OMG ITS GUNDAM!

GREAT weekend. Saw some great friends that I haven't seen in a while. Walked away with some pretty great jokes, including everyone singing one room jesshika over and over. saw inception. GREAT movie. first movie in a theater in japan!!!! ate popcorn and everything. saw the giant gundam .. twice! once at night and then during the day the next day. bought a tshirt and a folder. my camera died though so i got no pictures! but other people did so im going to steal from them haha.  did soo much karaoke. listened to recordings of mel gibson being a jerk.

the next 3 weeks are going to be nuts. next weekend.. birthday. the weekend after that...climbing fuji.... two days after that.. china.. realized today that im going to be on the top of mt fuji and camping on the great wall of china within 4 days of each other. how epic is that!

theres also a video on facebook ... go to videos of me and check it out!

Happy 4th of July!

Today is good ol' independence day so I'm going to celebrate it the only way I can here in Japan.... and thats karaoke!!! We're going to sing all the songs that have the word america or usa in it and be proud of where we're from!! haha maybe eat some cheeseburgers or something too. I plan on skyping with my family at some point at the 4th of july party so that'll be nice. For now I'm goign to clean my apt because I might have friends visiting.

Did I mention im going to China in August? WOOOO 7 days in Beijing.. .sleeping on the Great Wall of China... eating fried starfish on a stick and bear hands and weird things like that. Very excited. And climbing Mt. Fuji the weekend before that. Its going to be an exciting and exhausting week. Can't wait!!

Meanwhile, in July... I'm going to Osaka next weekend with some friends.(not going to hiroshima for fishing anymore).. in 3 weekends I'm goign to Travis's to see the unveiling of a huge robot the size of a building. Should be fun. And the weekend after that is my birthday.. so maybe going to Atami to see fireworks and live on the beach.

I love the summer.
Work sucks lately but who cares. :)

lazy lazy

hi! man this has been such a lazy weekend. I mean, not counting Sat night. After this busy week of parent observations I took the train to Tokyo and had a night out with some friends I made at my follow up training a few weeks ago. It was great to see them again and spend time with a different group of people. I've made so many neat friends here! We danced the night away and also watched some of the world cup at the first bar I've ever been to in Tokyo, the week of New Years! Anyways that was a fun night and I ended up wanting to crash at like 4 in the morning.. my train back home wasnt until 6:40! but I made it and slept for most of Sunday. I was able to skype with Amy during her graduation party which was awesome catching up with lots of old friends. I miss those kids.

I also got into the show Mad Men so I've been watching that every chance I get, trying to catch up to season 4 that starts in July. Im on season 3 so I've made good progress. I watched a lot of that yesterday. Today I didn't wake up until 1:30 and have done nothing since then. Im going to head out in a bit to pick up dry cleaning though and maybe find a rain coat. Its rainy season in Japan so ..... lots of rain and its very humid.

I finally got to eat REAL (as real as it gets out here) PIZZA! Last weekend I visited travis and zach in shizuoka city and we ordered pizza la  .... it was amazing. but SO expensive. 1 large pie was around 30 bucks. gah. We got 3 pizzas haahha whoops. it was a great dinner and breakfast the next morning after a night of karaoke.

open up with your smile!!!

So i have some cool stuff coming up in July.. maybe for 4th of july we'll have a bonfire on the beach. and I might take a trip to Hiroshima to go fishing with Adam. Its also my birthday at the end of the month and theres goign to be a huge fireworks festival in Numazu and Atami so I want to go see that. AND im going to shizuoka city with a huge group of people at travis's to see the unveiling of a giant Gundam Robot. should be a good month. Hopefully work won't be as stressful now that parent observations are over. It wasn't too bad though. Two weeks of parents being in the classroom.... for my older students though their parents didnt really show up. And my younger kids behaved better while their moms were watching them in the classroom so that actually made things a little smoother. No complaints from parents so thats good!! 

Hope everyones doing well. Feel free to leave me a message

OH also i should add...... I extended my contract. Im now staying in Japan until the end of May. I can't believe I've been here for 7 months now. I'll get some nice vacations out of it so I'm pleased. 

bad news

i have a kidney infection. how does this happennnnnnnn

HAHA

Dude its been 3 months since i last updated this. I just got back from my 6 month follow up training in Zushi which is outside of Tokyo. It was only for a weekend so it went pretty fast. I made some new friends though! and they are all going out in Tokyo in a few weeks so Im going to try to meet up with them. yay.

