Mystery in a Box and Shabu Shabu on a Plate

Hello all. Sorry for not writing for a little while. Its just that there is not much eventfullness in my life.

On friday I was teaching at the school Yamanashi Gakuin. I created a game I call "The Mystery Box". Basicly I collected as many little everyday items I could find in my apartment (eg. a sock, a spoon, a toothbrush, chopsticks, a box of matches etc) and put them into a big cardoard box. I decorated the box with big question marks and wrote "MYSTERY BOX" on one side.

I then brought this box into the classroom and told the kids we were going to play a game called "Mystery Box". I explained to them what a mystery was and then told them that they had to "solve" the mystery of what was inside the box. I divided the class into two teams. I told them that if someone in their team could guess what the item was after only 1 guess their team would get 3 points. If they could guess the item after 2 clues, their team would get 2 points. And, yes, if they guessed the item after 3 clues their team would get 1 point. Their team could also get a bonus point if the person who guessed the item could make a sentence using the name of the item (eg "I wear a sock on my foot").

Here are some examples of clues I gave...

You use them when you go camping
They are kept in a small box
You use them to light a fire

MATCHES!

You keep it in the bathroom
It is made of plastic
You use it to clean your teeth

TOOTHBRUSH!!


The kids got really excited playing the game and I was tickled pink.

Although I was having fun playing Mystery Box with my kids, I started to notice I was feeling a head cold come on throughout the day. I was really bummed because I had plans to go out for dinner and karaoke. Unfortunately, by the time I was finished teaching I was feeling utterly woozy with the cold. Oh dear. So I stayed at home Friday night and rested up.

On Saturday I went over to my friend Fred's house and my friends Lynn, Olivia and Adam joined us to make Shabu Shabu. Shabu Shabu is a Japanese dish that is comprised of tons of vegis (peppers, mushrooms, sprouts, cabbage, spinach etc) and thin strips of beef. You have a big pot of water and you add all the vegis. You then cook the strips of beef seperately. When everything is cooked you put a pile of rice on your plate and scoop the vegis and beef ontop. Then you dip the strips of beef into little bowls of soy sauce or sesame sauce and eat them with the vegis. Yum yum!

It all turned out delicious. Then we all played a little bit of x-box and then watched Life of Brian (classic!). We all ended up staying so late that we crashed at Fred's. The next morning I helped Fred clean up his apartment then I headed home and cleaned up mine own (*yawn*, yes I know how exciting!).

Today I taught at a junior highschool called Sundai. The classes I taught were English Conversation, so I spent them telling the story of my misadventures snowboarding in Nagano and about the holiday Valentines coming up. In Japan on Valentines only girls/women buy chocolates for the boys/men. The men don't have to buy anything until one month later, on March 14th, known as White Day. On White Day, boys/men who got chocolates from ladies, return the favour by buying the girls/women candies or cookies (but not chocolates).

When I asked each of my classes whether they liked Valentines day not a SINGLE student raised their hand. It seems that the students don't like feeling obligated to spend so much money for other people. Despite this general feeling of dislike for Valentines, it seems that most female students will continue with the tradition of buying excess amounts of chocolates for the boys in the class....go figure.

I am getting excited about this coming weekend. I will be flying off to Sapporo, way up north, on friday afternoon and spending the weekend there. I'll be checking out the Snow Festival and, hopefully, doing some snowboarding. So, I will try and take some good pictures to share with you all.

Well , I better go. I hope you all are doing well. I miss you all so much.