A (school) year draws to a close

I’m having mixed feelings about this teaching thing- seeing my favourite third year JHS students leaving for the big city- kids I’ve only seen two or three times. Being in a country where no-one seems to speak the language I learnt in university- they all speak a weird mumbly, gutteral version of it (and to make matters worse it’s a different weird mumbly gutteral version in each area) I’ve determined to make these things all a challenge. Determined, like Yoshio Kojima, to just punch the air and yell ‘そんなの関係ねぇ’ (‘What does it matter anyway?’) It’s all a challenge- just like the Taiwanese movie I hired, figuring I could watch it on my computer with downloaded subtitles, until my computer died and I watched the whole thing with Japanese subtitles- a challenge. And the actress looks like Audrey Tautou and speaks Japanese, so I’ve decided we’re getting married. As soon as I can find her.

So aside from a computer that just shows the mac logo and a flashing question mark every time I try to turn it on, a language I can’t speak or understand and a pile of books to read and things to do that grows much faster than I can ever get through it, things are going well. I’m still setting goals for this year, I’ve divided them into three (although I may add a fourth and possibly a fifth- a sixth to do with teaching probably couldn’t hurt either) categories. For the sake of sounding cool, I’ll call them ‘operations’

Operation the First: Operation 二級。Considering my dismal showing at level two last December, I’ll have another crack this year, with more preparation.

Operation the Second: Operation Nouvelle Novel(lette) which mainly involves me writing in my little black book every day until I get a new computer/structured inspiration.

Operation the Third: Operation 富士山, which someone else has actually started planning for me, so it won’t be a solitary hike up Japan’s tallest mountain, but a whole group of Perth JETs walking up a big hill. I’m getting fit for it now. If Operation Fuji-San is successful, I’ll couple it with Operation Fuji-Rock, a trek to the other side of Honshu to see Japan’s biggest three-day music festival. I’ve already entered the ticket lottery.

 Operations the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth involve getting the most out of my JET experience, becoming a PA, travelling (goals for this year: Tokyo, Okinawa, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan & Australia. I should get at least four of those done no sweat) teaching, working out the future and just keeping on like I am.

To close, here’s a list of things I want to do when I get back to Perth:

• Brush my teeth (I miss flouridated toothpaste sooo much)
• Go into a closed building and be able to breathe
• Eat pizza and drink beer at Little Creatures
• Eat nachos and drink long island iced tea while listening to Jazz at The Moon
• Have a long black at Cafe 130 then be buzzed for a Monday double at Luna
• See either The Lucksmiths or Darren Hanlon (ideally both at the same time)
• Drop in on people working
• Ride the train to Mandurah, have an ice cream, then ride it back to Perth
• Try out my Japanese on people at the Hyogo Prefectural cultural centre- it’ll be great saying I’m on holiday from Japan.
• Eat vegetarian food without the possibility of 吃驚肉 (’surprise meat’)

(Incidentally, there’s a chain of hamburger restaurants in Japan called びっくりドンキ、or surprise donkey. There’s one in the love-hotel area behind Tennoji Station in Osaka. There’s also a chicken restaurant called びっくり鳥. Which makes me wonder what the surprise is)

And also, I’ll have a big picnic of sushi in King’s Park. Everyone’s invited. See you then (sometime in December…)

 

Confessions of love, Junior High School Music Festival

Third year Junior High girl: Nice to meet you

Me (sure I’ve met all my Junior High students): Umm, nice to meet you too. How are you?

Girl: I’m too happy.

Me: Oh, too happy? Why?

*Girl looks confused*

Me: なぜ嬉しすぎるですか？

Girl:　Oh, because I love you!

Perhaps you had to be there…

Today was the Annual Junior High School music festival, when students from all the junior highs in the city come to the culture centre, play music and sing. In the four smaller schools everyone took part, in the bigger one only the third years and the music club came. So in the smaller schools there was between fifteen and forty on the stage, the whole student body, and in the largest school there was 105 on stage, all singing at once. And everyone was really good, from the fifteen piece band with four accordians, to the music club, which was all girls except four boys, three of whom played percussion.

