A vacation like no other

Japan is full of wonderful things, places and people. My trip to Kyoto was no exception.

Since I am still dealing with some residual ear infection issues and am generally not a big fan of airplanes, the next best option while here is the bullet train called the Shinkansen, here.

Seating on the "Shink" is spacious and comfortable, there is a little lady who rolls a cart full of goodies to buy (a little bit like the food trolley on the Hogwarts Express. Sadly, no jumping chocolate frogs.) but you can also just pick up a bento at the station. It is quite relaxing to ride something that in many ways feels like a plane but never leaves the ground. The view as you zip past the enaka (country side/towns) and cities reminds me of what you see in a Van Gogh painting, slashes of color hurriedly compiled into a beautiful, scenic picture, rather than the view from the slower pace of the local trains I take everyday for work, where you can see the same scenery for minutes at a time.

The trip to Kyoto was a bit exhausting, the train from Chikugo-shi to Hakata, the big city terminal in Fukuoka, boarding the shink to Kyoto was a total of 3 or so hours of just sitting.  That being said, it was totally worth it.

Next stop, Kyoto!

When you take the Shink, I recommend
dragging a buddy along.

Yea.. New Years Resolutions......

So, I was all pumped after the New Year. I cleaned and reorganized my apartment to a stage I am pretty satisfied with. I set out a schedule to get things done, study Japanese and so on and so on.  Things were going pretty well until the third week of January and then homesickness hit me hard.

One of the partially rescued photos from my laptop before it crashed .
The original is gone but here is the copy with fancy edits.
Taken in New Hampshire, 2011 on a visit with my friend.
Pray for Japan!

The sad thing is, nothing bad happened in Japan, in fact, I haven't been this stress-free in such a long time but I found myself flashing back to memories of driving on the Kennedy and seeing the Chicago skyline ahead, or sitting in the tv room of my best friend's house, I even had a horrible flashback to my cubicle at my old job with my supervisor looming over me throwing some paperwork at my head.  (that actually snapped me into a reality check)

It also hasn't been so great with my computer being on the fritz. I'm probably going to buy myself a lovely new laptop in the coming days/weeks. Its an expense I wasn't looking forward to but its is a necessity at this point. I just need my Downton Abbey fix and to be able to stalk you all on facebook from a screen bigger than my hand!

.... and well, to keep up with my blog. Yea, I should do that too, huh?

So, keep a look out for some catch-up posts from the various travels I have done thus far in Japan.

For now, Happy Valentines Day!

In search of a new adjective

I love my students. They make me feel like a pop star.

"HALLO!!"

"NATARI!!!"

"I LOVE YOU!!"

"OH! Kawaii!"

"You are beautiful."

That last one and the kawaii one, have been a little over done. I have one boy student about 17 years old, cheery, sweet, smiley... he looks to me like a little Asian Pop Star and I enjoy him to bits because he makes every attempt to speak English with me. BUT he also is also the biggest perpetrator of telling me how beautiful I am. He goes so far as to blow kisses to me in class!

So, I am on a mission. I want my students to be able to express more feeling than the one word expression. Which is hard to do coming from the Japanese language, which is often very vague on things that in English we can be specific on and vice versa.

So, anyone have a suggestion? What can I replace cute and beautiful with?

Thanks!

When its cold, wear a sweater.

"CUTE!!!"
"COOL!!!" squeal my students at the college prep school.

Today, is dreadfully cold inside the my college prep high school. I mean, freeze your toes off your feet, COLD!  There is no central heating in my area of Japan. No insulation, either.  Often when it is tolerable outside, its dreadful inside the hallways and a few of the classrooms. Its so cold, I hate to walk down the hallway to the restroom, as neither are heated. As I write this, I have the feeling I might explode...

So, how do you prepare for a winter in Japan? Layers. Lots and lots of layers. But, as I had very little room to spare coming to Japan, I did not pack an ample enough supply of underthings to help me survive this weather. So, what did I do? I asked my school if I could buy one of the school sweatshirts to keep in my desk as backup.

I figured it was a safe thing to do, as you are pretty limited on what is appropriate for the school. I often see the students wear these gym sweatshirts as an extra layer in the fall. So, when I asked the response was;
"Oookkkaaayyy. But why would you want to wear part of the students uniform?"
"Because it is cold and on occasion need a little extra."
"I wouldnt want to be seen wearing the students uniform"
"oh...huh. Well, I think it is ok. I will only wear it at school."

That was the conversation I had with my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) and I have to admit, she had a little bit of a point. All day today, eyes turned and voices squealed as I walked the school hallways, donning my school pride.

A white sweatshirt with the school emblem on the left breast, with my name written in Kanji underneath.

Only in Japan would I unintentionally bring this much attention to chest.
(0.o")

Holla, Winter!

The recipe for a Chicago winter:

 1. Wind

 2. slushy wanna be snow 

 3. freezing Wind

 4. snow (whenever it decides to show up)

 5. Blizzard (that causes a 15 minute commute to a 45)

 6. Hot chocolate, marshmallows, good book, thermostat set to 69-70

 7. Hot showers and a warm home to walk around 

When my fellow apartment neighbors warned me that it gets cold here in the winter, I didn't take it lightly but I had all the essentials from back home. So, I thought I was pretty set and prepped. 

