From where I last left off....snow festival and such

Sorry no pics in this post, I'm typing this up during my break at work.  Ok so let's see...I left off somewhere in February....Sadly there wasn't much going around for the setsubun (bean throwing festival) in my town and I wasn't sure where to go to see things, so maybe next year I can see some festival stuff for that holiday.  Setsuben, btw, is a festival where they throw beans at people dressed as demons to symbolize driving away demons/evil spirits so the new year is free of bad spirits/luck.  The stores around me did carry little paper boxes with beans and a paper demon mask that you could buy, so I got to see some fun/weird cartoon demon masks ^^.  Oh, and in winter here (by the coast of the Sea of Japan) it is very very windy, there are signs warning of strong winds causing waves to come up onto the road, and a lot of Nami no hana (波の花), or “wave flowers,”which is where the sea foam forms en mass and blows around like snow/flowers  :). It's pretty cool, when I post pics I'll try to find a video of it as well for you to see.  And as cool as it is to see, it is freezing out when it happens and the wind is really strong (almost pushed me over a few different days) and if its icy it's especially fun b/c then you get pushed around the ice. 

Ok so snow festival.  There was a local snow festival/wedding in a small town about 10-15 minutes from me. I knew some of the people setting up (Kamimura-sensei, Chika-sensei, Nakagawa-sensei, and some people from the BOE) so I joined and helped set up.  I helped work on the giant snowmen that were at the entrance and stamp down snow to make pathways and so on.  In the bigger spots were we had to stamp down the snow I showed the people there a much more fun way to do it.  They were just marching around and literally stamping it down, I went and grabbed one of the giant snow shovels...they have really big ones like this:

And I sat down in the shovel part and had one of the guys pull me around to flatten the snow that way :).  Everyone was rather impressed and had fun doing the same ^^.  Oh, and people were also very impressed with my Pikachu hat that Donnie sent me for X-mas (thanks Donnie! :) ).
So it was a lot of work and very tiring, but also a lot of fun getting things set up.  After stomping down the fresh layer of snow (a good 1-2ft) we shoved a long pole down to where we think it finally hit bottom and we were standing on top of at least 5-6ft of packed snow 0.o.  The snow in that town (it's at the bottom of a small mountain) was high enough to cover the entire first floor of a house and start going onto the roof of the 1st floor, there were snow banks taller than me along the roads and sidewalks.  I've never seen so much snow before!! Even with us digging out steps and making a giant chapel out of snow I never did see the ground lol.  So, to the day of the festival, I worked as the staff and helped man the drink-booth and helped monitor events. I got to wear an armband that said ''snowman staff'' ^-^.  A decent amount of kids and parents showed up to build snowmen throughout the day. There was a tent full of oba-chans (old ladies) next to the one I was in, they were rather entertaining to watch ^^.  They played American music all day (Lady Ga Ga, Maroon 5, etc.) which I found rather interesting lol.  Oh and it snowed aaaallllllllllll day, big snowflakes that at times were a bit blizzard like....I felt kinda bad for the kids/families that showed up early to build their snowmen for the contest because by the time of the contest their snowmen had a good 1/2+ foot of snow on them if they didn't get a chance to brush them off.  Luckily it wasn't too freezing out, but at the same time with being warm in you coat the snow melted when it hit you and so by the end of the day everyone was drenched, especially your gloves....so next year I might bring a pancho to wear over my coat and definitely more gloves.  Just before it started to get dark we went around and placed tea candles inside little pockets/holes in the snowmen (people dug out the spot where they wanted the candle to go) and we lit them. We also made little snow blocks with a hollow center and put candles inside them to create a lighted pathway for the bride and groom. Once it got dark the bride and groom came and walked down the path (we had spotlights to provide light) and to the chapel's stage. The wedding is a bit different in Japan, rather short, and the bride and groom do a lot of talking rather than repeating after the priest-guy. But it was really cute, they were a bit embarrassed to have that much attention and it took a bit of encouragement to get the groom and bride to do kiss...they just did a really quick peck on the lips and wouldn't really do more than that...they really couldn't do much more b/c  they were laughing/giggling too much over the whole thing lol.  Then they cut a slice from a very small cake, and kids came on the stage and said stuff to them (idk what happened to the cake :P), and then there were fireworks from behind the chapel and that was that. People would get up and take pictures on the chapel's stage and look around at all of the snowmen. The volunteers sat around for a long time, eating and sitting by the small fire pits and taking pictures and goofing around. Then we cleaned up and took everything down and packed up, and some of them were going off to a bar but Kamimura, Chika, Nakagawa-sensei and myself voted to go home and sleep seeing as we got there around 7:30 and it was 10:30-11 by the time we got things stored away. Overall it was a lot of fun and I look forward to going again next year ^-^. 
So that's all for now, lunch time ^^......hmmm, next are pictures and graduation and stuff, and then we'll be all caught up to now ^^. 

ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ It's March!?!?!? ｏ( ><)o

(シ_ _)シ I'm soooooooooo sorry. I have been such a bad llama about updating TT^TT.  I hope you aren't too upset, I have absolutely no clue where the time went, I think it just ran past me one night, or I walked through a wormhole or something o.0....but man...March 15th.....

Ok. So there is obviously a lot to update on.  I have been a busy bee, and hopefully I can recall all of it. Let's see....ok so Christmas.... I got some lovely packages from my friends and family so that was a really nice surprise. I also bought myself a few things. I had a Christmas party with some of my co-workers at the Elementary School (Kamimura, Nakagawa, Chika (senseis) and Chika's husband...sadly his name escapes me at the moment...and Kamimura's bf Koji. We went to Koji's house to eat yaku...or grilled...styled foods. Basically there is a giant hot-plate thing that you cook veggies, meat and such on and you pick off what you want when it's done. I got to try piece of pig heart that night...the flavor isn't that bad but it's really chewy. Koji's grandmother is a hoot, I couldn't understand everything she said but she was very funny.  One time she came into the room and opened the side door-- it lead to outside but they had a makeshift plastic mini add-on-closet\room which created like an outside fridge/freezer--and she pulled out a big scotch tape dispenser (like the big metal ones you see on teacher's desks).  When everyone saw that she pulled a scotch tape dispenser from their outdoor freezer everyone cracked up and she did too, and said something about 'it's as good as any place' to keep it (I'm paraphrasing that quite a bit lol).  We watched a Karaoke competition on TV and had fun just talking and what not. We also got to eat some Christmas cake (I'll put up a picture later, I'm not at my own compy right now), which was really good, and sang ''Happy Birthday'' but I really have no clue as to why we sang that....and wonder if other people sing it too....We also had a gift exchange and I got a comfy pillow and everyone wrote a small note in English that way if I got their gift I could read it :) so that was super sweet of everyone.  I also went out to eat w/ Sadae-san.  So it wasn't super crazy, but it was still a very nice Christmas Holiday, skyping with my family was also very nice ^^.

New Year's Eve I went down to see Adele and Natasha in Murakami, what was going to be an evening of movie watching turned into an overnight movie-marathon. We watched the super hero movies that lead up to Avengers, and then woke up early to watch the Avengers. Just before midnight we took a break to go see the shrine at midnight, so that was really cool to see everyone gathered there and making wishes and buy good luck charms and burning special straw wreaths from last year.  I put in some wishes of good-stuffs for everyone ^-^.  So that was a fun outing, but very tiring to stay up until 4 and get up at 10 lol. And the drive back home was really scary because it snowed quite a bit over night (Adele had to leave for a meeting so I couldn't stay there) and I got to drive around 20 kmph (12mph-) back home so a 40 min drive became a 2-3 hr drive. But I made it safe and luckily no one else was speeding or riding my butt so that was a big relief (people here have a bad tendency to ride your butt to try to make you go faster...and if they rear-end you it's your fault too xp). But yes, I was sooo happy to get back home in one piece and to rest up.

I also hung out with my coworkers (Kamimura-sensei and them) and went out to eat and whatnot close to the start of the New Year.  I also tidied up a bit, but not too much b/c it was freezing in the rest of my house (33degrees at times X_x).  In Japan there isn't a whole lot of central heating/cooling, and my house isn' one of the few with it.  So if I want a warm bathroom I need to put a heater in there, a warm kitchen?　same deal....and the floors are always freezing because houses here are built off the ground to help air circulate and prevent mold and such, so there is a lovely space under my whole house which results in very icy floors in the winter.  It's nice in the summer, but not fun in the winter.  I eventually went out and bought fuzzy, hard-sole slippers (they are tan with little brown turtles on them ^^.  And it was a very very worthwhile buy. 

