Japan Part I: the Osaka and Kyoto edition!

It was finally here –the Korean holiday Chuseok (aka my trip to Japan)!  Yeji and I were so anxious and excited about our trip to Japan that we couldn’t sleep.  It probably wasn’t the best idea, but we were too excited!  We took the 6.30 train to Busan despite having a 2.30 flight because we were worried about the traffic and craze.  It turned out we definitely overestimated how much time we’d need because we were in the airport by 9.30.  At least we got to sleep a lot during our wait!  We landed in Osaka and took the train into downtown.  We were totally lost while buying tickets, but luckily a cute Japanese guy was able to guide us through the process!

Our Osaka hostel. It was right next to an elementary school!

We stayed at the J Hoppers Osaka hostel, which was a nice clean hostel with very helpful and personable staff.  The other backpackers weren’t exactly approachable though, so we didn’t hang around there too much.  I came to the terrible realization that I forgot my pajamas, so the staff sent us to the downtown shopping/food area, Shinsaibashi, so I could at least grab some leggings to wear with one of my tunic shirts for sleeping.  One of the things I really loved was the abundance of arcades in Japan.  They had a ton in the shopping district, and we had a blast playing this drumming game and Mario Kart.  I wish they had more of these in Korea –I haven’t seen any here yet!  We eventually found a good looking dinner place and had Okonomiyaki with a caesar salad.  I was surprised to see they put a poached egg on the salad.  It was surprisingly a good addition to the taste of the salad though!

A really awesome looking ferris wheel on the riverside.  If only it had been working!

My beautiful Wario picture at the arcade.  I make even Wario look sexy.

The next day we went to the Osaka castle before taking the train to Kyoto.  It was a gorgeous view, but I was a bit disappointed.  I had been expecting the castle’s insides to be recreated to match the interior of when it was used.  Instead it was a museum centered on a large fight between two clan’s families 400 years ago.

The gorgeous entrance to the Osaka castle.

Some adorable elementary boys enjoying some water during their field-trip to Osaka castle.

Working on some cool street art right outside the train station!

The train ride to Kyoto was only thirty minutes long, so we were at our hostel in no time.  We stayed at K’s Backpacking House, which was about a 15 minute walk from the train station.  It had a café/bar, a nice large common room with a roomy porch, and clean rooms.  We met a girl from Holland named Danielle there and spent the day exploring with her.  Yeji and I looked for an ATM for about an hour before we finally found one at the post office.  It turns out my sister wasn’t being a smartass when she said it’s hard getting yen in Japan –a lot of the ATMs only accept Japanese cards!  The three of us went to the Ippongi tea room (which has been open since 1717) where we learned how to make some tea.  There were two kinds we drank: matcha and genmaicha. I loved the rice flavor of the genmaicha, so I got some bags to take back with me.  I’ve been missing constantly drinking tea like I would do in the US!

 One of the beautiful shrines that we found while walking around in Kyoto.

 This tea shop has been open for over 300 years.  That's how you know it's good!

The matcha tea and a sweet to enjoy with it.  It was very strong and bitter!

One of the shopkeepers guiding Yeji through making her second tea.

Afterwards we head to the Harvest Moon festival at the Shimogamo-jinja shrine.  We wanted to wear kimonos for the festival, but it would have cost 5,000 yen (about $50) to rent for one day.  The first thing we saw at the festival was multiple food stalls full of Japanese sweets and special festival food.  Inside the temple area was a live traditional song and dance performance.  On the other side was a tea ceremony.  We were watching the tea ceremony when an older Japanese woman came up to us and gave us a ticket to the ceremony.  It was the last ticket so only one of us would be able to go.  We decided it would be better to give it to someone else, so I went up to a Japanese woman who I had seen asking about getting a ticket for the ceremony earlier.  She was so shocked when I gave it to her and said she couldn’t accept it.  I did an awkward interpretive dance to explain to her we got it for free, but we thought she should have it instead.  She tried to pay me for the ticket because she was so happy.  I was glad that we were able to make her night!

The entrance to the temple.  We had to walk through a long path in a forest to get here! 

All the tents had different Japanese sweets for people to enjoy.

Some roasted chestnuts.  I still don't think I've tried them!

Trying out a interesting tasting noodle sample.

Sake central.  Wasn't expecting to see that at the festival!

