It all began with Snack-Sensei...

You see, my friend Nicole has this Sensei that she sits next to in her staff room who, from the stories I hear, is a very generous man. Apparently he has seven boxes of assorted snacks hidden under his desk, and at the most opportune times will bestow snacks upon the nearest and luckiest. After quite some time of receiving snacks from this particular sensei, he was thereby dubbed Snack-Sensei.

We all have different Sensei’s that we work with. Snack-Sensei. Crazy-Sensei. Always Sleeping-Sensei. Suddenly Busts Out Random And Fluent English-Sensei. And this led me to begin thinking… what Sensei do I want to become.

I like the idea of Snack-Sensei, but Snack-Sensei is already taken. Plus it involves investing in assorted snacks and figuring out the most opportune time to hand them out. Then I thought I’d be Party Hat-Sensei, wearing Party Hats and blowing noise makers for my birthday which conveniently comes once a month (I turned 30 today!). Nicole had the idea of becoming Answering The School Phone-Sensei which we all thought would be particularly hilarious given our general inability to understand Japanese whatsoever. I thought I’d become Question-Sensei, and just start asking random questions to every other Sensei who is unlucky enough to be within speaking distance. But finally I came up with the type of Sensei I want to be.

Stands Around With Tea In Mug While Asking Random Questions-Sensei.

I want to stand around the staff room, sipping my tea between classes. And just when things get quiet BOOM there I am with a sudden, “Honbo-Sensei. Do you like cats?” No, I’ve never said a word to Honbo-Sensei, and no I don’t know anything about her aside from the fact that her last name is Honbo, but I don’t really care if you’re married or have kids. Everyone gets married and has kids. But do you like cats? You can tell a lot from a person if they like cats.

“When you were in school did you prefer math or science?”
“Do you feel there’s a population crisis in Japan?”
“Would you never eat fish again if you could receive one million dollars?”

And I would always follow it up with “Ah sou desu ka?” (Oh is that so?), a nod, a swirl and sip of my tea, and then I’d return to my desk to sit.

This is the Sensei I want to become. Random Question-Sensei, because frankly what’s better than a random foreigner coming up to you and asking how you feel about cats?

New Year's!

Having now successfully navigated over 24 years of living on this earth, and having just returned from a week long extravaganza in which most of Southern California was the star, it's time to buckle down and dedicate myself to my own general improvement. Hence, I offer you my New Year's resolutions.

First, obviously, I will better my own physique in order to maintain a general state of attractiveness to my own sex. Snowboarding should manage to accomplish this just fine although myself wonderfully impeded by the fact that my car battery managed to commit seppuku while I was away in America. After spending a hearty half hour gathering my things into my car so I could head off to the mountains, Gladys (my car) decided she wanted some more vacation time. After calling the dealership they said my options were call the Japanese AAA and pay $130 to get them to help me out, or they'll help me at some point in time tomorrow.

Okay, fine then. Tomorrow. I will continue to better my own physique starting tomorrow.

Resolution number two: Maintain a healthy aura of peace at all times. Most of you know working at my middle school normally leads to me wanting, much like my car, to commit seppuku by the end of the work week. Having decided that this is, perhaps, not the most healthy mindset, this year I will work on keeping my soul still while in the midst of of chaos-- much like the eye of a hurricane. Or a beekeeper in one of those suits. Maybe if I invest in some insecticide I'll get my kids to mellow out.

In the mean time I am currently trapped in my apartment due to the lack of car, so most of today will be spent watching Bridget Jones, sending Bridget Jones quotes to my twitter, quoting Bridget Jones to myself while cleaning the apartment, and making an amazing meal of eggs and sausage a la frying pan.

Of course. Of course the snow has come and the universe does not want me to enjoy it.

I can feel it coming...

The weather is not behaving favorably.

Last year, from what I’ve heard, the snow had already started and the ski resorts were open. Currently that is not the case. Yes, the weekend was sunny and warm and beautiful and yes I wore shorts and sandals and a sweatshirt, but I want snow. I want powder. I want lots and lots of white frost everywhere so I can drive up to the mountains to conquer them.

Of course everyone else I know writhes in pain on the floor whenever I say this. They say I don’t understand. That the winter is cold and driving dangerous. I normally retort with “But the mountains! They LAUGH at me!”

I’ve got this image in my head that I’m going to throw on my board and be an instant expert carver. Like I’ve been doing it my whole life. In my head, I’m doing back flips and spins and tricks.

In real life I can’t imagine that’s how it’s actually going to be. Most likely it’ll be more like me going down the bunny slopes 10 times trying desperately not to break my neck while five year olds whiz past me on their skis because they’ve been doing this since they could walk.

But what I lack in skill I’ll make up for in determination! Just try and stop me mountains! Bring it!

紅葉

One of the things I find fulfilling about the Japanese language is the word “Kohyoh”, which when you look up in a dictionary is defined literally as "Crimson Leaves." It essentially refers to the period of time when fall rolls around the country side, turning all the trees different colors. 

It really stood out to me in a really surprising way. Suddenly all the trees are this fantastic mixes of reds, yellows, and greens. Other trees will be rich, velvety purples and reds, others will be screamingly bright yellow. The mountains, which in the summer had all be a lush green so deep it very nearly hinted at blue, are now reds and browns so alive it looks like it’s all on fire. There’s such variation in all the trees around quiet Murakami these days, that it’s like there’s some sort of secret party that all of nature is celebrating right now, before our very eyes.

