Dance, Monkey, Dance!

Narita at night (took this from my first hotel)

Today was another performance day for me. But let's go to this morning...

I woke up at 06h30 almost on the dot. It was really frustrating for me as I wasn't able to sleep until around 00h30 and I needed and wanted more than 6 hours of sleep. I laid in bed until my alarm went off 45 minutes later and then sort of stumbled around. I moved too slowly to say goodbye to Shawn, and Patrick who left for their areas today. :/ Dang it. I actually made it down so late I had to sort of wolf my breakfast which made me ill. I'm determined to get better sleep tonight!

We walked to the building where we were having our meeting and went upstairs. We rented out a conference room and a ballet studio! It was actually really fun. A few us got along the barre and started doing some ballet warm-ups. :D

We finally sat at the tables and got started. We did some quizzes (including grammar ones and we won one of those which was gratifying for me), we learned more techniques and I took lots more notes. Then they told us it was lunch time. I had brought lunch that I bought last night at the grocery store. <-- That felt like it took forever. Some things I just wasn't sure what it was! I brought yogurt (white peach), edamame, and some chicken. Yuuuum! My lunch was so good! It was sort of nerve-wracking though because I was up for my 35 minute lesson afterwards. However, I was glad I was going to be able to get done first!

My lesson went very well but my wasn't that great. HOWEVER, I made it all by myself so there! It was HARD to make and it was OK, but in the future I will take ideas from the company site. It wasn't so much pride for me as I just didn't think to check there and pull something off their site. Doh.

After that we gathered and left. Most of the people were going to the office but I had already paid for my housing so I went home. At first I was walking alone but then Allie caught up to me and we chatted on the way back. I left her at the mouth of the ally (leading to our hotel) and went on to the train station to get some dinner. Iwate is known as THE prefecture to get noodles. So I found the place Allie recommended and sat down. One of the guys had taught me how to ask to get food to go (and I wasn't sure I was saying it correctly as he'd taught it to me days ago, but) I said: kore ha, moishi kaite. The girl shook her head no and did the "smells bad" motion which is also "no" so I stayed in to eat. I asked for "soba to tempura" (to = and), and she pointed something out on the menu and I nodded. The noodle were cold and I didn't care for them, but the tempura was REALLY good! I then stopped at a grocery store on the way home to grab my lunch for tomorrow's training. It was more of the same, picking things up, examining them and still being clueless. So I asked for help, "Sumimasen, niku ga arimasu ka?" (It's meant to mean, "Excuse me, is this meat?") The girl shook her head no (and the "smells bad") and said it was actually natto. I have eaten natto twice. I have also thrown up natto twice. However, I bought the natto sushi (6 small rolls) packaged with 2 brown little pockets. I had moved away, but then moved back and asked, "Natto (pointing to the natto sushi) to natto?" (Natto and natto - I wanted to make sure I could eat at least some of my lunch if my stomach rejected the natto!) But she said, "Nnn (shaking head no), inari desu." I thought inari was a type of meat, but it's just the kind of food it is. Here's a picture.

いなり

 I've had it before and it's really good. The little pocket is kind of sweet. It's yummy! I got pastrami as well and another yogurt - this one is a mixed fruit one. I think... it has pictures of assorted fruit on it. Oh! I know.. I'll just take a picture:

Natto sushi & inari, pastrami, yogurt

Then I got back to the hotel. The guys who did their physical today were joking around about their experiences at the doctor. I listened to their stories then came upstairs to write. Today was a strange day (it's still weird to me to me living here and I felt like, "I wish I could read these labels!" at the store), but it's been great being in Japan.

Here is my tiny hotel room:

View from outside my hotel room looking in

This is the bathroom. That's the size of it! (You step down into it and the tub walls are about 3' high!) Notice the faucet is also connected to the shower. You turn that little switch to make the water come out of the shower rather than the sink!

The information panel, thermostat, and clock

The bedroom - you can see I've pushed the bed into the far wall (the headboard shows the offset)

Better view of the corner and offset... crazy! That button on the headboard controls the lights. (So you don't have to get out of bed to turn the lights off.)

Funny moments: 

At breakfast they had one basket of what looked like those mini turnovers you can buy at the store. I was very interested until I saw they were labeled, "Tomato." I was hoping for a strawberry or raspberry but I thought, "What the heck" and grabbed one. (I also had some beef consomme. First time, but it was good!) The "tomato" inside was, literally, spaghetti. I'm thinking spaghetti was on the menu last night and they made it into a pastry. What the!?

