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Greetings everyone. Hope you enjoyed the 60 degree weather. Paul Harvey said people were mowing their lawns in Chicago. Wow. Ota hasn't been quite that warm. But I have been enjoying the fall colors. The mountains near Ota are really pretty right now. Everything is orange. Wish I had time to go and enjoy the leaves. But in less than 2 weeks I will be enjoying the greens and blues of the Philippines. That beats autumn any day. The rice has been harvested. I took lots of pictures, but don't have a digital camera or scanner to send you the images. At any rate, the fields have been worked over and the winter wheat has been planted. Tochigi-ken has just harvested it's strawberry crops. I had some yesterday and they were very good. You should try a Japanese strawberry if you ever get the chance. They are huge, surprisingly light (not dense), and are very sweet... and also cost about $0.80 each. You can justify it as a cultural experience. I took the Japanese test on Sunday. It wasn't as hard as the practice book. I can't believe all the words and grammar points I had sweat over and weren't on the test. But even so, I am not sure that I past. It was pretty easy, but that doesn't mean that recalled the info that I need to. Lots of the questions were about verb endings, and I was a bit weak on that part. Also, the listening section was tough. Some of the people talked really fast, and each question was played only once. Also, someone's cell phone went off 5 times during the LISTENING section! Can you believe it! If he didn't know how to turn off his ringer, he should have asked someone. Also, I was mad at the person who kept calling. It would ring and ring, he's turn the phone off, then the person would call back. Get a clue! So I missed a lot of questions during that section. But all in all, I was quite proud of how I did. Based on all the stuff I studied, I had the ability to pass, I just don't know if I did. Cross your fingers. Only 2 months till I find out. I have been Christmas letters from my friends in America. They are going all out this year. They have "year in review" letters for everyone. Sure beats anything I'll send any of you. I just have to make one comment about all you back home. It's really strange for me to read about everything happening in your lives. I feel mine is in slow motion, while yours have continued at regular speed. Also, it's weird to get all this mail about, "I found the man of my dreams," "do you want to be in my wedding party?" "can you be back for my wedding in June?" I am the lonely bachelor in a sea of ... well I'm am not sure what the sea is comprised of, but you get the drift. People on the JET program here think that I and my friends are weird. I think JETs tend to be wanderers and "forever bachelors". Most of the guys here think that 50 is about the right age to settle down, and the girls are shooting for 30. Or maybe it's just an East Coast versus Middle America thing (most of the JETs in Gunma are from the East Coast or another country). So I think I will have a lot of adjusting to do when I get back. I'll have to hang out with married people!!! On a completely different subject... Kids at my school were making these little figures. I asked them if they were clay, and they said no (stop me if I've already told you this one). They looked like clay to me- dark gray, bendable, smooth. What else could it be? Turned out that the kids were making them out of eraser dust. So after the kids would erase something, he would add it to the ball he had, and when he had enough, he would mold the stuff into little me. Pretty odd. But the reason that this is particularly funny is because of a conversation I had recently with other AETs. We were contemplating the effect taking away students erasers would have on the delicate harmony at school. Students use erasers like they use air. Most kids make at least 2 attempts to write their names on their papers. I've never seen a student cross something out. He or she will always whip out the eraser and go to town on the paper. If I point out a mistake at the end of a sentence the student has written, there is a good chance the child will erase the whole sentence. The great secret AETs have for wasting time in class is to have the students draw something. Nothing can be drawn in under 5 minutes! Kids go for precision. I could literally waste an entire period on the children making Christmas cards, and they would never have gotten to the writing part of it. Even when we play Bingo, some kids take out their rulers and mark off the boxes. I couldn't believe that kids took ten minutes to draw times on clock faces. Kids had their rulers out and kept erasing them, then colored the minute hands. But what really gets me about this precision thing, is if I drew a really bad picture on the board, as an example of what they should draw, some kids will take pains to reproduce my image. Ah, how I love "chuugakkusei." Valerie Straayer |