The Quiet American

Ikeda-sensei just gave me something to chuckle about.
Michihata-sensei is a social studies teacher at Yokota JHS. His wife once attended my English conversation class. (I don't remember who she was; she probably introduced herself by her given name.) Michihata told Ikeda that his wife's impression of me was that I was a quiet American. "She said you were the only quiet American she's ever met."

Oh, that was a hoot. "How many Americans has she met?" Ikeda didn't know.
"If she's only seen Americans on TV, well, only the loud Americans get on TV. The quiet Americans don't make it."


She's also concerned about me working on Friday, two weeks from today. Dad's plane leaves from Osaka at 7pm, so I'll be driving him there and driving back afterward. I'd told her I'd probably be in the next day. "I usually don't get to bed until after midnight, anyway."
"I am worried about the snow," she said.
"It's two weeks away; maybe the weather will be okay." Pointing to my calendar, I said, "I should know a couple of days before if the weather will be bad. If it's too bad, then maybe I won't come in on Friday."
"Ki o tsukete! (Be careful.) I don't want you to die!"
"Well, I don't want to die, so we're good!"

Groundhog Day

Isn't it funny how, despite whatever miserable weather February 1st brings, it always seems to clear up for Groundhog Day?

Yesterday there was talk of stopping the buses because of the snow, which would have meant sending the students home early. The bus company decided instead to delay their runs for this morning, so school started two hours late today... but of course the teachers had to be in at 8:10 like usual.

"We are adults," Ikeda-sensei said, explaining why we had to be there on time.
"So are the bus drivers!" I protested.
She was unpersuaded... not that she likely had a say in the matter. But even if the bus company's decision to delay their runs was not influenced by the school, shouldn't it indicate that maybe the roads aren't safe for anybody?

So the drive home yesterday was my most harrowing driving experience yet: the main roads had last been "plowed" hours earlier, visibility was poor, and students who didn't dare walk on the buried sidewalks carefully picked their way along the streets, occasionally moving over to let the cars pass. Mabel had asked if I wanted to go out for dinner, and while nothing sounded lovlier than eating tasty food at the cozy warm "Italian" restaurant in Yokota, I realized how impossible that would be when I pulled into Mabel's parking lot. It had clearly not seen anything vaguely resembling a plow, and my door pushed about 4cm of snow out of the way when I opened it. It was then that I knew I couldn't just wait out the storm (which showed no signs of abating) but had to get home before dark. Getting back out of the parking lot, pushing and packing snow as the car went, was definitely a trick. My little car is brave.

Visibility this morning was better and worse. It didn't snow at all while I was on the road, and the bounds of the streets are more well defined, but since they were never thoroughly scraped, the snow that remains on them is hard-packed and highly reflective in the morning sun. I usually hum some Copland or Holst to distract myself from the psychological component of my photosensitivity, but sometimes it's too bad even for that.

I discovered that my car has anti-lock brakes; that is to say, when I pulled out of the parking lot down the little hill to the street, the brake pedal started pumping under my foot. For some reason. I hadn't even started to slide. My car is smart, but sometimes she's a little too smart for her own good, making executive decisions like when to change gears and when to go into ABS mode without conferring with me, resulting in much frustration and gnashing of teeth.

This entry was composed entirely on my cell phone. It took two hours to write, and contains 2,811 characters. The sky was sunny when I began, and now it's snowing again, just like yesterday.
(>_<)

Big Kerosene Heater

In the Yokota JHS teachers room, This is the shrine at which we pay our respects several times a day.

Most ritual prayers involve the sacred incantation, "寒い…　寒いですよ！"

The Futile Pursuit of Happiness

One thing I've learned from being in Japan is that it doesn't often do me much good to predict how I'll feel at a given point in the future. I thought not being home for Thanksgiving would totally bum me out, but I was okay. I thought buying a Nintendo DS would provide me with hour upon hour of gaming pleasure, but really it hasn't had nearly that impact. I thought having a car would merely be convenient; now I can't imagine what I'd do without one. I'd like to get a minidisk player for my car, but I have a feeling I'd soon adjust to that, too, and no longer appreciate it so much.

What's nice is that according to this article, I'm not alone.

My Day in a Nutshell

Well, I just discovered that my refrigerator, washing machine, 1200W heater, telephone/fax machine, and toaster oven are all on the same circuit. Though the fridge, washer, heater, and phone were all on at the same time, this wasn't a problem until 10 seconds after I turned on the microwave. Yep, that's on the same circuit, too. Fortunately, it was just the breaker I had to flip, not a fuse I had to buy, so I turned off the heater, flipped the switch, and waited for my microwave tasties to finish cooking before I turned the washer back on.

