Jax in Japan

name silliness

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 03:59:29 GMT

it's a cultural festival at school and i'm bored out of my mind. so:

1.YOUR PORN STAR NAME
(name of first pet + street you live on)

Bubbles (I think) .... uhhhh... my street doesn't have a name. 2-11-1? :P I'll just use the SA one.

Bubbles Newcut. :P

2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME
(grandmother's/father's first name + favorite snack)

Maureen Pocky

3. YOUR FASHION DESIGNER NAME
(first word you see on your left + favorite restaurant)

Intel Izakaya (i don't know what the place's name is :P)

4. YOUR SOCIALITE NAME
(silliest childhood nickname + first town where you partied)

Littlefeetz Bryanston. I think. That makes no sense. :P

5. YOUR "FLY GIRL/GUY" NAME
(first initial + first three letters of your last name)

J-Tou. Yuck.

6. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME
(favorite animal + name of high school)

Cheetah Summit. Or Cheetah Phuthing. :P

7. YOUR BARFLY NAME
(last snack food you ate + your favorite drink)

Gum Shikuwaasa

8. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME
(middle name + city where you were born)

Vereeniging. Doesn't really work when you don't have a middle name. :P

9. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME
(favorite candy + favorite musician's last name)

Pocky Keidis

10. YOUR OPPOSITE SEX NAME
(name of [opposite sex] friend + cell phone company you use)

Aaron AU. Hahaha!

11. YOUR STAR WARS NAME
(first 3 letters of your last name + last 3 letters of mother's maiden name)

Toubar. That does actually sound like a Star Wars name. :P

------------------------

Anyway. The weekend is coming to a close, I have around 6 hours left at school. *Yawn* But at least I get tomorrow and Tuesday off because I worked this weekend. Yay! Hideki and I may go to the beach tomorrow. But it just started pouring with rain here, so we shall see. And that's it from me!

yet another fantastic weekend

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:40:50 GMT

This weekend was the Matsuri festival in Naha. So I went down, even though I was feeling sick last week, and stayed with Becky, yet again (thank you Bex!!)

Was really cool watching all the Eisa dancing, and other cultural dances and sports and things that people did all the way up Kokusai Dori (which was blocked off for the weekend).

Aaaaaand... I met a boy. A lovely boy named Hideki. We really hit it off well and I like him a lot. So we shall see what happens there.

On Sunday Hideki and I went to take part in the Guiness World Record breaking Tug-of-War. I ended up just having to stand in one place in a huge crowd for about 3 hours. Hideki went and did the actual tugging, and got us a piece of rope (the actual rope for the Tug of War was 28 tons heavy, I think, and everyone who takes part can cut off a piece of rope from it to take home for good luck for the rest of the year).

Sunday night was really fun. Went to dinner with Becky, Laila, Aaron and Hideki, and then Hideki and I went to a funfair. Unfortunately, we got there just as the fireworks ended, but it was lovely walking around the fair, seeing all the girls in their beautiful yukata and drinking mango slushies. Yum!

When we decided to go, the queue for the monorail was waaaaay too long, so we walked the long trek back to Becky's flat, which took like an hour and a half. But it was fun. We stopped at an arcade along the way, and I kicked his butt at a car racing game. :D

Yesterday Becky, Aaron and I just (as Aaron says) "cabbaged" all day and watched dvds. I bought another 4 DVDs. :P

And that's about it. Back at work today, but at least it's just a 4 day week!

grrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 01:40:41 GMT

i am having a very very bad day today. it doesn't help that i woke up an hour late and had to rush madly to get to school on time.

here are things that jacqui is currently hating:
1) being used as a tape recorder. would be fine if i had nothing better to do, BUT i have given the bloody teacher three other bloody exercises that the students would find far more interesting and would be far more useful than "read and repeat" out of the textbook. it's been proven that if they hate english they learn slower. you're making them hate english! don't do that!

2) being underestimated. you have seen what i can do! the worst class in the school that i was given full control over is improving at a faster rate than the kids you still have a hope for, and won't let me do anything with. yes, i can work. no, i will not break if you give me more than 3 classes a day. look at kagamigaoka - i teach 5 classes a day there and that's where i do my best work, because we CO-OPERATE!