In January and February I had Kids' Night at the community center, it was an evening English class for kids to have more fun and less-textbook oriented English.  So I had fun coming up with lessons and activities for everyone. They were on Tuesday nights, and each Tuesday had a theme.  We had Magic (Science) Night, Cartoon Night, Game Night, and Food Night.  In the middle of planning these events I also had a big Mid-year conference with the JETs in Niigata where we had workshops and such to do. And then once I got back from the conference I got the flu :p.  I started w/ a fever Sunday night, called in sick Monday b/c I still had a slight fever (only about 99.5) and I drove myself to the doctors.  The flu test here sucks...I don't know if it's the same in the states, but here they have a long q-tip thing (like what they rub your tonsils with when you get strep) and they shove it up your nose and swirl it around >.o.....it was very unpleasant. But yeah, so I got my meds and they weren't too expensive, went to the bank and took care of my bills and went shopping to stock up on food ( I wore a mask the whole time so it wasn't that bad of me to go around, but if people had known that I had the flu I doubt they'd want me there mask or not :p) ......and come Tuesday I wasn't running a fever so I went to school................which about gave all of my teachers a heart attack. They were all wide-eyed and told me that I had to stay home all week because I had the flu. So the rest of the week I was rather tired, and ran a cold fever (either that or my thermometer is dumb) but I kept registering at 97.2 or 96.7 and such....but it really wasn't that bad, I just curled up and watched a lot of movies and tried not to get cabin fever lol.  Oh, and it was super sweet, my JHS principal stopped by with fruit and food, Sadae-san brought me a bunch of food and drinks, Chika-sensei also brought me a bunch of stuff and one of the people at my adult community center English classes brought me fruits and stuff too. I definitely felt very loved and had a lot of fruit to last me more than a week. And getting sick was kind of a nice break from all the stuff I was doing, but come the next week I was so ready to get out of the house lol.

Also, around February  the principal at one of my elementary schools asked me to help get more English to the kids. She said that she wishes for them to be able to study more, as in study when I'm not there.....the lessons are pretty much all talking and no reading/writing. Not even the 5th or 6th graders read or write much despite having a book (their book doesn't have much written in it to begin with, Eng or Japanese).  So I have been keeping really busy trying to make more concrete lessons where the kids can have something they can use to review/study when I'm not there.  So I'll make little books that say ''I have____. I have a family of ____.  I have ___ pets.'' and so on, and I'll write katakana English above the English to help them pronounce stuff, and if I can I'll write in the Japanese translation of the sentence....or I leave space so they can do it.  But it's best to have stuff made before you present the idea of what you want to do, especially since there is a language barrier...so I have to make all of the booklets and worksheets and stuff before I can run it by the teachers and then go back and alter it as need be. So it's a bit of work trying to set stuff up this way, especially the younger grades because the only lesson plan skeleton you get it: 'greetings'...say ''How are you'' homeroom teacher ansers ''I'm fine'' (ask kids). 'main lesson'....vegetables, carrot, broccoli, potato, cabbage, onion, green pepper, etc, say ''what's this?'' the homeroom teacher answers ''it's___'' (ask the kids sometimes too).  'game'....have the kids janken and the winner asks ''do you like___'' and the loser answers ''yes I do/no I don't''.  'end'...say ''good-bye, see you'' ~end~......................so yeah not much to work with most the time lol. But as I've been here and watched the other teachers, and researched and experienced it's getting easier to come up with plans from these skimpy lesson plans, or from scratch b/c the lesson plan just flat out stinks.   Also, I'm putting together a picture English/Japanese dictionary (+some phrases) book for the kids, I can base a lot of lessons around what words I want to add to their dictionary that day and by the end of the 6th grade they'll have a complete dictionary that they've been piecing together over the years and they can draw in their own pictures if they want...there will be katakana English to help them and the homeroom teacher pronounce it and Japanese and English in trace-able font and a picture.....so I'm hoping that with the dictionary and the little booklets/worksheets that the teachers can/will help the kids practice English throughout the week and not just when I'm there....and/or the kids will take it home and show their parents/siblings.  Luckily I've gotten a few other people on board who are helping me put the dictionary together and once it's together I really hope it works out. .........ok that's enough for now, more later (snow festival + wedding ^0^, and pictures).  I need to get ready to pack up and go to the post office.  Please forgive any and all spelling errors, I'm on a Japanese computer and their keyboards are squished and some keys are in different spaces (not the letters but the other stuff are moved around a bit) but the letters are more to the right and a bit closer together :P).  Ok well, that's it... I'll post more soon I promise!!!!! And sorry again for the lack of posts the past few months :(. I never was the best at keeping a journal/diary/planbook, even if it was a school assignment.