Oh, and the modem, too. And since my laptop is now recharging, I guess that was also on the same circuit. I didn't test the TV, but if we assume that it also wouldn't have worked, then every electrical outlet in my apartment is on the same switch. There are three of them, so one must have been for the lights, since they didn't go out. The third one... maybe for the water heater? I dunno.

Edit 1/28/2005: The television plugs into the same outlet as my halogen lamp, which did get cut. And the water heater is on the same circuit as everything else, as I discovered when I later tried to wash my hands. Fortunately, it heats the water as it's needed, not stored in a big tank, so getting hot water to run again was just a matter of turning the heater back on and waiting 15 seconds.


I stayed home from school today with a cold. Yesterday, Tane-sensei and I discussed the next lesson for the san-nensei (third year students). There's a dialogue in the textbook between Mark, one of the recurring characters in the New Horizon textbooks, and a doctor. He goes in complaining of a headache; she looks in his throat, decides he has a cold, and gives him some medicine. Tane and I had a long conversation discussing this lesson, which digressed severely to my middle school days. After we wrapped things up, my throat felt sore, and I thought it was cos I'd just talked so much. How funny to show symptoms of a cold immediately after discussing a doctor's visit skit.

But it didn't go away, it got worse. So I went to the hospital this morning. Tane said I should go there, rather than the town doctor, cos they speak English at the hospital. That turned out to be not-quite-true, but they were able to help me with a bilingual manual. And they had a surgeon come down and examine me, because the regular ENT doctors don't speak English. I had my insurance card, which I carry with me all the time at the advice of our Prefectural Advisors, and the bill for the hospital visit was 970 yen (~$9.50), and the medicine the doctor prescribed me was 260 yen (~$2.50). It comes in little pouches of powder, and I'm supposed to take one at each meal for three days (nine pouches all together). You tear open the pouch, and swallow the powder with some water. And I think it's supposed to make me sleepy? I'm not sure I understood the pharmacist. I took a long nap after I got home, though I hadn't taken any medicine at that point. I took some about an hour ago, and I don't feel sleepy now.

I wouldn't have even bothered with the whole hospital/doctor thing—my cold isn't that bad—but I'm pretty sure I need to have seen a doctor in order to get paid sick leave.

What sucks about living between two countries:

Five minutes before my taiko drum lesson, I discover that the sports bra I bought at Kaufmann's back in Syracuse and had shipped to me with a host of other items that just arrived last Wednesday still has attached to it the plastic security thing that can only be removed by a Special Plastic Security Thing Remover. Angry!

Unless, of course, someone knows how to remove one of these things with Ordinary Japanese Household Items.

This just after I get an instant message from my brother telling me that a package, which should have been mailed to my apartment in Japan, has turned up on Meadowbrook.

This list of Things that Suck about Living Between Two Countries is by no means complete, but I'm late for taiko, so it'll have to do for now.

A word is born.

Props to Shambly for coining a new word and being the first to register it on UrbanDictionary.com: Flickrazzi.

And he did it on Mom's birthday, too. That can't be mere coincidence.

You know the weather's bad...

when people actually follow the speed limit.

Normally, the folks around here tailgate like tricycles after the ice cream truck, but the last couple of days, everyone's kept their distance.

I'm in Yokota this week, and it started snowing hard yesterday during school. Since the sky had been sunny and the ground clear, I'd foolishly worn sneakers to school that morning. In the afternoon, one of the teachers came in from outside and said, "Emily's car... snow," gesturing that my car was covered with a pile of snow. Lovely.

When I was leaving the teachers room and saying my Osakinis ("osakini shitsureishimasu" means, roughly, "I'm leaving before you, please excuse me," which everyone within earshot generally follows with a Sayonara, or "otsukaresama deshita"—thank you for your hard work—regardless of how hard you've actually worked)... anyway, when I was leaving, Yoshida-sensei, the P.E. teacher, bravely tried, "May I help you?" Kusunoki-sensei, a special ed. teacher who speaks quite a lot of English, laughed. "Say yes!"
"Yes," I said tentatively, "but I'm sure I'll be fine."
If I got into any trouble, they told me, I should shout, "Yoshida-sensei! Help!"
"Okay," I smiled. And since I knew the ichi-nensei (1st-year students) were going skiing the next day, and their teachers with them, I said, "This snow is good for skiing. Have fun!" I'm not sure if I managed to hide my jealousy. I didn't try very hard.