3) being bored. all the teachers around me are running around like mad things, and i'm sitting here bored. even though i'm constantly asking them if there's anything i can do. today it was announced that one of the teachers has taken a month's sick leave, so all the teachers are running around like headless chickens. i've told them i can do her lessons. yes, i can do them by myself - it's been shown that when i have control of the class, the other two teachers in there with me just sit and do nothing the entire lesson. if you want, take one of them!

4) people talking about me, but not to me. yes, my level of japanese is such that i know you're talking about me, and vaguely what the subject is. no, it's not high enough that i know exactly what you're saying. i am in charge of the speech contest. don't talk about it around me without telling me what you're saying!

5) ending up looking like a complete tit in front of classes because the teachers don't tell me what we're doing. if we're not doing any of the activities i've planned, i can't read your mind to see what you expect me to do. tell me!!! i know it looks kawaii when jacqui is confused, but it's bloody unprofessional. i'm not paid to stand in front of a class and look confused!!!

graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
ok. just needed to get that out of my system.
*breathes*

and my friday at kagamigaoka was taken away from me this week. *sob*
hm. they can trust me to plan all the exercises for the junior high school open days for tomorrow and friday but they can't trust me to plan a game?
*sigh*

I'm back online babies!

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 02:23:51 GMT

A nice man came to my door at 8pm last night and handed me a big shiny red box. Inside it happened to be a big, fat modem, lots of wires, a few bits and bobs and lots of stuff in japanese.

and hey presto! an hour later i was connected to the internet! (it's amazing what clicking random buttons can do, eh?) an hour after that i had even downloaded an english version of MSN and was up and chatting.

so it's official kids. no longer is livejournal my only means of communication. my gmail account is up and running once again, and i've actually read all my emails! (though if you haven't had a response it's because there were 102 of them since last checking and i just archived a large portion of them. :P)

i have chat! i have unlimited download quota! and i have skype! now i just need to figure out what that error message says when i try to plug my webcam in...

goodbyeeee social life. :P

t3h quiz of boredness. :P

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 23:43:28 GMT

1. Who is the last person you held hands with?
uhhhhh.... i have no idea. probably aaron. maybe becky. :P

2. If you were drafted in a war, would you survive?
i'd rebel against the draft. i'd rather go to prison than go to war.

3. Have you ever drank milk straight out of a carton?
yup

5. Who's car were you last in?
a taxi driver's

7. How fast can you type?
ummmm.... around 100wpm i think. it changes every time i do a test.

8. Are you afraid of the dark?
nope

9. Eye color?
blue/grey

11. When is the last time you chose a bath over a shower?
back when I was in SA. i haven't even seen a bath in over 2 months. just waiting for the onsens though! *bounce*

12. What did you last purchase, where and how much?
a bus ticket. Y140 (about R9)

13. Are you drinking anything right now?
yup - water

15. What phone have you got?
a sony ericsson k something w41 something. irunno.

16. Are you good at keeping secerets?
very

17. What are you wearing?
brownish pants, white and yellow adidas top, crummy sneakers.

18. Do you know the Muffin Man?
who lives on drury lane?

19. Do you talk in your sleep?
not as far as i know...

20. What did you last read?
"20. What did you last read?"

21. What form of exercise did you last do?
walked to the bus stop.

23. Do you consider yourself successful?
for my age, yes. :)

24. How many people are on your contact list of your cell?
errrrrmmmm... 27.

25. Have you ever asked for a pony?
No. i have asked for a horse though. dream big, people.

26. Plans for tomorrow?
lesson period 1, lesson period 2, lesson period 3.... plan for lessons on friday... go home.... pass out.

28. Missing someone now?
everyone at home, dreadfully. and oli.

29. When was the last time you told someone 'I love you'?
sunday night. well, it was "i love you too", but that counts, doesn't it?

31. How are you feeling today?
tired. but daijobu nonetheless.

32. Do you hate anyone right now?
not at this very second. :P

33. Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school?
nope.

34. What are you looking forward to?
in the very near future - the weekend. weekends here are funtastic. otherwise- aaron, becky and my trip to tokyo in november.

