The first new post on the blog

Right, so this will be my very first new post - everything else was repeating info that went out in emails. Hurrah.

ON EXCESSIVE SNOT
I've noticed that many Japanese people do not wash their hands often. My students will go through morning classes, eat lunch, go to the bathroom, clean their classrooms, and participate in clubs/sports, all without washing their hands. And it's not just the students, it's the teachers, too. I kind of expect it from students - many American students don't wash their hands, either. But usually by the time they reach adulthood, most people at least make the attempt to cleanse their hands, even if they just run their hands under water. Not here. They don't even pretend. They just leave the bathroom with no pretense of washing their hands. When I reported this to my mom, she pointed out that many American doctors say that Americans are over-anxious about washing their hands; in fact, many doctors say that washing your hands TOO frequently can kill good bacteria as well as bad bacteria. This causes me to be slighty suspicious, as I had always, perhaps falsely, assumed that bacteria is...well...bacteria. Isn't it ALL bad for you? Apparently not. With this in mind, mom said she would be interested to see how many people in my offices get sick during the winter. Now admittedly, it is hard to wash your hands during the winter, as the school bathrooms don't have hot and cold water taps - you only have one option for handwashing at school: pipe temperature. Ah, nothing as refreshing as running your hands under 35 degree water to really help hypothermia set in.

The question of how many of my coworkers would fall ill was quickly and easily answered. A week into the start of winter, the majority of my schools' teachers room's sounded like TB wards. I would come in to school and wonder what new and interesting version of whooping cough my teachers would have contracted for that day. If it wasn't the coughing, it was the sniffing (anyone who truly, truly knows me can visualize the shudder that just went down my spine when I wrote that). The Japanese in general do not like to blow their noses in public. I've heard several different reasons for why this is true, and I'm not sure which one to believe. I have, however, observed many times that most of my coworkers would rather consume a live howler monkey than blow their nose in public. At first I thought the sniffing was a crude attempt to catch the flies that are constantly buzzing around the staff room like a Biblical plague. After the coughing and sneezing started, though, I had to acknowledge that everyone in my office was becoming ill (perhaps another type of Biblical plague?). Except me. By the grace of God (and perhaps with a lot of pig lard), I managed to stay relatively healthy. Every once in a while, my nose would twitch a little and I would quickly trot to the restroom to blow my nose. I have never, and I will repeat this, NEVER blown my nose in the teachers room at any of my schools. Which is why I am always surprised that my trashcans at every school are always full of tissues. I have absolutely no idea why, but it seems like everytime I leave the teachers room, I come back to find no less than 3 new tissues have taken root in my wastebasket. At first I developed elaborate theories of snotaneous life, but eventually I realized that I was looking at the evidence of how sneaky my teachers truly are. See, they think: "Hmmm...no one in the teachers room right now. I could blow my nose to relieve myself of this buildup of snot which has required the strength of the Hoover Dam and suction power of a Hoover to keep in for the last 3 hours. But man, if I blow my nose and put the used tissue in my trashcan, everyone will know I blew my nose in public. And even if I do it when no one is in the room, they'll still see the tissue and know I did it. *pause as they peer towards my desk* But the AET...well, she's just a gaijin, right? Everyone KNOWS that gaijin are disgusting and do silly things, so they'll figure that she blew her nose in the teachers room because she doesn't know any better!" In every school I go to, the trashcan nearest to me always has tissues. If you look in the other trashcans, they will doubtlessly have no tissues anywhere in or near them. Mine is always chalkfull. I have visions of teachers waiting until I turn my back, then happily hurling wads of snotty tissues into my trash. I have to wonder what the students who clean the teachers room think of me. They are probably developing elaborate theories about how much snot is in a foreign body.