how can you have a picnic without any sun?

Well, we managed it somehow.

Our school held a picnic on the 28th, and the sun never came out once. The forecast had called for a 60% chance of rain, but it didn't start until 4pm, at which point the picnic was coming to an end anyway. The clouds disappointed me a little, but everyone else seemed a little relieved by the weather.

They all thought I was kind of crazy to suggest a summer picnic anyway. Every day for the past three weeks, everyone has come in complaining about the heat. This has amused me a great deal. Because while it is somewhat hot and humid, it's nothing compared to a Florida summer. As I told some of my higher-level students, "Sure, it's hot. But it ain't *that* hot." As for the humidity, eh. There's not much wind unless it's raining, so everything's all hazy and a bit muggy. Until this week, the rainy season hasn't been all that impressive: it would rain maybe three days out of seven. Even this week, it's been more cloudy than rainy. The way people talked about it, I'd expected rain five days out of seven. But most people I've asked say this is normal. Well, everything's relative, isn't it?

For another thing, the sun isn't as strong here, but maybe that's just me too. Japanese women seem terrified of getting even a little sun - I've never seen so many cardigans and long-sleeved shirts worn in the summer (maybe *that's* why they're so hot!), and they wear these funky long and fingerless gloves and carry parasols. Also, lots of them wear not just pantyhose but leggings, which is downright crazy if you ask me.

But, I digress. Back to the picnic.

I wanted a picnic. 1: because I'd had little chance to hang out with most of my students, and I wanted to have a get-together to do that. 2: because I must find new ways of entertaining myself. 3: Izumiさん (our manager) is moving back to Sapporo. She refused to allow this to be a sayonara party, but I wanted something to let everyone chat with her once more before she left.

We had about 30 students show up, most of them mine. Several of our students live near a park near Shin-Moriya station, about a 15-minute bike ride to the school, and they suggested that we have the picnic there. We had everyone bring their own lunches, and Izumiさん and I brought some picnicky items like bubbles and frisbees and a couple of balls to toss around. One of my students brought a badminton set, and another student brought a larger ball so we could play soccer and dodgeball.

It really was a perfect set-up. We ate lunch first and then broke out the picnic toys. We had about ten kids there, and they had a blast with the bubbles and playing soccer with some of the adults. Some of my students had never played frisbee before, so I conducted a quick mini-lesson on the art of the frisbee. The previous English teacher also stopped by, which made a lot of the students happy because they don't often get a chance to see him even though he lives in Moriya. One of my extremely shy and quiet pre-teen girls kicked butt at dodgeball. And there were dogs - three dachshunds brought by a student who lives nearby. The adults fawned over the dogs more than the kids did.

The best thing for me was the park itself. In addition to a playground and tennis courts, it has a nice big lawn for groups such as our own. Also, it is grassy and not sandy (as it would be in Florida) and there were no ants in sight and it was all nice and soft. So the first thing I did upon arriving was take off my sandals and run around barefoot. The way my students reacted, you'd think they'd never seen a barefoot person before. I couldn't convince anybody else (except one of my kids students) to go barefoot with me, but they all thought it was "adorable." Some of them are still calling me the Barefoot Sensei. Even better was when I had to roll up the cuffs of my jeans because they were getting all dirty and I kept tripping on them. That sent Izumiさん into a fit of giggles. Of course I had to wash my feet when we got back to the school, but it was totally worth it. What's the point of summer if you can't go barefoot?

We got about three hours in before it started to rain. I had known it was going to rain eventually - I could smell it in the air - so this came as no surprise. Everybody (except me, apparently) was starting to wind down and needing a rest anyway, so it worked out. And nobody went away disappointed - everybody gave positive feedback and said they hoped we'd have another get-together in the future. I get the feeling an August picnic would not go over well, so I'm settling for September. This satisfied them.

