The inevitable cultural comparison post

*Erm, I thought I posted this...did anyone see it up here before now besides me? Anyway, here it is again, apparently because Blogger is retarded.*

As many of you are aware, I recently spent a little time in my home country, in the state of Minnesota. Returning to my hometown like that, most especially in the middle of (OK, toward the end of) my contract here, meant that for good or evil, I couldn't help but make comparisons all over the place.

Two problems arise here. First, even if one makes a point of sharing pros as well as cons, it's easy to come across as negative and pessimistic. The moment anything along the lines of, "I like it better over there because..." leaves your mouth, the vast majority of people who haven't been there are going to lose at least some interest in your words. Sure, it's the pinnacle of awesome in your mind to think about what you have and may still again experience abroad, but guess what. Your listeners probably can't relate, even if they make an earnest effort to do so.
Second, it's easy to forget that when you visit or return to your home country after many months away, you are seeing the world there much in the way a tourist would. You're probably not aware of all current events, and everything new that came to be while you were away is going to be exciting all at once!! likely prompting your friends and family there to raise an eyebrow if you giggle and gawk like a schoolgirl at everything that by now, they consider commonplace.
That said, here are my comparisons and observations I just spent the last two paragraphs naysaying :)

1. Driving on the right side of the road again does not suck as much as I expected. As you may be aware, countries in which one drives on the left side have the driver's seat on the opposite side, too, so regardless of where you are, the center line is still right next to you. It seems to only take a day or two to get used to it, whichever direction I am going.


2. On that topic, America has rude, asshole drivers that Japan lacks. Japan may still get the shit end of the stick, though, because here we have ignorant drivers. Sure, they exist in the U.S., too, but the quantity of them here and acts of absolutely mind-blowing stupidity that they commit have put me in a number of situations that could have ended quite a bit worse than they did.


3. Anime fans suck so much less here. Most Japanese people understand that the word "otaku" is a derogatory remark, much like "dipshit" or "psychopath" in English, and not a badge of honor to cling to with every ounce of your being. While I'm not a hardcore fan of the cosplaying subculture, I do also have to respect the fuckton of effort the j-folks put into designing all of these costumes by hand. You'll never see a cardboard Gundam mech here.
4. I still won't eat American McDeath, but Japanese McWhatever is actually palatable, if confusing at times. The stores are clean, the employees want you to be there (!!), and the food somehow isn't quite so gut-wrenching. I hear it's due to the Australian beef they use which is apparently higher quality; this may actually be a fair trade for the fact that Aussie cows fart enough to negatively effect the global ecology. And some of the crazy shit they try here...continue, if you dare (look closely and you can even see the bacon in there). I so wish I was kidding...

Or how about a shrimp patty with mushroom sauce... *gag*

And if this one doesn't make you weep for our future...

There's so much other crap out there, but I've been working on this post for too long and need to move on. Finé.

Nose pickery

I so wish I had brought my camera to class today, because one boy in the 2nd row from the front was going at his nose in such an industrious fashion that one could practically hear the drill bits whirring from a distance. I hope he didn't hurt himself. Both Sugar and Saint are out on business trips today, so I had this sannensei class to myself. Since last year, the sannensei classes have been divided into advanced and basic classes, a tactic that is at least in theory a great idea. The basic division moves through the textbook at a slower pace, covering the fundamental grammar points the kids need to learn in greater depth, and the upper division moves through at a faster pace and eventually delves into adventures like free conversation, one of the greatest acts of comedy ever visited upon this quiet mountain town.

Anyway, this class was the basic division of sannensei English, and they should ideally be covering material like the passive voice and present perfect tense, but in reality have trouble counting past ten. And yet, I'm obligated to stay more or less on track and teach them the prescribed grammar of the week...regardless of how each lesson builds on the previous one, and without said previous knowledge one can't be expected to be promoted much beyond the rank of CLUELESS.
It's not like there are security cameras in the classrooms, though, so on the rare occasions when I have a class to myself, I have a bit more freedom than usual. At first, I (foolishly) thought that a review of the grammar at work here would be a good idea, but these kids were radiating such profound disinterest that I nearly lapsed into a coma, right in the front of class.
OK, no grammar. Time for a little song and dance act. If they were going to view me as the bad guy here, I was determined to at least be a villain with personality, so I started picking on them. See, the lower division kids may rarely study English and they may be completely unable to hold a conversation, but they do still know more than they are willing to let on. It's getting them to admit that (both to themselves and to me) that can be akin to pulling teeth. With the grammar already up on the chalkboard, I had them fill in the blanks with words they knew to make a present perfect sentence. The trick with getting even the most basic crap like this to work, though, is to ignore no one. Single out the quiet kids, stare, tease, dance circles around them - anything to make them laugh and realize that it's acceptable to have a little fun here. Even the most apathetic always break, eventually.

Students slip through the cracks of society and become destined for futures of absolutely nothing here only because too many teachers let them get away with it. After all, what the hell kind of junior high school student is going to step up to the plate if nothing is expected of them? The ones who really make an effort to disappear, though, are ironically the ones who fail most spectacularly at avoiding my attention. There's one in particular that comes to mind - for the sake of this blog, we'll call her Clam, since she closes up just like the real thing whenever she's in a classroom desk. She's one of those whom I know to be perfectly socially capable, since I see her talk - usually quite animatedly - with her friends, and have also spoken with her in Japanese in between classes. Any time a lesson starts, though, that clamshell comes down and she closes up tighter than a...well, insert your favorite metaphor here.
I'm a little shocked that most teachers here are content to ignore a giant mollusk sitting in (on?) a desk; I think Clam's attempt to crawl into her shell makes her stand out quite obviously amongst a sea of uniformed, black-haired children. It's actually a little funny to watch, because as you approach her, her head instinctively lowers as she makes an intensive study of the pleats of her skirt. Back away, head comes up a bit. Forward - down again. Students here won't flat out disobey a direct instruction from a teacher, though, and my first one is always to make eye contact with me. So, the shell comes up eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever so slightly...she peeks out...giggles when I make strange faces at her, but usually lightens up a bit. It seems to have become a running joke - I'm aware she's trying to remain unnoticed, and she knows this. She still acts as though she is trying to avoid my attention, and makes a dramatic show of how much it pains her whenever I call on her. Anyway, I hope she's getting something out of this big pony show, because I'm not sure any other teacher here, no matter how young or liberal they are, would upset the "harmony of things" to mess around a bit and draw this girl out of her shell for even an hour.

