Wednesday, May 14, 2008

"Hard Work! Progress! A Beautiful Star!"

Third day back, back in the rhythm. I was pleased to finally be able to say "ohisashiburi desu ne" - something like "long time no see" - for some reason I've wanted to say it since the first anime I watched, when the albino villain drawled it in a fascinatingly menacing manner. But of course, since I've been newly meeting people since I came to Japan, the return after Golden Week was my first opportunity to try it out.

Except for the fifteen minutes or so when I am actually eating, I am constantly, 24/7, absolutely starving. I'm not sure why since I cook as much as I want to eat for breakfast and dinner, and lunches are very carefully prepared to fulfill all our possible nutrition needs. Even when I eat a full pancake in the morning (which, by the way, I made peach tea pancakes and topped with mango jam? Heaven) my stomach is growling when fourth period rolls around. This is very embarrassing when the class is engaged in silent penmanship.

Someone kindly gave us the menu for the month - it's in Japanese, so when I have nothing else to do I have fun trying to translate the next day's lunch and then seeing how wrong I am. It's especially fun with katakana - the Japanese way of pronouncing foreign words. "Apparently we're eating a minibus tomorrow," I informed the other ALT. "Along with corn-and-nut salad." Well, at least the latter is possible.

2 comments:

Beeniac said...

Hi Em,
How did they respond when you said "long time no see?"
Maybe it's something only villains say. Hope not.
Love,
Mom

Unknown said...

Hey Em, I had a good day, glad to hear John dwrds endorsed Obama. Your hunger probably has to do with lipid hormone metabolism. Your body might have low Leptin levels, which makes you think you're hungry, or you might have too many Leptin cells in your blodstream, so that you've become desensitized to their telling your hypothalamus you are full and thus you never feel full. Keep excersising, eating just enough to sustain yourself and taking care of your general health and eventually your hormones will fall into place. ---wood