Sure enough, a three-inch blanket of snow covered my car. So that's why everyone was parked underneath the building, I thought. I set to work brushing it all off and scraping the ice from the windows. About five minutes later, I heard behind me, "Are you okay?"

Ikeda-sensei was out without her coat. "Yeah, I'm fine," I said, "but you must be freezing!"
"Everyone is worried about you, if you can get out."
I chuckled. "I'm a little curious, myself." The parking lot was covered with the same three inches of snow. "I think I'll be okay."
"If you can't get out, I will dig," she said, motioning like she had a snow shovel.
"Well, I hope it won't come to that."

I'd just finished cleaning the car off, so I got in and backed out quite easily. Woo! Go little car! The way home was slow going since everyone was being careful, but I arrived at my apartment without incident.

This morning I'd forgotten all about the snow, so though I left exactly on time for a fair-weather day, I had to spend seven or eight minutes clearing off another three inches of snow from my car, and then discovered that they don't clear the roads here like they do in Syracuse. Imagine a little neighborhood street in Central New York that doesn't see a snowplow for a day or so after the storm. Now imagine that little neighborhood street is the only road between two neighboring towns. Now imagine that even when the snowplow does visit this road, it doesn't even scrape down to the level of the road, but leaves about a centimeter of snow where it passes. So I got to school fifteen minutes late, but I don't think anyone was too upset.

There was a small disturbance in the teachers room at the beginning of first period, with the teachers there talking excitedly. I put on my curiosity face and looked at Ueda-sensei, who sits immediately across from me. She's one of the volunteers for the Japanese course I attend, but her English is pretty poor. She drew me a picture of some kind of transportation vehicle (a bus, I thought), and drew some snow around it. These she annotated with "snow" and "stop," and showed the drawing to me. "Oh, it stopped in the snow," I said, and spun my arms around each other making a noise like wheels spinning in the snow. She laughed and nodded.
"This is a bus?" I asked.
"Train," she said.
"The train stopped in the snow!" I was quite surprised, because I know they have a plow for the train tracks (I've seen it), and I've always considered (and especially this morning) that if the snow were ever too deep to drive in, I'd just take the train. "Where did it stop?"
She didn't understand, so I outlined an imaginary train line on my desk. "Minari... Kamedake... Yokota?"
"Yakawa," she added, which is the station after Yokota, then "Minohara," which is the mountain in Yokota Town that has a ski slope.

I finally understood the hubbub. "Ichi-nensei?!"
"Hai."
So the poor ichi-nensei had taken the train to the mountain, and were now stuck in the snow. Further conversations between the teachers and on the phone mentioned a school bus ("sukuuru baasu"), so I'm guessing they've sent one by now. They'll have to send a few, since there are about 80 ichi-nensei, and maybe eight teachers. I haven't seen Kyoto-sensei today; that might be where he is.

So with a third of the school population on a field trip (cry), it's been a quiet day. I have only one class, which Watanabe-sensei rescheduled to sixth period, so I have a large chunk of time to study Japanese post a blog entry. And then maybe study Japanese read the Daily Yomiuri. And then maybe study Japanese.

BlogShares

I'm not sure if any of you have noticed the little BlogShares banner near the bottom of the sidebar. Back in August, I noticed that Scott and Joe had signed up, so I looked into it, was mildly curious, and decided to sign up. It's a fantasy blog share market, where incoming links make your blog shares more valuable, and the more valuable the shares of the incoming links, the more valuable your blog becomes. I think that's how it works, anyway.

After signing up, I'd never been contacted by the folks at BlogShares until yesterday, when I received two e-mails from them. The first was welcome news:

Your 1000 shares in How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog <http://modernemily.blogspot.com/> were sold at B$19.98 ea. for a total of B$19,976.20. This brings your account balance to B$20,476.20 but the transaction will NOT be in your transaction history.
This was done because it was merged into How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog <http://modernemily.blogspot.com>.

Nice. They're reorganizing, and I turn a profit.
But then I got another e-mail from them:

Your 1000 shares in How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog <http://modernemily.blogspot.com> were sold at B$.20 ea. for a total of B$200.00. This brings your account balance to B$20,676.20 but the transaction will NOT be in your transaction history.
This was done because it was merged into How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog <http://modernemily.blogspot.com/>.

So, wait... they're merging A into B, and B into A, and autosold all of my shares in each?

