The Quick n` Dirty Catch-up Post!

Friends, family, countrymen...lend me your ears! Or your knowledge of Japanese, `cause seriously, I`m about to give up on trying to figure out what the guy at the internet cafe wants me to do. He`s saying something about an ID that I apparently forgot and am supposed to bring next time -- on my second visit here today, I showed him my American driver`s license out of desperation. He told me I didn`t understand. Well, no kiddin`!

*le sigh* I wish I knew what he needed from me. Maybe it`s acceptance. Isn`t that what we all need in this day and age?

I was out all day with my manager. Call me crazy, but I had a lot of ideas about what a Japanese boss would be like, and I definitely didn`t envision eating okonomiyaki together and talking about the Japanese boy band SMAP. Not that I`m complaining, since okonomiyaki is my new favorite food and I could talk about SMAP anytime anywhere till the end of ages. Still, are Japanese managers usually like this?

Well, I guess it wasn`t all fun and games. We filled out paperwork for my alien registration card too. I always suspected I might be an alien...now I`ll have the documentation to prove it!

Now to catch you up on the past week in Okayama: truthfully, loved ones, there isn`t much to say. I was with a great group of people and I had loads of fun, but life outside of training and lesson planning simply didn`t exist. I literally got up every morning, brushed up on whatever lesson I`d be teaching that day, went to training for nine hours, went back to the annex and immediately went to bed. My coworkers stayed up till all hours of the morning planning, but I consistently busted my lessons out by eight-thirty and called it a night. I can`t decide if that makes me supremely talented or supremely lazy.

Saturday night was a blast. We went out to eat (the company picked up the tab), and then I had my first experience with Japanese karaoke. Holy moley! I always knew I loved karaoke, but the affair has now been elevated to a whole new level. We got our own private little room with a good-sized catalogue of American and Japanese songs, two turntables and a microphone. Minus the turntables. Plus one more microphone.

Anywho, I dragged poor jet-lagged Ryan out of his room and he and I performed a couple of our standards: Stand By Your Man and Under Pressure. It was awesome. You could even pick up the phone in the karaoke room and ask for them to bring you drinks! The only thing that was kinda weird was that they didn`t have any of the actual American music videos to go with the songs, so they just showed random clips of like, trolleys in San Fransisco. Which works if you`re singing a mellow love song, but not so much if you`re screaming out a Dr. Dre track.

Well, I reckon I`m gonna take off now and try to get some of my pictures from Okayama developed. Apparently they automatically put them on a CD for you, so I should be able to share them on this blog before too long.

Toodles for now! Much love!