September 2004
Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2004 — Back to basics
My school has changed schedules so today wasn't actually the first day of the fall semester. Instead, it was just another day of lessons and tests for my students. I was reminiscent of what Sept. 1, 2003 had been like for me. Terrifying, not knowing any Japanese or anyone at the school. Having to give my self-introduction in front of the whole school and staff in the gym. All the newbie ALTs would have to do that today. I know a little of Japanese and have become good friends with some of the teachers at Kamona now, although I still don't talk with most of them. Such is life.
Thursday, Sept. 2, 2004 — Rain, rain, go away
Wow, rainy season’s got nothing on typhoon season when it comes to the actual amount of rainfall. It’s been raining almost every day this week. At least it’s helped with the heat. I was astounded by the freakishly cool weather when I emerged from school yesterday afternoon. I was actually able to sleep in my bedroom last night, rather than having to drag my futon into the living room to use the A/C.
I had two classes yesterday, one of which was like flogging a zombie and the other, which was much more successful. A second-year junior high school class is really defined by the number of outgoing students, particularly boys, in it. There were a wealth of them in my second class and they helped keep the class chugging along at a cheerful pace.
Sometimes I get so frustrated by my students. I opened the class with a warm-up of simple questions and it’s like all their English went out the window over summer break. A lot of them fail to see that a lot can be learned by listening. Most of the conversations I hold in Japanese, I really don’t understand the nuances and verb tenses being used but I can catch verbs and other words here and there that I recognize. That usually gives me an idea of what’s being said. Most students don’t realize that and just go silent when you ask something and they don’t understand all the words. They just shut down and give up, without giving an answer a try. Others, however, cheer me with how easily they pick up what I’m saying, simply because they listen.
Japanese students have this weird this about answering in front of class, and answering accurately. I asked a girl what she did on Monday, when all the students stayed home because of the typhoon. She just freaked out and kept muttering to herself, “What did I do?” They, while they go through the motions about thinking of a reply, they just stand there, prostrate and silent. A lot times, if they don’t have an answer at all, they don’t say ANYTHING. I was throwing out possible answers to this girl — “I slept. I studied. I watched TV.” — but she didn’t listen to any of this. Can’t they understand that I don’t really CARE what they say, as long as they give it a try, as long as they answer SOMETHING?
I thought the cooler weather may energize my students some but no such luck. My first class of the day was silent and sullen. <sigh> For the last exercise of the class, they had to write about their summer vacation. My favorite was from a boy who wrote about his supreme disappointment the Japanese baseball team took bronze at the Olympics:
“I watched Orinpiiku on TV. It’s baseball on TV. Came in third very terrible.”
Friday, Sept. 3, 2004 — Quiet rebellion
I went to my monthly adult eikaiwa (English conversation) class this evening after school expecting the usual. I was teaching the advanced class, which is actually well, advanced enough to have open-ended conversations.
I opened quickly with an interesting article I’d found in The Daily Yomiuri about the approach Japanese people tend to have when it comes to speaking English and how they can improve upon it. I thought it made a lot of good points, like how a lot of times a Japanese person will take forever to finish a sentence because they want to get their grammar just right. They go through every possible conjugation of that verb they can think of because they’re not sure which one to use. Usually by Try No. 1 or No. 2, though, the English speaker already knows what the Japanese person is trying to say even if it’s not in a grammatically correct form. I stressed that getting ideas across is a lot more important than saying it correctly.
This topic was a little complicated for the class, though, which was composed of teachers in my school district, so I moved on quickly to the idea I wanted to discuss: If you had three wishes, what would you wish for? To get the ball rolling, I gave them an example. When I was little, I’d wished for super powers — being invisible and being able to fly. The teachers all thought about their wishes for a bit. I wondered how imaginative or unimaginative their answers would be.
