ダメ!

title (dame) literally means "not allowed, no good," etc.

my kids were quite cute for the remainder of the week, despite being emotionally scarred by my お化け shenanigans:

except that they're starting to get sick again. ARMED WITH VITAMIN C THIS TIME Y'ALL.

Friday was a big day; literally, because about 36 kids came in for English time (getting them to focus was a barrel of lulz), but most were there in the morning so they could get a chance to play in the 迷路 (maze) that the fearless teachers constructed out of about 50 cardboard boxes:

The things we do for these children, really...

This brings flashbacks to that one maze they had at Health World; if you're a Chi town 'burb kid you should know this place well.

It was actually a bit of a struggle to get all the boxes to not collapse, so we (somewhat reluctantly) enlisted the help of the babies to reinforce the boxes with tape. They immediately jumped on this (bless kids, they love helping out grown ups) and it was kind of cute, a lot of the boys went all mechanic on me and would lie on their backs, halfway in a box and hold out there hand and go "テープ(tape)" in this business-like tone. Presh.

And now for obligatory pictures of kids-in-maze (i literally ran around the exits and randomly stuck my camera in and pressed the shutter, I'm surprised this even worked):

Marie, my cuddly wuddly!! Seriously, she's getting her own post soon

Oops, a REALLY BIG kid seems to have gotten stuck ;)

So remember that cutie patootie rocking the side-ponytail in the first picture up there? Posting her again even if you do remember, because she's just too dang cute

CURLY HAIRED BABY. CURLY HAIRED BABY. CURLY HAIRED BABY.

Her name is Rena and besides radiating earth-crushing cute waves, she's hilarious. I actually titled this blog after an interesting little game that we played all day on Friday.

Me: れなちゃん! (her name, called to get her attention) いい、よ (good!)!!
Rena: (at first, completely serious) ダメ.(no)
Me: いい、よ!!
Rena: (starting to smile a little) ダメ.
Me:  いい、よ!!
Rena: (definitely laughing now) ダメ!!


Whenever I'd be walking around vacuuming or getting kids's sandals ready or secretly playing Words with Friends on my iPod (what?) and she'd be in the same room, this would happen. It got to the point where as soon as I'd walk in she'd scream ダメ!!!! and then burst into laughter. Idk, guess you had to be there?

Anyway, she's sassy, talks back at you (but not in that way, at least not yet, she's still precious for now) and will just look up at you with a vacant expression, and then her chubby little face will explode in laughs and you just wanna pick her up and snuggle the cute out of her, only to put it back in because YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT.

I'm gonna need a lot of child-sized luggage for my return to the states...


Hope you're all well! And I shall be obsessively checking my email for the next 3 months (Pottrollmore eheheheh)

ホリー先生

お化け

 Title (obake) means ghost.

I've always wondered why parents throughout American generations have brought their small children to meet Santa and gotten a kick out of how truly, deeply terrified their child was, and even snapped pictures and cackled over them later

That is, until I was given the opportunity to scare children, and let me tell you it is probably the funnest thing I've done all summer.


Now don't get me wrong, I'm not evil I'm actually just a Horcrux shy from Voldemort but I think half of the fun is knowing that the kids aren't screaming because of any real danger; they're only afraid of a big, dumb costume. Now, if I had released a gorilla into the preschool, that wouldn't have been as fun no comment.


So as you know (or maybe you don't, I have this habit of assuming that I've told everyone everything) every day for the Summer Program there is a different "main activity" as well as all the normal daily stuff like playing outside in the pool, etc. The activity for Tuesday was お化け. As the kids were having morning English time, the rest of the teachers slowly transformed the preschool into a haunted house. Oh, my babies...bless them for being blissfully ignorant and really thinking that the activity was limited to making ghosts out of newspaper...

So anyway, long story short (breakfast awaits) the kids were ushered into a room whilst I slunk away and put on my お化け costume. It's one of those things that is literally so comical that it actually it is a little scary:

Okay...maybe more scary than comical. Is it...drooling?! With the souls of children??

