June 2004
Tuesday, June 1, 2004 — Dead quiet
Again, after long intervals of giving myself pep talks, I finally decided to check out the local movie theater by myself. I’d gone once before, but with a Japanese friend.
I wanted to check out Tom Hanks’ The Ladykillers and found, to my pleasant surprise, that tickets were only 1,000 yen each — about $10! The last time it’d cost about $18. I later discovered the discount came from it being the first day of the month, which is typically a discount day for movie theaters. I also heard this interesting tidbits: Unlike in the United States, where tickets cost much more during the evening, tickets are less expensive at night because most Japanese people go see movies during the day! Qué interesante.
There were all of four people inside the movie theater. I am uncertain whether this theater even used air conditioning, which may have explained the low attendance. But let me tell you, watching a funny movie with people who never laugh kind of puts a damper on the comedy. I often found myself the only on snickering at funny parts. It really does make you quite self-conscious. But you get used to it and then you just resume muttering to yourself in English.
Later, a Japanese friend told me that Japanese people are shy and don’t really like to laugh in public.
Wednesday-Friday, June 2-4, 2004 — Recontracting conference in Kobe
I had the next three days off from school so I could go on a business trip to Kobe. All first-year JETs who plan on staying a second year must go to the JET recontracting conference. If you live in northern Japan, you go to Tokyo in mid-June for the event. If you life in the southern half like I do, you went to Kobe in early June instead.
Once we got to Kobe and began attending lectures and workshops, I marveled at the difference 10 months make. The conference was very similar to my Orientation Conference in Tokyo back in July. Except this time, I was so much less clueless than when I had come. We had no problem getting around the city by ourselves, nor managing the public transportation system. The sense of anticipation and wonder had been replaced with an eagerness just to see people from the Tokyo conference and to shop in Kobe. This conference went a lot quicker, too, I think because in Tokyo everything was so new and we were all so jet-lagged.
We all may have been more relaxed this time around, but I was still shocked to see a lot of people attending this business trip in ragged jeans and flip-flops.
I ran into two guys who had come to Japan with me from the Texas-Oklahoma contingency. Matt was an Aggie from Bryan living in Hiroshima and David was from Houston and a fellow Longhorn living in Hyogo-ken, the prefecture in which Kobe is located. Ah, Texans! How I have missed them so! We talked about UT and Austin and Tex-Mex.
The workshops, which addressed all manners of topics from workplace relations to goal-setting and surviving your second-year on JET, were pretty good and occasionally gave me some ideas. One of my favorite moments of the conference happened on the last day, which was reserved for talks. You could pick which lecture to attend and I chose one by Robert Juppe, an American living in Japan who’s an assisatnt professor at a university in the Tokyo area.
Juppe had spoken at the Tokushima-ken mid-year JET conference and I’d found him to be quite entertaining, a rarity (in my experience) in educational speakers. At this talk, I sat at the front in the middle with all the other Tokushima-ken JETs. Juppe began his talk with an apology if any in the audience had heard him speak before. He asked people to raise their hands if, indeed, that was the case. We raised our hands. Then we looked around and realized our little contingency, sitting front and center, were the only ones with our hands up.
It totally made us look like Juppe’s little fan club. His groupies. Ah, well. He was funny.
As for shopping, Kobe is a place where you can just watch the money flow out of your wallet like water. I had to keep an eye on it. I visited the stationery store in search of a new journal and the import food store. My family is visiting soon and my dad had told me to write down what foods I wanted them to bring over. At first I thought, “Nah, I really don’t need anything.” But then I saw this import food store and saw Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup and that changed everything.
I bought a tin of pate for myself. That gives me an excuse to visit the bakery around the corner from me to buy a baguette to eat with it.
Wednesday, June 9, 2004 — My students keep me sane
The oddest things pass for normal here. I once had a class with a student who had a sizable wad of toilet paper shoved up one nostril the entire length of the lesson. No one seemed to notice or think it was funny or weird. He even answered a question or two so it’s not like there was never any attention on him. But it was like business as usual for the students, class and teacher. I kept thinking, “Geez, am I the only one that sees this?”
The kids who slack off most in class are the ones who work hardest in their athletic clubs. I have some third-year boys who are always sleeping during lesson but who become the taskmaskers themselves when basketball practice comes around. I watched them bark at a younger student who’d failed to complete his drill. They made him do it again. At practice, the slackers are always the first to start the drill. They also compose some of my better English speakers. I think it’s because they really don’t care and thus feel no pressure when they interact with me. They spit out with comes to mind and they’re relaxed enough to go with the flow.
