Okay, so I am not in Japan, anymore. I came back to the US of A and found a job teaching English to foreign expats, tourists, and students who find themselves washed up on the shores of the Bay Area. It's not such a bad place to get stuck, except that it is criminally expensive and life-prohibitively unaffordable. And it ain't cheap.
But it's not so bad to visit, I suppose. My school works to take kids with elementary and middle school English, learned from non-native speakers, and provide them with some accent polishing, vocabulary expanding, and grammar brush-ups before they jump out into the world of American high schools and universities, where they will undoubtedly have to compare themselves to their native-English speaking peers, and probably show them up. We take some adults too, folks from China, Russia, and India who live and work here and want more confidence in their business English skills. In general, everybody wants to be there, at the school. The teachers like teaching and the students like learning, they know it to be useful, and they suck it up and make do.
There are always exceptions, however, who make things difficult for everyone.
Right now, I have a set of private students, all lovely, among whom one stands out as being a pain in the backside. Not to me, actually. He's pretty decent, polite, and engaged in lessons, when he is in my classroom. Apparently, he doesn't like one of his other classes and is locked in a battle of wills with the teacher of said class.
Now, there are very few kids who really enjoy misbehaving. Most kids like testing boundaries and being reassured that consequences exist and are consistently applied, so they can rely on the powers that be to enforce rules and protections for everybody at all times. Some kids get a kick out of breaking rules, but very few (in my experience) really like stonewalling their teachers. For one thing, in a private lesson, it gets hella boring. Sitting silently staring at each other for twenty minutes is pretty grating on the nerves of all involved parties. I have had kids sit through the last ten minutes of lessons like that - mostly seven-year-olds who didn't believe me when I said I would do that. And they didn't do whatever they were doing to piss me off very often after that. No one likes being bored.
There are older kids who will be rebellious just because they feel like it, but they usually react by pushing the envelope and contradicting everything you say. They don't like being quiet, they don't like sitting still, and they are trying to get a rise out of you.
So when a kid sits in his classroom, across the table from a teacher, staring down at a closed textbook, with an empty quiz sheet on the table, looking miserable, I figure it isn't because he likes the silence. I think it's because he either hates the subject or can't get along with the teacher, neither of which are things he would prefer in a perfect state of affairs.
All of us have subjects we hate, maybe because we innately despise it, maybe because we don't understand it in the slightest. I didn't pass geometry, although I went to class and sat through it. I literally cannot recall a single sensical idea from that class. I am sure I sat in my tiny desk, holding onto the pencil and tracing the shapes on the tests, wondering when I would be free from what I can only describe as a nightmarish experience. I remember that the teacher was a patient guy and that I cried every day over my homework.
But had it been a private class, I know I would have tried just as hard and understood just as little.
Basically if you hate a subject, you just have to suck it up and get through it. There isn't another choice - personal preferences rarely change. You know. Unless it's about wine. Cuz three cups in, and that $9.99 bottle from Chile suddenly has become your favorite merlot.
So it's probably a personal problem.
And this is tricky territory.
For one thing, teachers like to play god. The more atheistic the teacher, generally the more absolute the classroom rule. Go against the official opinion and you'll find yourself slapped with an extra essay, additional homework, and a request that the principal comes to have a chat with you, your mom, and the teacher to discuss your problem with authority. It's like living in a communist dictatorship, except with detention instead of Siberia as the constant looming threat to happiness.
It's way more difficult if there are no other students to balance things out. In such circumstances, the student decides that the only way to avoid active antagonism, especially if they are a more or less well-behaved kid, is to just shut up. And I understand that completely. If everything I say is wrong, why talk anymore? Just sit there and wait for the clock to strike 10:00.
Which is a miserable way to get through a miserable subject.
I don't know how to help these situations, because fault is almost always laid at the feet of the kid. I don't entirely disagree with this. No one is asking you to compromise your values so just sit back, smile and nod, write an essay spewing back the bare facts (avoid parroting the teacher's personal opinions - that just encourages them), and get through it. This is the least of your life's worries. At least here, in the classroom, you're technically safe. No one is going to haul your ass to jail or put you on the chain gang because you give less than your supreme effort. Save your zeal for the subjects you love. Somebody else will come along and stoke that teacher's ego, and hopefully actually like the topic.
