Getting ready to leave

Sorry I haven’t updated in over a month. Nothing too exciting has happened, so I couldn’t think of much to write about.

However, during Golden Week over a month ago, I did participate in the Tokyo International Lolita’s first ever flea market. It was actually very successful! I sold a few of my things, and actually made about 30,000 yen! I had to pay 1000 yen to reserve my space for the flea market, so I definitely did well money wise. I wish I could’ve sold more things though, because I still had to bring all the clothes that I didn’t sell back home in my large suitcase.

I’m not giving up lolita entirely when I leave Japan. I put aside four dresses and two blouses that I definitely want to keep, and I figured anything else I keep will depend on how much it will cost to ship it back. I also still have some things that I know I’ll just give/sell to friends right before I leave.

Basically, all I’ve been doing this past month is going through my belongings and clothes and figuring out what I should keep and what I should get rid of. I’ve made multiple trips to second hand stores like Hard-off and Kinji, and I’ve mailed two boxes home so far. It cost me 9,000 yen to send one box, 5,000 yen to send the other. I think if I send any more boxes home, I’m just going to send them by sea-mail, depending on the weight of course, because it’s more economical, even though it takes longer. I actually sent a box full of winter clothes home by sea-mail, which is okay, since I’m not going to need them again for a long while.

I’m also trying to enjoy my final days in Japan, but I feel there’s kind of a mental cloud hovering over me. Part of it has to do with knowing that I’m starting graduate school soon,  so I shouldn’t be spending money like every day is pay day. I think another part of it is just a general sadness knowing my time in Japan is coming to an end. Basically, I’m just trying not over think about it, yet still make sure I’m making the proper preparations to go home.

Anyway, I started my paperwork for my return flight home. I had to look up flights, and fill out a paper with flight routes and ticket price estimates. I turned it in last week, and I’m supposed to hear back soon about whether or not any of the flights are approved, and then the Board of Education is supposed to deposit money into my bank account so that I can buy the ticket. I hope I hear back about the money for the flight by at least next week, so that I can go on ahead and purchase my ticket home, because I want to go home as soon as possible, so I can spend time with my family before I go down to Monterey.

It’s also stressful to think about leaving Japan, and looking at housing listings in Monterey at the same time. Mostly because many of the online listings I see now all show move in dates for June, but I won’t be there until August. I have talked to some other incoming Middlebury Students about potentially rooming together. A lot of the people who have messaged me personally are also students who currently living overseas. One os a fellow JET in Japan, and the others are currently living in China, and the Dominican Republic. Basically we’re all looking at listings together, and if anyone sees anything potential for moving in, in August we share the links with each other.

Also, next week, we will find out who our successors are. I’m a little curious to find out who my successor is. I heard some rumors that a lot of incoming American JETs to Saitama are all coming from the bible belt, and that there is an incoming JET who earned a degree at bible school. It’s only a rumor, but, we’ll see what happens.

Well, I’m just going to continue to do my best to prepare my next stage in life, while trying to enjoy my last days in Japan. Here’s hope I don’t have a break down or an existential crisis along the way.

Starting Summer in Kansai

After coming back from Stephen and Nancy’s wedding in Germany, I was very jet-lagged. I didn’t really have to teach any classes because the students were all taking final exams, but I still had to hit the ground running, marking students’ English writing portfolios, and exams, making sure all of their grades were in order before noon on Friday after I arrived. I had well over thirty of these to mark, and I needed help from one of my JTE’s to track down students who simply hadn’t turned in their work yet.

I also had to turn in my summer nenkyu forms by that same Friday. I initially took about two weeks off in August because I thought my sister Katie might come and visit me. However, the next Tuesday, I had a chance to do last minute adjustments to my summer break forms, and I learned that my sister was no longer coming, so I decided to not take so much time off in August.

July 17^th was the last day of our first term, and we had our closing ceremony in the big gym. Good thing I brought my fan in there, because it was so ridiculously hot. They brought in three industrial sized fans into the gym for the ceremony, but it didn’t really make much of a difference. I also saw many teachers walking around, trying to wake up students who had fallen asleep while sitting on the floor.

