It's been a long time...I know.

The last couple of weeks before the kids’ summer vacation were devoted to tests, assemblies, and various other activities. Since my junior high school students were busy with finals, I went to the elementary school a few times. They have a friendship with another elementary school in a city not to far from where I live. Every year, the parents and children of both schools get together and play in the mudflats in the inland sea area. It was really nice to see the kids enjoying themselves with their moms and dads. We all were given make shift mud sleds and we ploughed through the mud to a sandbar where the kids collected snails, crabs, and whatever else. It was HARD WORK to get all the way out there in waist-deep mud. That after noon I was supposed to fly to Okinawa, but those plans were canceled thanks to the typhoon that ripped through there in the evening. Instead, on of my neighbors had an Okinawa party and we sat around and ate...waiting for a typhoon that never came. Here's all the damage it did in our area.

Despite the fact that I've made it clear that I don't sports, no one cares. They teacher I work with at the junior high decided that I would play basketball with the students. My knees been bothering me lately but I acted like I was playing anyway. It's really odd...it only gives me trouble when I'm seated with my leg bent for an extended period and I can't straighten it out right away when I stand. Anyway, my team lost so I guess it doesn't matter. I don't see why the other teachers don't ever play. Hmmmm. I'm not even the youngest in the faculty. Whatever.

I also joined the elementary school for their "work experience" in the mountains. In the States, 4th grades would never be let loose on a steep mountainside with razor sharp sickles to clear the brush from around baby pine trees...NEVER! We almost made it the whole day without someone cutting their fingers off. Not even 10 minutes after we returned to school, I spotted a little crowd around someone trailing blood across the stairs. I told her to hold her towel on it and press. While waiting for my bus, I went out and played with the kids. We played a game where you form 2 teams, individuals start at opposite ends, each jumps from tire to tire until they meet, and then they play rock-paper-scissors to determine will pass. The point is to get your whole team across. After that the kids swam. The warm-up was too cute. After all the splashing they jumped in and did laps. Most schools in Japan have pools and the kids are required to take swimming. In the kiddie pool next to this one, the little kids were doing their own thing. One of the kids was trying not to put here face in the water so the coach dunked her face a few times while yelling. Had I been walking by in my own world I'm sure it would have looked like he was trying to drown her.

Earlier this week we got smoke detectors installed. You would expect that to be standard but I guess it's not since we're just getting them. Sad. In the evening, my Japanese mother and her best friend took me and a coworker (who's leaving next week) to the beach to see the sunset and to a fabulous Italian restaurant. The sunset was a bust because the horizon was lined with clouds, but the food was REALLY good. I drove her Lexus SUV home...fun! Before coming here, I thought that I would live closer to some water. So, it was really nice to be at the beach.

Joy...Fun...Seasons in he Sun!

This past weekend was my friend Michelle’s birthday party on Shikoku. It was on Friday and I wouldn’t have been able to make it there in time for the party so I went to the Sanin Beach Party in Tottori instead. My friend in Saga drove and I was originally going to ride with them but her car was already full and she said it would take her like 8 hours to get there. It takes about 4 hours by high speed train. I left directly from school and my first train (which was to take me to the high speed train) never came. So about 45 minutes after my train was supposed to come, I hopped on anther rapid and they reissued my ticket for the high speed train. Long story short…It took me almost 7 hours to get there. Some other friends of mine already had tents so I crashed with them the first night. By the time I finished the second to last leg of the trip, the trains had already shut down. So, I scoped out 3 other foreigners at the station and we all split a cab.

I was a bit surprised when I got to the beach. For one, I thought the venue would be much bigger and that there would be more Japanese people there. It looked more like a foreign English teacher party. Secondly, they played techno the entire night…as in until I went to sleep at almost 5 am!!! So while a group of friends smoked hookahs at the hookah bar, I talked to the vendors who was French. Instead of dancing, most people were down on the beach where all the tents were. Jon (another really cool person I met at the beach who was also in the tent) lent me his flashlight services and we headed down to the beach too. The people whose tent I crashed in had fireworks so we set some off. The tent was HUGE so we started calling it “The Hotel.” It could fit like 9 my-sized people/6 adult-sized people comfortably. We all tried to get some picture of the sun rising over the beach but there were just enough clouds to make that a failed attempt.


