mitte Mai-sensei!

sniff sniff.....darn this cold...again....seriously this is getting ridiculous.

aaanyways! It`s such a beautiful day today. It`s really sunny and warm when you`re standing in the sun.....I went out and played with the kids today..we did some basketball hoop shooting...Oh yeah! I can throw! Though I am gonna have to admit that the hoop was probably at half the height it should be.....
My lessons went alright today, I was told in the morning that I was going to be observed by a BoE member. I was like..."ahhhhhhhhhhhh". And then had about an hour to build up Panic mode. I treated my first class as a sort of practice run for the class that was to be observed. Unfortunatley my kids must have taken some E before they came in. They were seriously all over the flipping place. Shouting random stuff, screeching, not sitting still. (I am NEVER having kids). So I was a little disheartened. Then the observation lesson began. My grade 2`s were actually suprisingly quiet to start with. I was thinking....ok I think I prefer loud and hyper (yes yes I know I don`t know what I want). But they warmed up when we played Simon says. The lesson went alright I guess. The Headteacher and the BoE guy were watching. The only thing that made the lesson that extra bit more difficult was one of my dear little girls that has a habit of hissy fitting. And yes..of course she had to today as well. We were playing a simple game of asking "what shape is this", "It`s a........circle/star bla bla". I put the shapes down in front of the kids so they had a reference. Of course this girl (let`s call her minidemon), did not like the shape she was given, and started whimpering. I quickly gave her the star because I know that was her favourite last time. She stopped momentarily. Until she realised that everyone had to shuffle one up to get to the next shape. Now we were all in trouble. The whining, and yelping was unleashed while she started convulsing on the floor like some solar powered wobbly toy. I restrained from tell her to effing get over it and smiled sweetly, while the teacher was coaxing her to just play along.

Anyway...throughout that lesson there were numerous minidemon hissy fits which at one point even got the headteacher to bedn down to her and give her a stern earful.
I seriously wonder how her parents cope...or if they cope...because really..if that was my daughter..................rar.

Yesterday I went to the wednesday night club, which is this get together of ALT`s in the area. We went for okonomiyaki which turned out to be...yeah hmmmm. There were almost 18 of us or something like that. 18 loud Gaijins, and one old lady serving us.....The bill was the most fun part....I am b\never going there again. We then went off to this underground bar, I got chatting to a guy who had lived in Vietnam for a year. He actually spoke vietnamese with a northern accent! It was pretty awesome anyway to hear it!

raaaaaaaaaaa..back to laminating my flashcards! (I LOVE laminating...it`s become this new wind down passion of mine...how sad am I?)

Roooooni shiteru?

Rar.

It's still bloody freezing. I could see my breath again this morning. Cycling to school also caused the circulation in my hands to stop and turn my hands purple. Wonderful.
My classes were quite fun today, although me having a cold and the kids all being on an acid trip or something has made my voice die. I really love the fact that my other schools have such small classes, I have to shout so much less. I actually started trying to get some kind of discipline tricks in to the lesson today. I was so fed with kids constantly chattering while I was trying to explain something, or taking ages to stand in line. So I started applauding the kids that actually did listen, and did the whole ominous counting down from 5. I am not entirely certain as to what the kids expect to happen after we hit 0, but it seems to do the trick. My handicapped class was an utter nightmare once again. We have a new kid in school. A chunky little boy with aggression problems it seems. He came with his Mummy today and I first took note of him in Assembly, where he proceeded to just punch his mother when he felt like it. I was like "oh wonderful...I wonder if he is gonna go in to my handicapped class". Of course he was...yay... My class actually started off ok for once. we played a game and sang a song. The little angry boy sat in the back watching it all with amused disgust, while his poor mother was fiddling nervously. When I then started drilling the target words, he decided it would be fun to start smashing a chair in to the door over and over and over and over.......you get the picture.
The kids were obviosuly distracted...lol no one was listening.
One of the teachers then proceeded to quietly tell him to stop, which obviously calls for some punching of the teacher. He properly whacked her in the chest! I saw all of this out of the corner of my eye...trying to desperatley keep the attention of the kids while at the same time fantasising of walking over to the kid, putting it in a head lock and gently telling it, that it was disturbing my class and if he would be so kind as to try and listen if he wanted use of his arms ever again.