The closing ceremony was when Salimah made her final good-bye speech to all of the Inagakuen students. She first made her speech in English, and then switched to simple Japanese. She’ll be leaving Japan next month. She was only here for two years, but it was great working with her.

The Sunday after the closing ceremony, I went on a short trip to the Kansai area with my friends Deanna and Akira. Deanna is also leaving Japan very soon. She used to live in the Kansai area before she moved to Tokyo, so she wanted to go on a trip to her former home before she leaves the country. We went on the trip through a JR rail tour package. We got shinkansen tickets and a two night hotel reservation in Kyoto, for just around 30,000 yen. Considering we stayed at the Rihga Royal hotel, which is a very nice hotel, I’d say it was a pretty good deal.

On our first day, we took the Shinkansen down to Kyoto, and arrived at our hotel. When we checked into our room, we all put on our yukata, and then headed over to the Fushimi Inari shrine. There was a festival going on at the shrine, but I don’t remember the name of it. While we were there, Deanna, Akira, and I each bought a fox mask, and wore them for the rest of the evening.

We also met up with a Japanese friend of Deanna and Akira, and we walked around the Fushimi Inari shrine when the sun set, and lanterns were lit along the rows of torii gates. It was beautiful, but it was also very crowded. I tried to take good pictures of the lantern-lit torii, but I mostly had the backs of peoples heads in my photos.

We have this one good photo though.

On our second day, Deanna, Akira and I all wore Lolita and headed over to Osaka. When we arrived, we immediately went shopping at some Lolita stores that Deanna used to go to when she lived there.

We had lunch at a restaurant called Eggs and Things, and the same Japanese friend arrived to eat with us. She also wore Lolita, and brought some of her Lolita friends.

After lunch, we went around a few more Lolita shops. One of them was right inside of an apartment building, in an actual apartment, which was converted into a store.

Of course we did purikura before saying good-bye.

We then said good-bye and headed back towards Kyoto, where we had dinner in the Gion district. After a nice meal of cold soba, Deanna went back to the hotel, while I joined to meet one of Akira’s old friends at a bar called Paper Moon. It was a cute small bar. We had only around two drinks each, but later on, a drunk man stumbled in, and thought that we both just looked so cute; so he paid our tab before we caught a cab to go back to our hotel.

On our last day Deanna and I wore normal clothes, while Akira wore another yukata. We took a bus to go and see the Golden Pavilion. We also really wanted to go back and see Nijo castle, but it was closed for the day. So we went on back to Gion, and walked about around Yasaka shrine, before we did some omiyage shopping.

After shopping, we took a bus back to Kyoto station so we could take the shinkansen back to Tokyo, but not before we stopped at one of Kyoto’s cute matcha café’s, because Kyoto is all about matcha.

Even though it was my fourth time in Kyoto, and it was humid beyond all reason, I still enjoyed my trip. It was fun to visit these places with my friends, especially with someone who actually knew some hidden places in Osaka, besides the big touristy sites.

One thing about this trip though, was that I had made plans to go with Deanna on this trip, right before I left to go to my brother’s wedding in Germany. It wasn’t until a week after I had come back from Germany, I was told that Inagakuen teacher health checks would be on July 21^st, which was the same day that Akira, Deanna, and I were taking the shinkansen back to Tokyo.

However, I had also missed the health checks last year, so I knew I could make it up later. I was just slightly annoyed, because in past years, I remember knowing the health check dates at least a month in advance, and this year, it just seemed like they kind of got around to telling me at the last minute. Luckily, I was able to do my make up health check at Urawa Girl’s High school the day after I came back from Kansai. I met my advisor at Urawa station, and he took me over to the high school, and helped me along the different health check stations around the school for hearing, seeing, weight, blood pressure, blood work, and of course, the x-ray.

