one more thing

that I've been thinking about lately-It's JUNE already!!! That means I only have 5 months left...
All along I have been comforting myself-it's okay, I still have lots of time to study for the test (Japanese) and then I woke up and it was June and June is almost over and the test is at the beginning of December and CRAP!!!
Do you think that means I've started studying yet??!

still here

Haven't written in a while, I know. Lots of thoughts rumbling around in my head about what to write but just haven't had the chance lately. The kids had mid-terms so I thought that work would be a little easy but it ended up not being the case. One of my coworkers had to fly back to Canada briefly, leaving me with all of the marking. All of the marking of the writing tests-so I ended up marking over 80 essays, and of course it had to be done quickly because we had to get the tests back to the kids immediately. It ended up taking lots of time as my days were interrupted by speaking tests, too-we had to interview about 20 kids each day and mark those tests immediately, before we forgot things. Anyway, got them done. Now I'm trying to get used to my new schedule, new since April but with lots of events happening in April and May, we didn't have full classes until June. Now we have full classes and the final exams are at the end of the month, so I have to make another test! Never ends.
Some things amusing me lately:

Been listening to lots of Tom Waits again. The song Big in Japan just makes me laugh, cause of the song and because I take it literally- he sings I'm big in Japan. It's like my own private joke (because I feel big in Japan.)

Bought a pair of gauchos last weekend. Gauchos!! Ok, the name alone makes me laugh but also the fact that they are popular again...I don't know, I think it's funny.
Enough for now, just wanted to get back in touch.

here and there

Friday, the boy had a field trip. This means I had to make him lunch. Here's his lunch: (not nearly as cute as the other moms do but oh well)

Yesterday we went to my school festival. This was at the train station.

This was painting senbei, or rice crackers with syrup, then adding sprinkles to make a picture.

Hard to see but he's painting a train...

eating jelly made by my students-cherry in his cheek

at a restaurant for a yummy lunch with my friend


Home again-doing piano homwork-this is his book for piano class. You can see what fingers we're working on.

The 'song' he's practicing.

this is scary

article from the news
Holy Crap! last repaired in 1975!

all about fish

our at least my kid's fish, anyway. Last September we went to our local city 'festival'. People who live in Japan know that that means you can pay a couple of bucks to try and catch goldfish (with kind of a paper net-it sounds lame because, well, it is.) Of course, little boy had to try it. Of course, we didn't catch any fish but the people who take our money for this seem to feel like they owe you something and so they scooped a couple of fish and put them into the plastic bag to take home. (Let me just say that I wasn't there!)
Anyway, when I got home, little boy shows me his fish proudly. I believe I said something to him about giving them to his cousin who already a fish tank and everything set up, but he told me that his grandmother had told him that she would get him a tank. Great. More things for me to take care of. sigh.
They got the fish tank, food, whatever else they needed. We put the fish in the fish tank. They died, one by one. (There were 3 of them?)
Little boy's dad, trying to make him feel better, decides to get more fish. They look on the internet for fish and choose some of the ugliestfish I have ever seen. Their name, which I can never remember, is something like demekin, de meaning big ass, me meaning eyes, and kin meaning goldfish. So it means big ass eyed goldfish. I found a picture on line that sort of resembles the ones we got.
Anyway, we got 3 more fish. I was not terribly impressed with them. We put them in the tank. They did nothing. We fed them. They did nothing. We didn't feed them. They did nothing. They were so uninteresting! Not surprisingly, they died one by one.
Got 2 more fish. One big ass eyed and one something else (I know, I'm so technical). These ones move! They seem excited to see us, and always very happy to be fed! I can sort of think of these ones as cute. So my next question is, if your pet fish has a long string of shit coming out of it, does that mean you are feeding it too much?

just letting you know

in case you have read something in the news about Japan-I didn't even feel the earthquake early Thursday morning.
We are fine :)

delayed

I was at school, checking out a comment from Gina (hi Gina!) and found that the video seems to be working now-scroll down to this is the 4th time!

