Port Europa

Yesterday was graduation at my junior high school and it was a very serious ceremony. There was no smiling or any memorial speeches. Infact everyone's speech seemed to have said the same thing. I saw people dozing off. It was like no-one cared. The tempo changed near the end when the one girl from the graduating class went up on stage to read some good-bye stuff from some people and she started to cry. Ohhh, awwww. Everyone sort of lost it there. I only have known the graduating kids for some 6 months, plus I don't know all there names, I only half of the class' names. So I didn't really feel anything. Then they played some songs. No 'Pomp and Cicumstance' though. Instead they decided it felt like New Years or something, and so they played that 'Auld Lang Syne' song and sang to in Japanese. You know the song, 'may auld the quaintence be forgot......'. It was sort of like any old graduation would be, but it just was a little different than what I was used to. Then afterwards they had all the kids circle up on this ball thing hanging from the ceiling in the gym and a couple of teachers opened it by rope and then confetii and some small balloons fell onto the graduating class of 15 students. It was all nice and everything. Afterwards we headed to the cafeteria for a 'tea luncheon' with the parents. It was just the graduating class, their parents, and the teachers. My principal bought be one of the Bento lunches that everyone ate. It was a little too formal and every had sit at certain tables. For some reason, and I didn't notice I sat at the girl's table, with the mothers of the students and a couple of female co-workers. There were some female teachers over at the male teachers/fathers table. I thought that it would be one of those standing room 'meet and greet' things like most graduations have afterwards. So yeah, the crying stopped and the year book signing began.
After graduation I sat in the BOE for a few hours then headed home in my 'cool suit'. There I changed out of my monkey clothes and took short walk around because it was a pretty pleasant late afternoon, where you didn't have to wear a jacket or anything and my little town is a beautiful place. The name of my town translated into English does mean 'Beautiful Mountain Village' afterall. Then for some reason I ended up at my neighbor's house. They are an older couple and are really cool. So they made me a small dinner and drank some sake together. It was pretty cool. And next Wednesday I have to go over there again to help him with his bottle of Scottish Whiskey. Crazy huh?
Today was crazy too, and absolutly exhirlating. I went on a school field trip, and ensoku, with my neighboring elementry school. I rode in one of the two buses with the kids up to Wakayama-City which was about and hour and a half away. To pacify the kids the bus driver played Shrek in Japanese on the two TVs that were in the Bus. I also got to shoot the shit with some of the kids. So this place we went to is called Port Europa. I went there back in January, but today I had the 'Passport' braclet, that was given to me by one of the teachers. So instead of paying each time you want to ride a ride you instead just waved your neon green braclet at them. So I was able to hit up some of the rides numureous times. Tjis place was a mini-theme park. It had a cool little roller-caoster where the cars spun in circles. Another ride was one of those boat diving rides where ride in this boat and it takes you up a ramp and then later sends you down a steep incline and you make a big splash. It was the best ride there. They also had a hydroluic seat movie thing, you know where the seats move in sync with the movie's motion so it feels like you are in a vehicle. In this case of Seafari, you where a whale like submarine following a dolphin that spoke Japanese. It wasn't too thrilling, but enjoyable. There were also a bunch of smaller rides. And the whole 'Europa' thing, all the buildings were built in an Italian style as to give you the filling that you were Europe. It really is sort of like a mini-Italian with some large old looking buildings and twisty small brick-lined roads with stores here and there. It was nice, but I was really ready to go after about and hour and a half. But were were there for about four hours so I did a bunch of rides several times. The kids were so excitied about everything. It was funny to see the little 1st grades get turned away by the larger rides, but by then end of the day they loved them and were riding them multiple times in a rode. A popular ride was the power dive ride, or the Twin Dragons. You know the ride where the vehicle swings between 2 'A-frames' and you go back and forth higher and higher. Unlike Great America in Gurnee where their Power Dive ride goes 360, this one only went half way and not upside down at all. But it still gave your belly a jolt. The day wore the kids out too. I am little tired myslef and I have to head to Gobo soon to study some Japanese, not that I don't really study all the time.
Anyhow, the day was a refreshing blast and really revitalized me from the events of this past weekend. I spoke of what happened before, and the past weekend was all-in-all great fun, just being here in Japan has been a blast, but some things have happened that have jolted me and at times gets me depressed a bit. But I have only been here now for 6 months and there many things that I have overcome, but just when overcome them, something new out-of-nowhere hits me.
Right now I have been listening to music that I have stored on my computer. While I do that I have also been reading 'The DaVinci Code' which is an alright book. I read 'Angles and Demons' about a year ago, which was an awesome book. Dan Brown seem to just keep using this same formula he has in all his stories, so the story is sort of predictable. He also tries too hard to write in a style to seem that it were a movie. Which makes for a fast read but seems I don't know how to say it, but dumbed now in a way. You know how when movies have to stop with the story for a moment and explain things. It is like being spoon fed all the time.
