ON ROOT VEGETABLES
I should have learned from the microwave incident that when I say little things offhandedly, they can have surprising repercussions.
I was at Cromartie Jr High the other day, once again trying to keep from drooling on my paperwork. The principal walked in with a bucketful of some sort of dirty root vegetable type thingies. He came up to me and said in loud, slow, Japanese, "TAKENAKA". Ah. Yes, I see. Still having no idea what the scary, muddy, smelly things were, I grabbed my dictionary and looked it up. "Bamboo shoots". Okay. Good to know. I smiled and told him what they were in English. He then said something, and picked up a really HUGE bamboo shoot and showed it to me. As I understood it, he said something to the effect of "This bamboo shoot is really big, isn't it?" I agreed with him. "Yes, it's big." He laughed, and went and got some newspaper. I realized that some sort of error in understanding had been made as he started to wrap up the bamboo shoot. With a sinking feeling, I realized that by somehow agreeing that the bamboo shoot was big had apparently meant, "please, I'd like to take home an excessively large bamboo shoot so I can watch it slowly rot and decay, as I have no idea how to cook it." The other teachers in the teachers room were laughing at the fact that the foreigner had apparently asked for the biggest bamboo shoot. Just goes to show you that foreigners eat a lot, yea?" A few of the female teachers came up and tried to give me directions for different ways to cook this beast, but I realized that it was impossible, as I didn't have any pots or pans large enough to cook it in. I smiled politely and pretended to write down their directions.
I got home and, of course, never cooked the thing. It slowly started to rot until I finally threw it out with the burnable trash. It looked like a little mummy wrapped up in its newspaper. I was glad to finally be rid of the thing. Which is why when I went to Cromartie the next time and got yet ANOTHER bamboo shoot from the secretary, I wanted to start crying. My only consolation is that the season for bamboo shoots is rather short, so I suppose I'll only have to worry about smiling and accepting these things for a few more weeks. Until then, I guess I'll have to either figure out how to cook them, or figure out the Japanese word for allergy and explain to my office that I've suddenly developed an allergy for bamboo shoots. Is that even a real allergy? I don't know, but I bet that they would believe me if I told them many foreigners were allergic to it. But would I be willing to lie to dozens of people just to make my life more convenient? You betcha!
ON HORRIBLE THINGS TO TEACH CHILDREN
I thought the worst/funniest moment of my teaching career in Japan was going to be the time when a teacher asked to to teach students the translation for "otaku" (nerd). Nothing beats having 25 students chanting the word "nerd" in chorus. Or so I thought.
Perhaps some background would be nice before I get to the point. There is a teacher that I hat-...er...that I am less than fond of. She's not a horrible person; she's just a horrible teacher. A horrible, horrible teacher. A HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE teacher. Of all my English teachers, she has the second worst English skills of the lot. She always makes TONS of grammar and spelling mistakes in classes, and all her worksheets for the students have LOADS of errors all over them. If a normal Japanese person has crap skills at English, I don't care. In fact, I appreciate the fact that they try to use English. But when it comes to English teachers, I expect them to be good at English. And she's not. She's really, really not. I'm so embarrassed whenever we have international gatherings and she's in charge because her English is so crap. After teaching with her for awhile, I decided that maybe I should politely try to correct some of the mistakes she was making on the students worksheets. If her English is crap, that's one thing; but she's teaching my students crap English, and I feel like part of my job is to help teachers improve their English as well as the students. So one day, I pointed out to her that she had made a few mistakes on the worksheet. I did it in a very Japanese way. "I was reading this worksheet, and I noticed you wrote 'I will take bath'. And I think maybe it might be a little more natural to say 'I will take A bath'." She just looked at me blankly. "I mean, I've never actually heard this phrase used in America. Not, of course, that it may be used like that in other English speaking countries, but I think that it's not very natural to say it this way." Blank look. "And I think teaching students this phrase will be hard for me because I don't know how to say this at native speed because it's not a native phrase." Blank look. "Your English on this sheet is wrong." Her reply? "Oh. Well, I already printed out the sheets for all the students, so I don't want to change it now." We had about 5 other conversations like this over the course of a month, and each time, she refused to change the mistakes. No matter how politely (or rudely) I phrased it, she still refused to change the mistakes. So I had to say these wrong sentences and have students repeat after me, thereby teaching and reinforcing incorrect English.
To add to the many joys this teacher heaps upon me, she's a HORRIBLE classroom manager. She has absolutely NO control over the second year students this year. They talk, yell, get up and walk around, throw things, make fun of her and me, etc., and she doesn't try to stop them. Perhaps their most annoying habit is when they get up in the middle of class and start looking through our teaching supplies. In one of my first classes, several boys got up during my introduction and started picking up my dictionary, notebook, and pictures, and took them back to their seats to play with. And they do that in every class. They get up and start looking through my stuff. When I try to stop them and say, "Stop. Don't touch.", they look at me blankly and say "No English [I don't understand English]" and continue to mess with my stuff. And whenever I try to look at the teacher for help, she refuses to look in my direction and correct the students. Sometimes she'll look up when they pick up my stuff and ask her "What's this?" Now that I'm thinking about it, I think I should bring in some horrible things with my teaching supplies. I wonder how you say "tampon" in Japanese?
