I love the nightlife, I love to boogie!

Classes on Monday and Tuesday proceeded well, nothing really notable. Over the course of those two days, however, I managed to rack up five hours of overtime staying after school to work on our video project with ESS. (Too bad I don't get paid for overtime!) I, being the local expert on Windows Movie Maker, was charged with the task of putting the final product together, among various other things leading up to that point. Kristin and I put together a very nice and very time consuming display at the back of the Language Lab, where our presentation was held, and shuttled the ESS kids in groups to the A/V room to record their narration.

On Tuesday, in fact, I was at school until after seven, and feeling pretty worn out. Then, as I walked home, this little guy comes roaring up to an intersection on his unnecessarily loud motor scooter, and I am feeling pretty grumpy about it...until he hits the horn, which beeped out the opening strains of the Godfather theme song. Cracked me up!

There were no classes on Wednesday and Thursday -- it was time for the school festival! There was a lot going on. The first-year classes had all done art displays themed around movies. I think the winner was a model recreation of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, and second place was a big mosaic of a scene from Jaws. The second years all did prolonged dance displays, most of which involved pom-poms and boys in skirts. I now have more video of dancing Japanese teenagers than I will probably ever want or need. And the third-year classes all put on plays. The first place winner was an adaptation of the courtroom drama "Twelve Angry Men" (now "Twelve Angry Japanese," as there was only one actual boy in the cast), and second place was a somewhat hurried and edited for time production of the musical Annie. I liked the girl playing Rooster the best -- she did sleazy well. Besides those two, I also quite enjoyed the funny adaptation of the traditional Japanese folk tale Momotaro ("Peach Boy"), and perhaps most of all, their version of Snow White. It was greatly altered -- Snow White, besides being played by a boy in drag, pulled a gun on both the hunter and the seven dwarves when threatened, continually refused to go on a date with the prince, and eventually made up with the evil queen (so that they no doubt continued a joint-reign of terror). One of the funniest parts, though, was when Snow White kept refusing the narrator's attempts to make him go out with the prince, until the narrator finally conceded that Snow White instead "lived happily ever after with the seven dwarfs, the end." The prince, of course, took exception to this, and through some argument, the play continued. Over all, much fun!

Wednesday night, Kristin and I met at seven-thirty to go to the house of a very kind middle-aged woman named Sumiko, who has apparently been teaching Kristin and my predecessor about Japanese tea ceremony and calligraphy. Tea ceremony actually looks more interesting than I had suspected, but as for calligraphy, well. Let's just say that I'm pretty awful at it. Painting never was my medium! Anyways, Sumiko is a very nice lady, and we've arranged to all go on a nature hike together in about two weeks. I look forward to it!

There were no classes on Friday either, due to it being sports day. We got to watch all the students performing various feats, several of which were probably dangerous. It was a lot of fun. What Kristin and I didn't realize ahead of time, though, was that we would be invited to join in the teacher race against the track team! I was in running shorts and a t-shirt, but had worn sandals to school. So, I traded shoes with Hosoi-sensei, who wore my sandals while I ran. What you must keep in mind is that Hosoi-sensei, besides being the section chief of the English department, is a middle aged man. :P He really is a hilarious guy, though. He was announcing during the race, and during my leg of the relay evidently announced that I had come from Atlanta specifically to run. He and I were joking about my skills as a professional athlete -- he made a crack about a triathlon, and I told him I'd run to California, swum to Japan, and then biked to Sonobe.

Anyway, for the rest of the day teachers kept coming up to me and saying enthusiastically in English, "Nice running!" :D

At the end of the day, Kristin and I went to our respective homes for a shower and a change of clothes, and then returned to school at about 6:40. We were having an enkai! Sort of a start-of-the-new-term, hooray-we-successfully-finished-the-school-festival double hitter. It was held at a pretty good restaurant called "Rainbow," where we had a private tatami room for the forty or so teachers who came. Seating was held by lottery; I picked number eight, and sat at the end of one table, across from and next to two teachers I didn't know, and who didn't speak much English. They were friendly, though, and we had a good time talking about Atlanta and baseball and fishing. Eventually we also pulled in the teacher sitting diagonal to me. I hadn't met him either, but recognized him from a picture shown to me by predecessor Stephanie as "Richard Gere-sensei." (As you might guess, he resembles a young, Japanese Richard Gere.)

"Richard Gere-sensei," which she of course never called him to his face, is apparently an English teacher! But me and Kristin don't teach with him, which is why we hadn't met yet. In any event, he's pretty young and rather good looking, and comes to sit by me for awhile after the principal steals his seat. We had a nice chat about language, and time spent abroad, and books.

