More School

The view of the city and mountains from the window
A view of the baseball field
Lovely Clouds

Around School

These shovel sit next to the front door just waiting for the snow. I often wonder what would happen if I put a yellow shovel in the purple shovel row.
The sun was out today! I swear! I took a picture to prove it!!
I even took a picture of my shadow to really prove that the sun was shining!
This is where I usually have lunch. At the grocery store there is a huge selection of sushi, noodles and fried foods galore.
It seemed like a good idea to take a picture of the vending machines. One of them is a hot vending machine so you can get hot coffee and tea in a can or bottle.

ESS Nabe Party

Zach and Sanako, Ikuyo and Miki
Eating.... yum!
Ayami and Tomomi

ESS had a nabe party yesterday and I had a great time!!! Nabe is meat and veggies stewed in broth....mmmm delicious!!!!

A Day in the Life of.....

This week at school has been pretty easy. The students only have half days this week- classes in the morning and parent/teacher conferences in the afternoon. Yesterday, I taught two classes. Today, my only class was cancelled. Incidentally, today is the most beautiful day we have had in Kanazawa in a very long time. The air is cool but it is bright and sunny. This is a stark contrast to the normally grey rainy days that I have become used to. Too bad I am in the staffroom all day. During lunch I decided to take a little walk around and took some pictures of the area surrounding the school. I will post those later. In the meantime, I though you all might like to hear a little 'Day in the Life of Alexis'.

My days start out at 7AM- I wake up, do the normal morning things and rush out the door, ideally by 8AM, usually by about 8:15 AM. I arrive at school between 8:15 and 8:30 AM and the first class is at 8:40 AM. Three days a week I have a class during first period so I rush off to those right away. I have between one and four classes per day. When I am not in class teaching, I am making lesson plans, photocopies, etc. But truthfully, that does not take a huge portion of my day and for most of the month of December, the lessons have been really straightforward so there hasn't been too much preparation on my part. What do I do for the other 3- 6 hours per day when I am not in class? I check my email, chat on gmail chat, surf the net on sites like www.ishikawajets.org or read the news online. Some times I even post on my blog. And then I look at the clock and it is usually about 9:30 AM at that point. Sometimes I read a book, wander around the school or work on law school personal statements. And often times I chat with Zach. At 11:45ish I walk to the nearby grocery store, buy a salad sushi roll, some pineapple and a Diet Coke and walk back to my desk to eat it.

I usually leave school at around 4:15 PM. What I do after school varies- I go to Japanese class twice a week, sometimes I go out to eat with friends, sometimes I go shopping, sometimes I go to the gym and sometimes I go home and don't really do much of anything at all. For dinner, I either eat with a friend (sometimes), cook for myself (rarely!), or pick something up from the prepared foods section of the grocery store (often). My grocery store has some great pasta, sushi, or rice dishes. Mmm mmm good. I go to bed at 11 PM ready to start the process all over again.

Actually in putting it down in writing, my days sound pretty boring. But I quite enjoy it. It is just that 3:15 to 4:15 slump that gets to me- the time of day at school when everyone is in meetings and I am sitting in the staffroom without enough people to have it be entertaining but with too many people for to actually do what I want (like surf websites like people.com). Work will be over soon though and, hey, I am being paid right now to write on my blog so I really can't complain about that, can I?

ESS Christmas Party

Eating the houses to only way they know how- with chopsticks!!
Zach and some of our girls
English Speaking Society
This afternoon Zach and I hosted a Christmas party for the English Speaking Society. We made mini gingerbread houses (coconut cookies instead of gingerbread), played a gift exchange game and sang carols. Of all, it was a huge success and I think everyone had a great time.

The weather

Since I have put bubblewrap insulation and plastic all over my windows and doors, when I wake up in the morning, I have absolutely no idea what the weather is like outside until I open my front door. This morning I was expecting the usual morning grey and was shocked to see little bits of frozen whiteness falling from the sky- it was snowing!!!! I packed up all of my burnable trash (Monday is a burnable trash day) and trudged down to the garbage pit and then back to my apartment. Five minutes later when I left my apartment to go to school, the snow had stopped and it was just rain. Still, for a brief moment it was exciting to see the snow.

And last night, I was caught in the most ridiculous hail storm. I left my apartment is buy more powdered sugar to make icing for my English Club Christmas party. I was about half way to the grocery store on my bike when hail the size of small ice cubes started falling from the sky. It was unreal. And it hurt! It felt like someone was throwing ice cubes at me! Not wanting to risk life and limb for some icing, I turned back home sans icing sugar. So now my English Club will have to suffer through a Christmas party without enough icing. I blame the stupid Ishikawa weather!!!

