Jake still in Japan

So I was teaching Elementary School, as I do every single Monday from here until time ends (approximately), and had decided on teaching Weather words, since I've learned that the Japanese love to pretend to talk about the weather. They don't really, it's just a standard conversation opener. The only time they DO seem to talk about the weather is if they're asking me whether I enjoy the humidity. I don't. They continue to ask me this as the humidity steadily increases, reminding me that when I arrived it was hovering around 90% with 38 degree temperatures, which it's likely to return to before I leave. Assuming my brain doesn't melt.

Anyway, I chose a nice easy set of pre-made vocabulary words from MES-English because it reduced my prep time to "How quickly can I save this onto a USB" and set off to teach. Only the people living here apparently hadn't heard of "Hail". Including the teachers. I attempted to explain this to all the classes I teach, which I for the most part failed at, until one student finally piped up with the correct answer of "Arare!"

The teacher then told him that was wrong, as that's ALSO the unconjugated form for the word "Sexually improper dress or conduct". I mean it was, but that wasn't the point. How does no one here know what Hail is?

This story isn't going anywhere, I'm just trying to get back into the spirit of writing things.

It's freaking EASTER today?

Let us cast our minds back to Tuesday, for those of you thinking about making another snarky remark about my updating habits, let me clarify that is Tuesday March the 18th thank you. I choose this date because GOOD things happened that day. I got a knock in the mail saying that a very large package containing Guitar Hero III for the Wii was here. I answered by giggling to myself for about half an hour then trying it.

It didn't work. But no matter, perhaps there were just some instructions I hadn't followed, I merely told my parents to hold off on the bad news and left it overnight to confront the problem fresh tomorrow!

Tomorrow it was still broken, and the problem apparently spread to my internet. Again. This time my router now says "Authentication failed" whenever I try to connect, which would imply that Chaneon has cut me off, which wouldn't be a problem if I could phone them up, which I CAN do except none of them speak English, and my English teacher at Toyone was "too busy" to help me deal with this right now and I wasn't at Tomiyama until today so I went almost a week without internet.

Fortunately this just put me in a vaguely nostalgic mood.

It's the last day of classes, and if I don't get this fixed I won't have internet until school starts again in all likelihood. But I won't have it for the next week anyway because I'll be in China! Woooo! I would have told more of you about this sooner, but if you don't know why I didn't I suggest you check yourself for short-term memory damage.

Now all I have to do is hope the plane doesn't crash.  

OBJECTION!

I just had more important things to do. Also Jessica and Ryan visited this weekend, so I had to prepare for that. I think they had fun. They sure did leave early today though.

I'll write more later, have to prepare for elementary school

It turns out that my new internet hates Vox as much as my old internet. Go figure. I'm back to occasionally talking from Tomiyama. Still, the new internet is fantastic. I've downloaded all three seasons of The Collector, several of South Park, caught up on the Daily Show/Colbert Report and have five episodes of Miss Marple (the one with Geraldine McEwan!) to watch over the weekend. This is FANTASTIC news!

Oh and also I can talk to people from home. That's good too I suppose. Anyhow, let's make my mother's life slightly less stressful and post something she can mother about.

Like where I live!

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Yes, this is the only room I actually live in, there is a kitchen and a bathroom too, but I see no reason to post pictures of them because they aren't interesting. The real highlight is the fact that I now have an actual, legitimate bed and not a crappy air mattress or a series of crappy futons to sleep on. I know I'm not re-contracting, but I figured I still get six months of solid enjoyment out of it that is completely worth the price. However once I bought it I ended up basically reorganising my apartment into a more aesthetically pleasing shape, and this is the result.

I mean yes, it LOOKS like crap, but I can blame this on something else if I try hard enough I'm sure. Let's focus on what matters!

The amazing BED!

Yes yes, I can't make a bed. I know this. Shut up. It's still incredibly nice, and is on wheels so I can adjust it to be facing the TV if I want. However, by far, its most awesome feature is that it adjusts like a hospital bed so I can end up sitting in an upright position, meaning that now my process of waking up in the mornings is flailing for the control, and then giggling as my bed slowly raises itself until I achieve semi-verticality and can't fall back asleep any more. It's fantastic.

And it beats sleeping on the floor.

Yes yes, I've got connection problems with my ADSL. It seems to be fixed by uninstalling and re-installing the router*. It's still better than what I had before! Once I work out all the problems I might even be able to post on a semi-regular basis. Assuming I feel like it.

I bet I won't.

*Every few hours or so...

It's 11:13 PM here.

I got back from playing badminton about an hour ago and am sore, as well as of course cold.

I must wake up in a few hours to go to Tomiyama.

Why did I bother wasting time writing this at all given how unreliable my internet at home is?

Because I'm writing this from home.

ON MY NEW ADSL MODEM

I thought someone might like to know.

Boy, it's sure been awhile since I've posted at all about something that isn't soul-crushingly depressing hasn't it? According to "reliable sources", this makes my mother worry about me in vague, unfocused ways instead of narrowing her worries with surgeon-like precision onto one or two topics that she can ask me about until I invent something else to distract her attention away from me*

However, despite the fact I have nothing good happening to me right now, I'm not going to let that stop me from PRETENDING like everything's okay. I shall start this process with a theraputic image that I've been holding onto for just such an occasion. Behold! Little Japanese children doing cosplay!

SO CUUUUUUTE!

Yup. I think everything's gonna be juuuust fine.

*I probably should've used strikethrough there, but what're you gonna do?

Phew, with luck Mom won't notice the fact that I'm posting twice, nigh-simultaneously (barring of course another freaking internet shutdown.)

Yeah, Toyone's been abusing me again with its lack of information. Last week they didn't tell me the ski trip was cancelled, didn't tell me I was teaching an English conversation class to the 8th graders, didn't tell me I was teaching an English conversation class to the adults and didn't tell me about graduation photo day so I showed up wearing my Elementary school clothing (since that's what I was teaching that day) and looked all disshevelled and hobo-like.

Plus my internet has still been crapping out on me and I STILL can't convincingly force myself to say I'm not recontracting another year. I have these horrible flashes that I might actually do it. It's terrifying! I'm getting incredibly pissed off, and yet I still LIKE teaching here. What the Hell? Anyway, in case Mom is breezing through the blog, let's throw in this image that she can focus on and some reassuring text before and after to provide camoflague.

So let's summarize what I've just been talking about, meaning there's no need to review anything I've just said.

SO CUU-wait, did she dress up as a hooker?

So the erratic and unseemly behaviour in my phone line is because they're trying to install an ADSL line in Toyone. If you think about it logically, that wouldn't actually explain anything, but it's what they've told me and there's very little to be gained from arguing with people in authority in Japan. They've completely broken my spirit

Anyway, you'd think an ADSL line would (eventually) be good news. If you think that, I refer you to go back and read about how often things have gone my way here.

To reinforce the point, I had to reconnect twice while writing these messages. Quite vexing.