Land of fish and beauty products!

Hello!

After my week in Korea, I would like to greet you with 'hello' in Korean, but Korean is really difficult and I didn't get the hang of any of it, so English will have to suffice!  

It's late and I'm super tired - too much sleep on holiday backfired when I couldn't sleep last night.  My cold (going on six months here!!) didn't help either.  I ended up getting up and lying on the couch, coughing away as I finished my book.  So the good news is I finished my book!  The bad news is I don't want to know how little sleep I got (purposefully didn't look at the clock!).  

Sorry, my point about all that was that I should be getting to bed now.  But tomorrow I will have millions of student journals on my desk (there were 127 when I left, plus whatever was handed in last week :(  ) and after that I need to get back into Wide Island View so I wanted to write something tonight while the experience was fresh in my mind.  

(Side note: I'm sorry I've been so shite at blogging this year.  I changed my gmail address but google won't let me change the address associated with this blog, so I have to log out of one email and log in with another to blog.  It's enough of a disincentive to stop me, turns out!!)

Anyway, I have two main conclusions from a week in Korea: Busan smells of fish, and we are way more adjusted to Japanese life than we realise!  

We got to Korea by taking a boat from Fukuoka, in Southern Japan and spent our first three days in Busan. I didn't realise Busan is, basically, a large fishing village.  For someone who hates the smell of raw fish so much that she avoids the fish section of the supermarket, that perhaps wasn't my best holiday destination...  Lonely Planet says about Busan that 'cultural mores prevent most people from initiating contact with foreigners' and locals can 'giggle at the sight of international travellers'.  This is perhaps something I should have read BEFORE we went there!  It doesn't seem a big deal when I write it like that, but you have to understand that in Japan, often we are stopped in the supermarket so people can say "Hello-how-are-you?" to practise their English, before they walk away giggling.  When we go to the post office or bank, people apologise for not speaking English (because it's not like we're in their country, right??).  So to come to a country that DOESN'T bend over backwards to communicate with us was somewhat of a shock!  In Busan's defense, on our last afternoon there, shortly after a conversation about how much less friendly the people were, we had not one, not two but THREE people talk to a us in one train station - one a European guy checking we knew which platform we needed, one a Korean businessman based in Canada and one a local guy who speaks English for work!

The highlight of our time in Busan was, without a doubt, a couple of hikes we did in the mountains near an old fortress wall.  The first day we got there a little late and just went for a wander in the foothills, where we came across an exercise circuit which we ended up playing on for 20 minutes.  Jeff was much amused by my attempts to jump onto the parallel bars.  It wasn't that I couldn't do it, it's just that while Jeff could jump up and push himself the last bit of the way with his hands in one smooth motion, I needed to stand on a rock next to the bars, put my leg over the closest bar, tuck my toe under the other bar, shift my weight forwards until I was straddling the bar, then bring my second leg over so I was sitting on one with my feet on the other, then I could position my hands and drop into supporting myself on my arms.  Yes, I did gymnastics as a kid, yes I quit when I was holding Holly back because she didn't want to go up a level without me and I couldn't pass the damn Level 1 test.  Anyway, my 'creative' way to get on the parallel bars gave Jeff an excellent opportunity for a laugh and some unflattering photos!

The second day we were more organised on our hike - we found our way to the bottom of the gondola that would take us up to the fortress wall, from where we could walk around some of it.  Sucks for us, the gondola was closed that day!  We ummed and ahhed and walked a little way up the forest track under the gondola.  Then walked a little more.  Then pondered how far we had walked and how far the track was, and walked a little more.  We thought the walk was about 5km, all uphill, judging by the inaccurate-looking map at the gondola.  When we had walked about 4km we finally committed to making it to the top!

Up there we bought a cold drink and checked out a bit of the wall, before walking down another path.  The wall itself actually was a bit of an anti-climax - it was much smaller than we expected - not large enough to walk ON and there was a roped-off swathe of mown grass between the wall and the walking track.  On reaching the bottom we both agreed that the winding dirt path going up through pine trees had been the best bit.  The funny thing about hiking is that I rarely enjoy it when I'm doing it (uphill = hard and sweaty, downhill = tedious and hard on the knees), but you always feel so amazing when you reach a vantage point or hit the top!

Next: Seoul.  In Seoul we spent three days in the city centre, then two days staying in Gangnam (hence Jeff's facebook photo, 'drinking beer Gangnam style!').  Just a few highlights here:

* Beauty product stores.  Korea is famous for them.  Lucky for this cheap-arse Kiwi, they like to give away free samples to encourage you in the door!  Admittedly I did buy a few things (mainly face wipes and nail polish), but I came away with 26 free samples and 5 boxes of cotton face pads!  SCORE!

* Fortress wall - Seoul also had a fortress wall available to hike.  Only this one is still an active military zone!  They even had a tree displayed bearing bullet holes from when a group of North Koreans tried to sneak in and attack in 1968.  Considering the wall was first built in 1396, it's pretty impressive that it is still helping Seoul defend itself!  This hike was nowhere near as peaceful and natural, but it provided some stunning views of Seoul and the mountains you were cresting.  Sadly, for military defense reasons, photography was banned on much of the track.

* Last but definitely not least, Jump!  Jeff had never been to see a show that didn't star one of my sisters, so he didn't share my enthusiasm about going to see something at the theatre in Korean.  However, having read a little about it - 'martial arts', 'acrobatics', 'comedy' and 'Edinburgh Comedy Festival award', I was super keen - and was pretty certain Jeff would enjoy it too.  What I didn't foresee was how much it would like him!!

I booked us seats halfway back so Jeff wouldn't get targeted for any audience interaction - a recent karaoke trip had shown me that Jeff does not have an exhibitionist bone in his body.  Even after hours of all-you-can-drink-karaoke, when all the rest of us were trying on costumes, he still stayed firmly behind the camera, not even trying on the fetching blue wig Denzel was so taken with (look at the facebook photos if you haven't already!).  However, my measures were nowhere near enough.  Much to the delight of me and the two young women giggling beside me, before the show even started Jeff was approached by an 'old man' who first sat on his knee, then made him give him a piggyback down the aisle to the stage.  When Jeff finally returned to his seat, the old man rummaged through his pockets until he found a lolly, which he held out for Jeff, while Jeff traipsed all the way back down the aisle to collect his 'payment'.

The show began - and was awesome.  If it comes to a town near you and you enjoy martial arts, acrobatics or comedy (and if you don't enjoy any of those then you should see someone about that!), then I strongly recommend you go see it!  If my recommendation isn't enough, in the program there is a page showing clips from the media about the show and it includes a picture of Prince Charles shaking hands with cast members.  A Korean comedy act good enough to meet the Prince?  What a winner!  (Incidentally there was also a clip from the NZ Sunday Times there.  Go NZ!  Even though you had to be familiar with the paper to recognise that!)

Anyway, halfway though the show one of the cast came down off the stage and started waving you to Jeff.  "You," they called, "come here!"  At which point Jeff sighed, then stood up and followed the man onstage.  The deal was he was to 'fight' one of the actors (much of the show was taken up with the actors versing each other in comical but brilliant martial arts tournaments).  Partly prompted by the man who had called him up and partly working it out for himself (necessary when the other actor does a forward roll, then a backward roll into a handstand then flicks to his feet - and you are told to copy!), Jeff's moment in the spotlight involved him being discovered with about ten knives on his person, doing a forward roll, then 'scaring his opponent into submission' by brandishing a very bendy sword.  Audience and actors alike seemed impressed at how game he was, doing a forward roll onstage - I guess that's what three years of teaching little kids has done to him!  Jeff commented afterwards on what everyone who has acted in a real theatre knows to be your saving grace when you're nervous - the lights are so bright, you can't really see the audience!  Playhouse Theatre, I think I feel another actor coming along ;)

So that concludes most of what I wanted to say about Korea.  I just wanted to add to that something about my earlier comment that Korea made us realise how well-adjusted we are in Japan.  I guess I expected Korea to be something like Tokyo with more beauty products, but of course that was totally wrong.  Despite some of the things that Korea is known for - internationally known beauty products and tri-lingual pop songs - we found the level of English to be much much lower than we expected.  Or, perhaps it was our 'lens' that was wrong.  We always discuss how differently we view each country when visiting from Japan, as opposed to if we were visiting from NZ.  In this case I suspect that my surprise at how little English was spoken was ACTUALLY a misunderstood surprise at myself for understanding no Korean/understanding a fair bit of Japanese.  I think we underestimate exactly how much Japanese we understand, and how much we understand the systems in Japan, so that we acutely felt the frustration of having ZERO Korean.

We had silly situations like a coffee shop which displayed a sign saying 20% off drinks with your Jump ticket.  But when we tried to get a discount, they shook their heads and spoke rapid Korean at us.  I let the woman rattle on at me for a while with my best confused face before I finally cut her off saying "I don't speak Korean!"  They then called over another woman (assumably because she spoke English?), but she also just shook her head.  The three of them could do nothing but shake their heads at me, even though this was in a coffee shop in a central shopping district of the capital city.  I was really surprised because I'm pretty certain that in a similar situation in Japan, I would have got at least a 'Not today, sorry', or 'This coffee no, sorry' from the staff.  In the end I ordered our two coffees, then was only handed one - turns out the coffee Jeff wanted wasn't available anymore and they hadn't TOLD me when I ordered (again, no sorry, just head shakes).  To top it off, my 'gingerbread latte' tasted like toothpaste!  Coffee shop FAIL!