So to sum up her negative aspects, she's bad at English, she's got bad classroom skills, and she's just an overall bad teacher. But on the positive side. . . . . ummm... having trouble with that one. And for some reason, God has decided to smile upon me by blessing me with her 5 times instead of 3 (most teacher teach 3 classes [one grade]. For some reason, at this school, she teaches 2 grades [5 classes] and the other English teacher only teaches 2). Add this to the fact that the teachers at this school are incredibly nosy (on days when I'm at this school, they wait until I leave to teach a class, then some of them open my desk and look through my bag, purse, and teaching supplies. They've ruined a few pictures by spilling tea or food on them.), and you can probably understand why I DREAD going to this school. Seriously, every time I see it pop up on my calendar for the week, I want to sob uncontrollably (and I almost did last week. I had a class with the really bad class with Miss Incompetent, and the students were so bad that I almost burst into tears from frustration. I was closer to yelling at students than I have ever been, and that includes my American students). At my other schools, even if I'm having a bad day, I can at least fake a smile and depend on the fact that one of my students will do something to make me laugh. Not at this school. The only thing I can depend on is the fact that I will literally be counting the minutes until 4:30, when I can escape. I've been convicted lately that I need to work on my attitude towards this school, because if I start the day convinced that my life will suck, I don't see how it can really get better from there.
And as another tangent connected to what I said last time about being "in love" with a new teacher - I found out in April that this school was going to get a new English teacher. I was excited at first because that would mean that I'd only have up to 3 classes with Miss Incompetent, and thus maybe I could look forward to going to this school like I look forward to going to the other 2. But the more I thought about the school and everything that I don't like there, I realized that in order for me to actually look forward to coming to this school, the new guy would not only have to speak near perfect English; he'd also have to have the physique of a Greek god, the face of an angel, and the ability to find me a beautiful, unique, and interesting person he'd be interested in dating. When I did meet him, I learned that he does have a decent handle on English, even if he sounds like he's Russian. And he's kind of cute, in a little kid sort of way. And maybe he has the physique of one of the lesses Greek gods, perhaps Bobules the god of old cheese. So while I didn't have hope that I'd look forward to going to this school, I at least thought that I might not hate it so much. However, for some unknown reason, my school has decided that the new teacher will team teach with the good teacher at this school, and has thus left Miss Incompetent to continue teaching 2 grades on her own. There goes my brief glimmer of hope. Crushed. Destroyed. Annihilated. Never to be thought of again.
All this leads to one particular lesson with Miss Incompetent. And this lesson is rated PG-13 (maybe leaning towards R). Miss Incompetent usually comes to me at the beginning of the day and shows me the lesson plan. She'll highlight the target sentence and show me some examples she wants me to have the students repeat. This lesson, the target was to teach students plurals. 1 cat, 2 catS, etc. in hte form of "Someone has Something." So she had a sample conversation for us to have. I've stopped looking at her sheets before classes, as even if there is something wrong, she won't change it. I have now learned what a bad thing that is. What is to follow is not fiction. I got to class and after a few minutes, she asked me to read the sample sentences. "Jane has 3 dogs. Taro has many DVDs. Dick has big balls." ...
...
...
Yeah. You read that right. Of course, the sheet had pictures of Jane and her dogs, Taro and his DVD's, and Dick and his soccer balls. Of COURSE it was soccer balls. What ELSE could that sentence have meant? I can't really describe the sound of 28 Japanese students informing me that Dick has big balls. Certainly a unique experience. But wait, it gets better. The teacher decides on a little spontaneity. The students are learning numbers as well, so she wanted to teach them the sentence "how many?". She wanted to model that question, so she asked me questions about the sample sentences. "How many dogs does Jane have?" "She has 3 dogs." "How many DVD's does Taro have?" "He has 20 DVD's." "How many balls does Dick have?" I so wanted to answer that last one with something like "Well, ever since the accident, only one." But I didn't. So help me, I have NEVER tried to keep laughter in as hard as I did during that lesson. Just goes to show that even if you hate your job, you can still find moments of joy in every day, if only you take the time to look.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Another quick update. Hurrah!
ON DRIVING
It's been almost a year since I came to Japan, and you know what that means: time to get stuck in yards and yards of silly Japanese bureaucracy! Woohoo! Before I came to Japan, I got an international drivers license, which allows me the privilege of driving in Japan for 1 year. After that year, though, I've got to get a Japanese drivers license. Now, if I was from any one of 27 different countries, including England, Canada, or Australia, I could just go to the Japanese DMV, so a lot of complicated paperwork, and get a Japanese license. Headache over. Since I am from America, though, I get an extra helping of headache. Hurray for me!! So not only do I have to do some really spiffy paperwork, I also have to take a written and driving test. Extra fun for me!!! I hate bureaucracy!!!!
I have to make 2 visits to the Japanese DMV. The first visit was just to do some boring and tedious paperwork so they could approve me to take the tests on my second visit. Not wanting to do this alone, as I have the Japanese language skills of a ferret, I brought a lady from my BOE who speaks a decent amount of English. She called ahead of time and told me that I had to bring several documents, including proof that I had been driving in my home country for more than 3 months before leaving. Unfortunately, I renewed my drivers license just prior to leaving America, so my license indicated that I had only had it for 1 month. So I had to get in touch with the Ohio BMV and explain to them what I needed. They were actually quite helpful (maybe it had something to do with my mom calling and roughing them up a bit first?) and even tried to fax me a letter in Japan, which consequently didn't work. I eventually got the letter thanks to my parents (who deserve extra rooms in their mansions in heaven for all the work they've done for me since I've been in Japan), who scanned it and sent it on to me through email.
