Jeanneabeck’s Weblog

My 2nd year Japanese students in the international studies program cooked food from Korea, China, and France & I wrote a simple English article about it. Enjoy!

http://www.nagano-c.ed.jp/fuetsuhs/kokusai/kokusai2009/food.pdf

Now time for another episode of strangely interesting Japan: The only time I’ve ever seen anything substantial sold in bulk in Japan….

I’ve never stayed in Japan for Christmas or New Years… when I come back from the US all I see are the remnants the holiday.  For the past while I’ve seen these strange but strangely useful left over New Years gift box sets for sale.  Some of them have what seems like to me some really random stuff, like  canola oil, soy sauce, canned crab meat and salt. 

Others made a little more sense. 

I guess in Japan it’s polite to give family members or elders these gift boxes, which should hopefully last them a year.  This is a little random but when I went shopping a week or so ago I saw that the gift boxes were more than 50% off and bought a year’s supply of yummy instant coffee for myself! 

I felt silly but economical and quite American at the same time, and will probably be sending one of the smaller instant coffees to my family to try.  I kind of want to go back and see if they’re still selling these gift boxes, and if so, if there are any more that would make sense to buy.  They were in an odd part of the store and I don’t think many people think to buy gift boxes after the date just to use the items yourself.

It’s January 31st and I’m sitting down on my bed to a breakfast of chocolate chip banana pancakes made by Ryan attempting to do school work but instead realizing that I should probably post on my blog first to, you know.. get the juices flowing.

January didn’t go by as fast as I thought it would.  I started the month out at home in Jefferson City, Missouri, for New Years and the last few days of my trip to America in Kansas City, where Ryan and I got to eat all the last minute things we didn’t get to eat such as Perkin’s Peanut Butter Ribbon pie and authentic Korean food.  We made Grandpa drive around a lot for everything so I’m very thankful to him. 

January was the month that I finally got a Twitter account and despite my initial annoyances that any non-Twitter user has with Twitter (good God no one cares what you’re thinking 24/7) I’ve found it to be very useful.  It takes me a lot of time to write a blog but only a few minutes to make a Twitter posting. (don’t want to call them “tweets” yet.)  Also, I am able to highlight little funny occurances with students or with Japan itself that I’d normally would forget by the time I sat down to write a blog.  I’ve been thinking about cutting out all the text and going for more of a photo blog (except for my end of the month reviews).  That would probably get me more viewers because most people can’t handle reading more than a paragraph at a time but since when did I care who reads this?  Ha ha.  This blog was originally just for family to see what the heck I’ve been doing. 

In January I signed a paper saying I was interested in recontracting; I didn’t sign a contract yet so sorry about the misinformation.  In January I also pulled a muscle really badly which had me limping around for a few days.  It’s all better now, I just need to stretch out before walking to (and maybe from) school each day. Speaking of which… *stretches out* My classes final semester of graduate classes just started this semester too so I’ll be trying my best to pass those and graduate.  Ryan still is finishing up his classes he started in December and will be starting his next round March 1st.  I’m not sure what Ryan would write for his month in review… video games, classwork, having an annoying wife who wouldn’t shut up about her muscles… Ha ha!

January was also my first time really seeing snow that stuck to the ground in Iida.  I took hundreds of pictures when that happened but only a few turned out well.  And here they are…

Keeping up with me on twitter? I’m trying to post everyday but that doesn’t always happen. Still, I update more on there than here. http://twitter.com/jeanneabeck

It’s hard for an ALT not to enjoy this time of year in school. It’s January so the third years have ended their normal classes and have been preparing for graduation and college exams. This means that a good number of my classes have ended with them, which is sad because I really like those kids, but at the same time frees up quite a bit of time during the school day. The second years are preparing for their trip to Australia so it’s been interesting trying to make their final classes before the trip as meaningful as possible, and the first years are winding up their classes. It seems like whenever the teachers are really busy with exams, etc., ALTs aren’t so busy. I know however that in the fall, when ALTs are swamped with English Camp, the English debate contest, English Speech Contest, etc. teachers will not seem as busy by comparison although I’m sure they are equally taxed.

It’s a good time of year to feel content working in your town, but plan ahead for the many fun months to come. Dream and scheme.

