Irasshai: February 2006

I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7lbs, 11oz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M AN AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

me and nina-chan

lins, fu-chan and t-chan over for dinner

apaato desu

sliding doors to bedroom

messy during the day

yosuke

what is up with my good mood???

i went to the bank at lunch today and had 17 people in front of me (number 198). and all i needed was a new bank book. however, i was helped by my favourite T-san, who is not only tall and cute but also speaks a bit of english. oh sugoi.
they are doing road construction on my narrow little street. they are not widening it. you see, my street is the kind of street where two cars can't pass each other without one pulling into a driveway or something. and i have a minicar. i can put my car in my pocket yet i can't pass oncoming traffic.
but i like my street. it's very quaint, with a little canal running alongside it. the driveway to my house is suspended over this canal...with no barrier at all on the sides. it's rather treacherous at times on occasions when the road is snowy and slippery - with only a thin floppy cable between my little minicar and the water below. especially when i have to attempt to pass an SUV which is stupidly trying to negotiate my street. also rather treacherous for my drunken old-man neighbour who likes to pass out right next to the canal in the middle of the night. actually before i left canada i was told at one of those JET workshops that this particular ex-JET (who was doing a presentation on drinking in japan) was telling a story about his drunken neighbour (who incidentally used to come home at night and let himself into said-JET's apartment thinking it was his and pass out on the couch). anyway this old drunken neighbour of this ex-JET ended up driving his bicycle into the river one night and drowning himself.
so back to the construction.
every morning i leave my house on my bike and pass this young construction dude, wearing his bright aqua construction uniform and baby-blue construction hat. he always steps clear of my bike, waves his little baton thing and bows with a tiny flash of a nervous smile. i think it's rather endearing and now i give him a little bow back, wearing a huge friendly (if not flirty) grin. i think i probably scare the poor little dude...tall gaigin woman barralling along on her bike flashing a huge smile and making eye contact. eye contact. oh the horror of horrors. but now we've developed this friendly little routine which we execute twice a day at precisely 7:55am and again at 4:15pm.
after school i get to see my ichi-ban daisuki little girl - nina chan.
speaking of favourite little girls...just now i got an email from loralie saying she's begun having contractions!!!!!!!!! I AM GOING TO BE AN AUNT TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!

I LOVE JAPAN!!!!! he he

i was sitting in starbucks with kat on saturday, enjoying a taru-saizudo kafue ratte by the window. a little boy and his mother walked by, and the boy (who must have been about three or four) stopped in front of the glass and just stared at us. we waved to him, and his mother smiled. then the boy crouched down and attempted to look up my skirt! the mother pretended to hit him on the back of the head, smirked, and they moved on.
oh how we laughed.

so little natalie is just "too cozy" to bother coming out yet. i think that she's waiting until i show up to make her appearance. i'm sure loralie can hold on another couple of weeks! speaking of pregnancies...in japan they say the gestation period is 10 months. 10 months??? WTF??? guess a lot of babies are born premature. how does that work???

my goodness nattou for lunch AGAIN!! also, i'm not a fan of those pulverized potatoes that they like to add to the miso soup sometimes. they taste as though they've been turned into rubber bouncing balls. no thanks. i never eat them. today as i was eating my soup, i took out the bouncing-ball-potatoes and put them on top of my rice (which i was finished with). a few minutes later, X-sensei told me that NIHON DE, (in japan...we japanese..yaddayaddayadda) find it quite rude and offensive for someone to add soup to their rice. it's considered very impolite and that i shouldn't do it. Y-sensei came to my defence by saying that i was in fact finished my lunch, and i was just preparing to dump it. quel trou de cul!

hey guys we GOTTA check out this new film. starring lots of people apparently. HOLY SHIT!

the great outdoors. nature that is japan

ok i'm getting really sick of these so this is the last wolf picture, i promise

so my clip idea was revolutionizing until it stopped working. so now i've got TWO clips affixed with masking tape.

who's the brit?

...ok, so it's true you guys do in fact look different than the rest of us. especially you kat. you're so damn cute and british looking. take this quiz. i got 14/20. http://www.jamiefrost.co.uk/whosthebrit2/

jon, miho, tomoks & mari...all looking a little scary actually

more ramblings

i'm so bored today i've reorganized my sticker collection. seriously. i divided them into piles of: 1) prizes for the kids, 2) big sticker ichi-ban prizes for the kids, 3) for sticking on papers when i'm marking them and 4) birthday stickers to put in my organizer. OMG this job is killing me. KILLING ME.

they've just wheeled in the lunch tray and it smells like the mess hall of an overnight camp. memories of singing praise jesus songs and having crushes on my councellors and foon hunting with pillowcases and doing the polar bear swim at 7am. actually, i loved camp. i loved sitting around the fire toasting marshmellows and drinking hot cocoa with my fellow campers and councellors, singing kumbaya and telling ghost stories. i loved going on canoe trips and making gimp bracelets and sleeping in cabins and hiking through the woods and making applesauce sandwhiches...camp wahanowin, edgewood, kimanoya, conostogo...(tam u were pretty much there at all of them too, weren't u?)