So the day arrived when my BOE lady and I were supposed to go to the BMV to get the paperwork done. We triple-checked that we had everything and went to the BMV. We drove about an hour and a half to get to the capitol city of my prefecture. We walked into a large room with 2 walls of numbered windows. My BOE lady said we should go to window 2, so away we went. We got to window 2 and were then told to go to window 12, which directed us to go to window 13, who sent up up to the second floor room 2, where we were directed to sit in the seating area until 2 o'clock, when we were then told to go sit in the 1st floor waiting room until someone came to take us to a different room on the 1st floor. And that's not exaggerating at all. We certainly got a work-out.
When we were finally led into the interview room, the man asked me tons of questions about driving in America. I didn't INTENTIONALLY lie about any of them, but how many people here honestly remember how many questions were on their driving test? Or how many hours of classroom work they had to do before they could take the practice test to get their temps? I was grilled for about half an hour on things that I've long since forgotten, and he sat waiting patiently for me to answer every question. I didn't have the option to simply NOT answer, so I had to do my best to make plausible sounding answers. The man then looked at my paperwork for about 5 minutes and asked me about 60 times how old I was when I got my first license. Fun stuff. After a few minutes, he had us sit in the waiting room again, then he came back 15 minutes later and gave me all my stuff back and said it was okay for me to take the test on my next visit. Hurray! So now I get to go back in a few weeks and take a written test (10 multiple choice questions, 3 hours to complete it) and a driving test (90% of all Americans fail it at least once). I'm so looking forward to it!
ON PEP
We had a pep rally on Friday. In Japan, pep rallies are solemn occasions. It's a time when the school body says to athletes, "Here is our pep. Guard it well." And the athletes respond, "Thank you for your pep. We will do our best." There is no spontaneity, no cheerfulness, no random fun. It is highly organized, highly boring, and highly annoying. Students file into the gym. Teachers say stuff. The athletes with games come up on stage. The principal addresses them. The student council addresses them. A student with a headband comes up, and 2 students with flags follow them. He chants, then the student body chants in response, then he chants more, the students chant more. Then they sing the school fight song. Isn't that happy? With pep rallies like that, I guess it's not surprising Japan doesn't do as well in international sports competitions.
ON LOVE
So I've fallen in love with one of the new teachers at my school. He's a first year teacher, and as such, he attends a lot of classes with the other more senior English teachers. He happens to be at the school I really don't enjoy. At this school some of the students will come up during class and look through my stuff. I tell them to stop, and they just say, "No English [I don't speak English]". And the classroom teacher lets them. She has got to be my least favorite teacher. The students are always talking, yelling, and throwing things in her classes. But ever since this new teacher came, the students haven't been as bad. He prowls around the classroom and stops students who are talking or being disruptive. I think I fell in love with him on my first day of classes with him. I was in my worst class, and a student came up to try to look at my things. Before I could even move towards him, though, the new teacher walked up, smacked this kids hand, and said 2 words that every woman (or, at least me, in this situation) loves to hear: "Don't touch!" I seriously could have hugged him at that moment. For all I know, he could be a serial killer, but at this point, I don't care. He has made my life at this school slightly more bearable at this horrible school. So until the moment he tries to kill me, I am going to think the very best of him.
ON DRIVING
It's been almost a year since I came to Japan, and you know what that means: time to get stuck in yards and yards of silly Japanese bureaucracy! Woohoo! Before I came to Japan, I got an international drivers license, which allows me the privilege of driving in Japan for 1 year. After that year, though, I've got to get a Japanese drivers license. Now, if I was from any one of 27 different countries, including England, Canada, or Australia, I could just go to the Japanese DMV, so a lot of complicated paperwork, and get a Japanese license. Headache over. Since I am from America, though, I get an extra helping of headache. Hurray for me!! So not only do I have to do some really spiffy paperwork, I also have to take a written and driving test. Extra fun for me!!! I hate bureaucracy!!!!
I have to make 2 visits to the Japanese DMV. The first visit was just to do some boring and tedious paperwork so they could approve me to take the tests on my second visit. Not wanting to do this alone, as I have the Japanese language skills of a ferret, I brought a lady from my BOE who speaks a decent amount of English. She called ahead of time and told me that I had to bring several documents, including proof that I had been driving in my home country for more than 3 months before leaving. Unfortunately, I renewed my drivers license just prior to leaving America, so my license indicated that I had only had it for 1 month. So I had to get in touch with the Ohio BMV and explain to them what I needed. They were actually quite helpful (maybe it had something to do with my mom calling and roughing them up a bit first?) and even tried to fax me a letter in Japan, which consequently didn't work. I eventually got the letter thanks to my parents (who deserve extra rooms in their mansions in heaven for all the work they've done for me since I've been in Japan), who scanned it and sent it on to me through email.
So the day arrived when my BOE lady and I were supposed to go to the BMV to get the paperwork done. We triple-checked that we had everything and went to the BMV. We drove about an hour and a half to get to the capitol city of my prefecture. We walked into a large room with 2 walls of numbered windows. My BOE lady said we should go to window 2, so away we went. We got to window 2 and were then told to go to window 12, which directed us to go to window 13, who sent up up to the second floor room 2, where we were directed to sit in the seating area until 2 o'clock, when we were then told to go sit in the 1st floor waiting room until someone came to take us to a different room on the 1st floor. And that's not exaggerating at all. We certainly got a work-out.
When we were finally led into the interview room, the man asked me tons of questions about driving in America. I didn't INTENTIONALLY lie about any of them, but how many people here honestly remember how many questions were on their driving test? Or how many hours of classroom work they had to do before they could take the practice test to get their temps? I was grilled for about half an hour on things that I've long since forgotten, and he sat waiting patiently for me to answer every question. I didn't have the option to simply NOT answer, so I had to do my best to make plausible sounding answers. The man then looked at my paperwork for about 5 minutes and asked me about 60 times how old I was when I got my first license. Fun stuff. After a few minutes, he had us sit in the waiting room again, then he came back 15 minutes later and gave me all my stuff back and said it was okay for me to take the test on my next visit. Hurray! So now I get to go back in a few weeks and take a written test (10 multiple choice questions, 3 hours to complete it) and a driving test (90% of all Americans fail it at least once). I'm so looking forward to it!
