Five seconds of fun

Yup.... stuff like this happens to you on days with no lessons...
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Your Love Life by lpfloatsmyboat
Name/username/nickname:
favorite color:
best physical quaility:	eyes
best personality trait:	friendly
will you marry your bf/gf that you have now?	no
when will you get married?	January 13, 2013
your kiss is:	short and sweet
People date you because:	you're cute
Quiz created with MemeGen!

A bill, a cold, and a billion kanji

So first things first, heard back from Maruiei and Toby's surgery is going to cost 16 man... poo poo poo poo poo. Only cost me 13 in the first place, so unfortunately think I'm going to have to abandon my dear friend to the wilderness of obsolete electronic devices. It's actually really sad. I can't believe a quarter of a cup of water has managed to land me with a bill for over 800 pounds and put my entire virtual existence on hold for a month. Ugh. So yeh, am going to go shopping this weekend and hopefully pick something up second hand so I can start rebuilding my life (sob, wail). Must learn to be more responsible and not get distracted when there is water around.

After last week's holiday binge I was dreading doing a full week's work, but hey it's already Wednesday, and what with mid-term-tests tomorrow things are pretty chilled out, for me at least ;). Went to a Toga party for Mel's birthday on Saturday (in Morita so for the first time in ages I didn't have to drive halfway round the ken just to hang out, yay): quasi-nudity, cross-dressing and a bit of a daikon saga, and a happy Saturday night was had by all. Well more or less. Sunday was onsen (I have never known guys spend so long washing) and sushi before Charlie, Mike, Alex and Ellie had to head back to the Dark Side. Since then have just been working and studying really. Still bashing away with the kanji but to be honest I am losing patience and fail to see why there need to be quite so many when half of them look the same, have roughly the same meaning, and are barely used. It didn't occur to me before I came here (kanji, like snow, were just things I hadn't thoroughly anticipated) that I was susceptible to obsessions with pictographic writing systems, but I am practically drawing radicals in my sleep. When is it going to end??!

Right well that's all I have to say really. Still have no idea who I'm writing this for. Is anyone reading? It's like the whole speaking-in-a-vacuum thing, if you type words into a computer, put them up on the internet, but no-one sees them, do they actually exist? Did you even actually type them? Or are your intimate (read superficial, trying-to-be-non-offensive, not-hugely-personal-or-secret) thoughts just destined to float unnoticed in cyberspace? Why do it? Because it makes me feel powerful ;)

Phew! How do people cope with this much time off?!!

So yes, what with the water-incident my darling laptop Toby has been incarcerated by the lovely computer-doctors at Maruei Denki... he's been there for almost two weeks, and still no word, not looking good is it? I miss him greatly and am frustrated beyond all reason by not being online at home and having to use school computers to check mail and stuff. Last night I used a spare half hour to clean, rather than check e-mail - something is seriously up. It's not that I can't live without it, just that I would really rather not. Grrrrr.

Anyway. Last weekend was a bank holiday and then we had another national holiday yesterday (there's this run of weeks at the beginning of Autumn where there's a day off on average every fortnight). Took advantage of the long weekend to drive over to Hachinohe and Mike's party, still took us 6 hours from Hirosaki to Hach including dinner and numerous stops for petrol etc. Luckily I had Anne to keep me company. Yes. We have the same name. Scary thing is the similarities don't stop there - to quote from her blog... This weekend Anne and I drove to Hachinohe to Mike's party. For those of you from home - yes there are 2 Annes in Aomori, we're both British, went to Cambridge and speak Russian. we also both have blonde hair. Freaky. But nice, in a weird alter-ego kind of way. She reminds me a lot of me when I was... dunno really, just, before now. Has it been Japan that's changed me?

Anyway the party was simply hilarious, those guys are just insane, I don't think I have met a group of guys before who have fun with such conspicious finesse... There are some pics at Tyack's page (www.charlietyack.com) which describe the events far better than I could do in a gigabyte of blog. The freaky thing is, that Tyack actually does look like Nico (well vaguely at least) and Chris looks like Richard, and Alex dances like Andy Gibson, so it's freakily like being back at uni, from my little subjective point of view. I'm in process of considering the mean-ness of denying people their power of self-definition by saying "ooh, you're just like so-and-so" within five minutes of meeting them, but hey can I help it if so many people look the same?!! I have no doubt and plenty of evidence that they are perfectly different perfectly individual people, after all.

Sunday I went back to Aomori, met up with Kathryn and Ryota, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed, and Dan (first time since Russia!!! Dan! Where have you been??!!) and we went for yummy nosh at Saigon and then some bars, and I met up with Ken who I met in Aomori around this time last year and haven't seen since, who by some freak coincidence turned out to be one of Ryota's sempais from their neighbourhood when they were in primary school - hadn't seen each other for ten years so that was a fond (???!) reunion. Just for the record, Ken is a super-nice guy, and we think that's because he works in an old-people's home.