35. Have you ever crawled through a window?
yep

37. What room are you in?
the staff room

38. Can you handle the truth?
most times.

39. Do you think raechel young is a lesbian?
one can but hope.

......(who???)

40. Do you have plans for tonight?
go home. watch dvds. pass out.

Another fab weekend

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 23:49:42 GMT

Seems my weekends are the only things worth writing about lately. :P But at least they're goodies. :D

Had another fantastic day at Kagamigaoka on Friday. Thank the South African embassy for that one. Everyone was hugely sugoi at the dvd about South Africa - even teachers from different classes came in and sat in on mine. :D

Friday night was a dance at Kagami. Was toooo awesome. They got me to join in on the Eisa dancing, but I was rubbish. I think someone snapped a few piccies, so if I can get them and they don't look too disgusting I'll put them up here. Earlier in the day when the kids were watching the dvd's they loved the African ceremonial make-up on some of the women, and asked me to put it on for the dance, so I did and they loved it. :D

Went out to an izakaya after that with a few of the staff and parents. Got dragged away from my seat to go sit at the table where all the young guys were sitting (which led to cries of Sekuhara! Sekuhara! (sexual harassment)), but that was really fun. Was yet another exercise in communication through interpretive dance and sign language, until I managed to drag another of the teachers away from his seat to come translate for me (more cries of Sekuhara!). :D

Saturday was pretty boring. Iw oke up wih a migraine because of the increased pressure of the typhoon. So spent the day in my flat, boerd out of my mind. I read all the manga I have, I watched crappy American tv, I watched crappy Japanese Tv, I spent about 3 hours learning Japanese, I tried to sleep... ja. Boring. :P Ended up making a huuuge pot of spaghetti, a) because I was bored and b) just in case the electricity went out for three days and I had no contact with the outside world. Mostly because of the former, though. :P

Sunday was fun! Yay! Went through to Naha again. Did some shopping. Bought an insanely cute dress, some tatami shoes, jewellery, Tool's 10 000 days album... aaaand... what else? I've already forgotten. :P Went out to karaoke again on Saturday night. Was nice to see some of the people there as I haven't seen them in a while. Sang loads of Red Hot Chili Peppers with Chris. Sang loads of everything else too. :P Aaron and I totally hogged the microphones. :P

Monday (yesterday) was awesome too. Twas a public holiday - Respect for the Aged Day. So Aaron, Becky and I decided to go through to Shuri Castle to do a bit of the touristy stuff. It was so amazing! Still working on the pictures, of that and of Friday night, so I'll put them up in a bit.

Well, ja, that was basically it. We walked around Shuri Castle all day, went and had gyoza for lunch (which I couldn't finish because it was basically dough packed with garlic. :P), sat and chatted at Becky's place for the rest of the day, and then went and had soba for dinner. And then I wended my weary way home, with all my tons of shopping (but only after going out and buying three dvds - Pirates of the Caribbean collectors edition, The Last Samurai and Fight Club). DVDs here are so cheap. All 3 of them cost less than Y4000, which is around R270. Cool eh?

Anyway. I'm back at work today. Feeling a little ill, actually, so we'll see how the rest of the day goes.
-------

Edit: pics as promised:

Bex and Aaron in front of Shuri Castle:

Some of my kids at Kagamigaoka:

A tiny replica of Shuri Castle. This thing is amazing, there's such attention to detail!

wheee! typhooon!

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 06:12:09 GMT

apparently there's a really big typhoon coming.

article here: http://wwwa.accuweather.com/news-blogs.asp?partner=accuweather&blog=andrews

the other teachers say we might get the day off tomorrow because of it. damn. my one good day of the week! and i put a load of laundry in the machine this morning! argh. :P

but it'll be interesting!

even though it does mean that the plans to go to the beach, and other sightseeing stuff, are kinda ruined for the long weekend (it's Respect for the Aged day on Monday). pooh.

Odd weekend

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 23:45:26 GMT

Had a very very strange weekend. Full of new experiences.

Friday's day at Kagamigaoka was excellent! The students loved me and the teachers are such fantastic, friendly, genuine people. I'm really going to enjoy working there. The kids loved learning about all the animals in Africa, and even though it was a really really exhausting day, it was well worth it.

