Tokyo, Exam and Winter's Approach

Hello and welcome back to Lauren’s blog. Last time we heard about my Toyama and Nagoya adventures. This week, we’ll be looking into Tokyo, my medical exam and Winter’s fast approach.

So this past weekend, a mess of us ALTs went up to Tokyo to celebrate the birthday of one of our own. We left right after work on Friday and were in Tokyo by ten that night. Not letting the late hour stop us, we went out to this themed restaurant called Arabian Rock.

The first thing you noticed as you climbed the stairs, the restaurant was on the third floor, was the music. It was the music from Aladdin. Then, we opened the door and found out that the staff were dressed up in “Arabian” outfits. And by that I mean they looked like they’d stepped off the set of some weird harem movie.

So we sat down and ordered. The first thing to appear were the golden eggs. These are given to everyone. They’re just hardboiled eggs that have had their shells painted gold so really not that exciting. Actually most of the meal was pretty normal. The food was good and we were all wound because we were in Tokyo.

Then dessert came. Or rather, the birthday boy’s dessert came. They suddenly turned off the lights and then played some crazy song and we’re all wondering what’s going on when a guy dressed like a genie shows up. But not just any genie. Oh no. This is blatantly the genie from Aladdin. He came in with a piece of cake. None of us expected it and were all dying of laughter by the end. We got some awesome pictures out of it. I’d show you but this site has changed and I haven’t figured out how to put pictures up yet.

After that we went back to our hostel. Which was a capsule hotel, something I’ve always wanted to stay in. It wasn’t the normal kind of capsules, I was slightly disappointed, but more like wooden boxes stacked on top of each other. They were surprisingly comfy and the place was cheap so I have no complaints.

The next day we went to Harajuku. My group, we’d split up into several, started off at the shrine. I can’t remember what the name of it was. There we saw tons of kids dressed up in kimonos. There’s a custom in Japan where kids go to shrines on their 3rd, 5th, and 7th birthdays. And so there were tons of these adorable children running around all dressed up.

We also ended up watching a wedding procession at the shrine. We, and the other tourists Japanese and foreign alike, began snapping pictures. It was awesome. While we were at the shrine, I bought a charm. Mine’s for good luck. I might buy some for other people if I manage to make it to a shrine before I come home.

After the shrine, we went out into the main part of Harajuku. The first thing we saw was a guy who said he’d sing your national anthem. Emma was the first to put him to the test and got him to sing the Australian national anthem. Which he did. We were impressed. Deciding to see how good he was, Colin got him to sing the Irish national anthem. Which is in Irish. And he did. After much applauding, we moved on.

Harajuku is a shopping district. It’s also where you can see all the weird fashion trends. Sadly the crowds were too thick for me to get pictures of any of the outfits I saw.

I did have fun shopping though. I bought some Christmas presents and some sweet tights for myself. Yes, I’ve started wearing dresses and skirts a lot here. And tights and leggings. I now have a collection of weird and wonderful tights and leggings.

Eventually we headed back to the hostel to get changed. We all brought fancy outfits and got dressed up. I wore a dress and the new pair of star tights I bought. Then we headed to the New York bar in the Park Hyatt. If you’ve seen the movie Lost in Translation, you know what I’m talking about. The place has an amazing view of Tokyo. It’s also super expensive. Which is why I only bought the one drink. Still, my Bellini was good.

After that, we moved on to dinner at a Shabu Shabu place. Shabu Shabu is where you have a big pot of boiling water and you dump vegetables in it and swish thin strips of meat around until they’re cooked. It’s very tasty. We also did a 90 minute nomihodai (an all you can drink time period). That part might have been a mistake for me.

We went back to the hostel and changed again. This time into clubbing clothes. Then we were off to Womb, one of the most popular clubs in Tokyo. The cover was super expensive (about 40$) but it was an awesome place. While I was there, I had to leave a bit earlier than the others as I had drank more than was good for me, we watched what was basically a circus act. A woman in a leotard wound herself up and around a thing of cloth and would pose. This was done over the stage some 15-20 feet in the air. It was sweet!

So we all made it back and passed out. The next morning we got up and separated into our two cars for the journey back to Takayama. My car stopped first at a 7 floor book store. Yes, I found my own personal heaven here. Or it would be if I could read Japanese. Sadly only the seventh floor had English books and the selection wasn’t super great. But I did buy 2 novels. And some more French textbooks for my class.

