A Typical Day in Japan

My days usually begin around six o'clock. That's when I roll over to throw my alarm clock against the wall to get it to shut up. Normally, however, this only activates the snooze function, so around 6:09 I'm dragging myself out of bed, hair a mess and eyes puffy and red, to find my alarm to get it to shut up again. I spend the next 10 minutes or so sitting on my futon mostly being angry that I'm awake while trying to see how long I can get away with doing nothing before I absolutely have to jump in the shower.

I run the hot water for about 20 minutes trying desperately to stop the dreaming and wake up so I can mentally prepare myself for the battle I'm about to undergo. Because when it's just you and 200 screaming children aged anywhere from five to fifteen, you need some morning mental preparation.

Next is ironing my shirt, something that also usually frustrates me because I always tell myself to do it the night before, and I never do. Ever. The next thing is one banana and some peanut butter on toast and I'm out the door by 7:30. I enjoy about 10 minutes of loud music in the car now that I'm officially awake (sometimes practicing for karaoke on the drive to school) and then I'm at my desk and furiously sorting through my list of activities to prepare something for my lessons for that day while I still have some time left before the madness begins.

For the next eight hours I'm either in class trying to get kids to speak English (sometimes I'm more successful with this than others but all the while I'm talking LOUDLY-AND-SLOWLY), or sitting at my desk trying to plan for other lessons, or sitting at my desk while my coworkers teach me slang and I teach them the various different ways to say "cool" or "awesome" or "sweet" or "sick", or I'm still fighting off sleep and desperately trying to figure out where I can get some coffee.

Then lunch time rolls around. By this time I'm positively starving, but for the most part all the lunches, while pretty tasty, always include some sort of weird assortment of vegetables that always give me gas, so I spend the last few hours at school trying to figure out how I can relax my stomach and blame it on one of the students or the dog.

Sometimes I eat with the students and then for afternoon break I'm a human jungle gym for them to climb on. Sometimes I remember to bring my track suit for this. Other times, I don't. For some reason the elementary school kids love climbing up onto my back so I can run them around school, or spin them around to make them go "WOoOOAAhhHH" and laugh. Sometimes they just want to stare at me and giggle, sometimes we play tag (where I'm the "demon") or dodgeball, and for the most part my middle school kids ignore me.

You win some, you lose some.

Finally four o'clock rolls around and the "going home from school" song plays over the loud speakers that are placed throughout town so that no matter where you are, you know school is done. Depending on how busy the day is either I'll stay for an extra half hour or so to help teachers out with work if they have any, or I'm out the door by four-oh-one, speeding home so that I can get ready for either the gym/taiko practice/going out to dinner with friends/running errands/grocery shopping or if I'm particularly lucky I'll have a few quiet hours at home to read, write out some postcards (only god knows I have no idea when exactly I'm going to get to the post office to send them), or work on my cross stitch, hoping desperately that I'll be in bed before 11 o'clock. If I'm in bed by ten, this is a good day.

Sometimes I lay out my futon, sometimes I fall asleep in my chair because it's comfortable, sometimes I wake up at 1am realizing I haven't set my alarm and I drag myself over to the stupid thing to set it, knowing I've only got five glorious hours of peace left before I wake myself up to do it all over again.

Life here is good.