And he has arms!

I just had a most brilliant weekend with excellent people who I definitely don't see enough.

Friday after school I flexed my under-developed domestic skills and created a huge huge huge bowl of tabouleh from cous cous I had found at the foreign foods and tons of fresh veggies from Uoroku. I packed up my car and headed into Kamo where Rosalind was hosting a potluck dinner at her apartment. Dinner was excellent; great food, lively conversation, plentiful wine-flow followed by 2 hours of ridiculous karaoke. It was really nice to have a change of pace and meet some new people. Ta Rosalind for the invite!

On Saturday I headed home in the morning and made a few phone calls. I had the afternoon free so instead of lazing around or heading out to spend money I don't have, I got serious and cleaned out my closets. I managed to separate my massive amounts of clothing into three piles: stuff I want to keep, stuff I could potentially sell (there isn't really charitable-giving here) and stuff that should never see the light of day again. It was quite an accomplishment and I realize I definitely need to send another box of stuff out to Portland.

At 3:30 I headed into Sanjo to meet Makiko and her family, friends and random neighbors for a barbecue. Again, the beer and food were fantastic and for 3 hours we ate, drank, talked and laughed. Ah, so fabulous.

At 7:30 we headed to Rocket Pink where Koken's band was playing in a jam night. It was awesome cause I got to see all my old friends from last year's Pearl Jam days, and I realize now that it might have been the last time I'll see most of them. The other awesome thing was that Kat and I finally managed to engage in a piss-up together after about 2 years of failed attempts. She and her friend Lindsay came and the three of us totally rocked out as the gaijin girls.

Anyway, the night was a boozy one and the bands were cool and there was just a very good vibe all night. After the concert we headed to an 'after party' at Cafe Cleo where we continued the drinking and socializing til about 3:30 in the morning and I totally scored digits of the hot bongo player from one of the bands - a last month fling to rid me of any bitterness toward Japan perhaps?

And here are some photos to further ruin my chances of a future political career...
Koken who now has giant hair and awesome English

Yay! Me and Kat

This awesome picture was taken to display that that "special car" had the highest ceiling ever. I distinctively remember laughing so hard my face hurt at this fact and Kat's incessant singing about the special car

Ako-chan

This is Kosei, the son of one of Koken's bandmates. He's the coolest kid ever and he was tooootally getting down. The parents made him wear earplugs, thank goodness!



_____________
Oh, and other awesome things:
-Mad props to Sarah who found us an apartment in an awesome neighborhood in Portland for only $695 a month. This means that I'm paying merely $50 more than I'm paying here in the middle of nowhere Japan.
-Yesterday during one of my 1 nen sei classes, a girl handed me a letter and said, in English, "this is from my sister." I read it and it's from Miho and Asuka, two of my favorite girls who graduated last year. They wanted to see how I am and they gave me purikura of them and a girl I somewhat-affectionately nicknamed "Crazy Girl" in my first year. Seriously, how sweet is that?
-Today I was handed a pile of evaluation cards where students ask me questions and I correct their questions and answer them. Today's target is "Have you ever..." My favorite question was "Have you ever listened to Melissa music?" Um, what?
-OMG 35 days

Yesterday

Etc.

Today's sayonara went ok. Managed to hold back the tears until I was in the car. 1 down, 6 to go...



I waslooking back through old pictures tonight and I stumbled across this jem that Michelle took on New Years Eve.

I love it.

Starting the Sayonaras...

Tomorrow marks my first last-visit to a school. Every Wednesday for the next 5 weeks I'll be saying goodbye to the students and teachers of my Elementary Schools. I've decided to do my farewell speeches in Japanese hoping that I'll be less likely to cry if I don't really understand what I'm saying. Amazing how loaded language is, isn't it.

With a little help from Makiko, this is what I came up with for my farewell speech:
みなさん、こんにちは。
私は今まで日本にいた二年間、____小学校でおしえていました、たいへん楽しかったです。
みなさんあたたくむかえてくださってかんしゃしています。
____のせいとはほんとにいっしょうけんめいでしたので、おしえることが楽しかったです。
この二年間に、みんなは私のじゅぎょうをたのしんで、英語を勉強してくれたと思います。
これからも、がんばってください！
どうもありがとうごさいました！

*edited to remove the school's name and lower the risk of someone here finding my blog via google. paranoid? maybe*




My brain hurrrrrrrts.

巻夏まつり

Last weekend was the annual Maki Summer Festival. Maki's festival is rather early in the season and it lasts for an entire weekend. Festivities start Friday night with a parade where various businesses and organizations make floats, dress in yukata (summer kimono) or happis and drink sake between rounds of the traditional parade dance. The rest of the weekend is packed with events like school band performances, children's parades, fireworks, live karaoke, street dance performances and of course, matsuri food stalls run by Japanese gangsters.

Last year I was asked to be in the Friday night parade with the town office, but this year I wasn't. I felt weird about that until I realized that it's probably because we were swallowed up by Niigata City last October and therefore, there is no more town office. Japanese politics - I don't get it either.
From last year's parade. God, I look goofy

This is the Maki fish. These things are all over the place during festival time. Wonder what I have to do to get someone to give me a mini one as a going-away gift?




