Nagasak'eeeeeh.....

Sorry for the lack of a promised update yesterday, but when I wasn't grading 240 mini-paragraphs about what the first years did on their summer break, I was teaching my first class, or starting in an exhausted daze out the window. I'm slowly getting more used to this schedule of 6:30 mornings, but its been tough to get to bed in time to get enough hours! I'm doing better today though, hopefully I'm getting used to it! Can't wait for my sleep in tomorrow however...mmmmmn sleep in.

SO! Now I need to catch up over the Nagasaki trip! Thankfully there's somewhat less to say on that front, since we were all too busy or again exhausted to do too much while we were there.

Megan, Gill and I all headed out together on the train, which was about 2 hours long and followed the sea-line for the most part, so it was very pretty! On the way we saw the main building in Huis Ten Bosch. Its kind of a 'Dutch town', but its more like a theme park. I'm totally hitting it up for Christmas time! Check it out here: http://english.huistenbosch.co.jp/ It looked really nice from the train, we even saw a windmill!!


When we arrived in Nagasaki, we were at the train station slash AMU plaza, which is just a huge mall right next to the station. From there we took a tram to the JA building, where our meetings were held. Lemme tell ya, hucking a heavy overnight bag in high heels down the streets of Nagasaki is noooot so fun.

So then we had meetings for the rest of the day, but at lunch the three of us wandered down to Dejima wharf, which was just right beside the JA building, and took pictures. The view was pretty spectacular, with all the boats and the sea laid out before us.



This was a shot down the pier of where were standing.



There was a big boat in the water as well, a smaller replica of which we'd see at the train station, and I love the huge face on the bow....stern? .......front.




And ladies and gentlemen if you look straight ahead of you, you'll see the rare, Canadian dork in all of her glory.



So after we had all taken silly poses on the pier, we moved into a restaurant for lunch! There was a huuuuge tank full of fish, and for some reason I was compelled to take some pictures. I'll save you from those however, and just show you my favourite one, of this creepy little eel that was slithering around. Later on, I ate one of his relatives over rice. Eel is taaaasty.

After lunch were moooore meetings, but after that was relax time! Ogawa-sensei had hooked me up with a room at the Holiday Inn in Nagasaki, which was about $80 (+ breakfast) a night, and man was it swank! The room was gorgeous and the bed huge, I totally loved it. We even were given green and purple yukatas (light Japanese robes) to wear, and the three of us all took pictures of each other, but with Megan's camera so until I get them from her I am picture-less.

That night was a dinner and drinking party at another hotel, which was later followed up with a trip to a local club. The girls and I took taxis everywhere in the city, because they were so cheap and convenient. Here, the fare automatically starts at 560 yen, which quite high compared to home, but it goes up very rarely, so every time we took a cab we split a $6 cab fare between the three of us! It was loverly.

The dinner was just a big buffet, but it featured a lot of Western foods! Including, much to my squealy-delight, potato wedges!!! These are one of my favourite foods back home, and so to have them here was just toooooo lovely. This picture isn't with a potato wedge, unfortunately, but a sweet little fuzzy navel I got to try! Yummers.


We met a lot of great people there, in particular a fellow Torontarian named Lana! She's a third year ALT I believe, now living in the close-by city of Omura, and was really awesome. Unfortunately for Meg, she came out looking rather possessed in this picture. The red-eye function on my camera is a little wonky sometimes!

After the dinner, we all headed down to "Club Jah Rule", which was....pretty lame, actually. There were two DJs, and the first played the absolutely worst music to dance to possible, so the people who did attempt looked pretty silly. Gotta give them props for trying though! Most of us chilled on the couch for a little while until the music changed.


Suffice to say, the ALT boys decided it was the night to get their drunken mack on, and so part of the night involved me doing some dodging and assists for the other girls. I've never heard and overheard so many lines in one place in my life, it was pretty gross! We all left around midnight, being too tired and fed up with the club to really want to stick around. Plus we had that early morning hanging over our heads.

Unfortunately, none of us were in great shape the next day, between the travelling and the lack of sleep. Our meeting was over by lunch though, and Megan really wanted to head out to the Atomic Bomb Museum while were there, and so we got a locker for our bags and dragged our tired behinds down to the memorial and museum. Outside of the entrance was, curiously enough, a thing totem pole.

Perhaps if I'd been in better shape I would have attempted to get better pictures of it and the following sites, but a) the road to the museum was totall uphill and b) it was scoarching hot outside, and so I literally couldn't be bothered to muster up the energy to walk those few steps to get a closer view. *laughs* Yeowch.
This was a huge gold statue outside of the memorial. Again, not a great picture. I shall also blame the sunlight for making it hard for me to see if I'd taken a good photo on my screen I shall! Cop-outs for everyone!

I wish this was nicer too, but I thought it was a pretty scene. There were a few statues and memorials outdoors before you got into the main building, and these people were reading the inscription on one. I like her parasol.

