After getting home from school, I decided I needed a haircut, like immediately. So I went across the street to the salon, but it was closed. So I went to the drugstore and bought hair scissors thinking that it couldn't be very hard to cut long, side-swept bangs...

...I was wrong.

Yesterday, I headed out to Iga, the birthplace of the ninja, for their annual ninja festival. Iga is about two hours away from Suzuka. I went with Jeff, Ellen and Dan (Ellen also lives in Suzuka, Dan is in Aichi-ken).

The day started with a stop to pick up our ninja suits. Yes, we all dressed like ninjas to walk around town. Nearly everyone who participates in the festival rents a ninja costume. Ninja suits are harder to put on than one would think.

Dressed appropriately, we made our way around the town stopping at various booths to check our ninja skills. Highlights were shuriken (ninja stars), blow darts, logic puzzles, and slingshots with exploding pachinko (little balls, usually used in a type of slot machine game).

The people of Iga were very friendly. A group of people probably employed by the city (wearing awesome costumes!) walked with us for awhile, telling us about the city and ninja weaponry. We stopped for a snack and bought Iga specialties, an Iga beef shish-kebab and Iga Ale. The beef was perfect and the ale was tasty too. It was dark, and tasted like apples had been added to it.

Some of the locals must have thought we were insane though, because the costumes seemed to unleash the inner child in all of us, causing sparring in the streets and mock fights with vegetables in the supermarket. This all resulted in some great photos, and if I can make an album, I will post a link in my next entry.

When the festival closed, we returned our costumes and got the scores on our ninja skills cards tallied up. I had the highest score! I did really well on throwing stars and blow darts. So I was the master ninja of the group!

It's tough to teach and be cheerful after reading news about the Virginia Tech mass murder.

I read a little about it yesterday, but had no time to think much about it because of work. Today I had to be extra cheerful and energetic because it was orientation for the first years.

I feel so horrible thinking about the students and the professors who were killed. I keep imagining what it would feel like if that happened at Kent. The professor who died trying to save his students...students so young dead or lives changed forever. The effects of this tragedy will be felt throughout the world.

My heart goes out to those at Virginia Tech and their families.

These past few weeks have been eventful.

Sunday, April 15:
I experienced my first earthquake. I'd like to sound brave and say that it was nothing, but in all honesty, I was quite frightened while it happened. The apartment was swaying, everything was shaking and the noise! Everything was rattling, I could hear things falling in the apartments around me, and glass shattering in my kitchen. I was able to remain calm throughout the quake and afterwards, but my heart was racing for the next hour.

It turns out that the epicenter of the earthquake was in Kameyama, which is basically next door to Suzuka. The quake was a 5.3 on the Richter Scale, which means it was a moderate quake. However, it was the largest earthquake Mie has had in a hundred years.

Saturday, April 14:

Jeff and I bought a Nintendo Wii! Wii stopped by a game/dvd/cd/book shop on the off-chance that they would have one, and they did. Wii've wanted to get one since Nintendo cleverly showcased it in Nagoya. (yeah, bad puns)

Monday, April 9th:

The new school year started last Monday. My high school is now a SELhi, which stands for Super English Language High School. The Japanese government selects a few high schools in the country and gives them a huge budget to revamp their English program. My job has become much busier! This is good, because I feel more productive at work and the workday goes by much faster. It's bad because I went from having nothing to do, to having tons of things to do, and my desk is paying the price. I need to get organized! Another downside is that most of the time, teachers are too busy to tell me anything.

March has been a very busy month!

On Saturday, Jeff, Theda and I went on a day-long road trip with our friends, Sanae and Miho. Sanae drove us to Nara-ken; Nara (and Kyoto) are famous for many of Japan's historical treasures.

On the way to Nara, we stopped at Aoyama. Aoyama is a huge mountain topped by gigantic windmills. It was very beautiful. The windmills were impressive, but the view from the mountaintop was even more so. I will post pictures later, if I can.

In Nara, we went to Hasedera Temple. Then we went to Tenri, to eat the famous Sakai Ramen (which was fantastic). Tenri itself is a very nice city. There is a university, and the architecture is a beautiful blend of traditional Japanese and European...even the parking garage looked wonderful.

After that, we went to Asuka Temple and Asuka Burial Mound. Inside the Asuka temple was the oldest Buddha in Japan. The Asuka Burial Mound was impressive...I'm not sure how to describe it.

The day trip was a lot of fun. Sanae and Miho are great people to hang out with, and we got to see places in Nara that we've never seen before.

Tomorrow is a holiday. Theda and I will have a tv marathon tonight, and we will possibly go to Nagoya tomorrow. Possibly, I will by henna in Nagoya and dye my hair dark red, but most likely I won't dye my hair.

On Saturday, Theda and I are flying to Singapore! We will stay there for 3 days. I am super excited about it.

It's a rainy day here in Suzuka. The weather was absolutely beautiful over the weekend and it felt like summer. Today, it is chilly and dreary.

It is exam time again at Iino. I have some notebooks to grade, and a newsletter to work on. I wanted to have a lot of it done by last Friday, but I was sick with the flu. I was sent home from work on Thurs, and I had to miss the 3rd years graduation. I'm still not feeling 100%, but I'm well enough to be here.

There is some sort of race going on over at the circuit. You can hear it all over the city.

