Mad respect yo

I had my first class of 1st and 2nd graders. They are a zany bunch but lots of fun. We played some games and hopefully they will at least remember "hello" and "good morning". Maybe even "how are you?"!

Right now all the schools are preparing and practicing for their big Sports Day event. I have yet to attend one but I've been invited to some coming up this month. I hear they have real races and competitions but also funny ones like a relay race with an all teachers team against students and something involving dunking people's faces into flour. Should be a treat!

I'm excited because Monday is a holiday so we get a 3 day weekend. It is in celebration of "Respect for the Elderly" day. It's like Mother's Day or Father's Day but for Grandparents, as I understand it. The elderly here definitely deserve respect because I see most of them working hard in the rice fields and riding scooters and carrying heavy things. It's no wonder they stay so healthy. They're so active and fearless!

Scott and I are itching to buy a giant coke and popcorn and watch a flick in the theater. There's this amazing Japanese spaghetti western that Quentin Tarantino seems to be involved with that looks pretty awesome. I think it's called Sukiyaki Western Django. They're speaking English in it but somehow it still kind of sounds like Japanese.


A typhoon is supposed to be on its way here this weekend. We're definitely getting more bugs and it's been humid and hot once again. Scott finally saw the giant spiders I've been talking about. Actually this one is just a baby version of the ones I saw when I first got here. They're baaack!

Cap-tivating exhibit

Catching up on bloggin here and I don't think I mentioned that last week Scott and I went back to Nagasaki City to see an exhibit at their art museum. It was the last weekend for a special exhibit on the life of Robert Capa, this photojournalist from the 1940s and 1950s.

The exhibit was really impressive and spanned about 20 years of his life. It was in chronological order and we were amazed at how much he captured in so little time. Most of the photos were from war and battle scenes. One of the most famous and graphic is a photo of a man shot at the exact moment he's being shot in the head.



He also had photos of famous icons he befriended like Ernest Hemingway, Picasso, Ingrid Bergman and John Steinbeck. The exhibit is moving around the world and is coming to NYC soon, so you NYers, check it out! It was pretty cool that it was in Nagasaki before NYC. The museum is relatively small in comparison to NYC museums but it is a lovely building and everything is presented very well.

Party time, excellent!

I had my first visitor from home this week. My buddy Masa! He came all the way down to Nagasaki to see me and to travel around the area with his girlfriend Maggie. As Scott said, "it was nice to see a familiar face." I almost forgot where I was when we were hanging out. I guess although I feel pretty comfy here, it still feels surreal that I'm living in Japan. We had fun catching up over a tasty dinner (Masa tried the famous Kunimi crab, fresh from the pond in front of the restaurant!) and I showed them around my little town and gave them a tour of my house. Good times!



I also went to my first Enkai party. It was a welcome party for new teachers thrown by my junior high staff. I had heard much of these parties and of what to expect. Mostly lots and lots of beer pouring and drinking and speeches and good food. But there are also crazier stories of debauchery and such. As they say, what happens at an enkai, stays at an enkai. Mine was pretty tame although there was definitely heavy drinking and slightly inappropriate conversation, but all in good fun. Hopefully I won't get in trouble for publishing this pic!

Welcome Jessica Sensei!

Whew! I just finished 2 days of nonstop elementary school classes. It's all been a blur , but I think it went well overall. Each class was so different in personality that I ended up improvising a lot of my lesson plans. I learned a lot in just these couple of days.



I kinda get what things work better than others but again, a lot of it depends on the personality and attitude of the home room teachers and the kids. Some classes were shy and quiet while others were zany and wild. Overall the boys are much louder and rowdier than the girls. The girls tended to be quiet in class but after class they were friendly and wanted to talk or hold hands. It was very cute.

In my last class, one boy asked for my autograph (maybe because I lied a little and said I'd actually met Matsui in NYC)! Then a crowd of kids swarmed me and asked for my autograph as well. One kid asked me to sign his scissors! Another girl looked like she was about to cry if I didn't sign her book so I let her be the last one for the day. It was pretty fun being a celebrity but it also felt so bizarre. I'm glad the kids enjoyed the lessons though. Hopefully some of it seeped into their adorable little brains.

Gone til September

Ooh, my first blog for September. Which means... I've been living in Japan for a month now! 11 more to go! Well, this month has gone by pretty fast and yet when I think back to my first days in Tokyo, it feels like ages ago. I was starting to feel a little homesick looking at pictures today but I must stay strong!