I’ll have the results of my health check around sometime next month, but of course it will all be in Japanese, just like last year. As long as the results don’t say I’m dying from some unknown disease, I’m not too worried about it. I’ll just do my best to enjoy the short summer break that I have.

Marine Day!

So in keeping with my time-honored, accidental tradition of waiting a week, or up to a month to update my blog, I’m going to talk about Marine Day, which took place on July 21st!

July 21st is a holiday in Japan, in which everyone gets a day off, although it was the first day of my intensive Japanese course at Coto academy. My Japanese classes start at 9:30 AM and go until 12:20. It’s a bit of a pain to wake up and take the train all the way to Iidabashi to get to class in time in the morning, but once my class is over, my afternoon is completely free and I’m already in Tokyo!

After my Japanese class, I quickly changed into my sailor lolita dress and met with some of my lolita friends in Shinagawa to go to the Aquarium.

The aquarium we went to was attached to the Prince hotel. The entrance was steep, but our Japanese friend, Hina, had a group coupon, so we only had to pay 1,200 yen. After entering the aquarium, we went to go watch the dolphin show. It was lot of fun, though we got splashed quite a few times. My lap was completely soaked! Luckily, my dress was cotton, and I dried up faster than the other girls.

After the dolphin show, we went to go sea the sea lion show, but the arena for the sea lions was already full. It turned out that the next show wasn’t going to be for over an hour. We went to look at the penguins, and then we wandered around the rest of the aquarium, only to realize it was actually quite small, and not much to do to kill a couple of hours.

There’s literally a dolphin pool, a penguin habitat, a walk through tunnel with rays and small sharks, a few small tanks with fish, and the sea lion tank. There wasn’t even a second floor. Luckily, we found out we could get stamps on our hands for re-entry.

We left the aquarium to get lunch. We also found a place for Maria and Hina to continue drying off in the sun. While we waited, Maria brought a tube of bubbles, and we played around like little kids, and also took some outfit shots.

Playing with bubbles. Hina took this picture.

After awhile a security guard came and asked Maria to stop blowing bubbles because they were blowing towards the entrance and getting in people’s faces.

After we were told off, Akira and I decided to give in and bought 500 yen tickets to ride the ocean-themed carousel by the entrance of the aquarium. It’s kind of hard to tell in the photo, but I was sitting on the shark.

Akira and I on the carousel

After riding the carousel, it was about time to re-enter the aquarium to sea the sea lion show. We got our seats, and this time we weren’t splashed. the sea lion show was cute. Mostly they got the sea lions to wear funny hats and masks, but they did have some small children come and throw rings toward the sea lions to see if they could catch them.

We finished up our Marine Day activities by going for sushi at a kaiten-zushi, or conveyer belt, restaurant in Shibuya; and then, of course, purikura! This time, I can actually show some of them here on my blog!

Back row L-R: Akira, Maria
Front row L-R: Me, Hina

Hina and mine’s outfit shots.

Even though it was a bit  expensive, it was a great way to start my summer break after the Inagakuen school term ended.

Lolitas at Ghibli

A couple of months ago, I met some fellow foreign lolitas when I kept returning to the Harajuku Fashion walk, and lately we’ve been meeting up for other lolita gatherings.

This past weekend, some of us went to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. This was my third time going, but it was the first time for many of the girls who went this past Saturday.

Deanna, the girl who organized it, bought everyone’s ticket a month in advance. Our tickets were for the 2:00-2:30 time slot and we almost missed it! We arrived at the museum about 5 minutes before our time was up. The first two times I went to the museum, I took the Chuo Line to Mitaka station and just took the bus to the Ghibli Museum. This time we met up at Kichijoji station and then walked through the park to get to the museum. We ran a little late because someone had to pull money from the ATM first, and one of the girls kept trying to stop the group asking if we wanted to take outfit shots in different places. We kept having to remind her that if we were late, we wouldn’t get in.

Anyway we arrived in just in time! We looked around the animation exhibits on the first floor of the museum, before we lined up to  see our free showing of a short film. At the Ghibli Museum, you get a free movie ticket upon entry, and it always shows three animation stills from a Ghibli film. This time my film strip movie ticket had a scene from Castle in the Sky.

