joy to the world
It turns out that in a few days I will be heading home for the holidays, December 22nd to January 8th, if you are around. During this time I will be spending my vacation with family and friends and I hope that you all will be doing the same. Since I will have a very limited number of days at home, I plan to make the most of them. I will most likely be taking a break from blogging for this period. I will still respond to emails and phone calls so I won't be any more out of the loop than usual. However people should probably not expect to follow up on my holiday life on here until I return in a couple of weeks. Thank you to all that actually do read my blog and I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed living it. I want to wish you all safe travels during the holiday season and I hope you get to spend time with the people that love and care about you.
Until next year, that will prove to have more Japan craziness, take care.
don't be a hobo
Sadly one of the crew is leaving us in the next month. Emily is supposedly heading back to the states this January and it will most likely be while the rest of us are home over break. In order to properly send her off we decided to have a pseudo sayonara party for her. Of course we, and by we I mean mostly me, did a little pre-gaming on the train over to get the night started. We began the night at Asian Kitchen, which is this restaurant in Niigata that has this nifty light show at seven, which I have mentioned before. Before dinner started we were a little short on people since a few had bailed because of the poor weather conditions. We still managed to have a fun meal that was made complete with plenty of drinks, flavorful food and good conversation.
After dinner we decided that the next best thing to do would be karaoke at a place called big echo. This place is not to be confused with the aforementioned manekineko because there is a much larger music selection to jam out to. We were in this cool room that had all these werewolf black light images on the wall. After a couple hours of drinking and singing our life away it was time to make our next stop that happened to be Hot Spot, which is a bar in Furumachi district of Niigata.
One of the key reasons for going was because certain person on our trip, who shall remain nameless unless they decide otherwise, had a thing for the bartender there. Needless to say in the middle of our game of never have I ever they went up to the bar to get a fresh drink and came back with a phone number and a keitai address. It was awesome! Too bad I can't just pick up guys like that.
Finally we got some drunken ramen at this place near the bar, who knows the name or if we could find it again, but it was exactly what we needed after a long night of partying. Of course I crashed at Melissa's place after I had passed out while we were taking a daiko (this amazingl taxi service that drives your car back for you) back to Maki.
The next day I was excited because I was not nearly as hung over as I thought I would be. However, after calling my parents, Melissa, Kate and I headed out for McDonald's. Even though I am in Japan, I still feel there is no better way to cure a hangover than to have some greasy McDonald's. Sadly I missed breakfast again but there will always be a next time. Then we came back and did a crazy Engrish t-shirt exchange for Christmas. For those that have no clue what Engrish is, Japanese doesn't really have a distinction between the "r" and the "l" sound. Therefore when spelling out English words they sometimes end up putting those letters in places they shouldn't be or just flat out jumble a bunch of letters together. My t-shirt says "Grass Hither he is too positive about everything confidence person flogs." I am sure over the next year or so I will be collecting plenty of these for my wearing pleasure.
brokeback mountain
I remembered hearing about this movie back when I was home this summer and completely forgot about it until I randomly came across it on the startribune online. For those of you that will be seeing me somewhat frequently at home, this is definitely the first thing on my to do list! Just watch the trailer. I am going to be such a sucker for this movie, especially with Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in it. Plus, it definitely makes me excited that there is finally a Hollywood blockbuster that has a homosexual storyline with two sexy studs as the main characters.
snow snow snowbo
Yes, it started to snow in Niigata. A little later than back home but it was just in time to get me into the holiday spirit. To prepare for the snow Melissa and I waxed our snowboards last week. This was following a great taco rice dinner with Kate at Melissa's place. Don't ask me what is with me and tacos lately because if you ask any of my roommates from last year I rarely ate Mexican food. However, this time I did not do the organizing so I don't take responsibility for the menu. Despite the minor rant, it was delicious and I am excited to enjoying eating it again. Obviously there was some typical Aaron and Melissa wackiness but it is what I have come to expect when the two of us get together to do anything. You have to admit we are total hotness when it comes to playing with snowboarding gear.
