doki-doki

friday night's gathering of both japanese teachers and alt's was a strange blend of 'justine at work' and 'regular justine'. yahara sensei, one of the japanese english teachers i teach with at toyoura, was at this enkai. several drinks into the night (that is, everybody), i sat down next to him and started chatting. his alcohol induced state allowed him to speak much more freely than he does at school, and we ended up having a really nice conversation.
he told me that when he sees me at school, he thinks i am so lonely because everyone is too shy to talk to me. he says that he feels so sad for me, but that he is too worried to talk with me because he is "shy boy". japanese people have several really cute expressions which consist of saying one word twice, and fast. one such example of this is 'doki-doki' (said while thumping one's heart). it basically means your heart is beating fast (because you are nervous, or, more likely, because something has 'touched you'). so he said "i see justine sensei sitting at her desk, and my heart goes doki-doki, and i feel so sad". i laughed and said i am completely fine at work (usually msning one of you guys). so then we promised we'd talk more at work and that we are now 'tomodachi' (friends).
watashi-tashi ima wa tomodachi desu. is this right?

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look

lately i've become a bit homesick for holland. i'd really like to try and get there in may. i miss the busy streets of amsterdam, that feeling that you could witness any random mixture of crazy things before your eyes. i miss leidseplein and the bulldog, the cobblestone streets with things coming at you from all directions (bicycles, trams, people, cars, mopeds...). i miss the narrow, windy canals with old footbridges and weeping willows. i miss niewendijk straat, H & M, ZARA, and MANGO. i miss the chime of the train through the streets of den haag. the view of the parliament over the river, the hustle of the market in the turkish neighbourhood. i miss the night beach parties in schevenignen, the sand dunes and the peer. i want to wake up on a saturday morning and go to the veenendaal market, browsing the stalls of cheeses, fresh seafood, fruit and vegetables. drinking a kofi in the back courtyard of the colony, wicker tables and chairs, fresh cakes from the bakery, to be eaten before dinner. vla, herring, dropjes, frites met ouches en mayonaise...

opening night

so....yeeeaaaah. missing the last rehearsal to go and party in tokyo is never a good thing. we had our first Peter JaPan performance saturday night. it turned out to be more like a dress rehearsal. the tribe's big number, The Tribal Dance was...hmmmm...a wee bit appalling to say the least. our rhythm was off, our music stopped halfway through, and (poor tif!) slipped on a paper leaf and fell smack on her ass. and to an (almost) full house in murakami! but, luckily, it was in murakami so i didn't know any of the audience members. (sorry kat, i'm sure you'll be able to show your face after a week or two)
luckily shibata's show yesterday was a vast improvement, and the tribe had never performed better! i'm sure it was due in part to joe, hiten, luke, mieko, jeff, nathalie, mari and asako's screams of encouragement from the front rows!
i'm surprised at my present chipper mood despite just having returned from teaching a lower-level class. not unusual events today included a boy moving a desk over to the sliding door of the classroom (which was locked), standing on the desk, half-crawling through the window above the door in order to unlock the door, and leaving. this was of course all done right in front of the teacher who just ignored him. i think that saruhashi junior high school has a small population of evil children. at least no teachers were punched today.
sorry, not such an interesting entry today. finding neverland is a great movie.

i think i'm being slowly poisoned

it seems to me that quite often i find myself sitting at my desk at toyoura junior high school, feeling sick to my stomach, with a foul (bathroom cleaner-like) taste in my mouth. i glance suspiciously at the bottle of water beside me and my mind wanders...
tsunamis and earthquakes are spinning in my head. my teachers are all having me do 'tsunami' lessons for my kids, showing them my before and after pictures from thailand... on top of that it's the 10 year anniversary of the kobe earthquake which was japan's most deadly in...oh, i don't know how many years. so the press is filled at the moment with documentaries and memorials...
and there was another earthquake here in niigata last night. no where near as large or lethal as the one back in october - i think this one was a 4.6 or something.
i'm feeling very uninspired at the moment...
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/specials/0501/0116alt.html here's a pic of me playing with my cell phone while all the other supporters are screaming their hearts out (i think i was trying to take a pic?)

