Karaoke Passout

This past Saturday I was supposed to go see my friend Judy and her friends compete in the Dragon Boat competition. The Dragon Boat race is an annual competition in Yamashita park where people race in traditional dragon boats from Hong Kong. More can be found out about it here (in English): http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090616ev.html

Or here (in Japanese): http://www.yokohama-dragon.com/

Since the race didn’t happen due to being rained out from the ever- encroaching typhoon (which I’m not sure has happened or not due to the lack of severe rain) everyone ended up meeting up at the karaoke place near Kibogaoka station. LUCKY! It was around 700en for around 3 hours. CHEAP! I’m super in love with this place. I took a short video of the fun. I had a blast! I love love love karaoke!

One of Judy’s friends sang a song called Secret Message and all of the characters were messed up on the screen too. We were dying. XD

After karaoke, we went to the house of Judy’s friend. Her husband made us this amazing meal. I felt like royalty. We met up with more people there too. I didn’t end up getting home until around midnight. Saturday was so amazing… so amazing I slept most of Sunday. :3

Yesterday, on my way home from work, I took a video of what I see on the train from Futamatagawa to Kibogaoka; just one stop. I had my phone pressed to the window to steady it, but most of the images are still blurry. I’m going to try and take the same video with my flip cam and see the difference in image quality.

And finally as a general update, here are some random images I’ve taken around town and a video in my apartment.

Mix Tape

At school this week, the 3rd year teachers decided that one of the class activities should be to listen to the song "I Was Born to Love You" by Queen and have students fill in some missing words in the lyrics. Oddly enough, I'd never heard that song and was later told it is used in a ton of commercials in Japan.



Well... after having to listen to the song 10 times or so in one day I decided I should make a mix cd for the school. Oh, this idea also came into fruition because I played a past tense verb game of hot potato on Monday and the only english cd the 2nd year teacher had was of Disney songs... because everyone in America listens to Disney cds.... So this is the playlist I gave them. I took into consideration the "appropriateness" of the lyrics and if I could enjoy listening to the songs over and over again.

Class Mix
1. Middle of Nowhere / Hot Hot Heat
2. Annie Waits / Ben Folds
3. Soul Meets Body / Death Cab for Cutie
4. Truly Madly Deeply / Savage Garden
5. Stars / Barcelona
6. Relax, Take It Easy / Mika
7. Work / Jimmy Eat World
8. I Wish You Were Here / Incubus
9. Keep Fishin' / Weezer
10. The Only Exception / Paramore
11. On Love, On Life / Bayside
12. 'til We See The Shore / Seabird
13. Setting Up Sunday / Meg & Dia
14. Roll With It / Oasis
15. Slide / Goo Goo Dolls
16. Everything is Alright / Motion City Soundtrack

I gave the cd to the head JTE and I have a feeling he's going to be listening to it this weekend since the 3rd year students are going on their class trip to Kyoto from Sunday to Tuesday. This week should be interesting without having the 3rd year teachers around for the first half of it.

China Town, etc.

So last Friday I went to an AET meeting in downtown Yokohama (Motomachi Chukagai station). After the meeting I decided I would treat myself to a nice meal. After all, my bills came in and they were much cheaper than expected, so I had left over money. I took several pictures while I was there and I thought you lot would enjoy seeing them.

School is going well (I think). Yet again I was confronted with the fact the other AET left before the school year was out. What a bastard. You had 2 weeks to go before graduation and you left? Now, I’m having to rebuild bridges. Apparently this guy was from Houston as well, which doesn’t help my cause. The school did make my shoe locker smell like roses and put a little flower on my locker too. How cute. I think someone stole the flower though because it’s not there anymore. My locker still smells like roses though. :D

Today my school took a picture of me to be put in the PTA newsletter. They said I can get a copy once it goes out. I hope there is nothing bad written in it. Lol. Speaking of pictures, here’s a copy of my Gaijin Card. It shows I’m legal. I blacked out some important info again. Sorry!


All in all things are going better. I’ll be posting here more often now that I’m pretty much caught up on what’s been going on. Friday is a national holiday (Showa day), which kicks off Golden Week. I’m excited to be able to have some time off. I’m hoping to go see Sankeian Garden and maybe I’ll go to Zoorasia. The zoo is 1 train stop over from me, so I should probably go. And I was just informed that I can take a bus from Mitsukyo directly to the zoo! WOOH! My excuse is that I need to scout out some places for my parents to visit in Yokohama, plus I haven’t seen a lot of my city. Opportunity! Cha! \(^0^)/