Long Overdue

Warning, this shall be a bit of a long post. I have about a whole month or so of catching up on. So lets begin!
On September 5th I woke up at 7:30 am,had a breakfast of my favorite bread topped with peanut cream, and brushed my teeth in the morning before dashing out the door to make it to school on time. I was late. (No I am kidding, I am not going to give you a blow by blow of every single day, but hopefully a general summation of my life for the past month or so) [Oh, and no I wasn`t late (mom) I wasn`t even teaching at schools yet).
So seriously, let`s begin!

Okay, so I have neglected this blog a little bit. Sorry, but I guess I have been busy, or unmotivated. Or maybe a mixture of both.
Anyway, so on August 27th (way forever ago now) I had participated in the 21st annual world shrimp catching festival in Aio, in Yamaguchi prefecture. It was pretty interesting and apparently it is really popular, because it attracts people from all over Japan to participate, and even the occasional internationals. Aside from us foreign JET's there were also some people participating from China, Korea, and South America. prettty awesome.
The basic idea behind this shrimp festival is pretty odd, to say the least. They section off a part of the ocean with a large net barricade/fence and then begin to throw thousands of live shrimp into the shallow (maybe knee high water). After giving the shrimp about 10 minutes to get nice and burrowed into the sand then they give out a count down and there is the mad dash to the water!h
So the goal is to catch/dig up as many shrimp as you can. If you catch the most shrimp you win some fabulous prize, I have no clue what it is, because I didn`t catch the most shrimp.

Anyway, those suckers are surprisingly more difficult to catch than you might expect. The best way to go about finding them is to lightly run your hands and feet along the sand and if you feel any lumps more than likely there is a shrimp beneath you. The worst thing that happens though is when you are running your hand/feet along the sand, if the shrimp is not burrowed very well, you get poked by the sharp ...for a lack of the proper word, `pointers` that they have strategically placed on their foreheads and tails. Not nice, this happened a few times and it hurt!!!!


Usually once you find the shrimp it is not too difficult to catch them so long as you act quickly. Simply scoop the creature out of the sand and plop it into the bag/container/laundry net that you have designated as your shrimp storage space. If you dont go very quickly they will swim away from you or flop/jump/air swim out of your hands. This happened twice to me, and it was pretty infuriating having spent all that time searching for a shrimp only for it to hop/flop/plop away. >_< . In total I ended up catching only four shrimp...womp womp. If I decide to stay here another year, I hope that next time I will catch at least 8!



Oh, I forgot to mention the best part, after catching the shrimp we had a delicious lunch of freshly caught grilled shrimp. Some of the braver ALT`s ate them raw.For me, No thank you.







And what have I been up to since August 27th?
Well for the most part I have been busy teaching my students, who are ridiculously cute (ES students) and ridiculously ridiculous (JHS students). Currently I have a bit of a love/hate relationship going on with the elementary schools I work at.The reason being is that I absolutely love elementary school because as mentioned these students are too cute(!) [They are so small, and so silly], they are not as self-conscious about using their English as JHS students, and they are super uber genki (excited/energetic) all the time, and here in lies the hate part of the relationship. Excited energetic kids are awesome(!), way more awesome than kids who are falling asleep during their lessons and refuse to participate. BUT super genki kids thrive on me being equally as genki as they are, which I generally enjoy. However, as I mentioned in my post about summer English camp, being super genki every second is really surprisingly tiring. And after 3 straight lessons of genki comes lunch and of course recess (every kids favorite hour of school) which in Elementary school involves playing and running and usually me getting hit by a dodgeball or two (an upcoming post shall be dedicated to dodgeball, and I will try to post sooner than later). And so although I am always really excited for one of my elementary school days, by the time the days is through I am ready to roll into bed, rejoicing in the fact that for the next 3 days I get to enjoy the relative peace of JHS.

After devoting a paragraph to elementary schools, I suppose it is only fair that I also enlighten you a bit on the pleasures of being a foreign english teacher in a Japanese JHS. I suppose the reason I choose to identify my JHS students as ridiculously ridiculous is because of their mad obsession with this equally ridiculous American girl (me). I think it is rather fair to say that most of my JHS students that are males have a crush on me (and no I am not trying to be annoying by highlighting the fact that I am ridiculously gorgeous or incredibly intriguing), I`m just fairly certain that for one reason or another I have garnered the attention/affection of most if not all of my JHS boys. Everyday I am at a JHS one boy or another ventures to ask me outlandish questions usually along the lines of: `do you have a boyfriend, what type of boy do you like, do you want a boyfriend, where do you live, you said you are a little lonely here, I can keep you company` (creepy, but seriously one kids said this, in broken english though of course), etc.

