[Lest I Forget] Summer 2005 - Part 1 of 10-ish
Picasa from the fine people at Google is awesome. It sorted and organized all my bajillion of photos, found pictures I didn't even know I still had, aaaaaand . . .
. . . reminded me that there's still a bajillion photos I never got around to posting up. Not just summer, but Yuki Matsuri, the crazy weekends of Feb & March, Nikko, and heaps from the 03/04 school year. >< My memory sucks, and I don't wanna be posting about Japan forever, so I'm going to give myself to the end of September to FINISH IT ALL!! And because of the planning fallacy, I'm going to give myself till the end of October instead. SO WHATCHA GONNA DO?!!
Early-July
This was so cruel but so much fun. ^^ Basically, a cicada flew into the teacher's room and Mr. JTE sprayed it with the Rooster-cide of Doom but it wouldn't die. So then kyoto-sensei armed himself with a broom and kept swiping at it but it was darting around too fast. So finally I couldn't stands no more, got out my badminton racket and started flailing away like a B-movie monster. Then . . . *POW!* I smashed the cicada all the way into the sink at the end of the room. XD Then kyoto-sensei squashed it with the broom and swept it away. If only killing cockroaches could be this fun. :)
Speaking of which, in early July, I met my first cockroach . . the one on the right, of course.
But for the longest time, I thought cockroaches were the one on the left. What is the one on the left, then??
Thankfully, unlike the one on the left, cockroaches don't jump. But they scamper around really quick. So I sprayed it with the Rooster-cide of Doom, only for it to flip over. Not wanting to squish it and smudge the floor, I left it there. But day after day, its legs were still wiggling. Finally, a week later it stopped, but as I went to toss it out, it flipped itself over and crawled away. oO; Long story short, I eventually got it in one of those cockroach traps and threw it out just as the garbage truck rolled by. Must've been a """CRUSHING""" defeat. HAHAHAHAHA!!! XD XD XD
THIS was my ranking on TV Asahi just before I cancelled my keitai at the start of July. I've been a subscriber for so long but I only used it to download ringtones that I rarely used, so might as well show off my rank and get something more out of the membership. ^^
I never used my keitai much either . . I just downloaded popular songs, took pictures, played games, and honestly, I got my keitai more for show than for calling. So when I started cleaning my house and found a bunch of unopened Vodafone bills, I was shocked, jaw-dropping brain scrambling WAZZUPWITDAT?! shocked, when I opened them and almost every bill since February was . . . 10,000+ YEN?!! Again, I rarely call anyone and I was on the 3000 yen plan, so WA - IZ - ZUP - WIT - DAT?!!!
Well later, I learned that the 200 yen internet access charge doesn't exactly cover unlimited access. Basically, they charge you for every byte of data you download, such as web surfing and . . ring tones. >< So all those times I was d/l request songs at lunch break and reading LJ on long train rides, my wallet was being pickpocketed by my own phone. How could you? ;_;
Final Classes
1nensei
Crap, my shirt! Should I still post this up? Eh well, maybe no one will notice . .
Thanks to Ms. JTE for setting up this impromptu surprise party. :)
2nensei
I chose "Banana Phone" for the final song. Thankfully, I passed my translation by Ms. JTE, because it turned out my translation of ying-yang was "genitalia." Whoa, now I don't think that was the banana phone Raffi had in mind. oO; I really gotta stop blindly cut-and-pasting from ALC . . seriously, check it out yourself. ><
Sadly, the students didn't like Banana Phone at all, and were clamoring to get back under the umbrella of "I was born to love you." :P
3nensei
Er, there wasn't really a final 3nensei class because Mr. JTE never told me that he was using the last three classes for movies and TV shows. >< I wished he asked me for some movie suggestions, because as much as I love Kiki's Delivery Service, showing the English dub w/ Japanese subs must still be pretty boring for the students who had seen it a million times by now. I did sit in on the TV show though, which was about the dangers of being a coal mining kid hosted by TOKIO heartthrob, Matsuoka Masahiro. During the show, the BIGGEST THUNDERSTORM IN THE LIFETIME OF ME hit Hirono, and one student was going into shellshock with fear. So to ease the tension, I started calling, "Matsuoka~!" whenever he appeared, but the kids were more like "huh?" than amused. :P
Elementary
. . was covered here. ;_;
Adult Conversation
Children Conversation
As you know, I'm not a big fan of this year's set of kids because they never listen and act like prison inmates. But since I wanted to send them off happy for the last class, I pulled out my ultimate never-fail lesson: "Your change." Basically, there's this page in the JHS textbook where a kid and a stranger have this conversation: "Excuse me." / "Yes?" / "Your change." / "Oh my change! Thank you!" / "You're welcome."
