Get Your Genki On

2009-02-27T17:05:00.002+09:00

I know I haven't blogged in awhile. I just haven't been motivated. At first, I was excited to write about all the strange things in Japan. But after awhile, things just become normal. Corn and mayonnaise on your pizza? Normal. Students running up in the hallway to pet your hair? Normal. People stopping you on a train to ask you where you're from and then telling you that you're beautiful? Normal (and seriously, after awhile, it doesn't even serve as an ego boost anymore).

I guess it truly is time for me to come home. To my mother's intense relief, I declined to recontract for a 4th year (the person who gave me the papers asked me twice if I was absolutely sure. She even gave them to me a week late to give me more time to "think it over". I told her that I eventually want to get married, but I am having no luck even finding a boyfriend in Japan. She reminded me that I still have 6 months, and wouldn't it be a shame if I got a boyfriend in that time and then had to leave? Fun stuff).

So as of August or thereabouts, I will be coming home. I figured that now that the American economy is in the crapper, I should definitely leave my steady, stable, well-paying job and head back to America where I can aspire to be, with patience and dedication, a manager at a fast food restaurant. Or at least marry one.

2008-12-14T21:59:00.003+09:00

Okay, so let's take a survey. Hands up if you've ever had a Spaniard, a Frenchman, and 2 Japanese guys talk and flirt with you for several hours over the course of 24 hours (and I have to admit here that I will be a little freaked out if any of you guys out there raise your hands...).

And people wonder why I like my job...

It's been a great weekend of great insights, including the deep insight I had detailing that I could NEVER marry a Spaniard becuase no matter HOW good/unaccented his English is, he could still never open his mouth without me hearing, "Alo. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

On Elections

2008-10-25T09:35:00.003+09:00

Last Sunday, I went to a Field Day for adult foreigners in Japan. Craziness and fun ensued. The next day, muscle pain ensued. I was planning on having a nice, relaxing day of sleep. And that's when it started.

I know, I know, you're sick of elections already. After all, you've been hearing the campaigning for two years now. But I'll be complaining about Japanese elections, not American ones. The good thing about Japanese elections is that they are almost literally called one week and held the next. The bad thing about Japanese elections is the week between when they're called and when they're held.

The Japanese way of campaigning is quite different from the American one. There aren't a lot of expensive tv ads or the like (with only one week, it's kind of hard to make, schedule, and air them), so in order to get attention, they turn to the airwaves. No, not radio. Actual honest-to-God airwaves. They drive around in cars with gigantic speakers attached to the top and blare out campaign slogans. All day. For 7 days. At maximum volume. And lucky for me, this year, there are 23 candidates up for various elected positions, which means I get to hear 23 different people drive by and say, "Thank you, please vote for me!" All day. From 7:30am to 8pm.

So these 23 candidates all get jackets that are a bright, annoying colors, paint a car with their name and various slogans, then get 4 of their friends to drive around with them, then wave with white gloves (not kidding, they all wear white gloves) at passerby as they drive around the city. With 23 candidates and a small city, they sometimes cross paths, double the noise pollution. Invariably, one candidate will apologize and drive away, which everyone appreciates because by that point, all the china is shaking on the shelves. I always think better of the person who drives away. If I were running a campaign, that would be my strategy. I would drive around until I found another campaign vehicle, then act like the bigger person, apologize, and leave. Everyone would love me because they wouldn't hear from me.

Another annoying thing about these campaign cars is that they drive slow. And we're not talking, "5 or 10 miles under the speed limit" slow. We're talking, "Whoa, did that old lady with the walker just pass me?" slow. And they randomly stop completely so they can wave more vigorously at the old guy on his bike who is doing his best to completely ignore them. This just incites them to wave harder and crank up the volume on their speakers. Eventually, the old guy will acknowledge them just to get them to go away, and then the car will drive off, happily assured of having lost another 10 votes (the old guy plus the 9 cars that are backed up behind them whose drivers are now all angry and late for work). Again, if I was running for election, I'd go speed through the city at 80 miles an hour. Everyone would love me because I wouldn't be backing up traffic AND they could drive just behind me at 78 miles an hour and not have to worry about getting pulled over first!

Unfortunately, I can't even vote in Japan, let alone run for office. Ah, well. Fortunately, the elections are tomorrow, so I don't have to listen to this noise polution that much longer. I just have to worry about the motorcycle gang that's started to hang out near my train station. Most annoying thing in the world. I was tired on Sunday because of the exercise Saturday and the nonstop campaigning. I was finally ready to go to sleep Sunday night when the biker gang started to get feisty. I think they must not like the elections, either. I never thought I'd have anything in common with a biker gang, but there you go.

In the Headlines

2008-10-25T09:00:00.004+09:00

I'm typing up another post as we speak, but for now I thought I'd post 2 articles detailing why I fear Japanese medical services.

Todai hospital also turned new mom away
The Yomiuri Shimbun
A pregnant woman who died of a brain hemorrhage after being refused emergency care by seven Tokyo hospitals also was refused admittance to Tokyo University Hospital, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
The woman, 36, died three days after giving birth by emergency cesarean section and undergoing surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage at Metropolitan Bokuto Hospital in Sumida Ward, Tokyo, earlier this month.
Despite Tokyo University Hospital, in the capital's Bunkyo Ward, being designated as equivalent to a tertiary emergency medical facility for the treatment for critical patients, it said it refused to admit the woman because all the beds in its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) were occupied.
Observers have noted that this situation again shows up insufficiencies in the nation's emergency care system.
The woman's regular doctor at the Gonohashi Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, a clinic in Koto Ward the woman visited regularly during her pregnancy, called seven hospitals on the evening of Oct. 4 to request they admit her. They all turned down the request.
The reasons cited included: "All the intensive care beds are full," and "The obstetrician is busy handling the delivery of a child."
According to the Gonohashi doctor and staff at the university hospital, the woman had complained of a headache and nausea while being transported in a Tokyo Fire Department ambulance. Believing she would be admitted by Tokyo University Hospital, her doctor and ambulance crew decided to try to have her accepted there.
When staff at the university hospital heard of the woman's condition, they decided the child would have to be admitted to its NICU following his or her birth. But all nine beds in the unit were reportedly full, so woman was refused admission.
The woman was taken to Metropolitan Bokuto Hospital, one of the facilities that had initially turned her away. She underwent a cesarean section at about 9:30 p.m., and had cerebral hemorrhage surgery at about 10 p.m. The child reportedly remains in good health, but the mother died three days later.

The sad thing is that this is not at all uncommon. I think I wrote this in an earlier post, but I'll write it again for emphasis. I had a friend in Japan who had appendicitis. She was turned away by 2 hospitals before her appendix burst and she was finally admitted by a third hospital.

Here's a new and innovative idea from a newspaper contributor.

Obstetrics, emergency depts must cooperate
Makiko Tatebayashi / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
In order to avoid a situation in which patients in need of emergency care are turned away by a succession of hospitals, improvements to the emergency treatment system must be made to ensure that key hospitals are able to accept patients around-the-clock.
Earlier this month, a pregnant woman suffered a brain hemorrhage and died after being refused by seven hospitals. Metropolitan Bokuto Hospital in Sumida Ward, Tokyo, initially refused a request to admit the woman, but later accepted her when it was contacted again, which prompts the question: Why did the hospital fail to swiftly admit the woman the first time?
Two years ago, a pregnant woman in Nara Prefecture died after being refused treatment from 19 hospitals. That woman also suffered a brain hemorrhage.

Now, I don't know a whole lot about hospitals in America, but I do know that I've never been worried about being turned away from a hospital there. In America, my home city hospital is willing to admit anyone, and within thirty minutes you can be assured, regardless of age, gender, or sexual preference, of being told that you pregnant. Mind you, it may not be the BEST medical care, but it IS always available. In Japan, there's just no guarantee that you'll even get in the hospital. If you get a horrible, festering wound in Japan, it's probably best just to go to the school nurse, who will sneeze on it and then but a bandaid over it. Seriously, it's no wonder people here live to be 1,000. They either die young or acquire an immunity to everything, including death.

2008-09-23T09:31:00.002+09:00

And more food. I love Italian food. It's simple, it's easy, it tastes good. How could anyone mess it up?

Is it wrong that I laughed at this one?

Pizza. Who can mess up pizza? It's dough with stuff on it.

Stuff indeed. The upper pizza, as you can see, has broccoli, corn, potato salad, red peppers, and soggy bacon. Yummy.

The pizza here sports mushrooms, soggy bacon, corn, and red and green peppers, all topped with mayonnaise. What's that? You say it looks like there's scrambled eggs on that pizza? Don't be silly. Japanese pizza isn't THAT weird. That's actually egg salad. You silly people. Who would put SCRAMBLED eggs on a pizza? That's just gross.

The next two are from the school lunch Junior high school students and teachers get everyday. In Japanese, it's called "kyushoku", but the ALTs have lovingly renamed it "Spewshoku". Because it rhymes. And we're clever like that. Get it? Yeah, we have too much time on our hands.

Everyday, my kyushoku usually consists of milk, a bread loaf or bowl of rice, a bowl of soup or something, and some kind of meat (or fish - Japanese people classify meat and fish separately) and vegetable. This is a fairly typical school lunch. You will notice the tiny albino hot dogs. Scary, gross, and disgusting. I think they're actually made of fish. The lunch pictured below is second only to the lunch with the pasta, bread, and potato salad with soggy bacon. It's CARBtastic!

Here are the mysterious hot dog things again, tossed in a salad of boiled seaweed, cabbage, and corn. Looks like it's already been eaten, doesn't it?

All I can say is that you people can never call me a picky eater again.

2008-09-23T09:01:00.007+09:00

Yea, it's a national holiday! And for once, I have nothing to do. Time to update my blog with pictures of wonderful Japanese foodstuffs.

I almost posted the picture upside down, but I caught myself just in time as I looked at the kanji writing. "Whew, that was a close one. I almost looked pretty stupid," I thought. And then I realized, "how would they know the difference?"

I'm sorry, I'm too American for this to ever, EVER look appetizing. Ever.

This was in my school provided lunch one day. Kind of looks like moldy little bits of thin steak, doesn't it? But what is it really?

Yup, it's whale. And this helpful chart lets you know what part of the whale you're eating. Yum.

This actually looks quite disgusting to me with all the mushrooms and whatnot, and it's not helped along by the fact that there's a raw egg in a bowl next to it. But this is, by far, my favorite Japanese food. It's called Sukiyaki (okay, everyone my parent's age and older can stop singing that song now), and it's just a bunch of vegetables boiled in a sweet soy sauce. You get 4 or 5 people around a pot like this, and you add the vegetables and meat to the pot. Then everyone just reaches in with their chopsticks and pulls stuff out. Once you get something, you dip it in the raw egg in your bowl to cool it down a little, then eat it. Sounds gross, but my friends who visited 2 years ago can attest to the fact that it's actually really, really good.

2008-09-16T10:04:00.006+09:00

As we all know by now, when I say, "I'll update tonight," that means that the update will be in my head and will appear online in the next few weeks. This again won't be a very big update. I'm currently at work, with nothing to do as the teacher with whom I was supposed to teach today "forgot" me on his way to class. It's okay, though. I'm not bitter. I've been really busy lately, so I enjoy the free time. It's allowed me to get some important stuff done. In fact, I've almost completed my to-do checklist. All that's left is "Figure out if the Macarena starts with the left arm or right." If anyone could help me out with that one, I'd appreciate it.

On the Impending Speech Contests
Every year, there are several English Speech contests for junior high school students all over Japan. It starts in late September with district speech contests. Winners from that move on to the prefectural (state) contests, winners from that either move on to regional or to the national speech contest. Each school is allowed to send a few students to the district contests. Since I have 3 schools, that means I get to coach 6 students. Fun fun! Along with that, since I'm not in my third year in Japan, many nearby districts have asked that I help judge the speech contests for their district. I recently had a meeting with one such district. I'll be listening to and judging 27 speeches and 7 recitations. Since the speeches are judged on content as well as pronunciation, the district sent me all the speeches ahead of time so I could grade them on content.

I've started reading the speeches. Some are good, some are...not so good. In most cases, the students write their speeches in English, and the English teachers translate. The only problem is, many of the teachers don't have a grasp on the natural flow of the English langauge or on how speeches are written in English. Thus, many of the speeches lack a native speakers understanding of nuances and "real" English. I would feel bad for the teachers, but I don't. All of them have access to a native English speaker in the form of an ALT/AET (my job, remember?). Some of these teachers just decide not to ask their ALT for help. And thus you get a speech with the following quote. While the word choice makes sense, and is indeed very "slang" and "natural," using it in a very formal, serious speech contest was perhaps not the best choice.

"He [the speechwriter's dog] sometimes breaks our family rules. When I leave him home alone, he pisses everywhere in my house."

Another new entry

2008-09-10T14:49:00.002+09:00

Coming soon to a blog near you. I'll update tonight if I haven't melted into a little pile of goo by then. For now, here's a great quote.

The new ALT in my city was asking some of the office ladies about Japanese life. Talk turned to the section cheifs in our office, all of whom are quite old men. "What do Japanese men do after they retire?" the new ALT asked. After a lengthy pause and some debate in Japanese, one of the ladies replied, "Get divorced."

2008-07-30T10:35:00.003+09:00

I'm not going to post a huge update here - I'm just going to post this video for now.

This is my nephew Kai. He is the most adorable child ever. He's six months old, and he's just discovered a new noise which you'll hear a the beginning of the video (the growling noise which his father then copies back at him). You'll also get to see him try a new food - bananas. He obviously LOVES bananas.

Massive Entry on the new school year

2008-07-13T17:22:00.002+09:00

Part San - Sorry, this is a long post.

So lucky me, I had a ton of teacher changes this year. And they weren’t all for the better. You saw the line-up of old teachers.

At the end of the first week, the schools officially announce which teachers will be staying and which teachers will be leaving. I missed one change, much to my chagrin. Freddy, my beloved Freddy, was leaving Cromartie. Due to my mis-reading his name (his name was written in kanji, and when I was reading it, I accidentally switched the characters in my head, and thus thought a teacher I had never heard of didn’t care about, was leaving. I was wrong), I didn’t realize that he was leaving and thus never had time to say a proper goodbye to him. This lack of closure led to a bizarre, and in retrospect slightly troubling, incident wherein I almost started crying in another class because Freddy was gone. Freddy used to bring his guitar in and sing Beatles songs with his students; one of my other teachers did this one day, and my eyes started tearing up. I didn’t even know I was that attached to Freddy until then.

Also creating much sadness and despair, Oneesan was leaving Cromartie as well. The two best English teachers in Cromartie, and maybe the two best English teachers I ever worked with, were gone. Great. But I had decided that my theme for this year would be: Stay Positive. In my second year here, I had quite a long bit of culture shock that resulted in me being very negative and angry. So for this new school year, I decided to keep a positive mindset and always see the good in things.

In that line of thought, PD sensei from my Base school was leaving. Yea! No more hovering and over-translating and bad coffee/tea breath! No more randomly grabbing my arm in a vice-like grip. No more hand-shaped bruises on my arms! See? Something positive came out of this. Every thing is sunny and smelling of roses!

In other news, Svelt and Dependent sensei left the Ghetto school. Can’t say I was really sad to see Dependent sensei go. But Svelt, well, Svelt I would miss. He had really made my life more bearable at the Ghetto school. Now I could only hope that some new and great people were moving in.

Hahahaha…

Staying positive. Staying positive. I’m sure loads of handsome, young, smart, English-speaking teachers were going to come pouring into my schools. Yup. And I’m going to start losing weight every time I eat ice cream.

I found out that both Dependent sensei and Svelt were being transferred to Cromartie. That worried me slightly. I was sure that Dependent sensei would keep relying on Svelt sensei and that he would never be able to figure out how to teach because he would always be teaching with her. Luckily, the principal of that school decided to give them each separate grades to teach, so that worked out. It was good that Svelt was replacing Oneesan because I really needed a nice teacher who would talk to me at that school.

I can’t decide the order of the next announcements, so I’ll go with the school with the least amount of changes first. My Base school. Hurrah. So as I said PD sensei left, and was replaced by another part-time teacher. Can you guess who? Can you guess who? This is karma trying to slap me in the face. This is what happens when I try to think positive, happy thoughts. I thought I had gotten rid of him. He left for good. He went to teach at another school as a part-time teacher there. I gave him flowers at the going-away party. That means he wasn’t supposed to come back, dammit! He was wussy, he was girly, he was annoying. Yes, friends, witness the triumphant return of Mr. Passivity! Back in all his worrying, sniveling, whimpering wonder. Crap. At the welcome party for my Base school, he did his darndest to avoid me at all costs. He sat right across from me, and anytime I would turn to talk to him or ask to translate something for me, he would suddenly turn in the opposite direction and offer to pour someone a drink. Nice to see that some things never change.

My last school. My worst school. The only school where I had almost lost it in a class and started yelling. The Ghetto school. There were 2 vacancies at the Ghetto school now, and I was worried about who would come in. The only teacher there was Rabbit sensei, and I had seen how her lack of classroom management had ruined the English of 2 years of students. So imagine how surprised I was when I talked to her and found out that she was only going to teach one elective English class (and a part-time special needs class) and that the other 2 teachers were going to teach all 3 grades of English (why does the Ghetto school do this? Their students’ English is worse than any other school, and I can only think that it has something to do with their being the only school to assign teachers multiple grades to teach. It seems like easy math to me: 3 English teachers + 3 grades = 1 teacher per grade). I was even more confused when I found out that a teacher from Cromartie would be teaching English at the Ghetto school. The reason for my confusion was that he was a gijutsu teacher – the equivalent to the Industrial Tech. teacher. Now riddle me this, riddle me that. When you have a certified English teacher in your school, why then would you choose to make the Industrial Tech. teacher be the English teacher and the English teacher be the Special Needs teacher? Why? Whywhywhy? Who, in their infinite stupidity, decided that this sounded like a good idea? The only person to whom this would make sense would be someone under the influence of alcohol. Way, WAY under the influence of alcohol. And I mean to the point of alcohol poisoning. But, in my newfound positive mindset, I decided not to make judgments ahead of time. Maybe he would turn out to be an absolutely amazing English teacher. Maybe he would have hidden depths. Maybe he couldn’t find an English teaching job and so had to settle for teaching Industrial tech all these years. Maybe I will lose weight every time I just look at my treadmill.

So staying positive, I sent an email to Oneesan to see what her opinion of this guy was. Her response?
“He is a little strange teacher. Good luck, Jessica.” And here she inserted the most evil smiley face that I’ve ever seen, but it unfortunately can’t be reproduced on the computer. Needless to say, I was very encouraged. (She later told me that he had quite the reputation for being “difficult to work with”, which doesn’t sound TOO bad until you run that through a Japanese/English translator and realize that she was saying, “He’s a &^*#^$@ and he’s crazy and absolutely NO ONE likes working with him.”).

And now, after teaching quite a few classes with this teacher, I realize that it’s worse than I originally thought. His English is horrendous. I can’t understand what he says in English. And his Japanese is strange. You’d really have to speak a bit of Japanese for me to explain it, but he just uses strange, strange words. When he speaks to me in class, he often uses Japanese. He’ll command me or order me to do something instead of asking, and he’ll often do it in Japanese. This makes the students then think it’s okay to address me in Japanese. One of the primary reasons that I’m in Japan is so that students can get to talk to a native English speaker in English. Using Japanese as our primary communicative language kind of shoots a hole in that. This teacher is just bad. Really, really bad. And he randomly yells at the students for no reason at all. During one activity, he felt that the boys and girls weren’t talking to each other enough (come on, dude, they’re 12 years old. They’re just starting to get over the whole cooties things), so he yelled at them to sit down, then yelled at them for 10 minutes. And I mean yelled. Spittle was flying (I considered handing students books or something to put up as spittle shields, but I figured that this might make him even angrier), his voice was cracking he was screaming so loud, and other teachers were opening their doors to see what was up. And the worst part was that he kept mentioning me, and I have no idea why or what he was saying. There would be a long, random, loud string of Japanese, followed by my name, followed by more Japanese. He was probably telling the students that I was angry with them or something (which I wasn’t. I was about to go smack him upside the head and tell him to let it go – just because no girls wanted to talk to him in junior high didn’t mean that he needed to yell at them now as a way of getting revenge). And every once in awhile, he’d turn for me and ask for confirmation in Japanese. About 3 minutes in, I stopped paying attention and just sat down, figuring he’d peter out eventually.

In my professional opinion, the man is an idiot - an unstable, bipolar, crazy idiot. You wouldn’t want to know my personal opinion. And I think that the best part of having him at this new school is that his desk sits right next to mine. Yes, joy beyond all joys, he sits next to me. Usually, I can ignore (Defense #1) the people next to me, but he refuses to be ignored. The first day I was there, he sat next to me during lunch and stared at me for literally 10 minutes. I tried not to make eye contact (Defense #2)– I hear this works when bears are attacking. However, apparently as he is not a bear (slight oversight on my part), he came out with the comment, “You use chopsticks very well. I am surprised you can use chopsticks.” Now, this comment sounds harmless, but try to realize that I have been at the same school as this man for 2 SOLID YEARS. How did he think I was getting nourishment if I couldn’t use chopsticks? I haven’t been getting fat on air alone. And the fact that it was preceded by 10 minutes of staring was someone off-putting as well. After that stunning starter, he started talking to me in some weird mix of Japanese and English. And still to this day, after replaying the conversation over and over and over in my head, I have absolutely NO IDEA what he was talking about. Something about how American school kids used to behave badly in the 1980’s but are getting better now (don’t know where he got this idea – maybe Brat Pack movies of the 80’s?), unlike Japanese students, who were good and are getting worse. Or something like that. I’m not entirely sure. Eventually, I just agreed with him to get him to stop talking to me (Defense #3). And ever since then, whenever I see that he’ll be eating lunch in the staffroom, I down my lunch in literally 2 minutes, bolt out of the staff room, drive to a nearby store, buy a coffee, and sit in peace and quiet for 20 mintues. And I hate coffee. But I’m willing to drink it if it lets me get away from him. I guess being around him drives me to drink.

Positive thoughts. I’m thinking positive thoughts. I’m going to my happy place. Relax, relax… (when I’ve gotten stressed lately, M sensei has taken it upon herself to ask if I want her to run out and buy some aroma therapy candles. It’s getting easier to tell who’s worked with me based on their understanding of sarcasm). I guess on the positive side, I can still depend on the Ghetto school to make me not want to come to work. Everybody likes consistency, right?

