Random Little Happenings

Today was full of interesting happenings. First, after I was done teaching one class I looked out the window and there were people scraping moss out from between the bricks in the sidewalk, no wonder Japan is so clean. They hire people to crawl around with a little knife to cut the moss out from between the bricks. That was on one campus. On the other campus there is going to be a festival this weekend (No school for me Monday or Tuesday!) so they hired people to come in and fix the broken bricks and cut all the dead leaves off the trees to make the campus look all pretty. We would never do anything like that in the US.

Today during my classes I decided to teach my students the "Trick or Treat, smell my feet. Give me something good to eat" saying b/c Halloween is soon approaching and I thought it would be fun. They thought it was funny. So that is good. My first class I made them each say it once before they could leave the room b/c when I wanted them to say it all together half of them didn't say it. By the end they were laughing though. My second class did much better with the saying it all together. So instead of making them say it individually, I made myself practice their names, I think I finally have them all learned. 3 classes down - 3 to go. They kept laughing at me though b/c I couldn't pronounce some of them and was calling them by the wrong names even after a couple times of going around the room.

After school I went shopping with Diane for the rest of our costumes. We are going as the Blue Brothers so we needed to find the right hat, which we found in a used shop. It was actually quite easy once we found the shop and everything. So we are all set to go on Thursday for our Halloween party. After we done shopping we went to a little Italian restaurant where the waiter did magic. It was pretty cool, he put on a show just for us.

We then went and taught the dentists. Yes, Diane teaches a group of 4 dentists English on the side. It was a lot of fun. They definitely were asking a lot of questions about me and why I was in Japan. (Which may I add, no one likes hearing that I came b/c I was offered a job, so I am going to start saying I came b/c it is really close to Tokyo Disney!) After that Diane and I were waiting at the train station and a drunk guy got off the train and just feel in front of us on the ground and just sat there. In the US people would stop and make sure he was ok, here though, they just keep right on walking, they may look but that is it. They do nothing about it. (Drunk Business Men are a common thing here I guess, they always go out after work and drink with their bosses - and it is mandatory.)

Oh and on a side note, the US needs to invest in a hot towel before every meal to wipe your hands before you eat business. I love the fact that when you sit down at a table one of the first things they do is hand you a moist (most of the time warm sometimes cold) towel too wipe your hands. And I don't mean a flimsy little paper towel napkin or a wipy dipe. I mean a real wash cloth type towel.