Life at the BOE

Today is Friday, the last day of the work week—a day eagerly anticipated by CEOs and school children alike. Here at the Kaga City Board of Education, Friday seems to have been five days in the making. The famed Japanese work ethic is punctuated surprisingly often by idle fanning, lengthy smoking breaks, listless paper shuffling, gazing out the window while not-so-secretly leaning over the air conditioning, and of course office colleagues jumping up to answer even the most mundane questions from we clueless newcomers (including a lengthy introduction to properly straining tea and the cumbersome complexities of the fax machine). Let no one tell you, however, that this is limited to the locals. If this looooong week has taught me anything, I need a firm plan if I hope to survive this many weeks of nothing.

In my Board of Education little is taking place right now. It’s the middle of summer holidays, and the workload for most people is very limited. However, due to a communal effort to maintain a functional atmosphere, the staff are continuing to put in full days, week in and week out. The same applies to me. Nevertheless, there is a noticeable distinction between my job and theirs. As an Assistant Language Teacher here in Kaga, my job description entails visiting various local elementary school and junior high schools on a daily basis, teaching kids between the ages of 6 and 15 the merits of English and multiculturalism in general. This presents a bit of a problem in the summer, when classes are out for several weeks, and I am left with little to do at the office for eight hours a day until September.

Granted, there are lots of things I could be doing, but at the end of the day, after carefully pacing my review of teaching materials (don’t want to be left with absolutely nothing to do that’s actually work-related) and studying Japanese for an hour or two, there are still a lotta hours to kill, and I’m fairly sure the rest of the staff feels the same way.

Today Anna and I had a welcome reprieve from trying to look busy when a local French ALT took us out to the local International Exchange Association for morning tea, where we met a couple of locals and shared random treats. Alexandre, the Frenchman, and his fluent French-speaking wife,Yasue, were hospitable to the point that Anna and I have volunteered to take part in a community cooking event in which we are expected to cook a dish from our respective home countries with the help of local members of the community in an effort to further cross-cultural communication. Food aside, it’s designed to make us foreigners look more approachable and also give us a chance to meet people who may currently be too frightened of us to greet us on the street. Remember, the town of Daishoji is very, very small. That said, the meal I end up preparing will probably account for a significant portion of my public identity, so I feel as though investing some thought into it wouldn’t hurt. A year from now I don’t want to be walking down the street getting “Look!! It’s Salmonella Mike! Damn him and the poison Canadians call food!!” spat at me from left and right. So if anyone can think of some simple recipes that might be fun to share, and that vaguely represent either Canada, Switzerland or New Zealand, and that aren’t just maple syrup, chocolate (however delicious) or lamb, please let me know.

Haha this just happened: the lady who works across the desk from me just offered me and the other folks around some Godiva chocolates. I gratefully received it with a “oh cool, Godiva chocolate”. I was, however, immediately corrected on my pronunciation of the word ‘Godiva’, which I had pronounced in the American way (guh-die-vuh). The correct pronunciation for this American chocolate brand name, it turns out, is ‘Godiva’ (goh-dee-ba).

The things you learn.


Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to the city of Kanazawa, north of where I am now, with Anna, Daniel and a Japanese guy from Kaga named Issei. It’s the biggest city in our prefecture, so we’re going there to do some sightseeing, maybe some shopping, but most of all to get out of the country and into a city for half a second. Then on Sunday Anna’s going to break in her new set of wheels and take us to the beach, which, if we’re to believe maps of the area, is apparently quite close to where we live. She’s the only one with experience driving on the left side of the road, hence a higher chance of survival. Speaking of which, apparently they have deadly jellyfish that start popping up around this time of year....woohoo seaside!