I didn't understand it, but when I visited my BlogShares page, I noticed that a new blog had linked to mine: JAPAN BRATS-Gaijin Blogs. I have no idea who they are or what they want from me, but I don't mind the free press.

<shrug>

o_O

I never thought I'd hear Eminem's "Cleaning Out My Closet" played over the school's PA during lunchtime, but here I am, at Yokota JHS during lunchtime, and there it is, playing over the PA. It's not the clean version, either.

I had to control my urge to bust out laughing in the teachers room.

Home

So I'm back in Nita, in my messy apartment, and what do I think of my visit home?

For one thing, it's really weird visiting home. I've gotten used to visiting Mom and Kreg in Poughkeepsie, cos Pok never was home for me. Mom and Kreg were, but not the house, not the city. I got to Syracuse on the 28th, and Chris had long since taken over my bedroom (he's done good things with it--it looks cozy), so I stayed in the guest room. (Grammy, when she came over, stayed in Chris' old room in the basement.)

Reverse culture shock was minimal. The first thing I noticed was that 65mph is really fast when you've been stuck with 50km/h speed limits for months. (I don't think my car is physically capable of exceeding 110km/h—it gets very unhappy between 80 and 100.) They opened a new 24-hour Dunkin Donuts on Marshall Street, and P&C supermarket bought the old Peter's near Drumlins. I learned that President Clinton had had bypass surgery (not all US news makes the headlines in Japan, and I don't read the newspaper faithfully or thoroughly), and SU head football coach Paul Pasqualoni was recently fired. Of all these things, maybe the P&C/Peter's thing was the most startling, but it didn't affect me much.

I visited with some friends, saw some folks at church, and tried to think of new ways to answer the question, "How's Japan?" I'd forgotten a lot. Not really forgotten, but it felt like the previous five months had drifted behind me into a cloud of fog, recognizable only by its silhouette. I would remember funny stories or strange details one at a time, here and there, but they never amounted to what had felt like volumes of things I'd thought I'd be able to tell people about living in Japan. And while I missed friends back in Shimane, I didn't miss Japan, because I knew I'd be going back.

The guest room wasn't too bad, but all of my stuff had been packed up into boxes in the basement, and, I dunno, it was just weird to return to a place that I once called home, and not feel like it's home anymore.

In a way, when I was on the train back to Nita, I felt like I was returning home.

Location, location, location

Back in Japan now, waiting in Osaka for the night bus to Shimane, so I thought I'd entertain my faithful readers with this photo.

Taken in the "Cash Corner" of the Sanin Godo Bank in Yokota, it appears to be a lottery advertisement.

False Alarm

Maybe learning Japanese will help me get a job.

For fun, and cos I was kind of bored, I updated my resume at monster.com a few days ago. Though I'd never before received a cold e-mail from someone who'd read my monster.com resume, today I got one from a Ms. Araki of New York City, asking me to contact her to discuss my "interest in jobs."

It's not all that it seems, of course. Her e-mail was awfully vague, so I checked out the company, Tabata Oxford Personnel, LLC, and it's just another job placement agency. They offer positions in Japan (though none are currently listed on the site), so the new "Japan" in my resume was probably what caught the attention of the search they ran.

Meh. I'm not planning on leaving the JET Program for at least another 19 months, anyway. Just thought I'd get an idea of what might be available for me after I do leave.

Oh, and pretend that it's Monday, January 3rd, at 11:40pm. Cos it is.

In America

If there's a way to change the time stamp's time zone for individual posts, I don't know it. I can only change the time zone for all of my posts. Right now my entire blog displays JST time stamps, even those posted before I moved to Japan. So rather than change the time stamp to EST, then change it back in a week and a half, just pretend with me that it's 5:30am here in Syracuse... cos it is.

I'm still on Japanese time, it would seem.

Getting to Kansai International Airport was much easier than I thought it would be, since I ran into Davina (a Matsue ALT) at the bus station in Matsue. She was taking the same bus as I, and also traveling to Kansai, so we stayed together till we parted ways in the terminal. This was great for me, cos Davina's a nice person, and she's been to Kansai before so she knew just how to get there. It was strange for me to see so many foreign faces in Osaka. I kept thinking maybe I knew them.

If you ever rent the DVD for The Triplets of Belleville, watch the music video included on the same disc. I swear, there's a reference in there to badgerbadgerbadger.com.

In other news:

Everyone loves Magical Trevor,
Cos the tricks that he does are ever so clever.
Look at him now, disappearing the cow.
Where is the cow? Hidden right now.

