October 15th
Forgot to turn the volume up on my alarm and kinda woke up late. Made it to school right as class was starting though, so it was okay. After walking into the school, teachers gave me nuts from the ginko tree outside. Then after 5 minutes, they realize I’m supposed to be helping in a class and rush me upstairs. Even the principal was sitting there eating gingko seeds with me, not knowing what was happening. I started teaching the kids about Halloween, including bobbing for apples, and it brought me back to 3rd grade in Mr. Garcia’s class. It also helped me remember ‘Dirt’ made from Oreo cookies that had gummy worms and whipped cream. Those were some good days. Only had 2 classes to teach. The rest of the day, the kids were busy getting ready for their school festival. From what I can tell, they’ll be playing music (keyboard, drums, xylophone), singing, and for some reason they’re dressing in wedding outfits made of plastic.
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| Yes, that's a boy on the left. |
What?! Other kids have pointed gnome hats on their hands and heads. I can’t figure out what’s happening here.
At night, I meet up with Shinmiya, his kids, and a few adults who regularly play badminton at, what I’m going to call, our recreation center. Before starting play, Shinmiya had me introduce myself to everyone again. I think there are people here who have met me 6 times, but still come up to say ‘Nice to meet you.’ Two of the girls, who are badminton players for a national team, came up to me giggling but then surprised the heck out of me. They each gave introductions in perfect English, including what they like and don’t like to eat, what city they live in, how old they are, their date of birth, and then saying ‘Nice to meet you.’ I was blown away and probably scared them with how many times I complemented their English.
The games started and everyone was trying to show me how to hold the racket and serve the shuttlecock. You should have seen the looks on their faces when a little girl and I nearly beat two adult men. No really, they were freaking out impressed at how well I we were playing. In fact, they went so crazy that they had me play games against every person Shinmiya knew. I think I played 9 games of badminton. I haven’t sweat that much in a while. Good news though, my leg didn’t cramp up.
The girls who introduced themselves, bought me a drink and walked away giggling. Shinmiya couldn’t stop giving me compliments. They wouldn’t let me rest for 5 minutes and I was already drained. We finally left for home around 10 (we got there at 7) and I went straight to bed.
October 16th
I thankfully woke up this morning and made it over to Hamanoue’s house. He invited me to come fishing with him and I couldn’t pass it up. His buddy arrived a little late, but we made it to their fishing spot about an hour down the coast. Stopped at a little Ma and Pop store to buy shrimp and some crazy ground up fish. Mind you, it’s legal to chum out here. We also bought some bentos for lunch. Getting to the fishing spot turned out to be quite the adventure. We parked out cars about a mile away from the rocks we’d later be fishing on. Unfortunately, the rocks were over a mile trek through thick, steep, overgrown tree forest, vines, and bamboo. There were spiders everywhere but we just walked straight through all the brush. Hamanoue probably should have told me not to wear shorts today. Upon exiting the forest of 1 billion spiders, we found ourselves on the edge of a cliff. It’s okay, we’ll walk across. The lip of this cliff is only about 2 feet wide, 60 feet from the ground, and covered in wet grass/vine. I watched as these two 60+ year old guys with heavy backpacks walk across the cliff. I guess all three of us really like fishing, because we were across the 50 foot section in no time, and crawling down boulders to get to the water’s edge.
Mixed up the chum for the guys and we cast our lines into the water. We caught some beautiful bass-looking fish. They were dark, dark gray and about a pound or two each. I later saw this same type of fish at the market on sale for 1,000 yen each. We caught about 9 of these, a few needle fish, and I caught some red snapper-looking fish that Hamanoue said would taste very good.
All was a great day besides the fact that they burned all their trash (plastics included) on the shoreline. I was actually gathering all the bento boxes and plastic wrap to carry back and they said we were going to light it on fire. With all their recycling I still don’t understand why so much is burned out here.
Got back to the cars and headed home. Hamanoue invited me to join him the next day for a motorcycle ride so I had to accept. Home was relaxing and I fell asleep early.