Kids love it because it's simple, it's fun to roleplay, plus I get them to cross out "change" and replace it with something they pull out of my mystery bag of stuff from around my house. It's also great because it teaches kids a variety of useful English words, such as whoopie cushion.
Last Day
Throughout the day, students were giving me so many wonderful letters. I was so surprised and happy because I always got passed over during graduation and Valentines for the "real" teachers. ^^ I was just re-reading them yesterday, and here's two more cool letters that I didn't post: Letter 1 & Letter 2
I also had to make some speeches, but I forgot my camera and no one took any pictures of the ceremony, so you'll just have to imagine me on stage in a neon green toga, mooning the teachers and then making a stage dive into the crowd with a 360 corkscrew twist while screaming "LET'S CHALLENGING!!"
Some goodbye pics with the kids. Since I wanted to be remembered as the happy, wacky teacher, I tried to do a crazy pose in most of them. ^^
I wanted to test out the Ultraman pose I recently learned from a Kimutaku skit, but maybe it was a little too over-the-top for this student. ^^;
This student wanted to ride her friend like a donkey while kicking her in the face for this picture. Aww, how sadistically cute.
These two girls are in the basketball club, so I did a slam dunk pose. :) Man, I saw that girl making the hoop start writing something about me in her bingo book during the last class, and I'm still wondering what she wrote. Hopefully it was something nice . . she did ask me to marry her last year after all. XD
Here's one of the students that didn't like me much, but on the last day she was suddenly nice to me again . . and then proceeded to do a lot of backflips. oO
I also went out and worked out with the baseball team. Had no idea what I was doing, but it was lots of fun and wish I did more of this in the last two years.
And the final update to English Station! I spent the whole week on this one, and was up till 9 on Thursday putting the finishing touches on it. Guess I just really wanted to top my super successor in *something.* ^^ Some of the girls were drooling over the picture of Willy Wonka Johnny Depp. Willy Wonka Johnny Depp is hot? oO;
Farewell Parties
Adult Conversation party
. . was covered here
JHS party
. . was fun. Though because I had to leave early to prepare for the Fuji Trip that never happened, I didn't have a chance to talk to many of them. ><
That's Mr. JTE singing to "Open Arms," one of those English songs that seems to have caught on in Japan but nowhere else. This was one of the rare enkais that had karaoke cuz everyone knows I love it . . . sadly, no one was interested in singing except me and the JTE. >< I had a song kinda memorized that I've been wanting to try, but Mr. JTE told me, "No one knows this song. Please sing a song that everyone knows." >< So I ended up singing that Hustle Ondo song by K-1 fighter, Naoya Ogawa, since I loved what I had heard on his website. Unfortunately, the 10 second clip was all I ever heard which left me struggling after those 10-seconds were over . . so I just did a bunch of wacky gestures throughout the song and I think that distracted them enough to get away with my lousy rendition. ^^
And with that done and school done, I decided to head down to Tokyo on Friday to get a Sawai Miyuu event ticket (which I'll save for another entry . . oh man, that was freaky . .), when my boss approached me on Wednesday to tell me, "There will be a . .
Board of Education party
. . this Friday." oO; Good God! Please change it, pleeeease? "No." Doh!
So Friday was interesting . . I made it to Tokyo at 9, got the ticket at 11, spent another two hours there, caught the Shinkansen to Koriyama to return this new digital camera that had no English option, then hopped onto a bus to catch Team BOE at Iwaki Station at 5:30. x_x
It was a great party though, super food with super folks. And I got a really nice cap, shirt, and fan as a parting gift. Not really any interesting pictures of note, so here's two strange signs from Akihabara instead. :)
Packing
All of the above kept me busy for most of July, so I didn't actually have much time left to pack except the final two-day weekend.