wordless wednesday

OK, this is like taking a page from illaheebaby’s book, but I like this style and it’s easy to write (therefore easy to post more!)
To my inner i-pod,
While I admit that I like music a lot, could you please stop making me listen to songs that I don’t like? Come on, now, I have never enjoyed Roxette, could you please stop making it go through my head?! Also, I would appreciate it, if you are going to continue making music go through my head, if you could at least pick songs from the music I listen to lately, ok? I don’t really need those kid songs in Jewish anymore, I stopped babysitting that little girl about 10 years ago now!
Thanks very much,
sheri

learning

What have you learned this week?
I found out that it’s not good to substitute baking soda for baking powder. Scones ended up tasting like baking soda. Yeeech!
I learned that when I get bored, I want to eat. Never used to be like that!
How about you?

um

Back at work. Still not very good at this. Well, I’m now into my second full week of being back at school. Still haven’t had a full week of classes. Yes! It’s been really good to ease back into things. I think we won’t really have a full week of classes until June or so, (not kidding, either!) There seems to be something every week, and then by the end of May we have midterms, which is pretty interesting as we have barely had classes in some cases so what am I going to test them on?
The only problem is that I end up getting bored, or wasting time on the internet. There’s so many things I want to do but once I start looking on the net I don’t bother doing anything. Kinda stupid, I know. I could certainly use that time to study or write this. Hehe.
So I am teaching about 20 hours a week, a number I have been told is a lot by other teachers but it doesn’t seem too bad (same as last year). A new thing for me this year is going to the high school that is attached to my junior high school. I have 2 classes a week there. All of the students are kids I taught last year, so I know them. Unfortunately, I know them. The students from this junior high were divided into levels:2 advanced classes, 2 average classes, and 1 basic class. I am the basic class teacher. 14 boys and 2 girls. While I was looking at the list of names I was thinking “Ah!”, not him”, “oh no!” Anyway, the biggest troublemakers and loudest boys are almost all in my class. *sigh*
Well, I think I am going to follow the example of a few of my friends and start doing Wordless Wednesday and Foto Friday. I want to post more!

oops-time keeps slipping away

Again it has been such a long time since I updated. I have been meaning to write and even had a bunch of things I was thinking of writing about but, not having written them down, can no longer remember. Sigh.
Anyway, I’ll write about something I do remember. A couple of weekends ago, I went to Tokyo. By myself. Holy cow! As in the first time I didn’t sleep with my boy. Since he was born. It was sooooo cool and soooo needed! He didn’t have much of a problem, it seems, without me, although he called me a couple of times and apparently cried a little on Sunday morning. It was great.
So the reason I went to Tokyo was to take part in a conference. It was a conference of Canadian Consular Wardens, of which I am now officially. (got a certificate and everything!) A Consular Warden is basically the eyes and ears for the embassy in our area. What that really means is if there is a natural disaster in my area I have to contact people on my list and see if they are all right. Even though that if there is a natural disaster (read earthquake) then probably all of the communication lines will be down and I’m not sure how I’ll be trying to contact everyone. But anyway. We found out at the conference that we have to try and reach the people on our list but that the number of Canadians who are in Canada compared with the number of Canadians who are registered in Japan are completely different- almost 3000 people are registered but the Japanese government gave almost 12,000 Canadians alien cards last year. So if you are not registered, you should do so. Basically it’s so the embassy can get information about you and pass it on to your family in Canada. In the event of an emergency.
Other than that, not much is new. I am at work again, killing time. The kids have all taken their final exams and so I have finished marking and giving back exams, giving grades, and there are no more lessons to plan for this school year. I guess I could plan for next year but seeing as I don’t know what classes I’ll be teaching (or if I even will be teaching here next year-nothing is 100%!) it would be challenging. Guess its time to start studying Japanese again!

video

Can anyone see it? I just get the little x in the top left corner.!!?!

This the 4th time!

The whole video thing has not been working out for me. I'm going to try one last time!

Only about 30 minutes this time...

let's see if this works

Hiroki's grandmother bought him a used piano for Christmas.It seems like uploading this takes a really long time but I would like to see if it's going to work. What does everyone else do-do you somehow make your video file smaller before uploading it? Or do you just end up spending a lot of time waiting?