On Saturday, Jeff and I went down to Toba to participate in "Toba Kids Day." It was a function sponsored by the rotary club so that children could meet foreigners and get excited about learning English. Really though, we weren't there to teach, we were there to play with the kids. It was a lot of fun, and the kids were adorable (and also full of energy)!

Toba is a small cty that is south of Ise. It is a resort area and many people from Japan go on vacation there. It is famous for Mikimoto Pearl Island and its aquarium.

Before the event, the ALTs participating were taken to Mikimoto Pearl Island. Mikimoto Pearls are famous because they are the world's first cultured pearls. You can also watch the famous pearl divers (called ama). It was a very cold and windy day, and the sea was incredibly choppy. I didn't really want to see anyone diving into it for my entertainment, but the diving shows were going on anyway. It was really interesting. They took us to a special observation room for foreign guests and served us green tea and cookies that looked like oyster shells with a sugar pearl inside (the cookies had pearl protein in them).

All the ama are women. The reason that divers are only women was given as "because women can hold their breath longer than men and have an extra layer of fat," but I think it is more likely the reason our tour guide gave us. He said that most of the men were fisherman, so the women became pearl divers. The ama begin training at the end of elementary school, and many aren't experts until they are middle aged. There are ama as old as 80 who go diving everyday! Now, people don't dive for pearls anymore, but they still use this method to harvest abalone (and other shellfish) and sea urchins.

The museum at mikimoto was interesting. We learned all about the procedure of cultivating pearls, and there was some fancy pearl jewelry on display. They had displays on different types of pearls, and on how pearls are sorted and made into necklaces.

Pearls are lovely, but I never liked them that much until the past couple of years. I think the black pearls and the blue pearls are the prettiest.

After, the museum we headed to a gymnasium for Kids Day. There were 13 ALTs and about 70 kids. We played games like 4 Corners and a ping-pong relay race. I got to practice a lot of Japanese, since the children don't learn much English in school (I did get to teach words like "sky blue" to groups though). Sometimes I miss working with kids (the best part of the daycare job was seeing the kids everyday). It was a lot of fun, and I definitely will sign up for any other Toba Kids Day events.

It is oral exam time for my first year classes. There are about 5 major questions I can ask them, and then I ask questions based on their answers. They are doing very well so far. I am usually surprised by how good some of the students English is when they don't have the other students around to judge them.

Of course, sometimes some of the sudents who are OK in class are absolutely terrible one-on-one because they don't have their friends to bail them out when they don't know how to say someting.

Last weekend, I went to Tokyo with Jeff. We took the overnight bus from Yokkaichi on Friday night, and then took the night bus back on Saturday. I am never taking the overnight bus two nights in a row again. It was not bad, but I've felt a little exhausted and sick Sunday morning.

So, the Tokyo day started out with a visit to the world's largest fish market in Tsukiji. I have never seen so many fish. It was a dangerous place to walk because people driving carts were all over the place and aisles were very narrow and slippery. Water was all over the floor to rinse away the fish blood. I almost got blood on my pants when a fishmonger sliced the throat of a live fish...I've never seen blood splurt out like that. Anyway, this talk of blood makes the place sound gross, and it really wasn't. The fish market was pretty interesting. A sign that I have been in Japan too long is the fact that now, when I see raw slabs of tuna, I think that they look delicious, and I want to eat them.

We went to a sushi restaurant for breakfast. We had to wait about an hour to get in because there were only about 10 seats in the restaurant. I have never eaten such good sushi...the texture was fantastic, and the taste was so nice. There were 8 pieces of nigiri and 3 pieces of maki.

After breakfast, we headed to the Square-Enix Building to buy some souveniers (If you don't play video games, sqaure-enix is a company that makes video games. square made the final fantasy games). The gift shop was nice. Most of the stuff they were selling was Enix merchandise though...smile slimes abounded. They had a room devoted to jewelry and other more valuable merchandise. Embedded in the floor of that room was a life sized Sephiroth in his mako cacoon. It looked awesome. I got a picture. Yes, I am a Sephiroth fangirl.

Then we met a couple of our friends for lunch in Shibuya. We actually went to T.G.I. Fridays. Surprisingly, two Western girls who had also been at the sushi restaurant for breakfast were at Fridays for lunch. After lunch, we went to Cold Stone Creamery!! I have not had CSC ice cream since July, before I came to Japan. It was so delicious.

The day ended with a Tool concert. It was not one of the best concerts I've seen...mainly because the sound quality was bad, and we were packed on the floor tighter than commuters on a Tokyo train at rush hour. I was too short to see the stage. There was a girl in front of me who danced so wildly every time I moved to see the stage better, she danced into my line of vision. Then during one song she started hopping and hopped backwards onto my foot. Frustrating.

This weekend has been much more sedate. Jeff is in Suzuka, and we relaxed most of today. I was feeling pretty sick yesterday, so we went out to lunch and that was about it.

So, I've discovered that I do enjoy milk tea. Just not the pre-bottled milk tea that you can buy in all the supermartkets and convenience stores here.

The variety of beverages you can buy here is astounding. I can buy juice boxes containing 100% juice in all sorts of flavors, such as black cherry, kiwi, or peach. My favorites are cassis grape and red & green apple. I can buy bottled and canned coffee that is just too sweet for me to drink (although refrigerated milk and coffee "lattes" are awesome). Bottled cocoas and teas are available in dozens and dozens of types. Milk is full fat by default, and you have to hunt for 2%, which costs more.