If you ever wanted to prove that I was a closet otaku, you could probably use this as evidence . .
When I came to Japan, I wanted to find myself a hobby, so I started collecting gashapon and building this empire on the top of my dresser. I think what I liked the most about gashapon was the chance aspect . . thankfully, I never tried pachinko. ^^; Then one day last fall, I saw this 20-something year-old at the gashapon machines and I thought, "Haha, that guy sure is weird . ." then I realized I was just like him. >< So I stopped collecting after that . . a good idea after I started tabulating how much I had spent on them. Good God, those 100 and 200 yen adds up quick. oO;
Well, I assumed that was the hardest thing to pack with so many of them. I finally just gave up and pushed them all into a box to sort out the missing limbs later. I thought I could do the same with everything else, just throw it all in one big box, but oh-ho-ho did I underestimate packing. By Monday, my final day in this house, I was up to box #7!!!
When my boss came over to help bring them to the post office at 1, he wasn't very happy at what he saw. And since I had been working so hard on packing, I hadn't had a chance to clean the place yet, which made him unhappier. Then after he found out that I still had to cancel my bank accounts, pick up my JTB tickets, and drop off the shogakkou textbooks within the next three hours, he pretty much had steam coming out of his ears and threatened to kill me for the rest of the day. Playfully . . . . . um, I hope. ^^;; I tried to explain to everyone how busy I had been "seito no tame ni" but no one was listening. ><
Goodbye Hirono
And so to make it up to the bosses, I stayed up and cleaned every inch of the house. I ended up cleaning until 5 in the morning, at which point I had to leave to catch the train. Seeing as I only had three hours sleep the night before, I left my home and Hirono not in the grand fashion I once imagined I would, but as a walking corpse clinging to reality. x_x For current JETs, word of advise: pack and clean early when you leave.
The second floor of my home post-cleaning . .
Looking out from the balcony at dawn . .
The first floor . .
Goodbye house!
. . . reminded me that there's still a bajillion photos I never got around to posting up. Not just summer, but Yuki Matsuri, the crazy weekends of Feb & March, Nikko, and heaps from the 03/04 school year. >< My memory sucks, and I don't wanna be posting about Japan forever, so I'm going to give myself to the end of September to FINISH IT ALL!! And because of the planning fallacy, I'm going to give myself till the end of October instead. SO WHATCHA GONNA DO?!!
Early-July
This was so cruel but so much fun. ^^ Basically, a cicada flew into the teacher's room and Mr. JTE sprayed it with the Rooster-cide of Doom but it wouldn't die. So then kyoto-sensei armed himself with a broom and kept swiping at it but it was darting around too fast. So finally I couldn't stands no more, got out my badminton racket and started flailing away like a B-movie monster. Then . . . *POW!* I smashed the cicada all the way into the sink at the end of the room. XD Then kyoto-sensei squashed it with the broom and swept it away. If only killing cockroaches could be this fun. :)
Speaking of which, in early July, I met my first cockroach . . the one on the right, of course.
But for the longest time, I thought cockroaches were the one on the left. What is the one on the left, then??
Thankfully, unlike the one on the left, cockroaches don't jump. But they scamper around really quick. So I sprayed it with the Rooster-cide of Doom, only for it to flip over. Not wanting to squish it and smudge the floor, I left it there. But day after day, its legs were still wiggling. Finally, a week later it stopped, but as I went to toss it out, it flipped itself over and crawled away. oO; Long story short, I eventually got it in one of those cockroach traps and threw it out just as the garbage truck rolled by. Must've been a """CRUSHING""" defeat. HAHAHAHAHA!!! XD XD XD
THIS was my ranking on TV Asahi just before I cancelled my keitai at the start of July. I've been a subscriber for so long but I only used it to download ringtones that I rarely used, so might as well show off my rank and get something more out of the membership. ^^
I never used my keitai much either . . I just downloaded popular songs, took pictures, played games, and honestly, I got my keitai more for show than for calling. So when I started cleaning my house and found a bunch of unopened Vodafone bills, I was shocked, jaw-dropping brain scrambling WAZZUPWITDAT?! shocked, when I opened them and almost every bill since February was . . . 10,000+ YEN?!! Again, I rarely call anyone and I was on the 3000 yen plan, so WA - IZ - ZUP - WIT - DAT?!!!