Anyway, communication situations like this - plus the fact that Koreans, like Japanese, often don't look where they are going and walk into you, only in Korea they don't apologise for it - meant that we struggled a bit.  Surprisingly, there were some situations where our knowledge of Japanese helped, as most places had signage in Korean, English AND Japanese.  I chose my smoothie by reading the Japanese list of ingredients when the English name didn't enlighten me!  All in all, the experience made us (me?) realise exactly how adjusted to life in Japan we are.  "Futatsu kohi onegaishimasu!"*

So, we now have less than three months left in Japan.  Jeff is bored mindless at work and is fretting about how long we have left to go.  I have a 'Before We Go Home To Do List' as long as my arm and am fretting about how short a time we have left to go.  Midway between Jeff and I, there is a beautifully successful person...

Ok, now I'm off to add to my google docs To Do list; 'put together folder of 2013 lesson plans for successor'!

Have a good week all!

C
xo

P.S. Totally didn't finish this in one go due to tiredness.  But you figured that when it wasn't posted just after our holiday, right?

P.P.S. Oh my gosh, totally forgot to mention the zoo!  I'll only say one thing... BABY GIBBON!!!  So adorable I could have watched it all day!

*Two coffees please.  May or may not be correct spelling and grammar.  But does successfully get you coffee!

A Wee Moan

In a moment I'm going to give you a little update on our trip to Korea, but first I wanted to just complain for a moment.  So that I don't start a blog about our week in Korea by moaning about my first day back at school, I'm making it a separate post.

As Monday was a holiday, I was at my once-a-week visit school today.  Most of the teachers there are great but there is one particular teacher...  He is TRYING to be a stickler for correct pronunciation, but the thing is his demonstrations of 'bad Japanese pronunciation' often sound like a Kiwi accent!  I know I should just chill and ignore it, but I find it really pushes my buttons and I end up tacking on the end of his explanations 'if you want an American accent.  Or you can keep saying it your way and it's like a New Zealand accent'.  I KNOW I should shut up, but it's one of those moments where your inner voice is going 'ignore it, don't say anything, don't - oh, you just said it.'  (Tell me I'm not the only one who does that??)

I know he means well with his explanations, but it really bothers me that when there is SO MUCH to teach these kids, he wastes time on such needless things as correcting students with 'Sa TER day, not Sa TA day' (has little chuckle at the students pronunciation).  Drives me nuts because I feel like he's basically teaching the students that my accent is not acceptable.

However, it's worth noting that this is the same teacher who I mentioned on facebook as not knowing who Rilakkuma, a very common Japanese character, was.  That's like being a Westerner and not knowing who Donald Duck is (if you don't, shame on you.  Our friendship is over!).

Ok, that's all I had to moan about.  Now I'm going to endeavour to write a BRIEF account of our time in Korea.

How far would you go for a good meal?

Jeff and I often laugh about how far Japanese people will travel for a meal, or how far they will travel for a mini holiday (I think our 10 day international breaks are considered excessive by our workmates).  This student journal made me smile because it's very very Japanese:

It is Saturday today.
I went to Shikoku.
I was with mother and father.
I went to eat udon.
It was very delicious.

If your Japanese geography is hazy (it's like NZ, but near China, with lots of geisha.  Right?), school is in Fukuyama city on Honshu island.  As in, not on Shikoku island.  Actually, pretty darn far from Shikoku island.  Ah Japan, anything for a good feed, aye?

Student journal win

Just a quick one to share with you a lovely student journal I just read.  The question I asked was 'Do you think journal writing has been helpful or enjoyable?'  I am very interested because it's been quite a lot of work for me and the teachers, so I want to hear if the students think it was worthwhile.  This is my best reply so far:

I think that this is very meaningful.
English journal writing is the most difficult in all homeworks.
That have gave my hed the most, most, most thinking.
But, there are give me good studies at the same time.
Therefore, I think English journal writing is very meaningful.

Aww!  Guess who is getting a big sticker!!

Thailand... so incredibly overdue!

Hello my lovely readers!

I'm sorry it has taken me just shy of two months to write this!  The first month, January, I had the excuse that I was horribly busy at work, catching up on journals the students handed in over the Christmas holidays.  But in February, I just knew I really really needed to write this - but I also really really needed to do a couple of jobs for Wide Island View and I really really need to reply to a couple of emails.  So what do you do when you can't decide which job is the most important?  Err... you don't do any.  Apparently.  Dammit.

Anyway, today I realised it was almost two months since we returned to Japan and almost exactly two months since I last blogged.  So here I am, writing for you.  I apologise that much of Thailand will have faded from my memory in that period, but time helps you sift the important from the less so, so I think I'll now be able to write less, but about the things I found really special.  So when I write a 10,000 word essay be thankful - if I'd written last month it would have been three times as long!

Where to start?  For anyone who has been in a coma or doesn't use facebook (same thing, really!), Jeff and I spent a week in the Baan Dada orphanage in rural Thailand.  We went with a group of JETs and were lucky enough to have three of our lovely Hiroshima friends also on the trip (the others were from near Kyoto).

As background, Baan Dada is near the border of Burma/Myanmar.  There are some small communities who have been pushed out of Myanmar by the Burmese (Myanmarese?), but they are not welcome in Thailand and have become refugees in tiny, extremely poor border towns (I use 'towns' in the loosest sense of the word.  As in, houses around a dirt track).  Most of the Baan Dada kids (all?) are from these communities (Mon and Karen people), so were rescued from extreme poverty when they came to the orphanage. Some of the kids are not even orphans - one boy lives there but his mother works in the kitchen.  At first this seemed surprising, but it only takes a moment of thought to realise how much better off her son would be playing with all the orphans, having the orphanage send him to school, eat the orphanages food, etc, in return for her being an 'employee' of the orphanage (I assume she is not paid and is allowed to live there in return for her work, all functioning as more of a family than a place of employment).

Before we went to Baan Dada I had been volunteering once a month at an orphanage here in Japan.  The Japanese orphanage is run rather as you would expect - a staff to child ratio of rather more than a school, with plenty of adults available to look after the little ones.  At Baan Dada I was amazed to discover there is one main Dada ('dada' means brother in Thai, while 'baan' means house) who has been there for about a million years (he's only in his 40's, so I may be exaggerating)  and a second Dada who has been helping out for the last four years but may get posted to a different orphanage at any time if there is anyone else more needy. These two Dadas care for between 50 and 60 kids (estimates differ depending on how many are home from university/work at any one time).  Dada 1 appeared to be more in charge of the paperwork and business side of running the orphanage, although he was super hazy on the kids ages and even seemed to have a tentative grasp on their names!  Don't let that lead you to think he didn't care - he was a lovely man and I have so much admiration for him, but he was one of those people who is so laid-back you expect him to fall asleep on his feet.  Dada 2 was a bit more involved in the kids and seemed to be in charge of the physical aspects of the orphanage - beautification, building a new mud hut playhouse, etc.

However, no-one was in charge of dressing kids (the youngest were three or four) or making sure they were ready in the morning.  There were two rules that seemed to apply at Baan Dada - first, organise yourself because no-one else will do it for you and second, keep an eye on anyone younger than yourself.  We saw the first rule in full force when we were riding the truck to school with the kids.  One boy came out late and the truck had already started driving away.  No-one even considered telling the driver to wait, they just watched in a disinterested fashion while he ran up the road clutching his bag in one hand until he was close enough to leap onto the bars of the truck.  Watching this I had guilty pangs about all the mornings Dad had to drag me out of bed to get me ready for school before he started work.

The second rule I realised when we went to the markets with a small group of kids.  Each kid had latched onto an adult with a one-to-one ratio, except for Jeff 'Child Magnet' Wigg, who had one on each hand.  I was with the oldest girl, a 13 yr old.  I had never understood how we managed to not lose children, because the Dada's never did head counts or anything.  However, one hand in mine, this 13 yr old used her other hand to do a quick head count before everyone dispersed in the darkness.  It was the strangest mix of childish innocence, hand-holding with an adult, and responsibility - having the ultimate say at the end of the night on if we had everyone and were ready to leave.

So that is a fairly general background to operations at the orphanage.  As for the physical set-up of the place, it was a mix of concrete blocks and mud bricks.  Buildings were far from fancy, but the small things lent it a charm - foot prints in the concrete from an old pet, murals on walls, children's art displayed and designs made by stones inset in mud brick exteriors.

The orphanage buildings for the children comprised the two gender-separated sleeping blocks, a music room, a 'library', the nurses room and the kitchen.  Many of these had walls that didn't reach the roof or, in the case of the kitchen, were completely open.

If you followed the dirt path through the centre of these buildings you had the choice of a metal bridge on a lean, with only one handrail, or crossing the dry stream bed where snakes occasionally liked to sunbathe.

The path then continued with jungle encroaching on the left side and the orphanage gardens on the right.  Most days an uncle of one of the boys could be seen crouching in the gardens, working, while his pet parakeet sat on a handy bucket or post, supervising (once when I was walking past, the boy asked me if I had seen his bird.  I had just heard it squawk, so I helped him hunt the trees for it until we found it!).

Continuing on past the vegetable gardens, the path made an abrupt turn right and headed into a circle of wooden huts and the concrete block volunteer house.  This was our little refuge, for when the demands of playing with kids or working in the hot sun got too much.  Here we had a Western toilet (a toilet seat cannot be over-rated!!) and a warm shower (even if I never figured out which one it was!).  We had a friendly (huge) bathroom lizard that I thought was art until Jeff assured me it was real.  We also had a huge stash of bottled water and not enough coffee.

