Stuffs of stuffdom that catches you up to stuff ^^

Random highlights:

At the store a while back, I ran into some of my third year JHS students....who proceeded to hide behind the shelf in the row next to the one I was in and pop their heads up to see me then giggle and try to hide again......my only thought "if you're trying to be sneaky it helps if you aren't snickering so much, ya goobers"......so I said hello which made them gasp...guess they thought I didn't notice?....then they said hello back, two of them even peeked out from the end of the aisle so I could see their face and they said hello.....the rest of the time at the store they were giggling and trying not to be in the same aisle as me.......I won't lie it was kinda weird but entertaining nonetheless lol ^^.


All of the numbered things happened in one day ^^
0. got my package from my mom and dad in the mail (didn't think it'd come since it was sunday), and I skyped with my parents (and the dogs) for a bit :).

1. Soba noodle festival with awesome soba noodles in the small village next to mine. There were two news people there one with a camera for a Niigata newspaper and another one w/ a video-recorder....needless to say being the only gaijin there and with Sadea-san (an old English teacher who taught in this area and knew most of the people in the room) I had lots of pics taken of me and was interviewed and Sadae-san kept referring to me as a "star" or "movie star" lol. (a pic of the soba noodles and stuff is in the post about food)

2. after the delicious food and great people that I met, I went to Sadae-san's house where she gave me broccoli, potatoes, dakon radishes, peppers, coffee, creamer, and sugar....and she served me tea, coffee and snacks (all of which were delicious), and showed me her house. She also showed me a photo album of past ALTs of Sanpoku and an album from when she taught at the Jr. High and told me fun stories and pointed out who was married to whom and who had kids and how one of the people is a famous movie director and so on.

3. Went home to get stuff and then went out shopping where I got some neat pics of sea foam, the ocean, and the sunset....felt bad for the seagulls it was sooo windy they weren't going anywhere when they tried to fly toward the ocean.....had someone pull over to offer to take my picture with the sea in the background...at one of the stores I was offered hand cream by the cashier (since I mentioned it was cold and windy, she pulled out some hand cream and offered to give me some), she also gave me an extra coupon thing ^^... then at the door I had a bunch of people hand me free reflector stickers (one guy even put them on the backs of my shoe (guess he wanted to make sure I understood what some of them were for) and a little wallet thing and a reflector sash...in the store I ran into some people I knew which is always fun, and then I ordered some tsukune (chicken on a stick) and told the chef it was oishii (tasty) which made him really happy^^, then got home and ran into one of my neighbors and had a nice, short chat :).  Here are some pics of the ocean and the sea-foam stuff, it was blowing around a lot, but it's a bit hard to tell :p. 

Here's a link to a video on youtube that shows the sea-foam floating around....and idk about the people in the video but when I was out it was freezing and super super windy xppp, but it was still cool to see ^^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3abEsdg0jI 

What else..........I got to practice playing volleyball with a beach ball (indoors) with the teachers at Minami Elementary school and it was a lot of fun, they were joking around a lot and there were a few times when some of the teachers had to sit down b/c they were laughing so hard :D.  It was a lot of fun, and then we placed 4th I think in the community tournament (maybe it was 5th....there were only 6 teams, so we weren't too great, but it was a lot of fun and we came close in a few games^^). After the tournament we all met at a restaurant for some good food where I had fried rice in oyster sauce (I think it was oyster sauce, the menu said kakisa-su ) anyway, that was a lot of fun ^^.  

I had a nice Thanksgiving dinner, the night before I went to Chika-san's house with Kamimura-san and their husband and boyfriend (chika's husband and kamimura's bf) and we had a really tasty hot-pot meal and cake.  The hot-pot is where there is a pot of hot soup-broth/water in the center (with a small burner underneath so you can heat it up) and you put in bits of fish/meat and veggies and let them cook and then fish them out ^^.  It was really good and had the carrots cut into tiny hearts^^.  But yeah, that was a lot of fun sitting around and chatting with good food.  Then on Thanksgiving I had Sadae-san over and I made some chicken/turkey (one turkey leg mixed in w/ chicken), stuffing, spicy carrots and daikon radish slices, tomato soup, mashed potatoes, and chocolate pie ^-^.  Everything turned out pretty good and Sadae-san really loved my stuffing, which I gotta admit was very tasty :D, though I made it completely from scratch (boiled the chicken and turkey leg to make stock) and used Thyme, which really made it taste good^^.