So jealous of their beautiful kimonos.  Next time I come to Japan I definitely want to rent one!

Thirty minutes later, when we were watching the dance performance she came up to us to thank us with an epic bow for giving her the ticket.  We realized that meant she looked through the big crowd just to find us.  A bit later, we made another round through the stalls to look for some dinner food.  Danielle went to this stall that was selling dough balls covered in sweet sauce and waited in line for a while Yeji and I went to a small temple food shop to check out their selection.  When she came back, she told us the woman saw her in line and bought her a package of the sweet balls as further thanks.  Japanese people are extremely nice –maybe even nicer than Korean people (who are already extremely nice)!  It seems like everyone really went out of their way to be nice to us or to help us, even if they didn’t know any English.

Part of the huge crowd enjoying one of the live dance performances.

The tea ceremony was so interesting to watch.  I wish we had known about it earlier so we could have gotten tickets!

One of the performers dancing while men in the back played instruments and sang.

The next day, I was looking through our map when I saw a monkey park!  Naturally, we had to drop all of our previous plans so we could go feed some monkeys.  The bus there was about an hour long, and once we got to the place, we had to walk about 20 minutes up a hill to get to the monkeys.  Some signs along the way warned us about not to look at the monkeys in the eye (apparently they’re not like hippogriffs), which of course I accidentally did anyways with the first monkey we saw.  I cried and just about sprinted down that hill when that monkey came sprinting in my direction afterwards.  It turns out the monkey was just running towards another monkey friend, so I just looked like an idiot.  We were able to buy a bag of apples and feed them from a small shack on top of the hill.  As I was feeding one monkey, I noticed he was throwing down the apple peels.  I tried to give one back to him and the jerk threw it at me!!  What a picky, temperamental monkey….

 Just monkeying around.  Also, you can see the gorgeous city view we had from the top of the hill!

Draw me like one of your French girls. 

The street to the silver temple.  There were so many cool shops along the way to the temple!

A cool ornament shop.  I got a really rockin one that has a dragon making the cutest angry face I've ever seen.

Just before leaving for Tokyo, we made a quick stop at the Silver Temple, which had absolutely gorgeous gardens and a breath taking view of the city.  I definitely want to go back to Kyoto sometime soon.  Maybe I’ll go back for a weekend to explore some more!

A big zen garden at the entrance of the temple.

The beautiful view of the city from the silver temple!

Encountering a Tiger Poo Poo

So it’s been about two weeks with my new classes of kids.  I must say, I really love teaching all these kids!  My first class of the week is a group of fourteen 2^nd and 3^rd graders –they’re a bunch of cutie patooties!! The kids always come to visit me at my desk and hold my hand and do other super adorable things.  One of my co-teachers and friends always says about the munchkins, “you think you’re real, don’t you?”

I think it was good that we started a new semester because it helped me break out of my nervous shell.  Now I’m able to amuse the kids by being weird, while at the same time teaching them.  My classes seem to really love my dramatic reenactments of the readings as well.  As long as I can help them understand the material, I’m happy to get ridiculous with the kids!

My class of kleptomaniacs.  I have two nicknames: very very kind teacher and vampire teacher (I was dubbed that after we read about vampire bats)

The first day of class with my problem kids from last semester was annoying because the three boys kept talking.  I put on my scary voice and said: I’m not going to put up with this for this semester, so cut it out!  I think I freaked out the boys who had never seen me actually annoyed, so they’ve been pretty good since then.  One of the kids was being distracting and annoying in the next class.  I decided next time one of the three boys are really rude or distracting, I’m going to make them do detention with me, except it’ll be productive.  They’ll have to sit with me and tell me exactly why they find the class boring, then come up with solutions with me to make the class more interesting while still following the materials.  They’ll hate it, but it will be really helpful for me!

A warm welcome from my favorite class I had in intensives (they could name 42 states)!

Basically that class is okay now, but I have a new soul sucking class to take its place.  This is the lowest level debate class and they’re all 6^th graders (the highest grade we teach).  That essentially means they’re there because they don’t want to learn, not because they struggle.  There’s one kid who actually talks in class and he is awesome.  The other day, he submitted the most glorious summary, which was mostly in the form of a cartoon.  When I first saw the paper, I was in the angry mindset because I thought this was just someone who didn’t know what he was doing, so he doodled.  All the TOPIA teachers and I were completely blown away when we read it though!  It absolutely broke my heart to tell him he needed to do the proper essay format.  I told him I’d really enjoy if he did his cartoons at the end though!