The surrealness began with the first teacher and just grew from there. This teacher, who interestingly enough has gone to Nepal a bunch of times because she apparently has a boyfriend there, wished she had more vacation days. And it all just went downhill from there into bashing session of the school district and education system. The lone male teacher in the group jumped in, complaining about how teachers used to have the summer break off but now the school district makes them come in every day, even when they have nothing to do. And should a teacher be spotted not at school but — GASP! — out, say, SHOPPING, then parents will actually call the school to COMPLAIN, asking why the teacher wasn’t at school. So teachers take their vacations in secret and feel a load of guilt while doing so.
I’d heard about stuff like this happening but through fellow ALTs. To hear it straight from the horse’s mouth was a bit shocking. To hear the teachers actually grumbling about the education system was even more surprising. They’re typically a stoic lot, a take-in-on-the-chin group of people. I rarely EVER hear them complain. It was AWESOME.
Then they turned their attention on me, which was unnerving. “What’s YOUR summer work policy?” they asked. Wow, so direct! I mentally shrugged — what could it hurt, telling them? I recounted what had happened in the days leading up to the summer and how we’d been so worked up about it. The teachers shook their heads in sympathy, which was actually quite comforting. I know some teachers dislike the slack they feel ALTs get. These teachers seemed to understand where I was coming from and why I’d felt so angry about how we’d been treated.
On the other hand, even though there was a contingency of teachers who wanted to have it out and talk about stuff like this, the other half of the conversation class were dead silent. I could tell they were completely uncomfortable with listening to this criticism. But the other teachers’ dominated the class with their venting session, which I’m sure was cathartic to some degree. The male teacher even told me to shut the door, since we were in a meeting room at the school district office, for more privacy to speak freely.
At the end of the hour-long class, he looked gravely at the other teachers and said, “What we have said … stays in this room. Outside … please shut your mouths.” I knew what he meant to say was, of course, to please keep quiet about what had gone on in this room but the juxtaposition of his polite demeanor and his unintentionally aggressive words cracked me up.
Saturday, Sept. 4, 2004 — Kamona’s fall fair
Kamona had its bunka sai, it’s culture festival, today. I chronicled last year’s festival, too, remember? Performances in the morning ranged from the usual band and chorus performances, plus the usual dancing and skits, which I STILL never understand. But apparently I’m not the only one — I asked one of the English teachers exactly what was going on and she said she didn’t understand either.
The best scene, though, involved a classroom setting with a bunch of girls sitting around and a lone boy trying to study. One girl starts irritatedly ranting about something and she starts the get the other girls worked up and before you know it, they’re kicking chairs over and causing mayhem in the unsupervised classroom. Finally they descend on the poor boy, one of the girls slamming a hand down on his desk and yelling at him before ripping his homework away from him and throwing it away.
What made it so funny was I know all these girls, and they’re all sweet, studious girls! I was sitting by some first-year boys in the audience and one boy seemed quite frightened by these aggressive girls. He kept muttering, “Scary ... scary!” to himself.
After lunch, I visited the classrooms. Japanese kids sure have interesting fair games. There was a haunted house, of course, and when I went inside, I was surrounded by a bunch of first-year girls. The girl behind me was hanging on for dear life. So funny.
Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2004 — Typhoon No. 18
Since I had to work on Saturday, I got Monday off. It started raining that evening and when I woke up this morning, I was shocked to find it was STILL raining, that it rained through the night.
Typhoon No. 18 wasn’t going to let go of Japan without dumping as much water on us as it could. It was the seventh typhoon to make landfall this year, a record since the country’s meteorological agency began keeping records in the 1950s. It’s reassuring to know that the Japanese TV media, just like our own, sends poor, hapless reporters into the eye of the storm to describe weather conditions while battling the wind and their own billowing rain slickers.
At first, I assumed I’d still go to school. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d gone to school during a typhoon. But as I peered outside, I noticed how the wind was a lot stronger than the last typhoon had been in the morning. There weren’t any cyclists on the road, which was a sign of the weather’s severity. I had to go to school in that?
