Almost as much a tradition as the Super Bowl, I’ll be missing the Oscars too because I’ll be at work. (It’ll be Monday morning here). Don’t spoil any surprises for me though because I fully intend to download them and watch them at my earliest convenience. …while eating Girl Scout cookies.

There’s something about stuffing my face while watching those ladies who haven’t eaten for weeks just so they can fit into their designer gown…

p.s. I hope Ellen is better than Jon Stewart. His particular brand of humor doesn’t quite fly at the Oscars does it?

a million miles away…but Hollywood is always just around the corner.

p.p.s. i know you are jealous but we can’t all have lives as exciting as mine.

I’m back in Japan after my short visit to Texas.  It was a much much needed break!

Luckily the weather back here in Japan has been really beautiful these last few days so its made the transition more bearable.  And I’ve found that being away made me more cognizant of the things here that have actually grown on me.

Not least of which are my schools surprisingly enough!  I was actually glad to see some of the teachers and students’ smiling faces.   When I first started, the best thing about my job was the free time I had in between teaching classes.  Now, teaching classes is itself pretty fun so my days are pretty much enjoyable all-around.  I especially like my new habit of going home for a long lunch!

The food here continues to be weird but I can find enough at the grocery store so that I can make some really tasty things at home so its not too bad.

The other good news: beer, tomato juice, tabasco and black pepper can all be found here so I can indulge my newfound craving for Bloody Beeries!

*maybe a drunken blog will be coming soon…hahaha

Something important is happening today.  I’m not sure what.  Of course the school has the usual Friday air about it but there are too many teachers still in the teacher’s room.   For 9:14am there is much too much hustle and bustle.

My kyoto-sensei (vice principal) is coming to watch my first grade class today.  I’m not sure who he’s evaluating, me or the Japanese teacher.  Either way, it’s not worrisome.  Our lesson plan rocks and the first graders are good kids.

Early Sunday morning I’m flying back to America for a visit.  I’m not completely attuned to this “carless” thing and it was too late that I realized I’m flying out too early.  I live over an hour away from the airport and there are no buses or trains (or even subways) running early enough to get me there in time.  SO…my journey actually starts on Saturday.   I booked a hostel in Fukuoka where I’ll spend the night and then take a taxi to the airport.  Sheesh, what a pain.

I’m double glad to be getting a rental car–I miss driving. 

My third grade (9th grade) class practiced English composition this week.  I came across this one when I was grading and just couldn’t not put it on here

“I like English because we have a young teacher.  I like the young teacher because the young teacher very kind and beautiful.  But the young teacher only sometimes come in my class.  So I’m very sad.”

This one was just a little confusing.  It starts out well enough though…

“I like books.  My hobby is reading books.  I like unique books.  I books reead srrypy.”

tee hee

The Super Bowl is on now.  It’s Monday morning and I’m at work.  Those two statements seem too strange to go together.  But here in Japan, life is well, different.

Scott is at home watching it on his computer through his brother’s tv feed in California.   I miss Super Bowl parties

But the Japanese have their own celebrations…Saturday was a special day.  They threw soybeans out the window for good luck.   Man, they really know how to do it up.

Pooey, it seems like a long time that I’ve made an entry in here.  I can’t claim its because I’ve been really busy with important things.  It’s more like halfway busy with unimportant things and having trouble accessing the site from school.  :-p

Well, last weekend Scott and I went to lunch at one of his fellow teacher’s house.  We ate oden, a “stew” of weird processed fish products, horribly overboiled, tough eggs and strange gelatinous blobs of stiff egg white (i think…)–officially the most disgusting thing to be found here in Japan.  Yes, even grosser than the tiny fish.  After we finished lunch we went on the strangest outing…first we visited a butcher shop where I was forced to sample a variety of fatty, marbled meat that was supposedly delicious (far from it)…then the butcher took us out to the back to show us…carpentry.  He also carves furniture out of wood.  It was rather good too.   Then we went to a strange place: half house, half pottery shop and…bakery?  coffee shop?  there were other women in there, we couldn’t tell if they were friends or customers.  But we all sat around a table where it was obvious (even moreso than at the butcher) that we were being paraded around as the “foreigners.”  Kind of like show and tell.  Especially since they did a lot of talking around us, about us and over our heads, rather than to us.  We just sipped our coffee, sneaking occassional peeks into the other room where a boy was having more fun than us playing video games.  We had an interesting time.

Friday it snowed.  It was great.  Too bad it wouldn’t stick.  My desk looks out onto our school courtyard so I had nice scenery to watch.  I took pictures. 

This weekend we went out with some people from my school.  We went to an Italian restuarant that served us Italian food “Japanese style.”  That included octopus salad drenched in Italian dressing and natto pizza.   After dinner and a medley of drinks we made our way to a neighboring bar where we drank another fair assortment of shochu.  I won’t be drinking that much again any time soon.  The end result was not good.