The Night Before Christmas

Short post today- just wanted to try out some cool stuff I'm told I can do with Blogger, like embed pictures inside the post, rather than making eight thousand of the dumb things. Also, I'm beginning to appreciate the vast differences between Japanese middle schools. My last middle school was, evidently, the "problem" middle school. They were the bad kids- loud, disrespectful, and not at all good team players.

Which means I loved them. They were great- talkative, friendly, and individual. Note the subtle difference in perspective- I want students who will talk, they want students who won't talk back. Hayama, in this respect, is a model school for Japan. This is causing me no end of struggle- there are no volunteers. I've resorted to Question Ball (You catch it, you answer!) and calling student numbers out of the air to prompt some kind of interaction. They're so quiet I'm really not sure they're alive. There are a few kids who get up and go for it, but they're so quickly branded as disruptive by the teachers that they clammed right up after a few days. Time to figure out a way to reward the "bad kids" for wanting to speak English- because the "good kids" sure as heck don't.

While on the subject of Hayama, here's two pictures taken from Hayama's back porch. Marvel at....The picturesque soybean field and rice field! All right, so I really took this picture for the cool house and the clouds misting off the mountain, but it's fun to be glib. This next picture's only in here because the clouds made it look like the mountain was on fire. Hayama (by the way) means "Mountain Leaves" or "Leaves on the Mountain" or "Shrubbery on the Rocks, Half Twist of Lime Let's Enjoy Naming Time Together."


Both pictures were taken from the exact same spot, on the intersection in front of school. Should we get a decently sunny day (HA!) I'll post a pic of Hayama.

On to the good stuff- another snackyfood is being submitted to scrutiny. I have long bemoaned the fate of Japanese chocolate- it's just not sweet, nor is it very chocolatey. I evidently have not been buying the right Japanese chocolate- a friend tipped me off to "Lotte Gold".

It's really quite amazing. It's impossible to get a good picture of this, but the candy itself is covered in little sprinkles of gold leaf. Thin strands of white and milk chocolate woven together, topped with gold sprinkles. One bar (shown lower-right) is about the size of a domino, just right for piling in a bowl and inviting people to take one. Slightly inconvenient to have to unwrap each one to pig out- but that might be part of the subtle cultural "don't eat too much, as overweight people are like lepers or foreigners in Japan" vibe goin' on here.

Full Disclosure: I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today, because a few friends were going and it sounded like an excellent idea. Note 1: Japanese movie houses are EXPENSIVE! I claimed student discount (using my Michigan drivers' license- English really IS your ticket to the world, like the sign says on the local NOVA office!) and still paid ten bucks. The non-discount price: 1800 yen, or about 18 dollars US. Wowza. On the upside, American movies are NOT dubbed over in Japanese- they're just subtitled, and the subtitles (crazy mistranslated subtitles) are half the fun of the movie. They insert Japanese cultural references (Charlie comes home, says "Hi, Mom!" and it's translated as "Tadaima", which is the Japanese way of saying "Hey, guys, I'm home!" and is yelled by most Japanese folks even when they come home to an empty house.), they gloss/ignore/destroy jokes, and they often miss the point of what is being said and go entirely off in a different direction. It's great. No wonder we were the only people in the theater laughing- a grand majority probably only had the slightest of ideas what was going on.

So all that was merely to indicate that I have good reason to be jonesing for chocolate- hence the biased review of gold-covered woven-chocolate snacks.

I think the picture embedding worked- and if it didn't, when I hit POST it'll certainly let me know. Tomorrow's the first birthday away from home- I think I'll celebrate by taking myself out to Starbucks and going hog wild on a large latte- a Japanese large, of course, which would be a small anywhere else. Sizes here go "Short" (kiddie small) "Medium" (McDonalds Kiddie Orange Juice) and "Large" (16oz cup).

I'm going to be a thin man pretty soon.

-Sparks Out