Well, went to the city today and did some shopping. Bought a cute, knee-length black skirt with small white polka dots. I'm planning on wearing it to the dinner the English teachers and I are having on Friday. I want to wear my new Victorian shoes and jacket too. Considering a lot of the outfits I've seen here, I don't care if I look a bit mismatched.

Hair--Ended up trimming my hair last night. At first I only cut off an inch from the 10 longest hairs on my head, but then I cut off another half-inch. The ends are still wispy, but not as much as before. I want to thicken up my hemline so I'll probably maintain at classic for a while, trimming 1/4 of an inch each month.

Trying something slightly different with my herbal rinses. This time instead of 2 spoonfuls of lavender, I used 1 and added 1 spoonful of coltsfoot. The rinse wasn't as dark as usual; more like watered down Coke instead of strongly brewed coffee.

Tonight's fenugreek treatment is also different. I tried whipping some cocoa and kokum butters together, but ended up with cocoa-kokum oil. I wasn't sure what to do with it so I added it to the fenugreek after I strained it. The melted butters (think it was the kokum) turned into little solid balls and I had to nuke everything so it would melt again. When I put the mixture on my hair, it seemed a little silkier than previous times. I'm not sure if that was from microwaving it or because of the butters. I guess I'll find out tomorrow if heating/butters made any difference or not.

--BPAL--Been surfing the site and (unfortunately) there's more things I want to buy. I'm trying not to be taken in by the item descriptions and only pay attention to the ingredient list, but they make everything sound so good! Must resist ordering more until my first order comes in. I wish our resident cat-loving, BPAL guru was still here.   Actually, I wish a lot of the currently MIA members I got to know over the years were still here (or at least popping in once in a while to say hi). I hope they're doing okay.

I don't mean to make any of the newer members feel bad or anything. Far from it! It's just that there aren't too many people still posting from when I first joined and I can't help but wonder how the others are doing. 

Angel Spun--Glad to know someone else feels the same way. I haven't read older threads, but I do look through forum pages and think "I wonder how so-and-so is. Are they still growing out their hair?" I remember reading your posts from 2 years ago and I'm glad you're still around.

Had a weird dream last night. In a nutshell, I dreamed that I had moved back home and Anthony Kiedis was in love with me. And although I liked him, I kept refusing him because he had a pregnant girlfriend. Anyway, we were walking down my street when my neighbor, who in real life is a nice retiree, came out of her hair salon/house wearing this frilly white blouse with cherry print. She was in a panic because she had seen us together and demanded, "Juri, how can you do that with him?!" I was like, "What? NO! We haven't done that!! He's just-just a friend!" Then Anthony said, "But I love you." I replied, "I know, but you have a pregnant girlfriend! And with the age difference, I think it would be borderline illegal!"

Then somehow we were in a luxury motor home and I was bummed out because Anthony was looking at a Victoria's Secret catalog. I was looking out the window when he came and sat next to me and said, "I'm sorry, but I realized I have to go back to her. But we'll name out second child after you." I was sad, but I knew it was the right thing to do (although the news that he was having his second child and not the first was surprising, not to mention the whole naming-the-kid-after-me thing). Woke up and immediately thought, WTH? I'm not sure what that dream means, and I'm not sure if I want to know. And why am I so virtuous in my dreams? I've had a celebrity crush on Antony Kiedis for years and even then I don't hook up with him.

Hair--I'm really surprised at what a difference the cocoa and kokum butters had on my fenugreek treatment. With the fenugreek alone, my hair feels nice but it doesn't feel nice until after I put shea butter on it. Well, this time I could feel the difference right after I detangled and didn't even have to use any shea. It's almost as if I did a coconut milk soak! Even if I can't figure out how to whip cocoa and kokum butter without melting them, I should add them to my fenugreek treatments from now on.

Speaking of whipping butters, I'm starting to wonder if I'll just have to use shea as a base and add the cocoa and kokum to that. I think I should try whipping just the latter two first. If that doesn't work, I'll get out the shea.

Well, should go back to cleaning my apartment. *hmph*

lol, I ask myself the same thing when I read things like "He is lecherous cool" and instead of telling the kid to find another word besides lecherous, say "Add a 'ly' to 'lecherous'." The more creative ones seem really pleased with what they write so unless they ask me to translate something REALLY inappropriate, I just work with what they give me. *shakes head*

When Jogging Smallpox's first album comes out, let me know where I can get a copy. 

lol about your sister. She and I must both be Labyrinth freaks because the movie's talking worm was the first thing I thought of when you mentioned the one in your dream. Man, this makes me remember the time when my friends and I managed to work the worm's dialogue into our skit of "Return of the Native" for our senior English class. lol, I would have stayed as well if David Bowie Jareth asked me to stay in his labyrinth.

