Abra In Exile

For those of you outraged by the blatant anti-mainland, anti-white people discrimination displayed by the Mine City Board of Education, I have some good news. It turns out that yes, my replacement is a Hawaiian female of asian descent (Japanese-American to be exact), but guess where she went to college? That's right, Willamette, located right in the heart of Oregon territory! I take this to mean that while Mineians (the people of Mine) maybe prefer Asians to whiteys, they love Oregonians! I also am extemely tired today and realize that in actuality it probably doesn't mean anything.
Sitting in the office today is like getting your ears boxed repeatedly by the schoolmarm at the one room school house just like in days of yore. Actually, it is not like that. It is just really, really boring. And I am a bit cracked out owing to a late night. I apologize. My mother should be touching down in Osaka in about 2 hours, and with a little bit of luck, I will be picking her up from Shin-Yamaguchi station later on tonight. I am, of course, very happy to see her, but I am also very happy to see what she has brought with her. For me. I am talking about my 36 creme eggs, my skittles, mini-snickers, body scrub, real American deodorant, and magazines. If you are currently living in Japan (preferably the Yamaguchi area) and would like to relieve me of a creme egg or two, you need to contact me directly and I will see about making the proper arrangements for an egg transfer. Don't be greedy and request more than two please.
Also, if you are living in Japan (anywhere in the country would be ok for this one), I need some advice. I am being interviewed for the local tv station next week and am going to be asked about cultural differences between Japan and the US. For some reason, possibly due to the fact Japan kills my brain cells (hmm... maybe I could use that as some sort of cultural difference), I am having a hard time thinking of anything other than "In the US students aren't forced to finish every tasty mouthful of pregnant fish at lunch time as well as every grain of rice" and "Bells don't ring out at noon everyday to announce to the city that everyone can now eat their lunch". Oh and also, "Playboy themed clothing and school supplies are not fashionable or appropriate for young girls. Neither are ensembles involving plaid pants and striped polos. Or track pants, heels and sweaters." I am guessing this is not the kind of stuff the interviewer will be looking for.

It is only a little after 9 pm on a Wednesday night, but I am so exhausted that all I can think about tonight is getting into bed. It has been quite the day in Mine. What I thought would be a typical office day--sitting, checking my email, sitting, reading, writing a postard, sitting--turned out to be much, much more. I spent half of the morning at Shigeyasu elementary, a school I had never visited and taught the class of a woman who may be obsessed with Selene. Well, perhaps not, but she definitely has a picture of Selene on the wall, and when we had a meeting to plan the lesson and I answered "no" to her question regarding if I liked cooking or not, she immediately informed me that Selene liked cooking. Anyway, the woman spoke some English, which was a big help. However, her English ability did nothing to help me from getting tired and more sweaty than I have been in quite some time. I played four games with my little students today and each one involved a lot of movement. Too much movement judging from my sweat-stained khakis (yes, I was that sweaty) and dripping neck. Luckily, I got to escape a little early in order to take part in a "field work" with teachers new to Mine City. Field work, as far as I can figure, must be synonymous with field trip because I spent my afternoon on a packed chartered bus with a bunch of nihonjins touring Mine's most venerated sites. My favorite had to be the Isa Cement Factory. For those of you who aren't aware, Mine is famous for limestone mining...or something like that. Ok, I really don't know what I am talking about but there is this huge factory/mining area in the city that makes cement with limestone. Maybe. Anyway, I got to go to both the factory and one of three giant excavation sites! And I saw trucks with giant wheels, wheels taller than almost two of me! Perhaps you had to be there, but it was definitely the highlight of the field work.
In other news, my mother arrives on Friday. She is flying to Osaka and then taking the train all the way over to little Yamaguchi. I am a bit nervous for her but she has assured me that she had a life before I was born and has traveled to foreign countries alone before. Still, there is so much that could go wrong. She could accidentally get on a train for Tokyo, she could find herself seated in a smoking car, she could get her foot stuck in a squat toilet...actually, the toilet trains are all westers! Nevermind! I am thinking it will all work out. Off to bed.