Our time at the orphanage was... magical.  Being a senior high school teacher and being, well, me, I'm not so good with little kids.  I'm awkward and don't know how to take the initiative.  But watching Jeff with the little ones made for so many mushy moments.  They loved him so much and he usually had two or three competing for his attention at any one time.  This ranged from bigger boys trying to race around with him to (my favourite) the teeniest girl there launching herself onto his lap when she got a fright in the truck.  I guess she figured the biggest person around is the best for fighting off scary tree branch noises??  I had always suspected Jeff's love of puppies would translate to liking kids, but I had never seen it for myself.  Now I know that not only does he like kids, but they LOVE him!  Of course he has been teaching elementary school for almost three years now, but I don't get to see it so I didn't realise the extent of his popularity with the wee ones!  If you want further proof of Jeff's connection with the kids, just take a look at our (many!) Baan Dada pictures on facebook.  There are many, many pictures of Jeff with a bunch of different kids.

So while Jeff was being all popular, what was I doing?  Well, as you know, I'm better with girls and as you can figure, I'm better with older kids.  The first night we were doing a 'meditation' session in the library - because nothing says relaxation like meditating with 20 kids leaning on you, right?  (Actually, I can't blame them.  My stomach rumbled so loud during meditation that I heard the next volunteer along giggling!  Some things don't change...).

Anyway, while we were talking then meditating, the two girls on either side of me slowly slid towards me, leaning against me, then putting my arms over their shoulders.  The one on the left was the one I mentioned earlier, who did the head count at the market (by the name of Nongdee, perhaps?), but the one on my right was Notoba.

Nongdee (we'll call her that.  It may be right!) was an open-faced, smiley, confident girl.  Notoba, on the other hand, seemed like a puppy that is used to being kicked.  She often looked almost furtive, but seemed like her heart would burst with happiness when I put my arm around her shoulders or got her to sit on my knee.

The first night the kids went to bed shortly after meditation, but the next night was Christmas Eve and we did carolling.  This involved vast numbers of children and all the volunteers wandering around in the darkness until we bumped into houses (I think the kids knew where they were going...), when we would sing a couple of Christmas carols.  The occupants of the house would then hand over a little money or a gift - the huge bunch of bananas was a hit - which an older kid would collect, to later be shared out between all the kids.  This singing/wandering in the Thai jungle thing lasted hours, but the whole time Notoba stayed firmly attached to me.  The only times she let go was when she went to fetch me a banana and when another kid took my head torch and caused the strap to come undone.  Fiercely jealous of not just me, but of my possessions, she leapt like a little wildcat, snatching my head torch from the other kid so she could fix it for me.  I tried to take it and fix it myself, but she wouldn't let me, insisting on fixing it herself before she gave it back.

The whole week this type of behaviour continued - when camping she would ran to my side if I waved her over and if I walked away she would sit hugging my water bottle until I returned.  Most nights she insisted on giving me a good-night kiss before bed.

On the last night, I told her I would be leaving early the next day.  She gave me a hug that lasted ten minutes and I suspect she was crying.  I felt so terrible leaving her.  Finally I called her away from the others, into the darkness.  I had a little toy attached to my backpack, a pink 'baby Elmo' that Jeff had won me in a game machine here.  I asked her if she liked it and she nodded furiously, so I took it off and gave it to her.  I told her it was something to remember me by.  She looked overjoyed, but in a way that was almost too much for her to handle, that almost bordered on horror.  She clutched it to her chest and ran away into the darkness, off to her bedroom, forgetting to give me my good-night kiss.

That was the last I saw of her.  The next morning Jeff and I left early for elephant riding and river rafting and she wasn't up yet.  However, I had told her she should write to me in Japan and when the non-rafting volunteers caught up to us, I was handed a letter she had written me that morning.  She had asked another volunteer how to spell everything properly and wrote it out painstakingly.  She finished it with an illustration of her and I, depicted as pink Elmos.

This week I finally got my act together to reply to her.  I am sending her some photos of the two of us, a one page letter, plus some Hello Kitty writing paper and pencils so she can write to me.  Also some origami paper with Engrish instructions.  I don't know how much use that will be...  

Anyway, as you can see, Notoba and I were pretty tight and I felt awful leaving her.  Apparently she has one buddy in the orphanage, but it's clear to see she doesn't get along with the other kids well, so the lack of a mother is especially hard.  

I should stop here because it's past midnight and this blog is already incredibly long, but I just wanted to mention the camping trip.  We had been told we would go camping in the jungle and we were not disappointed!  To get to our spot we had to wade three rivers, ride in the back of a ute crammed with gear, then trek along a cow path for what seemed like hours but was, I suspect, about 15 minutes.  We also had to avoid fresh poop on the aforementioned cow path.  Easier said than done when you're wearing a backpack while carrying three pillows, a couple of sleeping bags, two days worth of water and a packet of toilet roll!

Setting up camp involved cutting bamboo to size, then using it as tent poles to hang tarps across (none of us were wilderness-savvy enough for this job - we just watched the older boys work!).  The first girls tent looked like a real tent and even had mosquito netting on either end, brought especially from the bedrooms.  The second, older girls tent, had one tent-like side and one vertical side.  The boys tent,., well, what it looked like was irrelevant because it was full of ants.  The boys ended up storing their gear under there at one end, away from the ant trails, and all sleeping round the riverside campfire under the brilliant moon.  

I had really really wanted to sleep outside too, but I thought I was being stupid because I had a space saved in the tent with the mosquito nets, plus my bedding was all wrapped round Notoba (the space next to mine) and I would need to carefully take my pillow from under her head to take it outside.  However, come sleeping time, one of the other volunteers didn't have a space to sleep AND there was a spare sleeping mat, so I decided it was a sign - I was meant to be sleeping outside.  

Having just farewelled Jeff about 15 minutes earlier, I cheerfully trooped back to the campsite with my bed roll, sleeping bag and pillow and announced I was there to stay.  I set myself up on the last bit of sand (most of the riverbank was stones), at the head of Jeff and the other male volunteers and lay there gazing at the beauty around me.  It was an incredibly beautiful night - a full moon, or one night off it, and a clear sky.  It was one of those brilliant nights when you could read a book by moonlight.  I knew I should sleep, but I couldn't stop marveling at the moonlit jungle and the silvery river only metres away.  Finally I managed to shut my eyes and drift off to sleep.  

Kind of.  The downside of the camp was that kids love to camp.  And they feel sleeping on camp is a waste of time.  A select group of boys (in all fairness probably the same ones who made the tents and set everything up) stayed up ALL NIGHT talking and feeding the bonfire.  I am a pretty heavy sleeper, so I believe I got some sleep.  Maybe even two hours of it.  Cue spending the next day feeling like a zombie until I snuck into the little girls tent, lay down in my original spot and took a really long nap!!  

There were two other incidents which I consider particularly worthy of mention during our camping trip.  The first was quite early in the morning while we were all still lolling around in our blankets, not quite giving up on sleep.  Suddenly one of the male volunteers looked down at his bedding and said, "Oh, hello little scorpion." Wtf?!?!  While it was small, as I later told the guy, he deserves 10 million cool points for his relaxed response to finding a scorpion in his bed!  

End of story is he lost the scorpion in his blanket, found it again, then one of the kids knocked the stinger off it and left it to wander around our beds again.  Err... ok!  

Our second wildlife adventure started off more tame.  We were cleaning up the camp, preparing to leave, when one of the female volunteers shrieked and dropped the rubbish bag she was holding.  Out crawled a decent sized spider - not as large as Avondale spiders in Auckland or the Huntsman spiders here in Japan, but with a larger body than either of those.  Sarah, one of the Hiroshima volunteers, loves insects, so she came over to have a look, then picked it up and moved it away.  

About half an hour later I felt something on my ankle.  I looked down to see the same large spider on my leg.  Startled, I shrieked and kicked my leg, sending it flying.  I then felt foolish having reacted so badly to 'just a spider', so I went over to check it was ok.  But this time one of the 'boys' (he's at uni) from Baan Dada saw. "Oh, don't touch it!" he told us.  "This one is very poisonous!  In the jungle there is this one and the tarantula; their bite can kill you!"  Sarah, standing next to me, went a little pale.  "So, umm, I shouldn't have picked it up, then?"

However all's well that ends well.  The guy then picked up the spider with a stick and took it deeper into the jungle to throw it away.  The kids had protected us from the scorpion and the killer spider, even while they poisoned us by cooking with river water (over the camping trip we had three volunteers go home early feeling ill!) and most of us returned to the orphanage with nothing worse than ant bites!  

I'm going to stop now because this has got crazy long.  Oh, ok, just a couple more points, in reference to some of our facebook photos:

* The pole pictures.  The deal was the poles were greased with car oil and cooking oil.  Prizes were tied to the top.  Kids had to figure out how to climb up there to get the prizes.  Kids are amazing.  They will do anything for some free candy!

* The gift-giving pictures.  On Christmas day we took the Baan Dada kids out to the Mon and Karen communities.  I had come to Thailand viewing the orphanage kids as the ones to be pitied, but I realised on Christmas how wrong I was.  The Baan Dada kids had so much to be thankful for - they were rescued from the lives of poverty and hunger that was their fate in the communities they came from.  And they know it.  They were amazing about sharing with each other and they loved the opportunity to give gifts to other kids.  Christmas truly is about giving, isn't it?  I realised the best 'gift' we gave the Baan Dada kids was the money to buy gifts to give to other kids!  