My supervisor had instructed us beforehand to call our schools during times of inclement weather to see if we’d need to go in. I called one of my English teachers on her cell phone. “There’s a typhoon?” I asked her, hoping she’d excuse me from going to school. No such luck. “Yes,” she said cheerfully. There’s a typhoon. The students don’t have to go to school today. But the teachers have to go.”
“So ... I have to go to school,” I said slowly, trying to keep it from sounding like a question. “I will ... bike ... to school. I won’t ... stay home.” I kept trying to give her opportunities to disagree with me. Her reply: “Yes! Please take care. If you want to stay home, you have to take a vacation day.” I told her haltingly, “So ... I will see you soon ... ” No disagreement. My shoulders drooped as I stared outside at the water spraying across my windows. She had to be kidding. People had DIED in that typhoon!
Given that, my next strategy was to keep asking people until someone told me I could stay home. I called my supervisor, both her cell phone and work number. Of course, she wasn’t available. No one was at the office. That’s because there was a typhoon! Finally, I did what I should have done in the beginning: I called my school.
The woman who answered said the vice principal, who I asked her, was in a meeting. The English teacher who usually handles school affairs for me wasn’t in yet. The lady handed the phone over to another English teacher. His English isn’t so great but he’s a nice man. He said I didn’t have to come in. Success! I thanked him and told him to notify the other English teacher of the change.
The rain lasted throughout the day and didn’t recede until the late afternoon. I called my sister. While I was talking to her, the apartment started to shake. I started to do that hyperventilating thing that I do when mysterious acts happen, like when something brushes against my leg in the water at the beach. My sister thought I’d seen a robber or a ghost, hahaha. I told her no, I’d felt a tremor.
It was the THIRD tremor I’d felt in three days. There were TWO on Sunday. The newspaper the next day reported two earthquakes that had caused some damage as well as spawned some tsunamis and that it was odd they’d happened so close together. Seismologists were predicting that the earthquakes might mean we were in for THE BIG ONE sometime soon. I live in an insane place.
Friday, Sept. 10, 2004 — Cooking at Chanda’s
Chanda invited me, Sally and Sally’s boyfriend John, plus a new JET, Kelly, over for dinner. I hopped a train right after school and arrived at her town 40 minutes later at 5:30 p.m. Since the others weren’t arriving until later, Chanda and I set about getting dinner ready.
As you already know, my culinary skills leave much to be desired. But I’m actually pretty proud of what I accomplished that night. Chanda had planned a meal of fondue and, for dessert, banana fritters. She’d actually promised me strawberry shortcake because I mentioned not thinking I’d ever had any but it turned out there weren’t any strawberries to be found at the grocery store. And she remembered my exceeding fondness for banana fritters from Vietnam, so she picked the next best thing.
While she cooked the chicken and steamed the vegetables, she had me prepare the salad and some of the other foods we’d be eating with the fondue. This forced me to ask questions the likes of, “So ... I’m supposed to take the skin OFF the avocado, right ... ?” I feel comfortable doing a lot of domestic things but cooking is not one of them. Nevertheless, the salad turned out okay (although Chanda made me take the avocado out, ultimately, because she said it was too old and hard, even though it tasted fine to me ...) and the fondue was delicious.
Sally, John and Kelly arrived and we all sat down and helped ourselves to the cheesy goodness that is fondue. We ate it with potatoes, sweet potatoes, chicken, asparagus, bread and carrots. Yummy!
Then Chanda and I set about making the banana fritters. They turned out to be more like banana pancakes but they were still scrumptious nevertheless. She mixed up the batter and I fried them. Chanda made this gorgeous chocolate sauce to drizzle over the fritters by melting some chocolate pieces and adding milk and cream to the contents.