Had a really fun welcome party on Friday night too. One of the art teachers even brought handouts for the rest of the teachers about South Africa! And then a couple of them got really drunk and started to teach me some Hogen (Okinawan dialect) very loudly. So now I know that Ayena! means Oh my god! And that's about all I can remember. :P

Saturday a group of us went to explore the Urasoe Castle Ruins, the pictures of which are below. :D The views from the top of the hill were amazing ("I can see my house from here!") and the grave sites and tombs were creepy but very very cool. Got bitten to bits by mosquitoes though. :P

Saturday night was crazy. Becky, Jen and I went to an all-you-can-eat Korean barbeque restaurant, where, when the owner saw us, he immediately called up a friend of his to get there quickly. His friend's son was fluent in English, because he'd been to Canada for two years. He was a little hottie too. Imagine our dismay when we found out he was 16. :P So Becky and I have decided to bring him to our schools and try set him up with some of our students. ;)

But the owner of the restaurant gave us free drinks and a discount on the meal just for talking to them. Crazy eh?

We then headed out towards the Kadena military base because Jen wanted to see a guy she'd met a couple of weeks ago. That was just weird. The taxi driver took us to the wrong gate. So imagine what three girls dressed to go out standing around outside a military base looks like? Yup. Just like that. :P

After many phone calls, demands for our IDs and general pandemonium we finally managed to get to the right gate, and then promptly turned around and went in the opposite direction, to a club where a band was playing disgusting music (when they weren't doing bad Deftones and Marilyn Manson covers).

Yeh. That experience of being surrounded by soldiers and soldier-groupies was just horrifying. It's terrible to find out that all the stereotypes are true. I stayed very very sober for fear that I would tell them what I thought of them. :P

The night ended badly when we wanted to leave - the soldier guy yelled at Jen for giving money to a beggar, basically told us we were liars and then called all Japanese people stupid. Quite literally - "All Japanese people are stupid! All of them!". This, naturally, did not endear me to him and I just walked away to find a taxi. As the last one into the taxi, he stood behind me and patted me on the butt. He very very nearly got his groin kicked into his throat, which Jen thought was hilarious. :P There, Mum- there's the temper you were talking about. :P

Wow. That's just one experience I'm glad I had, because it was an eye-opener, but one I wish never to repeat. Icky icky icky filthy yuck!

But yeh, Becky stayed over and we had more of our lovely chats yesterday morning. And while waiting at the bus stop, saw Jen and Emma drive past, so we caught up with them, and then I went with them to buy a pillow. I have a proper pillow now! Woot!

So yeah, that was my weekend. And no, Mum, I didn't get drunk. :P

Becky and Jen in front of the Ruins:

Becky, Jen and Amie in front of the Ruins:

Jen going down a slide in The Coolest Play Park Ever!

Check out http://suqbus.deviantart.com for more pictures, which I'll be uploading during the day.

Awesome weekend!

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 06:40:25 GMT

Had such a fantastic weekend!

Mum and Keith - you can ignore the bits about me getting drunk. I did not get drunk again.

So I got drunk. Again. Went through to Naha on Friday evening. Had dinner and pre-drinks at Kadija's place, which was really fun.　Then headed out to a dance party Aaron found for us. It was really really empty, but that at least meant that there was room to dance. The music was fantastic. I danced my little tushie off.

Had the hangover to end all hangovers on Saturday morning though, which was odd, considering I wasn't all thaaaat drunk. Bah. Becks looked after me so nicely and gave me toast. Hooray for Becky!

