Infectious Part 3.

Today's absentee count of the first years was over 80 students today. The second years are beginning to drop as well, with almost 30 students absent with influenza. The only reason the third years aren't getting sick is because they're too busy studying 20 hours a day in solitary confinement in their bedrooms.

In the effort to prevent an influenza epidemic, although I suspect it's already too late, all classes tomorrow have been cancelled. There was a big meeting after lunch about it, and I've found it hard to express surprise at the decision without being amused. The students still at school are completely thrilled at the bonus day, and I'm content with a student-free day myself.

To then be told that in order to prevent further sickness myself, I should gargle with either tap water or green tea every time I leave the staff room, because the virus lives in the throat, makes me wonder a) if we'll actually get to graduation next week, and b) who the amazing people are that do such a wonderful spin job on the at-home remedies in Japan.

How to gut fish.

Things I'd never thought I'd learn in Japan:

Apparently gutting a fish (serves me right for not looking properly and assuming) means that I have to scrape the innards out with my hands. eeeeew. Eew.

That I'm a little squeamish when it comes to innards....actually, I don't know why that one's a surprise in Japan, given some of the things I've had put in front of me and been expected to eat. Case in point: boiled fish ovaries. eew.

Infectious Part 2.

I took this morning off. I've been feeling like I've been fighting something off for about 2 weeks now, and really didn't fancy the prospect of sitting in the simmering pot of sickness that is our staffroom at the moment.

I got to school at lunch time to be questioned by many people who all kept me at arm's length as though my germs were going to be more gaijin vicious. Then I was told with a small hint of delight that there were over 60 first years away today due to colds and influenza. The kids still left at school are finding it somewhat amusing that they're tougher than their friends and have taken to mocking each other coughing.

Jokes aside, really, I'm not surprised that everyone's getting sick. The classrooms are generally freezing, there's 40 kids in each room, the windows are never opened, and the kids are constantly pushed hard. It's almost the end of term, there's exams and classes finishing, and graduation and song competitions and the cultural festival coming up. While I'm all for having a full life and being busy, you've got to wonder about the durability of these kids when roughly one quarter of the year group is absent, fallen to something that can only be fixed by prolonged bed rest. Like Amanda said, preventative medicine has a long way to go in this country. Not coming to school and getting well is surely going to be a lot better recieved by your colleagues than passing around the malady that you're incubatuing.

Infectious.

I just taught a class of 23 kids. 23. I normally have 40 kids in a class. Today, 10 of them were home with influenza, and the other 7 were home with colds. The remaining 23 weren't all that flash either, with at least half of them looking like they were on the wrong side of the black plague. Minus the pustules.

Ganbatte, anyone?

Everyone else around me seems intent on spreading whatever it is that they have - the spluttering, spitting and sneezing symphony is in full swing in the stuffy, over-heated staffroom drowning out the pious ones with their Micheal Jackson-esque masks. I feel kinda crappy, and I'd rather take my chances with my own solitary germs at home than the cocktail of air-borne mucus that's on offer at school at the moment.

A wee bit excited!

Your estimated departure time for HOKKAIDO is in approximately 4 hours. Please try not to panic as you will surely have packed enough clothes by now. Sit back, relax and enjoy the fun that that freezing cold white stuff will provide.

Madam, your complimentary glass of champagne awaits you on board.

Thank you for flying ANA.

The Night Bus of Evil

The night bus is evil. It sucks you in with promises of luxurious reclining coach seats and the adventures of travel, but above all, a cheap ticket to somewhere far far away, all made possible while you rest and sleep.

They lie. Except for the cheap part. After the first time, you swear never, ever again, but something keeps bringing me back, like the glutton for punishment I am.

