They'll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate

I'm not sure if you can tell from my recent entries, but since this weekend I've felt myself falling into a bit of a funk. I think I finally hit the low point of that funk mid-afternoon today, as I was revising lesson plans. I just started feeling overwhelmed with life in general. 

I left work in a depressive sort of mood, but was cheered up when I ran into a small group of students from my school. We were all on our way to the train station so we walked together and got on the train together. One of the girls in the group is in my third year class (my smallest class of eight more advanced students). She seems like the quiet geeky type, but she always shows interest in talking with me (even if she's not always sure about her English). Today we talked about manga. It turns out that we both like D.Gray-man and Kanda is our favorite character. Her friends commented that we both seem similar. It was all pretty cute. The whole thing left me feeling a lot better, at least momentarily. My favorite part about the job is when I get to have actual conversations with my students.

I'm in a kind of in-between mood at the moment. Not too bad, but not great either. I think that part of my problem right now is that I haven't hung out with any friends recently. I can only go for so long without hanging out with people before I start feeling down. I'm also missing my close friends. I'm decently close with Eri, but I haven't seen her recently and I miss my really close friends. I wish meepalicious wasn't in Osaka so that we could have awesome times in Tokyo like we used to. I want to be able to hang out with at least some of Kotobukigumi.

I'm also missing DJ terribly. In America, we were in touch all the time. We'd always text each other when we had something to say, or even if we didn't have anything in particular to say. I miss the easy closeness that we developed over the years. It was just so comfortable to be around each other and we'd talk about anything and everything. I haven't been able to talk to him much at all since arriving in Japan because he doesn't have a very stable internet connection at the moment. It'd make me so happy to be able to Skype with him, or even IM with him.

(And stellawind and melody1228, let me know if you want to Skype sometime soon? It's been a bit since we've last talked and, of course, I'm missing you, too!)

At least I have something to look forward to tomorrow. Yumi invited me to go out for dinner with her and Elise after work. I'm not really close with them, but it should still be fun. It sounds like we may be going out for Indian food, which I love. And there's also a three day weekend with some fun plans to look forward to, so I think I'll be all right. When I'm in a less than great mood I generally feel better when I can get out and do things.

I'm finally going to write the entry about my high school's culture festival (or bunkasai in Japanese). 

The festival was held on the 3rd and 4th of this month. The school was opened to the public for the weekend. The culture festival is an event for the students to show the local community what they've been doing in their extracurricular activities and it's also an opportunity for the students to just have fun. The students spend a lot of time preparing for the festival. I'd seen them working on festival preparations since shortly after I first arrived at the school in July. The whole school was decorated by the students. The homeroom classes in each grade all decorate their classrooms, each room with a different theme. This year's festival theme at our school was movies, so each class chose a popular movie (like Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, or Alice in Wonderland) for their classroom's theme. They then went all out with decorating. Each room either sold food or had some sort of games for people to play. There were also a few different rooms that the students made into haunted houses (of course, these rooms were very popular). The festival was also an opportunity for the cultural clubs to show what they've been doing in their meetings. Groups such as the band, dance team, baton club, and tea ceremony club all put on performances during the festival. The photography, art, calligraphy, and astronomy clubs also all had rooms to display their work.

That weekend was basically the best days of work I've had so far because it wasn't actually work. I got paid to attend the school festival, eat food, play games, watch performances, and talk with the students. One of my favorite rooms was the Harry Potter themed room. The students decorated the outside of the room like Platform 9 3/4 and the inside like the Great Hall. Inside the room the students sold yakisoba. There were four tables set up, one for each Hogwarts house. Before giving each customer their food, the students would put the Sorting Hat on their head and sort them into a house. I was amused when the students decided to sort me into Hufflepuff (even though it's not my house of choice, I think them sorting me into Hufflepuf shows that they think I'm nice). One of my other favorite parts of the weekend was going to the tea ceremony club's tea ceremony/koto performance. There's something about koto playing that I really like. Here's a link to a few pictures from the festival (cause I'm being too lazy to upload them into this entry right now). I have more, but I'm not posting them because they have my students in them. (I don't think it's kosher to post photos of my students online without their permission.) I feel like the few pictures that I can post don't quite do the festival (or the amount of work that the kids put into it) justice.