It's unfortunate, however, that the above statement is the best way to go. I meet and have met a great number of teachers. They work with big classes, they are underpaid, overworked, and extremely under-appreciated members of the working class. So I understand when they decide that it's their way or the highway and this is the method that works for 70% of the students in the past, so they aren't going to change anything. Change is exhausting, it involves research and study (on your private time - you don't get paid to prepare lesson plans), and you have to test it out in real-life situations, which means some of your classes just became laboratories and if trial day happens to be the same day that the principal comes to sit in - and things don't work out the way you hoped - suddenly you look like a total fuck-up.
So you just stick to the same thing. And the 30% of the kids who don't get it, act out, act up, act like little jerks because they don't understand the relevance of geometry, history, anatomy, or physics. Or god forbid, English. So they just hunker down, praying for anonymity and daylight. Maybe the teacher will never call on them. Maybe they will just get through it if they ignore it long enough.
Hey. It worked for geometry.
2014/04/04
And Follow-Up
So the cab driver story isn't over. Because when I sat down, and we pulled into traffic, my cabbie looks in the rearview mirror - still on his phone - and says, in broken, but intelligble English, "What country you?"
"America."
He nods. In my travel book, any chat with your cabby is license to become buddies with your cabby. My driver in Kyoto was a good dude who had traveled more extensively than I have, albeit many years ago. We talked a lot, about teaching, foreign countries, tourists, and marriage. Everybody talks about marriage. I can't get around that one.
Anyway, I keep going. "California. San Francisco," I say, hoping he'll pick up the thread and sew something friendly. A tea-cozy, maybe...
He nods, then holds up his phone like, "Don't bother me, you rude whitey. I'm talking real words with a real person here."
"Oh." I make a gesture, hopefully an apologetic one. "Sorry."
He shakes his head at me, talks into the phone some more, than presently says, "Bye-bye. Bye-bye!"
He laughs at me in the mirror.
"How long Korea?"
How long have I been here? "3 hours." I point to my wrist, where my watch would be if Mickey hadn't split his leather the week before I left for Tano.
He laughs. "Speak Korean?"
"Nope!" He laughs again, looking a little surprised. Japanese are always surprised when I speak decent Japanese. Koreans always seem surprised that I don't speak Korean. I'm not sure which is the better reaction.
"Why Korea? Business? You working?"
"Visiting a friend."
He nods. "Boyfriend?" I shake my head. "Girlfriend?" I hesitate, then nod. "Girlfriend?!" His eyes get wide and he laughs.
No, no. "Friend, girl. Not girlfriend," I say, but he repeats, "Girlfriend?! Women?!" We go back and forth like this for a while, until I figure out how to be clear.
"I like men!" I declare.
"Oh, oh!" He laughs again and changes lanes, almost without looking. The cab behind us that was sneaking up like a shark slides smoothly into a parallel parking spot at precisely half a second before we smacked his right front bumper. "So how long Korea?"
"Hm, two weeks?"
He nods, sagely, wisely, and picks up the phone again. I swear I never even heard it ring.
Burst of Korean both distorted through satellites, phonelines, and receivers, and distorted by my uncomprehending ears. He hangs up. "My friend lives - " in the same apartment complex as my friend does.
"Your friend, girl, pretty?" He asks me. "Yes, of course," I reply. "Like me!" I strike a cute pose and he cracks up. I'm going to take that as agreement.
"Baek Suck" we both read off the traffic signs. We are getting closer. "I want study English," he confides patiently.
"Good. I want to study Korean." Which is always true for me when I am in Korea. "Now, your English is here," I illustrate by holding my hand at about waist height. "You study, you get good, then your English is here." Corresponding elevation of hand to level of grandiose learning capability. "My Korean is here," I stomp on the floor of the car.
"You're funny!" He is cracking up. "Married? Solo?"
"Solo." I never could get worked up over duets. "You married?"
Here there was a patch of completely unintelligble wordiness. I am not sure if he said he was married, or not, but somehow he got onto having two sons. One in high school and one in junior high. So I guess maybe? Or divorced? Cuz the simple answer would have been, yes.
"Hey! Straight?"
I thought we covered this.
"Left?"
Oh!
I stare out the window. We are in the right neighborhood, but like Japan, Korea doesn't really use street names for addresses (I think?). I recognize where we are, but all the towering apartment buildings surrounding us look alike (I am NOT racist).
"Um... Straight. Then left." I command.