Afterwards, Izumiさん, Mio先生, and I went out to karaoke to memorialize our last weekend as co-workers. That went beyond entertaining - both of them are good singers and they even sang English songs! (Usually, Benni先生 is the only one who does this with me.) We finished with a trio version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water."

[item of interest: Simon & Garfunkel are as popular as Queen and the Beatles here in Japan. S & G will are appearing in concert in Tokyo this weekend, and one of my students is actually skipping class to go to it. Some of my other students were disappointed that they couldn't go, either because of the cost of the tickets or the fact that they sold out almost immediately.]

And so, that was our Moriya summer picnic. I am now anxiously awaiting the main summer season, which will bring festivals and fireworks and other wonderful summery things. I'm especially hoping that I can make it up to Isesaki or Maebashi to hang out with my friends up there. Either way, summer is shaping up to be pretty awesome this year!

days of wine and takoyaki

Last Saturday, Benni-sensei and I were invited to a takoyaki party at the Maebashi school (which is also closing in the coming months). This is one of the schools where Kozue-sensei works, and Hamish-sensei is also pretty cool, so it stood to reason that it would be an entertaining night. Add in the fact that we just happened to go to Beisia that afternoon and thus just happened to run into Naofumi-san who just happened to be free to accept our extended invitation to the party and it gets even better. I love to hang out with certain of my students, and Naofumi-san is definitely one of them. He can be highly amusing and a very good sport.

Of course, there was alcohol at the party, as is only right for a party with no kids around. Most of the students live within walking or biking distance of the school (or they crash on any of the numerous couches at the school - why don't we have any couches? it's so unfair), so safe driving practices are almost always in effect, from what I've seen. Fortunately, having no car, it's not something I need to worry about - it's just a matter of finding someone willing to drive me back to Isesaki. Which turned out to be another good reason to have Naofumi-san around, because at 5am, he was one of the few remaining drivers going that way anyway.

But I get ahead of myself. First came the food and the wine. One of the Maebashi students had taken a trip to Yamanashi, which is particularly famous for wine. And it was very good wine indeed. And there was takoyaki, which I enjoy reasonably well but especially when it's homemade. Take-out takoyaki is nothing compared to the homemade variety. Also, there was gyoza, but it took a backseat to the takoyaki festivities. Primarily because someone found an abandoned Kit-Kat in the office and decided to put it to use.

I don't know who started it, but Naofumi-san was involved. I cheerfully volunteered to try the cheese takoyaki (yummy) and the kimchi takoyaki (eh, but I'm not a great fan of kimchi), and I was the only one who also cheerfully volunteered to try the chocolate takoyaki (interesting but not as bad as it sounds). It was only a little bit of chocolate, hardly enough to have any effect on the taste, but the looks on everyone's faces was worth it. I did refuse to eat the strawberry takoyaki; that goes far beyond the realm of sensibility. Nobody was conned into eating that one, and eventually Kozue-sensei ate it by mistake and immediately ran off to spit it out.

This was followed by an amusing game thought up by a Malaysian student. He calls it "what goes around comes around," and it's certainly the most disgusting party game I've had the misfortune to play. The general idea is to play russian roulette with a fetid concoction of whatever liquids are available. For us, this included (but was not limited to) wine, beer, tomato juice, lemon juice, mayonnaise, takoyaki sauce, oolong tea, and Zima. Add various flavored chips, Kit-Kats, and bonito flakes to the mix, and you can imagine the wonderful liquid that resulted. Hamish-sensei even threw in some foul-smelling cheese that he found in the fridge. In order to determine the loser of this game, all involved draw cards, and the lowest card gets to take the shot.

We played three rounds of this, which is a testament to how much most of us had already had to drink. As fate would have it, the first and last rounds were both lost by the Malaysian student (after the last round, he quite comically threw up his hands and shouted, "I suck at my own game! How is this possible?") The middle round was lost by Naofumi-san, and he did us Isesaki folk proud by not just taking a tiny sip but a great big gulp of what was easily the foulest of the batches. That he did it reluctantly but jovially says a lot. Like I said, he's a good sport.

