HILARITY: spoilt child 83

Wow. My time here is almost up. In approximately 6 weeks I'll be heading back to the United States. As you can imagine, I'm anticipating this a lot, but I know that I'll also miss things about this place, as weird as it can be. I won't miss how expensive things are, thouggh, or my complete lack of understanding about anything around me. That's right - despite being here for almost 6 months, my grasp on Japanese is tenuous at best. At least I'm not alone; while some of my friends have picked up the language well, others are as confused by the language as I.

The weather's changing. It's not as bloody cold as it has been; sometimes I can even venture outside with a t-shirt on. However, Japanese weather has kept things unpleasant by becoming horribly windy. Like, super-windy. You know those days when you're driving along and the wind's so bad you can even feel your car staggering under it? Yeah, that's the kind of wind I've been biking to work against every morning. Apparently spring is the windy season!

Ah, springtime - when a young Japanese schoolboy's thoughts turn to his ALT's genitals. You wouldn't believe the amount of gropings I've had to dodge, both front and back. There's been one "kancho" attempt from an elementary school (and if you don't know what kancho is, feel glad), but the junior high boys are the biggest offenders... and they're grabbers. They have learned a few words in that direction as well. "BIG PINISS" is one of their favorite phrases. (I don't really want to correct their pronunciation, when it's already so funny.) I won't even go into their attempts to pronounce certain parts of the female anatomy. One student told me that he liked "six." I had to stifle a laugh and agreed with him that it was a very good number.

Not all of the students are that bad, though. Most of the female students are very well-behaved, if a little too chatty. The elementary school kids have been a lot of fun to work with, mostly because I get to act like a big goof around them. Also, the special ed kid I mentioned last time is cool, even if he never leaves me alone. As some of you might have noticed from my facebook pics, I've been growing a beard for the last 2 months. It's pretty great. Said special ed student does not care for it, as shown by his fretting and rapid-fire Japanese while he mimes shaving. He doesn't speak English, nor does he want to. However, my lack of knowledge of Japanese doesn't deter him from speaking to me all the time. He comes by 3 or 4 times a day and talks to me, despite the fact that neither of us understands what the other is saying. I've decided to make a deal with him: if he can learn enough English to introduce himself to my friends when they visit the school (only about 2 1/2 weeks away!) I will shave my mountain man beard.

I heard stories before I left of people being stationed in super-rural towns where old men pee in broad daylight into the drainage ditches on the side of the road. "Haha," I laughed nervously. When I got to Kitakawabe, I didn't see any of that, despite there being plentiful drainage ditches on the sides of the road. "Whew," I sighed with relief. Guess what I saw the other day? At noon. On the busiest road in Kitakawabe. Not just one. Two. One on the way to the grocery store, one on the way back. Different people. What.

In late January, I caught a pretty bad strain of flu. It laid me low for the better part of a week, but I got better. Then, my computer decided to catch something, so about 90% of Vista isn't working. However, Firefox and iTunes still are, and honestly? That's all I'll need for the next 40 days or so.

I haven't traveled too far in Japan, but when I think about it, there doesn't seem to be anywhere else I want to go. I'm happy with what I've done and what I'm doing, and it'll definitely be something I'll remember for the rest of my life. There may be one more blog before I come back, there might not. I hope you guys have enjoyed reading these, I've definitely enjoyed writing them.

FRESH on Georgia Street

Yes, that was on some 4th grader’s hoodie. Hilarious! The Japanese like the word “Georgia,” I think – there’s also a coffee called Georgia. There’s also Boss Coffee, which is advertised by none other than Tommy Lee Jones. There are just pictures of him looking grizzled and deep in thought, accompanied by the company logo. Actually, a lot of stars seem to do ads here that they wouldn’t do in the U.S…. for example, SoftBank, one of the main cell phone companies here, has Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz in their ads, and Meg Ryan sells another kind of coffee. That’s one thing that Lost in Translation was right about. (Hell, it’s probably right about a lot of things – I bet when I watch it when I come home I’ll be like “yes. Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like.”)