Friday night Kayvohn, Kate and I had a couple drinks and headed out to the festivities. The paper-lantern lit streets were swarming with my students (and a few of Kate's and Kayvohn's) and we were constantly greeted by choruses of "Oh, Melissa sensei da!" "Keit-o sensei!" and "Kehbohn sensei!" I think we played the part of the local celebrities quite well, and I even made them practice their English outside of school hours (gasp!). My personal favorite was the chugakko 1-nen sei boy who peeked around my paper fan, noticed my beer can and said "That is a beer!" We just finished the 'this is a pen; that is a book' unit in school, so despite the potential unwholesomeness of the whole situation, I was quite charmed by him. And for the record, whenever they noticed my beer, I lied and said it was juice. Do you think they bought it?
My elementary students and their キモイボールs

Boys from Nishi Chu


Eventually we stumbled upon a most unusual sight: other foreigners in my town! There was a Turkish kebab stall run by real live Turkish people. Being in Japan for this long, and being slightly intoxicated, Kate and I reacted as any sheltered, small-town Japanese person would: by stopping dead in our tracks and staring. One of the guys broke the awkwardness (we can't help it!) by asking where we are from, which sparked a nice conversation and the purchase of my first-ever drunken kebab (now I get what all the Brits are always going on about). While we were chatting, I turned around and noticed a mob of about 20 of my students watching in awe as Melissa sensei communicated to someone other than their JTEs. We got the students in on the conversation (English only, despite the fact that the Turks could probably speak better Japanese) and some of them even purchased the weirdo gaikoku-land (foreign) food.
If that's not internationalization at it's finest, I don't know what is.
The Turkish guy, my students from Higashi Chu and a big knife


Saturday afternoon was gorgeous so Kate and I made our rounds of the children's parades and my school bands performances, stopping along the way to talk to various students and other people from around town.
The Shrine in downtown Maki with some priests(?) awaiting their turn to march.

Elementary students in the Children's Parade

Random street in the maze that is Maki

Higashi Chu girls in Yukata, Kaede, Sayaka, Yuki, Yoko, me

Taiko boys


By night we watched the 1-hour display of fireworks. For those who don't know, fireworks in Japan are quite different from those in America. Instead of blasting off 100 fireworks in 15 minutes like we do in the States, fireworks displays here last much longer. A company or individual will sponsor one firework. Before the firework is set off an announcer says the name of the sponsor and a number rating, which (I think) is a measure of its size. It's an interesting way of doing it. Because each firework has been carefully selected, they tend to be more majestic than those at home, but to be honest I think the constant noise from the announcer kind of spoils the whole thing. Ah, well.

On Sunday, Kayvohn, Phil, Makiko and I went down to Teradomari with Arisaka-san and Satomi-san from the Cottage, Satou-san and a bunch of other guys to spend the afternoon on their boat and jet-skis. Despite a sunny forecast, it was cloudy and windy and a bit cool on Sunday (anyone else noticed that the weather reports in Japan are always wrong?!). We ganbatta'd through it all though and it turned out to be a great day. We took a break at lunch to drink beers and barbecue the pounds of marinated beef, checken and pork they brought as well as some fish they had caught that very day. We also ate squid and some other fish raw, and literally straight out of the ocean. You don't get sashimi much fresher than that, eh?

In the afternoon Makiko and I suited up into wetsuits (very flattering) and went out on the jet skis with Satou-san and another very genki 55+ year old. Seriously, these dudes put us right to shame.
Arisaka-san, Satou-san and a seaweed wig

Oh, yes


All in all, it was a quality weekend. Made even more quality by the safe arrival of SJ and Kevin in Portland. Can't wait!

World Cup, what?

I don't know much about the politics of soccerrrrrr, or whatever. But, baby, I do know about this:

Um

-Stole this from Kat's blog. It's a horribly awkward video of America's favorite child molester on a Japanese variety show called SMAPxSMAP. SMAP is a wildly popular yet totally untalented boy band in Japan. They not only sing and dance but they endorse basically anything; have this variety show and they appear in TV dramas and commercials. They are, in a word, annoying.

And now Michael Jackson knows how ALTs feel...



SMAPは英語上手じゃないよね。

-The weekend was good. It involved lots of kites at the Shirone Kite Battle followed by lots of beer at Maki's very own Echigo Beer. I'm not really in the mood to type a whole lot about it, so here's a few pictures.

A random group of ALTs at the Tanaka family household in Shirone. The people in blue happis helped pull the Tanaka's huge kite

Kate and I wishing we had helmets

Pictures of kites don't turn out so well

Your local social coordinators (on our last mission) with paper napkin hats. It was cool at the time, I think.

Table 1 - Kevin, Naoko, Yumi, Masako (in absentia), Kozue, Tomoko

Table 2 - Errol, Kate, Ben, Makiko, Will, Akemi, Mike

Table 3 - Kayvohn, Aaron, Nuria, my seat, Phil (we totally won the beer drinking competition)

On the drunk bus back to Maki Station

Sweet karaoke action shot - Mike, me, part of Errol


-Sarah begins her cross-country journey to Portland today! Holy crap! I'm so excited.

That's all I've got for now.