The boy you would think would be the bully of the class because he’s the biggest and the least inclined to go along obediently with the lesson is also the boy who plucks his eyebrows. He is the type who spends class loudly making smart-alec remarks to his fellow classmates and the teacher. He gets away with this because he has the saving grace of charm. With a few clever words and an easy grin, he keeps the teacher eternally exasperated but never quite angry enough to do anything about it. There is usually at least one such charmer in every class.
I like how the boys are at ease enough with each other to sit on each other’s laps and put their arms around each other. It’s a cozy sort of companionship you don’t really find among boys in back home because of our different ideas of personal space and masculinity.
There is a boy at Kokufu who has already endeared himself to me. I’ve only had two lessons with his class so far. He’s a first-year student and his name is Tadashi. Tadashi is so small he seems to be swallowed by his uniform. He has to wear a belt, as many of the boys doy, to keep his pants from falling down and he still has to roll his cuffs up so he doesn’t trip over himself. He is so small, when he sits at his desk, his feet don’t touch the ground. With his scratchy voice he keeps a running commentary during class. Sometimes I think he simply talks to hear himself talk. Sometimes I don’t even think he’s speaking Japanese, just a rambling gibberish.
Another boy is Motoki, a second-year who never really talked to me until this year. I struck up a conversation with him one day about sports — he’d spotted me reading my English-language newspaper — and I’d been on the sports page.
I’d actually forgotten all about that until I began to notice almost by accident how Motoki would come into the teachers’ room every day and hover in the vicinity of my desk. He always dragged along a friend, usually one who looked quite bewildered. Motoki would tell his friend to talk to me. Inevitably the friend would protest and try to make a quick getaway. It took quite a while for me to notice this because they would stand a safe distance away — close enough to have a conversation, but far enough not to seem obvious and to be able to escape easily.
Motoki would also never look at me during all these exchanges, his cajoling of his friends and even when we did manage to chat. It wasn’t until I caught the Japanese word for “English” and “speak” that my ears perked up — you get used to tuning things out — and I looked over and started to talk haltingly with him in my barely passable Japanese.
Only recently did Motoki work up enough courage to initiate the conversation. “Do you like baseball?” he asked haltingly in English, staring at his friend but clearly asking me. I loved to see a boy that shy grow confident and interested enough to do that, even if he could never look me in the eye. He’d look at the floor, at my desk, at the other teachers — anywhere but me. Dear boy.
It really does make all the difference to have students who are willing to work with you to communicate. We have these Japanese-English conversations and they’re so rewarding even though really, so little information is ultimately shared. Every understood sentiment is a triumph. Some of my girl students are particularly keen on talking with me. The boys are much less so, but are no less endearing. Some of the first-year boys, with their glasses, hitched-up pants and solemn expressions, seem more like little men than pre-adolescent kids.
Then there are the kids who burst out laughing any time I attempt Japanese. You know they don’t mean anything by it but whenever your painful attempts are rebuffed with laughter, it can be a little discouraging.
I am cheered by how some of my former students, the third-years who graduated in March still wave to me as they pass me on their way to high school. I had thought they might have considered themselves “too cool” for me but apparently not. :-)
And it’s funny to see which English words or phrases the students latch onto. I say, “One more time!” and “okay” a lot and my kids have picked up on them and re-acquisitioned them for their own purposes, like asking me to repeat myself or telling me they’re ready. Other words are used to much more comedic affect. One boy uses, “Wowowow,” to punctuate any exclamation. Another time, when the teacher asked the students what to say when they needed me to repeat what I’d said, one boy replied with a loud, “Shut up?”
And then there was the priceless time we were working on vocabulary and one of the pictures was supposed to be ice cream but one boy disagreed: “That’s not ice cream, it’s corn soup!” Because the Japanese throw corn into EVERYTHING.
Thursday, June 10, 2004 — Demystifying the bus system
Oh wait, and did I mention about the BUS? Yeah, I finally figured out how to ride the bus back home! All this time I’d been just catching the bus to the station because ALL the buses that come by my place that are eastbound go the station. Ah, but figuring out which bus to take back HOME — that was another problem altogether. Well, “problem” is probably overstating things. I just needed to ask.
But I finally had to get my act together. Sally was the one who gave me the shove I needed. “Take the bus home,” she said as we parted ways at the station one day. “Just ask the lady in the booth which one you need to take.” Of COURSE it would be that easy. And it WAS. Now I’ve figured out, like FIVE buses on which I can hop on to get back home!
Although I have to admit, the second time I did this, it was 6:30 p.m. There was a buzz to notify riders in my bus and the others that it was 6:30 p.m. Immediately all the buses shut their doors and pulled out of the station. Japanese transportation is, after all, nothing but scrupulously prompt. But it was rush hour and the ride ended up taking near 25 minutes because of the traffic. Man, I could have gotten home quicker on BIKE.
Friday, June 11, 2004 — First typhoon of the season
The rain had already begun to steadily when I left for school this morning. I watched as it grew progressively harder throughout the day. Turns out a typhoon had been scheduled to hit the coast. That did make sense, I thought. They said it was supposed to hit later that evening. That made less sense. I stared doubtfully at what was already a near-flood-inducing downpour outside.
I was foolish enough to have biked to school that morning with only an umbrella. I had to make a trip downtown this afternoon to teach my monthly adult conversation class. I gloomily pulled on the 100-yen rain jacket I’d set aside for occasions such as this, when it was raining hard enough for my rain suit but when I didn’t have my rain suit with me.
By the time I got home, my pants were a dripping mess. Oh well. I wiped them down, threw my lesson materials in my bags and headed out the door once more. I waited beneath a wilting umbrella beside a talkative old Japanese woman at the bus stop. The trudge to the city office from the station was even more of a challenge. The wind had picked up and insisted on playing with my umbrella.
At the city office, I ran into Tashi, the JET who’d be teaching the other adult conversation class that day. We both grumbled about why the heck they didn’t just cancel the classes, seeing as how a typhoon was coming — or already here, really — and no one was going to show up. But that would have made too much sense. True to form, I only had one student in my class, and she was one of my teachers at Kamona Junior High School. I’d already talked to her at length that day. But the silver lining was that she was one of the teachers I really liked. I ditched the lesson and instead we just talked for the hour.
I was home a half-hour later. By then, the skies had cleared and the rain stopped. The typhoon had decided to end its brief reign just as I made it to shelter.
Monday, June 12, 2004 — Baseball practice
The baseball team, a monstrously large club, practices on Monday afternoons, starting with pitching practice. They pair up into twos and threes and fling the baseballs back and forth. They wear pristine white uniforms, although the occasional boy wears black. Their shirts are short-sleeved, but some boys are so small the sleeves still fall far past their elbows.
The boys throw the ball with loose-limbed grace in the way that I have never learned, in that way that their body coils like a whip. Each throw sees them separate further until they span the length of the baseball field. The expanse resounds with their inexplicable calls of, “Ooooyyyyyyyy ... !” Even the girls use this cry when they warm up.
The boys remind of lion cubs, their heads and paws still too big for bodies playing catch-up.
Tuesday, June 13, 2004 — Gimongous
Sometimes living in Japan really makes me feel like a giant. I’m only 5’2,” so this means back home probably 95 percent of other adults are going to taller than me. But, MAN, here in Japan, sometimes I seriously TOWER over some people here, and I’m not just talking about my students. I’m talking about other people, including some of my other teachers. I actually have to bend down to hear them sometimes! It’s a distinctly odd feeling, having to look downward.
I remember when I was back in Texas only last year, whenever I’d visit the local junior high schools, I’d marvel how so many of them were taller than me. They made me feel short. And those kids are a year younger than my kids here! The photographer wouldn’t be able to find me because my height blended in with the rest of the kids!
So this, then, is what it’s like to feel tall. Huh.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004 — Kicking ass and taking names (Can I say that on here? “Ass?” I’m sure I’ve said it before. Are my cousins reading this? Cover your eyes, cover your EYES!)
Today was a momentous occasion for me. MOMENTOUS. Actually, the momentous occasion began yesterday afternoon, or perhaps at the beginning of the month, when I switched schools and came to Kamona and found the school had scheduled for me to go to a nearby elementary school and teach lessons one day.
This was all the information given to me. I was like, “That’s it ... ? Well, what grade will I be teaching? How much English, if any, do the kids know? Do the teachers know any English? Will I be able to communicate with them? How many classes will I teach? How many students are in each class?” I mean, COMMON SENSE people, COMMON SENSE! Japan continues to surprise me with its constant lack of practicality.
After I squeezed that information out, I found out I’d be teaching three classes of 35 students each of sixth graders. In Japan, sixth-grade is still taught at the elementary-school level. None of the sixth-grade staff at the school spoke much English, if any. (I confirmed this when I met two of the three teachers yesterday and asked right away in Japanese if they spoke English to which they firmly replied, “No.” In Japanese.) The kids hadn’t had much formal English education. They’d never had an ALT before. EVER.
Such was the tools with which I could work. I make the distinction no one there really spoke English not so much as a judgment — I didn’t come here expecting everyone to speak English — but as an observation, given my own meager Japanese skills, so you understand the kind of language-barrier situations JETs face in Japan on a regular basis.
So, Tuesday, two of teachers from Kamona Minami Elementary School paid me a visit to find out what exactly I’d planned to teacher their kids for their 45-minute classes. One of my English teachers, whose kid is a sixth-grader at Kamona Minami, told me to come get her if I need help.
I ended up not needing her help at all.
That is not to say breezed through the conversation. There were definitely some roadblocks and U-turns but I emerged from the meeting flushed with pride that I’d gotten my ideas across! With some stunted Japanese and a lot of expansive gestures I was able to convey the gist of the activities I’d planned and even solicit some input from the teachers. They suggested more variety in the stuff I’d be reviewing and their level of difficulty. I told them no problem. When they left, about half an hour later, I was like, GO ME.
This morning I showed up at Kamona Junior High School with butterflies in my stomach. I had never been to this elementary school before and the other elementary that I occasionally go to, Kamona Elementary School, I team-teach with a woman fluent in English.
I waited for the Kamona Minami principal to come pick me up. Hamaguchi-sensei was a lean, older man with salt-and-pepper hair and glasses who didn’t speak much English. But he proved really nice. I spoke more Japanese today than I ever have in my life and much of it was to Hamaguchi-sensei. I’ve been taking Japanese lessons and was amazing myself with being able to recall a little bit here and there. There were times I would get frustrated, thinking to myself, “Dangit, I KNOW I learned how to say that ... I just can’t remember how to say it ... !” But Hamaguchi-sensei was quite patient with my occasional switching to English. We got each other’s points across.
I got the distinct feeling of relief from the school staff when they found I could speak some Japanese. Gosh, I know the feeling, too. I’m so glad Kamona Minami decided to wait until now to request me to come teach there — imagine if I’d come last year, when my Japanese was zilch. It’s still pretty low, but LOOK! I was having, like, CONVERSATIONS!
The three lessons went like a dream. I began each lesson with a quick self-introduction, showing pictures of my family and eliciting the usual reactions. “DeKAI!” (“Big!”) when they saw the picture I showed them of my house back home — actually, really, my parents’ home since I haven’t lived there in years but I had to show SOMETHING, you know? I asked the kids to guess my age. Most of the guesses were, somewhat shockingly, in the 30s. I think I got a 40 somewhere. The kids looked confused when I told them I was 24. Geez. They make me FEEL old.
I whipped out pictures of my mom and dad. The best reaction came from the one male teacher: “He’s dandy! She’s cute!”
In that same class was this adorable little boy who had wrapped a towel (again with the towels!) around his head in a way that totally reminded me a one of those Burger King paper crowns.
Although it wasn’t necessary, I did the self-intro in both English and (with some prior help from one of my English teachers) Japanese. English would have been sufficient, but I’d wanted it to be more interactive, which involved me asking questions, would required Japanese.
Next, I played a quick name-game with the kids. I gave them a hackey sack to pass around while I played music. The music worked PERFECTLY that day — Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman,” the Felix Da Housecat Heavenly House remix, haha — because it provided an energetic vibe to an already energetic class. Whoever had the hackey sack when the music stopped had to stand and say their name. The hackey sack got nearly tossed out the window, so I had to instill a pass-it-only-to-the-next-person rule.
We did an alphabet game where I split them up by rows and wrote letters on their backs, which they had to draw on their teammates’ backs until the last person drew the supposed letter on the board. This proved trickier than I’d expected because I’d never played with a class of 35 before, only 20, so that meant it took me longer to make the rounds of scrawling the letters on their backs, especially when so many of them asked me to do it again.
After that, I wrote the alphabet on the board and split the class in two. One person from each team came up and was given an Awa Odori fan. With the music blaring, I’d yell out two letters and the first person to hit the letters with the fan got points for their team. In the first class, I used lowercase letters. But lowercase letters are harder for kids here because they learn them after capitals and so don’t have as good a grip on them. The second class nearly rioted against the idea so by the third class I’d learned my lesson and did a class vote, which favored capitals.
When class ended, I’d hang out in the classroom until it was time to move on. While most of the kids disappeared, some hang out with me wanting to ask me questions. To be sure they were in Japanese but after a while you learn what to expect in terms of questions from the kids. It was great getting to exchange with them. Finally, the school sent me packing with a warm please-come-again and a box of cookies decorated with the school’s symbol, it’s clock tower. I left feeling all warm and mushy and triumphant inside because of the things I’d done that day — speak Japanese and teach elementary kids on my own. I ROCK, baby!
Saturday, June. 19, 2004 — Waterlogged. So waterlogged.
