Carissa's Exploits and Fabulous Adventures




Japan Round Two

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Several complaints:
1) My office failed to mention that a new student was added until I received a call at home during my lunch break telling me that Saki was waiting for her lesson. I arrived 10 minutes late and had no lesson prepared. I suppose it is my fault though for not checking th3e schedule, but it was only my second day and I am still getting use to things.
2) The Japanese have the most ridiculous recycling system ever. I am not making this up: Every Mon and Thur is burnable trash (of course the Japanese and I define what is burnable as very different- I think everything is burnable if you burn it for long enough). The 2nd and 4th Friday of every month is non-burnable trash. The 1st, 3rd and 5th Friday of every month is plastics (I'm not sure how they differ from non-burnable yet). The 1st Wed of every month is for batteries and glass bottles. The 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month is for cans. The 4th Wed. of every month is for paper boxes, the 3rd Wed of every month is for plastic bottles. I'm going insane trying to remember all of this. You also have to put the trash into special bags that you buy at the store and you must write your name and apartment number on the bags, and place them on a street corner between the hours of 7-9am. If there is anything wrong with the bags (you put plastic in a non-burnable bag, or paper boxes in a burnable bag) they will return it to your front door and you are out of luck. I believe in recycling, but this is going overboard.

OK, now that my complaints are out of the way-- I am having a wonderful time! I love my classes. The teaching methods they taught us seem very effective, and are a lot of fun. We reinforce everything with games, so in a 50 minute lesson we will play at least 6 games (more for the younger kids). I also sing a lot of songs with the younger kids (Here we go arond the mulberry bush again for the 50th time today).

Sunday I rode my bicycle home in the rain. I was trying to carry my umbrella and steer a bicycle while it was raining, in the dark. I managed to not hit anyone, but only because there was noone to hit that late at night. I imagine that I looked a bit like a circus clown the way I was veering around. Honestly though, it was a lot of fun. Monday night I decided to just get wet and forget about the umbrella. I also found the 100 yen store (which is similar to dollar stores in the US) but I must say that the amount of stuff and the quality really puts American dollar stores to shame.

I have talked to both of my host families on my new cell phone, and will be going to visit them soon. I am excited to see them again. I am excited that I got to talk to them. I'm excited just to have my phone ring (hint hint). =)

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