 The most glorious paper ever.

Part of me wished this wasn't from the smart kid in class, because then that'd mean there were other (willing) smart kids in class.  One can only dream I guess!

And now, PROBABLY THE MOST ADORABLE STORY OF MY LIFE.  The other day the owners four year old grandson came to visit.  I first saw him playing in the lobby with his Burberry shirt, little shorts and high socks –basically the equation for the cutest thing in the world.  He came into the office with his owner and said hello in perfect English.  One of the teachers asked what his name was, and he said “I’m not a person! I’m a… TIGER POO POO!  I’m a POO POO TIGER!”  The little immature child in me burst into laughter (I still laugh thinking about it now).  When we asked him what noise a Poo Poo Tiger makes, he went, “ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR!!!!!”  It’s like he knew how cute he was.  He was playing around his grandpa’s legs and babbling in English when he suddenly yelled, “I have to go, NOW!” and ran out of the room.  Perhaps that tiger poo poo was living up to his name.  Either way, I didn’t see him after that.  I hope he comes back to visit again!

One of my coworker's student's responses in his homework.  It seems like this kid (one of my old students) has their priorities all figured out!

This week, I haven't done too much aside from school things.  I tried out my very first hot yoga class, which kicked my butt!!  I decided I'm going to start doing yoga three days a week and also take Korean classes on the other two weekdays.  Yay productivity!!

The other Saturday, I visited Eunaengdong for underground shopping with Yeji and Lynne.  They have a Uniqlow here, so I was able to get a nice warm sweater there for the fall/winter.  They have some great thick leggings and thick underwear as well, so I know where I'll be getting my winter-wear!  I also found a jewelry shop with some gorgeous rings.  I decided to order a nice ring (it has to be specially made because I have fat fingers) for myself there, so I have something I can always cherish and carry around with me my Korea memories.  It may seem a little foolish, but I have wanted to buy a quality, meaningful ring for myself for the past few years.

A Korean big band in Eunaengdong.

Sunday, Lynne and I headed to the LeeChard Pro salon in Dunsandong right across from Timeworld.  I wanted to get my hair trimmed (it's been so damaged) and colored because I can't stand the lack of red in my hair anymore.  They didn't really speak any English, but everyone was very polite!  I just got a trim with my hair, and they did really well with keeping all my layers and making my bangs look actually shaped.  As for the dye, we had a harder time communicating with each other on that (it still turned out well though).  They asked me if I was okay with natural dye.  Either way I had no idea what they were talking about, so I just said sure.  It was a really cool process.  They had a big bowl of various spices and sat me down to drink some rose tea.  After five or so minutes, they poured half the rose teapot into the spices, mixed it up, and put it on my head.  It smelled really nice -I wish I would have remembered to take a picture!  They gave me a free manicure while I waited, which was really nice.  Basically I was pampered all of Sunday afternoon!  The haircut was really cheap (only 15,000 won), but the hair coloring was like the price it would be at any salon in the states.  I sure hope this natural dye lasts!

Lynne and I at Robocook for lunch, plus the wonderful salon!

Today was a very eventful Thursday for me in the school realm.  Today, our director decided to sit in on my low level class without warning.  I was really jittery when I walked in and saw him there, so I think I didn’t teach as well as I normally do.  He didn’t say anything though, and one teacher told me that just means I did a good job!  On top of that, I decided I would take it upon myself to put the Korean translations on every single test of the semester for all of my reading classes.  Almost every class, the kids have a test where they’re given a definition from a word list they had to study, and they have to put the Korean and English definition.  If you think about it, it’s really difficult!  Especially since these kids have tests at school, in their other classes at our hagwon, then at other hagwons (I probably wouldn’t be able to do it even if that was my only class)!  Our director said it was alright if we put the Korean translation on the prewritten test.   I decided I might as well do the Korean translation for all the tests now in my free time, then put it in the books for everyone else.  It’s really a win-win situation for us all because it means I get to learn a few Korean words here and there and not be bored in my free time, and everyone gets to not have to worry about a few of the classes (maybe 10 minutes searching/writing in Korean for each test).

It's less than a week away from Chuseok, which means my trip to Japan!  I can't wait. :)