Santa says HAHAHA!

November 25-December 21

I spent actual Thanksgiving at the JET Mid-Year Seminar. It was a rather boring two days worth of speakers and classes but I got some good ideas to use in my classes and I’ve actually already used some of them. That weekend there was a JET Charity Pub Quiz that four of us Himi people entered. Our group was called the Himi Hermits. We came in second place by only one point, too bad only the first place people got the half of the money that wasn’t going to charity. Still it was a lot of fun! Also, it wasn’t actually at a pub, it was at a Brazilian restaurant and the food was awesome. There was even turkey, which is basically unheard of here, to give me one more chance to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Exciting news for Himi is that buri (yellowtail) is officially in season! This is one of the things Himi is most famous for and, having eaten it both grilled and raw, I can see why. It is sooooooooo delicious!!!

Buri nigiri.

I haven’t done anything too grand recently but work has been pretty busy all December. For example, on Dec. 10^th I had a demo lesson for prospective students at Seibu MS. Basically, 6^th graders from the three elementary schools that feed into Seibu came and had a mock English class. I think it went okay. This was largely helped by the fact that two of those elementary schools were schools that I teach at so I already knew the students. That same day we had the BOE enkai which was great because they scheduled it at Tori No Ya which is the restaurant owned by the same guy that owns Wyatt. Having been there before I knew to expect great food and they did not disappoint.

I made little nametags (with no names...) for the demo lesson.

Also at school, I have had several really great Christmas classes. We did all sorts of Christmas activities including: Christmas bingo, Christmas card making (I made one card for each of my schools), cutting out snowflakes, reading Christmas stories, talking about American Christmas (including some pictures of my family), singing Christmas songs etc. At several schools I wore a Santa hat, which was usually met with great enthusiasm, especially from the younger kids. I even got applause when I walked into one of the staff rooms! I got the kids all riled up by walking around during cleaning time saying “Merry Christmas!” I apologized to the teachers but I figured it was okay since it was the last day of classes and I usually don’t interrupt their chores.

One of the best classes was with the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd graders at Hayakawa ES. As we were doing the fun lesson, Kyoto-sensei (vice-principal) walked by a window dressed up in a full Santa costume. The kids got really excited and by the end of class, after walking around outside several times, he finally came in the classroom and gave the students their presents (which was just some Japanese candy). I cracked up because instead of saying HOHOHO he said HAHAHA.

Another great experience was with my 5th graders at Kubo ES. We had a fun lesson and at the very end they gave me a Christmas present. Their present was to play "Silent Night" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads" on their recorders. Apparently they had just learned "Silent Night" in the few days before my lesson with them so they could play it for me. I was very touched!

More Christmas spirit has come from the decorations around town. My favorites are the lights near the main bridge that include some shaped like a buri! Also, the ALTs helped the CIR with a Christmas event for 30 or so 3^rd and 4^th graders that had more of the aforementioned activities and was really a lot of fun.

All these pictures are of the lights near the Hattori-kun bridge in.

The buri Christmas lights.

The Christmas tree outside of Sunstage. The lights flash faster and faster.

Making Christmas cards at the Christmas party. I figure that you can't see any of their faces so this should be an okay picture to post.

The card I made :D

Alex came out as Santa at the very end. Also hilarious was John's reindeer hat that you can sort of see in the background.

Christmas ice cream from Baskin Robins. I had the bear and Katie had the Santa.

Since I probably won’t update this again before Christmas: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! メリークリスマス！よいお年を！

Auld Lang Syne

November 19-23

From the 20th to the 23rd I was in Tokyo with three of my best friends from Wake Forest, Jenni, Jeannie, and Diane. Late Friday night I took the night bus to arrive early the next morning outside of Ikebukuro station, which was very conveniently about a 5 minute walk from the hostel we stayed at. I was the last to arrive so despite it being too early (around 5:30AM) for me to check in there was no problem with me just walking right into the room with Jenni who had come to pick me up…for some reason she thought my sense of direction might need a little help :P

After a few more hours of sleep for everyone I officially checked in and we headed off for our first day of adventures. Our first stop was McDonald’s for breakfast and I enjoyed a delicious McGriddle. Next up was Nakano Broadway, which is basically a big store but with several of the floors devoted to fan goods for all sorts of different things such as anime, music, and movies. It felt kind of like a classy flea market (if that isn’t too much of an oxymoron). We spent most of the day shopping and playing around in the different stores. That night we bought some food and drinks and then spent a very long time singing karaoke. It’s hard to describe just how much fun it is to karaoke if you haven’t had the real experience, but believe me when I say it’s a very fun way to spend an evening.

