The Surprise Engagement Party

Friday was graduation day at my high school, and this year was particularly emotional, because I'd seen many of the graduating students grow so much in the past three years, and had become incredibly attached to them.

However, it was also a uplifting occasion because I got to celebrate with them, take lots of pictures together, and see an old coworker, Max, who'd come back for the occasion.

 To celebrate graduation day, and for old-time's-sake, Max, Sun, and I went to lunch at Cafe Kugafu. While there, we kept an eye on little baby Dion, whose family owns the cafe. When we were getting ready to go back to school for an International Club meeting, the cafe got incredibly busy. I knew that Kazuno (Dion's mom) would be extremely busy trying to take care of customers and watch Dion, so I offered to take him back to school with me for the afternoon.

Back at Koyo, we waited for the club meeting to start, and Dion fell deeply asleep in my arms. When it was finally time for the meeting to start, I walked in and the room exploded! 

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More than twenty students greeted me with party poppers and screams of "Congratulations!" I was completely shocked: they were throwing me an engagement party! Amazingly, Dion stayed asleep through all that commotion, and I quickly searched the room for some place for him to sleep. I spotted the prop box full of cozy costumes and laid him in there. He stayed asleep in that box for an entire hour of loud music, dancing, laughter, and countless girls taking his picture. :) Too cute.

 Once Dion was settled I got a chance to really see what was going on. The students had gone into great detail decorating the classroom, and had drawn some pretty convincing pictures of me and J. <3 br="" nbsp="">

 

 Then the leader of our club, M, annoucned that it was time for the first event: a dance to "I Think I Wanna Marry You." At first I was amazed that they'd choreographed a dance for me, but it turns out the plan was to play the music really loud and just run/dance around the classroom in a circle. Tooooooo fun!
 

 We also had a delicious cake with fruit and a giant chocolate circle on top. :)

 And the final event was a model-walk-race. Haha only my girls would come up with such a thing.

 It was incredibly fun, though, and Max really got into it.  That boy looks FIERCE!

 After an hour, Dion's mom came to claim him, and the party kept going for about another 45 minutes. We played another round of runway race, they asked me a bunch of questions about J and our relationship, and then we all sat around eating and chatting. It was SUCH a sweet thing for them to put together, and I feel incredibly lucky to have such thoughtful, kind students. I am going to miss them all TOO much. What a great day!

Office Prank

Among the many amazing, wonderful people who are abandoning me this year is Max, my favorite coworker. I can't even begin to deal with all the emotions that come with saying goodbye to him or my other friends, so I am just going to get to the subject of this blog: pranking Max. 

I've been wanting to pull a decent prank on Max for awhile. He's the kind of easy-going, fun guy who just begs to be pranked, and I am just the punk coworker to do it. 

Even though his contract has expired so he no longer needs to come in to work, I knew Max was going to be there for a little while this afternoon, and brought supplies with me to begin work in the morning. 

I planned to just gift-wrap the things on and in his desk with blue paper, but once I ran out of things to wrap, I realized that the desk looked a bit bare, and thought I might as well wrap it, too. 

At that point, another coworker finished her classes and came over to help me. She had the idea of putting tape, sticky side up, on his chair and dubbed it the "Max, don't leave" chair. 

We added a few silly posters just for fun and sat down to wait. 

Finally, around 2 p.m., Max arrived. He was definitely surprised but maybe a little too harried to fully enjoy it.  ;)

He was a good sport, and it was a fun way to pass some boring office hours, but next time I prank someone I want it to really cause a reaction. ;) Maybe my new coworker will be a victim to my cruelty someday. Mwahahaha. (I hope he's not reading this.)

Any prank ideas you guys wanna share?

The Monster Inside

I have never been one for confrontation.  Call it middle child syndrome or a naturally peaceful disposition or just plain cowardace, but when something gets on my nerves I almost always hold my tongue.  Sounds perfect for living in Japan, the passive aggressive capital of the world, does it not?

 

Chigaou!*

I hadn't realized it, but the extreme passivity of Japanese culture is too much, even for me. All the complaints that I have bottled up have begun to vent themselves... without my permission.

 

Just in the last month I have snapped on at least three occasions for offenses ranging from the extremely menial (persistent reminders in a facebook game) to the more peeving (America stereotypes) to the truly obnoxious (extremely loud neighborhood announcements at 7 a.m. on a Saturday. Screaming back at loudspeakers doesn't make me insane, does it?).

In almost all of these cases, I would normally just suck it up, keep the peace, say nothing... but there's a monster growing inside me. And if I keep feeding it all of my frustrations, irritations, and disappointments, I'm afraid it will take over completely.

I need guidance. How can I remain culturally sensitive and peacefully disposed without totally losing my marbles? Because, at this rate, the next sweet little granny who pats my belly and asks when I am due will be able to examine the contents of my stomach from the inside.

...'cause I'm gonna eat her.

The End.

*Chigaou is a Japanese expression which literally means "it's different" but is used in place of "no" because it's less confrontational... See what I did there?