Then last weekend I went to Shiozawa to visit my homestay again. As usual there was plenty of drinking and eating, although I have finally managed to figure out how to say no to them. Also I spent the first night there with just the mom, grandma, and younger sister. Talk about having a good Japanese weekend. I have come to realize that I am very comfortable there and hence have an easier time both using and understanding Japanese. It probably helps that the mom talks to me like a kindergartener.
Anyway the following day Asuka and Paul came up from Tokyo so we could all go snowboarding. Apparently there was a big party at the dorm so Paul had a bit of a late start to the morning. A few hours later than planned they arrived in Shiozawa to grab some lunch so we could hit the slopes. We went to this place called Gala which is ten minutes away from their house. Needless to say it was snowing the whole time and it was gorgeous. It also made me happy to be learning to snowboard here because there was plenty of fresh snow for me to fall on a multitude of times. It hurt but by the end we were attempting, emphasis on attempting, to take some of the more challenging runs. The situation was made a little more interesting because I didn't send myself gloves, goggles, scarves, or a stocking cap so I was hatless with borrowed gloves and no goggles. At least it wasn't that cold and snowboarding actually took some effort so I hot anyway. Still it is nice to know that you can still pick up new things if you want to. At the end of our time there we headed back for some dinner and then hit up the onsen. Let me tell you, there is nothing like relaxing in an onsen after snowboarding. It was amazing.
Sunday proved to be a relaxing day, which was definitely needed, that included sleeping in, eating, and watching two movies. One of the movies was a new one by Ghibli Studios called
Howl's moving castle and, despite only getting subtitles, it was amazing. I can't wait to see if there is an English version out back home. Melissa was at Gala on Sunday checking out the slopes as well so I hitched a ride back with her to Sanjo while catching up on the weekends events.
All of which brings me to now where the snow has finally started to fall and stick in Sanjo. For me it signifies the official start of winter and I will probably bust out the sweaters for work now. However, after a slight miscalculation with my budget for the month has left me with $40 for the rest of the week after borrowing $100 from Melissa. Apparently I had too much fun for my own good this past month. Plus I ran out of gas for my kerosene heater so I will be a little chilly for the next week and will be glad to return to the land of central heat. At least it is forcing me to leave my apartment and go to gym.
sake sensei
On Friday I decided to have a small get together with my English teachers. I don't know what it is lately but tacos have just been the way to go. We had tacos in a bag, which I provided, and had the teacher bring the drinks. Oh they definitely brought them... One of my teachers busted out this massive bottle of sake, that we were told was around $100, and there was plenty of beer. It was great to see most of my teachers drunk and all of them getting to talk with each other. Many of them know one another but hardly get the opportunity to meet up. Besides the fact that a bunch of teachers were eating food out of a bag with forks, apparently this whole scene was kind of strange because they had never been invited by an ALT to a party at their apartment. That information really surprised me because, from what my JTE's have told me, it sounded like they got along great with my predecessors. So all in all a great time.
Before all of that could go down I ended up going to a demonstration class that one of my JTE's, who didn't come to the tacos party, was holding. It is fairly common for teachers to have these classes so that they can be critiqued by other English teachers on how they conduct class. Whether this is out of their own will or it is a requirement is beyond my knowledge but I usually get invited to them. In fact usually I teach with the JTE's doing the class. However not only did I not participate in the class but I wasn't formally asked to watch either. Of course I went anyway but this teacher is really high strung and it kind of a blow that he didn't want me involved in the proceedings. After he finished the class we had a meeting to discuss what went down. They tried to hold it in English, which was very nice of them, but it just meant that I did most of the talking because the other teachers were too shy to talk in English. Basically they ripped this guy apart so I felt bad for him but hopefully it will spur him to change his teaching style a little bit.
