Lucky Curry

Now where was I?

Right. The weekend before last, I went with my the staff of my junior high school on their trip. The first destination on our trip was a theatre. "Oh! A theatre!" I hear you cry. "Something classy and cultural, am I right?" No. You're most certainly wrong about that. We went to see 'Muscle Musical', a circus-like variety show featuring a bevy of shirtless men. I mean, it had broader appeal than just that (some of the stunts were genuinely impressive), but I couldn't help but feel that I was just watching a trashy version of a Cirque show. Speaking of Cirque, 'Muscle Musical' is actually playing in Las Vegas at the Imperial Palace under the name 'Matsuri', I think. Anyway, the most exciting part of the show was when they broke the record for the most jumps on a jump rope in 60 seconds. They did it live and had it verified and everything.

Sorry about my English tonight. I sometimes feel like it's becoming my second language.

After that, we went over to Ebisu and made a quick stop at the Beer Museum before heading off to dinner. Drinking and dining with your co-workers is a cultural embedded activity in which the professionalism of the workplace is thrown out the window... on the condition that it is never spoke of again after that night. Summarily, my vice-principal got quite drunk. We went out to karaoke afterwards, and at one point he started singing a song by Kinki Kids, and he turned to me and said in English, "Kinky. Get it?" He also bought a bicycle horn beforehand which he honked whenever someone said something inappropriate.

I had canceled my hotel reservation earlier that week because of my cold, so after karaoke, I made the long trek home. Probably about an hour and a half of trains.

Flashing forward to Tuesday: We had the first day of our Saitama JET mid-year conference. One of my junior high teachers, Mr. Takeuchi went with me. During the first day, I discovered that the way my junior high classes are run is not necessarily 'normal', and if I think they suck (which they do), I should really try harder to do something about it. So now I am. It's a slow process, but I'm just going to be a persistent little mosquito buzzing in the ears of my English teachers. On day two, the guest speaker in the morning was fantastic (gave me a lot of great ideas for class), but the afternoon workshops were a bore because they were mostly pertinent only to high school ALTs.

Moving on to the weekend now: