Summa time

I’m going to break down past couple of weeks into two subsections: fun time and work time (although they overlap in a couple of places).

FUN TIME

I went to Tokyo for a few days at the end of July and met up with some friends. We went to Shinjuku, Odaiba, Shibuya, and Roppongi, and all in all it was a pretty sweet respite from slow country living that characterizes life in the D (Daishoji). I enjoy Tokyo, but this time it was hot. REALLY hot. In fact, after a day of walking around Odaiba I came as close as I ever have to passing out from dehydration. I probably spent like 2000 yen on vending machine drinks on that day alone.

I’ve taken up bike riding this summer, which has been a really effective outlet of stress and unused energy. Kaga has some really beautiful countryside—rolling fields of rice, beach paths, and mountain trails—all within easy access. I usually go home after work, change, and then hit the road while it’s still daylight. There are some woods I frequent that I swear could be the setting of Jurassic Park 4 (although God forbid that should ever happen) or Lord of the Rings: Rise of the Jungle Orcs. Sometimes I run into students or other people I know, but on tiny winding roads it’s pretty rare. I’ve been down some isolated narrow mountain paths where I’m almost positive the prehistoric inhabitants haven’t seen foreigners since Tom Cruise tried to modernize Japan back in the Meiji era.

Other than that, there’s been parties, karaoke, friendly get-togethers, and fire alarm fiascos.

WORK TIME

-In the second half of July, I went on an English retreat with a high school in Kanazawa to Hakusan. It was my first time working with high schoolers, and it was awesome! They actually have some English ability and would listen to directions and had decent senses of humour :D. We ended up doing lots of games, skits, an English proficiency exam practice test,

-Last week was quite busy—a rarity during summer vacation. On Tuesday I gave a conversational English seminar to the staff and faculty at my largest elementary school. Homeroom teachers by and large have no formal English language training beyond what they themselves learned in school, so for a lot of them the new English curriculum has come as a shock. Even more so considering that come next year, they’ll have to be teaching English solo cuz there aren’t enough foreign ALTs to go around. So we went over useful expressions, did some activities, drills, pronunciation practice, etc. They were almost exactly like my students—I looked around at one point and saw some 3rd grade teachers whining about how the principal was cheating at “Go Fish”.

-The following day I went to Daishoji’s local daycare center and did a presentation on Canada and played some games with local kids (Anna and Alex’s students). It didn’t take them long to warm up to me so pretty soon we were playing duck duck goose like we’d done it all our lives. Also, the youngest kids were super eager to grab hold of me. I mean, I can handle physical attention from little kids, but when they’re hanging off your legs it makes running a tad trickier.

-On Friday, Daniel, Zach and I taught some classes at the Tsubata community center on American sports. We played ultimate frisbee and battle ball (similar to dodgeball). The kids were mostly awesome at these games, but we coulda used some AC. By the time the last group of kids came in, I was drenched with sweat. One shocked-looking boy pointed at my shirt and asked me if it was indeed sweat, to which I responded, “No, I just hopped in the pool with my clothes on” which he seemed to accept.


Tomorrow, I’m heading to Korea for one night only and then to America!!! My layover in Seoul is pretty long, so I’m gonna stay at the same guest house I stayed at in March and meet up with a couple of friends, get a pitiful night of sleep, and then fly the 15 hours to Washington DC, where I will spend the next couple of weeks hanging out with family and friends. Can’t wait!

Pool Time

On Monday I had no classes, so instead of going to school I spent the day at the office planning, among other things, my last lesson of the semester. While it wasn’t an amazing feat of creativity by any stretch, it was cool because I managed to convince the teacher I was working with to move the class from the classroom to the pool. I figured it’s hot as balls to begin with and there’s no AC in the classroom, so might as well use the towel I routinely drape around my neck for something other than mopping up sweat. At first we just joked about it cuz of the heat, but the more it was brought up, the more reasonable it seemed until the 5th grade homeroom teacher was like “dude, let’s just do English class in the pool for real!”