It actually has a (giant) face-hole near the hat, but I just put my braids in my face, so my hair ended up blending in with the hat and some kids didn't realize that it was me (although by process of elimination, I was the only teacher not there / my legs awkwardly stuck out of the bottom)

So in pairs, the teachers lured the kids from the sitting room into the dark hallway, where I was waiting for them. And the first reaction was ALWAYS priceless. They would do a double take then try and run away, only to have the teacher laugh (their ass off) and grab them by the waist and force them to come closer. To make matters worse, that morning Nogami-sensei asked me if I had heard of "The Ring", then informed me that they had bought the soundtrack. LOL, so that was also playing in the background.

I made really stupid "Ooo0o0-o0o0o0o0o!!!" noises, thought that over, and then just went for the evil cackle or the drawn out "Konnichiwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!! heehehhehehheheee". what the kids also didn't know was that when they got past me, that I was going to chase them throughout the house. Staff had put balloons in strategic places so I could pop them as I was chasing them, and the path led to the tatami room where English is usually held, except there were dark streamers and rattling cans and just...lol. I'm pretty sure they all cried.


Mind you, the costume got unbearably hot after a while, and some of the older kids just raised an eyebrow and were like "HI HOLLY-SENSEI!!!!!!!" but, yeah. That shit was just a little too fun. I eventually had to stop, take off the costume and show them that they really had nothing to be afraid of, all coos and soothing and "It's just me, guys!!"ing, but a lot of them just had very, very angry tear-streaked faces and one kid just walked up to me, tugged on my skirt and was like "ホリー先生、すご怖かった" (Holly-sensei, I was really scared/that was really scary) in the most deadpan voice that I had ever heard, and then I got a little uncomfortable and wondered whether they would ever love me again (spoiler alert; of course they do.)

BREAKFAST TIME.

ホリー先生

見てー

Ok so...the above title may not look annoying to you at first, or look like it's meant to be said in a whining, drawn out tone, but trust me; it is.

It reads: "Miteー" but sounds like

"MITEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH"

at least it does whenever I'm at work. It means "look!", and my kids have a habit of, during arts/crafty time, to storm up to me, shoving their creation in my face and going, "先生! 見てー" (Sensei! Miteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!). This quickly escalates into everyone looking up, grabbing the nearest thing to them (whether it be something they actually made or not) and crowding around me going "Miteeeeeeeeeehhhhhh! Miteeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhh! MITEEEEEEEEEHHH!" until I collapse on the floor, in tears--

Or, when they feel like being precious angels, just sit like this until I come around and praise them :)

On a similar vein, whenever I'm helping them with Montesstori things, or whenever someone is demonstrating how to make something (last week they made Kaleidoscopes, for example) one little kid will say, in a rather sad, small voice, "できない..." dekinai; I can't do it. :( and at first I get all sad and run over and encourage them to keep going, until I get hit with a rousing chorus of  "できない! できない! Dekinai! Dekinaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai!" Mostly by kids who have literally not picked up anything or tried to do anything. not one thing. Some of them hit me with a できない! Before any instructions have actually been given. And it's like....SERIOUSLY, BRO???

Or, they raise their hands and smile, telling me that they did it, and then pose for a picture and drop the smile entirely. Typical.

Ok, last one; I have to go eat breakfast. But whenever I read to them, or they're being shown a video, or whateverthehell, you'll always get a kid going "見えない!" mienai; I can't see! And, granted, some times this is actually the case, and I apologize and shift my reading pose or move them closer to the TV, etc. I'm sure you know where this is going.

I shit you not, during the sleepover when the kids were shown an old home video of them during their first year at the Kindergarten putting on a little play, the TV was put up on the stage, and all the kids were on the floor. LITERALLY, THIS IS DESIGNED SO WHEREVER YOU ARE SITTING, WHEREVER, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO SEE BECAUSE THE TV IS ON A RAISED SURFACE AND YOU ARE UNDERNEATH IT AND ONE KID STARTED WITH THE MIENAI AND THEN EVERYONE FOLLOWED, IN INCREASINGLY LOUD VOLUMES AND THEN I HAD HAD ENOUGH AND JUMPED OUT THE WINDO--

Who, me? Annoying? ^_______^ never.

The moral of this post; you cannot profess to working around children/loving them everyday without admitting that; they're kids, and a lot of the time, they're annoying. This applies on all continents. They're still my little munchkins, though. 

