Hi

I left it too  long again since I wrote my last post and now I can`t remember what I`ve done since last time! I`ll give it a go anway!

 I have officially and properly started working and teaching classes and getting up every morning around 7 or half 7 stupid Japanese workaholics!

The two schools I have been teaching at are very different. My base school is an academic high school, I teach there three times a week and I also teach in a commercial high school twice a week. The students in the academic high school are unbelievably innocent and well behaved for 15-18 year olds. The other day we had a sports festival and the whole school, girls and boys did a little cute dance while singing about how great school is. I know what kind of response you`d get if you asked Irish 18 year old boys to wave their arms about with cheesy grins on their faces in 34 degree heat for 9 hours-  and I can`t say I blame them.

The week after my birthday my base school had a school festival. I didn`t think that it would be a big deal but boy was I wrong! Classes were pretty much off for the whole week as the students prepared and practised for the festival, which suited me fine as I could hang out in the staffroom all day drinking tea. I decided to look in on my supervisor`s homeroom class preparing which was a little frustrating to say the least. I sat there for literally 1 hour watching them draw diagrams and talk at a hundred miles an hour in Japanese about how to stick some black plastic bags on the window. They must have put them up and taken them back down again about 5 times, and when I went back to check progress about 4 hours later they were still at it. No wonder Japanese teachers stay in till 11 every night if they get work done at that rate.

That said, at the end of it all they can definitely put on an impressive show! Although I wasn`t particularly enthusiastic about getting up at half 7 and going into work on a Saturday, I had a really great day. It started off with the opening ceremony where the students did their little cute dance and all the teachers (including me)  stood around shouting `kawaii`.　After that I went aruond to all the individual class displays, preformances etc.  I was being bombarded by so many students telling me to go see their class and, considering their Japanese and all look the same to me, I figured it was just easier to go to absolutely everything. So I went to a horror house, a love story maze, a Japanese movie version of Snow White, a balloon art show I saw lots of terrible bands play and ate a lot of suspect foods from the food stalls. Some students shouted at me to come over until I bought some weird sticky rice croquette things which I had to sneakily dispose of in a cardboard box without anyone seeing. I think I got away with it, thank God.

There were a lot of students and teachers wearing traditional Japanese clothes so I took the opportunity to wear my new kimono. It was 32 degrees and I was wearing about 3 layers, but it was worth it! The lovely old women in the sick bay helped me put it on (it`s unbelievably complicated) and I had some traditional Japanese tea by the tea ceremony club (we also had to do a bit of sneaky disposal of food there when we were served some sort of green bean paste, yocky!). 

I attracted some attention in the kimono (as if I wasn`t standing out enough in a crowd of a thousand Japanese people) and when I was sitting drinking my tea, I had the whole office standing on chairs looking out the window at me and pointing. I don`t even get embarrassed anymore, I`ve lost all shame!

I`ve acquired a few stalkers in my base school too. Two seventeen year old boys follow me around all day, but they could very easily be mistaken for 13 year old girls. They come and stand by my desk and whisper to each other for a few minutes, then giggle and squeal `No, you say it` etc. in Japanese for a about 10 mins. Then they might say `How are you, Liz?` or something equally tame and if I answer they giggle and squeal for another few minutes- it can get very irritating to say the least!  The weirdest thing is that after all their screaming in the corridor when they see me and following me around, if I bump into them and they are alone they put they`re heads down and don`t acknowledge me and if i ask them anything in class, they don`t answer. This is the typical behaviour of the Japanese male teenager. All I can say is, I`m glad I didn`t come over here looking for a boyfriend

Everyone is very interested when I say i have a boyfriend, so Brendan came along to the school festival for a few hours too. Myself and Lily (my supervisor) had told our classes that Bren was a big nerd and taught them to tell Brendan not to spend all his money on gadgets and nerdy things so they were very excited when they saw him. They shouted at him not to be a nerd and not to go to Kojima denki (the local electronics shop), haha!

Anyway, all in all the school festival was a really great experience. Last week we had the sports festival. Unfortunately, it was held on Friday, the day I teach in the commercial school, so I didn`t get to see it. I was there for the rehearsal on Thursday however. Yes, they spend a full day rehearsing for sports day. My supervisor`s job was to go around and pick up students who collapse from heat stroke and bring them inside. Why the hell they don`t have sports day in October when it`s not 35 degrees and humid, I don`t understand! I helped Lily for a while, and since I was under a tent away from the sun, I thought i was pretty safe. This, it turns out, was Irish stupidity and, ironically, I ended up with a bit of heat stroke myself- not fun.

Apart from the heat stroke, the rehearsal was good. The students performed another cheesy dance (of course) and then practised EVERYTHING!. The tug of war, the skipping, the races, they probably practised what lunch they were going to eat. The Japanese are gas men! So, I suppose I was lucky, I got to sit through Sports Day once, and didn`t have to endure two days in the sun!

When I first arrived in Japan and the heat was killing me everyone said, `Ah it will cool down in September` but the are all big feckin liars!! It`s still 33 or 34 everyday and if it doesn`t start cooling down soon, someone`s gonna pay!! Despite this and the fact that it has only raine once or twice this month, it still feckin rained when we went off to the countryside for our long weekend. 

Brendan booked one of the International Villas for me, him and 8 other JETs and we went to stay in the Japanese counrtyside with mountains and a river etc. It was in the real back arse of nowhere and there were lovely hot springs next door to the villa, it was great1 The villa was really fancy and we had it all to ourselves, so we the bad weather didn`T really bother us.  We went to a yogurt making factory, which was closed and had somehorrible sour ice cream and then went to the worst aquarium I`ve ever seen. It basically consisted of a turtle in a bowl and some dirty baths full of water and a few goldfish- it provided us with a good laugh anyway. After this we headed to the hot spring which I have completely fallen in love with, then made some punch and played some finger twister and cards (the only entertaining thing we could find in the convenience store)! It was a weird weekend, but really good fun all the same!

Oops, I jsut realised it`s 4.15 and I`m still in school, so I`m gonna leggeh! I still have plenty more gossip so I`ll post again soon!