I've been pretty scattered in the last few days, so I've had nothing focused to share. Saturday I worked hard in my garden, pulling out grass (I've essentially become a lawn-mower) and planting more fun things (watermelon, canteloupe, eggplants, colored peppers, and flowers). I got sunburnt on my back, oops. I also cleaned my house in preparation to go away for awhile... unfortunately it has mysteriously gotten pretty messy already!! The one bad thing about living by myself... there's just no one else to blame for the mess! Jaclyn and I also went to watch "Chicago"- we loved it (and thought Renee Zellweger is WAY too skinny!).

Sunday I made it to church for the whopping third time this year. I also ran errands while Jaclyn was at her church. It was a beautiful morning and I spent quality time in the park around Matsumoto Castle reading my book (just finished The Cider House Rules). In the afternoon, I was pretty much lazy all day which felt nice. Meant to pack, but we all know that was destined to wait for tonight (i.e. the-last-possible-minute).

Yesterday it was nice in the morning so Jaclyn and I decided we ought to bike to school and back, I've really missed doing that (when its nice). Of course, when it gets nasty out (like it did before we got home...) it can be a bit of a chore. After school we (more like I but then J got dragged in...) decided I was freaked out enough about earthquakes to prepare an emergency kit. Having never done so (or really lived in an earthquake zone before), we just went to the grocery store and stocked up on the things we figured we would "most want" if the world was going to end (yes, we were being pretty silly about the whole thing). So, my "kit" so far consists of two grocery bags of water, Kit-Kats, mixed nuts, some band-aids, and instant ramen sitting inside my doorstep. Here's a strategic question for you all: I live in a two story house and sleep on the second floor: where do I put said kit? I'm starting to think my best bet is out in the shed. I've also moved my cell phone charger into my bedroom so I can grab it in case things get freaky (at our fire drill the firefighter who spoke to us emphasized how wonderful cell phones are in a disaster... they can help rescuers locate you and double as a flashlight until the battery dies). Supposedly The Big One is coming to this area soon (depending on who you ask), so I want to be able to sleep at night knowing I'm "prepared".

After that, Jaclyn and I watched the last three hours of this season's Alias. I never watched the show at home, but Jaclyn's parents have been faithfully sending it over and I am SO hooked!! Perhaps those of you who also watch can understand how shocked I was after we finished the season finale (poor Will! poor Sidney!! Vaughn!!!!!). So shocked in fact, that I completely wiped out and fell down Jaclyn's stairs trying to rehash it all and leave at the same time. OUCH OUCH OUCH. Our stairs are literally dangerous but I've made it this far up-right. Thank God. My butt hurts SO badly today that I can barely sit. Actually, it hurts to stand. It hurt to put pants on. I have such a bright purple butt that I really am tempted to either a) take a picture so I can show off without mooning people b) start mooning people. Of course, mooning people would just plain hurt too much. Maybe I'll use my cell phone and take a nice blurry picture so no one can proove its really me. Yep, this just in time for a three hour train ride tomorrow and a what, 14 hour plane ride the next day! So that's my prep. for my trip- a sunburnt back and a bright purple butt. This will be so fun!!

in case you're curious, here are two websites that do justice to the weirdness of Japanese food. Don't get me wrong, eating here is usually a very wonderful thing. However, they do have some pretty scary things on the menu. These two websites show off some of the best:
The Web's First Japanese Pizza Page and Other Fine Japanese Eats . ps. the pizza menu shown isn't rare at all... that is exactly what you get when you go out for pizza here.

