The Nagasaki Adventure!
(warning: the following content is for adults/people who don't mind excessive drinking on occasion only. You've been warned! cough! *dad* cough!)

As most people know, I went to Nagasaki with a couple of friends of mine over the first weekend in November and HAD A BLAST!!! It was so nice to be in an actual city again! I try not to think about it too much when I'm home, makes living in the inaka all the more difficult. Anyway, we left on Thursday night and took the ferry from Tomioka Port (about 30 min drive for me) to Nagasaki prefecture. (It was another 15 taxi ride into the city: totally worth it!) We decided to start the party early because none of us had had anything even remotely resembling a vacation in quite some time. My friend Sara brought some umeshu and sake, I hooked us up with snacks, and all was good! We even made friends with a nice Japanese boy with a really nice car... unfortunately, I forget his name... but he was nice!
After the ferry arrived, it only takes about an hour, we took a taxi into the city, checked into our hotel, and headed out for the night. Oh, what a night! We went out for Indian food, (a luxury for me now! There are NO restaurants in my town. Nada! Nilch! Less then nothing!) and decided to indulge in a bottle of wine to go with our food. Afterwords, we wandered down to a chill karaoke bar where the owner hooked us up with all you can drink/sing for one hour at 1500 yen. (This included taking shots of some DE-lish Chinese liqour he thought we had to try!) When our hour was up, we headed down to a "reggae" bar to decide what to do next. As luck would have it, the bartender just happened to know the woman teaching Sara and me Japanese and, in my current, ahem, "happy" state that was all it took for us to become good buddies. After a drink there, the bartender lady took us to another bar/club where we finished off our evening. The place was empty when we got there, but I didn't really care because I had that much more room to dance! They were playing reggae music all night, and by midnight the place was packed! It was a blast! We didn't make it home until 4 am!
Unfortunately, this led to a very late and subdued start on Friday. I was still ready to go go go, (NOLA, you trained me well) but my partners in crime were defintely a little slower to get going. We managed to hit up Chinatown, SUCH GOOD FOOD, and do a little shopping before we had to head back to the hotel so they could nap. (I wondered over to Starbucks and looked around a little before I joined them. There was cable at the hotel! YIPPEE!) Later that evening, we met up with a college friend of Anna's who I almost immediately disliked. I felt really bad, but MAN that girl rubbed me the wrong way! We wandered around downtown Nagasaki for almost an hour looking for a place that SHE wanted to eat at, forget what the rest of us wanted! (Gah, I'll end with that. She was annonying.) We ended up eating at a yummy Italian restaurant and I took the opportunity to indulge in some good red wine, another rarity in the inaka, before heading back to the hotel with Sara for mimosas, ice cream, and sleep. Anna and friend headed out to a club with some Nagasaki JETs... I couldn't stand to be around the girl anymore so the hotel sounded good to me.
The next day was busy busy to make up for our lackluster performance on Friday. We took the street car, (only hyaku (100) yen!) to see the Peace Park, A-bomb hypocenter, and a-bomb musuem. The day got off to a rocky start because Anna's annoying friend joined us for the day. Sigh. There was an argument over the street car, it was stupid, moving on. The hypocenter was very bleak and there were pictures of what Nagasaki looked like after the bomb hit. Very very sad. The Peace Park was a nice reprieve because there were statues from cities and countries all over the world dedicated to peace. It was beautiful. Alas, we saved the A-bomb musuem for last and it was devastating. I made it through most of it but, at the very end, they had testimonials from survivors, (both on video and written) and I broke down. It was too sad. I ran out and spent some time in the giftshop and bought a keychain as a physical reminder of the emotions I went through that day.
After the musuem, we found a cute little place to eat. The owners spoke no English so there were a lot of gestures and pointing, but it all worked out. Feeling full and refreshed, we headed down to see Megane bridge, the oldest bridge in Nagasaki. Alas, on the way there was another clash between stupid girl and me, resulting in Sara and I getting off the street car early. (At the stop I wanted to get off at because the bridge was only a block and 1/2 away. Stupid girl wanted to wait another two stops because that's what her book told her to do. Gah, BAKA!) Anyhoo, the bridge was neat as were the HUGE koi swimming the river beneath it. I do mean HUGE! (see pictures for confirmation) We then took the street car to Glover Gardens, the site where most gaijin homes had been located back in the day. Mr. Glover's home was on top of this huge hill overlooking the harbor, and some other gaijin homes and been moved there to make the gardens. It was gorgeous! We ended the day there, eating many samples of DE-lish castella (like pound/cheese cake) and headed back to the hotel for a rest before our last night in Nagasaki!
Oh! Our last night in Nagasaki, what a BLAST!!! The night started out at an izikaiya where we met the JETs that Anna had hung out with the night before. Apparently they go to that place a lot, because they started messing around with the owner the minute they got there and it was hilarious! The food was wonderful, the drinks were plentiful, and we must have been there for well over 3 hours. Afterwards, Sara and I (along with Erin and Paul, another Amakusa JET and her boy that we'd run into that day) split off of the big group and headed back to the chill karaoke bar we'd visited our first night in Nagasaki. My goodness, we were there the rest of the night! Erin and Paul left somewhere around 2am and Sara and I stopped paying for our drinks about that time too. The owner became our good buddy and he decided to put me behind the bar to make some of my drinks. (This is a TINY place, btw, so it's not as bad as it sounds. There were only 2-4 people there aside from Sara and myself!) Anyway, one thing led to another and by the time we headed home the sun was already rising and they were serving breakfast at our hotel! SO MUCH FUN!
The next morning, (or that same morning, as it were!) was a bit sad because I knew that I had to head back to my little piece of nowhere. We headed down to Starbucks one last time before catching a taxi to our ferry. Erin and Paul turned out to be taking the same ferry, so we chilled and chatted on the way back. It was a nice way to end the trip. Very relaxed and such. We all parted ways and headed home, (where everyone promptly went to sleep is my guess)! All in all, a GREAT trip! I highly recommend Nagasaki to one and all! There is so much to do, cheap public transportation, good restaurants, and great bars... a wonderful city! PLEASE VISIT! (oh yes, and please check out my pics!)
Ok folks, that's all for now! Ja ne!

