Kamakura

     I visited Kamakura this weekend.  Kamakura is known as little Kyoto b/c of the many shrines, buildings, etc.  I've never been to Kyoto but my friend who has says it's a pretty accurate likeness.  Kamakura was one of my favourite excursions so far and I am itching to go back!
     When we arrived we spoke to a lady at information to ask what would be the best places to hit up.  She told us a few but was SO quiet we could barely hear her and left wondering if we can figure out where the hell to go, hahaha!  Who whispers at a tourist info booth?!?  At any rate we found the right bus and travelled to Hakokuji Temple.  The moment we passed under the gates a hush fell and it seemed so removed from the busy streets with buses not 100m away.  It was lush green with trees, grasses, stone steps, stone statues, ponds.  So serene.  We climbed the steps to the temple but weren't allowed to enter.  So we moved on to the bamboo garden - amazing! We were blown away.  Never have I seen such a forest!  Tall, tall trees, skinny like an arm straight to the sky.  Light grey in colour and bright green at the top that let in streams of sunlight.  I was in heaven and didn't want to leave.  We continued along the path and saw some caves that were no longer available to trek to.  The caves were shallow and had all these stone statues in them.  It looked really cool and I regret that I couldn't get any closer.  We walked the forest again :) and followed our noses to the wonderful scents of the burning incense from the cemetery a few feet away.  I'm not a fan of cemeteries at all at home - they creep me out.  But these are incredible!
     There are stone plots after stone plots right next to each other.  Some of them were ancient and some were obviously new that probably replaced the broken ones.  There were offerings of incense, sake, and even a lit cigarette.  The place was huge and surrounded by trees.  As we walked further our breath was taken away again and again.  So many plots with so much detail and care. In the back were steep stairs leading to more plots of the levels of stairs with a backdrop of trees.
     What's really amazing and I found so touching is that the living family members (mostly the older generation) come and take care of the plots.  The cemetery provides buckets, water, scrubbers, etc. for use by the family.  They come and fill up the buckets and scrub down the stone, replace the incense.  This one old lady was so hunched and carrying 2 buckets and had already gone thru 2 more.  She was working so hard and her daughter was there holding a baby and I just wanted to go help.  I didn't b/c I felt it would be intrusive but it would've been nice.  We didn't want to leave and all I wanted was to stay and read a book.  Weird I know, b/c it's a cemetery but you'd feel the same.
     Then we made our way to Kotokuin Temple, home of the Great Buddha.  He's a bronze statue 36 ft tall.  Pretty impressive.  we went in and again were just in awe.  He was so majestic against the blue sky.  Also, and my friend said the same, he almost looked fake - like made out of cardboard or something.  Maybe b/c the sky was so blue and the statue was such a contrast but it was weird.  It was really cool to look at.
     Side note - from the side angle looking up at his eyes it reminded me of the Oracles in The Neverending Story.  He had the same slightly sharp and open eyelid.  I thought it was cool!
     Then I had the BEST kakigori since Okayama Gardens - the old machines are the best!  We walked along the street for a while to get to Hasedera Temple.  The stores are really interesting.  The buildings are so old and unique looking.  The stores are so varied - there were tiny little stores so old and hardly shopped in and other stores with NICE clothes, expensive wares, and gag gifts. So contrasting!
     We made it to the temple but we had JUST missed it b/c it closed 15 min earlier.  The shrines close so early - 4 or 5.  We were disappointed but I'm planning on going back soon - it's not far.
     Funny story:  On the bus back my friend sat beside a young woman that wanted to practice her English and started talking to my friend.  She asked where she was from and how old she was.  Then she started wracking her brains for things she could say to my friend to find a common ground.  It was really funny to listen to.  Out of no where she said she liked Leonardo Dicaprio and Titanic.  Then she said she really liked gospel music and started naming some songs.  THEN she said she liked Kirk Franklin!!!! How does she know about him? I guess if you like gospel you like K.F!   Too funny! 
     When we left the bus I found a yummy "German" bakery that I dragged my friend to and I had sample of the sponge cake with orange camembert in it! Scrumptious!!!! I bought 2 little cakes (the size of my palm) and they were so cheap.  My friend bought Sutoroberi Shotokeki - strawberry shortcake.
     All in all a great day!!! Can't wait to go back!