9 hours a day. 9 hours a day with them. Pray for me.

先生ホリー

キャー

oh look! Japanese title. Today's: キャー! meaning...quite literally:

• the sound a fangirl makes (KYAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *clutches face, tears running down cheeks*)
• a sound you make if something particularly frightens/disgusts you (think: eeeeeeeeeek! or yikes!!!)
• If Ann Coulter comes running at you, arms spread wide for a hug (think blood-curdling scream)

Hello again, readers-of-Holly's-blog. Don't you love how my last post was all about me being determined to break my abandonment streak, and then I...picked it up again? My apologies. I think I've come to realize why blogging has gotten so tiresome for me.

For one, getting pictures to upload is a nightmare; I'd happily just throw them all on Facebook, but since that uploader is a Dudley-sized P.O.S. my brain flails and is all LOL, NOW THERE ARE TOO MANY, OH WELL, TIME TO INTERNET etc. There are a random smattering on Google+ however, for all you cool cats reading that have Google+ and are actively being inactive just like everyone else who has Google+...
OH LOOK WHAT I FOUND.

I love it when I tell them "No no, don't look at me!" And I get things like this. ^_^  click for full-sized adorable-ness

So yeah, the summer program is in full spring for my kiddies. It's held at the preschool, which is conveniently located in the ground floor of my teacher's house, which is even more conveniently located....2 doors down from me. What does this mean you ask?!!? This means I don't have to worry about leaving my house for our morning meeting until pretty much...5 minutes before it starts. THE GOOD LIFE. Although I do miss riding my bike to work everyday. 

I get a lot of my kids from the Kindergarten, as well as some new faces from around the neighborhood! You gotta love the separation anxiety babies -- since we're not in a huge building, their cries resonate pretty strongly. But it's all good, because about 10 minutes after they arrive it's a full hour of ENGLISH TIME!!11 so most of them calm down by that point. Most of them.

Meet Ayano. Every morning (I shit you not) when her mother drops her off, she  screams and cries all day, until we can find a way to calm her down. Last week it was by following Misaki everywhere. Everywhere.

But she wasn't actually calm...she was just sad. :(

Very sad. :C

I'm making these short now, because I've found this also helps with the procrastination...somewhat.

Look for another post later on in your day! (circa 6 am for me)

Hope you're all doing well! Oh and fun fact, the other night I woke up and was like why is my bed shaking. I'm dreaming, right? Yeah, I'm dreaming. Is...is the room spinning? then went back to bed. Checked the interwebz the next morning to discover a lovely M6 earthquake had hit in the middle of the night. Just your average day, lolz.

scary thing is, apparently this happens ALL THE TIME. Only I would sleep through that many quakes.


Mata!

-ホリー先生

HAYYY pt 1

Oh, dear. I seem to have abandoned this doo-dad. And I also seem to have abandoned my theme of naming each post after a new Japanese word.

SO MUCH ABANDONMENT.

But, really; sorry about this delay. After my body reluctantly recovered itself from being all sick-like, I was launched into a series of busy, busy things. Most of which I'm not even going to bother letting you know, because you're super bored and probably just came here to see pics of Japanese kidz doing cute things

Shiori-chan being so adorable it's borderline stupid.

So I'm gonna go ahead and work backwards as far as events that I haven't documented go, because that's how cameras work and I'm literally going to have to flip through my pictures to be able to remember things that have happened, especially when we get into the 200's (eeek, it's been so long I'm sorry!) But! At least the 泊り(sleepover) is fresh in my mind, and this story has many lol's in it so I think I can compensate a little :)

So. The kindergarten holds a 泊り for the oldest kids as a kick-off to the summer program, and also as a last hurrah for them seeing as how they will be graduating to elementary school once the summer ends. It's a nice little treat that the teachers throw for them (read: a lot of bitch work) BECAUSE WE LOVE THE 年長'S SO SO MUCH ~ cough.


