Valentine's Day!!!! Yaaaay!

Hello Dear Readers!!!

I hope you're having a wonderful day!

Finally, I could make time for this post. I wanted to do it last weekend, but a friend called out of the blue, saying she's coming to Osaka at the weekend (from Hiroshima), we haven't met for 5 long years!!! so I really wanted to meet her. 

Anyway, let's explain the Japanese Valentine's Day! It's quite different from western countries, what a surprise, huh?  So, February 14th is Valentine's day, when girls, or women give chocolate to the guy they have a crush on, or to their boyfriends or husbands. March 14th is called White Day...wonder why "white"...when guys give something in return, if they are interested in the lady they got the chocolate from.  So, to put it straight, if you give chocolates to your crush on Valentine's and you ain't get shit on White day, you're screwed. 

There are 3 types of chocolates on Valentine's Day. There is the "honmei" chocolate, which  goes to the boyfriend(-to-be) or husband. "Honmei" literally means "certain" or "favourite". Then there is tomo-choco. Tomo comes from the Japanese word "tomodachi" meaning "friend". Obviously, this type of chocolate goes to your friends. Today, at my school, many high school girls gave away chocolates, handmade cookies etc. to their friends. On this day, handmade sweets are very popular, it is a good chance to show off your cooking skills to your Mr. BIG ;). 

The chocolate moulds I used. diamond, ball, heart, sqare, dome and heart shaped.

After 2 coating, waiting for the Malibu (coconut rum) cream filling.

The finished product :) Not bad for a first try I'd say.

The third type is called "giri-choco". "Giri"stands for "duty" or "obligation". This is a kind of chocolate you give to your co-workers, mainly to the guys, but often to fellow lady co-workers too. This kind of chocolate should not be taken seriously, it's just for politeness. They have a pretty strict protocol, such as all chcolates should be the same, otherwise the receiving party might misunderstand. 

It's a bit far-fetched to me, but I love making sweets, so I always bake or make something for my boyfriend. I usually make more than needed and give some to my friends, but only the ones who are really close. 

One thing I love about Valentine's Day here, is the enermous variety of bon-bons, and home made sweets kits that are on sale from the second week of January! It's amazing! You can find many popular character shaped chocolates, really cute ones, all different kind of liquor chocolates, the finest Belgian stuff, and all kinds of ingredients for cooking that are not available everywhere throughout the year! This year only, I spent more than 25 000 yen on buying chocolates and mainly cooking ingredients!! Wow...

Everything you need from almod and strawberry powder to ONE PIECE shaped handmad choco kit.

These are my absolute favourites from day one! Japanese traditional themed artisan chocolates by Aya Kato.

For animal lovers...

...for Teddy bear and dessert addicts...

...for flower lovers...

The funny section: tits chocolate, money chocolate, sexy female body chocolate, and poo chocolate to bring you luck...I guess.

I hope you gave and got some chocolates today too. This is what I get from my friend, the librarian of the school: (the rose and teddy bear chocolate moulds I lent her). She did a really good job with them. The most delicious however, were the truffles...also home made. Yummieeee.

I also got some Belgian chocolates (not home made of course), they were really nice...must have been expensive!  

Hope you enjoyed today's post! But if I may advise, don't show love and respect only on Valentine's day. It's a nice gesture to give a small gift, but love and respect should be present in a relationship 24/7, 365 days a week, no matter whether it's friendship, family, or a love relationship.  

Damn...now that this nice topic, that I looked forward so much to share with you, is over, I gotta find some new topic to write about, hopefully by this weekend...hmmm....

PLEASE WRITE IN THE COMMENT SECTION WHICH CHOCOLATE IS YOUR FAVOURITE FROM THE ONES IN THE PICTURES! I really want to know what my Readers think! You can comment anonymously.  THANKS! (^^) /"

Valentine related post postponed...MALÉV Hungarian Airlines is over.

I've just talked to my parents and heard the news...

After 66 years of service, MALÉV, everybody's beloved Hungarian Airlines that we were so proud of went bankrupt. I'm shocked...devastated...and yes, I did cry. I'm a very sentimental person and had quite a lot of fond memories with Malév. Their BGM has been my ring tone ever since I had my first cell-phone.

The first flight ever in my life was with Malév. And if you don't live abroad, you don't know how it feels after a tiring 10 hours flight, and an hour waiting for transfer, to finally see it: the Malév colours on the tail of the plain with the colours of Hungary's flag. The flight attendants would say "Üdvözöljük a fedélzeten" instead of "Welcome aboard", they would serve cheese or ham sandwich to you accompanied by a bar of Balaton wafer. It tastes like home, it feels like home, and so, the last two hours of your trip feels much better.