Anyway, that's that. There is also the upper division, though, and managing their classes has been one of my favorite experiences here so far. Anyone who has worked as a teacher before (or even just tried to impart information to the apathetic) knows how much it sucks to struggle with unmotivated students - it's not that they're necessarily stupid, they just don't give a shit. This is the complete opposite. My upper division kids are the biggest reason I miss last year's sannensei, many of whom have gone on to the better high schools in this area. Sure, their skills are more developed because they actually study on their own from time to time, but more importantly is the fact that they're just fun to work with because they want to be there. Free conversation was something that Saint and I came up with for last year's class after they finished the prescribed, brain-numbing, gov't-stamped-and-approved New Horizon textbook that really should be burned on sight.
The process is simple enough - giving the students a topic and then leading them in some conversation activities that require them to speak entirely on their own instead of parroting cheesy dialogue from a textbook - but it was the result that often slew me. Some of the real choice ones (and yes, these all really did come from 14-year olds in free conversation in English without any assistance) were:

• "Don't pretend to know everything."
  
• "I like George Bush because he is strong and he has many chemical weapons."
• "Shut your face hole."
• I want to meet Arika Takarano because she is my goddess. All of her music is very good. I think she will become a religion."
• "When we got on the ship, I saw some dolphins. They were cute. I like their fins. Maybe they were delicious."
• "The person I want to meet is a secret because I'm embarrassed. He is very beautiful!"
• "I don't remember why I was an elementary school student. It was annoying."

Beyond that, there was something just priceless in seeing my students get into savage, cutthroat arguments in English whenever a difference of opinion came up. Considering that they barely knew more than a thousand vocabulary (at least, in theory) by the time they finished the 3rd year textbook, it was rather amusing to see what they managed to put together. To this date I still haven't quite nailed down the right adjective to describe the scene where a cute little uniformed Japanese schoolgirl points her finger at her classmate and shouts in heavily accented English, "Shut the fuck* up!"

Surreal, maybe?

*No, that wasn't one of the vocabulary in the textbook.

Updating my life

The word on the street is that two big events in my life have been decided recently, but since my streets are several thousand miles from most of yours, I'll write about it all here.

First, I will be visiting Minnesota in July. I will be there starting on July 2, and am definitely planning to attend CONvergence. The Romulan Consulate is returning for our 3rd year now, and will naturally be toting buckets of alcoholic beverages that make you barf blue. We will be gracing cabana room 109 from Thursday through Saturday night, and as always, we will have a better party than the Klingons. Those of you on Facebook should look for an ad for it there sometime soon.

The other big item is that I will not being staying in Japan for another year beyond this one. I've been accepted to the University of Hawaii Shidler College of Business's Japan-focused MBA program, a 21 month program that includes in the latter half a several month internship in Tokyo - here's to hoping that this leads to riches and fame (or at least the former), because the cost of tuition and living in Hawaii will probably make me cry.
I very much doubt that my schedule will allow me to return to Minnesota in between leaving Japan and moving to Hawaii, so I will do my best to see everyone at CON and in the week following.

Aside from those two snippets, there have been a few other current events here and there, so I'll try to hit them all in this post...

I may have mentioned from time to time that while living here, I've been training in the Japanese sword art of iaido under the town dentist here in Kosaka. Along with Mike and Tristen, two other English teaching friends of mine here, I tested for and earned my 1-kyu rank in Akita City this last weekend. For those unfamiliar with martial arts rankings, 1-kyu is the rank that comes before a first degree black belt. I hope to continue with this and take my first degree black belt test sometime around December, but that of course assumes that I'm able to find a good dojo in Hawaii. I hear that there are several, though, so that shouldn't be too much of a worry.
My only concern now is my knee, which has been misbehaving recently under the strain of one particular form that it doesn't care for. I'm working on resting and strengthening it now, so I anticipate being back up to full speed before long.

What else...my parents and sister visited Japan recently, so I got to babysit them for a couple weeks. The big surprise for me, though, was my supervisor's reaction to the whole affair. Now, Kosaka's a small town that doesn't exactly see scads of foreigners (or really, tourists from anywhere). This means that adding 3 to the current count more than doubled the gaijin population here, at least for a bit. I didn't quite expect this to be cause for trumpets and fanfare, but I was apparently wrong. When my supervisor caught word of this, he asked if it'd be OK if we have a "mini-mini-welcome party."　Sounded simple enough, and I was of course happy to give him the opportunity to have a little fun with the foreigners. He went on to arrange a catered dinner that at least 40 people showed up to, including a bunch of my coworkers, the superintendent, the chairperson of the Board of Education, KJH's principal, etc...
Probably the highlight was when my supervisor announced a surprise performance - he had arranged for 4 of my students who play taiko drums to do a brief show for us!
I know all four of them pretty well; they're some of my better current sannensei students. Even being giggly teenage girls, though, they managed to keep this whole thing a secret from me, so it was pretty cool to see them show up and do their thing. The little introduction speech they put together in English was cute, too. I thought I had some better pictures of their show, too, but somehow they just vanished like a fart in the wind...
Isn't technology a joy?

The weather here, after securely orbiting Planet Suck for quite some time, is now awesome and so I am biking every day I can. Lake Towada is my favorite for that so far, so here are a number of pictures from recent visits:

Mmm, nummy blue water...

Can you spot itty-bitty Tristen at the bottom of that cliffside descent?

If you think it says "Watch out for bears," you might be right.

Lake Towada Shrine. Mercifully, the gift shop is too far to the right to show up in this picture.

A tiny shrine on an island that's actually in and not alongside Lake Towada. They haven't put a gift shop here yet, but I'm sure plans are in the works.
Okay, in all fairness, the tourist traps are not as prevalent as I make them sound. And most of the stuff they sell is actually pretty cool - at least, assuming you didn't grow up alongside it.

Why do I have a picture of a dangling bug? I don't know. It was neat, and Japan has big bugs.

This was probably a lot cooler in person than it is in photograph, but I still feel compelled to post it. Underneath (and really, all around) one fountain at Towada Shrine, there was a great cacophony of very mysterious noises that we eventually realized was the croaking of an entire civilization of frogs and such. What you're seeing here is a direct shot underneath the fountain, as well as a few piles of frog eggs that appeared to be...quivering. I would have liked to get a better picture, but I couldn't see too well under there and didn't know if there was something waiting to eat my camera (or hand).

