November 2004
Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004 — Picnicking while sick
I was sick today but had planned a picnic for the city JETs and, well, it’s not like I could miss my own social event, especially considering the rarity in which I plan such things. I’d e-mailed the JETs in Tokushima City saying we should get together to better get to know each other since we live in such close proximity. I proposed a picnic on today, a holiday (“Culture Day”), and to have that picnic at Bunka no Mori (“The Forest of Culture”), that lovely prefectural park on the outskirts of town.
Even if the majority of people I’d invited to the picnic hadn’t showed up, it still would have been okay. The weather was lovely for a picnic and I knew at least a few of my friends were definitely showing up. But we had a healthy showing, which was quite pleasing and made me forget my congestion woes, at least for a few hours.
Together most of us took the bus from Tokushima Station to Bunka no Mori, then trudged up the interminable stairs to the park. I was surprised to find the park filled with so many people but, at Claire later pointed out, it WAS Culture Day and we WERE at the so-called Forest of Culture. For lunch, I brought some pasta and chicken, plus a PBJ sandwich and some Laughing Cow Cheese and crackers. I also toted my carrot cake along to see if anyone would be brave enough to eat it. I think two brave souls took the plunge.
Thursday, Nov. 4, 2004 — Sick day
What the heck's wrong with my body? Cold No. 2. Japan, you and your cruel, cruel pathogens. I took the day off from school and missed three classes. Spent most of the day sleeping. Better now than WHEN I GO HOME! :-D
Updated the site: I added some pictures and a post from my second school trip on Oct. 22, as well as kimono bowling on Oct. 23. Enjoy! ;-)
Monday, Nov. 8, 2004 — Sudachi
My school district assigned me to Sudachi Gakkyu for one week out of every fall and spring semester. This started with my second year on JET. Today was my first day ever at Sudachi. I didn’t even know where it was located until late last week, when another teacher at Kamona who used to work at Sudachi gave me an excellent map. My school district had given me a map, too, but all the labels had been in Japanese and it hadn’t included an recognizable main roads. Yeah. Helpful.
Sudachi is a mystery school. Man, the things I learned about it today.
Sudachi Gakkyu is a school intended for kids who wouldn’t go to school otherwise, who can’t handle normal schools, for whatever reason. In Japan, there is a syndrome of some sort where some kids just never go to school. It doesn’t help either that high school is optional. I haphazardly mentioned that high school is compulsory in the States and my English teacher did a double-take, she could hardly believe it. So anyways, Sudachi is home to about 30 students from elementary school to high school who come here instead of their normal schools. About 20 come regularly and the rest come if they feel like coming to school.
I rode the 20 or so minutes to the school. I didn’t even have to show up until 9 a.m. since school didn’t begin until 9:30 a.m. The kids go home around 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. That’s unlike my normal junior high schools, where I show up at 8 a.m. and school begins at about 8:45 a.m. I wasn’t complaining about my later start-time, though! ;-) The school is built like a house, complete with tatami rooms and wooden floors, which is why I missed it the first time and completely rode past because it didn’t look like a school at all.
Here’s the kicker: At Sudachi, the kids have only ONE hour of lesson a day. ONE HOUR OF LESSON. What KIND of lesson, you ask? Any lesson! Any subject they want. Thus, I was told I’d only be teaching English if a student WANTED to learn English. And this is what happened. I had one cute fourth-grade girl ask to me to teach some English words. She’d draw a picture and I’d tell her what it was in English. Another day, a boy and I ended up going over some English-language flashcards. There are a handful of teachers at Sudachi and during the lesson-time, they give individual help to students on whatever subject they want to work on.
SO, that means, when lesson-time is over, the kids do WHATEVER THEY WANT. So the rest of the day was whiled away with video games, card games, making friendship bracelets, and reading manga. Until school was over! THIS IS A NORMAL DAY! I kid you not. It just blew my mind, it seemed like such a colossal waste of time. These kids may have deep-rooted emotional problems (although, if they do, I couldn’t tell, they seemed like normal kids to me, if perhaps a bit more sensitive than most) but that doesn’t meant they have to be cheated out of an education!
Everyone brings their own lunch and we ate together in the kitchen area. The kids were curious about my peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. They had brought a typical Japanese lunch: rice with pork cutlet, pickled plum, and the like. I’m really glad I don’t have to eat that every day. I don’t like eating cold meat and vegetables.