Today I had my first official class. It was the 1st year junior high students. They are a pretty rowdy bunch except when they're hot and bored. I was worried about them being bored during my little introduction speech but I also prepared a quiz about the US and NYC and that livened them up. They answered most of the straightforward questions easily (prez of USA, where is the White House, etc.) and they also answered my question about how long a flight from Tokyo to NYC is (14 hours, granted it was multiple choice). But when asked how long the flight from LA to NYC is after showing them a map of the US, some thought it was a 20 hour flight! I guess the map made it look really far, which it is, but thankfully it's only a 6 hour flight. Another question I asked and just found out the answer to recently is, how many languages are spoken in NYC. The answer is 170 and they got it right but I think they were just arbitrarily choosing a number. I think they finally understood the question in the end though. Ooh, I hope none of the other students are reading this and cheating!

Tomorrow I have another junior high class and then elementary schools for the rest of the week. I'm excited to meet the little ones but at the same time, it's going to require a lot of happy energy!

Flower fire (hanabi)

I didn’t really emphasize it earlier but it’s still blazing hot here. Today we had a bit of rain so hopefully that will cool things down at least for today.


The other night we drove out to Shimabara for a fireworks show and festival. It’s supposed to be one of the biggest fireworks shows around so we couldn’t miss it. It was pretty spectacular. I don’t think we’ve ever seen any so huge!


We also went to Mos Burger for dinner. We’d been hearing how it’s way better than McDonald’s here so we had to try it. The burger patties are definitely heftier than McDonald’s but it’s still not exactly a burger. It was tasty for sure but the burgers had a more meatloaf taste to them. The chicken sandwich had a great sauce to it and some nicely chopped cabbage though. I’m sure we’ll be back when we get that burger/fries craving again.

Also, when we got out from eating, my car had a little present on it. Some crazy kids tried to scare us by leaving a toy beetle on my hood! Kids these days! It ended being a cool windup bug that is now Scott’s new friend.

Eating out is always an adventure

On a lighter note, Nagasaki is a fun city to hang around in. The city is bustling with trams, cars, motorbikes and people. There’s a huge mall and train station, and even a movie theater. It’s busy but still manageable which makes it a perfect mix. We walked by the Dutch town which is a reconstructed villa showing how trading was done in the 1500s. You have to pay to enter so we decided to just walk by it and head to Chinatown.



Compared to NYC’s Chinatown, this one is quite small but much cleaner and nicer smelling. There were still old men playing chess in the park but there are also legal fireworks for sale. We walked into a shop and I couldn’t resist getting the one where a monkey flies out in a parachute. Sure it cost about $10 but it is so going to be worth it! You get to keep the monkey afterwards so I see it as an investment.



After our stroll, we decided to get some dinner. Not knowing any restaurants in the area, we walked into the first one we saw. The menu looked good from what we could read so we stepped in. We saw Shabu-Shabu (a boiling pot of vegetables, meats, fish, etc) on the menu and thought we should try it. The owner/chef came to get our order and asked if we’d like sashimi (obviously their specialty) but we decided to be obnoxious foreigners and ask for Shabu-Shabu. He replied with extreme politeness that it is normally a winter dish but that it is delicious if we’d like it and then proceeded to make it. We felt like total wankers (as Alex would put it) but what was done was done.

We heard all this flipping and chopping noise and realized one of the fish in the tank was gone. Moments later we had sashimi and a fish head staring at us. The poor fish was delicious (talk about fresh!) and the chef gave us the option of eating it sashimi style or Shabu-Shabu style (dipping it in the boiling pot of water and eating it hot). We felt so bad about our faux pas that we felt obligated to eat every part of that fish. We did our best and it every bit was tasty. He also served us some fresh vegetables and tofu and then made a special rice dish with the leftover broth. It was amazing.


We kept joking that this meal would’ve been perfect with some eggnog, a roaring fire, and Christmas presents in the winter. We felt like such idiots! We overheard the waitress telling another table that the crazy foreigners had ordered Shabu-Shabu in the summer and then we heard a roaring “Ehhhh??” (the Japanese equivalent of What?? Or Wow!). Too funny! But all ended well and the chef and his wife thanked us for our visit. They gave us drink tickets for the next visit and were even kind enough to allow a picture.



On the walk back to the hotel, we were treated to some surprise fireworks and walked by Meganebashi. Literally translated, the name means “glasses bridge” and you can hopefully see why.