Almost a month since my last entry! Much has happened since then, and I hope to effectively summarize most of it, but I doubt it. The following will be a lackadaisical account on my part, partly because I am at work and partly because I am very tired and coming down with a cold.
1. Yes, I got my car. I lovingly refer to it as “putt-putt” because that is the sound it makes, especially when I try to drive up hill and putt-putt barely breaks 30. Kilometres. But it gets me around and I got a tape with a cord so I can listen to my iPod on the radio, so despite the perpetual buzzing of the radio and the shaking of the engine, it’s a good one and I am happy. This weekend I completely disregarded my insane promise to the office and drove not only to (and through!) Kagoshima City but to the Osumi peninsula in order to see a rocket launch. We were planning on taking the train to the city to catch a ferry to Osumi where we would get picked up by a friend, but as we couldn’t find the train station I just decided to drive the whole way. The journey from my house to the place where we were staying took about five and a half hours. Of course this includes waiting for the ferry and driving back country Osumi roads (where it is impossible to determine which road is which due to the lack of highway signs) and stopping to look at the map in puzzlement and calling our hosts to yell at them for giving us terrible directions. But it was well worth the trip. The rocket launch was sometime between 6 and 7am Saturday morning. After trying and failing to pull an all nighter, we woke up at around 5:30 after a couple of hours of sleep and made our way to the beach 5 minutes away and waiting for the launch. I almost missed it because I was looking at the ocean and there was absolutely no sound from the rocket, but I did see it fly through the air and I managed to take some pictures. Maybe the pictures will be posted, but don’t hold your breath. After some more hours of sleep, we went to another beach, a bit of a drive away and made delicious barbe-que on a portable grill. The waves were incredibly rough and I guess we got there just before high tide because every 30 minutes we would have to gather all our things and move further down. Since the strand of sand we were on was nestled between the Pacific Ocean and an amazing river, we were soon chased off the beach. The rest of the weekend was passed in Kanoya City and in the putt-putt returning home, which took much longer than expected.
2. School. Teaching at the Junior High School is going well. I’ve only been there while school is on for about two weeks, and so far have managed just to do my self-introductions. I am hoping to god that I did my last one on Friday, and they have become more and more painful each time I have to get up in the front of the class with my crayoned Canadian flag and photocopied pictures of hockey and maple syrup. I’m making it out to sound worse than it is, but nevertheless self introductions are terrible. It is not in my nature to stand in front of 40 people and talk about myself for 50 minutes. I talk as much as I can about Canada, but that bores the kids/they don’t understand. I made the mistake of going on a beaver tangent, explaining the importance of the beaver to Canadian history, which even my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) couldn’t understand, thereby embarrassing him in front of the class. I still feel terrible about it, but saying the same thing about how we have a lot of bears in Canada gets boring. I also pass around a photo album with random pictures of me with family and friends, and some of the kids are so interested but others could care less, and I can’t say I blame them.
Ugh. I have more to write but this is enough for today. Tomorrow I hopefully will buy a computer, and then the internet will hopefully arrive soon afterwards. In the next post: sports festival, school enkai (maybe), KAPIC.