I did some listening tests at the JHS.  The kids were nervous, so I let them practice/ask questions real quick before they started.....and gave them stickers....and that seemed to help lol :D. Most of them looked really relieved once it was done and were really chipper after class lol........though sadly I didn't move them along at a fast enough pace and so a few of them had to take it after lunch on Friday. :p.....but, oh well, I regret nothing ^^.  The tests were rather simple and it really seems to have helped the kids warm up to me more....it's been harder to click with them b/c of how little I do in the classroom and they do their own thing at lunch, where as at the Elementary schools I do a lot of the teaching and get whisked away at recess by the students....but either way^^ things are going more smoothly w/ the JHS students so that's a nice relief.  Though sadly, I gave some of them candy from America the other day (b/c it was close to winter break and b/c I wanted to share/give them incentive to speak English)...I also arm-wrestled some for the candy... but one of the teachers heard them talking about it and I was scolded (sorta, not a very stern scolding, but still) for giving them candy and was told that such things do not promote well for learning environments............and while being scolded all I could think was, "I wonder how much worse I would've done if I didn't have candy, it helped me study and remember and gave me incentive to get good grades b/c then I got candy or ice cream or pizza, and so on"....but c'est la vie, though I still can't help but feel bad for the students in Japan, such a strict lifestyle, it's no wonder they have a lot of issues with stress :p.  

I felt a tiny earthquake in the beginning of December....At first I thought it was the wind at first (the wind gets pretty strong, I've been almost knocked over by it), but then I realized more than my windows were shaking a bit....nothing major (though it hit harder elsewhere) where I was it just felt like bobbing a bit on a raft in a pool.  

The nursery schools had a dance festival where the students did dances, it was really cute, though sadly I could only make it to one of the nursery school's dance festival. But the students dressed up for various themed dances, like samurai, princesses, ninjas and so on^^.  The Panda class (the grade just before Kindergarten) had a dance about shrimp, and they had bandannas with a picture of crab attached to it...and one of the boys was very happy to do the dance and when he got off the stage he was walking sideways and crouched down with his hands up (in pincer position, pinching at the air) like a crab with a huge smile on his face lol. Needless to say the dance-thing was super cute.  The kids really seemed to enjoy it, though at one point two little girls were crying on stage, but they still said their verse in the song when their time came, but later on they cheered back up more^^.  

I had a get-together with some ALTs, and their Japanese friends and their family in Murakami to celebrate Christmas, and that was a lot of fun. I made the delicious spice cake, it was so nice to bake again^^. But we basically had fun talking and catching up and eating and cooking good food, so it was a lot of fun to see everyone and eat good food and bake ^0^.  And then, on a different day, I met up with Kamimura, Chika and their husband/boyfriend to have a Yakiniku dinner xmas party where we did a secret santa thing.  I got a comfy pillow to sit on.  The yakiniku is were there is a giant hot-plate thing in front of you (kind of like the really big ones and you can make a lot of grilled cheeses or pancakes on them) and you cook meat and veggies on it and pick them off when you want to eat them. We had pork (a bit of pig heart too, chewy but not too bad) and mushrooms, onions and peppers, it was pretty tasty ^^.  And as always it was a lot of fun hanging out with them and chatting and such ^^. 