My byôkyû

Monday morning greeted me with a rather incapacitating headache, a particularly bothersome event since I almost never get sick. Monday is my busiest day of the week, with generally six classes on my schedule - that's every class period during the day, with no rest but lunch. There was no way this was going to happen. For any of you who are thinking, "Oh, you poor baby. You mean once a week you actually have to work the whole day??" I'd like to point out that a huge chunk of teaching is prep time, and without it we are fucked running. So, my head condition combined with the stupidly busy schedule staring me in the face led me to one conclusion: time to actually use one of my sick days.

And if that's all there was to this article, it would suck out loud. Fortunately this rather lame event gives me an opportunity to share another precious nugget of Japanese office culture, though, so I'll dive right into it. Byôkyû (病休), literally "sick vacation", is the name for leave granted to full-time workers in this country to theoretically keep them from dropping dead on the job. For the Japanese, it has about a snowball's chance in hell of ever actually getting used. "What's this?" you say. "Have those crazy Japanese actually evolved beyond common illnesses, now?"

Psssh, no, they're just masochists. This is not to say that they'll show up to work no matter their condition; days do come in which even the hardiest must cash in their chips and take a bit of a rest. That's not too unlike the rest of the world, as many of us prefer to get stuff done at work rather than doing nothing all day if at all possible, but here's the kicker - while J-folks will occasionally take a day off, they will almost never use their byôkyû. They'll instead use one of their normal paid time off days, as if accepting personal responsibility for their illness. And despite this idiocy, most will still not end up using all of their PTO. I may sound a bit judgmental here, but having worked in an office environment in the U.S. before coming here has led me to the belief that employees who don't know how to take a break end up going shit-nuts. My former employer even agreed with this opinion; it was their policy that supervisors strongly encourage those under them to use every PTO day they are granted in a year. They were even required to use some of it, and would be barred from entering the building if they didn't. It'll likely be a while before Japanese workplaces reach this level, though, because there is a certain cultural stigma here against not being present at work, even if there's not a damn thing to do. I've even had a number of days (plus I'm looking at two more in my immediate future) in which I am required to show up and exist in the teachers' office, but I have absolutely nothing on my schedule for the day, and no prep work to complete. Sigh. Somehow, though, the utter shame of not being seen at work chains the majority of Japanese to their desks when they could be doing something of measurable use instead.

I wish that's all there was to it, but this unwritten policy of never using the vacation days one is granted also sort of applies to me – or at least, they try to make it apply and I deliberately ignore the attempt and let them think that I don't quite understand. In all other ways I am totally in favor of blending in, playing by their rules, being a Roman whilst in Rome, etc. But when it comes to vacations, I strongly believe that the Japanese need to try just chilling out a bit, and they'll find themselves more productive in their active time and *gasp!* possibly even leading a happier lifestyle.

So, I was sick* one other time last year while working here, and I went through the appropriate procedure of letting the right people know that I wouldn't be in to work and all that. Feeling better the next day, I came into the office and went to take care of the necessary paperwork for using 1 day of my byôkyû ...turns out that CPB had already filled in the necessary document, marking my time away as PTO.

...I guess it's a plus that at least she didn't make me trace it that time. Anyway, I asked that the PTO day used up be changed to byôkyû and she told me that that would be impossible, since I did not visit the hospital during my time of illness. For a head cold. Can you hear me rolling my eyes?

*OK, ½ sick and ½ needing a Day Off To Preserve Brett's Mental Health. I consider that close enough, since I probably would have been violently ill without it.

Riiiiiight, so this time I was wise. I made an appointment and stopped by to see the doctor for my uncomfortable but entirely benign head condition. He did the standard sort of checking on throat, sinuses, and such and came to the shocking conclusion that I have a... wait for it, wait for it! ...head cold. It might even be accompanied by stress from overworking, he said. I was nearly sick all over his floor right then for reasons entirely unrelated to my stressy sinusy thing. And if any of the last paragraph or so was confusing, just reread it with enough sarcasm to coat most of Tokyo, and everything will make sense.
Now, here comes the weird part. He gave me not one, not two, but three(!) prescription medicines for this minor affliction. I dutifully filled them at the next-door pharmacy (the whole town would have known within minutes if I hadn't), but do not intend to put any of them to use, except for maybe the iodine gargle stuff. Let me say this once more, because I'm not sure even I believe it yet - I have three prescription medicines for a fucking head cold. I am so confused right now...

In to school the next day, and just like last time, CPB had filled in my paperwork for me, with PTO used for the day I had missed. The nasty part of this was that I had no more PTO that wasn't spoken for; I had signed the last of it away because I am planning a vacation of sorts in July. As CPB manages all of these records, she knew this. To state this clearly - my July plane ticket is bought and paid for. I have no more PTO to sacrifice on the Japanese Altar of Shame. I cannot shorten my vacation (even if I wanted to) to adapt to a draconic unwritten policy of suffering needlessly because people here are afraid of change.
Fortunately I was armed with appropriate countermeasures this time. I had a doctor's note! That's right, kids, I had to get a note from the doctor to prove that I had been to the hospital for my head cold, so I could use byôkyû without causing CPB to breathe fire. I may be missing something here, but by my recollection I work in a junior high school. I am not, in fact, still a junior high school student.
The look on CPB's face when I showed her my doctor's note and told her I'd be using byôkyû was just priceless. She stared at the note, looked at me with pleading eyes as if begging me to change my mind, and finally only said, "I see." Now, I'm not culturally ignorant; I know that this was the equivalent of an American having a screaming temper tantrum, but I had no intention of budging one millimeter. As much as I believe in the importance of international exchange and understanding, there are a few moments for me when common sense rears its ugly head. I am gaijin, hear me roar.

On a lighter note, I have some more office nicknames for you, as previously promised.

