School Intro Vid

Song is ID by Kasabian

Yokohama. Holiday. Melon Slushies. Art.

Yesterday was Yokohama day! I’m in love with Japanese holidays. Since I don’t get 2 ½ months off for summer vacation, the mass amount holidays make up for it (mostly). Yesterday, I cleaned my apartment and balanced my budget. Fun times! It’s always fun trying to figure out the bare minimum one needs to survive monthly. I have monthly student loan payments to make, which amount for almost half my paycheck every month. Needless to say, it’s a buzz-kill.

On Wednesday, I did an hour of karaoke by myself. It was my first time to do it and I will probably do it more often. There aren’t many places where you can sing at the top of your lungs and not be embarrassed. In Japan I’m thinking there are 2 places (as an adult): karaoke and live concerts. The best part about my karaoke place is that it is all you can drink free soft drinks and they have melon slushies. SO GOOD. The price per hour is 280en too so it is a really good deal. I love the melon slushies! Here’s a short clip of me singing an Ikimonogakari song. I love them.

I also wanted to post a newsletter from the PTA I received this week. Most of it is blurred out because I wasn’t sure what I could and couldn’t show as far as privacy. This is a list of all the teachers from my school with what subject they teach. I’m the only one not blurred out. The two people with the little text blurbs are the principal and vice principal of the school. They are talking about how wonderful the PTA is.


Next week I go back to my other school (the one with the taiko club) and maybe I can get the students to film me being an idiot trying to learn the drums. Tonight, I stayed late at school to record the student’s listening tests. I also got to draw for 30 min with the art club. They were doing landscapes and this is what I contributed. It was fun drawing from life again. I haven't had a chance to do it in a while. Very good practice.



Also- check out the huge azalea bush near one of my schools.

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.

Tired. Hair cut. Percussion.

I can’t tell you how exhausted I’ve been this week so far. Being an ALT is the first full time job I’ve ever had. I’m being childish when I say this, but I’m hating the responsibility of having to show up every day. With school, I could always take a sick day whenever I needed extra sleep or just really didn’t feel like going to class, those days are over. When I feel exhausted, I have to show up anyway. I haven’t been sleeping well. There have been earthquakes in the middle of the night and even without them occurring, I keep waking up 3-4 times a night. FRUSTRATING! I’m so tired, yet my body won’t relax.

On an unrelated note I’ve been here almost 2 months. That means 1 thing absolutely needed to be done. I needed a haircut. I finally got the nerve to go get my haircut on Monday. Needless to say, that was an adventure. I went to the place probably 50m from my apartment. It is literally the building next to the parking lot of my apartment complex. The lady didn’t speak English and sorta gave me a brand new cut when I just wanted a trim. It only cost me 1,000en though and the cut doesn’t look bad by any means…. So I can’t really complain. Lol. I was grateful that I didn’t walk out of there with a shaved head with how poor my Japanese is. XD

Yesterday, towards the end of school, I had nothing left to work on, so I decided I would find the drumming I could hear in the teacher’s lounge. On the other side of the school, another floor up, I found the percussion section of the brass band! They were excited I dropped by to see what they were working on and told me I had to play drums with them… so I did. They taught me the first part of a song they were working on. I botched it up pretty bad towards the end, but had a lot of fun. I tried explaining that I had only played drums once in my life back when I was 11 or so and it was just for fun. They didn’t care and insisted I try again. Lol. After I hopped off the drums, they told me I should play chimes too. This was really cool because I had never played chimes before. I played Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and thanked them for the experience. Chimes are set up completely different than a piano. Upon leaving school yesterday, the rain started up again. It rained all through the night and was pouring this morning. I’m hoping it clears up soon.

I’m caught up again with the blog! Yay!

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^)/