As far as I know it's because of the EU. Our Prime Minister stood up against the EU because he didn't agree with things they were doing, and the result is that many countries are attacking us, saying we have no democracy anymore, blah, blah, blah. To make it worst, suddenly everybody wants their money back, even though they know we are struggling, thus pushing Hungary closer and closer to bankruptcy. I'm so pissed, and worried!!

You may ask, what do I care, living abroad, having a well paying job. The truth is, I've never planned to stay here forever. I don't want to. Japan is a convenient place to live, but mentally, it is so stressful, it's suffocating. I want to save money and get outta here. I want to go back to Hungary and live close to my family. In fact, I can't wait to go back...but with these circumstances, planning a family in the future, who in their right mind would go back there? They are ruining my homeland, and it's really devastating to see it. 

I would like to say THANK YOU to Everyone at MALÉV! Köszönet a Malév összes dolgozójának. Sajnálom hogy igy alakult. 

Isn't it beautiful?

Open Lesson and how a work relationship can go bad...

Okay, so, almost everyone who comes to Japan and teaches in public school will have this experience. It's called an open lesson, which means you are doing a team teaching lesson with the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English), and some teachers from your school  and other schools, as well as a few people from the Board of Education (BOE) would come and watch your lesson. After the lesson, there would be  a meeting where they would praise the good things in the lesson and rant about the bad stuff.

This is what we had last week. Unfortunately, the JTE wanted to include the T-NET (part time Native English Teacher) as well as me, the NET (Native English Teacher). I thought it was a bad idea from the beginning, since the Aussie T-NET doesn't have much when it comes to teaching skills...but the school desperately wanted to show off that they have two foreigner teachers. Also the JTE and the T-NET are both same age, same sex, same interest old guys, so they are on good terms. Whatever, I thought, after all I had no problems with any of them. However, I prepared myself for the worst, because the T-NET screwed up a lesson a few days before the open lesson.

This was a regular lesson we taught together for 3rd graders, and it was their last lesson before graduation. I proposed the topic of "What will you be doing in 10 years?" Me and the T-NET would each give a short 1 or 2 minutes speech, not more that 10 simple sentences to the students, then ask them to write about how they imagine their own future. As usual, the T-NET prepared a hundred slides and a full 5 minutes speech with lots of difficult words and useless information (way too many details). After the students wrote their short compositions and read them out, we had a Q&A session, when the kids would ask us questions they prepared. Did they have a lot of questions! Again, the Aussie guy would keep answering the questions in so much detail that he robbed the students of their time to ask more questions. It was not only rude, but unprofessional. That's when I got pissed the first time. How much does he like to listen to his own voice? When is he going to notice that the lesson is about the students and not about him?  I discussed it with the female JTE we taught the lesson together with, and she agreed with me.

See, that's the problem with people who, just like him, come here on a holiday working visa for a year, to play around, they are not professionals (yes, I have a teaching licence), they just came here to relax and see the world, and they tend to think they are more important than they actually are...so they screw up your lessons, if you are assigned to teach a lesson together. Usually you are not asked to, because most schools have only one foreigner, but God knows why, here they always want to push us to teach lessons together, because the students get more excited.  Whatever...

Anyway, after this incident, I got alert about the open lesson. We had a practice lesson the day before the real thing. That's when this Aussie bastard started acting like a jerk. We totally had no trouble up until then. So after this trial lesson, I went to the JTE because I noticed a pretty bad mistake on the handout. I told him what I think would be a better phrase to replace it. We were right in the middle of the conversation, when the old Aussi guy (59 this year btw) came between us, turning his back on me as if I weren't there, and told the JTE how to rephrase the mistaken sentence. As if it was his idea?! He was standing close enough to hear what we were talking about, then he just walks up, pretends I'm not even there, pushes me out of the conversation and presents the whole thing as if it was his idea. I was pretty shocked to be honest...but oh, well. He is probably obsessed with proving people that he is a competent teacher...or maybe he is just being snobbish about being a "real" native English speaker, because I'm from a not English speaking country. Who knows? 

It was just so rude and kind of childish. So I decided to ignore him afterwards. 