What are the kids like?

            It occurred to me I haven’t really written about what it’s like teaching and living here – I’ve been posting about adventures.  But I keep getting asked what the kids are like and how I like teaching.  So here goes.

            To be honest I never really liked kids – teaching kids is a side effect of choosing to leave Canada and live in Japan to find out who I am.  Having taught for 2 months I realized my thoughts haven’t really changed, hahaha!  I’m on the fence with the kids.  For the most part they are good, cute, polite, fun, and smart.  But there are some, as I’m sure you know, who are just brats!  They run, fight, scream, don’t listen, and constantly misbehave.  I know they’re kids and they’ll do that but still – when I tell you to sit down you sit your ass down!  My patience has been getting shorter with my floor classes b/c they are really taking advantage of my kindness.  I started out really nice – my co-worker said it’s better to do that.  But now they think I’m soft and won’t mind if they act like brats.  So I’m trying to balance being a kind teacher while still threatening to kick some major ass.  My co-worker laughed at me b/c I complained he TOLD me to be nice and it’s backfiring!  It is pretty funny tho :)

            I have my faves who just light up my day when I see them.  They’re so cute and helpful and call me sensei.  I can’t wait to see them and play with them and make them laugh.  It’s actually not hard to make all the kids laugh – I thought it was going to be super hard b/c I’m not a kid person and don’t do the baby talk thing.  But I just act goofy, roll my head, “act” exasperated and they love it!  Too funny! 

            Others are very difficult to teach.  I have a class of touchers.  This little girls just keeps poking me with her foot when we’re sitting or trying to pull up or down my shirts and skirts.  Another just reached out and touched my boob.  I know they do this b/c they’re at that curious age.  But I’m trying to enforce NOT pulling down my skirt and feeling my ass.  I’m pretty sure I wasn’t raised to touch my teacher wherever I could.  Anyway, I’m working on it – wish me luck :)

            The floor classes with the parents are really difficult especially.  The babies are fine and the moms are great but the older ones – 3-5 yrs old are total brats and the parents don’t do anything to discipline them.  They laugh and think it’s hilarious when their child throws a tantrum, grabs my supplies, throws them around, screams, pretends to sleep, and slaps them in the face.  I have a class of 2 bros where the mom thinks it’s hilarious her sons are body slamming each other.  Sure boy will be boys but in a classroom where you’re paying a lot of money to learn a language shouldn’t you do your part to ensure they are learning?  And I can’t do anything b/c I can’t discipline the kid in front of the parents.  On top of that she called my manager voicing her concern that her sons are too rambunctious and not learning like they should be – I wonder why!

            However, I have been making progress with my 2 worst students.  One just cries the ENTIRE time even tho his dad is at the window watching an joking around.  The other screams, slaps, grabs things, throws my things, and constantly makes a break for the door, and does a FABULOUS impression of sleeping.  This week, however, they weren’t so bad.  I got the first kid to stop crying after 25 minutes and the other 20 minutes he was laughing, participating, and saying the target language.  The other girl was still acting out but she lost it only once b/c we finished singing a song she decided not to join in on.  If that happens we usually have to start it over just for her.  This time I plowed thru and she recovered and did her new trick of taking out foam letters from the alphabet and putting them back by herself.  It keeps her busy and happy and we repeat the letters.  So lots of progress and I didn’t want to kill them so much – which is great b/c they’re so darn cute!!! It’s ridiculous :)

            My older kids – 10-12 yrs are pretty good.  Some of the private lessons are getting out of hand and again I’m going to have to be REALLY strict.  They keep trying to take my things or waste time playing games or trying to distract me and joke around with me and it’s hard to keep them on track b/c they understand the material so well just the pronunciation is off sometimes.

