Blind Dates, Autumnal Equinox and bad-ass teaching habits.

Number one sign that maybe you should not be a teacher: You fall asleep in your own class. Yes, its true...Yesterday, I fell asleep in class...the class that I was suppose to be teaching....now, I'd like to give the excuse that I was totally exhausted and i think that maybe I am coming down with something. But come on...really?? I fucking fell asleep....I was so overwhelmed with how boring the class was that I had to teach, and annoyed cuz the person I am team teaching with, would not allow me to do creative things, to spice it up. So in this selective English Class (its optional, but students are REQUIRED to take it...Japan is so wierd.) we were watching this english video on Rakugo (a performance that involves a fan)...I decided to sit at a desk in the back of the room...suddenly, I find I can no longer stay awake...cuz the video is horribly boring...I don't even know what it was about, but it was making my skin crawl with anxiety...you know, when you are so craving a warm bed, but you have to sit somewhere and be polite?? Well, needless to say, my students also fell asleep...but they were like, if the teacher can sleep...so can we!!!...I think, if/when it happens again, I'll just plead Narclepsy...I mean, what else is there to do?? Class isn't going to suddenly become any less dry.

Today was a national holiday...Autumnal Equinox...I love the fact that we get days off to celebrate the seasons...It was raining, but me and my friend M took a short road trip to Kotohira to check out the shrine...which was atop 700 steps. Other than being kind of physically draining (even with the rain, it was still pretty humid) it was totally worth it. The shrine was high up in the mountains, and the view was incredible...especially since there was tons of mist hanging over the mountains and the valley below. It was one of those moments, where I looked around and thought..."Wow, I'm in Japan!!" ...This would be an appropriate place to pop in a picture...but alas, I can't figure out how to put pictures up on this blog-thing...technologically challenged...This is where I need my fab friend Jason, to explain things to me.

And finally, this evening i had my first Japanese blind-date. UGH!!! On a blind date scale of 1-10, 10 being OH my God, I want to have his children...1 being "excuse me, i need to use the loo...then calling my best friend on my cell, and pleading with her to call me and get me the hell out of the date."....I give it a 3...I mean, I've done my fair share of blind dating...and for the most part, I have yet to experience a totally horrendous date. Its really a combination of things...1) My friends know my tastes pretty well, and don't set me up with total losers. 2)I'm a relatively confident person, with a few interesting anecdotes to keep the conversation flow going if it starts to dwindle. 3) I'm generally pretty patient with people, and willing to give them a chance beyond an immediate impression. So at the very least, I can make it thru an entire date without being rude. That said, those things only apply to blind-dating in an English-speaking culture. So the guy from tonight gets a 3 because he seems pretty sweet and kind, intelligent and I hear he makes good money (he's a physical therapist at a hospital). But the overall date, BLEW!!! I mean, first off my friend K and her husband had us both over for dinner...so it was like having chaperones watching over us the entire time. Then there is the obvious language barrier...he's japanese..I am the 2nd Western women he has met...EVER. And third...I know I don't understand the culture...I REALLY KNOW that I don't understand the dating culture in Japan...I mean, okay so a guy sleeps with a girl in this country...many times that means, he then has to meet her parents and then they get married...UM HELLO!! not to air my dirty laundry...but I don't even want to think about how many husbands that would mean I would have had already...So the whole time, I just kept saying..."well, I'm only here for 10 more months." and My friend K, (god bless her) kept saying things like..."well, when I met my husband (she's a NYer and He's Japanese) we didn't speak at all...there were lots of silences, but eventually we began to understand each other."

Now no offense to my friend K. But a) I'm not ready to get married. B) I'm really not up for dating someone who I can't communicate with nor share ideas. c) I am having enough trouble with the culture issues..I don't think the Japanese dating culture is something I'm ready to take on now.

Of course I did agree to go with him to a movie...but I'm hoping I can get him to understand the western ways of being friends with members of the opposite sex.