A baby and some break dancers

This is me at a restaurant where the bartenders let me have these glasses. There were only three pair and they got them in NY and they let ME have them! This has nothing to do with the post, but I'm sure it will make some of you all's day! :-D

So, unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me, so I didn't take any pictures. And the camera on my phone is not the best when there is no sunlight, even though it's a whopping 8.0 megapixels (for those of you that don't know, the higher the megapixels the better the image quality, my big nice awesome Sony camera is 10 megapixels. That's just a megapixel comparison, obviously my camera phone is nowhere near as capable as my awesome Sony camera, but anyway).

First, I'll start with some amazing news. My boss is pregnant!!! She has been trying to get pregnant for a while (with her HUSBAND all you judgementeralists!!!). From what I understand, she was always planning to leave Amity soon because she was trying to get pregnant. And just yesterday she found out she was pregnant. When one of my students wasn't showing up on time she was talking to me in the lobby and she said, "OH! Jeremy I have news!" I asked, "Good or bad?" and she said "Good! I'm pregnant!" I was floored by this, because I was expecting her to say something good about the company or something. One, it was refreshing to see her with a crazy happy genuine smile on her face (not a business "I have to be nice to you because you are my customer smile) because she is truly happy. I'm sure working around kids for two years and WANTING some of your own when you are married while you are trying can be tough on a person, but she's finally getting her wish and I wish her well. She told me she was nervous. I told her that my mom had me when she was 22 and I turned out GREAT so imagine how your kid will turn out (because she is older having her first child in comparison with my mom who had me very young, woah..realization..she had me at the age I am now...woah! anyway).

Yes, I just gave my mom a HUGE pat on the back, if you don't agree that she raised a great son (with the help of my dad of course) then why the heck are you even reading this blog to begin with, obviously I have something good to offer if you are reading about my life when you could be doing a BILLION other things! So thank you, from the bottom of my heart :-D.

So yes, my manager is pregnant. Secondly, I finally watched some break dancers today outside of the train station. I had been seeing them a lot, usually every weekend as I biked past the train station on the way somewhere or on the weeknights when I was biking home. Today I decided, what the heck, I'm going to stop. They were doing tricks on top of tricks on top of more tricks. If they were a car, they would have been tricked out *da da DING*. There were about six or seven of them and after about 15 minutes I asked them (in my LITTLE Japanese that I knew) if I could put my iPod in and let them jam to some of MY tunes. They let me (because Japanese people are AWESOME like that!) and they danced to one of my DJ Sega mixes (I'm not DJ Sega, but I had one of his mixes on my iPod) for about 20 minutes or so. And the best part is, I got in there are started dancing myself (not break dancing obviously) and they clapped for me. So yeah, imagine this tall black guy in his suit after work dancing with a bunch of b-boy Japanese break dancers out in front of a train station at 9:30 PM. It was awesome! One of the guys asked me where I was from, I told him I was Americajin and that I worked for Amity. I asked him how often they come out to practice and he told me every night at 9. So maybe one day I'll take my b-boy clothes to work with me, change afterwards and try to learn some of their break dancing moves. Here's hoping me and the pavement don't have another nasty encounter. :)

-Jeremy aka the future break dancer?

aaaaand I hit a curb...

This is what happens to your bike when you try to battle a curb
(And no this is not my bike I know some of you are wondering)

No, I didn't fall off of my bike again, but I definitely hit a curb...too fast. One teeny tiny small fact about Japan that I did not know before arriving. Japanese curbs are pretty high. They aren't so high as to make you fall forward on your bike (unless you are really just GUNNING it), but they are high enough that if you do not have a mountain bike and you try to have a one-on-one duel with the curb VS. your bike tire at high speeds, the curb will win my friend, the curb will win.

Last night on the way home from dancing I was going pretty fast. I had my bike in third gear and I was blazing down the deep dark sidewalks of Tottori Japan. Suddenly I realized I was going a bit too fast as I approached *DUN DUN DUUUUNN* The Curb!!! I couldn't slow down fast enough and I went over the curb pretty hard. I managed to stay on my bike, but something was different. Something that wasn't happening before I hit the curb was now happening. At first I tried to ignore it, then it started to make itself known more and more and more to the point where I actually had to stop my bike to check and make sure it wasn't what I thought and knew that it was. Yup, my tire is flat. Specifically my front tire had gone flat.

I thought to myself, "Maybe this had just been happening over time and the curb took the last bit of air out of the tire". Yeah, that was a stupid idea because that is obviously not what happens. To put it simply, I got in a battle with a curb and the curb won. Flawless. Victory. (For those of you that don't know that's a Mortal Kombat reference, I was watching it last night). This afternoon when I woke up I decided to go to the store and buy a pump in the hopes that it was just a flat tire that needed to be pumped back up. As I was trying to pump up the tire nothing was happening. It just seemed to stay flat. I thought I might have been doing something wrong when I finally decided to believe that, yes, my inner tube had a hole in it because of the battle with the curb the night before.

