What's been going on

So, I'm sitting at my desk here at school with absolutely nothing to do. Yes, that's the life of an ALT in Japan during summer vacation. We have to report to school or the Board of Education (BOE), but most the time we are just sitting, watching the clock tick. Thank goodness for camps, meetings, orientation, to take up my time somewhat, or else I'd literally go crazy.

So on Friday, I went to the BOE in the morning. Only Jeff, Tom and Robert were there as well. We got there at 9am, but were already bored outta our minds by 10am. We had an "English seminar" later that day at 3pm, but we knew nothing as to what the seminar entailed. We decided to take a long long lunch...2 1/2 hours to be exact. At a little past 2pm, I got a call from Mr. Goino, our supervisor, asking where we were. I told him we were still out, and he said that we had an orientation at 2pm...which was going on right then! He was like, "Didn't I tell you about it?? Everyone is here already. Please HURRY!!" (And no, he didn't tell us about it) On that note, we walked briskly back to the BOE, only to find out that we were supposed to teach shouggakkou teachers English?? Wtf? We literally had 45 min. to throw together a lesson. Um, okay. This was clearly a waste of time on both the ALTs' and the teachers' parts. Oh well, at least we came up with some good games. That is my actual job anyway...Professional Game Maker.

On Saturday, I trained to Shibukawa with Jeff to go to the Heso (Bellybutton) Matsuri. It was really cool!! Like, most maturis in Japan are EXACTLY the same, but this one was different. Shibukawa claims to be the bellybutton of Japan, thus this annual matsuri. Anyway, guys have cute anime characters' heads painted on their bare chests and they wear these hands on their hips so it looks like the heads on their chests have bodies. Hmm...I'm not explaining this too well. Pictures to come later so you can see for yourself! Anyway, cool stuff. However, they have to dance for like 3 hours!! It seems fun, but for 3 hours?? We had some ALT gaijin in the mix as well. Woot!

On Sunday, I walked around the Ota matsuri with Jeff and Ann. The Ota matsuri definitely had a ghetto flare, being in that it IS in Ota, afterall. There was this biking ramp thingy and wanna-be improv rappers and dudes with hairstyles from the 50s who thought they were cool. I dunno, it was just ghetto. I did see a bunch of my kids tho, and that was cool. We later met up with many many ALTs, for one last Ota get-together at Gen. Saad! It's weird to think that these people who I've known the past year aren't gonna be around any more. Sad, indeed.