Well later, I learned that the 200 yen internet access charge doesn't exactly cover unlimited access. Basically, they charge you for every byte of data you download, such as web surfing and . . ring tones. >< So all those times I was d/l request songs at lunch break and reading LJ on long train rides, my wallet was being pickpocketed by my own phone. How could you? ;_;
Final Classes
1nensei
Crap, my shirt! Should I still post this up? Eh well, maybe no one will notice . .
Thanks to Ms. JTE for setting up this impromptu surprise party. :)
2nensei
I chose "Banana Phone" for the final song. Thankfully, I passed my translation by Ms. JTE, because it turned out my translation of ying-yang was "genitalia." Whoa, now I don't think that was the banana phone Raffi had in mind. oO; I really gotta stop blindly cut-and-pasting from ALC . . seriously, check it out yourself. ><
Sadly, the students didn't like Banana Phone at all, and were clamoring to get back under the umbrella of "I was born to love you." :P
3nensei
Er, there wasn't really a final 3nensei class because Mr. JTE never told me that he was using the last three classes for movies and TV shows. >< I wished he asked me for some movie suggestions, because as much as I love Kiki's Delivery Service, showing the English dub w/ Japanese subs must still be pretty boring for the students who had seen it a million times by now. I did sit in on the TV show though, which was about the dangers of being a coal mining kid hosted by TOKIO heartthrob, Matsuoka Masahiro. During the show, the BIGGEST THUNDERSTORM IN THE LIFETIME OF ME hit Hirono, and one student was going into shellshock with fear. So to ease the tension, I started calling, "Matsuoka~!" whenever he appeared, but the kids were more like "huh?" than amused. :P
Elementary
. . was covered here. ;_;
Adult Conversation
Children Conversation
As you know, I'm not a big fan of this year's set of kids because they never listen and act like prison inmates. But since I wanted to send them off happy for the last class, I pulled out my ultimate never-fail lesson: "Your change." Basically, there's this page in the JHS textbook where a kid and a stranger have this conversation: "Excuse me." / "Yes?" / "Your change." / "Oh my change! Thank you!" / "You're welcome."
Kids love it because it's simple, it's fun to roleplay, plus I get them to cross out "change" and replace it with something they pull out of my mystery bag of stuff from around my house. It's also great because it teaches kids a variety of useful English words, such as whoopie cushion.
Last Day
Throughout the day, students were giving me so many wonderful letters. I was so surprised and happy because I always got passed over during graduation and Valentines for the "real" teachers. ^^ I was just re-reading them yesterday, and here's two more cool letters that I didn't post: Letter 1 & Letter 2
I also had to make some speeches, but I forgot my camera and no one took any pictures of the ceremony, so you'll just have to imagine me on stage in a neon green toga, mooning the teachers and then making a stage dive into the crowd with a 360 corkscrew twist while screaming "LET'S CHALLENGING!!"
Some goodbye pics with the kids. Since I wanted to be remembered as the happy, wacky teacher, I tried to do a crazy pose in most of them. ^^
I wanted to test out the Ultraman pose I recently learned from a Kimutaku skit, but maybe it was a little too over-the-top for this student. ^^;
This student wanted to ride her friend like a donkey while kicking her in the face for this picture. Aww, how sadistically cute.
These two girls are in the basketball club, so I did a slam dunk pose. :) Man, I saw that girl making the hoop start writing something about me in her bingo book during the last class, and I'm still wondering what she wrote. Hopefully it was something nice . . she did ask me to marry her last year after all. XD
Here's one of the students that didn't like me much, but on the last day she was suddenly nice to me again . . and then proceeded to do a lot of backflips. oO
I also went out and worked out with the baseball team. Had no idea what I was doing, but it was lots of fun and wish I did more of this in the last two years.