For the 5th graders, this was joyous news. We were studying “I like~”, which is flexible enough to mold any kind of lesson plan around. For the 6th graders, this wasn’t so good, because we were studying months and days, which don’t really have any applicable water activities (i.e. if you’re birthday’s in January, splash the person next to you). Don’t know how cool my bosses at the BOE would have been with me doing my class in the pool, but I just didn’t mention it and no one was the wiser...except maybe when I came back to the office soaked. But that might have been attributed to sweat.

So on Tuesday, we marched out to the sparkling blue water in the 35 degree afternoon with swimsuits and figurative language caps on and proceeded to do ball-passing warm-up games and some conversation relay races. This particular group of 5th graders is energetic and motivated, but try as they might, they just don’t have a knack for studying or sitting down and absorbing info, so I’ve quickly learned that if I want my English classes to have any effect, they’d better be packed full of hands-on activities, sporty-type games, and fierce group competition. It came as no surprise, then, that some of the most fluid sentences I’ve ever heard from this bunch came when they’d just done two laps of the swimming pool and asked their partner whether or not they like Nintendo DS. It was a fun class, but I ended up getting to the next class a little late, and, unbeknownst to the students, I taught in my swim trunks heehee.

On the same day at one of my other schools, I entered the pool for a second time, this time because I was invited during my free period to experience a Japanese elementary school swimming class. So I joined the students for stretches beside the brand new pool, which is located on the roof of the school overlooking a beautiful lake. It was definitely better than sipping coffee in the teacher’s room. We did some paddling practice and laps of the pool and kicking with a foam board, which brought back memories of learning to swim as a kid in NZ. I don’t know about American or Canadian schools, but apparently all public schools in Japan have their own pool and instead of P.E. in the gym, kids are taught to swim a couple of times a week once the weather is hot enough.

We all learned some lessons that day:
-When I removed my shirt to hop in the pool, my kids learned firsthand where the ‘white’ in ‘white people’ comes from.
-I rediscovered the joys of giggling and splashing in the water, and that paddling several lengths of a pool is way more tiring than kids make it look.

Flipping out

It’s been a while, so here’s an update.

To our sudden dismay, 1st term clas

ses abruptly finished up yesterday, so in an effort to prolong the beginning of what can only be described as tortuous boredom in the Board of Education office, the Kaga English teachers signed up for the Daishoiji High School International Day. We were basically asked to prepare a hands-on lesson on something related to the culture of our home countries, in this case mine being Canada. Not being able to think past the maple syrup stereotype, I ended up teaching a pancake cooking class to some of my friend Daniel’s high school first graders.

The day before I went out and bought a couple tons of baking flour, maple syrup, milk, eggs and maple syrup, which I hadn’t counted on carrying to Daniel’s school at 8 in the morning in 30 degree heat. In any case, we got where we needed to be and started setting up. Several of my graduated junior high schoolers were in the ranks of the students attending the cultural event, including several kids who I remember having pretty decent English ability last year.
After heartfelt reunions were done, there was a brief opening ceremony, followed by my first cooking class. I had originally intended to do a test run the night before at home, but didn’t get around to it, so I instead demonstrated to the students with no practice, which I don’t think anyone noticed cuz by some miracle I made absolutely beautiful crepes on the first go—from raw ingredients to edible in 5 minutes. It was sweet. The students did just as well, and we all did our best to share ingredients and encourage one another using the wonderful medium of English. Some students in the second class tried flipping pancakes too, which was really successful. I probably would’ve thrown them into a wall or something, so I didn’t try.

Surprisingly, I only got to eat like half a pancake, while the students stuffed themselves with their bountiful batter. The great thing about pancakes is that you can’t really mess it up. Even the kids who seemed inept ended up with a pretty tasty end result. In the following closing ceremony, the group leaders and class leader thanked us and we were done, but all in all it was great to work with high schoolers for the first time. They were responsive, mature, and understood English enough to make pancakes. What more could you ask for?

Kyushu Trip

Kyushu is just one of those places; if you’ve been once, you can’t help going back. It’s a combination of things, I think. The ramen, the great weather, the ramen, the friendly locals, the ramen, the relaxed atmosphere, and another bowl of that mouthwatering tonkotsu ramen combined together to form an unforgettable holiday destination.