The movie we saw was the same movie I saw when I went with Lauren over a year ago. It’s called Hoshi wo katta no hi, or “The day I grew a star.” It’s about a young boy who runs away from the city, and is taken in by a woman named Ninia. He helps her out with her farm, and one day when he takes some of her turnips to market, he gets stopped by these strange merchants who sell him a gem. Later that night, the boy plants the gem in a pot and by nightfall, there’s a small planet floating above the pot, with three moons orbiting around it. Eventually the boys parents come to take him back home, so he leaves the plant with Ninia. The end of the movie has the two merchants picking up the boy so he can see Ninia one last time in this place that has a collection of other small planets that people grew. At least that’s how I understood it. It was all in Japanese and there were no English subtitles., but the animation was gorgeous.

After seeing the short film, some of the girls had a theory that the young boy in the film grew up to be Howl and moves to one of the new planets when he grows up. It might not make sense story wise to people who haven’t seen the film, but the boy did look a lot like a younger version of Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle.

The majority of the museum are permanent exhibits showcasing how they do their animation at Studio Ghibli, and some rooms are set up like fake offices. The only exhibit that was new for me was this small exhibition on lenses, and mirrors, and how they can be used for optical illusions. By the end of the exhibit they tied it all in with how light and lenses are used to project animated films.

At the end of all of the exhibits, we went outside and up the roof to take pictures by the tall Laputa robot statue.

 

Castle in the Sky

Since this was my third time at the Ghibli Museum, I had told myself that I didn’t need to buy so many souvenirs again, but then I bought a few anyway. I have a growing collection of Ghibli character plushies, and this time a found a new one that I had never seen before. It was Yakkl, which is Prince Ashitaka’s deer, from the movie Princess Mononoke.

Let’s take the bloodiest Ghibli movie, and make stuffed toys out of its characters!

I also bought a cute pair of chopsticks, a pin, and I found Sheeta’s magical pendant from Castle in the Sky, and it actually glows!

Sheeta’s pendant

It glows!

It glows when you press two sensors at the bottom. You turn it off by pressing the sensors again. If you press and hold the sensors, it starts to blink rapidly.

Even though I had seen the museum before, it was nice to go again with a nice group of friends. It was a lovely way to spend a sunny, although windy, afternoon.

Group photo by the giant Totoro

Students . . .

This past week was the Saitama English Drama competition. Sadly, Inagakuen did not win. Kesha was the only ALT to accompany the students to the competition. All of us wanted to be there and support the students, but it’s next impossible to let us all go when the competition is in the middle of a school day.

Inagakuen put on a cute little production of Charlotte’s Web. I spent a bit of extra time during lunches and after school, coaching Satomi, who played Charlotte. Even though Inagakuen didn’t win, Tamaki, who played Wilbur, got a special award for Best Speaker. We’re all waiting to see the video of their full performance. Either way, I am proud of them. I helped them practice when I could, and the student’s improved their speaking and acting by leaps and bounds during their two months of practice leading up to this competition.

Also, this past week, in my Oral Communication One class, we had some visitors. The visitors were University students who came here to study Japanese, and they are all teachers in their own country. One was from Sweden, one was from Vietnam, one from Indonesia, and two from China. Each of these student teachers gave a short presentation about their home countries, and the students asked questions. The majority of my students in this class are really good at English, but they act super shy. When Andreas, the man from Sweden, asked the students, “Do you know about the Nobel prize?” everyone just stared back at him, silent. He assumed that meant they hadn’t heard about the Nobel Prize. Yet, when it came time for the students to ask questions, some of the girls asked if he had ever been to a Nobel Prize ceremony, and if he personally knew anyone who won it.