Also, in a way I am trying to up my tolerence a bit. So I have been meeting Miffy for some sake every night. Who is Miffy. Just a rabbit chracter that is on my coffee mug which come with my house. I actually have two Miffy mugs. I just more the sake in and place the cup in the microwave and then nuke the sake so it's all nice a hot. And why am trying to become more tolerent, well everyone has been inviting my out to drink, or whenever I end up doing something outside of work with other people; drinking always seems to come into play. And being able to hold your liquor is cool, well that is how it was back in college, but I have noticed that in Japan, if you can drink people under the table, at least in my little town, you socially more accepted. Especially if you can down a few small bottles of sake. Case in point, this past weekend after I finshed a couple bottles of sake with my teachers from　one of my Elementry schools, the principal then invited me over to dinner someday. This princpal never has really ever noticed me when I am at his school, but after downing a few bottles of sake, he then noticed me. So yeah, that's that. And I hope that the whole tolerence thing doesn't back fire, becasue I sort of kept thinking about drinking that damn cheap 'Maru' sake during the graduation ceremony the other day. Ahhh, Maru sake.....

Term Change

The terms here are different than the US. Gruadtion happens this week and most school go on Spring break next week and that will end the term. After Spring break all the classes are new and teachers get changed around. I am hoping that not too many of my teachers get changed around.
I have been really bad at posting recently but I have just got to say that I have been having a blast in the past few weeks. The week days go by pretty well, and I have nothing to really complain about. Except when I have to teach a class alone. I am just that, no other teachers in the room except me. Last Tuesday my 2nd graders at my junior high almost got out of control because it was just me in the room. What am suppose to do? What really got to me was when a couple of kids handed me a note written in English, it read "what color is your pubic hair?" I was like WTF and just kind of got mad at them as you would to a dog that won't sit down. I can't just start yelling at them in Japanese. But I tried, because when I tried English they just acted like they didn't know what was going on. It was ok anyways. But last weekend, not this past one was a blast too. On Friday night I hung out in Tanabe, another nearby city, karaoked with a bunch of other people. On Saturday, me and another ALT took the train up to Osaka and hung out all day. We saw a showing of LOTR Return of the King Special Edition. The film had an intermission too. So the whole thing clocked in at just over 4 hours. That was the longest movie I have ever seen in a theater and probably the longest movie I have seen in one sitting. I didn't fall asleep at all, but the lady next to me passed out about 1 and a half into the flick. I got by not on coffee but rather 2 kinds of beer. I started a Guiness about and hour into the movie and finished the film with a nice Sam Adams. Being true import beer each beer costed about $3 each. But it was so good. The movie did sell beer too, but I opted for my more tasty beer. What was weird about the movie theater is that it sold tickets by the seat. Each set was assigned. Your set number was on your ticket. But was really odd, is not that there were assigned seats or that the theater filled all of its 300 seats for a foreign 4 hour movie at $15 a head, but the entire audience remained in their seats as the credits rolled. No one budged or got ready to leave, nor did the house lights come on. Everyone just sat and watched the credits roll as me and me friend and his friend left the room. So that was fun, but Sunday was also cool. I met up with Aaron from neighboring Ryujin and some of his friends and we headed up to the mountians in his area for some good old fashioned sledding. We had two plastic sleds with us. One was the Usagi(rabbit) sled that was loaned to us by some local pizza place owners. They had gone sledding the day before and later on Monday their sleeding picture with the Usagi sled made the local newspaper. So we sleeded until we were hurting. You know it was a good day because we broke both plastic sleds, even the donated Usagi sled. We ripped it open right down the sides. What really did it to the sleds was the jump we had built up just at the bottom of the long hill. Half way through we were like 'this jump is kinda of weak' so we packed it up with some more snow. It gave us more air time but sore asses. Afterwards we went swimming in the local river for like only 15 seconds because the water was friking cold. The air temprature must have been like 45 degrees, but it was sunny. After a hot shower we then ate a nice pasta meal while watching Bourne Supremecy on Aaron's awesome computer.