Taking his bow it's Magical Trevor.
Everybody's seen that the trick is clever.
Look at him there with his leathery, leathery whip.
It's made of magic, and with a little flip,

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the cow is back!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the cow is back!
Back, back, back from its magical journey!

What did he see in the parallel dimension?

He saw beans, lots of beans, lots of beans, lots of beans.
Saw beans, lots of beans, lots of beans, lots of beans, yeah, yeah!

That's my cue. Goodnight, everybody!

Holiday itinerary

I should be packing, but I thought I'd write a short post to explain my travel plans to any folks on the homefront who're wondering.

I'm due to leave my place in less than two hours. Sayuri is giving me a ride to Matsue, cos she has a meeting up there at 9:30 anyway. This is great, because I was previously looking for a place where I could park my car in Matsue for three weeks. I'll catch a bus at 10am to Osaka, and arrive there sometime around 3pm. My plane leaves shortly after 7pm, so I need to get to Kansai Airport at 5pm. This gives me two hours to navigate the trains between the bus station and the airport, which I trust won't be too much of a problem. I'll see about catching a shuttle directly to the airport, if possible.

Then it's 12 hours and 15 minutes to Chicago, one hour and 40 minutes milling about O'Hare, and two hours and 20 minutes to New York City. If all goes as planned, I'll be touching down at LaGuardia at 9:25pm, local time.

Mom and Kreg are picking me up at LaGuardia, and I'll be spending Christmas in Poughkeepsie; Chris has to work on Christmas Eve, then he'll be down to Pok for the holiday as well. Sometime between Christmas and New Year's, I'll be going to Syracuse to spend the rest of my holiday there. Dad's driving me to LaGuardia on the morning of January 8th, and I won't return to Japan until the afternoon of January 9th. Monday, January 10th is a public holiday in Japan (Coming of Age Day, for all the 20-year olds), so I'll catch the night bus back to Matsue, and then probably take the train back to Nita Monday morning, and sleep the rest of the day. Or go to a Welcome Back party that's being hosted somewhere in the area. It depends, I might desperately need the sleep, or I might desperately need the company.

Tane-sensei has my birds. She's such a sweetheart. I asked her two weeks ago, "Do you like birds?"
"Mmm... why?"
"Heh."
So I told her I needed to find someone to take care of them while I was out of the country. "Anyone, really. Teachers. Students."
I forgot to bring it up at Yokota, but I figured it would probably be better to get someone in Nita to watch them, to minimize travel time. So when I returned to Nita JHS this week, I still hadn't found anyone. Well, that's not entirely true; Amy in Kisuki had volunteered, but Kisuki's a half hour away, and apparently her apartment gets pretty cold. I've since discovered this isn't such a huge problem (someone on BigDaikon rationalized, "Some of these birds come from Florida, and sometimes it freezes in Florida"). But still, yeah, Kisuki's kind of far.

So I had the plane tickets, the bus tickets, and a bit of pocket cash graciously loaned by Mabel; my last stress was the birds. I said to Tane again yesterday morning, "You sure you don't like birds?"
"Mmm..." she thought about it for a minute.
I explained to her that it was okay if the birds weren't kept toasty warm all the time, but that it was more important that they be kept away from kerosene and other oil heaters.
"Oh, they don't like it?"
"It will kill them."
"Ahh, so ka."
She lamented the fact that she has only kerosene heaters, and I agreed it would probably be best if I found someone else.

But then during lunch, she said, "If you can lend me your halogen lamp, I can care for your birds."
"Yes! You can definitely borrow my halogen lamp! Oh thank you, thank you!"

So she came over last night and I showed her how to change the food and water, and told her that if they got too noisy, she could put a blanket over the cage to make them fall asleep.

So I've got to remember to pick up some Lucky Charms while I'm home; Tane said she wants to try them. "They're very sweet," I warned her, as most Japanese people don't care for very sugary things. She was unphased.

This post is longer than short, so I'll finish off now.

Christmas in Japan

I had an interesting conversation with some of the folks in my eikaiwa (English conversation class) back in September. A typhoon was blowing through, and though we only got some bad rain, I think that was the main reason why only three people showed up that night. I'd planned on playing Charades, but with only four of us I abandoned that idea. Kenji, to whom my predecessor asked me specifically to say Hi for her, is turning out indeed to be a pretty cool and interesting guy. I hardly knew him at the time, though, so he startled me first with his English, which is pretty decent, and second with his questions.