And the final update to English Station! I spent the whole week on this one, and was up till 9 on Thursday putting the finishing touches on it. Guess I just really wanted to top my super successor in *something.* ^^ Some of the girls were drooling over the picture of Willy Wonka Johnny Depp. Willy Wonka Johnny Depp is hot? oO;
Farewell Parties
Adult Conversation party
. . was covered here
JHS party
. . was fun. Though because I had to leave early to prepare for the Fuji Trip that never happened, I didn't have a chance to talk to many of them. ><
That's Mr. JTE singing to "Open Arms," one of those English songs that seems to have caught on in Japan but nowhere else. This was one of the rare enkais that had karaoke cuz everyone knows I love it . . . sadly, no one was interested in singing except me and the JTE. >< I had a song kinda memorized that I've been wanting to try, but Mr. JTE told me, "No one knows this song. Please sing a song that everyone knows." >< So I ended up singing that Hustle Ondo song by K-1 fighter, Naoya Ogawa, since I loved what I had heard on his website. Unfortunately, the 10 second clip was all I ever heard which left me struggling after those 10-seconds were over . . so I just did a bunch of wacky gestures throughout the song and I think that distracted them enough to get away with my lousy rendition. ^^
And with that done and school done, I decided to head down to Tokyo on Friday to get a Sawai Miyuu event ticket (which I'll save for another entry . . oh man, that was freaky . .), when my boss approached me on Wednesday to tell me, "There will be a . .
Board of Education party
. . this Friday." oO; Good God! Please change it, pleeeease? "No." Doh!
So Friday was interesting . . I made it to Tokyo at 9, got the ticket at 11, spent another two hours there, caught the Shinkansen to Koriyama to return this new digital camera that had no English option, then hopped onto a bus to catch Team BOE at Iwaki Station at 5:30. x_x
It was a great party though, super food with super folks. And I got a really nice cap, shirt, and fan as a parting gift. Not really any interesting pictures of note, so here's two strange signs from Akihabara instead. :)
Packing
All of the above kept me busy for most of July, so I didn't actually have much time left to pack except the final two-day weekend.
If you ever wanted to prove that I was a closet otaku, you could probably use this as evidence . .
When I came to Japan, I wanted to find myself a hobby, so I started collecting gashapon and building this empire on the top of my dresser. I think what I liked the most about gashapon was the chance aspect . . thankfully, I never tried pachinko. ^^; Then one day last fall, I saw this 20-something year-old at the gashapon machines and I thought, "Haha, that guy sure is weird . ." then I realized I was just like him. >< So I stopped collecting after that . . a good idea after I started tabulating how much I had spent on them. Good God, those 100 and 200 yen adds up quick. oO;
Well, I assumed that was the hardest thing to pack with so many of them. I finally just gave up and pushed them all into a box to sort out the missing limbs later. I thought I could do the same with everything else, just throw it all in one big box, but oh-ho-ho did I underestimate packing. By Monday, my final day in this house, I was up to box #7!!!
When my boss came over to help bring them to the post office at 1, he wasn't very happy at what he saw. And since I had been working so hard on packing, I hadn't had a chance to clean the place yet, which made him unhappier. Then after he found out that I still had to cancel my bank accounts, pick up my JTB tickets, and drop off the shogakkou textbooks within the next three hours, he pretty much had steam coming out of his ears and threatened to kill me for the rest of the day. Playfully . . . . . um, I hope. ^^;; I tried to explain to everyone how busy I had been "seito no tame ni" but no one was listening. ><
Goodbye Hirono
And so to make it up to the bosses, I stayed up and cleaned every inch of the house. I ended up cleaning until 5 in the morning, at which point I had to leave to catch the train. Seeing as I only had three hours sleep the night before, I left my home and Hirono not in the grand fashion I once imagined I would, but as a walking corpse clinging to reality. x_x For current JETs, word of advise: pack and clean early when you leave.
The second floor of my home post-cleaning . .
Looking out from the balcony at dawn . .
The first floor . .
Goodbye house!