Captain Combover
He's the new music teacher, though I must admit that I had no idea what his role here was until just recently. He's a soft-spoken, short (for Japanese people), pretty much unremarkable man whom I'd guess to be in his 50s. He smokes occasionally, and has one of the most amazing combovers I have ever seen. This thing doesn't merely cover a little hairless spot, nay. It spans his bald pate, reaching like the clawing hand of a drowning man seeking air. You really need to see it to understand it. Sometimes when it's late in the day and the office is growing quiet, I think I can feel it staring at me...
Anyway, I had no idea what this guy or his chia pet's function here were until I saw my ninensei practicing for an upcoming festival in Kosaka that they will apparently perform at. They were doing the school song, but not with enough feeling, enough energy...so this tiny little smoker of a man with creepy hair belts out a tune to fill the entire damn gymnasium!

Waif
Waif is Giggles' replacement; Giggles got moved to a school in Odate in April. Waif, as you may have guessed, is skinny and very much gives me the impression that she might be knocked over by the next stiff wind that sweeps through here. She's fresh out of college and occasionally reminds me of a deer in headlights. She's new to the system and her English leaves something to be desired, so I really hope she breaks out of here and experiences the world, rather than falling into place like a good little cog in the great machine that really isn't teaching Japanese kids suitable English skills without foreign intervention.

Whisper
He replaced Sugar at the School in the Sky; Sugar took the place of Mrs. Freckles and now works at KJH. Whisper isn't a bad English teacher, but he desperately needs to eNUNciate his WORDS when SPEAKing JApanese or ENglish, so EVeryone can underSTAND him. I wish I had more to say here, but I've only taught with him a few times, and he was actually out on a business trip the last time I was at SitS, so I had the classes to myself (wheee!).

I'll save some more for next time, since they can be tacked so easily onto pretty much any post I put up here.

Electives, beatings, etc.

As you may have previously heard, there's a lot of pressure to succeed academically in Japan. This pressure doesn't just come from parents or teachers, but from fellow students as well. I've observed two sides to this (potentially 3-sided??) coin so far, one that's pretty brutal and nasty and one that's downright humorous.

I'll get the ugly one over with first, but with one caveat before I begin: Japan is not America. Not all of the laws are the same, and the customs are most certainly different. Actions that you may perceive as wrong, while not necessarily commonplace here, can happen and may not be dealt with as you might like. Furthermore, I don't necessarily support every action taken here, and am reporting it primarily because it could be interesting to you. That said (and now that I've illustrated just about every use of the potential form in English), try not to get up in arms over what you read. I don't like every aspect of the Japanese education system, but it does work - to an extent anyway - as evidenced by Japan's 1st world country status and successful economy that isn't on the verge of collapse like America's.

Now that I've caveated the living hell out of you, I'll get into my first topic here, ijime. Ijime, literally 'harassment' or 'bullying,' is typically used in a more specific context to refer to bullying that takes place at school, most often junior high and high school. Of course this sort of behavior is hardly limited to Japan; students all over the world find reasons everyday to torment and beat each other. In the U.S., the victims are most likely to be those perceived by their peers as physically or emotionally weak, and thus easy targets. In Japan, though, it is the unsuccessful students (academically or in club activities) who have traditionally been the targets of torment in the hallowed halls of learning. This is made particularly easy by a system that has relied on shame in the past to encourage greater effort, by making test scores and grades public knowledge to the student body. It is only recently that Japanese schools are turning away from this trend and keeping class marks between the teacher and the student in question.
Bullying also sometimes takes place here in an attempt by students to maintain some form of "chain of command." Japan has for centuries been a Father-Knows-Best society, and schools are no exception. Students are expected to obey teachers without question, and younger students are expected to show respect to their elders. I don't want to turn this into any kind of linguistics lesson so I'll just say quickly that it's very easy by one's word choice in Japanese to convey how much one respects another, so there is rarely a question in the intention behind one's words.

This (finally) leads into one of the observations I mentioned at the beginning of this entry. Officially, younger students are expected to respect more advanced students, but Japan is no different from any country when it comes to children - kids are still kids, they go through the same developmental stages as every other child, and they are often total bastards to each other. And teachers are hardly around to observe every transgression, even if they care to play judge, jury, and executioner in each petty squabble that arises. So naturally, students take issues of "discipline" into their own hands. The event that went down here was simple enough - a 1st year student failed to speak with (what was deemed as) proper respect to a 2nd year student, and said 2nd year student shoved the 1st year's head in a toilet. I learned of most of this when the 2nd year was hauled into the teachers' room - no, this or any sort of bullying isn't tolerated here and students who get caught are disciplined - by one of the more hard-line "scary" teachers here. It started with him giving the student a stern talking to, which gradually escalated in volume to capture the attention of everyone in the room. He stood up, continued the tirade, struck the student in the chest and then upside the back of his head, and then gave him a shove toward the door with a final "get the hell out of here" or some such.

...And, now what? A silence had settled over the room, but people went back to their business quickly enough. Beyond a few quiet questions of why that had happened, no one paid the issue much attention, and so I had to wonder, was I in a position to do so? Ultimately I decided that I was not, although it was a struggle. In the U.S., striking a student would most likely be a terminable offense for a teacher. We've already established, though, that that's not where I presently am. I put a lot of thought into what I personally felt about this incident for several days after the fact. I knew that the student suffered no significant injury except maybe to his pride and I also really had to wonder if he deserved it, based on his previous behavior. Neither Japanese custom nor the law here would provide me with any support, so I had to go with what I thought was morally right. Considering the extent to which the situation went (or rather, didn't go), I couldn't justify raising a stink over it. I'm confident that my reaction would have been different if the teacher had struck a female student, or if the student had suffered noticeable injuries, but as it stood...sigh. Moral dilemmas can be such a sumbitch.

On a happier note, and one that's also much easier to write about, my students have recently been given the freedom to inject a little personal choice into their class schedules. Once a week we now have a special time for 1-2 hours where students can take an elective class that is largely unrelated to their required class material, and includes options such as flower arrangement, Japanese drums, making solar panels, traditional cooking, and my new responsibility, English speaking.
Erm, but wait...isn't that what I teach every day here? Ah, no, not quite. I've previously told you of the PTM* and the power they wield here. This is no mere spark in the night, nay. I'm talking about the moment when Arthur first drew Excalibur from The Stone seasoned liberally with the Power of Greyskull.