Night buses, let me state again, are evil. The whole premise that you fall asleep on departure and wake bright and refreshed is null and void. Instead, you contort into uncomfortable positions, try desperately not to encroach on your fellow passenger's minuscule personal space and have the pleasure of being woken, if you've been lucky enough to sleep in the first place, every 90 minutes for a wee and a cigarette and yet another omiyage store. To add to this whinging tale of woe, (because really, that's all this is - I got off the bus in Osaka at5.30 this morning, and I'm stuck at school AND I'M TIRED, GRUMPY AND SORE SORE SORE) encourage the majority of the night bus shenanigans during the winter months to far away snow fun that the powder monkeys clamour for.

But, should you persevere, you will be rewarded for your sacrifice. This weekend, Jeff and I headed up to Nozawaonsen, for a weekend of throwing ourselves carelessly off the side of mountains, onsens of sulphurous water that are barely cool enough to dip a toe in, Apple Kit Kats, and pigeons with wheels (if I ever find anything on the web about these, I promise promise to post a link).

When we arrived early Saturday morning, there had been 20 cms of fresh powder, and the same happened on Sunday night. There was a brilliant gully of powder between two runs that was fun to do again and again and again and as one who has never been boarding through powder, I am an instant convert. It's like falling in pillows, but it takes concentration and muscle (well, from me anyway) to turn through it and avoid the trees.

I may not be able to move my legs fully at this present moment, and anything that requires stomach muscles is a lesson in why sit-ups are good for you, and the night bus may well be the most hellish thing I have had this misfortune to have experienced of late, but the endorphins you get out of gunning down the powder on the side of a black run makes you forget all about 10 hour bus marathons.

Next weekend: Hokkaido. It's the third weekend of a potential 5 in a row of boarding and I fear it may be the point in which my body turns into nothing but a mass of highly sensitive pain receptors. Apparently whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.

Feeling the love.

This weekend, I was invited around to a family's house for dinner and to help them put up Christmas decorations. My friend and I went over in the afternoon and got all festive and put tinsel and baubles and lights and wreaths in almost every spot possible. The piano was played, carols were mauled and the special Disney carol-singing Mickey Mouse quickly had last year's batteries replaced. We stayed for dinner and were plied with wine and chu-hais and more food than I ever thought possible for a normal Sunday dinner.

This is the first time that I've been actively included by a family in Ono, and it's yet another reason to add to the list of why I'm thinking of staying. It's taken almost 18 months of trying to be involved and being a visible part of a small community to get to this point, and I don't think I'm ready to walk away from it yet.


We put fairy lights all through this tree and it looked pretty!

And I got to play the new Wii that Santa bought early to the Ao's house. Sidenote: it was really really cool. I'm the antithesis of a game nerd, case in point: my brother and sister, who are both mentally handicapped are better at Nintendo than I am. The whole package is sleek and it's really hard not to be sucked in by the whole speckiness of it all. It's good to see that finally, gaming companies are doing something about minimising the impact that sitting and playing games for hours on end has on rising obesity levels.


Another brand spanking new reason is that I think I may have just won my very first nenkyu battle and the right to use my unofficial time in lieu to travel instead of being made to use it to go home a few hours early. Biding my time and waiting 18 months before I've really needed to become the difficult ALT actually worked. I think I made everyone else's afternoon a little more interesting too, as it took two English teachers, Kyoto-sensei, about 4 phone calls to the office ladies, my refusal to accept an utterly infuriating explanation of 'but that's the Japanese way', all of which was conducted in the dead center of the staff-room, and it was almost all the other teachers could do to stop themselves from staring outright and trying to furtively listen to the outcome. Here's hoping they'll still talk to me at the bon-enkai...

Jittery

Note to self:
Proper coffee has more caffiene that regular instant muck that is at the back of the staffroom. Remember this.

Mindlessly eating chocolate covered coffee beans while watching Lost will result in an excess of caffiene and sugar surging through the bloodstream. Check.


This may go some way to explain why my heart feels like it's going to pound it's way through my ribcage, almost every word I type is having to be re-written due to copious spelling errors, loud noises and movement make me jump, I'm somewhat nervous and I'm currently unable to stay on track with anything.

Caffiene-induced ADD. Here's to making exam week a little less tedious and a little more addiction-fuelled strung-out.