But of course God has a curious sense of humor and wanted to make sure I stayed humble. He sent humility to me in the form of storm clouds. I’d planned to go check out some fellow JETs’ art exhibit on the other side of town this evening. It was raining when I left and only poured harder as I continued on my merry way to what turned out to the wrong place entirely.
I had on my rain gear but it was ripped (likely from past falls) and the water was seriously leaking through. I called Sally, one of the art exhibitors, and got directions. I got there at 6:30 p.m., half an hour before the art exhibit closed in the café in which it was housed. On the way there, I cut a corner at a gas station. Stupid, stupid, STUPID! The gas stations here have these gutters that run alongside the rim of the station so as, I GUESS, to catch auto emissions. It’s been my nightmare to catch into one of those since I first spotted them. My nightmare came true. I noticed the gutter at the last minute, too late, and went down like a felled tree. If there is anything in Japan that will leave me mentally scarred, it is the fact that no one helps you up when you fall here. This time, Fall No. 3, was no different. I heard one of the gas station attendants exclaim but no one came to my aid. It’s okay, I DIDN’T NEED YOUR HELP PEELING MYSELF OFF THE PAVEMENT ANYWAY.
No, I’m not bitter. My rain pants were ripped. I felt the sting of something bleeding on the inside. Ouch. It hurt. And the plastic of the rain gear rubbing against it made it feel allll better!
I was a bit dazed from the downpour — the typhoon wasn’t scheduled to come until Sunday or Monday! — and simply stood there, dripping, in the café foyer. The owner kindly gave me a towel to dry my sopping face and a hanger on which to my dripping rain gear.
The art exhibit was cool — Chanda, Sally the CIR Claire and Jaime (who’s from Louisiana!) had their works posted on the walls. You could tell they’d put a lot of work into it.
Dinner entailed going back downtown in the rain (always the rain) but munching at a delicious Italian restaurant. The pizza made me feel marginally better. My skinned knee looked like what I would a imagine a nickel-sized third-degree burn would look like. I debated whether to bike home without the rain gear but pulled it on anyway. It was just water, after all. Got home, slapped on a Band-Aid (or “plaster,” as the Brits call it), changed into dry clothes, went to bed. THE END.
Sunday, June 20, 2004 — Hotel reservations
So my family’s coming in August for two weeks. Did I mention that? Well, they are. And they’re here during prime Tokushima time. If there’s ever an actual reason for people to come to Tokushima (other than, say, the JET program), it’s in August for ... AWA ODORI! I love Awa Odori. If you haven’t read about my many entries on Awa Odori, it’s Tokushima’s famous annual dance festival.
I knew I needed to reserve a hotel for them, pronto, because Awa Odori is high traveler season. I psyched myself up (and trust me, that takes time and doing) and marched over to the business hotel five seconds away. No one there. Dang it. I’d come back that afternoon.
I came back in the evening. The lady at the front desk did not speak English. Over the course of about 15 to 20 minutes, we worked out that of the seven nights of lodging I was looking for, the hotel could accommodate five nights’ worth. The two nights they were full were, of course, during Awa Odori. But at least I had lodging for when the family first came. I thanked her and left on my merry way, pretty darn pleased with myself for making my first hotel reservations in mangled Japanese.
Monday, June 21, 2004 — Typhoon
No school today. I got a call from my supervisor at 6:30 a.m. “There is a typhoon today. Please do not go to school. Please stay inside.” Noooo problem. I spent the morning listening to my windows and doors rattle violent. I watched as near-solid sheets of rain got shoved off the rooftops by the wind. I’d wanted to go downtown to get help on my family’s hotel reservations. But no train. :-( Well, I guess that was smart of Japan Rail, what with the typhoon and all.
The storm broke around 11 a.m. I didn’t realize it until I realized it was actually quiet. Still. Around 4 p.m. I biked downtown to TOPIA, only to notice that though the train wasn’t running, the buses were. Curse you, buses! Got help with the hotel. Biked home. Noticed the train was running. Curse you, train! I could have used you, too!
Tuesday, June 22, 2004 — Typhoon aftermath
Usually the daily cleanings, “souji,” take place after the last class of the day but the typhoon left a layer of detritus in its wake. Dirt, leaves and branches littered the usually pristine school grounds. We spent part of the morning scouring away the rubbish. With 600+ people on the job, it didn’t take long. Kids came to the trash drop-off spot bearing branches longer than they were tall. Others got the lucky job of having to separate the debris into burnable and non-burnable piles.
