Brian's Japan Adventure

October 26th, 2007

A Gang of Recycle Groupies

So I woke up this morning to rain. Actually I pulled aside the curtain to peek at the weather to find someone standing there. The little old recycle ladies were standing under the outside stairs to stay dry. The local recycle point is right across the street. These old ladies, who I can only assume are volunteers, stand out there and take bags of recyclable bottles and cans and sort through them. I took out a giant bag full of my Pepsi Nex bottles and Marc’s Coke bottles. They tore open the bag and took each individual bottle out. Then they cut the labels off with scissors, twisted the cap to let the air out and then stomped the bottle to make it smaller. This is NOT something out (English) recycle instructions say to do, so it looks like they do this for everyone’s trash.  Since the old ladies are going through the trash piece-by-piece, I decide not to take out Marc’s beer cans. If he gets up, he can do it, otherwise, I am not going to have these old ladies (who probably gossip through half of Japan) thinking I am the biggest drinker in the Eastern hemisphere.  The problem is that bottle and can day is only the last Friday of the month, so I’ll be wading in beer cans by the end of November.

It was still too early to leave, so I read some great cheaters from the “Best Buddhist Writings” book. It seems to be really well done so far, with only one author who sounded like a flake. Eventually, it was time to get to my meeting, so I went up the mountain in the rain. Fortunately, umbrellas are very popular. For some reason in America if you carry an umbrella, people look at you like there is something wrong with you. Not so here. So while I wait for 11:00, I checked email and did the blog updates. I also talked a bit with Mrs. Y. I paid the phone bill of 60 Yen. That’s around 75 cents I think. I made one four-minute call last month. I also asked her what “Mr. Principal” from the Kindergarten’s name is. She didn’t know and had to call and ask! I’m not sure whether I prefer “Mr. Principal” or “Mr. N” right now.

Money!

I also remembered to ask about when I get paid. I thought it was supposed to be on the 27th, but that’s Saturday. I was surprised to hear that it’s actually the Wednesday after the 27th.  No problem for my part, but I wonder how Marc will react?

Actually, I think I’m doing remarkably well with money considering the situation. I am right at the border of using one whole month’s pay since I got here. That’s one month of pay for two months’ real life expenses. I’ve used the money I brought with me plus about 100Y of actual pay; I have barely touched the money the gave me in September. If I keep that up, I should be going home with about three months’ pay in my pocket. Maybe more if special guest appearances like this party come up more often.  I didn’t come over here for the money, but it’s good to know I’ll be going back with some; my student loans ought to start coming due just about exactly the time I am done here, and at least as of right now, I have no job plans.

The Party Line

11:00 came and the meeting began. Most of the talk was between Mrs. Y and the Language school owner. She brought a party schedule (program?) already printed up that had my name all over it as guest speaker. No pressure. There are basically two parties, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning one is more of a real party, with songs, activities and games for the 6-10 year old children and their parents. The second group is 8-10 year olds, and is more of a conversation/discussion group for them to interrogate me. There really isn’t anything to officially prepare, but getting a bunch of shy (all Japanese are hard to get talking) children to converse for an hour and a half is going to be tough, so I need to think of lots of topics.  I don’t think there is really anything Halloween-specific that she wants me to do, so all the stuff I found already will have to wait for another event.  Basically, I have to show up and talk to people; no great effort. There was no mention made of doing it again on Monday, so that may have been set aside (or temporarily forgotten).  There’s nothing to worry about at this point, so I have the rest of the day free.

After the meeting, I go back to the computer and print off a few pictures that I can use in my discussions tomorrow: a map of the USA, a picture of the Wright Brothers airplane (important to Dayton folks), a picture of the Dayton Dragons baseball team, a picture of a house that isn’t mine, but looks close enough that I can say that it is, and a photo of Dayton itself, which really looks pretty small to me right now.  It’s too late now, but I could have printed out a few of the pictures from the Japanese Exchange program last summer. Some of those showed Dayton and Me at the same time. Ah well. Then the office closed for lunchtime, so I grabbed the box that arrived for me yesterday and carried it back down the hill in the rain. This box was heavy compared to the previous ones.

A Whole Mess O Stuff!

I do eventually manage to get my paper notebook, the umbrella, a huge brown box, and myself down the side of the mountain in the rain. Marc is up, finally washing the dishes he messed up when his friend was here last weekend. I guess even he decided the living room was getting uninhabitable. Maybe he saw the bags of beer cans still lying around and took a hint. They’re still here by the way, so I know he didn’t get up in time to take them out. He asked me why I didn’t take them out, and I told him exactly what I wrote above; that I didn’t want the old ladies thinking I was the biggest drinker in town. I didn’t point out that all the cans were his, but I don’t think I needed to. I suspect that “laying down the law” is going to be a phrase you see here again before too much longer, but not today (yet).