(the following entry is just copied from an e-mail to some friends, sorry, but didn't have any energy to write it all over).
So last night I had raw horse. "had" meaning "ate". not anything I've ever wanted to eat, but it is a Nagano specialty (along with grasshoppers, which I've tried and baby bees, which I never will) so I was guessing I wouldn't make it out of here without doing so. But... since I don't eat meat... I was really, really hoping I wouldn't have to. Last night was Jaclyn (my neighbor for those who don't know... crazy, eh?) and my normal night for dinner out (always the same noodle/tempura place- the only good restaurant in the village) before our caligraphy class... and the place is owned by a family with children in both of our schools (she teaches at the elementary- sorry for all the parenthesis!!) and the mother decided we needed some extra "service"... hence the raw horse and the absolute zippo ability to not eat it. It actually didn't taste too bad, but since my tummy is way out of the practice of eating red meat... it didn't feel real good. oh well.

and now I have a snotty cold- not that the two are connected, but I'm not feeling too bouncy today.

hope you're all doing better and eating yummier things (just sent my mom a list of foods that I would love to eat when I'm home.. it almost made me cry) than me. I will beat you to Friday, though!!

I've obviously had too much time on my hands today: I'm having an "I don't know what I want to be" day. Blargh...

Most of you know by now that I'm seriously considering becoming a "real" teacher in the near future. I've been looking into programs and researching my options. I still haven't the faintest idea what I'm doing. Upon reflection, I realized that I don't exactly remember what middle school social studies is like. Nor do I know what it is like today.. and my guess is that things change every year. Honestly, I'm definitely dragging my feet on handing over another huge stack of money and investing more years of my life for another degree/certificate that I may or may not use. Particularly since it has become clear that I'd have to take quite a few of extra undergrad courses to even qualify for an education program. (What? I need to actually have studied U.S. Goverment in the last ten years to teach it?) Too bad I didn't consider this all at Olaf.. hindsight gives me a headache. I really want to make an educated decision on what to do next. I don't exactly know quite how, other than consulting my Magic 8 ball (thanks Teff!).

Today I had more of a "Do I really want to teach?" moment. I don't know how it started, but I'm back to daydreaming about working overseas in a peace corps like job. One of my main problems (and there are many, don't worry Grandma) with that has been the fact that I have very few real skills. Besides energy and a willingness to get filthy dirty and do anything... I have zippo to offer anyone that would make hiring me a worthwhile investment. So, do I go study agriculture? Or business? I sure as heck don't have any interest in teaching English longer after I'm done with my current posting. Explaining English is a nightmare! You would think that someone who has always loved studying foreign languages would love her own... but I hate English (at least teaching it)!

so there's a download worth chewing on.. I'm going to go weed in my garden. It's my newest hobby and I don't have to worry about ever finishing. Let me know if you have a clearer vision in your Magic 8 Ball.

I spent WAY too much time in a car this weekend. The rest of the time I spent asleep. Ok, I spent approximately 3 minutes catching a fish. But that was it.

Friday night, 11:55 pm: woke up after 2 hours of sleep which was interruppted by a call from Sara to let me know she was bailing on the fishing trip. wasn't conscious enough to consider TP-ing her house until a couple hours later.