ON PEP
We had a pep rally on Friday. In Japan, pep rallies are solemn occasions. It's a time when the school body says to athletes, "Here is our pep. Guard it well." And the athletes respond, "Thank you for your pep. We will do our best." There is no spontaneity, no cheerfulness, no random fun. It is highly organized, highly boring, and highly annoying. Students file into the gym. Teachers say stuff. The athletes with games come up on stage. The principal addresses them. The student council addresses them. A student with a headband comes up, and 2 students with flags follow them. He chants, then the student body chants in response, then he chants more, the students chant more. Then they sing the school fight song. Isn't that happy? With pep rallies like that, I guess it's not surprising Japan doesn't do as well in international sports competitions.
ON LOVE
So I've fallen in love with one of the new teachers at my school. He's a first year teacher, and as such, he attends a lot of classes with the other more senior English teachers. He happens to be at the school I really don't enjoy. At this school some of the students will come up during class and look through my stuff. I tell them to stop, and they just say, "No English [I don't speak English]". And the classroom teacher lets them. She has got to be my least favorite teacher. The students are always talking, yelling, and throwing things in her classes. But ever since this new teacher came, the students haven't been as bad. He prowls around the classroom and stops students who are talking or being disruptive. I think I fell in love with him on my first day of classes with him. I was in my worst class, and a student came up to try to look at my things. Before I could even move towards him, though, the new teacher walked up, smacked this kids hand, and said 2 words that every woman (or, at least me, in this situation) loves to hear: "Don't touch!" I seriously could have hugged him at that moment. For all I know, he could be a serial killer, but at this point, I don't care. He has made my life at this school slightly more bearable at this horrible school. So until the moment he tries to kill me, I am going to think the very best of him.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Not much to write right now. I've got to do a lesson plan still before bed, and I've been tired of late. So yea for short updates! And sorry, once again, for any huge and glaring typos. We aim to misplease.
ON PERSISTANCE
I was talking to Freddy (a teacher at one of my schools) a few months ago, and he introduced me to the word "dandy". He tried to explain it rather quickly before class, and as far as I undertood it, it meant a man who cared a great deal about his appearance. He asked me how to say that in more natural English, but the only word I could think of was "metrosexual". I found out later that week that he hadn't explained "dandy" very well, so I had actually given him a completely different word than what he was looking for. Oh, well. I really didn't think anything of it.
A month later, we were walking to class and he said, "Remember that word you told me a few weeks ago?" Honestly, I tell him new words all the time. He always asks me the strangest questions, so I teach him a lot of English slang. I asked him what word, and after several mispronunciations, I realized he was saying metrosexual. "I can't find it in any of my dictionaries," he said, slightly distressed. Trying not to laugh at his distraught expression, I explained to him that it wouldn't be in a dictionary, as it's a newer word. He looked disturbed at this, but dropped the subject.
Skip forward 4 months. Freddy came up to me at school the other day with a very happy look on his face. I asked him why he was so happy. He opened a book up and showed me the word metrosexual, with a Japanese explanation for what it meant. "Look!" he said proudly, "I found it! I found a slang dictionary, and I found it!" This was 5 months after the fact. And he had been looking for the word this whole time. Something that I had completely forgotten had been consuming him for 5 months straight. I have to wonder if he's been sleeping these past 5 months or if he's just been scouring bookstores and libraries the whole time. I guess I'm happy for him, now that his 5 month quest has ended. I'm just going to have to be really careful about what new words I teach him. I think things like "obsessive" and "OC-disorder" would be good to teach him.
ON HOLIDAYS
Most teachers ask me to talk to my classes about how I celebrate holidays in America. So when Easter came up, I talked to my students about the religious and secular aspects of Easter as it is celebrated in America. You know, I never truly realized how complex the Easter story really was until I had to boil it down to 50 simple English words. Both the religious and secular aspects include a LOT of vocabulary that my students don't know. I'm pretty sure some of them are now convinced that the Easter Bunny died on a cross for their sins. Am I going to hell for that?
ON SHAKING HANDS
In the school that I hate, there is a class that I hate. In the class that I hate, there is a teacher who I hate. There's a whole lot of hate going around on my part. I won't go into detail on this teacher right now; I'll just say that she's got horrible English and her pronunciation makes me want to cry - as do many of my teachers, but she's the only one who thinks that her pronunciation of English words is better than mine. This is just one of the things that irks me about her - I don't want to go on about her more than that for now. I'll save the full rant for later. For now, I'll just talk about one incident with her. I got a lesson plan the other day in which she said, "The AET will introduce herself in simple English and shake hands with the students."
...
Kids me no touchy. I'm sorry. You want me to what? These are junior high school kids. Do you know where their hands have been? The problem for me isn't that I DON'T know where their hands have been - the problem is that I DO know where their hands have been. I know EXACTLY where their hands have been. I'm already boarderline obsessive-compulsive when it comes to handwashing. Since I've been to Japan, I've gotten worse. I've seen adults and students alike discreetly picking their noses, scratching various body parts, using the restroom and not washing their hands, eating lunch, playing sports outside, etc. And not washing their hands after any of this. And you want me to shake 90 of those hands? Oh, I think not.
