stuff i did.

Well a couple weeks ago I had my first Karaoke experience (ever in my life). In Japan Karaoke doesn’t involve standing on a stage in front of an entire room of people [thank goodness]. Japanese Karaoke is about sitting in booths around a table in a little room with a TV and a bunch of friends. The staff immediately brings more drinks the moment you hit a button. Accompanying the music on the TV are "music videos" of Japanese couples taking long walks on the beach. There are microphones. That’s about it. Karaoke bars are open 24 hours, so it's the perfect thing to do if you miss the last train home (which is easy to do cause the last trains are usually around midnight). You sing your heart out in a Karaoke room until 6am when the trains start running again. Hopefully you haven’t lost your voice at that point. I surely did. Of course, I was more into it than some people. We sang songs by David Bowie, the Spice Girls, Kate Bush, Weezer, Madonna and other random artists. Loads of fun. I guess the all-nighter is a common thing in Tokyo because of the train situation and the fact that a lot of people live far from central Tokyo. I have finally been initiated into the all-nighter club. Splendid.

About a week ago, I went to Yokohama with my boyfriend and his parents, to help him look for an apartment. Yokohama is a big city on the coast of Japan almost directly south of Tokyo. It’s been a famous port city ever since 1852 when Commodore Matthew Perry ended Japan’s isolation and opened up trade between Japan and the U.S.


Here's an excerpt of the Wikipedia entry on Yokohama:

“Yokohama was a small fishing village up to the end of the feudal Edo period, a time when Japan held a policy of national seclusion, having little contact with Western foreigners. A major turning point in Japanese history happened in 1853 and again in 1854, when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived just south of Yokohama with a fleet of American warships, demanding that Japan open several ports for commerce. The Tokugawa shogunate agreed in 1854 by signing the Treaty of Peace and Amity.[2] It was initially agreed that one of the ports to be opened to foreign ships would be the bustling town of Kanagawa-juku (in what is now Kanagawa Ward) on the Tōkaidō, a strategic highway which linked Edo to Kyoto and Osaka. However, the Tokugawa shogunate decided that the location of Kanagawa-juku was too close to the Tōkaidō for comfort, and port facilities were built across the inlet in the sleepy fishing village of Yokohama instead. The Port of Yokohama was opened on 2 June 1859. The Port of Yokohama quickly became the base of foreign trade in Japan.”

So, as a result, there remains evidence of many Western influences in Yokohama, including a few western style buildings. The majority have been replaced by more modern Japanese buildings, but there are still quite a few old Western buildings.

Looking for apartments was interesting. First, we had lunch in Chinatown, which is nothing like NYC’s Chinatown because it is SUPER clean. It had great food though. I had scallop dumplings. They were so damn tasty. Then we met up with the real estate agent who took us on a walking tour of the area. We looked at about seven apartments. It was extremely awkward and slightly humorous for me because I’m pretty sure the real estate agent had no idea who I was or what I was doing there. They didn’t explain, and she didn’t dare ask. She kept stealing furtive glances at me, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing following this Japanese family around as they looked at apartments. It was also funny, and slightly annoying, because each time we came to another apartment, we had to take our shoes off before entering. We took our shoes on and off over and over again. Many of the apartments were in the same apartment building, so as soon as you finally had your shoes on properly, you had to take them off again. Ridiculous. The real estate agent had to wait for me struggle to get my cowboy boots on and off, over and over and over again. Poor lady.



After a few hours of this, Yu’s parents went home and left us to explore Yokohama and have dinner. I found Yokohama very interesting. It reminds me a lot of Chicago, because it’s on the water and also quite windy. They, too, have a huge ferris wheel near the water, like Navy Pier in Chicago. Of course, it was absolutely required that we take a spontaneous turn on the wheel at 10pm on a Sunday night. It was very quiet, and eerily beautiful. Yokohama just has a similar feel to Chicago somehow. It’s not as huge or crazy as New York or Tokyo. I liked it. And that’s good, because Yu is moving there and I will probably be spending a lot of time out there over the next year or so.



In other exciting news, the cherry blossoms have bloomed this past week! It’s very important to get to as many parks as possible over the next week or so because the beauty of cherry blossoms is fleeting, you see. The wind blows the blossoms away after only a week or two and they are gone forever until the following year. How dramatic. The name for cherry blossom viewing is Ohanami. I went to one park with some people I met from my guesthouse on Thursday. The place was extremely crowded. The custom is to put tarps down on the ground and have huge picnics under the trees, no matter how cold it is. My favorite part was seeing how all the Japanese people took off their shoes and lined them up on the ground neatly along the edge of the tarp. Even on a picnic, they don’t wear shoes on the picnic tarp. Of course. Why didn’t I expect that? At this particular park the cherry trees lined the edge of a big lake. Everyone was paddling around in boats that were in the shape of huge swans. That's normal, right? Also, the weather was gorgeous. (and yes, there is a cat licking itself in that picture.)

Today was quite a bit colder, but I still went for a walk around Koganei park which is the huge park near where I live. There were a ton of cherry blossom trees there. When there is a huge mass of them all close and tangled together it’s really stunning. The trunks are so dark they almost look black and the blossoms are so white that the contrast is just fabulous. It looks like snow. The pictures I’ve taken don’t even begin to do them justice.



On Sunday, I went to the annual Anime fair in Tokyo. Lots of anime geeks wandering around ogling pretty Japanese women posing in ridiculous (and often revealing) outfits. There was also a good amount of people dressed in big fuzzy cartoon animal suits. Very cute. I liked those. I know nothing about anime and had no idea what was going on, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing lots of cute things. Also, a lot of Japanese female cartoon (ahem, excuse me, anime) characters have extremely large busts. It’s, well, odd. And… that’s all on that subject.

















The new school year starts on April 1st. In Japan the school year is from April 1st to March 31st the following year. So this week I will be starting my own new classes that I will teach for the rest of the year, meaning until next April. I have NINE kids classes in my schedule every week. That’s a lot of kids classes. The maximum a teacher can have is 12 kids classes. Most teachers usually have around 3-5, but I have 9! (Geez) I guess they really did like my demo lesson during training. I hear it's good to have lots of kids classes though, cause if you are teaching too many adult Free Time Lessons (FTLs) it gets repetitive and boring very quickly. I am enjoying the FTLs so far, though. One student told me this week that she found my lessons really helpful and that the notes I wrote out for her were really clear and easy to understand. I couldn’t believe it! She even asked me what schools I’d be teaching at, starting in April, so she could go to those schools and sign up for my lessons! I was very flattered. [Someone actually enjoyed my lessons. wahoo]! Anyway, I’ll be teaching at a different school every day of the week. So five schools in total each week. Some schools are ten minutes from my guesthouse, while others are about an hour from my guesthouse. Here it goes... Wish me luck y’all.