I got my first glimpse of “Biohazard,” better known as “Resident Evil” in the United States. It took me a good year to figure out that “Biohazard,” which my students told me about a long time ago, was actually just “Resident Evil.” And BOY, is it VIOLENT! I watched this one boy play it for a while at Sudachi. He cracked me up. He’s somehow learned, “It’s-a-fantastic!” and kept saying it cheerfully to himself. Thus, this is how a scene is “Biohazard” would play out:
<Boy shoots a zombie. Blood seeps out of the zombie onto the floor.>
“It’s-a-fantastic!”
<Boy begins to leave, but rushes back to the corpse to stomp on it a couple of times.>
“It’s-a-fantastic!”
That day, my students also learned the phrase, “Oh my GOD,” from me.
Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2004 — Mikan-picking
Ooooh, after having harvested sweet potatoes last year I got to go mikan-picking with the kids of Sudachi! We rode a bus to Sanogochi, south of Tokushima City, about 40 minutes away. Mikan are Japan’s small oranges. I’m told they’re called mandarin oranges or clementines in the U.S.
They’d told me to bring a bag to hold the mikan I picked. I knew whatever I picked, I’d have to eat, so I made sure to not go wild on my mikan-picking. Basically, we showed up at the house of this old woman, who gave us buckets and pruning tools. She walked us to her orchard. For a 70-year-old, she walked impressively fast.
The trees in the mikan orchards surrounding us were pregnant with fruit. Kids immediately began pulling mikan off the trees and peeling the rinds off to sample the fruit. Wow. It was all so … pastoral.
Friday, Nov. 12, 2004 — Bike vs. Car, Round II. Oh, and sports day.
I got hit by a car today. And then I got hit by a house.
Okay, so it was I that hit the house. But it sounds funnier the other way around.
My second car accident. <sigh> This time there was much more drama than my Jan. 30 one. But don’t worry, I’m okay. That strong-smelling green ointment my mom gave me works miracles.
I was riding on a backroad heading east and a van was approaching the same intersection, northbound. I saw a woman and her baby crossing the street, albeit in the opposite direction, so I assumed it was safe to the street. How wrong I was. The van clipped the back of my bike. I lost control and went careening into a house. Good job, Vi.
It’s a bit of a blur what happened immediately after. I’m always a little skeptical when people say this happens but now I know it really does! The police later would ask if the driver and I exchanged any words. I told them the truth: I didn’t remember but if we HAD exchange works, it would amounted to him asking if I was okay and me replying that yes, I was. Whatever the case, the driver sped off. I suddenly found myself surrounded by all these Japanese people who’d witnessed the accident, worriedly asking if I was okay:
“ARE YOU OKAY? I GOT THE LICENSE PLATE! YOU SHOULD GO TO THE POLICE IMMEDIATELY!”
My Japanese deteriorates in stressful situations and I was a bit disorientated, so I told them right away I didn’t understand Japanese and that I was American. I think they were particularly freaked out for me because of the loud noise they’d heard from the van hitting my bike. An old lady ordered me to give her some paper and a pen. She wrote down the pertinent information about the accident, including the car’s license number and description. Then the lady with the baby said her family owned a bike store nearby and I should come with her. I’d hit the house so hard all the air had gone out of my front tire.
We walked the five minutes to her home. Her baby’s name was Daisuke and he was a 13 months old. He already knew to bow his head in thanks when someone gave him something. It was unbearably adorable.
At their home, the mom offered to call the police, but I asked her to call Sudachi Gakkyu instead for me. I didn’t know the school’s number but luckily, she was able to find it in the phone book. Sudachi was expecting me at precisely that time, 9 a.m., because together I was going to head with the school to a nearby track for a sports day. Really, I didn’t want to call the police at all. Foremost in my mind was that I was going to be late for school.
None of the teachers at Sudach Gakkyu spoke very much English, including the head teacher. When I was telling him what happened in near-incomprehensible Japanese, his only replies were, “I see. Okay.” I told him I’d get my bike fixed and then meet him and the students at the track. “I see. Okay,” he said. It was probably just to agree to what I was saying at the time rather than explain what he intended to do, which was call my supervisor at the school district office.
My supervisor, Harada-sensei, arrived in school district van driven by a co-worker. I told them I was okay. They looked dubious. A fellow ALT had been in a car accident a couple months ago and he, too, had said he was fine only to call Harada-sensei a couple hours later in pain. She took me to the police, where it became a mild drama with like six people throwing questions at us. Amazingly, they located the driver of the car in like 15 minutes. They called him and made him come him.
I thought he’d be all hostile and angry for having to come in but he was actually quite easy tow ork with. I never directly interacted with him but he took the whole ordeal well, considering. The police, the driver, my supervisor and I all headed back to the scene of the accident so the police could better understand what happened. I saw the old lady who’d helped me originally at her home by the intersection and nodded to her.
