From my Japanese Blog!

Please correct this Japanese for me! もしよかったら、この日本語を直してください！

たいへん久し振りにmixi日記を書くね。ごめんなさい！m(__)m かなり長い間バタバタしていたが、最近スケジュールを減らした。春休みでは旅行に行く機会があって、２週間ほどシンガポールとタイへ行った。友達が５人と一緒に行った。こういう長い遊びは健康と精神に必要だね！海外にいってる間に将来のことを考えて、迷っていたことをいろいろ決めた。良い思い出をたくさん作った。そして毎晩ぐっすり眠った。うれしい！今から仕事や日本の生活を安心して続けられると思う。

日本へ帰ってからいろいろと楽しいことがあった：

松山でポルノグラフィティのコンサートに行った。ヘ(^^)♪ よかった！あきひとさん（歌手）が面白い表現をしていて私はあまり分らなかった。広島弁でしょうか？彼の話し方はとても可愛かった！

先週末八幡浜に護身術のクラスを共同で開催した。松山のALTがクラスのleaderだった。このクラスはALTのためには初めてだった。ALT さんと日本人も入っていた。確かにインターナショナルなイベントなった。そこでは事件が起きればどうするかとかを習った。たとえばパンチしかた、蹴りかた、犯人からの保護。(。。;)＼(゜o゜# みんなはたくさんを学んだ。出きれば、来月も護身術クラスを開催したい。八幡浜の犯人－あなたのために一言注意を申し上げたい：暴行しないで！

護身術のあと八幡浜の柱と言う祭りを見た。 昔の祭りだよ。朝早く始めて遅くまで、近所の男の人が長い木を切って、町中ロープで木を引いて、酒を飲みすぎて、歌う。夜９時から１２時まで神社でお神楽（かぐら）した。私はお神楽が大好きだ！！

あの祭りでは優しい友達と会った。彼と妻は保内の喫茶店経営者だ。本当にいい人だ！彼らはほとんど親類のようなしたてっる。そして月曜日喫茶店でうれしいごとがあった。ある人に紹介するときに彼らは私のことを「うちの娘」と紹介してくれた。＼（＾-＾*） ♪♪♪びっくりした！！！！気持ちをうまく言葉に表せないけどとてもかんどうした。

じゃぁ、用事があるのでここで終わります。みんなさん、Golden Week を楽しんでね！♡♡

地震が起きた！

今朝伊方で小さいな意地震が起きた！（けさ　いかた　で　ちいさいな　じしん　が　おきた！）

I wrote that in Japanese so as not to alarm my family. But it was quite an intense way to start the morning. Just thought I'd mention it. Hope my fellow mikans are doing alright!

First of all, sorry for the lag in meaningful posts recently. I promised myself I wouldn't work on any more blogger posts until I updated my Japanese one. And finally(!) I did that. Well, I completed a first draft anyway. So hurray, the hard part is over. And when my Japanese post is complete I'll post it here as well.

Not much else going on, at least for this week. Last weekend was action-packed: I had two work-related parties on Friday night and a super-cool ALT stayed over. Then I went to an excellent self-defense class on Saturday afternoon with the always-lovely Yawatahama gang. Later that evening I had the opportunity to watch my very favorite festival of the year - 柱祭り - in Yawatahama.

[Note to JJP: Argh! The world is closing in on me! That night at the festival I ran into about a million people that I know. Can you believe it? Guess I've been around here for far too long, huh? Unlike previous years it was an actual challenge to watch the kagura this time. At one point on the way back from the bathroom I was physically abducted by friends and brought into a house party...so I missed the part of the kagura where they climb on top of the shrine!!! Fortunately amake responded to my surreptitious text and phoned me 15 minutes later, providing me with a graceful exit.]

Hey, does anybody else feel like the week before Golden Week is the looooongest week of the semester?!?! For those of you not in Japan, a brief explanation. Next week there will only be two work days (the rest of the work week are national holidays; this week is know collectively as "Golden Week") and, although I have no concrete plans for my free time, I just can't wait for it to arrive.

I'm going to sleep! A lot! Or at least a good 7 hours each night.

And I'm going to make hummus. A big, big yummy bowl of it. You see, I have a Japanese friend who has never even heard of hummus. I know, I know - you can stop shrieking in terror now because its all going to be ok. I promise. I will send a sample his way and rectify this truly terrible situation.

Have I ever mentioned that hummus is one of my most favoritest foods in the whole wide world?

So, what are YOUR plans for Golden Week? Be sure to send me mails/texts/phone calls if you find yourself with nothing to do. That means you too, Chicago!

Till then! As the ever-so-cute group ゆず　succinctly puts it: また会える日まで！

As you can see, I'm still a little discombobulated from the morning. Apologies for this scattered post!

Random Trivia

Just some interesting trivia I discovered while preparing a lesson for my students:

1) There are 119 grooves on the edge of an American quarter.

2) There is 1 slot machine in Las Vegas for every eight inhabitants.

3) Jingle Bells was originally intended to be a Thanksgiving song.

4) When glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour.