Monday was just staying in bed till lunchtime, gossiping with Kathryn, then made my way back to Gosh, got stood up for dinner and ended up having random conversations with the nice sushi guy about kanji. Then met up with my teachers for some kanji practice - class was off because of the bank holiday, so we went to the coffee shop. Then finally made it home. Three lessons at Daichu Tuesday, bit of a mix-up but a day in the office on Wednesday.

Thursday was off too, went to gosh and had lunch and a movie - I Robot, and by the way the opening scene of Will Smith getting out of bed deserves an Oscar for something eh ladies??!! Then went for Curry in Hirosaki at wonderful Tandoor with a load of the gorgeous wonderful Tsgaru JETs, so that was fun.

Apologies if this comes out in STUPIDITY font, for some reason can't change the settings and I'm blowed if I'm gonna go through the HTML trying to work it out - will hopefully fix things if I ever get reunited with Toby.

Food in the Forest

Today I managed to wangle my way on to the first-grade "excursion" - an hour long bus trip to a campsite on mount Iwaki. Take 60 12-13 year olds. Place in forest-park. Split them up into ten groups. Give each group enough wood, bricks, grill pans, raw meat and oil-covered wood shavings to pose a considerable danger to themselves and the surrounding environment. Allow four hours for them to make fires and prepare food. Sit back and wait for food to arrive. A recipe for large-scale disaster, wide-spread third-degree-burns, food poisoning and acres of forest fires? Or a day's work as an ALT? Well in the end no-one got hurt (I'm pretty sure it's not the kind of excursion that would go down hugely well back home!) and the food was really good, the kids came up with all kinds of things from yakisoba and curry-rice to cabbage rolls and weener soup... and prepared the whole lot largely unaided, without burning anything down. Impressed? I was. Amazing what kids can do when you credit them with a bit of responsibility. So a good time, and a good feed, was had by all. I love my job.

7 Reasons why I love where I live...

Check out these pics. I am so lucky :)

Driving home from work...  

Evening Coastline 

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Sunset 

Lighthouse at Kasose 

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And it's been.... Here Silent all these years

Yesterday was... busy? mainly because I took it on myself to catch up with some letters and e-mails, then went home and tried to clean my house, which was heading from "extremely disgusting" to "hazardous to all forms of life except cockroaches" - sorted about half of it out, still got a way to go but it felt better in the end. Keep thinking that it won't be long (3 months??!)until it's cold and I'm sleeping in the living room again... at least then I'll only have to clean the one room!! Everything thrown on its head by the prospect that people may actually come to my house this year, and might even do so on the spur of the moment without giving me a a week's head start to de-crap-ify. Good incentive I guess. I don't really enjoy living in a tip, it's just when I have a spare half hour at home and it's a choice between cleaning, sleeping, kanji, e-mails, or Russian homework, - well it's a matter of priorities! Also because I've really lost that chilling-at-home time I had last year - the less time I spend there the less mess I make and the less point there seems to cleaning. It would be nice to live in a perfectly clean house though, would like to invest in some cleaning gnomes. Ramble ramble.

Have some more eating stuff written but putting it out there for all to see (even though no-one seems to have discovered this little festering pile of self-analysis yet hehehehe) is just more than I can bear at the moment... if you're interested chuck me a mail.

Feeling contemplative for a Wednesday

Today was good, quiet, mildly productive... another day in the office, trying to find things to look busy with, for reasons beyond my own puny comprehension. I actually don't mind the office days, mainly because as long as I sit at my desk and don't run rampage around the yakuba with my pants on my head (though the temptation is admittedly there) or take coffee breaks that last longer than two hours a piece, I can basically do what I like, i.e. study, mail and write random stuff. And cut & stick things for school out of pretty coloured paper. Spent a lot of time today mulling over eating habits - which is just about the one remaining area where my life is still going haywire. Had some very profound thoughts which are still settling in my mind so will blog them when I am feeling more succinct and less tired.

Had a great time doing speech contest practice for two hours at Daichu - it really amazes me how hard the kids are trying and the amount of progress they can make in such a short time. I know there's limited practical value in learning to recite the same passage over and over in perfect English, but seeing my kids gain confidence in great leaps like today is really rewarding. Am worried about the state of my own English because it seems I must have forgotton so much; for every new word I learn in Japanese I lose five items of vocabulary in English or something like that. Though I don't think my style has really changed, those nice complicated words are popping up less and less. Must try to use longer words. And work on spelling - had a big spelling collision with "diarrhea" last night, but then it's not a word I was ever particularly good at spelling anyway.
FPOTD - speech contest student? She really gambatte-d today. Or maybe my supervisor for coming out with some really nice comments just before lunchtime - "アンならなんでもできる", so he says... if only he knew... but it was really encouraging. いいなぁ... and Tammy xxx