Kids Training and Osu Kannon

When Red Rock closed on Wednesday night, everyone who was still in the bar formed an ad-hoc group bound for Karaoke (Jeff can let me know if I used 'ad-hoc' properly). It occurred to Tim, Rachel, and I that our group had picked up a few undesirables, so we left to get some food. We went to a diner around the corner from where Rachel lives and got some curry and rice. There was a coin machine that you ordered from (everything had a picture) and then you gave a food ticket to the people at the counter. It was different but perfect for what we are: unable to say anything in Japanese. Tim and I crashed at Rachel's for the night and I ate a bunch of her candy. Apparently there's something called a Crunchie Bar that Australians and the British love. I've never seen one before, but then again I still get lost in Greenfield every now and then. So its a piece of honeycomb-like candy, covered in Cadbury chocolate. They're quite awesome. Its funny that I dont remember anyone's name from that night but can perfectly recreate that candy.

The next day I had to get up early, hungover, and go to Kids Training in Toyohashi. Now I can teach kids in three age groups, 4 to 6, 6 to 9, and 9 to 12. Thats quite scary as Im unfit to teach anyone anything in my opinion. Today is my second day off (the first was after my initial training) so I went to Osu Kannon in Nagoya and bought a rice cooker. Osu Kannon is an old temple, but theres a shopping area adjacent to it. Its not nice like Newbury Street, and its not particularly cheap. I think its like Washington Street in Boston. Tourists go there and you can find some stuff you need, but after a while you realize that its nothing special. I bought a rice cooker for 4300 Yen and then spent an hour trying to translate the instructions. No such luck. I've started asking random people I meet in the day to tell me what certain Kanji mean. I'll see a character over and over again, so I'll ask any person who I have an excuse to talk to to explain it to me. I drew the Kanji for 'between' and demanded one of my students tell me what it means. I just drew another one for the girl who works at the front desk of this internet cafe. She pronounced it for me, so now I can use my dictionary to look it up. Its not a perfect system, but I'm making some progress. Sunshine has a bunch of Japanese textbooks, so I'm going to borrow a few and start learning again soon. Theres also something called the International Center in Nagoya where you can go to take books out and post want-ads on the Student Exchange. Rachel said this is known as the 'fluids exchange' since its where Japanese people post when they want to meet Westerners and vice versa for 'cultural' and 'lingustic' education. And by 'cultural' and 'lingustic' I mean face-sitting and a finger in the butt. It just occurred to me that my entire family has this blog's address. Here's hoping none of them are checking it.

I put up some of the pictures from Osu Kannon, but my camera died so there arent many. I forgot to charge it after Red Rock. Ill probably go back there a few times though, so Ill fill in the gaps later.