AAANYSPANKLES. So the kindergarten was turned into a "Hotel" for the night, complete with all of us having to wear matching shirts and the kids having permission to have us completely clean up after them (fml). Oops, I skipped the part where all of the teachers (plus some of the kids' mother's) had to cook dinner for all 60 or so 年長's who would be sleeping over. Menu; Japanese curry rice! It's a bit different from Indian curry, but zomg the delicious-ness was astounding and my tongue still has no idea what even happened omg.

So the kindergarten closed about 4 hours early so we could get our cook on. First was to chop about 200 onions, carrots, and potatoes.

Dear onions,


Go die in a fire.


No love,


My eyes.

But seriously, the office was turned into a mini cutting studio with all the tables void of teacher-like things and strewn with onions. Momo, one of the 3 male teachers in training, walked in to get something from the copier and practically burst into tears and ran straight out. The women giggled. It felt nice to be with a bunch of gossiping women chopping up produce, even if I could only understand about 70% of wtf was going on. Next was the frying part, which was done in a little canopy-looking area where the bikes are usually parked. One of the mom's had lived in New Mexico (random lol) for 6 years so her English was quite good, and all the other mums were like "すごい!!!!!!!!!!!!" every time she opened her mouth and I was able to understand what was going on. What I wanted to say after the 9th time that they were all "ooooh, ahhhhh" was that them being able to chatter in Japanese was way cooler than lame English. Seriously, I feel like we got the short end of the stick as far as languages go. Regardless, they were impressed with the amount of Japanese I knew, and I in turn am surprised by how good I'm getting after only being here for a month. Mind you, my polite Japanese has degraded to extremely informal chatter, so going back to NU and talking to my old teachers will be interesting. They'll probably think I'm some sort of delinquent. YEAH ANYWAY

Have some cute. You deserve it after all my rambling. Lovely Sana-chan!

So after my housewife-like duties were finished (lol jk I was nearly halfway done but was getting tired of getting smoke in my eyes) I helped some of the other teachers load up all the 布団's (futon's -- YEAH THAT'S RIGHT, FUTON IS A JAPANESE WORD. Welcome to mind-fuck ville, population ME. I have been pronouncing it wrong my entire life. It took me a while of reading "futon" over and over to realize that it was actually "futon" and yeah. wtf. I will correct you from now on if you continue to pronounce it wrong. It is not "foo-tawn". NO. it's "h(f)uton."That and karaoke. It's not "carry-okee". No, you lose. It's "kara-oke". Okay? right. cough. 

SO MANY FUTONS. BUT NO FOO-TAWNS.

So the kids came around 3:00, and were let loose to basically troll around the "hotel." For the lolz, this is what  made the kindergarten a "hotel"

I'm ~halfway convinced...

THERE YOU GO. Official hotel status.

The extra funny thing is only extra funny if you know how to read Hiragana (shout out to Sam and Sarah, as well as maybe Jasmine or anyone who has taken Japanese for more than 2 weeks and is reading this)

Remember; I work at Mizuho. +1 if you lol'd like I did when I took this picture.

And now for a random smattering of pictures before I progress with my sleepover story:

Spot the cutie! (hint: he makes it very easy for you)

Lol, when I said "random smattering" I really just meant one. LIFE IS FUNNER WHEN YOU'RE UNPREDICTABLE, OKAY?!

Oh geeze, where was I. *scrolls up* ah, yes. So after all the kids arrived, we had them change into their swimsuits to get ready for EXTRA SPECIAL PRIVATE POOL TIME!!!!!!!!1111 which, sadly, couldn't happen because (lol) a typhoon was passing through. yikes. So the swim instructors improvised them and had them all just...go the ホール (kind of like a mini auditorium; I think I mentioned it in a previous blog post) to play an hour's worth of games that would have been taken up by swimming. I originally thought this was going to be a pretty daunting task, but I forget that children have this tendency to want to repeat a game about 18 zillion times if they thought it was fun the first time around, so all was well.

I only kind of remember what they were doing here. All that you need to know is that it kept them  occupied for a long, long time.

Right. This blog needs to make sense. So soon after was dinner tiiiimee!! Yay, time to eat the curry rice I bled 14 eyeballs for. *confetti*. Each of the 年長 classrooms was transferred into a "restaurant", and the teachers (lol yay for getting out of doing a lot of things) became lovely servant lady...things.