Anywho, we’re calling this new teacher Patsy, and I’ll give a Japanese dollar to anyone who can figure out the word association that lead to that name.

The only bright point in my life right now is the other new teacher at the Ghetto school. He is possibly the best teacher I’ve ever observed, and that includes teachers in America. When I first came to the Ghetto school to just say hello to the new teachers, he sat down with me for 25 minutes to talk about team teaching and his experiences and what he expects, etc. He told me his background in education, and everything. This is incredibly rare. Most teacher can’t even find 25 seconds to talk to their ALT, and if they can, they say, “Here’s the lesson plan for next week” or “Can you plan the lesson for next week.” So I was blown away by his willingness to just sit and chat. His English wasn’t the best, but he was absolutely fearless using it. He’s not embarrassed at all. There’s a half-Japanese half-Canadian student in one of his classes. He loves it. He treats the kid as a half-teacher during English classes, and doesn’t mind at all if the kid corrects his English. And during this teacher’s self-introduction to his students, he used almost all English. And they paid attention. And they understood most of it. It was amazing. This class is the one that almost made me go insane and start yelling and throwing things. This class has never behaved before. Ever. I don’t think they know what it means to behave. Rabbit sensei couldn’t do anything to stop them from being little turd-muffins. And this guy came in, and right away got control of the class almost instantly. His classroom management skills are amazing. You can tell he loves to teach, he loves to use English, and he’s really, really great with junior high students. He instantly developed a relationship with them, and most of them really respect him and listen when he tells them to be quiet. He great and amazing and he’s married, dammit. And he has 2 kids.

Seriously, I have to stop myself from randomly hugging this guy. He teaches both the grades that Rabbit sensei did last year, and they have completely turned around. Students who ignored me last year or muttered “Ohayo” now say “Good morning!” when they see me (sometimes it’s in the afternoon when this happens, but hey, I’ll take it). I now no longer dread these classes. I just dread the other classes with Patsy. We’ll call this other new guy Metabo sensei, for lack of a better name (in his self-intro, he said that he loved fried foods, but he’s getting “chotto metabo” [a little fat], so he’s on a diet. He also told a cute story about his daughter who’s now in 1st grade and refuses to go to the bathroom at school because she was told that the girls toilets were haunted. So now the poor thing is terrified to go).

So there they are. My new teachers. The only great change was Metabo sensei. Everything else kept the status quo or just made things worse. I guess I shouldn’t complain. I know a lot of ALTs have horrible teaching experiences. (Patsy just walked in the room, making me feel that NO ONE in the HISTORY of BEING an ENGLISH TEACHER has EVER HAD TO DEAL with someone as STUPID and INCOMPETENT at teaching as HIM. Seriously, Rabbit was annoying and all, but I never had fantasies of smacking her upside the head). Staying positive! I’m positive this will be a great school year!

Base school
M Sensei
O Sensei
Mr. Passivity

Cromartie
Ice Queen
Dependent Sensei
Svelt

Ghetto
Patsy
Metabo

A picture is worth a thousand words

2008-07-08T13:33:00.003+09:00

I was playing around with my cell phone the other day and realized I had a few pictures I wanted to share, but had never posted. Here are a few of them. Remember, the ones with writing are from Japan, so the English isn't the best (which is why they're funny). There are two names for this type of very strange English - my favorite is Engrish, so that is what I'll refer to it as.

The first one here is rather risque, so read at your own risk.
This was found at a 7-11 type store called Lawsons. In case you can't read, it says "Attention to all manly men!! Lawson proposes a fresh and new product category of mysterious, yet sexual supplements. They are the love magic for couples, the drive source for men, and the necessary elements for the world of today. We guarantee different d?????? Try them out!" I just loved this for the first line.

Mmmm...looks tasty, don't it? My first impression was that it was a brain in jello. It was actually the dessert at my welcome party in Japan 2 years ago. It's a jello/jelly substance with a pickled plum in the middle. Mmmm....

In Japan, there is a holiday in May that used to be called "Boy's Day" but is now, for PC reasons, called "Children's Day." For this holiday, people display toy models of ancient samurai armour. And it ain't cheap, either. Check out the price tag - $1,195. Granted, you only buy one or two of these in a life-time, but still...

I was shopping the other day and happened across this shirt. I just had to take a picture.

Woohoo! So now I've figured out how to post pictures on blogger. Yea! Maybe my posts will be more visually exciting from now on.

2008-07-08T12:29:00.004+09:00

Again with a short blurb. Sorry. Blogging is not the foremost concern on my mind. Of more pressing concern is the current whereabouts of somewhere around 8,000 gallons of liquid. You see, I got really thirsty after an elementary school visit the other day, so I stopped by a 7-11 and got some things to drink. 4 waters bottles, 1 carton of chocolate milk, and 1 jug of aquarius (like gatorade) later, I was still thirsty. I tried to hold off drinking after 8pm because whenever I so much as look at liquid after 8pm, I get up at 2am and 4 am to complete a vital part of the water cycle. However, I was so thirsty that I couldn't stop myself from drinking about 3 water bottles worth of water between 8pm and 11pm. I went to sleep, but left the door to the bedroom open, figuring that I would be pretty much living in the bathroom that night. Frighteningly enough, I slept through the night and woke up refreshed at 7am. And with a surprisingly empty-feeling bladder. And no, I did not wet the bed, thank you very much. Skip forward to today (1 and 1/2 days later). Without going into too much detail, I have to say that I haven't been spending quite the amount of quality time with the porcelin god that I was expecting. I seriously have to wonder where all that liquid went. Maybe one of my legs is hallow? Maybe I've been sweating WAY more than I thought? Maybe a black hole is forming in my stomach? Any way you look at it, it's got to be effecting my mind. Why else would I inform everyone I know via my blog that I haven't gone potty enough? I'm sure I won't hear about this from my mom when I come home.

Interlude

2008-06-24T13:51:00.002+09:00

Yes! Another month has passed between blogs! I'm getting good at this delayed posting stuff. I do have most of the second half of the last post written; however, it is at home and I am currently at school. So I guess I'll just post some random stories and news articles. Hopefully I'll have time to post the second half of the last post sometime this week.

ON MEDICAL ADVANCES
So let's start off with this nice news article I just found today. Many people often wonder why I fear Japan's medical services. People figure that since Japan is so technologically advanced that their medical profession must be as well.

"A woman in her 80s died in Hyogo Prefectural Nishinomiya Hospital in March after an intern inserted a feeding tube, which was supposed to deliver nutrients directly to the woman's stomach, into her lung instead, the hospital said Wednesday. "

Lungs, stomach, they're all the same, right? It's all internal. The thing about Japanese medicine that worries me is that all doctors go to a generic "doctor school." Once they graduate, they can choose to be a doctor of whatever they want - they can be a dentist, eye doctor, etc., regardless of how much of that area they have actually studied. So you can potentially have an optometrist who has only taken 1 3-credit hour class about eyes. He can even perform LASIK eye surgery on you, even if he really hasn't had lots of training. I fear Japanese dentists because I just KNOW that if I go in, I'll walk out with wooden teeth.

ON THE POWER OF ADVERTISING

"The Yomiuri Shimbun
At least 29 people who went to forests at the foot of Mt. Fuji to commit suicide changed their minds after seeing a sign put up by an organization of loan shark victims about a year ago.
The sign reads, "Your loan problem can definitely be solved," and carries a telephone number for a 24-hour consultation service. The sign was put up by a national liaison council of associations of loan shark victims based in Kanda, Tokyo, in an attempt to prevent those troubled by financial difficulties from committing suicide. "

Now THAT'S what I call effective advertising.

ON PREMEDITATION

In March, there was a big news story about a man who killed one person, then stabbed a few more at a train station in Japan. He apparently sent several emails to police before he committed the murders, daring them to stop him. A few days after he was apprehended, the following news article appeared in the Daily Yomiuri.

"MITO--A man who is suspected to have fatally stabbed one person and injured seven others Sunday in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, and who was arrested on suspicion of murdering a man four days earlier, may have been planning to commit the murders, police said Monday. (Mar.25)"

Which is a stunning revelation in and of itself, but it was nicely followed up by this one.

"MITO--The eight plainclothes police officers posted in and around JR Arakawaoki Station on the lookout for a man wanted for murder were not equipped with radios and thus were unable to coordinate their actions when the man they were seeking went on a stabbing spree in the station area, it was learned Monday."

Apparently, the police were all over the train station (remember, the guy called and emailed them before hand, telling them where he would be), but for some reason, they didn't think to carry radios. So when this guy encountered one of them, he just turned and ran to a different part of the station and stabbed someone else. The only thing I can really think to say is, "Duh." I think that covers it rather nicely.

ON BEING CAMERA SHY

And while we're on the topic of police, I have another article. A few days before this next article was posted in the Daily Yomiuri, there was a story of a 70-something year old man who was taken into questioning by police and somehow "accidentally" broke his fingers and 2 ribs while in the station. People suspected possible police brutality. You think? The police in Japan have often been accused of forcing confessions from suspects, often using violence, threats, or plain old guilt. I started to write a long summary of this, then realized I could just insert comments in the article itself.

"The nation's criminal justice system is in a quandary over how to change the way police interrogate suspects ahead of the introduction of the lay-judge system for criminal trials and in the wake of a series of recent revelations [these "revelations" have been coming out for over 30 years; don't know if I'd consider that "recent"] of coercive police questioning that resulted in false charges.
As the National Police Agency released new guidelines to ensure proper investigation Thursday, the focus of the debates will shift to whether the practice of making audio or video recordings of police interrogations of suspects should be introduced.
[...]
A report released this month by a group of judges studying the issue also predicted that if the introduction of recordings leads to stricter selection of evidence, the average period of criminal trials could be shortened to four to eight days from the current period of between 16 and 39 months. [holy crap that's a long trial] NPA officials were initially reluctant to drastically review interrogation practices. [no kidding]
[...]
Though the NPA explained the situation to all 47 prefectural police forces, a sizable number of police investigators expressed embarrassment, saying that filming of interrogation sessions will make it more difficult to get suspects to trust them. [read: more difficult for the officers to beat the suspects]
Because police officers in Japan are not given the authority to carry out as broad a range of activities as their counterparts in other countries, investigators have developed techniques ["techniques"] to make suspects ["]voluntarily["] confess. For example, investigators have tried to ["]guide["] suspects into a sense of remorse by asking about their personal worries and life history.
It is also predicted that gang members will hesitate to confess, if all conversations in the interrogation room might be recorded and replayed in a court.
Requiring that all interrogations be recorded may make investigations more difficult and result in poorer public safety conditions."

To sum up - the courts are talking about requiring the police to tape/record interrogations; the police say that will damage their "trust" with the people they interrogate. Ummm... okay. Does this sound like they're worried about being found out, or am I just overly suspicious?

Well, that's all I guess for now. That was a longer post than originally intended (as they all are). I'll try to update again in the next few days. But I always say that, don't I?

2008-05-23T21:48:00.003+09:00

New, long post about the new school year coming soon. Until then, here's a short story.

So I was heading to the bathroom at my base school the other day, and as I was switching into the bathroom slippers, some 2nd year boys were coming towards me. I said hello, they said hello back, and I went into the bathroom. I fully expected the boys to keep on walking and go to their class, as they usually do after I say hello. These boys, though, apparently had a bee in their bonnet about something. I could hear them giggling and whispering in English outside of the bathroom. They waited there while I went to the bathroom, washed my hands, and came out and changed back into my indoor shoes. Then they all asked me together (ever heard 6 boys ask a question in a foreign language in unison?), "What did you do last night?" And no, they weren't being stalkerish and weird (although 2 of these boys were part of the group I labeled as "My Three Stalkers" last year); this was the new target sentence that they had just learned. Apparently, one of the teachers had mentioned to the students that I like to watch Japanese comedies and dramas, and the boys had discovered that I liked some of the same shows they did. So they wanted to see whether I watched the show or not. This may not seem like a big thing, but the sad truth is that most students won't even say hello to me, so the fact that they asked me a question and waited for the answer, and then even replied to the answer, was really nice. It almost makes up for all the times they run away from me during interview games in class.

2008-05-02T16:19:00.002+09:00

New School Year Part Deux

At the beginning of last school year, my teachers didn’t change all that much. If you remember Mr. Passivity, he left for another school in my city. And I got a new, young teacher at my worst school. And I got a new temporary teacher at one of my other schools. So there was not a lot of dramatic change/upheaval. This new school year was a little different. Before the new school year started, this was my list of teachers.

Base School
M sensei – really nice, one of my best friends in Japan
O sensei – can’t speak English really well, so she always tried to avoid having me in her classes. She was originally a music teacher, but the school needed an English teacher, so she got “promoted”. Tough old bird, though. She had throat cancer earlier in the year, had surgery, and was back at school, literally, inside of a week.
Physically Demonstrative sensei – semi-decent teacher, but she’s one of those older ladies who feel that because I’m foreign, they are allowed to constantly invade my hoola hoop of personal space. She would always grab on to me, get WAY too close when speaking to me, and it didn't help that she had really bad coffee breath all the time...

Cromartie
Freddy – I think I wrote about him before. REALLY good teacher, a little strange, but knows a LOT about western culture (he understood a Soul Train reference)
Ice Queen – bit of a misnomer because he’s actually a guy. He’s always busy, and he translates every #*(& word that comes out of my mouth in class (seriously – I say “Good morning” to his second year students, and he jumps in with “ohayoo gozaimasu”), and he NEVER talks to me unless he can help it. Not sure why he’s an English teacher…
Oneesan – Oneesan means “big sister” in Japanese, and she was kind of like a big sister except for the fact that she’s about 4’9” tall. I always talked to her, and she was one of the best teachers I had. She was really creative and had tons of ideas for game activities and such.

Ghetto
Mr Genki – This is the new young teacher I wrote about awhile back (he told students “don’t touch” when they were looking through my stuff). I don’t know about his teaching style because they always paired him up with Dependent sensei, so I’ve never seen him teach alone. He has earned my undying love, though, by his obvious interest in English and in western culture. Almost everytime I was at the Ghetto school, he would find time to talk to me (usually when he was playing hooky from his baseball coaching duties). He made this school a lot more bearable.
Dependent sensei – Nice older woman, really sweet, terrified of English, and afraid that her age was making her forget all her English. She couldn’t plan a lesson on her own for the life of her, and even when she did plan lessons, they weren’t that good or exciting. But she tried, God bless her. She made Mr Genki teach every lesson with her so she wouldn't have to teach alone.
Rabbit – poor, poor woman. She had lots of really good ideas for teaching English; unfortunately, she had ZERO classroom management abilities (it was in her classes that the students would stand up and walk around, leave the classroom, yell, look through my stuff, etc.), and her English wasn’t that great, either. To add to that, Dependent sensei taught together with Mr Genki, leaving Rabbit to teach the 1st and 2nd year students (though Mr Genki helped with the second years).

And then we come to this year. Many changes were made. Only one was for the better. The others either kept the status the same or made it much, much worse.

dundunDUN

New School Year Part 1

2008-04-30T18:47:00.002+09:00

This is going to be a multiple entry blog about the new school year, my teachers, and other fun stuff. The first blog isn't going to be much fun because it'll just be me whining about the Japanese school system. Sorry!

Before I start into the specifics of my schools, my teachers, and my students, I think I’ll take a brief moment to detail the Japanese school system, which is really messed up. The way the school system works here in Japan is weird. School runs from April through March, with a 2 week break usually falling at the end of March/beginning of April. I’m fine with that part. That way, students get a break (in theory, but this is Japan, so they still come to school every day for sports and club activities), and teachers have time to chill, write report cards, etc. And in Japan the teachers do take the first week to write final reports for the year, etc. The problem I have with this school system is what occurs at the end of the first week and all through the second week.

At the end of the first week, the teachers find out if they are being transferred. That then leaves them only 1 week to go to a new school, meet the new staff, and create a whole new set of lesson plans for the school year. It’s crazy. Just because they taught the 2nd year students using one brand of textbooks one year doesn’t mean they’ll teach the same grade and from the same textbooks the next year. I had a teacher who taught using the New Horizon textbooks to 2nd year students in a neighboring city; the next year, she was transferred to my city and had 1 week to familiarize herself with the Sunshine textbooks that my city uses and with the 3rd year level of English. How do schools systems think that 1 week is enough time to plan your entire curriculum for the year? That’s barely enough time to figure out where the bathrooms are in your school, let alone to design a whole years-worth of lessons, games, etc. No wonder there’s not a lot of change in Japan – there’s no TIME to implement change. And now imagine the situation of my poor BOE guy, who not only had to do all of this, but he had to couple it with moving to a new city, learning how to cook dinners for himself alone, saying goodbye to his family, etc. Utter, utter crap.

Teachers change schools about every 3-8 years, with the average being about 5 years at any given school. They have no say in what school they go to, or even where in the prefecture they go (though they can make requests). It’s not unheard of for teachers to get moved to schools upwards of 2 or 3 hours away. Many teachers in these situations must rent an apartment in the city they teach in, live there alone for 4 days a week, then go back to live with their family on the weekend. One of my favorite BOE members was just transferred. He was really nice, spoke really good English despite not having studied it for several years, and he really adored his family. But, at the whim of the higher ups, he was transferred this year to a school 2 hours away. So now he has to live alone for most of the week, and he can only see his family on the weekends. This situation could last upwards of 3-5 years. How much does that suck?

Anyway, back to teachers. New teachers usually only stay a year or two at their first few school because the BOE wants them to get a feel for a few different schools. There are also contract teachers, who have studied their subject area and went through teachers' training, but didn’t manage to pass the final exam (which is really hard because in Japan, they only accept a certain amount of new teachers a year. So you could be a really, really great teacher and really good in your subject area, but if they already accepted 3 new teachers and the quota was 3, then sorry, but you don’t get your teaching license). These contract teachers usually only stay 1 year at any give school, though it’s not unheard of for them to stay 2.

So that’s a quick overview of the crappy, crappy system here. Next post will have a little more humor, I hope. This one was just complaining. Sorry.

2008-04-23T16:32:00.002+09:00

This is just a post to catch up on the beginning of the school year. This is the last thing that happened before the new school year, so I'm posting it before I forget it. Not incredibly amusing, but I feel it's worth recounting because I want to brag about my sports prowess.

On Gaining Street Cred

I went to Cromartie the other day, which has never been one of my friendlier schools. The staff are usually fairly indifferent towards me, which is why I was quite surprised to walk in and hear several teacher say "Good morning!" in English (at this school, I'm lucky to get 3 or 4 teachers to acknowledge my presence in Japanese, so I was a bit surprised to hear it in English). When I went up to the 3rd year students hallway, many of the boys (who are usually quite shy, and will only nod their heads if I say hello to them) went out of their way to say hello to me and ask me how I was. Why the sudden change in everyone?

A few weeks ago, I came into the staffroom at Cromartie in the morning. The principal followed me in a minute later and said in English, "Jessica, let's play softball!" I laughed, asked him when, and he gave me a specific date. An English teacher then told me that the staff had decided that they wanted to play a staff sports game. They had decided to play softball, and one of my English teachers remembered that I liked softball, so they decided to invite me to play. I said okay, since I love softball and haven't played it in about 10 years. I figured it would be a fun game amongst the staff and that most of the students wouldn't be at school. I was quite surprised to get to school and find most of the students still there for club activities. Even better, I found out that only a few teachers were playing and that we were going to play against the boys baseball team. And the best thing of all was that I was the ONLY female teacher playing. So it was me and 8 male teachers who don't regularly participate in sports against 20 teenagers who practice baseball everyday of the year. Yea!! I love a challenge. I got incredibly nervous, not having played in 10 years, and had great fears of accidentally killing someone by throwing a ball wrong or some such thing. It didn't help my nerves that all the female teachers and a great deal of students were watching and cheering for me (literally cheering for me. Everyone was screaming my name. I was like a rock star).

Luckily, I didn't do too much to shame myself. The male teachers got together and decided that I should be pitcher (turned that one down) or catcher (also said no to that), and then they decided on first base. I was hesitant to play first, but I gave it a try, and I wasn't so bad. Every time I made a slightly difficult catch, all the students and teachers watching would scream my name. I also found out that in sports, Japanese people use a lot of English terms (people would say, "nice catch" or "nice play".). I did slightly embarrass myself batting. I struck out the first time (the boy pitching threw it really fast because he thought I was good), then after that, I would yell "be nice!" every time I got up to bat, and he threw it much slower. He felt really bad about striking me out and even apologized later. Poor kid. I never did get on base, but that was no surprise, as hitting had always been my weak point. Still, I did fairly well in fielding, and I even made one kid's days when he ran into me (short kid. Very short kid. Head about the same height as my chest. Yup. Poor guy.). The teachers, much to my surprise, whooped the butts of the students. The score was something like 10-1. And after this game, I become a celebrity at my school. My students had always figured I was smart because I speak English (doesn't matter that it's my native language - the fact that I can speak it makes me smart to them), but they didn't realize that I had some athletic skills, too. I'm just glad that we didn't play soccer or something really embarrassing like that. I would have completely shamed myself and the students would have laughed at me instead of saying hello.

2008-04-21T22:14:00.002+09:00

Okay, so it's been nearly 3 weeks. And I'm not actually going to update today. I've come to promise an update soon. My new school year has started, and thus I have some great stories about new and old teachers, possibly the most interesting of which involves pornography. Be sure to tune in sometime in the next week for my exciting stories!

2008-03-30T15:33:00.002+09:00

Ha! I only let 2 weeks slip by between posts this time. Go me! I apologize for any random m's, k's, or n's that pop up - the soda I spilled a month ago on my keyboard is getting a bit temperamental and changing letters that it likes to add repeatedly. At first my computer wouldn't let me type those letters, but now it seems determined to make up for this fact by adding extras to every sentence. What's better, I sometimes don't even push k, but it adds a random k just for the heckk of it. And I can't be bothered with typing this in Word first and then doing spell checkk, so you'll just have to live with it. :-) Apologies.

On Allergies
Currently in Japan, we are going through allergy season. I believe that everyone is saying that it is cedar allergy season. They say that cedar pollen is getting to everyone. When they do the news every night, they have a separate time during the weather when they broadcast how bad the pollen will be for the week (instead of suns to show sunny weather, they have little animated heads. A really bad allergy day is represented by someone wearing a mask kand coughing, whereas a mild day is someone wearing a mask and looking somewhat constipated).

