Better Than Sunday

(video; yatai matsuri rocks the weekend. More on that story later.)

Let me set the scene. I'm at my desk at Ogawa JHS, the teacher next to me is counting an unusually large amount of money and the space next to me is empty save for two spare laptops and a laminator. The windows behind me has a view of students playing tennis, baseball and other club activities and the P.E teacher and another young teacher are standing at the door watching as well. They can't leave as they're wearing inside shoes and they can't go outside in inside shoes as that would defeat the whole point wouldn't it! Other teachers are milling about doing god knows what and I'm maintaining a lightly smiling face so everyone thinks I'm a pleasant person which I am - but it doesn't hurt to make it more explicit right? A new teacher has just sat down, the counsellor, who studied in Canada for 5 years so has a fairly strong grasp on English. Score.

I have an hour and 10 minutes left before I can go home but with nothing to do so I thought I would begin to write my blog and then send it home and finish it off there. I supposed the news to cover in this blahg is the news regarding my apartment and the new school I started at. To recap for those playing at home, I had starting teaching at Bato JHS a little while ago which I love and I was living in this enormous backhouse in Otawara of the general manager of the Otawara branch of Joytalk. It was a nice place (tatami mats. Again.) but I couldn’t work the gas cook top and I knew I would be leaving the place soon so I couldn’t really see it as much of a home or anything.

While I was staying at this backhouse I started at Ogawa Junior High School (JHS); which is actually smaller than Bato JHS and I’ll be honest, doesn’t look quite as nice from the outside. Class sizes on the whole are smaller and there’s more of a ‘city feel’ to everyone. By that vague sentiment I mean that these guys aren’t as instantly nice as the country-ish folk of Bato but they’re probably easier to get along with. My desk (a.k.a party central) is opposite the school nurse and both of the English teachers here speak very good English and are both a lot of fun. On my first day after I briefly introduced myself for the second time to the head English teacher (Hirasawa-san) she informed me that her son was sick and that she had to go home. Which was… you know… awesome. I was placed in the care of the other English teacher (Fukuzawa-san) and I began my whole new rounds of introductory classes. I was told I needed to stretch out my 10 minute introduction to fill in a whole class which was tricky as I’m actually not that interesting to the untrained eye but I spun gold (ala Rumplestiltskin minus the whole stealing of the child thing) and in every class Fukuzawa-san would ask the same questions and act equally surprised each time for the student’s sake. The fact that we sometimes eat Kangaroo was met with surprise and then 3 seconds later I’m told they eat horse - This was not met with surprise.

I’ve gotten a lot more confident in front of students so I wasn’t that phased to find the students of Ogawa were noticeably quieter in class than the Bato-ites. The teachers are making every effort to make English enjoyable as apparently students have been saying (in English no less) that they really hate English. So I guess they're not so worried about proper learning when the foreigner is in the classroom which works well for me!

I'm at Ogawa for 4 days, then Bato for 6 days. Lather rinse and repeat stopping the pattern only for public holidays and proper holidays but it evens out with those anyway. Both schools have different good points and it seems the only bad point I have had so far are the down times at my desk trying to keep my eyes open. I have a very short attention span at the best of times so when faced with 2 hours with absolutely nothing to do except drink enough tea and water to make myself go to the toilet frequently I find my head falling to the desk. I've gotten into making flash cards and I'm strolling around the school more and more but I plan on joining a club to com - what does everyone think of Archery? I think it'd be cool.

This weekend past was special for 2 reasons; 1) I moved into my new apartment, and; 2) the Yatai Matsuri! Yatai are these elaborate and intricate cart-type things that contain 3 drummers, flute players and a varying amounts of percussion. Each town around Otawara has their own yatai and from Saturday morning to Sunday evening each yatai is playing a particular rhythm over and over again. It was a pretty amazing way to be welcom

ed to my apartment by having these awesome carts wheeling past my window and playing some steady drum beats and then having so many delicious food stalls to choose from. I had okonomiyaki, karaage (freshly deep fried chicken chunks in a cup), a crepe, a snow cone and some imagawayaki.

I chose to hyperlink that last one as it's probably the one that most people will want to see and not read.

(photos: left; the view from my apt window, right; a yatai at dusk)

And my apartment! Oh, my apartment (♥)! I had a run through of the inside from the previous owner and she told me about what's not so good and what's great etc. She also left a whole lot of things in the place for me to use like a microwave, toaster oven, a fridge and so on. I made a video to show everyone instead of trying to take a photo of each room. She says it's haunted but, I don't know, I felt like it was one of those 'I'm American pay attention to me as I'm SPECIAL' sort of things... Sorry Americans.

Yes. Missing tiles, ripped paper doors and more! I will say that this place is enormous and bigger than what I need - it's tatami mats which I'm a little over at this stage - but it's location in Central Otawara is awesome! I think it's great so I'm very, very happy. We'll see how I feel when it gets either really hot or really cold and it's the same temperature outside as it is in because there's no insulation but until then I'll keep enjoying myself.

So all in all both of my schools are great, my apartment is rockin' and everything seems to be going very smoothly! I'm really pleased with how things have turned out! Boy these things keep getting longer and longer.

(public Facebook link; http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=245434&id=680155088&l=ce333b6df3 )