Work--Had all 6 classes at K Elem. I was dreading the 5th and 6th grade classes because they're always scheduled at the end of the day and by that time everyone's tired and wants to go home. But this time those classes were a lot of fun and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I just have to remember to include a lot of competitive games when I have those grades.

The lower grades ended up being rather silly as well. I was teaching body parts and the 3rd grade class wanted to know what it's called when someone has a fat stomach. The Japanese call it "metabolic" and I taught them the term "beer belly". The kids thought it was quite amusing, but I'm hoping they don't remember. I have images of them seeing a guy with a gut, pointing at him, and then shouting "beer belly!" But Billy Blanks is super popular right now, so judging from the pronunciations I heard, they might say "beer Billy."

There's a game called Fruit Basket that's insanely popular with little kids. You form a circle with one less chairs than there are players. Each person is assigned a fruit and the person who is "it" calls a fruit (eg orange). The people with "orange" have to change seats and the last person standing is now "it". If you want everyone to run, you call "fruit basket." This game can be played with any vocabulary words and so you can have Color Basket, Animal Basket, etc. Well, I played this today with vocabulary words for body. The only problem with this, is that the kids yell "Body Basket!" and I get all sorts of weird pictures in my head when I hear that.

Talking about the 1st years' creative compositions made me remember some of the presentations the 2nd year students did last year. They each had a picture of a person from a magazine and had to introduce that person to the rest of the class. Most of them said things like, "This is my friend Bob. He is a singer. He is cool. Thank you." But one kid said something along the lines of, "This is my friend John. He will lead Delta Platoon Squadron. He loves guns. Thank you." I don't know why, but the gun part didn't bother me. I think it was because I was too busy laughing at the portion with Delta Platoon Squadron. And one girl had a picture of a surfer guy and told us that was her friend Kim Jong-il. I had no idea what they were writing so I can't take the blame for any of that. /

Sweet.

I don't think they know what lecherous means either since the boy that wrote it had to ask me for a translation. I was like, "Erm...." But that wasn't as bad as having to explain what a fart is to the English teacher.

Okay, you use Body Basket for your band and I shall use Jogging Smallpox for the neo-hair metal band I'll set up. Once we have enough money, we'll fly to Cali and we can have a double-headliner tour.


Hair--I don't think I should use kokum butter in my fenugreek soaks. It doesn't absorb into my hair very well and when it cools down, there's little kokum beads all over. Also, I shouldn't microwave the fenugreek. When I did it last week, it ended up being too hot and because it retains heat better than coconut milk, I had a lot of little white dots the day after. On Thursday when I didn't microwave the fenugreek, I didn't have any LWDs.

Stuffs--Had dinner with the English teachers at my school last night. We ate at a French restaurant and it was they type where there isn't a menu and the chef cooks whatever he/she feels like. The food was wonderful. My favorite part was the vanilla ice cream. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I ate it.

After that we went to a pub-ish bar. That ended up being an endurance test for me because instead of only a "little while", we were there for two hours and left after 12. It would have been more enjoyable if the teachers had talked more in English so I could join in the conversation (or at least follow it), but it was 99% Japanese. Now, I didn't expect them to speak English around me the whole night, but after 2 hours of 99% Japanese conversation (which I couldn't understand) at dinner, I was getting fed up. If I had enough money, I would have taken a cab home after about 30 minutes at the bar. I feel like I'm totally whining, but since they are ENGLISH teachers and they know I'm crap at Japanese, I was hoping for a bit more conversation in English. Feh. At least the food was good.

Garlic Festival--Speaking of good food, today I went to the Garlic and Beef Festival with some of the other JETs in Takko Town (yes, that's the name). The food was great and the stage entertainment was interesting. There was a country line-dance troupe from Misawa Air Base and some hula dancers. I thought, "Gez, it's like I've never even left home."

Someone was selling wreaths made of garlic with a ribbon wound around each of them to form pentagram. But I'm not sure if the pentagram shape was intentional. I thought it was quite interesting (and only 500 yen) so I bought one with an orange ribbon.

After that, the group I was with met the former prefectural adviser and we went to climb the dragon tower in my town. I'm not sure how many stories high it is (maybe three) and a bit rickety looking. While I'm fine with hights when I'm on a building or staircase, but I don't like it when I'm on a free-standing structure. You'd have to pay me to go up past the 5th rung of a ladder.

Well, halfway up the tower, I looked down over the side and almost lost my lunch and said I'd wait for them to finish. M, the former PA who has had years of new JETs call her with their problems-both personal and professional, was very nice about it and convinced me to go to the top. I did, but I could not look over the side. I just looked straight ahead the entire time we were on the top platform. The view was really nice, but I wanted to go down before there was a huge earthquake and the structure came crashing down. Did I mention that I'm also paranoid about a big earthquake hitting my area while I'm still on JET?

Anyway, despite that nauseating trek up the dragon tower (didn't expect it to hit me so bad before I started climbing), it was a fun day.