Friday, July 16, 2010

A BOE day

I always hear about ALTs who have to go and sit at their BOE and don't have anything to do, they spend their days looking for random things to fill their time (I do this often enough at my high school). Next week my school has holidays that I don't get (I'm not going to the school festival this weekend), my supervisor has said come to the BOE (Board of Education) on Tuesday and Wednesday, when you're not visiting schools (elementary visits in the middle of the day.

Like a little kid who has never experienced homework, but sees their older siblings doing it, I'm a bit excited to spend a day in my BOE (I will have class visits) and see what happens inside of the BOE. Maybe I'll make some new friends there.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

A trip to Furano

This weekend I have two awesome friends coming to visit, since neither one has a car and they both have decently long journeys, I decided I wanted to be able to provide towels for the two of them. Owning two towels already, I needed another.

After school, I set out for Furano to hit up their Homac and grab a towel and a few other things I wanted to have on hand before I have friends visit.

On the way to Furano, I have to pass through two tiny towns, not big enough to have memorable names, but big enough to slow down for, as well as Yamabe, which is big enough to have two combinis (hear the jealousy in my voice?).

Just before I reached Yamabe (I was about 3/4 of the way there), I reached into my purse for something (probably a music player of some sort) and realized I hadn't brought my wallet.

Living in Japan that not only means I didn't have money to buy the items I wanted, but I was driving illegally (no license), was illegally just being (we're supposed to carry our gaijin/foreigner card EVERYWHERE), and I didn't have my insurance card. All big no-no's.

So half an hour into my drive, I turned around to do it again. I got home, grabbed my wallet from my backpack (when did it escape from my purse to my backpack?) and turned around to go back to Furano.

It all turned out ok in the end. I even decided on the second trip in to stop and try and capture the beauty of the sky. While that picture wasn't so interesting, this one was:

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Aloe Yogurt Kit-Kat

That's right. You read correctly. I just finished eating a Aloe Yogurt Kit-Kat.

How was it? A little strange. But aren't most of Japan's Kit-kat flavors strange?

It's my personal goal to try every strange flavored kit-kat I've run into. So far, my favorite is Sakura-Green Tea. Soo good! Also, Maple was yummy.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

What will happen next year?

Interestingly enough, with all the cutbacks being made world-wide, JET is rumored to now on the chopping block as well. The only real article about it is here, and it doesn't even to have any real, solid facts.

Regardless, it makes me wonder what will happen if they just up and drop JET. I'll have some notice, because they wouldn't be able to do it until the end of a contract year (a year from August, at the soonest).

In my town, it would mean they don't have to "deal" with having someone who can't speak the language around. At the same time, they'd miss out on realizing that not everyone speaks Japanese, that my culture has me thinking about things entirely different sometimes.

In general, it would mean there would be less of us causing a ruckus whenever we end up in a giant group (which isn't too often). There will be way less foreigners to practice English with on the trains, sneakily snap photos of and be generally confused by.

Less foreigners would be able to come over knowing that they have this amazing support system that JET provides for us.

For me, it would mean I'll be thrown into a crazy dash to find jobs in Japan (should I want to stay) or the insanity of teaching jobs being cut at home.

I know that God will lead and provide wherever he leads, but it has me very curious to see what the future looks like for both Japan (including these people I care about), my JET friends and myself.