Strain the brain

So what have I been doing during the time that I was too lazy to blog? I have been to Atsuko's house a couple of times. Once we had dinner and Atsuko's friend Chinatsu from China made us proper Chinese gyoza. Very, very good. I got to help fold them up.

I watched the entire first series of the new Doctor Who and then my old computer died so I can't watch the next series. I am now using the internet on my little subnote computer, but I can't leave it at home for a week downloading a TV series because this is the computer that I take with me to work. Well, now at least the descision whether to take my old Compaq back with me to NZ or not has been made for me.

On the 16th I became a doll. Until April a woman called Mitsu-sensei was working at the elementary school. For months she had been telling me that she would give me a kimono before I left Japan, and the other month she got in contact with me and said that she would have me dressed up in said kimono and get my picture taken profesionally, as a present. That happened on the 16th. Mitsu-sensei picked me up at 9am and took me to a beauty parlour in Nikaho. The owner of the beauty parlour, a lady who goes by the name of Elle, had volunteered to dress me up in the kimono for free. She did my hair too, and seemed to have fun doing so. "I've never seen hair like this before. . . ."

After I was all dressed up, Mitsu-sensei's husband came and drove us to a photography studio in town and I had my picture taken. Then we briefly went to Mitsu-sensei's parents house so I could be placed in front of a traditional Japanese alcove and in a traditional garden and have my picture taken again. Then we went back to the beauty parlour and the kimono and the hair style came off. Elle gave me a free hair cut because she said my hair was just too ratty and she couldn't in good conscience leave it like that.

I bought a pink Nintendo DS Lite. I had a very good reason to! You see, I also bought a piece of software for it that is not a game but a kanji study tool that makes excellent use of the touch-sensitive screen. So I can practice reading and also writing kanji on the DS Lite. Wonderful! Maybe now I'll study kanji on a regular basis. Maybe my DS Lite will help me pass the Japanese Proficiency Test.

Last Friday I had plans to go hiking in Nakajimadai, some type of park or nature reserve near here, with my Eikaiwa class students. Unfortunately the hike was cancelled due to rain. That evening some books and a CD arrived for me from Amazon. I got Tori Amos' new album American Doll Posse, two manga (the last two volumes of Fruits Basket) and a few more graphic novels written by Neil Gaiman. I just can't stop reading that guy's stories! I bought Black Orchid, The Books of Magic and Midnight Days. What am I going to do when I have run out of stuff by Neil Gaiman to read? Come to think of it, I'll probably start reading Hellblazer. The Books of Magic made me feel like reading more about John Constantine.

Last Saturday and Sunday there was an inter-school sports exchange event. On Saturday I went to Chokai to cheer for the baseball team. It was sunny and hot (very different to the previous day) and I got very sunburnt despite the fact I put SPF 30+ sunscreen on twice. It was a close game with many no-run innings. (Are they even called innings in baseball? Or runs?) There was excitement of the bad kind when two of our fielders collided trying to catch a ball (they dropped the ball but managed to stay on the field. Unfortunately the boy who got hurt worst was our best batter). Two minutes or so later, the other team had much worse luck when the pitcher and the catcher managed to run headlong into each other while trying to catch the ball. The catcher was fine (he had a mask etc. on after all) but the pitcher knocked himself quite badly on the catcher's mask and had to be taken away by ambulance! Oh, the drama. Even minus their main pitcher the other team managed to win.

On Sunday I went to cheer the soccer team. The soccer tournament was held at the TDK sports facilities in Konoura, so not far away. The team played two games. They won the morning game against Kisakata quite easily (is 3:1 easily? I'm guessing so) but they lost the afternoon game. The afternoon game was against one of the best teams in the area, so that's OK. I can't say much about how the games were played because a) there was no grandstand like at the baseball so I couldn't really see what was going on and b) even when I can see well, all soccer looks like to me is a bunch of people running around randomly on a field. Yawn.

At lunch time I went with the free teachers and students to Kujira Park (across the road from the Shirase Memorial Museum) and got to see all the baseball, judo and art club boys playing excitedly on the jungle gym like five-year-olds. Well, not all. The boy so anti-social he hardly ever comes to school sat out to one side and the Head Boy, who seems to be the only mature boy in the whole school (hence the fact he was made Head Boy), decided instead to sit in the shade with the teachers and join in the "Look at them! They're like monkeys" conversation.

I got sunburnt that day too. I was in a fair amount of pain on Monday. I had been planning on going somewhere either on Monday or Tuesday because I had those days off in lieu, but the weather was sunny and hot again and I was afraid of getting even more burnt so I stayed home. That is of course with the exception of Monday morning when I went to the kindergarten to teach English for half an hour. Just half an hour.

On Wednesday Mitsu-sensei came to the elementary school to give me the kimono and the photos from the 16th. I should scan the photos up sometime. I have some of the non-professional photos on my computer already. I'll see about posting them. Maybe. My scanner has not been working very well lately and the scans are very bad quality.

Today I had plans to go on the hike around Nakajimadai that had been postponed last week, but it rained again! I don't know if I will have another chance to go, which is too bad because I had been looking forward to seeing Chokai morimo (a type of moss. That's right, you heard me. I'm sad because the rain is keeping me from going to see moss).

Speaking of moss, I just remembered something. I once read an essay written by an ex-ALT who said that the Japanese also have the saying "A rolling stone gathers no moss" but in Japanese the meaning of the phrase is opposite to the English phrase in that the Japanese want the moss i.e. the Japanese version of the phrase means don't move. I thought that was really cool, and was thinking of it as an example a main difference between Eastern and Western thought. The other (week? month?) I asked my Eikaiwa class about that saying. They confirmed that it exists in Japanese. But then they disappointed me greatly by saying that the ex-ALT had been wrong. The phrase means exactly the same in Japanese as in English: moss bad, moving good. So very, very disappointing. But I guess what this story now illustrates is that Eastern, Western, whatever we may be, we are not so different after all.