Halloweening

On Saturday we had a Halloween party for primary school students here. Much fun was had by all (at the party at least, I am sure there would have been a few rather disgruntled parents and tears before bedtime when then sugared, scared and face-paint-smeared wee ones got home). We have been sort-of rehearsing for the Halloween play for the past few weeks but the preparation began in earnest on the Wednesday afternoon and continued apace until minutes before the kiddies arrived. On Friday night I carved my very first pumpkin. It was fun and far less dangerous than I had imagined due to some specialised tools we had been sent from the States.

On Saturday morning we all showed up bright and early (and looking spectacular)

for last minute practise (I was reminded that I was in charge of a 15 minute dance... which I successfully delegated) then we divided up the afternoon's responsibilities...
I have to say that sitting in an dark room, waiting to scream at small, terrified children was one of the odder things I have intentionally taken part in, even in Japan. My first haunted house and I was a haunter. Reactions ranged from yelping, to charging (one particularly boisterous child I dumped from a considerable height and then tickled) to uncontrollably shaking, to dismissing me with a "uh, Donna-sensei da". Indeed.

Other highlights of the day were me as the devil in the Jack-o-Lantern story and a small child backing away from me and crying when I entered the room. One of my favourite things in costume is when people don't recognise and a couple of my kids refused to believe I was me until they spotted the eye-brow piercing. Grand.
After a night of little sleep I headed out on a field trip with a lovely bunch of exchange students on Sunday. There are some pictures which tell the story passably well on my flickr page. Enjoy.

Hope you are all thriving and I will try and catch up with emails properly this week.
loves much

I ate till it hurt tonight. It still hurts. Why are roasted root vegetables so irresistible? I just don't know.

The time has come

Talking about last weekend has become rather overdue. I am forgetting the finer details so I will do what I can to offer you a brief but exhilarating account before I lose all sense of my Oki-time.

From the top: the enkai (work party) on Friday wasn't much to write home about, we had a tasty dinner at which everyone consumed a modest amount of beer and/or chuhai and I was then officially welcomed and asked a few questions (like why I decided to pierce my eyebrow) and the hot caretaker was officially farewelled. The second party of which I had such expectations was only me, the principal, the vice-principal, the disciplinary teacher, and another old fellow who lived on Oki long ago. I was urged to sing unchained melody and perform a duet with one of the old ladies at the bar that the headmaster was trying to crack onto.

I headed for Oki on the Saturday and had to get ready all in a rush to get the train to get the four-hour ferry because the fast boat was cancelled because of the 4-and-a-half metre waves.
I was picked up by Mis. Nobe and Helen and Steph, (my friend/former JTE and the two new ALTs respectively) and taken to Tsudo to stay at Ms. Nobe's house and be fed many kinds of deliciousness. The next day we were picked up by Yoshida, Funada, Tori and a few others for a pleasant day of surprise expeditions. It was most excellent. We had many more kinds of my favourite foods in picnic form up by a waterfall and collected delicious spring water, and then hung out at a small lake with retired ducks. There was also chestnut collection going on. It was so nice and comfortable to be with all these familiar folk and know I have not been forgotten. That evening I we went for some karaoke with Rika(rika) and the next day Helen and I baked a cake which we ate with Konaka-san (my old supervisor) and then with Kate (really Yawata) and then I went back to Hamada on the ferry.

So all in all it was lovely. But it was lovely like staying at my parents house now and then when I was having a hard time at uni was lovely - I felt rested and reassured but I don't think it was the place for me to be living all the time. I do think I made the right decision to leave - there are negatives to being where I am, but they are certainly no worse than the island negatives, and there are also nice things and people in both places.

In other news on Friday I went to Matsue with Makiko (one of my students) and Hinohara-sensei (one of my two JTEs) for the prefectural own-composition (read: ghost-written by yours truly) English speech competition... and Makiko won! So she will now be going to Tokyo for the national competition. I want also to be going to Tokyo for the national competition but don't think I can afford it because of all that coming home for Christmas stuff. But still, it was very exciting.

In other, other news, there was a cockroach in my cutlery drawer this morning so I just spent lots of time scrubbing all the poison and cockroachy-ness off all my utensils and I now have pruny hands.

A ponder on the subject of transportation

I am not feeling up to describing my whole entire weekend just now (see what I am cunningly doing, is building up suspense with these tidbits so when I finally write about it you will all be ready to understand how lovely it all was) so I decided to report on my musings about boats, trains and planes.
I will first have to reveal a segment from the very end of my weekend...
I had waited until what my companions considered to be the last minute (not to be confused with the actual last minute in which I usually operate) to board the boat. There being quite a few actual minutes left I spent a long time watching my friends from the boat and intermittently waving. During this time I took some photos of the port and on the ferry I pondered them.
I think I have decided what it is I like so much about train stations and ferry ports but not airports. When I first left New Zealand for Germany back in 2000 I took a picture of the railway tracks on the way from Petone to the airport and it was so pleasing it stayed on my desk all year. I like the way that these places all all set up with ingenuity and precision, in straight, clean, shiny lines - and then the world around them (the sea air and the commuters feet and the city dust) comes and has a nibble, and dulls the tracks to the colour of the rocks and chews little random patterns into the paint and everything adjusts to its surroundings. As a passenger on such services I appreciate both the shiny new times and the grime, shadows and (reasonable safety-wise) signs of age. I don't like airports because they are the opposite, air travel is so necessarily artificial and wrenching. Humph.

All that said and I just realised I managed to leave my USB cable on Oki so no pictures for tonight.

