Success

8/20
Today was a really nice today.

First of all, I was lucky enough to hear a conversation between two old man teachers that went something like this but in Japanese,
“Hey, Tanaka-sensei, this Facebook thing, do you know it?”
“Facebook…Facebook…not really. I think my daughter uses it.”
“But what *is* it?”
“Social networking, right? That’s what I think.”
“Facebook, huh…I don’t get it. Whatever.”

I gave my self-introduction at the morning meeting and was a little nervous, but my Japanese is getting to the point where it’s fluent enough that I can just talk sometimes without thinking and without screwing up either. I gave out a lot of my omiyage, the chocolate covered pretzels, and everyone seemed to like them even though they were like, “Huh? Salty AND sweet??”

K-sen said my introduction was *perfect* which makes me feel really good, though I’m not sure he really meant flawless, that would be hard to believe lol After that he took me to get my foreigner registration card at city hall and on the way back we talked about graduation pictures and the like in our countries. Then he was like, “Yeah, but one thing students are really into here is…uh…what’s it called…”
“PURIKURA!” (those are photobooths where you can edit you pictures, if you remember)
“YOU KNOW IT??”
“I’VE DONE IT!”
“Wwhhaaat?”
And we bonded right then and there.

Mumbles-sensei also came up to me today and told me I’d be having a welcome party from the English department, just when I started thinking I wouldn’t. Time to be scared!

I was going to run some errands, but I thought I’d just try to stay at work really late instead. In the end, even though I only had to work until 4:35 and I stayed until 6:30, I still felt bad because I was still the first teacher to leave school!!

Shindig Starts

9/7
Sitting at my desk I’ve realized this is the second job I’ve had where I get paid for drawing things like dragons and giant pieces of cheese.

Also I’ve realized that dreamwidth works at work. HELLS YEAH!

Time travel...

8/21
Today I sucked up some courage and went down to give the librarian some omiyage and some English books I’d wanted to donate to the library. He was very nice and we chatted a little, which again made me feel productive in Japanese. She gave me a reciprocal candy bar that was totally unnecessary but delicious.

I inquired about the VP’s lunch today, partly just to be nice and party to practice my Japanese, and as a result I walked away with two packets of miso soup mix. It’s not like I’ve never had miso before, but I thought it was cute that he felt the need to give it to me.

After spending a few lunch periods raising the nerve, I finally managed to go eat lunch with a group of girls during their lunch period. We had a cute little chat and one of them shared her green tea cookies. We were sitting in a circle out in the hall, which meant boys would periodically jump out the door, shout hello, and run away again. Of course, there were also a few boys who would stumble out into the hall way, see me there, and then run back in nearly falling over themselves. I felt my conversations were a great success because they didn’t feel much need to confer with each other between answers and I was able to keep the English simple enough that nobody got confused or scared.

After work, Chica-san picked me up and we went to the Jazz festival welcome party for our first night of translation volunteering. I knew my Japanese wasn’t good enough to translate, but whatcha gonna do?

As it turned out, most of the musicians’ Japanese friends spoke fluent English, so I couldn’t really figure out why I was there. Our musicians were University professors, three very nice fatherly men who knew still knew how to be happy. Chica was a little troubled because the musicians spoke with such a strong Tennessee accent and used so much Southern slang that she couldn’t understand them well. So it quickly turned into a game of me translating into standard English and her translating into Japanese every time they wanted to talk to someone. Though essentially, I just took on a role as one more person to talk to who also happened to be able to explain the Japanese customs that the Japanese folks were too used to to know they should be explaining. We ate Genghis Khan outside on little grills and drank beer and it was a good time. I got about a million business cards and met about a million people from all around town. It was standing in the warehouse on the wharf with 2,000 folding chairs, however, when I realized this was going to be a much bigger event than I’d thought.