But what is maybe even more ridiculously ridiculous than my boy students are my female students! The example I am about to give you is one of my more extreme cases, so thankfully not all of them are like this, or else combined with the boys I think I would die of ridiculous behavior overdose! So anyway, at one of my JHS`s 3 girls in particular seem to have a larger crush on me than any of the boys at my schools. Every word I say merits a loud chorus of KAWAIIIIIII (cute), everything I do, including the most mundane things like dropping pencils, tying my hair back, coughing for goodness sake (!!!!) is immediately followed by a resounding KAWAIIII! During lunch these girls will crowd around me and just stare at me and watch my every movement which usually results in me giving awkward smiles, tense laughs, and a mumblings of `oh my, oh my oh my oh my` under my breath, and of course, you guessed it, their response: Kawaii! (and also mimics of the mumblings I make).

My conclusion on being a foreigner in a JHS is that you become an instant celebrity, JHS student fantasy, etc, etc, etc, etc. For awhile it is a bit of an ego boost that these kids think you are the bees knees, but after awhile it does become a bit pesky having 15 year old boys vying for your affection and 16 year old girls stalking you and squealing in excitement every 5 minutes (or less, seriously!)

Outside of school I have been trying to keep myself pretty busy because, yes I am feeling a bit lonely out here in the middle of no where. It is especially hard living on my own for the first time. For the past 22 years I have always lived with someone, growing up it was my family, in college it was a roommate, and so now coming home to an empty apartment (and weatherby, but a turtle is not the most communicative companion) feels rather depressing. So most weekends I tend to go off the island to visit friends, or go shopping. And now every Tuesday I attend a Japanese language course that is about 1.5 hours away by combined transportation methods of car and train. On top of that I also teach an adult English conversation class twice a month, which is nice to be able to chat with Japanese people outside of work.



I suppose there is just one last thing I want to share before calling this post complete, and that is that I got to visit my host family this past weekend! From Oct1(morning)-Oct. 3rd (evening) I spent time in Tokyo and Chiba prefecture. It was so great to see my host family again, in many ways it felt like being home. I was really surprised when I was catching the train from Tokyo station to Myoden (the suburb my host family lives in) that everything felt so familiar. When I was walking my regular route from the station to their house I felt in many ways like nothing had changed at all,and that no time had passed. In my mind I was simply walking home from a day of school and that the next morning I would follow the same routine of almost two years ago. But in many ways, being back with my host family also showed me how much I have changed and grown up from the last time I saw them in March 2010. And something I think that I finally was able to realize that I hadn`t before is that I do think of my host family as almost a second family, and that I think of me more than just some girl who lived with them for 5 months.During this visit I was so surprised that my host mom remembered so many little things about my character and habits that I would have expected her to have forgotten in a year and 2 other host kids in between my stay. Both my host dad and host brother also remembered a number of my silly quirks. But I think the moment I really realized how much I have come to care about my host family was when my host mom saw me off . Instead of just dropping me off at Myoden station or simply guiding me to the terminal entrance of the bullet train, she instead insisted on buying a ticket onto the platform (different from the actual train ticket, so it only cost a couple hundred yen) and waited next to the train until the moment I departed, waving goodbye to me until I was out of sight. It was in that moment, with my eyes tearing up that I realized that I really have come to love my host mom.

Mickey and the Carps: The Best Teams Ever

Today is one of those days.One of those days where I slam my fist upon my alarm clock set for 7:00 and roll over and go back to sleep thinking to myself thank god it is the weekend. Only to shoot up out of bed at 7:45 and realize, `OH SHIT! Today is not Saturday, today is Friday and I have work at 8:30. And then I rush rush rush to make and eat my breakfast, rush rush rush to gather all of my `burnables` that are to be collected today, (there are about a billion categories of trash here and they are collected on very specific days of the week. Tuesday and Friday are burnables)rush rush rush to pack my obento, rush rush rush to brush my teeth, get dressed, and get out the door, and finally, rush rush rush to drop off my burnables and drive to work. And naturally, once at work all I want to do is konk-off and go to sleep, but of course that is not allowed. While tiredness is pretty standard, I am feeling particularly worn down because the past 7 days have been crazy busy, and all of the energy I exerted has at last taken its toll on my mind and body. I guess it is true when they say that party cannot go on forever.

So to briefly summarize, some of the hectics that have taken over my generally domestic life are as follows:
Partying pre-Kencho in Yamaguchi (8/18)
7 Long Hours of Intense Japanese Learning (Kencho 8/19)
Post-Kencho partying and Karaoke in Yamaguchi(8/19)
Hikari Beach Party, and all you can eat/drink beer garden in the evening (8/20)
Karaoke in Tokuyama until 3am (8/20)
Shopping and eating in Tokuyama and Yanai (8/21)
Finally an evening at home (8/21)
Super genki everyday for English Camp (8/22~8/24)
Hiroshima Baseball game (8/24)
To sum it up I have been away from home and pretty busy for the past week or so. While all of these events were extremely fun and worthy of elaborating on (excluding Kencho) I will dedicate this blog exclusively to English Camp and a little bit about Hiroshima.