Now that my time here is well over half-over, I’ve kind of started thinking of the time remaining in smaller bits and pieces – only so long until I do this, so long until I do that, until finally I’ll head home. Right now, it’s a little less than a month until I see Arcade Fire in Tokyo (so pumped about that, you have no idea) and about sixty days until Thomas and Lauren arrive. (Even more pumped about that.) And then, in approximately 11 weeks… my time here in Japan will be over. It’s kind of hard to believe.

We had a good 2-week winter break, during which I did… well… nothing. Really. I was thinking about going to Kyoto, but that ended up being too expensive. I ended up mostly going to Tokyo and Omiya with my friends. In Tokyo, I went to Harajuku, Shibuya, Asakusa, and the old haunt Akihabara. Asakusa was probably the most interesting; it had a big temple and a bunch of shops around that sold lots of cool old-Japanese stuff. I’ll definitely have to go back there again. (Also, there was a performing monkey on stilts. Too awesome. Mario has pictures, but I don’t think he’s put them up on facebook yet.) In Omiya… well, we found a British pub called The King George that serves good beer and great fish and chips (something I did not think existed) and has a great atmosphere and a cool owner. My British friend Tom is basically in love with the place, mostly because they have his favorite beer. We spent Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve there. And yes, I know how odd going to a British pub while in Japan sounds, but there’s definitely something nice about a place that’s owned and operated by someone who speaks your language. (Yes, the Japanese is still awful. However, I think I’ll be saying “sumimasen” instead of “excuse me” for the rest of my life. At one point at a concert I actually said it to a white girl.)

No real news from the school front. Between the last entry and this one, it has mostly just been winter break. There have been a few amusing incidents, though…

-One of the students took a Stitch doll, opened up the head, pulled out the stuffing, splashed red paint all over it, and hung it up on the wall. It looked like Stitch had grown a gigantic gory tumor the size of his head. When he pointed it out to me, I was caught so off guard that I immediately started cracking up. (Face it, it’s funny.) They LOVED that.

-There’s an elementary student who is basically the poster child for ADD. He’s always screaming, yelling, and running around, and you can tell it exhausts the poor teacher to keep that kid in check, much less the rest of the class. So, as I’m teaching animals to the class, I move back towards the kid’s seat and pull out the flash card with the picture of a monkey on it. “What’s this?” I ask the class, pointing at the kid’s head and showing the picture to everyone. “It’s a MONKEY!” the rest of the class said, cracking up. The kid himself loved it (hey, more attention!!), and the teacher loved it even more.

-As you folks might have noticed from my facebook picture, I’ve grown a beard. This has had immensely amusing results with most of my classes. A normal Japanese expression of surprise is a loud “Ehhhh?!” Believe me, I’ve incited plenty of “EHHH??????”s when I walk into a classroom with a full beard. The special ed student who’s decided that I am the most interesting person in the world is really freaked out about it, and keeps telling me I need to shave. No way, buddy. If it keeps you from sticking your fingers in my ears and trying to turn my computer off while I’m working, I’ll be a mountain man until March. (I do like the kid a great deal but he can get annoying pretty quickly.)

So, well into January with just two and a half months to go. Japan is fun, but I’m looking forward to getting home and seeing all of my friends and also my baby nephew! And my car… and my Wii…

Meri Kurisumasu

Well, it’s nearing Christmastime for everyone around the globe, and Japan’s no different! While they still put up the lights and give gifts and think about Santa, there are a few differences at least. Christmas is all in all a completely commercial holiday – less than 1% of the population is Christian, so that ‘birth of Jesus’ thing isn’t mentioned at all. It’s just a consumer-led holiday over here.