Two rounds of Uno were played, though it wasn't much of a competition because people were starting to succumb to the late hour and the alcohol. About seven of us decided to head out to a nearby bar, which I'm definitely glad we did because it was an AWESOME bar. It has a piratey theme to it, including fake palm trees in the corners, blunderbusses on the walls, and a rickety wooden dumb waiter to deliver drinks to the second floor. There is also a life-sized Yoda, which doesn't really fit with the pirate theme but nobody seems to mind. We stayed only long enough for one drink, but it was fun.

Upon returning to the school, I realized it was nearly 5am, and I had plans to go to Kumagaya the next day, so I decided it was time for me to head home. Naofumi-san was also ready to leave, so he offered me a lift so that nobody else had to worry about driving to and fro. I got home in time to get four hours of sleep before having to get up to head on my way to Kumagaya. Surprisingly, I made it through Sunday morning with only the slightest of hangovers, so I figure I must not have been too drunk. I've been worse off.

So, all in all, a most pleasant way to say goodbye to Maebashi. Our farewell party will not be as depraved because we're inviting all the kid students. I'm hoping I get a chance to chill with my stupendous adult students too, because I like them, and I'm going to miss them.

And yeah, I'm definitely moving on April 1st. It's not completely finalized, I'm waiting to hear back on the details. But if it goes through, I'll be much MUCH closer to Tokyo - as in, maybe a 20 minute train ride - but still not too far away from Isesaki if I want to hang out for a weekend. It's not been perfect here, but overall, I don't have a whole lot to complain about.

the laziest Wednesday ever

I like my Wednesdays a lot, because there's not a lot of demands on me. I don't have any classes until 6pm, and my total number of students is 3, including Naofumi-san, who is always amusing. The kids are amusing too, especially since they usually want to spend the first five minutes sending my Obi-Wan doll on new adventures around the room.

There aren't any kids' classes because it's a "catch-up" week, when any classes missed due to GEOS holidays or teacher absences can be made up. I have no need to do this, so that ejects eight classes from my weekly schedule and leaves me with only Naofumi-san's classes today. I love it when I can show up at the school in jeans and know that I have ample time to do whatever the hell I want to most of the day.

Benni-sensei showed up with taco leftovers, so we all sat down for a taco fiesta for lunch, which was brilliant in so many ways. A delivery guy stopped by to drop off a package, and being the generous people we are, we forced him to eat a taco. Can't imagine what he thought of that - Mexican food isn't incredibly popular or available here (Shinobu-san had never eaten tacos before, and neither have Hitomi-san's parents) - but he seemed to enjoy it. He should have, because they were damn good tacos. Again, I ate way too many of them. We decided that we should do this more often, so our next theme will be a pizza party. No telling when we'll actually have it, but it's an idea.

After lunch, I went out to do something I've been putting off all month long: buying a set of weights. I stopped by Beisia first to get the ingredients to make peanut butter balls for this weekend and then went over to Cainz Home to get the weights. 3kg each, which is a little more than what I used in the States. We'll see if doing all this bike-riding has actually improved my endurance or not. I even brought my Biggest Loser DVD with me, so I'll be giving that a try this week. Good thing I don't have any kids to worry about, because I'll probably be in pain for a couple of days. Nice.

I dropped my stuff off at the apartment, changed into appropriate attire, and arrived back at the school in time to learn that Naofumi-san had called to say he would be absent, thus affording me my first day of 0 classes taught. Hitomi-san and I gave Benni-sensei her card and present (a small blanket and pillow for when she wants to nap in her classroom - seriously, she's done it a couple times, and she's slept there overnight too), and then I spent three hours studying Japanese.

Have I mentioned lately that I love my life? Because I do. Totally.