I just wanted to share with everyone what the good people at Isa Junior High attempted to serve me for lunch today. I will give you a couple hints. It is gray on the outside, but both pink and white on the inside. It has a tail, a head with eyes, lots of bones and skin. Its taste inspires nightmares and prompts sprints to the toilet. That's right. They gave me pregnant fish. For those of you lucky enough to have avoided contact with this with wolf in sheep's clothing (I say this because they serve it fried in tempura batter. The Japanese are nothing if not sneaky, I will give them that), you won't believe how much I envy your innocence, your purity and innate goodness in such a dark and evil world. I have eaten a lot of strange food in this country, including raw horse and whale spaghetti, but the only dish that has made me gag so far has been the pregnant fish. I still feel sick.

With another 45 minutes to go and a blurry contact that is making it difficult to read the tiny print in my book, I have decided the best way to spend my time would be to write my second entry of the day! Yes, I am very bored. After spending the morning at Toko Elementary school, where I was interviewed for a newspaper and filmed teaching by a local station, I am exhausted. I only taught one class, the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th graders. 10 students in all. Out of a school of 13. The class room I taught in featured a welcome sign on the door and a huge display of paper flowers, American flags and a drawing of a blond girl with bangs and blue eyes (me). The teaching wasn't what got me though; it was the 45 minutes of non-stop running in the gym while playing some game involving police and a jail and lots of running. Being without gym shoes, I was forced to play in my socks, which made the continuous running dangerous. Definitely also lessened my speed and I was almost constantly being "caught" by the wee ones and placed in jail. I did however manage to convince one of my chasers to stop tagging me and putting me in jail by shaking my finger at her and telling her to stay away. I was totally joking of course (kind of), but the girl did not tag me for the rest of play time. So that has been my day.
In other news, I am thinking about changing my fake name. "What fake name?" you might be asking yourself. Why, the fake name I have been using for the past 4 and a half years. It all started as a freshman at Whitman College in the old SUB. When you ordered food from the restaurant, the person manning the register would take your name along with your order, and upon its completetion, someone would shout out your name and you would claim your food. Being the owners of rather uncommon names with a variety of possible pronunciations, Malia and I soon tired of picking up food for such unsavory characters as "Mall-ya" and "Ay-bra". Seeing as though we both very much enjoyed enjoyed using our Whitman ID cards to purchase items that would appear on a bill only our parents would see and, grumbling, take care of, we ate at the SUB all the time and quickly got sick of hearing our names butchered. So we decided that we needed fake names. Not any name would do, of course. Something like Hermione or Flavinia would only make matter work. Our new names had to be common and eay to pronounce. we also decided that we should look like the name we would take on. Therefore, Malia became Jill and I was reborn as Julie.
My name has served me well. It has traveled with me to many countries and been used to save me from potentially embarassing and undesirable situations involving reservation making at restaurants, American-loving Chileans, noisy bars and clubs, horny Marines and a cat-loving Brit. There are some situations now in which I find myself automatically assuming the role of Julie without even thinking if it is necessary to do so or what the consequences might be. And I have greatly enjoyed being Julie. But maybe the time has come for me to enjoy being someone else. Anyone have any suggestions? The same selection criteria as before still apply.