*Parent Teacher Mafia

Anyway, the PTM dictates that only government-stamped-and-approved English be taught to their childrens' fragile little minds, and almighty God help the poor soul who deviates even one iota from that decree. The textbooks hardly emphasize speaking at all, though, and except in the case of a teacher personally enforcing speaking requirements, a student can cruise on through three years of junior high English by reading, writing, listening, and never actually speaking a single word of English.
So, I work in as many opportunities to have my students speak as I can. My fellow (Japanese) English teachers seem to understand and sympathize; they want to teach the kids as much functional, useful English as they can, too, but are bound by the same fetters I am, plus they can also be admonished for stepping out of line. In theory I can as well, but in practice most Japanese people out in the country who don't know us foreign types are afraid of us and won't initiate a conflict unless they have to.
End result is that I'm thrilled to have partial charge of an elective class in which students can focus more on speaking and speech techniques. It's a small class, too, so it's much easier to give personal attention to the students.

So, one day recently I was talking with a few of my kids who are in this elective class. Three of them are officially in their first year of learning English, but have studied previously outside of school (they went to a private school together) so they actually have a much better command of the language than their fellow ichinensei. I asked them if they wanted to use the break after lunch time once a week to go over some more difficult English and in general learn some more interesting stuff. One immediately chimed in "Yep!" and a second followed in suit. The third didn't answer and so I asked her again. To her friend she replied, "I think I'm gonna go play this time." Her friend then proceeded to slap the holy shit out of her, shouting and calling her lazy, etc. I nearly died laughing. I swear, the little sailor uniforms and the fact that they are like 4 feet tall makes it even funnier.
The nicknames of Slappy and Punching Bag have thus been put into regular use. Expect a few more next time, now that I've gotten to know all of my new coworkers...

Lost without 'er

Alas, I'm not (this time, at least) lamenting about the lack of beautiful women in northern Akita...nay, this post is more me reminiscing on how fucked I'd be without my car. See, I got to experience this for the last couple days, and it was exciting, to say the least.

It started with me returning from Tokyo, a long and arduous journey of about 5-6 hours by train and sometimes bus. To make a long story slightly shorter, I had taken a different route than I usually do to get to Tokyo, and so while I was able to get back home just fine, my car was parked at my friend's house in Aikawa, about an hour's drive away. My plan was to pick it up the following day.
Now, in most of Japan, the solution to this would be simple - take a train to Aikawa and drive my car back to Kosaka. Kosaka is so close to the ass-end of nowhere, though, that it doesn't have trains. Until just a few months ago we had a freight train that made a few stops here a day, and trust me, I would have seriously considered stealthily hitching a ride on it had it not already gone the way of the dodo. As it stood, though, my only apparent option was the (ludicrously overpriced ~$8 to a city 25km away!) bus.
It was evening, but the buses - *cough* according to the schedule, anyway - run to Odate (I was going to meet some friends there and hitch a ride back to Aikawa) as late as 7:something. I got on the last bus and rode along happily for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, content that the evening was going well so far. Aaaaaaaaand then the feces hit the fan. I was the only person on the bus as it pulled over at one of its stops, an onsen (hot spring) in between Kosaka and Odate.

Bus Driver: Yukisawa Onsen, final stop!
Me: *WTF* Erm, final stop?
BD: That's correct.
Me: Um, according to the schedule in Kosaka, this bus goes to Odate station.
BD: No sir, this bus goes back to Kosaka now.
Me: Okaaaay, ah, I don't have a car and I was going to meet some people in Odate this evening...
BD: Not to worry, Odate's not far. Just walk down this road (he points to the road the bus normally travels on) and you'll be there in no more than an hour.
Me: An hour.
BD: Yup.
Me: And you can't go as far as Odate, even the edge of the city.
BD: No, my route goes back to Kosaka now.
Me, thinking: What fucking route? There's no one riding, and it's the end of the night, AND the schedule in Kosaka lists this bus as going to Odate, just like every other one does!
Me: ...
Me, finally speaking: I see. An hour. Understood. I'll be off then.

I glared daggers at him, and a string of expletives that would have made Chevy Chase blush ran through my head...but "negotiating" with Japanese people who think they are just following the rules is less effective than trying to burn ice. I set out on my cross-country trek, hoping but not really believing I'd be in central Odate within the hour.

If this had been a wide city road with stoplights, sidewalks, and the like, this whole task would have been a cinch. The "if" at the beginning of that last sentence probably clued you in, though, that this was not the case. Nay, the Jukai Line between Kosaka and Odate is a winding 1-lane nightmare on which people of questionable driving skills (and sometimes, sobriety) travel at speeds that would make an SR-71 Blackbird green with envy. Oh, and it was night.
I tried to walk along the side of the road at first, but after being passed (and possibly almost killed) by a few vehicles, I decided against this method of travel and detoured to the now defunct railroad, along which my journey continued. The railroad more or less traveled alongside the car road, generally staying within 50 meters or so of it, so even if it went to a different ultimate destination I was confident that it would get me where I needed to be. Eventually. With the flashlight on my cell phone I was able to make steady progress. Technically this was illegal, walking along the railway, but there are really no cops around here and I wasn't so much in the mood for dying on someone's hood, so it seemed like a fine option.
It was, for the most part, except that surrounded by darkness and forest as I was, I did not realize that I was going up a slight but steady incline, until...
What you're seeing here is a sign that reads "Do Not Enter." It was affixed to a small barrier in the railroad which I could easily step over, and then...a rail bridge. Yes, the narrow kind that has no railings on either side and spans a gap. I really wish I could have gotten a good picture of this, but my camera-phone-thing is just not quite that awesome. Due to the darkness I couldn't ascertain the exact depth of said gap, but based on the treetops I saw below me, I gathered that falling off would be kind of lethal-ish. The other side was probably about 15 or 20 meters away. This left me with an interesting choice to make. Admit defeat, turn back, and walk all the way back to Kosaka? Or risk life and limb to accomplish a near-pointless goal that could easily be stalled one day and attempted again in a far safer fashion? The correct choice was obvious.
Mercifully, the bridge had an iron grate running over the wooden beams that criss-crossed the rails. I considered for a moment that until recently it had supported the weight of an entire diesel train engine on a daily basis. Yeah, it could probably handle my 80kg. Flashlight up, I proceeded into the gloom.
As I am not publishing this blog from the afterlife (or a hospital bed, for that matter), you can probably guess how it went. Just put one foot in front of the other foot, then put your foot down, down, down...
That was the last really exciting part of my journey. The rest involved walking, more walking, and some walking, too. I actually left the tracks when I arrived at a small village on the outskirts of Odate and used the roads there for a bit. 9pm, my scheduled time to meet with my peeps in Odate, was swiftly approaching, though, and I knew that I still had a ways to go. Crap. I honestly didn't expect my cell phone to get a signal out there, but miraculously it came through for me. I had paused at a rest stop - well, really just a parking lot with an outhouse and a few of Japan's ubiquitous vending machines - to get some refreshing and refueling
and was in the middle of a conversation with my friends, asking if they could come and pick me up, when a some random old guy appeared, practically out of nowhere (really, I think he may have just materialized from the mists lingering over the rice fields), and hesitantly asked me if I was having some trouble. We quickly established that I speak Japanese, and I gave him the short version of my evening's adventures. "Odate?" he asked. "That's no more than 10 minutes away. My car's right over here; let me give you a ride."
Turns out he saw me from his home at the edge of the aforementioned outskirt village and walked the block or so to the rest stop to see if I was lost. He didn't realize from a distance that I was a foreigner, and admitted that he was quite surprised when he got closer and realized that I was like four meters taller than him. He was kind enough to drop me off at a strip mall in Odate, and earned major Brownie Points (and a spare Minnesota post card I had in my bag) for his troubles.
...You know, I think I kind of like countries where people trust random strangers they meet at night not to knife them and steal everything they own.