However that was last weekend. This past weekend was also a blast. On Friday night I hung out with the one cool teacher from one of my elementry schools, Kitayama-sensei. This guy is awesome. He took me to his house again for dinner and little GT4 battling. For was Tako-yaki, or Octopus surprise. It is just a breaded ball with a bit of octopus inside. He had kept asking me if Takoyaki was ok. I have no problem with it. We cooked in this little grill and with this little spike thing you have to flip them and move them around, which was a bit tricky. I sort of got the hang of it, but I let a few cook too long. After dinner we hit up the billard tables at Roman city. My gave started to impove right before we moved on to bowling next door. I haven't been bowling in about a year or so and so I just was out to give it my best. I got a 99 which I was ok with. I think my highest ever was something like 135 or something. That was a blast, so was beating Kitayama in OutRun 2 in the arcaded battle mode. We made it through the entire game and in the last minute I pulled right ahead of him and into the goal. At one point I was way behind, but I caught up quickly with my stylish power slidding abilities. Moving onto Saturday. Saturday was slow, I woke up late and watched some of the Lost In Translation before making plans with Joe to play some Halo 2 online at his house. So I up and went to Inami where played with his buddy who was online in Chicago, where it was roughly 2am on Saturday morning. I got my ass-kicked but I had a few kills. For dinner we met up with Mark Bush and some of his friends in Minabe. There we hit the sake hard and ate like kings. The night withered away quickly from there. I remember that there was karaoke involved and some drinking back at his place, but man sake holds back its punch for a about an hour then smacks you hard. The sake that night KO'd me. I was hurting all Sunday. I have no idea what time I passed out at, but I had to be at an end-of-the-year ceremony at Sougawa Elementry School by 11 am on Sunday. I felt way out of it on the drive home. I made it just in time to Sougawa. There was not graduation at this school because it doesn't have a 6th grade, so it was more a year-in-review ceremony. At point I was in the slide show and they mentioned that I came from Chicago and that I didn't know any Japanese but I could use chopsticks. I also had to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with bells with rest of the other teachers. We also had to do part of Beethoven's 8th. So yeah, parts of this ceremony dragged on, but after wards the whole staff was off to Kinosaki Onsen just north of Kyoto. This was a very expensive trip too. So I was really hoping that it would be fun. $350 worth of fun. And it was too. What was really expensive about the trip was that we charted a private bus for the entire time. The bus driver even hung out with us most of the time, except for the the dinner and karaoke. So yeah, after the ceremony thing I went home changed and met the lot of them in front of the city hall where we climbed abord and made ready for a 3 1/2 hour journey Northward into the mountians. This is a famous onsen place and it also famous for its Kani, or crab. So about 4 hours later I was sitting at a table with a full crab in front of me. We went to dinner right when we got there. It was a lot of effort to pry all of that meat out of that thing. I finally made it through the whole the whole thing and then proceeded to drink with the rest of the gang. And boy did we drink, but unlike the night before, I had a whole meal in my belly and drank everything. I think I might have actually out drank everyone, and I remember the whole night too. I remember that right before I went to bed that 2 other people out of our party of 8 had passed out already. What really did it was the karaoking. We had a blast there. It was a small place near to the hotel. Each karaoke booth was a actually a tiny building. I sang Wanted Dead or Alive and YMCA, because everyone was much older than I except for the 25 year-old nurse girl. After the karaoking we made it back to the hotel where we talked before hittin the hay. I was awoken earlier and only got to spend about 2 mintutes in the osen before I had to go. We had to go sight-seeing. It was a cool little town area. We even took a power-boat ride across the little lake to the other side. On the way the seagulls followed you and you could feed them out-of your hand as they followed. At the other end we bummed through some Omiyage gift stores before riding a cable car to to the top for the beautiful view. At the top there were a couple weird things. One is that supposedly the view is cooler if you stand on this mini bench and take in the view with your head between your legs. So I did that. Then there was this ring off away from the ledge into which you are suppose to throw some clay discs. Out of 3 chances I got one through the ring. Then I just started to through snowballs through it. And then another weird thing was that another bunch of tourists that were up there seemed to be a bunch of tall women from far away, but were actually guys. But guys trying to look like girls. They looked kinda of weird as women, but what really gave their secret away was their voices were all off. I don't know what was going on there. Plus I really didn't have a hangover, but instead just sort of felt out-of-it. We hit up lunch then and then back home were we rolled in at 3:30pm yesterday. I was pretty tired and went to bed at about 9:30 after having a good ramen dinner in Gobo with another ALT.
Now today, was jsut spent here at the junior high were they were preparing for their graduation ceremony tomorrow. Which will be the first here at this school, because last year there were 3 junior highs in Miyama, they merged into one last April. So I sat through the practice and it brought back some of my graudation memories. It seemed like a nice ceremony, but something seemed to be lacking. Plus the graduation from 9th grade is more of a big deal in Japan than in the US. Getting into High School can be very hard, and it really is a big step for a lot of people. What is really nice is that the weather here has really been nice the last couple of days. It has been sunny and pretty warm, but still freezing inside the buildings.
As a little graduation present I have been CDs for everyone in the 3rd grade class. I hope they like them.