What i do these days

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  Futenma, Japan
Thursday, March 30, 2006

So it is now spring break here. In Japan the teachers change schools every 3 to 5 years depending on the school and location. They have no say about where they will go to. I don`t know exactly how or who decides where they go, but that is what they are doing now. There are no classes, but I am still required to come to school everyday and stamp in the book to show i was here. Nobody has told me the exact rules of these two weeks where I have nothing to do. But I have been making up my own. The thing I did have to do is now done- I had to move my desk. Why? I don`t know, but they told me to do it so I did and now I have no other tasks to complete and classes don`t start until April 6th or so. So my rules have included that I come in sometime between 9 and 10. Stamp. Sit at my desk. Wander around school. Read the news and/or a book. At various points of the day I sneak out in a move that I have coined `the mysterious gaijin disappearing act`. They are always very impressed by this, I am sure. Sometimes this is to run errands. I had a very important four hour lunch with my old favorite student and now my new favorite Japanese person- Ryoko. Sometimes I come back and sometimes I don`t. The other day I left school with the intention of coming back but I just got busy. I took a walk around my apartment, which isn`t really something I have done yet. I have found a route that I can run around my apartment which took sometime because there are a lot of hills around my house that are just too steep for my out of shape ass. But I did manage to find a pretty nice little course. Otherwise I have to drive to the park which is a bit of a pain. Anyway so I walked up some of these hills around my house. I didn`t really have a direction or purpose, but it was a nice day so I wanted to be outside. I ended up finding a Shinto Shrine area. In the middle of all this concrete and hustle and bustle I managed to find a nice relaxing peaceful spot. I was pretty excited about this. It was a beautiful little place to explore. I continued my hike up not really knowing where I was going and found a spot were you can see both of the oceans, which is always an amazing view.

There have been lots of going away parties the past few weeks. I even cleaned my apartment and had my favorite teachers over for dinner. It was fun- the Japanese don`t usually invite people to their houses. I made sure mine was spotless and they were impressed. We had a nice dinner and desert and good girl talk. Three of the teachers are English teachers and one is not- she is a math teacher. But she tries really hard and it always amazes me how much we can communicate. The other teachers don`t understand us sometimes because of our limited vocabulary in each`s languages, but we relate to each other perfectly. Must be like minds. Anyway we had some good bloopers this week. I`ll share them now.

Shoko is telling a story about some students and she was lecturing them about sex because they were kind of bad kids and they had *kiss marks* on their necks. So in English she says sternly `I told them, you MUST have sex`. We had a little lesson on the word NOT after the laughter died down. can not, must not, do not.

So it wouldn`t be fair to just pick on Shoko with the bloopers. I made a humorous mistake as well. The five of us have a `skinny club` we try to keep each other from eating too many sweets and getting fat, basically its just silly because you can not avoid it in this culture. Anyway- I wanted to say in Japanese as we were eating large pieces of chocolate cake `Maybe, today we don`t have skinny club`- except I pronounced skinny wrong and said- Maybe, today we don`t have diarrhea club.` Woops.

Also I have to share what the teachers that are here are doing. Some of them are busy moving their desks and cleaning. Some are reading the paper, or playing on the internet. They do a lot of chatting. Most of the teachers are not here though. The other day a man sat at the paper shredding machine for an hour shredding paper. I wondered what he could be shredding for so long and I was getting really annoyed at the sound. `How can one have so much paper to shred! Common buddy give it a rest.` Well, I was eyeing the machine for a little while and decided to try it myself yesterday. Wow- when you have nothing to do, shredding paper is really entertaining. I only did it for about 5 minutes but it amused me for a short time. After I had my fun, the same man went over and started shredding again. As I now understood the enjoyment I didn`t mind so much this time. Anyway I timed him because, well, I don`t think you should be allowed to have too much fun! He shredded paper for about 15 minutes. Now has a really cute kind of puppy dog looking puggey face and is normally a really happy guy. Since I was timing him I watched him a bit. He went back to his desk and sat in his chair and spun around- like a little kid. This was really funny to me. After he spun around a few times- he got up and went back to the shredder. I thought about telling him he is having way to much fun- but I let him go because he is so cute.
Ok well I think that is about enough random stories for the day- stayed tuned. Next week I may let you know about the industrial paper punch they have. You can punch holes in over 50 papers at a time. It is a very amuzing piece of office equipment, maybe next week I will do some experiments of its strength for entertainment. That is if I manage to make it back to school!
I am now about to shock and amaze my Japanese coworkers with my famous disappearing act!!! Wahooo it`s another sunny day too!!!
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Poof!

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