Japanese snowmen are made with two snowballs instead of three.

Wow. That's about the best way I can describe the past few weeks. So much happens these days that I've fallen way, way behind on reporting them. The trouble with that is I don't want to make an entry about one thing without having talked about something that happened before it. That's put me in the predicament I'm in now: I've got about thirty stories I could tell, each of them worthy of their own post, but I have neither the time nor the energy to fully explore them. Maybe I'll do that on my 18-hours-of-flying travel day. At any rate, I've decided the best way to update all of you and the future me is to just give teasers. Hopefully the spirit will move me and I'll come back and make posts expanding on each item, but if not, at least there'll be enough information to jog my memory.

1) I spent Thanksgiving in Fukuoka, with four of the other Tsushima JETs. Fukuoka is in fact an awesome city, and we spent our time shopping and eating at Mexican, Thai, and Indian restaurants. The Indian place advertises itself as the oldest in Kyushu, and on its 0-50 curry hotness scale, 4 had me sweating. I also took the jetfoil instead of flying, which marks the first time I've ever been on a boat in the open sea. 2 hours of no seasickness leaves me encouraged to try the six-hour slow ferry sometime.

B) I turned 24 the next weekend. The event was low-key--the American JETs came down to celebrate with me by taking me out to a ramen shop. I had an awesome time because nobody got wasted, and we found a great bar. I even taught the bartender how to make an Angel's Smile!

0) I was feeling brainy, so I signed up to take the GRE when I'm home next week. Woo!

iv) I learned the planets in Japanese! They're named for the five Chinese elements: water (Mercury), metal (Venus), fire (Mars), wood (Jupiter), and soil (Saturn). Uranus is literally "sky king star," and Neptune is "sea king star." Pluto's is "underworld king star." Yes, I still consider Pluto among the planets--My Very Energetic Mother has to have Just Served Us Nine somethings.

.) In following that geeky-lingo-in-another-language vibe, the teacher to whom I've been directing all such inquiries found two books she was given when she was in school in Ireland. One is for math, and the other is for science; they both give each subject's key vocabulary in Japanese, English, French, and German. I giggled like a schoolgirl and spent the rest of the day learning how to say things like "herbivore" (草食) and "coefficient" (係数, lit. "related number"). She was amused, to say the least.

π) I taught my group of seven high school seniors a unit on rhyming. An entire lesson was spent in a misguided attempt to teach them basic red-said-bed-head rhyme. It didn't completely flop. The follow-up, however, fared much better: we spent two weeks learning and singing "A Whole New World." (Yes, the one from Aladdin.) We began with listening to the song, following along with printed copies of the lyrics, and circling each word that rhymed. This was followed by roughly translating each line, something that worked surprisingly well: half the class had seen the movie, and that half included the kids who normally would be apathetic and hardest to reach. Once they jumped on board, and were spouting out perfect translations of each line, the kids whose correct answers normally dominated the class perked up and tried to match them. It worked beautifully. The teacher (the one who rocks for many reasons, not least of which is giving me those math and science books) coached the girls on singing, while I took the guys. I won't dare say that half an hour of practice produced perfect pitch, but they all got the gist of it, they got the hang of rhyming, and the guys even learned to harmonize!

e) As you've probably noticed from the pictures I've been posting, I stopped shaving after Halloween. It wasn't so much for fashion as it was necessity: it's awfully windy here, and I do a lot of walking. It got no small amount of attention from, well, everyone: guy teachers said it looked good, girl high schoolers giggled and said "beard" in Japanese, and the elementary kids touched it every chance they got. When students would ask teachers in our classes why I grew out my beard, I replied in simple Japanese "because it's cold." This always got a laugh. Having shaved this weekend for the concert, I can safely say that a beard does an astonishingly good job retaining heat. It's almost as though it's been selected for by nature.