During each of the presentations, Tsuji-sensei and I basically did what I call a “clown act.” We used our exaggerated gestures and chipper voices to try and perk the students up in order to get them to respond, even if it was just to get them to answer yes or no questions. Also, whenever one of the student teachers finished with “Are there any questions?” Tsuji-sensei and I had to press the students by saying “You have one minute to think of at least two questions,” before we started calling on students. This is actually a pretty regular occurrence in many of my English classes, yet some of my best students are in this class. At least they are more talkative than the Oral Communication One class I taught last year.

Later in the week, one of our past students, Ryusei, came to visit Inagakuen. He used to be in my English Expression class last year. He was a little shy, but really good at English. He looked so different! He had all these new earrings, had his hair cut and dyed, and was wearing a very stylish sweater. He looked very grown up without his high school uniform. He came to visit me, Kira, and Aaron, and to say good bye to his old homeroom teacher before he leaves for America this next week. He is going to be studying at a small college in California. I know he told me the name of it, but I can’t remember it, oops!

I’m only 24 and yet I feel like I’m getting old when I see my own old high school students coming back to say hello after they graduated, especially since they look so grown up! It’s only been a couple of months too!

Anyway, now that the last English high school competition has passed, I no longer have to spend an hour or more after work helping students to memorize scripts. The exam season is upon us, and we are preparing exams for some of our classes, or at least preparing lessons, games, and exercises to help students review for their upcoming tests. Once exams start, there isn’t much for us ALTs to do, since we don’t actually teach classes or administer tests during the exam period. It’s actually relaxing to wind down after such a busy fall term.

Even though this month has been busy, I have managed to catch a few breathers and have some fun here and there. I went to the Ashikaga wine festival again this year. I didn’t drink as much this year as I did last year. I learned to better pace myself. I got another souvenir wine glass to add to my, now actual, collection. I also got another wine festival pin marking it as the 30th anniversary of the festival. The weather this year was a lot better than it was last year. It was super sunny and warm. I could actually take off my Northface jacket, and lie comfortably in the sun. There was also no wind, so that made it so much more comfortable. I went ahead and got the red wine as my entrance wine again this year. I can’t help it, it’s the only one that comes with camambert cheese on the side. There’s no contest.

Also, this past weekend, I took part in the Harajuku Fashion Walk. There’s a fashion blogger who started organizing these fashion walks, for Lolitas, cosplayers, and other outrageously dressed people to form a group and parade around Harajuku. I know many people reading this might think, “But isn’t Harajuku already famous for that?” Well, yes, but the amount of people coming out all dressed up in the famous Harajuku styles is dwindling. The shops are still there selling clothes, but the police have cracked down on the people who take up space on the pedestrian bridge that leads to the Meiji Jingu Shrine.

Anyway, the dates and times for these fashion walks are always posted online, and anyone who hears word about them, and wants to come, can just show up. There’s always someone there to take photos. I wore a lolita outfit with a strawberry skirt.

The outift I wore to the Harajuku Fashion Walk

It was a lot of fun! I remember when I first visited Japan as a Freshman at Hollins, and took a picture with some visual kei cosplayers in Harajuku. This was back in 2009, when there were more of these fashionable fold just hanging around Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon.

Taking a picture with cosplayers, four years ago.

The Fashion walk ended with a big group photo session on the same bridge, and this time many tourists stopped to take pictures of us. I even had three separate people ask if they could take pictures with me. Honestly, this little turnaround felt really cool.

Here’s a picture of all the people taking pictures of us.

 

There was also a man who takes photos of every Harajuku Fashion Walk, and if you look closely, you can find me in some of his photos. Here’s a link so you can take a look. I think I look alright, but there is one photo where I know I looked up and started to wave, but my head is completely cut out of the photo. I had a lot of fun at this event, and I would definitely want to go again.

http://www.japanesestreets.com/reports/2828/20th-harajuku-fashion-walk
Also, right as everyone was dispersing, I actually ended up bumping into two Inagakuen students! They were surprised to see me in my lolita dress. They had just come from a big French exam at Aoyama University, and they weren’t sure of what to think when they saw me. Today at school, the same students kept giggling when they saw me, or when anyone asked them what they did this past weekend. Hey, teachers have lives outside of school too!