My JTE and some of my students at the English Recitation Contest in Reihoku. (Aren't they cute!?!)

From left: Yasuda-sensei, 1st years Riho and Risa, 2nd years Fumi and Ayumi, 3rd years Eri and Satoki, and moi!

If anyone ever says "Two hambugers and two colas, please" around me ever again, so help me, I can't be responsible for my actions!

Sorry for the long hiatus from blogging but life in Japan has been pretty uneventful lately! I'm still crazy busy, but it's just everyday stuff. Almost everyday in October I stayed after school at my jhs to help some of my students prepare for an English recitation contest. It completely took over my life! I swear, I never left school before dark! (FYI, Japan doesn't participate in daylight saving time so it get dark here really, really, REALLY early!) Working with them was a struggle, it's amazing how many sounds we make that they simply can't seem to comprehend. I spent a whole month working on the word "worry" with one of my students and she STILL can't say it correctly! GAH! What are they paying me for?! Alas, I am a failure as a teacher. :-/ Anyhoo, we finally had the recitation contest on Oct 26th and it was one of the longest days in my life. Let me explain. JHS is made up of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year students. There is a textbook for each year with various dialogues, etc in a vain attempt to get these kids to speak English. The students get to choose to memorize and recite one out of 3-4 dialogues. Unfortunately, this means that many students choose the same ones. Even more unfortunately, those of us attending the contest are forced to hear the same thing over and over again all... day... long. Oh! Did I mention the terrible accents and bad acting!? Actually, those two things kept me going. It was a struggle not laugh at some of these kids. I mean, they were making random gestures for every single word! (For example, the horrid hamburger/cola dialogue required them to ask "Large or small?" and "For here or to go?" Now, as native speakers we all know that these are relatively inane questions that require nothing more then a short, some could even say terse, response. Not with these kids! I've never seen so many hands flying all over the place! Who knew that one had to point in the appropriate direction for "For here or to go" and that more gestures had to be made to indicate the relative sizes of "Large or small?") What it boiled down to is that they were freaking hilarious and there was no way I could take them seriously. Even my JTE was holding back on laughing the entire time!
Now, I don't mean to disparage the kids because they were all doing their best. A lot of the trouble is that some JTEs really push their kids to gesture all the time in an attempt to distract from less then perfect pronunciation. In my mind, however, it made the faults stand out even more! Oh well. It was an interesting day, to say the least. My kids weren't even close to winning, (although I'm proud to say they all refused to act like soap opera stars!) but they worked really hard and I'm proud of them.
Aside from the English Contest, not much of interest happened until this past weekend. I helped out at a Halloween Party for another ALTs students and they were so, so, so, so, so cute! I could barely stand it! I threw together a random costume, (I had 3 days to find a costume since I just found out about the thing on the Wed before the party, and there aren't any Halloween costume-y things around my island at all!) and had a great time. We played games, had a costume contest, handed out treat, etc. It was really fun! I'll try to get my pics up soon... when I'm feeling a bit less lazy! ;-)
After a relatively uneventful October, November is going to be crazy busy! I'm busy every Thursday taking Japanese classes in Hondo, (about a 45 min drive one way) and every Saturday I'm taking traditional Japanese dance classes. They are really fun! It's basically a private lesson, FOR FREE, and she dresses me up in a kimono and everything! The only condition is that I have to perform in her dance thingy this Spring. (What a hardship! Y'all know that I just HATE performing and being in the spotlight!) It's a really sweet deal and I'm excited about it. Not to mention Reiko-sensei is really nice and speaks very little English, so it forces me to practice a little Japanese without being too embarrassed.