He shakes his head. "No, no." Pointing his finger ahead and shaking it contrarily. "No, no." I try to show him the address I've got on my phone, but he can't read it and we can't magnify the printing. Never mind, he waves me back. We'll just go down every street until we figure it out.
So we pull a u-turn in the middle of the street.
And Mom wonders why I think she'd be a great Korean driver.
"Number?"
I tell him, but I'm sure now we are at the wrong complex. The mountain park place is directly in front of us and it should be on our left.
"No, no, no, no," I try to direct him.
"1-0-5," he replies, pointing left. There's the mountain. Forget the mountain, there's the apartment complex I've been looking for since 9 o'clock this morning when I left my hotel in Osaka.
"That's it, that's it! Okay, go left! Straight, straight! Left!" I am so good at directions.
He's cracking up again. In fact, I don't think he's stopped laughing for a full minute at a time during this drive. "I like you!" he tells me as we roar down the avenue, turning in at the correct complex, winding our way through the various towers, and finally stopping in front of the doors to my friend's apartment building. "Yes! No! Left! Straight! I like you!"
I'm laughing, he's laughing. Maybe he's laughing at me, and I'm laughing with him, but who cares? It's hilarious. As most of life is, when you're honest with yourself. Who really knows what we're doing anyway?
My confidence has been restored, for the moment at least. I still have to count out the correct cash to pay my fare.
"America."
He nods. In my travel book, any chat with your cabby is license to become buddies with your cabby. My driver in Kyoto was a good dude who had traveled more extensively than I have, albeit many years ago. We talked a lot, about teaching, foreign countries, tourists, and marriage. Everybody talks about marriage. I can't get around that one.
Anyway, I keep going. "California. San Francisco," I say, hoping he'll pick up the thread and sew something friendly. A tea-cozy, maybe...
He nods, then holds up his phone like, "Don't bother me, you rude whitey. I'm talking real words with a real person here."
"Oh." I make a gesture, hopefully an apologetic one. "Sorry."
He shakes his head at me, talks into the phone some more, than presently says, "Bye-bye. Bye-bye!"
He laughs at me in the mirror.
"How long Korea?"
How long have I been here? "3 hours." I point to my wrist, where my watch would be if Mickey hadn't split his leather the week before I left for Tano.
He laughs. "Speak Korean?"
"Nope!" He laughs again, looking a little surprised. Japanese are always surprised when I speak decent Japanese. Koreans always seem surprised that I don't speak Korean. I'm not sure which is the better reaction.
"Why Korea? Business? You working?"
"Visiting a friend."
He nods. "Boyfriend?" I shake my head. "Girlfriend?" I hesitate, then nod. "Girlfriend?!" His eyes get wide and he laughs.
No, no. "Friend, girl. Not girlfriend," I say, but he repeats, "Girlfriend?! Women?!" We go back and forth like this for a while, until I figure out how to be clear.
"I like men!" I declare.
"Oh, oh!" He laughs again and changes lanes, almost without looking. The cab behind us that was sneaking up like a shark slides smoothly into a parallel parking spot at precisely half a second before we smacked his right front bumper. "So how long Korea?"
"Hm, two weeks?"
He nods, sagely, wisely, and picks up the phone again. I swear I never even heard it ring.
Burst of Korean both distorted through satellites, phonelines, and receivers, and distorted by my uncomprehending ears. He hangs up. "My friend lives - " in the same apartment complex as my friend does.
"Your friend, girl, pretty?" He asks me. "Yes, of course," I reply. "Like me!" I strike a cute pose and he cracks up. I'm going to take that as agreement.
"Baek Suck" we both read off the traffic signs. We are getting closer. "I want study English," he confides patiently.
"Good. I want to study Korean." Which is always true for me when I am in Korea. "Now, your English is here," I illustrate by holding my hand at about waist height. "You study, you get good, then your English is here." Corresponding elevation of hand to level of grandiose learning capability. "My Korean is here," I stomp on the floor of the car.
"You're funny!" He is cracking up. "Married? Solo?"
"Solo." I never could get worked up over duets. "You married?"
Here there was a patch of completely unintelligble wordiness. I am not sure if he said he was married, or not, but somehow he got onto having two sons. One in high school and one in junior high. So I guess maybe? Or divorced? Cuz the simple answer would have been, yes.
"Hey! Straight?"
I thought we covered this.
"Left?"
Oh!