I NOW INTERRUPT THIS BLOG THAT MAKES ABSOLIUTELY NO SENSE, ESPCECIALLY NOW THAT IM SLIGHTLY UN-SOBER (ITS LEGAL IN JAPAN, PLUS I SANG KARAOKE  SUE ME) WITH THE FIRST EDITION OF "WHY AM I SURROUNDED BY CUTE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME":

wait that sa tree lol fml

LOL. LOVE THEM.

hahaha. to be continiued. 


-ホリー先生

ah...so biigg...

萌え

I can barely describe the title of this post (moe) in English.

It's like...that feeling you get when you see something that is literally so cute that you're not necessarily in love, but you get all giggly and fuzzy and go "awwwww" about a billion times in your head and just want to reach out to the object of your 萌え and hug it to pieces while simultaneously dying inside over how cute it is. Like a crush, kind of, or extreme infatuation.

萌え will be relevant in a bit, when I get to the part about the maid cafe. Oh ma gawd y'all.

So this day started off with Mint cooking me a Thai breakfast of "crispy" eggs (they turned out mildly crispy lol) and some salmon. Omnomnomz. Grace came down and was like "You guys are going to a maid cafe today? ...CAN I COME PLZZZZ" so our party increased from 3 to 4! Yayy, the more the merrier for adventure-type things.

So as we're bouncing along in the train, excited for our day, I take a quick glance around and notice goodness gracious me, Japanese girls got their shoe game on point

Shout out to the little girl. WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN. If only my feet weren't so big...

It was kind of EXTREMELY HOT in Akiba, and I don't know what it is about Japanese people and the lack of wearing sunglasses when it gets so freaking sunny, so I definitely enhanced my foreign-lookingness (whoever thought this would be possible...) by whipping out the Ray-Bans. What I did see, however, was the prevalence of people using parasols, yes PARASOLS.

Like a scene out of a movie or something. um,  this edition  of spot-the-fashionista is sort of NOT DIFFICULT AT ALL. Damn damn damn why can't I dress like them and make it look so effortless? 

So our first stop in Akiba before the maid cafe madness was to go to ヨドバシカメラ (Yodobashi, which is sort of like Best Buy but on some srs CRACK) to try and get headphones for Lhriza (spoiler alert, she couldn't choose, typical www) but what I did find by the headphones section was this gem:

JUSTINE. JUSTINE. 'I DIE' DOESN'T EVEN BEGIN TO COVER THIS.

So after Lhriza was finished being undecided over which headphones to buy (the square ones are cute but there isn't enough base, etc :P) we walked around with a map that a lady cosplaying in some...kind of outfit gave to us when we left the station. It was kind of tricky but we eventually found 2 different areas teeming with maid cafes.

Ok before I go on, let me explain a lil' bit:

So as I mentioned before, Akihabara (shortened to Akiba) is おたく central, pretty much. I touched on it before, but basically it's for people that have such extreme obsessions i.e. games, manga, anime, etc. that they're known to not really leave the house much as they accumulate their nerdom. cough. Maid cafes were kind of constructed for these awkward shut-ins to get an opportunity to meet women. If it sounds wrong, it's because it kind of is. MORE ON THIS LATER.

So my inner おたく squeed when we walked through this little mini-mall thing where they had amazing figures on display and omg guys it's Haruhi

Explanation: been watching this Anime since the 7th grade, and kind of sort of learned the entire dance sequence that ends each episode (and yes I mean the entire thing, just ask me to do it and I will)

YEAH ANYWAY...UH... THERE WERE SOME THINGS THAT I DIDN'T IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZE?

I don't know who you are but I'd like 839438 of you please.

Idk what this was, but it was really shiny and kind of epic-looking, plus it was something in Japan as tall as me so I carpe diem'd and all that.

I feel like this will become one of those posts where (if you don't know me that well) you awkwardly discover just how strange I am. Oh the fuck well.

We continued our trek through Akiba (which by the way I'm in love with, can we take another picture break and just look at this plz?)

Neat thing about this amazing place is that on Sundays (which is when the 4 of us went), before 6 pm there are no cars allowed on the roads so people literally can just walk up and down the street, do cartwheels, pose for corny pictures, that sort of thing...