As I am obviously getting nowhere in pumping up my tire, a Japanese man, whom I believe lives in my building, came up to me and started speaking Japanese while pointing at my bike. From what I gathered, and from what little Japanese I spoke and understand and what little English he spoke and understands, there was a bike shop RIGHT across the street from where I live. This I did not know. Only one problem, he told me it was closed today, but he told me there is another bike store very close that could fix my inner tube. The guy was so awesome, he drew me a map and I knew exactly where it was. As I thanked him, he literally ran off because it seemed as if he was late for something, even though while he was helping me he did not seem anxious at all.

I took my bike over to the shop and got it fixed. I wasn't sure if I was in the right spot so in my broken Japanese I tried to ask "Where is the bike shop?", but stupidly, I was standing in it, haha. After I failed to communicate anything to the man working at the store, he decided to just come out and look at the bike. He saw that the front tire was flat and I did some gestures that let him know I tried to pump it up, but it wouldn't pump up. I kept telling him "Wakari masen, goemnai sai" which means, "I don't understand, I'm sorry". And from what TEENY bit of Japanese I know, he kind of smiled and said "Ah, he doesn't know Japanese." And kind of chuckled about it. But either way, he patched up my inner tube and I was able to get riding within fifteen minutes. It was amazing because I thought I would have to leave my bike overnight somewhere and he just dropped what he was doing to fix my inner tube. That was great!

So, to date, I have had to have my bike fixed three times.

1) Back tire was flat and innertube seemed to be messed up, I got a new tire.
2) My seat was out of WHACK and wouldn't go back down into the bike because the rod was bent on the end and it slowly started to lean back so far it looked as if I was low-riding everywhere on my bike. Got a new seat and a new rod.
3) My front inner tube got a hole in it because it lost a bout with a curb, got my inner tube patched.

I've only been with Andre a couple of months and already I've had to fix her up a bit. Andrea is the name of my bike for those of you who are a bit confused.

Things are still going swimmingly in Japan. I got a gym membership and I am getting back on my workout grind. Gotta look good for the summer. Oh, and I bought Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete on Blu-Ray disc the other day along with a ton of other Final Fantasy VII stuff. I love that this country has everything that makes me ecstatic!! I gotta give props to Armella that statement because she IMed me saying, "I love how Japan has everything that makes you ecstatic!" It's so true! JERPAN yay!!

-Jeremy aka If I have to get my bike fixed one more time...

NANI?! (WHAT!?!)

This has nothing to do with the post (the picture I mean), but it is a teaser to the pictures I'll be posting later. Enjoy this one picture and happy reading.
Oh! By the way. This is Sakura (Cherry Blossom)

Pictures

So today started off beautifully. The sun was shining, I didn't have to go into work until 12:00 (really 11:45 because 15 minutes early is on time), the Sakura were out (Cherry Blossoms) and Becca was having the best morning ever, so I was feeding off of her energy as well. Additionally, we knew that we were going posting.

For those of you who don't know what posting is, it's basically handing out fliers mailbox to mailbox so that we can try to get more children to come to Amity. "Why don't you just take out an ad on TV Jeremy?" That's the same thing that I asked, but I'm sure it's a lot cheaper for them to ask us to do it for them, and frankly, I don't mind. It's nice to be able to get out of the school for a couple hours, pop on the iPod and just drop fliers off in mailboxes while all at the same time realizing "Wow, I'm in Japan...dropping off fliers in mailboxes...wow! Yay!"

So when we got to work it was going to be me, Becs, and another Japanese English teacher who teaches computer classes named Kei (KAY). She is really quiet, but she is extremely nice. So Kei drove me and Becs in her car and we went to the area where we were going posting. We got to the posting area at about 12:20. We decided to each take a side of the street, Becca would take the middle, I would go to the right and Kei would go to the houses on the left. We were to meet back at 12:45. I'm walking around, doing my posting, listening to some Angel Taylor (and if you don't know who she is, look her up, she opened for Adele when I went to her concert in Philly, she's AWESOME!), and having a good time. I dropped off about 33 fliers in mailboxes (yes I was counting, because we are supposed to). It's close to 12:45, so I begin to head back to meet with Kei and Becca and go to another posting area. As I met them back at the car we realized something. Kei does not have her keys. They are not in any of the bags that we had for holding our fliers, they were not in Kei's pockets and obviously they were not in me or Becca's pockets.