Maintaining Madonna

I've recently started reading gossip columns on the internet in attempt to balance all the other serious (hah!) literature that I read at home. Well, I feel I should justify my insatiable need to know about has-been 90's star cataclysmic meltdowns and whether Britney's back with K-Fed somehow.

Amongst all of this crap which is doubtlessly taking up room in my brain which would otherwise be much better utilised for Japanese, this article about Madonna came up. It further re-inforces my views on the Confessions Tour - the woman no longer re-invents, she maintains.

Why am I so indecisive?

While posting when drunk is never a good idea, and I swear I'm not going to edit this in the morning, there's a certain amount of skewed introspecitive that's provided by an hour's solitary train ride, accompanied only by an i-pod full of music from Perth bands, amongst others, and a brain addled by ume-shu.

I was handed my re-contracting papers a few days ago, and as much as I overplay everything and be a complete drama queen and be capable of giving advice of what everyone else should do in "Amy's Perfect World", I really don't know what to do and it's completely tearing me up. So instead of writing something that I can't blame on the Hub's happy hour jumbo Long Island Iced Tea's, I'm going to leave you with this; my effort at cheering a friend up on a late Friday afternoon:


And with a flick of her sleek, glossy hair, she turned on her heels and strode out of the room, towards something, she was sure, that was better than the blandness that the day had provided so far.




Third year: crash and burn, or cut and run, or see out the opportunity that I'm unlikely to have ever again?

Do you have to? Really?

Can the man with the jackhammer drilling ditches on the tennis courts outside my house shut the fuck up already? It's 9am, it's raining and thank christ I'm not hungover.

the lights are off

while watching a storm come in over the mountains of Ono. Purple flashes of electricity, spears of white that blaze through the sky and arc to the ground. Counting the seconds after each flash until the thunder speaks to see how far away the storm is - like being on year 8 camp in Nanga Mill, but with more than a plastic hootchie overhead. The cracks of thunder which count closer and closer until both lightning and thunder are almost simultaneous get angrier, crisper and the sound ripples over the sky. Slowly, gradually, petulantly the rain begins to drop fat splashes on the tin roof until eventually it seems like all three elements of tonight's storm are in competition to be the brightest, loudest, most oppressive. Mostly the thunder wins and I retreat to my bed, to feel safe, cocooned in blankets, away from the fury outside.

When dealing with the devil

keep in mind that you may eventually want your soul back. If this happens to be the case, go here where you'll find one of the handiest How To's I've seen in a long time.

Oh, the things you find when looking for ideas for lessons...

Practising perserverance

For the past 3 weeks, I have been working on making my halo shine as brightly as possible. Either that or I'm making retribution for undisclosed heinous atrocities committed in another life. I'm not yet decided. I have been ever so patiently coaching students for the speech competition that was held in Akashi on the weekend.

I had three first year students in the recital competition, which involved them memorizing a passage about some kind of 'heart-warming' rubbish about courage or another one about the importance of the earth to Native Americans. One of the girls I was ready to strangle and nearly bit my tongue off in the attempt to not explode at the seventy gazillionth fuck-up of the pronunciation of 'the'. 'Za' is not 'the' and until Japan understands this and stops using katakana (the alphabet used for foreign, mainly western, words), they will not make progress in developing confidence in speaking English. Ooh dear, I think I'm ranting. Anyway, we finally had a breakthrough, 'za' was miracurously turned into 'the', and my sanity was preserved. It helped somewhat when the passage was actually explained to the girls and they were actually able to understand where the emotion in the passages comes from.

The two second year girls were easier and not nearly so frustrating to work with. They had to write their own speeches, so the understanding was already there, it was merely a matter of sorting out intonation (so more impossible than it sounds) and dodgy pronunciation. One girl wrote a emotive essay about her grandmother's wrinkled hands, and how they reflected her difficult life, while they other girl wrote a rather timely essay on Australia's water crisis.