Anyhow, literally everyone around me is suffering intensely. The staff rooms are full of nonstop coughing, sneezing (which they don't cover their mouths to do, and they appear to try to do is as loudly as possible), burping (? not sure of the connection to allergies, but the instances of random burps in the staff room have risen of late), hacking, and (shudder) sniffing. The composite of all these makes it sound like I'm working in a rat infested plague pit. I've never encountered cedar allergies before, but they seem to make everyone in Japan absolutely miserable. And I can only assume, based on the continuous and annoying nature of the sniffles, that said cedars are growing inside their nasal cavities. What's more, these allergy sufferors seem to be trying to keep said cedars INSIDE their noses, while at the same time, the allergens are trying to convince the cedars to come out and frollick in the snot-covered fields with them.

And the thing is, there’s no medication here that can help because all the semi-strong sinus and allergy medication is ILLEGAL in Japan . That’s right. Even something like Tylenol sinus is too strong and is considered highly dangerous. So instead of helpful medication, people are forced to go to nose and throat clinics where the doctor gives them water in a squirt bottle and 28 different kinds of sugar pills and tells them to come back in a week if their symptoms haven’t cleared up. So for 2 months, they sit in misery, making others miserable, too, as their noses run nonstop. I miss America, where we can just go straight to a doctor who says, “oh, you have allergies.” And he gives us some medicine with warning labels like: may cause drowsiness, slight mood swing, loss of appetite, seizure, blood clot, insanity, bed-wetting, etc. And we wake up the next day next to 10 dead bodies of people we’ve killed in a sleep-walking rage and say, "Hey, he was right! No more sniffles! This stuff is great!"

Another Quick Update

2008-03-16T22:04:00.002+09:00

You know it's been a good birthday when...
it takes you 30 minutes to email replies to everyone who wished you a happy birthday
the weather is over 50 degrees and you don't have to use your heater for once
you battle your apartment back to a state of semi-ungrossness
you finish a horrible, boring, upsetting class before your birthday and never have to do it again
you watch a good movie
you have time for a nap

On Signs
So I've been gaining weight lately. And I know this for a fact. I'm not like one of those girls who gain 1/8 of a pound and start complaining to their friends and saying, "I'm such a pig!!! I'm never eating food again!" I've seriously gained a bit of weight. And I've taken proactive steps recently by buying a treadmill. But I still buy dessert that I know I probably shouldn't because it just makes me fatter. But just the other day, I got a big hint that I really need to start losing weight. I went to the store desperately wanting something chocolate-y. So I bought a chocolate pudding pastry. And to go with it, I bought a chocolate latte. And since it's been warming up lately, I decided to get an ice cream bar in case I wanted something cold later in the week. Feeling a little guilty, I went to the register, where I received a clear sign from above. When the cashier rang up my healthy purchases, I looked at the register to see my total. Much to my dismay, my dessert total was 666 yen. Now, if that isn't a sign that I'm supposed to lose weight, I don't know what is.

2008-02-28T12:43:00.003+09:00

I know culture shock is a constant cycle that keeps recurring so long as a person lives in a different country. And I know it hits everyone differently. But has anyone out there every heard of someone who forgot one language and started speaking another? I've been hitting a low in my culture shock curve lately, and along with the depression and weird mood swings, I've also been forgetting a lot of Japanese. But what I find most odd is that at the same rate I'm forgetting Japanese, I'm suddenly remembering my high school Spanish. I've tried to talk to several people in Japanese lately, and so help me, the only "foreign" language I could remember was Spanish. On the other hand, I feel like a good student now that I know I can still remember stuff from high school.

Ohisashiburi

2008-02-22T11:15:00.004+09:00

Ohisashiburi desu, ne? It's been a long time, right? No excuses. I'm lazy. I was going to update last week, but I spilled pop on my keyboard and had to figure out how to clean it off without ruining stuff. Still not sure if I managed that because I haven't turned it on since I cleaned it last night. I'm currently using my work computer. Yeah for slacking! Except I'm not. For once, I honestly don't have any lesson plans or games to prepare, so I can just sit around and do whatever. Graduation is coming up, so I don't have the 3rd year students anymore, and the 1st and 2nd year students are almost done with their textbooks, so the teachers are gearing them up for one final test. Oh, joy! From August 2007 to February 2008, I was the busiest I have ever been in my life (excluding senior year of college). I was pretty much nonstop busy - Sports Day, Speech Contest, Culture Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, going home, New Year's, Valentine's Day. Every weekend had at least one thing going on, I was always planning for something, and I had to be 80 places everyday. So it's finally slowing down.

I guess the first big news is that I'm staying in Japan for another year. I've recontracted, which means I'll be staying until August 2009. But I am so definitely coming home then. Don't think I could last a 4th year. But I'm going to stick it out for a third year for my students, teachers, education in general, and money in specific. I'm working on having a positive mindset about a third year, and for those who know me, you know that a positive mindset is sometimes slightly difficult for me to achieve. It's hard to be positive during winter in Japan. It's cold outside, it's colder inside, everyone's sick, and we're all battling SAD (Seasonal Affect Disorder or something like that). I just keep telling myself I need to last until March. My birthday is in March, spring is in March, the teachers I hate could potentially be leaving my schools in March... it's a world full of possibilities.

So as I look towards this possibly brighter future, I guess I'll also look far back at the dimming past for some fun stories about what's been going on with my life since September. I think I pop up a few updates over the next few days with stories from the past 7 months.

On Annoying Questions
Some of you may remember quite awhile ago, I complained that at one of my schools, I had a teacher who talked to me in very broken, very LOUD English. He left the school at the end of the year (the teacher he was replacing was on maternity leave, and she came back thank GOD!), and I was sort of happy about that. But I should have known better. When one annoyance leaves, it is sure to be replaced by another. There was a new teacher who sat next to me, and she was a special education/home ec. teacher. On the first day, she turned and introduced herself to me in English. "Oh, that's nice," I (foolishly) thought. "She's trying English and seems like she wants to speak and learn it." Hahahahaha... I shoud have heard my scornful laughter coming from the future, but for some reason, I didn't. My Scornful Laughter Detector must have been broken.

So the next time I came to that school, I set my water bottle on my desk. Now this is a little strange in Japan, but not totally unusual. You see, usually in staff rooms in Japan, they have coffee and tea for people to drink. As I don't like either of those, I just bring in some bottled water (I wash the bottles and re-use them - I'm not one of THOSE people who buy a new bottle of water everyday). This teacher saw my water bottle and asked me, "Oh, do you like mineral water?" She actually said this about 3 times, as I couldn't understand her English the first few rounds. "Ummm, sort of?" I replied. Because it's not like I'm addicted to it - I just buy it for the bottle. "Oh, I see," she said. "Water is healthy. But why drink mineral water? H-city has good water!" Okay, fine, "Yes, I like mineral water," I finally said just to get her to stop asking about it (this conversation looks short, but about 10 minutes actually passed, as she tried to say this first in Japanese, which I didn't understand, then in very broken English, which was still difficult to understand.). And thus the conversation ends, right? RIGHT???

Haha. Wrong. She persists in asking me if all American water is dirty and if we all have to drink mineral water. And, like many Japanese elderly and middle aged ladies, she's very grabby. In Japan, usually you don't touch other people unless you're good friends (hence bowing, not hand-shaking). Japanese people know, however, that this is not the rule in other countries. So many of them feel that it is okay to touch foreigners, as we don't have the non-tactile rules that apply to Japan. Unfortunately, some women feel that it is okay to grab me. And they don't understand how hard they grab. Since they don't touch people often, I think they underestimate the amount of force you need to exert when taking someone's arm, patting them on the back, or poking them. I have bruises, painful painful bruises, from where old ladies have grabbed me or poked me. And the problem is that you can't pull away from them because you don't want to hurt them or knock them over. But people who know me, know I have about a 15-foot circle of personal space around me at all times. And these ladies definitely invade my circle. And this woman was no different. She grabbed my water bottle, then grabbed my arm and started talking in fast Japanese about mineral water. And she WOULDN'T LET ME GO. I could't get away. I wanted nothing more than to jerk my arm away and run out of the staff room (this has got to be some sort of phobia or mental disorder, but I seriously hate it when people I don't know grab me. Maybe it's a control issue?). After 5 minutes, she let go, and blessedly, it was time for me to go. I literally threw all my stuff in my backpack and ran out of the room.

I should be nicer to her for making the effort to speak in English, I know. But that was just weird. And it got a little weirder the next time I went to that school. She came in the staff room towards the end of the day again and saw my water bottle. And once again, she asked me if I liked mineral water. "Wait," I thought, "didn't we just have this conversation a few days ago?" But since she was trying in English, I responded politely, but made sure none of my limbs or water bottles were within grabbing distance.

Fast forward 2 months later, and everytime she sits down, the first words out of her mouth to me are, "Oh, do you like mineral water?" AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!! "What will it take for you to STOP ASKING THAT QUESTION?!?" Seriously, I know this isn't a big deal, but imagine if someone you didn't like came up to you and asked the same incredibly pointless question EVERY DAY. Wouldn't it slowly wear away at your soul? It got to the point where I dreaded going to this school. I would hide my water in my bag and only take it out when I needed it. And yet, she would always find a way to ask me that question. I wanted to post a sign between our desks answering the question so that I could just point to it everytime she asked.

Luckily for me, I had already developed a skill crucial to living and being successful in Japan. It is the skill of Crafty Ignore, which is like a +5 skill level in D&D (total lie - never played D&D, but it sounds like a move from there). You see, here's my problem: I can't let my anger get the best of me. It's not an option to explode. Because to most of these people, I represent America. And if I explode in anger, just once, that means that all Americans suddenly have anger management problems. So anytime I'm rude, angry, or negative in any way, I immediately gain a bad reputation for all Americans. So I had to develop the Crafty Ignore skill. See, I figured out early in my time here in Japan that if you don't make eye contact with people, they'll usually leave you alone. People usually won't talk to you if you look busy and avoid making eye contact with them. I have spent many minutes watching people stand uncomfortably beside me as I updated my blog, looking intensely busy and not looking up at them. I know they're there, but so long as I don't acknowledge them, they feel bad disturbing me. Yes, I am that rude. But sometimes, you just KNOW that the person is going to ask you an inane question or something. The nice thing about this situation is that when I act like I'm busy, they make the silly assumption that I am actually, well, busy. So I get off scott free because they don't think I'm being rude. Far from it - they think that I'm a hard worker. In being rude, I'm actually helping out all Americans. See guys? It all works out somehow. Right?

So now, everytime I see this woman come in, I immediately pull something out of my bag so that I can look totally focused and engrossed in something or other. I can see her twitching next to me, facing me, and obviously wanting to make another insipid comment about bottled water, and I just ignore her. I become completely and totally engrossed in my calendar, textbook, pencil, head lice, whatever, just to ignore her. I don't think anyone has ever been so engrossed with the Bohemian Raphsody, but she came in once, and it was all I had on my desk. For about a week, I couldn't get that song out of my head. It helped when I listened to Weird Al's version. But you know what? It was worth listening to the Bohemian Raphsody for a week just to not here that stupid question.

2007-12-11T21:50:00.001+09:00

Wow, can you handle it? Two posts in one week. Sugoi, ne? I just, again, wanted to post a quick update. There is a Mid-year seminar going on, so I must get my beauty rest tonight so that I don't kill anyone tomorrow during my presentation. That always tends to mar any presentation.

Since I, again, don't have time for a massive update, I'll just share a quick anecdote from a friend. My friend was quite impressed with the way I look as if I understand everything being said to me in Japanese, and even mangage to reply correctly to statements which I didn't understand. I guess I'm just good at B.S. I told her that when someone is talking to me, I try to pick up the gist of what they're saying and then guess at what the proper answer would be (can you tell I've been around British people today? Proper... that's not American English. Next thing you know, I'll be calling it a "holiday" instead of a "vacation"). So impressed was she, that she decided to try this bit of language acquisition. So at one of her elementary schools, a Japanese teacher was talking to her in Japanese. She heard the word "Japan" and lots of other words, and she realized that the teacher was probably asking her if she could speak Japanese. Her answer? "I can a little, but not very well. I've been practicing a lot." She got a bit of a strange look from the teacher, but she answered in Japanese, so she figured her Japanese must have been strange.

Only later, when she was talking to a teacher who was fluent in English and Japanese, did she learn that the first teacher had ACTUALLY asked her, "Can you use a Japanese style toilet?" Her answer in Japanese had been flawless, though just a little strange considering the context...

2007-12-04T22:50:00.000+09:00

So in keeping with the flow of the last 4 blog entries in which I have stated that I will update soon: once more, I will update soon. At least I changed the template of my blog so now there's new and pretty colors to entertain people with. But it's almost 11 now, and I still have to organize my handouts for a student newspaper meeting tomorrow. It should be interesting. I'm excited about it, but the thought of trying to teach 13 year-olds to write a newspaper in a foreign language is a little bit daunting. Especially since I never took a newspaper class in high school or college. I guess I'll make it up as I go along. The good thing is that if I teach them wrong, no one will know. That probably didn't sound as professional as I wanted it to.

Anyway, this next week is going to be insanely busy. I've got tons of stuff to do for school, tons of stuff to do for our Mid-Year Seminar (does anyone know how to team teach or how to motivate students? I've got 2 and 1/2 hours that my group needs to fill...), and I've got to get ready to go home, too. And winter is coming, so my lack of indoor heat is making me hole up in one room of my apartment and not move. But it's worth it to move. Today, I had a 2 hour conversation with one of my JTE's (usually, Japanese English teachers are really busy, so they don't have a lot of time to chat). And it was a useful conversation because while we were talking, he learned that not all Americans have guns. Or sing really well. Or play instruments. Seriously, these are apparently things that almost all Japanese people assume Americans have/can do. I had fun explaining the concept of "Mennonite" when I told him about my college. "No, NO ONE had a gun. They were pacifists. Well, except those football players, but we holed them up in their own dorm and let them destroy whatever they wanted." He was surprised that I hadn't at least SHOT a gun. But we decided that we could make textbook English more interesting. Instead of saying, "We stayed in a house built in 1904." we changed the sentence to say, "We shot a gun made in 2002." We even went so far as to say, "I drank wine made in 1908." We think students will appreciate the new, updated, and "cooler" version of English. (And come on, what kind of weinie English is "We stayed in a house built in 1904."? How often do you use that sentence pattern in your daily life? But let's not get started. These last 2 weeks have been test weeks at all my schools, and I've led a life of constant complaining about textbook English being silly, stuffy, and stupid.

Okay, so now it's after 11, and I really must go so that I can get my newspaper handouts ready and prepare games for the elementary school students. And I've gotta find some pliers so I can attack the bulletin board. But more on that later.

2007-11-26T22:57:00.000+09:00

Okay, so we've had one vote on what I'll write, so that is what I'll write about. Tomorrow. For now, it's very late. I have been cleaning my apartment for 2 days straight. Well, I call it cleaning, but it was much more like excavating. I literally had layers of junk in my bedroom. The drifts came up to my knees in places. It was truly horrible. But now my apartment is almost completely spotless. I had to go out and buy some bins to help keep peace and order, but it all seems to have worked out. It almost didn't, though.

I knew I had to buy something to put in my closet to hold my non-hanging clothes. I got out my tape measure and measured my closet's dimensions, carefully noting the size of the door in my notebook. Then I measured my bedroom door and my front door just to be sure that whatever I bought could fit past both, and I entered these measurements in my notebook as well. Right, ready to go. I went to the store, found the storage bins, and compared the dimensions to my notes. I finally found the perfect plastic container - it was a little plastic storage bin with 3 drawers, and it was just a little smaller than all the measurements I had taken for my doors. It would fit through them all without a problem. Yea for measuring. So with a little bit of struggle, I got my new storage bin on the shopping cart, got it up front, got it out the store, then got it to my car. And here is where I encountered a new problem.

Measure closet: check
Measure closet door: check
Measure bedroom door: check
Measure front door: check
Measure car door:

...

oops

Yeah, that was a slight oversight on my part. So at 9pm in the parking lot of a store in a strange city in Japan, I had to play around with geometry, physics, and other sciences. I'm fairly certain the theory of relativity went in there somewhere. I picked the box up, shoved it in sideways, which didn't work. I turned it on its side. Didn't work. I turned it upside down, shoved it optimistically, and it still didn't work. "Ah ha!" I thought. "The Trunk!" Didn't work. Meanwhile, I had around 5 young guys watching me from the front of the store. They weren't even disguising that they were laughing and talking about me and my struggles. Brilliant.

So hoping against hope, I dragged the thing out of its box, using my keys to cut tape when necessary. Sadly, it wasn't much smaller out of the box, but it had less inconvenient corners. I set it down, lowered my passengers seat all the way back, rearranged my car about 8 or 9 times, then pulled and shoved as hard as I could. It stuck for a few moments on something, but with a creak and groan, it eventually went in my car. After it was in, I got in and realized what it had been stuck on. Yea for flexible rear-view mirrors! Mine almost fell off, but proved to be made of stronger stuff than I thought. Woohoo! The door closed without so much as a hard shove, and I was finally ready to go. Good thing it was clear plastic, too, or I couldn't have seen out of the left side of my car.

Anyway, I just spent the last hour trying to shove the thing in my closet, which required quite a bit of rearrangement. And now I'm tired and going to bed. But I'm half-way finished with a long blog update. But this is all I'll write for now. Stupid cleaning. I was going to relax today and write my blog and catch up on emails; instead, I ended up doing laundry, washing all my floors, rearranging my tv room and bedrooms, and teaching an Adult Conversation Class. So much for my relaxing 4 day weekend. But I found a Laundromat that actually had hot water to wash clothes in (all the washing machines I’ve encountered so far only use cold water). I couldn’t pass up the chance to actually get my laundry really and truly clean-ish. Was it worth it? We’ll see how I feel when I wake up tomorrow.

2007-11-18T22:00:00.000+09:00

Right, I hate to fall into that pattern of "Oh, I promise I'll update soon", but it happens. This coming weekend, I have a 4 day weekend, so I have promised myself that my blog will be massively updated and my apartment will be massively cleaned.

Here are some things you can look forward to in my next updates:
On Bladder Infections and the Ankle Injuries that Cause Them
On Horrible Lunches
On Swearing and Why Its Okay for My 12-year-olds to Dance to Sex Songs
On Musical Interpretation

Let me know which one sounds the most promising so I can be sure to actually write that one this coming weekend.

2007-11-12T22:12:00.000+09:00

Haha, you thought this was going to be an actual update, didn't you? Psyche! It's late, so I just wanted to post info. about my Christmas plans. I just bought my tickets, and I'll be home December 23-January 11. Some of that time will be spent in Indiana, but I don't know exactly when that will be yet. Probably sometime around Christmas?

Fun story - you know what's worse than find half a bug in your apple? A student finding half a bug in their school lunch! School lunches are made in one big vat, then dished out to smaller vats for each class. Everyone in the school will eat the same thing on a given day. So today, one of my students found half a large bug in her salad as lunch time was finishing up. That gave wonderful pause to everyone in the school as we all had to wonder - who had the other half and didn't notice? Yum. I guess mushrooms and cabbage AREN'T the worst things in school lunch after all...

2007-10-25T13:04:00.000+09:00

Okay, another quick update to assure everyone that I'm alive and will soon be posting regularly again. For now, I just got on for a quick moan about school lunches.

As I sit and eat my cabbage, carrot, corn, and hot dog soup (in fish stock), I have to wonder about what makes truly good cafeteria food. American lunches did have many of the major food groups necessary for children - starch, fat, oil, sugar, and burnt crispy bits, to name a few. To be fair, there usually was a healthy option in most lunches, but honestly, I think maybe 1 out of 25 students actually selected to pick up a fruit cup or salad, and of those, about 90% threw it away without eating it. It was almost impossible to get a really healthy lunch that tasted decent. In America, I saw so much junk food that I was convinced that no nation in the world could have a worse school lunch program. I was wrong.

I guess I shouldn't complain because I'm fairly certain that most of the lunches I eat here are healthy. Or, at least, what I can identify in the lunches is probably healthy. Maybe. I know the school lunches are usually planned so that they can utilize fresh ingredients. But it kind of sucks, because it has given me a chance to figure out exactly which vegetables I hate to eat boiled and then cooled (most of them). What makes "fresh ingredients" worse is that they really love seasonal stuff. And, unfortunately for me, it's mushroom season now. It's not that I have anything against fungal lunches, per se, but after a solid 2 weeks of them, my stomach and I are ready for a change. Or a gas-x. Mushroom are gross. I can only liken the fungal culinary experience to eating a rubber chew toy for dogs. In my humble opinion, no food should squeak when you eat it unless it is alive and actively trying to escape. And while quite a few mushrooms have managed to fall off my chopsticks, I wouldn't call that an attempt to escape. Or, at least, I wouldn't call it an active one because that would involve biting and scratching. And if I ever met a biting, scratching mushroom, I think I'd just leave it alone.

I really hate mushroom and cabbage season. I suppose everything has a season, and we must endure through the gross, squeaky, tasteless seasons. I guess I just have to keep hoping and waiting for chocolate cake season.

2007-10-06T23:29:00.000+09:00

On Practical Gardening

So way back in the beginning of September, my schools had their annual Sports Days. You really have to see them to believe them, so I took tons of video for everyone to look at when I get home. These Sports Days are pretty big events. People from the Board of Education, the PTA, and other important people who I have no idea who they are, come to watch these events. The schools, then, must be cleaned and look nice and tidy. And since schools don't hire janitors or groundskeepers, this job falls mostly to the teachers and students. And since the students are practicing hard in 100+ degree heat, most of the teachers do the majority of the work. In my first year here, I was at my base school for the first week, so I ended up helping to weed the Sports field while wearing a skirt and sandals and wielding a sharp instrument of death. Fun times, fun times. This year, I was at several different schools, but I was smart enough to wear sports gear and take pictures of my students instead of picking weeds.