Benni-sensei's reverse birthday

Benni-sensei's birthday is this week, and Sunday, she had a little taco party to celebrate. She invited three of us over to her apartment for the afternoon (another GEOS teacher, her best friend, and me). As always with Benni-sensei, I had only a vague notion of what was planned, but that's okay. All I had to do was show up, and that was simple enough.

Kozue-sensei (from the Maebashi school) picked me up at the train station in Maebashi and told me that we needed to stop by the nearby mall to get some chicken from KFC. Apparently, Benni-sensei was afraid the tacos wouldn't be enough. So, off we went to Keyaki Walk, where we ordered a box of chicken and wandered around the mall for a while. There's a really nice bookstore in the mall, and it even has a small English section, so we browsed there for a bit. I finally bought a book to help me practice reading and writing both kana and kanji. I'm pretty solid on the hiragana, and the workbook I use in my lessons with Benni-sensei is helpful with conversation, but I want to work on my kanji recognition. Doubt I'll ever really be able to write kanji correctly, but I'd at least like to recognize some of it.

After picking up our chicken (note: Japanese KFC is merely "okay" in terms of fried chicken; I was not overly impressed), we drove over to Benni-sensei's apartment and immediately dug into the food. There were only four of us, so we had more food than we knew what to do with. We decided to wait on the tacos, instead focusing on the KFC and a couple bags of Doritos for lunch. We also decided that we needed a diversion between lunch and dinner, and because it was Benni-sensei's birthday after all, we asked what she wanted to do. She suggested karaoke, and off we went.

It was an amusing birthday party - Benni-sensei had asked us not to bring gifts (we did anyway), and she gave gifts to us. Granted, they were souveniers from her trip to Thailand, but it was still kinda funny. She also treated us for the karaoke, which we protested vehemently, to no avail. She insisted. I've never attended a reverse birthday party, and it was interesting switch. Reverse birthdays and un-birthdays deserve more attention.

Continuing with the party . . . Japanese karaoke is highly amusing, even without alcohol. We stayed for three hours, singing both Japanese and English songs (they tried to teach me one Japanese song - something about a bear, pretty simple, like a kids' song - but it didn't go all that great). Benni-sensei studied music in college in Los Angeles, and she has a beautiful, trained voice, so it's nice to listen to her sing, even if I don't understand exactly what's being said. Also, it was incredible fun singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" with her. Benni-sensei has seen "Wayne's World" and agrees that head-banging is necessary when singing this song. We startled Kozue-sensei and Shinobu-san with our exuberant head-banging.

We'd worked up an appetite with the karaoke, so we went back to the apartment and absolutely gorged ourselves on tacos. Benni-sensei had asked me to make guacamole, and we also had refried beans, Pace Picante salsa, and jalapenos to top off our tacos. The taco shells were small, and I have no idea how many I ate. They were absolutely delicious and messy and fun. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.

The awesomest thing about Benni-sensei's apartment? It's right next to a train bridge, so you can watch the trains go by. Every time one passed by, we all stopped what we were doing and waved at it. Benni-sensei says she does it all the time.

Definitely a very fantastic birthday party. Benni-sensei's presents from Thailand were matching purse bags for us - orange for Kozue-sensei, purple for Shinobu-san, and chocolate-brown for me. I'll have to take a picture of it, it's really pretty. It has flowers and an elephant stitched on it. I like it.

I've been having very entertaining weekends this month, and next weekend should also be entertaining: we're finally having our New Year's party at the school. Going to an izakaya with my students should be incredibly entertaining. Add in that I don't have any kids' classes this week (hurray for William's perfect attendance! there's no need for me to do any make-up classes), and January looks to be ending on a high note.

Thus far, 2009 hasn't given me too much to complain about.

three more Christmas party pics

And look! I'm in them!

I tried to avoid getting sucked into too many pics in front of the Christmas tree, mainly because I was the one making sure that everyone was staying out of trouble while Benni-sensei and Hitomi-san took the picture-taking. But even I couldn't avoid it all the time.

