So I went to the gym this morning for a class called "Body Pamper." I figured it was a cross between Yoga and stretching with lots of relaxing music and I was really looking forward to it. HA HA HA. I was sadly mistaken. There was no relaxing music, no yoga, just a lot of dumbbells. It was not called "Body Pamper" but "Body Pump." In Japanese pump is "Pannpu" and pamper is "Pannpe." Easy to see how I would have made that mistake.

The Japanese apparently don't believe in duffle bags. I have been trying to find one and everytime I ask someone where I could buy a duffle bag or a sports bag I get an empty look and they point down the street to distract me as they run away in the opposite direction. Not really. They really speak a lot of Japanese that isn't helpful while looking confused. They might as well point down the street and run for all the good it does me.

Tomorrow we are moving the office. They have been doing construction and expanding out school so that John and I will no longer have to share a classroom (it worked ok since we only worked 2 days a week together, but now we will be working together 5 days a week). What this moving tomorrow means is that after 10 hours of working (teaching 9 classes) I will have to stay for another 2 hours to help move all of the stuff in the office into the new space. Ack!

Riding a bike in the snow is harder than one might expect. And one would expect it to be quite difficult. If one was intelligent. Unfortunately moi wasn't that intelligent until I was attempting to peddle my bike through a snow bank and fell over. ha ha ha. The snow gets stuck in the spokes and the wheels spin but you don't move and then "waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh" a little old Japanese lady is picking you out of a snow bank and asking if you are ok. A lot of bowing and arigatou-ing follows and you attempt to peddle away red-faced and glad that you don't live here.

I met a man from Peru today. He didn't speak English and I don't speak Spanish, so we had a lovely conversation in Japanese. By lovely I mean I barely understood what we were talking about. However, when he asked me out on a date I understood that and successfully used the language barrier to pretend I didn't understand and then I ran away.

John and I decided to order a pizza the other day. He had a Japanese friend give the pizza place his address so he only had to phone with his phone number. He tried talking to them, but because he doesn't speak Japanese he handed the phone off to me. I pretended to understand and thought everything was fine until I asked how long it would take, which started a 5 minute discussion on the other end of the line. After an hour when our pizza hadn't arrived I called again. There was some sort of problem, but I had no idea what they were saying. So I gave the phone back to John who yelled in English for awhile, and amazingly enough our pizza came. Delicious pizza. It was a cross between a taco and a pizza. But I'm not sure the pizza was worth the trouble it took ordering it. When we both wanted a pizza a few days later we decided just to go to Bear's Bar (where everyone knows your name) and have pizza there. Much easier to point at the menu in person.

Snow snow snow!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't believe that the Japanese have really figured out how to deal with snow either. It has been snowing for several days (serious snow- I had to wade through 2 feet to get out of my apartment building. I have seen exactly one tractor clearing snow and a lot of that sprinkling system that they seem to think clears the snow, but really it just creates huge piles of sludge that I have to walk though. yuck! The one thing I have to say is that despite the ridiculous amount of snow everything is still open. In DC this would constitute a massive emergency and everything (including the government) would be closed for a week. What they lack in common sense (I define common sense as snow plows) they make up for in persistence. I don't envy Aaron though- he probably gets 10 times this amount of snow.

So I figured out the best way to make Japanese friends- join a gym. Everybody wants to talk to the foreigner attempting to work out in the gym. It's great. I don't even have to approach them, they just come up and start talking to me (sometimes in the shower that is a little strange though). One old Japanese woman told me in the onsen the other day that I had thin feet and I wasn't quite sure how to take that, but it was funny. That is one compliment I have never received and never actually thought I would receive. The gym has a great shower though- it's like a Japanese onsen, so they have a sauna and a huge tub for soaking. Plus next to the pool is a jacuzzi and steam room. I use these things as my motivation for going to the gym, but they seem to be a great motivation. I took a yoga class on Wed and it was a lot of fun.

Some links to pictures Aaron took in Tokyo (you might even be able to find the back of my head if you look closely).
TOKYO

I just finished reading "Stupid White Men" by Michael Moore, and although at times he is a bit more liberal than me, he makes some great points about Bush not winning the election. He adds the votes up in many different ways and points out that Bush is not the democratically elected leader he likes to think he is. He then points out that if the same thing had happened in any other country the UN would be throwing a fit and sending in troops to stop the coup. Ha ha ha. Considering they are usually US troops sent in I suppose that wouldn't work in this case. A great book though!

I have been very bad about blogging. Lately I feel as though there really isn't anything exciting to write about, which I know is ridiculous. I went to Nagoya, Shizuoka and Tokyo for 7 days. I had a great time, but it is difficult to sum up a weeks worth of travel. I loved Tokyo. There weren't alot of sightseeing places, mostly it was spent wandering around looking at neighborhoods and shops and the crazy people. We also managed to see some great bars and restaurants. It is terrible to enjoy so much when I came to live in a foreign country to experience that country, but I loved loved loved going into bars and having most of the clientele be foreigners. It has been a few months since English was the predominate language I heard anywhere (well from native speakers and not 3 year olds).

An albino girl came into school yesterday and might sign up for one of my classes. She is only 2 years old and really sweet. However all of the other students/parents/teachers were staring very rudely. Rather than black hair. she had white hair, pretty blue eyes and very pale skin. One grandmother kept asking me loudly in Japanese if the girl was Japanese or a foreigner (the girls parents were standing right there). It made me realize that coming from America where diversity is normal I am not as shocked by people who are different. I would hate to grow up in Japan if I was different in any way. There really is such an emphasis on uniformity.

I am currently very angry with my manager. I asked if I could take off one day in March (2 months away) and I was told I should wait until a specific week in June. However that week in June I have to go to re-training, so I will have to wait until November. What use is it to give us vacation days if we aren't actually allowed to take them off. This wouldn't be a huge deal, but they are changing my schedule so I only have a 2 day weekend, which means that I won't be able to take advantage of having had the 3 day weekend. They are not being very communicative, and if I didn't keep asking questions every 3 minutes, noone would ever tell me what was happening. Grrrrrr.