The police scrutinized my bike, which we brought along with us. They scrutinized the van. They found some of the paint from my bike had transferred to the van front, connecting to the two. I was pretty impressed, even if it was a simple bit of police work. The driver offered to pay for the repairs to my bike. We brought it back to the bike shop and I heard figures of $100 or so tossed around, considering I needed a new tire and new piece of framework that connected the front tire to the bike.
My bike wasn’t going to be ready until later than afternoon, so I was dropped off at the track for the last hour of sports day with the Sudachi students. The time went by pretty fast. I didn’t run the 1K run they had scheduled. Hahaha, I think the car accident prevented the teachers from egging me on to run.
I really was okay, aside from a bruise on my leg. It amounted to the same kind of pain that I’d experienced the last time I got hit by a car. I went home afterward and put some of the ointment on my bruise and it healed up much faster than the bruise I’d gotten last time. Maybe enduring the ointment’s smell WAS worth it … !
Later that evening, I went to Kamona to practice piano. I talked with two students and an English teacher beforehand in the piano room on the second floor. One of the students said earlier that week she’d been getting ready to go home in the dark of night at the bike rack, which is just next to this wing of the school. She’d be frightened because all the lights at the school were out except for in that classroom, and she could hear the sounds of “Moonlight Sonata” being played. But she couldn’t see anyone sitting at the piano! It really freaked her out. It didn’t help that there are no lights at the bike rack, either.
Hahaha, I told her it’d been me practicing piano. “Moonlight Sonata” is a pretty dark piece and not particularly a comforting piece of music to hear when you’re alone and in the dark. I thoughts you could see people sitting at the piano from the vantage point of the bike rack, but apparently you can’t. I’m glad we cleared that up, especially since I’ll be practicing more in the future. Imagine if the poor girl had continued to think she’d heard a ghost playing that night, and in future nights!
Saturday, Nov. 13, 2004 — Pottery festival, followed by an unpleasant surprise
This morning I headed by train to Otani, a town north of Tokushima famous for its pottery. This weekend the town was having a pottery festival at a local temple. I’m not big on pottery myself but thought it would neat to look at, at the least.
Otani was only three stops away. From the station, I walked to the shrine, about 10 minutes away. Its front yard was covered with tables sporting pottery from lots of vendors. Grade-school calligraphy decorated the front walls of the temple. There were food stalls and plants for sale. There were boxes of marked-down pottery as well as huge pots in the price range of several hundreds of dollars’ worth. I don’t even know how you’d use those kinds of gigantic ceramic containers.
I found a pretty cup for myself and got it as a souvenir before heading back to Tokushima. I ate lunch at home and then hopped on my bike to go to Sally’s. We had planned spending the afternoon together because she’d wanted to learn about Web design.
When I neared her apartment, I spotted a bike wheel sticking out of the water in the canal that runs alongside her apartment. I had a sinking feeling about it. Sally’s been having a lot of problems with her neighbors lately and they’ve been retaliating in sad, pathetic, passive-aggressive ways.
Her neighbors live directly across from her. They share the same balcony, with a divider in between. For a long time, Sally would wake to shouts and screams and cries next door. A woman was being beaten. Children were crying. Once, the lady and her children were locked outside. They also had a dog — keep in mind dogs aren’t allowed in this building — that kept peeing on the balcony, which meant Sally couldn’t keep her windows open because of the smell. She complained and the neighbors reacted by noisily cleaning the drain on the balcony at six in the morning.
This escalated when the dog remained a problem. Sally complained to our supervisor, who contacted the real estate agent who acts as a go-between between tenants and the landlord. The agent said he couldn’t directly speak to the neighbors about the problem. (Yeah, right. The lack of confrontation in this situation really irked me.) The most he could do was put a notice in all the tenants’ mailboxes reminding them dogs weren’t allowed. The day it went out, Sally found a ripped up notice in her mailbox. Then someone tore off the small gold star she had affixed to her front door.
There were times when her neighbors were yell at her through her door. Her boyfriend, who is English, too, knocked on their door to confront them about it. The neighbors stayed in their apartment and just yelled back at him through their door.
The last straw happened recently when Sally woke to the sound of someone yelling on her balcony. She waited until they went away and peeked outside. Someone had carved a sizable hole out of the divider with a knife. Frightened, Sally called our supervisor. The supervisor and real estate agent came. The agent talked to the neighbors. Apparently a divorced woman and her children live there. She has a high-school-age son who flipped out because they had to put their dog down since they couldn’t find anyone to take it. It was the son who’d been on Sally’s balcony, yelling at her. But the neighbors maintained it was an accident and furthermore, accused Sally of having parties and playing her music loudly. I know Sally. She doesn’t play music loudly and she doesn’t have parties.
