Getting to Kobe Carina and I caught a shinkansen to Kobe, a little worried we were running late until we saw other JETs on the same train. At Kobe Station, we eventually found JETs en masse waiting for the bus to the hotel. They had to charter an extra one because there were so many of us. The bus crossed a bridge and we were on the man-made island in the sea. At the lavish hotel, we were guided toward the basement reception by tons of uniformed, polite staff, far more than were needed. Smartly, they had two key-cards per room so roommates did not have to depend on the random person they shared the room with to get in. This is good since I never even saw my roommate until the next morning. I would have preferred a single room, though; I am an adult.

Hey, This is a Pretty Good Conference I was pretty impressed by the opening panel discussion. It looks like this conference will be better than I gave it credit for. They opened the floor up for questions and most of the JETs who walked up to the microphones at the front of either aisle of the auditorium had very pertinent questions except for two weird people, one who went on a seemingly irrelevant tangent about racism and the other who admitted that he criticized and corrected the teacher in front of the class then wondered why she starting sitting in the back, not participating. Duh. How many times did they tell us to have a little diplomacy and not force the teacher to lose face in front of her students? The panel handled the question so well, they got a round of applause.

The AJET Secretariat I went to the mezzanine and asked a couple questions to the AJET rep on duty. The first was, "What the heck is a secretariat?" and then I asked if I could go through with my crazy idea of writing an AJET book on passing the driver's test. (This, even though I haven't passed it myself yet.) Everyone was very receptive and excited. Woo hoo!

Workshops My favorite workshop today was on the theory of Multiple Intelligences. I got ideas just from the way she did the presentation. People found their groups by making the animal sound of the animal written on one's sheet (no talking allowed). When she chose someone at random, she asked things like "Who's wearing blue?" "Who is an only child?" "Who has a birthday on the 16th?" "Who has climbed Mt. Fuji?" then picked someone from the few who raised their hand. The actual presentation was phenomenal as well, and the quiz (to find our own "Intelligence") was fun. I think I will start to put this theory into practice at my schools with all the good ideas she included in the handout. The workshop on Music in the Classroom was pretty good. I was amazed when she suddenly taught all of us the Macarena. I kind of stole the microphone and added the bit about teaching the kids the names of the months while doing the 12 steps of the Macarena. A couple people had heard about it already, but most liked the idea. We then did "Music Poetry" where we changed a verse of "Imagine" by John Lennon then read our new versions aloud individually. I was vastly confused, however. Am I the only one who thinks the lyrics are happy? I mean, it's about living in peace, right? Here are the lyrics (we only used the first four lines of the second verse, changing the key words to make a new and often amusing poem.):

"Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...


Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace..."

So I guess it's the first line that throws everyone off. It's not often that someone talks about heaven in a negative way. In this case, heaven is an indefinable 'higher purpose' people strive for when they should be living for their life today. I think. I am notoriously unskilled at interpreting lyrics, but it seems pretty obvious here. Yet, the presenter said, "I'm sorry these are such sad lyrics" and most of the audience did not seem to get it, even in their poems. People kept putting good things in place in heaven so their poems did not make that much sense. You're supposed to put something bad, right? Am I wrong that "Imagine" is a happy song? One girl put centipedes! She understood! It was one of the best poems, except that most of the audience did not understand when she used the Japanese word for centipede: "mukade" They have probably never had to deal with them, lucky bastards. After lunch, which was efficient and yummy, we had more workshops. I went to "TEFL/TESOL Theory" which had a very clever presenter who kept practicing bad teaching techniques then would stop and asked us what he just did wrong. One time, I was suddenly lost at what I was supposed to do - I even stressed a bit - and then realized he had confused all of us on purpose. That stuck in my head; it was very impressive. I almost went to the "Trading Places (Maori)" where we would listen to a class in a different language (Maori) to understand what our students feel like. Instead, I opted to go to "Elementary School Visits." It had the best, most extensive handout ever, but the actual presentation was a bit disturbing. She kept talking about how we're supposed to get the homeroom teachers involved and motivate them to teach English in our absence. Huh? I should have went to the Maori one.

The Search For Kobe Beef No one except for me was willing to search out and pay for the notoriously expensive Kobe Beef with Yong, so the two of us went on our own. On the way, we stopped in Kobe's Chinatown, saw the fanciest public bathroom ever, then we went to the Earthquake memorial. At the memorial, which was a bit spooky, we asked this classic old Japanese couple where we could find some Kobe Beef. They discussed it for a bit, then gave us excellent directions... to a place that did not have Kobe Beef. We were quite embarrassed to walk out of the yakiniku joint after just sitting down. Nearby, we found a restaurant that had a big advertisement for Kobe Beef (with Beef in katakana, even.) But it was just closing as we walked in. And it was only 8:30! Sheesh! We were starving and thinking about giving up as we walked back to the station. Then suddenly, we found some. It was very non-touristy, but it did say "Kobe Beef" in Japanese and had a small platter for $50 so we figured it had to be it. We went up to the tiny restaurant, confirmed it was the real deal, then ordered. Conclusion: Pretty yummy! My only complaint was that it was a bit fatty and fat is hard to chew compared to the very tender meat. It was also a bit over spiced. Other than that, however, it was a very satisfying meal.

A Morning of Zen In the morning, we could choose two presentations to go to, then we were free! I went to a really cool presentation on Zen in modern Japan. Totally worth it. Before the speaker arrived, there was a funny message on a white board saying, "All American JETs must pay $50 to Vivian Topolski" (or some name) followed by some official-looking names of the organizers. I was like, "Huh?" but assumed it was legit. I sat down in the second row and found myself next to Vivian Topolski herself. At first I thought she was just someone with a similar name who was trying to collect for the real person, then I realized she was the prankster. She was sitting with Kate from Nagasaki, one of the first people I met at the Tokyo Orientation (not to be mixed up with the other six Kates I've met here.) Someone official came in and eyed the message suspiciously. Shortly after, Vivian ran up and erased it. She got a round of applause. The presentation started shortly after and was really good. He was western, yet so Zen. He told us simple tricks like pushing your energy downward when nervous. His examples of how Zen has affected modern Japanese life were really insightful, as was his comment that if "Zen" had not been romanized with the magical "Z" (that so few proper names, Zorro for example, start with) would we find it as mystical as we do?

* * STUPID THING OF THE DAY * * After grabbing some lunch and one last Haagen Dazs, I went to the station. It took me a long time, a really long time, a super really long time, to realize that this was not the station I wanted. I came by a hotel shuttle, remember? D'oh. Worse, I could not find a single train going where I wanted. Where was the shinkansen station, dammit?! I refused to take a taxi, but luckily, I ran into the other Melissa and Glynis at the station and they explained that I needed to take the subway. I would never have guessed that. I didn't even know Kobe had subways.