Now, when I say pulling weeds, you probably think of someone sitting with a spade or something. No, when we pull weeds in Japan, we don't pull them - we annihilate them. With extreme prejudice. The first time I helped, I was given a stick with a flat, sharp piece of metal on the end. Kind of like a mallet of death. Some of these things are sharp, but the one I had was not. I guess I was supposed to bludgeon the weeds to death with it. Other teachers carry other implements. The vice principal (kyoto sensei), principal (kocho sensei), and head teacher all get the really fun weed pulling jobs. They get to walk around in ginormous long-sleeved jumpsuits with aprons over them because these special teachers get to wield Blades of Weedy Death. They get the weedwackers, the weedsmackers, and the weed destroyers. All symbols of spinning, shart death for weeds and the occasional snake (kocho sensei killed a snake that was on the field with a weedwacker. That was great fun to watch). Apparently, though, there are some weeds that even these instruments cannot get to. Weeds stuck in between the pavement and the curb in the parking lot are impervious to weedwackers. I'm happy to say, though, that my teachers found a solution.

First, I should describe the head teacher at my school. The head teachers is usually a teacher who has taught for around 15-20 years, has a good handle on teaching, and can hand out punishments whenever the vice principal isn't around. The head teacher at this school was actually the head teacher at one of my other schools last year. He never talked to me at that other school, but at this school, I found out that he actually can speak flawless English if he is so moved to do so. He's just incredibly shy around me, as is the entirety of the male population of Japan. I'm intimidating like that. Anyway, I feel as if I have to make this observation about him: he is the most ripped man in Japan. He has biceps as big as my head. Well, maybe not quite that big, but still impressive. Here in Japan, most of the guys I see that are muscular have very thin, sleek physiques, so they don't have the massive muscles that guys who lift weights in America have. These guys usually have the lithe physique of martial artists (surprise, surprise). This is not to say that they are not strong and do not have muscles. But this is why my head teacher sticks out so much - he is absolutely and completely ripped. And he knows it. And he wants others to know it as well. He walks around in sleeveless t-shirts whenever he can get away with it. And whenever he does wear a t-shirt, he rolls up the sleeves so everyone can see his guns. He is not shy at all about it. He really kind of looks like a man's man (and no I'm not in love with him - he's old enough to be my father, and he's married and has kids. So don't worry mom! I'm not marrying any Japanese guys yet! [I bet that "yet" was comforting, wasn't it?]

Anyway, this guy is a man's man, very big, beefy, manly, practices judo, probably spits and scratches himself when appropriate. I had seen him prowling the school grounds with the weedwacker one day, and he seemed to be having problems. For those of you who have never heard a weedwacker scrape against cement, I suggest you go give it a listen. Hearing fingernails on a chalkboard will NEVER be an issues for you after that. So this guy suddenly disappeared for awhile from the school grounds. After an hour, I had to leave to go coach students at another school for speech contest, so I grabbed my stuff and ran out the door. As I turned around the corner, I heard a noise like air going into a balloon. I soon found out why. Turns out that Mr. Buff had a great idea about how to get rid of those weeds. When using a weedwacker doesn't work, why not pull out another helpful gardening tool - a blowtorch. What? You're telling me that you've never used a blowtorch on your flowerbed? Why ever not? It seems a logical conclusion to me! Stubborn weeds? Make life easier! Burn them all! A quick pass or two with a blowtorch, and you'll never be bothered by those weeds again. Or by your eyebrows, flowers, trees, grass, or neighborhood cats!

This is just one of those sweet things that I'd never get to see if I had stayed in America. Sometimes I'm so glad that I'm in Japan. Where else could I see someone using a blowtorch as a garden tool? It's the little things...

On Quick Updates

2007-09-12T22:29:00.001+09:00

Let's play the "You know you haven't posted in awhile" game.

You know you haven't posted in awhile...when you realize you can't remember your password and have to search all your email accounts for an hour to find it. Yeah, this has been a productive evening.

I know I haven't posted lately, but, once again, I've been busy. I've been helping new ALT's in the area settle in, helping students prepare for an English Speech Contest, and getting ready for Sports Day. And battling 100+ degree weather. And starting English Conversation classes again after summer break. And getting ready for the soccer tournament this weekend. And I went back to America and all that good stuff in July. So I've been a tad busy. Once this weekend is over, I may have some more free time to do several posts, but for now, I'll have to leave it at this short post just letting people know I'm alive. Oh, and possibly one fun anecdote.

I was shopping the other day and saw some of my male students at the store. I smiled brightly and asked them, "How are you?" The boldest smiled, looked around in case there were other teachers around, and declared, "I am sexy." I so want to use that as my standard answer whenever I get asked that question from now on.

2007-07-08T22:51:00.000+09:00

Very quick post just to let you know I'm alive and I won't be posting much lately, as I'm going (coming?) home soon for a few weeks.

ON HEAD TRAUMA
I decided I will post this while it's still fresh in my mind. Japanese people have no concept of germs, I think. Also, I have decided that the purpose of the school nurse is to distribute maxi pads and bandaids. I'm not entirely certain that the school nurse has an sort of medical training at all. I've taken 2 Red Cross courses and High School Health class, and I get the feeling that I know more on the topic than the school nurses at most of my schools. I really wonder how much school nurses get paid, because for all the work they do, the school could just hire a homeless person for much less money with essentially the same qualifications and skills.

The other day, the students were playing outside after lunch, as they often do. One student fell, hit his head on the concrete, and started bleeding fairly heavily from his head. The teachers called in the school nurse, who came running. All she had with her was a towel in a plastic bag. That's it. No emergency medical kit or anything. No gloves. No disinfectant, antiseptic, cleaner/cleanser, nothing. Just a towel. And I know she didn't wash her hands before she came out. She walked up to the student and began mopping the blood off his head. Meanwhile, the wrapper from the towel got caught in the breeze, and after it had rolled through dirt and blood, one teacher picked it up and held onto it. After a few minutes, the teacher with the bloody bag comes in to call the kids mom. He plops the bag right down on the desk, wipes some blood off his hands on a kleenex, puts that on the desk, too, and picks up the phone. Oh, and the desk with the phone is right next to me, fyi.

The school nurse runs in a few seconds later to ask the mother what hospital to take the kid to. She didn't wash her hands, touched the phone, her computer, her desk, etc., opened a pack of clean guaze, grabbed it with her unwashed hands, wiped her hand with it, put it on her desk, then went out to put it on the kids head. ACK! The mere imagining of the transfer of germs going on was enough to give me chills. I had to take a Communicable Diseases information course for my summer job working with children a few years ago, and I have to say that there are some truly horrendous diseases that you can pick up through contact with blood or other bodily fluid. If I know this, you'd think the school nurse would, too. But she didn't appear to care. Instead, she called a taxi to go to the hospital (a TAXI?!? What the crap, this kid is hurt, shouldn't you call an ambulance?), coughed into her hand, removed the bloody towel from her desk (don't worry, she disinfected her desk afterwards by grabbing a tissue from the box and rubbing the blood around the desk a few times), and left to go to the hospital.

Throughout this whole ordeal, teachers were coming in and out of the teachers room, picking up bloody towels, dirty tissues/bags, using their computers and phones to check on info. And none of them washed their hands even once. And none of them were wearing medical gloves. And each time they entered the teachers room, they took off their shoes. How messed up is that? Don't mind spreading whatever diseases through blood and dirt, but God forbid we drag dust onto the teachers room floor. Well, so long as they've got their priorities straight.

ON FINDING MYSELF
They say that to find who you truly are, you must remove yourself from everything you know and examine yourself; to put yourself in a foreign environment and see how you react. I've done this, I've taken this journey into a foreign land, and I've made many discoveries about myself and my true nature. Perhaps one of the biggest and most important discoveries I've made about myself so far is that I could never marry a man with smaller feet than me.

FAME
In Japan, literally every little hick town and horse outpost is famous for something. Every city claims it is famous for something, whether it be its' special brand of noddles, its beer, its sweets, or its people; and they all sell gifts (to tourists too stupid to know not to buy them )indicating what makes them famous. My city actually is famous (the first Japanese prime minister was born here, so people can buy silly postcards with his picture on them), but other cities aren't so lucky. Still, people always act like their town is amazing due to its great fame. And when they tell others what their city is famous for, others feel obligated to be impressed. So some hick will tell a traveler, "Yup, our city is famous. Right over there is where Lord Tajima puked after eating bad sushi." And the person listening must respond, "Eh? Ii, na!" Meaning, "Really? That's great!", as if nothing in the world could be better than some unkown noble tossing his cookies in a rice paddy. And they must look at the Tajima Puke Replica with great interest, even if they won't buy anything.

I just want one city to be honest and say, "Yup, we're famous for nothing. We don't even have special hats, although my son once got the hiccups after eating a live frog. That was special." But even if they said that, the person listening would still have to say, "Eh? Ii, na!" Good thing I can't speak more Japanese, or I'd start bsing people and telling all sorts of weird stories about why my city was famous. "See that mountain over there? Well, that's the very spot where...uh...Bob the uh...god of Alcohol Poisoning umm....dripped some of the uh sacred alchohol of the gods in order to make dogs of putty that he could mold to his will and make his messengers so that the other gods would um...know when he was planning big drinking parties. Would you like to buy a putty dog souvenir?" Consequently, I'll be bringing home plastic models of Lord Tajima's puke if anyone wants one...

2007-06-24T21:47:00.000+09:00

ON THE JOYS OF TEAM SPORTS

Parts of this one are going to be PG-13, so I apologize. I will warn you about them before they come.

I posted a short and cryptic update about my soccer weekend and never actually got around to finishing the post. I’ll try not to make this a mammoth post, but something tells me that it will be.

From June 8-June10, there was a large soccer tournament on Awaji Island near Kobe. ALTs from the western side of Japan came to drink beer and play soccer, in that order. We had had a tournament similar to this in December except that in the December tournament, it was sleeting while we were playing.

Our girls team was going to go in 2 cars to Awaji, a great feat, seeing as it is a 6 hour drive. We left Friday night and would return Sunday night. I was placed in the car driven by our goalie, a very nice, possibly insane, lady. She is from Australia, she is a chain smoker, she loves to drink, and she has some serious anger management problems. Great fun. It turns out she has serious road rage, too. If someone was driving slower than her in the fast lane, she would drive up right behind them, flick her lights on and off at them, and honk her horn. Great times making friends in Japan. There were 5 people in the car, so it was a little cramped, but still enjoyable for the first 5 minutes. After the first hour, we (we being the others in the car, not me) decided to play an absolutely wonderful game which has a bad word in the title, so I will not elucidate. Essentially, a person had to give the names of 3 people, either famous men or men in our prefecture, and then everyone else has to decide who they personally would sleep with (one night stand), kill, and marry. Great fun, great fun. This game was sadly interrupted by the apparent typhoon that suddenly came upon us. As we were driving through mountainous, windy roads, a storm suddenly overtook us. I have never driven in a storm like this, and I was quick glad that I was not driving. It was almost impossible to see through the rain; every time thunder struck, we could feel the car shaking, and the car was being hit by debris from the trees near the road. We were driving on a 4 lane highway, and we couldn't even see the cars next to us. We were inland, with a city on one side and a mountain on the other, and I will clarify that there were no bodies of water nearby; all of which made it very surprising when the tidal wave hit. We have no idea where it came from or what it was. We were driving along, and suddenly, a gigantic wave came at our car from the right side, engulfed the car for 3 seconds, then was gone. Totally out of nowhere. Fun times. We got to Awaji 7 hours later, all grateful to be alive.

We got to the hotel and found out that there were only 2 rooms for our team - one with 3 beds, and one with 4. 2 of the other girls in my car were nonsmokers and pretty calm people, so we immediately decided to steal the 3 bed room on the pretense of it being a nonsmoking room. I was fairly happy with the arrangement, as I thought the other 2 were nice girls. One of them, who shares the same name as me, has a similar sense of humor to me, and she likes anime. Happy times. So we went to bed at around 1 in the morning and got up around 7. Nice, relaxing night sleep on a bed as hard as rock. We got dressed, headed out to the field, met 2 of our players (girls play on half-fields and need 6 players for a team; we had 5, so we asked 2 girls from another prefecture to play with us). Played the first game. Won 4-0. Played the second game. One of our girls rolled her ankle, so she was out for the rest of the day. We had to play most of the second game and the third game with no subs. But we still won the second game 6-0. The third game was a long awaited grudge match between our team and the team that had won 1st place at the December tournament (we had been second). They have girls on that team who played soccer in college, so they're a really strong team. Our goalie was doing all sorts of swearing to rev herself up because she really hates this team. The previous year, one of their players accidentally injured her, and she was looking for revenge. So it was rather ironic that 5 minutes into the game, one of their players accidentally kicked her in the head, making her bit through her bottom lip and giving her a concussion, thereby bringing our number of players to 5. Hurray. Luckily, someone was on had to take her to the hospital to get stitches, and the other team waited long enough for us to get another team's goalie so we could have 6 players. Amazingly, we actually managed to hold them to a tie. Until the last minute of the game. We asked the ref "How much time?" and she said "Less than a minute". Great, we only had to hold them for one minute, then we could go into Penalty Kicks! And then they scored, with 30 seconds left in the game. Crap. Heartbreaking loss, 1-0.

Everyone wanted to go into Kobe that night to a Brazilian restaurant, but our goalie was in no position to drive, as she was taking some great pain medication that made her slightly loopy (though that could have been the concussion...). Darn, looks like we couldn't go. But wait. What's that, you said? Was there an AET nearby who had only just recently earned her Japanese driver's license? Why, yes, amazingly enough, there was!! And just GUESS how EXCITED she was to be driving a TOTALLY INSANE strangers CAR through LOTS of traffic in a BIG JAPANESE CITY?!? She was THRILLED!!! So after an incident I won't talk about, as it involves onsens and embarrassment, we went out to Kobe.

The restaurant was indeed nice (I still haven't taken the time to get the pictures on my computer yet, so I can't post them. Sorry), and it features a large array of salad bar type foods buffet style. Also, at each table, there were a few empty plates, and every few minutes, a large man would come by with a ginormous spit of meat (pork, sausages, beef, chicken, you name it, they had it) and he would carve some of it onto the plate using a knife which any samurai could have easily used as a sword. It was about $25 for nomihoudai (all you can drink) and tabehoudai (all you can eat) for 2 hours, so most of the AETs consumed an amount of alcohol that would have made most Vikings stand back in awe. I had fun listening in to conversations around me (I had people from Canada, England, Scotland, Australia, and South Africa sitting around me) and contemplating if our goalie should be mixing her pain medication with 3, no, 4 beers and 1 chuhai (a fruity alcoholic beer thing, I think). Nothing wrong with mixing medication and alcohol, right? I'm sure there could be no bad consequences from that. Everyone kept saying how sorry they felt for me because I couldn't drink since I was driving. Yup, it was a shame, but we all have to make sacrifices in life. It probably helps that I don't drink anyways...

This next paragraph is a little...gross at parts, so if you're squeamish or don't like potty humor, don't read it, please. If you read it anyways, well, I did warn you... So we left the restaurant. I didn't know the way back to Kobe (I had followed another team's bus to get to the restaurant), so the girls in my car all piled back in and we waited for the other team to go back to their bus (it had to park a few blocks away from our cars, so they had quite a walk). After 20 minutes, one of the girls finally said, "I've gotta pee." Now, I know that we had all been thinking that (I had had quite a few ginger ales myself, so I was feeling the pressure, so to speak), but no one wanted to say anything. After 25 minutes, we figured the bus must have forgotten to come back to get us. The girl then said, "Okay, I can't hold it, I'm gonna pop a squat." For those of you who don't know, to "pop a squat" is to crouch down where ever you are and go to the bathroom. So she gets out of the car, goes up to are goalie who is smoking a cigarette (high, intoxicated, and getting some tobacco in - great combo!) and asks the goalie to stand in front of her. She then goes up on the curb so some bushes are blocking her on one side, the car on another, a phone booth and bushes behind, and the goalie in front. She then proceeds to pull her pants down IN FULL VIEW OF EVERYONE DRIVING ON THE ROAD and goes to the bathroom. She then gets back up and gets back in the car. I must say that at that point, everyone in the car was dying with laughter, including the goalie who was standing in front of her. She was very unapologetic about it - "well, I needed to go!". Five minutes later, she announced that she had to go again. Everyone berated her for "breaking the seal" (going to the bathroom the first time after lots of drinking; once you go the first time, apparently, you need to go soon after that), but she got out again and went once more. Another girl in the car then figured that she might as well go, too; plus, she's wearing a dress, so she figured it be easier for her to go. So she goes out to almost the same spot and starts to do her business. She suddenly shrieks with laughter and informs us all that her legs are getting wet because she is going so hard that it's ricocheting off the sidewalk and on her legs. Poor girl. Couldn't get much worse than that. Oh, wait, what's that coming towards us? Why, it's the bus for the other soccer team pulling up right across from Peeing Girl! Wow, talk about phenomenal timing. She leaned over onto the hood of the car, laughing so hard that she couldn't even stand up. "I'm still peeing," she gasped, "I can't stop!" Some of the other team looked out the windows and saw her, which was quite amazing, as she had at least 10 Japanese people walk past her without noticing what was going on. She finally finished her business and got back in the car. Her nickname the next day was, of course, Potty Legs.

So we got back at around 11, and there was another party that almost all the players were going to at a nearby bar. Hmmm...I could go to a bar and watch people get drunk and do dumb things, OR I could relax, stretch my aching muscles, read a book, and get to bed early. Yeah, I am such an old woman at heart. So I went to bed at around12, was woken up at 2 by one of my roommates coming in, was woken up again at 4 by the other roommate coming in and talking, I assumed to my other roommate, woke up again at 6 because someone was snoring really loudly (one of my roommates had a cold and warned us that she might snore), and finally got up with my alarm at 7. I looked over at the one roommate (2am) and she was awake and looking slightly annoyed. I assumed it was because our other roommate (4am) was snoring. I nodded at 2am, indicating that yes, the snoring was annoying. Then I looked over at 4 am and saw that HER EYES WERE OPEN. Weird. Her eyes were open and she was snoring. Talented, that is. I will comment here that even though I don't drink, my mind tends to act drunk when it is tired. Logic and I are not friends in the early morning hours, especially when muscle pain, cramps, and sunburn are involved. Looking more closely at 4 am, I saw something else weird. She apparently had 3 HANDS. AHH!! Freaky! How'd that happen? I put my glasses on and peered at her again. 3 hands. 3 arms. 2 heads. Ummm...yeah. There was a guy in her bed. THERE WAS A GUY IN HER BED WITH HER!!! Well, now I knew who she had been talking to at 4 in the morning. When she realized we were both awake, she said, "I'm sorry, guys, he followed me home!" Apparently, they had met outside our hotel the night before at 3am and had started talking and making out. He was so drunk at that point that he actually couldn't remember the name of his hotel (he had come that day, so he had only seen it for 10 minutes), so 4 am, being a kind soul and not wanting him to have to sleep out in the rain, had offered to let him stay with us. Nice. Very kind. So that was an exciting way to wake up.

So we got up, got ready (which is really hard when every muscle in your body is trying to remind you that the most athletic thing you've don't since December was play tag with the elementary school students, and you had had to stop after 5 minutes because you were so winded and sore), and headed back out to the field. For some reason, the brackets were messed up, and even though there were 8 girls teams, we ended up playing 2 of the same teams we had played the day before. We won our first game 2-1, and then our second game was against the Team of Amazingness. They hadn't gone out to the bar the night before, so they were all fresh as daisies. The entirety of our team, except for me, were playing with hangovers (the first game started at 9:30am). This was not going to go well. Their first attempt at scoring was stopped by our goalie; after seeing our goalie coming towards the ball, their player backed off and stopped charging. Our goalie talked to their team and told them she was okay (which she wasn't - apparently alcohol+medication+tobacco really DON'T mix well. Who would have thunk?) and that they didn't need to play overly-easy for fear of hurting her again. They took her at her word, and we lost 3-0 (should have been 2-0 - the first goal was scored offsides). It would have been worse, but for the last 4 minutes of the game (The games were 40 minutes long), we knew there was no way we were going to come back, and they were saving themselves for the championship game, so it was nice. Everyone jogged instead of running, when someone got the ball they just hauled off and kicked it as far as the could instead of passing to other people, and no one was being entirely aggressive. Heartbreaker for us, since it meant we wouldn't get 2nd place this time around, even though we deserved it (for those who know me, I usually don't brag often, but when I do, it's deserved bragging. We really were the only competition this other team had. Our team had 3 girls who played high school soccer, and the rest of us played some sort of sports in our lives, so we have a generic sports coordination thing going on; the other teams mostly had girls who had never played a sport in their lives. People kept asking how often our team practiced [Team Amazingness practices once a week]; most were stunned to learn that we, at best, practiced once a month, and that we had just met 2 of our players on the first day of the tournament). So we went into the 3rd/4th place match against an equally unenthusiastic team. We each agreed that we were tired, and they knew we were going to win, so we got the ref to allow us to play a 20 minute game. We scored a goal in the first minute, and it was pretty much over after that. It was a much more relaxed and fun game than our last had been, so it was a nice ending. We got third place - a nice trophy, and a large case of beer. Hurrah.

I had to drive home that night, which was all sorts of fun. 6 hours of driving after 2 days of intense physical exercise, sunburn, sleep deprivation, and stress. What more could one ask for? What's that, you say? A trip to an onsen (hot spring) after which the guys describe as a RUDE TERM COMING UP, PLEASE DON'T READ IF YOU'RE EASILY OFFENDED "wang by wang replay" OKAY YOU CAN READ AGAIN. I need to hang out with AETs more often because it makes me feel so good and morally superior. Anyways, 5 hours into the drive, the goalie says she can drive, and I'm so tired that I believe her. We got back to the city we departed from at 12:30, and then I had to drive another teammate home, so I didn't get back to my apartment until around 1 or 1:30. And I had school the next day. Fun stuff. All day Monday, I was doing a sexy "Night of the Living Dead" jolting type of stop-and-go walk. Stairs were equally amusing, as I could barely lift my legs (before I started playing soccer, I had not been aware that I even HAD a groin. Did you know that everyone has groin muscles, and that these muscles can be pulled and strained? See how much I've learned since I've come to Japan?). Now, two weeks later, I finally got over the cold I got from Miss 4am (her midnight make out partner didn't get it, which I think is a little unfair), I'm walking more naturally, and I've stopped crying every time I see a soccer ball. Progress is being made, I think. Maybe by the next tournament that rolls around in December, I'll actually be willing to make another attempt at being sporty. Until then, though, I think the most exercise I want is the bicep curls I do while changing tv channels.