Lastly, the end of the year party, kinda of amusingly placed on Dec 21st lol.  It's the party where the teachers stay at a very fancy hotel/onsen and eat, drink, sing karaoke, and enjoy the onsen and basically party/relax the woes of last year away.  During dinner we did a game show thing where we had to guess the highlights of the past year and we got points for out team if we guessed a chosen highlight. My team placed 3rd out of 4 teams.  I realized that I am no good at karaoke without a wingman/woman...I need to hear the lyrics as well as the music to do a good job, though granted I wasn't drunk and it was my first time doing Karaoke....idk if being drunk would help, prob not, but it did seem to help the others get into it.  I chose YMCA which was a really good choice b/c all of the teachers stood up and did the dance and chanted the YMCA part lol ^^.  And then I got to go to the onsen with one of the teachers, the rest went back to the bar or elsewhere, and just sit around, relax and chat, so that was really nice^^. It's nice to have someone who would rather relax and chat than party a bunch.   And yeah that's pretty much up to date...........as per usual if you want more details feel free to comment......I'm trying to find a nice place to put up pics since some of you don't have facebook....though you can try to see them there and if it doesn't work just let me know by saying something in the comments https://www.facebook.com/mary.miller.587606/photos_albums.

Food

Here are some pics of food I've eaten and some that I've made while being here....first let's have the ones of food that I made :), if you want recipes then all you need to do is comment on the post and ask me there ^^, or send me an email. 

spaghetti and meatballs (super tasty)

super tasty mac 'n cheese (gouda and cheddar)

super tasty chocolate lava cake in a cup (cooked in the microwave for 1min) ^^

chicken, carrots, and broccoli in a chicken broth-y sauce thing (kind of tasted like pot pie)

another pic of the awesome cake in a mug ^^

grilled cheese (w/ mozarella) and tomato soup (made from scratch), also super tasty^^

Empress Chili (had to make my own chili powder too lol)

Chocolate cake (box recipe) made in rice cooker, with homemade icing ^^ (this was to celebrate Thanksgiving)

fancy cheese with blueberry jam-preserves-thing, a slice of a daikon radish (sweated) on a ritz cracker), rather tasty^^

The cake (w/ the hole where I stabbed it to get ready to cut it then went to take the picture) is an amazing, absolutely scrumptious spice cake XD!

 Food that I didn't make:

bento box meal for lunch at school, it was the weekend (school festival) so the teachers ordered bentos

frozen pizza with corn (a lot of the frozen pizzas come w/ it), green peppers, weird pepperoni (more sausage-y, like brat kinda sausage in a weird, but not bad way), and very little pizza sauce and a doughy crust.....not too bad, but def not as good as what I'm used to in the states.

another bento meal at school

Soba noodles and stuff, rather tasty and was for the Soba Noodle Festival that the small village next to mine was having (I'll blog more about that later)

chocolate-coffee cake w/ various layers of creamy cocoa/coffee/toffee stuff. I got it at the local cake-pastry shop^^

fish head, well half a fish head it was split down the middle so I had the right side. It was served at the school's end of the year party (blog more later).....despite the grumpy zombie look, it didn't taste too bad.

some of the food at the end of the year party.

 

Mail :D

Ok, so there are fun postcards and stationary stuff here so if you want me to send you postcards now and again or letters feel free to email me your address and I'll write you stuff ^-^. 

Spirited Away

Ok, so I wasn't really spirited away in the same sense, but today I had a surprise visit and outing, so close enough ^-^.    I unfortunately slept in, thanks to me 2nd alarm not going off, so now I have to wait until Wednesday to take my trash out -.-........for those of you who don't know in Japan you don't put your trash outside, you wait until designated trash days where you take your trash to a dump site where it is picked up and taken to wherever. So I can only take my trash out on Wednesdays and Saturdays.....seeing as I live alone it's really not too bad and I can go without the second day....but sadly I have a relatively full bag, and now I get to wait and hope it doesn't start to stink xppp.   Anyhoo, that aside I was just sitting in bed trying to decide what to eat when the door bell rang, so I scrambled up and tried to look as awake as possible and it was the delivery guy with my snow boots that I ordered.  Less than 2 minutes after I closed the door and took the package in the doorbell rings again and it's Sadea-san (the older lady who helps me run the adult teaching class at the community center) and she wanted to go out and eat lunch and chat and stuff.  So I quickly threw on clothes and such and was whisked away to a nice small restaurant and then to her house for some mini potato-things and coffee and tea.  The mini potato things are really cool, they are the size of a half dollar to a quarter and look like, well, mini potatoes, and you can easily peel them with just your fingers. And then you eat them and they taste kinda of sweet, not quite as sweet as a sweet potato, maybe more similar to a red potato in a way.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun hanging out and she showed me pics sent from the first ALT to her of their family and kids, and we just sat and chatted ^^. 