Saturday morning, 12:15 am: jet-lagged Jaclyn & I somehow slide our sleepy selves into our car, say a short prayer for safety at this insane hour, and hit the road.
12:30 am: we pick up Danielle, realize we forgot towels, realize its darn chilly, I open a bottle of lemon coke to soothe my stomache.
12:50 am: we pass Omi-mura and consider stopping to wake Sara, but we're too tired to follow through.
1:15 am (or so): we reach Nagano an hour plus ahead of schedule (damnit!) and find a Royal Host to sit/eat at. Roy-ho is a very non-delicious 24 hour Japanese version of Denny's. Jaclyn and I get pancakes & drink bar, Danielle gets a club sandwich. I am still regretting the full meal I ate with my English dept. folks a half hour before trying to sleep.
2:30 am: we are waiting in front of Nagano station for the rest of the caravan to arrive. No one is there except the drunk business men eating noodles from a trailor stand and squatting on the side walk because they've missed the last train.
2:35 am: we call a trip organizer and are told the meeting place changed (15 min earlier) to a highway oasis 5k north of Nagano... didn't you guys know? In a pile of sleep-induced fury, we get back on the highway.
2:50 am: we reach the oasis. no one else is there.
3:15 am: one other car reaches us, tells us that the rest of the group is waiting at Nagano station... apparently they didn't catch the change either. grrr... how hard is it to plan a road trip?
3:45 am: everyone arrives and we're ready to go. I sadly add up the 2 plus hours extra sleep that I gave up to poor organization.
3:55 am: back on the road and the sky is already lightening
4:15 am: the sun is up. unreal... this country needs to discover day-lights savings...
4:35 am: we reach Joetsu & Naoetsu on the coast of Niigata (the identical spot I'd been last weekend... in fact I even saw the car ferry).
4:50 am: we're lost. we've done about 5 group U-turns. we're supposed to board the ship at 5am. I need to use a bathroom badly.
5:20 am: after a stop for bait, directions, and a bathroom.. we reach the ship..er, boat. it is MUCH smaller than I'd imagined.
5:30 am: the boat folks aren't ready for us so we head to a convenience store for snacks. (more sleep time!)
6:00 am (or so): we finally launch. we get a great, cold & windy shot of Japan from the ocean during sunrise.
6:30 am: we're still searching for a good spot to drop anchor. actually, we've dropped the anchor several times, but the captain isn't satisfied and so it gets dragged back up.
6:34 am (or so): I fall asleep on the bench in the boat and nearly fall off the bench... fortunately my back is to the center of the boat and there is no way to fall off the boat.
7:00 am (or so): we've dropped anchor and people have begun to fish. I'm too tired and too cold to make the effort so I just watch. The poles are rigged with a line tied off with not one hook, but five. above the hooks is a large plastic capsule that the fishers fill with nasty baby shrimp for bait. I don't know how it works, but it does... we begin to reel in the fish.
7:02 am: I am seriously dissappointed with the size of the fish. Having decided to join the trip after seeing pictures of Brook's carribean fishing trip and his texas sized barracudas (or whatever they were)... I was expecting to be yanking tuna out of the water (ok, maybe not that big, but I wanted BIG fish!). the fish we were bringing in on Saturday we less than a foot long. "this is what I pulled an all nighter for??" I ask myself. I go back to sleep, head resting on a wall, feet up on the boat railing, cap low over face.
8:30 am: I am still trying to sleep. The sun is already at a 30 degree angle to land and I feel like I've been out for ages. I ask Jaclyn for the time and she responds "9:30" and I am relieved that we only have another hour and a half. Then she's corrected... it doesn't seem possible that it is still so early!
9:00 am: Danielle hands me her pole after catching her third fish (two at one time!). I drop the bait and a minute later I'm reeling in a fish. Jaclyn hasn't caught any.
9:05 am: I go back to sleep
9:45 am: I break out the banana bread as a snack... its tasty but salty. we move on to the Dots Jaclyn brought back from the states. yum. They taste better then Danielle's fish look (they're swimming upside down due to their rapid ascent to the above sea level world).
10:00 am: Jaclyn has yet to catch a fish but is now using "strategy". I go back to sleep.
10:35 am: last call for fish. Jaclyn doesn't catch a single fish.
10:45 am: we head back to shore. everyone looks like hell (or like they've been up all night then hauling in fish and sticking their hands in mushy baby shrimp bait)
11:00 am: fishing trip is done... we take a group picture and head for lunch.
12:00 pm: lunch done, we head for ryokan (inn)
1:00 pm (or so): we all go to sleep
5:00 pm: alarm goes off
7:00 pm: we wake up
7:10 pm: we eat our freshly caught fish: fried and as sashimi.. as far as I can remember, this is the coolest part of the trip. we ate our fish raw! of course, we hadn't actually ordered a real dinner, so that's all we had- raw fish and beer. mmmmmmmm....

Ok, I will stop the details there and just say that after that we decided we needed to spend some time awake so most of us (minus jet-lagged Jaclyn) went out to an izakaya (bar/restaurant) and had drinks and bowling alley style french fries until we deemed it late enough to go back to sleep. For me this was the way late hour of midnight. It had been a really long day.