October 17th
Hamanoue told me to join him for lunch so I met at his place around 12. His wife cooked the fish from the day before and it was some of the best I’ve ever had. They removed the innards but everything else was BBQ’d. I still don’t like it when the fish’s eyes are looking at me, but this fish was so good, I just stared at my plate of salad instead. We left for a festival in a town about 35 minutes away and parked our bikes. We walked around for about an hour, seeing some other ALTs and one of Muro’s motorcycle buddies, and then stopped to stand at a roped of section of road. It turns out this area is for an archer to display his horse riding and shooting skills.
We watch him take a few passes and each time he hits a target, the crowd goes nuts. The archer’s outfit was extravagant to say the least, and was visibly distracting him when he tried to reload his bow.
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| Can you tell I was more interested in the horse? |
Hamanoue and I left the festival and rode around the mountains for an hour or so. He took me to a huge waterfall area, a landslide, and then back home through some fields. For this guy’s age, it’s still hard for me to understand how he’s so good on the rough trails.
Getting to his house, Hamanoue’s wife already has dinner about ready to eat. Again, it’s the fish we caught yesterday. There’s only so much fish I want to eat each week, let alone each day. It’s delicious, of course, but I'm done with fish for a while. I excuse myself and get home for a relaxing day off tomorrow.
October 18th
Woke up late. Drove around looking for motorcycles, again. I bought a couple packs of mango Mentos and devoured them in less than 10 minutes. Queue stomach ache in 3, 2, 1… Not a very productive day, but I manage to see some new places around Kagoshima. Had taiko practice and learned a new song. They also told me we won’t have taiko for the next two weeks, so that’s sort of a relief.
October 19th
My teacher decides that since I have stickers, we’re going to play Bingo all day and she’s going to delegate how many stickers I give each kid. After giving about 30 stickers away to one class of 10 students, I have to politely tell her that I can’t give anymore out because they’re for other schools too. For some reason, I’m not particularly in the best mood today (not the sticker thing, just something not clicking). I think I have taken as much of Japan as I can at the moment. Welcome to ‘Stage 2,’ as JET calls it, when you just start to dislike nearly everything in Japan. My notes from my little journal have, “I want a bike so I can ride and get away!” written in it. I think it’s time to get serious about buying a motorcycle out here. Already planning on taking a ferry to Amami and Okinawa to ride around the islands.
October 20th
Today started the wrong way. A teacher, 20 minutes before class when I’m trying to organize everything for first period, starts to talk to me in broken English. Taking 5 minutes to look up a word and then not even explaining what he just looked up. I was literally about to flip out, but my JTE saved me and sent kids to bring me to class. I gave another 5,000 pieces of candy to classes today but had one kid freak out because his piece wasn’t as big as his friend’s piece. A teacher came into my class, mid-lesson, and pulled me out to have me see where this kid was throwing a temper tantrum. Then asked me to come back after class so we could fix the problem. Japan, I just have to warn you, this is getting really annoying. After class, I go to find the kid and he’s got a big smile on his face, skipping down the hallway. I’m so glad they made such a big deal out of this kid, he might not have skipped that extra inch higher.
My second school was fine. One of my ‘funny’ kids kept whispering, “I love you,” while my JTE was teaching. I’m going to burst laughing one day. He’s too funny, but always learning the new material before the rest of the class. The tea lady gave me a jar of strawberry preserves and a can of black pork meat that her daughter helped make at her high school. Then before I left the school, a teacher asks me to tell her about my Halloween plan for next week. I start to tell her, but she stops me and says to wait because she has a class. I wait for 45 mins, but she doesn't come back in the office for over an hour. Once she gets back, I approach her about the lesson plan and she blows me off for another 10 minutes, giving money to someone and giggling with someone outside. I decide to pack up and just leave when she comes over, looks at the two lessons I told her about before her last class, and says that should be fine. I get 10 words out of her after an hour and a half of waiting.
After work, I tried to run and cramped up again. STAGE 2!!!
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