The day before that I was asked to join a last-minute get-together with two of Kita Elementary's teachers, Kamimura-san, Chika-san and their friend at a nearby restaurant.  It was a lot of fun, their friend teaches English in a town nearby and can speak it really well and he was talking about watching the Little Mermaid in English and having to look up the phrase "take it from me" in the song "Under the Sea" because he wasn't sure what it meant.......it's always fun to have phrases like that pointed out, because you don't really realize how many things are said but aren't easily understood by foreigners until you spend a lot of time with foreigners.....though I guess here I'm the foreigner lol, but ya know what I mean ^^.   Anyway, it was a lot of fun hanging out, I got to eat some of a 'century old egg' which wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be, definitely expecting a more fermented nasty taste, but it didn't really taste all that bad.  And the oyster sauce (kakisa-su) fried rice at that restaurant is really really good ^-^.  Anyway, this is a short post, but more are on their way shortly, figured it's easier to separate the subjects and put them in different posts rather than one giant blob. So on to the next post ^^. 

Looooooong time no post

Sorry for the lack of posting, been busy and lazy and neither of those things lead to updates on a blog.  Anyhoo, I'll probably have to blog stuff in chunks to catch everyone up, and winter break is almost here so I should be able to spit them out rather quickly.  Ok, so I don't have my camera with me so I'll do the posts that don't really need pics first.

~ The other day I was greated by a Kindergarten student running up to me yelling ''Mary-sensei, diasuki!'' which means that he loves me. So that was a sweet way to start the day, and then the teacher let me color and decorate my own xmas tree with the class which was sweet of her, though I still hit a bit of a language barrier with this teacher so it's still a bit rough at that school, but hopefully it won't  be for too much longer, I'm getting quite a bit better at Japanese. 

~ People in Japan like soulfull early 90s, late 80s music, especially 'xmas' music, like ''Last Christmas'' and ''Winter Song''....I find this rather amusing, the teachers were talking about how popular the songs were though I maybe only ever heard them once or twice prior to coming here.  Though you can probably imagine how surprised I was when they said, ''We're going to sing and listen to xmas music today'' and then those songs came on.  Also, I saw some stickers with Alphabet letters and a picture for each letter, like A and a pic of an apple....and the letter X had and xmas tree lol. ....well this is a short update, more will be posted this weekend and I'll try to get pics up.  I gotta get ready for an office party type thing with the JHS teachers....so I'll report on that and the rest of the stuff later.....also I may have to start designating some posts to just food lol, I've had a lot of fun cooking ''American'' dishes from scratch.

The Jr. High School's culture festival was fun, I got some applause for telling the students that I knew the opening dance to Haruhi lol.  It was a lot of fun seeing the students do relay races and little skits on the stage...though I wish I brought my other camera's memory card that way I could have recorded more of it.  Some of the teachers joined in on the skits (dancing and lip syncing and singing to songs, and one played the guitar) so that was a hoot because the teachers and the students really got into it.  If you want to see pictures or anything from that day ask me and I'll email you some pictures, but I don't want to post stuff openly since I don't have their permission to do so. 

Yesterday I got to go to a band concert with one of the Elementary schools (though all of the schools in Sanpoku went to the same thing) and I got to see the JR High band students perform with some older band people.  It was really good, and the students really enjoyed it for the most part.  After the JR High band played a few songs with them the other band played songs and then marched some stuff and had a small color guard and all.  It was rather interesting how they kept segueing back into the James Bond theme (James Bond seems to be rather popular here)...but they'd play Bond's theme, then go into something like Live And Let Die, then back to Bond and such...it was well done and very fun to watch and listent to, and I was tapping my toes in rythm of their marching because I'm a dork like that lol.   Though it was sad, one of the director people came and tried to talk to me and I couldn't figure out everything that he was trying to say to me, so I flagged down a teacher for him to talk to and from what I could tell he was just inquiring about me....I understood some of what he was saying, but not enough to respond properly :P oh well, one of these days lol.  Oh and I tried to get some of the Jr High students (mostly boys) to guess the password so they could come into the room to get their shoes and this is how it went:

Me: *with arms out blocking the Jr High kids from coming in the door and smirking* What's the password??

