A Week in Takayama

On Saturday and Sunday I:

• fell on my ass repeatedly. I went snowboarding both days and tried to learn how to carve. It didn't work out so well for me or my bottom half.

On Monday I:

• ate nothing but apple pie for lunch. On Monday, school lunch consisted of cream soup, udon noodles to eat in the cream soup, apple pie, and whole fish tossed with almonds. Because of my lactose issues I couldn't eat the soup, which meant I couldn't eat the noodles, which left the fish and the pie. You try eating a plateful of silver fish - eyes, tails and fins included - tossed with almond flakes! Hence the meal of pie. Oishii.

On Tuesday I:

• received instructions about what to teach next week at one of my Elementary schools. For the 5th years it said: " Teach dairy activities with gestures". Dairy activities. I imagined myself trying to teach 10 year olds how to milk a cow and separate curds and whey. How was I going to do that in English? And it's not like I have a clue. But then one of my JTE's suggested that perhaps they meant 'daily' activites, like go to bed and brush your teeth. Right.

On Wednesday I:

• helped teach a class where we played a song and had the students arrange the lyrics in the correct order. At the end of the class I had written the following on the blackboard : Doo-wop, sha-la-la-la, bulimia, Karen Carpenter. Not that it was my choice in the first place, but perhaps 'Yesterday Once More' isn't the best song to do in an activity like this.

On Thursday I:

• helped teach a class that was suspiciously like a black mass. At one point the teacher had me reading a story out of the textbook, backwards while holding the book upside down. Doing that for too long can mess with your head.

And today I:

• woke-up to find I had no hot water in my apartment. I ended up washing my hair in ice-cold water, boiling water on the stove to wash my face, and all in an apartment with a temperature that was hovering around 7 degrees C.

Viva Japan!