Graduations

Spring is here again (finally) which means graduations, parties, saying goodbye,  flowers, holidays and change. At my last visit to the big Junior High School I was given a package of letters addressed ‘to the ALTs’ from the graduating third graders, saying thank you for two years of occasional English. They ranged from ‘I enjoyed game’ to more detailed messages such as ‘thank you for teaching English and abroad culture for us. We had a good time at the ALT. I will go to foreign country and use English taught by you’ Here are some highlights (and this formatting is frustrating):

 ”Thank you for teaching us English. It was very fun. See you again.

PS JEF UNITED ICHIHARA CHIBA is very strong team!! Soccer is interesting”

(I finally asked this girl is JEF United are good at soccer last week. Her reply was あまり- not really)

“thaksyou. With all my heart <3″

(this next one was written all in katakana)

“I am a Manchester United fan. We won’t lost to Liverpool!! Gerrard’s kick is the best!! Please come to [name of Izakaya we sometimes go to for 三次会s] and have a conversation. see you SAM day”

“genki de ne <3

your happy <3

ba—-i [picture of hand waving]“

“thank you for real English”

“At the time of class of the ALT, I was very happy. The various time when I played a game was the most pleasant in that.

Thank you very much so far”

“Thank you for teaching us English. It was exciting”

“Thans. See you again. Take care” (this boy spelt Sam’s name wrong)

“I like you [picture of smiling face giving peace sign]“

“thank you very much. three years. very good class”

one boy made up Kanji for my name: 流胃酢 style of/stomach/vinegar. And then thanked me from the bottom of his heart.

“I learned many things from you. Thanks to you I became interested in English. Please check with a dictionary.” (I’m not sure about the last part. What am I meant to check?)

“I don’t like English, but I came to like English. Sam & Louis are BEST OF TEACHER”

“English very X100000 difficult…but ALT is very interested”

“Thank you very much. The English was very fun. I want to change myself. I will try to do every thing and enjoy doing it”

“If I am going to meet studying English peaple, I will said “America and Australia are lived by great English teacher. Their name is Sam and Louis.”

“Thank you so much for the last two years. I couldn’t grow up without you!! You changed my life!! I wish your happiness!! See you someday!! Your forever student Kento”

I worry about that boy sometimes.

 

While I type up a new post, here’s something I prepared earlier

Yesterday there was a breaking news story about a monkey that was spotted at Shibuya station and, after twenty minutes sitting on top of signage for the Tokyo Tokyu Toyoko line (now that’s a mouthful) managed to elude police and run out of the station, skirted dangerously close to the busiest pedestrain intersection in the world, turned onto a back street and climbed onto the Yamanote Line, heading towards Harajuku. The monkey wasn’t seen after that- if it made it without getting hit by trains it could have either found its way onto Takeshita St (which to this day I still refuse to pronounce correctly) in Harajuku, freaking out a lot of freaks, or could be somewhere in Yoyogi park, which is probably slightly better until the bands start playing. The report, which lasted twenty minutes of live crosses and people with cameras chasing after a running furball, was a welcome respite from Japan’s skewed coverage of the Olympics. I enjoyed the softball though, and the table tennis. I still refuse to call baseball interesting. Not as interesting as a monkey running around terrorising Tokyo.

I have a plan now, a plan that I may have had before but now it seems more like a realistic goal. With a million yen of savings per year for the whole time I’m in Japan (I can do that pretty easily, probably more) which could be two years or it could be five, I would start in Southern Japan during the summer Seishun-18 time, explore the whole of Japan on rediculously cheap local trains, get up to Wakkanai in Northern Hokkaido and then ferry across to Vladivostock, and then from there travel by train across to St Petersburg, etc. etc. onto London. With something like $30,000 to spend that could make for a pretty sweet holiday, and I could come back to Australia in February or Japan in April, to study…this is at least a year away, probably more. Re-contracting information comes out in October, hopefully before I go up to Tokyo to see Radiohead.

The convenience store in Shiomi-Cho is opening next month. Nothing to say there except it will be convenient. Ice cream at any hour of the day or night. And, you know, other conveniences like not-very-good onigiri, small dodgy condoms, hot canned coffee even in summer, and not having to make breakfast every day. And alcohol, because that’s exactly what I need more of. But it will be good to have the after-party option, after the liquor store closes at eight.

