Graduation

I have now been to all my schools graduations, from kindergarten to middle school. Its been fun overall but very different from graduation at home. First, its very very somber much more like a funeral then a celebration. The kids having their names read is the smallest part of it. The rest of the hour or more is speeches. Even at the kindergarten there were at least 3 speeches. The kindergarten had their principle, the head of the school board, and the elementary school principle give speeches. The Middle Schools had the principle, PTA president, village government member, school board official, and some person whose roll I didn't catch at all speak. Let me tell you it was boring. After all the speeches there was singing of sad songs. The graduates would sing to the rest of the school. Then the rest of the school would sing to the graduates. Then the graduates and other students would sing together. Then we all sing the school song. Well, everyone else sings the school song and I mouth along with it.

After the Middles school graduations were the after parties. My schools had very different after parties. Chokai had a more casual thing with food and alcohol. The teachers all said something they remembered about the kids. I told them all how scared I was the first day, but how much fun I had with them. then we got pictures with the kids. One of the fathers got extremely drunk and so the closing was him telling embarrassing stories about the kids. People were fairly friendly to me, but they weren't really eager to talk to me. Kozuya's after party had no booze and was a lot more organized. The kids lead everyone in games. The big games were pretty fun. They did one were people blindfolded themselves and held their nooses and then ate something. They would then guess what they ate. Then we played a game where they had 4 rice balls 1 filled with wasabi and the other with pickles. The crowed watched the people and then voted on who ate the wasabi. The last was bingo for prizes, I won an umbrella. After Kozuya's after party there was what they call a nijikai which means second party. The second party was the drinking party. The teachers and parents got together for a kid free drinking party. It was a ton of fun. At the start of the party before the toast the fathers set on one side of the room and the mothers the other. None of the fathers wanted to sit next to me. So as soon as we toasted they all moved down the table away from me. Which kind of bummed me out. Then most of the mothers came and talked to me the rest of the night. It was great Japanese practice and nice to meet my students families. One of the mothers brought home made rice wine that was just delicious.

Oh one of my favorite teachers is being transferred this year. So when I start back in April I will be working with a new guy.

The spot that Dante missed

As some of you may already know, my grandmother passed away. (Thank you for all your kind words.) In order to attend her funeral, I went back to America for a few weeks.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to visit all of my wonderful friends. If I didn't see you it was because I was needed at home and/or you live too far away from Chattanooga. Caleb and I are planning a trip back to America together for late summer or perhaps the Holidays. We'll try to arrange a big group reunion for that time.

My eternal thanks to Jon and Emily, who picked me up and dropped me off at the Nashville Airport. Both times with very little notice. ( My Bad.)

While I was home, I was very surprised to hear that I have readers. People actually enjoy reading this thing. Who knew? Well, I do ...now. I'll try to put more up here.( If I should start to slack again, a good nagging via email should get me writing again.)

Anyway, on to something more entertaining.

I bet you're curious about that title.
Let me just start by saying that if you have not already read the Divine Comedy I highly recommend it. You can look like a real smarty-pants if you point out that some little detail from some little book is "obviously a literary reference to Dante's divine Comedy". Also, the many levels of hell make for interesting reading.

I digress, back to the title.
When Dante explained all the little nooks and crannies that sinners fit into, he missed one. He missed the place in hell specifically dedicated to people who bring infants on transcontinental flights.
Before anyone gets mad at me, let me explain.

I'm not talking about people who have no choice but bring their infant. ( I personally like to pretend that each squalling baby is flying to a life-saving surgery performed by brilliant, but personally troubled surgeon. It keeps my patience in check.) I'm talking about people who bring little- bitty babies on vacation.

Here's the thing. Babies hate flying. They hate takeoff, which can actually be quite painful for them because they can't always equalize the pressure in their ears. They hate the noise. They hate all the strangers. They hate landing. They hate the whole thing.
I know, I know nobody really enjoys long flights. But imagine how uncomfortable you get on an airplane. Then imagine that your only way of expressing your discomfort is incessant screaming.

I don't know if it's scientifically proven, but it's my personal theory that most human beings are hard-wired to pay attention to a baby's screams. Whether we want to or not. So if you happen to be stuck in a plane's cabin, several thousand feet above sea level and 10 hours away from your destination, with a screaming baby ( or in my case, THREE screaming babies) you find yourself incapable of finding any distraction from it.
Three screaming babies for thirteen hours.

I'm not saying that the parents would have to go to the really deep levels of hell. Hey, maybe they could hang out with the virtuous pagans right beside the gate. All I'm saying is that if Dante Alighieri had been next to me on that Texas-Tokyo flight there would be a circle for people who bring infants onto transcontinental flights.

Unless... you know... there are three brilliant, but personally troubled Tokyo surgeons receiving patients right now.

JLPT Level 3

I'm not sure if you guys remember or not but about 2 months ago I took JLPT level 3. This week I got the results and I passed. It was difficult and I was nervous about it but I passed. This July I'm going to take the level 2 test. Which would make me fluent enough to attend college in Japan. Level 3 means that I have mastered grammar to a basic level and know 1000 words and 300 kanji. I'm proud of my self because foreign language has always been a struggle for me but I have reached one of the goals that I set for my self in coming to Japan: take and pass some level of the JLPT.