A few teachers even did some karaoke, including the principal and vice principal! I got promising video footage. After about two, two and a half hours, though, it was time to go. Our friend Eriko (another third year English teacher, with whom we don't actually teach) was kind enough to give Kristin and I rides home. Since I had to get up early on Saturday, I went to bed semi-early (for a weekend night, anyway), at about 11:30. However, I received a rude awakening around 1:30 in the morning, when there was a big crash in my apartment. I came awake with an exclamation and a faux heart attack, thinking I was being somehow attacked or murdered. I fumbled for my glasses, and turned on the light, only to discover that a wall shelf had collapsed. I took a few minutes to rehang it and halfway clean up the mess, before going back to sleep.

Seven o'clock I'm up and moving to get to the train station. An hour into Kyoto, where I meet Sean, Alex, and Alex to hop a train to Osaka. From there, we took a taxi (which was really cheap with the four of us) to Costco for a shopping adventure! The cabby was a hilarious guy who spent most of the drive talking about boxing, and got really excited every time Sean named a fighter. "Osukaa de la Hoya! Ohhhh!"

At Costco, we mostly bought bulk foreign food, which was expensive or difficult to find in your average Japanese grocery. However, we couldn't get anything perishable, because we had to leave the stuff in a locker at the train station for several hours. Sean was funny while we walked around though, because he got excited about everything he saw.

"Oh my god, guys, look at this corn soup!"

"Check out these water bottles, who wants to split them?"

"Oh, yes! They have bay leaves!"

All actual examples. Needless to say, we've all developed a pretty good Sean-impression with which to tease him.

We grabbed lunch at a McDonald's, and then spent a while trying to puzzle out where to catch a taxi back to the station. Miraculously, Sean overheard two people at the bus stop speaking Phillipino, and starts talking to them in the same! (Sean is a Philippino-Chinese-American.) Well, call it instant friends, because by the time we get a taxi, we know it's the girl's birthday and Sean has both of their business cards.

After stowing our shopping at the station and some mild shenanigans finding the correct train, we make it to the Osaka Dome for our next stop: baseball game! We were a few innings late, but quickly joined up with a bunch of other Kyoto JETs, a bit behind third base. It was the Seibu Lions versus the Orix Buffaloes. We were rooting for the home team, the Buffaloes, who lost miserably, 7-1. We had a good time, though.

Next, our now larger group headed to Shinsaibashi, the shopping and nightlife district. We grabbed dinner at a Chinese restaurant and wandered for a bit until 8:30, when we met a crowd of JETs from Hyogo, a nearby prefecture. They were hosting a pub-crawl to introduce the area (called "Osaka Nightlife 101"), and about six of us joined in -- myself, Neil, Mike, Liz, Joanna, and Pat. Over the course of the evening we stopped in at six bars and one so-called "club," though it was so small that I would call it a bar with a dance floor. From about the third or fourth bar onwards we were constantly dancing, so my legs are pretty sore today! But it was probably the best exercise I've had in a while. My favorite new people of the night were Lester, a nice guy from Guam, Yuko, an adorable Japanese girl who'd help put the crawl together, and Gina, a random non-JET New Zealander who'd come along by merit of being friends with the organizer. She was probably in her thirties, and either drunk or a crazy person. She sort of freaked Mike out, but I thought she was hilarious.

In any event, there was much dancing and socializing. At the last club/bar place, I even got pulled out onto the floor by some Japanese guys, but they weren't great dancers, so mostly it was just us making a spectacle at which Mike and Neil laughed a lot. Finally we all dispersed. Me, Mike, and Neil ran into Lester at a convenience store, and then proceeded to get lost on our way to a train station. We found another, though, decided it would work, and sat down on the curb until it opened up for the early morning trains. By now we were all sleepy zombies, but we found our way back to a recognizable train stop and went our various ways. Since I was had to kill a few hours before meeting Alex Ma at Kyoto Station, and was already in the Osaka area, I stopped in at Hirakata, an area I frequented when I studied abroad here two years ago.

I killed some time at Starbucks, and got a maccha frappacino. So delicious! Then, since the book store opened first, I bought a book and sat reading in the park for awhile. While I was there (minding my own business!), this guy wandered over and started talking to me in Japanese. We had a decent conversation, until it became obvious that he was looking for a date rather than a friend, and the conversation ended a trifle awkwardly. Sorry, guy!

I did, however, achieve several of my shopping goals, collecting a pencil case, a water bottle, and a little lunchbox. (So I can stop buying lunch at the convenience store every day, and hopefully save some money!) I also bought a work shirt on sale, and some little cakes for the office, which I intend to bring in tomorrow. Me and Alex Ma met at Kyoto station, he kindly bringing along the bag of Costco stuff that he and Sean had babysat the night before, and caught a train back home together. (Alex lives past me in a town called Fukuchiyama, I think.)

And that's pretty much the end of my story. I got home and fell asleep almost immediately around five, and didn't wake up until it was time to go to work! Finally, a good night's rest!





Enkai: a Japanese office party held at a bar or restaurant, which generally involves a lot of food and a lot of drinking. Karaoke optional.

Maccha: Japanese green tea.