Harry Potter as an Anime

I like how Snape is on a bed of lilies. Sneaky, there.

101 Dalmations

Thanksgiving!

Which sucked last year in Japan because there was none. I suppose that is to be expected because of the whole Thanksgiving is Christian and most of Japan is Buddhist...

so this year I found this awesome thing right here which promises a full on Thanksgiving dinner. (Okay, I don't see the part where they say "and all the fixin's" but there will be turkey and good times) But the thing is.... my husband does not like being social. At all. He will do anything to avoid going to events. Even faking being sick (Sometimes I wonder about his maturity). So even though I poked and pleaded, he wasn't going to budge.

Fine. I thought. He can sleep the day away while I go have fun. (Expensive $45 dinner fun) I went and asked around the few contacts that I know and it looks like my Japanese teacher is interested, as well as her International Associate friend plus the other Canadian in this town. (Did I mention that he and I are the total Canadian population in the town? I'ma 50% number here! That's the biggest number I have been and yet the lowest I have seen the Canada population. Granted I had lived in Canada before now...)

So hopefully I will have lots of fun and meet new people while my husband sleeps his Sunday away (He does that ever Sunday. I don't know how someone can sleep as long as he does)

Cute Bento

Bento - a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables, usually in a box-shaped container. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware.

If someone were to take this much time and effort to create food pictures, I might actually feel bad for eating it...

English Advice?

I teach English every Friday and Saturday to adults, with an English-Japanese exchange every Tuesday and a monthly visit every first monday to a day care to sings some English songs. The day care is a bit of confusion especially when the teachers do not understand a single word of my native tongue and I only a few of theirs. But we manage together, which is very helpful. If they had left me alone with 30-something children under the age of 6 I... would probably not do so well, haha. (Actually, I'm not so bad with kids and when we can both communicate effectively I am fine supervising kids. It's that darn language barrier -shakes fist- )

There are some times, though, in the adult class when they ask me a question and it stumps me. I can easily look up a word in my handy English-Japanese dictionary that I pirate away from my husband on the weekends because it has an English dictionary for English people in it as well. But when they ask me the why questions, that's where I have trouble. One of my students even told me that he could understand every individual words meaning but he couldn't understand the sentence meaning. Sometimes in English news or books I will have to read it over again because I do not understand the point they are trying to make in the sentence, but 80% of the times it is due to the fact that I will have skipped an important word. The sentences I use in my classes aren't terribly hard to understand - At least from my point of view- But sometimes I forget that they are learning the language, and just as I have a billion questions every time I study Japanese so do they.

Although is it too much to ask for a vocal response from them when I ask Does everyone understand? Does anyone have any questions? Because when they sit there re-reading what I have explained I cannot tell if they do or they don't and my instinct says Well if they aren't asking questions, they must understand.

Repost- Best Useless Thing

Ever.

Repost- Evil Cats

Have you ever heard a cat fight? Not a cartoon cat fight. Not a TV cat fight, but a real cat fight? Liiah described it best when she said “What?! What is it?! Have my nightmares manifested themselves?! Oh… Oh no. It’s just thecats.”

Yes well. Have you ever heard alley cats fighting?? Or, or, or a hungry clowder of cats? (Oh yeah. I’m smart. I can use intelligent words. Even if spell check says I’m wrong) Y’see, here in the… whatever part of Japan you’d call the place I’m living. Town, Country side, village, you understand what I mean, right? Well here there tends to be stray cats. Not just one, not just two, but, like, ten or twenty. (Okay, maybe only six or seven, but after 3-4 you really don’t care anyway) And these cats like to meow (Miaow?) constantly. I swear they take rounds. First going to this group of houses, then the next group and so on until the repeat and come back here again. And it’s not just meowing. Oh no. They like to pick fights with each other too.

At two in the morning.

Ugh, seriously. I’m sort of glad I don’t have to get up early in the mornings because that there would just annoy me to no end.