2007-06-19T21:44:00.000+09:00

ON MY THREE STALKERS
At my Base School, there are three first year boys who absolutely crack me up. They always say hello to me in incredibly loud voices. The other day after class, they came up to me as I was gathering my stuff and all stared nervously at each other. One of them (the tallest, and therefore, I think, the leader), said “se no” which is the Japanese equivalent of “okay, an three, two, one”, and then they all said in unison, “Jessica is cute.” I laughed and thanked them for their nice lie, and they all giggled a bit (I didn’t know boys could giggle, but I guess they can). Ever since then, whenever they see me, one of them says “se no” and they all say “Jessica is cute.” Talk about a daily ego boost. As an update, they just learned the word “beautiful.” Today, they came up to me and did their “se, no, Jessica is cute AND beautiful.” And people ask why I like Japan…

ON NATURE'S WARNING SIGNS
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a bad poker face. When I’m feeling particularly annoyed, overstressed, and generally ticked off, my eyelids start to twitch. I don’t think most people would notice it, but I do, and it annoys me even more. I can’t help but think that it twitches for a reason. Maybe it’s like one of nature’s warning signs: poisonous frogs are brightly colored, rattlesnakes have their rattle, that guy in the Farside cartoon has an inflatable floaty and a bazooka, and my eyelid twitches. It's natures way of telling people that what they are approaching is dangerous and under pressure, so everyone should stay away. I think I need to make the twitch more obvious so some of my more annoying acquaintances stay away...

ON MORE TRANSLATION FUN
I was in an adult conversation class the other day, and one of the men was talking to me about some topic or other (I’ve forgotten what it was about). We were chatting, and suddenly he said a word that didn’t fit. “He was being very impodent.” I asked him to repeat it, but it didn’t make any more sense the second time around. I had no idea what he was trying to say, but it sure sounded like “impotent” to me. Figuring that was the wrong word, I asked him to repeat it. Three more times of him saying “impotent” at me, and I was no closer to figuring out what he meant, though I was a lot closer to laughing. I tried to help him out by making some guesses. “Important? Impressive? Impersonation?” But he kept saying those words weren’t right, and repeating “impotent” like it would help me figure out what he was saying. Eventually he got out his dictionary and looked up the word he wanted. He turned his dictionary to me, and I read the word. Oh, impudent! Okay. That makes sense. He gave me a “duh, of course it makes sense look, then asked me what I thought he had said. I taught him a new phrase, “I plead the fifth.”

ON HOOKED ON KANJI
My students at one school were learning the phrase “Do you know…?” My English teacher for that class decided that the students should write some different kanji (Chinese characters) and ask me if I knew what they meant. Now, I was less than thrilled with this, as my kanji comprehension is at about the level of a Japanese infant. After being in Japan one year, you’d think I’d be getting some decent skills, but in truth, I’m a slacker. I haven’t been studying nearly as hard as I should have been, and this is becoming all too apparent to me as I’m about to enter my second year here. So the students were asking me about some kanji, most of them holding up just one character and asking me about it. I understood the easier ones they held up (river, mountain, forest, stomach ulcer), but then one student got up and held up what looked to be a diagram of Fort Knox, but what actually turned out to be ５ kanji strung together. He asked me, “Do you know what this kanji is?” I informed him that of course, I had no idea. I did recognize some of the kanji for the city of Tokyo, so I mentioned that to him. He then said, “That’s right!” (He was reading off the script the teacher prepared for him, so he wasn’t sure how to say “That’s half-right.”). “This kanji is Tokyotokkyokyokakyoku.” He explained it meant “Tokyo Patent Permission Office”, which was honestly, obviously going to be my next guess. He was impressed that I had at least managed the "Tokyo" part and declared my kanji skills to be "amazing." Again, another ego boost. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it back to America, as my big head is no doubt going to have trouble fitting on the plane.

2007-06-18T22:27:00.000+09:00

Announcements
In case anyone hasn't heard, I'm coming home for 2 weeks in July (the 14-29). So if anyone wants to visit, I'll be home some time during that period. We already have family events scheduled, so for any of my friends, fans, or stalkers, please email me to set up a time to meet if you want. :-)

ON GETTING A JAPANESE DRIVERS LICENSE

So I went to get my drivers license on Friday, June 1st, leaving bright and early in the morning. I left my BOE at 8:15 to the applause and wishes of good luck from my BOE bosses (embarrassing much? And of course, it didn't add any pressure to the situation). I headed out with the same woman who had helped me before (and who should be nominated for sainthood, I think). I reminded my BOE that 9 out of 10 foreigners fail the Japanese driving test their first time, but I don't think it really sunk in. I think they thought I was just exaggerating. I wasn't.

More fun times at the Japanese DMV. We got to enjoy the window hunt again, but luckily we actually got to the right windows. Our first window stop (window 12-14) led us to the guy who had "helped" us last time. He did my paperwork, welcomed me back, and wished me good luck. We got through all the necessary paperwork (hand in paperwork Window 12, pay fee at Red Window3, show stamps obtained from paying fee to person at window 10, get more paperwork from Red Window 4 and have police officer X help fill it out [ever tried to ask someone who doesn't speak your language if they have narcolepsy? That was some fun paperwork, let me tell you. My poor BOE lady...] go to big booth 2 to get eyes tested [by a sweet old man who spoke no English, but told me I could use English for the eye test if it made me more comfortable], then wait upstairs in waiting area 2 for someone who will give me the written test), and went to our assigned waiting area. There were already about 150 Japanese people in the testing room (for native Japanese, they have to answer 100 questions on the written portion of their driving test - I had 10. Sweet.); at 10:20, a police officer came and took me into the back of the testing hall.

I was slightly worried about the written test, as if I failed that, I would have to go home and come back another day, which would have been horrendously embarrassing. Other AET’s have said that the test is very easy, and if you fail you shouldn’t be let within 10 feet of a car. Even more pressure, because if I’m the one idiot that fails this thing, I’m never going to live it down. So I listened attentively as the officer explained (in Japanese) how I was supposed to take the test (circle True of False - he was worried I didn't understand those complicated directions, so he repeated them about 3 different ways, then asked for confirmation that I understood.). He led me to the back of the testing hall where I sat down and opened a notebook with 10 pages (clearly marked with numbers 1-10 on 10 different colored tabs). The examiner told me I had 10 minutes to finish the test - it worried me a little that I had so little time, so I hurriedly opened to the first question, which was a really tough opener. "If the traffic light is green, but there is a police officer signaling for you to stop, you should obey the police officers' directions. True or False." I think I agonized over that one for AT LEAST 10 whole seconds. The other 9 questions were just as difficult. It took me almost THREE WHOLE MINUTES to answer said questions. I went through the test twice, and after 4 agonizing minutes, I turned to the officer to let him know I was done. He smiled and said, "Easy, right?" He directed me back to the waiting area where the BOE lady looked up at me amazed. "That was four minutes. You're done?" Ten minutes later, the guy came back and said that I had, of course, passed (his words, not mine).

The officer then directed us to a room overlooking an enclosed driving course. He gave us a sheet of paper with a course mapped out and said the testing would start at 1:00, and we could walk the course at 12 if we wanted to. So I had roughly 2 and 1/2 hours to memorize the course, which was easier than I thought it would be. After 20 minutes of studying the course and memorizing it, my BOE lady asked if I wanted to go get lunch so we could walk the course at noon. I was feeling really nauseous and didn't want to eat anything for fear of booting in the course car (we didn't get to drive our own cars for the test, we had to drive cars the course provided for us), but I knew that if I didn't eat, this woman wouldn't eat, either. We headed down to the cafeteria and I was delighted to see that all the food served there was deep fried, greasy, or piping hot. Just the thing for a nervous stomach! I got a bowl of noodles, hoping it wouldn't be to horrible on my gut, and finished in about 3 minutes. We headed back to the course and waited another tense 10 minutes (SERIOUSLY the woman with me deserves SAINTHOOD) before we walked down to the course. I didn't know how long it would take, so I started walking fast before I realized my BOE lady is a good foot shorter than I am, so it was taxing her a bit to trot at my pace. I tried to slow down, but my nerves were having none of that. We walked the course in about 15 minutes, talking through when to stop, where to look, when to signal, etc. When we got back to the start point, I told her I wanted to walk again, but didn't want to drag her along, so she took my things and went back upstairs to wait. This time through, I flew. I walked the course in about 10 minutes, paying particular attention to the trouble areas.

The trouble areas in this course were 2 particular spots. There's a part called the "s-curve", which is an sharp s-curve about the width of a parking space. The next tricky part is called "The Crank." The crank is 3 very sharp 90 degree turns with flexible poles lining each corner. Rules of the test are: if you fall off the road, it's an automatic failure (they built a trench alongside the road, so if you accidentally get too close to the edge, it's rather obvious that you're off the road), and if you hit a cone or pole, it's an automatic failure.

I looked at my watch after my second walk through and saw that I had 5 minutes before the course closed, so I went back up to wait. Ms. Saint Theresa and I waited for another 15 tense minutes before a guy came up the stairs and confirmed my identity. There were 2 other Japanese guys waiting, so he talked to them for about 5 minutes (they would be driving a different course than me, so he was explaining their route). Then he got to me, confirmed that I spoke a little Japanese, and we were off. Now, there are a lot of routine things one must do when doing a Japanese driving test. The test itself is not so much a driving test as a test to see how truly serious you take driving. You get TONS of points taken off if you don't do certain things at certain times. The key to passing this test, I had been told, was to drive as slowly and as carefully as if you were going through a field full of puppies frolicking around children playing dodge ball.

Before the test, the instructor got in the car, as did the next driver (the driver that will drive after you sits in the car as you take your test. Really, great fun. I highly suggest for your next driving test, you get someone who's never seen a foreigner in their life before and stick them in your car. It's really quite fun to have someone staring at you from the back seat of your car while you're trying to concentrate. And I mean staring. EVERY stinking time I turned around to check my blind spot or looked in my mirror, he was staring at me.). Instead of getting in right away, I had to walk around the car, check the tires, check the mirrors, and make sure no stray object, cats, or nuclear devices were located near the car. I then opened my door, said "Excuse me" in Japanese, and got in once the instructor gave me permission. I checked my mirrors, checked my seat, checked my mirrors, looked to the left, looked to the right, checked the mirrors, checked that everyone was wearing their seatbelts, checked my mirrors. This test is all about over exaggerating everything you do so they can see that you are serious about driving. Every time I checked a mirror, I made sure to swivel my head so that he KNEW I was checking a mirror. Every time I checked my blind spot, I almost literally turned all the way around in my seat so that he couldn't miss what I was doing.

So, starting the test. Turned on the car, put it in drive, took off the parking brake, signaled to go out, checked my mirrors, checked my blind spot, waited for the bus, and released the brake. I had been told by other AET's to drive insanely slowly on this course, like around 5 kilometers an hour (I think that's -.2 miles per hour or something). I started off at about 10-15 kph, and that seemed incredibly slow, but I kept at it. Around a curve, turn left, approach a blind stop. Stop. Count to 4, roll forward, stop again, count to 4, check, recheck, triple check, okay. Pull out right turn stop light is green, slow down, check crosswalks, speed up, left turn into s-curve, go slow, stop breathing, keep tears inside, finish s-curve, thank God, signal left out of s-curve, stop, count to 4, go left, stop, count to 4, another left, traffic light, stop, green light, go slow, look at crosswalk, go left, go straight, another left (for the love of all that is holy, ENOUGH with the lefts!!, go straight, another left, and left into the crank, passenger seat passes corner, crank the wheel, drivers seat passes corner, crank the wheel, slow down, passengers seat passes corner, crank the wheel, signal left, start breathing again, count to 4, turn left, go straight, look at crosswalk for stray dogs, children, or gorillas, turn right, turn left, turn left, go around a corner, go straight, go back towards the car garage, look both ways, slow down for crosswalk, signal right, turn right, pull into parking space, brake, car in park, parking break on, car off, check mirrors, get out of car, cry yourself into oblivion, pass out. And thus ends the driving portion of the test. I thanked the instructor. The whole time I was driving, he hadn't been taking any notes. In Ohio, I remember that my instructor was grading me during my whole test. Once we got back to the driving center, she added up my score and told me straight away that I had passed. But not so in Japan. They like to make you suffer. Must be part of the code of Bushido or something like that.

The driving instructor then confirmed that I knew a little Japanese, and proceeded to reel off some very fast Japanese. I knew I failed at that point. And I had no clue what he said, though I caught the words "left" and "bicycle." Eventually, he realized that I had no idea what he was saying, so he took me back upstairs to Ms. Theresa. He reeled off his stream of Japanese again, she listened, and he left to go give the other 2 their tests. I thanked him again for his time. Then my BOE lady turned to me and said, "He says that you need to stay more left when you drive in case bicycles or mopeds come beside you. And he says that when you stop, you do stop, but you need to stop longer." Oh yeah, I so failed. She looked at my disappointed face and said, "I think you passed. Probably."

Now came the fun part. I had to sit in a waiting room for half an hour until the guy could come out and tell me that I failed for sure. Fun stuff. Poor Ms. Sainthood had to sit while I was in a depressed little funk for half an hour. And when I'm depressed, it can be an almost palpable thing. The minutes dragged by, and I was cursing myself for not falling off the road or something. At least if I had fallen off the road, it would have been automatic failure instead of this waiting for 30 minutes and THEN failing. And still, a small part of me was hoping that I had passed. I kept playing all sorts of scenarios in my head where I had to go back and tell the BOE that I had failed. Somewhere inside of me, my mind kept trying to think positive and show me scenarios where I came back triumphant. All those scenarios ended with Godzilla attacking my city right after that, so my victory was always short lived.

After a very, very tense half an hour, a different police officer came down the stairs and called for me and my BOE lady. He was not smiling and really looked liked the messenger who was about to tell Vlad the Impaler that his subscription to Horrendous Torture Implement of the Month Digest had been canceled. He then, still unsmiling, said something in fast Japanese. My BOE lady turned to me and said something in English that I didn't understand. But she was smiling. Hope, a thing with feathers that sits unseen in my soul, tried to take flight directly through my intestinal wall. "I passed?" I asked, and she nodded, smiling. My mind then digested what she had originally said, which was, "He says 'you are very rare'", which could be a great pick-up line, but wasn't intended to be in this case. Apparently he had explained to her how rare it was for a foreigner to pass the test on the first time (finally, she believed it - she thought I was over exaggerating until then), and that was his way of saying that I passed. He then broke into a grin when he saw how happy I was (my knees almost gave out), and said we had to do some more paperwork (I was so relieved at this point that I was positively skipping to go do more paperwork. Yea! Paperwork! I love this stuff!!). He escorted us to the appropriate window like a proud father, and every officer he saw along the way, he stopped to tell them that I got my license on the first try. Rather hilarious. Some of these officers I'd never seen before, so they just smiled in a vague sort of way and congratulated me. The officer I had seen a few times before shook my hand and looked very happy for me, though he was probably actually just happy that he would never have to see me again.

Yea for more paperwork. I was floating at this point. We then went upstairs so I could watch a safety video in English that taught me how to drive in Japan. Since I had just passed my test, I figured I knew how to drive in Japan; but I was so high on joy at this point that I swear I have never watched a movie as attentively as I did this one. My BOE lady and I talked a little bit (we were the only 2 in the room, so we didn't have to worry about disturbing others), and I think she wasn't as sure as she had seemed about me getting the license. She kept saying, "I'm so relieved!" She was preaching to the choir on that one. After the video, we asked the police officer what my driving score was. He said that there are 100 points for the test, and you need 70 to pass. Then he said that I "giri-giri pass", which means I barely passed. I got 70 points. But who cares? I passed!!

I then went to get my picture taken. Some really nice ladies were operating the camera. They congratulated me and told me to sit down and look at the camera. I sat and started fixing my hair and adjusting my shirt, then I got ready to look at the camera. "Ii desu" they said (it's good/okay); "Ii desu" I responded (yup, we're set, take the picture). My BOE lady then said, "Oh, no, they meant they had already taken the picture." ..... What?! This is a picture I'm going to have to live with for how many years, and I didn't even know they took it? What the heck? I was probably looking off-screen, drooling, and fixing my lopsided shirt. Great. I'm going to look like the hunchback on Notre Dame. Whatever. I got the license. Now I just have to be careful to not get pulled over so that I don't ever have to show it to anyone.

A few minutes later, and we were out of the DMV. I was so happy (have I expressed that enough?). I offered up so many prayers of thanks it was insane. The drive back to the BOE was much less tense. My BOE lady and I said we should pretend I failed just to see how the BOE reacted, but once we got back, we couldn't hold back our giggles. My section chiefs all stopped work when we came in and asked, very kindly, if I maru (circle/passed)? I think they were worried I didn't, because they were all looking very kind and concerned (man, you break down crying once, JUST ONCE, and everyone thinks you're going to do it all the time). I waited for a few seconds because everyone needs a little dramatic tension in their life, then I held up my hands in maru. The whole BOE cheered and told me congratulations. I told them "giri-giri pass", but one of my sections chiefs said, "We'll take it. A pass is a pass!" I had people crowding around me asking to see my deformed drivers license picture (it looks like a mug shot), and telling me how impressed they were. It was 4:00 at that point, and my boss looked at me and said, "Your work is done for the day. You can go home and relax now."

The rather ironic thing about all this is that I almost got into an accident on the way home. I think I had been so overly vigilant in my driving for the past few weeks that my mind snapped now that I had my license. So I went across a busy road and failed to notice the car speeding towards my side. They breaked just enough and I floored it just enough that we barely missed each other. I thought how wonderful it would have been to have to call the BOE 1 hour and 20 minutes after I got my new license in order to tell them that I had just totaled my car. But luckily, I'm okay. I just didn't drive for the rest of that weekend, and then I went back to driving as normal the next week. The poor Japanese DMV. They have no idea what kind of monster they've just unleashed on the roads of Japan. (*insert generic evil laughter here *)

2007-06-12T17:54:00.000+09:00

ON THE JOYS OF SHARING A ROOM

Really, insanely quick update, as I have to be at my conversation class in 30 minutes.

Question: How do you respond when you wake up in your hotel room and find that one of your roommates decided to let a man sleep in her bed with her? I remember hearing her voice at around 4 am, but I didn't hear who she was talking to, so I assumed it was our other roommate. When I woke up at 7 and looked over at her bed, I realized that I was very, very wrong. Apparently, she had made a "friend" last night, but he was so drunk that he forgot where his hotel was. So being a kind person, she invited him to stay in our room with her. How sweet is that? I wasn't as bad off as our other roommate, though. She had gone to bed with a tank top and no pants or shorts, thinking, "It's really hot in here, and we're all girls, so it's okay." Needless to say, she was less than thrilled with the fourth person in our room. Whee! Fun times in Japan.

2007-06-05T23:31:00.000+09:00

Okay, quick update here to fulfill my once a week obligation. I hope to have some time to write on Thursday night, but I'm not sure I'll be able to find spare moments. Sorry. The drivers test update is halfway done, but I'm too tired to finish now.

ON BEAUTIFUL QUESTIONS
Middle of class. 30 Japanese students looking on. Teacher turns to you and asks, "Do you know how to reproduce?" How do you answer? Turns out it's a teaching technique they use in Japan, and the term "reproduce" is the best translation they have for it. Nice. Who would have thought? I just figured it was going to be a really, really interesting question.

ON BEING LOST IN CONVERSATION
I "teach" an English adult conversation class in which 5 elderly Japanese people sit around and talk in Japanese for 2 and 1/2 hours. Highlight of my life, really, because I couldn't ever hear Japanese otherwise. Wait. I'm in Japan. I hear it EVERY DAY. I so dislike teaching this class. Imagine 5 people you really don't like. Doesn't have to be a reason you don't like them - they just get on your nerves. Now imagine having to sit in a room around a very small table with them. For 2 and 1/2 hours. Every week.

They talk for the whole time, mostly in Japanese. I will sometimes make a contribution in English (it IS an English conversation class), and they will nod, one of them will translate for the others (only one of the 5 even attempts to speak English), and then they will discuss whatever I said in Japanese. Occasionally one of them will turn to me after a joke and encourage me to laugh at it. They will be talking for maybe 20 minutes straight in Japanese (at which point my eyes have glazed over, when suddenly, someone will turn to me and say, "It was a joke. So funny!" through their laughter. Ahahahaha...yeah, I still don't understand Japanese, especially not jokes that take 5 minutes to explain. Last week, they were once again speaking in fast Japanese, and I was trying to catch some of it. I caught a few references to years (1992-1993), and I think I heard the word "dog", but I'm not sure. They all then burst into peals of laughter. One of them turned to me and said, by way of translation, "It's so funny! 1993!" and then looked at me expectantly. That was no help. That was actually the only part of their conversation I understood. Why did she translate that? And what was so funny about 1993? I was 11. Unless it was a joke about Tiny Toon Adventures, I probably wouldn't have understood it. You know the part of the song "Mary had a Little Lamb" that says, "It made the children laugh and play, laugh and play, laugh and play..."? Well, this conversation class makes me want to scream and cry, scream and cry, scream and cry.

ON IDEAS FOR GAMES THAT I'LL NEVER USE
I was trying to think of new games to play with the elementary school students. I was teaching them the names for various items of clothing, and I thought that we could play a type of go-fish. But as the thought further developed, I could see problems. "Taro, do you have any pants?" "Yes, here." "No, Taro, you're supposed to hand over the card with the picture of the pants..." But I do think it would be supremely fun to hear someone say, "Jun, do you have any pants?" "No, go fish."

On Root Vegetables and Bad Teachers

2007-05-27T16:21:00.000+09:00

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.

2007-05-20T21:52:00.000+09:00

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.

2007-05-13T21:26:00.000+09:00

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 Appliances

2007-05-05T23:02:00.000+09:00

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.)

2007-03-19T21:33:00.000+09:00

On Life
Sorry, I've been really, really busy lately, so I haven't had time to update. To rectify this, I am putting up a mammoth post that has been building over the course of several months.