I should probably not be a teacher for long. :p

Instead I stayed calm and smiley and genki...of course...teaching the words and playing the first game. The class dragged a lot...but we got there in the end.
Lunchtime was great though. There is a child that is a big footie fan and when he heard I was from Manchester (yes, I know that that is technically a lie...), so he was like....waaaa do you know Beckham??? and Rooonie???? well he pronounced them all in a strange way so it took me several attempts before I could tell who he meant. He asked if I liked Ronaldo...I was like...IEEEEEEEE Ronaldo Kiraiiiiii! (translation:I don't like him). Everyone laughed.

Kids are odd creatures. I got pretty violated by some of them last week! There is this girl in one of my grade 1 classes that seems to have an obsession with touching my breasts! I have to crouch down to her when she asks me stuff, and then Boing!!! her hands are all over me! I am like.."whoaaaaaaa personal space has just been breached!!!!". or she jumps at me and grabs..yeash......what is up with that??? Another boy thought it be funny to smack my bum!!!!! I was like..."nani?????". Kids don't do that in England do they???? Maybe I am missing some freudian stage of body obsession....meh.

awesome Osaka part 3 - coming of age day

Another early start to the day! But it's worth it. We met up with Sally's mum to go to the aquarium. apparently it's one of the biggest in Japan and also is the only one with a massive stingray (some species which is very hard to keep). Sally's mum was so lovely and paid for everything! I was so chuffed! It was really sweet because she tried to explain various things to me in English, and I tried to follow in my broken Japanese. We had a laugh though. The aquarium was so good! I thoroughly recommend going! It was massive. The tank was very very deep. There were sea otters, dolphins, penguins (!!!!), various colourful fish, cute crocodiles, iguanas and and and. After the aquarium we went on to the big Ferris wheel, where we could see most of Osaka. It was quite windy, so our cabin was shaking a bit, but the view was pretty! Then we went for some takoyaki and okunomiyaki in this small restaurant place, followed by a ninja house! The ninja house was just this fun little place, where you had to go through mazes and you'd trigger off things falling via light sensors, (which I quickly noticed and kicked to see what would happen before I moved on.....scaredy cat that I am).
The Osaka castle was last on the list. it was a beautiful place. The castle was more pretty than anything. It wasn't really the greatest defence place in the world. But I learnt a little about about the history of Japan and shogun..that castle was built by a hideoyoshi..T...something something. He wanted to be a shogun and was very respected bya lot of people. I don't like him too much anymore after I learnt that he killed his wife and adopted son after finding out his other wife had born him a biological son. Meanibum.

We also saw quite a few girls in kimonos waltzing around because it was the coming of age day, so all the 20 year old girls get to dress up. It was really nice seeing them around the place. Little splotches of vibrant colours dotted aorund.

Awesome Osaka part 2 - Universal studios!!!

OMG I can't believe we went to Universal studios!!! It was...awesome to the MAX! I was like some overexcited little child hopping up and down. The first ride we went on was the spiderman ride. It was all 3D with glasses and illusions. So cool! Spiderman spoke japanese...hehehehe. They also had a spiderman shop....I so nearly bought everything...dangerous place. We saw the blues brothers perform..and it made me feel strangely at home hearing americans sing...bizarreness. In fact it made me feel strangely at home hearing all this american pop/metal/soundtrack music, which was being blasted out all over the place. We then went on the terminator ride. That was quite funny, again 3D. It's good I know the storylines to most fo these movies, because there was a lot fo talking in japanese..which obviously I didn't really understand. Next was back to the future! That actually made me a feel a little queesy because we had just eaten before then...we had pictures taken with the car. The staff are all a little mental in that place, screaming at you to get some kind of reaction out of you! We were having a great time though! There was this horror rock show that we went to afterwards. That was quite amusing...Beetlejuice was the only japanese speaker, and made the whole crowd do mexican waves. The dancers then did various versions of classic pop/rock songs. It was quite funny!We also went to the waterworld show, which was pretty impressive. they had stage fights and explosions. Quite neat how they manage to pull all of that off. I felt sorry for the actors though, jumping in to freezing water..we were freezing in our 6 layers. How must that actress have felt in her tiny skirt?
We also went on the E.T ride. It was really lovingly done. I liked the fact that for most fo the rides, the queueing didn't feel that bad because there was always stuff to distract you. It even snowed a little that day! We then went off to a japanese buffet for dinner. Seriously they should have those in England. Healthy AND delicious! Maybe I should open one up In Manchester. All in all it was a great day!