Sunday, we woke up fairly early and decided to hit the road as soon as possible! We had to give up on our waffle cravings and instead settle for convenience store bread & sushi then later stopped at another Royal Host. We all felt like sludge.

Monday 12:30 am: I still feel like sludge. I had a good night's sleep, but since its Monday and the 2nd graders are leaving tomorrow on their school trip to Takayama, none of the teachers want to team teach. I've been relegated to internet surfing and brainstorming for my next bulletin board. and to counting the days to home!!

Lift off for the states in exactly two weeks (plus two hours)!! I'm really looking forward to it. I've got a huge list of things I want to do (see a zillion people, go shopping, sit on a real couch, go rollerblading, drive on the right side of the street sitting on the left, stock up on hugs, and play with my dog being the things that pop to mind) and an equally sized list of things I want to eat (don't let me get started). I miss everyone even more now that I know I will see you soon... it kind of emphasizes it. The closer I get to being there, the more I just want to go NOW! I'll be hanging out in North Carolina with for Beth's wedding, spending 5 days at home in Indy w/my parents, my brother, and all three grandparents, then spending the last two nights in Minneapolis with the global gang and hopefully some camp friends! It will not be relaxing at all but who said you can't do everything? (probably my mother after trying to do so).

Today is rainy which is good for the garden and matches my mood. Last night I made an executive decision to take a sick "night". I figure since I can't call in sick to use my sick days... I am entitled to play lazy bum once in a while on my own time. I skipped out on Shodo class then read a book in bed for awhile after returning home from school, then took a nap. This was followed by a good hour plus of reading, then dinner of popcorn and finally an hour of Japanese TV. I think I'm ready for Jaclyn to come home (she's been at home since last Tuesday)... some company and Mac & cheese would have been a lot better. oh well. Tonight I have a long staff meeting and then will be going swimming, picking up my hemmed bridesmaid dress and getting gas and hopefully picking Jaclyn up at the airport, so I will be busy again.

I am still getting used to having 4 or 5 classes a day instead of 1, 2, or even 3 from last year. Its exhausting! This week I don't feel like I've been jiving very well with the students, either, which has made class extra tiring. I think it might partly be due to the fact that the other teachers (specifically the two new grad. teachers) seem to be really underestimating the amount they can accomplish in class. They come with one activity and a little lecture and try to make it stretch the entire 50 minutes. When I'm there it is painfully akward because the classes are filled with tense pauses and silences while the teacher fumbles for something else to do. On the swing side of that... there's me.. trying to fit in 3 crazy and different ways to practice a number of different expressions.. and doing it all in English (could be Italian for all the kids understand somedays)... I think its kind of a shock. So my new goal is to try to slow down a little. We'll see if I can succeed. I'm doing better at using the other teacher in my lessons more (as opposed to me leading/explaining everything).. but we're still really unbalanced: she'll speak only Japanese and I speak only English so the kids stop listening to me and just wait for her to translate, etc. Anyway, all of this and more... I'm really ready for a break!

Whoa- one obvious drawback to my increased classload: less time to putz on the internet. My apologies to anyone trying to kill time that has been dissappointed with a lack of new material. It hasn't quite been a week since I posted... but I guess I ought to get cracking.

I had a great weekend. Yesterday was Children's Day here, a holiday that used to celebrate only male children but officially now celebrates all children (though from the sounds of some of the girls' diaries today... it hasn't really changed). Anyway, the only thing it really means to me is- extra long weekend! Well, and there are lots of 6 foot long carp streamers flying from poles all over the place, but that's a pretty normal thing, right? ;)

I'm kind of working my way backwards now. Let me go back to the start: last Wednesday I missed writing about our fabulous bike safety day. All the students rode to school on their bikes. Then in the afternoon, all the students sat and listened to a police officer warn them about traffic safety while the teachers checked out whether all of the bicycles met school safety standards. Also, we (the students and the teachers not checking bikes) got to watch a thriller bike safety movie. It included slow motion shots of cars running into bikes from all angles. There bikes were (fortunately) ridden by dummies.. referred to as O-tousan Dummi, etc (O-tousan=Father). They even had a baby on the back of the bike for some of the shots. The kids (and me- but don't tell!) tried not to laugh, but ended up getting yelled at anyhow.