a country of contradictions

i think that maybe it's my recent trip to the bathroom which has induced these remarks:
it's something that many gaigin (foreigners) living in japan talk about quite a bit. we have the opportunity to see things quite objectively, being such fish out of water.
ok, i'm not talking specifically about toilets or anything that has to do with bodily functions, but i bring up the fact that i just went to the bathroom as a example of what i mean when i say a country of contradictions.
there is no central heating in japan. or, at least it's not a standard thing on honshu or kyushu. i've heard that they do up in hokkaido, where they experience winters similar to central canada, but for the most part, the japanese rely on little mini heaters to heat up the chosen sectioned off part of the house (or, room).
so, in my trek from the heater-heated teacher's room to the non-heated bathrooms, i walk through a non-heated hallway, where i can see a fresh cloud of steam coming out of my mouth with each breath i take.
the whole experience is quite an agonizing one - until i manage to finally get in the cubicle and sit down...to a nicely heated toilet seat. and you don't have to stay at the keio puraza hoteru in tokyo to experience a heated toilet seat - i have one in my apartment.
while we're on the subject of bathrooms, it's also the case that women do not let anyone hear them pee. in fancier places, there is a button which hosts a previously-recorded 'bathroom medley - ie, the sound of water running', which you press right before you are about to create your own 'bathroom medley'. in regular places without such a extravagances (such as in the toilets at school), the teachers will all flush the toilet just as they are about to pee, so that no one will hear them. yet, they have no qualms about the sound of expelling other bodily fluids - like phlegm, for instance. they will hork and hork and hork until the cows come home, right in front of you, and in the middle of a conversation.

back from the rain to the snow

today i am exhausted. it's monday morning, 8:29 am. i am at saruhashi, my 'bad' school. my lessons here are much easier to get through when i'm genki because i usually really don't care how evil the kids are being and i just kind of have a mental shrug and somehow the lessons seem to turn out alright. or, actually, i don't care as much when they don't go well. but when i am tired everything is that much harder. since i have spent the past seven years or so fighting the natural shyness of my personality (as natalie so elequantly put it of herself!), when i am tired i don't always have the energy to do this and i act defensively.
however, my energy levels are a product of a great weekend spent supporting the niigata ALT soccer team in saitama. the japan-wide tournament hosted the top 8 teams from the Nagano tournament (eastern division) and fukuoka tournament (western division) held back in october. our boys placed third in nagano, and have been practicing several days a week since then. the top two teams to play the championship game would play in saitama stadium - possibly the best soccer stadium in japan and host of the 2002 world cup.
we (the team and supporters) took a bus down to saitama friday night (about 30 minutes north of tokyo). the boys played through the freezing rain all weekend to qualify against fukuoka to play the championship game - which we won! we are now the japan-wide champions. i especially feel quite proud since i know most of the teammates quite well - three of them live in my town and several others in niigata city.
i also managed to see dave and pascal (who live in tokyo) for a fun night of izukayas and nomihodais.
i think yoko's trying to get me back for a weekend of loneliness as she insisted on waking me up this morning at about 5:30...er er ERRRRRRRRRR, er er ERRRRRRRRRRR! (anyone like roasted quail?).

i'm on such a buzz

on fridays i teach at primary schools. this means ichi nensei (first grade) to roku nensei (sixth grade). when i came to japan i had all of these preconceptions about what the school system (and the students) would be like. boy was i wrong.
in my experience, "discipline" does not exsist. so, by the time the kids get to junior high school they're all a bunch of sacks of potatoes.
which is why primary school (for the most part) is so much fun. the kids have not yet reached that phase of "i'm far too cool for this", and are quite 'genki'. (genki is a great word that means 'enthusiastic and happy'). so, i can walk into class, sing a song and do a stupid dance, and they'll love me for it. it just leaves me with such a good feeling...

35 minutes...

...until the end of my day. i think that this little piece of software is a godsend for those of us who spend most of the day sitting at our desks...
but it's amazing the things i've accomplished:
- emailed probably about 20 people
- sent photos
- msn'd for a while
- phone-texted my jpns friends
i'm such a productive employee. that's why they pay me the big bucks.
i'm also in a good mood because tonight at our weekly japanese class, instead of having a lesson we're having a dinner. this means eriko cooks everyone a fantabulous japanese style meal - and lemme tell you this woman can cook.
and tomo-chan's back from the states....definitely looking forward to seeing her.
alright maybe i should start preparing some lessons...