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Something I forgot to mention about Tuesday was that we had this problem with a few large flies flying around inside the school. Since my class is right by the school entrance, I seemed to be plagued by them. So Eri and I were trying to chase down the bugs and get them out... right before my 7pm class was starting. So here's three students standing there in the lobby watching us run around and listening to us yell rapidly in English about it. It was pretty funny in retrospect, and eventually I actually cornered the bug from my room on the wall and WHAM! killed it with a GEOS information brochure that was conveniently lying around.
I had almost expected the students to be staring at me in horror like "What kind of crazy American is this running around yelling and slamming into walls?" but actually they all laughed and applauded.
Anyway, so yesterday was Thursday, which is one of my tougher days in terms of classes; I have 5 scheduled on Thursdays and on Saturdays (technically 6 on Saturdays but one is an LTA semi-PL). I got in and signed in at 12:58 -- nobody else was there yet -- and immediately after that, Sachi came in! Sachi is our manager, and she had been away for Obon, and was supposed to be at a meeting at Kyomu today, but apparently it was a misunderstanding, so she came to school instead. She brought us back white chocolate cookies from Niigata, which was nice of her. (They were really good!)
I had bakery food for lunch again (today I tried a burger pastry, which is exactly what it sounds like -- a pastry with a small hamburger in the top), and then worked on lessons. At one point some businessman came in to talk to Sachi about something and I thought it was a student so I came out to talk too, and she said "oh, no, this is ______", and I was like "oops!" and she told him I spoke Japanese and could even write Kanji, so he asked me how long I'd been in Japan and stuff like that, and I just went ahead and spoke with him in Japanese because no students were around. That was interesting. I think Sachi knows I want to work on my Japanese but I don't get much of a chance to.
(sorry, I'm friends-locking the part about classes themselves now, except that my 4pm was again one lady, because the other one apparently is suffering from Natsubate, which means "it's too hot, I don't want to go do anything". The one who was there is VERY nice but has actually just moved up to Sprint 6, so I think we covered about half of the lesson. So "natsubate" was my new Japanese vocabulary word for the day. Oh and for those who care, my Mill A class went better but the baseball player didn't show up, sigh)
After our final classes, two of Eri's students were still hanging out and my student was still there too and we all had a conversation in the lobby, 50% in English and 50% in Japanese; I'm not supposed to drop the "I don't understand Japanese" act around Eri's students in theory, but let's face it, when 5 people are talking in Japanese and I'm with them, and I reply to things in English, it's pretty obvious I understand what's going on, y'know?
Anyway, I didn't leave the school until like 11pm -- Eri told me not to hang out there alone at night if I can help it, apparently sometimes drunk people wander down into the school and things like that. I dunno, but so I ended up leaving with her to walk to the station. We talked about how we'd like to have some parties at the school in the future, and we're going to try to hang out on Monday to discuss details, and maybe she'll take me shopping and stuff. Fun!
I went home by way of Nishi-Kawaguchi again; I had tempura for dinner at a second-floor little restaurant. They were actually relatively rude to me there; I was surprised, I'm not used to that. The food was good, though I don't think I'll go back there. It's run by an old couple and the old lady pretty much just stood there watching me the whole time.
I walked home along a weird path and of course I got lost. I found my way to that Max Value 24-hour grocery and decided to go in this time. I must have spent like 30-40 minutes wandering the store and trying to read things. I decided to get more laundry detergent and fabric softener, and stuff like that, and asked one of the store clerks to help me, and she was very nice and explained the different stuff and which ones were detergent/softener/etc. I got new clothespole clips and an air freshener as well. I also walked around the store looking for American food but most of what I found was stuff like Pringles, and Snyder's pretzels. The guy who was the night manager kept seeing me wander around and at one point I set off these rubber duckies that quacked at you and I was just trying to get them to stop and I could see the guy trying REALLY hard not to laugh at me. It was pretty funny in retrospect.
I got lost coming back from there as well. No big surprise, I guess. I did eventually get home though, and pretty much spent 20 minutes waiting for the place to cool down and then just collapsed.