Perhaps it’s because I went to three schools with no music program at all to speak of, but I look at all my students, together after practicingly insanely for what must’ve been weeks (some of the best students were also in the speech contest, which is scary. No wonder my phonics exercises made them cry, they must be dying of stress. I wouldn’t have coped when I was fourteen) and it makes me wish I went to a school with a dedicated music teacher, it makes me wish I could have learnt piano (I still can. There’s a piano school near my house)  from a young age, stuck with guitar, or learnt to read music or actually recognize the notes by their sound. The students were all really impressive, even more than the rock band at the high school, in my opinion.  I also remembered that one of the third years girls (Ai – I think it’s great that her name means ‘Love’) has a thing for one of the third year boys at another school, a guy who manages to make himself invisible for every class, but who I talk to around the school whenever I’m there. I feel more like a kid than a teacher, despite sitting around the office, being served coffee, and standing at the front of every class speaking English to them. I feel like the students teach me more than I teach them. One day, I’m going to get them to give me a Japanese lesson entirely in English, but I have no idea how to go about doing that. Maybe an end of year thing.

 On a scary note I was typing in something starting with S into Blackle and one of the auto-answers was Sam’s name. So I figured I’d type L, and sure enough, one of the auto-answers was my name. Someone had googled Sam and My names on the computer, before we came. And the scary thing is I’m not too worried about that. The thing that worries me is that this computer obviously holds cache for a long time. I don’t do anything too bad at work…I swear.

 

Ah, the weather is perfect..

So the weather is perfect, the alledged typhoon never materialised (it never does, which is annoying. There’s always so much build-up and nothing comes of it) and my weekend was spent doing almost no relaxing.

Friday night I filled up the shopping trolley/ralley car and drove out to Mihara to get Nick’s signature so we could vote, and together we drank Jim Beam, played Everybody’s Golf 3 on Playstation and ate pizza. It’s good to occasionally go to places smaller than Shimizu- just to know they exist. In contrast to Mihara Shimizu is loud, cramped and busy. This is the reason I couldn’t sleep when I was in Fukuoka; it was just too loud- also hot. Also there was a construction site across the road.

On the drive back to Nakamura we took a wrong turn looking for a dam we knew existed but we weren’t sure where. It turns out it was the turn off after the tunnel, not before. In the end we drove down a tiny road, passed a nine hole golf course (beautiful and incredibly cheap, even by Australian standards)  and stopped off at a picnic spot with gardens and a maze that had become overgrown and was blocked by a wall of spiderwebs. After the drive to Nakamura and Mister Donut for breakfast I stopped off at the video store to pick up the videos 智美 reccommended. One of them, ジョぜと虎と魚たち, I was watching this morning, and wanted to finish but I didn’t want to be late for work.The IMDB Page has no plot synopsis and only the keywords ’sex scene, breasts, female nudity, based on a novel’ which kind of scared me- so often at the video store I pick up a movie, thinking it looks interesting and while looking on the back to see if it has English subtitles I see the back cover photos are kind of…odd – there seems to be a very thin line between drama and pornography here- and this is without even venturing into the curtained-off section of the video store- I’ve never been in there, but I’ve heard stories.

But no, the movie’s really good. The fact that 智美 reccommended it in the same email she reccommended ‘y tu mama tambien’ and ‘garden state’ is the reason I hired it, despite being too busy to take Chan up on his offer for an eggplant curry anytime soon. I figured I’d find the time even if it was between six and eight on a monday morning.

On the drive home  from Nakamura I stopped at Ohki beach (because the weather was so perfect and I always keep bathers, a towel and sunscreen in my car for that reason. Also a futon) for a swim and lunch, because I like the restaurant there, and they understand that fish flakes and fish stock are made of fish. After that I drove back to Shimizu, just in time for the tea ceremony, which was in the park behind the library, which was just so perfect, even though I misunderstood and left during the break halfway through, instead of staying for the part where the kids perform the ceremony themselves. After finally shopping (Doraemon was getting really hungry) borrowing money off Chan because I forgot I bought petrol on Friday I drove out to Souro to see the festival- I hate being put in the position where I have to choose between invitations, especially when I feel like I’m being pressured.

