Icciv's notes in Japan

Peirced or not?

Last night I went for a meal with my supervisor, his best friend, melissa (my ALT next door neighbour) and Blaine, an american who was an ALT 10 years ago, and is now married to a japanese lady from the island. We were talking about having the balance of maintaining your own personality whilst accepting local customs and ideals, and hence the subject of my tongue peircing came up. I asked Blaine if he thought I should wear a retainer or was it not that much of an issue. He took the hard line, stating it wouldn't be that accepted in school, though he also thinks most the staff have probably seen it.

I am now left with the decision of whether to wear my tongue stud or not. I do have a retainer which I would happily wear. I'm not keeping my tongue bar to make a point about internationalisation, I doubt I'd be able to wear it in a British school. I just worry the retainer isn't that secure, the last thing I want is it to come out in the middle of eating with the kids. I think the best plan is to wear the retainer for a weekend before I start teaching, and if it works then I can wear it for work and relax about angry parents claiming I'm a bad influence on their kids.

Anyway, last night was fun, I drank a lot of shocho (like a Japanese vodka made from rice, wheat or potatoe, depending on which you prefer) and got home at about midnight. The food was very nice, I'm beginning to know what I like and dislike now so it's getting easier to eat out, and to shop in general. Before food we had gone down to the kindergarten for a festival and all the kids were wearing yakutas, they were so cute. It was a really nice place and I won a balloon on a string, joy!!!

Tonight I think were going to head to Arikawa, the pubs are better there. I forgot to mention that when we were the other day I told the guy behind the bar I liked this cup in Japanese(it was really nice and had the bar name on it)and so he gave me one! I was very happy, and want to try and get a cup from everywhere I drink (as long as its nice). Yeah, so, Arikawa tonight me thinks, I can relax there, and Lori bought me some toilet slippers and shower slippers. I do feel silly getting toilet slippers because its so small in my toilet room you only put them on to turn 45 degrees. I s'pose if I have a japanese guest it would be rude not to have them though. I can see the point of toilet slippers, expecially in some restaurants with manky toilets. In one of the restaurants in Tokyo I was so glad to have toilet slippers, if I had gone in wearing my flip flops I would have had to soak them in bleach for a week! I am grateful for having a western toilet, as the traditoinal Japanese loo is a squat style, still found in many places. The premise of this toilet is that it's more hygenic, as no part of your body touches it. Again I see the logic in this, however the fact I weed on my foot the first couple of times I used them, made the hygene thing a non starter.

Anyway, I'm wittering and better go, the Japanese teacher at the school (who has been so lovely to me) noticed I was learning hiragana and katakana earlier (40 symbols memorised so far!) and has printed a sheet explaining the movement from kanji to hiragana, and went over stroke patterns with me, so I want to go practice some more. Promise to have pictures soon, but if you really want to see some check out Carries blog which has photos of Aokata and other random things. Its also alot funnier than mine. Carrie is the Canadian ALT who spells Wales 'Whales' which I love because I have images of me and all my friends living on giant Whales! Not that I'm criticising, my spelling is crap and I'm s'posed to be an english teacher, poor kids! Anyway, she's lovely, and more computer organised than me!!

posted by Icciv @ 1:44 pm