Hindsight

Last night’s “James Sensei welcoming party” was nice. Only the JTEs showed up and three other ichi nensei teachers, but I like them all so it was great to drink with a small group.

After that, Tokuyama sensei drove me near downtown because she lived near Kokura and I wanted to meet up with some other ALTs at the Lucky Moon. So I drank more.

This was a bad choice.

After the bar, which was good fun I might add, I trudged down to Ichiran (“good for drunk food”). Unfortunately, for the first time, I could not stomach any ramen and I had to walk my way to the toilet and throw up. I took a cab home after that.

So now it’s lunchtime and I’ve got a not-so-grand hangover. But I am tempted to take a subway down to Hakata and Tenjin just to look around. I definitely need to go out and ship some packages at the post office and then get some non-ramen lunch. The weather isn’t a factor for me this weekend so I’m going out no matter what. Maybe I should find a place to crash in Tenjin that’s cheap? Dunno.

The ALT meetings are starting to become pretty repetitive. After 4th period (ichi-nensei self introduction) I took the IC Fukuoka highway bus back to Kokura, met up with Alex, had some ramen at ichiran and went to the meeting.

Same old same old: some new funny experiences. S. mentioned how his school was still wacko and how one of the boys took the classroom teacher’s table and pushed it down the stairwell. This is the same school where he says some students would just shoot with their water pistols into classrooms and the teachers wouldn’t do anything about it. I’m glad I didn’t get Kurosaki.

A. is at a JHS where they don’t wear school uniforms. Apparently in the past they protested that they wouldn’t go to school if they had to wear their uniforms. Talk about a revolution.

So Chiyo seems like any other traditional school. I don’t mind experiencing “regular” days.

After the meeting I walked with some others and finally landed at Best Denki where I looked at bags for my laptop. I’ll need to bring this thing with me to school soon or else I’ll literally doze off and plop my head on my desk. I’m already halfway through “The Watchman”, a book/biography of sorts about Kevin Poulsen. I love it. This is the second book by Jonathan Littman that I really enjoy. But, I’m halfway and it’s only been about three days at Chiyo. I guess I shouldn’t complain, but I still doze off after going through a book for several periods.

I think the heaters in the staff room help me fall asleep. Now, instead of being painfully cold, I’m comfortable and reading something and bam, I’m gone.

Friday’s Chiyo enkai was postponed to next week. No problems. Tim asked me if I was free on Friday. Apparently he wanted to have drinks and yakitori with Kuwahara sensei, the English teacher who helped me move into my apartment the first day I got here to Kitakyushu. Tim team-taught with him until last week. It’ll be good to catch up with him.

Apparently the local department store across from Kokura Station recently closed down. Sogo I believe. I just caught it on the local news.

Tonight London Boots will be on at 9 I think. Two weeks ago I saw it and laughed quite a bit. I used to watch it with the gang back home when Mari would rent recorded ‘Boots shows from her local Japanese video rental joint.

I’ve been asked to join my coworkers for an enkai. A welcoming party. I’m happy about that – apparently no one at Tahara does drinking much. It’s my first week and I’ll be getting a little sloshed this Friday. I better rest up.

Yoshida sensei had me correct some of the ichi-nensei’s self intros. I read things like:

“Nice to meet you.
My name is [insert name here].
I like baseball.
I don’t like terrifying teacher.”

I wrote down, “Me too.” as a comment.

I had two more self intros today. I got the usual “Do you have a girlfriend?” and “How tall are you?” questions. New to the list is, “Do you want a girlfriend?” I was like, “Yeah, sure!” Putting false hope into the dreamy minds of JHS girls. I am a dangerous man. Well, not really.

I’ve been looping Gustavo Santaolalla’s music work from “Amores Perros” for at least an hour now and haven’t even noticed. It slips nicely into my mind and sits beside me to keep me company.

I’ve not seen the movie. I’ve only heard this music just recently. And I’m relaxed. Slightly.

I feel some sort of shock. Changing schools obviously did it. I mean, there were students at Tahara that were still curious about me but I never got a chance to talk to them or say hi. I think about that now.

It just made much more of an impact on me this time. I had students I really liked to talk to there and now I won’t be back until February, and then again in June or so.

I’m sad and I miss them.

(Deep breath). But.. I have new adventures to forge here at Chiyo. Gotta keep looking, and moving, forward. As much as I can.

I have been pretty pre occupied lately with my health. The cold is making it worse. I just need to sleep more, which I started two nights ago, so I am doing better. But my throat is irritating me like it did about a month and a half ago. I would like to think that my body is doing a much better job of fighting this time around. I’m not coughing, but I feel my throat is a little more irritated than usual. Not quite a sore throat. Difficult to describe.