So the agent came back to Sally, completely unsympathetic. “They say you cause problems, too,” the agent said. Even if she DID play her music loudly or had parties, that wasn’t what was at issue. She hadn’t destroyed property or trespassed. But it didn’t matter. Nothing was done. Sally wanted to go to the police but our supervisor said no. “They have to HIT YOU first before you can go to the police!” our supervisor said. Sally pointed out the damaged divider. It didn’t count, the supervisor said, because there was no proof the neighbors had done it on purpose.
The last few weeks have been deceptively quiet. I was suspicious. So Saturday, I approached the bike with caution. My fears were confirmed: It was Sally’s bike in the canal. In a place it couldn’t have gotten to on its own. Someone had THROWN it into the saltwater canal. And who else could it have been but the psycho neighbors? Sally was distraught. It was the last straw. Her bike was her main mode of transportation. She called two English teachers and together, they went to the police, which is when I last saw her.
Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004 — Domesticity
When my parents came to visit me in August, they brought a big tub of Peater Pan creamy peanut butter with them. I’d steadily been making progress through it but still had about ½ a tub left. So I did what had to be done: I made peanut butter cookies. For the first time, too, I might add. And they turned out DELICIOUS. I was very proud of myself.
Monday, Nov. 15, 2004 — Catching up
I’ve put in a couple stuff in late August — flower arrangement and a Halloween party — plus November stuff. I shared my peanut butter cookies with my students class at lunch today. I had used an old milk tea-powder tin to store them and kept having these horrible flashes of worry, wondering if I’d used the tin to store any toxic chemicals by accident like, I don’t know, anti-freeze. Also, there was a LOT of sugar in these cookies and I wondered if the kids would be like, “suuuWEEEEEET!!!” but in a bad way. Fortunately, there were no toxic chemicals involved and the kids really liked the cookies. The teachers were so impressed they want me to teach the kids how to make them next week!
SWEET!
Thursday, Nov. 18, 2004 — David vs. Goliath (aka Sally vs. the school district)
Sally has decided to move to another apartment to escape her psycho neighbors. She had a meeting with our supervisor and her boss, the department head in our board of education (our school district, which we typically call our BOE) to discuss the arrangements. She left in tears and didn’t come to calligraphy afterward.
The BOE wanted Sally to move into an apartment just west of Tokushima Station. Sally lives about 20 minutes by bike east of Tokushima Station. Three other ALTs live in the apartment building the BOE wanted Sally to move into. Sally had other ideas. Her boyfriend had gotten a job at a private English school in Tokushima and his boss was offering a more centrally located apartment. They checked it out and decided to move there instead.
Given this news, the BOE told Sally the following: 1.) She would still have to pay December’s rent, even though she wouldn’t be living in the old BOE apartment then; 2.) The BOE would no longer subsidize her rent; 3.) She could no longer use a BOE vehicle to move. She’d have to figure out how to move her stuff by herself and, the kicker, 4.) Had she chosen to stay with BOE housing, her boyfriend John would have been kicked out.
In fact, given that bit of power-mongering, they were kicking out the girlfriend of another ALT that worked for the BOE. The office had known for some time the couple was living together but decided suddenly no, that wasn’t “allowed” and gave the couple a deadline for the girlfriend’s moving out.
I feel like my BOE is making an example of Sally. There’s following the rules and then there’s FOLLOWING THE RULES to such an extent that there is no humanity nor compassion involved. So much so that you’re basically punishing the person involved, which is what I feel is happening here.
I’m fortunate in that my housing situation has worked out well so my interaction with the BOE has been much more limited. But I’ve lost so much, if not all, respect for my supervisor and her boss. They really only seem to care that we show up for work, and that’s all that matters. Happily, I’ve also learned to compartamentalize and they haven’t spoiled my experience in Japan as they threatened to do earlier this year. My life outside the BOE office — with school, friends and cultural exchange — remains rewarding and interesting.
My supervisor is a woman whom I know wants us to like her. But I wish she’d be more of a support for us — who else do we have, really? — rather than simply a funnel for the information coming down from on high.
Friday, Nov. 19, 2004 — Baking cookies
Today I showed my special-needs class how to bake peanut butter cookies. That was the plan, anyway. The teacher had said she’d take care of the ingredients. Then I saw the ingredients and the “adjusting” immediately began.