            I’m starting to realize it’s a delicate balance of keeping their asses in the chairs and still being nice and smiley and not mean and scary.  For other kids when they don’t sit and don’t listen I’m starting to slam the floor and saying “SIT!” – it’s still not always working.  Lots to do and lots to learn on my end but thankfully my fellow teachers from other schools are giving me lots of help!  I’m hoping to implement them this week.

            My emo teens are just as teens are – they mumble, are awkward, and soooo quiet and shy.  It’s like pulling teeth to get them to speak at a normal level or at all and I feel like every game we play or whatever we do they think it’s not fun or beneath them.  But whatever, I can’t cater to each emo kid’s feelings and temperament.  I’m trying with them but that class is probably a lost cause…

            On some funnier notes – my student said “sex” and knew what he was saying.  We were playing tic-tac-toe and I told him he’s “X”.  He kept saying X and then “sex” and gigged and repeated it.  I told him not to!  But it was really funny and we both giggled and he didn’t say it again.

            My other class of twins (boy and girl) was kinda funny.  The sister was putting her things away and kept saying Karay.  “Karay? Karay? Karay?” with her eyebrows raised b/c the name is odd.  I corrected her and she kept saying it.  Then her brother giggled “and rice!”  LOL!!! It was so funny!!! Curry and rice is really popular here and curry is pronounced karay (sp).  Oh man, we laughed pretty hard and I was so happy with the connection he made. It was great!

            There are lots of great moments in my days and I feel awesome when I have a breakthrough with my kids.  But then there are awkward moments when I think I’m definitely making a mistake.

            The phonics for a class was the hard “ch” sound.  The words we were given were “school” and “stomach.”  I like to ask if they can think of others or I’ll think of others.  The first class I taught this in didn’t work out.  She couldn’t think of anything and the ONLY thing coming to mind was Christian, Christen, and Christ!  NOOO!!!!  So we thought really hard and I couldn’t think of a damn thing.  So I wrote it slowly on the board, shaking my head and hesitatingly asked if she knew the word Christ…blank stare.  Then I cringed and asked, “do you know who Jesus is?” …blank stare and I’m standing there thinking I’m a Jevovah’s witness and how I don’t want to be responsible for the education of Christ to this little girl!  GAH!!! My co-worker was like “Why didn’t you just stop?!?!?!”  LOL!  So then I said “Jesus…Jesus…do you know Christmas?”  Then I was like LIGHTBULB!!! You idiot, Kalai!  Christmas!! So I shouted, threw my hands in teh air and she laughed and I wrote Christmas on the board!  Crisis averted!!!  Next class I asked the other girl if she could think of a word and said immediately “Christmas!”  DUH!!! Good gravy that was a close call!

            Teaching keeps you on your toes, huh?

The Cup Noodle Museum

     In Yokohama there's a cup noodle museum  Not just a regular cup noodle museum, no no.  THE Cup Noodle Museum about the man and product that introduced instant noodles to the world!!!  And what a story that is!!! It's about a man who came from nothing and saw people starving and lining up on the streets for food after the war.  He wanted an affordable and easy food for these people to eat.  And so he worked in his shed an discovered that if you fry the noodles the moisture in them dries up and when you add hot water to them  they plump up again.  Genius!!! And so he toiled and created these noodles for people.  Then competitors came and tried to steal his idea.  He was upset.  But THEN he was approached by some food industry people who asked him to spearhead the Cup Noodle market for the world.  He agreed and shared his secret to the competitors.  Then he travelled to America and met with people to bring the product there.  They ate it but didn't understand chopsticks and recommended using a fork instead.  "A fork? Why didn't I think of that?  It had never occurred to me!"  Then they found it wasn't very convenient and so broke the noodles apart and put them in a cup and added water.  Voila!!! Cup Noodles!!!!

     The film we watched is full of inspirational ideas like thinking outside the box, no man is weak, anything is possible, blah blah blah.  Pretty serious stuff if you check it out for a noodle museum.  It was AWESOME!!! I felt like I could invent anything!!!!

