Today we presented our mock teaching lessons to our peers and I must say, I feel my partner and I did really well, even with his hangover from last night. I'm very loud, I project my voice, I can speak slowly, and I'm very genki! We filled out an evalulation for our training teacher Jody and that marked the end of our week long training. WHEW!
Yesterday was extensive training and working with our partners. My partner Richard, is from England and very very cool. He actually taught here in Japan for 2.5 years with NOVA but recently joined Interac.
Laura and I decided to take advantage of the early afternoon and checked out the Imperial Palace, in the center of Tokyo surrounded by commercial buildings and crazy traffic. The gardens were closed by the time we got there, but we took pictures and walked the entrance and around, and then headed back.
At 6:45pm all of the teacher "coincidentally" met up in the lobby with Jody and a few of the other training teachers and we walked over to an "all you can drink" restaurant. It cost us 3000Y for 2 hours of all you can drink and various appetizers like tofu, salad, fries and onion rings, and pizza. Literally in the first 22 minutes my table of 4 had already drank 2 large bottles of beer and ordered some ice tea/choju! I think we drank the restaurant's entire supply of bottled beer, so they started giving us pitchers and eventually just handed us two small kegs (I've got pictures!) Some might say that I was a little tipsy, and though I openly admit to being a lightweight, I was NOT drunk nor ever unaware of what I was saying or doing. I did learn, however, that I apparently speak more like a typical American "vallye girl" more than I thought I did, thus my new nickname has been born. It statted off with my response to stupid comments by saying "shut up!" and then everyone mimicking me, and then my random "whatever" and "like like" didn't help either. It was good times though, and there were about 20-25 of us all together.
At 9pm our all you can drink ended and we headed one floor down to the our karaoke floor. There we got 2 rooms (smoking and non) to sing for 1.5 hours, again with more all you can drink and they even had their own soft-serve ice cream, which I totally took advantage of. Now I thought I knew my songs, and yes I will always love sining Karaoke, but when you've got a bunch of white people from mostly the States, England, and Australia hogging the mics, it's all rock and roll songs! Most of them I didn't know, and I only managed to get 1.5 songs in by the time the 1.5 hours was up!
It was really good times (I have pictures to share!) and I believe this was when most of us started getting really drunk. I actually didn't drink the entire time we were at Karaoke, mostly cuz I know I'm a lightweight, but as we headed out one of the teachers Joel, from Australia, a very nice guy, 24, a music teacher at home, was so piss-drunk he kept tripping over himself and laughing about something. I definitely still had alcohol in my system but when I saw Joel needed some help it kinda killed my buzz and I was Joanna the babysitter in a snap. We laughed, he cried laughing, he drooled a bit, I had to wipe his chin, he kept wanting to take silly pictures of us, and eventually the girls and I shoved him into his room where I found out this morning he banged his head against something and forgot most of the evening. haha...
The rest of the group (minus the girls I hang out with...2 of them don't drink at all) all went out for dart games until who knows, but that's why my partner (and I'm sure many others) woke up with hangovers this morning. Me, I listened to my itunes until I passed out, got up at 7am, walked to the river, stretched a bit, had breakfast, and prepared for my lesson. It was a really fun night and I'm glad everyone got a chance to relax and just be themselves for a bit.
Today after our presentations the girls and I tried out MOS (Mountain Ocean Sun) Burger, which is a big burger food chain out in Japan. Japan also has lots of McDonald's, KFC, and I found a Wendy's today at Sunshine City.
We shopped at this store called UniQlo, which is also in England. I was told it was a cross between GAP and Old Navy, but I think it's more like the conservative parts of Target and GAP but with less selection. I ended up buying a $7 sweatshirt, A $7 long sleeve shirt (I only brought 1!), and a new purse for $10. Good deal, right?
Then we headed out to Sunshine City, which is supposedly this huge mall (very huge) and some fo the girls bought more stuff. Laura really wanted to be there for the 360 view of Tokyo which we didn't end up seeing for some reason, but really she wanted to see the anime store. We found it across the street, called ANIMATE, and was literally 7 full floors of an entire building dedicated to entirely anime stuff. From the CD's to the DVD's to stickers, shirts, toy models, buttons, bookmarks, towels, nani nani, it was choked full of everything you could imagine. You can also imagine how indifferent I felt as I walked through the countless aisles of characters I didn't know and a language I didn't understand. Probably by the 5th floor I started feeling dizzy and claustrophobic, and by the 7th floor I just told the girls I would meet them downstairs. I tried really hard to to think of any friends that would love anything from this store, but I either couldn't remember the anime name, or I really didn't know if they loved it enough to own something or if they even had it already!
Seriously, i think we spent a good 1.5 hours there in that crazy store. I now understand what it must be like for men to shop with women. You can stare and try to understand and be interested, but I have never been so uninterested in something before in my entire life. I think even if I sat there and watched religiously ever single anime given to me from here on out, I would probably never be obssessed with any of it enough to shop 7 floors of it. It made me start thinking what I was obssessed with...and honestly, I couldn't figure it out. How did everyone else in this store, and virtually in this world, know so much about anime to be obssessed with it, and I didn't have the time? What was I then spending my time doing? What other hobbies am I therefore interested in? And I honestly couldn't think of a damn thing. So A. I'm either super boring!!! or B. I just don't have an obssessive personality and won't ever love ANYTHING enough to be OBSSESSED over like an Otaku (a new word I learned today!). Although it does make me wonder...what do I spend all my time doing then?
Anyway, the rest of the night wa spent riding the JR line to Harajuku where it was sprinkling and we only found a small handful of cosplayers smoking cigs together outside. Then we walked the punk-infested stores at Harajuku where everything was super overpriced and way too punk/gothic for my taste. We went to a store called "Body Line" where they sold really puffy dresses and fetish costumes, very cute and if I was super ballsy I guess I could walk around in one of their outfits, but not for $100. I took a picture of that even though I wasn't supposed to, so enjoy! Ate dinner at this really shitty buffet of "italian food" which had no parmesan cheese, the pasta all tasted the same, and everything was either too bland or too salty. And the girls all headed off to their rooms to pack up to check out tomorrow morning.
To those who care, Happy Easter! Judy will take me to her affiliate church out here for their Easter service which I think will be really nice. There's a festival over at the Sensoji temple tomorrow to celebrate Buddha'd birthday (or so I've been told) so I wanna do some last minute shopping, and then we catch our 4pm train to MITO! Monday we meet our IC's who are supposed to take us to our new apartments and help us set up our water, electricity, show us where to buy groceries, how to take the buses, etc. It will be super overwhelming again and we meet our new schools on Friday in order to start school on Monday the 16th. Crazy!
Miss all of you at home! I will definitely send pictures of my llovely humble abode as soon I get there. I should have internet up but it will take a few days to get it running, so please be patient with my journal entries! And please enjoy the pictures!
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