Pray Please

One of the other JETs program teachers in Iwate, died recently. He was 23 and had pain and went to the hospital and passed. I just want everyone to keep his family and friends back home in their prayers.

Video Editing is hard Y'all

I was trying to edit the footage I took during our DMZ tour into something that you guys could watch. Not only is the video size allotment for this blog miniscule, but the video editing software I have is very difficult to navigate. At some point I deleted all the sound from the video. I don't know how. It was impossible to fix once deleted. I'll try again from scratch tomorrow, but for now here's the silent version. Just imagine that it's in sepia tones and piano music is playing in the background. (The guy in uniform up front is explaining everything so it'll all make more sense with sound.)


ACTUALLY,

Blogger refuses to upload the video. The popup that refuses my wish to share video clips is all in Japanese, so I don't even know why it won't upload.

UGGH. You win this round video editing.

S.

Big Big Post

In this post I will try to finish about Korea and update everyone on how we are. I will also be trying to post more often in the New Year but the past few days have been trying. First, Korea.

In Korea we had a ton of fun. In fact in you just wanted to come to Asia and had narrowed your choices to Tokyo or Seoul I would say go to Seoul hands down. The English was better. I mean, not fluent but at restaurants people could help you. Basically, people had enough English to help you in the situation you needed. We went to several cool sites like the National Museum of Korea. Its the sixth largest Museum in the world and was huge. There were a lot of cool exhibits pictured bellow.



After the Museum we got a lesson in geography from some Korean school kids. They taught us that the Sea of Japan does not belong to Japan. It also belongs to Korea. They were very insistent that it be called the Sea of Korea. Which I guess is just as good. The next big thing we did was the Seoul National Flea Market. It was really cool. We ate some good Korean food and saw some interesting art and things for sale. We bought ourselves some metal chopsticks. They are more commonly used in Korea then plastic or wood seemed to be. They are really pretty. We were looking around the flea market when we did discover one section that an American Flea market wouldn't have. Let me just say that it was an adult entertainment section and sold some things I wouldn't buy at a flea market.



We also did the USO DMZ tour. As we prepared to leave, a representative got on the bus and said "This is not a tour. This is a trip to a real war zone that is no joke and a place where serious diplomatic events happen." So on this not-a-tour which is to a real war zone where do they have the first stop? A gift shop. That and the fact that it is sold as tour made it a tour. It was a great tour too. We saw Panmunjom, the peace village. It is the northern most village in South Korea. We then went to the place where the armistice was signed. It had guards from North and South facing off at each other and showy diplomatic buildings on both sides. We saw the worlds tallest flag poles, the tallest in the North and the old tallest in the South. This kind of thing seemed common on the border. After looking from an observation post into North Korea we watched a video on the border becoming a impromptu nature preserve. In places the North had dug tunnels under the border. We toured one of these tunnels. It was like any other cave I've been in dark, damp, and too small. the last stop was a train station waiting for reunification to rebuild the tracks for service to Pyongyang.


This set of pictures is of the place where the armistice was signed and where negotiations still go on. This is the closest we got to North Korea.


After the tour we went out to eat with some Canadians and one guy from Las Vegas who were teaching English in Korea. It was a ton of fun. I will write more about Korea later in the week but right now I want to to catch you all up on us.

We have had a difficult week. I watch American news and I know that its been colder then normal. This weekend here it reach -12C which is cold. Our toilet pipes froze and a plumber had to come out. I apparently had not plugged the right plug to warm the pipe. Which is my mistake, but still annoying. Then yesterday our washing machine drain froze and threw up the water from the wash all over the freezing cold kitchen. Which took an hour in barely above freezing temperatures to clean up. It was a kind of depressing thing to do. Now, I know that many of you are wondering if these two event make a bad week, but I have a third one that will defiantly do it for you. Today I got home from work and Samantha turned on the TV and it made a terrible sound and caught fire. That's right, when our TV was plugged in it shot sparks and caught fire inside. So our TV is dead our house stinks of melted plastic and the Board of Education says it will be a while to replace it. The other ALTs and I have decided to ask the Board for more repairs on the houses like vented heaters and non freezing washers. The TV is just the icing on the cake.

Tokyo/Seoul

The flight from Tokyo to Seoul was a decent one. It was about 2 hours. One of those where you spend more time at the airport than in the air. We rode the subway to near our hotel and then took a cab. The cabbie didn't speak any English or Japanese and we of course could not do Korean. So his solution he drove down the street yelling out the window at people to see if they spoke English. He found someone who did and figured out where we were going. By that I mean that the guy he found who spoke English used his cell phone to look up directions which he told the cabbie. The whole time the meter was running. Now to put Japanese prices into dollars you take off two zeroes. In Korea you take off 3 thin meant that we thought we had taken a 100 dollar cab ride instead of what we had taken a 10 dollar cab ride. When we got to the hotel we were happy to find it had American TV including America's Funniest Home Videos. That was soothing.