In Japan, most people have never heard of baking soda. Baking powder, yes, but not baking soda. The recipe called for baking soda. My teacher glossed over this and said baking powder would be fine, that it was the same thing as baking soda. (My mom later would explain the difference to me, something about sodium carbonate versus sodium bicarbonate and how one’s used in cookies and cakes and the other’s used in cornbread.) I personally was lucky enough to find baking soda at my local grocery store and had used it in the original cookies. But with my students, we only had baking powder.
Then I saw the peanut butter. Or rather, peanut “cream.” Japan doesn’t really have peanut butter. Before my parents gave me a jumbo tub of Peter Pan Peanut Butter, which is what I used to make my cookies, I settled before for a tube of peanut “whip” instead. It was less dense and sweeter than American peanut butter. My teacher had bought containers of “peanut cream” to use in the recipe. I stared at the contents when she opened one up. It had the consistency of molasses and smelled like SUPER-sweet peanut butter.
As a result, we halved the amount of sugar needed and increased the flour. Nevertheless, when I was finished mixing the batter, I was seriously worried about the outcome. The batter was much thinner and … shinier … than when I’d made the cookies at home. Would they even rise?
To my great relief, they did rise. Still, unsurprisingly, they didn’t turn out anything like my peanut butter cookies. They were spongy (mine were solid) with only a faint taste of peanut butter, and lighter in color. But I realized you can’t really mess up cookies. If they’re sweet, you’ve succeeded. That’s all a growing kid wants: sugar. My teacher had to keep the students from wolfing them down.
Saturday, Nov. 20, 2004 — The best shopping trip EVER
I had planned to go all the way to Takamatsu, the capital of Kagawa-ken next door, today in search of ski wear. I’d heard the stores in Takamatsu had more stuff for better prices. When I’d checked one of the sporting goods stores for swimsuits, I was appalled to find them all in the $80-$100 range. I figured ski-wear prices would be astronomical. I’d have to swallow the $50 roundtrip train ticket to Takamatsu but I was hoping the trade-off would be in the ski-wear prices and, hopefully, sales.
I mentioned my impending trip to Satoshi, my Japanese teacher, yesterday. His reply set me on course for one of my BEST SHOPPING TRIPS EVER. He’d been checking out the newspaper that day for shoe sales and noticed a big ski and snowboard sale was planned at ASTY Tokushima, which is kinda like the city convention center. He suggested maybe I’d wanna check it out before I went all the way to Takamatsu, which is an hour-long train ride. I figured, why not?
So this morning I biked over to the convention center. When I first entered, I wasn’t all that impressed with what I saw. I saw mostly shoes and ski tours on sale. But then I entered the main hall and entered skier’s nirvana. Skier’s nirvana, I tell you! It was chock FULL of ski wear as well as ski gear and snowboard gear. There may have been a small section of active wear and swimwear but by far the majority of the stuff was snow-related. There was a big TV on the wall that kept displaying ski trail maps and the announcements in Japanese were frequently interviews with people hawking their ski resorts, I think.
I wandered around, open mouthed, impressed by the sheer volume of products. But thenI spotted the sales rack — and then another, and then ANOTHER — of ski wear that had been marked down. I looked at the prices and did a double-take. Whaaaaat? Were those prices RIGHT?! NO WAY! See, the thing is, I'd long ago given up on sales in Japan. I take them where I can find them but I don't shop that often so of course I don't find them that often. It's not like in the U.S., where I can open the newspaper to find out which stores are having sales. It's hit-or-miss here.
I spent nearly three hours there. I’d intended originally on getting only a jacket and pants. But with the money I saved, I decided to get gloves (that match the jacket, of course! ;-) and a hat. I didn’t need the hat but decided to treat myself. I even got a little English-language help from one of the many store clerks on hand to aid the mob.
My best coup, by far, was the ski jacket. Originally 12,000 yen, marked down to — GET THIS — 2,000 yen. That’s right! Crazy! I guess they were just trying to get rid of older merchandise; my jacket was from 2001-02. But the cut and style were totally the same as the other, more recent jackets. It’s red and cream-colored. Satoshi later saw it and called it pink but I refuse to even entertain the fact that I might be wearing pink. I’m pretty sure it’s red. A soft red. And cream.
With my big bag of stuff securely tied to the back rack of my bike, I pedaled home, immensely pleased with myself.
Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2004 — Long-paper calligraphy!
