And a good yontif

So there go the high holy days in Japan, in a pretty quick flash. It was a little difficult to even remain aware of them seeing as how I'm the only Jew I know here, and home is 13 hours in the past. But I did my best. Ganbarimashita.
Another thing I wasn't aware of until my parents let me know a month after the fact is that someone at my college was shot during a robbery. Somehow even another teacher at my school became aware of this, asking me if I knew a college in Lancaster PA. Indeed I do. The next day a student told me he heard of a bad incident in Pennsylvania, something about a school and a murder was all i caught, but i assumed he too somehow just found out about the college thing (though noone died in that fortunately). My bad though, because in fact just down the road from my college, apparently some random local otherwise known to be normal walked into a small amish farming elementary school, shot 5 young girls dead, and then killed himself. There seems to be no exact motivation, only some vague plan involving sexual molestation that wasn't carried out. What's going on Pennsylvania? Specifically central Pennsylvania? I think a teacher at my school was trying to explain that in America many people have guns, but noone in Japan does? It was in Japanese so I'm only making an educated guess... But that does seem to be what they think about when they ask if I heard about what happened.
Before I heard about these incidents, another English teacher at my school I guess saw me put skim milk and a touch of sugar in my coffee, and commented that she always imagined Americans would put tons of cream and sugar in their coffee. Maybe... but she then continued that she also imagined that Americans were mostly big and very fat. Great. She again continued to note that I am in fact short and skinny, like a Japanese person. I told her that in fact the clothing stores here are much better in terms of sizes than in America for me. Actually i think my frame and belly may even be a touch on the big side for Japanese clothes. Regardless, what I wanted to tell her was that maybe she wouldn't be so sickly if she weighed more that 80 pounds. I may not talk favorably about America so much these days (a friend told me I was really negative actually, and a bad ambassador for the States). But for some reason it still pissed me off to have this little tiny Japanese woman tell me "boy americans sure are fat aren't they." Another friend told me that indeed his coworkers too appear to have trouble differentiating between the kind of things you think about, and the things you say out loud. At least when speaking English.
On a funnier note, today my school had a festival, which mostly revolved around musical performances. This included me singing a song in Japanese with all of the other teachers. So if you want to laugh at an image in your head, imagine Aaron on stage with about 30 other Japanese adults, in front of maybe 7-800 Japanese children and adults, singing a song in Japanese. And if you need more, you can picture the principal coming on stage, saying something, and then handing me the mic. Thankfully i had vaguely prepared for such an occurence, based on the sudden nature of the previous times i've had public speaking (in japanese!) thrust upon me.
Ok, you can stop laughing now.