gomenne

So I'm slacking even more with the posts since my last one over two weeks ago. Gomen ne (sorry)! Sometimes it's hard to know what of my life is worth relaying onto the internet and what isn't. But I'll do my best. I'll try to roughly work from when I last posted.
So the next weekend after I last rambled was slow but mostly relaxing as usual. On Saturday I test drove some cars from a guy who rents to many foreigners in this prefecture. One car was a glorified scooter engine placed inside a do-it-yourself instruction booklet style car frame and I believe had well over 500,000km on it. The other was a little Nissan March (same kind of car that my predecessor rented from this same man, but different actual vehicle) which while very tiny did feel more like an actual car to me. I really want a car to drive around here, but I still haven't decided exactly what to do about that. I know of a car for sale, but its not really worth buying unless I know I'll be sticking around for another year. But I also wonder if this rental guy is such a good deal. I'll keep thinking about it, but if no revelations appear to me in the near future, i'll probably go back to this guy.
Anyway after that I went to a wine festival about 45 minutes East of me in Gunma prefecture. It was nice enough, but me and Amber foolishly did little research on the actual even and arrived about 30 minutes before they closed the gates and between 3 and 6 hours after everyone else had arrived. We still enjoyed a bit of wine on a steep hill though. On the way out I managed to smash both my and Amber's commemorative wine glasses with the help of a drunken Japanese guy and my own clumsiness. The first time was when Ryosuke knocked my hand holding the glass, and it smashed everywhere with a bit of wine still in it. At least I could blame that one on someone else. But later Amber asked me to hold hers for just a minute as she put stuff in her bag, and in a few seconds I managed to drop it and smash that everywhere too. I don't even have the excuse of drunkenness, just naturally poor coordination I guess.
Anyway, far more exciting than that was this past weekend (which, with the help of a public holiday and a day of paid leave, was 4 days long) when I went to Kyushu (southern island of the 4 main ones in Japan). This was actually Amber's trip, as she lived there on and off for years and was there to visit friends and host families. I happily tagged along though and got to spend time and see the cities of Fukuoka/Hakata, Kokura, Kurosaki, and Nagasaki. Kurosaki was not much to look at, but the other cities all were definitely more bustling and interesting than the cities of Takasaki and Maebashi where I currently live. A few other teachers confirmed this observation when I talked to them about it today at school.
Probably more interesting in the long run were the host families and friends of hers that I saw, as opposed to the cities themselves. Though it was a bit incredible to think that Nagasaki was basically wiped from the Earth only 61 years ago and now exists as a relatively thriving city of half a million. But the same is basically true of most or all of Japan, whether through nuclear explosions or not.
Anyway, the first host family of Amber's was what she described as really "bogan" (redneck being the closest American equiv word) despite being quite wealthy. This was pretty accurate. They lived in a beautiful traditional Japanese mansion with an exquisite garden outside, but inside the house was a massive collection of tasteless piles of Disney crap and arbitrarily placed plasma screen TV's. They (and we) ate at 7-11 and the members were either overweight, missing teeth, or both, and everyone smoked. I even got to wake up to a physical altercation between one of the daughters and her husband who didn't come home the night before because he was out drinkin with his buddies.
That said, they were incredibly nice people, and actually had a very happy and together seeming family (sort of...). In the brief moments that I was in the same room as them and Amber wasn't they instantly went to teasing and making fun of her (ironically for being dirty and not cooking) which I happily joined in with what little tiny shreds of Japanese I could muster.
The other host family was also quite well off, though their house was much more tastefully put together, and fit more easily into a normal image of a upper middle class Japanese family (at least I think). The only real memorable part of that stay was when I went to take a shower, and the host mom asked Amber to show me how to use their bathroom. After walking me through the complicated process of finding the obviously located towels and pointing to where the shower room is located I went in, not realizing that the step of turning on the hot water was necessary, though not included in the instructions. After a few minutes of running cold water like an idiot the mother shouted something in Japanese at me, and then at amber, and then amber told me that the hot water wasn't on. She found this all hilarious, but I still say I had the last laugh because the mother got a bit short with her and forced her to apologize to me a few times as warm tea was made for me to warm up. Plus most people reading this could probably vouch that I don't really mind smelling bad, I just try not to for the sake of other people.
Other highlights include making fun of Australia for about two straight hours with a Japanese friend of Amber's and going to a silly bar in Fukuoka where we watched the bartender do some crazy flippy stuff with the drinks and then watched an impromptu and impressive magic card trick show at about 2am.
I'm back at school, and going through the motions of the day while furiously planning/trying to plan my winter break, when four girls of varying relation to me will arrive from America and I have to pretend to have at least some slight idea of how to get around this country.
The only thing of note that happened at school was yet another evaluation of some kind, when again I donned my suit and taught class while a guy stood in the back and took notes. I guess it went ok, though the main teacher told another coworker that it actually did not go well. I could honestly care less as I am so distant from the bureaucracy of the school system, and my teacher seems keenly aware that she's the one under pressure with these things, and not me. On the plus side, I used the incredible amount of free time I had to make some rather detailed and delicate picture cards, which all the other teachers seemed blown away by, and I was told they were a hit with the note-taking bureaucrats as well. It's good to know that like humans everywhere, the Japanese too can be distracted by pointless pretty things. I'll do my best to keep that up. Perhaps I've found my true purpose at Minami Junior High School.
I'll put up pictures ASAP. Promise.