Ive recently fallen in love with Milk Tea. I think its starting to give me migraines though so i may have to stay away from it. Its perfect after a day at the beach though. Speaking of beaches... I've been to the beach a few times now here in Japan... i had two days off this week (to make up for the weekend of training) and I spent them on the beach in Atami. A few weeks ago I also took a trip to Shimoda which is 2 hours away but has gorgeous beaches. I went with Alex and her bf Yosuke. June is rainy season though and I heard it might start this week. Hopefully that holds off another week so that next weekend I can go to the beach some more.

Soon I have to decide what to do with the length of my contract. Big decisions!
Work is stressful as always but thats life. In April we started a new school year, and I have some babies.. like around  2 years old.. that now have to take a class without Mommy in the classroom. Boy has that been awful. Crying babies everywhere and only 1 Jessica Sensei. Some of them have stopped though and are back to wanting to sing the ABCs every 5 minutes, so thats good.
I think my English is getting worse out here though. Unfortunately, my Japanese isn't getting that much better. Slowly but surely though its coming around, and I plan on doing more studying now that all my TV shows have ended and I have nothing to watch after work.

Anything else? Not recently. Planning a trip to China soon and going to finally climb Mt Fuji too. Lots of good things ahead. Always running around. Never home on the weekends (always traveling!) Life is great here.

I do miss pizza though.

Me and my friends. I realized I love the cute stuffed animals here that looked depressed or aren't smiling. Weird! But Cute!! Kawaii

sickness

Well the past 2 weeks have been really boring. 2 weeks ago i got sick with the stomach flu and missed two days of work. Then immediately after that I got an Upper respiratory infection. I get it every feb so that wasn't a huge surprise but being sick for two weeks straight hasn't been much fun. I purposely stayed in my apartment and didnt leave this weekend so that I would focus on just resting and recovering. During that time I had a weird dream that I came home for the weekend. Met up with the whole family in New York. and then freaked out because I realized I wasn't going to make it back in time for work on Tuesday. Being home in my dream felt really nice though. I miss America!
BUT Japan is so great, I know these past 2 weeks have just been a slump i need to overcome. I need to get better and get back into the groove of traveling on the weekends and seeing/trying new things. Because thats why I'm here. (So when I don't do something new every week I feel like I'm wasting time. Which is why being sick for 2 weeks has made me very unhappy)
The upside to being in my apt all weekend: my apt is very clean and my laundry is done. I watched 4 movies on my English movie channel on my tv: Somewhere in Time, Stuart Little 2, 88 Minutes, and Racing Stripes.  Most of those movies were bad. But i laid in bed and watched anyways. I also finished a book and started a new one.
The downside: I was sick and too lazy to study any Japanese.

The Crazy Side: I've been living in Japan for 3 months. WHAT!?

wow

its been a month since i've updated! i'm awfully sorry about that!

im going to make a list of stuff that ive done in the past month

• made my own homemade sushi 
• went to a sushi conveyer belt restaurant
• went to hiroshima for a weekend
• traveled on a sleeper train with my own bed!
• ate Okinomiyaki (famous in hiroshima)
• Stood in the spot where the bomb was dropped
• went to Peace Park and explored the museum about the bomb in hiroshima
• went to a club called Roop Fooding and another called Space Foo
• went to Gotemba Premium Outlets (just like Jackson Premium Outlets!)
• worked many many many hours
• bought myself a new chair and lamp
• been studying japanese occasionally (i really need to study more)
• learned how to work my rice cooker
• learned a few new recipes
• avoided the flu this month (4 out of 7 employees had it)
• received a few origami animals from cute 5 year old students 
• playing the new super mario bros on the wii
• ate soy beans to ward off evils for the year
• got asked 100 times what my blood type is. apparently its similar to people asking what your horoscope is. your blood type means something about your personality. consult wikipedia for the chart  mom or dad if you guys know what my blood type is.. let me know because i forgot. haha

thats the highlights i guess. pictures with details to come!