Watashi Wa Nihon-go ga Wakarimasen

Sarah A, Me and Steph on our way to Roppongi
Sarah and a pretty yellow tree :)
Me and Peter, my favorite Swede
Some Nova teachers at Beer towers...

That means "I don't understand Japanese" at least i think it does...haha. So teaching kids is fun, it's pretty much just babysitting for 40 minutes, because we play games the whole time. They are so cute, well some of them are, others like to run wild through the hallways!
It's wierd to me how different wedding rings are here..1)Most guys don't even wear them and 2)there is NO bling, hahaha. They are all just a band with MAYBE a teeny, tiny diamond. I guess we Americans are just greedy snobs!
Sarah and i have the most random things happen to us in this country..the most recent was this past weekend while we were out shopping. I was looking at boots and this little old lady came up and pushed me out of the way! I put down the boots for a second to try on a different size and she snatched them up! I was so bummed, bc they were the ONLY ones in that size. She put them right on and paid for them while they were on her feet! Then Sarah was looking at a purse, she had it in her hand and the lady came up and grabbed it from her! When Sarah acted uninterested in it, she put it down, it was like she only wanted what we wanted. It was so wierd. I'm trying to keep this blog PG, so if you want to hear the MOST random thing we have seen in this country (and in our lives!) then email me. ;) (it's good, you don't wanna miss out)
Tonight is the 7th night of Hannukah, but thinking of that gets me a bit bummed. I love it here and have no desire to go home anytime soon, but it does make me a big sad not being home with the family for the holidays. Sarah and i went over to a friends house for dinner and had latkes, that was fun, and it felt a little like hannukah! haha. (She is one of the 2 Jewish people i have met)
We met some Americans on the navy base last week and we've been hanging out with them a bit. I went out in Roppongi the other night to a club called Vanilla. We went dancing and had a blast!! It was 1000 Yen ($10) to get in, but you got 2 free drinks. My friend Kellee and I went crazy, we had so much fun dancing. I had a dance off with a Japanese guy then afterwards he taught me some fun dance moves! We got there at midnight and stayed until 5am. You'd be amazed at how crowded the trains can get at 5am, since it's the first train!

Me and Kellee at Vanilla

Me and Matt at Vanilla

Drinking before dancing...

From Duski to Dawn

Sarah A. (open mic night) .........Sarah A. , me, Stephanie........ Sara, Bonnie, David, Leslie

Out for Sarah A.'s Birthday! ...........Tom, Matt and Kyle ..................Sarah, ?? and Steph

We were planning on going to Seoul, Korea at the end of December but we decided on Hokkaido instead. (The VERY COLD northern part of Japan) We figured we may as well explore all of Japan while we're here. We have about 10 days off work so we are going from Dec. 27-Jan.1st. It's going to be me, Sarah, Sara, David, Leslie and Amy. We got our flight and hotel rooms for about $400 for all 5 nights..not too shabby. I can't wait to play in the snow!! :)
Sarah and I went on the army base last week and got some clothes and things (a real pillow!) we needed for our apartment, i'm so sad that her military id expires next month! haha. Thanksgiving was fun, very international! It was Sarah A.(England), Reanna (England), Steph (England), Davy (New Zealand), Peter (Sweden), 2 Japanese guys and me and Sarah L. We went to a Japanese restaurant and just shared a bunch of things then split the bill, it was a lot of fun, but wierd not being home with the family.

Our Very International Thanksgiving day Feast :)

This past "weekend" (monday and tuesday) was fun. Sarah and I met up with Davy and Wada for dinner after work on Sunday. Wada took us to the Imperial Hotel for tea and a nice dinner. The next day Wada took Sarah and I to "The Yushukan at Yasukuni Jinjya" It's a shrine and Japan's oldest museum (founded in 1882). It was a history museum featuring all the war heroes and momentos. After the museum Wada took us to lunch then I had to get home to get ready for dinner #2! Matt, a British guy that I met last week, took me out to dinner.

The next day Sarah and I had a double date with 2 Japanese guys who could speak a little English, haha, interesting but very fun night! They took us to dinner then we went and took pictures in a photo booth, everyone is obsessed with those here!!




I had kids training this week, so i finally get to actually work with kids! I'll let you know how that goes...sorry this is such a short update but i have to eat dinner! xoxo

Out with people from work for the welcome party! :)

Ruthie and Brian.........................Allen, Alan, Adrienne.................me and Kel and the staff



Out for Sara's Birthday

David and Sarah.........Me and Leslie.........Taka, Sarah and ME

i wrote this about 2-3 weeks ago...

Karaoke is huge here! You pay by the hour for a room with just you and your friends. It's usually all you can drink...

