Kelly in Japan

Happy New Years!

// January 2nd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

As per my New Years resolution to be a better blogger (don’t we all say that?), I am busy editing and uploading a bunch of videos from the past six months. You can view my videos here on the blog, but they will also be posted to blip.tv, Vimeo (which supports HD), YouTube (if they quit sucking), and iTunes. Supposedly blip also exports to Facebook, but that feature is down right now. It also exports to MySpace, but I don’t ever check my MySpace anymore so I wouldn’t recommend watching or commenting there. And it alerts Twitter when I post a new video.

I’ve also made a couple of new pages here on the site, Photo and Video, where you can thumb through both forms of media. Just in case you’re ever bored (Grandma, I’m talking about you!) … :)

As for New Years itself, we were pretty low-key this year. We had dinner over at Joe & Andrea’s. Joe made queso and we played Bomberman on Wii. I won a respectable amount of games, and even Kory made a good showing! We didn’t visit any temples or shrines, mainly because Joe and Andrea swore the line would not be worth it. In any case, we’re a little vacationed out and it didn’t take much convincing for us to stay home, edit pictures (me) and play iConquer on our laptops.

I got New Years notes from two of my JTEs, which I thought was very sweet of them. We ate sushi today and go back to work on Monday.

Japanese Culture

// September 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I got a good dose of Japanese culture last week. The school’s music teacher imported a trio of traditional Japanese musicians - a shamisen player, a shakuhachi player, and another girl that played the piano and some small flute thing that didn’t appear to have a name in my program. It was very interesting, though they also did the requisite instrument discussion which I couldn’t really follow. The trio performed four times throughout the day, so it was a nice intimate audience when I was there.

Also, one of the English teachers invited me to Flower Arranging Club. So I have been to Flower Arranging Club twice now. This last time I remembered my iPhone so I could take some pictures! I do get to take the flowers home each week, but I have to disarrange them first and they’re never quite as pretty the second time around.

On Saturday I had to go to Numazu to watch the regional speech contest for which I helped three students prepare. It took all freaking day but all of our students advanced! Our two girls got 3rd and 4th in the regular division, and our boy got 1st in the “has lived abroad so they must speak English better than everyone else” advanced division. The 1st and 2nd place winners in the regular division spoke English better than most of the people in the advanced division, so we knew they would win. Anyway, the upside is we did well. The downside is now I have to stay after school every day AGAIN to help them prepare for the next round. :P

On Sunday we found a conveyor-belt sushi place that a co-worker had directed me to. It was great fun. After that we visited the ice cream/confectionery shop that Kory had seen on his bike. We came away with lots of ice cream, mochi balls, cookies, etc.

Check out Flickr for pics of all the above, plus more from our trip to Osaka!