With Nene-chan.

With Rio-chan. Yes, she's dressed as Snow White. Her mother just shrugged and said she insisted. The girl loves her Disney.


For a brief while, we had the younger kids coloring quietly in my room. From left to right: Yoshiki-kun, his sister Saki-chan, and Yuzuki-chan.

Christmas parties are not for wimps.

Especially Christmas parties geared toward children.

In the end, I decided not to put too much effort into my plans for the kids' Christmas party for three reasons: 1. only 14 kids signed up and showed up; 2. they wouldn't have understood much anyway; and 3. Benni-sensei is a piss-poor planner and doesn't tell me anything when she does make a plan.

I like Benni-sensei, I really do. We just do things a little differently. When planning, I need some kind of direction. It's okay if I have to be flexible and divert and make up stuff as I go, but I need to start with something other than, "Okay, let's do this!" I have no problems putting things into action, but I need to have an idea of what the end result is supposed to be. I realize that not everyone works that way, but I do, and ignoring that fact would be kind of stupid because why would I purposefully work against my own nature?

I thought it was a Japanese thing at first (in that everybody is on the same wavelength and comes to a mutual decision together), but now I'm not so sure. Most of the time, it seems like Benni-sensei is running the show and nobody else has any idea what the hell she's doing.

But this isn't about Benni-sensei, this is about our Christmas party! It actually wasn't so bad, possibly because the 3 Jyukou boys weren't there - they typically spend most of their time beating each other up and having to be separated. As it was, the kids were pretty riled up anyway (I blame the full moon), and it was enough work trying to keep them all occupied.

Benni-sensei played "Jingle Bells" on the guitar, and the kids mostly sang along when asked (we'd even made little song books for them to read along). Then we had them write little notes to Santa Claus and put them in a little mailbox that Hitomi-san made. After that, we had them color paper ornaments for the tree we put on the wall in the lobby. This was followed by feeding time, and man, can those kids put away the food. Benni-sensei wanted me to give them a little Christmas lesson, but we decided that they weren't going to calm down enough to do that, so we played a vocabulary game in which they had to race to hit the correct picture. That entertained them well enough. We finished with the present exchange, and off they went. Not bad for two hours.

But, here's another thing I've noticed about Hitomi-san and Benni-sensei: they have no idea what these kids are up to most of the time. And like all children everywhere, the one thing they are consistently good at is making trouble. I noticed that Nene was messing around in the back storage room (which is crammed full of junk that's probably been back there for years), and then she ran off to do something else. So, I went and closed the door and turned around in time to see her leading six other kids down the hall. And I took her by the shoulders and turned her around and glared sternly at the rest of them until they all went back to the lobby. I do a lot of this kind of thing, even on regular class days - making sure that the kids are where they're supposed to be and doing what they're supposed to do. Benni-sensei can keep them entertained, I make sure they stay still for it. Not that Benni-sensei didn't make an effort, but it's one thing to ask them to stop running and another thing to cut them off and herd them back to the main group. I know what a complaint sounds like no matter what language it's in, but they also know that I'm not playing around.

I don't mind being the one who makes sure that nobody's getting into trouble. It gives me something to do other than stand around and wonder what everyone's talking about. And it reinforces to the kids the idea that I'm not some kind of pushover just because of a language barrier.

All in all, though, it was a good party. Everybody seemed to have a good time, and I certainly can't complaing about that.

They make a good picture, don't they? On the far left is Hitomi-san and her daughter (whose name is either Kokora or Kokona, I'm still not sure), and on the far right is Benni-sensei. Most of these students are mine.

One thing's certain, these kids can eat!

Ayuka-chan (my student) and Raito-chan (who will be Benni-sensei's student as of Monday).

Playing a vocabulary game with the kids. Rio won. Yeah, the 4 y/o beat a bunch of older kids, without hardly any help at all. I swear, she's like some kind of little genius.

Our Christmas tree on the wall. The kids helped decorate it.

