Monday Majik

Monday was sort of fun, or at least it all worked out to be fun in the end. The main point is that I saw the Saiyuuki Movie at the MOVIX theater in Ario, and 1) seeing the "late" showing, ie after 8pm, is CHEAPER than seeing earlier shows, 2) I could actually understand 90% of the movie, which means either it was simple Japanese or I am getting better at listening, and 3) It was really good! Go see it if you can! I think you sort of needed to see the dorama to at least be a little familiar with the auxiliary characters (mostly Ling Ling and the God character) and with the general structure and the inside jokes, but overall it was still a lot of fun. Katori Shingo rules. :)

Anyway.

( afternoon stuff )

( hanging out with another random GEOS teacher for a bit, and Dice-K dice )

( Tokyo Dome shopping )

( Ario, the Saiyuuki movie, etc )

But yeah, it was pretty neat going to see a Japanese movie in a Japanese movie theater. I totally have to do that again sometime!

I went home after that, and that's really the end of the story for yesterday.

Now it is the work week again and I am off to GEOS. I may finally get my alien registration card either today or tomorrow, if I am lucky.

Tuesday Majik

Not really, but I'm at GEOS late since I stayed to do a bunch of things, so I figured I'd just post now instead of trying to write at home etc etc.

First, Sachi got one of our former students to make me a hanko (signature stamp). It just has my name in katakana, and cost 2000 yen. Tomorrow I will go get my gaijin toroku card and then later on I can go get a postal savings account and then I can actually get paid for working!

Second, today actually went remarkably well. I didn't entirely stick to my lesson plans, but for the most part I felt like I was getting students to talk, and I was teaching the main points. I had one sort of sticky point of a class and managed to bail it out with something funny at the end. The only downside is that I was behind by about 5 minutes all day it seemed. The afternoon's lesson was particularly fun, we were talking about Andy Warhol and the museum in Pittsburgh.

Also, people loved seeing the Inaba home run ball! One of my students even kept picking it up and pretending to throw it, he thought it was really cool!

(When we got in this morning/afternoon, Eri came by, I said "How was your weekend?" and she told me about her hockey match, her team lost it in overtime on a shootout, it was the finals, so they just got these silver pins for second place. She asked how my weekend was and I said "I caught a home run ball!" and she was like "WHOA! Did you get it signed?" "No..." "Really? I think you can get a home run ball signed after the game..." "WHAT?" Man, now I feel really dumb.)

Not much else to say that doesn't directly involve classes, since I actually entered the building at 1pm and haven't left it since -- I didn't even go get dinner today for some reason. I'm gonna head out for food now and then go home, I think. It's sort of weird that it's Sachi's last week here, all of the students are saying goodbye to her. A guy from one of the student loan companies we work with brought by a bunch of pieces of cake for Sachi as a going-away present. So she gave me and Eri some of the cake too. It was good.

OH, and one of my students gave me free tickets to the National Natural Sciences museum in Ueno! (She works there and I helped her work on a bunch of English letters she has to write to some science museums in America.) One pair is to the current special exhibit, which lasts until Sept 24th, and the other is just a general pair of tickets which are good for like three years (so I figure I will drag Carl to it when he comes to visit in a few months). I forgot to ask when and where she works there, since I should probably come say hello when I go, I think.