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.
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.
posted by Justine at 11:03 p.m.
11 Comments:
oh yeah, and today is my 1/2 year anniversary of being in japan. wow. i should do something...
weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Time flies doesnt it Ah well, another 18 months to go!
You guys screwed up on purpose to embarrass me in front of my city..although one of my students was in the audience (!!) and told me were all sugoi! So perhaps you werent too bad, or we just made you look great ;-)
Esther's mum: One piece of advice from an old teacher, don't take any of the offensive behaviour from those brats personally. And, frankly, good riddance! Do you get into trouble if he's missing?
i can't believe its been 6 months!
your stories remind me of my days as a french monitor at brooks road public school.
btw- i can relate to the process you went through of strong arming friends to post on the blog- it seems to take a bit of encouragement at the beginning- and then nobody will let you stop!
mireille: yes, good riddance indeed! it is actually illegal to kick a student out of class (against his/her right to an education?). so, if they remove themselves, all on their own, the rest of the class goes by much more smoothly!
Hello again. Obviously i have nothing better to do than comment here on your blog. Fancy that. No pressure to do so mind.
So, ive been thinking. Do you wanna go to Seoul one weekend? Im gutted i cant go to PNG....bah, my school sucks sometimes! Ah well....Russia it is. Another third world country anyway, isnt it? And i get to practice my HEMNOXKA PYCCKUU, so its not all bad. Sorry that's in caps, there's no russian keyboard. How flash i am.
okay, i am insane, i was trying to get my own bloggggg and i was unable to progress after entering the initial information, and i was getting outraged, assuming it was because i have a mac, and that this "blogger" (yes those quotes mea alleged, i was mad!) site wasn't mac friendly, then i decided, to just try the name and password i'd been choosing for the last week only to find out that i created a blog last year, and majestically, chose the same name and password,,,, eeek.
Peter jaPan was outrageuos, camp, delicious, i have to admit that i KNOW it will scar those poor children who have watched it for life though, a bunch of scary gaigin, dressed in tina turner/patti smyth/cyndi lauper 80s style jungle attire and some drunken pirates with unusually deep voices, it even chilled me a bit.
Kat, you left your sweatshirt and blankie in my car...
see you two beauty queens later...
xox
anonymous:
i do agree to a certain extent. school can be like a prison sometimes, and why was the door locked anyway? but, i have also been teaching at this school for the past 6 months, and my patience is weening for these kids. this particular schools is one of the worst in the prefecture, in terms of misbehaving 13-15 year olds.
there are some cliches that hold true and some which are completely different from what you would expect. it seems as though school is more of a social activity than anything else, as discipline (for the most part) does not exist, or if it does it is extremely rare. that being said, students from first grade junior high to third grade highschool are forced to take part in 'club' activities which take up much of their time after school (and on weekends). this could be kendo, judo, baseball, english club... on top of this forced commitment, most students also attend 'jukyu' (sp?) after school several nights a week. jukyu is an after school-school, which prepares students for their high school entrance exams (and past?). i think this is where most of the studying and working actually takes place. even on weekends, on a saturday or sunday night as i'm coming home from whatever fun thing i've just been doing, i see students riding home on their bikes, still in their school uniforms. so, they are really expected to be in school, or have something to do with school, most days of the week, most hours of the day. it's no wonder that there are on average 2-3 students sleeping during every class. the teachers just let them go ahead and snore.
kat, yes. let's go to seoul one weekend. i've heard you can get cheap rates from niigata airport, as it is north and therefore closer than narita. eriko's husband goes there to gamble all the time, he goes at least one weekend a month. was it you who said you also wanted to try to go to north korea?
Thanks Nat, i thought i might have. The blanket isnt mine though, im sure i took mine, but ill take it if no one wants it, and extra blankie is always welcome!
HOpe youre feeling better Nat....hangovers are a bitch.
Sorry this has nothing to do with you Justine, but at least i can use you to keep in touch with other people, huh?
Karaoke is gonna rock tonight!
Oh yeah, you need to learn how to put pictures on this site too...get to it.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
so n-chan, was that a positive or negative comment about peter japan????? you freak. cindy lauper. HA! (well, not me personally, though i'm STILL having nightmares about lindsay's leopard-print headband).
kat: as if you're using my site to gossip with nat. actually, daijobu desu. it's what it's here for. i know. i need to work on the picture thing. so i can put you and your dirty-faced pirate pics up.
ka ka ka ka karaoke....DON'T BE LATE FOR ENKAI! FIRST KAMPAI WILL BE AT 6:30 SHARP! xo
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