I didn’t understand why the teachers had to go to school the day of the typhoon but found out today. They had to make sure the school stayed secured the ground, the winds were so strong. The gym started leaking, so they had to cover the floor with blue tarp. One of the windows at the school shattered. Some tree branches broke off and bashed into some of the teachers’ cars.
According to The Daily Yomiuri, Typhoon No. 6 was the second typhoon to make landfall on Shikoku, my island, this month. Gusts of up to 90 kph were reported. In Kochi-ken, a wind speed of as much as 202.5 kph was recorded. The Kansai Electric Power Co. reported 96,000 households in eight prefectures lost power because of the typhoon.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004 — Am I the only one who hears that?
I’m doing interview tests for the second- and third-year students, which means by the end of the next week I will have interviewed two-thirds of the Kamona student population.
The interview test involves me dragging a desk and two chairs into the hallway. The students come out one at a time and put themselves at my mercy. Some come and lounge indolently in their chairs, not a care in the world. Others come quivering with fear. One second-year girl in particular cringes in terror whenever she sees me, as if I may lash out at her at any moment. Yes. Because that’s apparently the kind of vibe I give off.
With the second-years, first they tell me a little about themselves and then ask me a question. I answer, ask them two or three questions from a pre-prepared list and then the student asks me another question. With the third-years, I just listen to them give me a little speech on something traditional in Japanese culture. They get bonus points if they bring a visual aid.
I brought my camera with me to record some of the interviews. Because there are so many students to listen to, I don’t use my camera often, only with students I think will be comfortable with a camera in their face. Sometimes I guess wrong. The students end up completely losing their train of thought or just fade out, as if hypnotized by the lens. That’s when I put the camera away. But others seem at ease with it there, which means I have a nice little memento of our two minutes together.
By far the most surreal interview I had today was with Chihiro, a cheerful third-year basketball player. She did her speech on traditional Japanese puppetry. Unfortunately, with some of the students, they speak so quickly or unclearly, it takes me a while to figure out what they heck they’re talking about. Because Chihiro didn’t have anything on hand, I didn’t really know what was going on in her speech. I thought she was talking about New Year’s cards, which is a Japanese word that also beings with “n.”
So I’m all expecting her to whip out a New Year’s card when suddenly Chihiro stops talking. She looks up at me from her notes and suddenly starts singing in this weird, high-pitched voice. It was just her and me in the hallway. I was like, “Whaaaaa ... ?” It was one of those moments where I looked around wondering if I was the only one noticing what was going on. Chihiro stopped. Paused. And then began singing again.
When Chihiro finally finished, it was time for me to write down her grade. When I got to the column where I was supposed to grade her on her visual aid, I did what I thought the teacher had instructed me to do: an “A” for having one and a “C” for not having one. I hadn’t seen anything — and the singing seemed kind of random — so I marked down a “C.” C for creative. Just kidding. Chihiro looked way bummed. It kind of bummed me, too, but rules are rules.
The teacher, Morita-sensei, later explained to me that Chihiro was singing a traditional song performed in puppet theater. DUH! It all came back rushing back to me. That totally made sense! I felt so foolish and bad for having given her that grade. After school ended and cleaning began, I hunted down Chihiro to apologize.
She brushed it off good naturedly. “No problem!” she said in English.
Friday-Saturday, June 25-26, 2004 — Camping at the hotel at the top of the mountain
The day didn’t get off to a particularly promising start. I went to school not feeling particularly great. During first period, in the midst of a game with the students, I abruptly stopped, told the teacher I didn’t feel well, and left. I don’t the kids, who were busy counting their money from the betting game (I try to corrupt where I can), even realized what was going on, only that suddenly Ito-sensei was leading the game and I had disappeared.
After that was taken care of, I retired for a bit in the nurse’s office. Good thing I’m friends with the nurse, Rumi, who came to Kamona the same day I did last year and with whom I’d begun chatting with this new school year. I laid down for a while but you’d be surprised how noisy a school can be even when class is in session and no kids are in the hallways. At the bell, a boy came in to talk to the nurse and he was shocked to see me in there. Rumi woke me up, wondering if I had a second-period class. The boy was even more shocked to hear Rumi speak English.
By then, the teachers had heard about my illness and, when I returned to the staffroom, they asked if I wanted to take the day off. At first, I considered the idea but then I found out that they’d make me take a vacation day rather than a sick day. That’s how the Japanese system works. I don’t think Japanese teachers even have such a thing as sick days. And even then, they rarely use their vacation days, even for vacations. It’s just work, work, work.
Anyways, faced with the decision of whether to use a vacation day, I opted to stick it out at school. I’d rather spend my vacation days traveling than convalescing at home. But after sitting at my desk for a while I realized I wasn’t going to make it, that I needed to go home. I figured I’d just tell them I’d take a vacation day but later contact my supervisor, who works at the school district office, to straighten things out and get it marked as a sick day instead.