Today was horribly boring. I had a self intro for ni nensei kids (“Do you have a girlfriend?”) and a class for ichi nensei repeating what I did last week. After that, I switched between studying Japanese and reading “The Watchman”. I finished it today.

Tomorrow is the Fukuoka Prefectural Mid Year Seminar. Dion, me and another will probably get a hotel just to stay in the area and not worry about waking up at six o clock in the morning just to get there from Kokura (here). Jon mentioned seeing “Ramen Stadium”, which is, apparently, a large area with just ramen shops. For Dion that’s probably heaven, and for me… well I’m up for it. Hopefully it won’t rain tomorrow – it’s been cloudy today with some sunshine thrown in.

Last week I remember a ni nensei girl walking up to me and introducing herself.

James: “Your English is very good! You’re smart!”
Her: “Thank you…. I like (points her finger at me).. you!”
James: “…. you’re smart!”

Seems like a cool kid.

Today I didn’t leave the apartment. That doesn’t sound very good, but I relaxed. House cleaning (that what the weekend seems to be for, partly) and general laziness brought on by the laptop here. I was catching up on some sites while letting “Amelie” run in the background, which caught my attention more than several times.

The Toshiba notebook has been doing well, keeping up with the number of tasks that I throw at it. It did crash once, when unplugging my camcorder from the USB. But other than that, it’s been fine and online.

Dion came by today and ended up submitting to the gameplay of Grand Theft Auto III and Hot Shots Golf 3 (both for PlayStation2). We talked about our individual winter plans. He may go to Egypt. And as I mentioned before, myself to California.

Tomorrow I have two ichi-nensei classes. Self-introductions for them… and it’s my last week at Tahara. I haven’t taught the ichi-nensei kids there because they’ve had student teachers in addition to bunkasai preparation (which happened just last Friday). So now they finally get to see the mysterious ALT in their own classes, starting tomorrow.

I’ve been kind of stuck for games. I think I might do Fruit Basket with the ichi nensei this week, though. What do you think? One of the ALTs last meeting said that they got Fruit Basket to go well in a san nensei class…. A lot of us were surprised – and of course reluctant to try that game with the older kids. This week my ichi nensei are learning days of the week.

From the looks of the current schedule, I will be teaching each ichi-nensei class three times. That’s actually quite hefty. There’s almost no space on my agenda for the other grades. I’m not complaining though: ichi-nensei kids are always on the more energetic side and I really need a morale boost right now anyway.

After school I’ll be going with some others to a baseball game in Fukuoka. It’s a Japan/US game (All Stars?). I actually don’t even know what I’m going to, except that it’s a baseball game. It’s a chance for me to get out (and a little early out of school, moreover) and hang out with the others some more. Looking forward to it.

“Dear Mr.James

Thank you for your inquiry.

How have you been since then?

We let you know about the state of your PC.

The part arrived today.

So,we start to repair tonigth.

We will finsh repairing your computer by tomorrow unless no problem.

Do you mind installing the recovery CD by yourself?

If you do not mind it, we will be able to send your computer tomorrow.

Please do not hesitate to ask us if you have any questions.

We are waiting your e-mail.

Thank you.

Toshiba PC Kobo”

—-

Well, I do not mind installing the recovery CD, or anything for that matter, on my laptop.

I e-mailed them back. As long as the hardware is fine, I can deal with the software on my own. And I could definitely USE my DSL connection right now. I’d never have to hit the net cafe again. Which is good – budget is still tight.

This weekend introduced even colder weather into my California-native self. The second space heater has worked remarkably well. I finished Jak & Daxter (technically I have completed 91 percent of the game). No complaints. It was fun so far.

Today was alright… went to an international festival Kitakyushu Daigaku with Jon, Dion and Tim. Those guys can be the center of attention, especially Dion. We were laughing at people’s reactions. Everyone looked at Dion like he was the messiah, or a person of wonder..

“Oh my god, a negro!”, Dion said about himself. Everyone was busting up. He brought his Hi8 camcorder to show footage to send home to his mom. “Apparently, everyone here is surprised to see a black man.” he said.

He’s staying around Japan for the holidays, or he might go to Ghana he says. My tickets have been booked for California for months now. This coming paycheck I will have paid for them.

I e-mailed PC Kobo just under an hour ago and got the response you read up above. That was a very comforting message. If I can get my laptop this week, I’ll be quite productive (unproductive?) again. So it begins…

Tonight I’ve got to work on some game handouts and catch up on the listening portion of the CLAIR Japanese course, book one. I’m ahead, but I want to push further still.

I picked up a single from Tower Records last night by a group called Ketsumeishi. The kanji for the name of the song was something like “Hana, Umi, Kaze, Tsuki”. The instrumental version will be quite helpful….

That’s it for now. Possibly greener pastures this week.