Hidaka city people festival and a teacher's trip to an onsen

My general habit with this blog is to post on Sundays. Unfortunately, I was so exhausted last Sunday that I neglected to update. Bad llama!

I'll start by sharing with you why I was so tired. Last weekend was the 日高市民祭り (Hidaka city people festival), and the office thought it was a good opportunity for us to teach the city about what an AET is (in JET lingo, my job is ALT - Assistant Language Teacher, in Hidaka, my job is AET - Assistant English Teacher). As a result, the six of us found ourselves spending most of the weekend at the Hidaka arena and making hand turkeys and snowflakes with children. Kaz did a lot of breakdancing, and I danced a little hula. A highlight of the weekend was dancing for the mayor who kept exclaiming "sugoi!" and insisting I teach the local hula group how to "do real hula."

*sidenote that has a related purpose*
At least four of us (maybe more, I'm not sure) take our dry cleaning to the same little shop near our apartments. She's super sweet, and recognizes all of us (not that hard, but still its nice that she asks us how teaching is going).

Anyway, she complimented Kaz's dancing by saying "黒人のおどりすごい！" which essentially translates to "the black person's dancing is awesome!" She previously said to another AET (in Japanese) that "your black friend has really good Japanese."

I also crashed my bike into a guardrail on the way to the arena. It hurt alot, and it was only a few days ago that I was able to sit on my bike with out pain. Sad, I know.

The smart thing to do after working from 8-4 when you know you have to do it all over again the next day is to go home and sleep. Dan and I went out instead. Our friend Albert hosted a party only four train stops away, so we really couldn't not go. Furthermore, he prepared Cuban food (black beans over rice), and I never had Cuban food before (it was pretty good!). To condense a long, awesome night into a short paragraph, we played a really fast game of "I never," had a mini-dance party, and took a ton of photos. One of my favorite moments of the night involved my friend Amy exclaiming "I've never felt pleasure like this before!" while I was giving her a back massage. The hilarity was further compounded when Albert, from whom Amy stole the massage by inserting herself between Albert and me, said "I want to feel pleasure too!" As expected, Dan and I (intentionally) missed the last train so the party turned into a big sleepover.

Unfortunately, the next morning, Dan and I had to go back to the festival. We left Albert's apartment at 6:30. It was painful for a number of reasons (not the least of which involved my bicycle and a guardrail).

Then I came home and slept.

You would think, since we worked the weekend, we would get Monday and Tuesday off. But no, instead we got two "substitute holidays" to be used for a day when we don't have class (in other words, the days we would be doing nothing in the 教育センター (education center). One of these days was used on Wednesday. I'm not really sure what the holiday was, but here are the facts I know: only people in Saitama get the holiday (therefore its not a national holiday), my VP told the other teachers that they had to take nenkyu (paid leave), and my co-teacher, when talking about the holiday, sang "Happy Birthday" to Saitama. Essentially, it seems as though its a birthday celebration for the prefecture, but they don't care enough to make it a real holiday.

Anyway, since we had Wednesday off, Dan, Zac, and I decided to go out and meet up with our friend Sabrina in her area of Saitama (for reference, Sabrina is the girl who missed her last train and ended up spending the night at my apartment). First stop was dinner at a restaurant that was half-restaurant, half-child's toy box, and half-greenhouse (it's like manbearpig. if you don't get the reference, don't ask). Next, we went bowling. Dan lost, and as a result, he lost a bet. In the interest of preserving your impression of my friends and I as responsible, mature people who are sane enough to work with children, I won't go into details except to say I will be surprised if we actually go through with the terms of the bet. After bowling was a bar where Zac could not keep his hands off a display of daikon (again, don't ask) and Dan and Sabrina were sure the waitstaff was laughing at them behind their backs. We missed the last train and spent the night at Sabrina's apartment.

Breakfast the next morning was at Denny's. As one of my TIUA students proudly said, "Denny's in Japan has rrrrrice!" (he was very proud of his ability to pronounce the letter"r"). We then watched Bourne Identity, and I felt sick from the shaky camera. Lunch/dinner was at an odd Chinese restaurant.

As with Sunday, after I returned home, I promptly fell asleep.

As if my life didn't sound crazy enough, the following Friday was my school's annual teacher's trip. We went to an onsen in "Tokyo" (actually far away from the city, but in the prefecture). It was absolutely gorgeous, and a lot of fun. The main downside was I was exhausted from listening to/speaking Japanese all day. The enkai (a work dinner party that is more about drinking and pouring drinks for others than the actual food) was a lot of fun and was followed by the best way I've seen to get people to sing karaoke. We played bingo (I had fun and made them call the numbers in English), and the winner was awarded a prize and forced to sing. I won a scarf and sang "Yesterday" with the art teacher who really likes English. The onsen was fun, and the water felt amazing (i think it was diverted from the nearby river). The next day we went up a mountain on a cable car and saw a temple. I'd write more about it, but that's about it.

I then hopped on a train and met my friend Evan (from Willamette). He has a conference in Tokyo this week, so he came up a couple of days early to visit. I'm not quite sure what we're going to do yet, but I'm near Tokyo, so I'm sure we'll find something interesting.