...until you turn 18 and then camping involves getting a site in rockwood, going with your girlfriends hoping to meet boys, bringing beer (and mushrooms) and music and spending the day at the beach...

i've got a secret addiction to cycling over the coverings on the side of the roads. the ones that are all put in place, next to each other, all in a row, all along the length of the road on either side, so that each concrete piece can be lifted to do underground roadwork or whatever. when you cycle over them it makes the most satisfying sound. of rumbling or hollow knocking or i can't explain it but it pleases me.

last night T-chan invited mari, jon, miho, iwan and me over for dinner at her parents house. she had made delicious seafood curry and had previously taped two episodes of nip/tuck. i can think of a no better way to fill an evening. eating chunks of squid and clams while watching someone get his face peeled off. seriously though. good evening.

ok, off subject but...how many of you JETs out there read (or have ever read) a novel at your desk?

update

so...the elastic snapped and it went flying across the room. i tried to re-affix it but to no avail. so i've taken a clip and fastened it to the top of my screen. seems to be working so far...

"we'll have to improvise". wise words spoken repeatedly by my father. so...that's what i've done today. i just simply couldn't bare the thought of not having a working PC at my desk. so i attached an elastic band to the screen and to the keyboard, pulling it where it needs to be pulled in order for the screen to become visible again. and...voila!!!

i might pull a tamara and bash my pc with my fists

so as i'm typing this, i can only see the left 2.5 inches of my computer screen. so please forgive any typos. the only way my pc works is if i hold the screen at an exact angle...then the picture comes back. but as soon as i let go, it turns to black/multicoloured etc. SOOO frustrating! other's can relate with me on this one...how i'm going to survive at work without my pc is very, a VERY frightening thought.
today i had my 2-nen class do a writing assignment. some funny entries:

"there was a town. one day that man came to town. that man liked bananas. that man said "oh! my banana!" that mans name was bob. bob can't live without banana"

"one day there was time machine. people surprised. a person said "let's go to future world". people is agree. but there is 50 people. already person said "lets all go together." all together they took a time machine. as soon as time machine went to the future world, nobody don't return. because future world isn't really. where is people?"

"once upon a time there was a black banana in the store. he could not be sold because he was dark skins."

"long, long ago, a boy lived in village. his name is daiki nakamura. one day he met a big alien. "what are you doing here?" the boy said "shut up!!!"

"long ago a baby was present in olympics. he play habatobi" (long jump)

"one day an old man find a small girl in forest. girl is very very short. old man said "where and what are you doing?"

""one day this boy saying to the people. tell me everything you know about johnny."

puts some good humour into my day, anyway.

this is about the woman who stabbed two of her child's kindergarten classmates:
(from asahi times)
"The motive for the attack has not been established, but a woman who knows the suspect said Zheng, who arrived in Japan from China in August 1999, was having trouble learning the Japanese language and fitting in with the mothers of other children at the kindergarten"
BIASSED MUCH???

i'm trying to deal with my bad monday-mood this morning but my computer problems isn't making it easy. it's slowly dying...and i'm terrified that this is going to happen before i get to canada and (hopefully) buy a new one. the thought of sitting at my desk without a computer is panic-inducing...and probably enough to make me go absolutely insane. fingers crossed...
this weekend laura, tam and i went to see a film-festival movie in niigata city. we thought we were going to see 'jazz seen' in the afternoon...but quickly discovered this was not in fact what movie we were watching within about 5 seconds of settling into the theatre (my fault). the fact that the film we did end up watching wasn't even in english (with japanese subtitles) aside...it was pretty terrible. it was about the musical and dance culture in brazil. i mean, even if we did understand it, i think it would have been just as bad.
on sunday luke and i took advantage of the sunny weather and went for a bike ride. i never seem to catch the mountains on a clear day. that's what's interesting about living here. shibata has two sets of mountain 'ranges' on two sides of the city. but if it's at all cloudy (which it is about 98% of the time...) the mountains are completely hidden and you can't see them at all. but as soon as we get a clear day, they come into full view and they shine behind all the buildings of the city, the sun reflecting off their snow covered tops.
we left at 2pm and started along the bike trail which leads into the rice fields. about 3 km's in...the bike trail ended in snow, so we just decided to go wherever our moods took us. we ended up part-way up a mountain, following random winding roads, through villages and farms. when the sun began it's descent back behind the mountains, we decided that it was probably time to start heading back. unfortunately, the path we were cycling on then, too, ended in snow. we left our bikes beside the bank covered in monkey prints, ran through a field and climbed up onto a swell of dirt. we looked all around for a paved road which wasn't covered in snow...but short of having to make a treck through terraced-rice fields, we were going to have to retrace our steps.
almost back in shibata we came to a little section of trees. within this small area of woods was a tunnel of shrines. there were two tunnels side-by-side so luke went through one and i through the other. they went all through the woods and finally met each other in kind of a loop, with a temple in the middle. we payed our yens, clapped, bowed, clapped and made a wish, ringing the bell to solidify them. in the process, a lone cat sneaked into the temple and settled itself on the tatami. there was a priest inside who we left to deal with that...as it wouldn't listen to us!
running back through the bright-red shines i felt like sayuri from memoirs of a geisha. though luke didn't fall off his bike because of one glance from me. ;)
heading back the sun was setting and it became quite chilly. i retired to my apaato for a bubble-bath and a few episodes of the OC. quite a nice day.