Needless to say, it was first on our minds when around April or May my friends and I decided to make a little excursion to Japan’s southern paradise (to be clear, the one that’s not Okinawa). It wasn’t long before our ‘Fukuoka fantasy’ became reality, and before we knew it we were the proud owners of a stack of tickets to and around the island of Kyushu. Risk-taker that I am, I took a day off work to extend the trip to an unheard-of three--count 'em--three days. The tickets were actually a really good deal. All-you-can-ride rail pass anywhere within western Japan for three full days (including express and bullet trains) all for the low, low price of 16,000 yen. We pretty much woulda spent that much or more just getting there.

The morning of the 13th, I got up around the time old people in my neighbourhood usually have lunch (6am), packed my bag and met up with Shima, K, and Daniel at the train station. Sleepy but excited, we boarded our Osaka-bound train and met up with Tomoko, who had come directly from Kanazawa through Kaga. 15 minutes into our 5-hour journey and cameras (many of them brand new) were already flashing, ipods were out, and my new-used gameboy was being passed around like a cheap wh-…item. Impressively, Shima, who none of us thought was gamer material, beat Super Mario Land like it ‘wudn’t no thang’ before we even reached Kansai.

When we finally arrived at Hakata Station, our first order of business, understandably, was to wolf a couple bowls of ramen, which we accomplished without delay. That done, we wandered the already-scorching-hot Fukuoka streets in search of our hostel, which actually turned out to be pretty nice. We then proceeded to devote the rest of the afternoon to exploring Momichi, where Fukuoka’s Yahoo! Dome, Fukuoka Tower, Hawk’s Town, and some impressive beaches are located. I’ll be the first to admit that we lost a lot of time goofing around and taking ridiculous group pictures every couple of minutes (the same can really be said for the next two days as well), but no regrets from where I’m standing. It was time well spent.

After a celebratory beer at Hard Rock Café, it was time to head to Tenjin, Fukuoka’s downtown core, where I met my old host family and the Kaga group split up for a little while. My family and I headed to this great yakiniku place, where we gorged ourselves on savory meat and the odd vegetable. In classic form, and with my friend Alex’s help, dinner was spent ribbing my host sisters, which not surprisingly came back on me pretty quick.

Although it would have been great to spend more time with the surrogate fam, Maki, Alex and I rejoined my Kaga homies and cut loose until about 3 or so before stumbling back to the hostel. The next morning, we got up around 9-ish, and went to the station to catch the next train to Nagasaki. Amazingly, I found out my high school friend Paul had just moved there, so I was pretty excited to see him and check out his neck of the woods. I actually really enjoyed the city—we didn’t have time to see that much, but the weather was exceptionally good and Nagasaki had a cool, kinda cultured air to it. Everyone says it, but I’ll just reiterate that there’s virtually no sign that the city was ever leveled by an atomic bomb.

We strolled through Glover Garden, took the tram a bunch of times, and then meandered through the streets before going to the A-bomb museum and Peace Park for a sobering dose of history. I find that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki feature museum exhibits that are a fair bit more graphic than they would be in the West, but I guess that comes with the territory—no one in the West can claim to have had two major urban centers nuked. After catching up with Paul and seeing some of the sights, we had dinner and then took the train back to Fukuoka. We checked into a sweet new hotel that Shima booked for us and then headed back off to Tenjin for night out numero dos.

The next morning was maybe the most difficult to get going, and Daniel and Tomoko actually ended up leaving the hotel before the rest of us. Another perfect day, we went to Canal City for a bit of shopping and ramen for brunch. There’s a Cold Stone ice cream store that I particularly enjoy, mainly because the staff working the counter will burst into song on request. Yet, because of some inexplicably perceived connection between show tunes and swine flu, they weren’t offering their singing service that day. There was just enough time between bites of delectable ‘fudge devotion’ to feel a little disappointment.