Now, those are just the regular activities. I am also going to Nagasaki the first weekend in November, (I leave TONIGHT!!!) because there is a holiday on Friday so we have a three day weekend. I'm going with a couple of friends and it should be a lot of fun. We're going to visit the A-bomb museum and do some cultural stuff, do some shopping, and, of course, explore what nightlife the city has to offer! I'll take a lot of pics, don't worry! The next weekend, (11th and 12th) I'm busy again. This time I have a school event on Sat, (a hella long walk from Ooe to Takahama that is supposed to last all day. How do I get myself into these things!?) and then I'm going to a performance of some of Reiko-sensei's students the following day. (She tried to talk me into joining as well, but I've only had two classes! I don't want to embarrass myself that much!) The following weekend I may be having a joint b-day party with my tantosha because his birthday is 3 days after mine. We're still working out the details though. It might be nice to be a hermit for at least one weekend. Ok, moving on! The next weekend, (24-26) I'll be heading to Fukuoka to see my first Sumo competition! I'm really excited. I'm going with a group of ALTs from Amakusa, including this guy Adam who LOVES Sumo so he can tell us when and what to yell. Plus, we rented out a box which means we should be given free sake and beer. Oh yes, life will be good. (No worries, I'll take pics of that too! I know y'all want to see fat men in diapers as much as I do!) :-P Now, to finish it all off, I'll be heading to Kumamoto city from Nov 30-Dec 2 for the Kumamoto ALT mid-year conference. (aka get all the ALTs in the prefecture together. Make them pretend to be interested in boring seminars, then socialize all night and promptly forget everything we pretended to learn! It's more fun then it sounds, I promise) Hmmm, I think that's all for November anyway... hope I didn't forget anything! ;-)
Sorry to dump all that on y'all at once but, as you can see, I'll be even busier than usual so posts might be even more infrequent then before. Gomen nasai! (I'm sorry!) I promise to get massive amounts of pictures on-line to make up for it!
Ok, I think that I've typed myself out! If anyone can think of a way to send me an already cooked Thanksgiving turkey, please do so, I'm going to miss Thanksgiving dinner because none of the ALTs have an oven! Sniff! Ok ok, mata ne!

Nihon Quirks Part 2

Fear of the Sun: It appears that once women here get out of high school, they develop what seems to be a severe fear of the sun! Well, not fear exactly, but they are obsessed with NOT getting tan! (The women in my town, anyway) Even when it was so hot outside that merely walking outside made me break out in a sweat, these women were wearing long sleeve shirts AND PANTS!!! PANTS! They also have these weird sleeve-like things that they put on the handle bars of their bikes. It's difficult to explain, so I'll try to take a picture sometime, but they are like stiff sleeves that they use to protect their arms from the sun. It's very strange! They also have a helluva lot of skin whitening creams here. You can buy anything from sunscreen to regular lotion with additional Whitening Action! It's so strange. I wonder it it's just a country thing... I shall have to stake out the city soon and keep an eye out for bikes with sleeves!

Squatting: I've already introduced you to the wonders of the "squatty potty," right? Well, I think that they developed that strange contraption because most of the people here squat all the time. When they are cooking, (yakiniku anyway, aka bbq) playing, or simply waiting for their turn to do something, they almost immediately get into the squat! It's next to impossible for me to get into the same position because I'm just not flexible that way... and it's killer on the knees! (Here's the image: feet remain flat on the ground after you hunker down. It's really difficult, try it!) Anyway, this means that the squatties are easy for the natives to use... plus I think they get a good chuckle out of us silly gaijin making fools of ourselves in the powder room!

OK, that's all for now. I know that I had some more quirks but I'm incredibly tired and my brain isn't working. When I think of 'em, I'll add 'em!