That same weekend was the weekend that Leslie and Kate arrived in Japan. We tried to meet up in Ikebukuro that Saturday night, but they were really tired and I was a bit late getting to the station. That, combined with the fact that they didn't have cellphones yet, meant that we were unable to meet up. I was pretty disappointed about this because I'd really wanted to see Leslie before she had to go to Osaka. The night wasn't a complete loss though. After I'd been waiting at the station for a while I noticed another blonde foreign girl waiting by herself, too. We passed each other by a few times, then we started talking because we were both waiting. She told me to call her Ed. It turned out that she was also a JET and that she was also having trouble meeting up with her friends because she had forgotten her cell phone. Since we both couldn't find our friends, we decided to go grab dinner together. On our way to find food, Ed ran into the friends she had been looking for. They were four college-aged Japanese guys. They all invited me to come eat with them, so we got a bunch of pizza and pasta at Shakey's. They were a fun group to hang out with and Ed had a lot of amusing teacher stories because she's been here a year longer than I have. After dinner, we managed to squeeze all six of us into a purikura machine and took some ridiculous purikura pics. Even though my original plans (sadly) didn't work out, I still ended up having a good time. Ed and I exchanged info, so maybe we'll meet up again sometime.

The speech at the opening ceremony went well, even though I was nervous about speaking in front of everyone. I was worried that I might have spoken too fast, but Hasegawa-sensei told me that I did fine and that I didn't look nervous, so that's good.

Today, I managed to survive the all important first day of Being a High School English Teacher in Japan. I was pretty nervous beforehand, but I think the lessons were successful. I taught four of my first year classes at my base school today. The first two classes were a bit quiet and shy, so I worried about how well they were understanding (or if they were enjoying the class), but they did fairly well on the worksheets. The second two classes were a bit more lively, though I sense that I might eventually need to give a couple of the more rowdy boys a talking to. I gave the students my self introduction then I had them partner up and ask each other some 'getting to know you' questions. I think my favorite responses where when I asked students what they wanted to become. Some of the best responses where 'a god', 'Anpanman', and 'Kamen Rider'. I spent the rest of the periods when I didn't have classes grading their worksheets and organizing my files. I also spend the last half and hour or so relaxing and talking with Shono-sensei, the second youngest teacher at our school (of course, I'm the youngest).

This weekend I don't get time off because it's the school festival (which should be fun), so I get two substitute holidays to make up for it. Because of the way my schedule works out, one of them is tomorrow. I'm planning on spending my day off relaxing and playing around on Pottermore because I finally got my e-mail! My user name is RoseAvis146, if anyone wants to add me!

Just a quick note to mention that tomorrow is the first real day of school at my high school. This involves the opening ceremony and me giving a speech to the entire school. Then, I start officially teaching on Tuesday. I'm trying to not get too nervous about all of this, but it's hard not to. I'm sure I'll be fine once I get started though.

When I'm less tired and I have time, I'll post about the fun night out I had last night.~

As of yesterday, I have officially been in Japan for one month. It's a little hard for me to believe that it's already been that long. Then, I realize that I'm going to be here for much longer. And I'm doing surprisingly well at dealing with homesickness thus far. I'm just gonna keep my fingers crossed for what's to come (especially with classes starting next week).

I was able to go to my third (and final) school for the first time today. They seemed pleasantly surprised after they met me. One of the teachers told me that the ALT before Dylan had been a girl from America, the same age as me, who had just graduated college. Apparently their experience with her wasn't very good, so when they heard about me they were preparing for the worst. They were surprised and pleased when I showed them my completed lesson plan because they weren't expecting me to have it done yet. After talking with me, the teachers said that they weren't worried anymore and that I seemed mature. I'm glad that they seemed happy with me. After the planning meeting, Funakoshi-sensei brought me with her to the school's pottery club, which she helps run. She recruited one of the first year students to help me make a cup, which was fun. While we worked, some of the girls and I played shiritori (a Japanese word game). It was nice to spend some time at the club and I think I might try to go again.

I was also able to get a rice cooker after school today. Hasegawa-sensei took me to the store, so that I could buy it and not have to carry it (and the big bag of rice) back to my apartment by myself. It'll be easier for me to make certain food now, so I'm happy. I have yet to try it out though because I was too hungry to wait for rice to cook tonight.