But went out to Starbucks with Caren. And Becky, Dave, Aaron, Amie, Deej and Nic because they happened to be there too. Tried having a chocolate doughnut (doughnut, Jacqui! Not donut! Do not succomb!!) but that was a stupid idea. :P

Walked around the fleamarket with everyone too. Bought some kawaii phone decoration thingies. What are those things even called? To anyone not familiar with this trend - you have a little place on your cellphone/mobile/keitai where you can hang stuff off of. So we get little... ummm... toy thingies (ARGH! have only been here a month and already my english is going to the dogs!) that you hang off there. I got a little shiisa and a Hello Kitty in a shikuaasa outfit(shikuaasa is a type of citrus fruit you get here - shikuaasa juice is the yummiest thing ever!). Um. Anyway. Got a bag and some cute socks with frills on them too. :D

My original plans were to leave Naha at this point, but I was seduced into staying by the suggestion of karaoke. So we missioned off to find a karaoke place. On the way we passed an Irish pub, which we just had to enter. Craziness: strawberry daquiries in an Irish pub in Japan. Heehee.

More missioning, and we found the Big Echo karaoke place on Kokusai Dori (the main tourist street in Naha). Not just any karaoke. All-you-can-drink karaoke!!

Crazy, crazy, crazy. Amie and I did a pretty good rendition of TLC's Waterfalls, and Becky and I got all deep and meaningful with Incubus' Drive. This is me not mentioning Karma Chameleon. Or MMM-Bop. :P

When they kicked us out just after midnight, we went down to Paul & Mike's (Canadian pub), where I had a nice chat with a cute Japanese teacher and got bought beer by a soldier. Fun, fun, fun.

Slept over at Becky's place again, and we had a lovely chat the next morning. We have decided that Becky rocks our world.

Yup. Another bus back to Urasoe, and I was dead to the world last night. Tried to wake up early to prepare for a class, but that just did not happen. Which ended up working out, because when I got here I found out that the class had been cancelled.

My classes today were great. First one was with 14 genki girls, who were really excited to meet me, and asked tons of questions, all in English. For the second one I had to make up a short self-introduction game really quickly over my lunch break, but it ended up working really really well.

And ja, that's me.

Another really long entry! Muaha. But at least it was more interesting than any other in the past two weeks. ;)

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Edit 1: graaaaaaaaaaah! When you ask "are you busy?" and I say "Yes, I'm working", this is not an invitation to sit and tell me about your pronunciation of the word "owl" for 20 minutes!

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Edit 2: Just read on a news site while searching for info on Australia for a class: Steve Irwin has pegged it from a stingray barb in the chest. It had to happen some day....

awwwwww!

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 05:41:45 GMT

the english teachers here just took me out for a fantastic lunch of korean barbeque. yummy yummy yum!

they also each said a speech welcoming me and telling me how glad they were i was here. yet another ego-boost. and they gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers. i very nearly burst into tears when i said my thank you speech. :P

ummm... in other news... not much. been working pretty hard. i have to give a speech in japanese at the opening ceremony on friday, so i've been practicing that. had a meeting with a couple of other english teachers yesterday, and they said i can do whatever i want in the class, and i don't even have to follow the textbook. which is fantastic, because even though it's more work, it'll be way less boring. :)

um. ja. that's about it. boring, ne?

Eeeeeevil

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 03:11:14 GMT

Yup. I am evil.

I just told one of my students to say "red lorry yellow lorry" three times fast.

Kept me entertained for half an hour.

led lolly lellow lolly ... rer rorry lellow rorry....

heeheeheeheehee

Stupid things

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 00:58:17 GMT

Stupid things Jacqui has done so far:

1) Well, the first one is just a collection of shoe mishaps. The teachers here must think I'm a complete savage because I keep wearing the wrong shoes to the wrong place, and I always take forever to put them on and take them off.

2) In the staffroom - Plug headphones into laptop and turn the music volume way up. Only discover 5 minutes later that it doesn't matter if you plug the headphones in - the music still plays through the speakers. Doh.

3) Discover at aruond 3:30pm that my brightly coloured bra is plainly visible through my shirt. But at least it's not school-time.

4) Lalalalalaaaaaaa.... walk in a semi-daze (sp?) through town... past the American consulate... hmmm... what are all these people doing outside? ... Why are they glaring at me? .... Do I have something on my face? Nope. No one can make you feel unwelcome like the Japanese... they don't actually say anything, they just talk under their breath and glare at you.

This was at a protest outside the consulate, saying they wanted the nearest military base gone. Guess what? Jax looks like an American (to the uninitiated). Jax was also wearing military-style pants. Doh.