The problem is, the teacher's English sucks, so I couldn't explain to her why I didn't want to do it. So I did it. I shook every little sweaty, sticky hand, and then I tried to avoid touching anything of mine until after class when I could run to the restroom and scrub my hands till they bled. I feel like a walking germ factory. I was tempted to go rub my germy hands all over her stuff in hopes that she'd be out sick for a week or two, but that might have earned me odd looks from the other teachers in the teachers room.
ON PERSISTANCE
I was talking to Freddy (a teacher at one of my schools) a few months ago, and he introduced me to the word "dandy". He tried to explain it rather quickly before class, and as far as I undertood it, it meant a man who cared a great deal about his appearance. He asked me how to say that in more natural English, but the only word I could think of was "metrosexual". I found out later that week that he hadn't explained "dandy" very well, so I had actually given him a completely different word than what he was looking for. Oh, well. I really didn't think anything of it.
A month later, we were walking to class and he said, "Remember that word you told me a few weeks ago?" Honestly, I tell him new words all the time. He always asks me the strangest questions, so I teach him a lot of English slang. I asked him what word, and after several mispronunciations, I realized he was saying metrosexual. "I can't find it in any of my dictionaries," he said, slightly distressed. Trying not to laugh at his distraught expression, I explained to him that it wouldn't be in a dictionary, as it's a newer word. He looked disturbed at this, but dropped the subject.
Skip forward 4 months. Freddy came up to me at school the other day with a very happy look on his face. I asked him why he was so happy. He opened a book up and showed me the word metrosexual, with a Japanese explanation for what it meant. "Look!" he said proudly, "I found it! I found a slang dictionary, and I found it!" This was 5 months after the fact. And he had been looking for the word this whole time. Something that I had completely forgotten had been consuming him for 5 months straight. I have to wonder if he's been sleeping these past 5 months or if he's just been scouring bookstores and libraries the whole time. I guess I'm happy for him, now that his 5 month quest has ended. I'm just going to have to be really careful about what new words I teach him. I think things like "obsessive" and "OC-disorder" would be good to teach him.
ON HOLIDAYS
Most teachers ask me to talk to my classes about how I celebrate holidays in America. So when Easter came up, I talked to my students about the religious and secular aspects of Easter as it is celebrated in America. You know, I never truly realized how complex the Easter story really was until I had to boil it down to 50 simple English words. Both the religious and secular aspects include a LOT of vocabulary that my students don't know. I'm pretty sure some of them are now convinced that the Easter Bunny died on a cross for their sins. Am I going to hell for that?
ON SHAKING HANDS
In the school that I hate, there is a class that I hate. In the class that I hate, there is a teacher who I hate. There's a whole lot of hate going around on my part. I won't go into detail on this teacher right now; I'll just say that she's got horrible English and her pronunciation makes me want to cry - as do many of my teachers, but she's the only one who thinks that her pronunciation of English words is better than mine. This is just one of the things that irks me about her - I don't want to go on about her more than that for now. I'll save the full rant for later. For now, I'll just talk about one incident with her. I got a lesson plan the other day in which she said, "The AET will introduce herself in simple English and shake hands with the students."
...
Kids me no touchy. I'm sorry. You want me to what? These are junior high school kids. Do you know where their hands have been? The problem for me isn't that I DON'T know where their hands have been - the problem is that I DO know where their hands have been. I know EXACTLY where their hands have been. I'm already boarderline obsessive-compulsive when it comes to handwashing. Since I've been to Japan, I've gotten worse. I've seen adults and students alike discreetly picking their noses, scratching various body parts, using the restroom and not washing their hands, eating lunch, playing sports outside, etc. And not washing their hands after any of this. And you want me to shake 90 of those hands? Oh, I think not.
The problem is, the teacher's English sucks, so I couldn't explain to her why I didn't want to do it. So I did it. I shook every little sweaty, sticky hand, and then I tried to avoid touching anything of mine until after class when I could run to the restroom and scrub my hands till they bled. I feel like a walking germ factory. I was tempted to go rub my germy hands all over her stuff in hopes that she'd be out sick for a week or two, but that might have earned me odd looks from the other teachers in the teachers room.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
On Appliances
Gomen (sorry)! I haven't written in a very long time, but I have a good excuse! I'm lazy!
I never said you'd like my excuse...
Since it's currently late for me, I'm just going to post on my current woe. I'll post more perhaps tomorrow, but this whole laziness habit is a hard thing to kick. I'll have to work on that. But I think that can wait for another day.
ON APPLIANCES
They say bad things come in 3's. I won't go into details, but both of my sisters just had...interesting and unexpected things happen in their lives. Silly me, I thought, "Man, that sucks for them. I guess I'm just lucky. Hahaha hahaha hahaoh crap." See, whenever I think things like, "Gee, I'm glad that didn't happen" or "Oh, aren't I lucky that such and such" I invarialby end up, hours later, crying and saying, "WHY DID I HAVE TO SAY THAT?!?" As an example, I hated it when I first came to Japan. I didn't actually cry at first, but I just wasn't happy the first few days. Then one day, I tried to make myself more positive. "Well, everything may smell funny, I may not be able to understand anything even when it's said in English, I may be forced to talk to more people in 2 days than I've talked to in the past 2 years, and Iu may hate to think that my shower would only work for midgets, BUT at least I've got my healthohcrap." And yes, true to the curse, I woke up with a cold the next morning.
So after what I thought the other day, I really, really shouldn't have been surprised this morning when I found out that my refrigerator is no longer in the land of the living.