Our phone has chickens

I kid you not. One of the phones in the teachers' office here occasionally cries out (or crows? caws? Cock-a-doodle-dos? I'm not really sure how to describe it) with a variety of animalistic noises that amount to one of the funniest mechanical failures I have seen in years. I've heard everything from a dull purr to a flat out rooster call, and I honestly wouldn't be shocked at this point if it teaches itself to roar like a lion.

Things have been...well, not dull around here recently, not exactly. I think “scattered” might be a word for it. I've had a number of small events and occurrences that strike me as worthy of mention at the time, but I have the short-term memory of a goldfish, so often I...hey, a keyboard! Where'd that come from...?

I've been terrible about updating this thing recently, and I know it. Every time I sit down and try to write, something somewhere somehow happens. It also doesn't help that this site is no longer accessible from work, thank you new site blocker. Sure, I can write entries in a word doc and post them from home later, but generating ideas is only made more difficult when I can't see what I've previously written.

So, what has happened in my life recently that matters? I last wrote about graduation, and I'm sad to see my sannensei gone, particularly since all the smart ones are now going to high school in neighboring cities, so pretty much no chance of me running into them. After graduation came spring break, and my first visit from home. Melissa and I bummed around this area for a bit, went to a lot of hot springs (this area is known for them) and then traveled south, passing through one of the more beautiful areas of Japan I've been to so far. Yes, here comes the photo album:

Here you are seeing Dewa Sanzan, three mountains sacred to Japan's Shinto faith. Well, you're not so much seeing the mountains per se, since the amount of snow remaining on the ground made two of them inaccessible, but the third one is a bit more tame, involving a walk through the forest and then a mere 2,446 steps to the summit. We completed that hike in a lazy, meandering two or three hours, though it supposedly only takes an hour if you don't dawdle. But why ever would we want to do that?

Damn hippie liberals...

I, too, long for the day when I might smoke a clean and tender heart. Wait, what??!

The blooming of sakura (cherry blossoms) in Japan has moved way beyond national pastime to something more like "frenzied obsession." Every year their blooming is calculated to the day in each region, and Japanese crowd the parks in hordes to stare, marvel, socialize, and often times drink themselves into hopeless oblivion. It's all in the name of living in harmony with nature, though, so who's to complain?

Now, don't get me wrong, they are pretty and all...but to me (and, I suspect, the majority of foreign guys here) it's really just an excuse to get stark raving drunk and flirt with Japanese women.

And back up north, where there is still tons of snow on the ground. On a little nature sojourn near the School in the Sky, a few of my elementary students discovered vines hanging from some of the trees. The vines were rather dead, but still strong enough to support them...your mileage may vary if you are not a 60 lb. Japanese child, though (see below).

Having experienced the beginning of a new school year, I now actually have quite a bit more to write about, but I'm going to leave that to the next post (which won't take a month to get written, I promise!). More important to get this one out there for now, so people stop bugging me about it.

There is wildlife in my tea!

*shrug* Seemed a better way to start this off than most of the other (cliché) thoughts I had. Said wildlife was actually a special occasion brew. Mornings normally are accompanied here by a cup of green tea from (you guessed it) Tea Lady, but as today is the ceremony of Kosaka Junior High School’s 61st graduating class, we get freaky tea. It was…unique, and not at all in a bad way. It was slightly salty when it first hit my lips, but it quickly faded into a light, almost-but-not-quite sweet aftertaste that made me ponder the meaning of existence for a good few seconds.

I had already been awake for a while by this point, as before coming to school I did some quick interpretation for the mayor because he had some foreign guests who were leaving that morning. So, arrive at school, drink the super tea, and before long the ceremony is under way. I’m not going to waste much space on this – if you’ve seen one graduation ceremony you’ve seen them all, and this one was not in the least bit different. Songs were sung, tears were cried, names were called, etc, etc. We had a few visiting dignitaries including the mayor (hey, long time no see!), the president of the Parent Teacher Mafi…*cough* Association¹, and some alumni who had gone on to lead exciting lives as salarymen…but nothing really worth pooping a brick over. One of them actually had an interesting factoid to share, though: when he graduated from KJH 45 years ago there were over 1000 students here, and his classroom had 55 people (about the size of today’s entire graduating class). This is actually hinting at a much deeper topic, but you’ll have to wait until a future post for that one. Trying to cover it here might result in me writing a four-page tangent.
¹If you work in the Japanese education system, the PTA owns your soul. They influence the school’s budget, the curriculum, and the length of rope you will hang yourself with if you fuck up. Do not defy them or you will be lucky to merely have your kneecaps shattered.

So, the ceremony was…ceremonial, the kids finished signing each others’ yearbooks, and my hand was about to cramp up and fall off. From the start I had been writing a few meaningful sentences to each kid who asked me to sign, and then when they started lining up in droves I of course couldn’t skimp and seem like I was playing favorites, so everyone got a few sentences. Everyone. Hands much more accustomed to typing than writing were not happy with me after that. The obligatory picture time followed, as kids poured out the front of the building to congratulate each other, shoot the shit, and throw each other (and some teachers) into the air.