On that matter I’m giving up drinking, except at office events. For the sake of money and because I felt like I was drinking just because. Also because my belly is getting a bit more belly-tastic. I’m also trying to cu back on crap, getting rid of one of my surfboards, organising and actually reading my books, finally getting through Guardian Weeklies and London Review of Books(s) that I’ve been meaning to catch up on properly since May.

I’m starting a Kumon correspondence Japanese course, far more expensive than the alternative (just learning it myself and speaking Japanese to people) but I’ve found I need motiviation to study. Hence I also may sit the JLPT again in June or December next year, level 2 again is my score isn’t very good, and a dismal attempt at level one if my score is good.

Meeting an ALT who did my job five years ago made me feel that my time here will have to end one day. The three year rule no longer applies, and maybe by the time I’m here for five years it will have been extended. Who knows. Five years is a long time though- a long time without lasagne, a long time to have the same song stuck in your head (when I get back to Perth I want to blow you all away with my karaoke. It may not be good but it is enthusiastic), a long time to be in a long distance relationship, a long time without real vegetarian food and real cafes. I’ve heard the longer you live here the harder it is to go back to somewhere not so green, not so safe, harder to get away from well paid, easy work. But I have no reason to get away yet.

I’ve made two discoveries that make being vegetarian in Japan far easier- fish stock does not actually enhance the taste of yakisoba, and miso soup doesn’t actually taste very good. Now I’ve just got to find sauces without fish in them.

The yogurt lady is here, reminding me that paisley is an undervalued fabric.

 

Things I learnt from from first year in 日本

A list in chronological order, that being the chronology of the time I thought of it.

• Japanese convenience stores keep their hangover cures next to their alcohol, in some cases mingled between it. This is convenient if you buy them together, not so if you go searching for lemonade and ‘ウコンの力’　after a heavy night and the very sight of alcohol makes you retch. Lesson learnt.
• The best omiyage is that which is purchased at the last minute. Closing stores, highway stops, train station convenience stores, all make for successful sweets to bring back to the office.
• Japanese houses were not designed with Japanese weather in mind- they let the heat in and the cold out in summer, and the heat out and the cold in in winter.
• Seishun-18 is the way to go when you want to travel. An eighth to a twentieth of the price of the bullet train, and with actual views out the windows. Failing that night buses work.
• Engrish is often created by someone who speaks English well but has a sick sense of humour. Case in point- attractive girl, mid twenties, black dress with elegant gold writing which reads ‘I’m built like a brick shithouse’
• The Japanese that barely got me through university is not the Japanese that is spoken here. Neither is it the Japanese that is spoken in Tokyo. I should’ve studied.
• Even in the absolute bottom of rural nowhere I still don’t have enough time to do everything I want- thus guitar, writing and studying have all fallen a bit to the wayside.
• I like the beach. I like nature. I like cities. I like trains. I like old abandoned buildings with trees overhanging and cicadas chirping. I like kids.
• There is so much to see in the world outside of Perth, outside of cities, outside of popular tourist destinations, outside of your comfort zone.
• I no longer know how or when to give up. With perhaps one or two exceptions. But when it comes to going up mountains without a care of how I’ll get down, well, I don’t let sense stop me. I still have an injury on my leg from Niseko, not to mention Fuji.
• Being vegan is easy, healthy, cheap and tasty. I will be mostly vegan again when I leave here.
• I have lots of plans for my future but still no plans to ever leave here.
• Stereotypes are often wrong, but it’s fun to wonder where they come from. Or to be proved wrong.
• I like to be proved wrong, but only after the fact. A long time usually.

And that is all for now. Really they seem to be just things I learnt about myself in my first year here. Maybe they are. Maybe they are.

 

Abandonment

Yesterday I was driving to the next town to help out at (ie. sit in on) a community English conversation class the English teacher in the next down gives, and I passed through a small village just before the city border, one of many small villages around the area that are being abandoned as the population declines. The town has an elementary school with five students, due to close next year (when two of those students will graduate) and a Junior High School that closed last year. Set into a valley, below the level of the road in front, all that is visible of the junior high school is the crumbling gym. There are at least six schools (that I know of) like this around Shimizu that are closed, three of them completely abandoned, and only one in regular use (as an old people’s home) I couldn’t resist stopping to take photos.