7 5 3

Back at work. I don’t know why I feel like I can get this done more here than at home. Could be because I have so much time on the computer here. I have also planned lots of my lessons already and so end up wasting time surfing net. I could probably study Japanese…
Last November we took the boy to the shrine to celebrate his becoming 5 years old. Shichi-go-san (7,5,3) is often celebrated here, I’ve heard that it started because children didn’t survive long in the old days, so people started to go to the shrine to give thanks to the gods that their children were still alive. Wikipedia, however didn’t mention that. Anyway, boys go at 5 years old and get dressed up in a hakama or suit. We rented a hakama for him, it was beautiful.



The shop that we rented it from was great. The woman said to my mother-in-law that we don’t need to pay for someone to put it on him (the sashes should be tied elaborately, especially if you are going to get pictures done) and that she would teach us. So she did. My mother-in-law tried it a couple of times and then the saleswoman told us we could take it home to practice with. We had wanted to use it the next week. She also told us that she was going to give us a special deal-we said that our price range was around 15,000 yen or about $150 but the one she showed us first was about double that. Gulp. She said if we liked it we could rent it for our price range. Nice. She was really good at sales, I think. Anyway, we rented it and ended up borrowing it for a week longer since we couldn’t get to the shrine on that weekend. It was great, didn’t cost anymore money or anything. My poor mother-in-law ended up practicing and practicing tying the sash (she used a garbage can) and in the end Hiroki kept looking down at it while she was tying it and saying “That’s wrong, you’re doing it wrong!” Rat.

She finally did it!

Ok I am at work procrastinating. I have been wanting to write for a long time-there are so many things going on that I wanted to write about. First, of course, was the winter holidays. I had a pretty time, once all of the cleaning was done (finally on Dec 31st!) Actually, we didn’t really get all of the cleaning done but it was more of enough for now. My mother-in-law was leaving a lot of it to me, as I think she was pretty tired. But in between Christmas and the cleaning, we did manage get away for a night to a ryokan, or a Japanese inn, and the only worry we had was ‘Which hot spring should I try next?” Pretty nice, actually.


And something else I liked about that ryokan was that it had French food, yum! Of course dinner was served in our room. We took advantage of the fact that it was my mother-in-law’s birthday and got extra cake served with dinner. We had a whole bunch of cake, and it was all really tasty.

Cake and chocolates, mochi (rice cakes made from super fattening rice) have all contributed to my weight gain for the start of the year. I have to cut back on all of my snacks again to get back to where I am a little more comfortable.
Other things I have been itching to write about-living here in Japan. Things have gotten increasingly strict for foreigners here. Last year we had the idiot minister of justice announce to the press that he had a friend of a friend who was in Al-Quaida and that person had come into Japan several times. The way he announced it was so unclear it seems like he was warned about one of the bombings but he didn’t do anything about it, like warn anyone. He later changed his statement to say that he hadn’t known about any bombings and he didn’t really know the person who was in Al-Quaida, anyway, he made the government here look as bumbling and inept as they are, I suppose. The upshot of his whole statement was that Japan needs to protect itself against foreigners (which I will always be living here) and therefore the government made the program to fingerprint every foreigner every time they leave and re-enter the country. Every time. And not only that, but they will keep the records for an unannounced period of time (I think I heard like 70 years or something ridiculous like that) and they will give other government officials any access they need to the records. As in any police office around the country can access the fingerprint bank any time to use for ‘solving crime’. Maybe I am paranoid, but I don’t believe that first of all, the government is capable of not leaking our fingerprint information. I also am slightly paranoid that a police officer could frame any foreigner for any crime. Maybe I have been reading too many websites about this, but I just don’t feel comfortable that they’ll keep fingerprints for that long. Actually I have stopped reading a lot of sites like that as I have been feeling more and more paranoid-I’ve heard that I can actually (technically) be deported from the country for traffic violation. Anyway, it has made me feel not so happy about things here. It was brought up again today, with the headline in the news that permanent residents may be required to prove their Japanese proficiency. Sigh.