Boredom

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 04:16:26 GMT

Yep. Boredom has set in. :P

Went to Kagamigaoka yesterday to introduce myself to the staff. My co-ordinator there rocks. :D met him while we were both drunk at the beer dome last week. :D but after my little introduction, he said i could go home. so i spent all of yesterday cleaning my flat.

told you it was boring!

and today i've just been making more lesson plans. i have zillions of ideas for things, but i haven't actually had a meeting with the teachers yet to see if i'm doing what i'm supposed to be doing or not. brought up that little issue today, and they said we'll have a meeting next week. way to do it at the last minute. :P

playnig badminton again tomorrow afternoon, after my meeting at kagamigaoka. at least i know what i'm doing there!

but yeah. that's it. boring, boring, boring. :P

Looooots of cash

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 00:35:45 GMT

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEITH!!!! Hope you have a fantastic day.

So I got paid yesterday, and since I had saved quite a bit from the money I brought with (by not buying things like a bed, and anything else for my flat :P), I decided that the bargain I saw on the laptop I found yesterday couldn't be missed.

So I ended up buying a Toshiba Dynabook AX, because they were selling it for about Y40 000 less than it's usual price, and it came bundled with internet connection, wireless, an IP phone and lots of other internet-related stuff I don't remember right now. :P It's mostly in Japanese, but I'm looking to see if I can get an English service pack for windows xp, and I know my way around it enough to be able to get by with it in Japanese for now.

But they can only install my (50mb cable!!) internet line on the 25th of September. I'm not entirely sure why, but after that I'll get two months of free internet, so that's pretty cool. And there's another Y12 000 saved. So I think it was a good deal, even though I feel raaather poor right now.

So yeah, spent last night emailing crazily from my new phone (which cost Y1, and I'm dreading the first bill for next month :P) and setting up my new computer. And cleaning my flat. Four days of me getting home really late at night, or not at all, left it quite a mess.

So yeah, that's me for the day. :D

-----

edit: cracking myself cuz today i decided to wear pigtails in my hair. a bunch of teachers just came into the staffroom, saw me and let rip with the KAWAIIII's (kawaii means cute), and one of them was like "what a pretty girl you are". hahahahaha! excellent.

Drunken island weekend

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:34:31 GMT

Pheeeew. What a weekend.

I guess I should start from last Thursday... went through to Naha, where we had more orientation lectures. *Yawn*

Thursday night was really really fun though, because we had our welcome party for all the people in group B, who only arrived here a week ago. We went to The Beer Dome in Naha, where it was Y2100 for all you can eat & drink. Didn't eat so much, but drank plenty. Got fairly plastered and ended up having very philosophical discussions about politics with a guy from Minnesota (Nick). Was fun. ;)

Shared a taxi home was Jen & Emma, and when the taxi driver reached my area after dropping Jen & Emma off I couldn't remember the words for "turn right", so I just told him to drop me off where we were. Had waaay too much energy, so ended up running the rest of the way home and managed to screw up my left calf muscle, which was only apparent the next morning when I stretched after waking up, and the muscle cramped up so hard it took me half an hour to work out. It's not been often that I've felt that much pain. Was limping for the rest of the day. :P

Went for a bit of shopping with Carin on Friday evening, where I bought some more clothes suitable for work, and a pair of aqua socks, which came in very very handy over the weekend.

Creepy creepiness when Carin and I were followed around in the clothing store by this Japanese guy in a wheelchair. After about half an hour of following us around he got the guts up to talk to us, but he mumbled everything in Japanese. And even though I told him 15 billion times that I didn't understand him, he kept trying. I suppose you have to admire the effort. But I told him I had to get going, and Carin and I just ducked out, and managed to avoid him the rest of the time we were there.

Theeeen Saturday morning... I was so surprised I managed to wake up on time, but I did. :D And I managed to get to the port. Yay me. Took a bus, then the monorail, then Carin and I were supposed to meet at the monorail station to get a taxi to the port, but she got us a lift from her supervisor. Yay for saving money too.

The ferry ride to the Tokashiki islands was so much fun. Sat right on top in the sun with a bunch of lovely people. Took some pics (see below) and had a great laugh.