In addition to being an exceedingly good hostess, Chanda also keeps a lot of interesting things in her apartment. She has a bass guitar, which she plays, and recently acquired an acoustic guitar, which she wants to learn. I wasn’t much use either, but had fun messing around with the acoustic guitar. It’d been a while since I’d picked up my classical guitar. But, haha, we resolved to learn some songs so we form a girl band and play music together! I actually find this idea very motivating.
Sunday, Sept. 12, 2004 — Kokufu’s fall festival
Because I missed Kokufu’s bunka sai last year, I resolved to go this time. Their performances in the morning lasted even longer than Kamona’s — from about 8:45 a.m. to 1 p.m.! It was a little tough because it meant sitting in an un-air-conditioned gym with none of the windows open. The windows had been closed and the drapes closed so the gym would be dark and spotlights could be used. Halfway through during a break, I went to the teachers’ room to get some water to make sure I didn’t get dehydrated just from sitting in the stuffy, warm gym.
There were the usual skits and songs and dances, although Kokufu’s was more like a talent show. Sometimes entire classes performed and other times, smaller groups of students. A student band played. I danced Awa Odori with a first-year class and the special needs class. They sprung the request that I dance with them on me that morning, but I figured I didn’t have much to lose. My Awa Odori costume kept coming open in front and even though it didn’t worry me — I had a shirt on beneath — the teachers kept tugging it closed. They would mutter beneath their breath. The only word I caught was “hadaka,” or “naked,” which I learned back in February at the Naked Man Festival. ;-)
Afterwards, I visited the classrooms. I noticed a lot more parents around. The PTA was having some sort of market, selling stuff off. But I’m always so conscious about collecting stuff and then having to figure out how to get it back home when I move back, that I didn’t get anything.
Monday, Sept. 13, 2004 — Creative writing
I team-taught a third-year class today. They were studying profiles. The teacher had asked me if I had any ideas for the lesson. Usually this means coming up with some sort of game to reinforce what they learned. I’m okay with coming up with games, especially with younger classes since they’re writing skills are very limited, but I realized: Why don’t I have them do some creative writing?
While I really liked this idea — if I had my way, I’d ALWAYS have the kids do creative writing because I think it’s a wonderful exercise and a personal favorite of mine — I worried if the kids would be up for it. Japanese kids rarely get to do creative things, aside from in art class. Usually, they’re just told what to do or there’s only one correct answer. I learned this when I taught several first-year classes earlier this month: The teacher asked the students to draw a picture, any picture, for the activity. Oh my gosh, I watched these kids really STRUGGLE to put something on paper. They had no idea what to do! Some stared blankly at their paper. Others looked in their books so they could COPY a picture. Only one boy blew me away: he draw a perfect rendition of Goku from Dragonball Z. But he was probably an exception, one of those kids who spends classes sketching rather than listening to the teacher.
Given these unencouraging past observations, I wondered if this creative writing idea would work. I like creative writing because there are no right or wrong answers. I decided to give it a shot. I’d have them write profiles and then correct their grammar afterward. To help inspire some creativity, I found three visually interesting pictures and posted them on the board. It's difficult to find high-resolution pictures on the Internet, so I took pictures of pictures in some of the American magazines I had at home, then printed out copies. They really raised eyebrows.
I told the students to write a profile about one of the people in the pictures. The students found the pictures quite odd, which generated interest. That made me happy.
Although it took some of the students a while to understand that they could use their imagination to wrote the profile, eventually most of them began to scratch out sentences. A lot of them were formula sentence structures they’d lifted from the lesson (which explains the similarity between a lot of the students’ profiles) but I appreciated that they made an effort to inject funny and interesting descriptions. I was really happy with how the lesson turned out.
You know what this means. I’m just gonna have to squeeze as much creative writing out of these kids as I can!
Thursday-Friday, Sept. 16-17, 2004 — Elementary school!
I spent two days at Kamona Elementary School and had SUCH a great time. Elementary kids ROCK. Their energy and enthusiasm are infectious. Plus, I was so fortunate as to be able to work with a teacher who really knew what she was doing — so much so, that she faxed me the lesson plan two weeks in advance. I didn’t have to plan ANYTHING. Even better, the school told one of its better English-speakers, a science teacher named Jiro, to help me out when I needed. Impressive! I gotta tell you, all that preparation and assistant is typically not normal when it comes to teaching at the elementary schools, so I felt really lucky.
Thursday morning I had three back-to-back classes in the morning. Horii-sensei, the teacher who’d planned the lesson for the sixth-graders had been thoughtful enough to move the classes to a big, empty room with air conditioning! Sweet. It made things so much more comfortable, especially considering the running around involved in her games. That’s what made both days so cool — being to get the kids up and running around and hearing them giggling. I typically don’t get that chance at junior high school.
On Friday, I taught three classes of fifth-grade students. I could tell the homeroom teachers of each classroom were quite nervous of having me there since they didn’t speak any English. But Jiro came to the rescue. He was quite anxious about teaching a subject that wasn’t his specialty but he was a natural. The kids loved him, and his flair for the dramatic. We played this self-introduction game where the kids got “new names” in the form of silly names like “Snow White” and “Cutey Honey” and they had to run around introducing their new identities.
One of the best parts of the two days was getting to eat lunch with the students. At first, they told me I’d be eating with the principal. Now, eating with the principal in Japan is about as fun as it would be back home as a student. When I seemed surprise at the news — I really was! — the teachers asked, “What do you want to do for lunch, then?” I told them I’d expected to eat with the students. They were like, “Oooohh, that’s a good idea!” So when lunch time came around the first day, a small hoard of sixth-graders came to the staff room to fetch me to their classroom.
Clutching my tray of food, I walked up the stairs to the third floor, where I was met by a huge milling crowd of little people. Apparently a kid had found a snake indoors and pretty near every sixth-grader on the floor wanted to see it. But the student had been directed to release outside. So as he’s passing me, I’m cringing away from the snake writhing in his hand and the mass of children eagerly following him, trying to make sure I don’t lose hold of my tray and spill my lunch on any of them.
Lunch time was full of bright-eyed children, especially a group of girls eager to ask me a bunch of questions. Of course, the questions were in Japanese. I said a silent prayer of thanks to my Japanese teacher; my Japanese has been improving lately due to his help. To my immense satisfaction, I was able to answer most of their questions. I was pleased to find the kids throwing in what English words they knew when they were talking to me, and also how they slowed down their speech so I could make out the words. These were my future first-year junior high school students!
On Friday, some boys from a sixth-grade class were hanging out in the teacher’s room after lunch and they asked me to come check out their Awa Odori practice. The school was soon going to have its sports festival and the kids were practicing for the festival ceremony. Since I was finished with classes, I went to the gym and sat on the sidelines. Watching three classes of sixth-graders do Awa Odori was so funny. I knew that these kids have been doing Awa Odori since they would probably walk — it’s a really popular activity at the elementary-school level — but it was surprising to the diversity in skill.
You can totally tell the kids who probably practice with an actual Awa Odori group that performs during the dance festival. Their movements are fluid, precise, and confident. The ones that only do it at school looked like their were having waking seizures, they were so endearingly ungraceful. It made me feel a little better, hahaha, considering the disgraceful state of my own Awa Odori technique.
Saturday, Sept. 18, 2004 — Received in the mail
“Guide for Garbage Disposal in Tokushima City: This brochure has been prepared to instruct foreign residents living in Tokushima City on how to dispose of household garbage. Follow these rules and help keep Tokushima a clean and pleasant city.
Please separate the trash into eight categories: 1) Burnable trash 2) Nonburnable trash 3) Cans, Bottles, Plastic Bottles 4) Plastic bags and packages 5) Newspapers 6) Magazines, cardboards, Carton’s 7) Large garbage 8) Toxic garbage.”
Thursday, Sept. 23 — Movie afternoon
A holiday today, the autumnal equinox. One of the new Tokushima City JETs, Jenna, had planned a movie afternoon at her apartment, so I biked to her apartment. Jenna’s from California. About seven others came. It was a great afternoon to watch movies. It was raining on and off outside.
We watched Casablanca first. I’d never seen the movie until now. I just tend to think black-and-white movies will be boring. But Casablanca turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I get a lot more cultural references now that I’ve seen it, that’s for sure. And it was interesting to see Ingrid Bergman act — I could really see the looks and mannerisms she passed on to her daughter, Isabella Rosellini, who guest-starred on “Alias,” one of my favorite TV shows EVER. And Humphrey Bogart, who’d always looked vaguely unappealing to me, turned out to be quite a sympathetic character. It’s funny how he’s so much more compelling a character when he’s unhappy. It just seemed kind of unnatural to see him all happy and semi-smiling when he was having flashbacks in the movie.
I’m glad I had the chance to watch Casablanca with a group. It’s one of those movies I don’t think I ever would have watched on my own.
Hahaha, we balanced out Casablanca with Romeo Must Die, the Jet Li and Aaliyah (“She’s dead, right?” Jenna asked.) movie. From a classic to a hip-hop martial arts movie. I love it.
This past month I got kind of obsessed with the movie The Ring, specifically the American version. I don’t watch scary movies because I live alone and who wants to watch a scary movie and then have to go home to a silent, shadowy apartment?! Except M. Night Shyamalan movies. They’re acceptable. But The Ring had intrigued me for some time. I already knew the plotline; I’d sat my sister down one day and made her tell me everything that happens, if just to experience it second-hand.
The idea of possibly watching The Ring started to seriously plague me after my family came. I watched “Red Dragon” with my sister while my family was here. I was so excited I’d sat through a scary movie that I was like, “Maybe I SHOULD watch The Ring. Maybe I CAN do it!” I told Sally this, along with a host of other people, and these were their various reactions:
Sally: “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Amy: “Don’t be such a <obscenity>. Just watch it.”
Jenna: “It was the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.”
Satoshi: “It’s just a movie. Dawn of the Dead was scarier. It’s a zombie movie! Now that was <obscenity> scary.”
Miyata-sensei: “I watched Exorcist when I was 5 years old.”
My reply to people who pushed me to see The Ring: “I have a weak mental constitution!” I vacillated between watching it and not watching it for while. Sally volunteered to have a movie night at her place followed by a sleepover so I wouldn’t have to go home (to a dark apartment!) after watching the movie. That was comforting but the closer we got to it, but more uncertain I became.
Finally, I was decided by Sally, who ended up watching the movie with her boyfriend one night at home. She told me afterward: “While I watching it, I was thinking, ‘There’s no way Vivi can see this.’ You’ll be traumatized by it.” She was still a little jumpy about the movie herself. So that, was that. That’s what friends really ARE for!
Friday, Sept. 24, 2004 — Dinner among strangers
Earlier this month I’d gone to a Girl Scout event where several families of Girl Scouts in Tokushima were hosting the English equivalent of Girl Scout team leaders. Several college-age students from England who head up troops of “Girl Guides” came to Japan for an international exchange. One of my English teacher hosted two of the young women. There was a welcome party for a group of the Girl Guide leaders and my teacher invited me to come.
At this Girl Scout party, I chatted with Harue. Harue is an exhuberant Japanese college student who goes to school in Osaka. Her family lives in Tokushima in a shrine of sorts. I had really met Harue at calligraphy — her calligraphy teacher is my calligraphy teacher’s sister-in-law. Her family, too, was hosting some Girl Guide leaders. Harue taught the crowd of moms, young Girl Scouts and their brothers, and the Girl Guide leaders about capoeira at the Girl Scout party. She loves to dance and has studied capoeira at a dance studio near campus. Harue got all weepy at the end of the party. She said she was so happy I had come and gave me a full-on, draping hug. This was only the second time I’d seen her.
Anyways, I met a guy at the Girl Scout party who invited me to dinner with some of his friends. Abe was a friend of a friend — the school nurse at Kamona, Rumi. Apparently Abe and Rumi are tennis buddies and play all the time. They’d met at English school, which explained why their English was better than most.
Tonight was the dinner. I was a little nervous because it was the first time I’d gone out with a bunch of Japanese people my age. Plus, Abe had this slightly unnerving way of getting my attention when he wanted to say something to me. He’d just stare and patiently wait until I noticed he was staring at me before he said something.
We gathered at a popular meeting spot, ACTY 21, which is a building in the middle of the Sakaemachi/Akitamachi nightlife neighborhood. (Whenever say I went to Sakaemachi, Japanese people just assume I’ve been drinking because that’s where all the bars — as well as a bunch of restaurants — are located.) About 10 people in all came. We settled in a restaurant, Buono, where I’d spent the agonizing welcome party for the new Kamona English teachers in April. Except THIS time it was different. THIS time I actually KNEW a little Japanese. And oh, what a difference it made.
I originally was sitting between Hashimoto, a guy who worked at the prefectural office, and Harue. I was really impressed by the effort Hashimoto made to chat with me. He turned out to be a pretty sporty guy who liked soccer and “running marathons.” His English, considering he doesn’t need for his job, was pretty good. I also met Harue’s sister, Mitsue, who was a science major at Tokushima University. Her extracurricular activity was kyūdo, Japanese archery. Then there was Naoya, a 23-year-old public servant from Mikamo out west. His English was junior high-level and his demeanor kinda reminded me of my junior high boys, too. Not necessary a bad thing, but at first when I was talking to him, I kinda felt like was I was doing an interview test with him.
Considering everything, I felt the four-hour (yes, that’s right) dinner went quite well. It helped that Abe had brought along an electronic dictionary but most times we were able to make do and have substantial conversations. That’s pretty tough to do sometimes in even your OWN language, so I was quite proud of myself for how things turned out.
Saturday, Sept. 25, 2004 — Band concerts are universal
My students at Kokufu had invited me to their band concert today. I took the train for the first time to the school and headed to the gym. The band is impressively composed of the usual brass, woodwinds and percussion section, plus a pianist and some double basses. Band students are universally hard workers, I have come to realize. These kids drill and drill and then drill some more, just like my band friends from school back home.
The band was also joined by the school choir, too. They played pieces that sounded vaguely familiar but that I didn’t quite recognize, except an ensemble performance of “Yesterday.” Then there was this ceremony at the end that I didn’t understand that involved the exchanging of flowers between students and half the band members (most of whom are female) getting choked up and crying. But I had to beat a hasty retreat anyway to make it back in time for my Japanese lesson.
That evening, I went out with some friends for dinner. Yes, again, again in the same nightlife district. We went to the a new Italian restaurant with yummy food but extra-small portions. I handled the bill and when everyone had given me their money, we found ourselves with about $20 leftover. So we went to go get dessert at the bakery downstairs.
We just wanted to buy some pieces of cake and maybe have a drink but the waitress came by and said something to us about drinks and we thought maybe all of us were required to get a drink or maybe it was included with our dessert. No one really understood, we just ordered a drink. When it was time to pay the tab, it turned out the drinks were separate (I still have no idea what exactly happened there) and bill came to $56 and change for eight people. I threw in the leftover money from dinner and quickly did the math in my head of how much everyone owed. Now, math is most definitely not my strong point so I wasn’t even sure what I told them was right. People were just thrusting money at me. Chanda threw in some extra. I poured it all in the money tray for the cashier to count. I had no idea how much money I’d received and figured we’d probably need more.
But when the lady counted it up it came to, MIRACULOUSLY, $57 — exactly what we needed!
Now that’s SWEET.
Monday, Sept. 27, 2004 — I need to practice bowling
Went bowling in the Japan for the first time ever this evening. Apparently the Tokushima JETs are having some west-side/south-side/city competition. Those basically are the three regions we’re broken into. The city JETs had a practice at our local bowling lanes tonight.
I went to the counter to get my shoes and the employees pointed vaguely to the left side of the counter. When I went to investigate, I discovered that the shoes are dispensed through VENDING MACHINES. You slip in two 100-yen coins into the machine with your size shoes and VOILA! Out they come! Wow. Now I’ve really seen it all. Bowling-shoe vending machines.
I played two games and the highest I got was an 80. Didn’t come NEAR a 100. Lots of gutter balls. At least I bowled with a better weight than the last time I tried, when I ended up with sore wrists.
Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2004 — Newspaper exercise
Sometimes, I want to slink into the shadows because what we do in class is so deathly boring, it’s a wonder I don’t make anyone comatose. Other times, I really have to pat myself on the back. This was one of those times.
Negami-sensei, who teaches the second-year students at Kokufu, had asked me to come up with some fun games for the kids to play. This was my plan: first doing Red Light-Green Light, but with the alphabet on the board. You might think writing the alphabet might have been beneath second-year students, but you’d be surprised it proved still proved a challenge to some of them. I know if I had to do the Japanese alphabet, I’d probably falter under pressure, too. When we played it, some kids blazed through it and others really had to put a lot of thought into it. Even those who found the exercise easy sometimes missed a letter or two.
But the BEST idea took up most of the class: I took my trusty English-language newspaper and photocopied an excerpt from two news stories, two sports stories and then also copied two comic strips. I blew up the excerpts so the print size wouldn’t intimidate them. I put them all on one sheet of paper and prayed the students wouldn’t receive it with cries of “Muri!” which means “Unreasonable!” and is basically used in situations when you want to say, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
To my immense pleasure, the kids took it quite well, usually with only mutterings of “What’s this?” in Japanese. Some even tried to read the articles, especially when “New York Yankees” caught their eye. The crux of this activity: scanning for specific words. I’d write a word or two on the board and they had to find each appearance of those words in a designated article or strip. For example, I told the kids to look for the word “boy” in a an article about a kidnapping and told them the word was in there nine times. Teams were to send the first person to finish in each team to the front, and you got points for your team based on what place you came in.
It was BEAUTIFUL.
When I set them to work, Negami-sensei and I were shocked — SHOCKED — by how incredibly QUIET the class had become. Not only were these kids really concentrating on the activity and, triumphs of triumphs, finding it interesting, but they were doing it in COMPLETE SILENCE. It was deafening. I’d never heard the second-years, typically the rowdiest of the three grades, that quiet.
They really took the activity seriously, scrambling to skim the articles as fast as they could, then bursting out of their seats. What was fabulous was this was an activity where the girls could excel, too. Typically in competitive activities the boys overpower the girls because of their sheer enthusiasm and loud mouths. But I was so happy to see the girls making an excellent showing with this activity.
I’m definitely gonna have to do this again. The newspaper to the rescue!
Wednesday, Sept. 29 — Typhoon No. 21: An homage to The Cider House Rules
In other parts of the world, they have hurricanes. When the swirling fury approaches, people evacuate. They run to the inland hills. They make haste to escape what rain-soaked damage may come their way. Here in Japan, we have typhoons. They do not have evacuations here because there is no where to run. There is only the island, and the island next to us, and the island after that.
Here in Japan, teachers still must go to work in inclement weather. There is no evacuation, so why not spend it at work? There are no students — the students get to stay home — so there is, essentially, no work. To keep you entertained, though, they turn on the news so you can see the utter havoc and destruction the typhoon is wreaking on Japan.