My elder sister, Sayuri, met us at the mall and, while Shima, Daniel, and Tomoko made their way to Dazaifu Temple, the rest of us headed to Tenjin for an hour or two. While there, we spotted a poster outside a clothing store that, from a distance, was the spitting image of Daniel. Upon closer inspection it still looked a hell of a lot like him--> hat, blue shirt, beard—the works. With precious little time to spare before our rapidly approaching train home, K and I bid Sayuri goodbye and took a cab to one of Fukuoka’s most famous parks, Ohori Kouen. In the center is a large pond, and one look at the swan-themed paddle boats was enough to simultaneously convince us both that it was time to paddle-boat-race around the pond.

After getting off our short-lived ride, I popped into a convenience store to buy a drink, at which point the old man running the place moved hastily into the back room to retrieve something. When I went up to pay, he asked me if I spoke any Japanese, and when I said, “yeah, a little” he asked if I wouldn’t mind translating a sign for him from Japanese to English. So I got to do this guy a good turn while virtuously promoting cross-cultural exchange/internationalization AND I got a free Coke out of it. A sweet deal, it was. K took a picture of us holding the completed sign to commemorate the occasion and then we high-tailed it back to Hakata Station for the long trip home.

Some new observations:

-"Hello" (or "haro", as it's most often pronounced) is an acceptable substitute for real conversation.

-Before visiting a school I haven't been to in a while, I always take some time to think of some interesting or exciting potential weekend plans to save inquisitive people the disappointment of learning that my weekend will be spent watching TV or doing other normal stuff that normal people do--gotta live up to that gaijin razzle dazzle lifestyle.  

-In Korea, food from street vendors is meant to be avoided, but in Japan it's something to be sought after, no question.

-Getting nice and hammered by early afternoon under some blossoming cherry trees with your friends is the nationally preferred method of ushering in Spring.

-I recently started going out jogging, largely because the weather has become really nice.  I found a nice secluded path down by the river that serves as both a scenic backdrop and a way to avoid inducing heart attacks among the elderly inhabitants of Daishoji--particularly the sort not accustomed to seeing young, sweaty white guys booking it through town for no apparent reason.  

-My most fun schools are also the most dysfunctional.  

-My students' most common response to a friendly "Good Morning" from me in the hallway is some sort of open-mouthed exclamation or look of discomfort, rarely resembling a greeting in either English or Japanese.  

-Despite the language gap, I've found there's very little that can't be communicated in one way or another.  You may be speaking/acting/wildly gesturing like a child/ape/less intelligent life form, but at least it's possible to express a bastardized version of what's on your mind.  

-I went on a camping trip last week around the northern, peninsular part of Ishikawa, which is called the Noto.  We made the newbie mistake of following road rules and posted signs, resulting in near-death situations more than a few times.  Drivers in small, rural towns spit in the face of automobile laws and laughed at us at the same time...

Things I've learned living here so far

Here it is:

IN AND AROUND DAISHOJI

-You can’t expect to get away with being overweight or oversize in any capacity.

-Jaywalking is frowned upon but still doable. Even more so, eating or drinking while walking. Or being foreign while walking.

-Service kicks ass—I will never get tired of people being cordial to me in stores and restaurants.

-No matter how much or how little Japanese a foreigner may emit, coos of praise are sure to follow.

-There’s one unrestricted wifi signal in Daishoji and after I cycled all over town with my ipod touch looking for one, I found it to be in a tiny parking lot outside a building near the train station.

-The train station will, without fail, have at least 20 or 30 Daishoji High School students waiting on the platform.

-Ramen is awesome.

-Going to the ‘big city’ brings home the fact that I’m turning into a country boy.

-For the first time in my life, I’m not allergic to everything. In fact, since I’ve been here, I curiously haven’t had any adverse reactions to nature whatsoever…

-Paying my bills at the convenience store, while kinda weird, is actually pretty convenient. I can just pop in for a sandwich and some pringles and pay my phone bill in one fell swoop.

-I will, without fail, run into minimum 5 of my students/other teachers if I am out and about in Kaga.

-Teenage boys suffer no loss of masculinity if riding in tandem on one of those old-lady bicycles with a basket.

