Misc.

Back in March my base school had their Career Day. Since I teach at a Commercial High School, many of the students will go straight into jobs...great jobs. I teach at a very high level Commercial High School. For instance, we are home to the Number One abacus user in Japan. :) You know, the calculator before calculators. She's a genius. Also we have the 2nd fastest typer in Japan. Or so I hear. I never seem to understand anything correctly. :)

Nonetheless, all my kids at this school are really super smart and friendly. But I wanted to attend one the the presentations where I wouldn't be needing to understand any hard Japanese. Thus, I painted nails! I really like those nails (above), and am considering quitting JET to be a nail artist. hehe.

Btw, getting a manicure or pedicure here is almost impossible. Have I talked about this before? I could go get a manicure for $100 here, and it wouldn't be nearly as good as a $12 one in the United States. The beauty school that hosted this Career Day Seminar was from Fukuoka, where there are a few more nail places. But really-nothing like the amazingness of back home in the U.S.

I really miss my tri-weekly pedicure.....

This picture is from one of our assembly/ceremony days! I offered to help set up. I helped put down all the mats (the floor is wood...not that greenish color). I helped set up the chairs.

And then!...and then I tried to start lining up the chairs, so they were nice and orderly. I kept being shooed away. I was really confused. The chairs were not lined up at all, and ....this is a Japanese ceremony!! Why weren't they lining up the chairs?

Then I realized it was because the measuring tape had not been brought in yet. Every single chair had to be PERFECTLY measured. I wrote down the exact parameters for their chair set-up...but I don't know where I put that paper. Nonetheless, setting up these chairs was an exact science.

Lastly, me and my friend Whitney were trying to kill some time a little bit ago. So we wandered into this awesome game center in my city mall (SATY), which somehow I never knew existed! I must have known about it, but it never clicked, or something. It was a really fun place! Like Chuck-E-Cheeses for kids & twenty-something time-killers!

There was this one game that we played on Pogo-sticks. Is that what you call it? Bounce, bounce, bounce. It was like those motorcycle arcade games, but involved jumping on a Pogo-stick, and wobbling all over the place.

Our favorite was, of course, air-hockey! We started playing, and all was normal. Well, there was a big window in-between the two sides, which was odd to me. But everything was pretty normal. Then about 2 points in, this mechanism that I hadn't noticed pops out another puck. And then a few seconds later-another. It spit out up to 5 pucks at a time on us! I've never had such a stressful experience in my life! Oh, yes, I forgot that it wasn't quite normal in the beginning because we had 2 of the white "blocker" things that you hold. 2 each. So if you can please take a few seconds to imagine.....Us.....both hands flying all over the place to block oncoming attacks, with 5 pucks. Air-hockey Extreme, for sure.