Ikebana Cell phone pics

Apparently the only time I take pictures anymore is at ikebana. So here are some of my recent ikebana projects. All of the pictures were taken with my cell phone!

Preserved Flower Wreathes

My Wreath
Me and Honda Sensei

Last week, Jane and I made preserved flower wreathes. They were pretty difficult to make but should last a long time.

Bonenkai

Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning was the Nisui High School bonenkai. Bonenkai literally means "Forget the Year Party" and every office in Japan has them. They are big parties, sometimes held in hotels overnight, where every eats, drinks and is merry and tries to forget the last year. Nisui's bonenkai was held at a ryokan (Japanese style inn) in Kanazawa. We arrived around 4:30 and most people headed straight to the onsen for some public bathing. Bathing nude with your co-workers.... sounds like fun, eh (might be an idea for Corp Care's holiday party next year, Dad). Anyway, I avoided it. I have been to the onsen before and it is nice but the idea of disrobing in front of my supervisor just gave me the heeby jeebies so I stayed in my room and chatted with other teachers. At 6 pm everyone headed to this huge room in the hotel and the eating and drinking began. There was more food than I have ever seen before! It was all Japanese style food so, as you can imagine, some of it was pretty odd but there is so much of it that it is definitely possible to get away with not eating something. With the eating began the drinking and honestly before I could blink half of the teachers in the room were drunk. I kid you not, some of these teachers were drunk at just the smell of beer and at about 6:20 the teacher that sits across from me came running over to me and said "Alexis! I am three sheets to the wind! I am plastered!" Anyway, the eating and drinking continued til about 8:30. The time was filled with games (passing beans from one bowl to another using chopsticks, bingo and some others), one of the young teacher fake proposed to another young teacher. My supervisor told me that I needed to be as drunk as her and encouraged me to quickly drink some sake. At one point my supervisor asked me when my parents got divorced and when I told her that my mom had passed away, she started to cry!!!! Oh man, it was an interesting evening.

After the first party, people went to their rooms to go to sleep (at 9 PM!!) or to the onsen or to other people's rooms to continue to drink. I went back to my room and ate some cakes with some of the ladies in my room. Then I went to another room to hang out with some of the teachers. The young teacher who fake proposed was puking (at 9:30 PM- poor form, if you ask me!). I stayed up chatting with other teachers late into the night and was very impressed that I could communicate in Japanese (well, at least I tried to).

The next morning, everyone got up early for breakfast and then headed home. And today is just like any other day..... except there are a few teachers who said that they are still hurting from that night. Looking back on the evening, it was a lot of fun but also VERY strange.

Happy Five Year Anniversary Matt!

The first picture taken of me and Matt.

Old photos: Mom and Me

Fall at Kenrokuen

Alisha, Alex and I headed to Kenrokuen Garden yesterday to check out the fall colors. It was a gorgeous day- sunny and mild. And the colors were beautiful. It was really great.

Thanksgiving

Hello everyone,

Today is Thanksgiving and I am in Japan. I do actually have the day off for some Japanese holiday (Labor Day, I think). I am doing lots of Thanksgiving-y things (which is to say not Thanksgiving-y AT ALL) like ikebana and shopping. I did go to McDonalds today and that may be about as American as I will get today. I wouldn't mind a piece of pumpkin pie but I will have to settle for the pumpkin shaped chocolate that my Dad and Cindy sent me instead (thanks for that, btw!).

I am enjoying a relaxing day. The last two days were really busy. We had our JET Mid Year Conference which was held about 90 minutes from KZ. There were lots of presentations on lots of topics including Motivating and Evaluating your Students and Surviving an Ishikawa Winter (wear a sweater, yeah, I would have figured that one out). I love conferences so I had a great time and it was nice to meet some new people and see other people that I don't see a lot.

Tomorrow I will be back to work and then it is the weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

On the way home.........

Chris was nice enough to give me and Caroline a ride back to Kanazawa from Suzu. On the way we stopped at this beach that you can drive your car on. Apparently it is a really popular touristy thing to do and there were a ton of tour buses riding up and down the beach.

