My Own Biggest Fan

The way I sometimes go on and on in my blog, you would think I am having a horrible time. Really that isn’t the case. These blogs are mostly for the people that I don’t see and I want you all to know that things aren’t the same without you. It would be easy to pretend to be nonchalant in my blogs but I have to admit that I am sometimes kind of a mess from the move. Homesickness doesn’t come when I deal with the major changes. Language barriers and culture clash doesn’t make me pine for home. These are the reasons I came here. Nope, I feel most like being in Calgary when I am doing the things that I always did, but are now broken. I still watch downloaded television and drink way too much coffee on Sundays. Though now it’s a bit lonelier because I lack partners in crime for these “inactivites”.

I still eat out more often than I should. Now more than ever, because it’s easier to find a place where I can figure out what I am ordering than it is to buy things in the supermarket. Either I can’t figure out what the things are in the first place, or if I can tell what it is, I can’t read the directions. (It is actually not any cheaper to buy groceries most of the time because produce is crazy expensive) It is also pretty solitary experience most of the time. In Calgary I can usually find a diner companion within two phonecalls and meet within 15 minutes. That doesn’t really happen here most days.

I am making new friends though. The university students I mentioned in an earlier blog are quite fun to hang out with. About half of them are Italian so I call those four “Little Italy” Example:

Schdief: “We are going to karaoke tonight, want to come?”
Mason: “Who’s going; Little Italy?”
S: “Yeah, and the Icelandic guys and some Japanese people”

I have a whole Italian tour plotted by them for next year. They are all from different areas of Italy… Bologna, Milan, Sicily and some other place. One of Little Italy is moving into our house next week and another is dating Schdief, one of my roommates, so we have a little family going.

That’s all I guess for now.

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Hello friendly readers. I am in an unnaturally genki mood today at school. I couldn’t fall asleep until 2 last night and I woke up late because my alarm didn’t go off today. So now I am high on an energy drink which are unofficially (and aptly) named Genki Drinks. They are much more potent here than at home. Today is first day of second semester though, and the kids had an assembly first thing. So I didn’t have to be alert this morning. But, I have been given an extra Ichinensei (first year) art class a week and this first one was strange.

I know this is really boring, but hell, some of you might be interested in hearing about this crap.

So, instead of first class, we had an assembly, instead of second class, we had an extended homeroom, that didn’t include us ALTs. Third class was that new art class that I have, which will normally happen during second period. Fourth and fifth period somehow are back to normal. So when the kids went to the gym for phys-ed instead of the art room today I wasn’t at all surprised. What did surprise me was the fact that the kids understood what Pointalism was in less than 3 minutes. The same kids that on Monday mornings are sleeping in class and generally “dropkicks” (a word used by the Australian music teacher) were absolute superstars today.

So now I have a bit of a free period to do a bit of work and more-so, write a blog entry. This weekend was a long one, with Thursday and Friday being fall break and Monday being Sports Day. I had big plans to go to Nikko but I wanted to go with Adam because he used to live in that area, and he could drive. Unfortunately Adam was unavailable, so Friday I went to a gaijin exchange student dorm party. That was pretty fun. I hung out with a bunch of people an average of 5 years younger than me. I met some Italians, Americans, Germans, Dutch, and Icelanders. That was the main reason I decided to go actually, some Icelanders had brought some Brennevin to Japan for their friend who was studying. I ended up drinking more than I had planned and feeling like crap the next day. Which was a shame because it was beautiful out. That evening I went to Karaoke with many of the same people. It was my first time since coming here. It was pretty fun, it was about half and half Japanese / gaijin so that was good. I want to try and not spend too much of my time with only foreigners here, I did that in Scotland quite a bit and I regret that now.

Monday I went to Yokohama, did a little shopping, and walked around. It’s a very pretty city. There are places there where you actually see the horizon. Of course, I didn’t take my camera. Whoops. The chinatown is apparently the main attraction, but I found it a little boring. Compared to Japanese streets there isn’t a whole lot of change in the amount of beauty or character. Of course the foods and sights are different, but no more or less interesting. Part of a chinatown’s appeal is sometimes the more seedy looking bits. It looked to me like this was pretty sanitized.

Everyone here asks how long I plan on staying and I can’t really tell yet. My visit to Yokohama showed me that there are places here that are close enough to Tokyo to visit a couple times a week, but are much less hectic. The stressful pace can really get you down if you don’t take a break. So, who knows maybe after this contract is up, I will look for a job in Yokohama or some other close city. Of course, it is still up in the air, I can’t make any decisions after the first month.