On the Saga of The Roach
I sing to you now of the story of Pete. A few months ago, I was preparing to talk to my parents one morning. As I reached over to grab my hair dryer, Something large and black fell from beside my hairdryer and landed with a tick on the floor. Wondering absently what I must have put by my hairdryer, I proceeded to plug in my hairdryer. That’s when I noticed that the ticking noise hadn’t stopped. Sudden realization dawning, I looked down at where the Thing had fallen and realized that it was no longer there. I was in a hurry that day, so I quickly decided that what had just happened was something I neither wanted nor had time to dwell on. I was about half way through when I noticed something large and black crawling out from underneath my washing machine. At first I thought it was one of those giant scarab beetles from The Mummy (I hate scary movies, I know I hate them, so WHY do I watch them?), but upon further examination, I realized that it was a cockroach. A giant cockroach. Now I understand why that guy in Space: Above and Beyond was so freaked out when he thought of tons of cockroaches. I freaked out for a good long minute, then decided I needed to get to my computer for my call with my parents. I first got the vacuum as a preventative measure. In America, my preferred method of choice for spider extermination was a quick ride down the Vortex of Doom.

And then I had to pause and wonder about vacuuming up a cockroach as an effective means of destroying it. Anyone who has studied biology or has read a Farside cartoon is well aware of the fact that cockroaches are the only creatures that can survive a nuclear holocaust. So I began to wonder: what are the chances of a cockroach being able to live after being sucked into a vacuum? If I was a betting man, I think my money would be on the cockroach in that battle. So I figured the only way to help the roach along on its path to destiny would be to turn my vacuum into a Swirling Vortex of Doom. I turned on my vacuum to suction power high (its sounding more and more like a sci-fi movie, isn’t it?). But every time I would even make a movement towards the roach, it would go scuttling under the washing machine. Eventually, I decided that I had better things to do than babysit the washing machine to keep the roach in check.

Later that week, I went and bought roach traps (I had been taking a nap on my couch and heard the fateful ticking noise of roach feet on tatami [floor mats] and had immediately decided that the roach needed to die), which to me looked too small to fit the roach, but whatever. Oddly enough, the roach didn’t die. I’d see him scuttling away from me very fast about once a week. And that was it. He never climbed on my food or furniture, he never came in my bedroom (I kept both doors leading to the bedroom firmly shut), he never really came out from under furniture if he could help it. Soon, I found that somehow in the past few weeks, Pete had grown on me. I didn’t mind that he lived in the apartment with me so long as I rarely saw him and he was alone. And I also realized that I had inadvertently named him. And he had become a he, not an it. With horror I realized: I have a pet cockroach. And I was sort of okay with that. Now I was sort of okay with Pete because he was a Japanese cockroach at heart. He was WAY more scared of me than I was of him. He had only to see my shadow, and he’d go hurriedly scramble under the nearest piece of furniture. You know, I guess I’m okay with cockroaches so long as I know they’re scared of me. If I can’t see them, I can tolerate their existence.

Our relationship started to sour, however, when Pete did something unforgivable. Pete always seemed a decent sort of roach, fairly quiet and conservative. I guess he was just hiding the inner party roach from me. Yes, it all went south when Pete started living in sin.

I came home late one night from a party and went straight to the bathroom so I could get ready for bed. I took out my contacts (located on the left side of the sink), then got ready to start brushing my teeth. I saw a black blur by my toothbrush on the right side of the sink. “I must have moved the plug for the sink sometime today and forgotten about it,” I thought. I was about to switch it back to the left side of the sink when a bell started to go off in my head and my hand froze. “Wait a minute,” my inner intelligence thought. “You haven’t moved that plug since you cleaned the sink when you first arrived. It’s probably stuck fast to the sink, and you don’t remember tugging it off today.” My eyes swiveled to the left side of the sink. There, indeed, was the plug for the sink. My eyes swiveled back to the right and saw the inevitable. It was a cockroach. On my sink. Half-on top of my mouthguard (which I wear to bed every night). Not moving. Now that’s just not cool. I could tell right away it wasn’t Pete – Pete is humongous and black, and this roach was much smaller and brown. I don’t know why I immediately decided it was a female, but I did (female roaches are probably bigger than male roaches, but at this point, Pete was Pete in my mind). Sudden realization dawned: Pete had a girlfriend! And no, I wasn’t jealous. Mostly. It’s sad when your roaches have a more exciting love life than you do, is all I’m saying.

Once I realized that Pete had a girlfriend, I became less friendly to him. I was okay with a bachelor roach living in my apartment on his own. But now he was living in sin in my apartment, and this I could not tolerate. It was time for me to evict Pete. I went out and bought approximately a million roach poison pouches (if he had a girlfriend, I could only speculate as to whether her family was going to move in with them, so I wanted enough poison for all to share) and laid them all over my kitchen, tv room, and bathroom area. At first I didn’t notice a difference – I still saw the girlfriend around every once in awhile. After a few weeks, though, I realized that Pete and girlfriend had been absent for quite some time. And the peasants rejoiced. I left the poisons out, just in case.

But the story does not end there, oh no. Skip forward 2 months for The Reappearance of Pete. I can’t remember where he first popped up again, but I remember seeing him scamper by very quickly when I turned on the lights to my kitchen. A few days later, I saw his girlfriend reappear as well. Dangit. And she was right in front of my shower. How am I supposed to ignore that? I needed to take a shower, so I needed her out of the way. I cautiously approached the roach (ie – I kicked a water bottle at it). It didn’t move. It kind of gave me a contemptuous roach shrug and said, “Yo, was that supposed to scare me? You’re gonna have to do better than that.” Never one to leave the stakes where they lay, I decided to up the ante. So I kicked a sock at it. Still nothing. It scrambled a little towards the wall, but it was still showing defiance. “It’s a sock. Scary! You’re gonna have to do better than that.”

Now, I’m okay with roaches when they’re scared of me and cower in fear. But when they start pulling this defiant attitude…well, I’ve gotta draw the line somewhere, right? And this roach was ticking me off. Who did it think it was, blocking my shower and not cowering in fear before me? I started to get really angry at the imposition this roach was putting on me. It brought to mind the Disney movie “Beauty and the Beast” where all the villagers are singing “Kill the Beast!”? I was about one pitchfork and a few flaming torches short of that. I wanted to commit some serious roachicide.

I looked warily at the cockroach, and realized that she was smaller than Pete and thus had a better chance of fitting inside my vacuum tube. I got my vacuum cleaner out and slowly approached. I gathered my courage and like St. George stabbing the Dragon, I thrust my vacuum tube into the heart of the beast. Although in retrospect, I doubt St. George squealed like a little girl and made little fearful whimpering noises when he made contact with the beast. And he probably didn’t wet himself, though only because rusty chainmail rubbing against your nether-regions is NOT something you want to experience on a thousand mile horseback ride. Okay, well I didn’t wet myself, either, but it was a close call. At first the roach didn’t go up the vacuum tube, but then I turned to maximum suction power and it fit nicely up the tube.

Enter dilemma 2. As mentioned before, cockroaches can survive nuclear fall-out. So, how could I create a mini A-bomb in my vacuum cleaner? I don’t know enough about science to answer that. But I do know enough about sharp pointy objects to realize that they can be deadly when hurling around in a Swirling Vortex of Doon. I started looking around my floor for anything with sharp edges that would hopefully not puncture my vacuum bag but would still perhaps cause serious damage to a roach. So I began sucking up plastic tabs for bread wrappers, paperclips, staples, and anything else that looked pointy and sharp. Eventually satisfied that there was nothing left to suck up after la cucaracha, I let my vacuum run for another minute so as to inflict maximum damage, then I slowly switched it off. Immediately, I grabbed a Ziploc bag and rubber-banded it to the end of the vacuum hose, just in case the cockroach tried to pull its bleeding and mangled body out of the vacuum cleaner tube.

While talking to my mother later, she paused and said to me, “Okay, you thought about this WAY too much.” Maybe. But I know that someone, somewhere can sleep better knowing that there is one less cockroach on this planet. Sleep well, entomophobics, wherever you are.

2007-02-16T19:31:00.000+09:00

ON PRIDE
So I spent a busy day at work researching ninjas. I had absolutely nothing to do as usual (I get paid a ridiculous amount of money to do nothing), so I was looking into places to travel in Japan. I found Iga Ueno, home to the incredibly famous Iga ninja clan. I would estimate that I spent somewhere around 4 hours reading about different medicines and moves and whatnot that they developed. As happens when I read things like this, I started thinking, "That doesn't look too hard. I bet I could do some of those easier moves, no problem."

Whoever said pride cometh before the fall certainly knew what they were talking about (it's a Biblical quote, so obviously...). I finished my ninja research, then went off to plan a St. Patrick's Day bulletin board. I walked along the sidewalk to my board, then started holding up sheets of poster board to estimate how much green I'd need. Now, the fun thing about this sidewalk is that there is a slight slope. It's really easy to miss unless you're looking at it. So as I lay on my back 7.2 seconds later, trying to replay the last 7 seconds of my life going from upright to sprawled out, I realized that my ninja stealth may need some fine tuning before it is ready to be put to the test.

ON GIVING UNTO OTHERS
I have some friends who will be visiting over Japan in March and April. In honor of them, I've decided to really scrub my apartment. This will be a harder task than it sounds, by reason of my gentle nature. Some of the mold in my apartment has become like family to me. I know it well. It's been there so long, it's almost gained sentience (not to mention hair longer than mine). So my pain in cleaning will be two fold. I will have to destroy my beloved friends, and I will have to scrub REALLY hard to destroy said friends. To make my life easier, I ordered American cleaning supplies from the Costco in Japan. I have nothing against Japanese cleaning supplies. It just seems to me that if nothing is sudsing or foaming when you're using soap, something's got to be wrong.

Tonight I was eagerly awaiting the delivery of my cleaning supplies (and the Root Beer I had ordered [hey, heavy cleaning makes a person thirsty. I NEEDED the Root Beer for its refreshing qualities.]). At 7, I heard someone pull up outside, so I rushed to the door. The delivery man handed me receipts to sign as he went down to the truck to get my boxes. Now, when I ordered these cleaning supplies, I assumed they'd just come in normal sized bottles like we use in America. Hahaha, oh, my naivete. This is Costco. Nothing comes small. I was thinking I'd get boxes the size my parents normally send; boxes which could comfortably fit Gimli and possibly his battle axe. Instead, I looked down the stairs in horror to watch this poor man struggling with 2 boxes that could have housed Legolas, Aragorn, the hobbits, and possible quite a number of orks as well. And their weapons. And STILL had room for Treebeard if they all scrunched up. The Delivery Man (he earned the capital letters after carrying these things up the stairs) set the boxes on the top step to my apartment, then lifted the top one to put it in my apartment. I noticed the bottom box was teetering on the edge of the stairs, so I tried to pull it up a little. The box didn't move. I tugged harder, putting my back (as well as my newly acquired ninja skills) into it, miraculously managing to move the box 3 inches. Woohoo!! I looked at the little Japanese man who had just carried TWO of these behemoths up the stairs at the same time. It's at times like these that I just don't understand why Japan didn't win the war.

Mr. Delivery Man put both boxes in my entry way, took his receipts, and went back to his van, probably to cry over the pain of his newly pulled groin muscle. Sparing about 2 seconds in a moment of silence for his children who will now never be able to exist, I started opening my boxes. Holy crud. I've seen big bottles of cleaning fluids, but these put them all to shame. I wasn't aware that Mr. Clean came in a bottle which passes big and super size and goes straight to deity size. It's mammoth. Now I see why these boxes were so heavy. I bought about 5 gianormous bottles of cleaning liquids and a 24 pack of rootbeer and 1000 sheets of construction paper. And 2 pillows. I don't really factor the pillows in with the other things, though. They seem fundamentally different somehow. I opened the second box and saw the pillows on top and thought, "ha, I can move this one, it's just light stuff." I missed the construction paper and years-supply of Tide on the bottom, though. Now my back hurts. Sigh. And it's sad that I'm so excited, because all that awaits me now is cleaning. Woohoo.

But I'm still excited nonetheless. So I'll sit here tonight, happily belching my rootbeer and having happy dreams of Moldy Death in the morning. Maybe I'll send up a prayer or two for Mr. Delivery Man, praying that he has already had all the children he wanted or that scientists develop wonderful new technology to aid him in the next 10 years. Sleep well, Delivery Man, wherever you are. And use ice. Lots of ice.

2007-02-12T20:50:00.000+09:00

ON ROMANCE
Since Valentine's Day is fast approaching, I thought an entry on romance would be appropriate. Not a lot of romance happens in my life, though. I was looking at clipart the other day and saw a monkey kissing another monkey and I thought, "Man, even the clipart monkey is getting more romance than I am."

A few weeks ago, I started making visits to elementary schools in my area. Since I didn't know where any of the schools were, I had to have teachers show me the way. Usually, the school would call me a few days before my visit and arrange, in very, very, incredibly sadly broken English, for someone to pick me up at my base school. I was getting worried one Tuesday, as the school I was to go to didn't call me. I was relieved when I got a phone call at school in the early afternoon. The elementary school principal called me and arranged to pick me up himself the next day. I was surprised, but happy that it was resolved. The principal called back later that afternoon, though, to inform me that he had a meeting and thus could not pick me up. It was okay, though, he said, because there was someone else he could send. "I will send K-sensei. He is the 6th grade teacher," he said. Okay, whatever. He then continued, "He is 30 years old." Do I care? No. But thanks for the info. I got ready to say goodbye, but he was not done yet. "He is a very handsome boy." Whoa. Definitely didn't ask. But thanks again. "I think you will like him."

"..."

New rule to my life: In order to set me up, you have to know me first.The story then continues. Mr. K did indeed come to my school. I was flustered because of what the principal said and because I was worried that Mr. K didn't speak English. No worries, though, because he does speak English. His English was better than almost every elementary school teacher I had previously met. Thank goodness. But I guess that isn't saying much considering that most of the elementary teachers I know have issues handling, "Hello."

So I went to the school and the children there were adorable. The school only has 26 students. Literally. 26 students. That's it. The kids were very friendly. Many of them ran up to me and introduced themselves, shaking my hand. So cute! So I taught all the classes, then had lunch with Mr. K and his 5th and 6th graders (since there are so few students, most of the teacher teach 2 grades). I love school lunches. Today's lunch featured thin smelly soup and rice with mysterious tentacles. Yum. As I was focusing intently on chewing and trying to figure out if things were wiggling in my mouth that I wasn't controlling, some students tried to ask me questions. They kept asking Mr. K how to ask things like, "What ___ do you like?". Some of the girls kept giggling. Mr. K came and sat across from me once he was done with his lunch so he could better translate for the students. Finally, one of the girls whispered to him a few times, and he whispered back. She then turned to me and asked, "What type of guy do you like?" ... I'm fairly certain I turned a shade of red not normally seen in nature. Eventually, I said, "I guess I like guys who are nice." The students didn't understand, so Mr. K translated it as kakkoi (to my knowledge, kakkoi usually means "cool"). The girls all started giggling, and one girl immediately pointed to Mr. K and said, "Kakkoi, desu yo!" ("He's really cool, you know!"). Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match...

ON DIET
No, not DIETING, but DIET, like the food you eat. I don’t think I’ve ever actually dieted in my life (though I probably could have used it…). As I have talked to various friends and relatives about food here in Japan, I have heard almost all of them utter something along the lines of, "I didn't expect you to eat strange stuff. I mean, it is YOU after all." Now, I know I may not have been the most culinarily adventurous person before I came to Japan, but I've changed. I have eaten so many strange things since I came to Japan that at times, I feel well qualified for Fear Factor.

Foods I hated (or had never tried) in America
mushrooms, fish, radish, soggy vegetables, sesame oil, tea, coffee, cabbage, spicy stuff, etc. There's a long list.

Foods I’ve tried in Japan
mushrooms, fish, radish, soggy vegetables, sesame oil, tea, coffee, cabbage, sweet bean paste, more noodles than you can shake a stick at, crab, shrimp, raw fish, clams, scary dairy products, octopus (mmm, tentacles...), bread with pudding, ice cream that looked as though a fruit shop had vomited on it, raw eggs, et. al.

Foods I hate in Japan
mushrooms, fish (I'll admit that some fish are good, but some are really, really horrible), radish, sesame oil, soggy vegetables seasoned with sesame oil, tea, coffee, cabbage, spicy stuff, shrimp, raw fish, clams, scary dairy products, octopus (mmm, tentacles...), raw eggs, etc. I’m building a tolerance for most of these, but I’m sure that people can build a tolerance for cyanide.

Foods I suspect that I’d hate if I actually tried them
basashi (raw horse meat), fish testes*

*The fish testes is a fun story. I was at the bonenkai (year end party) for my base school. There was some weird white stuff in one of the bowls on the table. It was squiggly and looked like milk curds. I asked one of my English teacher was it was. She got a very strange smile on her face (HUGE warning sign. Many, many bells were going off in my head.) and said something in Japanese that I didn’t understand. I asked her to explain, and she couldn't. She got her dictionary (still with that freaky smile) and looked something up. She turned her dictionary to me, still smiling. I looked at it and saw the word "albino". Hm... I explained to her that that word means different things and really didn't help unless she was implying that I was eating a human. She got a confused look and entered something else into her dictionary. She turned it back to me, and I suddenly understood. Testes. I was looking at a bowl of fish testes. Yup. Not quite sure how to respond to that one. Fish testes. Yup. Um. Yeah. I pushed the bowl away and gave it" a look". The teachers around me laughed and kept trying to persuade me to taste it all night. They would tell me that it was delicious and it was considered a delicacy. I kept pushing it further and further away. There was NO WAY I was going to try it. And not for the reason most people think. I wasn't worried that it would be nasty or that I'd throw it up. Oh, no. What I was truly worried about was that I would actually LIKE it. Iwas scared that I'd develop a taste for it. Iwas that scared I'd be hanging out with my friends in America one day and suddenly say something like, "Hey, you know what I could really go for right now? A big plate of fish testes. Mmmm, yes. Can't beat a big plate of fish testes."

2007-01-19T21:21:00.000+09:00

ON CURRENT EVENTS
And in the news: I'm going to recontract for a second year. Hopefully next winter in Japan will be just as warm as this one.

ON INSECRITY
For once, I won't be talking about my own insecurities (which there are too many to list here, anyways), but those of people around me. Specifically, that of a male coworker. There are many things that I had never thought would happen in my life. And it's not like I never thought they'd happen. They were so remote a thing that they never even entered my head as a concept of something that could happen to me. One occurred yesterday in the form of a Japanese man coming up to me and asking, "Am I fat?"

The teacher that asked this is sort of new to my school. He came in to replace another teacher in October, and I noticed that he was always staring at me. Slightly creepy. I came to find out that he enjoys speaking English, though he doesn't speak it really well, but he was too shy to start a conversation with me at first. I told him not to be shy. In retrospect, that was stupid. At the time that I told him that, I didn't realize his voice could do the work of a fully functional bull horn all on its own. When he's talking to someone, EVERYONE in the staff room knows about it. The man has no "quiet" setting to his voice. It's permanently stuck on the "make the ears of the person next to you bleed" volume. People who know me know that I don't usually like much attention to be called to myself, as I am incredibly self-conscious. This guy makes it impossible for me to sneak anywhere. I'll be sneaking into the staffroom 2 minutes late (well, actually, I'll be 8 minutes early instead of 10, but in Japan, you should always be somewhere 10 minutes early), and I'll almost be at my desk when I hear it. "OH! GOOD MORNING, JESSICA!" I always sigh, but only inwardly, and put on my genki face as I quickly and quietly reply, "Good morning!" while dashing to my seat with my head down. I sometimes dread going to Cromartie (the school) because I KNOW that I'll have to have an embarrasingly loud conversation with this guy. But hey, he likes speaking English, and this is the only time in his week that he actually can, so I humor him.

And no, he doesn't like me, so those of you with those thoughts, please put them aside. I should amend that and say that he doesn't REALLY like me, he just likes me like every other male in this country likes me. You see, to many Japanese, foreigners all look the same. That is to say, we all look completely different from most Japanese people. So we are mysterious and inherently interesting. Until this week, my blog profile read something like, "I'm not very interesting." After numerous protests from my mother, I finally took it down after I realized that right here, right now, I am intensely interesting to most people around me. In America, I'm not a stand-out in many things, but in Japan, I stand out just because of what I look like and where I come from. Most people find me intriguing. I think I shouldn't stay here much longer or this might go to my head. It's flattering until you realize that they aren't interested in YOU, they're just interested in foreign people/things. So if there was any other AET here besides me, that person would get just as much attention as I do. It's not because I'm am incredibly special. This all leads back to say that when I get attention from Japanese guys, I don't let it get to me. They don't actually like me, per se, they just like the foreigness of me. So this teacher doesn't actually like me, he just like the thrill of talking to a foreign woman.

So yesterday, this teacher came up to me and obviously wanted to talk. I had nothing to do, so I politely turned to him. Sometimes it's hard to talk to him because his English, while loud, isn't always so good. I have to try to use as simple English as possible, which is a real challenge given the topics he sometimes wants to talk about. This is how the conversation yesterday started.

Him: OH, HELLO JESSICA!
Me: Good morning.
Him: I HEAR THAT AMERICAN PEOPLE EAT A LOT OF FOOD.
Me: ... um ... I guess some do.
Him: OH, I SEE. DO YOU?
(It was incredibly difficult to restrain the eyeroll and bitchslap that were tempted to appear).
Me: ... (about 6 comments were mentally deleted before I settled on) Not usually, I think.
Him: OH, I SEE. WELL, I HAVE A PROBLEM. I EAT TOO MUCH.
Me: Really? (This had the feeling of an internet chat. I wanted to say "lol", but I doubted he would understand that.)
Him: YES. AM I FAT?
Me: ... (smile, look slightly puzzled, sit back and look at him to see if he's serious, give a quick answer) No, you're not. You're not fat.
Him: WHAT? I'M NOT SMART?!
Me: ... ?! NO! I said you're not FAT. You're NOT FAT!
Him: OH, I SEE. I'M NOT SMART. BUT I'M NOT FAT.
Me: NO! You are NOT fat. You ARE smart. You are a math teacher. You are smart. Math is difficult.
Him: OH, REALLY?
Me: Yes.
Him: SO I AM SMART.
Me: Yes.
Him: AND I'M NOT FAT. OH, I'M RELIEVED.
Me: Good.

He walked away smiling, which I guess can be considered a satisfactory outcome for any intercultural exchange. I'm just wondering why he suddenly decided to ask me that question out of the blue. He sounded like a teenage girls asking, "Does this make me look fat?" Maybe he rented some American tweener movie and wanted to try out some of his new vocab on me. Whatever the case, I've decided that I'm going to try harder to dodge him in the future. Next thing I know, he'll ask me, "Does this suit make me look like a skank?"