To fully appreciate the wonder of God's timing as it relates to my household appliances, let's travel back to last night. I was relaxing in my living room, watching some tv and enjoying my day off (this is Golden Week in Japan, a week where we get 3 days off for no apparent reason. Yea for random holidays!!!). The prevoius day, I had gone out and shopped, figuring that if I were to fully enjoy my days off, I'd need to stockpile food and clean clothes like it was Y2K so that I wouldn't have to leave my apartment for any reason except the Second Coming. My fridge and freezer, for once, were full of fresh, non-decaying, non-leftover food. Oh, the joy! I could open my fridge at anytime and find fresh food and beverages! But sadly, this joy was not destined to last. For in order to make the food, I had to have clean dishes. I have the terrible habit of making food choices based on what pans I have clean. Used the pancake pan yesterday? Good, I'll make eggs today. Used the soup pot last night? Good, I'll make spaghetti. Used all my dishes in the past week? Good, I'll eat toast on a paper towel. Eventually, though, toast gets old (both literally and figuratively), so I did get off my lazy butt (although I was, in my defense, not being lazy - I was killing hoardes of heartless beings bent on destroying the heart of all worlds, though I'm not entirely certain why they're bent on that - maybe it's Golden Week for them, too, so they have nothing else to do?) and washed dishes, a feat which took over 2 hours due to my small sink and even smaller draining board.
So back to me relaxing in the living room watching tv. I was enjoying the quiet of the night and scent of clean dishes, when I suddenly heard a large, terrifying grunking noise coming from my kitchen. I paused my dvd, froze for a second, and listened in horror to the grunking noise, wondering what the heck Pete was doing in my kitchen. I realized the noise was coming from my refrigerator at the same time I realized that no amount of money on this earth was going to make me walk out into the kitchen to see who was doing what to whom and with what. The noise stopped after a few seconds, and my thoughts on the subject were brief, yet decisive. "Fire? Nope, no fire. Explosion? Nope, no explosion. Water spurting all over? Nope, no water. Smoke billowing out of anything mechanical? Nope, no smoke billowing. And we're good. Nothing whatsoever to worry about... Yeah... Yeah, I bet Japanese fridges all make horrible grunking noises every once in a while just to say hello... Yeah, maybe if I understood more Japanese, I would have been able to understand what it just said to me... Yeah, well then, nothing to worry about. I'll continue watching my dvd and pretend nothing has happened... Yeah. NOTHING HAS HAPPENED, DARNIT!" Yeah, it wasn't convincing to me, either, but little lies can sometimes help us keep our sanity.
I found out the next morning that instead of "grunk GRUNK grunk", what my fridge had ACTUALLY been trying to say was, "Help..me...I'm dying...erp...gurgle...gurgle...sclup....." As I was getting ready to talk to one of my sisters this morning, I went to my newly stockpiled fridge to get something to eat. I opened my freezer for ice and noticed that the inside seemed a little drippier than normal. Curious, I looked at a box of popsicles that was decidedly soggier than it had been yesterday. I pulled out a popsicle and noticed that it was no longer a popsicle; rather, it had become a popsuckle (that word sounds odd, but it's late so I can't think of anything else. Humor rating for this post = -1.). It was liquid. Totally. I could have drank it for breakfast. Yum. "Well," I thought, "That's not normal popsicle behavior. For you see, the normal state of a popsicle is a 'solid', and I see that my popsicle has metamorphosed into what is commonly known as a 'liquid'." (Okay, so I actually didn't think that last part, but come on, I had to learn those scientific terms in 5th grade and like WHEN are they EVER going to be used in my real life unless I force them to fit somewhere?) For some vague, stupidly optimistic reason, I thought, "Well, maybe it's because this popsicle was closest to the door and that somehow...made it...no, that doesn't work, does it?" Still, I looked at a few more of the popsicles in the box, and alas, they were all as sadly puddled as the firs tone had been. I also noticed a certain balminess that I know is not a part of my freezer's natural ecosystem. Drat.
When I opened my fridge, I noticed the temperature was slightly warmer than normal, but the light still went on. This gave me hope for a second, but I realzed that the light was on, but nobody was home (humor rating = -2). Though I guess if you give it a few days, I'll have some nice sentient mold growing on some of my foodstuff, so maybe somebody will be home given enough time...
So now my fridge is dead. Does anyone know what to do with a deceased refrigerator in Japan? I'm not certain what I should do. I have absolutely no idea how to call a fridge fixer (I was going to say mechanic, but I'm fairly certain that's not the word I'm looking for). See, one of the fundamental problems here is that when confronted with anything vaguely mechanical, electric, or electronic, my brain gets immediately overheated and I go into what is known as "Damsel-in-Distress (DID) Mode". I can't figure out how these things work, and for all I know, pictures really are taken using magic and planes fly because there are hundreds of indentured fairies flying inside the wings of 747s. That's just how my brain works. Or doesn't work, as the case may be. I have NO IDEA how electronic things function. Still, I optimistically looked at my fridge and tried to figure out what might be the problem and how to fix it.
I hit it once or twice, because they always do that in movies, but it didn't seem to do anything other than hurt my hand, which I'm sure wasn't helping anyone. I then unplugged and replugged all the appliances near the fridge. I then opened and shut the doors to the fridge and freezer, adjusted the temperature control, did a rain dance, sacrificed a piece of toast to the carbon gods, and then hit other appliances in my kitchen out of principle. Surprisingly, none of these sure-fire methods for fixing appliances seemed to work. And as luck would have it, my one Japanese friend and mentor is out of the country for the week. Great timing (Before she left, I said something like, "Man, I hope everything is okay while she's gone. I'd hate for something to break down. But that hasn't happened so far, so what are the chances that in the week she's gone..." ... yeah). Well then.
