Halloween parties

Long long week. It is counseling time so I have to counsel each of my fifty students individually and therefore have to come up with fifty reasons for them to stay at Geos. To tell them they are doing great, but they still need to come and learn English. So, lots of extra work this week. And to top it off, not been sleeping good or feeling well lately. I think it is because it is so damp and chilly here. Now, I normally love the fall. I love that the summer is over and I am no longer constantly hot and uncomfortable. I love being able to wear a hoodie. Which, by the way, I miss my hoodies. Damn the expense of shipping to Japan! I love the crispness in the air in the fall. Maybe that is the difference, there really isn't the crispness here. Probably because it rains all the time. Instead of smelling crisp outside it smells damp and kind of moldy depending on what you are walking by. I imagine falls in the American Northwest are very similar.

Anyway, by Saturday this week I was exhausted and looking forward to my weekend. Unfortunately I had some (mandatory) volunteer work to do on Sunday. It was the GEOS Halloween party! One for kids at noon on Sunday and one for adults at 6. Which means my entire Sunday was shot! Yay! Oh, and Saturday night just before I left work I was informed by my manager that one of the other teachers was not going to make it to the party, and could I come up with a few more games and maybe some songs for the party. Oh, yeah, sure, let me just go come up with a culturally and age appropriate game after having 6 or 8 beers (cuz, let's face it, it was Saturday night, the end of my week, and I knew I needed a drink (or 6)).

Fast forward to Sunday at 11am. Ungodly hour to be up on a Sunday. Me, hungover. The weather, cold and raining. The mood, less than enthusiastic. I actually came up with a couple of games, a mummy wrap game and a wiggle worm game, that I thought would be pretty good. Plus I downloaded some songs (including the Pooh Halloween album which isn't as bad as you might think it would be (Hey! this is a little kids party and they don't speak English, and the LOVE Pooh (I mean, who wouldn't?) so I thought that would be a big hit)) so we would have appropriate Halloween-y type music, and maybe do some dancing. I, of course, proceeded to forget the cd with the music in my apartment that morning.

Get to the school. Set up two of the rooms for the party, one for food, one for games. Help the other teacher and the manager to cut out bones for a make a skeleton game. Cut. out. so. many. bones. Must have cut out 40 bones, took over an hour and my fingers had that nice scissors indentation from being pushed against for too long.

Kids started to arrive. Supposed to have around a dozen or so, thankfully only 8 showed up and three parents. So that was good. Party off to a slow start, ate some lunch, including my new food of choice, rice balls wrapped in seaweed with soy sauce in them. So damned good. Must seek out for future lunches. Oh, and one of the moms was super crafty apparently because she made witch costumes for her two daughters and also made pumpking muffins which tasted exactly like pumpkin pie. I would ask her for the recipe but i don't have an oven. anyway, food was good, but the kids were getting a little restless. Well, some of them. Well, one of them. Happily one of my extra special, gets into everything and can't sit still for a minute students came to the party. yay.

Oh, and here is my costume:



I went as a dapper ghost. Tie, hat, and glasses. Had to take the glasses off though since my breath was coming through the eye holes in the costume and fogging up my lenses. I could barely see as it was, didn't need to have the fog to add to my blindness.


Me with some of the kids, including a vampire!

My costume was a big hit with the kids. They liked pulling on it and lifting it up to see what was underneath. The also liked to run to my side real quick so I couldn't see them because of my shoddily made eyeholes.

By the way, that sheet was the nicest sheet in Tsuruga and I cut holes in it. What a moron I am. Maybe I can sew the holes shut and continue to use the sheet.

Anyway, back to the party. After a slow start it was actually a lot of fun. I had a good time and I think the kids had fun. We played some games including my mummy wrap game.






And then we alternated playing a bean bag toss game and a search for monsters game. Geos is really small. Like super small. Especially if you don't want the kids to be running around destroying the classrooms and offices. We set up a search game where we hid pictures of monsters around the school common areas and had the kids look for them. While half of the kids did this the other half played the bean bag toss game. They tried to throw balloons filled with rice into the mouth of a pumpkin. Or rather into a box with a pumpkin mouth cut out of the top of it.



Yes, I made this game. Yes, I am kind of proud of it. No, I don't know why there is a used tissue in the box.

The kids had a freaking BLAST playing these two games! I am definitely keeping the bean bag toss game in my repetoire for teaching. Just change the picture on top to match whatever the lesson is supposed to be.

