nothing to do at work

now im beginning to see why so many ALTs in Japan have a blog....we have extremely large amounts of down time. Which can be a good thing if its used wisely. Lately my time has been used researching flights back home, checking out cool places in the south of Japan to visit in March, and spottily studying Japanese. Apparantly we dont have any classes for most of the month of March but we still have to come to school. Before coming to Japan I had a feeling that an all day desk job wasnt for me, Japan has helped me confirm this feeling. It will be weird for me to go back to having a job where there is actual work to be done. I feel like all I do is plan games, a few lessons, and have many confusing/funny/strange conversations with the students and teachers. Yesterday I had alot of fun at the elementary school. Although I did my introduction with 6th graders (who can be too cool for school), I got them to sing a song and dance with me. I left feeling really energized. I think Joey D did too.
I decided to stay a second year because I think I will get more out of Japan. It takes time to get used to the place and to pick up the language. And I can use everything I learned in my first year in my second. I am having fun here and there is tons to do and to see. I dont think I will stay more than 2 years though because the job isnt as fulfilling as I would like it to be. I dont get to see the students make much progress and I don't have as much job autonomy as I would like. Oh, by the way, the sumo tournament was amazing! I really hope to go back again next year because it was so sweet. Next year I wont tell any of my coworkers im going because I think they were all envious that I went. Sometimes I feel like they resent me because I don:t have as much work as they do. I dont get it though, they work so hard and so long but alot of them dont really do much at work. And they work on the weekends alot and don:t take holidays. I don:t like refering to my Japanese coworkers as "them" but its kind of unavoidable. Right now the guy next to me is snoring loudly and Im trying really hard not to laugh.