5) Until the 19th century, solid bricks of tea were used as money in Siberia.

6) A "funambulist" is the name for a tight-rope walker.

7) It can take longer than two days for a chick to break out of its shell.

8) A baby bat is called a pup.

9) The darker an olive, the higher its oil content.

10) Pears are a member of the rose family.

Oh! Beloved Japanese Television,

I just love the way you suck soooooo good! (^-^;

Yep, love it or hate it, its everywhere. And while, for the record, I'm not really a fan this just made me laugh out loud. So here's a little Hard Gay to help jumpstart your day.

Does anybody actually find any of this "sexy"?!?!

PS - This is dedicated to Claudie who visited me in Japan two xmas ago and made j-tv even more funny then usual...

Sadly, back to the grind

Recently I had a much-needed chance to decompress.

It all began 3-4 weeks ago when a wonderful friend from Uwajima visited me in Ikata. Lots of terrific people gathered at my house for what would turn out to be three days worth of fun. Highlights include playing frisbee and watching the sun set at moon beach in Misaki, bowling in Honai (what would be my worst game ever), lots of homemade deliciousness (such as pumpkin bread, chocolate cake, pizza, etc), an afternoon picnic at Red Wing Park (followed by some shameful attempts at gymnastics on the playground), card games, drinks, revelry, mischief, sushi and shopping in Uwa, and one particularly awesome late-night conversation with Wen-Wen.

It was wonderful.

Sadly, my health took a turn for the worst. My cold progressively morphed into some kind of flu-like illness and during the final hours of our Sunday outing I lost my voice completely. This was unfortunate for numerous reasons foremost being that in less than 48 hours I was scheduled to meet Rae-Rae for train ride to Matsuyama, an overnight ferry ride to Osaka, and then a six-hour plane ride to Singapore.

Um, I thought I was going to die.

I should also mention that amidst all this excitement the school year ended, my favorite students departed for high school (sob), my good buddy kocho-sensei changed schools, and there were a few changes in my department at the yakuba too. So things kinda looked something like this:

Friday through Sunday: Four friends, six towns, an unclear amount of chu-hi, approximately 65-75 pieces of sushi (guestimation). I don't know, you do the math. :D
Monday: Full-fledged sickness so terrible that kocho-sensei sent me home without docking me nenkyu (vacation time). This is actually the first time in my 2.5 years in Japan that I've ever gone home sick.
Tuesday: I made it to work sans voice. It was a looooong day as our farewell enkai for kocho-sensei et al was that evening. Yikes! Obviously, karaoke was out of the question for me.
Wednesday: Began the long journey to Singapore. The fun began as soon as I met Rae on the train for Matsuyama. Once we arrived in Matsuyama we both dropped a lot of money at the DeoDeo, thus setting the tone for the rest of our vacation and what would become one big shopping extravaganza (thankfully Rae talked me out of visiting the HardOff shop for used cd's). It was a very relaxed afternoon. We chatted over coffee, met V for okonomiyaki, and then the three of us boarded the bus to Touyo to catch the ferry to Osaka. Have you ever seen the movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles"?

Somewhere en route to Osaka, after an impromptu birthday party for Rae-Rae on the ferry (happy birthday), my head in a flu-drug-induced haze, a few things occurred to me:

(1) This year I haven't traveled outside of Japan nearly as much as I want to. I must take immediate actions to rectify that situation.

(2) I've been wasting far too much time worrying about what people around town think about me. Perhaps as a result of #1, I allowed my world to become very narrow and therefore obsessed about things that ultimately aren't too important.

(3) Those massage chairs on the ferry are sinfully nice.

I want to write in more detail about the trip, so I'll just touch on it briefly now. In short, the four of us spent two days in Singapore, three days in Thailand, and seven more days back in Singapore (joined by a fifth person during the latter part of the trip). In between the shopping and the eating (and did I mention the shopping?) I managed to experience some of the local sites including galleries and an art museum, a night safari at the zoo, a walk through a rainforest and an orchid garden at the botanical gardens, Little India, the Arab market, and lots of sightseeing near the Boat Quay. But then it was back to the business of shopping.

I returned back to Ikata a few days ago just in time to meet M who was visiting amake from Tokyo (it was such a pleasure to hang out again...although I must say I will never look at a rhombus in quite the same way again) and for the Chugakko's welcome enkai on Friday. Despite enjoying a few too many kanpai's I woke up early Saturday morning to join two friends from work for a day of - you guessed it - more coffee and shopping(!) in Matsuyama.

Ugh, I am so broke now.

But this wasn't just your average day in Matsuyama. We went to Matsuyama for the purpose of seeing the Porno Grafitti concert. Wow - it was great! Truly what a rock concert should be. In fact, I would say it was a million times better than I ever expected and I will definitely go to the next one.

Here are some links with information about Porno Grafitti:

http://www.pornograffitti.jp/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porno_Graffitti

And now, sadly, with all this awesome activity behind me, it is back to the business of English (mis)education, eikaiwa, and club activities.

Can't wait for Golden Week at the end of the month.