The leaves have been changing and now most of them have fallen. The area still looks fairly green though due to the swaths of evergreen trees on the hills; many of the trees that died after being exposed to the salt water of the tsunami have been cut down as well.
I took some pictures of the trees that still had colored leaves a few weeks ago so I figured that I should post them.
A tree near the middle school in the area.
I do love maple trees in the fall.
Japanese maple trees tend to have purplish-red leaves in the summer but in the fall they become even more beautiful.
This bug's camouflage isn't working so well for him on the concrete. Then again, with all the green leaves disappearing from the area I suppose being on a tree wouldn't be very good either.
More buildings have been taken down over the past few months (though this one seemed to have been in pretty good condition, considering).
Recently the cleanup has also been focusing on the foundations of houses and other buildings; most houses in Japan don't have basements but they do have concrete foundations. When the tsunami destroyed and washed away the houses often the only thing remaining to show that a house had been there was the foundation. The de-construction workers (as I call them) use a machine similar to a digger (those ones with the long arm with a shovel at the end) but instead of a shovel they have a large metal pick that is similar to a jackhammer at the end. The long-armed jackhammer is used to break up the foundations, leaving just a pile of rubble behind.
The sun has been setting around 4:15- 4:30 PM so when I'm driving home from school I can see the sunset. On the day I took this picture the high tide had partially flooded the coastal area (and the road) near my place.
Actually it flurried a bit last week... so we changed over to our winter tires on Friday. It's illegal to be within 50 meters of snow without snow tires on your
car (or something like that), haha. We also got some thermal curtains for the apartment; they have a layer of aluminum foil inside of them. Supposedly there will be a 7 degree Celsius difference between using the thermal curtains and using plain cloth curtains.
Speaking of curtains, that reminds me of a funny thing that happened at the middle school about a month ago. At the time it was a bit chilly outside but not cold enough to turn on the heater; in fact, the window was open and bright afternoon sunlight was streaming in. The English teacher was explaining a new grammar point and I was walking around the room making sure everyone was paying attention. I heard a whispered conversation going on in the back of the classroom near the windows so I headed over to see what the problem was. A few of the boys seemed to be having a conversation about English (of all things); I heard one boy say, "Use 'Can I'," then another boy said, "No, 'May I'." As I watched, the boy closest to the window abruptly raised his hand.
Shingo-sensei: Yes?
Student: May I close the window?
Shingo-sensei: Nice English. Yes, you may.
(the student closes the curtain)
Shingo-sensei: ... That wasn't the window, that was the curtain.
(he has the students repeat the new word several times)
Shingo-sensei: But good job. One point!
Student: Yes!
(I give the student a sticker)
Actually in this particular class I have been passing out rather plain stickers that are round with a gold star in the center. The same student who asked the question is obsessed with collecting them because he says that they are like Dragon Balls.
Dragon Ball was an incredibly popular manga/anime series that ran for many years. I remember watching some of the dubbed episodes back in the early 90's.
Meanwhile at Hayai Elementary I had lunch with the first graders (always a treat). This particular class asked me some of the usual questions and then asked a question using a word I was unfamiliar with.
Student A: 好きな生き物何ですか。 (What's your favorite ikimono?)
Me: いきもの？ (Ikimono?)
Student A: はい、好きな生き物何ですか。 (Yes, what's your favorite?)
Me:「いきもの」は何ですか。 (What's an 'ikimono'?)
(at this point the teacher was listening in but decided to wait and see if the kids would be able to explain the word to me)
Student A: 生き物は。。。 (An ikimono is...)
Student B: 動物です。 (It's an animal.)
I looked it up later and apparently an
ikimono is a 'living thing'. I know it can be hard for little kids to explain new words to people, so I was happy that the teacher let the kids try to explain the word to me.
After asking me some more questions the class became obsessed with my (completely plain and uninteresting) earrings; as I've mentioned before, pierced ears are not very common in Japan and schools often have bans on students wearing real or clip-on earrings. As a result many of the girls (and boys) in the class ended up poking my ears quite a few times and asking me questions about them. The girls asked if they hurt (at the time a boy was tugging on one, which did kind of hurt) so I said "Not usually" as I swatted the boy's hand away. They next asked me about my eye color (whether it was gray or blue) and I said blue. I told them that my dad has brown eyes but my mom and sister and I have blue eyes and my brother has green eyes. They were completely shocked and asked me to verify several times with questions like, "Does your dad really have brown eyes???" I suppose family members having different eye colors is a... foreign... concept to them, haha. A few periods later the first grade teacher came up to me in the hallway and said that even after I left the students wouldn't stop talking about eye color.
And now, it's time for
Let's Learn Engrish!
'Engrish' is what happens when you take a statement in Japanese (or other East Asian languages) and plug it through an automatic translator (or just look up the words individually in the dictionary) but then don't have a fluent English speaker check the results. For humorous examples see
this site. Though I guess it's similar to American t-shirts or jewelry pieces with 'Chinese characters' on them that probably sound equally strange (or nonsensical) to Chinese-speakers.
Today's example is fairly tame (with two things I find strange about it) but since only two words are printed, that's actually quite impressive...
1. It sounds like it's a cookie made of squid (it was just a sugar cookie)
2. There was only one cookie
I would change it to: Squid-Shaped Cookie or I would make the wrapped clear (so you can see it's not made of squid) and call it a Squid Cookie.
That's all for now.