Halloween is over.

Yeah, for me it is. This week was the week to give kids their "special lesson" on Halloween, and then, on Sunday, we had our school Halloween party. This was highly entertaining, since it was my first official work party, and it was all for the children. I believe a total of twenty-nine kids showed up, and I was pretty much put in charge of the ones ages 7+, of which there were about eighteen. Now, my room is pretty small, and I consider it somewhat miraculous that I got all eighteen of them in there without much damage done. Half of them were my students, the other half belonged to Benni-sensei, who had all the younger kids. She had them in the bigger activity room, but they made way more noise and a bigger mess than my group did.




Obviously, the school couldn't afford to give pumpkins to every single kid, so we had little oranges (mikans) to give to them. The ones that got to the party early were put to work drawing faces on them. They turned out pretty cute. The two boys in the picture are my students; the girls are Benni-sensei's.



Some of the kids came in costume. The first pic is Rio (not to be confused with Ryo, who is sitting next to her), my 4-year old private lesson student. As you can guess, she LOVES Disney Princesses and is absolutely adorable - sounds like someone else I know, hmm? (yeah, I'm talking about Cyra, except Rio is cute in Japanese AND English, ha ha). She's a very bright little girl, and her mother wants her to learn to read English so she can get into an international school next year. The bottom picture shows Nene and Ayuka, also my students.



The lady with the guitar is Benni-sensei. She is very talented when it comes to music, and she wanted to teach the kids a Halloween song, and it took me a while to convince her that there really wasn't a song that would be easy for non-native kids to learn. She finally settled on "You Are My Sunshine."



I was instructed to give a Halloween lesson for about twenty minutes, and I had no idea what to do with 18 kids in that time span, so I settled on having them draw. I got them to do both pumpkins and ghosts, and then I had them do a word find that was too difficult for some of them, but they seemed to enjoy it. They all stayed on task, and they cleaned up the whole mess afterward (it was astounding, I blinked, and the next thing I knew, the table was clear and the kids were gone).

The girl in the last picture is Arisa, one of my shyer students. She's a very good artist, so I wanted to make sure I got her ghost in a picture. Behind her, hunched over his ghost (who has hands and is wearing a suit and glasses) is Yuudai, who is easily one of my best students and is quite fun besides.



After the "lesson," Benni-sensei led the whole group to two of our neighboring businesses for pre-arranged trick-or-treating. The first was a flower shop (Floralies), the second a drug store (Marue, which we go to frequently anyway, sometimes once a day). This attracted quite a few stares and kept us adults on our toes because some of the younger kids don't have full awareness of their surroundings yet. Plus, pedestrians don't appear to have automatic right-of-way in Japan, even if they're a pack of thirty or so kids.


The kids were all brought back safe and sound, fortunately, and they were promptly fed sandwiches. That went rather smoothly, considering we had a total of about forty people crammed into the activity room and stuffing their faces. Then, everyone was brought back out to the lobby area and there was a gift exchange. I'm told that Japanese people love to give gifts, which is the only explanation I can come up with as to why a gift exchange was planned into a Halloween party. But it made everyone happy, and who can argue with something that makes people happy?

Finally, costume prizes were handed out (all three to young kids, I noticed; Hitomi-san looked a little wide-eyed when Benni-sensei asked her to judge), pictures were taken, and then the children were released to their rapidly-arriving parents.

All in all, it was quite fun. We made it through without incident, which I consider a pretty good success. The only fit thrown was by one of the student's year-old brother, who by the end of the night was sick and tired of being held by anyone who get could their hands on him. He was dressed as a little bunny and was pretty darn cute all right, but even he was done with by the end of the night. Can't say I blame him.

So, the next party will probably be a Christmas party in December. Japanese people don't celebrate Christmas, but this is an English-speaking school, so it follows English-speaking holidays (Easter is also on the calendar). That, I'm thinking, should also be a fairly entertaining evening.