Next day, we had the open lesson. It went pretty well. Only one teacher from a different school came, a few of my school and two BOE guys. They had a few comments on the lesson, both good and bad. The meeting was held in Englsih coz the Aussie can't speak Japanese. I still ignored him, and quite enjoyed his speech, how great HIS lessons are, how creative HE is when he makes a lesson plan blah, blah, blah. He totally talked as if it was his school and if he would be the only NET here. I don't really like talking at these meetings anyway, so I quietly enjoyed the show....LOL He tried to seem so busy and important. It was rather ridiculous.  I don't know why he started behaving like this, but thank God, he will be gone next Friday. Part-time NETs contracts end in early February. 

My contract ends March 31st, but I'll probably come back to this school next year too. I hope the next T-NET will be someone with actual teaching experience in Japan, who is hopefully young. The generation gap is way too big between the students and him. When they ask him about movies or music, he would start talking about some 50 or 40 years old black and white movie, or some long forgotten band, that the kids are not familiar with at all. Then, the conversation just fades out, and the kids look really confused. I wonder if he ever actually noticed that. Next year, someone young and possibly female please!! Excuse my typing mistakes please...it's been a long week, and I have part-time language school teaching to do tomorrow all day... (T_T)

So, that's the story behind the scenes. 

Stay tuned, 'coz I'll be back this weekend with a Valentine's Day special post! 
( ＾＾ )ノ" Bye-bye!

New Year in Japan

Hi Everyone,


Sorry for keeping you waiting. I got an infected e-mail last week, that didn't seem suspicious at all, and I opened it. The past 4 days I've been closing e-mail accounts, creating new ones, saving contact information, and cleaning out my laptop. I thought it would never end, but with the help of an IT pro friend, I finally finished, so I'm back. Here is the promised post about Japanese New Year.


In Japan, as I might have said before, Christmas is party and dating time, while New Year's or, as they say in Japanese, Oshoogatsu, is more like a family get together. So, I went to visit my boyfriends family. It's not the first time I went there, but we were careful not to meet his relatives, other than close family. The thing is, in Japan, if you take your girlfriend or boyfriend home to meet your parents, it means you are to be engaged. Well, we aren't, and his close family knows it, his relatives, I doubt. So if I would meet them, he would introduce me to them, and they would start congratulating...it would be very awkward. It actually happened two years ago once...by some kind of aunt or something. We were just standing there in an awkward silence...

New Year's Eve dinner

Anyway, we had a nice dinner together on New Year's Eve, eating o-sechi (New Year's food).  I believe o-sechi may vary depending on the family members' preferences, but one common food is black beans and of course different kinds of seafood. I can't eat sea food, so I just ate soba, a kind of noodle. Toshi-koshi soba, is what they call the soba they eat either at New Year's Eve or on New Year's Day.  It is regular soba, only the name is special. I heard they eat it, because noodles are long, so it is a symbol of long life. If you eat toshi-koshi soba, you'll have a long life.



After dinner, around midnight, we went to a temple, and they rang the small bell there, clapped their hands and prayed. Then, they also pulled this huge thick stick like thing that hit a really huge bell. They said every temple that bell is supposed to ring 108 times, as according to Buddhism, people have 108 earthly desires, or something like that. My dear Japanese Readers, please don't hesitate to correct me, if I'm wrong.
Next day, on January 1st, we went to shrine for our hatsumode-first visit of the year. We had some fortune telling and stuff. Even though it was quite countryside compared to downtown Osaka, hundreds of people queued to ring the bell and pray, so we just skipped that. Instead we took a walk at the beach, it was pretty cold. We spent the rest of the day pretty much staying at home, eating all day.



The big bell thing.

On the 2nd shopping malls opened, we went around, and did a bit of shopping because everything was so cheap: New Year's bargain!!! Again, I love the countryside, there weren't too many people. My friends who went shopping in Osaka said it was unbelievable. People were lining up before opening time at the gates of the mall. When they finally got in, they were pushing and stomping each other, fighting like vultures to get the good stuff. Many stores sell so called fuku-bukuro, which is like to buy a pig in a poke. The direct translation would sound like "lucky bag", these are big shopping bags, that are sealed. They are sold for a certain price, but usually the products in it are more expensive. That's why many people buy them. Depending on the shop, in some cases you can actually check what's inside before buying it. It seems to be very popular.

I got my fuku-bukuro order from a cosmetics catalog. I could buy any 3 products for 5000 yen. I ended up getting some quality skin care products worth 16 000 yen for only 5000. Pretty nice, huh?


Anyway, New Year's bargains are still on! I finished shopping though. This year I want to save money, so one of my New Year's resolutions was to cure myself...yes, I'm a shopaholic. WISH ME LUCK!!