Still intent on maybe being able to fix this myself ("I've got a college degree, I should be able to do this, right?"), I got out a flashlight and small mirror so I could peer behind my fridge. It indeed confirmed everything I know about refrigerators in one go: "yup, there's pipes and tubes and stuff. Some of them go into the fridge. They probably work together to, as we say in the science world, 'make things cold'." Yup. Sure am glad I looked back there. Otherwise, I might have missed something important. Like maybe there could have been a toaster back there. Yeah. I mean, what if it was as simple as that? I could have looked and said, "Oh, oh! I see the problem now! It appears someone has changed my fridge pipes and made them into a toaster oven! Haha! Your normal human would have overlooked that, but not I!" Though realistically speaking, it could actually be a toaster oven back there, and I still wouldn't know the difference. And I still couldn't have fixed it. All pipes, wires, and cords look the same to me.
So now I sit in my apartment with a fridge and freezer full of quickly decaying food. Normally, I would kick myself over something like last night, when I totally ignored the danger warning signs. But realistically, what could I have done to fix it last night that I haven't thought of this morning? It's not like some insomniac mechanic fairy would have happened to be wandering by and bestowed upon me some kind of magical appliance powers that would have allowed me to fix any appliance simply by laying hands on it. So for now, I must sit here and worry about cleaning my apartment, for I know that once I inform my BOE of this, I will have people descending on my house. I'm slightly worried that we'll find half a dead cockraoch in one of the pipes. Maybe this is some kind of cockroach revenge for me sucking up Pete's girlfriend in my whirling vortex of doom? Ah, well. As they say in Japan, shogunai (it can't be helped). But you know, I can't help but think, "I'm lucky my fridge hasn't done anything weird like start to work suddenly in the middle of the night so I don't have to buy a new one. Oh, and that world peace hasn't been achieved yet. And that I don't have a wonderful, handsome, intelligent man proposing to me. Man, I'm lucky none of those things are real...Hahaha hahaha haha...."
(Just in case - it should work better than before, that means no hate crimes, and he has to be over 5'10" tall.)
I never said you'd like my excuse...
Since it's currently late for me, I'm just going to post on my current woe. I'll post more perhaps tomorrow, but this whole laziness habit is a hard thing to kick. I'll have to work on that. But I think that can wait for another day.
ON APPLIANCES
They say bad things come in 3's. I won't go into details, but both of my sisters just had...interesting and unexpected things happen in their lives. Silly me, I thought, "Man, that sucks for them. I guess I'm just lucky. Hahaha hahaha hahaoh crap." See, whenever I think things like, "Gee, I'm glad that didn't happen" or "Oh, aren't I lucky that such and such" I invarialby end up, hours later, crying and saying, "WHY DID I HAVE TO SAY THAT?!?" As an example, I hated it when I first came to Japan. I didn't actually cry at first, but I just wasn't happy the first few days. Then one day, I tried to make myself more positive. "Well, everything may smell funny, I may not be able to understand anything even when it's said in English, I may be forced to talk to more people in 2 days than I've talked to in the past 2 years, and Iu may hate to think that my shower would only work for midgets, BUT at least I've got my healthohcrap." And yes, true to the curse, I woke up with a cold the next morning.
So after what I thought the other day, I really, really shouldn't have been surprised this morning when I found out that my refrigerator is no longer in the land of the living.
To fully appreciate the wonder of God's timing as it relates to my household appliances, let's travel back to last night. I was relaxing in my living room, watching some tv and enjoying my day off (this is Golden Week in Japan, a week where we get 3 days off for no apparent reason. Yea for random holidays!!!). The prevoius day, I had gone out and shopped, figuring that if I were to fully enjoy my days off, I'd need to stockpile food and clean clothes like it was Y2K so that I wouldn't have to leave my apartment for any reason except the Second Coming. My fridge and freezer, for once, were full of fresh, non-decaying, non-leftover food. Oh, the joy! I could open my fridge at anytime and find fresh food and beverages! But sadly, this joy was not destined to last. For in order to make the food, I had to have clean dishes. I have the terrible habit of making food choices based on what pans I have clean. Used the pancake pan yesterday? Good, I'll make eggs today. Used the soup pot last night? Good, I'll make spaghetti. Used all my dishes in the past week? Good, I'll eat toast on a paper towel. Eventually, though, toast gets old (both literally and figuratively), so I did get off my lazy butt (although I was, in my defense, not being lazy - I was killing hoardes of heartless beings bent on destroying the heart of all worlds, though I'm not entirely certain why they're bent on that - maybe it's Golden Week for them, too, so they have nothing else to do?) and washed dishes, a feat which took over 2 hours due to my small sink and even smaller draining board.
So back to me relaxing in the living room watching tv. I was enjoying the quiet of the night and scent of clean dishes, when I suddenly heard a large, terrifying grunking noise coming from my kitchen. I paused my dvd, froze for a second, and listened in horror to the grunking noise, wondering what the heck Pete was doing in my kitchen. I realized the noise was coming from my refrigerator at the same time I realized that no amount of money on this earth was going to make me walk out into the kitchen to see who was doing what to whom and with what. The noise stopped after a few seconds, and my thoughts on the subject were brief, yet decisive. "Fire? Nope, no fire. Explosion? Nope, no explosion. Water spurting all over? Nope, no water. Smoke billowing out of anything mechanical? Nope, no smoke billowing. And we're good. Nothing whatsoever to worry about... Yeah... Yeah, I bet Japanese fridges all make horrible grunking noises every once in a while just to say hello... Yeah, maybe if I understood more Japanese, I would have been able to understand what it just said to me... Yeah, well then, nothing to worry about. I'll continue watching my dvd and pretend nothing has happened... Yeah. NOTHING HAS HAPPENED, DARNIT!" Yeah, it wasn't convincing to me, either, but little lies can sometimes help us keep our sanity.