ə) Just before my birthday, I taught at my elementary school for the second two-day stretch. When they weren't patting my beard and asking me if I knew such-and-such-a-word in Japanese, the kids were awesome. I realized they were just skittish my first two days. The teachers routinely overestimate my Japanese ability, which leaves me in the dark, but not enough to be seriously problematic. I'm consistently on the penumbra of the light of comprehension, you could say. If you were a nerd, like me. Anyway, we (students and teachers) ran for six minutes to begin my second day, which is apparently routine, even in 40-degree weather. I let slip on the first day that my birthday was that weekend. The next day, three of the fourth grade girls came to me during recess with a Santa gift bag that had, in order of ascending cuteness: a Santa candle, origami, and one of those little paper fortune-telling games you hold in both hands that looks like a flower. I also learned from the school's tea lady (the lady whose chief job is to serve hot tea to the teachers) how to say "the Earth revolves around the Sun" versus "the Earth rotates about its axis" in Japanese. Granted, she got some help from one of the office workers, but it worked.

θ) I hiked my second mountain this past weekend! It's Tatera-san (the title for mountains sounds just like you're calling it Mr. Mountain, but is in fact a different symbol), it's 550 meters high, and it's silly to climb it on a blustery Saturday in December. My companions were the other two JETs in my town, the Northern Irish JET from the northern part of the island, and two adult Japanese students of English. The view from the top was definitely worth all the trouble getting up there. (Isn't it always?)

Σ) A week ago, as I was changing my shoes at the school entrance and bundling up for my walk home down the mountain, the science teacher asked me if I sing. This was purely to start conversation--he only approached me because he'd heard me singing in the halls (which I still do, all the time). It turns out that he's the school chorus conductor. His English isn't great, but by our powers combined, I understood that the chorus was learning English Christmas songs, and would I mind joining them for practice to help them with their pronunciation. This was one of my big goals in coming to Japan--to be involved in the music/singing programs at my school--so I happily agreed. The 14-member chorus has one or two first-year students that I know, but the majority are second- and third-years. All of them were thrilled when I poked my head in the room the next day. Their Christmas set consisted of Joy to the World, Angels We Have Heard on High, O Tannenbaum, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, and Amazing Grace. I did a doubletake at the last one, both because I've never seen it filed under "Christmas," and because it's one of my favorite Christian songs. The group's sound is fine, and after a few minutes of coaching, we worked out the most egregious of their pronunciation errors. (Those were a proper "th" instead of s/z, and "v" instead of b, both of which had combined to produce "how sweet za sound, zat sabed a wretch like me.") They were awesome through it all, and at the end I asked if they had a concert. They told me about one coming up the next weekend in the city's church. I asked the conductor about it later, and they weren't kidding--there is indeed a small Christian church in town. Anyway, "would you come to our concert?" turned into "would you join us for our concert?" when half the group's bass section (well, one of the two basses) got sick and couldn't make it. I'm going to have to give this its own post, so here's the rest in condensed teaser format to jog my memory: church choir prayer roxy karaoke elementary kid.

Ack! That's roughly half of what I've been meaning to write down. As you can probably tell from all this, I love it here. I'm going to repeat that, as much for myself to read later on as for the rest of you: it's the dead of winter, and I still love being here!

I'm also officially going to be in Missouri from December 22 until January 3. I fly to Atlanta on the 4th, and will fly from there to Japan on the 7th. That means I'll be in and around Georgia for a little over two days. Those of you Georgians who read this probably know me well enough to know this, but I still worry and feel the need to repeat it: I love all of you guys, and want nothing more than to see each and every one of you one-on-one for hot chocolate/Choo Choo/Waffle House/hamburger helper/Guitar Hero/Smash Bros. That being said, I will have neither a car nor enough time to do that. I still don't know how I'm going to work this out, but there will probably be a big get-together one night that weekend. Details will follow, I promise.

Anyway. I'm going home in three days, no current Braves were named in the Mitchell Report, and the US delegation caved in at the Bali talks after being called out by Papua New Guinea! Hooray!