Highlights of ‘07

Tokyo in January- made me feel like I could do something. I felt like my students actually respected me (kind of blew that by getting horrificly drunk in Uonuma and being hungover for the bus ride back)

Passing the JET interview- on the back of two great references (I chose my referees well) and answers the interviewers liked, I’m now in Japan, after months of waiting.

Graduating- put undergraduate university behind me for now. I’ll go back to honours one day, but maybe not in Perth, and certainly not at ECU. I’m thinking I’ll pass JLPT ni-kyuu and then do my honours on the literature of Kawabata Yasunari, maybe…I’ll work that out later.

Quitting my job- self explanitory. But no more dealing with abusive customers, abusive superiors, and…well everyone in that store was a bitch, with maybe three exceptions. No more sitting in a windowless box for twelve hours, or standing up for ten.

Moving to Japan- Everything from the five star hotel in Tokyo, the rent-free giant house to myself, the great pay, the job I love, the holidays I’ve been taking every month, the getting paid (a lot) to learn and all the cool people I’ve met, make me want to stay for a lot longer.

And then there’s all the small things, like having a 2nd grade teacher (a 26 year old about half my size) ask me what a ‘mother fucker’ is. She’d just seen Pulp Fiction, apparently.
Things like walking down to the shrine behind Sunny Mart to sit down on a bench, eat chocolate and read.
Things like the section of the Dosan line, where it crosses through eastern Tokushima prefecture, winding through white cliffs, red and orange leafs in Autumn, snow in Winter and (I can’t wait) blossoming cherry trees in Spring.
Things like knowing what the best coffee from all the vending machines is, and seeing the red stripe at the start of winter which means they’re selling canned hot coffee again (and hot tea, hot corn soup…)
Things like the christmas and new year’s cards I received from my students, particularly the one from Kaho in which she apologized that the card wasn’t ‘luxurious’ (actually it was the equal best christmas card I’ve ever gotten, because I’ve only ever received two hand made cards)
Things like planning more trips; Mt Fuji and Fuji Rock in Summer, following the cherry blossoms north to Tokyo in my Spring break, maybe Europe, Maybe China, maybe back to Australia for christmas (but the almost white christmas here was so good) which mean that the best of 2007 will most likely be the worst of 2008
but you might not all want to hear about how happy I am, so here’s a picture:

 

Coffee

I’m used to being overfed whenever I’m at a school, but the school I was at today (in fact both the schools in that town) really went above and beyond. A female staff member opened up a box of sweets for me, bought out a plate of mandarins, poured me two cups of coffee (she even came back to check whether my cup was full) and then just left me to study Japanese alone in the meeting room.

Now I don’t really mind this, what I do mind is having a busy female staff member drop everything to make me coffee, while the male staff members stand around outside smoking. I don’t like that three o’clock is tea time in the BOE, unless both of the women who work here are out, because none of the seven Japanese men even consider making tea. Sam does it sometimes, I used to do it until I discovered I make horrible tea (and I still do it sometimes if I need a tea)

At every school I go to, one of the teachers will drop everything to make me coffee, and I love coffee, so I never say no. The thing is, out of seventeen schools and the Board of Education, there’s only one Japanese man who makes coffee; the English teacher at the Junior High School on the cape- our one male JTE. And even he won’t put a pot on, he makes instant coffee if there isn’t a pot ready.

And that’s not even the worst. In any workplace in the west, if you finish a pot of coffee you make a new one- I poured myself a third cup of coffee (like I said, I like my coffee) at the school this morning, the last in the pot, and I went to make a new one. A female teacher ran over from the other side of the staff room to stop me, saying it was alright, and then went back to tell everyone in the office about the crazy ALT who tried to make coffee. She kept saying I’m a guest, which is true, I guess, so I just sat down with my coffee and my Japanese textbook.

And as I sat there, a male staff member walked over, mumbled ‘is there coffee?’, pulled the pot out, looked in it, said だめ, and then put the pot back, returning to his desk.

He did not consider, even for a second, putting a fresh pot on, instead decided on waiting for someone else to do it. That someone, I’m sure, was female. I would’ve drunk that coffee. I would’ve put a pot on, if only I’d been allowed to.