I stare out the window. We are in the right neighborhood, but like Japan, Korea doesn't really use street names for addresses (I think?). I recognize where we are, but all the towering apartment buildings surrounding us look alike (I am NOT racist).
"Um... Straight. Then left." I command.
He shakes his head. "No, no." Pointing his finger ahead and shaking it contrarily. "No, no." I try to show him the address I've got on my phone, but he can't read it and we can't magnify the printing. Never mind, he waves me back. We'll just go down every street until we figure it out.
So we pull a u-turn in the middle of the street.
And Mom wonders why I think she'd be a great Korean driver.
"Number?"
I tell him, but I'm sure now we are at the wrong complex. The mountain park place is directly in front of us and it should be on our left.
"No, no, no, no," I try to direct him.
"1-0-5," he replies, pointing left. There's the mountain. Forget the mountain, there's the apartment complex I've been looking for since 9 o'clock this morning when I left my hotel in Osaka.
"That's it, that's it! Okay, go left! Straight, straight! Left!" I am so good at directions.
He's cracking up again. In fact, I don't think he's stopped laughing for a full minute at a time during this drive. "I like you!" he tells me as we roar down the avenue, turning in at the correct complex, winding our way through the various towers, and finally stopping in front of the doors to my friend's apartment building. "Yes! No! Left! Straight! I like you!"
I'm laughing, he's laughing. Maybe he's laughing at me, and I'm laughing with him, but who cares? It's hilarious. As most of life is, when you're honest with yourself. Who really knows what we're doing anyway?
My confidence has been restored, for the moment at least. I still have to count out the correct cash to pay my fare.
Good Morning, Seoul-Incheon!
Oh, Korea.
There is something very unsettling about leaving one Asian country where you can read the signs, follow the conversations, interpret the menus, and count out change with obnoxious precision, and heading to a country where the people look the same, but everything else is totally alien.
And no, I'm not racist, I'm realistic. They think we all look alike, too.
Last night, I was an articulate and intelligent, if slightly hammered, citizen of the world, chatting and kanpai-ing with my local sushi chef, comparing sake from Osaka to sake from Kochi, and making bad puns involving ginger and supermarket cashiers. ("Shouga? Shou ga nai!" It doesn't translate.)
Today, I'm running up to the poster at the front of the restaurant, pointing at a faded depiction of rice, eggs, and bamboo shoots, and smiling like a big white fool while the old lady running the joint is complaining to herself about my lack of comprehension, and the waitress is saying, "Ooh! Look! She wants bi-bim-bap! How cute!"
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
It's not enough that I tried to get on the wrong bus outside the airport and was saved only by a kind man who spoke enough English to ask to see my ticket, and gently point out that I really wanted to go to that other departure gate. The cashier at the coffee shop had to patiently help me find the correct change for my lunch, because apparently my math skills are closely linked to my language skills. Not only have I become deaf and mute, suddenly I can no longer add.
People may very well roll their eyes and get put out over my inability to tell a good joke in Korean, or for that matter say "thank you" correctly (I've tried - it's not working out for me), but it doesn't mean I care. For some reason, this trip at least - less than a day into it - I don't take it personally. It's all part of the game. You can't get anywhere if you don't go somewhere new and take a chance.
With a stomach gurgling over with kimchi and bean sprouts, a backpack spilling over with snacks that were purchased at an earlier time for that very probable moment when I'm starving and stuck at home, and my mind brimming over with humor at myself and my awkwardness (I'm not usually clumsy, but today I've knocked over everything I've touched - I almost include the plane in that; if it weren't for the gusty Osaka bay winds, I swear, it would've crumpled when I boarded), I wandered over to the taxi stop.
There was a long line of cars and a short line of people. I watched this one cabbie drive up, on his phone the whole time, and I figured he was going to pull right out of there when he saw a luggage-laden foreigner with her finger on the translate button of Google-talk, wobbling slightly on her trusty, but rather dilapidated after an inadvertant mountain trek, sky-highs.
Instead, he bobbed his head at me and opened the trunk.
Somehow I managed to pronounce the name of my destination correctly. He nodded again, and took off, like I was just another passenger.
That's right. Nailed it.
There is something very unsettling about leaving one Asian country where you can read the signs, follow the conversations, interpret the menus, and count out change with obnoxious precision, and heading to a country where the people look the same, but everything else is totally alien.
And no, I'm not racist, I'm realistic. They think we all look alike, too.