The highlight of my Christmas day was watching one of the older Baan Dada boys who had returned to the orphanage for Christmas, dressed in his skinny jeans, smart shirt and shades, leaping off the back of the truck and running up to a little girl on the deck of a bamboo pole house, arms laden with gifts.  The little girl, only a toddler, looked so amazed at all the gifts handed up to her and could only look to her mother for confirmation that it was real.  Then the guy jogged back up to the truck, leaving the gifts next to the girl, the only colour or adornment in the bare brown house on its patch of dirt.  This young man wouldn't have looked out of place in any big, fashionable city, but he had a background that meant he would appreciate the worth of everything he had, in a way we can never truly understand.  

Ok, now I really really need to get to bed!  I intended to get up and exercise before work tomorrow morning, but it's 1am now so I doubt that's going to happen!  Never mind - this blog entry was something I had been meaning to do for the longest time.  I hope to later tell you a little about our week being tourists, but it's much less important, to my mind, than sharing our experiences at Baan Dada.

I hope you're all well.

C

xo

Last one for 2012

Hey everyone!!

I'm going to keep this short, because I've got things to do, but this is me signing out for the year!!

As soon as I finish this, I'll be powering down my laptop so I can load my stuff in the car before Closing Ceremony, so I can make a quick getaway.  At the apartment, I'll have a few minutes to get changed before our taxi arrives to take us and our luggage up to the train station (usually we walk, but Jeff's still feeling light-headed and sick after being out with the flu for ages, and I don't fancy carrying BOTH our packs, so I think taxi is best!).  There we will just on a train for an hour and bit, then we grab some dinner from our favourite bakery enroute to the bus stop where we will catch our four hour bus to the airport.  At the airport we will either wait around for the best part of an hour to catch the free shuttle to our hotel, or we will decide that at 10pm it's not a good idea to wait an hour just to save a few yen and will take a taxi to our hotel.  Right now I'm pretending we'll do the former, but I think we can all see how this will work out...

Anyway, we can catch some shuteye, then at 7:30am we have to be back at the airport, and this time we hope to avail ourselves of the free shuttle.  AND THEN WE FLY TO THAILAND!!!  Via somewhere, but we'll forget that.  I don't like stopovers, so I'm not thinking about it.  WE FLY TO THAILAND!!!

We'll spend one week at the orphanage, then ten days in Bangkok, exploring the city and doing day trips out.  It's going to be amazing!  I can't believe I'm going to eat Thai for 17 days!!  Thai and Indian are, like, totally my fav!!  I actually have no idea what else to expect, but I know there will be food and it will be spicy and I will love it!

Back in the here and now, I still have a big pile of student journals on my desk.  We told the students they had to have finished 20 journal entries by the end of winter vacation.  It sounded good at the time.  Result 1 was that the last two weeks of school, when Charly intended to do Wide Island View work and prepare for Thailand, she ended up taking journals home to mark in bed (strict no-no taking work home here, but I can't work until midnight at school.  Even my Japanese workmates aren't that bad!) and being unable to see her desk for a fortnight.  (Sorry, I will stop talking about myself in the third person now.  Bad habit!)  Result 2 is forecasted.  Currently the 20 student classes have an average of 2 or 3 students who have completed their 20.  Which means there are 17 or 18 in each class that HAVEN'T finished.  Which means 17 or 18 journals from each class will be on my desk when I return.  I have 16 classes.  I just did the maths for you and that's 280 journals.  Welcome back to school, Charly!!!  Oh dear!!  I really should have thought this through better!!

Now it really is time for me to pack up my laptop and bag and put everything away.  Maybe I can get through one or two of those journals before I leave :S

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!
xo

An Encounter in Hiroshima

Currently I'm sitting at my desk with half an hour before cleaning time.  I spent Monday to Thursday doing odd jobs and catching up on things at school while the kids were in exams and now I'm officially bored.  Yes, classes started up again today, but I only teach two a day and the last month or two I haven't even been planning my own classes (it's amazing how long you can spend planning a class when you only do it once every two weeks!).

So now I'm doing something I have been procrastinating for some time - telling you about a very odd conversation we had last time we were in Hiroshima.  I may have forgotten things, in which case I hope the other two present will remind me and I'll amend myself, adding in the other social atrocities referred to in the conversation.

To set the scene, Jeff and I are having dinner with an ALT friend, Ana, at our favourite Irish bar, Molly Malone's, in Hiroshima.  We are happily enjoying the awesome food, foreign beer and good company.  However, Ana went to the bar to get another drink and, on her way back, she was stopped by a young vertically-challenged Marine from the table behind us.  I'm not sure what he was saying to her, but she came back blushing and looking awkward.  She slipped out to have a cigarette (and avoid the Marine), but he was clearly bored and wandered over, all 5ft of him, to talk to Jeff and I.

Hearing our accents, he was delighted.  "I used to work in Australia!  You guys are cool!"
"Err, actually we're not Australian, we're from New Zealand."
"Yeah!  You guys are cool!  I really liked Australia!"
"No, New Zealand.  It's not part of Australia."
"Oh, yeah, but... I love your country."
#^&^&^%%!!!!!!!
My year living in America I was totally used to people not knowing what or where NZ was, but Japan LOVES NZ and I've been spoilt.  It was so hard listening to someone that didn't know - and didn't believe - that NZ was actually a separate country!

A little later, Jeff asked what he was doing in Australia.
"I was blowing shit up."
"??"
"We were in the outback blowing shit up.  It was really far out, heaps of abos!"
Jeff and I meet eyes.  He raises his eyebrows at me and I take a deep breath.
"It was a place called Katherine," he continues.  "Do you know it?"
"Ah, no, we don't."
He looked surprised.  "Why not?"
"Ah, cos it's a different country!"
"What about Darwin?  We went to Darwin, too.  Have you been there?"
"No.  No we haven't."
Again, the surprised face.  "Really?"
"Australia is quite far from NZ.  You have to take a plane.  For at least two hours"
Blank face.

By this point Ana had come back and whispered to me, "I'm so concerned that he is allowed to use explosives!"

But it wasn't just USA-NZ international relations that he was out to destroy.  Things went from bad to worse as Jeff continued trying to have a polite conversation...

"So," Jeff asked, "how do you like Japan?"
"Oh, I fuckin' hate it," he replied.  "But it's cool being in Hiroshima cos, you know, we bombed the shit out of it and stuff."
At this point I start looking for any holes in the floor to crawl into before anyone sees me talking to this guy.

In an effort to change the subject Jeff started a conversation about America.  "I've been to America," Jeff told him.  "I did a three week tour that started in San Francisco."
"San Francisco?!" he repeated.  "You're not a faggot, are you?!"
Oh good Lord... America, why did you let him out?!  You can keep idiots like this to yourself, please!
Future notes for our Marine friend:
1. That is offensive language.  Highly, highly offensive.  But I'm not even going to bother telling you that because you haven't even got your head round the fact NZ is not part of Australia.  Even though I told you six times in the last 20 minutes.
2. If Jeff took offense to that... Well he's a foot taller than you.  Just saying.
3. If he said yes... what you going to do then????  Run away screaming???  (Yes, it did cross Jeff's mind to answer in the affirmative!)

And finally, just to ruin any lingering intelligence we thought he may have possessed, Jeff asked him where he was from.  "Virginia," he told us.  Jeff and I couldn't place it, so we asked him what it was next to.  His brow wrinkled in thought for a few moments.  Finally he had to turn to his friend and ask, "What's next to Virginia?"  The answer, for those non-Americans, turns out to be West Virginia.

I could see Jeff wanted to start banging his head on the solid wooden table as it would have been more intellectually stimulating, but he politely refrained.  Finally his friends told him they had to get back to base and the Marines bid us goodnight.

That was a very very special conversation.  We get a warped view of the world over here - all the English speakers we interact with here, whether Japanese or foreign, are university educated people.  It's easy to forget that there are plenty of idiots that speak English too!  Although that guy may have been the most uneducated person I've ever spoken to.  He made my Downs Syndrome aunt look smart.  At least she can hold a conversation without offending the other party multiple times!  And, as Ana kept reminding us with a worried expression, he is in charge of guns and explosives.

That conversation was one of the most surreal experiences I've had here.  For the rest of the evening, walking arm-in-arm through the streets of Hiroshima, Jeff and I laughed in disbelief and shock at the things this guy had said.

I'm trying really hard to end on something clever here, but I also know both America and the Marines get a bad rep (it's unfortunate that the least educated people in America tend to be exported the most!), so I guess if I can't say something nice, I won't say anything at all!

You'll be relieved to know I'm unscrambled

Hey everyone,

Once again, apologies for the long delay on writing one of these.  Fun fact: Charly considers this a weekly blog.  (Note last blog was written a month ago!)

So... the last few weeks I have felt like someone took out my brain and replaced it with scrambled eggs.  I think it all started with coming down with a cold.  Somehow, once I was sick, I couldn't get myself to bed on time, I ate badly and therefore had no energy and I got nothing useful done in my free time.  My running tapered off to almost nothing, I got super behind on the Wide Island View website and I had a mounting pile of student journals to check on my work desk.  It was a bad cycle where the more I got behind, the more panicky and inefficient I got.

However, I'm finally feeling back on track!  I had a weekend of nothing but hanging out in Jinseki, catching up on sleep and relaxing mainly.  I was then determined to not get low on sleep again (I think all my inefficiency issues stem from tiredness) and to prioritise things.  This has meant some small changes - less Japanese study on my phone and throwing my cookie stash in the back of the wardrobe - and some bigger ones - like getting to bed by 9 or 10pm a couple of nights a week so I can get up at 5am to do a big run before work (how to feel virtuous all day in one step: get up at 5am and run 12km!).