     The museum has a lot of cool things to check out.  They replicated his shed where the creation was created.  There was also a noodle bazaar with different noodle dishes from around the world.  It looks like a genuine town in Taiwan or something (my friend confirmed this as she's been :)  And I had my first pho since being in Japan and it was great.  I want pho so bad now!  There's an amazing tree-shadow show.  It's in a dark room with teeny trees set up on a platform.  It looks pretty unimpressive until the lights start moving.  Through the trees these little flashlights move up and down the rows creating a forest on the wall and as the light travels the main tree gets bigger and bigger.  Then the sides lights come on and the forest starts moving and evolving.  I didn't do it justice in this explanation at all but it was an incredible show.  You should youtube it if you can.

     Then we went down to MAKE noodles.  Technically we decorated the cup and then put noodles in it but it was COOL!!! Especially the final touch...we wait in line, buy a cup, and then get to decorate with these great markers that work like paint.  We went nuts and didn't talk for several minutes concentrating on our "artwork" LOL.  Then we got to "put" noodles in the cup.  We gave our cup to the person who puts it over the noodle nest and we get to turn the crank to rotate the cup upside down for the noodles to fall perfectly inside.  This idea of putting the noodles in upside down was another genius idea from the man himself :)  Then we chose our flavour and fillings.  I chose bacon, corn, something else, and chicken.  The chicken was dehydrated and  shaped and coloured like the little chicken mascot, too cute!

     THEN the best part and the ONLY reason I wanted the dumb cup noodles in the first place - I don't even like cup noodles! Hahaha!!! We place the sealed cup in a plastic bag and inflate it with a pump.  The bag swells up and it looks like the cup is floating in this bubble bag!!!! AMAZING!!!! Then you can tie a string on it and wear it like a bag - which we did!!!  I was ecstatic!!!

     There were some pretty great designs on the bags, too.  One guy did "The Re-creation" on the cup.  This terrible picture of Jesus that an old woman did b/c she ruined the original and painted over it.  It was perfect!!! My friend got a picture with and and made a new facebook friend, hahaha!

    I don't know if I'll ever eat the noodles.  They expire in 1 month but then I have to puncture the bag and lose it forever.  I don't know if I can do that...it's too cool!  Maybe one day...

Tokyo Dome...and porn for teen girls?

     Yes, I said porn for teen girls.  At first I wrote Teen Porn and IMMEDIATELY changed it! Oops! Anyway, on our way to the cat cafe we checked out the comic book store for girls.  We were interested - what was so different?  Apparently a lot!  All the books are plastic wrapped so you can't see what's inside and there is no pic taking allowed.  All the books are manga so no real people on the covers.  Lots of the covers were your typical boy and girl in love hugging each other covers.  Very teen harlequin.  Others, however, we quite naughty.  There were covers with girls scantily clad showing a side boob, nipple, or just the peak of a crotch.  And lots others had boys kissing boys.  Now I'm not offended or whatever but I wonder what draws teen girls to this market?  Is it just a romantic love story they're interested in?  Do they like homosexual love?  Why are teens girls interested in this?  My friend and I were flabbergasted and soooo curious!  We also wanted to buy one just to see what's inside the covers! LOL, we didn't! :)  But next time....
     We then decided to check out Ginza.  It has crazy expensive shops like Cartier, Bulgari, Coco Chanel, etc.  Not that we could afford such things but it's nice to window shop.  We never made it, however.  Whilst we were on the train we saw a sports dome and THEN we saw a roller coaster!! We both looked at each other and said "did you see that?"  We got off at the next stop and turned around!  We had arrived at Tokyo Sky Dome.  It's the baseball dome with an amusement park.  The roller coaster goes thru the centre of the ferris wheel - the ferris wheel has no centre!!!  The amusement park is also partly attached to a mall (of course...) and there's a triangular corner that juts out which the roller coaster also goes thru.  Too cool! Oddly thought there were no riders.  It seemed so strange!  So we figured it was closed and didn't go on.  We walked around and found a teacup ride so we HAD to go on and got incredibly dizzy.  I hadn't been on one for so long and we were able to spin it like crazy and both of us felt a little nauseous, good times!  THEN we found a haunted house that looked genuinely scary but my friend was way too scared and refused.  Damnit!  I need to make more friends :)  
      There were a bunch of cool things to do but they were kinda expensive so we settled on 2 things - the cups and Tokyo Cruise Ship.  It's this 3D ride where you sit in a car with 8 people - 4 in front, 4 in front.  Then it starts.  You dip and spin and whirl around and get whipped from one screen to the other.  You "help" this cat girl defeat the evil creature while traveling around the world (or Tokyo, I'm still not sure, it happened so fast).  I don't speak ANY Japanese but you get the main idea.  The ride was pretty cool and not at all what we were expecting.  There were parts in the ride where it was raining and we actually got sprinkled on.  There were black lights and fog and crazy things on the wall and all around you.  It was pretty detailed.  I had a blast!!! But my friend had her face covered most of the time and was super-scared. HAHAHA!!! I guess she couldn't have handled the haunted house.
     I love random days!