Who could ask for anything more...

My weekend even had ducks.
And I like ducks.

It's gonna be a long weekend (in a good way)

Thanks folks for all the emails, I should send out an "Oy yew, read thus" message more often. In retrospect the crazy awake post was possibly not the best note to advertise myself on... you can all rest assured that I have been resting since and am becoming saner by the day.
This evening I (finally) have my welcome enkai for school which will be interesting. Normally workplace relationships in Japan are jump started with a bout of drunken humiliation but I have had to wait until I have formed some fairly clear ideas about my co-workers before I've seen them cut loose. Watch this space...
Tomorrow I will be heading to Oki for the long weekend. I am sure I will have some amusing anecdotes to share with you all next week.
Today while trawling the internet like the diligent employee that I am, I found a tribute site and I would like to leave you with some of the joys of Michael Leunig.
I like the way he thinks about:

GoatsWar
Law

and Ducks

I really like ducks.

Netai (want to sleep)

This writing thing could become addictive for me and tiresome for you all, but I just thought I'd write about my last night because there was such a lot of it.
I have been building up (unintentionally you understand) to a no-sleep for a week or so now - I started last Sunday and have have been getting less and less sleep since (which made me rather surly last week (sorry) and also made my primary school visit seem particularly cruel and unusual) but this was the first time in a very long time that I have had an entire night without a wink. I had quite forgotten how the no-sleep process works.
Normally, although it is dependant on the the timing of the original sleeping attempt, I give up on sleep at about 3-4ish and then can get on and do something productive, but last night, despite my filthy apartment and my many planned sewing projects, I was extremely loath to commit to not sleeping and instead I played Civilization for an hour and achieved nothing (except partial world domination).
I finally had my 'no sleep is going to happen tonight' moment at 5:42 when I noticed how light it was getting outside, but by that time it was too late to be creative, innovative, or hygiene-restorative so instead I tied a sock around my head and put on Leonard Cohen (I have this theory that his voice slows down my heart-rate) and hummed along until my alarm started. I spent today in the unsteady foggy place that one's brain goes when it hasn't had enough time out (which could be a rather nice place were it not for the funny shaky body) and now am trying to while away the hours till I can get a good nights sleep (attempt to go to bed to early and I risk rebounding into wakefulness). If I don't get a solid slumber I believe I shall have to go begging for a place to crash on Thursday night because despite my complaints about the years of sharing a room, I always sleep better with others around.
Right am off to have some dinner and a nice cup of herbal-absolutely-decaffeinated-tea.
loves much
donna

September happened

While changing this over to the new site, I saw just how diligent I once was at keeping you all informed about my various doings. Even when there really wasn't so much doing being done. Imagine the things you could know about my new and exciting life! But somehow my people based interactions don't seem as writable-about as my little musings and happenings. I will offer for you all a sample of my recent party going and exciting social life and then, if I am still communicative, I will tell you all about my new school. Desperately intrigued? Totally riveted? Mildly flatulent? I know you are.

Anyway. As you can see by the photo that I will figure out how to attach to this post with hopefully a minimum of naughty words and computer-focused anger, I have been out and about dressed in glittery spandex. Why? Does one really need a reason? It was entirely justified I promise. I was at a 70's party being all sociable and stuff. I made four costumes in all. All of which are hopefully pictured here. Darrell and Rebbecca won the best men's and women's costume prizes respectively and I got the specially-made-up-on-the-spot-for-me best designer prize. Zang. The party definitely lived up to the aviators. Indeedy. T'was quite a party. As you can maybe see here.

A few weeks ago now I had my school sports day. My first few weeks at school were spent in obsessive preparation for this terrifyingly well coordinated event. The kids spent the better part of every day yelling their slogans, practising their dances, marching endlessly around the field, painting banners and making paper flowers. Sports day, you see, involves very little actual sport. I put some photos of what it does involve on the site. Particularly notice the scary saluting. This produced a physical reaction in me that is the exact opposite of the inexplicable joy I feel when hearing a large group of people singing.

Righty... some time has passed since I wrote that lot...
Now October has begun and the new JETs have been welcomed at Mt Sanbe in the customary manner. I am still very, very tired. I feel I need a bit of a weekend to recover from this last weekend. Friday we had a quiet wee indoor BBQ at Darrell's, of which I have posted some pictures, then Saturday we all dragged ourselves up a mountain (in motorised transportation) and partied the night away. Due to my playing RUGBY (mmm hm) for what felt like four or five hours during the afternoon, I was messy and in bed at the reasonable hour of oneish. So that brings y'all up to speed on my speedy social life.

I promised some insights into my school life (and intended to post some pictures of my house but it is awfully messy and so will have to wait). School is a completely different kettle of fish to last year. I am at the same school every day and so my lessons are not considered anything special (and certainly not "most very precious time for students") and the teachers don't put much planning into them, we just bumble on with the text book. It is difficult to get used to after being so involved in planning my classes last year and playing games and having routines to follow with the students (which should really be easier here but it is a bit of an uphill battle to even open the class in a consistent manner). BUT it is not all doom and gloom. There are definitely advantages to being at just the one school. I am getting to know the students which is excellent and rewarding in itself. There are some interesting characters and I have a couple of wee fans who show up in the staffroom every lunchtime. I also get to spend a lot more time with the kids who are training for speech competitions and am gaining a much more rounded view of Japanese school life in all it baffling glory.

If I don't put this up now I shall never get around to it. I hope everyone is well and good. It is lovely to hear from people so keep emailing!