Lunch was awesome. It being a Saturday we had no prepared school lunch, so we called in a box lunch strike and had these amazing bentos (that I really should have taken a picture of) airdropped to our immediate location. I <3 Japanese food.

After that, though, things got a little iffy, by which I mean complicated…by which I mean Japanese. All of us teachers and the principal gathered in the gymnasium again to hold a second graduation ceremony for one girl who couldn’t make it to the first one in the morning. Had she been sick? No. Did she have some unavoidable conflict or crisis? No. This took place because she is so incredibly shy that she cannot deal with appearing in front of a large group of people. This is actually somewhat common in Japan – at least compared to other countries – and there are some people in this country who literally have not left their homes in years because they suffer from this disorder. I don’t know how much research has been done on it, but I know that it is curable; I recall actually seeing some news about it recently in which one guy surmounted this hurdle by getting involved in the martial arts. Anyway, while it was certainly compassionate to hold a special ceremony to adapt to this girl’s difficulties, I had to wonder whether she should be graduating from a normal junior high school.
If you recall waaaaay back to the post called Compulsory English and you! you may remember how in Japan, everyone graduates. One need only show up on the first and last day of junior high school to walk away with a diploma. I personally remember this girl coming to class only once in my 7 months here, and even then I was asked not to call on her because this would “make her uncomfortable.” I know for a fact that my school is equipped to deal with special needs students, and my opinion of the special ed here has only improved with time. I also know the two special ed students, and she was not one of them. As best I can tell, this girl sat in her house and hid under a blanket for the last few years, and now she has a diploma. Sigh.

Most of the women (teachers) wore full dress kimono for the event, and so we had a little photo shoot afterwards to commemorate them getting all dolled up. Ms. Giggles was kind of funny; she was constantly adjusting and fretting over how her kimono (incidentally the least form-flattering garment on the planet) made her chest look small. She even shouted at one point something akin to, “Damn it, I’m Japanese! I already don’t have much to work with! Who thought up these stupid things anyway…”

I present to you here the ladies of KJH:
And really, what would this post be worth without a few photos of my graduating class on their final day? Ladies and gentlemen, the class of Heisei 20 (2008):
And another, this time celebrating outside:
And finally, in dress uniform (1/2 the bunch, anyway):

The beginning of the end

Today looked like it would be a dull end to a dreadfully boring week. The only class on the schedule for me was English, 1st period, and I quickly found out that there was no need for me to go – Saint would be passing back some recent tests and explaining the answers so there was nothing for me to do there. With that canceled, I now had nearly eight hours of jack and shit to do. Oh well, time to waste an hour or so on teh internets, right?

Wrong. This last week it turns out that we had some network wiring and stuff updated, and while they were putzing around with that the technicians also tightened the screws on the site blocker that had always been in place. As this is a place of work, websites with dating, violence, porn, or religious (go ahead and make the obvious joke about these two being related, if you must) themes were of course banned – one would expect this. I did not, however, count on Facebook [casual communication], foreign food/beer websites [adult indulgences], and even my friend’s airsoft site [weaponry] also getting the nix. M’eh, I guess Big Brother is going to be watching a little closer from now on. I still have my blog to work on, right?
Nope! That’s now a [message board]. Just for humor, I tried an actual message board, WotC’s Dungeons and Dragons forums, and thought I’d see what would happen. Seems it’s a [game in general], so no love there either. Sigh. My internet wanderings have been chopped off at the proverbial ankle. I still have my email (for now), but not much else.

Well, reading one of the e-books on my flashdrive or writing something were certainly options, but in all honestly I wasn’t in the mood to stare at a screen. Ms. Giggles was just as busy as me, having by this point already endured a rigorous hour of watching the students practice lining up for graduation over and over and over and OVER AND OVER! to the point of near complete mental breakdown.

Pardon the interjection here, but Elvis just gave me this year’s photo of all the teachers. We had it taken by a professional photographer maybe two months ago, and my God it’s bad. Like, laugh-out-loud-I’m-not-sure-I’ll-ever-take-myself-or-any-of-you-seriously-again bad. Here it is in digital format, but since you may not be able to see all the details, I’ll add a bit of description.
The "professional" photographer forgot to mention to me that my jacket was slipping a bit, so it looks like it's hanging off me like a cape. I'm the only one in the whole picture who's most definitely smiling, though I do count 3.8 hints of a smile scattered throughout. Finally, check out that row of tennis shoes in front, matched up impeccably with the suits and ties. Sexy, eh?

Anyway, Giggles and I needed a project, and how. We were on the verge of throwing random objects off the 4th floor balcony just to see which would hit the ground first. Let’s see, 1kg bag of rice and 2nd year textbook…ready…GO! Seriously, though, we were lucky to have both Saint and Elvis come to the rescue, or we may very well have done something illegal.

Elvis has really embraced having me here as his first full-time ALT, and so he had this idea of further internationalizing the school by putting up English translations of all the door signs at room entrances. Normally each room has a two-sided sign like this:

And he wanted to have one side display the room’s purpose in English. This wasn’t to be some half-assed whim, though; we needed signs that would stand the test of time and be around for future generations of uniformed little students to ignore or throw things at.

Out come the rulers, the laminator, the exact-o knives, and other such utensils of the trade. I surveyed the school and translated all of the signs into English, which was a harder task than one might expect. Japanese is one of those languages in which translation is never an exact science; it is so completely different from English that expressions that make perfect sense in Japanese are awkward at best when directly translated, so one has to be creative and really look into the use and meaning of a word before choosing an appropriate English substitute.
Take 被服室 (hifukushitsu) for example. This basically means “clothing room,” but what is a clothing room used for? Is it storage, or perhaps a changing room? I had to know what happened here so that I could make the translation of this place less ambiguous. In Japanese its use is obvious; this is where a sort of home economics class in which the making of clothing is taught. It’s not the only home ec-type class taught here, though, so we had to go with something a little bit more specific than that, while still fitting it on the display sign. We eventually settled on “Sewing Classroom,” which may not be perfect but was good enough for our less-than-exacting standards.

So, we finished with the printing and the laminating of the signs, and luckily this was all taking place on the day before graduation. This meant that the entire student body was in the gymnasium practicing for the ceremony, and I had the school to myself. I ran through the whole place, Mission Impossible-style, stealthily inserting all of the English signs in their appropriate places. The goal, of course, was to Englishify the entire school before the students finished and returned to their classrooms, so this way we teachers could deny everything. “What do you mean, new signs? They haven’t always been bilingual?” Many of my students are gullible enough to not pick up on the ruse, either. Yeah, we’re immature like that. It was a close call, but I slipped into the teachers’ room right as the kids got back.