After that, we stopped by this international grocery store. Tomoko kept laughing at me as I got excited over the things I hadn’t seen in a long time. I now have a giant jar of pickles and one of olives as well as a 10 pound box of oats among other things. That place was awesome!

When we finished, we packed the car up, we all bought too much, and came home. And that was Tokyo.

Tomorrow, I have my medical exam. All the ALTs have to do it. I started preparing for it yesterday when I had to poo on a stick. Yes, you read that right. I had to get poo on this stick, there are picture instructions on how much should be on there, and then seal it up. I have to do this again tomorrow morning. I also have to pee in a tube. So tomorrow morning I go to the Kuguno branch office and get checked out. My supervisor came over to my school today to help me fill out the forms. Because they are entirely in Japanese.

We had some fun trying to figure out what to write for some parts. Like one of the questions was asking if I’ve ever had an operation around my stomach area. So I had to say yes. Then you have to specify what part of the stomach area. Yeah. The forms were fun.

The last thing I shall regale you with is the approach of winter. It’s started getting cold here. Cold enough that I finally dug out my kerosene heaters. And then realized they had no kerosene in them. Something I’ll be rectifying today.

Because Japan pretty much doesn’t build anything with insulation, there are several things you have to do here that you wouldn’t do at home. As one of the ALTs has already had to do, you have to put some of your toiletries into the fridge. To keep them from freezing. I wish I was making this up.

I should have realized this was coming given there have been mornings where the fridge was slightly warmer than my apartment. Yeah, it gets that cold. One of the things I want to get when I’m home is an outlet timer like for Christmas lights. Then I can set it a half hour before I get up in the morning and plug my heater into it so I don’t have to freeze when I get out of bed in the mornings.

So that’s about all for now. I just realized I’ll be home in like 3 weeks. Which made me realize I haven’t finished Christmas shopping. So I’ll be busy doing that in the next little while. Until next time, bye!

Nagoya and Toyama adventures

Yeah I know. It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been busy. But because I’ve been busy, I now have awesome stories to tell you!

First off, last weekend I was bored so I decided to go to Nagoya. I took the train down in the morning, after missing the train I wanted to get on because none of the bloody ATMs open until 9am, and I was there by noon.

After wandering around the train station for a while I managed to acquire an English map of the city. That was all I really needed. My basic plan for the day had been to somehow get myself to Nagoya castle. I bought myself an all day all subways and bus pass and went off.

I ended up walking most of the way. I couldn’t figure out which subway station I wanted. It worked out because I saw lots of cool stuff. Some park that was full of water fountains, city hall, the city archives, and a huge TV tower.
Eventually I did make it to the castle. When I got inside I noticed a crowd of people gathered around a roped off area. The area had a sign saying something was happening at 2pm. As that was ten minutes from when I got there, I decided to hang around and watch.

I’m not sure what you’d call a show like that. 5 people came out dressed in historical outfits. 3 of the people had huge spears. I got really excited. I though they were going to fight. Sadly, they didn’t. Instead they danced. Yep. You read that right. They danced. To some weird pop-y music. At one point I think they were talking about historical stuff. At least I recognized one of the names as being historical so I’m kind of assuming that. The Japanese was way too fast for me to catch it all.

The show didn’t last all that long so then I went wandering around. They had these displays of flowers everywhere. Then I went inside the castle. It’s 6 floors. They had stuff from the original castle as well as reconstructed stuff. At the top there were a bunch of windows so you could see all of Nagoya. It was pretty sweet.
So after my touristyness, I went shopping at the underground mall near the station. Nothing really that exciting to report there so I’ll skip that and move on to what happened on Tuesday.

Tuesday, AKA yesterday, a bunch of us ALTs went to Toyama to go see the new Harry Potter movie. It was a holiday so none of us had work. I was one of the drivers. My baby made it no problem. The theatre we went to was in the middle of this huge mall so we also did a bit of shopping. I ended up running into one of my English teachers there which was kind of weird for both of us.

The main reason we chose this theatre, and why we drove an hour and half, is because this theatre had the movie in English with Japanese subtitles. Not only did that mean we could watch it in English, it also meant the theatre wasn’t full of children because they can’t read all the kanji/ read the subtitles fast enough.
After the movie we went to a second-hand shop followed by Don Quixote which is this weird everything store. It’s where most ALTs get their onesies. I found some hilarious stuff for people as well as a delightfully warm hoodie for myself.