Look, I am sorry I have not been unpdating the site more than once a week. The problem is that I usually leave school, where I typically don't have access to a computer anyway, pretty soon after I am done with my lessons for the day, and then when I get back to my apartment, my brain is so warped from having spent a significant part of my day seated and bored with nothing to do and I find it difficult to write. Or do anything really, which is why I often spend the first few hours of my freedom aimlessly playing around on the internet, exercising or sitting cross-legged on my floor meditating. But I will try to change this pattern and create more entries for your (Zandra) entertainment.
This past weekend was a rather low key one. Friday after school I headed to Shimonoseki where I dined on sushi (and out ate a boy), drank a bottle of wine and went to bed. Saturday, I was roused from my slumber by the sounds of suit-ironing (this does produce noise it turns out) at 6:30 am, and then couldn't get back to sleep until around 9. Knowing that I would be leaving Shimonoseki at some point that morning, my only goal for the day was to leave Adriano's apartment by 10ish so i could get to McDonalds for a sausage mcmuffin before the big lunch turnover at 10:30. Sadly, when I finally did get back to sleep, I stayed that way until 11. Consequently, I missed my special breakfast and the day was utterly ruined...until I got to eat more sushi (out ate a girl) for dinner and ogle Brad Pitt in Troy, a movie which I have a few questions about. For one, was the ending changed? I remember a slightly different chain of events in my nerdy little mind. I can't really elaborate much more on my suspicions for fear that not everyone has seen the movie. Also, I don't remember liking Achilles that much in the book. Was his character altered for the film or was I just blinded by his good looks? Everyone knows good looking people can never be evil and all crime in this world is committed by uglies. Tis true.
Anyway, Sunday I went to the home of a crazy, recently retired principal to look at his peacocks and then to a Japanese lunch. Thus, Sunday can be counted as a cultural day.
I am thinking this weekend will bring more of the same; a movie, a bottle of wine and a cultural day on Sunday. Ooh, and hopefully some sushi. The taiko group has been asked to play in Yamaguchi City with an "orchestra" although Meagan and I are having doubts about the existence of this "orchestra" because yesterday the "orchestra" came to rehearse with us in Shuho and consisted of a man on a saxaphone and a conductor. Right. Still, I will get to once again don my orange hapi and white headband and feel like a real drummer for approximately 25 seconds, which is most likely make my first mistake, thus reminding myself that I am a white american girl with no musical talent.
Speaking of being white, although my office will not give me all the information until next week, I have managed to discover through secret and discreet channels that my replacement for the position of ALT in Mine City is a Hawaiian girl of Asian descent. As it turns out, the past three ALTs before me all happened to also be Hawaiian girls of Asian descent. I feel like Mine decided to mix it up a little, you know take a risk on a white, Jewish girl from the mainland, and its gamble didn't pay off. I feel like I have let down white, Jewish girls from the mainland everywhere, but then again, I don't really care. The good people of Mine got their blue eyes for a year and maybe that's all they needed. I also have been feeling really glad that I decided not to recontract. All those feelings of "did I make the right choice?" have rapidly disappeared and I cannot wait to get out of this country. I mean, I have had a great year, but I am perfectly happy to leave it at that and get on with my life. Another year here would destroy all motivation and kill more brain cells then I feel I can spare. Actually, so will a lot of things I plan on doing at home, but somehow killing brain cells in that manner seems more noble.
Special message to Brian: You need to get on planning my welcome home party. I am thinking pirates, I am thinking a pre-party foritfied wine tasting, I am thinking Journey. Make it happen. We can discuss it further when you get here, like when we are at the Boyz II Men concert.

This past weekend I have made what will probably be my last big trip in Japan during my tenure as a JET participant. While that is obviously sad, the good news is that my trip to Kyoto last weekend was possibly the best trip I have taken in Japan this year (Thailand and Hong Kong not included of course). It was so great to reunite with Anna and Carrie, as well as to see Namsie again, and we made the most of our time there, visiting temples, shopping, eating, boozing, dancing and bonding. We also went on a very unfruitful geisha hunt, which I am sure would have been successful if we had had the dogs we wanted, and had given them pieces of kimono to sniff before setting them loose on the streets of Gion. I did, however, get a picture of geisha shoes through a screen door, so at least we were close. we had a slightly more successful hooker hunt, however, and I am sure we could have spotted a ton more if it hadn't been pouring out. It was so nice to take a stroll down memory lane back to our Whitman days, although a number of people from the curry restaurant on Shoji now know exactly how many people each of us hooked up with at Whitman. Oops. The only bad thing about the trip was the nonstop walking, which left me with a pulled muscle and sore feet, but it also left me with a large appetite as well as a major depletion in calories, so actually it wasn't a bad thing after all. Seeing the homeys again definitely made me a lot happier to be on my way home, as did the humidity, talk of future living arrangements, lime flavored Tostitos, and discussions of favorite foods available only in the US. Nam and I also helped to spread the use of our favorite words, "tis" and "twas". We are language pioneers, you might say.
I am currently trying to figure out my Summer travel plans. What I would like to do is by a one way ticket to Portland from Fukuoka, with, say, a three week extended layover in perhaps Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur or somewhere I can use as a launching point for my travels. What I am trying to avoid is going traveling and then having to come back here to fly home to Portland. but that might have to be what happens as my office is supposed to purchase my ticket from Japan back to the city from where I left for Japan. the prices for the two tickets, according to my research, are about the same, so my sneaky plan is to get the ticket myself, and get reimbursed and out of here before the good people of Mine start asing questions as to why my one way ticket from Japan to Portland has me going in the completely wrong direction and why it takes me three weeks to complete what should be a ten hour flight. More later.
Tonight I will be attending my first taiko practice in like two weeks. I am very worried that that the young children, you know, our troupe mates, will have now mastered our new song "Green Wind" and that Meagan and I will once again be at the bottom of the taiko talent pool. We were doing so well on this new song too. We had even suggested hip shaking dance moves to the group, you know, trying to spice things up a but and were finally feeling like, real contributing troupe members. Even though we now how the group's t-shirts, I feel as if we will once again be back to our old comic relief duties at tonight's practice.