That was our fabulous time-wasting activity for the day, but getting waaay back to the title of this post, it was also the final day for my sannensei students. The whole day, most especially wandering through the empty halls, was fraught with that feeling – what is that emotion called, that sense of everything coming to a conclusion? Not nostalgia…it’s somewhere between a wistful sadness and a sense of accomplishment and pride, I think. We’ll just leave it at mixed emotions. I really am proud of my sannensei; the majority of them worked hard for this and will have many wonderful memories of this time. I will miss their classes and I hope at least a few stay in contact with me. For better or for worse, tomorrow it all comes to an end.

A Marriage in the Family

I thought for way too long about how I wanted to start this one, but ultimately got sick of thinking and just started typing. This last weekend, not one but two of my coworkers got married - yes, to each other. If you'll take a moment to recall some of my previous nickname posts, the happy new couple are Ninja T of KJH and Closet Naughty of School in the Sky.

Ninja T is the Japanese teacher at KJH, and he's recently become my study aid, by no fault of his own. When there's nothing to do at work I sometimes study Japanese, and when I came across complicated material I used to default to asking my English-teaching coworkers about it. One day I was stumped by a particularly minute detail that I asked Mrs. Freckles about; she jokingly told me to leave her alone and ask the guy who teaches this kind of thing. It didn't take long for Ninja T to become my go-to guy for all such obscurities.

I've known Closet Naughty on a personal level for a while longer; she sits right next to me at SitS (sits...SitS?? oh nevermind, it was unintentional anyway) so we're always talking about this, that, or the other thing. I know a bit more about her and I knew that she had a boyfriend...I did not have a freaking clue that her guy worked with me until their marriage was announced! Granted, they work at separate schools and I pretty much only see each of them at work, but I still have no idea how this never came up even in passing. Ninja T seems to have shinobi-esque qualities beyond those of his table tennis game.

Anyway, on to the event itself. A Japanese wedding, much like an American one, is a two-part affair - the ceremony and the reception. In Japan, however, the ceremony is reserved for close friends and immediate family, and the reception is held separately.
The banquet hall it was held at is in Akita City a few hours away, but since so many of the guests were coming from the Kosaka/Kazuno area, there was a tour bus reserved for getting us there and back. The reception was an afternoon function, so the bus left in the morning and the ride there was pretty quiet - everyone had either fallen asleep or else was wishing they had not yet woken up. We arrived sometime after 11 and had at least an hour to kill before anything got started. This was when it dawned on me what rednecks some of my coworkers are. Yes, just like pretty much every other country, Japan has folk who lack knowledge of the finer points of sophistication. We were all slowly congregating in the lobby of the hotel where this banquet hall was located, and generally making small talk about how we were bored and had nothing to do. So, we sat around in our expensive suits and tried to look important for a bit, but it wasn't long before one of the teachers from SitS hefted his briefcase up, cracked it open, and started passing out cans of cheap beer to everyone.

...Picture, if you will, an elegantly decorated lobby, adorned with chairs worth more than your car and chandeliers worth more than your life. Small clusters of impeccably dressed guests are enjoying small talk on the latest trends and fashions; they are the very image of savoir faire. A uniformed maître d' passes, his practiced eye watching for any sign of guests' discontent.
Suddenly a mighty belch ripples across the room, and in the ensuing silence one can hear a pin drop. It is of course followed by a string of humble apologies, but the damage has been done and the scene has been set. I'm just finishing tuning up my banjo, but alas, the hoedown will have to wait. The bride and groom emerge from double doors at the far end of the room and begin their procession toward the entrance of the banquet hall.

Here they are, flanked by parents on either side. This is unfortunately the only decent picture I got of them in traditional Japanese wedding raiment. The Japanese wedding reception, as it currently stands, appears to borrow heavily from the American version most of us are accustomed to, but it does have a few unique points, as well. We sometimes say (mostly in jest) that the wedding is for the woman - it's her moment to look absolutely astounding and to bask in the adoration of friends and family. In Japan this is doubly (triply?) true, as it is customary for the bride to change gowns at least two times during the event and make a new grand entrance each time.

Here's the lovely bride in costume #2, next to their beast of a wedding cake. Yes, it really was bigger than her.

On to costume #3, as well as a wonderful idea on the part of the bride and groom. When they made their grand entrance this time around, the lights were first dimmed. From the start there had been an unlit candle on each table, and as they passed through the banquet hall they stopped at each table and lit the candle together.

It wouldn't be a proper wedding in any country if friends and family didn't get to devolve into clownish idiocy and have many laughs at the new couple's expense. Here, the bride and groom had to take turns drawing these big hanging scrolls out of a box; each one had a household chore written on it that the lucky winner would be responsible for for the rest of their married life. The two pictured have been claimed by the groom, and say "Bath tub cleaning" and "Taking in the laundry (after it has dried)." This one:
tested their respective knowledge of their new spouse. They were simultaneously asked a question about each other, starting with easy stuff like favorite color, and gradually getting more personal and invasive. They had to write their answers on separate whiteboards which were then displayed for everyone to laugh at. The part where they had to draw a caricature of each other was particularly rich.

And speaking of rich...this whole event, from the decor to the (amazing) meal we were served, reeked of costing a fortune. Either I'm way off in my calculations or someone tapped the Bank of Mommy and Daddy for this one - most especially considering that we got PRESENTS! on the way out, too. I'm not talking little bell-and-whistle souvenirs, either. Each guest got a gift bag which contained a designer chocolate cake and a gift catalog from which each person could select one item to have sent to them at a later date. I went with a pretty hardcore cooking knife.

The way home was inevitably peppered with alcohol consumption; after all, Japan has no open-bottle law, so long as the driver is sober. This was only the natural result of putting a bunch of Akita rednecks on a coach bus for three hours, with restroom breaks at convenience stores that sell liquor...

Ninja T, Closet Naughty - on the off chance that you ever read this, congratulations. I never would have guessed it until I saw the ceremony in person, but you two make an excellent couple. I look forward to much more teaching with each of you, not to mention a plethora of stupid banana jokes.