It’s amazing to think Christmas is in eleven days. Students have had exams, so I had been doing a whole lot of nothing until this week. My December monthly report looks pretty bare, with “テスト”written in half the dates and nenkyu or public holiday in many of the others (these foreign words stand for “test” and “paid vacation,” respectively). This week includes Christmas lessons for the ichinenseis at Araya and the ninenseis at Kita Ko. When I told the ichinenseis today that I was sending gifts to America for my family and that my family was sending gifts to me, the students asked again how old I was. Apparently, twenty-one is too old to be receiving presents. I disagree.
I spent last weekend in Tokyo with some friends from the prefecture. Basically, we looked at shrines, walked around parks, shopped, did an epic purikura (photo booth pictures which look like Lisa Frank vomited on them), went to an onsen that actually allowed tattoos, and ate all the ethnic foods we can’t get in Akita. And it was a blast. I got back into Akita City at 7:30 on Monday morning, an hour before I had to go to work. It was snowing quite heavily, there were about two inches of snow on the ground, I had all my bags, and I ran out of time for coffee. My apologies to my class during first period. I’ll do better next time.
I got myself pulled together by sixth period, and we had loads of fun. Two students at two different times told me that my hair was different (You’ve never seen me with night bus hair before, kids), so I explained to them what a “bad hair day” is, and how sometimes it is unavoidable. We worked on correct English pronunciation of katakana words, a game in which the JTE pronounces a word with a Japanese accent and then the students correct the pronunciation. Sometimes they have no idea what changes they are looking for, so they will just change intonation (salada-sALada-salADa-saLADa-salaDA), until they figure out what they actually need to do, like drop the ‘a’ off the end. Snowboard is also a tough one. Earphone was hilarious (e-ya-hone is basically how they say it).
Today, I introduced students to the wonderful American invention of scratch-and-sniff stickers. I demonstrated, and they didn’t seem to believe me until they tried it themselves. Shocked gasps. Sniff again. “Eeeee, sugoi!” (translation: Hey, Cool!). I’m kind of surprised they didn’t already know what they were. Whoever invented scratch-and-sniff stickers had the soul of a Japanese teenager.
Next week I head to Miyazaki-shi to spend Christmas with the incomparable Rick and Martha Synder (PSYCHED!), and then spend five days in Tokyo over New Year’s. I’m staying in a capsule hotel, which should be a riot, and then taking the shinkansen (bullet train) back to Akita, which I have been told is like spending four hours on a super space ship.
A quick note on how much Celsius doesn’t make sense - My kerosene heater in my house tells me the temperature of the room and then the temperature it is set at. When I turn it on in the morning after it has been off all night, or when I come home from work, it often reads 8 or 9 degrees. Now…I know that this doesn’t really mean 8 or 9 degrees, but there is no way for my American consciousness to get around the fact that 8 or 9 degrees ABOVE ZERO, no matter what scale you are using, is still really cold. And thus, everything feels colder to me because it all sounds like it’s much colder. My complete lack of conversion skills also doesn’t help. I want Fahrenheit back.
Happy Christmas to all! Send me your address if you would like a postcard.
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