At about 8 am, I was wide awake. When I stepped out of the tent, I noticed that everyone else (even the severely hung-over) was too. That whole circadian clock thing is amazing. There were food vendors there so for breakfast I had a tandoori chicken skewer, a rice ball, and miso soup. I wasn’t full so I also at two chicken kebab sandwiches being sold and another stand run by the French guys. Sounds like a lot right? Well everything was Japan sized and the kebob sandwiches weren’t really sandwhiches per se. Chicken was stacked and roasted on a spit like the lamb for gyros. The chicken, raw cabbage, tomatoes, and salad dressing were wrapped in a flour tortilla. It was a good variation on a theme I guess.


A group called Capoeira Aché Brasil gave workshops and a performance in the afternoon. So, after watching the first workshop and giggling and feeling like 5th grade groupies/stalkers with some of my new homies about how cute the instructor was, we decided to take the second workshop. It was so much fun, but knew I would be hurt in the morning. The weather didn’t get that hot so I only spent a few minutes in the water with one of the people from my cab ride from the station. My friend from Saga and her crew finally made it in. That evening the music finally changed so everyone headed to the dance floor. DJ Kaori, who was featured on the party’s flyer, came on at 8:30. She’s and ok DJ but it dawned on me that I knew what songs came next. Instead of displaying her mixing skills (if she had any), she played a lot of prefab mixes and just scratched to transition in between the songs. Everyone rushed the dance floor to see her so I moved to the back where I could breathe. There was an elevated log in the back where people had been sitting so I stood on top of it and had my own little party. All the drunk folks were walking by and asking, “How are you staying up there?!” every few minutes. A few even tried to climb up but eventually ended up back on the ground. ..HILARIOUS! By about 12:00 I was dog tired and the DJ was doing more singing than DJing. I think she may have been promoting her new cd or something. So, I went back down to the beach, collected my belongings out of Hotel Tent with the help of Jon’s flashlight, and went to sleep in the tent of one of my people from Saga.


Sunday morning I was back up at like 8, which never happens without an alarm clock when I’m at home!!! The inside of the tent was HOT! So, I threw on my bathing suit and ran into the water. After swimming a little, I ate breakfast (rice ball, banana, and green tea from a convenience store down the street) and talked to Sai (the guy with the sweet mother and sister who I met in Atlanta before coming here) and Rachel (another teacher from that area who I clicked well with) who speaks French. The capoeira group was back, and so was all our giggling. So, Rachel and I decided to take the workshop again and giggled some more. The group is from Osaka and we’ve already planned a trip there to take some classes next month, which I’m sure will result in MORE GIGGLING!!! I can’t wait! After playing on the beach (Bogus Yoga with Theresia and Counterfeit Capoeira with Yuki), the ladies from Saga and I went to lunch. Then, they dropped me off at the station and got on the road. My first train left at 6:15 and I got home at 10:45. They didn’t get home until almost 5 am!!! As you can imagine, I’m more than happy that I decided to dish out the funds and take the train! I did one load of laundry, did my hair, and took my poor tired self to bed!

As the saying goes…When it rains, it pours.

I’ve been trying my hand at Caribbean food lately. Friday evening I made stewed fish and fungi, and believe it or not the fungi had NO LUMPS!!! Saturday I had a taste for saltfish pate, but I have yet to find salted cod. So, I decided to experiment and I mixed canned salmon and tuna instead. It was surprisingly good. That night, I went to a salsa event in the city to see one of my friends perform. I decided that I wasn’t going to stay out all night so another friend and I cut out early to hop on the last medium speed train, which costs the same as the slow train. He just recently broke off a yearlong engagement with someone who he’s been with for four years. So, we talked about that for much of the trip home. I got home after midnight and jumped on the phone with my folks. Sunday, I had planned to wake up in time to take my recyclables across the street because they pack up at 10:30. I did two loads of laundry and as I was bout to heat up some lunch, my neighbor called to invite me to eat soba at our friend’s restaurant. In spite of the bountiful Caribbean smorgasbord that I was about to reheat, I couldn’t deny the fun of eating good food with good people. So, I threw on some clothes and scurried downstairs. At the restaurant, he asked if I was free to work on our orientation film and go to a potluck later. WHAT? MORE FUN AND FOOD? Is there any question? There was only an hour between when we got home and the time we agreed to meet to leave home. So I kneaded some dough real quick and made some more pate for the potluck…YUMMY! (Yes, I’m tooting my own horn). The lady who hosted the potluck teaches Japanese calligraphy and a lot of English teachers take lessons at her house. She really enjoys entertaining, she’s a great cook, and she always prepares dinner before each lesson. Every time I go over there, she always tells me to come back soon and more often. This time she asked me for my email address.

Monday morning, it was raining cats, dogs, whales, porcupines, and a host of other animals that would spoil your day if you saw them falling from the sky. So, I put on my rain gear…rain jacket over my book bag that contained my laptop, rain pants, and galoshes…and rode to the train station. The river across the street from our apartment had reached street level and the rice paddies were flooded, so the street was covered by about 5 inches of nasty water. EEEEK! I usually go to the board of education every Monday, but I had two demonstration classes today.

Yesterday, I went to school in the morning and judged a speech contest in another city in the afternoon. So the teachers requested the I come in on Monday to plan the demonstration classes. As usual, I sat around for the first half of the day waiting for someone to come “discuss” something with me. It kills me that the teachers freak out and do all kinds of extra things for demonstration classes. It would have been a classic moment in educational history if one of the students had raised their hand and said, “We don’t do all this for our regular classes.” Alas, that didn’t happen but I was praying it would. The classes today went well as usual.

Tuesday afternoon, I returned to the board of education to meet my supervisor so that we could ride over to the speech contest. I hate that we’re never given details about things they ask us to do. When I asked about it, he didn’t know. So, when I got there it was kinda explained to me. The group of women how hosted the contest is called Soroptimist International. From what I gathered, they are a group of Christian woman who are into community involvement and environmental issues. They all also appeared to be quite wealthy. The contest was between two high school girls and they each had written a short speech about their lives and environmentalism. After the contest, the ladies gave us gifts. First was the white envelope that my supervisor vehemently refused. I’m not sure what he said, but I did hear, “but Tiffany can...” So, they put his envelope down and gave me the other one. Then, they presented us with big boxes of desserts. The lady in charge, who had fly purple hair, asked me like 3 times to come back and visit and come to her house.

Let’s just say my supervisor is a little…ummmm…different. When I got to his van, he opened the back seat and didn’t move the stuff he had in the passenger’s seat in the front. So, I rode in the back of his stank van. I later asked a fellow co-worker about this and she said that when she rode with him it was the same. WEIRD! I haven’t ridden in the backseat of an empty car in over 10 years. Anyway, on the way back to the office, I noticed that my supervisor was starting to swerve a bit and I didn’t think anything of it the first time because sometimes swervage happens. However, he did it again and this time I saw him rub his face and straighten his back…THIS FOOL WAS FALLING ASLEEP! He was only driving about 15 mph and I was in the back wishing he would crash into a rice paddy so that I could hop out and walk back to my city. It also became apparent that he was lost, which also happened with the other co-worker when she rode with him. I’ll be coming back with the new teachers in August from Tokyo and I think I’m supposed to ride back with them to the city with our supervisor…NOT HAPPENING! If he says that I will, then I’m just going to have to be honest and tell him that I’m going to ride the train because I don’t feel comfortable with his driving.