As for the hidden monsters game. Well, the kids loved it. The school, not so much. They ripped down almost everything we had on the walls searching for those hidden monsters. They tipped over a magazine rack spilling the magazines all over the floor. They overturned the chairs in the lobby. They ransacked the bookcase. Basically they made a mess of the school. Good thing I don't have to clean...it....up, dammit! I am going to have to clean up tomorrow!

All in all the party was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I think the kids had a good time and the three hours flew by for me. Someone took a picture of all the kids and the teachers in a group. I will see if I can get a copy of that photo to post up.

Kid's party was finished at three, adult party started at six. I had three (well two by the time I got home, and since I had to leave for the adult party at 5:30 to get there at 6) glorious hours to myself. What did I do with my time? Why, take a nap of course! Ahh, nap time.






Nap time gets a long break.





The adult party was at a karaoke place. I had to do nothing to prepare. Simply walk out of my apartment and wait for my manager to pick me up. Nice! We then went to pick up Steven, the teacher from Sabae, and headed off to the party.

Now, I like Steven for many reasons, he is a cool guy. But even if he was a complete dick, it would still be nice to hang out with him simply because he is an American guy and therefore makes perverted jokes and curses all the time. That is the thing that I miss most about being away from America (other than the food of course) I can't make stupid pervert jokes here. I mean, I guess I could, but I couldn't explain why they were funny to my students without worrying about offending someone.

The adult party was pretty much the 7-up crew, the manager, Steven, and myself. Not a huge turn out. I think in part it was because it was a Sunday night. If we could have done it on a Saturday I bet more people would have come out. Also, and this is what one of my students said, people think they have to dress up in a costume cuz it is a Halloween party, and Japanese adults don't want to dress in Halloween costumes. Just uniforms apparently.

Anyway, karaoke was a drunken good time. Albeit an expensive one, it cost me $60 that night, and multiply that by 8 people, ouch! Speaking of drinking, here is something odd that I dislike about Japan. You aren't supposed to pour your own drink. It is considered rude. And at some places they give you a liter bottle of beer and a tiny glass, about twice the size of a shot glass, or maybe the size of a rocks glass to compare, and when you empty your glass you have to just let it sit there until someone notices that you are empty, or you have to "subtley" hint that your glass is empty by saying something like, "Boy am I thirsty." or "Wow, it is really warm in here, it is making my throat dry." or "HEY! Empty over here!" And when some people are fat Americans who need to drink about six of those tiny glasses of beer to even begin feeling a buzz, it makes for a somewhat frustrating drinking evening.

Karaoke was first a seven course meal followed by the actual karaoke. The meal didn't have any weird food. In fact it was so unweird it felt odd. Weirdest thing was a deep fried rice ball, and that wasn't even weird to me, just delicious, but something different for the Japanese.

After dinner was karaoke, which was different from the (rather limited) karaoke I have experienced in the US. This place had individual, soundproof rooms, each equipped with a karaoke machine, 36" high def flat screen tv, and sound system. You were basically just singing to your friends. Where is the intimidation in that? I sang some Sublime with Steven, Paranoid by Black Sabbath (yeah, my voice, it sounds nothing like Ozzy's), Understand your man by Johnny Cash (also, my voice sounds not at all like the venerable Mr. Cash's, but at least I got that twang down), acted as hype man to an Eminem song, and finished out the night with Party Hard by Andrew W.K., which is not my favorite song of his, but the only one they had. They had some of the oddest choices in American songs and bands. They had Christmas songs, and Happy birthday to sing karaoke to. They had several songs from obscure bands, and then didn't have songs I thought they would. Of course, now I can't remember a single thing that I thought was so funny that night. That is what a gallon of beer will do to you I guess. All that beer however did lead me to take this amazing set of photos in the bathroom.




Floor length urinals. No need for the short guy urinal in Japan. Makes sense, all the short people in this country. Oh, and you think I have seen a single public toilet that didn't have an automatic flush on it, well you just don't know Japan.

Speaking of automatic, here is their weird automatic hand dryer.




You put your hand down into the space between the fans and air blows from both sides drying your hands. Now, maybe i am just a big idiot but I keep touching the sides while trying to dry my hands, and you can't rub your hands to get them dry, so basically you just stand there for a minute to get the soaking wetness off, then wipe your hands on your pants to get them dry for real. What's up with that?


And finally, here is a traditional Japanese toilet aka a hole in the floor.



Sanitary!



And I will leave you with this image and say nothing more.