awesome Osaka part 1

I arrive in Osaka at around 6pm on Saturday! We had a minor issue of finding each other, but in the end I was finally hugging Sally after almost 3 years of not seeing her! It was really cool! We went off to a restaurant in Osaka station which was very posh. I thought I'd experienced most Japanese types of cooking...but obviously I had not. Sally introduced me to a whole new menu I wasn't familiar with. I think it was something that was popular with Japanese girls..who are concious of weight and such things. It was all very healthy and mostly tofu based. Lots of tiiiny dishes...but they really never stopped coming, so we ended up really full! The main part was this...milky thing which was in a dish over a hot plate. It formed a skin on the surface just like boiled milk does. We then scooped this out with a little stick and dipped in to some kind of sauce. It tasted a little bit like milk too! I can't for the life of me remember what it was called!
It was a very interesting meal anyway! We also caught up with each others lives in that meal time. So many things to report and so little time....we then went home to Sallys, by that time it was so late and we were going to have a big day ahead of us!

sushi and karaoke

Today was a slow start...which was nice...lying in and no real plans for the day. We got a call from Minae around 2 pm though asking if we wanted to go for sushi with her and her boyfriend. Why not? The sushi place was awesome, it was one of those hyaku-yen places, and it was reeeeaallly goooood! It's actually only like the 3rd time I've had sushi here..bizarre huh? We then went off to karaoke. I so did not want to go. I have this immense fear of singing in front of people. I hear you ask "but you were in the choir!". Yes but that was singing with other people. No one would be able to distinguish me then! Anyway, I couldn't be a spoilsport and say no. So I got dragged there. It was quite funny really. Karaoke is a great way to learn how to read hiragana faster. I tried to follow the lyrics while They were singing japanese songs. I could almost do it..skipping a few symbols here and there. But I reckon if I'd go more often it would actually improve my reading, though I still have no idea what the words actually mean. I actually sang some songs too...so embarressing! It was fun though, I have to admit I had a good time. I guess it's ok when you're not in a really massive group. We then went for some ice cream at sun to moon, and came back home. All in all it was quite a japanese day really!

Are you tired? You've been running around my head all day

Will arrived yesterday!!! We ended up having okonomiyake (?), with Minae and then went home and set up camp. It was then present opening time. I found that 40% of Will's luggage actually consisted of presents from my family. I got soo many coool things! Thank you sooo much guys!!! The monkey is called Edward by the way.
Today we had to get up relatively early because I had a haircut appointment!!! We had to walk though because the spare bike got nicked!!! ARGHHH so upset! Also...seriously Japan...what is the deal with shutting down all banks and ATM's during bank holidays???? Will had to pay for my hair cut and various things...dear dear!

The Hairdressers was an interesting experience. It was quite a posh one..so it was my first time at a "proper" hairdressers. They were all sooo friendly. I was a little scared..and almost felt underdressed. Mikage had to then do the whole translating thing for me...which was a little difficult..but then we realised that the (VERY) cute hairdresser guy doing her hair actually understood and could translate along. So it ended up going ok! My hair doesn't look terrible or anything! yaaaay! We then went for lunch at the thai place and had the longest coffee session afterwards. Todays really been about getting Will to meet mostly the Numazu crew. We met up with Imo, Dave, Katy and Amy for dinner and then went off to SpeakEZ. I got presents from Minae and Mikage! I received japanese kanji learning books and a children's book! I also got mochi!!! So I can make it and try it myself! How awesome?? I then ended up teaching Mikage cheesy chat up lines. It was hilarious hearing them come from a japanese girl. I loved every minute of it. Will taught us both one which was "How do you like your eggs in the morning? Unferitilized." I then had to explain what unfertilized was though...which was a little awkward...try imitating sperm! In the end because 2 other japanese friends wanted to know I made a diagram with explanations....It was an interesting english lesson really!