It is tue that I was being lazy last night, and didn't want anything to interrupt my banana bread eating, when I asked (not forced) Selene to write an entry for me. I just felt so bad for everyone that had been anxously awaiting a new entry that I knew something had to get on the site and fast. Selene did a commendable job I might add. I might also add that she is a very good cook. The banana bread was excellent, an she makes very tasty potato salad and a scrumptious pavlova. But anyway...
So I have recently returned from my Golden Week trip to Okinawa. All in all, it was a pretty great trip. We arrived on Thursday afternoon, picked up our rental car, Esther (if you ever go to Okinawa, do not even try to do it without renting a car. You will be very, very sorry) and settled into our youth hostel, which was far and away the best and cleanest I have ever stayed in. That night, we pretended we were Japanese tourists and headed for a steakhouse, where I enjoyed a huge meal of meat, potatoes and veggies, all cooked on the grill on my table by a chef who did tricks with the salt and pepper shakers for our amusement a la Tom Cruise in Cocktail.
The next day, we piled into Esther and headed for an island that my guidebook had promised had some "good beaches". Either the "good beaches" somehow became concrete or my guidebook was lying because we didn't come across even a little bit of sand for our beach towels. Luckily, we stumbled upon a small, pretty beach on our way back into Naha, and spent the afternoon burning (Meagan), hiding from the sun (Jocelyn), getting pink-cheeked (Jo) and doing a combination of all three (me). That night, we headed out to Okinawa City to celebrate young Jo's 22nd. By the time we returned to out hostel in the wee hours of the morning, we had had quite a night. A list of events follows:
1) Ate dinner at restaurant named "Hammer" that showed video after video by Bryan Adams and Celine Dion (for the rest of the trip, the four of us repeatedly performed renditions of some of Celine's most famous numbers) and served nachos consisting of 9 chips with a bit of cheese dizzled on each one. The restaurant also featured a magician who performed tableside.
2) Were greeted with a "What's up bitches" by a Marine we asked the name of a good club or bar to go to. He ended up spouting off some nonsense about flipping bitches and dragons, but he eventually led us to a very sketchy street teeming with marines, air force guys, strip joints and dirty little clubs. Just what the birthday girl ordered.
3) After parking Esther and walking up and down the street trying to figure out where we were going, we stumbled into this bar, sat down and were immediately surrounded by men, several of whom tried to sit with us, took our pictures on their keitais and bought us buckets (love buckets) and beers. I think it goes without saying that the US armed forces really need to do something about getting more women to join up because and ship them to Japan because there are definitey not enough English teachers to satisfy their needs. Anyway, frazzled by all the attention, I proceeded to tell all who asked that I was a Marine corp officer, first lieutenant to be exact. By dropping in to conversation such words and phrases as "charlie company" "I am on supply" "West Point" "At ease Marine" and "court martial". Yes, I think I was very convincing. Especially with Jo posing as my friend, a wing commander in the British Royal Air force, on an exchange program to Japan. We had them fooled until they asked to see military id.
4) Went to club where it was illegal to dance if the lights went on and if you were caught doing so, would be arrested.
We spent the morning after our trip to Marineville recovering at the beach, and then headed out that night to a club recommended by a marine called Slums. And slummy it was. My favorite things about Slums were as follows: 1) The outfits of the Japanese girls--ranging from slutty to sluttier 2) The simulated sex on the dance floor 3) The 15 minute long line at the bar. All in all not my favorite club of all time, but I managed to pick up some fashion ideas and the people watching couldn't be beat.
Sunday was sight seeing day. We wanted to head to the north of the island to hit up the aquarium and something called pineapple park and a bunch of other things, but because we were stuck in standstill traffic for approximately four hours we only saw the park and aquarium. Both were great though. At pineapple park we got to eat and drink all the pineapple stuff we wanted, as well as ride in a pineapple shaped car. At the aquarium we got to see some very impressive whale sharks. On our way back we stopped at the same very good mexican place we had the night before (this is excusable as will not have good meican again until I get home. Same goes for our three visits to the A&W drive in).
Monday, our last day, was spent hanging out on the balcony with high school boys and drinking, eating in a tree, shopping, sight seeing some more and parting with out dear pal Esther.
So today it was back to work. But tomorrow morning I am off to Kyoto until Monday at some point to meet up with Carrie, Anna and Namsie! Should be great time.