The search for the Neke Cafe

      Greetings!!! Last weekend was sooo much fun and so random!  I wanted to hang out with a friend and she came up with the awesome idea to look for a pet cafe.  I told her I was in!  I also asked her if this had to do with animals or if our friendship was going to take a leap - I wasn't too sure what a "pet" cafe was...  So I looked it up and apparently they're pretty popular here in Tokyo.  They are cafes that have dogs or cats lying around the place for you to pet, hold, or just sit by.  Kinda strange I know.  Unfortunately I couldn't find a dog cafe but there are cat cafes a plenty!  I'm allergic but had to check it out just to see what the fad was.  We went to Ikebukuro (home of my first planetarium!) and walked towards Sunshine City.  She found a building she said that was supposed to have the cafe.When we get there we're standing in a store for cat stuff.  There's a ticket seller for the Cat Playground - 600Y.  We decided to check it out.  We get our ticket, walk inside and a cat streaks past us.  Then we look around.  Umm, what?  This wasn't what we were expecting.  Doraemon is sitting in the front of a colourful train.  There are a few enclosed cars behind him with glass windows and cats lounging in bright rooms with cat perches, hammock, and the like.  It was pretty cute.  Then we check out the other room.  This one has MORE cat perches up to the ceiling.  There are bridges running the length of the ceiling with holes to the next room for the cats to walk.  There are chairs to sit with the cats.  And in the back there are little cat sized rooms entitled "In the Kitchen," "In the bedroom."  They had fake rooms set up with cats sleeping in them!!! Soooo cute!  There was also this super cute grey fluffy one sleeping in an egg shaped container.  When you scratched his head he turned his head towards you and arched and looked really pleased but NEVER opened his eyes! Hahaha!!! Adorable!  There were so many cats!  And surprisingly the place didn't smell at all and I had NO cat hair on me when we left, even though they had lint rollers for us to leave.
     We were pretty disappointed b/c we hadn't found the cat cafe.  We walked some more and I saw another sign for a cat!  Had we found it?  Nope!  It was a place with big squashy chairs, books, and large tables in the back to hang out in.  You could get drinks from the hot vending machine, and oh yeah - Look at cats!  This place charges 200Y/10 min to hang out here.  There were quite a few peeps chilling, one guy was even sleeping.  Again, hardly any cat hair even on the cloth couches.  Every so often the "cat wranglers" would relocate the animals to another perch.  They would just stare as if asking "What the hell was that for? I was comfortable!"
     And yes, we stayed for 50 minutes (1000Y!!!) to check it out AND play the greatest/worst game over!  It's a German game called Viva Topo!  The instructions were terrible and I wish I could have taken pics of them.  Essentially, you have to move your 5 mice around the board to paradise before the cat can get you.  The fat cat moves along the board with the mice depending on the roll.  The mice have to collect cheese (obviously :) when they "run away to their friends and relations."  But we're still not sure how to win.  I got all my mice to paradise first but my friend got the most cheese...so we both won? Or lost? LOL! Who knows!!!
     The BEST instruction - To start: Whoever likes cheese the most can roll first.  AHAHAHAH!!!! I'm using that in my classes to see who can go first :)
     After all this searching we still didn't find the right one.  HOW many cat places are there in Tokyo?
     The weekend continues...