Taiko sickness

Quite a lot happened last week. I got to see 2 taiko performances given by my JHS taiko club (that I’m a forever “new member” of) and I got sick. Though I have to say, for every new experience that I have, it seems I’m always behind my self-expectations. I was hoping I would know how to cook a lot of Japanese food, be fluent in katakana, and have some Japanese children’s books translated by this time in my mind but… I’ve been here over 2 months and I’m nowhere near completing any of those things (well the katakana thing is improving A LOT). I can now read a lot of foods and signs that I used to just look at puzzled. I am also learning where and when to purchase the cheapest foods in my area and what a good deal is (ie: getting a “loaf” of bread for under 100¥).

So back to the taiko thing- I recorded part of the ichinensei’s dance routine from my phone. I tried to record the encore performance that the sannensei’s did, but the file didn’t save properly. I was kinda bummed about that but I took 2 pictures also and a small video of what the little festival looked like too. I only stayed for about 2 hours, but I had fun and the students were glad to see me there.

The taiko performance happened on Sunday and on the Thursday before, after teaching passive tense to the sannensei’s, I got really nauseous and sick to my stomach. Around the same time, I started to get a headache and felt really clammy. I ended up leaving school early and sleeping the rest of the day. I went to work normal on Friday, but obviously wasn’t as energetic, drank a lot of water in between classes, and sat more than normal. After school Friday I slept and slept all day Saturday as well. I also loaded up on medicine for those 3 days. Tums and Tylenol Sinus. Yeah. I was feeling great! Actually by Sunday, I was feeling well enough to support my taiko club, but I’m glad I wasn’t asked to perform in any way. I would have probably vomited everywhere.

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.