 minutes south of me. My town is the dividing line between the northern part of my prefecture (the Tajima area) and the southern part (the Harima area). Himeji Castle (the big white one) is in Harima. Technically, my town is in Tajima though, so everything with our schools and stuff is interconnected. Would you believe I have met the teachers in the towns south of me only once or twice!!! These towns are only 20 minutes away (but still small!). So, off we went to explore Fukusaki - 40 minutes south. Here we found yet another department store, and a great grocery store/dollar shop called The BonMarche (as we discovered, NOT the American one). They had a HUGE Thai food section, and a great baking section, and I even found PAPAYAS. I was so excited that I had to buy one - 5 bucks for a lousy papaya!!! Still, it is winter! We also found a great electronics store, and a great second-hand store - you name it, they had it! [We bought these cute little yellow blenders (Margaritas anyone?) only to discover when we got home that they were battery operated!!! Oh well, great for summer barbeques! Only in Japan...] We grabbed some MacDonalds and headed back to Sara`s place to gather and once again, watch a movie.
My friend Maeva has a friend visiting from Ottawa, so we decided to paint the town red and go out on a "school night": we went bowling at the Jusco in Wadayama. It was actually a lot of fun - heck, anything becomes fun after doing nothing but sitting under a Kotatsu (that heated coffee table thing) and watching movies. It was cheap to do, so we have decided to start our own gaijin (foreigner) bowling club and meet once a month. Tonight is Friday, so we may go to Wadayama to do Karaoke (if the snow stops). Once again, it is a weekend. We will probably go to explore a town, and then go watch more movies. Last night I watched "Patch Adams". I also rented "Tailor of Panama". Got any suggestions???
Notice a pattern here? I still haven`t gone skiing!!! Maybe we`ll do that instead.
Now for a typical day during the week - I`ll describe the past 24 hours for you.
It is Thursday afternoon and I am sitting at my desk. I have taught three classes today - the third years are about to do their High School Entrance Exams so everyone is stressed out and my classes are more about grammar than fun. The school year here ends in March and begins in April, so I went to listen to the speeches of the candidates for the new student council. Here, they stand up and do their speech (mostly on who is their favourite band and what their hobbies are). Then one of their friends stands up and talks about a time when the candidate in question was nice to him or her. This went on for about an hour - there were about 16 candidates for each of the four vacancies (the President had no one run against him, so he automatically won. The positions to be filled were: Boys VP, Girls VP, Secretary (mostly male candidates!) and Treasurer (mostly female candidates!). Everyone laughed when one poor girl stood up and talked about the fact that she is very sorry that she has no friends and isn`t allowed to listen to pop music. Her only hobby is studying - her mother won`t let her do anything else because she has to get into the best High School in the area. So she said that she was sorry that no one knew or liked her, but she would be a very diligent Treasurer, and commit as much effort to that position as she did to her studies. She said that no one should worry about her mother not letting her join the student council because it looks good on a resume and would help her get into her desired school. Sad, isn`t it - the poor girl is only 13 or 14! [Well, I just found out that they voted her in. The students here are really good about supporting each other - I think they realzed that for her, this would be the only fun she would be allowed to have. YAY (I`m all for the underdog).]
Now I am just surfing the web and watching the clock, tick, tick, waiting for 4 o`clock to roll around so I can go home to my frozen apartment.
OK the evening has come and gone. I decided on my way home that I would rent a couple of movies and go buy fruit and vegetables. I just got one of those plastic things to make fresh OJ - all the fruit juice heres no better than Kool Aid. I drank this treat along with my dinner - a teriyaki beef stir fry. I sat there in silence contemplating the quality of rice grown by local farmers as opposed to rice shipped in from elsewhere in Japan. At 7pm, my friend Naoko came over to help me with my Japanese. Her son came too so I taught him Yahtzee. It was so nice just to have company!!! It also helped to have someone put my Japanese textbook into context. They left at 8:30 - too early for me to go to bed. Darn! I recently finished another book, and didn`t really feel like beginning another just yet. So I watched a movie, did the dishes and got ready for bed. Getting ready for bed means going into my freezing room and turning on the two space heaters plus my electric blanket. If I don`t do this about 45 minutes before I climb in, I am freezing for most of the night and won`t fall asleep. I also must remember to set the timer on my kerosene heater - if I don`t, it will be the same temperature inside as it is outside when I get up. The weather report predicted a cold front coming at us from Siberia, so the timer is a necessity. After all these preparations (plus the usual `brush my teeth` kinds of things), I can climb into a nice warm bed. I leave one electric space heater on all night so that I don`t wake up from a frozen head and nose.
I hear my alarm in the distance and wish wish wish that I could stay in my warm bed for another hour or so. Alas, it is 6:30 and I know I will have to leave earlier than usual to scrape off my car. I hoist myself out of bed and OH-MY-GOODNESS! It is SOOOO cold! Siberian airmass is right! I look at the thermometer outside and it reads -10. That makes my bedroom about 0 to 2 degrees. YIPES! The kitchen is a little better - it has warmed up to 8 degrees. It is so cold that when I pee, the toilet room steams up!!!! I put on the coffee - a big mug today, and run the shower for a few minutes to warm up the room. I get lost in a daydream in the nice steamy shower (not THAT kind! Get your mind out of the gutter!), and realize that I have been in this nice warm shower for over 20 minutes. Gotta run. Ooops! It is bottle day! On each day of the week they collect a different kind of garbage - so it is always garbage day. I can never remember what to put out Now I am running late (as usual) and the ice on my car seems thicker than usual. Grrrrr.
I maneuver around cyclists and old people pushing carts, and I finally make it to school. First item on the agenda: turn on the computer and pour a cup of hot tea. Then I arrange my hot packs: one to stick on each foot and another in my pocket. Most of the school is still not heated - only the teachers room and the classrooms are. Then I sit around and check my e-mail and work on little projects. Today I had to make cards for a game of "Go Fish" at one of my elementary schools - we are using last week`s target sentence "Can I have _____, please?" and the students are learning the names of the months. So they have a card with the Japanese for the month on it and have to ask in English for a month card to match.
I surf the web a little, vaguely listen in on the five-minute daily teacher`s meeting, and wait for a teacher to ask me to come to class. They sometimes give me one or two minutes to prepare something, but more often than not, they just shout to me as they are leaving: "Can you come to class now?" No matter - I usually have three flights of stairs to climb and can think of something on the way. Thank you theatre training! I still don`t know any of my students` names, but it is no problem - if I need them to answer a question I either do "eeny meeny miney moe" (they love that) or I throw my hand warmer at them (they love that too). Today they were learning "who is more beautiful? Sabine-sensei or `insert name of famous Japanese movie star here`?" The little sweeties of course picked me :) It is through this vote that I learned that the majority of my students think that English is more difficult but more interesting than Math. Go figure.
Now I am eating lunch. A hunk of fried fish, a big bowl of soup, a big bowl of rice, and a boiled spinach and bean sprout salad. mmm mmm good. not. Ooops - there`s the cleaning music - after lunch I have to go clean the meeting/math room with some students. All the sweeping, mopping, and wiping of the school is done by the students and teachers. The meeting room is rarely used, but that means it is never heated. Every day I think I am going to freeze to death there, but I never do. I just work harder and faster - it keeps me warm.
That is a typical day for me (except for the election part). So if you don`t hear from me and wonder what I am doing, it is probably the same kind of thing.
Ho hum.
:)
sabine