English Camp
The English Camp I volunteered at was on Oshima island, I was one out of 9 JET ALT's to volunteer to spend 3 days assisting 33 students, from 5 different schools (JH and HS) on the island, speak and learn English. Before activities really began we had lunch with the kids and so I kind of got to establish a general idea of how well these kids could speak/understand English. During Lunch I was seated with Matthew and three JH Japanese girls Yuina, Kana and Chisato. All of theme were pretty shy and wouldn't really initiate conversation, but once I started asking them questions I quickly realized that Chisato and Kana could not quite understand what I was saying, or if they could understand they either did not know how to respond, or were nervous to make English mistakes and tried responding to me in Japanese. Yuina on the other hand, although a little reluctant to converse could understand every single word that I was saying and was able to easily formulate proper responses without much effort. After chatting with Yuina, I learned that there were two primary reasons why her English was so good 1) She had lived in Osaka up until a year ago and attended an international school, and, 2) She had spent 3 weeks in Australia learning English and living with a host family. I was completely blown away by her English capabilities, especially once I found out the average capabilities of the other students at camp. Anyway, needless to say, if you cant already tell I in a way had fallen in love with Yuina, she was so adorable and shy but friendly, I began to think of her as a little sister. But anyway, back to talking about camp.

At camp, we were randomly broken up into Family's or groups and we chose family names, for example, my family was Team Mickey! And, to my surprise and delight, Yuina was placed in my group, along with Kana T., Kana F., Naoki, Seiya, And Mizuki. At the start, I was a little weary with my group because both Kana's, Naoki, and Seiya were extremely reluctant to use English, let alone speak in general!!! And although Yuina had amazing English, she too was pretty reluctant to speak. Mizuki on the other hand was such a relief, she was very eager to speak in both Japanese and the English that she did know,which was great. Anyway, throughout camp we played various different games where teams could win points and prizes. And during break times kids would run up to us and ask us about a gazillion questions, usually in Japanese, and we would have to remind them that we were at English camp so they had to ask it in English.



During camp, i think I got some glimpses of what it will feel like to be a proud mama. Everytime my students won sticker points for speaking in English I felt really happy and impressed. I was certainly most impressed with one of my students, Naoki. He was extremely extremely reluctant to speak English to me at first, instead he would just nod or smile. But after spending sometime with him practicing how to pronounce words and properly formulate simple sentences I was so happy whenever I would hear him speaking English to me or any of the other ALT's! What made me the happiest was when my group was totaling up their sticker points (they got these when they won games or spoke to ALT's in English) and naturally I knew that Mizuki would have lots of stickers, and Yuina too (because the other ALT's were equally as impressed as I was), but I was so elated to see that shy quite little Naoki had almost as many stickers as them!!! I think it was in that moment that I realized that all of the overly perkiness (more tiring than you think) and long hours were completely worth it. Oh, BTW, my team won a prize for earning the most sticker points, so so proud of them!


Yuina and I (seriously she is so adorable can she please be my little sister forever?!)

Hiroshima
Okay, so directly after English camp finished on Wed. Jessica (ALT from Yamaguchi city) and I hopped into my car drove to the train station and caught the train up to Hiroshima to wander around and watch the Carps game (baseball). So, baseball games are such a crazy experience for me here in Japan because, although it is a traditionally American sport the Japanese definitely have fun making the experience uniquely their own. Throughout the game fans sing these cute little cheers and bang together weird noise makers, which I know can tend to be common in America, but here they are so enthusiastic about it that it seems completely different! And the funniest of all is that during the 7th inning everyone blows up these things (that oddly enough resemble condoms) and shoot them up into the air, why..., I'm not too sure but it is pretty fun and funny to see. Although I am usually not a baseball fan it was sooo much fun to watch all the crazy cheering and attempt to join in. Jessica, Emily, Anneli, and I all attempted to teach the Japanese fans near us some English cheers, as well as the wave, which was pretty fun. And, the Hiroshima Carps beat the Yokohama Bay Stars 8-1! YAY! I really enjoyed Hiroshima, I'm planning on going up again next weekend with some friends to do a little bit of shopping!


Interesting balloons that are released during the 7th inning.


Super Exhausted,
Keri

P.S. All of my posts have still contained something about fish. Sheesh Hiroshima Carps.