This +

this = breakfast? hmmm

During lunch we filled out medical forms as those of us teaching in high schools have to have a more thorough medical screening. I'm going to the screening itself tomorrow but they wanted us to be ready. I asked about lying for the sake of making things easier (that is I know how to keep myself from being anemic but I regularly have a very low hematocrit), but Bryan advised me to be honest. As I was filling it out, I got to a box titled "Medical history." However, there were roman numerals to the side which were titled: I: medical treatment, II: observation, III: neglect, IV: operate, V: medical treatment ends. So I called Satou-san, our branch manager, over to ask him if I should list my previous surgeries. He speaks some English, but not very much as I found out he had no idea what I was asking. So I asked Bryan and at first he said to list it but as I couldn't circle any roman numerals out the side, I eventually scratched it out. I told him, "I'll just list kidney stones, kidney infections, endometriosis, and PCOS." So then he asked me what endometriosis was. I calmly explained but I was the only one in there with a room of guys and the shifty eyes started. It made me laugh as I could tell it was sort of a, "I'm not here. I'm not hearing this. LALALALA!"

During one of the other guys' lessons, one of them made a "secret code" game. The numbers corresponded to letters of the alphabet and the first code he put up was: 3.1.15.1.4.1 ...For those you who didn't work that out yourself, that spells: caoada. Ya... he meant to do 14 (n). Pretty funny!

During that same secret code activity, he gave us: 23.15.12.6. The guy sitting in front me goes, "What the!? What's that?" I look on his paper, and he wrote, "Wolg." Oh man, James (the Kiwi) and I laughed and laughed. Poor Scott! The rest of the class we were teasing him and joking about it. In fact, I drew this (below) while he was teaching and he came back and saw it. LOL I think it helped him though as he was able to laugh about it.

Mr. Wolg the Panda

Also while Scott was teaching, he gave us a sentence worksheet. We were supposed to figure out the order of the words and write the sentence correctly. We then had an opportunity to make our own. The first I scrambled was, "Last week Mr. Wolg played xbox with a bear from Caoada." And my second one was, "One time my dad ate a fish but he threw it up." The clever guy next to me who decoded it (Brandon from North Carolina) wrote: "One time my dad threw a fish up but he ate it." LOL Sorry Papa! At least I didn't tell people you were a smoker! (He's not!)

At the restaurant, the cold noodles were piled on top of a little bamboo tray. However, they gave me liquid for the noodles (since they were plain). I tried dumping the liquid on top (and poured some) when the girl came running over. "Iie!" (No!) She then modeled for me to pick up the noodles, dip them into the cup, THEN eat them. Oops. She also showed me how to eat the tempura (but that one I already knew!). It was pretty funny then I saw her go over and tell the story to her two coworkers. They all laughed at me, but hey! I'm tryin and still learning. In fact, today I learned the correct way to eat cold soba. So there!

Out of the guys who went to the doctor, two have a severe phobia of needles. In fact Tim said, when we found out that we had physicals, "Will there be any blood tests or needles? I'm not afraid of needles, but I'm asking for other people who maybe are." Wow... I thought those kinds of phrases were only uttered in television shows and movies. (Tim is an African American from Tennessee.) So Nate is getting his blood drawn and he said he must have looked awful as the nurses kept asking if he was ok (daijobu desu ka?). They couldn't get the blood from that arm so they switched arms and he turned his face the other way. When he did that, he saw Tim carrying on (throwing his arms over his face in horror) which caused him to panic and they both said it was probably the most fun those nurses have had all week. When it was Tim's turn, they asked him a question. Peter, the only guy in our training group still here in Morioka who speaks Japanese fairly well, was playing translator. "They want to know if you're going to faint." AHAHAHA That poor guy!

Tom (the Brit) said when he was putting his shoes on, the nurse was trying to ask him how to say that in English (put your shoes on). He said he stared at her blankly then blurted out loudly, "Shoes!" She shook her head and did the motion of slipping her foot into something and he asked, "Put on your shoes?" He said that by her facial expression he thinks that she thought he lied to her and wasn't going to use it. He also started worrying that if she said it to the other guys and they didn't respond correctly that she'd come after him.

Then Tom, after finishing his physical said loudly to the doctor and the nurse, "Yukatta!" The doctor and nurse sort of just gaped at him in astonishment and confusion and he looked from face to face waiting for some sort of acknowledgement then said he quickly uttered "gomen nasai" and took off. Yukata is a woman's dressing gown. YOkatta means "I'm good," or "That's good!" or "It was good!" So ya, not the same. AHAHAHA Tom is so great!

Oh one more interesting thing: the Japanese sell caffeinated gum! I'm going to try some the next time I have my period. Hopefully it helps as they don't sell Rockstar here. (They have Monster which I like fairly well and Redbull that tastes like carbonated tylenol and sweat. Just sayin...)

XOXO, A