myOtaku.com: sailor firestar

myO Still <3's You

Vitals

Birthday
• 1979-05-10
Gender
• Female
Location
• Shizuoka, Japan
Member Since
• 2004-03-06
Occupation
• English Teacher
Real Name
• Katy

Personal

Achievements
• stayed alive for 28+ years
Anime Fan Since
• 1997
Favorite Anime
• Sailor Moon, Naruto, Spirited Away, all things CLAMP, all things Gundam
Goals
• to not freeze during my first Japanese winter!
Hobbies
• Rollerblading, Writing, Drawing, Reading, Karate
Talents
• Pretty much the same as those *points upwards*

myOtaku.com: sailor firestar

Saturday, September 8, 2007

How you livin' biggie smalls?

WARNING: Long post ahead!
Heh, the reason for the title is this:

If you haven't seen it before, this is what my apartment used to look like....

So now, at last I can show you all what it looks like with me in it!

bookshelf

kitchen

the contents of my fridge are a bit less alcoholic....

desk

closet

ahh....I just realized I've been making these smaller than I meant to.....ok, the next ones will be bigger...

bed

bathroom

....and...the Evangelion Doritos, since I promised them!

Next time will be some outside type pictures and my yukata. Now let me say one more time....I looove my school! Everyone is soooo nice to me. They're even having a welcome party at an oden restaurant next Wednesday night. Oh, if you don't now oden is a kind of Japanese stew and it's really good. Lots of vegetables! Yesterday I got to visit the elementary school that's next door and help another ALT teach the 5th and 6th graders about animals. They were so cute! I also got to watch my kids practicing cheering for Sports Day. Japanese cheering is really different from American. I think I like it better. It's more about pumping up the team and less about girls in small skirts entertaining drunk fans.....

Anyway, Sports Day is next Sunday and I get to go and participate too! We do all kinds of cool things like relay races, tug of war, and that thing where 2 people have to saw a big log in half. Megumi and I will probably do that one together. Oh, Megumi is the English teacher and she's the same age as me so we get along well. Also, in Japan Sports Day is a really big deal. They practice over and over to show all the parents what they can do. Oh yeah, and "ALT" is what all of us native English speakers are called. It's short for Assistant Language Teacher. There are 19 of us here in Shizuoka, 3 are at high schools for the entire year, 2 visit a different elementary school each day, and the other 14 of us rotate through the middle schools every few months. It's a bit complicated, but it works.

I also got to learn the official Japanese stretch from the kids while practicing Sports Day. I didn't know this but every morning at 6:30 this certain music is played on some TV station all over Japan and people do a set pattern of stretches. I can't watch it at 6:30am of course b/c that's when I'm biking to the station to catch the bus, but the kids will do it at the opening of Sports Day so I watched and they said I could join in. I haven't exactly memorized it, but I will so I can teach everyone at home someday!

We had a typhoon here this week, but I wasn't really bothered by it since it's just like a hurricane. It's not exactly safe to be up in the mountains during that bad of a storm though so the kids & I all got sent home after lunch on Thursday. The only bad part was biking back home in the rain. I seriously thought I was going to die! The wind was really strong and cars kept driving past and splashing me so I thought I was going to crash! Ahh...but maybe I was just freaking out....I got home just fine and it was pretty cool standing out on my 6th floor balcony and watching the clouds go by really fast. Its' too bad though, at home we give the hurricanes names, but here the typhoons just have numbers. This one was #9 and I learned that there are usually about 20 in a year. Of course they don't all always hit the same part of Japan, just like not all hurricanes hit the same part of Florida.

The kids are getting a little less scared of me now so I'm glad. Since they learned that talking to me in the hallway gets them stickers they're all about it, especially the 3rd years which I find really funny. I mean....they're 14, but they like it so I'm not complaining. Also, Megumi is assigning them a topic to write to me about every day in their little English notebooks. They don't write very much, but it's nice. I check the grammar and such and then write them a little note back. It gives me something to do too. The other teachers are impressed though when I have no work to do and I whip out my kanji workbook. I've only learned 2 so far, but they were important ones! The first is the one for person, and the second is the number one. After that they're all numbers for a while so it will be a bit boring, but I know I need to learn them. I can also recognize the kanji for Shizuoka, Ken (means prefecture), Shi (city), Ku (ward) and Suruga, even if I can't read them since they're part of my address! Now I just need to learn Shinkawa and I'll have the whole thing down.

Well, I guess I should stop here so I'm not wasting too much of people's time. Here's a video from the fireworks in Fukuroi that I saw the first weekend I was in Shiz! You can hear Stacey and me talking in the background a bit, and some Japanese girl saying "kawaii!" (cute). Stacey has a video where the girl behind us is saying "Sugoi, sugoi!" (amazing, amazing!) like 50 times in a row. It's really funny!

See you tomorrow everyone!

[PS] Leslie, I've tried to email you back twice, but it keeps getting returned as "delivery failure". Maybe I have the wrong address? Could you send me one again? Thanks!

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