Stray White Cats and Vitamin C

But first, an inspired poem:

Salt fills the ocean,
Perhaps that's why fish taste good.
Salt is Magical.

Yes, with a capital 'M'. Salt makes my food taste good, and man do I use a lot of it. You just don't notice these things until you're cooking for yourself on a regular basis. I'd like to think that I've been moderately successful so far with my cooking. My repertoire basically consists of stir fries (sometimes with instant curry), soups, and anything-that-can-be-put-in-the-rice-cooker-or-a-blender. My only complaints: my miso soup was rather lacking in flavor, and I bought these mushrooms that sort of overpower all other flavors, and they're not the tastiest mushrooms. Luckily, I'm not a picky eater.

Yesterday was my first day of school as well as the Opening Ceremony for the 2nd semester, which takes place after their summer holiday, which is their longest holiday. Right, their longest holiday is between their 1st and 2nd semesters. Seems odd. Anyway, I had to give a speech in English, and I even repeated it in Japanese. They had a student prepare his own English speech for me, which he presented about two feet in front of me in front of the school. There was lots of bowing and it was overall quite the disciplinary display. The whole rest of the day, if I walked about the school, the students would stare and giggle. It's like they've never seen a foreigner before, but they have - just last semester! Well, I guess I look different from Jay. The braver (or more brazen) students would try shouting things in English at me - usually things like 'Hello!' or 'How are you', though I did get one 'You are very beautiful' from a 3rd grade boy who quickly darted out of sight. (The junior high school is divided into grades, which are referred to as 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade.)

Today was my first day of teaching!!! I spent the morning and lunch time at Yamanishi Elementary School introducing myself to the 5th and 6th graders. I played True or False with them, feeding them some blatantly false information about myself ('I like to sumo wrestle') followed by some true information. I told them bits about Texas, mentioned NASA and longhorns. I showed them some of my origami and they were impressed. The homeroom teachers were very helpful with translating some of the instructions and questions and keeping order, though they are far from fluent speakers. They were really into it, though, and a couple of them even tried the yoga balance I demonstrated - to great comedic effect!

Oh - but the best part of today was the 10 minute break between classes that I spent wandering the hallways. I ran into a hall of first graders who just stared at me. Then they came closer. Then they started acting silly, one boy carrying a smaller boy up to me. 'Oh, present-o desu ka?' They all laughed, and the little one ran away. THEN they followed me to the library, where I had been teaching, after I said 'bye' several times. They stayed there until the bell rang, then they all ran away.

A side note on bells: at 5 o'clock every afternoon, the town clock plays the chorus of 'Yesterday' by the Beatles. Strange.

A different sidenote: I found my way and back (triumph!) to the HI Hirose (the equivalent of a Wal-Mart Super Center) in the next town over. Inside, they were playing Yankee Doodle on repeat over and over and over and over. It was maddening.

Ok, now on to the title of this post: Stray White Cats and Vitamin C - they're everwhere! Japan really doesn't have a problem with strays, but I've seen enough white cats around to generalize about it. And there is tons of Vitamin C water everywhere, and several different brands of it, as well as other forms of taking vitamin C. It's like there was a massive scurvy epidemic at some point. Which reminds me - limes! Where are they? My body senses that it's missing something, and I'm pretty sure that something is limes! My heart skips a beat every time I pass these small green lime-sized mandarin oranges that I haven't yet tasted because I begrude them their appearance. Oh limes! that perfect companion to salt and so many other things! I would probably write you a haiku, too, if you were here!