In the main foyer, there was this display set up of cranes and crane-sculptures students had made for the recent anniversary of the bombing in Nagasaki. Cranes are stacked on top of each other in either long trains, or even sometimes as shapes!!





Megan and Gill had gone to the Peace Park on a previous trip, which from what I gathered was spread out over the hypocenter of the bomb's drop, and there is a huge statue of a man pointing at the sky. These students had made a replica out of teeny cranes, how neat is that?

Inside the museum no pictures were allowed, but let me just say, it was....interesting. Definetly very difficult at times. The stories and the artifiacts found that show the effects of the heat and radiation of the bomb were jarring. One display that hit me hard was one that showed the 'shadows' that were created on the sides of buildings after the blast. Apparently the sheer heat from the blast changed the colours on buildings, but where the surfaces were shielded, with a pole or laundry or something, a 'shadow' was created on the side. I found an image on the web that shows an example of this:

This phenomenon is pretty incredible as it is, but there was one picture that was incredibly startling. Imagine a side of a wooden wall, with the shadow of a ladder, and man standing next to it. He had apparently been in a lookout, and climbed down just as the bomb landed, and his shadow along with his ladder's were permanently burned (or not burned, as is the case) onto this building. It sent shivers through me, even writing about it hear gives me goosebumps. The other images of the destruction, the death and the decay that occured were disturbing as well, but I think seeing the image of someone that enables you to so easily imagine what it must have been like at the moment of impact was one of the most difficult parts for me.

Once we were outside of the main display rooms, there were two large quilts that had been made by students, each patch pleading in some way or another for this to not happen again. The sheer stupidity of such a weapon is what really infuriates me. From such greed for power comes such suffering, which is still strongly felt by the people here decades later.




So, after we left, we walked by what I think was a huge Chinese style restaurant, that was really quite amazing. But then again, I'm easily amused. :B



After the museum our bodies gave us no choice but to head home, shuffling our way back to the train station. The cars were actually pretty comfy, and not too crowded as we got closer to home.

We all basically sat in a stupor, read, chatted, or dozed. I wasn't actually sleeping in this picture, but the pose came incredibly naturally to me by that point.


While I was gone school had officially started again, what with it being an 'academic' school, full of students who almost all want to go on to University. Wednesday I did more of the same, as in nothing, but yesterday I actually got to work! Hence the lack of updates, as I mentioned. I was given paragraphs to mark that students had written about what they did over the summer break, which was long but kinda fun. From what I noticed one of the hardest things for them are 'ing' words, so saying "tiring" instead of "I found study very tired." Some of them traveled, but many students wrote about how they had to come to school every day to participate in clubs and/or study. Much different breaks than the ones we experienced back home!!

Yesterday I also had to conduct my first lesson, and it was ooookay. I had prepared a game to get them to ask me some questions, which went over moderately well, particularly the part where the question "do you have a boyfriend?" is asked. This might sound a like a bizarre choice to have them ask me, but since I'm open about it, and was going to be asked anyway (as I have been five times since arriving here) I thought I may as well save them the trouble. When I offered the picture of Alex to show, an entire row of girls jumped out of their seats with an "eeeEEEEEH!!?" Apparently that's a very, very big deal here! *laughs*

As part of the intro lesson too they wrote messages to me, along with their names. The boys mostly just wrote "nice to meet you", save the one who wrote "Arm hair, head hair, leg hair" in a column down the page. Yeah...I dunno. The girls meanwhile almost entirely drew little cartoons, with long messages about themselves and complimenting me. "I think you are so cute!" "You are very beautiful!" and the occasional "I love you!!" were the most common. They made me smile, but I realize that all those phrases are easy to remember in English, which is probably why I got so many. *laughs*

After school hours, I went to the Taiko club, of which I am now a member! It means I'm much more busy, but I love all the kids in there to death, and the drumming itself is addictive. I'm very excited to be part of that!

Today I had to give a speech in front of the whole school, and I think I did well. Besides sweating like a race horse and being on stage with two of my buttons mis-matched of course, but still, the all seemed to enjoy the fact that I did half of it in Japanese. Everybody knows my name now, however, which means that packs of boys like to spit it out like a dart at me so that I turn to look at them. One group in paticular seems to like shouting words like "Sushi!" "Tempura!" "Sashimi!" at me. I just laugh, but considering that they stick together and are often bigger than me, I'm sometimes a little inimidated! I can never help but wonder what the heck they want!!

The other class I was supposed to teach today got canceled because of the assembly, so today I'm just relaxing for the most part. Tonight I have my welcome-party/dinner to attend, which I'm looking forward to it, but I'm keeping my expectations low juuust in case.

I agreed to do an English camp next week from Monday-Wednesday with a bunch of other ALTs and Japanese English-speakers, but I didn't realize at the time how hardcore it was gonna be! Three days of hours and hours of workshops. Crimeny. Hopefully it'll go well, and I'll get the chance to steal a few minutes on the internet in the mornings here before I leave.

So that's all for now, I'm pretty much caught up, and next time hopefully I'll have some party-pics to share! Bye for now!