We started searching everywhere Kei could have stepped looking for her car keys. She kept saying, "I'm sorry, Gomenai (it's an informal term for sorry in Japanese)." And we kept telling her, "No, it's ok Kei (yeah I did not mean for that to rhyme)". We searched for about half an hour when our manager came to pick us up (because Kei did have her phone with her). Before my manager got there however, I realized something. I left my backpack in Kei's car. Yup, that's my Wallet, DS, PSP, my Pikachu hat, my Nintendo hat, my gloves, my Harry Potter book (the second one, yeah I know, I'm behind), my phone, my "Everyday Japanese" book, an "Easy Hiragana (one of the writing systems in Japan)" book, and a notebook. Yeah, it kinda sucked, but at the same time, I knew it was safe, it was all just a manner of WHEN am I going to get it back, especially since I had NO money for lunch that day.

As we got back to the school me and Becs had to ask for some money from our manager so that we could eat (because Becca's money AND her lunch were also in the bag). Once Kei found that out she was SOOO sorry. And we didn't even want her to feel worse than she was because really folks, it happens to the best of us. Alls well that ends well right? She had a spare key at her house, so after work today she went to her house, got taken to her car, and got our stuff out and brought it to me and Becs. On top of that (and THIS is one of the many reasons I adore the Japanese...simply ADORE them), she got us some snacks. A milk tea, a really sweet bread bun, some potatoe sticks and something that looks like Jell-O pudding. She really did NOT have to do that, but she did, she's so sweet. So yes, I have my bag back, I have my money back, I have my PSP and DS back (thank GOD!) and my Pikachu hat (yay!) and all the other stuff that I mentioned.

Second story.

I teach babies. Yes, you heard me, babies. I teach little tykes who don't even talk in Japanese yet, I teach them English. I teach a particular group of babies who are two years old. They are sweet little children. There's only one problem, make that two. There are a pair of twins in the class. Now, honestly, this isn't too bad, but I really feel bad for the mom. Because the baby classes are a class where the moms come in and they basically learn WITH their babies so that there is a deeper connection with them and their children with the English language. I know some of you may think it's pointless, but it's really not. The hard part is there is usually one mom to one child, well, since one mom has twins she has two children. So we have three babies and two moms and a teacher. If one of the twins starts to cry or get out of control and the other is listening and interacting, what is the mom to do? Well that happened today.

One of my children (Masayuki...MAH-SAH-YOU-KEE) started crying, and his mom just let him keep crying, which I understand because she tried to help him and he didn't want it and his twin sister Fuka (FOO-KAH) was listening. So he's whining and crying a bit, but nothing too extreme. All of a sudden, and I'm not quite sure when, we are doing "Yellow Banana" and BOTH of the twins start crying. So the mom, who isn't but so big, is holding both of her children who are SCREAMING and the other mom who has a daughter named Honokoa (HOH-NO-KOH-AH) is trying to ignore it and follow the lesson. At one point Masayuki (the boy) is crying and he sees his sister Fuka crying and all of a sudden he just SLAPS her across the face, pretty hard. The mom, bless her heart, you could tell she wanted to do something, but she was torn between the lesson and trying to get her children to stop crying. Now I know some of you are thinking, "If that had been my child I would have this that and the third." Guys, you gotta understand something about Japanese culture, at least the little that I know about it. When you are in a professional setting where you have to show someone respect, you put your problems aside to try to accomadate them as best you can. Now I'm not saying she shouldn't have tried to reprimand her child, but I also believe that she understood that she still wanted to COMPLETE the lesson and if she had scolded him and been harsher too her son right then and there then there is no TELLING how loudly or how much longer he would have cried. But anyway, back to the story.

They kept crying for what felt like 10 minutes but it was probably half of that. Finally, the mom of the twins says something to the other mom in Japanese. I think she was telling her, "Ok, I'm going to take them out, I'm sorry to interrupt the lesson, but I'm going to take them out." I don't know if she said I'm sorry, but for her to say something to the other mom at all instead of just taking the children out, I'm sure she was asking if it was ok, maybe not, but maybe, all I know is that when the twins mom got done talking to the other mom, both of the kids stopped crying, looked at me and waved GOODBYE. And me and the other mom looked at each other and LAUGHED. Because it's almost like they were intentionally doing all this JUST so they could get out, and once they got it, they were basically like, "Peace Jeremy Sensei, I'm out this B!" So I look at the clock and the lesson is only halfway over (20 minutes). The next few minutes went by peacefully and then the twins come back in the room. But good news, one of the other moms came in to help the mom of the twins so we now have three moms and three babies. The lesson went smoothly after that.

That was my FIRST class today. My manager came to me afterwards and with concern asked, "Are you ok?" And I said, "Yeah, it was just crazy, I can't believe Masayuki hit Fuka, but yes, I'm ok." She did the same thing last Saturday when I had to hold two kids who were CRYING in my ear, one from missing his mom and the other because he saw I was holding the one that was missing his mom.

Whew! At any rate, it was an eventful day. I will update this post later with some pictures of the cherry blossoms. I don't want to do it yet because I am going out to sit under them again this weekend and I will take some more pictures, so I'll put them all up at once. I hope everyone is well. Ja mate ne!

-Jeremy aka the guy who realized it was a possibility that he MIGHT not eat lunch....