A Tale of Ordinary Madness:

Demo lesson: Down!

Writing this Friday night ~ tomorrow is the last day of training, and we have to teach REAL LIVE KIDS, in front of some peers, a trainer, and the parents. It’s going to be hell, because they briefly went over Infant classes today, where you spend the whole time bouncing around singing songs etc...and that is what we’re teaching. They dumped it all at once, so I’m sort of freaked out. We’ve been doing timed 20 min. practice lessons with each other in front of a trainer, which I’ve never been nervous for. Just woke up, picked games, and went for it while everyone else has been up late planning and stuff, but I’m nervous for tomorrow! Songs? I know no songs! Gah, I’m going to just pound maybe 3 of the energy drinks they have here and bounce off the walls until the lesson is over. (which are called genki drinks, but are all ” vitamin” and medicine themed, but are really just super hardcore sugar or something. Way different from the rockstars and red bulls back home. They are quite effective, and come in like 7 oz bottles.)

By the time you read this I’ll be done with my lesson, and probably on lunch break. I’m looking forward to that. Oh, also, the lesson will be videotaped, because _____ is making a new video for recruiting or something, so we signed wavers that it’s okay to use our material. Well, I signed it anyways. Then after training tomorrow we go out to Izakaya with all the trainers paid for by _____. It’ll be really fun, all the trainers are really cool and our age. I only don’t like one, and really she’s just annoying. The trainers have been keeping separate from us, though, which I don’t like. You know, they eat lunch by themselves and just split after training to who knows where together. It’s sort of lame that they purposefully separate themselves from us, especially when we’re supposed to “call them at any time” when we have “any kind of problems in Japan”. They’re the very personable type, too, so it must be ____ policy or something. So that is Saturday (tomorrow for me, today for when it’s posted). Then Sunday morning I go to Hiroshima!

The girl I’m replacing me is going to sell me her old bike for 7,000 yen. I want a bike SO bad. Supposedly you can’t get one “for less than 10,000”, which is like 90 dollars, which is shocking because all the bikes here are just crappy (but cute) cruisers. Well, whatever.
Everyone rides bikes here. The streets are full of mobs of cute girls in schoolgirl uniforms You see like 70+ year old men riding bikes down the street with their wives sitting on the rack on the back holding a bag of groceries. It’s the best thing in the WORLD.

If a burrito and piece of sushi had a baby, I ate it for lunch yesterday. It was like as long as a piece of celery, and it was crab, egg (tamago, sushi style), umm…celery, and eel rolled in rice and wrapped in seaweed. It must have weighed a pound, it was SO good and it stuffed me. It cost 320 yen! That’s like 3 dollars, and I was a happy camper. I would have taken a picture but I was in a hurry, and didn’t have my camera. Today Mat and I ran to get a handful of 50 yen manju (mentioned in 1st long post) from the cute manju girl at the covered mall for lunch, but she wasn’t there. I bought what looked like a roll of bread from the store, but it was full of bean paste. Yuck. Careful of bread here! It always has something stuffed in it, and it’s probably not what you want. I cooked some soba noodles for dinner, you can see how they make it here. www.brovision.com once you put it in boiling water it almost melts it gets soft so fast. I had it hot, which is good, but if you get it in a restaurant it’s usually cold, and very popular in the summer as a refreshing snack. You get it cold, with a cup of a type of very strong soy sauce, and then dunk it.

I have yet to get back to you on the types of alcohol ‘round here… haven’t had a chance to experiment at all still. Oh, except I had some Orion beer last night, you see it advertised in sushi stores sometimes, but I’d never actually seen it for sale in the states. Just another Japanese draft, I think I might like it a little more than Asahi.

This is a long entry, with almost no content, sorry! It’s 9:30 and I guess I’m just trying to not think about this lesson tomorrow… bed time, or lunch time I guess for when I post this up. Oyasumi nasai!

p.s. Japanese t.v. is very interesting…

Saturday! ~~~ Lesson's over!

oh and kyle i'll post up my snail mail address here...if it's on my person right now...

Hiroshima Hacchobori _____
Hiroshima Omoto Building 1F
1-17 Naka-ku, Hacchobori
Hiroshima-hi, Hiroshima-ken 730-0013
JAPAN

i think i've posted that already. I'll make a "contact" tab here on this page soon. Time for lunch! Lesson went decent today. Cameras freaked me out. I look good though, all black shirt, suit, tie.

posted by Dan @ 8:32 PM