Don't get excited about reading about Okinawa just yet, cos Abra is lazy and doesn't want to write, so it's Selene. While she sits and eats banana bread that I made for her, she makes me write something...! So rude!

Anyway, we just came back from Nonno spaghetti, top quality as per usual, with Meagan. We were quite the old ladies, eating our spaghetti, then setting in for a bit of banana bread and a few rounds of cards, namely bullshit! Fun times, til Meagan had too much of Abra and me collaborating to make her lose!! Ha ha ha!!!

So I'm sure all those who know me and don't, want to know what I did for Golden Week...yeah?? Well, I didn't go to Okinawa, sad, and maybe wrong decision, but what can we do...Back in the day, I decided I should save money since I am flying home for a holiday in August and have to pay for it, so that meant No to Okinawa. However I think I still managed to spend as much money...

So in a rough chronological order this is what I did...
Saw "School of Rock", very cool, and fun. Also saw "Freaky Friday" fun and cute movie, enjoyed both. I was in Hofu, and this guy came along and asked me to take a photo for him (or so I thought), cos he ended up leading me about 30 metres away around the side of this building and taking a self-timer photo of both of us?? So weird, and if it weren't for the fact I was bigger than him, and would win if he tried anything, I'd have been scared! But instead I had the photo, with a "what the fuck is going on here" look on my face! SO anyway, the main trip of my weekend was to Nagasaki with friends Mary, her friend from home and Tomoko. Fun times, and nice city, went to the peace park and bomb museum. Did you know...when they were planning the bomb drop, it was proposed for both Yamaguchi city and Shimonoseki!! Whoa! And then it was meant to be dropped over Kokura (City at the very top of Kyushu, very close to Yamaguchi), but there was too much cloud cover and factory smoke, so they headed down to Nagasaki... Love being cultural! So after, we had okonomiyaki for tea and then it was off to karaoke!! Fun times, most of the shout outs were for Abra - Foreigner, Journey, Boyz II Men, and they brilliant rap that Mary and I did... Yes, white girls from Essex and Timaru can rap with the best of them!

Okay, we watching a movie now, so I'm finishing my story. One more though quickly, so they say traffic is mayhem over Golden week and I never doubted the stories, but still I thought it might be pleasant to drive to Shimonoseki on Tuesday, instead of taking the 30 minute train trip...DON'T EVER DO IT!!!!! It took over TWO hours, I wanted to kill myself!! Totally stressed me out, but then I went on to Kokura and had my hair done, and I love Japanese salons, so I destressed..! But I repeat DON'T DRIVE IN GOLDEN WEEK!! Ok, nice chatting, I doubt you will hear from Abra until after the weekend at this rate, cos she's going to meet her uni mates in Kyoto, so be patient...! Bye!