In case you don't know, Japan actually set a heat record yesterday as well -- it was 40.9 degrees Celsius in some parts of Japan, namely Saitama and Gifu. No wonder everyone has natsubate.
I had almost expected the students to be staring at me in horror like "What kind of crazy American is this running around yelling and slamming into walls?" but actually they all laughed and applauded.
Anyway, so yesterday was Thursday, which is one of my tougher days in terms of classes; I have 5 scheduled on Thursdays and on Saturdays (technically 6 on Saturdays but one is an LTA semi-PL). I got in and signed in at 12:58 -- nobody else was there yet -- and immediately after that, Sachi came in! Sachi is our manager, and she had been away for Obon, and was supposed to be at a meeting at Kyomu today, but apparently it was a misunderstanding, so she came to school instead. She brought us back white chocolate cookies from Niigata, which was nice of her. (They were really good!)
I had bakery food for lunch again (today I tried a burger pastry, which is exactly what it sounds like -- a pastry with a small hamburger in the top), and then worked on lessons. At one point some businessman came in to talk to Sachi about something and I thought it was a student so I came out to talk too, and she said "oh, no, this is ______", and I was like "oops!" and she told him I spoke Japanese and could even write Kanji, so he asked me how long I'd been in Japan and stuff like that, and I just went ahead and spoke with him in Japanese because no students were around. That was interesting. I think Sachi knows I want to work on my Japanese but I don't get much of a chance to.
(sorry, I'm friends-locking the part about classes themselves now, except that my 4pm was again one lady, because the other one apparently is suffering from Natsubate, which means "it's too hot, I don't want to go do anything". The one who was there is VERY nice but has actually just moved up to Sprint 6, so I think we covered about half of the lesson. So "natsubate" was my new Japanese vocabulary word for the day. Oh and for those who care, my Mill A class went better but the baseball player didn't show up, sigh)
After our final classes, two of Eri's students were still hanging out and my student was still there too and we all had a conversation in the lobby, 50% in English and 50% in Japanese; I'm not supposed to drop the "I don't understand Japanese" act around Eri's students in theory, but let's face it, when 5 people are talking in Japanese and I'm with them, and I reply to things in English, it's pretty obvious I understand what's going on, y'know?
Anyway, I didn't leave the school until like 11pm -- Eri told me not to hang out there alone at night if I can help it, apparently sometimes drunk people wander down into the school and things like that. I dunno, but so I ended up leaving with her to walk to the station. We talked about how we'd like to have some parties at the school in the future, and we're going to try to hang out on Monday to discuss details, and maybe she'll take me shopping and stuff. Fun!
I went home by way of Nishi-Kawaguchi again; I had tempura for dinner at a second-floor little restaurant. They were actually relatively rude to me there; I was surprised, I'm not used to that. The food was good, though I don't think I'll go back there. It's run by an old couple and the old lady pretty much just stood there watching me the whole time.
I walked home along a weird path and of course I got lost. I found my way to that Max Value 24-hour grocery and decided to go in this time. I must have spent like 30-40 minutes wandering the store and trying to read things. I decided to get more laundry detergent and fabric softener, and stuff like that, and asked one of the store clerks to help me, and she was very nice and explained the different stuff and which ones were detergent/softener/etc. I got new clothespole clips and an air freshener as well. I also walked around the store looking for American food but most of what I found was stuff like Pringles, and Snyder's pretzels. The guy who was the night manager kept seeing me wander around and at one point I set off these rubber duckies that quacked at you and I was just trying to get them to stop and I could see the guy trying REALLY hard not to laugh at me. It was pretty funny in retrospect.
I got lost coming back from there as well. No big surprise, I guess. I did eventually get home though, and pretty much spent 20 minutes waiting for the place to cool down and then just collapsed.
In case you don't know, Japan actually set a heat record yesterday as well -- it was 40.9 degrees Celsius in some parts of Japan, namely Saitama and Gifu. No wonder everyone has natsubate.