When I got home, I barricaded myself into my living room with the air conditioner on. It’s finally gotten to the point in the summer where I sometimes sleep in the living room to have access to the A/C when the heat is unbearable at night. Watched a little Fight Club, lent to me by a friend, read a little, napped. One of the reasons why I decided to go home was to rest up for a bit before going to a prior engagement: the Shikoku University English Camp.
Fenn, the Englishman who’d given me a ride back to the city after the rugby match, had contacted me some time ago about guest-teaching at the school’s annual English camp. I told him sure. He picked me up that afternoon, along with Travis, an American private teacher in the neighborhood whom I’d never seen before (but will likely never forget, given his height) and drove us to the camp venue. I was really psyched about the venue: Kampo no Yado, the hotel on the top of Mount Bizan!
The camp proved really fun. One of the best parts of it was getting to meet the first-year college students and several new non-ALT foreigners. Travis was from Colorado and married to a Japanese lady. Meg was from Washington and married to a Japanese man. There was Robert, the Canadian, who was married to a Japanese lady. I also met an Australian ... I’d met Steve before — he’s from Kenya, and he and his daughter had done the international fashion show. I don’t remember where I’d met Kevin, but he’d spent some time in Austin. And, heavens to betsy, there was a whole FAMILY from Texas there! No wonder Travis was introducing himself this way: “No, I’m NOT from Texas ... !”
Thomas and his wife and two young sons had lived in Austin. Thomas was even FROM Houston and had gone to the same college as me. I was immensely cheered when he asked, “So, which high school did you go to?” because that’s what you ASK when you find out you’re from the same place! Better yet, I recognized his school and he recognized mine! His wife remarked upon the fact that I’d managed to escape having a Texas accent like her husband had. You’d be surprised how often I hear that — people surprised I don’t sound like a Texan.
Rooms at the hotel proved to be in the traditional style, which meant tatami floors and futon beds. I had no complaint with that and to my pleasant surprise, I found out the instructors all got their own rooms! Imagine that! I get put up for the night with my own room! The hotel also had a nice bath for its guests, although it felt odd to take a hot bath in the middle of the summer.
The two-day English camp was one activity after another meant to get the students practicing English with the instructors. Considering they planned on majoring in English, their grasp of the language ranged from awful to adequate. I had been asked to prepare one activity and the one I’d had in mind — which involved idioms — Fenn had said might prove too difficult. He said junior-high level games would be best. Can you believe that? So I chose a game that would take advantage of the venue, an activity that would require space to spread out, a luxury I don’t have at the schools.
After the opening ceremony and activities, we guest teachers were given an hour break before dinner because the students were busy with something that didn’t require our attendance. We went to Meg’s room to hang out. Then they talked about married-people stuff. Wow. Talk about torture. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the company of the three other people there but MAN, when you’re the only unmarried person in the room ... It was like a non-being. ARGH!
Let’s just say married people talk about stuff I don’t particularly want to know. Actually, I don’t know if I’d want to talk about it even if I WERE married, at least with strangers!
Squirming with the discomfort of it all, I practically threw myself at Steph, my fellow ALT, when she arrived later that evening. She’s been doing a separate English day at another school.
That night, the teachers had a staff party in one of the hotel rooms. The students, of course, managed their own party as well. They were so loud, one of the teachers finally called them at 2 in the morning to tell them to shut up. The teacher was astonished to find the next morning that a single girl had been the culprit of all the noise . The teacher had thought a group of rampaging boys were to blame.
Saturday afternoon finally came around and we said our good-byes to the students and teachers. Fenn drove Travis and me through the mist-wreathed roads of Mount Bizan — it had rained most of the two days — and returned us back home.
Sunday, June 27, 2004 — Lunch with Tiger
I have become quite close with one of my English teachers at Kamona. Dear Miyata-sensei, whose English is excellent, is so nice to me and has such a sweet personality that I even began confiding in her about work-related stuff. Typically I don’t really discuss work-related things with my English teachers. Venting frustrations I may have with other teachers could always lead to that teacher finding out. But Miyata-sensei seems to really get me and understand where I’m coming from, which, believe me, is a rarity in Japan.
Miyata-sensei invited me to her home for lunch today. I rode the 40 minutes to her apartment and met her family. I was really surprised to find all the adults in the room spoke excellent English! I’m just not used to entire families here being able to do that. Miyata-sensei’s husband apparently had gone to school in the States (Illinois, actually) and her sister, who also came, is studying for a master’s in English education.
