coming home

I have now been home for an entire 18 hours and they have been entirely fabulous (even if 11 of them were spent asleep). So far it feels like a bit of a dream - enjoying Chipotle and real Diet Coke and American TV and more. Sure, i did almost faint this morning at the size of the coffee pot. And i still haven't ventured into what is likely to be the excessively over-stimulating world of public places. But for now, i'm happy.

the final countdown

Its really here. In less than 60 hours i will be on my way home. And I only have 12 hours left in my apartment. The walls are bare, the floors are scrubbed (including some of the grossest stuff under the fridge and the washing machine), the drawers are empty, the dishes are packed and my suitcases are bulging at the seams.

Tomorrow the boxes and furniture will all be packed up and hauled away to Shimagawa for the new ALT (mostly, probably by me and Shannon). My suitcases will be sent to the airport so i dont have to haul the 100+ pounds by myself through 3 train transfers on the way to Nagoya airport. The next two days i'll be crashing at Shannon's with a small backpack of stuff and tons of errands to run - cancel my cellphone, empty my bank accounts, return my modem, collect my money at Heiwado and Liquor Mountain from my point cards, say final farewells at school, and more. Of course our last two evenings are planned too: Cannery Row tomorrow and the Omitetsudo Beer Train on Tuesday.

The last days have been long in coming, and while i'm sad to say goodbye and leave everyone here, i'm ready to go home. Sayonara Nihon.

holy balls

OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!!!!!!!!!!

In approximately 30 minutes i willl have, in my hands, my very own copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They came this morning when i was on my way back from Kobe, and as soon as I saw the slip i made Shannon call to get it delivered ASAP!!! I mean, its true that i have no intention of reading it today (i'm doing what i can to keep it for the plane ride home in 12 days, reading books 1 through 6 to distract me), but still, I'll have it!!!

Yes, i am aware that it is mildly pathetic that i chose to write an entry about this rather than discussing the exciting events of my last days (enkai, the total bust of yukata shopping, going out in Kobe, etc) but we're talking about Harry Potter here!

the last 14 days... one giant emotional rollercoaster

So its wednesday now, and exactly 2 weeks till my departure from Japan. And lets just say things are getting a bit more difficult. Today i had two more last classes with my second year students who i just loved as first years but who have become a bit less enjoyable to teach. The class that i'd had planned for 2 weeks (to play a Jeopardy-like game and give out candy as prizes) completely fell apart as the kids didn't want to have to think at all. The questions were slightly challenging, though they could have done it if they were interested in focusing, but instead they started a chant to play Shiritori (the word string game... egg, game, english, house, etc) which is, clearly, quite easy for them, and which we've played about a million times. I felt like it was cheating to give the winners for that game candy, but as i'd given it to allthe other classes i didn't think i could get out of it.

So after this seriously frusterating class, a group of my favorite girls came up to me and apologized for the class 'making noisy' and making me sad. At which point i, of course, start crying and apologize to them and say how sad i am to leave.

Then after school a girl (also a favorite 2nd year of mine) comes out of clubs to give me a gift... a miniature bintemari she had made for me herself in homemaking club, along with a cute note and purikura picture of her. So i start crying again.

I'm a bit worried about the waterworks, to tell you the truth. The last classes have been, up till now, fairly unemotional as i still see the students everyday. But friday is the last day of school where we'll have an assembly, i'll give a goodbye speech, and i'm sure there will be lots of picture taking and more crying (on my end). Plus after friday i may see some of the students when they come in for clubs, but the third years probably wont come in at all since they're finished with clubs. Woah.

So here i am, 14 days from leaving, and already feeling overwhelmed with the hugeness of it all. And i haven't even started cleaning this bloody apartment yet... something tells me the grime and grossness of it all will really bring me to tears.

adventures in yukata - me and the women of the Aisho-cho BOE

Yesterday i was told to head over to the Board of Education to discuss my going-away-present, after i finished my last class. Since i already had some papers and questions for my supervisor about my travels home i figured it was no problem. but, as usual, things didn't turn out as i'd planned.

At about 2:30 i show up at the office and am greeted by alot of confused faces. I mean, they know who i as but not what im doing there. I was informed that my supervisor had gone on business to the Echigawa office (a whole 10 minutes away) and that i should wait, though they didn't know when he would return. So i sat at a table and stared out the window as 15, then 30, then 45 minutes passed, and still he hadn't returned. But then another worker who (it seems) is in charge of helping me purchase my going-away-present although she speaks no English and i speak very little Japanese, came back from some errand or another and suddenly the office was in chaos.

I had mentioned to one of my JTEs the other day that i'd like to get a yukata (summer kimono) as a going away gift. So as soon as the woman walked into the office there was a flurry of movement... three yukatas were pulled from shelves and desks drawers, obi (the belts) were located and the corner where i had been sitting quitely became a dressing room. The had me try on all the yukatas and learn to tie the obi (belt) properly. And then i discovered that the 4 women helping me weren't the only ones working on my 'yukata search.' Once we'd determined my size they led me around to, count them, 6 different computers whose owners had been searching different internet shopping sites to show me the yukata design options... did i want red, pink, green, blue, a modern bright design, or a more traditional and simple design... the options were pretty endless.