As soon as we got to the camping site, we got changed and went for a swim. I had bought goggles and a snorkel at the port earlier, so I saw some amazing stuff under the water. I wish I could describe how beautiful it was, or that at the very least I had an underwater housing for my camera so I could've taken pics. Beautiful, beautiful fish in really bright colours.

When we had enough I helped Whiti (from New Zealand) set up his volleyball net, and he taught me how to play (kind of- I'm still total rubbish!). So we got teams together and played volleyball until we couldn't see the ball any more.

Dave (an older JET who had organised the trip) had brought some fireworks with, so we watched those, played some music off someone's i-pod, had some drinks and loads of fun.

Aaron (also from New Zealand) got me very very drunk on Awamori (an Okinawan drink similar to sake, but it tastes better). Ended up in the ocean again, yelling at Michael (from Scotland) not to get too far away from me, because he was a lifeguard and I was going to drown without him. :P

Stayed up until the weeee hours of the morning chatting to a guy from the US (another Dave) and a couple of Japanese guys from Ryukyu university. Becky (from England) came stumbling back at around 3am, and her and I went off to try get some sleep together.

Managed to get about 2 hours' sleep, and even though I'd sobered up when I went to bed, I had a very very nasty hangover the next morning.

So yesterday I spent the day doing things to try make the headache go away, like sleeping (which didn't work) and eating greasy foods (which helped very slightly), eating soba and ice-cream (which also helped slightly) and going for a swim (which was nice when I was in the water, but highly unpleasant when I got out).

The ferry ride back made things waaaay worse. We all sat in one of the rooms at the bottom, where it was just one big carpeted area with pillows so you could sleep. Got about 45 minutes' sleep, but woke up feeling much worse. Very nearly threw up. :P Fun fun fun.

Was soooo glad when I finally got home. Threw all the wet stuff in the washing machine, made like 4 fried eggs for supper and fell asleep. Was woken up by the bastard military blowing stuff up in the middle of the night though. Woke up because of big bangs, completely freaked out. Didn't know what the hell was going on. Looked out the window and couldn't see anything, but the bangs continued for about an hour (so loud that the ground actually shook). Grrar.

Anyway! The last 4 days have been AMAZING- experiences that will never be forgotten.

Sorry for the loooong entry, I just didn't feel like splitting it into four seperate days.
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Aaron, Tim and Nic on the ferry:

The island (but the pic does no justice as to how beautiful it really was):

Cravings...

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 01:57:06 GMT

Things Jax craves...

- South African accents
- Real cheese (I've only found super-processed plastic stuff here)
- Biltong
- Cheap fruit

Mrrrrrrr.

Anyway. At Kagamigaoka today, just gave another lesson. What a sweet kid, and I've already forgotten his name again. Dammit! (Edit later in the day... I remembered his name! It's Tatsu. Woohoo!)

I'll be offline til Monday, I think. Unless I find time to get to an Internet cafe. Going to be in Naha tomorrow and Friday, for a new JET conference, and this weekend a bunch of us are heading through to the Tokashiki Islands. Fun fun fun!

------

15:15pm - Heh. I'm back at Chubu, cuz Yuko wanted me to go with her to the bank. So I now have a health insurance card, a pension book and a bank account. Yay! We went to the cellphone place, but they insist I have to have my gaijin card. Apparently certification from my Board of Education, health insurance card, proof that I'm getting my gaijin card next week, pension card, passport and inkan aren't enough proof that I live here. :P Ah well. Just 5 more days.

But while we were at the cellphone place, we went to the bookstore next door. Soooooooo much awesome manga! I couldn't help myself... I bought a Bleach manga, even though I can't read it. I have an electronic English version, so I'm going to go through both and work out the translations. It was only ￥390, which is the same as a bus ticket from here to Naha, so they're SUPER cheap. :D And anime... it's about ￥2800 to buy a dvd of a series. And apparently the dvd's have English subtitles. *Squee!*

So I've been roped into playing badminton again this afternoon. Just waiting for 4pm. Hopefully they won't think too badly of me if I play barefoot... I'll just tell them that I need to wait until after pay-day to buy shoes. :)

Anyway, so that's me for the weekend.
Ja mata!