In addition, what I hope will be my final semester of grad school classes starts this week. I just have two classes, a total of only 4 credit hours but I still think these classes will be a little demanding. Because of money I don’t think I’ll be able to attend my graduation in America, but as long as my family isn’t too sad about that I won’t be. I told my mom when I told her I didn’t want to walk in 2008 that I’d walk when I got my masters degree. Oh well. I’ll just have to get a second masters or PhD someday so they will have at least one of my graduations to attend. X_X

We’re back in Japan and enjoying at 3 day weekend thanks to the national holiday “Coming of Age Day.”  On this day all the 20 year olds celebrate officially becoming adults.  I honestly don’t know much about this holiday but I think it’s one of the few times you’ll see 20 year old girls wearing really nice kimono.  Last year we were still in America at this time so I’ll tell you want I see.

We had an absolutely awesome time in America!  We enjoyed spending time with everyone we got to see, and are so thankful to everyone for your kindness.  We’d like to come back to America in either May (or my graduation) or July (big family reunion in California/I miss seeing summers in Missouri), but I don’t think we’ll have enough money to do either.  I need to start saving money and paying back my parents for college, and of course I still have a few classes left to go and Ryan’s working as hard as ever on his classes.  There’s so many great deals going on now and while I wish we could go to Seoul for a weekend or travel to the other end of Japan for a while this dreaded thing called responsiblity has finally started poking me in the head, telling me to do the right thing.  I think we’ll have no problem coming home for either Thanksgiving or Christmas this year though so look for us then.

The trip back to Japan was pretty uneventful, which is good.  We got into Tokyo on time, managed to catch an earlier bus to Iida than expected where Ryan and I slept most of the ride away slumped over on each other to the surprise of some girly girls who sat near to us.  I took off Tuesday so we could go get Kitty, go shopping and catch up on sleep, and I worked Wednesday, Thursday and Friday although there weren’t too many classes going on at the time. 

Friday I signed up for my 3rd year on the JET Program.  It was exciting but at the same time it feels like I signed part of my life away.  This will definately be our last year in Iida though.  Because there are ALTs from two different programs/companies working at my school I think they’ll be wanting to at least transfer me after August 2011.  This, however, sounds like a good time to end my stay with the JET Program.  By then Ryan will have earned his associates degree and although we might not go back to America (I’m still thinking about staying abroad until he finishes his bachelor’s degree) I think that might be a good time to say good bye to Iida, if not to all of Japan. 

Self-Serving Promotion Time!

So if you haven’t noticed, it’s not easy for me to sit down and write a blog response as often as I’d like.  Until I figure out how to make shorter/easier to post blogs I’ve signed up for a Twitter account! http://twitter.com/jeanneabeck  Twitter, if you’re not familiar, is micro blogging.  You only have 140 character per post so I should have no problem writing on there daily.  So if you like, follow me!

… so maybe I’ll have to do one of those “year in review” things to make up for all I missed.  X_X

Hi, everyone! 

I’ve been back in America for the past week now enjoying the family, food and conveiences that Ryan and I had missed while being away in Japan.  We’re staying from the 17th-3rd and are so far doing a pretty decent job of seeing the people we’ve wanted to see, eatting food that we missed and buying goodies to take back to Japan.  I already need to say a special thank you to my mom and Ryan’s mom, who’ve gone the extra mile to cook the homemade food for us that we’ve missed.  Gotta love moms!

Ok, now for month’s worth of recapping…

The week after my last post Ryan and I went to Taipei to take a break from Japan, see some friends, and have fun in the busy city.  We had a great time and now really love the place, hopping to go back again.

In Taipei we got our hair cut...

walked around some very cool and modern places...

got to see and walk around in Taipei 101...

saw the Chang Kai Shek Memorial Hall...

...and ate good food and delicious desserts with friends.

Taipei actually reminded me a bit of America since people drive on the same side of the road, there’s less Engrish (no Engrish t-shirts!), and people stare less at foreigners.  We got to relax during our five day say and try authentic Chinese food, while sampling some of our favorite American and international food we weren’t able to eat while in Nagano.  I honestly went from not knowing much or caring much about Taiwan or Taipei to now thinking that it’s one of my favorite places in the world.  

After Taipei, Ryan and I came back to Japan with a lot of school work on our hands.  With finals approaching we were both really busy, and I had work to do for my Japanese high schools too.  It was tiring, but we got most of it done and out of the way before our two friends from Singapore, Yi Wen and Eveline, came to visit for a week.  It was a little hecktic having two journalists shadow us for a week during our final week before heading back to the US, but it was a lot of fun seeing them and helping them with their senior project.  I wouldn’t have traded that for anything.  (And Yi Wen, thank you for all of the high res pictures!) After they left, Ryan and I had a few days left to do our own final projects, pack, send kitty off to a pet hotel, and get ourselves to the US! We’ve been here for a week now and while we’ve gotten over jetlag, I caught a cold right after landing and am nearly over it while Ryan seems to have just caught a cold this evening.  Hopefully he’ll wake up tomorrow just fine. *crosses fingers*

On Friday I only had one morning class and then was free the rest of the day because of testing so while I was grading essays I uploaded some videos on Youtube on my FightouChan account.  Please check them out if you like! http://www.youtube.com/user/FightouChan

For instance, I uploaded some videos from our school’s chorus contest.  I should have done this a month ago – little did I know their classmates who are studying abroad in Italy, France and the US were waiting anxiously to see a video of their classmates’ performance. 

