Ep 40. Unexpected Itty Bitties

I am a rather curious individual. As such, when my curiosity is peaked I simply must investigate,

The door

no matter what. So, what has peaked my interest this time in the land of the largest city? I will give three hints. 1) They are really small. 2) I can guarantee that at least one person who reads this sentence had one, and it's highly likely that someone does. 3) The most impressive specimen they had was about 8.8 meters (28.87 feet) long. It was an enormous tapeworm taken out of a person. I went to a parasite museum. It was so completely gross and so utterly cool; but I was not alone on my endeavor. I managed to convince a co-worker to come with me to this (free admission) museum. Did she enjoy it as much as myself? Probably not. But I don't care. They had so many specimens placed out, each lovingly labeled (in Japanese), and some placed in handy charts to show what part of the body they came from. On top of that, they have a gift shop. They have t-shirts. I know what my next paycheck is going to.
And now, pictures (yes, some are gross):

Some old notebooks.

Oooh, head lice and crabs

In case you were thinking about lunch...

Aren't they pretty?

That thing was almost 30 feet long. And it was inside of someone.

The museum is in a part of time called Meguro, which I had never been to before. I must say that it feels as a very western part of Tokyo. The styles of the buildings and streets felt more like Portland than any other place I had been to, and my co-worker and I saw many mixed race couples. The sidewalks, which normally are skinny at best and non-existent at work, were broad and colorful with trees planted every few feet. There was even a median with (gasp) plant life. Coupled with all of this greenery were many fine establishments of an exotic nature, such as an English pub and the single most hipster Starbucks that I have ever seen. From the wooden tables populated with young people (all had glasses, and all had a certain, fruity brand of laptop) to the enormous tapestry hanging on the far wall enmeshed with exotic, almost South American patterns, everything about this place screamed of the counter-culture scene of Portland. That Starbucks, coupled with the Carribean tapas bar down the way (complete with all of the staff having dreadlocks) gave the whole area a very bohemian feel. I shall need to see what else I can draw from it.

A nice river view.

Like I said, hipster.

Wide sidewalks and trees

And a leafy median.

After having gone out the day before, I wanted to stay in today. I woke up, and a message from my sister reminded me that a certain, global event was ongoing. So, I turned on my TV, and what did I find? Team USA playing against...I had no idea. I couldn't quite catch the Japanese of their team name. But both teams seemed to be doing well, and I think that the announcer was excited. Anyway, I wasn't really paying attention, because I was talking with friends. And, for a few minutes, I wasn't really paying attention to that, because I had opened up my burnable bin only to find that it was filled with fruit flies and their offspring. Now, as evidenced by the previous day, I am more than happy to go to museums and zoos and stare at ucky itty bitties until my skin crawls. When they get in my home, though, that is another story. Those few minutes were my frantic need to get those bugs out of my house as fast as flippingly possible. It worked, but I had a lot of cleanup to do with them. The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, and as usual I got different cleaning done than I was anticipating. Ah well, there is next weekend.

One last thing, before tales of the week. I went out to a nikuyaki (meat frying) place with my co-workers. Obviously, I didn't partake in the meat part of the event, but I still enjoyed myself a lot. Basically, everyone sits around the table, and they bring out these ginormous grills to use.

Caution: hot

The meat is then brought to the table, and you fry it yourself. According to my co-workers, they had quite a selection; everything from tongue, to cutlets, to offal. Everyone had a lot of fun talking and laughing, and then suddenly my two foreign co-workers and I share a look. A song had come on, but it couldn't be that song. No, no way, and then, to confirm what we all could not believe, in the middle of this nice restaurant, blaring over the speakers, we heard, "I'm too sexy for my," and the three of us just lost it. The music that night was just overall an eclectic variety, from many decades and genres. All that I can say is that it is really nice to work with people who one can enjoy going out to eat with.
Somehow, I just cannot see a place like this taking off in the states. Not only do we cut our meat too thick (the Japanese like their cooked flesh nice and thin) but either someone would burn themselves, or the sheer liability insurance needed for it would be too high, or people wouldn't understand what to do, etc. The point is, that something so simple and local over here would have so many hurdles in the US as to make it almost untenable.


In terms of classes this week, there are some good stories:
1) I taught one of my 3rd/4th grade classes a simple clapping game. Boy was that a mistake. They enjoyed it so much that they were doing it with me, their classmates, their desks, etc as I was trying to teach. Lesson learned, think about how to turn these things into a more connected activity before I teach it to them.

2) My 5th/6th graders got an interesting set of vocab this week. The sentences were about being passed something, in this case tools that could be found in anyone's garage. Things like a saw, axe, hammer, or even a shovel. Apparently we were learning how to become serial killers this week. On another note, because hammer was a word this week, I spent a good deal of time telling students to, "touch your hammer." And then praising them for it. I think that I giggled every time.

3) Junior High classes. I love this age group (particularly the oldest ones, who are roughly the same age as freshmen in high school), love love love working with that age group. I can connect with them, I can make things fun and productive. It's just a great group. And I have a story from all three of my classes.
In one (kids who lived abroad and then came back, so they have really high English) we made a sport. This is such a cool sport. So, there are five teams of twenty people each. For a uniform, everyone has to wear a samurai outfit, and everyone has to be constantly holding hands. The object of the game is to get the ball (American football shape, two meters in length) into the goal of one of the four opposing teams. But there is a catch: all the players of a given team must be constantly holding hands. As such, the players cannot use their hands and must instead use their feet or heads. It sounds like a lot of fun,
In another (8th grade age) we are talking about our dreams. The students did a great job coming up with ideas to use. One wrote, "to fly in the sky." So we were doing an activity to get/ give advice from other students, and the one tells another the dream, "I want to fly in the sky." The response was surprisingly clever, but not quite what I wanted them to say, "then you need to die." I kind of had to step in. That particular student is really great about being really creative (when I was modeling the activity, that particular student told me that I should want to be God) but there's only so far that we can go. So I didn't shut the student down too much (considering the culture, this was a truly amazing idea), but just told the student to try and say something nicer.
In another one (Freshman in High school level), we played a game that I had used in improv. How this game works is that the first person writes a sentence (sentence1). The second person draws a picture of sentence1 (picture1). That person then folds the paper to hide sentence1, and hands the paper to the third person. The third person then must try to guess sentence1 from picture1. Lather, rinse, repeat. They really liked this game. It let them be creative, and laugh at where these things can go. Meanwhile, I like it because I can correct their writing and gives them something concrete to draw on. The best one of mine started with, "Japan wins the world cup," -> "Human meets space man" -> "The man fights a giant robot." I will definitely be doing this again.
 Before I go, I have two more pictures to share:

An overall gorgeous sunset by the train station.

The most beautiful lily-pad that I could find.

Well, this has been another adventure in the austentatious (complete with pictures [in color]). If you liked it, tell your friends; if you hated it, tell your enemies; and if you didn't care either way, then tell everyone. Good night.