Nope!

Most of us in America cant really understand what central heating is not until we experience it for ourselves. I will try to explain with the best of my ability what I am facing this winter season.

Imagine, your house is completely made up of cement, glass and wood. There is no insulation between these materials, there is a draft and heat never stays inside for very long. So far, the temperature hasnt dropped below 45. Which is good for the fact that very little to no snow will come this way. Hearty root veggies still grow and believe it or not, strawberries are in season, now.  Sounds livable?

Well, home is ok. I keep the heater in my one room ON during the evening and sleep bundled to the nines in socks and a hoodie, but that means when I go to the kitchen or to take a shower, I walk into a room a good 30 degrees colder than the one I just left. (All I can say about that is DAMN! FFFFFUUUUUggghhhhhh!)

Its home though, so I only have to worry about evening and night time, right?

Nope. Japanese schools and buildings also don't have central heating, only the classrooms and staff rooms are heated when occupied. That means, the hallways are just like being outside! You need a coat just to walk to homeroom! (And they frown upon walking around "inside" with anything you would wear "outside."  I sit at a desk nearest the door to the staff room entrance, I sit in draft central! Burrrrrr! I've stretched out my loafers wearing two and three pairs of socks! 

Also, the bathrooms aren't heated, there is no hot water from the tap to wash your hands, and you have to bring your own towel to dry your hands. If you forget (and I often do) to bring a towel, then you walk around with wet hands and trust me... its brutal.

Anyway, short post to complain about the cold!

I miss all my friends back home and hope you are staying warm!

There are days and there are moments.

We all have them. You know what I am talking about. Those times when something doesn't work out the way you planned, or when something is missing, gone without a trace its that time when the world feels like its crashing around you and you have no control in stopping it. I notice that this happens a lot to me. It can be the dramatic ear infection that has been going on for months or the dramatic decline of my computer's hard drive and loss of data from my backup, to simply a bad day at work.

Whatever that cause is for those bad days, its definitely the right moment to start thinking about all the awesome things in your life. Back home, for me, a bad day could turn into a bad month, then year, than life.. pretty quickly. I was quick to be down on myself for a lot of things that didn't go well/right. In college, some of my friends would comment on how I was too serious and needed to loosen up a bit. I know they meant well, but it hurt a lot when they said or teased me about this. I didn't know how else to react to things that didn't go perfectly when I should be in control of them. At some point last year, I realized that my inability to relax and let things happen as they do was effecting my life on a more holistic level.

Life wasn't happening the way it was supposed to.

Everywhere I turned, I wasn't living up to the standard of living that I believed was expected of me or that I believed my friends were living. Friends were getting married, having kids, graduating from Graduate School, traveling, working a job they liked/loved, going on adventures.... The list went on and on... No matter what I tried to do, I wasn't happy, I didn't feel accomplished...   Even when I had/did things that I thought were on the list, the outcome didn't yield the results it should have.

And then, I did something crazy. I applied to teach English in Japan.

It wasn't something new, I'd done it before. Three times before, in fact. Every time I applied I was one step closer to making the cut, but not making it so many times when many of the people around me got in on the first or second try... Well... I felt like a loser. A judo friend encouraged me to try again. He reminded me, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain if I made another attempt. He was right. Albeit, I am still realizing how right he was in pushing me to apply to JET. I couldn't have imagined the people I would meet, or the experiences I would have.  Moreover, I couldn't imagine what a step away from my life in America would do for my ability to accept that "shit just happens."

I don't want to sound like I am a new person. I am not. I still panic when things don't go well. Friday, I was brought to tears, when one of my lesson plans failed, at no fault of my own. It was simply one of the difficulties one faces when working with language barriers and a different personality. What I am learning is that there is so much potential for things to go right or for them to change that dwelling on that failed moment or day, is not seeing the whole picture clearly. There is still awesome in failure, its just a matter of perspective.

To bathe or not to bathe.... Hey, a lil' dirt never hurt nobody!

Last weekend, my family challenged me to Onsen. I say challenge because my American self is not so excited about the idea of bathing naked among strangers nor friends and family.
                                                    Its just.... awkward... 
But I did it. It was nice and relaxing. There werent that many people because the hotel with the Onsen in it only had 6 rooms for guests and was private to only those guests of the hotel.

The procedure for onsen is all about showering before you enter the bath. Then you sit in this really huge pool full of hot water for a while and yup... that's it.

I dont much get the excitement of onsen. I personally would rather my own glamorous bath tub in the comfort of my own home but Japanese people and foreigners alike have raved to me about doing this. Perhaps its because Japanese homes are too small for glamorous baths or if your a foreign language teacher (like me) at the mercy of your Board of Education, where you live is up to them and the status of your living accommodations is an accumulation of the years of ALTs before you, well then, a pretty bathtub might be an exciting event.

But still... Its not the bathing naked with other people that bothers me, its that to me, bathing is my own private relax time, where I can get lost in my thoughts and sink under the skin of the hot water, lying half vested into another world and where gravity is my friend.