And today? Today is one of those days we don’t see much any more. The sky is blue, the sun in shining, and there’s just a few clouds sailing softly overhead.

Really, it’s all very lovely.

K Pop (also known as crack)

So I'm involved in this musical that's going to help raise money to help build a school in Papau New Guinea and a lot of it involves taking famous Korean, Japanese, or American pop songs, rewriting the lyrics, and then acting a fool on stage all in the name of building a school for those in need.


Unfortunately there was a horrible side effect.


I didn't realize K-Pop was like crack. Once you start, you CANNOT stop.


Take this video, for example, which I just found today.





Notice the bad clothes, the oddly hypnotizing choreography, the wonderful dance beats, and the awful, awful hair choices.


I think I watched this about 20 times and sent it to everyone who happened to be online with the message "WHAT IS THIS!?!? =-O"


Bad news. That's what it is. 


Mostly because it then led me to this video:





All this video did was make me say "Man, I want to buy ALL of those clothes. Right now." And notice the ridiculous light-swinging-above-their-heads-overly-dramatic close ups that are just so obscenely ridiculously lame that you can't help but die a little inside.


BUT I LOVE IT. I love it so much I downloaded this stupid group's album, and then to balance things out I had to add some ladies to the mix.


Here's the one that came first.





It almost hurts the eyes to watch it because of how much color is involved in this music video, but it's just so damn cute that I can't help but enjoying every awful second.


Now, for our final evidence to support how I'll be collapsing into insanity while locked up in my apartment this winter to avoid the cold, the finally video I've allowed myself to watch this evening:







At this point if you feel mildly ill, much like I do, I can't really say I blame you.


But... ugh... it's just so damn catchy.


Please punch me in the face.

The Cutest Damn Thing

The cutest damn thing happened today.

As most of you know, or have heard, my middle school isn't the easiest place to work at. It's stressful in ways I wish I never had to be stressed, but it is what it is, and so I'm trying to do everything I can to make the best of it.

Today, however, was oddly peaceful, and since I only had two classes, I took it upon myself to finally finish another posting to the English Board that I've been working on a bit over the past two weeks. It's about school lunches from around the world, so I posted pictures from school lunches from 8 or so different countries with information about the ingredients, the country's flag, and the country's population. I color coded everything (following the ROYGBIV rule to make a nice rainbow).

Finally, after two hows of work the thing is finally ready to go up, and our school lunch hits. I go off to eat, and afterwards it's lunch break, and all the students are running around the school going crazy and having fun.

I wander over to where my English board is to post it up and there are some girls milling around just hanging out. I start to put it up and one of them bravely asks "What's this?" as I'm posting the first picture. The rest of her crew gathers around, and I tell them "This is school lunch!"

"Ooooh" they say, looking at the picture. "For Korea!"

"Yes!" I say beaming. They talk about how it's similar to their school lunch, and giggle about the Kim-Chi (because all my students think Kim-Chi is funny for some reason), and I keep tacking up all the different pictures of all the different countries, and we talk about each one as I put it up, looking at the flag and the different foods. Sometimes they shout out things like "Cracker!" or "Olives!" or "Grilled fish!" and I beam and say "Yeah!" with a great, big impressed look on my face, which would make them smile like they accomplished a great feat of excellence (which as far as I'm concerned, they had).

You girls all get an A for the day.

Finally, the last one goes up. We stand back, take a look at it, I ask them which one they think looks the tastiest, and they choose Germany's (mostly because it involved lots of yogurt, fruit, and ice cream), I put in some final tacks to make sure everything sticks, I stand back, the girls say "Yosh~!" (All right!) and then all the girls turn to me and suddenly burst into applause.

Talk about warming my heart on a cold autumn day.

Cue me turning beet red, denying that it's any good (although on the inside I'm really rather proud of it), and we walk off talking about how the girls have science next, and they all like science.

I sat back down at my desk, super pumped about what just happened and really just happy that I managed to have a bit of a connection with some students at one of my most difficult schools.

It was a good day.

Hair Cuts

It's bizarre coming home from a haircut and finding myself compelled to write a blog entry specifically about hair cuts, but haircuts here are such glorious, wonderful thing that I find myself not minding having to sit in a chair for an hour while I use my awful, awful Japanese to have a conversation with the stylist about movies and snowboarding and how driving to Sapporo in February is a terrible, awful idea.

Every time I get an hair cut here, whatever happens is different. The past two times I've gotten shampoos with my hair cut, this time I got a weird scalp massage and shoulder massage where the stylist said "Man, sit up straight kid, you've got awful posture" not in words, but by pulling both of my shoulders back as hard as he could.

Sometimes there are other stylist there, and they're always super excited that I'm there. Today I was greeted by a girl I've never seen before in my life who said the equivalent of "BRYAN!! YOU'RE HERE! YOU'RE SUCH A GOOD GUY!" and I had to quickly put on my "Oh, yes, I've seen you before and know exactly who you are" face before it was explained to me that I'd never met this person before. Well, in that case, hajimemashite!

After the cutting process was over, there was quite the shampooing experience followed by me getting my ears shaved (that was new), and he topped it off by spraying something cooling and nice on my scalp.

And all for less than I pay in America! Hurray. =)