More interesting news...

I went to elementary school today. Shonai, the school which I called in sick last Tuesday and told to reschedule on a Monday since I was going to the hospital with a fever and a finger infection.

They were great and really nice to me, asking if I was feeling better, and concerned that I would be biking home in the rain today (which I did, hopefully I don't catch something, though think it should be okay).

I came back to my H.S. to check mail, talk to my JTE, and some other things. As I was sitting here checking my mail my vice principal comes up to me with ... the black book. The black book is the book with all sorts of information and stuff, but the only thing I know it for is it's the book where you put in the paid-vacation you are going to take and sign off on it. He comes over with this book, and asking if now's a problem (my reply no), and then starts talking about the 1st of November (which was that Tuesday). I say yes, I was sick and went to the hospital, and even before he has a chance tell him that I would like to file that under bokkyuu, or sick leave. That stumped him. He paused, looked around nervously, then proceeded to retreat back to his desk. I have been waiting to see if he will return demanding I take nenkyuu, or paid leave, but it seems this is not the case.

Therefore, I guess what we have learned here is something that JETs knew all along: Your school will attempt to take off your paid leave without informing you about your other options because they don't want you to use your paid leave. JETs are not Japanese people; We value our vacation time like loose change for a homeless man, and we don't give it up easy. Japanese teachers take pride in never using any vacation, JETs take pride in using all of our vacation days.

This was the first vacation day I have taken yet. I also am not missing the school since they are making it up on a monday. I think in the back of my mind that this was the reason why the school gave me monday off in the first place: knowing that I would miss days and they could be made up on mondays, and my desire to leave on weekends perhaps adding on a monday and if there were no classes then I wouldn't miss anything.

This is all just my thoughts. I could be wrong.

A funny anecdote from school today: A kid comes running after class, and boldly asks me in Japanese "何人ですか？”or "Where are you from (literally what kind of person are you?)?" The appropriate response is american, but I shocked even myself when the joke response came out even faster from my mouth, "にんじん", or "carrot". The reason why this is funny for japanese people is because both have "jin", the question being in romaji: nani jin desuka? The funny answer: ninjin.

We were also playing bingo, and I had a little cup full of small white balls with the numbers 0 to 60 on them. The cup device worked where if you lifted it up then returned it, a ball would be pushed up and out of the cup, same thing as a bingo wheel or something. Well, I was shaking it, asking if students were ready when the top came off, and all 61 balls went EVERYWHERE! Amazingly kids everywhere sprung to action and every single ball was found and replaced in a matter of less than a minute. Wow, what bad luck though to have the top come off!

Apologies for these being purely text. I haven't had another exciting weekend of picture taking yet. I still have to put halloween pictures up on my photosite, as well as post some other random pictures of things that I took such as the bike-pile near the 7-11 and my finally managing to get my plastic bottle collection out for PET bottle day.