Last night, I was an articulate and intelligent, if slightly hammered, citizen of the world, chatting and kanpai-ing with my local sushi chef, comparing sake from Osaka to sake from Kochi, and making bad puns involving ginger and supermarket cashiers. ("Shouga? Shou ga nai!" It doesn't translate.)
Today, I'm running up to the poster at the front of the restaurant, pointing at a faded depiction of rice, eggs, and bamboo shoots, and smiling like a big white fool while the old lady running the joint is complaining to herself about my lack of comprehension, and the waitress is saying, "Ooh! Look! She wants bi-bim-bap! How cute!"
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
It's not enough that I tried to get on the wrong bus outside the airport and was saved only by a kind man who spoke enough English to ask to see my ticket, and gently point out that I really wanted to go to that other departure gate. The cashier at the coffee shop had to patiently help me find the correct change for my lunch, because apparently my math skills are closely linked to my language skills. Not only have I become deaf and mute, suddenly I can no longer add.
People may very well roll their eyes and get put out over my inability to tell a good joke in Korean, or for that matter say "thank you" correctly (I've tried - it's not working out for me), but it doesn't mean I care. For some reason, this trip at least - less than a day into it - I don't take it personally. It's all part of the game. You can't get anywhere if you don't go somewhere new and take a chance.
With a stomach gurgling over with kimchi and bean sprouts, a backpack spilling over with snacks that were purchased at an earlier time for that very probable moment when I'm starving and stuck at home, and my mind brimming over with humor at myself and my awkwardness (I'm not usually clumsy, but today I've knocked over everything I've touched - I almost include the plane in that; if it weren't for the gusty Osaka bay winds, I swear, it would've crumpled when I boarded), I wandered over to the taxi stop.
There was a long line of cars and a short line of people. I watched this one cabbie drive up, on his phone the whole time, and I figured he was going to pull right out of there when he saw a luggage-laden foreigner with her finger on the translate button of Google-talk, wobbling slightly on her trusty, but rather dilapidated after an inadvertant mountain trek, sky-highs.
Instead, he bobbed his head at me and opened the trunk.
Somehow I managed to pronounce the name of my destination correctly. He nodded again, and took off, like I was just another passenger.
That's right. Nailed it.
2014/03/25
99 Bottles of Beer
"Dinner together or be drunk?"
This is a message I received from the junior high school vice principal's daughter. They're my kind of family.
I forgot how much alcohol is an inegral part of Japanese socializing. It is totally normal and acceptable to go down ten or so glasses of beer while at dinner with your boss, his boss, and the boss of everybody, his wife. Granted, the glasses are pretty small. I went to the Parent Teacher Association graduation party, and everybody had a rosy time. But if I were counting honestly, I would have to say each person probably only had two or three 12 ounce bottles of beer over a two hour period.
This is not much to a bulky Anglo-Saxon.
It is a lot to a petite Japanese person.
The PTA enkai was pretty funny, mostly because my students' parents look an awful lot like their kids. It was a little like looking into a distorted futuristic mirror that showed me exactly what twelve-year-old Seiyuu would be like in twenty years, and after three rounds of henpai (that grand drinking game, where you pour for your neighbor, and they reciprocate, and you reimburse, until the bottle is empty and you have to Thor-style it to the waitress: "Another!").
I made the mistake of being able to identify match a few parents and students without asking, and this meant for the rest of the night parents wandered up to me and said, "Quick! Who'm I? Can you guess?"
Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm slightly apalled at the hints they give.
"I have a daughter," one dad tells me. "She's kind of big."
"You mean tall?" I try to be diplomatic.
"I mean chubby. Fat. Big." Followed by an illustrative gesture.
Nice.
These introductions are always followed up by personal questions (let's face it - every question in Japan is a personal question: how tall are you, how much do you weigh, do you have a boyfriend, are your parents dead?). "Do you have children?" one mom asks me. I have about two hundred by now, if you count students. "No, not yet," I reply. "Are you married?" "No, not yet." "Do you have a boyfriend?"
If I did, he probably would be pissed off that I went to Japan for a month without him.
"No, not yet."
Surprisingly, though, when you talk to younger parents, they are very patient with you.
"That's okay," one mother tells me. "I didn't get married until I was in my thirties. You have to wait to find a responsible, hard-working man, who is financially stable. Nobody wants to marry poor."
I'll drink to that.
