hot topics

Saturday classes proceeded well. Since it was a very unusual schedule, I only went to one class, and did very little for that one. Pretty much handed out worksheets, talked to a few visiting students, and smiled at all the guests. Look, a friendly foreigner! Let's go to this school! :P After classes, we were supposed to have a visiting student to ESS, but they never showed up, so we just sat around chatting and drawing inexpert self-portraits. Well, inexpert except for Nao, who has mad drawing skills.

Sunday, for once the beginning of my weekend, I met my co-worker Kristin at Kyoto station, and we walked to the nearby home of one of our school's English teachers, Waki-sensei. She had kindly invited us over for lunch! To get there, we had to walk through Toji temple, which was holding its monthly crafts market. When we arrived at Waki-sensei's house, we were surprised to find the door opened by Shiroshita-sensei, another English teacher who was apparently joining us! They had both cooked, so there was a selection of sandwiches, pasta salad, and some weird (but good!) little chicken vegetable wrap things, as well as fruit, coffee, and some really nice wine.

Pretty much, the four of us just sat around snacking and chatting for several hours. We had meant to go look around the Toji market, but it started raining like the dickens, so we just stayed where we were.

On the way home, I ran into Joanna Mirsky (who is my new favorite person, because she made me an absolutely awesome mix cd) and Alex Rogals, who are both JETs in the area. We went to a Starbucks and hung out for awhile, which mostly entailed me watching the two of them get into heated and hilarious arguments. Then I went home and watched the movie "Shoot 'Em Up," which I strongly discourage you from doing. Even though it is starring Clive Owen, who I generally like, the film was absolutely unsalvageable. For those of you who can make the comparison, think "Crank."

Monday passed with little of the noteworthy, but on Tuesday I met the aforementioned Joanna and Alex, as well as our friend Neil, for a trip to the city of Nara. (Tuesday was a national holiday for the autumnal equinox, so we didn't have to go to school.) Nara is home to a large temple called Todai-ji, which is in turn home to the Daibutsu. "Daibutsu" means something along the lines of "big buddha," which is exactly what it is -- a humongous buddha statue, so large that a trim person could theoretically fit through its nostril. (I do wonder how they figured that out.) It is surrounded by a bevy of other largish and interesting statues, buddhas and otherwise.

Plus, the whole of the surrounding Nara Park is full of interesting little shrines and shops and, most of all, deer. There are thousands of deer that wander the park unchecked, because they're sacred and can't be harmed. They can, however, be fed, and most vendors around sell crackers specifically for the deer. The deer are now so used to humans and being fed by us that they practically chase people around the park looking for snacks, and don't mind at all if you want to pet them, or take some pictures (which is, of course, exactly what we did).

After some hours of aimless but fruitful wandering, we made our way back to the station and thus back to Kyoto (though we got charged extra for accidentally getting on the super-fast train), where we grabbed dinner before going our separate ways. Already we're trying to decide on our next outing -- I really like the group dynamic we've got going! Huzzah, friends!

Since then, it's class as usual. Next week is the almost school-wide English speech contest, so we are busy checking the kids' memorization and pronunciation. They were more or less allowed to choose their own topic, but many gravitated towards the same sort of themes. All I can say is that hopefully, after this, it'll be a good while before I have to hear anything else about global warming, metabolic syndrome, or smoking.