Back in business!

You know, it's always best to stick to what you know and in this case what we know is blogspot. After months of having limited Chinese access, we finally beat the system. So, since shutterfly has been a pain recently, we won't be desiring anymore of their service. That'll show them. So hopefully everyone enjoys the return of a reliable and dear friend like Mr. Blogspot. Hopefully, that means more frequent blogging.

The Best of Japan

Best Big City
Sapporo/ Hiroshima

Best Small City
Morioka

Best Country Town
Takko

Best "traditional" Japan
Shikoku

Best "Modern Japan"
Osaka

Best temple
Nikko

Best ramen
Spicy Miso Ramen

Best Fruit
Aomori Apples, Yamagata Cherries, Okinawa Passionfruit

Best "American" food
Bikkuri Donkey- Also places first for the best name in Japan

Best place to be when the sun is shining
In the car, on a long drive past rice fields and seeing hazy mountains in the distance.

Best place to spend a rainy day
Round One, Namja Town

Best summer
BBQ in the Akita Beach

Best Winter
Hakkoda Mountain, Sapporo Yuki Matsuri

Best Fall
Onsen in the middle of Kouyo (fall leaves)

Best Spring
Hirosaki Castle surrounded by cherry blossoms sipping a beer

Best amusement
Odaiba

Best chill place
Oirase River in Aomori

Best festival
Hmmm... Nebuta Festival in Aomori, Tuna Festival in Aomori, Sansa in Morioka

Best beer
Enjuku

Best snack
Rice burger from my school's cafeteria

Best sushi
Su no Ya Kaiten Sushi- cold, good quality fish and only 103 yen a plate!

Best thing to eat on a hot day
Dole Fruit popsicles, they do them right in Japan

Best thing to eat on a cold day
Nabe

Best onsen
Name Unknown in Iya Valley, cable car to the top and the valley below as you lie naked in the bath.

Best people
Okinawa people- Trusting complete strangers to drive your car while you are drugged in the back is TRUST!

Best random tourist trap
Tarabune in Sado ga Shima

Worse tourist trap
Chi no Ike in Beppu

Best place to go for "The Japan Experience"
Local festivals with yukata, food stalls, and the goldfish game

Best place for the "Food Traveler"
Kyushu- in it's entirety

Place I could go to again and again
Hokkaido

Tomorrow is the Last Day!

I am really going to miss this school, everything about it. Today, I had three classes with my first years. It was fun even though I realized early this week that these students will not have much sentiment over someone they met only four months ago, but I am really feeling the love from my second and third year students. Enough love to let myself know that I did what I wanted to do. I wanted to give these students a good experience with America and English and I think I've accomplished that. In between my classes, I had some great memories. I was going to the bank when I saw students from the blind school that I had just said "goodbye" to yesterday. They were having an exchange with one of my 2nd year classes. THey all gathered and I watched them play すいかわり (breaking the watermelon). I got to talk with a whole bunch of students and got to even play myself, breaking the watermelon. There was cherring and good things everywhere. Then a group of boys, some that I thought didn't have a care about me wanted to take pictures with me. Then in the office, a 3rd year student gave me a letter. I had trapped her into conversation earlier and she wanted to say her own goodbye. Then one of my 3rd year students that always comes to talk to me came and we had a great reminiscent talk. Tomorrow is my last day, but I feel like I can properly leave this school with my head up high, saying that I have done what an ALT is suppose to do.

Silver Dreams

In the past couple of weeks I have had two creepy dreams with silver in them. Strangely, these did not scare me like most bad dreams do and the story in the dream made a lot of sense rather than just clips of odd things that still makes a choppy story.

The first dream, I was living in an all-girl apartment with my friend Allison. The building and area wasn't very clean, but we didn't seem to mind. One day, we are walking together on the street and a taxi cab pulls up in front of us asking for a ride, we tell him we don't need one although he insists. He then tells us how beautiful he thinks we are and asks us if he can take us out to a big dinner. We imagined a very big buffet with a lot of expensive food, but we say no to him, many times. We returned to our building. A couple dream days later, we realized (in some weird way) that there were many taxi drivers out around the area, all asking for the girls to come in. We further realized that their ploy was to pick up the girls, take them to a really nice meal, drop them off at home and kill them. We did not know how. But then we heard a sound. We looked outside our apartment and saw men in black trench coats and silver masks walking around the apartment. We manage to find a very hot rock that we put on the floor and burned a hole through the next five floors. We looked and all our downstairs neighbors are dead. We realize though, that we are safe because we did not accept the offer to eat with them, but these men we around the halls trying to find the women in the apartment who ate with them.

Second dream, I was at an ALT party with a LOT of people. It was a big park with a fancy restaurant at the end. I was with Ron and an unknown person. As we are walking around, it felt like something was wrong with some of the people. We didn't know what , but it was creepy enough to try and leave the party. We went to the restaurant and managed to hide in the back storage area. During the time of waiting, people would come into the storage shed, in hopes to talk to a talent agent or such and many of them would not come out. Some of them did, but when they came out they had silver coming out of their eyes and nose. After less people started to come, we decided we had to leave since it really didn't feel safe. We left the restaurant and started to run through the park, but when we got to the park it was COMPLETELY empty. There was no one. We wondered where everyone went. Then, the silver people started to come out. They didn't seem to notice us and kept on socializing and BBQ-ing. More of them started to come around us and they knew that we weren't like them but didn't seem to care. We were in this really big group and finally when we knew it was safe to ask, we asked them,
"What happened to everyone?"
The silver people said, "Oh, we ate them. We need them to keep the silver in our bodies."
We asked, "But why don't you want to eat us?"
"Because it's already past our feeding time. We don't need to eat anymore. You're safe."
And we continued to BBQ.

School is starting to suck now.

This week has been painful. Now that I had my Farwell party with my English teachers, which was painful enough, they have started to make me say "goodbye" to my students. I realize that this is the best, saying goodbye to them personally, but it makes the days so much more depressing. Then I can't really read their reactions. Did they know? Do they care? Do they want me out of here? Are they like me and will start crying two weeks after I leave? I'm sure they wonder the same things. Why am I leaving? Why would I leave them? Who will replace me? amongst other questions. I feel like such a cheat going to China when I had planned to stay for three years. I really fear that they'll find out and think I don't care. I have tried to think of good reasons why going to China is better and that makes a perfectly legitimate reason why I HAVE to leave, but it hurts and sucks just the same. The closest I've gotten is that Ron found a job in China as well as me and we both haven't had a job in a while. I know I may not have reached all the students, but I sure hope I got through most. Even half, I'm cool with. Ugh! This is going to be a long, guilt-ridden, suicide-watching week (just kidding on the suicide).