Students (mostly boys): *look of complete horror and confusion and one boy mimics me and puts his arms out with a confused look*

Me: What's the password. You know, Password?

Students: *still confused and panicked looking* *boy who mimicked me and put his hands out gets this look of 'I get it'...on his face.....then comes forward and hugs me w/ a  big smile on his face* *other students look really panicked now and also in awe and some 'oh is that what she meant?'*

Me: *confused and giving myself a mental facepalm* well...that's not....ok....good enough....you can come in

Students: *now look happy and relieved*

Me: (.......maybe I should explain what passwords are next time I have class with them......)

The fall colors are coming in, but it's been really rainy so I haven't had a chance to get out and take pictures, and when it's not rainy I'm usually stuck at school until it's dark out....so maybe this weekend I can get out and take some pictures....I just hope the rain and wind haven't knocked down too many of the leaves :p.  Oh, I made No Bake cookies, they turned out ok, I used Skippy so they weren't as tasty as they are with Jiff, but I didn't want to use Jiff b/c I can't find it here and I wanted to take the cookies to work to share with people, and I didn't want them to taste how they'd be with a peanut butter they can't really use.....I figured that that'd be a litttle mean.......but one of the teachers asked for the recipe and so I wrote it out and wrote down metric conversions of the measurements and drew pictures and we got it all sorted out so hopefully she has good luck, I warned her that the cookies sometimes don't freeze up right, so she may need to put them in the refridgerator. 

I've been playing an interesting version of dodgeball at one of my Elementary schools, you have this big rectangle area (like that of a volleyball/basketball court) and two teams, and the typical no crossing the halfway line....but when you hit someone they go to stand around the perameter of the enemies half and if they get the ball and hit one of the opposing teammates they get to go back to their side....and whoever doesn't have anyone left on their side (in their court) they loose.....so it's really interesting and as the game gets going if your team knocks out enough opponents there are times where you're just running around trying to avoid the ball coming at you from all sides of the small court area because the other team is on all sides of your perameter......anyhoo it's really fun, esp because if you get hit you can still play and not be paranoid about dodging the ball :D.  

Some monkeys came back to the one elementary but left before I could see them (and I brought my camera with me that time -.-) but it was funy b/c the teacher asked me if I wanted to hunt monkeys with him and he had the long stick they use to close high-up windows in his hand and another teacher was pulling out an airsoft gun lol, they were all serious and I was trying not to laugh ^^. But yeah, sadly they went back into the woods before I got a chance to take a pic and see them try to scare the monkeys off.  Though in a way I'm glad b\c it's a family of monkeys and I don't really want to be around an angry family of monkeys o.0......I can't remember what else I wanted to post so I guess I'll either post it later or remember it at very inconvenient times and/or forget about it.....anyhoodle, hopefully I keep this trend of posting more often, eh?

stuffs

Ok....long time no blog...sorry for the delay, anyhoo, let`s see.. Here's a basic highlight reel, feel free to ask for more details on anything, just post a comment asking for more info and I'll post more........


Well the third grade class got to ask me questions and tell me something about themselves a while ago, and to help them remember how to say certain things in English they wrote down hints and pronunciation and words on their hands so they`d start talking w/ their hand held out as if they were holding a slip of paper, but lo and behold they were reading off of their hand lol.  One kid actually had a slip of paper and a few kids were brave enough to not write anything down, but the majority of them had stuff written on their hands (and one kid had stuff that extended onto his arm a bit lol)

Oddly enough it seems that people in Japan understand that syrup goes on pancakes, yet the ratio of available pancake mixes to syrup is way off balance, there is a lot, a whole lot of pancake mixes (a good chunk of them like Bisquick that can be used for other things too) but very little pancake syrup, and the syrup usually comes in very tiny bottles that are expensive....just something that makes me wonder as to why it's so off balanced when they seem to agree that syrup on pancakes is a given and you can find it in restaurants but not stores -.-......

