And more food. I love Italian food. It's simple, it's easy, it tastes good. How could anyone mess it up?


Is it wrong that I laughed at this one?



Pizza. Who can mess up pizza? It's dough with stuff on it.

Stuff indeed. The upper pizza, as you can see, has broccoli, corn, potato salad, red peppers, and soggy bacon. Yummy.

The pizza here sports mushrooms, soggy bacon, corn, and red and green peppers, all topped with mayonnaise. What's that? You say it looks like there's scrambled eggs on that pizza? Don't be silly. Japanese pizza isn't THAT weird. That's actually egg salad. You silly people. Who would put SCRAMBLED eggs on a pizza? That's just gross.

The next two are from the school lunch Junior high school students and teachers get everyday. In Japanese, it's called "kyushoku", but the ALTs have lovingly renamed it "Spewshoku". Because it rhymes. And we're clever like that. Get it? Yeah, we have too much time on our hands.

Everyday, my kyushoku usually consists of milk, a bread loaf or bowl of rice, a bowl of soup or something, and some kind of meat (or fish - Japanese people classify meat and fish separately) and vegetable. This is a fairly typical school lunch. You will notice the tiny albino hot dogs. Scary, gross, and disgusting. I think they're actually made of fish. The lunch pictured below is second only to the lunch with the pasta, bread, and potato salad with soggy bacon. It's CARBtastic!

Here are the mysterious hot dog things again, tossed in a salad of boiled seaweed, cabbage, and corn. Looks like it's already been eaten, doesn't it?

All I can say is that you people can never call me a picky eater again.

Yea, it's a national holiday! And for once, I have nothing to do. Time to update my blog with pictures of wonderful Japanese foodstuffs.



I almost posted the picture upside down, but I caught myself just in time as I looked at the kanji writing. "Whew, that was a close one. I almost looked pretty stupid," I thought. And then I realized, "how would they know the difference?"

I'm sorry, I'm too American for this to ever, EVER look appetizing. Ever.

This was in my school provided lunch one day. Kind of looks like moldy little bits of thin steak, doesn't it? But what is it really?

Yup, it's whale. And this helpful chart lets you know what part of the whale you're eating. Yum.

This actually looks quite disgusting to me with all the mushrooms and whatnot, and it's not helped along by the fact that there's a raw egg in a bowl next to it. But this is, by far, my favorite Japanese food. It's called Sukiyaki (okay, everyone my parent's age and older can stop singing that song now), and it's just a bunch of vegetables boiled in a sweet soy sauce. You get 4 or 5 people around a pot like this, and you add the vegetables and meat to the pot. Then everyone just reaches in with their chopsticks and pulls stuff out. Once you get something, you dip it in the raw egg in your bowl to cool it down a little, then eat it. Sounds gross, but my friends who visited 2 years ago can attest to the fact that it's actually really, really good.

As we all know by now, when I say, "I'll update tonight," that means that the update will be in my head and will appear online in the next few weeks. This again won't be a very big update. I'm currently at work, with nothing to do as the teacher with whom I was supposed to teach today "forgot" me on his way to class. It's okay, though. I'm not bitter. I've been really busy lately, so I enjoy the free time. It's allowed me to get some important stuff done. In fact, I've almost completed my to-do checklist. All that's left is "Figure out if the Macarena starts with the left arm or right." If anyone could help me out with that one, I'd appreciate it.


On the Impending Speech Contests
Every year, there are several English Speech contests for junior high school students all over Japan. It starts in late September with district speech contests. Winners from that move on to the prefectural (state) contests, winners from that either move on to regional or to the national speech contest. Each school is allowed to send a few students to the district contests. Since I have 3 schools, that means I get to coach 6 students. Fun fun! Along with that, since I'm not in my third year in Japan, many nearby districts have asked that I help judge the speech contests for their district. I recently had a meeting with one such district. I'll be listening to and judging 27 speeches and 7 recitations. Since the speeches are judged on content as well as pronunciation, the district sent me all the speeches ahead of time so I could grade them on content.

I've started reading the speeches. Some are good, some are...not so good. In most cases, the students write their speeches in English, and the English teachers translate. The only problem is, many of the teachers don't have a grasp on the natural flow of the English langauge or on how speeches are written in English. Thus, many of the speeches lack a native speakers understanding of nuances and "real" English. I would feel bad for the teachers, but I don't. All of them have access to a native English speaker in the form of an ALT/AET (my job, remember?). Some of these teachers just decide not to ask their ALT for help. And thus you get a speech with the following quote. While the word choice makes sense, and is indeed very "slang" and "natural," using it in a very formal, serious speech contest was perhaps not the best choice.

"He [the speechwriter's dog] sometimes breaks our family rules. When I leave him home alone, he pisses everywhere in my house."

Another new entry

Coming soon to a blog near you. I'll update tonight if I haven't melted into a little pile of goo by then. For now, here's a great quote.

The new ALT in my city was asking some of the office ladies about Japanese life. Talk turned to the section cheifs in our office, all of whom are quite old men. "What do Japanese men do after they retire?" the new ALT asked. After a lengthy pause and some debate in Japanese, one of the ladies replied, "Get divorced."