Well that’s pretty much it for now. On Friday a bunch of us are going to Tokyo for the weekend so I should have more to report after that.

Halloween and French

And here’s another post. Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been busy.

As for what I was busy with, I’m about to tell you. All of us Takayama ALTs have been planning and then executing a Halloween English Shower for elementary students. And it was a lot of fun.

We had about 120 kids registered and only a handful didn’t show up. And that’s not counting the unregistered younger siblings and parents who came as well. All the kids came in costume. I have to say there were a lot of witches. I think witch hats must have been one of the easiest things to find. We did have some originals. One kid had a sweet Peter Pan costume, a girl had a full Belle costume, and this one kid had a full pumpkin outfit.

Not to be outdone, us ALTs broke out our onesies. We had 2 Hello Kitties, one dressed as a tiger and the other a rabbit, one reindeer, one Pikachu, one other Pokemon, one actual tiger, one bloody bear, one Rilakkuma, and one Chopper (me).

This was the very first Halloween English Shower. Which is probably why we ended up with so many little snags. Groups got confused, kids ended up lost, no one knew where the next group was supposed to go, etc. It all worked out in the end though.

Early on, I made friends with a little girl who was around 2 or 3. She high-fived me and I pretended to fall over. This was something of a mistake. Because for the rest of the day, she would periodically come and find me to high five me again. She was super adorable so I didn’t mind.

The last part of the event was the trick or treating simulation. One of the ALTs had gone home for her brother’s wedding so she’d bought all sorts of real Halloween candy. Each of us had our own table which we could decorate and the kids went from table to table saying trick or treat. I’d brought some extra candy and gave it out to the unregistered siblings. And yes, red dress got a piece. I made sure of it.

Afterwards, we were all going to head to a Halloween party. I’d driven in, so I had to take my car back to my apartment and then catch the train into Takayama. Except the train kept getting delayed. First a half-hour, then fifty-minutes, then seventy-minutes. After an hour I gave up and went home so sadly I have no drunken Halloween adventures to tell you about.

Now not only did we have the Halloween English Shower, but most of us ALTs also did Halloween lessons. I blatantly stole my ideas from two of the others. For the older kids, any kid from 4th grade up to 9th, we played a trick or treat game. The kids had to say trick or treat to me and then pick a slip of paper out of a hat. If it said treat, they got a Halloween sticker. If it said trick, they had to wear the ridiculous costume that the paper specified. I know I amused my coworkers during Halloween week when I spent the time I had between classes making fake mustaches and beards for the kids to wear.

In my junior high third year English conversation class, the game went over a little too well. One of the boys had just gotten the feather and fan mask set, something that always happened to the boys more than the girls through no plan of mine, and the whole class was laughing. One of the boys laughed so hard he fell out of his chair and hit his head. Which of course made everyone laugh even harder. He was fine though he admitted it did hurt when everyone had calmed down.

The other game I played with the younger kids was Halloween Basket. Which is just Fruits Basket with Halloween words substituted for fruit words. Kids bring their chairs and put them in a circle. I randomly distributed cards with pictures of the Halloween creatures I’d taught them. Then I’d call out one. All those kids have to change seats. One kid is always left out and then it’s their turn to call out a creature. And the kids love the game. Of course there’s always a couple of kids who fake falls and stuff so they can be in the middle but all in all, it’s a good game.

So right after Halloween, I had my special, shoot-me-in-the-face, watched lesson. This is where a whole mess of English teachers from Takayama came to watch me teach English in elementary school. Well me and the homeroom teacher. It went pretty well. I got the teachers involved in the game instead of just having them watch and loom over kids with their clipboards. I got some positive feedback on the game so at least I know I’m doing something halfway decent.

So the night after my watched lesson I got a phone call from my supervisor. I thought he was calling to talk to me about my lesson. Nope. He asks me if I speak French. I say I do, more or less, and he tells me they have a French language class at the Takayama cultural centre on Thursday nights. And that their French teacher just moved. If they couldn’t find a replacement, they’d have to cancel the course.

And that’s how I ended up having a meeting with the lady who runs that the next day at school. Since it’s only beginner French, and I don’t want them to have to cancel it, I’m the new French teacher. This is either going to be really great or it’s going to end horribly. We’ll have to see. I start next week.

So that’s about all for now. There are plans for trips to Toyama and Tokyo in the next month so stay tuned for details of those adventures. Until later, bye!