On a Variety of Random Things that aren't Incredibly Funny because it's Late and I'm Tired

2007-01-15T21:30:00.000+09:00

As I further explore the wonderful world of blogging, I've noticed that all blogs have one thing in common: they all promise to update often, and they never do. I've always liked to stick with the crowd (okay, that's a lie, but it's a useful lie, so it'll stay for now), so I blame the fact that I haven't updated on everyone else in the world who has a blog. 'Cause it's obviously not just because I'm lazy and didn't write anything. Obviously. Yeah. Anyways, onword and upward. As a warning, I have some humor in this entry that children would find amusing (potty humor - boogers and such hilarious things), so please don't read if you get offended by things like that. :-) Also, another warning. It's late, and I'm tired, and I didn't really compile my thoughts well on this one. So I ramble. A lot. Apologies. Feel free to give up reading half-way through.

On Further Fun with the Language
So I've spent many a day at my Board of Education over the past few weeks. There are no classes during winter break, so I have to go to the BOE during my working days. Don't get me wrong, my BOE is great. The people there are very friendly, and when I have breakdowns and cry at work (happened once, big no-no in Japan, horribly embarrasing, enough said), they're really nice about it (though that could just be because they think I'm emotionally unstable). Some of them even speak fairly decent English. But the thing about the BOE is that it's an office. A workplace. Where people do work. This may not sound like a problem to some of you, but remember that I don't really do a whole lot of work. So I've got nothing to do over these days. I sit and practice sleeping with my eyes open (which is harder than it sounds. Actually, no, it's probably just as hard as it sounds). In order to stave off boredom, I decided to start studying Japanese, which was, in retrospect, a bad idea. Nothing says boredom like studying. This from an aspiring teacher. How shameful.

As I was studying one day, I came across a word I didn't know. This happens quite frequently, as the books I study from are crap. They leave about half the terms untranslated. They want me to memorize things that I don't understand. I don't want to memorize a phrase unless I know exactly what I'm saying. If I don't, it's too easy to slip up and say something wrong (in Japanese, the words for "wake me up" and "rape me" are a single vowel sound apart. Slighlty worrying, ne? So I turned my book to the other AET at the BOE and asked her what "mottainai" means. She explained that it's a very important word in Japan. It means "What a waste!" or "Don't waste things!" In Japan, it's a huge taboo to waste food or items that could be re-used. They're like the Native Americans in the Farside cartoon. "Son, I don't know what this is, but it's the only part of the buffalo that we don't use." The Japanese use every part of the fish (my bonenkai story about that will be lots of fun) and various other creatures. And Japanese children are told to finish all their food. They don't throw away any of their cafeteria food. HUGE no-no. So this is a very serious word with a lot of meaning behind it.

Skip forward to that night. Tchan (as we shall call the other AET in my BOE) had me and some Japanese friends over for dinner that night. Her friends cooked sukiyaki (Japanese stew with lots of interesting stuff in it. Tastes very sweet), and we all sat around to eat (except 2 people, who rotated into seats, as there were only 5 chairs in her house). Everyone was having different conversations, but we all started keying into one conversation that Kkun (AET in a neighboring city) was having with some of the Jguys. The guys were talking about murders in Japan. The current one they were talking about was reminiscent of Hanibal Lechtor (spelled that wrong, didn't I?) Apparently, there was a guy in Japan who killed his wife, ate some of her, then cut up the rest and put it in his freezer. Everyone paused for a moment to be fully grossed out by this. Someone finally managed to ask why anyone would do that. Another person wondered why you would store the body in the freezer. We all paused again, contemplating this. Tchan looked up cheerfully and said, "Hey, mottainai, yo!". Everyone just stared at her. "What? Why waste food? Obviously his wife can't cook for him anymore, so he's going to need to save what food he has."

On Picking Weird Habits (among other things)
When a Japanese person refers to themselves, they will often ask, "Me?" and point to their noses. At first, I only saw little children and old ladies do this, but I am noticing it more and more. Sadly, I have started picking up this habit. Everytime someone asks my opinion, I'll point to my nose and say, "Me?" A small part of me dies everytime I do that. I like my American hand gestures. I like using my whole hand to indicate myself. In my mind, my finger should not be near my nose unless it's planning to extricate something.

On Wisdom
In Japan, Rock, Paper, Scissors is known as Janken. Before I came to Japan, I had no idea how much it was used over here. Practically every game we play in class, students must janken. Every major decision somehow involves Janken. Students Janken over who gets stuck playing the crappy instruments in band all year, over who gets the last scary looking squiggly vegetable thing for lunch, over who has to pick up the dead bird that somehow flew in the window over winter vacation and died in the classroom (that was an interesting janken session to watch)... I sometimes get the feeling that in the Japanese translation of the Bible, Solomon told the two women to janken over who got the baby. The Japanese would no doubt find this a very wise decision. Can't dispute a decision made by Janken. Instead of arguing over who gets to take over the Chrysanthemum throne, they really should just wait until all the heirs are old enough, then have them janken to see who gets to rule. Now there would be an interesting idea for the presidential race. Instead of doing revotes, the candidates should have to janken to see who gets to be President. Saves a lot of time and money for all parties involved. No more 6 month campaign full of stupid tv ads slurring other candidates. Just a solid janken session. Best out of 1. Ready? Go.

On Weenie English
I've been disturbed lately about the English that my students are being taught. With a few exceptions, my JTE's (Japanese teacher's of English) are pretty good. They can speak understandable English, understand the majority of what I say, and have decent pronunciation. However, they have one fault: they were not born in an English speaking country. This means that they must rely on the textbook and other books to teach them English and to teach their students English. This is leading to what I think is one of the worst problems in modern Japan: Weenie English. What do I mean by Weenie English? Well, it's kind of hard to explain. The best way to describe it is, "English that would get your butt kicked on any playground in America by any self-respecting American." When I teach my kids these phrases, sometimes I want to kick my own butt. It's that bad. It's English that is either used in countries other than America, or was used prior to the birth of George Washington. It's English that went out of style so long ago, we can't even remember when it was in style. William Shakespeare would probably give my kids a poke in the backside for using some of this old school English. Let me share some examples.

"Oh, I say. There's Mr. Murata. He is dandy."
??? What's dandy? I know the term "fine and dandy", but I've never heard dandy on it's own. My teachers described it as someone who may not be handsome, but has a good heart. Right. Maybe it meant that 600 years ago. Now it means, "Please kick my a@@, I'd a dork." And when's the last time you hailed someone with a cry of, "Oh, I say"? THAT'S certainly not likely to earn you a ticket to be scorned and ridiculed.

"I like sweets."
Sweets? Sweets? I don't believe I've ever heard an American use that term except to mock a Brit. Does the baby want a sweetie? Please, children, if you ever go to America, DON'T use that term around your peers.

"I'm going to play with my friends."
Remember, this is being taught to 8th and 9th graders. This is not practical Engilsh. No one uses that term except children. Well, children and psychopaths. Okay, children, psychopaths, and perverts. But that's not a set to which I'd like to belong.

"I like soccer. It makes me excited."
My eyebrows raised, but you can't see that. Someone who says this is OBVIOUSLY not going to get mocked mercilessly everytime they are seen with a soccer ball. (The other sentence that I like is "I like chocolate. It makes me happy." When reading that to my students, I said, "I like chocolate. It makes me fat." The English teacher just kind of looked at me, and I re-read it the right way. Japanese seriousness 1 Jessica 0)

To combat Weenie English, I think I'm going to come out with my own textbook. "20 ways to get your butt kicked in America." My book will include helpful slang guides, bad words, and grammar points to show you how to inflict maximum damage with your insults. It will include such helpful phrases as, "What are you looking at, punk?" And "Do you wanna fight?" "Kiss my a@@ (cultural note - "a@@" means buttocks, not donkey)." "What've you got in your hands there?" "Oh, no. Someone call 9-1-1!" You should really see the hand-written version, as it shows which syllables are emphasized and how to pronounce words in natural English. I think it'll sell well in Japan.

On Christmas Wishes

2006-12-22T22:22:00.000+09:00

So I was writing Christmas cards for all of my JTE's (Japanese Teachers of English), and I got stuck on one. He is a new teacher, and very young (23. One year younger than me. But he's SO YOUNG). He looks like he could be one of my students - he's one of those J-guys (J- is a gaijin abbreviation for Japanese) that seem to look as if they're 10-20 years younger than they really are. I doesn't help that he's shorter than I am. One day I was standing next to him and realized that if we were playing hockey, I could totally hip check him in the ribcage. He's scared to death of me - every time I speak to him, his eyes get really wide and he looks around for the other JTE's so they can translate for him. He's an English teacher, but he's embarrassed about how bad his English is, so he hates to speak English. He's passive and a bit of a wuss. But he's sweet in a little kid kind of way, so I like him even if I get frustrated with him a lot. I think a good nickname for his would be Mr. Passivity.

So as I was trying to write his Christmas card, I couldn't actually think of anything to write inside of it. Everytime I tried to think of what to write, the only thing that entered my head was, "Dear I-sensei, Grow some balls. -Jessica" I eventually did manage to write something other than that, but I concentrated on every word I wrote just in case those other words were going to spring unbidden onto the page.

As an update of sorts (this is about a week after I was writing the cards):

I sort of got my Christmas wish! Mr. Passivity almost grew some balls for once. They were heavily lubricated (get your minds out of the gutters, people!) with alcohol, though, so I don't know if that really counts... At the bonenkai (end of the year party) tonight, M-sensei and I were leaving after the first party. Passivity sensei asked if I was coming to the second party, and I said that I was sorry, but I had to get up early tomorrow to go on a trip with another teacher (it was the truth - I wasn't lying). After a pause, he said, "I have to be in Yamaguchi tomorrow morning. At 7:40. What time do you go?" Now that may not sound like much, but he's Japanese, so you have to translate that correctly. What he really said was, "So what, you wuss! I'm getting up at 5:30 in the frickin' morning, and I'll have a hangover, and I'm STILL going to the second party. What's your excuse?" Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus. I was so proud of him, I wanted to hug him! He even said it in a slightly different tone than normal. I wouldn't say an aggressive tone becuase I'm not entirely certain that he's capable of that, but he at least attempted it. I politely refused to go again, but I kind of wanted to, if for nothing else than to see him acting like he's got a pair.

On School Assemblies and Other Things That Motivate People to Count Ceiling Tiles

2006-12-22T11:28:00.000+09:00

I hate school assemblies. They are long, boring, and a waste of everyone`s time, including my own. And my time is valuable. Every minute I`m in an assembly is a minute that could be spent sleeping in the teachers room. We had a school assembly today in order to prepare students for Winter Break. Pretty much the gist of it was, “be good over break, study hard, don`t have too much fun.” The students listened to the principals`s speech, which was thankfully shorter than normal (only 10 minutes of nonsense this time instead of the usual 20!), then they gathered to say the school pledge or whatever and sing the school song. After that, they got up to sing a random song, the point of which I`m not entirely certain. More speeches by other students (long, boring, pointless speeches), and I was thinking I was home free after only 40 minutes. I was fairly frigid at this point (no central/indoor heating in Japan, so the gym was about 35-40 degrees). Then they called in “The Talker.” The Talker is a guy who loves the sound of his own voice. He talks all the time, just for the sake of talking. I don`t know if he actually says anything helpful or instructive. I just know it`s usually fairly long. He`s sort of like the evil twin of the energizer bunny. He never quits, even though I wish he would sometimes. He talked for over 15 minutes. And the students are required to sit attentively the whole time, looking as if they are enraptured in his words. In reality, they are probably trying to figure out what the first stage of frostbite looks like and if that numb sensation in their feet and hands is something they should be concerned about. I was quite awake and perky until he started talking – once he started speaking, though, my will to live was sucked right out of me. I was almost asleep at several points in his riveting speech, and was jerked back to awareness by him yelling some phrase or another (he likes to yell, too). I have never been so happy to hear someone ask students to stand up, as it signaled the end of his monopoly on the microphone. I think I`m just going to abuse my privileges as a foreigner and walk out next time he starts to talk at an assembly.

On Learning the Native Language

2006-12-20T22:43:00.000+09:00

So I had fun with Japanese today at my base school. I was looking at I-sensei's papers and noticed he made a grammar mistake. I fixed it, then felt bad. He's studying English really hard, and I'm not studying Japanese. So I got motivated to study Japanese. When we got back to the teachers room, I started studying my Japanese book and got quite far. Towards the end fo the day, though, I came across something that confused me. Basic explanation. In my Japanese class at Owens, sensei (and the textbook) taught us that "benkyo o shimasu" is "to study" or "I study". The books that JET gives us, though, says it should be "benkyo shimasu". So I asked my head English teacher which was right. She thought about it and said both phrases quite a few times, but she couldn't figure out the difference. She asked the science teacher sitting across from her. Both teahcers started saying both phrases and were both getting confused. The principal walked by at that time, and overheard them, so he asked what was up, and my English teacher explained. So he started trying to think which was phrase was better (it should be noted that it's VERY hard for a non-native Japanese speaker to hear the difference between the two phrases, so it almost sounded like they were just repeating some sort of odd mantra about studying). The Vice Principal then came over to see what was up, and he joined in with his INCREDIBLY loud voice. The art teacher wandered up the aisle trying to get to his desk and got caught up in it, too. To make a long story short, eventually we had about 10 people crammed in the small aisle between my English teacher and I. Quite fun. And the teachers never came to a consensus about which was more accurate. They even asked a Japanese teacher, and she wasn't sure. The confusion lasted for about 15 minutes.

I eventually looked up at the principal and said, in a very exasperated way, "benkyo o shimasen (I do NOT study)" and closed my book, slamming it on my desk. He laughed and said "benkyo shimasen"?. I rolled my eyes (in retrospect, rolling your eyes at your boss is probably not the best idea I ever had, but he laughed because I was attempting to use Japanese to express my frustration) and said, "Nihongo wa muzukashii, ne? Eigo was yasai" (which I thought meant "Japanese is hard, right? English is easy" but which ACTUALLY meant "Japanese is hard, English is a vegetable". I think he understood what I meant.) After laughing, he put on a serious face and said, "Hai. Nihongo wa totemo muzukashii desu. Ganbatte." ("Yes, Japanese is very difficult. Good luck.") I smiled and then put my book in the trashcan, saying, "yaku ni tatanai" (useless!). He laughed and agreed that that was where it belonged.

Now I'm rather discouraged about learning Japanese. If even the native speakers have no clue what's going on, how do I have any hope of learning it? On the other hand, I did manage to be slightly cheeky, bordering on sarcastic, using only a few, simple words. So maybe there is hope yet.

On Choosing Your Words Carefully

2006-12-11T21:55:00.000+09:00

On my lesson plan for today, the teacher said, "The AET will teach students American hand gestures, asking 'Do you know what this means?" I don't know about you guys, but any of the first 5 gestures that came into my head upon reading that would get my kids shot in downtown L.A.

Sorry I haven't updated much. I have loads more to write about, but I have an early morning tomorrow. This weekend will be my first free weekend in quite some time, so I will hopefully have time to add more updates then.

On the True Meaning of Christmas

2006-12-01T17:23:00.000+09:00

Haven't updated in awhile, so I thought I'd throw something quick up here.

Today in class, we were playing a "describing game." We divided the room into 2 teams, then I would describe a person, place, or thing to the students and they had to figure out what I was describing. The last question was supposed to be hard, and the teacher told me to describe Santa Claus in a very vague way. So I said, "This is a person. It's a man. He is old. He has a white beard (hair on your face) and white hair. He delivers presents." The students whispered amongst themselves to try to figure out who I was talking about. One student turned and looked at me. "Osama bin Laden?" she asked.

I fear that my student's Christmas cards will read: A very Merry Christmas and a happy Jihad to all.

On Being a Model Teacher

2006-11-23T16:04:00.000+09:00

On Tuesday, I had to teach a "model lesson" with my main English teacher at my base school. This did not involve swimsuits are speeches about world peace, as I had originally thought it would. Apparently we were doing a "model lesson" to show other teachers how lessons are supposed to work. Or something like that. I'm still not entirely sure. All I know is that my teacher was flipping out for about a month before the lesson. Everytime I came to the base school, she'd rush up to me and let me know that she had changed the lesson again. Eventually, I stopped looking at the changes she made, knowing that they'd be changed in another two days. The weekend before lesson, she came to my house on Sunday to talk about the lesson. It was really just a normal lesson, with more planning and stress put into it. I kept on telling her that she'd be fine and not to worry, but she was almost in tears at one point. She's been teaching at the same school for ten years and was just transferred to this school in April (the school year begins in April in Japan. Teachers will usually teach at a school for 5 years, then get transferred to another school in their city or prefecture. From what I hear, she was at her old school so long because she kept going on maternity leave, so to complete her 5 years, she had to stay for somethign around 10).

While I had originally thought this school was full of very kind people and the principal was super-nice, I now found out that there were currents of unhappiness going through my base school. Apparently, the principal came to one of the English teacher's classes the other week and yelled at her and the students for being too loud. He later told the English teacher that her students test scores were too low (in Japan, written test scores are EVERYTHING. This is why you will have students who can read a book in English but can't say hello) and that she needed to get them higher and stop doing so many activities with the students. Now, if you know about how American teachers are trained, this is completely reversed. It's all about doing activities to give students "hands on experience" and "real life learning". Anywho, since then, my English teacher said she's totally lost her confidence. She used to think she could plan a lesson well, but now she feels as if she's a bad teacher. Sorry, that was a long rant, but I had to get that down.

So on Tuesday, I came to school, and SURPRISE, she'd changed the lesson again. :-) Poor woman. There are 3 second-year (8th grade) classes in my base school. The model lesson was to happen the period directly after lunch, but we had a chance to teach it to another class the period before lunch. Unfortunately, we didn't get through the whole lesson, so we had to modify it. Again. I wasn't really nervous, as I knew my job really wouldn't be effected by the outcome of this lesson. My English teacher was a wreck. She had to go to the bathroom several times, said her stomach hurt a lot, and I bet she didn't eat lunch at all. I felt so bad for her. Finally Dday arrived and we went up to the classroom. There was a row of chairs in the back for the other teachers to sit in. We started class as normal. Once our greetings were over, some of the teachers began to trickle in the classroom (all the other classes were doing seatwork or something on their own, since all the teachers were watching this lesson). After that, class went fairly normally. I noticed a lot of the teachers taking notes in the back of the room. Class went well. It ended. We went back to the teachers room. I was relaxing. Ten minutes later, my English teacher asked me if I was ready to go. Go where? Oh, she forgot to tell me. There would be a special meeting to talk about the lesson. Great.

So I scrambled to get my stuff for the meeting. I brought my Japanese/English dictionary and my notebook, notes, and pencil. The meeting was an hour and a half of Japanese I couldn't understand. And it sounded like my English teacher was explaining the lesson a lot, so she couldn't translate for me. The first half hour consisted of the other teachers asking her quetsions. The next hour was the Vice Principal at a random high school in my city. I guess he was like the guest observer who was going to impart his wisdom on us. He liked his voice. He used it for an hour. It was a very serious meeting. Everyone was taking notes and listening intently. I, too, was taking notes. The words puke, asshole, and dingbat are not in my dictionary. Vomit, burp, belch, ass (donkey only, sadly), butt, armpit, feces (that was surprising - I had to respell it 3 times to find it), and poop are. I was quite happy. I'm so glad no one could speak/read English near me. If they could have read and understood my notes, I'm pretty sure I'd be in trouble. But I know that I'm not the only one who was seriously bored. The art teacher was staring at this guy after he'd been talking for about 45 minutes. He had a look on his face that clearly said, "I can't believe this guy is still talking. This is boring. This is really, really boring. I think he's even boring himself. I'm about to pound my head on this table to make the pain stop." I just hope no one was watching me. Between my junior-high boyesque way of looking up dirty words in the dictionary, my yawning, and the time I almost let out a drool stream while yawning, I would have been interesting to watch. "Hey, what's the gaijin doing? She looks bored. She's scribbling stuff in her notebook. She's blinking awfully slowly. She's yawning. She's looking at the clock. She's standing up. She's heading towards the window. She opened the window. Hey, wait! This is the second floor. She isn't going to- Yup, she jumped. She's landing on the ground and rolling. She's running into the teacher's room. She's running out with her stuff. She's backing her car into the ornamental statue. She's running over our decorative plants. She's peeling out of the driveway."

On Embarrassment and Teenage Nudity

2006-11-17T21:24:00.000+09:00

Okay, so I think I had the most embarrassing moment of my life today. Well, maybe not, but close. In between classes, my dorky teacher (whom I have decided to nickname "Freddy", as he loves Queen) said he was going to stay in the classroom for the next class. I said I was going to run down to the teacher's room to get a drink and be right back up. So I went down, got a drink, and came back up. When I was about to go in the classroom, Hayashida-kun (a student who always sort of jokes around with me) jumped infront of the door and said "No no no! You can't go in!". I thought he was joking, so I asked why, but he just looked confused. I said, "I can go in the back door if I can't go through this one" (the classroom has 2 doors, and both were open). He started to walk towards the back door, so I slipped in the front door. I heard some boys yell something, so I looked up and noticed why Hayashida had said I shouldn't go in. You see, it was after gym class, and the boys change in the classroom. Yea. Usually they shut the doors and pull the curtain infront of it, but they hadn't today. About one second of a glance told me that I definitely should NOT be in the room (though I only saw a brief glimpse of some boys with their shirts off - nothing below the belt so to speak). I rushed in, grabbed my books that I had left on the desk, and rushed out again. Wow. Talk about embarrassing for both me and the students. And Freddy didn't warn me that they would be changing or anything. He knew I was coming right back, and yet he let them keep the doors open. If I were a more suspicious person, I would wonder if he did that on purpose. I was blushing madly for the rest of the day any time I saw a second-year boy. And since these schools are so small, I KNOW that all the students know what happened. Dangit. So embarrassing. A lot of the third year boys went out of their way to say hello to me loudly today after that. I really have to wonder why...

This has not been a red letter day.

The first new post on the blog

2006-11-11T20:15:00.000+09:00

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.