Three weeks of not leaving school until 5.30, watching the wonderful autumn afternoon sunshine disappear into darkness, was not more fun than a barrel of Yakushima monkeys (and they are SO fun!). Using the apparently bottomless well of patience that I managed to dig out of god knows where was certainly a learning curve (cue teacher being taught cliches), but come Saturday, I was able to send the girls off with the ability to bluff total confidence, if nothing else.

Proof that I am a great teacher. The second year who may be the solution to Australia's water dilemma won the speech competition, and the other girl came third; one of the first years came third in the recital competition and the other two were happy with their performance. Excuse me while I go and buff my halo one more time.

Oh, and to my first piano teacher, Mrs Timoney, who coached me to many a Narrogin Eisteddfod First Place - you have the patience of a saint. Teaching a belligerent, lazy student with a modicum of talent who, unlike my students, did next to naff-all practise must have made you a millionaire at the karma bank.

Maybe this isn't for me.

11.30. writer's block.

If this was NaNoWriMo, I'd be fucked.

NaBloPoMo or Amy and Deadlines just don't mix

While I was mindlessly browsing the endless reams of the internet for the 67th time today, I stumbled across this little gem: NaBloPoMo. It's an alternative to the NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. Instead of having to write a 50,000 word novel, NaBloPoMo merely requires you to post on your blog every day for the next 30 days. (Also means you can't write utter shite merely for the need of filling 50,000 words)

Marvellous, I thought. I can do that. Around rocks 10.30 at night, I realise that I haven't written anything for today, I want to go to bed, and once more I remember that one of the things I'm bad at is getting things done in time. I am Queen Procrastinator Extraordinaire.

However, I have managed to get a post up for today. They say it takes 21 days to break a habit...


And really people who invent these silly things, could you have picked a more bloody inconvenient name to have to type??

Does this mean I'm meant to be grown up now?

Milestones of life have never been something that I've been particularly motivated by. I've never had the ten year plan, I have absolutely no idea about how to go about the few career aspirations that I occasionally ponder, and I'm not concerned about babies and husbands.

Yet somehow, I've just made my first mortgage payment. Almost a decade of faffing about in cafes and periodically pretending to have a 'proper' job, living in cheap, crappy houses and refusing to move out of my parent's house has enabled me to save enough money to buy an apartment on Hay Street. Go looky!

I have city central apartment. I also have a mortgage. These words will be repeated many many times, until they become ingrained, because at the moment, Amy and mortgages aren't two things I ever thought I'd see put together for a very long time.

Look at me, all growing up now.

These things make me happy

I like waking up at 6am on a Monday morning, and knowing that I still have another hour to snuggle down and sleep some more.

I like even more hearing the sound of rain on a corrugated iron roof, pleased that it has been saved for a school day, and not for my weekend that was filled with beautiful sun-shiney autumn weather instead.





This photo is from a PICA exhibiton that I dropped into while meandering around Northbridge in August.

Why have I not heard of The Postal Service before?

Half a bottle of red wine down, and the interesting prospect of spending the entire weekend in Ono, due to this afternoon's purchase of a scooter and subsequent budget blow-out, I'm spending the night in.

All is not lost, however. I have just discovered the fabulousness of The Postal Service. I don't care how you get your hands on their music - borrow, steal or I'd even suggest buying it if there is no other option - but you really really have to listen to these guys. Upbeat, pace-y and tight, perfect for dragging yourself out of a downward slide into red wine melancholia.

If I were clever, well, not completely computer inept anyway, I'd post a link to their website. I'm not clever. Cut and paste: http://www.postalservicemusic.net/

A kindred spirit

I'm mired in the depths of post-exam hell at the moment. Several hundred exams to mark, all of which I've left until the last day - checking my emails for the gazillionth time somehow seems a little less frustrating.

But I've just come across this complete pearl in an essay about how to relax while studying.

'I suggest to you that you eat a chocolate bar. If you eat one, your brains will cheer up.'

If only she'd had the foresight to staple said choclate to the paper, and there would have been a perfect score straight up, grammar be damned.