Whooooa whoa whoaaaaa

School's in session bitches. I got up to Miyako 4 days ago, and started school 3 days ago. I've got 3 schools I'm teaching at: from Monday-Wednesday I'm at Miyako Senior High, on Thursday I'm at Miyako Kita High, and on Friday I'm at Miyako Kawai High. These 3 schools are about as different as you can get. Miyako Sr. High is a kind of big school (considering the area) with maybe 1000+ kids, and of the 3 schools I teach at it is by far the most academically focused. Most if not all kids there have high aspirations for getting into at least decent colleges, if not the big leagues. I've yet to actually teach at the other two yet, but from what I hear, Kita is just the opposite, in that its maybe 700 kids, and has a ridiculously high percentage of "Yanki" and "Housouzoku" (basically, ultra-punks (in the I-ain't-listening-to-yr-adult-ass, Fonzy-emulating kind of way), and biker gangs, respectively). They also have almost 0 interest in learning anything more than what is requisite to graduate. Suffice to say, I'm super stoked to head out there tomorrow. Lastly, Kawai has, all said, about 50 students. It is closing at the end of the school year, but apparently the kids in attendance are a great deal of fun to be in class with.

My lesson plan tomorrow focuses, first, around my self-introduction to the class, and second, on Batman talking to Cms. Gordon about Pittsburgh/Matt being awesome in various different ways. One thing I've noticed in my days subbing/the few days I've had so far actually being stationed at a school is that the cockier you are, the better the kids seem to react. So yeah, basically I plan on converting all of these kids over to the Steelers nation by the school year's end. There might be a Matt Nation in there too...

Miyako is a pretty nice city, though very country side. Shit's cheap (shit = everything, for instance, where 1 plate of the cheapest sushi in Tokyo runs about 140 yen and the most expensive going up to 700 at a Conveyor belt sushi shop, the cheapest here is 98 yen with the most expensive being 300 (and I'm RIGHT on the coast, so shit's real fresh)), people are real nice, my "co-workers" (none of us work at the same school, but we're all employed by the same company) are all surprisingly cool, and though I miss the hustle-and-bustle, go-hard-or-go-home lifestyle of Tokyo, its refreshing to get out of that kind of thing. Plus I'm surrounded by mountains, hot springs, caves, ski resorts, and THE OCEAN.

Oh, and I fixed my computer and got a new phone (both were uber-busted, the former being less so than the irreparable latter), so I'm back in touch with the real world. Speaking of which, if you want pics sent to you guys from my phone, just email me at tetsuou1986@softbank.ne.jp and I'll take a picture of the first thing I see and send it back yr way. Quality won't be the best (I picked up the cheapest phone I could), but if you wanna see what the country side of Japan is like, that's probably yr best bet.