Marc asked if I got paid while I was up there. I told him about the unexpected pay date, and he was not happy. He was expecting it today, or at the worst, Monday. I guess he’s running really low on money. This means he’ll probably be hanging around the house all weekend.

So then I open up the box. Inside is not just one, but two winter coats. The one I wanted plus a smaller thinner one. I’m not sure whether that was a good idea or not, since I can only wear one of them on the plane ride home. The other will have to be left behind. I think I’ll probably have to leave a lot behind, since it seems I am accumulating a lot of stuff. Not from shopping here, but mostly from home packages. I guess I don’t really need to carry underwear, aspirin and slippers back across the Pacific, but my growing pile of books might become a problem.

The box held more new T-Shirts, which are badly needed. I didn’t realize coming over there that “undershirts” were so common. It’s unusual to see people wearing t-shirts under their regular shirts at home, but it’s the norm here.  They also sent my winter gloves which I will definitely be needing, probably very soon now, as well as a Santa Claus hat, which I am sure will have many uses in the coming months (yes, really!). There’s also a little “expanding file” that is really nice, but I’m not sure what it’s for. Unless they send me an idea of what it’s for I’m going to put flash cards in it.

The first thing I noticed upon opening the box was a box of tissues. Not the little travel kind that I asked for, but a regular box of tissues. Huh? They have those here everywhere. Later I figure that’s just to fill space in the box as there are about a dozen little packs of tissues in the box too.  Cottonballs? Why? Oh, maybe they thought those would be useful for some kind of kids’ crafts like the pipe cleaners they included. Guys, don’t send me craft supplies; you can’t send enough for 80 kids, and I probably can’t explain to them how to do a craft anyway. It just wastes your money and makes the box more expensive to ship. I appreciate the thought, but…don’t! Good ideas are harder to come by than actual supplies.

Much of the box looked like someone bought out the local drugstore. There were vitamins, ibuprofen (dunno why, those always mess up my stomach), a first aid kit, and some cough drops. They do have drug stores here too Mom. I may not be able to read the boxes of cold medicine, but I know cough drops, cotton balls and bandages when I see them.  I see there is a box of hair color in there too. What am I supposed to do with that? I don’t color my hair, no I don’t. Really I don’t. Would I lie?

I think I mentioned somewhere in the blog about not having enough clothespins, and they sent some of those. I hadn’t thought of it before, but American clothespins are just junk.  These little clothespins might work indoors, but the ones I mentioned not having enough of are the strong outdoor variety, and I don’t even know if they even sell those in the States. Maybe I can use them, but they seem awfully small and weak; I just cannot picture two of those holding up my wet pants. I can’t picture ten of them doing it either.

Overall, they sent lots of good stuff, with a few oddball items thrown in. As far as I can predict, I should be completely “covered” for clothes now for the remainder of the trip.  For some reason, the pharmacy just cannot get the quantities on one prescription right, so I will have to have another package next month, but at least it won’t be weighed down with a bunch of clothes.

Then, since I had the rest of the day off, I ended up napping. I never did that at home; I never used to get up at 7am either, so things have changed. Around 5:30, I set off for Co Co Ichiban, but changed my mind halfway there and did Happy Town McDonalds instead. That’s two days in a row for that, something I have been trying to avoid doing. I just wasn’t in the mood for a long bike ride tonight. I didn’t even bother at the Happy Town grocery; I just did McSlop and came right home.

Doctor Who Returns

One of the items in my box this morning was my old MP3 player. I have a bunch of audio books that just will not play on my iPod for some reason. My old Sansa MP3 player (which cost about one-third as much as the iPod) plays everything I have ever put in it, while the iPod has so much copy protection and legal garbage embedded in it that it won’t play many legitimate files. Now I have a way to listen to my audio book collection that I brought along.  I managed to squeeze in about two hours of Doctor Who stories this evening. Yes, I am a major Doctor Who fan. I have seen every surviving episode (since the show started in 1963), and am currently listening to the “Big Finish” audio book series that uses all the original actors from the old series in about 120 new stories.  It’s not exactly deep literature or even remotely educational, but it’s fun.

And now it’s 9:30. I’m not really able to prepare much for tomorrow, but I’m still trying to think of conversation topics for little kids.  Less: hobbies, pets, favorite foods, games, TV shows, sports. What else do ten-year-old kids do?  My kinderphobia seems to be acting up again, and suddenly I am very glad this Halloween party is a one-time event.  Ah well. I almost certainly won’t be able to hit the Internet tomorrow, so I won’t be posting this until it’s all over. You can read how it all turned out in the next blog report.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 9:48 pm and is filed under Japan, Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.