Thanksgiving in the Noto

Jon, Me, Alex and Alisha
Lovely beach
We played uno!
Many JETs

Fiona, Marie, Caroline and Me

There was a Thanksgiving celebration in Suzu this weekend. After a stressful trip there (in the dark over windy twisty roads with no directions or cell service), we finally made it to the cabins. There were probably about 30 JETs and friends in attendance and we had lots of food and fun! The cabins were right on the water so we were able to go for a walk on the beach in the morning. It was lovely!

Forus

A new shopping mall opened up in KZ and it is the talk of the town. Jane, Heather, Katie and I had lunch at the Mexican restaurant and did a mega all-day-long shopping trip and we didn't even buy anything. The food was good though. Mmmm margaritas and guacamole.

Peanut M&Ms

Last non-picture post of the day....

I bought a bag of peanut m&ms that were on sale after Halloween. It was a bag with mini fun packs inside, perfect for snacking. I opened one the other day and found SEVEN m&ms inside. Seven m&ms does not a snack make! That is not a fun pack- that is a sad pack! I have to eat 2 or 3 packs to be satisfied. There is more packaging by weight than chocolatey goodness. Some people say that Japanese people are thin because they have a better diet but I maintain it is because they are hungry.

A few thoughts

It is generally my policy not to post long boring paragraphs on my blog because people really just want to see pictures and maybe a few explanations, right? I mean if you really wanted to learn more about Japan, you would just look it up on Wikipedia, right? Correct me if I am wrong because I can certainly start writing epic poems about my experiences- I'd be happy to.

Anyway, today's post will focus on heating, or lack thereof, in Japan. Some things in Japan make a lot of sense to me. While I may pretend to be annoyed by them to the other JETs (hello to Jane and Zach who will inevitably read this and feel shocked at my omission), secretly I don't think that recycling in Japan is such a bad thing (a little nutty at times but oh well). Heating however really gets me. Recently it became winter in Kanazawa. It seemed like overnight it went from summer and profuse sweating (sweating so bad that it has been rumored that JETs have had to change their shirt mid-day after a particularly hot class... I hear.... but I am not going to name names ) to winter and lots of cold. And while I complain now, I know it will get worse. Today the high was 13C and when I woke up this morning it was 16C in my apartment. People say that the Japanese do not well insulate their buildings and I think that is proof of the truth of that statement. It should not be almost the same temperature inside and out! I do have a heater in my apartment with a remote control so when my alarm goes off in the morning, I turn on the heater with the remote and go back to bed til the snooze goes off again. When I get out of bed at least some of the chill is gone.

The cold at school is no different. Some things make sense and some things just do not. For example, our school is built around an indoor courtyard (they call it a GA-LAIR-IA, I call it a Galleria). They only heat the classrooms and not the hallways that face onto the Galleria or the Galleria itself (makes sense). However, what does not make sense is that they leave all of the windows in the Galleria open which makes it completely freezing there! There is no heating in the bathroom. AND the bathroom window is always left open! Instead of heating the bathroom, or closing the window so that is not frigid, they heat the toilet seats. And, to be honest, it is surprisingly pleasant. The same that I found to be distasteful during the summer (hot toilet seat in summer = makes me think someone just sat there for a long time) is a life-saver in winter.

Anyway, I am cold..... and I know it will only get worse. While I am skeptical of reports from other JETs that they kept their toothpaste in the refridgerator to keep it from freezing, I do now understand what they mean by no insulation.

Ok that was my rant for the day. :-)

Drama Festival

Asae and Ayami (Best Actress!)
Ensemble performance of "Anything Goes"
At the barber shop (my favorite scene!!!)
Today was the English Speaking Society (ESS) Drama Festival. Weeks of practicing and preparing (mostly from our ESS girls but Zach and I put in a few late nights with them too) led up to this performance where our school competed against 10 other area schools all with 30 minute plays. Nisui performed an adaptation of Roman Holiday and the girls worked so so hard. We ended up with 3rd place! I was really proud of and happy for our girls because despite having come in 1st or 2nd place for the last six years or so, they were still really happy with 3rd place and we gracious and happy kids. The play was amazing and one of the judges told one of our teachers that we actually came in first place in terms of points but went over time by 2 minutes which dropped us to 3rd place. No matter though- it was a lot of fun and the girls were really happy. And our lead male role (played by a girl) and president of ESS won the Best Actress award!!!! Overall, it made me really happy to be working here!

Dancing Rabbits

I cannot figure out how to embed video right in my blog so here is a link. Christmas has started in Kanazawa and this is a funny video I took of Dancing Rabbits singing "Jinguru Berrus" in a store window.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hi2p77_6e0