I'm going to *itch now!

My supervisor (Mr. Nissan) doesn't speak English and I'm OK with that. First let me explain about my last supervisor. She was sweet, patient, and kind. She spoke very little English, but we were always able to work together to understand one another. I miss her. She had a baby and left work. I know that communication can be difficult, but it worked out with her. Anyway Mr. Nissan unfortunately doesn't want to learn or plan ahead any conversations that the intends to call me in for. Instead he uses Yahoo translator. It's actually a nifty gadget on Yahoo, but I think you must enter simple sentences for it to work correctly. Instead he enters complex things and it outputs crazy English. So today I'm summoned to his office. I figure it's to deal with the sick days that I've taken recently. I was correct. After an hour of showing me my contract and counting on the calendar how many days and what days I missed, I'm simply annoyed. Anyway in the end the translator kicks this out in English: Ito internal medicine. A medical certificate is necessary for application for a holiday. I ask for one piece of medical certificate. I am paid. OK, that's really not so bad and I've definitely had much much worse. So this was the meaning of his translated statement: Dr. Ito needs to give me a doctor's note so that I can count my days as sick days and not vacation days. You will have paid sick days. This took over an hour to explain to me! Mr. Nissan is a nice man and he is just doing his job. In fact I was dumped on him after my last wonderful supervisor left; so basically I'm just more unwanted work for him. The poor man just recently read my contract and now understands my pay, holidays, etc. Sooooooo don't mean to rant so long, but it was definitely one of those events that makes me want to rush home and hide from the Japanese. RELEASED *ITCHING ACCOMPLISHED.

The photo made me smile (and boy did I need to smile). I love the elementary kids. So kawaii.