SA JETs community

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 02:57:00 GMT

If there are any of the South African JETs reading this, I created an SAjets community for us. Thought it might be more useful than group emails. :)

Clickety to http://community.livejournal.com/sajets/, join and post! :)

Bleach!

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 00:36:48 GMT

Left work early yesterday cuz there was nothing to do and Yuko was offering a lift. ;) So I got back, posted some letters and postcards, did some shopping and walked back and collapsed on the couch.

Switched on the tv and found... BLEACH!!! So I watched the whole episode trying to guess where it was in the series, even though I couldn't understand a thing. It was just nice being able to understand "BANKAI!!", and seeing something so familiar on tv.

((For anyone who watches Bleach, the episode looked like it was maybe 15 or 20 away from where I ended off, which I think was on around episode 70. It was still the Bound storyline- Ichigo was fighting the Bound with red eyes & white hair (Kaira??). And **SPOILER**: Ishida regains his powers! Woot woot. At the end of the episode the Bound got into Soul Society. Interesting... (end spoiler) But the ending track was super-awesome!))

Anyway, I used my time wisely and spent about 3 hours learning my Japanese yesterday afternoon. Had the tv on for some background noise, and caught bits of this insane gameshow. Japanese gameshows are way better than SA ones! :D There was a guy & a girl playing together. In one section of the show they got hooked up to these big electronic things, and played as real-life video game characters in a prehistoric video game, having to jump and duck and run around and punch things. In another section they played speed hockey against two guys dressed in bright orange octopus outfits. The show had two male presenters, both wearing bright pink suit jackets. :P Wicked. :D

And how nice it is that the main news story of the day (complete with a full 10-minute video news story and animated graphics) is about a power failure in Tokyo. :P

Took ages to fall asleep last night cuz military choppers kept flying over and waking me up. God, those things are loud. At one point I actually sat up and turned on the tv to the military channel to find out if there was some sort of military emergency or something. Nope. Just late-night flyovers. Argh.

Anyway. Have had yet another invite to badminton this morning. But it's for tomorrow afternoon, when I'll be at my other school, and for Friday afternoon, when I'll be in Naha for the ALT conference. Such a shame, cuz I would love to play again. Badminton - dork chique. Haha.

And speaking of dork - the latest fashion crazes here are totally weird. Walking around Naha on Sunday, we saw some straaaange clothes. Apparently, waist-high pants with suspenders are in. And dungarees. Totally frumpy dresses with puffy sleeves and floral patterns. And the hairstyles - mullets! Oiiiy...

Soba!

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 04:53:48 GMT

So it turns out that despite the shoe thing, I actually made a good impression on the principal, because he took my supervisor and I out to lunch today, to have Okinawan soba - noodles in soup, with pork ribs. Was very yummy. And he kept just ordering more food! So I had fried tofu as well, and a dessert of sweet beans and rice paste topped with a gigantic mound of crushed ice. Yummy :)

And the vice principal just went out and bought a new badminton racquet, and has challenged me to a match on Wednesday. Haha. Too bad I've been booked to teach at Kagamigaoka on Wednesday. :P I need to buy some decent shoes first too, I'm not having my toeses all rubbed raw again. I still have plasters on both feet. :P

And my gaijin card is due to come through on Monday, so just one more week until I can get a phone! Woohooooooo! And once I have a phone, I'll have email, and can actually get hold of all you lovely people. :D

chocolatey goooodness!

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 04:10:58 GMT

i found another one of those chocolate mousse-filled bun things again! woowooowoo! :D

i've been invited to play badminton with a few of the other teachers this afternoon. this should be interesting. and highly entertaining for them. :P

heeheehee. to give you an indication of how little work the teachers have to do over the summer vacation: the vice-principal is asleep at his desk. :P

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15:45pm - i just met my kocho-sensei (principal). i walked into his office with shoes on. doh!

typhooooon!

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 06:47:55 GMT

i interrupt my backdating to say that i have to rush home from work now (as much as one can rush when waiting for a bus), as there are reports of a typhoon hitting us, and I have to get back to take in all my stuff from off the balcony.

Wooooooooooo! fun!