Miyata-sensei’s two kids were so adorable and had their mother’s sweet, happy countenance. Tora-kun is her 4-year-old son, aptly named with the Japanese word for “tiger.” He was a ball of fire, always running everywhere with a grin on his face, and had a penchant for hide-and-go-seek. He’s also quite the comedian. Nagisa, the 6-year-old daughter, had written me a letter (in which she called me “Vivi-chan”) before I came telling me how she was looking forward to my visit. Nagisa showed me how to fold some origami and showed me a children’s book she had in English. I was happy to be around young kids again. They remind me of my cousins, whom I haven’t seen in a year.
Lunch was — yummy! — oyakodonburi. “Donburi” is the type of dish and “oyako” means “parent and child” because it includes both chicken and eggs. Isn’t that clever? It kind of freaks some of my friends out but I just think it’s delicious. Miyata-sensei had said she wasn’t much of a cook and that her husband had had to come to the rescue while she was making it. The family had bought some pizza as back-up, which I thought was funny. For desert, we had sugar cane-flavored ice cream.
Their home was a two-bedroom affair. I was surprised by how tiny it was. The entire family sleeps in one bedroom and the other room is Kazu’s, the husband’s, study, full of his CDs — he particularly likes heavy metal, which explains why Miyata-sensei does, too — and guitars. They eat dinner in the living room by pulling out a small table where you sit on the floor.
Miyata-sensei asked if I thought Japanese homes were small. I hesitated and she said, “It’s okay, I think Japanese homes are small.” It just made my family’s home seem cavernous. But I guess the settlement and development of a Japan is very different from that of Texas,’ with its wide open spaces. In Japan, all the land is taken and thus, you have to build up. Miyata-sensei lives on the eighth floor.
The apartment grew markedly quiet after Tora left to ride his bike outside. I chatted with Miyata-sensei and Hitomi, her sister, for a while before taking my leave. I never know what is a reasonable period of time to stay and didn’t want to wear out my welcome. Miyata-sensei welcomed me back in the future. I told her next time, I’d make her family tacos.
On the way back I stopped by Ricaoh, a food store near their home, and discovered a wealth of imported food for lower prices than I’d been paying. I stocked up on tacos shells and spices.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004 — Interview tests
And so the interview tests continue. Man, who knew how exhausting it’d be, interviewing 200 kids? But they’re really good for me because the give me a chance to learn some of the students’ names. They’re always really surprised when I remember their names and if I then forget, they take me to task. And for all that it is taxing to do these interminable interviews, I really enjoy getting a chance to talk to each and every one of them, even if it is because they HAVE to talk to me.
The best interviews of today’s batch:
I spoke with a second-year student named Akihisa, a slight boy with a shy smile. He began his interview with, “I play tennis.” End. No more words. He couldn’t find the words to express what he wanted in say. But, rather than doing what the students usual do when they come to a dead end — shut down — he then began GESTURING. It was GREAT! He wanted to communicate, he just didn’t have the words. This is a rough rendering of what then followed:
<Akihisa swings his arm>
Me: Tennis?
<Akihisa nods, twirls his finger>
Me: Uh ... uh ... you put, um, spin on the ball? You hit the ball and it spun?
<Akihisa nods><I doubt that he actually means that, but am charmed by his cheerfulness>
Akihisa: What ... school ... car ... like?
Me: ...
Me: Do I have a car?
<Akihisa nods><Again, I doubt he actually means this>
Me: Uh ... no, I don’t have a car. Do I come to school by car? I come to school by bike. No, wait! Do you mean what kind of car I like?
<Akihisa nods>
Me: Gosh, well, I like Hondas. How about you?
<Akihisa shakes his head>
Akihisa: I like Toyota, Mitsubishi and <I forget the third one>.
<Timer goes off>
Me: Okay, finished Akihisa! Thank you so much!
<Akihisa smiles, leaves>
Dear boy.
Later, I interviewed the third-years. Two boys came out into the hallway to tell me about sakura, the cherry blossoms for which Japanese is famous. These two boys were the good-natured type, not the serious studiers (not that there’s anything wrong with either ;-) When they finished their little speech, they ended with: “From now, we will sing.”
Then they began to SING! I LOVE IT! They sang Naotarou Moriyama’s song, “Sakura” and it was sooo funny. I’m so impressed these two kids did it. Teen-agers are usually so self-conscious and it was wonderful to see these guys sing with such cheeky gusto. Later, I had to pick which students had the best interviews and I picked two other teams who’d had better pronunciation and presentation but I told these two boys that theirs was my favorite. Singing to the teacher always works.