Right out of the starting block: "What do you think about 9/11?" Then he wanted to know what I thought about the Iraq war. These things are difficult for me to express in the full robustness of the English language, mostly because I'm not entirely sure what I think about them, but it was a real challenge to explain these things in a way that he (and the other two people at eikaiwa that night) could understand. So, okay, I was mostly concerned with explaining them to him, since he could translate bits for the other two.

"What do you think about the war in Iraq?" I asked him.
"I hate it. I think George Bush is a terrorist."
He's nothing if not opinionated.

"Are you a Christian?" he later asked me.
"Yes, I am."
"Protestant?"
"Err... yes."
"Mmm...."
"Most Japanese people are Shinto, right?"
"Umm...." They looked at each other.
"Or Buddhist?"
Kenji said something to the other two in Japanese, and then, "Most Japanese people don't have a religion."
"Oh. But those who have a religion are Shinto or Buddhist?"
"I am Buddhist," he offered. "On December 24th, we are Christian. On January 1st, we are Shinto." He smiled.
"Oh." I didn't know quite how to respond to that, so I said, "In the U.S., we often celebrate each other's holidays, without 'becoming' another religion. I've celebrated Chanukah, but I'm not Jewish. Not everyone who celebrates Christmas is Christian. Do you mean something like that?"
Yes, they decided, that was more like what they meant.

It makes me uncomfortable when people here assume that I'm Christian just because I'm American; it makes me think that they don't have any regard for any choice I may have made to be Christian.

On a related note, Christmas itself is a well-known holiday, with its own Japanese traditions now associated with it, but it is wholly commercial. In the States, we always talk about how commercialized Christmas has become, but at least we know (or most of us do, anyway) the meaning behind Christmas, and those who don't believe that the birth of Jesus Christ is of any particular significance generally view the season as a time to remember our fellow man, and so forth... what I mean to say is that for most Americans (and if conversations with my other Western friends are any indication, for most of the West), the holiday season means something. And in Japan... I can't say that it does. It's all Santa Claus and Christmas cake. If it means anything more, I don't know it yet.

It's as if we started celebrating the Obon Festival in the States, but knew it only as a big drinking party.
"What do you do for Obon?"
"Oh, it's a blast, man. Best party of the year."
Though Obon is something with which I have only recently become familiar, an attitude like that just smacks of sacrilege.

I don't say this without realizing that we've probably already done this with a host of other holidays. And the Japanese attitude toward Christmas is a disrespect based in ignorance, so I can't fault them for it; I just wish that it weren't that way.
And it's why I want to be home for Christmas this year.

Indian food in Hiroshima

Made by real Indians!
I don't remember the name of this restaurant, but it was a great place to escape the rain and eat something tasty. Pretty popular with the foreign crowd, too. But then, Hiroshima City probably draws more tourists than all of Shimane Prefecture.

December Dandelion

I know! Can you believe it?!
I can't.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

The 3rd-year students are doing a unit on giving directions using train lines. So I drew up this highly simplified NYC subway map.
Critique it if you like, but I already know it's severely flawed. My goal was to include several popular sites on as few lines as possible, and to make it easy on the eyes for students sitting in the back; I think it succeeds, but I'll know for sure when I actually do the lesson.

Christmas Cards Please!

I know it's normally a social faux pas to request Christmas cards, but that's just what I'm doing.

Itohara-sensei wants to do a Christmas lesson in two weeks, and he asked if I had any Christmas cards to show the students. "Mmm... not yet, but let me see if I can round some up."

So if you're up for it, please send me a Christmas/Chanukah/New Year's/Holiday card by this Saturday, December 4th. It takes about a week for cards from the US to reach me (Grammy has been writing to me faithfully about once a week since I've been here), and it'll run you about 80 cents (again, if you're mailing from the US--I have no clue what postage will be from other countries).

I can't tell you on what days I'll actually be doing the lesson. No one ever knows what next week's class schedule will be, let alone two weeks in the future, so the safest thing is to ensure they reach me by Monday, December 13th (when I have no JHS classes). I suppose if they were mailed out on Monday, December 6th, they might arrive in time, but that's cutting it close.

As I'm reluctant to post my mailing address here, I kindly ask you to e-mail me first; my e-mail address is at the bottom of the sidebar (the column to the right). I'll get back to you straight away with my mailing address.

And if you know anyone else who might be interested, please let them know, too. I would be one sad, sad gaikokujin (foreigner) if I got only one card.

Do it for the children.
:P