Sarah, Jonathan and I tried to go to a margarita bar a couple weeks ago, near our apartment and got rejected!! They told us “Japanese only!!” The bar was completely empty too, it’s not like we were taking up wanted space, there wasn’t a soul in the place! Oh well, we went to an African bar next door, which was really chill and the owner spoke English, which was nice.
Let’s see what I missed..not too much has been going on, I haven’t had too much time to do anything lately. Work is going good, it’s nice now that I’m getting to know the students, they’re paired with us randomly so I never know who I’m going to get until that morning, when they post the schedule. I can’t believe I’ve already been here for over a month! (11 more to go ;) ) Once a week Sarah, David and I stay over Sara and Lesley’s apartment, because the trains stop at 12, we don’t have a lot of time to hang out, so this way we can all hang out together then crash, rather than staying out until 5am, when the trains start back up. I got my first pay check…but it was only for about a week of working, so I have about $300 to last me a month..YIKES! Thanksgiving was weird, considering no one here celebrates it, they don’t even have turkeys! Sarah and I had a very international holiday, with 3 girls from England, 1 guy from Sweden, 1 guy from New Zealand and 2 Japanese guys. (We just ate Japanese food.) No one has even heard of Hanukkah, I’ll be the only person in this whole country celebrating it, haha.
We met a lady upstairs, Bal, who is the sweetest lady ever! She comes over to practice her English, and brings us fruit and little presents. We got her a little plant for always helping us out with everything. We got something in the mail that we couldn’t read to we brought it upstairs and she drove us to the post office, which was only a 5 minute walk, but she refused to let us walk in the cold! She’s like our mom away from home (that can’t speak English, haha)
We were in a shoe store the other day and I was singing along to the music, Sarah gave me a weird look and asked how I knew the song (it was in English) and I realized it was the Fraggle Rock theme song, haha! (Dance your cares away ::clap clap::worries for another day, let the music play ::clap clap::down in fraggle rock! ~I know you’re all singing along right now, esp. you Jenna!!) Then we went to a book store where they sell used books and have a few in English. Out of the 100 books they had one of them was a Jacksonville Jaguars book!!! How random! We were very excited about that!
I meet up with my friend Davy about once a week. (I met him when I was a counselor at Blue Star, he is from New Zealand). The first time that we met up for dinner, he told me about this guy, Wada, that he lives with. So a couple days later Davy tells me that his friend wants to meet me. It didn’t look that they lived too far from us, so Sarah and I decided to go have lunch with them…Wow, words cannot express the generosity of this man…let me start from the beginning….First, I woke up at 6am on Tuesday and went to have breakfast with Rob (my parents friend who was in Japan for a few days). It took about an hour and a half to get there, and I had a delicious breakfast of pancakes at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. I was only there for about 40 minutes…then headed back to the apartment to meet Sarah, THEN we went off the map to Wakaba to meet up with Davy and Wada for lunch. He lives with a Japanese man and his wife. He quit his job as a tennis instructor and now works as an assistant to his guy’s wife (a dentist). The guy is pretty much LOADED. He doesn’t make Davy pay rent or for food or anything and buys him nice clothes!(and pays him for working for him). Well it took us 2 hours to get there on the train, and Davy and Wada picked us up from the station when we got there. Wada took us all out to a pasta lunch, then we went to see the dentist office and meet his wife. After hanging out there for a few hours, he refused to let us take the train home, he insisted on driving us the whole 2 hours back home!! He purposely passed our apartment and took us out to Sushi! THEN, as if he wasn’t too nice to us already he stopped at a convenience store, grabs a basket, starts tossing in chocolate, ice cream, beer, 4 packs of rice, cookies…random food, pays for it and hands us the grocery bags! We tried to refuse and he made us accept 2 free meals, a ride home, and free groceries!! I don’t even know how to thank him! I want to make him a cake or cookies or something, but we don’t have an oven! Anyway it was a crazy, but fun day. Davy can speak Japanese now and had to be the translator all day because Wada doesn’t speak English!!
So I haven’t randomly run into anyone that I know, like I usually do in foreign places but I have met up with 3 people now! It’s weird to be so far away from home and be able to meet up with people that I know! (Jonathan come back already!!) You all are welcome to stay with us if you feel the urge to travel through Asia while I’m here J Drew, are you still planning on coming in April?? That would be awesome!
I still haven’t gotten used to hanging my clothes to dry! There is a coin laundry pretty close though, so once it gets too cold, I may start bringing my clothes there since there are dryers! I wrote in my first entry that everyone wears dark clothes, I’ve come to realize that that’s not true, I was in the business capital at the time.
Sarah and I have started picking up a tiny bit of Japanese here and there. Davy lent us a few books to study, so we’ve been looking through them everyday. We’ve been making friends everywhere we go, because when we see someone that looks like they may speak English, we strike up a conversation with them. The first question they ask us is, “so what brought you to Japan?” haha, I wish I had a good answer to that question.

My ROOM!