This is now the second week of newly-organised Charly.  Admittedly I got to bed too late to do another huge run today, but I got up at 6am to run 5km.  That proved to be a much bigger ask than I expected.  Not until I was dressed, warmed up and outside did I realise it was raining.  Like, really raining.  Not quite in the downpour category, but wet enough that when I got back the only dry patches were between my shoulder blades, the small of my back and between my legs.  When I got in the door in my squelchy shoes I had to immediately strip and eat my porridge in my underwear with a sweatshirt over my shoulders and a towel to catch my hair drips.  If there is an exercise god, I hope I get double the calorie burn for running in that weather.  It wasn't pleasant.

But it's not only exercise that's back on track - I had a big realisation about the Wide Island View - namely that I was a slack-arse who was not keeping up with everything I should be doing, but also that I should be delegating everything I could.  As such, I have handed on the job of the WIV facebook account to the ever-organised Ashley.  I am SO happy about this and wonder why I didn't do it earlier.  She has created a whole new page, so people can be fans, rather than friends of the fake person, and is slowly posting the links to all the articles loaded in the last couple of months.  She is doing an amazing job AND I don't have that job hanging over me anymore.  That means when I have time to do WIV stuff, I can focus on the important bits of being editor - that is, actually editing.  Yay!

What else was involved in getting my life back on track?  I booked our hotels for Bangkok.  One is more of an apartment in a complex that has a lovely-looking pool (yay!!) and the second is the Shanghai Mansion, staying in the Ying Hua room ( http://www.shanghaimansion.com/bangkok-hotel/Bangkok-Accommodation/Bangkok-Ying-Hua.html ).  It looks AMAZING and I'm so excited to stay there!!

Do you know that story about the rocks in the jar?  The one where the professor asks his students how you fit a pile of sand, a pile of small rocks, a pile of larger rocks and few big ones into the jar?  If you start with the sand, you'll never fit everything in, but if you start with the big rocks, then the medium, then the small and finish with the sand, you can fit much more?  Well, I think my problem was I filling my jar with sand first.  Or at least the small rocks.  I've now cut the 'small rocks' from my To Do list and have just accepted that if I have extra time I'll sort that stuff, but it's much more important to address my 'big rocks' - sleep, exercise, healthy eating, quality time with Jeff, my teaching and the WIV site.  In fact, the last two may be medium rocks (just don't tell the Japanese that my paid employment isn't the highest priority in my life! :P  ).

In other news... this weekend just finished was a three-day weekend.  We weren't organised enough to go anywhere (I never realised quite how great the Japanese were at making the most of travel opportunities until I found there were zero hotel rooms free in Kyoto and only capsule hotels available in Osaka!!).  So we decided to visit Naoshima on Saturday ( http://www.wideislandview.com/2012/08/naoshima-weekend-escape-to-a-land-of-wonders/ ).  On Friday we came down to my apartment, ready to get an early morning train to Naoshima.  That night we went to a ramen place a few minutes walk from my apartment.  As the old guy next to us promised, it was delicious.  But within an hour or two of getting back, we both started to feel unwell.  Jeff thinks it was the stomach virus that was going around one of his schools, but I think it was suspicious timing that we both got hit within an hour of each other...  Whether it was the ramen or a stomach virus (I refuse to consider that it was my homemade rice pudding!), I guess we'll never know, but I'd be very hesitant to eat there again!!

Anyway, on Saturday we felt well enough in the arvo to go shopping at the outlet mall in Kurashiki.  We bought Jeff's Christmas present and a Christmas pudding and ended our day by going to a games arcade, where Jeff won himself a Japanese cat toy and me a Rilakkuma toy.  So now our work bags are looking very Japanese!  We so Japanese.  Japanese teenagers.  Not respectable working professionals.  I think by Japanese standards I really don't act my age.  Maybe a little bit by NZ standards too, but by Japanese standards... what's wrong with me that I'm 28 and married with no children??  How does Jeff cope with that??  He needs to teach his wife her wifely responsibilities!  Children, house-cleaning and rice for breakfast every day, that's what he should be demanding!

Sorry I'm getting off track there.  Jeff sent me a really interesting article on 'devil wives' ( http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/life/7968952/The-problem-of-Japans-devil-wives ) that has got me thinking (again) about the inequalities between the sexes in Japan.  Recently I was told this info (quoting here from this article ( http://www.japannewsreview.com/society/national/20071109page_id=2934 ): Japan ranked 91st out of 128 countries in the World Economic Forum’s annual ranking of gender-equal countries presented on Thursday, the lowest ranking among all high income countries except for South Korea and five Middle Eastern countries.

While that is not really surprising, it is still alarming.  Sometimes I get used to the differences and think I'm imagining things.  When I hear about things like that I feel vindicated, that it's not me going crazy or being hyper-sensitive.  I really do live in a country where people are surprised that my husband cooks, where people are surprised that I am married but don't have kids, where I needed my husband to sign my paperwork so I could hire my car and where most of my female students aspire to being wives.

Jeff had a good point about the slow rate of change of these out-dated views - in Japan you usually have three generations living under one roof - and Japanese old people live forever.  At home if your granny complains about your clothing you just remember to put a cardi on to keep her happy when you visit, but if you live under the same roof as your grandparents, you are constantly influenced by their attitudes and values.  As such, it would take much, much longer to change views.  He also suggested that could be why things change in the cities faster than in the country.  I think he may have a point...  (well, obviously, else I wouldn't have bothered to type it here :P  )

I hope this was long enough to thoroughly make up for the month-long drought.  I still mean to show you some of the funnier student apology letters.  Exam week is coming up soon so I'll try to post some of them then.

I hope you are all well.  Remember to put in the big rocks first and have a good week!

Charly
xo

P.S. Please buy raffle tickets!  Sales are still pitiful!

Student journal

Hey,

So I just read a student journal:

I want to beautiful face.
Just like Charly.
I want to more cute.
So I fite every day.
And I am going to cute.


I'm really not sure how I feel about this.  I mean, obviously it's flattering, but also it makes me sad - the idea of a little Japanese girl 'fighting' to look like a tall, pale, blonde woman.  And then another part of me admires her gumption - "I am going to cute"!

This reminds me a little of when a (drunk) girl at a party told me that she had heard about my au pairing experience and I had inspired her.  I was so happy to hear that, and then she carried on...  "You inspired me to do what I really want, so I got a boob job!"  Oh, the irony.  Never, ever did I think I would inspire anyone to get their boobs done!  The world works in mysterious ways!

Guess I just have to hope I don't inspire any Japanese girls to do anything crazy like try to bleach their skin.  Oh wait...  :S


In other news, our fundraising plans are coming along - I have spoken to the cafe where we will hold our fundraising lunch and they are in.  Now to choose a date...  Probably Dec 8th to give us a bit of prep time and make it Christmas themed.

The raffle is still going very slowly, although I have had another couple of people promise to buy tickets.  Hopefully I can sell a few to ALTs in Hiroshima this weekend.  Cross fingers!!

If anyone has any more fundraising suggestions, they are appreciated!

Hope you're all doing well and inspiring people in all the right ways.

xo

Planning, planning, planning!

Hello everyone,

How does this Sunday evening find you?  Personally I'm feeling terribly guilty - I should go for a run, in preparation for my 10km race next Saturday, but I have come down with a sore throat.  In the interest of shaking it quickly, I have decided to substitute a 10km training run with a 500m walk to the supermarket to buy lemons, so I can sit at home drinking lemon and honey drinks!  At least I can get an early night tonight and hopefully be back to normal tomorrow morning.  Cross fingers!  I hardly ever get sick (knock on wood!), so it would be terrible luck to be crook just in time for the race I signed up for ages ago and have slowly worked my way up to!!

In other news, Jeff and I have made our Christmas plans.  We will be joining a group of other English teachers to visit Thailand and volunteer in an orphanage for a week.  We will finish just in time to travel to Bangkok for New Year's Eve and will spend a few days exploring before we head back to Japan.  I'm sure I don't need to tell you how excited we are!  Except that, we are really ridiculously excited.  I mean, we went to Malaysia and Singapore last year and that was fun, but I'm at least five times more excited over this.  Partly because we are going with friends, which will make the experience so much more fun, and partly because of the volunteer aspect.  Anyone who knows me will know how much I love volunteering and fundraising for charity.  Yes, I stress way too much about it, but I also get the most incredible buzz out of helping others.  I am all too aware that I am a flawed, selfish, materialistic, self-absorbed human and volunteering gives me a chance to escape that (if anyone who works for a charity wants to offer me a job, I'm back in NZ in August!!).

The only downside to our Thailand plans are that we need to fundraise 15,000 yen each before we leave (a little over $200).  I THOUGHT I could raise some money fairly easily with a raffle - one in Japan and one in NZ, with a prize of 1/4 of the money raised from the raffle.  But I've had a really poor reception for it thus far, so I'm just hoping people are thinking about it for a few days before they donate...  Cross fingers!

Maybe my family have already sucked all my NZ contacts dry - I know Laura has been fundraising frantically for her two school trips and Mum and Kate did some fundraising for the Thai elephant sanctuary before they went.

Our other fundraising plan is to contact a wee cafe we know and ask them if we can hold a function there in December, then sell tickets to a lunch there.  We have yet to speak to the cafe (something we were supposed to do this weekend and didn't get onto!), but cross fingers they like the idea and we can go ahead in organising that.

What else is new?  Jeff has started counting down till we leave.  Sometimes I think it's because he is really anxious to leave, like when he tells me it's only 9 months and one week of classes left till NZ, but then other times I can see he will really miss Japan, like when he said, sadly, that it's our last autumn in Japan.  I agree that missing out on the autumn colours of Japan will be one of the saddest things about moving back to NZ.  Guess who will be planting Japanese maples when she gets a garden...!

