I haven’t written in a couple of days because I’ve been really busy. I wrote about my first lesson with real students… well, the next day I had to teach another lesson to my classmates. It was super hard, since I had to prepare everything from scratch (I was the lucky one in the class who didn’t get any pre-prepared materials). I though I would bomb the lesson, but it ended up okay… however, I did get called out on my poor preparation. It was good to find out what I was weak at and what I did well. We also had our “otsukaresama lunch” where the trainers treated us all to a nice lunch. I had omuraisu… so tasty! That night, we went out and I got another misokatsudon. As it’s one of Nagoya’s specialties, I’m trying to eat as much of it as I can while I’m still here. Nagoya’s special foods — misokatsu, unagi, and kushikatsu — are very, very good! I hope that Fukui’s specialties (mainly crab?) are just as good.

Yesterday was our “graduation,” even though we still have children class training next week. We taught another lesson to Japanese students (this one went okay, too, but I ended up being too fast and had to improvise and vamp for about 10 minutes… even so, it worked out alright). At our graduation, we received our official AEON pins, and our business cards. We also got even more news about our branch schools, such as what students we’ll have, the sizes of our apartments, and more. I think we’re all really excited to see our real schools, as well as move out of the hotel!

Oh, and you’ll notice I put pictures up now! Unfortunately I didn’t take too many… >__< That’s my weakness I think. But I will be getting the photos that other people took (I hope!) and I’ll post some of them here when I do.

Last night we went out to karaoke! It was a lot of fun, and for most of the teachers it was their first time doing Japanese style karaoke. We all got a bit drunk and practically lost our voices, but that’s the whole point of karaoke. Unfortunately, I have to hunt down a few of them and wrestle some extra money away from them, since I ended up paying for the room (being the one able to speak Japanese isn’t always an advantage I guess).

Today I went to Atsuta Jingu, one of Japan’s most famous shrines. It is supposedly the home of one of the three sacred treasures of the emperor — in this case, the most ancient sword in all of Japan. You can’t see it, so maybe it’s not really there… but it’s kind of cool to think that it is. The shrine had huge crows, ancient trees, and was really peaceful. It’s such a hot humid day, but under the trees in the shrine it didn’t feel so bad to be sweating.

I also took a walk this morning and saw a bunch of pigeons sunbathing in a park. Not normally an extraordinary site, but this time it was. These were the most laid back pigeons I have seen in my life! They were lying on their sides and their breasts, rather than sitting like pigeons usually do. Some had their faces against the hot pavement. They were rolling over and taking turns stretching one wing out in the sun, then the other. I’ve never seen birds laze around like that! It was so amazing!! While I was standing there, a couple of them mozied over to me, really really lazily, to see if I would give them food. I wanted to, but those pigeons were something special and might have been able to take me down and steal my wallet if I let them get any closer…

Today we also went to get our inkan. Instead of signing things in Japan, you use a stamp, and we won’t be able to open a bank account or rent our appartment without it. So I have one that says simply “マット.” One day I will probably get a really fancy and expensive custom-made one. I also bought a calligraphy pen and some really REALLY awesome paper! I remember Loni telling me that Japan’s got the best paper, and it really really does! It’s hard to describe the coolness of the paper I got, but I will be using it soon to do some pictures, so whenever I get my hands on a scanner I’ll get to post them here.

Japanese tv is really cool.