The highlight of the day on Thursday was a earthquake drill during the middle of the day. We all knew exactly when the drill was going to happen and when the siren went off, the drill consisted of our vice-principal reading a prepared statement over the PA (this is an earthquake- please get under your desks) in a monotone voice, then all of us running out of the school and lining up neatly outside. I had to go to the staff room and pick up my earthquake helmet first, (because I am sure I would do that in the actual event and I am sure the box would be sitting out in the middle of the room, too) then run out and line up with the kids (decked out in their bright white cleaning/outdoor time hats (because of course they would find said hats in an actual disaster!). The one glimmer of spontaneity (realism?) we were allowed was running out of the school in our indoor shoes instead of changing to outdoor shoes (oh, the horrors!). After everyone was safely outside and quiet, the homeroom teachers all reported to the vice-principal that all their students were safe. The vice-principal then passed the info on to our principal, who in turn reported it to the fire chief (who was conveniently standing around waiting for the report) who in turn gave us a disaster preparedness speech for 15 minutes. Don't get me wrong... I am living in an area where they are predicting a massive earthquake to occur anytime, so I am glad we do the drills... but the way we conduct them is a bit silly.

Whew! So that was my week- on to the weekend! Tom arrived Friday night and Saturday night we set out for Sado Island. Sado is located in the Sea of Japan off the coast of Niigata Prefecture, north of here on the west coast of Japan (map). It is the fifth largest Japanse island and home to the world-renowned Kodo Japanese drumming group. It took us about 5 hours to drive to Joetsu, on the coast of Niigata just north of the northern border of Nagano (I think Nagano is one of the biggest prefectures.. which are basically states here). It was pretty nice driving, the first half through the Alps (I am always tempted to call them "my Alps") and the second half along the sea coastline. At Joetsu we borded a 2plus hour car ferry to the island. We arrived just in time to drive across the island during sunset. It was really beautiful... lots of neat rock formations. Sado is apparently not a place you want to be in winter. Tom has a friend who lives on the eastern town of Ryoetsu, so we stayed with him both Saturday and Sunday nights. He works as a travel/trip/information guide for foreigners visiting the island.. so it was pretty ideal (and he sent us home with business cards and maps for our friends!). On Sunday he guided us to a number of quaint shrines. They were different from Kyoto- practically deserted, no entrance fee, no souvenir stores, nothing! All were very peaceful and positively ancient. At one shrine there were three Cypress trees that are between 800 and 1,000 years old. I got the chills just thinking about how much the world has changed since they were planted... if only trees could talk! Its always so awe inspiring to realize just how old Japan really is- that I'm visiting shrines that have literally existed as shrines for not a century, but a millenium!

We also saw a Japanese puppet show, a dying art on the island. All of the masters are retiring or have died and the young people are no longer interested in learning the skills (or in living on the island itself), so the shows are getting scarce. It was interesting but really hard to understand, linguistically. After the show and lunch, we headed to the Sado Gold Mine, a candidate for World Heritage Site recognition. It was fascinating (a heck of a lot more than I'd predicted!). The mine is extensive and the section you can tour is filled with life-sized robots showing what work in the mine looked like. Really creepy, actually.

One of the other predictable highlights of the weekend on the island was the seafood... yummy crab, shrimp, octopus, clams, and fish. Nagano is land-locked (not as much as Wisconsin, but it is) so it was a nice treat to be a couple of blocks from where they fish. I'll be heading back to Niigata this weekend for my re-scheduled (due to a typhoon last fall) chance for deep-sea fishing. I hope we get to eat some!

We most of yesterday racing the holiday traffic back here. It was beautiful outside all weekend which just made the trip that much more enjoyable. It was also nice to explore a spot in the area that I've not been to. And if you're ever interested... there's a guy there I can hook you up with!