Of course no one was really sure if the size of the Yukata i'd tried on would correspond to the sizes online (since they all had different sizing systems... some were 'free' size, some anywhere from L to 10L, etc). So, it was finally decided that despite 2hours of work and dressing up and computer searching, and the help of 10 different staff members at the BOE, most of whom i'd never met before, I will have to go shopping for a Yukata next week (during work hours of course). But this time Shannon will come along, partially in role as my decision maker/janken partner and partially as interpreter.

This one is my favorite. So hopefully in one week i will have my own yukata something like it. Where/when i will ever wear it, i have no idea.

Cambodia part 2 - and probably part last.

my earlier exhaustion gave way to illness and, while i previously planned to write a small novel for you all about Cambodia, you'll just have to make do with some pictures instead.

Angkor Wat:


The Bayon:




Ta Prohm:



Prasat Olok:


Banteay Srei:
They call this the Citadel of the Women, claiming the detail work on the buildings is so ornate and perfect it could only have been done by the hands of women.


Angkor Thom (the last capital of the Khmer Empire):


the north gate into Angkor Thom

The Phimeanakas, which, according to legend, is the temple where the king was to spend the first half of every night with a Naga girl (a race of supernatural human being, the original ancestors of the Cambodian people) to populate his city. He would return to his palace and his queen for the second half of the night. It was also believed that if the king failed to show up for the nightly ritual, calamity would strike his people.

Phnom Bakheng:

the temple on a hill

famous for views of Angkor Wat and sunset, which we didn't really get to see.

Miscellaneous Pics -


me, hanging at Bubble T



a Cambodian filling station.


With a name like 'Wrestler Red Wine', how can it not be quality?

Cambodia Installment 1 - getting there, getting around, getting home.

In my current state of exhaustion it seems that writing a bit at a time about my 5 days in Cambodia is the best answer. So here is part one.

I left Thursday night for Siem Reap, Cambodia by way of Bangkok. The flight seemed absolutely perfect at first; i left at 12 am and arrived in Siem Reap at 8am, thinking i'd sleep all night on the plane and have a full day to do whatever. Unfortunately i'd forgotten about the 3 hour layover in Bangkok and the meal and drink service on the flight which left only about 2 to 3 hours of sleep before my arrival. Luckily the flight to Bangkok (like all the flights i took on this trip actually) was pretty empty and i had 3 seats all to myself. I'd forgotten how fabulous Thai Airways is - really good blankets and pillows, nice (and of course beautiful) staff, good food, free alcohol, choice of green tea, black tea, and regular or decaf coffee, and more. Plus the hot towels... fabulous. And who doesn't love an airline whose color is purple? On the first flight, about 5 and a half hours, they fed us two meals, which just seems ridiculous. Especially given that in the states if you fly domestic from LA to New York you don't necessarily even get a free soda anymore. How Thai Airways makes it with a half-full flight I don't know. On the flight back they even offered cognac after dinner.

I also had no idea how great Bangkok airport was. Or maybe its been recently updated or i was in a different part of the airport. But for my layover I had the option of 'retiring' to the Thai Airways or Bangkok Airways lounge for a few hours, and with plush couches and the blanket and pillow from the airplane I had a good nap. At about 5 in the morning there wasn't much open for shopping or eating, but the couches were phenomenal.

Then we had a like 30 second flight from Bangkok to Siem Reap where they again served us food on Bangkok Airways "Asia's boutique airline." Never figured out what that was meant to mean except maybe small - on the way out to our plane every one we passed was basically a prop plane and i was terrified we'd be on a puddle-jumper with propellers instead of proper engines. Eeek. Somehow lucked out and had a regular plane 3x3 seats (747? i dont know my plane lingo).

So now that i'm done with my rant on planes, i'll move on to tuk tuks. While in Siem Reap and going around to the temples the most common mode of transportation is in a tuk tuk, a small roughly 4-seater cart pulled behind a motorcycle. For about 50 cents you can get a ride from your guesthouse into the main part of town or to a market or restaurant. For $10 the tuktuk will drive you around the temples all day. Given the climate of Siem Reap, especiallly now with rainy season picking up, the tuk tuk was great. It was breazy and kept me cool, and when it sprinkled protected me from getting wet. When it was raining really hard there were rain flaps with plastic windows to keep me dry. It was ideal. I will admit to feeling a little strange riding around alone in a tuk tuk... most tourists had 2 or 3 people in each tuk tuk. When i saw Cambodians in one there were usually whole families of 6 or so people. But it was always just me.

It was even just me when i was riding around the back of a tuk tuk and we got a flat tire. We had to pull off the road and push the tuk tuk to a small repair place a bit down the way. There i was all alone with the family of the tire repair-man who was helping the tuk tuk driver, as it was raining and i was instructed to go inside and stay dry with the family of 5 kids (two of whom were naked) and the mother. They spoke precisely three words of english, and i one of khmer. This made for lively conversation in which they said "hello" and "bye bye" about a million times, and i thanked them repeatedly.

Then i was all alone in the back of a tuktuk when the same tire went flat later and we spent an hour on the side of a fairly busy road trying to fix it before giving up, driving it flat to the nearest shop to buy a new one.

My final discussion of transportation leads me to trains. Today i got into Kansai Airport at 5:30am. I generally assume it takes about 2 and a half hours to get from Shiga to KIX, so figured i'd be back home by about 9. Unfortunately that early in the morning, and through rush hour, the trains weren't really running the way i expected. Plus there is the inevitable frusteration of catching a bus that leaves once per hour. I finally made it back to my apartment 3 trains, a bus, 4500 yen, and almost 5 hours later! Thank god i didn't try to go into work for half the day today.