School Food Porn 2.0

Lunch time in Japan is still my absolute favorite part of the day! Before coming to Japan, I was pretty hesitant about the food but now, I'm all for it. I'm a pesky pescatarian so if it has meat, aside from fish, I pick it out. Check out some my school lunches below! 

Love that salad! So yummy!

I'm not a big fan of white rice ;(

I asked them to serve me less rice. That day was sakura rice! Yep, sakura flowers in the rice!

The Luna case hold medicine. Today was muchi day. I ate it begrudgingly. 

I forgot my luna case so you can see my medicine in the glass cup. Today was natto day <3

Bread days are my favorite. These strawberries are from Ginoza!

Okinawan taco rice without the taco meat. I loved the mozuku soup and the pumpkin croquette!

Benimo or Okinawan sweet potato (purple) was so good! 

The final school lunch: Nan and Curry. 

I wondered about Nan Day earlier that morning so when I opened the bread container and found nan, I freaked! I absolutely love Indian food and Nan is my guilty pleasure, so this was a great way to end my final Kyuushoku.

You'll be missed!

Living in Japan Makes You a Weirdo

There is a wonderful post floating about the Internet called, "10 Ways Living in Japan Makes You Talk Like a Weirdo," and it's one hundred percent true! If you've never lived or studied abroad in Japan, you won't understand. Sorry!  However, if you are about to embark on this JET journey, get ready for Japan to change you in ways you never thought imaginable!

My favorites from this post are:

"Nani kore?" means "what's this?" I use this when I am utterly confused, which is often.

Omiyage is souvenir-like food from wherever you just visited

Sometimes, I get creative and use Espanihonglish! For example, in Ishigaki, I said, "Donde esta the beach desu ka?" It came out so naturally, it freaked me out for a second.

For more laughs, there is an awesome Tumblr blog with hilarious ALT-ism: Inner Thoughts of a JET

Enjoy!

Ishigaki Island Adventure

The rowdiest OkiJETs assembled for my last vacation.

Photo: Tristan Salvenera

I'm sure you know by now that Okinawa is a tiny Japanese island located fairly close to Taiwan. I currently live on Okinawa's main island, Okinawa Honto, but I recently had the opportunity to visit Okinawa's southern-most island, Ishigaki.

Sixteen of us met up at Naha International Airport to board an hour-long flight to Ishigaki. From there, we separated into three groups and dined by ourselves until we met up the following morning for snorkeling and scuba diving.

Cami, an Ishigaki OkiJET, organized the snorkeling and scuba diving! Thanks girlie! The snorkeling spots were absolutely amazing. I'm not the best swimmer (or so I like to tell myself), but I enjoyed floating about and checking out the sea life. Scuba diving was also a lot of fun, but I would have liked more freedom to move around. I also become a bit seasick coming out of the water so once I put my gear away, I hoped back into the water in my wet suit and relaxed for a bit.

Later, we were dropped off a Paniri Island, a privately owned island where we ate lunch, got in trouble, and jumped off the peer. Paniri Island had the most beautiful water I've ever seen! I should know, I've swam in the Caribbean. Trust me when I say that the Pacific Ocean is where it's at. Sorry, not sorry Atlantic.

Our night was eventful; one of my favorite parts was watching the boys go completely HAM during a Taylor Swift song at karaoke.

On second day we all took a 15-minute ferry ride to Taketomi Island. This island is known for their traditional Okinawan architecture, Shisa, star sand beaches, and water buffalo cart rides. We rented bicycles and rode to Kondoi Beach, a shallow yet absolutely gorgeous beach, where we lazed about and then moved to Kaiji Beach to find some star sand. Star sand isn't actually sand, it's the remains of tiny star-shaped crustaceans. It takes some effort to search through the sand in order to find them, but a small shop near the beach sells small bottles of star sand for \300. It's great omiyage!

That night, we ate, drank, and spent way too much money at an izakaya. Later, we migrated to a bar for more drinks as well as pool and darts.

It was truly a wonderful vacation with only a tiny bit of drama. ;)


Want to know more about Ishigaki? Click the picture below!

The Ryukyu Star and My Bungee Jumping Shenanigans

Okinawa JETs have their own online magazine called the Ryukyu Star, where you can read awesome articles by your fellow OkiJETs. 

Click on the photo for the Ryukyu Star's Summer Issue

This past issue, I contributed an article and a video on my bungee jumping experience at Macau Tower, the worlds highest commercial bungee jump. 

To read the story and watch the video, click on the picture below!

Enjoy!

Self-Introduction Lesson: All About Your Gaijin Weirdness

This posts is photo heavy

 

New JETs are due to arrive in a couple months, so here is an example of my self-introduction lesson (for elementary) with a corresponding game. Good Luck!

 

Nice big picture of yourself!

If you're from the U.S., point out which state.

As you can imagine, this slide was a hit with the kiddos.

The teachers enjoyed this one, as there are no casinos in Japan

The kids had no idea what a panther was! On the other hand, do you know what a tanuki is?

305 til I die!

Kids love Iron Man!

They freaked when I talked about alligator tail. Many students expressed that they wanted to try it as well!

This slide was also a hit for obvious reasons.

The only photo of my dad smiling. No lie!

Police officers are cool in Japan

My cat's name is actually Chin-Chin, but it's not a good word in Japanese.

I regularly dye Panda's hair. At first she had a pink Mohawk but since it's too close to her eyes, she now sports a pink tail.

They really liked Mrs. Pricklepants

This was also a popular slide

 

Throughout my presentation I had the students repeat vocabular words, like "alligator," in order to prepare them for my self introduction game.

 

A pair of students share a paper and the students place their hands on their head. When I say a vocabulary words, the students must quickly circle the corresponding picture. The fastest student receives one point. A variant (for younger students) is to have the students point to the picture instead.