Diane in front of the sign for Nakano Broadway

Just one of the many stops we made to play some ufo catcher games. Jenni is really good at them and Jeannie really wanted some Christmas Disney characters.

When we say this huge ice cream cone we just knew we had to get it. Jenni looks very devious in this picture.

It took very little time for the ice cream to go from the previous picture to this one. I love Jenni's face...I promise I was just pretending to steal her bite of ice cream :P

Jeannie and I posing with our ramen we had for lunch.

It was really awesome to see UNC paraphernalia in a store in Japan!

Weeellllll, I spent a bit of money but I now have the entire set of the One Piece poster...and lightsaber chopsticks, so it's okay.

Yes, we bought matching Mario one-up mushroom "Get A Life" socks.

Sunday Diane went to go visit her host family so Jenni, Jeannie, and I went to go see the new Harry Potter movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should go! Before the movie started we did a Harry Potter themed purikura (picture booth), one picture had Hogwarts in the background and the other with the Weasley’s. After we all met back up we went to Akihabara and did some more shopping and exploring. For dinner we went to a sukiyaki restaurant and had delicious, delicious food.

This frog and Santa Spiderman were hanging around outside the movie theater advertising some nearby shop.

There was Harry Potter purikura inside the theater! I tried to take pictures of my pictures so these aren't the best quality. Here we were trying to make the same face as Ron.

Yay Hogwarts!

Jenni and I playing the taiko drumming game after the movie.

Jeannie and I posing with the movie poster after watching the film.

Many of you won't appreciate how extremely cool it was to see this cafe. Basically Gundams are giant fighting robots.

Jenni and Diane posing with the Gundam taiyaki.

Sukiyaki!

After cooking the meat and veggies you would dip it in raw egg to make it even more delicious. I know this is a little off-putting for many westerners but the Japanese use raw egg quite often and I haven't gotten sick yet *knock on wood*

Since Tuesday was a national holiday and we had no work, I was able to ask for Monday off. Monday morning Jenni and I were on a desperate search to complete the poster collection we had started and Jeannie and Diane were willing to humor us so we headed back towards Nakano Broadway. With some good luck we were able to get the full set of One Piece posters! Lunch was at a kaiten sushi restaurant named sushi-go-round, which is my new favorite description of conveyor belt sushi. After lunch we split up for a few hours so Jenni and Diane could go to Korea town and look for fan goods for some musicians they liked. Jeannie and I went off to Tokyo Tower since I had never been. It was cloudy so we didn't pay to go all the way up to the top but we had a lot of fun exploring around inside.

First glimpse of Tokyo Tower.

We did our omiyage shopping at the tower. This was one of the particularly good bits of engrish there.

The very disturbing Tokyo Tower mascot...sorry, but I don't think I would ever buy my child a stuffed animal that looked like that.

The so-bad-it-was-hilarious 3D haunted house movie Jeannie and I watched. It had worse graphics than most video games made in the past decade.

We were being Godzilla.

Naturally we took a picture with the mascots, wouldn't want to forget how disturbing they are.

Outside the tower was very festive!

Our last stop was Yokohama to go to Chinatown for dinner. We went to a dim sum restaurant. It’s like a buffet but better because you pay a set amount and have a menu with tons of items on it that you can order from. They bring out a small dish that everyone at the table can share. We at sooooooooooo much food and it was all freshly cooked and delicious, as opposed to cold, stale, and touched-by-who-knows-how –many-people food you get at a buffet.

After dinner we did a group purikura before my night bus left. We cut it rather close and Jenni and Diane waited at the bus stop while Jeannie and ran back to the hostel from the train station and then ran to the bus. This is probably why I got sick a few days later because it had started rainy and was rather chilly and I was dashing about working up a sweat and getting rained on. Luckily I made and after a final round of hugs and a group phone call while we were waiting for actual final departure and could still see each other, I was headed back to Himi. The bus got into Takaoka just in time for me to catch the first train into Himi and I spent a large part of the Tuesday just sleeping and realizing that I had caught a cold.

A couple of the purikura we did. We were on a pirate ship in this one. Clearly I'm the captain because I have the top hat and mustache.

I love how this one came out!!

So to summarize the trip: I had an awesome time, got some cool swag, and got to see some people I love. All in all, an excellent way to spend the weekend before Thanksgiving!