So after the festival we went in to Souro elementary, on a Saturday night, and the deputy principal made me spaghetti and miso soup, and then, along with two elementary school boys we went to the river and pulled nets out of the water, full of fish. I just watched- I found it kind of horrible, and we all went back to the school, and I watched TV while the others skinned and fried the fish, and tried to convince me that sausages aren’t meat. The other guys slept in the Japanese style room at the school (and this is, for some reason, not odd) and I drove home and slept, only to do it again on Saturday at the Kagumi Matsuri, the culture festival, more pizza for lunch, and then a pretty vague attempt at Japanese study.

And oh, I checked back and the IMDB page does have more details. A decent review too. I might have to buy the book…I buy too many books…far more than I can ever read…but they’re so cheap!

 

I am in a great deal of pain

I don’t really understand Japanese culture – But I’m not going to write a whole entry about how nothing at all makes sense here because so what if making a whole school practice unicycles constantly in Australia would be more than a little twisted- there is nothing, seriously nothing, that beats the feeling of holding a six year olds hand as she steadies herself on a unicycle, it’s even better than the feeling of the same student taking your hand, leading you to the equipment shed and then trying to teach you to ride a unicycle, despite the fact that you’re in business clothes and can barely understand a word they say.

I have found the Japanese child I want to adopt though; the unicycling girl and her twin sister- Ako and Riko, completely identical except one wears glasses- even their teeth are identical. The left front tooth on both girls is poking out in the same way. When I left they all ran at me to shake my hands, and when I came back to say goodbye after my last class for the day, they all lunged at me to shake my hand, and I bent down to be on their level, and they swarmed – group hugged by twenty 6 year olds in a country where the adults never touch in public.

But that’s not that part that I don’t understand. No, Children are always 元気, no matter where they’re from, just like teenagers are always resistant. The part I don’t really get is the festivals- the bus-pulling, shrine carrying, impossible feats of strength broken-up with short breaks where everyone puts their shrine down, or stops dancing in the scorching heat, and sculls a beer, smokes a cigarette, or both.

So this weekend we got dressed in white pants, camel-toed shoes and happi-coats, and walked down to the local shrine. I was pretty wrecked from a big Friday night (this was Sunday morning) and we met with 20 men, of whom I was the youngest by far, and the tallest by quite a bit. And also, probably, the weakest. And we carried a shrine that could not have weighed less than half a ton through the town, to different parks, to the harbour, and past people’s houses and shops. Periodicially we’d run for 50 metres, or stop and bounce the shrine up and down (dislodging a section, which someone would have to pick up, climb up onto the shrine, and put back in, adding extra weight) there were two men at the front who drunk a lot during the lunchtime break, and they pushed back against us to slow us down, argued over which way to go (the route was largely unplanned) and would encourage us to run, and say things ranging from ‘are you alright?’ to ‘hey, ladies, are you dying yet?’ At one point one of the old drunk men touched me a little inappropriately, and at several times he slapped me on the shoulders, thinking it would be hilarious to hit me where it hurts.

And then afterwards, in true Japanese traditional, there was an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink party. Well, technically there were two parties…one after the other.

And it’s happening again this weekend. Me, being a great cultural ambassador, will probably end up going. I want to, it was a great experience. Maybe this time I’ll be able to take photos (if not we were roped into another one happening in April) There’s a culture festival on as well, which will be my out if I’m still in a lot of pain. The bruises haven’t started to show yet, I’m just very tender…and may be driving for an hour to get Nick to register as a postal voter, and also to play volleyball in Shimanto. Yay for spreading myself a little thin!

Also, I’m spending a lot of time helping middle schoolers with speech contests, and I really want to do more, because sometimes sitting in the office on Facebook and typing up blog entries doesn’t really feel like work, y’know. Neither does Japanese study, though. JLPT in just under six weeks