As for the name FightouChan, don’t ask I thought it was cool back in college.  Japanese people yell “fightou” or fight at sports matches and whatnot.  It’s like “do your best” or “go get ‘em.”  Chan is the suffix for a girl so some people call me Jeanne-chan, just as others might say Beck-san.   So I’m “little go get ‘em” or something. Works for me. 

Anyway, I’ll let you know on here if I post more Youtube videos, but if you already have a Youtube account go ahead and subscribe to my channel you’ll know if I post anything new.

I’d have to say all of the strangest drinks I’ve seen in Japan have come from Pepsi, and despite how horrible each of them have sounded my curiousity has always gotten the best of me.  First I found Pepsi Kyuri (Cucumber) while studying abroad in the summer of 2007.  Us international students dared each other, bought bottles of it and tried it.  This summer I saw Pepsi Shiso.  Shiso is a type of leaf used in various recipes.  Ryan actually kind of liked it but I’ve never been a shiso fan and did not appreciate it’s uniquely Japanese(?) flavor.  I just recently found Pepsi Azuki or sweet red bean flavor.  Why Japan? Why?!  Sweet red beans are used in a lot of traditional and modern sweets and actually tastes pretty good as part of a snack – but as the flavor of a drink? 

Since I want these “strangely interesting” blogs to be two sided, are there any strange soda flavors in the US or abroad now? …  I guess rootbeer is strange to them.

I’ve been enjoying some newfound freedom lately.  For the past few weeks I was seriously at school until 8 o’clock at night every night helping my kids prepare for the English debate competitions, which we had on back-to-back weekends.  Last weekend was my first debate-free weekend and I was shocked and amazed to be able to sit around and do nothing.  Same thing has been happening on week days too.  Getting home at 5ish instead of 8 or 9ish, I’m discovering I have loads of time I never realized I had before.

So what’s the big deal about debate?

I was never a debator, and in fact, I avoided the debate team just as much as I avoided the football team in high school because I found both pointless and intimidating.  It wasn’t until having to help coach Japanese students in English debate that I realized debate does have a point and intimidating is fun.  By the way, English debate does seem to be a pretty good way to help students learn how to speak English and do so confidently as long as you don’t train them to be killing machines.

At the regional debate competition, our two teams did well, placing fifth and sixth.  At the prefectural tournament, one of our teams was able to make it to the quarter finals and our two exchange students, who really took charge and lead the teams, got best debator nominee awards.  I was quite pleased.  The other day we celebrated by chowing down on snacks and reliving a few of the good moments of debate.  Mostly though, everyone wanted to forget debate.

This weekend I attempted to dress up our very bland Japanese house by glueing all the origami ninja stars the kids in Himeji gave Ryan and me on a string and hung them from the ceiling.  Everytime I look at them, next to our brightly colored Invader Zim Grr blanket that’s covering the majority of the shoji doors I get happy.  There’s a pile of origami balls of different sizes on our tv too.  The stuff of happiness.  The stuff of innosence and dreams.  I really need to write that school and say thank you.

The cold weather, forcing me to stay inside longer, has also forced me to deal with ways to both make our house more attractive looking on the inside and warmer.  Old Japanese houses are notoriously sucky in that there’s no central heating.  People, I guess, just curl up underneath their heated table or kotatsu, eat nabe or stew and wait until winter is over. 

I also took the beautiful Japanese style table running and tacked it on the wall in front of some of the sliding doors.  Sounds strange, but it’s been quite effective.  We’ve had to leave one door cracked for the cat to run in and out but the cold seaping into the room was quite annoying.  The table runner leaves just enough (or maybe a little too much) space for the cat to run in and out but keeps the rest of the door sealed.  Plus unlike keeping the table runner on the table, having it here will actually keep it clean. 

I found this past summer’s Iida Puppet Festival poster and put it up along with a traditional bandana from the same festival, but really I’m stretching it.  When we go back to America I think we need to find more posters to liven up our place for the rest of the winter months