Happy Holidays!

everyone...I can't believe I haven't updated since Sept! (Blushing)
I don't have much time now-end of the year cleaning and new year's cards etc-should have a bit more time in the new year! So I wanted to wish everyone all the best this holiday season and I hope you have an excellent new year!
xoxo sheri

now that I've got a moment

Well here I am at work again. I have been keeping myself busy and out of trouble. Maybe too busy. This was my first full week back to work as last week we had a couple of days we could go home early because of the typhoon. Most days I have been quite busy getting back into it but today the kids have tests that have nothing to do with us, so I have had to do nothing all day. (or is that nothing to do?) Coming here full time again has been particularly hard on the little guy. Wednesdays I work especially late, leaving in the morning a little after 7 and coming back a little after 8 at night. He is not happy with me on Thursday mornings and especially this last one. He was crying and saying he didn’t want me to go to work. Granted he was tired from going to bed late and getting up early, but I felt soooo bad. Like I wanted to cry myself. Really. Luckily this weekend and the next are long weekends, so I will have some more time to spend with him, so I told him that and it seemed like he got better but I still felt like sh*t all day.
Anyway, more about what’s going on here. I feel like I don’t have enough time in the day to get everything done. And I don’t, but it’s my fault. I have decided that I am going to try and get into better shape, which means going out for a walk earrrrly in the morning. (Like 5ish). There is a little path that I can take and I don’t have to worry about traffic. I enjoy it because it gives me some time to myself, to listen to music and just do something physical. There are always other people on the path at the same time, pretty much regulars I guess. I always feel better after having gone.
Another reason I’m busier lately is because I have decided to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. There are 4 different levels of this test and I got the 2 easiest ones years ago. But the gap between the one I have and the next one I want is huuuuge. I’m quite sure that I’m not going to pass but I guess I want to try a little. I have thought for years that I wanted to take this test so I decided to take it this year to try and light a fire under my butt to get myself to study?! Of course it’s only offered once a year, in December, and I decided at the beginning of September to take it, so I’m quite sure that I won’t be passing it.
So one of the things I did this summer was to make myself a bag. Actually I managed quite well, I thought, despite the fact that the last time I made something I was in junior high school. When I was in the Vancouver airport I saw a bag that I thought was really cool and almost bought it but didn’t because I decided that I didn’t have the money. Of course, after I came back I regretted not buying it. So I looked on the internet for shoulder bags and across this tutorial for making them. I really thought I couldn’t do it but a lot of the comments people left on the tutorial were from people who couldn’t sew and they all said how easy it was. My mother-in-law also encouraged me-she thought I would be able to do it. She also recommended trying it once with scrap material, and I’m so glad she did because I wouldn’t have otherwise. After I figured out how to do it and did the cutting and everything, she asked me if I knew how to use a sewing machine with a foot pedal. I thought that was pretty strange-are there sewing machines without pedals? Until I saw what she meant. It’s a sewing machine that you have to continuously pedal because it’s not an electric sewing machine. It took me a while to get used to it but I did. (Not that I can sew really straight or anything.)


After making a practice one, I finally started on my bag. The tutorial mentioned using recycled materials and because I am um, frugal, I thought that would be cool. I had a pair of pants that a friend gave me when she left Japan that were too big for me but I liked the material so I kept them. I decided to use them and found some scrap material to use for the inside that I thought would look good. In the end, I was pretty pleased with the result.

The only other thing that was going on around here is the typhoon that happened last week. The river in front of my house overflowed into the street in front of my house and came up into the front yard, almost to the door. It totally freaked me out. This is a picture of the river the next morning, after it had gone down. I usually can't see the river from this vantage point.

Enough for now, I guess I should do some work. Actually Tuesday is another day that I don’t have to do anything because the students have physical fitness tests, and all but the first period

(when I don’t have a class) is cancelled. Yay!

ok, maybe

Thanks for your comments ladies! They are very much appreciated! I seemed to have figured out the language thing-when you go to your dashboard, somewhere under your picture you should see language with a drop down menu. I changed mine to English and I can read again! I think my commenting problem is a security system thing but can't read what it says with the Japanese OS.
I don't have time to blog about my trip back to Canada right now but I will when I have time (and inspiration :P) but I will post some pics.

The young one and one of his uncles. Cheers!
Riding the chariot with his Canadian cousin.
We met Medea and her wee one! It was so cool!
Chuck E. Cheese fun!