Today was a holiday, “Labor Thanksgiving Day” or something indecipherable like that. Kurohashi-sensei had a special class for trying out long-paper calligraphy. Usually my calligraphy paper is about 8.5 by 11-inches long. With long-paper calligraphy, you work on the ground and at many points are actually sitting on the paper as you paint on it. Kurohashi-sensie gave me me a giant brush with which to work. It was fun to try the new style and new tools but a little hard on the back, too. When it came time to wash the brush out, it apparently had sucked up half the ink well and took forever to clean. After 10 minutes of trying to get ALL the ink out, I called it quits and said it was good enough.
Afterward, I visited Sally at her new apartment. She phone wasn’t working and her boyfriend wasn’t answering his cell phone so I called another ALT who knew where she lived for directions. She now lives in an covered shopping arcade just south of Tokushima Station.
I walked up to the place I thought she lived and found two apartments in a dark hallway on the third floor, just above an architecture firm and a clothing store. I figured my chances of getting the wrong person was 50 percent, so I picked one door and knocked on it. Lo and behold, I’d picked the right one!
Sally’s apartment was a wreck from her recent move, but a luxurious wreck. She has two bedrooms plus a living room. Her kitchen had so much counter space! I’d be jealous if I didn’t love my apartment already. Her floors are wood and there’s an air conditioning unit in every room. Wow. And she has a proper bathroom and a heated toilet and EVERYTHING.
She’s relieved to have one less connection with the board of education, now that she no longer lives in BOE housing. She has a longer commute to school now that she’s moved away from her old apartment, but it’s the same distance I have to Kokufu. Plus she no longer has psycho Japanese neighbors to worry about — she’d met her lone neighbor, a young American woman also teaching at the same private English school as John, Sally’s boyfriend.
We went for some Mexican food at Somebrero’s for dinner. Sally hadn’t known if I was coming or not since I couldn’t reach her by phone, and had already consumed a box of Oreo cookies. <sigh> I helped myself to nachos with guacamole (yummmmm … !) and a chicken quesadilla. What would I do without Somebrero’s?
Thursday, Nov. 25, 2004 — Cooking class
I cooked again with the special needs class at Kokufu this morning, this time as a student rather than a teacher. We made gyudon, which is made from sliced beef plus a clear, noodle-like component called “konyaku” and leeks in a soy sauce, sugar and sake sauce. I was grateful. We were making this dish just as leftovers at home had run out, so I didn’t have to worry about cooking dinner!
Afterward, the teacher made the students practice peeling and cutting apples. I have to say that was one of the most horrific experiences ever: Watching children clumsily wield sharp knives with the edge angled toward themselves, or at least their fingers. Thankfully, no blood was spilt.
Friday, Nov. 26, 2004 — Open Mic Night II
My second Open Mic Night! Oh, but what a day. First I had to go to the city office in the morning for the annual medical check-up. Last year, my EKG had showed some irregularities (brought on, no doubt, by having to do the medical check-up in the first place) so I was hoping this year’s EKG would be okay. And that I hadn’t gained weight. ;-) Those Japanese lunches are hefty!
They also took blood again. I looked away when they slid the needle in. I can’t believe I wanted to go in into medicine at one point. The lady started saying something to me so I thought she was done but when I turned around and saw the needle still sticking out of my arm, I made strangled sound of distress. She apologized. The last stop on this merry tour took me to a quick consultation with the doctor. He told me, in Japanese, how all my tests showed I was okay. Then he realized I wasn’t Japanese and asked if Japanese was okay. I told him I understood most of what he’d said but he went over it again quickly in English: “Hearing — okay. Seeing — okay. Heart — okay,” etc.
My EKG was normal (hurray!) but aside from that, everything was pretty much the same as last time. While I waited for my friends, a young Japanese woman approached us. She’d helped us with a little translation earlier in the testing. She introduced herself and turned out to be the daughter of one of my vice principals. She was nice and pretty. Lots of Japanese women are pretty, but she had a self-possession about her that was immediately evident. I told her that her mom talked about her a lot and she looked slightly embarrassed. It was just neat that we knew each other through her mom.
I didn’t have to be at school yet so I went to breakfast at Mr. Donut with Sally. We’d had to skip breakfast before the medical check-up. I took the bus home before biking the 20 minutes to school in time for lunch and one afternoon class. Then I had to bike BACK to the city office for my monthly adult conversation class.