First day of work in 2012

The worst day is always the first day of work after a holiday. It really sucks. Officially, New Year's holiday is over on the 3rd of January, and many people start work on the 4th, especially office workers and public servants. Kids don't go to school yet though, for which many teachers take one or two paid holidays on the 4th and 5th to relax, visit relatives etc. 

Even the trains, without the hundreds of students I usually ride together with, seemed to be empty. The car I was sitting in was literally empty. I was all by myself-as Celine Dion would sing ...LOL. Anyway, this Wednesday I seriously thought, I was the only one doomed to work that day. It turns out, my assumption wasn't even far from the truth.

Ghost train...

Empty walkways...

For the past two days I was all alone in the English staff room, that I usually share with about 10 Japanese English teachers.  There were 5 more teachers in the main staff room, and 3 people in the office, plus the groundskeeper. After I got help to plug in the two gas heaters we have (I don't like messing with the gas myself), I kinda enjoyed being on my own, in a bright, quiet room. Spent my time with reading, preparing for my next team teaching, surfing the net, occasionally dozing off a bit. 

Where's everyone? Is this the new Biohazard beginning?

I think tomorrow there will be a big staff meeting, so I suppose almost everyone will turn up to work. Good-bye relaxing silence...welcome lot of stupid questions about how I spent the holidays. :) By the way, in my next entry, I will tell you about how I spent my holidays LOL. It's just that I hate when like 7 people (whom I don't even like that much) ask the same question one after the other, and you know it's just because they want to be polite, not because they really care. Plus, you have to pretend you are interested in what they did too.

Christmas in Japan

In general, Christmas is no big deal here. Of course, they have tons of Christmas decorations and light ups everywhere. Sometimes even more than what we have back home, which is weird, because they don't actually celebrate it. Families with young children might buy some presents for the kids, but once they reach junior high school, it's over. Same applies to birthday in most families. Couples might go on a special Christmas date, and friends might organize Christmas parties, not to feel lonely if there's no boyfriend or girlfriend around. Twisted.

Also, we are supposed to save energy because of the March disaster, remember?? Well, with this much light up and wasting electricity, I wonder what their idea of saving energy is.  Just look up "Nabana no sato".Here's the link: http://www.esankei.com/ryokou/sp/nabana.html .  It's in Mie prefecture, not so far from here. It's a gorgeous and unbelievably huge light art creation, but c'mon, do we really need this, while some people in the North/East are still struggling to get back to their normal lives? They used 5800000　LED lights to do the Mount Fuji thing only....Not that I don't want to go and see it at least once in my life. However, this year, due to that disaster, we could be a bit more modest...shouldn't we?

Christmas decorations in Umeda, Osaka

I tried to make our Christmas as European as possible. My Mom had sent us chocolate ornaments and the famous Hungarian "szaloncukor", which in mirror translation would be "parlour candy", as in old times the Christmas tree used to be displayed in the parlour, so guests would be able to admire it when entering the house.They come in all kinds of flavours and beautiful, stylish wrapping. If you happen to travel to Hungary in winter, you definitely should try them. 

I spent about 2 hours on skype on Christmas Eve, talking to my parents, opening presents. In my family, we open the presents in the evening of the 24th. Some families do it on the 25th. So I neatly placed the presents we got from my parents under the tree. We did "kampai" (the Japanese equivalent of "cheers") with some "umeshu" plum liquor and ate a Christmas cake I did from ready made materials in about 15 minutes. I refuse to spend too much time in the kitchen during winter season, due to the extremely poor insulation of Japanese homes. It's freakin' cold!!
But yeah, it was  a nice Christmas, despite the fact that I was away from home. Never happened at Christmas before...LOL.. It was really busy, especially buying and sending tons of presents back home to friends and family.  But hey, I totally enjoyed it! :)

The cake, our tree, the candies, the presents and the plum drinks :)

I don't have any Japanese style New Year's decoration in my home, but I've seen a few really nice ones displayed in shop windows. Next year is going to be the year of the dragon, so obviously, most of the decorations include dragons! 

By the way, how do you like my new visitor counter little globe on the right? I found it on another blog, tracked it down, and installed on my page too. Pretty cool, huh? Now you'll be able to see, how many visitors I have, and from which part of the world!! I could check it in my stats since I started this blog, but the info wasn't visible on the blog.

600 Page Views

Today I checked my blog and it has just reached 600 page views!!! Wow! 

Thanks guys! Thanks to all of you who have read it at least once! Tons of thanks to my regular readers! 

Special thanks to those who bothered to comment!

Today, at least one more post is coming up...after I did the laundry...soooo STAY TUNED!