I found out the next morning that instead of "grunk GRUNK grunk", what my fridge had ACTUALLY been trying to say was, "Help..me...I'm dying...erp...gurgle...gurgle...sclup....." As I was getting ready to talk to one of my sisters this morning, I went to my newly stockpiled fridge to get something to eat. I opened my freezer for ice and noticed that the inside seemed a little drippier than normal. Curious, I looked at a box of popsicles that was decidedly soggier than it had been yesterday. I pulled out a popsicle and noticed that it was no longer a popsicle; rather, it had become a popsuckle (that word sounds odd, but it's late so I can't think of anything else. Humor rating for this post = -1.). It was liquid. Totally. I could have drank it for breakfast. Yum. "Well," I thought, "That's not normal popsicle behavior. For you see, the normal state of a popsicle is a 'solid', and I see that my popsicle has metamorphosed into what is commonly known as a 'liquid'." (Okay, so I actually didn't think that last part, but come on, I had to learn those scientific terms in 5th grade and like WHEN are they EVER going to be used in my real life unless I force them to fit somewhere?) For some vague, stupidly optimistic reason, I thought, "Well, maybe it's because this popsicle was closest to the door and that somehow...made it...no, that doesn't work, does it?" Still, I looked at a few more of the popsicles in the box, and alas, they were all as sadly puddled as the firs tone had been. I also noticed a certain balminess that I know is not a part of my freezer's natural ecosystem. Drat.
When I opened my fridge, I noticed the temperature was slightly warmer than normal, but the light still went on. This gave me hope for a second, but I realzed that the light was on, but nobody was home (humor rating = -2). Though I guess if you give it a few days, I'll have some nice sentient mold growing on some of my foodstuff, so maybe somebody will be home given enough time...
So now my fridge is dead. Does anyone know what to do with a deceased refrigerator in Japan? I'm not certain what I should do. I have absolutely no idea how to call a fridge fixer (I was going to say mechanic, but I'm fairly certain that's not the word I'm looking for). See, one of the fundamental problems here is that when confronted with anything vaguely mechanical, electric, or electronic, my brain gets immediately overheated and I go into what is known as "Damsel-in-Distress (DID) Mode". I can't figure out how these things work, and for all I know, pictures really are taken using magic and planes fly because there are hundreds of indentured fairies flying inside the wings of 747s. That's just how my brain works. Or doesn't work, as the case may be. I have NO IDEA how electronic things function. Still, I optimistically looked at my fridge and tried to figure out what might be the problem and how to fix it.
I hit it once or twice, because they always do that in movies, but it didn't seem to do anything other than hurt my hand, which I'm sure wasn't helping anyone. I then unplugged and replugged all the appliances near the fridge. I then opened and shut the doors to the fridge and freezer, adjusted the temperature control, did a rain dance, sacrificed a piece of toast to the carbon gods, and then hit other appliances in my kitchen out of principle. Surprisingly, none of these sure-fire methods for fixing appliances seemed to work. And as luck would have it, my one Japanese friend and mentor is out of the country for the week. Great timing (Before she left, I said something like, "Man, I hope everything is okay while she's gone. I'd hate for something to break down. But that hasn't happened so far, so what are the chances that in the week she's gone..." ... yeah). Well then.
Still intent on maybe being able to fix this myself ("I've got a college degree, I should be able to do this, right?"), I got out a flashlight and small mirror so I could peer behind my fridge. It indeed confirmed everything I know about refrigerators in one go: "yup, there's pipes and tubes and stuff. Some of them go into the fridge. They probably work together to, as we say in the science world, 'make things cold'." Yup. Sure am glad I looked back there. Otherwise, I might have missed something important. Like maybe there could have been a toaster back there. Yeah. I mean, what if it was as simple as that? I could have looked and said, "Oh, oh! I see the problem now! It appears someone has changed my fridge pipes and made them into a toaster oven! Haha! Your normal human would have overlooked that, but not I!" Though realistically speaking, it could actually be a toaster oven back there, and I still wouldn't know the difference. And I still couldn't have fixed it. All pipes, wires, and cords look the same to me.
So now I sit in my apartment with a fridge and freezer full of quickly decaying food. Normally, I would kick myself over something like last night, when I totally ignored the danger warning signs. But realistically, what could I have done to fix it last night that I haven't thought of this morning? It's not like some insomniac mechanic fairy would have happened to be wandering by and bestowed upon me some kind of magical appliance powers that would have allowed me to fix any appliance simply by laying hands on it. So for now, I must sit here and worry about cleaning my apartment, for I know that once I inform my BOE of this, I will have people descending on my house. I'm slightly worried that we'll find half a dead cockraoch in one of the pipes. Maybe this is some kind of cockroach revenge for me sucking up Pete's girlfriend in my whirling vortex of doom? Ah, well. As they say in Japan, shogunai (it can't be helped). But you know, I can't help but think, "I'm lucky my fridge hasn't done anything weird like start to work suddenly in the middle of the night so I don't have to buy a new one. Oh, and that world peace hasn't been achieved yet. And that I don't have a wonderful, handsome, intelligent man proposing to me. Man, I'm lucky none of those things are real...Hahaha hahaha haha...."
(Just in case - it should work better than before, that means no hate crimes, and he has to be over 5'10" tall.)
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