Ok, it's dinner time now.  Time to heat my asparagus soup, then go get those lemons.  Then I have an evening of writing my latest Wide Island View (www.wideislandview.com) article before getting an early night!

Night,
Charly
xo

Bits and bobs

Hey there,

I am SO overdue on a post, I know!

At the moment I procrastinating not one, not two, but THREE important things (that would be TEFL, Wide Island View and work!), so I'm going to keep this really brief.  I just realised that the longer I put it off, the harder it would be too write because it would be so long ago I would forget what had happened in the interim.

So, for ease of reference, I'm gonna bullet point this...

• JLPT - that is, the Japanese test we sat way back when.  Well, we got our results back.  Jeff passed with flying colours, though not quite as high as I had foretold, and I failed by one point, so not quite as low as I foretold.  The plan was I would resit this December, but the applications closed while we were in NZ and we were so busy running round getting ready for that that I didn't have time to get hold of the paperwork, never mind get it done, complete payment etc.  Maybe next July, if I'm organised!

• New Zealand - was awesome.  I was so excited by all the new beers and ciders that have turned up in the supermarket since our last visit home!  We had a nice time catching up with family (well, those that were around, anyway.  Kate and Beth didn't even SUGGEST flying home from London to catch up... no love!) and later friends.  The wedding in Whitianga was really lovely and there was only five minutes of serious rain where the ceremony had to be shifted to the shed at the end of the garden!  I was really nervous about my wee speech at the reception, but despite Jeff's original verdict of my speech when I practised in the car ("That's kinda what I was going to say.  But mine was going to be much better."), I upped my game once I was in front of the 80-strong audience and Jeff declared I was "awesome".  Which means that either I was, indeed, "awesome", or that Jeff had had a lot of beer by that point.  Either is possible, but I'm telling myself it was the first!  Anyway, once I had got by speech out of the way, I was just left with warm fuzzies that I could be part of the 'team' at my good friends' wedding.

• Marathon - yes, that 10km 'marathon' is fast approaching!  On Wednesday I did an 8km run and felt AMAZING - possibly due to the new NZ-purchased running shoes!  But then yesterday I went for a wee run of a mere 5km and felt like I was dying.  I had to break to walk a bunch of times, I was sniffling, my ears got blocked and I felt queasy after.  Guess you really can't pick your good days and bad days.  Now I just have to start praying that November 3rd is a good day!!!  

• What else??  If you haven't heard yet, Jeff and I have made a final decision that we will be moving back to NZ when our contracts finish at the end of July.  And by NZ we MAY mean Australia.  I don't like it, but I know I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face when the pay is so much better over there!!  We keep discussing our options but I know we are wasting our breath.  Ultimately we just have to see where we can get jobs.  I was slightly relieved last night to talk to friends, another couple here in Japan, that seem to have a similar issues to us when it comes time to leave Japan.  That fear of moving somewhere when you have no job, no home (although I know Jeff and I can stay at my parents') and need to just pick a place to start a new life.  I guess everyone goes through the same thing, but it seems twice the hassle when you have two people to accommodate and feed with no income!  

Ok, I know that's very brief but I really need to finish TEFL - oh, that's right, TEFL.  I meant to explain my TEFL course closes on the 24th of October, so I have only TEN days left to finish up.  And I still have 20 hours to do.  So I really should finish this pile of student journals so that I can do TEFL at my visit school rather than carting over work to finish from my base school, phew!!  

Currently it's 3:10pm and at 3:25pm I have to attend a meeting in the gym for 35 minutes.  It will be all conducted in Japanese.  I have no idea what it's for and I doubt I will have any better idea by the time the meeting is over.  I used to think meetings were hard to understand when I worked for a geothermal power company, but I didn't know how easy I had it!!  

I hope you're all doing well and I apologise for this being so long overdue and not including ANY funny student quotes.  Almost quarter of my students owe me letters of apology for forgetting their dictionaries, so I promise to put them on here.  I love student apology letters so much, they make me happy.  I get gems like this one, one of the first to be turned in, "I'm sorry.  I didn't bring my dictionaly in school every day.  I think I want to bring it.'  I don't know what the 'I think' translates as, but it's WELL over-used by my students!!

Oh damn, there's the bell!  Time to post this!  I haven't had a chance to proof-read so I apologise now for any mistakes!  

Charly 

xo

Results soon!!!

Hey,

This is a short post (I should be doing TEFL.  I've been pretty bad about staying on top of that lately...) to mention JLPT results.

Do you remember a couple of months ago Jeff and I sat a Japanese test?  Well, results were theoretically posted yesterday.  Japanese post is crazy efficient, so we can expect our results soon.

So... before they come out I want to post my predictions.  I want to point out now that my estimation of Jeff's result is based on nothing other than my own speculation, his relief at understanding lots of it and my knowledge of my husband's ridiculous modesty (I always struggle to even remember that word.  My subconscious is definitely trying to tell me something!).

Ok, so for Jeff's result I predict: 96%.  Or 94%.  But probably 96%.
For my result I predict: 29%
Further notes to my result: I think I will have passed the Listening and Kanji sections, but will have had those pass grades dragged down by a very poor result in the Reading & Grammar section.

Now we are just waiting to find out...

Btw I do not have an intuitive bone in my body and, as such, have no luck at this type of guessing, so don't be surprised when I'm way off.

However, to counterbalance my assumably inaccurate guesses, I'm also going to guess our friend Zach's result:  65%.  This is a very safe guess as he is ridiculously consistent in every test he takes, seemingly irrespective of the level!

I will let you know when the results come through!!

Charly
xo

My birthday!

Hey everyone,

Today is that special occasion that comes once a year... my birthday!  (Ok, if you answered 'Beth's birthday', you still get a point for being correct.  Damn birthday-stealing little sisters :P ).

It's been fun - starting last night when Jeff cooked me homemade hamburgers  (because he didn't want the hassle of cooking my birthday dinner in my little apartment tonight) and we had freshly baked carrot cake for dessert, with lemon cream cheese icing.  It was Jeff's first attempt at carrot cake and it was really awesome! He was a little short on carrot, so he added raisins, and they were a great chewy little addition!

This morning I had my English Club students coming in, so I decided to hold a traditional Kiwi birthday party - the type you had when you were six years old.  We started with a scavenger hunt ('a magazine' took them a while - I rejected one book and two comics before they got the right idea!), then had an egg and spoon race (that seemed to be their favourite game!), blew up balloons and had morning tea, followed by Musical Chairs (two kids gave themselves carpet burn and were going on about how much it hurt.  I was sorely tempted to teach them the popular English phrase 'harden up'), did Statues and finished with Pass the Parcel (prizes were sparkly hair ties, One Piece x Hello Kitty stickers and Anpanman tissues)..

At the end I told them the last thing you need at a birthday party is birthday cake, so I pulled out the second half of Jeff's carrot cake (I had done some soul searching the night before, about whether it was better to keep all the cake for myself and therefore have more cake, or share the cake and have more opportunity to brag about my husband's cooking.  It was a hard call, but I decided I didn't need the calories from an ENTIRE carrot cake, so it tipped the scales in favour of sharing).  I gave them each a slice while I gave my little fifteen year olds important life advice, "When you get married, make sure you marry a man who can cook."  How many of them understood I'm not sure, but they were nodding with big eyes.  That may be because of the cake I was wielding though.  However, I happen to know that there ARE Japanese men that can cook, they are just few and far between, so if my English Club kids heed my words of wisdom, hopefully at least a couple of them will get guys that help out around the home.  Leaving my students more time to pursue their careers as translators and airport staff!  (I know that some guys can cook because when I worked teaching guys at a shipping company I used to tease them about 'cooking' instant noodles, so they would get all indignant and tell me the things they could cook.  One guy cooked his girlfriend a three course dinner, including dessert!  No surprises he's taken!)

Anyway, they were really impressed with Jeff's cake and were HUGE fans of the lemon cream cheese icing. Such big fans, in fact, that when the cake was all gone they used the icing on cookies (understandable) and spicy chips (chips as in crisps, not as in fries.  Times NZ English fails me...).  Apparently it was good on chips.  I took their word for it.  Finally they managed to convince one super shy girl that because it looked so like mayonnaise, she should try it with one of the boiled eggs from the egg and spoon race!  She kept complaining it was sweet while the other girls kept repeating 'mayonnaise, mayonnaise!'.  I was going 'yeah, it's sweet!  There is lots of sugar in that!'  As I don't like mayo, I was very offended that they considered that delicious icing to be approximate to it.  But it's probably good they did what they did, because they got boiled egg in the last of the icing, which stopped me just finishing it up straight out of the bowl...

Tonight Jeff and I are going to a great little cafe in Fukuyama for dinner.  Jeff hasn't been there before, but I often have my Wide Island View meetings there.  The couple that run it spent some time living in Townsville, Australia, so they have great English and their cafe is rather international feeling.  They have a pie on the menu, but it's served with rice (??), so we'll go check it out tonight.  I'm telling Jeff not to hold his breath...

Ok, time to pack up and get ready to leave.  Hope your day is as fun as mine!
xo

Much writing about nothing

Things are pretty quiet here in Japan atm.  Jeff and I are trying to keep our heads down and save money after our road-trip and before the expensiveness that is Hiroshima Orientation (we will be paid back for most of our Orientation expenses, but not for a couple of months).

