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.
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