My eikaiwa (adult English conversation) class has turned out to be really fun, largely because only three teachers come regularly and two of them work at one of my schools. Because I teach the advanced class, their conversation skills are pretty good. I don’t work on grammar. I figure they’re there because they basically just want a chance to speak English. So I pose questions to them of stuff they’ve likely never thought of before. They’re ice-breaking questions we in the U.S. probably have heard or at least thought of before, but my teachers seriously have never been asked questions like these:
1. If you were on a deserted island, what one thing or person would you want with you?
2. What was your least favorite subject in school and why?
3. If you won a million dollars what would you do with it and would you still teach?
4. If you could be any animal, what would you be and why?
5. What’s something about you that makes you unique?
Seriously, you’d think these were critical thinking questions the way my teachers react when I ask them. But they’re getting used to the concept and enjoy them, I think. My favorite question so far has been, “If your house was burning and your family was safe, and you could only save one thing from your home, what would you save?”
Niu-sensei, the art teacher at Kamona, said she’d save her Picasso painting. The rest of us were speechless. Surely she meant a replica. No, she said, she had a real one. Woah.
Tokugawa-sensei, an elementary school teacher, puzzled and pondered for a long while before finally saying, “If there was a fire, I’d probably panic and not save anything at all.”
I told her that I wasn’t really asking what she’d do in the event of a fire. I was asking REALLY what was most valuable to her.
“Oh,” she said. “In that case, I’d save my money. Or my bank book.”
Priceless.
At today’s class, when I asked the “What makes you unique?” question, Maeda-sensei answered, “There is nothing unique about me.” She ended up talking about an interesting art documentary she’d seen recently. <sigh> Seriously, this is how they think. It’s really hard to make them think outside the Japanese way about themselves. But they’re learning.
After eikaiwa, I went to Sally’s to hang out in the interim before Open Mic started. While she was getting ready, she said I was welcome to check out the videos that had been in the apartment when she arrived. I found a tape with an SNL episode on it and popped it in the VCR. Maybe it was because I hadn’t seen SNL in a year and a half but that episode of SNL — a compilation of Will Ferrell skits — were soooooo funny to me, I was laughing so hard. Absence must make the heart grow fonder.
Finally, it was time to go to Bell’s for the soundcheck before Open Mic started. I had two pieces prepared. Plus, Anthony and Jeff wanted to “jam” on a blues piece we’d hoped to perform but never got a chance to rehearse. I’d explained to them how foreign a concept the idea of “filler notes” and “improve” had been to me but they seemed quite good natured about it all, so I thought I’d give it a try. We got all of five minutes’ practice in on the song, Muddy Waters’ “Mojo.”
When it was my turn, I played a slow, short jazzy piece, “Castles in the Sky” followed by the first movement of a Clementi sonata. My friend Chanda said it cracked her up how I play classical music at Open Mic since everybody plays folk or rock. I’m a classical kinda girl, you know? ;-) I figure it adds variety at the least. When I finished I stood to shouts of “Encore!” which was thrilling. I’ve never had anyone yell “Encore!” to me before! So I sat down once more and played the first movement of a Mozart sonata. It was pretty shaky but people were talking so loudly, I’m hoping the mistakes weren’t so evident.
“Mojo” went off pretty well, too, considering. I think Jeff was disappointed that people didn’t get into the song as much as he’d hoped. Maybe next time. We resolved to play together again next Open Mic, hopefully with rehearsal beforehand.
I got home at 11:30 p.m. It’d been a long day.
Saturday, Nov. 27, 2004 — Making handmade paper
I didn’t have much time to sleep in, as I had to be at this international-exchange event at the Tokushima Youth Center by 9:30 a.m. I was pretty grumpy about this event because I felt somewhat roped into it by virtue of my own ignorance. A teacher at Kamona had approached me about the event and explained it to me in Japanese. I mostly caught that it involved making handmade paper and that it ran from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. I thought she was asking me because she was going to do it, too. I figured it’d be a good opportunity to get to know her since she’s one of the many teachers I hardly ever talk to. So I agreed to go. Then, just to double-check, I asked if she was going, too.
“No,” she said, “I have a wedding the next day.”
D’oh!
So here I was, at this all-day event I knew little about with people I didn’t know. Things didn’t look good. But when all was said and done, I’m really glad I went. It turned out to be really fun!
The event was organized by the Tokushima International Youth Exchange Association or some group like that. I had heard from a friend that they were desperate for foreigners to participate in the event and I finally got an idea of how desperate when I saw the roster: In a group of about 40 mostly college-aged people, eight were foreigners, the rest Japanese. All the foreigners were from Asian countries (China, Malaysia, Laos, etc.) except me, so basically everyone WAS Asian. They divided us into five groups, and each group had an association staff member as a group leader.
