The last day before Summer

Today is really really my last day of work for the summer. Last Thursday was supposed to be my last day, but they want me to come in for about 30 minutes today so I can make some voice recordings for their speech contest speeches. Really classically me, I thought that coming in today would be no big deal. Sure, its Monday and I'm supposed to be on break, but whats 30 minutes? Its not till the afternoon, so I can sleep in, do some blogging, eat breakfast, and then do a little bit of work. On top of that, my company will pay me for gas, which they pay handsomely for, and so I can get a little extra gas money before my month of no company gas money. Of course, not till after I agreed to this did I realize that today is Alix's birthday, so I can't go celebrate with her today. We had made plans to maybe go to a pool/water park in Kimitsu, but since I have to work right in the middle of the day, that ends up being kind of infeasible. This is what happens when I try to be clever, why do I bother. Anyway, not really a big deal, Winston and Alix are heading out to Tokyo for the day instead, and I'm going to meet up with them for dinner as they head back.

Also, Alix is here! For those of you who don't know, she's a friend of ours from college, and is going to stay with us for about two weeks. She and Winston are heading out to Kyoto on Tuesday for about a week. While I could have the appato to myself for a week, that just feels lonely, so Merdith (Ms. America) and I are going to stay at a friends house on the East coast of Chiba, and spend a few days exploring the coast and finding beaches on the Pacific side of Chiba. I am convinced that Tokyo Bay is a useless place to look for beaches. I have tried, and been severely unimpressed. So, to the other coast! Kujukuri is on the East side, and there are supposedly beaches to the south of Kujukuri that are the real surfer beaches, although I have a suspicion that those are the beaches where dudes pretend to surf, and actually just pick up chicks. Kind of touristy. We shall see!!

And, here's some backlogged stories:

These are transcribed entries from the journal I am writing in at school. I started the journal for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being that I didn’t have Internet yet so I couldn’t post things online. The other being that I had free time on my hands. These entries are slightly modified, but mostly for grammar. I suppose you’d never know either way. Surprisingly, I had way more to say than I thought. Unsurprisingly, I have been bad (abysmal) at keeping my online entries up to date with my written ones. Someday, the dates will match but for now…These are the voyages of a long time ago in a galaxy far far away:

May, 13 suiyobi (Wednesday)
Dear diary, breakthrough! First, background: on the first day of classes at Sunami, I went around and introduced myself to all the teachers and as part of the introduction, I asked them what club they oversaw. (2nd degree background: the kids all belong to some after school "club," usually a sports club. Its like having a mandatory hobby, and one or two teachers are responsible for each club.) Well, when I got to the teacher in charge of the table tennis (ping pong, but no one calls it that here) I excited asked her if I could come to table tennis practice some time, and told her that I liked table tennis. What followed was an awkward 5 minutes of Japanese hemming and hawing, before it finally dawned on me that something was wrong with this request. It finally came out that well, you see...ah...table tennis is...an, ah...girls-only club, and...ah, well...I finished the sentence - I probably shouldn't go to table tennis then. This is how saying "no" works in Japan.

So, flash forward 6 weeks later, and at lunch today, the first years (ichinenseis) I was eating with were excitedly trying to figure out how to ask me to come to table tennis in English. They finally put it together, and proudly - with much bouncing and giggling - asked if I would come to table tennis club after school today. I replied with a, "hell yeah!" Well, ok, maybe just an "ok!" but that's how I felt on the inside. And now, I get to play ping pong for work: I have a sweet job. I'm also going to assume that this means Ping Pong Sensei really likes me, which also rocks hard. And, since the English teachers are still gone, I had two classes with Kyoto Sensei (vice president), (who is an English teacher) and they both went really well, so now he thinks I'm awesome, too! This has been a good week so far, and I did it all without the help of the English teachers. They got back from yesterday, and so they come back to work tomorrow.

2 things about Japanese kids: one is slightly inappropriate, and the other is about the alphabet. First the alphabet one: Japanese kids have a bunch of trouble writing the letters "r","n", and "h". They always write the r's like n's, and the n's like h'es. I think I know why, too: in Japanese, the sound "n" is the only consonant sound that they have as a stand alone sound (Everything else is a consonant-vowel pair: ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, ha, hi, hu, he, ho, etc) and in the hiragana alphabet, the letter for "n" looks a lot like an English "h". So, the common mistake is to write their English "n"s with a long stem, ergo, "h". Ad they tend to add a really long arm to their r's (which I can't really explain) and they look like "n"s to me.

So, let me start this second story by saying that Japanese boys are the most handsy group of males ever. Honestly, Winston and I have a growing collection of stories that start with, "so my boy's did the gayest thing ever today..." This time, I was with some boys, and we started talking about moon walking, proceeded to M.J., (rip) and ended with two boys on the floor, one on his back and the other enthusiastically rubbing the first boy's crotch, shouting "Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson!" and both boys laughing hysterically. Michael Jackson indeed.