Ohanami

Ah, Japan. The only country I know that uses even flower blossoms as an excuse to drink.

The sakura (cherry blossoms) are starting to come out at the moment, and this means 'ohanami', which translates roughly as flower blossoms, and is a word used to signify drinking under the cherry blossoms until late at night.

Ok, it can also mean just walking under the blossoms appreciating and all that, but that isn't nearly as much fun :)

Anyway, we have about 10 days to enjoy the sakura, and yesterday Rosie suggested we have our first ohanami at the castle ruins. It was great! Rosie made hummus (is that how you spell it?), we had bread, sausages, avocado, cheese . . . . . . .

It was great. Just Dan, Rosie, Jo and I mucking around for a couple of hours.

Sakura.

Jo, Rosie and Dan. We weren't high. Honest.

Anyway, we decided on Monday we would have a proper BBQ, so we are inviting everyone we know to come along, cook meat, drink beer and play soccer. I promise to take my camera next time, not just my phone.

Today Matt, Dan, Jo, Chris Mack and I are going to Fukuoka. Jo's mum is arriving tomorrow, and the rest of us are going to an Orange Range (J-pop group) concert. We figured we should go today so we can shop and go clubbing. Yay!!

Yesterday (Wednesday)

Yesterday I was not having a good day. I was going through the ‘what sort of idiot moves to a country where she doesn’t speak the language, where the culture is the complete opposite of her own, and she is still a short-arse?!?’ stage. I’m sure you are all familiar with it.

I guess it didn’t help that I have a cold, my ankle is stuffed and I had a really bad headache yesterday. So after moping around my house for a while, I got bored of feeling sorry for myself (it only took a couple of hours), and decided I should head out for a walk. This was just after 6pm, so the sun was setting and the weather was really nice.

Anyway, I wandered in a direction I hadn’t explored yet, and came across another historic part of Hagi (did I mention Hagi is a castle town which still has a samurai quarter and heaps of old buildings and areas?) with temples and a foundry and stuff. As I walked around the outside of the quarter, I noticed all these little birds flitting around. Then I decided they couldn’t be birds because the wings weren’t right, so they had to be moths or something, but they were too big for that, and after a while I realized they were bats! How cool is that! They were out chasing insects in the twilight.

After an hour, I wandered home, bad mood (almost) completely forgotten.

Today Dan, Rosie, Jo and I are stuck at the Board of Education because school has finished. That wouldn’t be so bad, except we have nothing to do, so are reduced to reading, playing sudoku, playing spider solitaire and making constant trips to the kitchen for coffee. The boredom is killing us!!!

By the way, this is Paul with an empty bottle of Hennessey. I don’t know if you can do this in NZ, but in Japan you can buy bottles of alcohol at bars, and they write your name on it and keep it for you, so whenever you go in, you just grab the bottle and drink away. It isn’t a bad system, but it can be expensive (this bottle cost 8000 円, roughly $120.

weekly update

Once again, I've gotten slack -sorry guys. Be honest, though, are you really surprised?
Anyway, its been a busy time lately what with graduations, parties, twisted ankles, bbqs, drinking and colds.
What can I say? I like to get a bit of everything in there :)
My Junior high school graduations were pretty difficult, and I have to admit that I cried at my favourite school. In my defence, all the kids, teachers and parents were crying as well. Still it was a sad day. The enkai (party) afterwards with all the teachers and parents was fantastic, though. We were at a hotel where we had a huge meal (seriously, everyone kneels at their own table, and there are about 4 courses) and alot of beer. Then the karaoke started, and by that time, I was drunk enough to be talked into singing a japanese song - painful. I was also drunk enough to waltz around the room with the kocho-sensei (principal). Thank god for 'what goes on enkai stays on enkai'!!!!
Here are some of my favourite kids from graduations at 2 of my favourite schools:


Akiragi JHS - the twins are Eijiro and Shoichiro

Kawakami JHS - these boys were great
Kawakami JHS - the graduating class

On Wednesday we had a public holiday, so 8 of us (7 ALTs and the son of one ALT) went to Tamagawa (north of Hagi) and had a BBQ. It was really fun. We played hackey, and mucked around and ate a lot of meat. We had so much food left over, that the next night we had another BBQ at Dan and Rosies place here in Hagi.
mmmmmmmmm, meat.
Rosie did pretty much all of the cooking. Starsky was grateful - that boy can eat his own body weight!