We did some ice breaking games and then settled into our groups to talk about traditional cards in our home countries. Next, we had lunch and then moved on to Tokushima Station, where we caught a train to Yamakawa-cho, an hour west, to go to Awagami Factory. “Awa” is Tokushima’s old name (hence, “Awa Odori”) and “gami” means “paper.” There, we watched a video on paper-making and made some handmade paper ourselves.
I was really into meeting the people at this event but the paper-making wasn’t as much a draw. As a result, my first card — we were making New Year’s postcards — turned out to be hideous because I was basically just throwing stuff on it. The Japanese attendees were circumspectly polite about its hideousness. I tried harder on cards No. 2 and No. 3 so as not to embarrass myself.
We returned to Tokushima for a snack and closing activities. It lasted well past 8 p.m., until nearly 9 p.m., but I didn’t mind. I had really enjoyed getting to meet so many new, interesting people.
Sunday, Nov. 28, 2004 — Sunday market
No rest for the wicked. I met with Sally, John and Claire to check out a weekly Sunday flea market in the south side of the city. I had wanted to see if there was anything to bring home as gifts but it’s hard shopping in a group. Sally wanted to look for a kimono — her neighbor had found one for an impressive $30 at this market — but all the kimonos seemed a little small for her. I didn’t find anything to bring home but did spot an obi (belt) that matched my yukata, the one Kurohashi-sensei gave me. I didn’t have a “proper” belt for it and had wanted to get one.
I asked the lady how much it cost.
“Three hundred yen,” she said after a moment’s consideration.
What? Three hundred yen!? Who am I to argue with a price like that? To give you an idea, the current exchange rate is about 102 yen for $1. I handed over the money and smugly pocketed my new obi, a silver blue with a dark strip running through it. My yukata is sky blue with pink flowers. Now, if only I remembered how to put on my yukata …
The Sunday market reminded me of Vietnam and basically Chinatowns everywhere: A mostly open-air market of everything from seafood to sweets, purses to plants. I think you can bargain here but the prices were so good (and my Japanese abilities not cut-throat enough) there was no need to do so. The clothes racks contained kimonos costing anywhere from $30 to $500. I love that about Japan, that you can put products worth hundreds of dollars in easy reach just like that!
I went home in time for my last Japanese lesson with Satoshi. I was going to be busy in December and he was moving to Australia in January, so I deemed that we’d stop at the end of November. I sent him home with some peanut butter cookies I’d made.
Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2004 — Elementary school
I now know that I fit into a third-grader’s desk.
Because Tuesday and Wednesday were test days at my junior high school, I was sent to Kamona Elementary School. My schedule: second period, all 83 first-graders; third period, all 75 second-graders; fourth period, all 89 third-graders. In the gym.
Kamona Elementary School is an ideal school in that the teacher who arranges my visits speaks pretty good English. Better yet, she does all the lesson planning! And the school even goes so far as to arrange for ANOTHER teacher to be on hand to help me out because he, too, speaks English. (Although he’s the computer teacher.) They don’t spring surprises on me and they even cover my lunch! So even though I had entire grades at a time to teach, I wasn’t too much worried because I knew I wouldn’t really be leading the show; the homeroom teachers would be. I know I make them nervous because of my limited Japanese and their limited English. But working together, we get stuff done.
The first graders were just insane. I was almost frightened of them, they had so much energy and so much VOLUME. They were so … precise … when enunciating, “YO-RO-SHI-KU O-NE-GAI-SHI-MA-SU … !” which is a standard phrase used when you’re first meeting someone or they’re doing something for you. We played a greeting game first. I’d played it with older students and it’d been pretty fun; the kids had followed the rules (say hello to “x” number of people, then sit down) easily. With the first-graders, it was like a bomb went off. They scattered across the gym, bouncing like atoms off one another, and just kinda kept running around. There was no sitting down. We eventually had to herd them back to their lines.
For lunch, I ate with a third-grade class. That’s when they stuck me into a third-grade chair and desk. It was a little off-putting to think I fit into elementary-school-sized furniture. While I stewed on this, a third-grader asked me for my autograph. I’m not kidding. Suddenly I was blindsided by the whole class of them, sticking pencils and paper in my face and asking me to sign.
That afternoon, one of the sixth-grade teachers enlisted my aid for a computer class, where they’d be playing educational computer games to practice English. They were working on different responses for “How are you?” since the only answer they know is, “I’m fine.” We drilled them on “I’m cold,” “I’m tired,” “I’m sleepy,” etc. When it was one girl’s turn to respond, I’m pretty sure she meant to say, “I’m hot!” but instead it came out:
“I’m HIGH!”