day at work

It's Obon week here in Japan, which means that people go to their hometowns for a huge family gathering and honour their ancestors. So, when people live further away, they usually take this week off to travel back and spend time with their families - Kind of like Christmas, except it's not officially a holiday or anything. 

So you'd think that since everybody pretty much has this week off, and on top of that it's summer holidays, schools would be closed, right? But here I am, typing away, not even making an effort to look busy anymore. While most teachers have taken the week off, instead of closing the school for a week, they made a rotating schedule for at least one teacher to go to school everyday to open and close up, and answer the phone. So, as I type, there's only me and another teacher just reading the newspaper. 

The only sounds I can hear at the moment are the sound of the air conditioner, and the typing on the keyboard. It's SO dead. Even though it's summer holidays, teachers still have to come to school every day, for full working hours - Apparently, it wasn't like this  5 or 6 years ago, since students also had school on Saturdays, but when they got rid of Saturday school, someone had the bright idea of making up for that working time by making teachers come during school holidays, despite having  nothing to do, but just trying to look busy.

So here I am, not having much to prepare since i'm an Assistant Language Teacher, trying to fill my hours from 8:30-4:30...

8:30: Arrive at school after riding my bike for 25 minutes to get here. Sweat profusely.

8:45 Continue sweating. 

8:50 Read emails. Try to prolong this for as long as possible, even considering reading junk mail just so there's something else to do. 

9:10 Write emails - Preferably as long as possible as to stretch it out for an hour or so.

9:45 Finish writing the first and longest email ever. Then decide to write shorter emails as to not waste too much time.

10:23 Finish writing all emails. Wish that I stuck with writing ridiculously-long emails again.

10:30 Write emails to other JETs to see if they're as equally bored as me at the moment. 

10:43 Check blogs (Thanks Google Reader!) and read  every single article. Wonder about trying to hide the fact i'm just surfing when the Vice principal walks by, but concede and continue to read.

10:47 Wikipediaing Cybill (the TV show) since a blog post mentions how a former writer of the show is now writing a CSI episode, and plans to make it about the murder of a snooty, sitcom star who was hated by everyone on set. 

10:54 Check facebook and myspace on the off-chance that the firewall blew up overnight and now allows me to access the pages.

11:00 Decide to print out cards for a class activity. Feel a sense of satisfaction for doing something remotely productive.

11:05 Give up on trying to cut out the cards and pasting them on cardboard. Don't want to get too ahead of myself. 

11:06 Be taunted by a notification that someone wrote on my Facebook wall that sits in my inbox.

12:08 Teacher came and asked if I wanted to buy a car. I said yes, and now he's on the phone to a car place. Awesome, albeit unexpected. 

12:28 Get mail - it's my ATM card in teh bank, along with 2 booklets and a little form! Yay! I can't understand it so it'll take ages to translate it all!

12:52 The Vice Principal turned on the TV to watch the baseball. It's official. There's not even any semblence of work being done now.

1:53 finished translating a document about "Net cash" that came with my ATM card - though the information in it doesn't really say anything about how to use netcash...  back to wasting time on the internet...

3:36 exhaust almost every possible avenue of entertainment on the internet without the use youtube. begin studying Japanese just for the hell of it. 

3:42 Give up on even trying to continue this blog post about what happens in my day, despite thinking it would ease my boredom...