Well, it's been awhile. I haven't had the energy just to sit down and type out a long entry in awhile but I'd figure I'd write one just to let everyone know what's going on.
One of the most interesting things that has happened lately was an "attack" by a bear some poor elementary school kids at Fuji Elementary School. I wasn't there when it happened but apparently a bear came drown from the mountain and chases a group of elementary school kids around. The school is very close to Fujimidai (my middle school's name) so school shut down early and the male teachers from both schools went on bear patrol. I was at my other elementary school when this all happened, but I figured something was amiss when I saw some of my students fleeing to their homes with a good hour or so still left of school. Although it was seemingly a very serious situation, I couldn't help but laugh at the image of some little kids fleeing in horror from a small Japanese bear. No one was hurt, so maybe it's ok to laugh a little...
And now for a random rant about Japanese culture! The subject of this rant: Japanese radio. As bad as Japanese television is, Japanese radio is 20x worse. Our town has one radio station called FM Fuji. This means we can't change the station when they go into commercials or talking. And boy is there a lot of talking. I think they only play about three songs an hour on average, and that's me being generous with the guess. In addition, they often cut songs off about halfway through or will talk over the song about 30 seconds or so into it. The rest of the time is filled with long rants from DJs about God knows what. They just talk to themselves for twenty minutes at a time, it's unfathomable. About the only one of these rants I understood was when the DJ was playing a video game and describing it to the listeners as he was playing. I think maybe I'm fortunate that I don't understand it.
They also play some of the worst songs you can imagine. The Japanese music itself isn't so bad, but it seems like they pick up a bunch of English language songs that they can play for cheap/free. I've heard some of the worst heavy metal, hip-hop, country and just about every kind of genre on this station. For example, today they played a song called "sex-o-matic" which was just some guy talking about how everybody calls him sex-o-matic and that he's not here to break your heat. For some reason they never talk over/cut short these songs...
If there's anything positive to say about FM Fuji it would be that they have some hilarious random English phrases inserted into the programs. My personal favorite is "HOT SHOT AIRPLANE" but there are a few other gems such as "HAPPY LITTLE FAMILY" and "QUICK DELICIOUS DINNER". I have no idea what these phrases mean, but it usually leads to more talking. There's also some random sound bites from celebrities. They have a sound bite from Jon Bon Jovi which is kind of cool, but mostly just completely random.
Well, that's all I can come up with for now. Hopefully there won't be such a long wait between entries next time, but I can't make any promises!
