Japantastic!

Two weeks ago I taught my last classes of Korean kids, said my goodbyes to my students, coworkers and friends, and headed for Japan, where I had arranged a 10-day layover on my way back to the US. After a 7-hour delay in the Incheon (Seoul) airport, in which I made use of their bathhouse facilities and did a lot of walking around, I flew into Osaka, Japan. I was at a loss at first, not being familiar with the language or the transportation system (which is confusing and not as expensive as I had thought), but I managed to get on a train and then the subway to downtown Osaka. I stayed in a capsule hotel there, which was a good time- you get a little robe to wear, and you sleep in this tube that's about 7 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet high. It's got a little TV, radio, light and shelf in there, and they have bathrooms, showers, and lockers for you to use. After a day in Osaka, I spent 3 days in Kyoto with my friend Daniel (we were friends during my Korea exchange student days at Yonsei University), a day in Hiroshima and Miyajima, a day near Nagoya with my friend Aiko (also from Yonsei, 3rd picture, center), and two days keeping it street in Tokyo with Joy (WM buddy) before heading back to Osaka to get my flight out. Kyoto has tons of stuff to see, Osaka had a nice waterside area and lots of big buildings, and Tokyo was as modern and packed and awesome as I had hoped. It's hard to summarize Hiroshima in a word, it was really good in a shocking and depressing sort of way, it definitely left an impression of the instant carnage that an atomic bomb creates, and its aftereffects.
On a lighter note, my day with Aiko was great, we went to see this series of small waterfalls up in some mountain forest- it was beautiful, and amazingly we were the only ones around (in Korea a place like that would have mobs of people). We also ate conveyor-belt sushi and went to a Brazilian Pentecostal church service that night. Yes, you read that right- there's a sizeable population of Brazilians in Japan, who either have some Japanese blood in them or who married Japanese people or just Japanese people who grew up in Brazil, and they have a church in Aiko's town. I was still working on getting used to Japanese culture and language, and then in this building I ran into a polar-opposite culture and language, and it was a little overwhelming, but the service was energetic and really good. No one there spoke both Portugese and English, but they found someone who could translate into Spanish for me. Afterwards, when we were talking with people, it was in a crazy mix of English, Spanish, Portugese, and Japanese- but somehow we managed to have conversations ranging from American hip-hop to whether Rio de Janiero or Sao Paulo is a more beautiful city. Good times.

I already miss these kids

Here are some pictures from my kindergarten classes. The first one is from the 6-year old (that's Korean age, really they're five) class aka Orange Class, and the rest are from the 7-year old (really they're six) class, aka Apple Class (the classrooms had fruit and animal names). The first one is Roy and Matthew having a conversation "on the phone", and the group shots were from my last day with Apple Class (they were my favorites)- it was during break time, and I tried to get them to line up neatly for a picture, but they preferred climbing all over me. In the first picture, from left they're Anna, Sam, Chris, Liz, Jeffrey, Alex, and Jamie. In the second picture you can see Austin, too. You might notice in these three pictures that Jamie was the best behaved student in the class- she's the only one who would stand and look at the camera like I was telling them. But I had so much fun with them- they especially loved it when Mike Teacher would leave the classroom and the Robot would stop by while he was out. All in the name of "teaching English".