2006-11-06T18:09:00.000+09:00

ON THINGS THAT SHOULD NOT BE
So I saw a kid (anyone under 18 is dubbed a "kid" in my mind) on a moped today. Nothing new. When you turn 16 in Japan, you can get a moped/scooter license, though you can’t drive a car until you’re 18. This moped was…different, though. It had bigger tires than most mopeds, it had a speaker (or something - somehow music was coming from it), it was painted purple. I guess the only way to describe his scooter is to say that it was pimped out. I didn't even know it was possible to pimp out a scooter, but somehow this kid did it. He pimped out his scooter. There is one sentence that I have never even fathomed I would EVER have a reason to...well, to even imagine or give frame to. Who pimps out a scooter? In my head, as I was passing him while he was soaring down the road at 20 km/h (what is that in mph? like -2 or something?), I had a conversation with this kid. "Kid, you may think you're cool, but you're not. You may wear your uniform collar up and unbutton the top button, but let's face it: a uniform is just not a cool thing. You may ‘pimp out’ your ‘fly ride’ and make it ‘hard for the ladies to resist,’ but let's face it: you still drive a scooter, and scooters are just not cool. And you may think you're a big man, that you're cool because you can drive, that you're a rebel since you dye your hair a light shade of brown, that you're hip and happening. But let's face it: you're 16, and that's just not cool."

ON NEIGHBORS
So I think the kid across the street thinks I’m insane. I’ve noticed lately that he stares at me as I go to and from my car and to the dumpster across the street from me. He’s probably about 6 or 7 years old, and he just stares and occasionally smiles. I’ll smile at him, then go about my business. I always think he goes away, so I’ll feel free to start muttering to myself (things get stuck in my car, going over what I need to do, letting out general frustration). Suddenly, I’ll look up, and he’ll still be there, staring at me. And this is like 2 or 3 minutes later. He just stares. And I KNOW he’s thinking something like, “Foreigners ARE crazy” or something like that. And I don’t think I’m helping matters. I just smile at him, wave sometimes, and continue on my merry way, hoping I do not prove to be his family’s topic of conversation at the dinner table. “Mom, guess what the gaijin (foreigner) did today?”

I’m learning that kids in Japan can be like that, though. The other day in the store, a young mother came in with 3 kids under the age of 5. They saw me and immediately started saying, “Gaijin, gaijin!” I smiled and tried to not look scary. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have, as it only encouraged them. For the next 15 minutes, I had the pleasure of being followed, neigh, stalked, around my small local convenience store by a 5-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 3-year-old. Every time I went anywhere, they’d follow me. And anytime I’d pick up anything, they’d gasp, and one would be sent running to tell their mother what the gaijin had just picked up or put in her basket. Sometimes, they would skip the formality of running and just bellow across the store. “Okaasan! (Mom) The gaijin is getting milk! Gaijins like milk! Now the gaijin is getting rice. Gaijins can eat rice!!” I was tempted to really blow their minds and start picking up random crap from every aisle. “Mom, the gaijin is picking up prunes! And dog food! And a hammer! And maxi pads! And diapers! And floor lint!”

ON BEING YUMEINA (famous)
On a side note, everyone in town knows who I am and what I do. At a restaurant, one of the waitresses mentioned to some of the people I was with that she knew who I was. They were talking and I mentioned that I had been to an island for an English camp, and she immediately volunteered the name of the camp and said she'd read about me going to it. I am getting slightly concerned that maybe people know other things. The papers probably have headlines like, "Gaijin Sensei Goes Poo in Squatting Toilet For First Time Ever. No Mess Reported On Scene." I need to learn Japanese so I can read what they're writing about me.

ON THE JOYS OF FOREIGN FOOD
If someone tries to get me to eat sashimi (raw fish) ONCE MORE, I WILL create an international incident. Just a fair warning. I had a Welcome Party for Y-gakko’s the other night, and a few days later, I went out with one of my Adult Conversation classes. Both times, there was sashimi. (Cultural note: at these parties, we don’t actually have full course meals. They order many little appetizer type things, and we all eat a little. So at one party, we may order up to 15 dishes, and there will be just enough food for everyone to try 1 or 2 of everything). For me, eating raw fish is no good (the taste isn't what gets me - it's the consistency). I am so ready for Fear Factor after all this - I have learned to tone down my gag reflex. I pretend I'm a seagull gulping things down whole. Raw fish. Yuck. If God had intended for us to eat raw fish...um...uh...He wouldn't have let us discover fire. Yeah. That makes sense, right?

As an addition to the above paragraph (this is now several weeks later), I would like to say that I should have realized there were far worse things than raw fish. I was at yet another welcome party (all right, already. I feel welcomed enough, dangitall!). At this one, they were actually trying to be culturally sensitive and ordered some “American” food (no matter what they say, though, no American pizza I have eaten has ever included hot dogs, red and green peppers, and tomatoes). They also insisted I try some Japanese food, though, so I gamely went along with my newly established rule in Japan of “try anything once.” Everyone hits a certain point in their life, though, where they become a rebel and break some rules. I hit this point when a new dish was brought out to me. Basashi. It looked like thin slices of raw beef. I just knew in the back of my mind what this really was. I had heard rumors that Japanese people ate this. Putting all cultural sensitivity aside, I had to put my foot down. I know when it’s time to re-evaluate my life choices, and that time came when someone tried to serve me a plate of raw Mr. Ed.

2006-11-05T21:31:00.000+09:00

ON GAIJIN POWERS
There is a website from another JET that is widely popular. In it, he mentions having gained certain “Gaijin (foreigner) Powers”, many of which are silly things that happen to most Gaijins. I have found that I do possess one Gaijin power – the power of Gaijin Narcolepsy. I have the power to look at anyone on a train, and, if they are looking at me, they are immediately struck with a strong bout of narcolepsy. It’s amazing. I’ll look up, catch someone’s eye, and their head falls to their chest, their eyes close, and they cease all movement. I think it’s better than Nyquil. I should try to patent it over here.

ON GENKI
JET's have taken it and morphed it into many different particles of speech. It can be a verb - "I am genki", it can be a noun - "Get your genki on!" – it can be an adjective “I was genki happy today”, etc. Genki is being happy, lively, energetic, perky, cheerful, upbeat, positive - all wrapped into one evil, hateful, horrible ball of malevolence.

ON BEING TERRIFYING
So I’ve never met an adult that was so petrified of me that they were almost crying. Until I came to Japan, that is. At my Welcome Party, I just had to laugh as I watched people down alcohol just so they’d have the courage to come talk to me. It was absolutely hilarious that they needed to drink to even feel brave enough to come speak to me. I was strangely, oddly honored by this. Japan is messing with my brain, I guess. But it is really hard for them to come speak to me in English, and they were trying to work up the courage. It was touching and amusing and really, really bizarre. Eventually, this one timid young woman came up with one of my OL’s. She was visibly shaking and kept looking at the OL and giggling. She handed me a card, and I asked if I could open it. She mimed that I could and said, “Yes”. Her voice was shaking. Poor girl. The card was an anniversary card that said, “On your Anniversary: This anniversary card is perfect for you, because it’s special and different from the rest…just like you two!” Inside, she wrote: “X-SAN – Let me introduce myself! My name is K T. I like chocorate so my nickname was “choco” in high school. My hometown is Y-city. Y-gakko’s junior high school is my alma mater. I study English now. I want to speak with you. But I am little shy. So I can’t talk to you. Could you talk with me sometime from now on? YOROSHIKU ONEGAISHIMASU. from K” She was so scared. I told her that I was shy, too, so it’s okay. We talked a little (her English was VERY good), and she said she would be picking me up for work on Wednesday (she almost started crying at this point. Her eyes were red and I could see tears forming). She explained that some of the OL’s went to Australia this May, and that’s where she got the card. I said several times how nice the card was and how cute it was, and how much I liked and appreciated it. I told her to not be shy, that I wanted to talk to her, too, etc. I kept saying, “Don’t be shy. It’s okay!” I was so relieved to talk to her, though. Being at the table with all the important guys who didn’t speak English was making me very, very uncomfortable.

ON HANDWASHING CLOTHES (email to parents)
They have a delicate cycle, but it's not very delicate. I'd say it's "Mildly Abusive" instead of the full out "Drunk and Disorderly Brawl" that is the Japanese washing machine's normal cycle.

ON BEING VERY JOUZU
I was complimented for the first time the other day by how jouzu (skilled) I was at using chopsticks. I’ve found, though, that it’s not so much how jouzu you are with using the chopsticks as much as how jouzu you are with hiding the evidence of not using them properly. First of all, always wear dark-colored or patterned clothing, so a spill is harder to spot. Then, wait until your co-workers aren’t looking (provide a distraction, if necessary. I’ve found yelling, “OH, LOOK!!! It’s Godzilla!!!” to be highly effective. Afterwards, just apologize and say, “Sorry, my mistake. It was just a giant grasshopper.”), then try to shovel as much in your mouth as possible. If necessary, pick up your bowl or plate and hold it straight up to your mouth. Whatever misses will land on your lap, which you can move under the table or desk simply by shifting your knees. When your co-workers turn back, they will be amazed at how well and how quickly you can eat with chopsticks.

ON GIGGLING
Japanese ladies (and in some cases men) giggle a lot. There’s no way to preface that or soften it. They just do. It’s like some sort of racial Tourettes’ Syndrome or something. They have to giggle and get it out of their system or else they’ll explode. I guess if I had to choose, I’d prefer giggling over swearing or violence.

ON THE JAPANESE CONECPT OF COOL
I can’t figure out the double standard of Japanese “cool.” I’ve seen these guys with the cool hair cuts and the tailored clothes, looking very suave and sophisticated. They even have the J-guy (Japanese-guy) model poses and the pouty lips look. So I’ll be looking at one, and suddenly I’ll look down and see that they have a Mickey Mouse keychain hanging from their cell phone. In the US, that would be a great way to acquire the nickname “Minnie” and get your butt kicked repeatedly after school. Here, it’s cool. It’s at times like this that I remember that I am facing not only a language barrier, but a culture barrier as well.

ON TRICKING THE MAYOR
So on the day I arrived in my city, I was told I was going to meet the mayor the next day. I had been told ahead of time to bring a present, so I bought a coffee mug with a picture of Ohio and some facts about Ohio on it. The only problem was, I wasn’t given a box – the sales clerk just wrapped it in tissue paper. Giving present in Japan is a big thing, and part of the present is how well it is wrapped. Wrapping a box-less mug was going to be a challenge, but I was sure I could do it.In retrospect, I have no idea WHY I thought I could, considering my track record with wrapping. Every Christmas, it’s a tradition for my family to mock my present-wrapping skills, as I have none. So, foolishly, I didn’t worry about having a box.

The night before I was to meet the mayor, I tried wrapping my mug. It was quite the chore, and the result can only be called a monstrosity. Not very impressive. I started stressing, but realized there was nothing I could do. I tried to convince myself that it really DIDN’T look like I had wrapped a live animal while it was squirming. Trying to put it out of my mind, I started exploring my apartment (this was the first night I was in the apartment, so I still hadn’t looked in closets and such yet). As I dinked around in the kitchen, I happened upon an almost empty cupboard. Behold, in said cupboard, with a halo of light around it and the Hallelujah Chorus playing from inside it, was an empty mug box. I squealed, ran to unwrap my wrapped wreck, and held my breath as I made sure the mug would fit in the box. It would! YES!!! Quickly getting more paper, I wrapped the box with military precision. Lines were folded hard several times, creases were exactly on the lines. And to be sure that the paper would not fall off, I taped it several times (it’s a trademark of my wrapping jobs to use excessive amounts of tape. That way, even if I tape it poorly, the package still stays closed). And this present actually did look impressive – very, very well wrapped, if I do say so myself (which I do). So, armed with an amazingly wrapped present, I went to meet the mayor.

I didn’t realize that it was going to be such a big thing until I go there, and there were 4 reporters outside and a news camera. ?!?!? I started to freak out, and U-sensei said (as was soon to become his refrain for me), “Rerax. It’s okay.” So I tried to “rerax.” It didn’t work. I went in to meet the mayor, trying to smile at him as I was blinded by camera flashes. The mayor would say something. I would smile as he said it. Then I would keep smiling and lean towards U-sensei, who was whispering as he translated, so I could barely hear him. I then replied in short sentences to U-sensei, who translated to the mayor. We sat down, and I gave him the present. He admired the wrapping job (as he darn well should have after all the effort I put into that sucker), then tried to open it. Now, I didn’t realize that ripping wrapping paper is not polite over here. My sister would adapt well to the present system over here; to rip the wrapping paper (say THAT ten times fast) is, I guess, considered bad manners. So my way of wrapping presents (with as much tape as possible) is actually either incredibly cruel or incredibly amusing, depending on what side of the present you are. “It is wrapped so well that I cannot open it,” the mayor laughed to U-sensei, who translated. I thought the mayor was going to have conniptions trying to get into the darn box. I kept apologizing and looking very worried, but inside, I was laughing so hard I was in tears. I could see the headlines, “Gaijin stumps mayor with cleverly wrapped present. H-city declares war on Ohio.”

ON OUR CLEAN BEACHES
I went to the beach with some people the other day. My city is famous for its beautiful beaches. I didn’t go swimming at first, and after the first person came out and said he thought he had just been stung by a jellyfish, I decided to hold off the joyous occasion of my first trip to the emergency room until a later date. Some others were braver than I, though, and took the plunge. Two people came back at one point, and I asked them how the water was. “You mean aside from the trash floating around in it?” Ken said (We call him Yamaguchi Ken [“ken” is the Japanese word for “prefecture,” so our prefecture is called Yamaguchi-ken] because we're clever like that). Choco, another AET, said that there were a lot of condom wrappers around, but they had yet to see any used condoms. Later, someone asked me if I was going to swim. I stated that, no, I had no desire to swim, as it would feel like I was swimming in STD’s.

ON GIANT BUGS
The other day, one of my Department Heads came into the BOE holding something…well, prehistoric is the only adjective that comes to mind. It was a giant bug, roughly the size of a Volkswagen. Other people in the office (even the OL’s [Office Ladies]) came up to look at the thing. I sat and pretended to be thoroughly engrossed in my reading. The Department Head called out my name and said, “What?”. Eventually, I figured out that he wanted to know what we call the bug in English. My initial thought was, “Hell if I know,” followed by, “Freaking Scary.” Opting out of both of these, I said, “I’m not sure. We don’t get bugs that big back home. But I’d guess it would be a dragonfly. Dragon (growl) fly (arms flutter). DRAGON FLY.” Cue the alien language routine. “Duragon furye.” Sure. That works. “In Japanese, we call tonbon.” I dutifully repeated “tonbon.” Why is it that of all the words people have tried to teach me, I forget the helpful ones, but remember the words for spider and dragon fly? Why can’t I remember the word for washing machine or lesson plans? Sigh.

ON STRANGE LABELS
The Japanese are obsessed with English. They like to see things written in English, and it doesn’t have to be good English, so long as it’s English words written down. English makes things sell well, apparently, so you will find English on almost everything. The words they use, though, are not usually checked by a native English speaker for accuracy. As a result, you will see English all over the place that makes no apparent sense whatsoever. It’s like how Americans enjoy having Chinese or Japanese artifacts with kanji (pictorial symbols) on them. For all we know, the kanji could mean, “I went to China and all I got was this silly shirt”. So here are two examples of bizarre, yet fun “Engrish” (a term coined to describe this kind of usage) from Japan.
Item 1: “It abbs abundant frightnees to pleasure of the tabie.” Good luck guessing where that one came from.

Item 2: “The spirit of OKASHI. It is what gives a peaceful and pleasant mind to the human race. All the time, man seeks romance in the OKASHI. We have been working hard and carefully, and work on. To weave the romance and the fancy into each OKASHI. This, at last, we have made up ‘The HAKATA SEIYO-WAGASHI.’ If you taste the feeling and the spirit of the OKASHI which value tradition and living in the times, there is no pleasure better than it.” This was from a sweet bread filled with stuff that someone brought back as omiyage (a present for the office). The office ladies saw that it was written in English and asked me to explain it. Umm…yeah. I translated romance as nostalgia, but I had no idea where to go from there.

ON THE SENSITIVITY OF ALT’S (assistant language teachers)
At a recent orientation session, we were given 10 minutes to prepare a self-introduction using 4 sheets of paper. We had to draw stuff about ourselves on the sheets and pretend we were going to present it to our students. After the 10 minutes were up, the leaders asked if someone would volunteer to be the first to present. Everyone started calling out the names of the 2 biggest jokers in the group, and one eventually got up and said he’d present. So he got up and said very loudly and very slowly (a little too much of both), “Hello, everybody.” Many of us mature adults then called back, “HA RO!” which is how most students say Hello because they can’t pronounce the L sound. The ones who didn’t say HARO laughed at it, anyway. Yeah. We were mocking our cute little junior high school students who can’t speak well because they haven’t had enough practice yet. Oh, yeah. We are all SO going to hell.

2006-11-05T21:26:00.000+09:00

ON INTRODUCING YOURSELF
So I’m working on my self-introduction. We’re supposed to write a little bit about ourselves – our name, where we’re from, what our hobbies are. Mine is not so promising. “Hi, my name is __________. Until recently, I was a college graduate who lived in my parents’ basement. I’ve never held a steady job. My hobbies include being lazy, mooching off my parents, and sleeping. In my spare time, I like to watch tv, play video games, and download music illegally from the internet.”

I think I need to change some of this before I actually use it…

ON ACRONYMS
So the JET Program is starting to get on my nerves. I don’t understand what anyone is saying because it’s all acronyms. I’m on the JET Program as an ALT (not a CIR or SEA). I’ll be working with JTE’s or at my BOE in JHSs. The JET Program is run by CLAIR and sponsored by MEXT, MOFA, and MIC. If I have trouble, I should go to my PA or my supervisor. I’m beginning to get Acronymphobia. … That sounded weird now that I break it down into syllables. Anyways, needless to say, I’m getting sick of acronyms.

ON CULTURAL EXCHANGES
It’s great spreading your culture and language to new people. I’ve been quite active in teaching my OL (Office Ladies) some English words. For instance, we learned the word “osen” (pollution) when they asked me if Lake Erie was beautiful. We learned “diahreabetes” when I tired to teach them how to say “diabetes”. It’s a great language exchange.

ON LOCO LOCOMOTION
So apparently there are issues on some crowded city trains where men try to grope women (my city isn’t bad – the trains are never that crowded). It’s gotten so bad that some lines have instituted women only cars. All I can say is that if any guy ever tries to grab my all-American tater-tots, he’s going to get his takonomiyaki deep fried.

ON SQUATTING WITH CAUTION
So I’m not a fan of squatter toilets (or squatty potties as my brother-in-law calls them). I swore that I would never use one. Never was quite quick in coming. The first day I arrived at my BOE, I had to go to the bathroom. Much to my dismay, the toilets were only squatters. During my many trips to the restroom after that first fateful attempt, I have had time to ponder the nature of the squatter toilets and why they never caught on in the United States. I eventually realized it’s a sexist thing. One thing that sets men and women apart in the US is what each gender is allowed to brag about. Women used to brag that they had a clean house and could prepare a nine-course meal. As the years went by and women got more liberated, they changed their bragging to say that they could do anything a man could do, to which the enlightened men would respond, “Oh yeah? Can you pee standing up? Can you write your name in the snow?” Well, gentlemen, guess what? Yeah, that’s right. It might not get marks for penmanship, but anything you can do, I can at least do without smelling like a latrine for the rest of the day.

Now, I have to admit to a certain amount of trepidation as to using these squatty potties for the first time. The first and foremost fear being that using the squatty-potty will lead to a messy-dressy. Also, there’s the fact that bugs tend to roam all over Japan, and these ain’t your cute little “itsy-bitsy spiders”. These are your Freakin-Huge-Bird-Eating-Spiders-of- Doom type of thing. And you can see them and their friends the pill bugs, the dragon flies, and other miscellaneous bits of insectology frolicking around and merrily enacting the food chain in the bathroom. I am, therefore, slightly worried about getting an arachnid enema. My biggest fear is that one day, as I’m going about my business, a spider will suddenly decide that it has a career in spelunking ahead of it.

Some quick hints for those of you who are worried about using these toilets.
1) Always wear a skirt.
You’d be amazed at how much easier it is to go in a skirt. This included you, gentlemen. If you have to go number 2, you’re going to have issues as well. Wear a kilt and tell everyone it’s a cultural thing.
Addendum: If your skirt has 2 high side slits, make sure the back of your skirt is out of the splash zone.
2) I may be crude to say, but life can be easier first if you remove your underwear.
This way, you don’t have to worry about it being in the way. Your first time using one of these can be stressful enough without trying to think of an excuse as to why a very strong smell is following you around all day.
3) USE THE BATHROOM SLIPPERS PROVIDED!
Never go in with your own shoes. Why? Well, to get into the nitty gritty, I’ll say that girls don’t have aiming devices like men do, so that makes it significantly hard to hit an object with any accuracy, no matter how large the object. Now add to this the fact that sometimes you may have children using the bathroom (and they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn). They should post signs saying, “Squat with Caution: Children’s toilets” or something like that. Let’s just say if you see liquid on the floor, it’s best to assume it’s water splashed from the toilet. But it’s really not.
4) Bring your own hand towel.
If you are lucky, the restroom you use may have soap. If you are excessively lucky, it may have a hand dryer. If not, you might not have soap, and you certainly won’t have hand towels or a hand dryer. Get used to it.
5) Upon entering the stall, always sight for something you can grab onto if you lose your balance.
Not everyone has perfect balance, and one of the last things you want is to fall backwards into the toilet. Or into a puddle of whatever has missed the toilet. Sometimes, there’s a bar for you to grab, or you can grab the pipe connecting the tank to the hood.
6) Look on the walls to see if there is a sound-muffling device.
Some toilets will have some sort of running-water noise to mask any “embarrassing sounds” that may be produced in the bathroom. Of course, if you use said noises, everyone knows what kinds of “embarrassing sounds” you were producing, so I don’t see how that makes it any less embarrassing.

And that’s my tutorial for Japanese squatters. Remember, squat facing the hood of the toilet (they’re very specific about this, but I’m not sure why. Does it really matter which way you’re facing?). And if you have back or knee problems, just don’t drink anything during your stay in Japan.

2006-11-05T18:21:00.000+09:00

First post, always akward, so I won't make it long. Just testing to see if this thing works and if I can indeed make a blog without crashing the internet.