One thing that completely didn’t make any sense to anyone over here is: Americans don’t eat Christmas cakes! At all! What the heck!?!? Yes, here in Japan they sell Christmas cakes, which are basically cakes with white icing and strawberries on top. There’s a rush to buy them before Christmas, and after Christmas the unsold ones get tossed. Weird. Also, KFC (a pretty big chain over here) has convinced Japan that fried chicken dinners are the way to go on Christmas Eve. So, it’s also super-surprising that Americans don’t have fried chicken on Christmas Eve.

While most of us back home tend to see Christmas as a time to spend with family and friends, here it’s more of a romantic holiday, kind of like Valentine’s Day in the states. In a weird tie-in to the Christmas cakes, once a woman is past 25 and doesn’t have a boyfriend/husband, she’s considered an ‘old cake.’ (Just like if a cake’s around past December 25^th…)

I myself am not doing much on Christmas. (Well, besides feeling really homesick. I would have gone home but, honestly, a one-way ticket bought even a month in advance would have been about the cost of one month’s salary.) I have taught a few Christmas lessons and made my classes sing a few Christmas carols, and today I went to the kindergarten and dressed up as Santa. The costume was hilariously small on me and I wore the flimsiest beard ever but the kids loved it. They get cuter the tinier they get, I swear.

But in any case, the real reason for celebration around this time of year for me is two weeks off from work – the last week of December and the first week of January. Those are going to be quite welcome. I plan to relax and maybe travel around a bit in Kyoto, Tokyo and Omiya. Perhaps then I will have more stories to tell? The only entertainment I’ve been up to is last weekend, going to Kumagaya where my friends Erinn and Rebecca teach, and hitting the town. And by that I mean we did karaoke for hours and I sang Toto and David Bowie and Metallica and gosh it was fun.

Well, Merry Christmas to everyone out there! Hope your holidays are eventful and fun and safe. Sayonara!

(sidenote: my Japanese has not become any better. I’m terrible at this immersion thing.)

And We Saw Parade of Falling Stars

Hey everyone! I know I haven’t blogged in a while, but I’ve been busy with one thing or another. I took part in Nanowrimo this year, resulting in the worst 50,000 words known to man. I also started catching up on House and played EarthBound on an emulator. Life is exciting!

Actually, it truly isn’t. I have settled into a pretty regular routine of things. Work during the week, go to Tokyo on the weekend. Repeat. It’s just settling in on me that my time here is half-over – don’t know how to feel about that!

My camera is still being wonky, so no pictures for anyone. Sorry. But there will be a few stories here and there, mostly from school.

-I have one class on Mondays where one of the English teachers plays guitar and we all sing songs in English. These songs include a few Beatles classics (“Yesterday,” “Let it Be”), “Honesty” by Billy Joel, and… er… um… “My Heart Will Go On” and “Dancing Queen.” (Whatever, I like ABBA. Can’t say the same for Celine Dion.) So this past week we had a singing test, where students would come in groups of two or three and sing the song. I would judge them on their pronunciation of the lyrics – if they sounded like correct English. A lot of the girls did “My Heart Will Go On,” while pretty much all of the boys did “Honesty.” There were a couple of “Yesterday” fans, too. However, the highlight was clearly the last student, a boy who came in by himself and sang “My Heart Will Go On” with amazing gusto. His pronunciation was a little off and he was sort of tone-deaf, but I couldn’t NOT give him an A after that performance.

-One of my students asked me, “why are you gross?” :(

-One day a week I help out with the special education classes. (Actually it might be twice a week, one day last week I played badminton with some teachers and the special education students.) On Fridays I sit around and watch one of the students draw and maybe sometimes translate for him. This kid likes to come into the teachers’ room, speak Japanese really fast at me, and then get frustrated when I can’t answer in Japanese. So during class I get to watch him draw Mario getting in fights with this kid’s noisy neighbor or whoever he wants Mario to fight. Because this kid knows that Mario is awesome, and can do anything.

-I had dinner with a Japanese family a few weeks ago. It was pretty fun! The mother helps me out at one of the elementary schools, translating for me during lessons. The father was trying to learn English, as his company has a few American branches. He’s been to Kentucky and Tennessee. (Nashville, in fact.) He tried to out-drink me that night. I had to bike home, so he ended up winning. :(

-Some of my coworkers just gave me coffee-flavored Jell-O. I ate it to be polite. Yechh.

-What have I been doing in Tokyo? Well, not much; I visit Akihabara a lot (not an otaku, I promise!) and eating at this curry place that is out-of-this-world good. It’s seriously worth visiting Akihabara just for that. One time we visited a maid café in Akihabara (basically, a place where girls dress up in maid outfits and serve you food… my friend Tom was hilariously uncomfortable) and that was pretty interesting. The music was pretty generic Japanese pop except for one point when they started playing death metal. Huh?

-I’ve also been spending some time at Shinjuku and Shibuya, and sometimes Roppongi. Funny story: we went to Roppongi and found a restaurant where they’d prepare your food in front of you, and good food it was. Turns out that this is a pretty famous restaurant – they passed around a book of photos with celebrities like Stephen Spielberg, Tom Cruise, the cast of Lord of the Rings… yeah, after that we knew it was going to be expensive. About 70-80 dollars a head, altogether. We saved afterwards by not finding a place to stay for the night and huddling in Starbucks and McDonalds for warmth until the trains started up again. (Huddling in a McDonalds to hide from the cold in a foreign city? Flashbacks to Amsterdam…)

So yeah, sorry my life hasn’t been more exciting for those of you who choose to live vicariously through reading these things. I think over the Christmas – er, winter break – I’ll try and visit some places like Kyoto, Osaka, or Hokkaido. (It’s interesting how they treat Christmas here – pretty much totally commercial, since Christianity isn’t that big over here. Lots of lights and decorations anyway, though.) Maybe I’ll come back with crazy stories from there! Who knows? Later, y’all.

Imagine: Reality without Affection

If anyone is wondering, I generally take the titles of my blogs from t-shirts that I see in Japan. The above is written out super-girly and with glitter. It’s a bit weird!

So I’m paid and happy. Good times! The payday celebration with other ALTs in Shibuya was a lot of fun. Some carousing was involved! Amusing anecdote: one of the places we went was a hip-hop club. There was a large mural-type thing up on one wall of the United States, with each state showing a picture of a (even vaguely) hip-hop star. I didn’t recognize who was representing Georgia, but Snoop Dogg was Texas and Justin Timberlake was South Dakota.

One of the things that annoys me about living where no one speaks your language is that no one can see how darn witty I am. For example, I met a class of first-graders (oh gosh so cute) and one of the girls was named Riyo. I said “yeah, I bet you dance on the sand, too,” and it was lost on everyone, teachers included. Gah.

Speaking of the first graders, I’m starting to understand some of the questions they are asking. That’s right, folks! My Japanese is almost as good as a first grader’s!

Saturday was both a great day and a pretty rough day. My junior high school was having a music festival, which of course I had to attend. It was pretty neat, really – the ninth graders all did a song that was based off of Pachelbel’s Canon in D, which is basically my favorite musical piece of all time. (Probably because I’m not a cellist.) I don’t know, something about that song hits all the pleasure spots in the brain that music can hit. Also, I was dragged up on stage with the rest of the teachers to sing a song in Japanese. I can read some hiragana and can also read music, so I winged it. Fun!

However, the weather was absolutely terrible. Windy, rainy, and it got dark at about 4pm. Biking 2-3 miles in it was a bit of an ordeal. I found out later that it was a bit of a tropical storm – not quite typhoon level, but still terrible to bike in! Boy, some of that rain should have gone towards Georgia, eh?

And, even worse, I was waiting on some very important news! The night before, I found out that my sister’s water broke! So, as it was hard for the folks back home to send me news when it happened, I was spending every free moment I had checking my email to make sure no one back home had died. Luckily, I now know I have a nephew and he is ridic. Cute. It sure was frustrating at the time, though!

Today, Sunday, was a great deal better! I woke up to find that the tropical storm had left the world’s most beautiful weather. I headed out to Tokyo for a few hours and had a pretty good time. I stopped in Akihabara to pick up some electronics stuff and a new Nintendo DS game, then went to Ueno to check out Ueno Park.

Unfortunately, no one in Akihabara spoke enough English to help me find lithium batteries for my (admittedly old) digital camera.

Me: “Is this a LITHIUM battery?” (shows the clerk the package of batteries I was holding, along with the old depleted battery that helped the old camera work)

Clerk: “Yes.”

Me: “Can I use it for digital cameras?” (asking pointing to the wall stocked with digital cameras)

Clerk: “Yes.”

(I buy the batteries, put them in the camera, try to turn it on, of course it doesn’t work, and I give up. At least I have batteries for the tv remote, now!)

I’m pretty upset that my camera was not working in Ueno Park. There were some sights that even put Harajuku to shame. There was a street performer who stacked six chairs on top of four glass bottles on a table and was doing handstands on top of them, which was horribly impressive, and then he was approached by someone on stilts in some weird monster costume who gave him a high five. Also, there were men wearing suits and some sort of eyeball dome on their heads. Maybe inspired by The Residents? Also, a man dressed all in black, with black paint on his face and hands, holding up a black sheet around him so he was a solid wall of black walking around.

So yeah, next time I go there, I’ll hit the zoo as well, and maybe at that point I’ll have a working camera.

Hope everyone’s doing alright out there!

McSister

Well, hello again everyone! I haven’t blogged in a little while now. Mainly, that’s because nothing very interesting has happened. I’ve made a couple of trips to Tokyo that weren’t worth mentioning, and also stopped in Omiya, which is the biggest city in my prefecture – kind of like a half-sized Tokyo that’s half the distance away. I’ve been hanging out with ALTs in this region while in Omiya, and that’s fun too.

Honestly, though, things are starting to settle into a routine, and I don’t really do all that much that’s exciting. Maybe once I get my first check I can do some wild and crazy things – a bunch of the Heart School employees I met during orientation are planning exactly that on payday, in fact – but I haven’t had too much of a chance to cut loose recently. (I did recently get a care package sent from my parents, which included the first season of 30 Rock. Thanks mom and dad! 30 Rock is such a good show. If you haven’t heard me talking about it, you probably haven’t talked to me recently.)

I’m getting more settled in a ‘teacher’ role. During junior high hours, I basically sit at my desk and try to learn Japanese. (A doomed venture.) Then, I go up in front of classes and repeat things in English so that kids can hear a native speaker say it. It can be boring, but I try to goof around a little to get the kids to laugh, and that’s fun. Recently, some of the teachers have asked me to create some lessons for their classes. My favorite lesson was one I made recently, where I played Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and gave the students chopped-up lines of the lyrics, which they had to put into order. (Veterans of Mrs. Jackson’s class in Parkview might remember that exercise with a lovely song called “Aicha.”) When they were done with that, I talked about American superstitions and asked them about Japanese superstitions. I like when I get to be creative.

Elementary school classes are also kind of like that. I work at two elementary schools, and visit them each once a week. At one of them, I have to create the lessons beforehand, and at the other, I have to stick with the Heart School regimen of classroom lessons. Either way, it’s definitely more work than the junior high classes – I’m the head teacher in the class and I’m usually the only person who understands English.

Welllll, like I said – not much going on. I’ll leave you guys with some weird/funny things I’ve noticed about Japan…

-People slap each other on the back of the head, Three Stooges style. It’s hilarious. Students do it to other students, and sometimes teachers do it to students! I can’t help laughing. Then, the rest of the class laughs, because apparently my cracking up is hilarious.

-Stitch is huge. You know, of “Lilo And…” fame? You see that little dude everywhere in the Elementary and Jr High schools. There are keychains, pencil bags, patches on bookbags… I’d say 90% of kids in schools here have some sort of Stitch merchandise. It’s like, “Mickey who?”

-People wear face-masks if they’ve got a cough. Like, those masks you see doctors wearing during surgery. It’s weird to see little girls walk around school with those on… kind of creepy, as well…

-Maybe it’s just me being a cultural imperialist, but honestly, why do they have such a ridiculous writing system? In class, a teacher’ll write up something in English on the board, then write it in Japanese – which takes about 4 times as long as writing it in English. It’d just be easier to learn the English language!! Then again, I’m sure the brains of Japanese students get much more of a workout from learning thousands of characters instead of 26 letters, so maybe that’s why everyone thinks they’re smarter than we are.

Well, here’s hoping that everyone back home is doing alright – and thanks, everyone, for the birthday wishes! It was a pretty low-key birthday, but it was definitely all sorts of alright. Any birthday where Radiohead gives me an album is good by me.

Candy Toy, Kubrick, BE@RBRICK

Well, another week, another blog. Things are starting to settle into routine around Kitakawabe. There’s not too much that surprises me, now – except for students who get a little grabby. There are about three or four students who like to try and touch my chest. Note to anyone who thinks that Japanese students are way more well-behaved than American students: you are wrong. They can be as noisy and disruptive as any American class.

Again, nothing much happening in Kitakawabe these days. So this weekend, we went to Tokyo again! And you know what that means…

No, actually, we didn’t see this guy. (Alas.) However, thanks to Alison, I did end up seeing this guy:

And getting my copy of American Gods signed…

Unfortunately, I was in a rush to catch a train and couldn’t stop long enough to chat with Neil Gaiman about my dream casting for an American Gods movie. (That’s fortunate, though. He’d probably just roll his eyes.) One amusing thing that happened was that another American had come to the signing having only found out about it the afternoon of that day, so he didn’t have any of Neil Gaiman’s books. Instead, he had a Margaret Atwood book, which he gave to Neil to sign. Gaiman was like, “why am I signing this book?” and everyone laughed. He ended up signing it, “I didn’t write this. Sorry Margaret, Neil Gaiman.” The guy’s pure class. (Also, his voice sounds like Alan Rickman’s, which is just a cool voice to have.)

The next day we went out to the Tokyo Dome to see a game! We figured, hey, a Japanese baseball game must be fun. When I exited the station, imagine how surprised I was to see this:

Yeah, a random rollercoaster in the middle of Tokyo. A pretty serious one, too. Look at that first drop. Also, it goes through a building! Crazy! In fact, there was a whole mini-amusement park around the Tokyo Dome, called Tokyo Dome City. There was a ferris wheel, a log flume ride… however, we didn't go on any, because we decided to save our money for the game.

A few pictures outside the park:





And here's an outside shot of the stadium...

The team name is “Giants,” but it beats me how those are giants.

I think we were a bit too loud at the game, but "loud fan" in Japan is something altogether different than a loud fan in the USA.

Here’s a picture outside the Tokyo Dome, after the game was almost done:

So overall, trip to Tokyo #2: a success! However, I think this’ll be the last Tokyo visit for a while, at least until payday in October. We’re planning karaoke for the weekend after payday. ;)

I’ve been doing a bit more exploring of the area around Kitakawabe, with the help of Clint – the old ALT. The city on the other side of the river, Koga, is actually somewhat city-like, and not just a rural town like Kitakawabe. However, this can lead to occasional instances of getting lost. So far I’ve found the Koga post office. That’s about it.

Living here has its ups and downs, really. On one hand, the kids are great; you’ll never feel so much like a celebrity as when you’re seen outside of school. (“It’s Kyle-sensei!!!”) I've even started making some inside jokes with some of my students. None of them are REALLY terrible, except this one elementary school kid. But I see him maybe once or twice a month, so whatever on him.

On the other hand, aside from Clint, it’s hard to communicate with anyone around here, and most of my evenings are spent just chilling out at home, listening to music. It's kind of slow sometimes, and I'm glad I'm only here for 7 months. I'll just have to enjoy it while I'm here, right?