I'm pretty excited though - two new JETs turn up in our area this weekend (well, actually today - or was it yesterday even? - but I won't be there until the weekend so that's when it counts ;)  ) and another (the one who is employed by Jeff's Board of Education) arrives the following week.  It will be fun to meet the new people and it will be a good distraction from the heat.

On the topic of heat, I'm trying to face August with a fighting attitude.  I only have to last 31 days, then the worst of summer is OVER (just sucks my birthday is in there.  Beer garden it is, then??).  Admittedly things won't cool down until about mid-September, but September is a month of hope because I wake every day thinking 'maybe THIS is the day it will cool down!'  In the meantime I'm trying to ignore the fact that my body hates hot summers (I get itchy legs, a rash on my hands and feet and zits are having a party on my face.  A face that is too sweaty to hide with makeup).

Jeff and I are fairly sure we will only stay one more year (although we won't make a final decision until January), so I'm just celebrating that this is our last full summer in Japan.  Next summer we will escape to the chilly dreariness of NZ winter.  And we will be SO happy about it!!

Currently the kids are on their six week summer holiday.  Only in Japan, 'being on holiday' means classes ONLY in the morning.  Wtf??  It seems to mean less breaks for teachers too, so I feel doubly guilty sitting in the office playing with my smartphone (hey, sometimes I'm studying Japanese on it!  Sometimes...) or tapping away on my laptop.

The good news is that my application for TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) funding was accepted, so last Friday I started my online TEFL course.  The only catch is usually these courses would be done over a year or so (mine is a 100 hour course), but for my course to be subsidised I need to get all my paperwork in by 31st January, meaning I have much less time than others could take.  Then, when I was paying for my course, but unable to change because this was the course I had nominated when applying for funding, I noticed in the small print that they only give you three months to finish, or you need to pay almost the original amount again to get an extension.  Yikes!

Initially I had a little panic attack, but once I started breathing again I realised it was a good thing, because it would allow me time to study Japanese if I want to re-sit my N5-level Japanese test.  So... my game plan is to work like crazy in the summer holidays left to me!  When I started the course I had five weeks of student holiday left.  Although I have a few training things in Hiroshima, most of that time is open for me to do WHATEVER I WANT.  No excuse for not doing my TEFL, right??  So far so good - I signed up on Friday, did Module 1 on Sat, Module 2 on Sun, my first tutor assessment on Mon, Module 3 took Tues and Wed (feckin' hard grammar!!) and Module 4 on Wed.  Although I'm sure my genkiness will fade (that's best translated as 'gung-ho'ness to those who haven't learnt Japan's favourite word, although dictionaries translate it as energetic), I want to make the most of the initial 'oh, this is new and interesting!' stage.  It's a good feeling charging through it quickly.  And, err, all the better charging through it quickly because I'm organised, instead of charging through it quickly because I left it to the last minute, which is my usual technique!

Anyway, in summary (was going to write 'summery' there... guess that would work too!), we're spending lots of time sitting at our desks with no school-related work to do.  And I'm learning how much I don't know when it comes to grammar.

I hope you're having a good August supping on cold beer or spiked hot chocolate (whichever is more weather appropriate).

Charly
xo

Shikoku road trip

Last night, at 7pm, we got back from our three day road trip round Shikoku.  We put 700km on the odometer, had a bit of colour on our arms and got lots and lots of photos - altogether a successful trip.

In the weekend we got really low on sleep ('accidentally' went to bed at 5:20am on Friday night...!), so on Sunday night we crashed out at 9pm in order to recharge our batteries and wake up bright and early on Monday.  Against all our principles, we woke up at 7 on Monday, despite it being our holiday, and were on the road a bit after 8am.  We took the Shimanami highway - a series of beautiful bridges over small islands, linking Honshu to Shikoku.  I used to take the first two bridges regularly when I worked at the private school on Innoshima and really really really wanted to follow the whole highway to Shikoku.  I was not disappointed!  On the way out there Jeff drove (ok, most of the holiday Jeff drove) while I looked around and took pictures.

When we hit Shikoku we headed down to Kochi - a city in the centre of the island, near the southern coast.  We had a lovely wander round the castle (one of only 12 originals left in Japan) and appreciated the lovely breeze at the top while we took lots of pictures of the view.  Although the castle itself was a much less imposing, grand structure than others, the grounds and gardens were lovely - very green and meandering.

We took advantage of the natural air conditioning at the top of the tower to jump on the smartphones and find our hotel for the night.  Our last minute planning was rewarded with a half price last minute sale on the fancy-schmancy place we had walked past on our way to the castle, so on our way back to the car we ducked in and booked ourselves a very luxurious room for the same price we intended to pay at a budget hotel.  Ah, lovely smelling toiletries and space to put our bags without tripping over them... not to be underestimated!!

In the afternoon we drove to a beach that our Lonely Planet mentioned, describing it as a popular local beach.  Equipped with togs, towel and jandals we headed out... to one of the more bizarre experiences we have had in Japan.  When we reached the beach, there was a large sign reading 'No Swimming - Big Waves'.  We looked at the sign, then looked at the almost waveless ocean.  Back to the sign, back to the ocean...  We took a picture for posterity, then walked across the sand down to the sea, intending to get a picture of me standing on the waters edge looking for these 'big waves'.  But as soon as we transitioned from the dry sand to the wet, we heard a furious whistling.  A man in a cream and blue uniform, epaulettes and all, came running down the beach towards us, waving his hands furiously.  Jeff signalled that we got the message, but he didn't stop loitering and fretting until we were back up onto the concrete path that ran above the high tide point.

We couldn't stop giggling.  The idea of so many people coming to enjoy a beach where they weren't allowed to get wet, and the idea of the almost non-existant waves being dangerous was so ridiculous.  While we wandered, taking pictures and investigating shrines, we noticed a bunch of school children repeatedly getting whistled at and shouted at by another very worked-up guard.  We quietly cheered on the children!

Back at Kochi city we went wandering, looking for dinner inspiration and found what Lonely Planet had described as a bunch of street stalls.  Instead it was like a big foodhall in a factory.  There were all types of food and drink, with crowded wooden benches in the middle.  Jeff went for seared bonito (the local specialty), dipped in yuzu (a yummy type of citrus, something between a lemon and an orange) sauce, accompanied by beer.  I went for the traditional dish of, err, Indian chickpea curry, with a glass of yuzu alcohol.  It was a really tasty dinner and an even better atmosphere.  I had been the one who was unhappy with the other restaurants we had found earlier, while Jeff was so hungry he would have eaten anywhere, so once we found this place - and once Jeff tasted his fish - he couldn't repeat enough how happy he was that I hadn't settled for any of the earlier restaurants.  His eyes glaze over whenever he remembers that meal.

The next day we headed down to Shimanto city - a small, tired-looking city near the southern tip of the island.  On the way we found a real beach - 2km long, decent waves and beautiful warm water.  We spent about an hour diving under the waves and trying to body surf.  When we had enough salt in our eyes and sand in our togs, we headed back to shore, happy and refreshed.

Next stop was Shimanto city, to find our accommodation for the night.  All the hotels felt old and tired and we were quoted prices that didn't reflect the fact that if they didn't rent us the room now, at 4pm on a Tuesday, they weren't going to rent it at all.  We ran round the handful of hotels doing a price comparison (most were not 'modern' enough to be online, apparently!) and we went with the cheapest - stained carpet, air con that was like standing in a gale and 1000 yen more than our beautiful luxury room the night before.

Things perked up at dinner, when we found an Italian place that served the best pizza I've had in Japan.  One was bacon and vegetable (zucchini, broccoli and ochra) and the other was tomato and smoked duck.  The smoked duck one was particularly delicious - salty and tangy.

After dinner we went for a walk along the riverbank where Jeff gave me a lesson in skimming stones and we achieved nothing more than getting another set of clothes completely sweat-soaked.  I'm not sure if Shimanto was actually hotter than anywhere else, but that twilight walk next to the river was the most I've sweated all year!  I thought I was being excessive packing six outfits for three days, but it was spot-on!

The last day was the most driving of our trip.  We drove inland across the bottom of the island, then followed the coast upwards.  The scenery was stunning.  The hillsides above and below us were stepped to allow citrus to be planted on these incredibly steep hills (if there weren't trees on them I would call them cliffs!).  At the base of the hills, waves lapped at tiny little bays where the citrus trees ended, just begging you to explore them by kayak.  Across the water we could make out distant mountains, which Jeff's iphone informed us were Kyushu.

The roads were super narrow and windy and the other traffic was noticeably ruder than up in this area - cars, trucks and motorcycles whizzed past with never a thank-you nod as we squeezed to the side of the road.  All's well that ends well and we didn't die, but there were a few close encounters that got our hearts racing!

After lunch we came upon a little manufactured bay, of the type Japan loves - concrete steps on either side, a shallow slope of yellow sand and a net to keep out any sea creatures that might have thought about joining you (sorry Opo!).  We went for a wade to cool down before finishing the last long leg back home.

Once we were on the highway, favouring speed over sightseeing, I took over driving.  This was great for the bridges, as it allowed Jeff to enjoy the view I had seen on our way over on Monday.  We had some amusing moments trying to take pictures of the road signs for tanuki ('raccoon dogs' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_raccoon_dog) and inoshishi (wild boar) on the highway.  There was some artistic license used in the illustrations - tanuki look like cuddly toys lying on the road while inoshishi look like high speed creatures dashing into the undergrowth.  Anyway, we got some pictures, so hopefully those will be loaded to facebook soon.