Yes, I took advantage of this. Me and Lhriza :)

Yes, I wore my Harajuku Girls shirt. Life is funner when you just admit that you have no shame.

Spotted these 2 adorable little ones and figured that they were inspired by my shameless posing in the middle of the street

socute. Every single child on this island. SOCUTE.

Quickly realizing that this post is more pictures than words. Idc, FB is being stupid and not letting me upload pictures so I'm going to keep going.

Anyway, I got very very VERY excited when we spotted a Taiko: Drum Master game hidden in a Sega store, and immediately had to play:

It's similar to DDR, but with drums. And also really, really fun.

There's a video of me playing this, but a certain individual who shall remain unnamed (Lhriza.) still hasn't uploaded it :P

We did a lot more procrastinating on our way to finding maid cafes, and went inside a little store filled with UFO Catchers. These are really big in Japan; I mean I see the odd UFO Catcher in the little front lobby-thing in Wal-marts and Jewel's and whatnot, but nothing this intense. it was really bright and there were so many machines and I really was tempted to just win everything I saw.

Pandas plz.

#necessary

Oh hey, look, I think we actually made it to the whole point why we were in Akiba to begin with...

So, more about maid cafes. As I mentioned, every waitress is dressed like a maid. But like...RIDICULOUSLY ADORABLE maids. They're dripping with jewels and charms and fluffy things and are all curly bobbed hair and wide eyes. It's the kind of thing where you're shocked and mildly disturbed but simultaneously having the best time ever. So the building we went to was 7 stories high, with a different cafe on each floor (the whole multi-level store thing is big in Japan. They're fans of conserving space.) we went aaaalll the way to the 7th floor, and only had to wait in line for about 20 minutes. When it was our turn we were greeted by a group of 3 disgustingly cute maids with a "おかえりなさいませっ、お嬢様" which is pretty much "Welcome home, mistress."

Ok, take a minute. Deep breaths. All together now: WTF.

So, yeah....remember that whole おたく thing from earlier? About how these shut-ins couldn't interact with girls? Yeahh, the entire time in these cafes the maids treat and address you as if you're their master (lol). They put ketchup on your food for you (lol) cut up said food before you eat it (lol), even let you pick the color of what straw you want with your drink. WHAT. The 4 of us felt out of place, but decided that this situation was too hilarious to not exploit.

The first maid we encountered asked if we understood Japanese (I'm kind of a blatant display of foreign-ness)  but she should have asked if we could comprehend cute because I swear that's all they were speaking. I looked around at all the maids flouncing about, and found myself judging them with Lhriza as they passed by ("oh! she's adorable! Look at that bracelet! Meh, she's alright. Could have dressed a little cuter.") and was further mortified when we were asked to pick a maid out of the lineup of all the staff to get to take a picture with later (you could also play a game with them, but I wanted a memento of this crazy ass day). Is anyone else picking up on how atrociously dehumanizing this process is? But still hilarious. You get sucked into the atmosphere. Oh right, there were also 2 awkward おたく dudes sitting near us who were obviously not there  for the lulz. Awkward.

Right, 萌え (moe). The maids were definitely a fan of this word. Before you drank your drank or ate your foods, the maids would bless it by instructing everyone to make a hand heart (no joke) and sing "萌え, 萌え, ちゅう~!" while bouncing from side to side. ちゅう means kiss, or rather the sound you make (chuuuu). She was literally inserting love and over-the-top cuteness into our meal. Like, what is this I'm trapped in some sort of cotton candy nightmare.

The 4 of us were seated at tables right in front of the stage where people could get their pictures taken, and I had a moment of extreme face palm-ness when I commented to Lhriza that the maid up there taking pictures with the poloroid was also adorable, and the maid turns and looks straight at me and waves. I'm like o___o ... then she goes "I can speak English." LOL. LAWL. PERFECT. It turns out the first maid we got could also speak English since she had lived in Canada for 6 years, and she was just too shy to speak in front of us (similar to my whole fear of speaking Japanese to native speakers...I could relate.)