It’s strange seeing how nature is re-consuming these old buildings, when you think about the students who, for three to nine years went to these buildings almost every day.  At the entrance and in the staff room of all the schools are aerial photos taken following major construction, like a new gym or a new pool. In the case of the combined elementary school/junior high school deep in the forest, at the intersection where one windy road goes inland to the mountains, and the other back to the coast to join the major tourist road, the only such photo I’ve been able to find is from 1978 (昭和 52 年）and hangs in the genkan of the nearest school, which if I remember correctly is due to close in a year’s time (along with four others) The frame contains two photos, one of three students doing star-jumps with a teacher on a fine day- the shot captures the moment perfectly. The other is an aerial shot showing all the students (about 10-15 of them) spelling out the school’s name on the small field outside, with the year written underneath. I can think of no more perfect metaphor for the loss of the rural way of life. I want to go out to all of these schools before cherry-blossom season is over and photograph the way the fresh new life is taking over the old dead buildings. I’ve somehow developed a nostalgia for a time I never knew.

The photos are of the entrance, a clock stuck at ten to ten and an old swing hanging from a cherry blossom tree.

Click on the images for bigger and better views.

 

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Today is bulk rubbish day- there are crazy sculptures of old futons and used bicycles piled up at the corner by the park, and all the elementary school kids are filing to school on the first day of spring vacation to welcome next year’s first graders- a bunch of seventy children each about a metre high. They walk to school holding hands. The Japanese seem to take the changes occuring in Spring -when the grayish green leaves are replaced by pink and white cherry and plum blossoms- as a sign that everything has to change. Students graduate, half of my Board of Education are being relocated, some within city hall and my supervisor to a Junior High School in the next city, where he’ll be principal. Half of the teachers get shuffled around, which is all published in the Kochi Newspaper. And for some reason this computer isn’t letting me type in Japanese at the moment.  So teachers who can’t control a class are transferred from small schools I rarely visit to a class of 40 students at a school I go to every second week. Yesterday I went to a graduation ceremony for two students at a school I visit all the time (I get invited to all their events, excursions, picnics, sports days, graduations, drinking parties…) who are going to a Junior High School I’ve only been to three times in the past seven months. Those two are being replaced by the graduating boy’s younger brother, the one first year student at that school, who is bent on competing with one of this year’s first graders for the title of most energetic child in the world. And all of my favourite third year Junior High School students are going on to Senior High School, and as my favourites are usually the smart ones, they’re mostly going to academic schools in Nakamura or Kochi, and not the Senior High School near my house.

Whoo, spring break!

And on top of all that it seems that everyone in the office has had a haircut. It’s certainly time for me to brave one of the many local hairdressers, for only the second time.

 

Saying Thank You

As the school year draws to a close the teachers tend to persuade their students (though many do this on their own accord) to thank the ALTs, so one second grade girl wrote me a note to practice my Japanese reading while I was eating lunch today. It said

“ルイス先生へ

えい語を　おしえて　くれてありがとう。　またおしえてね！　二年”

“To Louis Sensei

Thank you very much for teaching English to us. Teach us again! Second grade. “

I felt bad because I tried to write the Kanji for 教える to prove that I could do it, but I’m having one of those days where I forget my indoor shoes, or accidentally read 冬 as はは. (How I made that mistake I don’t know…) so I didn’t even get that right. I was impressed that she did this without her teacher telling her to. And then I came back to the office and there was an envelope on my desk from another of the primary schools, full of origami and thank you notes with rabbits (For Easter. I think. Although I can’t remember when Easter is)

The first thank you note said

ルイス先生へ

わたしが、ないている　とき、手に　ハンコ　を　おしてくれてありがとう　ございます。　わたしも、ルイス先生みたいな、やさしい人に　なりたいです。

さら

 ”To Louis Sensei

The time I was crying, thank you very much for putting a stamp on my hand. I want to become a nice person just like Louis Sensei.

Sara”

That is, no kidding, an exact translation. I always give out stamps of smily faces and kangaroos for good students, and I gave her one because she was crying (one boy had come into the class, taken her pencilcase and thrown it in the bin. Gosh boys suck)

That girl’s parents own the local onsen, I think, and are really nice people.

So now I have drawings of the families of a whole first and second grade class, a folder full of origami, a note from a second grade girl and another either notes from another second grade class, all on my desk. These kids are great.

 

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: