Rewinding the first week

It's really not possible for me to pick a single event out of my first real week of teaching that's worth writing about more than the rest, so I'll try (albeit rather ham-handedly) to lump it all together into one entry.
I teach junior high school, grades 1-3, which is the equivalent to American 7th - 9th grades. The ichinensei (first grade) know basically no English, unless they were lucky enough to have some meaningful* exposure to it before their former studies began. The ninensei (second grade) theoretically know enough to carry on a basic conversation, but in practice they have the confidence of a pygmy shrew, so don't count on it. The sannensei (third grade) are pretty fun; they seem to enjoy class participation a bit more than the rest. While it's possible that this is because they've developed enough English skills to have confidence in their abilities, I'm much more inclined to chalk it up as a freak accident.

*not American TV

Noteworthy experience number one would have to be during one of our "What is..." activities with the ichinensei. I first ask them a number of "What is..." questions which they repeat. The second time through, they answer the question instead of repeating me, but that's not the important part. One section includes several "What is your favorite..." questions (you hardcore geeks out there should see where this is heading), and one of my students handily earned the nickname of Tim by repeating one of my questions back to me as such: "WHAT!!...is your favorite color?"

Blue. No, yell-- Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

Next was skit time with the sannensei. They are working on memorizing a lengthy dialogue in which one visits the home of the other and they are enjoying some refreshments. Part of the memorization process is for the students, after practicing the transcript with their partners, to try to write out most of it w/o looking at the original. All was going well and good, 'cept for one guy in front who is called squid-boy for completely unrelated reasons.
Squid-boy speaks darned good English for a 15-year old who's been at this for 3 hours/week for a little over 2 years. He finished his writing very quickly...he made one teensy mistake, though, that nearly made me burst out laughing in class. The correct line in the dialogue was "Please help yourself." He had written "Pleasure yourself."
Once I had finished stifling my laughter, I pointed this out to him by just asking him to look at that section. He, without the slightest smirk or bat of an eyelash, asked me if there was a problem with his work. Did he seriously just make an unintentional masturbation joke? ...I think he may have.

And finally was an event from just this morning, one that still has me a bit...God, I don't know. Baffled? Stunned? Something like that.
One of the instructors works (well, worked) part-time here. He's an older guy, and I'd honestly not even had the chance to speak with him in the week or so that we've been working in the same school. During morning announcements, the vice-principal announced that due to some medical issues (back problems, if I understood correctly) this would be his last day. Suddenly the principal's secretary was hurtling down the middle of the room, armed with a bouquet of flowers that probably weighed more than her. She presented them, the guy said a few words about how he'll try to rest and get better, and then he was gone in a cloud of smoke. Well, very nearly. Did this guy just ninja-retire? I think he may have. Not the slightest sign of pomp or circumstance, just an enormous bouquet and a few words.
Afterward, all I could think over and over again was that I didn't even know his name.

Don't be disabled in Japan

Being disabled in Japan is a real sumbitch. I’ve never witnessed any outright rudeness or hostility toward those with disabilities, but the sort of passive-aggressive condescension that the disabled are subjected to in this country may very well be worse.

My school is not a particularly horrible example, but there have been a few incidents that have rather pissed me off. Amongst the 170 or so students at Kosaka Junior High, one is confined to a wheelchair. As best I can tell, his mental faculties are perfectly intact; he just can’t walk. Still, the only place left for him in every class is at the very back of the classroom. When one considers that the vast majority of lessons in a Japanese school take place lecture-style, with the instructor at the front and the students in neat rows, this is a serious disadvantage. I always walk amongst the students and teach from different areas of the classroom, but my class is only one of at least six that this kid is taking. I’ve even taken to randomly (well, somewhat…) rearranging the students to allow for different experiences in the same classroom, but I know that I’m the only one to do this.

Worse than this, though, was the special class I visited for the “mentally disabled.” There are presently only a few students in the school who qualify for this sort of special instruction, but I found the approach quite bothersome. The students are about 13 or 14 years old, and they may be a little slow to pick up on things but they’re certainly not severely handicapped. (In fact, the only handicap I observed in one girl there was that she was really, really, really short. Which, in Japan, means that she is about the size of a housecat. She’s a bright kid, though, and didn’t have any trouble with the English lessons I helped her with.) I found the treatment they receive to be subtly quite demeaning, with the “class” consisting entirely of childish games and such. The head instructor also played this obnoxious Sesame Street-esque CD for the entire 50 minutes of the class. Interacting with the kids was fun enough, but my thoughts were constantly interrupted by fantasies of me alone in a room with that CD player and a 12 gauge shotgun. Damn, it feels good to be a gangster…

I hold onto hope that the instructors of these classes will make an effort to respect the dignity of the students, but there’s not much more I can do. I’m only an observer when I show up, so my opinions are irrelevant. Moreover, I have no training (and frankly, no interest) in special ed., so I’m hardly qualified to make an issue of it. My gut instinct still says, though, that something just ain’t right.

"Sugitaru wa oyobazaru ga gotoshi." ―

―　"Too much is as bad as too little."

Today has convinced me that when we talk about it raining cats, dogs, pitchforks, anvils, or whatever in Minnesota, we don't have a damn clue what we're talking about. This country skips straight past that shit and pours giraffes, African elephants, tractors, and entire fucking forges on its hapless citizens. And yet somehow, through some sort of weird genetic accident, Kosaka Junior High's baseball team is still able to practice in this weather. The logistics of this totally escape me...I’m fair certain I would need gills just to survive a walk to my apartment right now.

In other news, I've begun something that resembles a productive work day. So far it's just preparatory work for classes that begin on Friday, but it ain't nothin' at least. I get an entire period with each of my classes just to introduce myself and basically torment them in any way I see fit. It's been complicated so far, as for my ruse to work I need the students to all believe that I don't speak a word of Japanese. “Well, surely that can't be hard,” you say. “After all, it's summer break. What student in their right mind would actually be at school?”
...Har. Har, har. This ain't grandpa's old-school American summer-vacation-is-the-time-for-growing-fat-and-forgetting　everything-we've-learned type of educational institution, no siree. Every student is required to take part in an after-school club, and as best I can tell, they all practice every day. Yes, weekends and vacations, too. And these kids are 12-15 years old. I imagine what it'll be like for them when they’re mature enough to survive real work, and it's no wonder to me that this country invented the ninja. Flip out and kill shit, indeed.

And finally, the first of my two official welcoming parties is tonight. This one is being held by the city's Board of Education, where my direct supervisor works and where I reported to for my first few weeks here. The head manager guy (not sure of his official title, but he's a step below the area's superintendent), a hilarious little bald guy who's taken great pleasure in showing me around Kosaka so far, stopped by my school on some business today, and reminded me of the event tonight. In and of itself this is perfectly cool, but he had a wicked gleam in his eye that made me think long and hard about his particular brand of humor.

...I do believe that evil bastard intends to get me quite drunk.

Japan is not America

Well, duh. Living here, though, it's the little things I notice, the kind of stuff that doesn't exactly leap off of cnn.com and into your living room.
Take hot water, for example. A device called a tempering valve is used on hot water heaters to mix enough cold water with the hot from the heater to keep the outgoing water temperature fixed, often set to 50°C (122°F) in the U.S. I'm not sure if this is just industry standard, or if it is regulated by law to keep our lawsuit-thirsty country from scalding ourselves and subsequently suing water heater companies into the ground, but it's the case either way.
Japan doesn't quite roll that way...if you turn on the hot water tap, the resulting output is really fucking stupid hot. I kid you not, I had a first degree burn on my hand from a drop of water that splashed from the sink onto my skin. I couldn't even run my razor under hot water and touch it to my face to shave in the morning; I had to turn on the cold tap just as strong as the hot to make that basic everyday activity manageable.
Moral of the story? Don't mess with Japanese plumbing, or you will be punished.

Here's another one for ya - Japan doesn't seem to believe in clothes dryers. Everyone hangs their clothes out to dry, whether they live in a sprawling country estate or an apartment the size of a shoebox. This has resulted in a disturbing national pastime, the stealing of womens' underwear. As if it wasn't enough to sell used schoolgirl panties in vending machines...
Trust me, I really wish I was making that one up.

Swords

Holy shit, I am giddy. In pain, but giddy. Take a moment to get all of the crude sex jokes out of your system...okay, now I'll tell you what actually happened.

Before arriving in Japan, I had heard from Andrew, the local CIR (coordinator for international relations), that the town's dentist was into iaido and I'd probably be asked if I wanted lessons. Sure, sounds cool. Swords hadn't really been my thing in previous martial arts training, but why not? Good a time as any for changes in one's lifestyle.

So, one of my coworker/supervisor people took me to meet this guy maybe a week or so ago. We met him at his dental clinic, and he brought us into his office, poured tea, and wasted no time getting right to it:

Him: So, I hear you're interested in iaido. When do you want to start? How's this weekend?
Me: Bwuh? Um, sure...I have hakama but I don't have a blade I can use...
Him: No prob, you can use one of mine. I'll lend it to you so you can practice at home.
Me: ...?!!

So, I now have in my apartment a several hundred dollar sword, and parts of me I didn't know I had still ache. We probably trained for about 9 hours this weekend, and he's said that he'll train me for free (!). He said as long as I'm serious about it I can come to his dojo (which is right next to his big, beautiful home up in the hills) and train every week.

Allow me to channel Keanu Reeves for a moment...Whoa.

Work, or lack thereof

I'm a bit embarrassed that I'm actually getting paid right now. The first few days of "work" here consisted of meeting all sorts of people around Kosaka, doing the diplomacy dance, opening a bank account, and other necessities like that, but...wait a tic...I get to do this during work hours? Without taking vacation time? And you'll ferry me around town in the city-owned car and help me with everything? Heh heh. This ain't right, but it still puts a teensy smile on my face.

Now that most of the prerequisites to a comfortable life here have been taken care of, work is, well...*ahem* I show up. I study Japanese, write in my blog, read e-mail, find other ways to keep myself entertained for 8 hours, and then go home. Oh, and there's a 45 minute break from these rigors for lunch. Every now and then there'll actually be some stimulating conversation with a coworker, but they all seem to keep busy most of the time. Thank God, Vishnu, Krishna, Buddha, Amaterasu, Jehovah, and possibly even Yahweh (plus anyone else who's listening) that this won't continue much longer, because I'm seriously considering sharpening some bamboo twigs and giving myself a tattoo, just to fill the time. Starting on the 20th, though, I actually report to the junior high school instead of the city office I'm presently at, and then I'll be able to get to know the people I'll be teaching with, along with preparing lesson plans, etc. And I'll have a desk of my own that I can decorate in suitable gaijin fashion. Suggestions, anyone?

In the Beginning...

I hope not too many people have been checking this in recent days and wondering if I’d abandoned the idea entirely. No, I’m here! Busy as hell, but now I finally have some time (and a ‘net connection I can pillage) so some of what I’ve written can be immortalized on teh interwebs.

First, a quick introduction, to set the scene. At the end of July this year, I moved to Kosaka, Japan, to participate in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. I live in a teeny mountain town (~7,000 people, and that’s really small for Japan) that doesn’t see a single rail of Japan’s much-lauded mass transit, and until I get a car in a few weeks, I ain’t goin’ far. I will be teaching English at Kosaka Junior High (this is grades 7, 8, and 9 over here), and occasionally visiting Nanataki, Towadako, and Kosaka Elementary Schools to assist with introductory lessons to foreign cultures.

This is a complete and utter departure from the sort of life this city-boy is used to, and I think it will be great for me.

When everyone on the program (1500 or so people) arrived, we spend the first few days getting wined and dined (ok, more so the latter than the former) at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku, Tokyo while we suffered through endless ceremonies and seminars, and bonded over way more beer than can possibly be healthy. None of that is too exciting when reproduced in text, though, so I’ll fast-forward to my actual home, now that I’m here.

Kosaka’s biggest draw is its natural beauty, which it has in abundance. I eagerly await getting my bike here so I can properly explore a little more of it. Within a few days of my arrival was the Tanabata Festival, a yearly event in which different districts of the town build and push around these huge floats with drums mounted in them, and have a sort of drum-off whenever they run into each other. We were the Shin-Hana district, and we had a ton of people in our group, including 5 (count ‘em, 5!) foreigners. Not too shabby, considering that I’m one of two who actually live in Kosaka. The other guys were former participants of the JET Program (henceforth abbreviated to JETs) who used to live in Kosaka, and came all the way from Tokyo for this. As a picture’s still worth a thousand words, I’ll stop typing and refer you to the electronically captured image above...