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! 

Tokyo - HONTO!!!! (REALLY!!!)

Im not sure where to begin, which is why its taken me some time to finally update. I had such an amazing time in Tokyo its hard to put into words exactly the amount of fun I had there but I will try my best.

My trip actually started out in Shizouka City, where my training friend Travis lives. He lives an hour away from Numazu. I actually was going an hour further from Tokyo to visit him but I wanted people to travel with so it was okay. Britney and her friend Katie from home who came to visit for new years also went to Travis's.

What a fun bunch.

So we spent our time seeing Travis's cool apartment where we had a lovely dinner and went out for drinks with his friends in the area. Had such a great time! I also learned about Mameshiba here:

Its hilarious and also creeps me out. The music is creepy!!! Its not even selling anything. The joke was the little edamame coming out of the pod going.. nnnuuuuuuuwwww! hahahaha 

Anyways. The next day we took the local train to Tokyo which was 3 hours because it was slow and made a bajillion stops. It was okay though because I put my Kindle into good use and read a book. From tokyo station we went to Ueno station which is where my hotel was. Ueno was pretty cool. Everything was just so busy from being the holidays and lots of people wanted to be there for the holiday (like me). It had a starbucks which was cool. There were a lot of starbucks in Tokyo. That night everyone met up for drinks and we bonded over stories from our first month at work.  The group I met up with were all from my training week back in November. It's so wonderful how close we've become in such a short period of time. All the traveling and new experiences really can bring you closer to people. I'm very lucky to have such great people in my life here!

The gang.

The next day was spent checking out Ueno. There were so many cool shops in that part of town and the streets were crazy. I bought a fun necklace for my outfit that night and also tried on some crazy stuff:

 Don't worry, I didn't buy that ridiculous headband.

That night was New Years Eve. We started drinking around 5 (probably not the smartest idea, but a lot of fun)  We went to Travis, Ai-Lin, Brittani, and Katie's hotel room to pregame because it was bigger.

 "America's Next Top Sensei" - Keziah

From there we went to this restaurant that I dont think liked us very much because we were such a huge group and were all drunk loud messes. But its okay.

After that we went to this club called Legato. I honestly don't remember much at this point (whoops.) But I do remember it was 15 stories up and the view of the city was so amazing. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a countdown. I looked at my phone around 1 and saw a bunch of texts saying happy new year and realized that we completely missed midnight. But it was okay. At one point Brittani and I took our shoes off which was gross haha. (Travis - "THATS DISGUSTING") I sat outside for air at one point and someone gave me an energy drink on the street. Don't know why. I also didn't pay the 5000 yen (50 dollars) required to get into the club. Don't know how I got past that one haha. At another point Erin and I went to pick up some friends at the station that were late joining us and we thought it was a good idea to buy a bottle of Chardonnay at a convenience store and chug it on the way to the station and back. (because you can drink on the streets here)  It was a great night!

The next morning... sooo hungover but woke up and did what the Japanese do on New Years Day... go to the temple and throw a coin in for good luck , and get a fortune for the year. The streets were packed and closed down to cars to accommodate all the people going to this thing. All along the sides of the road there were shops and food to eat. Pretty cool. So we get in and take pictures and throw a coin in and then leave. The next thing we do is go to the side where you shake this metal tin case. There is a hole in the bottom and inside the can are a bunch of sticks with numbers in them. The numbered stick that falls out of the little hole is your fortune, and you have to match the number to a drawer. You fortune is inside that drawer. I got a Medium Fortune. If you get a bad fortune you have to leave it at the temple so it doesn't follow you throughout the year.

So yeah...doesn't seem too great of a fortune to me. I'll need to watch my front and back.

That night we went to the restaurant that was the inspiration for the end scene in Kill Bill, when Uma Therman goes nuts and kills 88 ninjas. IT WAS SO COOL. I mean they didn't actually film there, the movie used a set. But this is the place that Quentin Tarintino ate at and used as his set inspiration! I was excited. This place was in Roppongi. There was a huge spider right when you got off the train which was cool. It also had Tokyo Tower, which we tried going to and got lost. Whoops. My camera also decided to not focus at all this night so most pictures are blurry.

Then that night we did karaoke which is always a good time, especially with 15 people haha.

So the next day me Travis Brittnai and Ai-Lin went to Yokohama which is outside of Tokyo. They had a Ramen Museum that I really wanted to check out because Ramen is like.. my favorite thing about Japan. The museum was so cool. It was underground and it was a replica of a section of Tokyo in the year 1958. All around it were ramen shops that featured ramen from different parts of japan. It was pretty neat. So we had a big bowl of ramen and went on our way to Chinatown!!! This was the best chinatown I've ever seen. It was so cool with so much going on and the buildings were so beautiful. We got bubble tea and walked around and just admired the area.

 Inside the Ramen Museum

 Busy Chinatown street

After Chinatown we went to Marine Tower and went up 40-somewhat stories in an elevator to get to the top, where there was a beautiful view of the Yokohama skyline. It was so romantic haha. We were up there just admiring the city and loving life.

 

So later that night the group went out on the town for our last night in Tokyo. Lots of fun! And the next day spent traveling home because I was so exhausted from all the sightseeing during the day and partying at night haha.

So basically this was one of the best weeks of my life. Can't wait to go back!

Also, not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.

Here are some jokes from the week...just for me to remember

Honto?

Ano NEEEE

Mameshibaaa... Nuuuuwwww

How many _______'s does it take to get to Tokyo Tower??

the rest of the pictures from my trip are found on my facebook OR you can go to this link if we aren't facebook friends: CLICK HERE

My next big trip I think will be Hiroshima, Kobe, and Kyoto which is pretty far from me but I'd love to check those areas out. Okay. I'll posting again soon.