In Japan

I forgot to mention, on Thursday one of my JTEs lent me two of her Takarazuka DVDs and gave me a present of some teas. And she said she’s going to miss me. I was sort of ambivalent towards her until we started talking to each other about Takarazuka. Now I will miss her, too. Sadface.

Tuesday it was raining (of course, it rained all Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday without really stopping) but it didn’t stop me from biking to Asobiba, which contains the largest video rental store that I know of around here. Of course they didn’t have Takarazuka DVDs, which was what I was searching for. I ended up going into the arcade instead. I won a Pokemon that I can’t name and this:

The biggest thing I’ve won so far, I think. I ended up e-mailing my teacher about my inability to find Takarazuka DVDs. That’s why she is letting me borrow two of hers.

I guess I will add more about the previous weekend here later. Or something.

I am back! So, last weekend. It all started with an enkai on Friday night for my BoE. All of us leaving ALTs had to give short speeches, which we all gave in Japanese (surprisingly). Chris said that mine was the best, but I don’t really believe him. I kept tripping up when I was trying to read it. Ugh. We got cards with messages from the people in the BoE, which was awesome. The food took forever to arrive (the same as the last two times we had an enkai there. I don’t know why they keep having them there), which wasn’t awesome. After that we went to karaoke. I got to karaoke two songs (one with the boss, one with another teacher) before we had to leave. You see, Jonathan was picking up both me and Melissa so we could spend the night at Josh’s, to make it that much easier to get to Takarazuka. We got in late, and we were bushed. We passed out at his place.

I then woke up at 6:15 Saturday morning, which didn’t make me the happiest camper, but I wanted to make sure I had everything ready so we could leave around 7. Robin was a bit late coming to Josh’s (she didn’t stay the night) because of traffic, but that ended up being okay, since we were going down the toll roads and Josh has a souped-up car. We got there early, and had a fun time trying to find a parking lot for a bit. Then we had to find the theater itself, by walking around 3/4s of it.

While we were trying to figure out where the theater was, we noticed a small group of people wearing the same scarf (same color and pattern, everything), and they seemed to be waiting for something. We noticed that they seemed to be holding stuff, too. We walked by, and noticed that there were some people who were trying very hard to Not Be Noticed going past them. Then they stopped and took the stuff from the people who were waiting.

They were the stars of the show we were going to see! That was their fan club! (Very small for some reason. Maybe because it’s the middle of the run, or it’s 11 AM?) I kept trying to look back over my shoulder. There was another group of people a bit further down. Those were people who were not in the fan club. They’re not allowed to get as close to the stars/give them stuff the same way the fanclub is. (Info here)

So, we kept walking around, searching for a way in. The first entrance we found was through Quatre Reves, their store. We popped in that way… and it was basically empty! I’d NEVER seen it like that before! It was nice to be able to see things without other people in the way (even though everyone else did come in in about 5-10 minutes…) I picked up a LOT of bromides. They’re all so pretty. I got one for one of my teachers, too, as a present. After that, we bought some omiyage for at the BoE, and then we stood in line to get to our seats, to see the show.

TO BE CONTINUED (when I feel like it.)

I’m defragmenting my HD, so I figure now is as good a time as any to recap. Starting with the most recent events, so I hopefully don’t miss anything.

Yesterday: Lissette’s birthday party. It was pretty fun. Brent grilled some awesome food. We played a really, really long game of Lunch Money. I came in fourth out of eight, so not too bad. Brent has now arranged a game of Castle Falkenstein for next weekend. I’m looking forward to trying it.

Friday: Like I said on Facebook: I ‘earned three new ways to inspire conversation at school: 1) have an icepack on your knee, 2) have a backpack that is open on your back, 3) have a cockroach motel on your desk.’

Now, to explain those:
1) You remember those pictures of my knee? Yeah. After I walked to school Friday morning, I wanted to have something on my knee for a while, since it hurt a bit. I asked a JTE if I could have an icepack. When he asked why, I whipped out my camera and showed him a picture of my knee. He went and got me an ice pack. Of course, it worried everyone else that I had an icepack on my knee, even the vice-principal, who then had the school nurse look at it. Yeah.

2) The zipper to the main section of my backpack is completely busted. I try to keep it shut with safety pins, but they keep popping open. This backpack has served me since high school, so I guess the dying was inevitable, but sad just the same.

3) So, Thursday night I saw a cockroach in my bedroom. I chased it down. It flew at me. I killed it with bug spray. I knew I had some cockroach hotels that I could use, but I didn’t know how to put them together. I had a teacher put it together for me, to show me how to do it. After she put it together, it was sitting on my desk, which weirded out everyone who saw it as they were going by. I had to explain that I was not, in fact, going to bring it back to America; it’s just that I was having some cockroach problems.

We also made more chinsuko on Friday, making it the third or fourth time we have made it in three weeks. The students are sick of chinsuko now, too. Oh, and don’t believe what anyone says: chinsuko is not sweet. It somehow has quite a bit of sugar in it and isn’t sweet. It tastes like sand. We also made cookies, but that wasn’t until after lunch, so the students didn’t really want to eat any of them. I took some of them to give to Lissette for her birthday present.

Thursday: I had my last day of elementary school. It was very sad. All the 6th graders made me birthday cards, which I love. They’re amazing. A lot of the 5th graders made me origami (this will be important later). I ended up having lots of stuff to carry with me, but luckily it wasn’t raining on Thursday, so I could ride my bike (with my knee brace on, as it’s sort of far). I was leaving the building after lunch, and two of the 6th grade girls stopped me and told me that they had lived in Maryland when they were very young. They couldn’t remember exactly where they had lived, but that it was somewhere in Maryland. It was pretty cool.

Anyway, I was biking back to my apartment with all my origami and stuff in my basket when a little origami shuriken goes flying out. I… have to stop for a second as it is 6 PM, it’s still fully light out and someone is setting off fireworks. Gah. Good way for me to have a heart attack.

ANYWAY. I screech to a stop, get off and wheel my bike back to where the origami shuriken is. I park my bike, and sort of lean over it to pick up the shuriken, while still sort of trying to make sure that my bike doesn’t fall over, and the entire sidewalk is on a slope. I leaned down to get it, and of course my backpack goes over my head. It try to steady myself, and I can feel something pointy trying to jam itself into my skull – one of the safety pins that had popped open. Wonderful. Of course, I ended up losing my balance and fell on top of my bicycle, sending more of my origami flying (I managed to save all of it), and shattering my bell into pieces. And giving me that wonderful bruise on my left knee, as my right knee had the brace on it.

After that, I called my parents to asked them about the bike grease. They said to not wash it, to just send those pants home (so a certain Grandma can work her stain magic). Then I went in to the weekly meeting, where I asked for ice (this is before my knee was turning colors. It just hurt then). So of course I go to explain to my supervisor why I wanted ice and how I managed to injure myself. The other ALTs mentioned that it was a bit strange. Jeff said it wasn’t as strange as when I first came and stabbed myself in the foot with a knitting needle. Which really, he’s right. Then we had a meeting, which involved going and bowing to many different people in the office, and going down (and up) one flight of stairs, which was murder. Melissa and I got to hand out our omiyage from going to Takarazuka on Saturday, and I got to talk to some of the teachers that I really like. One of them is going to go see if there’s a place where you can rent Takarazuka DVDs (they’re $100 each. Of course I want to rent them!)

After the meeting, I went and paid for my ticket back home, and then I went to JTB, to see about a ticket to Tokyo for August. WAAAY too expensive, so I’m going to have to find another way to get there.