Anyway, we were all called up on stage when we were ready to get our picture taken, and when it was my turn I awkwardly stood up in front of my maid and this woman was probably a couple inches shy of 5'5'' even with 4 inch heels on and sort of just stared at me and went "OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH!!!!" -_- sigh. Endless struggle of a tall person in Japan. Anyway, you could choose animal ears to wear in the picture, and OF COURSE I CHOSE THE LAMB EARS~. Me and...whatever her name was took a picture, which was promptly printed out and decorated with marker (another big thing in Japan: taking pictures and then drawing on them. More on this later.)

Finished product:

Notice the giant "萌". Good god.  ISNT' THIS SO CUTE THO

A picture of all our maid pictures (I don't have a scanner, shoot me).  BASK IN THE CUTE.

Anywhoodles, we finished up our food and got "License of Your Majesty" membership cards which were only Level 1, and if you went to the same cafe 5 times you got to the next level (no really guys)

I feel like a certified pimp or something. AWW YEAH.

Shit this is the part where the post gets too unbearably long. Okay so after trolling the maid cafe came to a sad close (we have every intention of returning, fyi) we went to a プリクラ (Purikura; photo booth!) I've always always ALWAYS wanted to do the whole photo booth thing in general, but especially プリクラ's because they looked so amazingly fun and just so...Japanese, you know? When in Rome....

So we went to the basement of a shop that had many different booths, all different themes. I think the one we chose was fashion-themed or something? I couldn't tell because when you walked inside and had to choose settings everything was timed and it was all very stressful so Lhriza just ended up wildly pushing buttons and I think the setting she chose enhanced your features, because I ended up with big ass eyes. Like, my eyes are pretty naturally wide as it is, but...yeah it was pretty ridiculous. But necessary. I think that's a recurring theme in my stay here: Ridiculous, but necessary.

So after we were done giggling and posing and being 15 year old girls, we ran around to the back of the booth for the editing station. THIS IS WHERE SHIT GOT INTENSE. You had 90 seconds to customize your picture, i..e adding crowns to people's heads, drawing squiggly lines, adding sparkly stars banners, etc. Basically cute-vomiting all over the place. It was intense but also fun because we were sort of breathlessly picking features and squealing when the time got closer to zero. Too too fun. I need to do more of these.

Love. Love love love.

Sorry if this post was unbearably long...reeling off of the disappointing news that Winter/Spring 2012 will not, in fact, be spent at the University of Sydney and I'm kind of figuring out housing and what I'll do with my life at NU and whatnot. I'm thinking of taking a quarter off and just going the fuck to Sydney anyway. Thoughts?

To everyone I promised a postcard to; SORRY THIS IS TAKING ME SO LONG. I still haven't gotten paid yet, but know that I have not forgotten about you!! I'll write something sweet :)

Instead of going to bed like a sensible person, I am now going to re-watch ever Haruhi episode because I can.

ホリー先生

かんたん

Title means "simple", which is exactly what this blog post shall be.

I'm sick. Like throat hurting, stuffy nose, weak sick. They thought I had a fever, but it was mostly because my classroom was too hot. Remember how emotionally charged Japanese people will be? Yeah, I kept getting offers to go to the hospital and my boss apparently has the same symptoms that I do so she whipped out like...4 bags of prescriptions and kept offering pills upon pills and I only kindly agreed to something to help with my throat because that shit is really starting to get on my nerves.


English time with the 年少's was fun, I brought in my speakers to play a fun little song on my iPod, that sings about big and small, fast and slow, open and shut, loud and quiet, etc. I underestimated (I just typed that as misunderestimated. Yeah, my English is going to hell.) how loud my speakers were, so I had to shout the words at them, which was fun because kids like loud things and grand gestures and whatnot, but that also did horribly mean things to my throat and I guess I was jumping around too much because I was sweating bullets and out of breath and I think my internal temperature was almost 39 Celsius and this is a horrible run-on sentence and I have to sneeze UGH.

Being sick in Japan is not fun.

What is absolutely fun was the day I spent in Akiba with Grace, Mint, and Lhriza (you're welcome) before my disease took over me. I promisessszzz that will be a really fun post to read; I'm just too tired now. :( Contents include our first time at a maid cafe! Oh lord.

In the meantime, a little treat of what Akiba's like;

One of these things is not like the other. Oh, and also a dude.

-ホリー先生