Also, I think it was last week, we had a last kencho - Yamaguchi wide ALT meeting. Pretty boring as usual, but it was our last chance for all the ALTs to get together before people start leaving as contracts end.
Starsky, Simon, Chris Mack, Anita, me

And finally, my latest injuries. On Saturday (St Patricks Day) I fell over and the doctor reckons I've damaged the ankle joint (he speaks English), as well as doing the ligaments in . . . again. Oops. And if that wasn't bad enough, I've also managed to catch a cold. I guess going out 2 nights in a row drinking didn't exactly help, but I had a tonne of fun.
On Friday, Dan and I went to No Side - our local bar - for a quiet one. two and a half hours later we left there and hit the next bar, then a karaoke bar. I have to say I didn't sing, but that may have been because I was too drunk to really string two words together. Nah, seriously, it was just a chilled night that happened to involve a bit of alcohol.
Saturday (last night), Dan, Rosie, Jo and I went to No Side (catching the theme?) where we translated the drinks menu into English. I think it was our civic duty, really. Plus it will make it easier to order stuff when we are too hammered to read the japanese:)

And that is this week over. Next week there are closing ceremonies at our schools, and then we are stuck at our Board of Education for a few weeks before the holidays.

I want one of these!

I'm not really sure if I've ever mentioned this, but my apartment is pretty bare. This is my living room:


(Note the Spongebob cup). Now, I don't really need much - a table, chair and tv pretty much covers everything. But I am staying in Japan for at least one more year, and I have decided it is time I upgraded the chair (and possibly get another spongebob cup).
In my wanderings on the internet, I found something that immediately had me reaching for a tissue to wipe up the drool. How comfy does this chair look? And the best thing is, you can move the segments separately to customise the comfort, plus it folds out to make a bed! Is there anything this chair can't do?



The only problem is, living in Hagi makes it a little difficult to buy one of these babies 'off the rack', and the website is in Japanese. How inconsiderate is that? Clearly their advertising department did not take desparate ALTs into account when designing the website!!
Anyway, I have made it my mission to track down and obtain at least one of these chairs by the end of my stay in Japan! Stay tuned for updates.

St Patrick's Day

What sort of alcoholic ALTs would we be if we missed this holiday? Thank god it was on a Saturday, because I think we all needed Sunday to recover!
Starting at 4pm, I went to Jo's house where Matt, Pauline and Jo were already decorating. And by that I mean putting up strings of paper shamrocks, making shamrock haloes for everyone and covering every possible surface in green-ness. The drinking began at about 4:07.
Jo made a guinness stew with Australian beef (we couldn't get NZ, so had to settle for second best!) and shitloads of potatoes, which we left for about 3 and a half hours and it was worth the wait. In the meantime, we discovered a new game involving small fluffy green balls. The idea was to throw them at each other, and when one landed in a lap or down someones top, you had to retrieve aforementioned ball without the use of your hands. I would like to point out that my jumper was zipped right up and I was standing throughout this game!

Huh?

This is just one example of the japlish we often come across. I reckon it is meant to be 'family album', but I could be wrong. Suggestions?

Snow

More bloody snow! It is meant to be Spring! On the bright side, I only had one lesson today, so can huddle inside.

And it's only Monday!

I’ve just had my last lesson with one of my favourite students. He is the only one in his class (at a school of 8), and we spent most lessons just chatting in English. Today he is really sick, but he came in anyway to say goodbye. It was so bad! I was almost in tears. He made me a card and gave me a pile of information on Japanese bands – we spent hours talking about music – and I gave him some CD’s. This has got to be the worst part of the job. I am not looking forward to the rest of this week – I have to say goodbye to about 300 kids. And I have graduation ceremonies on Friday and Saturday, and the after parties with the parents.
がんばって　ね？

The weekend

Good grief, this is the first weekend I've had in Hagi in ages, and I was planning on just relaxing at home.
So, naturally I found myself surrounded by a group of obasans (old women) chatting away in japanese and making cloth flowers. four hours later I had cut out about 90 shapes and painted all of them in preparation for the 17th when I get to put them together!
And today was so sunny it felt like summer. I realised I was meant to be relaxing, and was completely unsurprised when Starsky, Simon, Matt and Josh invaded. Sushi for afternoon tea and a DVD at my place, and that was Sunday.
Tomorrow, I have to be up at 5:30am, so early bed tonight.:)