-At exactly 6pm every Sunday evening an emergency siren unfailingly blasts across the expanse of town as though the Americans have returned on an overdue bombing run. Needless to say, it scared the crap out of me when I first heard it…and still does.

AT HOME

-Living by myself means that I will unavoidably waste food…which is a bad feeling.

-Cockroaches are slightly more intelligent than I am.

-Japanese people are surprisingly capable of adjusting to the squalor of my apartment, probably because it’s traditional Japanese squalor.

-Tatami mats (instead of tiled, wooden or carpeted floors) comprise roughly 90% of my apartment, which means I worry constantly about damaging it with heavy furniture, spilling food and drinks, exercising, cleaning, walking, sitting, lying down, and when I’m not home.

-My kotatsu (heated blanket-table warmth device) is the most practical piece of furniture I’ve ever invested in.

-On windy days, it’s best not to hang clothes outside to dry, because they can blow away and never be seen again. I’m not just talking about t-shirts—jeans too. No sign of ’em.

-Rice for at least two meals a day is now routine. I now just leave the rice cooker plugged in and turned on.

-When inviting my friend ‘K’ over, it’s best to have purchased several 6-pack boxes of ice cream beforehand. As a general rule of thumb, two won’t suffice.

-The patrons and hostesses at the snack bar next to my house necessitate earplugs when sleeping. And sometimes when awake.

-Due to the lack of central heating, winter in Japan results in the interior of my apartment being roughly the same temperature as the great outdoors, which in turn leaves me internally conflicted. On the one hand, I fear for my health and wonder why the f*** I have to wait for my toothpaste to thaw so I can squeeze it out of the tube, but on the other hand, I feel pretty badass for living in igloo-like conditions.

-Having a squat toilet kinda sucks, but you get used to it.

-I’ve discovered that if the house is in desperate need of vacuuming, I can wait several more weeks before actually doing anything about it.

-Sleeping in a 5ºC room has gradually become my ideal. Every night before bed, I whip out my futon and covers, don my Uniqlo sweatpants, sweatshirt, socks, and, on occasion, beanie, and hop into bed. Any warmer and my delicate insulation-to-temperature ratio is shot to hell.

-There’s nothing quite as uniquely irritating when I’m trying to enjoy a lazy afternoon at home than the screeching cacophony of the town’s venerable elderly drowning out my itunes playlist as they belt out their favourite pre-1950’s karaoke songs next door—worse when it’s the regulars straining their prehistoric vocal cords to force out the same agonizingly dissonant jingle day-in and day-out.

AT WORK

-School days are for the most part busy and very rewarding, leaving me feeling like I’ve actually accomplished something. Office days are not.

-Trying to look busy is an art form—one that, with practice and perseverance, can be refined and applied to maximize the industrious image of a completely unproductive day.

-If I have nothing to do on a given day, I am not assigned further tasks or responsibilities by my supervisor. Thus, on days when I have no classes or any significant amount of school preparation, I come to work with little, if anything, to accomplish that day…to the full knowledge of and acceptance by those around me.

-Because the average age in my office is roughly 50, I’m basically a child when compared to my coworkers, so everything I do will inevitably be attributed to my youth. If I take off my sweater when I’m hot, it’s cuz I’m young. If I mention that I’m hungry, of course it’s obviously cuz I’m young. If I sit still in my chair and don’t really do anything out of the ordinary, it must of course be cuz I’m young. 22 is the new 12…

-When getting up to go and pick something up from the printer or fax machine, there’s an unspoken rule that one must run or at least break into a light jog and throw on a stressed facial expression (there’s also a hissing/teeth-sucking option) to fully convey the pressing nature of one’s task, be it running a memo to City Hall or sprinting to the recycle box to dispose of that grape fanta can that’s been urgently sitting on the corner of one’s desk.

-On days when I have no school, I feel guilty leaving the office at the end of my work day because I know everyone else will end up working at least a couple of hours more than me.



This list is ongoing. I will add more to it later.