One of the elementary school got two sheep to take care of. They are young sheep, brother and sister, and just old enough to strike out on their own....they were kind of terrified at first, though who wouldn't be after going on their first truck ride and then the first contact w/ a lot of people were 1st-3rd graders that were squealing with glee and making a lot of noise and quick movements.....but the sheep have since calmed down and seem to enjoy the kids, especially at recess where a bunch of them clean out their pen and gather food for them to eat and there's always a group that goes hunting for the specific tree leaves that the sheep really like to eat lol.  And if I am out there with them a few of the kids start singing ``Mary had a little lamb`` in japanese lol.

The soccer tournament I played at was a lot of fun, I ended up playing in 7 or 8 45min games (half field), though the last one was shortened to 30 min (thankfully b/c everyone was exhausted by that point). The ride down was long but a lot of fun, we sang disney songs and had fun in conversations and ran around a sports store and such.....and on the way back we were all groaning and moaning every time we had to get in and out of the car b/c we were all so sore lol ^^. 

Had Sport`s Day at one of the Kindergartens which was fun, I got to participate in tug-of-war with the parents and grandparents, as well as a relay race :).  The students were very happy to have me there and it was a lot of fun to watch, and it was great how they had activities for the parents/grandparents/siblings that way the kindergartners could cheer on their family while they took a break^^.

I got to make a recording for a test w/ my JTEs (Japanese teachers of English), which was interesting and I only messed up once lol, though it was with the one teacher that I tend to mess up more around, but oh well, if I started out too gracefully they`d get surprised when I flubbed up, so at least this way I can be amazing for not messing up ^^....but in all sense it wasn`t a big flub...the 1st JTE had me repeat the # of the question before saying the question a second time, and the 2nd one didn`t want me to but I did on one of the questions, so not a huge mistake lol, but enough of one to where we had to re-do it and such. One of the other mess-ups that I have had with the 2nd teacher was in class where he asked me to tell the students to clear their desk so that we could start the lesson in the textbook....a simple enough command ``clear your desk`` but what tripped me up for some reason was that their textbooks were on their desk and he just wanted the worksheet to be put away, and when I said put away the worksheet I got confused looks b/c that wasn`t something they`ve heard...and so the JTE told me ``no, tell them to clear their desk, like I always do``, which added to the confusion b/c he doesn`t say that that often and I couldn`t remember when he gave an order to put the worksheet away but didn`t use the phrase ``put your ws away`` and used ``clear`` instead of ``put`` but doing that doesn`t make any sense b/c ``clear your ws`` would mean to erase the stuff on it and wouldn`t really translate to ``put it away``......anyhoo all of this was running through my head while I gave him a confused look and he kinda sighed annoyingly and said, ``ok, clear the worksheet`` and they put their worksheet away  -.-, which still leaves me at odds with that phrase, it doesn`t make much sense to me, but it`s the one that gets the students to put their worksheets away so I guess it works?? idk I`m still kinda confused by the whole thing, b/c you`d think he would have been ok w/ me saying ``put your ws away``....anyhoo so that was a rather odd and confusing mess up, but like I said, at least it now gives me a bit of room to where he doesn`t expect perfection of me lol.

I went to the Culture Festival at one of the elementary schools (I was unfortunately informed after the fact that the other elem. had one the same day -.-), and that was fun, I got to meet some parents and see some of the student`s art projects and see a comedian they invited in.....though the other school`s students just used the next time that I taught there to show me stuff that they had displayed at the festival, so at least I got to see some of the stuff from both schools ^^..........let`s see what else......the Junior High`s culture festival is this weekend, as well as an outing with the teachers at a restaurant....so that should be fun......and that`s going to be it for now, I`m tired of sitting around :p so off to do something else, prob go get some food to cook for dinner.......