Back home we unloaded everything and crashed out pretty early.  We are now in school holidays so Jeff is at his Board of Education, hopefully studying Japanese but probably watching movies, and I'm hanging out at school catching up on the emails I ignored over the last five days.  Tomorrow afternoon I have my English club coming in to school so I should have a think about what I intend to do with them.  It may involve watching Boy.  I don't expect them to understand native-speed English, but I figure they'll understand all the Michael Jackson references.  Will see how much they can watch before they get bored...

Happy holidays to all those who have summer break now, and to those of you working through the winter, focus on the positives - you don't get a sweat up just by breathing!

Farewells

We are currently in a very exciting and sad month.  At the end of July lots of our friends are finishing their contracts and leaving Japan, while in early August we get a bunch of newbies.

Although we have theoretically been through this last year, most of the people we are friends with started at the same time as Jeff and therefore weren't leaving yet (two or three years seems to be the most popular length of stay).  We didn't even go to the general leaving party last year.  This year, however, there have been lots of leaving dinners and drinks and it's all very sad.  I'm so busy sweating and sourcing ice-cream in this crazy summer heat that it keeps slipping my mind that those friends are actually LEAVING, but Jeff keeps reminding me how different the next year will be without the same network of friends we are used to here in Japan.  Personally it's better to just not think about it!

The positive side (well, the two positive sides) is that because there are so many people leaving, there are so many parties! (That sounded Japanese... that wasn't good grammar, was it?)  Last night we had dinner at a beer garden with Gabby, Danny and Maia (their wee one.  Who has grown HEAPS over her time in Japan and is super shy around non-Japanese, even though Jeff and I look way more like her parents than anyone else in Hiroshima!).  The deal is you pay a flat rate (about $50), then eat and drink as much as you like.  Retrospectively maybe 'beer garden' and 'Wednesday night' shouldn't be combined...  It was our first time drinking on a work night and what happened?  Our gas alarm went off at 5:55am!  Cue the two of us stumbling round in our underwear trying to find the source of the noise and shut it up.  To cut a long story short, the building supervisor spent an hour playing round with the fuse box, gas taps outside, phoning the company etc, and finally got it to shut up.  He told me he would get back to me to let me know if it is 'safety'.  Anyway, that was totally off track, sorry - too tired to focus today after our horrific morning!

My point was that it was great seeing Gabby and Danny (especially when I didn't think about not seeing them again in AGES) and that we have not one, but two more all-you-can-drink experiences coming up this week!  Yikes, lol.  It will be a fun weekend though.  Tomorrow after school I will jump on a train and race down to Hiroshima, where Jeff is spending the day planning the August Orientation meeting.  I will dump my stuff at our hotel and head into town with Jeff.  The next day we have a free day on Saturday (read sleeping in and city shopping!), before another party Saturday night.

On Sunday we will fight the alcohol-induced nausea and head back up to my apartment in Fukuyama.  There we will dump our Hiroshima bags and pick up our Shikoku bags, jump in the car and drive to Shikoku island for three days of summer road trip!  Ye-ah!  I think we are finally learning about our travel style - I hate the heat and Jeff gets really cranky in summer crowds, so I think we have got it right with this trip.  It's mid-week so no crowds, it's Shikoku so no crowds, and we're in the car where we can crank the air con and stop for ice-cream as needed.  It sounds like a great three days!

Anyway, I have totally distracted myself from my second good point coming up, which is the new people coming in (apologies for the incredibly rambling nature of this blog.  I'm not even going to reread for grammar mistakes because I'm horrified how all over the place this whole thing is!).  We have three newbies coming in to our local area (that is, within a half hour of our place in the mountains).  I feel a little responsible for them, which is silly, but I think it's because I know what a tough time I had when I first moved here.  The woman who will be the other Jinseki ALT with Jeff I'm particularly keen to meet and help.  This is SUCH a rural place to be and she won't even have a hubby to keep her sane!  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE our village and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but it can be tough when you have to drive so far to get foreign company, or when you miss most of the parties because they are in Hiroshima which is expensive and distant.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for today.  I tried to do an entry to tell you about the fun stuff we have coming up because I'm trying to make a real effort to stop doing such negative blogs, well at least, not all the time.  But this has ended up a complete rambling mess.  See what happens when I don't have something to complain about??

It's now 3:56pm and I finish work at 4:05pm (because that's not a strange time to finish...).  Then I am out of here SO fast.  I will stop at a konbini to treat my lethargy with chocolate (maybe the KitKat Salt & Puff bar... I'm a fan!), then home to my little apartment, where I can nap, sprawl on the floor or read my book without any pressure to work.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone would say anything if I did those things at work, but I'd feel weird about it!

Hope you're all doing well and have similarly fun weekends lined up.

Charly
xo

Apology letters part two

These I typed up ages ago, but due to computer/internet problems I never actually 'publish'ed them.  Better late than never?



I'm going to give you the rest of these too, because they're so darn cute...

I'm sorry.  I forgot an English notebook.
Because I forgot a charly's class.
I will bring an English notebook next class.
I promiss with you!

I'm sorry.
I forget notebook.
A bad thing does not bring a note to a lesson.
I leaves in understanding it.
Next, I'm not forget by any means.

Student journal

This one is not the usual amusing bad English.  This kid is clearly pretty smart and has a sense of humour.  If I was 15, I would want to be friends with this one!

Topic: Imagine you are a famous musician.  Tell me about your band and your life.

I'm a famous musician.
My band is very popular because my band have released beautiful tunes.
I am useful because I write a song.
But I can't sing a song.
My life is a lazy life because my work is very few.

Topic: Tell me why you love Lady Gaga or tell me why you hate Lady Gaga.

I hate Lady Gaga because I don't like her costumes.
Because her costumes make me displease.
I can't understand why she does strange things.
I like Japanese songs better than Western music.
So I hate Lady Gaga.

Topic: If an alien came to Fukuyama, what would you tell them?

Listen to my talk.
Do you understand English?
You are ET.
Your family is worring about you.
You have to go home.
Bye-Bye.
You mustn't come to the earth.

Top 10

I'm concerned that I mainly write complaining posts on here - partly because I think they are more amusing/interesting for my readers and partly because it's a good way for me to offload on people who see things from my point of view (that is, a Westerners point of view).  But... when I'm having a good time, like climbing Mt Fuji (ok, 'good' is relative.  Eventful, achieving, memorable...), I'm too busy to write.  So... to rectify this a little, here is my top ten list of things I will miss when I leave Japan, in no particular order:

1. Okonomiyaki, Hiroshima-style.  Oh cabbage noodle pancake, how I love you!

2. People bending over backwards to help you and apologising for not speaking your language, even though you're in their country!

3. Bento boxes (lunch boxes of rice and various meats and pickled vegetables) - and their availability at every konbini (dairy/convenience store/corner store/etc) and supermarket.  Where else can you get a range of filling meals for $5, 24 hours a day?

4. Konbinis themselves.  24 hours (except for our strange Jinsekikougen-cho one which closes at 9pm, wtf??), selling everything from beer to facewash.  And they NEVER complain about you popping in just to use the toilet!

5. Kei cars.  Tiny little cars with yellow number plates (white is reserved for 'big' cars), they look like something only midget grandmas should drive and they cost almost nothing to run.  Strangely, mine actually has more leg room than my station wagon back home!

6. Students LOVING interacting with you.  They make me feel like the most interesting, amusing person on the planet.  The teachers here look baffled when I try to explain how different it would be teaching teenagers back home.

7. Macha (green tea) flavoured things.  Macha ice cream, iced macha lattes, macha biscuits, macha chocolate... I just can't get enough of it!

8. Having so many exciting holiday destinations only a short drive/train/flight away.  Whether it's a 2 hr flight to Taiwan, a few hours drive to Shikoku island, or even just a wee train ride to Hiroshima city, it feels like holiday destinations are always so near!

9. Meeting so many awesome people.  As an ALT living in Japan, you obviously meet lots of other ALTs.  And by being foreigners in Japan, you are pre-selecting for some pretty out-there, adventurous, interesting people from a whole bunch of different countries.  Then there are the intrepid Japanese who are willing to befriend a foreigner (even though foreigners do wear funny clothes, talk too fast and have no idea about etiquette!).  In two years at home I might make a couple of new friends, but here we meet so many cool people every year!

10. Japanese kawaii (cute).  I found it really strange at first, but I have grown to love the fact that in Japan, there is nothing wrong with a 27 yr old enjoying the cuteness Japan has to offer - from my Jinglish pencil case ("This is my perfect moment with you" - picture is a duck in a bonnet, hugging an oversized carrot), to my Care Bear earphones (actually I don't recommend them.  They always fall out!), to my Rilakkuma collection (small brown expressionless bear.  Cracks me up.  So far I have the sheet, duvet, chopsticks, gloves, two mugs and a glass...).

So there you are.  In case my wild misrepresentations of my time here led you to believe we didn't enjoy Japan!

I am also tempted to add something that has only come up very recently - since my exam two weeks ago, in fact.  Since my bout of serious study coming up to the exam, I have really noticed an improvement in my understanding, mainly in reading kanji.  It's nothing major, but I have little 'oh!' moments that feel so great.  For example, last night, climbing into bed/futon, I glanced across at my foot cream.  And went 'oh!'  When I had bought it, I had used gesture to show I wanted cream for my feet, but now I've learnt some basic kanji, I realised the first kanji on the name is the word for foot/leg (they have one word to cover the both.  Causes all kinds of amusement when my students tell me they have big legs, or that their favourite singer has sexy feet).  So now I am proud to say NEXT time I need foot cream, I can find it myself!  Every little victory counts!

Hope you are all having a good week xo