Wax on, trash out

I woke up this morning to the sweet melody of my blaring alarm clock, which i promptly smacked until it shut up.  Every morning I have the same internal debate--do I get up early and take the trash out or is there still little enough to warrant waiting a little bit and taking it out in a couple days' time?  Today the extra 15 minutes of sleep won over my need to remove waste from my house.   

The reason I wait until morning to chuck the rubbish out is that my neighbourhood garbage disposal association (also known as 110-year-old women whose only purpose in life, besides refusing to obey the laws of one's own lifespan, is continued oversight of said association) has decreed that rubbish can only be disposed of in the communal trash-truck pickup area between 7 and 7:30 am because 'animals will get at it' otherwise.  I highly doubt this, however.  If ladies old enough to remember when Mt. Fuji was just a hill are able to catch me with a plastic bottle cap in my burnable garbage at 20 meters, then something tells me cats and birds aren't gonna have much chance getting a cheap breakfast.  

Trash collection in my neighbourhood, and many throughout Japan, is draconian.  It probably took me about a full month to figure out what day to throw out what garbage and then once I'd wrapped my head around that, it took me at least that long to actually work out what constitutes "plastic" or "burnable garbage"among other types--a mighty, quest-like task.  To some it may appear intuitive at first glance, but according to a lady who might have been in high school during the Meiji Restoration and who thoughtfully brought my trash back to my house from down the street when my infraction proved too great to bear, plastic that says 'plastic' on it may not necessarily go in the plastic pile, subject to, of course, a complex set of variables.  

In addition to these women who were probably already grandmothers during the invasion of Machuria, another important trash disposal regulator is a huge poster 'explaining' how the whole system works, down to what type of battery goes out on what day and in what container.  All I know is, there's a small pile of items sitting in my apartment that, after poring over this poster, I am still unable to classify, and will thus probably remain there long after I've left.  Even the stuff I'm pretty sure about, I throw in a plastic bag (it's gotta be the right colour bag, though) and then sneak around the corner, check to see if anyone's there, and if there isn't, I can breathe a small sigh of relief because if there is someone there, you can safely bet your youngest daughter that they'll be going through my trash to verify its contents the second I go back around that corner.  

So anywaaaaaaay....today I avoided the ordeal and woke up with a smile on my face, showered, wolfed my cereal, and stepped out into the beautiful sunshine.  It was a bit chilly, but nothing beats sunshine in a place where it's just so depressingly rare to have a day without rain.  I arrived at work five minutes early (a.k.a. 15 minutes late, because this is Japan, where you come to the office early and leave never) and it was like there was a fire drill or something.  Everyone was frantically moving furniture out of the office into the hallway and around the stairs.  That's odd, I thought to myself.  No matter, I'll just join in, and I did just that.  After about 10 minutes of dragging chairs and file cabinets out into the corridor, I asked a co-worker why we were doing it and she told me that the office was going to be professionally cleaned and the floor waxed.  It would take about two hours, she explained, so I could pretty much do what I wanted.  Sweet, I thought.  I figured I might try and meet up with Daniel at Jiri cafe and catch up a bit, but he was stuck at work, so instead I went home and did some errands, went and saw my landlord and picked up dry-cleaning.  Then I returned home with about an hour to spare and switched on the ps2.  It was about 10:30 am when it struck me that this was the first and probably last time I would play Grand Theft Auto 3 in a suit and tie during working hours.  Ah, Monday.

After work I went and dropped off Shima's giant electric pan that we used for okonomiyaki during the weekend.  As I was leaving her place with an extra spatula in hand, I almost bumped into a guy walking home from work.  He struck me as familiar, so I took a second glance and saw the same inquisitive look on his face as he tried to place me.  It was the mayor!  I'd met him once at a cultural event.  So I stammered "Mr. Mayor!"--no hello, or how are you, just a shocked "shit, it's the mayor!"--to which he responded with an equally shaky "konnichiwa...?...".  Then there was the whole awkward do-i-stop-and-talk-to-him-uhoh-it's-too-late-he's-already-too-far-gone-ok-quick-break-eye-contact moment and I went home.