As the evening passes, you get up and move around to talk to other people, to drink with your superiors, and express gratitude to the right teachers. The principal came around to chat with me, knock me over with a feather - she's a nice lady, but we're not what you might call convivial with each other - and before we'd gotten two sentences out, some old dude plopped himself down and began chatting with us in extremely thick Tosa-ben.
The Principal translated into standard Japanese and I must have been pretty blotto by then, because I do not remember anything he said to me, although I remember he seemed to have a marvelous time conversing.
I am a great conversationalist.
At the end of the evening, I sneaked over to the sixth grade teacher and said thank you for being such a good teacher. This class was really tough - there were a lot of students and they did not work well together before he came along. In fact, two years ago when I met them, I worried that they were on the breaking point - something that most of the teachers also thought at the time.
By the time we broke up the party with the single unanimous hand clap (which must have an official Japanese name, but I sure don't know it) most folks were swaying, happily-red-faced, and ready for Bedforshire, myself among them. As I walked out the door, the junior high Vice Principal stopped me and asked, "When are we going to izakaya? Maybe get drunk together?"
Like father, like daughter. I really missed this place.
This is a message I received from the junior high school vice principal's daughter. They're my kind of family.
I forgot how much alcohol is an inegral part of Japanese socializing. It is totally normal and acceptable to go down ten or so glasses of beer while at dinner with your boss, his boss, and the boss of everybody, his wife. Granted, the glasses are pretty small. I went to the Parent Teacher Association graduation party, and everybody had a rosy time. But if I were counting honestly, I would have to say each person probably only had two or three 12 ounce bottles of beer over a two hour period.
This is not much to a bulky Anglo-Saxon.
It is a lot to a petite Japanese person.
The PTA enkai was pretty funny, mostly because my students' parents look an awful lot like their kids. It was a little like looking into a distorted futuristic mirror that showed me exactly what twelve-year-old Seiyuu would be like in twenty years, and after three rounds of henpai (that grand drinking game, where you pour for your neighbor, and they reciprocate, and you reimburse, until the bottle is empty and you have to Thor-style it to the waitress: "Another!").
I made the mistake of being able to identify match a few parents and students without asking, and this meant for the rest of the night parents wandered up to me and said, "Quick! Who'm I? Can you guess?"
Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm slightly apalled at the hints they give.
"I have a daughter," one dad tells me. "She's kind of big."
"You mean tall?" I try to be diplomatic.
"I mean chubby. Fat. Big." Followed by an illustrative gesture.
Nice.
These introductions are always followed up by personal questions (let's face it - every question in Japan is a personal question: how tall are you, how much do you weigh, do you have a boyfriend, are your parents dead?). "Do you have children?" one mom asks me. I have about two hundred by now, if you count students. "No, not yet," I reply. "Are you married?" "No, not yet." "Do you have a boyfriend?"
If I did, he probably would be pissed off that I went to Japan for a month without him.
"No, not yet."
Surprisingly, though, when you talk to younger parents, they are very patient with you.
"That's okay," one mother tells me. "I didn't get married until I was in my thirties. You have to wait to find a responsible, hard-working man, who is financially stable. Nobody wants to marry poor."
I'll drink to that.
As the evening passes, you get up and move around to talk to other people, to drink with your superiors, and express gratitude to the right teachers. The principal came around to chat with me, knock me over with a feather - she's a nice lady, but we're not what you might call convivial with each other - and before we'd gotten two sentences out, some old dude plopped himself down and began chatting with us in extremely thick Tosa-ben.
The Principal translated into standard Japanese and I must have been pretty blotto by then, because I do not remember anything he said to me, although I remember he seemed to have a marvelous time conversing.
I am a great conversationalist.
At the end of the evening, I sneaked over to the sixth grade teacher and said thank you for being such a good teacher. This class was really tough - there were a lot of students and they did not work well together before he came along. In fact, two years ago when I met them, I worried that they were on the breaking point - something that most of the teachers also thought at the time.
By the time we broke up the party with the single unanimous hand clap (which must have an official Japanese name, but I sure don't know it) most folks were swaying, happily-red-faced, and ready for Bedforshire, myself among them. As I walked out the door, the junior high Vice Principal stopped me and asked, "When are we going to izakaya? Maybe get drunk together?"
Like father, like daughter. I really missed this place.
2014/03/19
First Thing's First
My first official action in Japan was to lose my wallet.
I had made it through customs and immigration, desparately missing my relinquished resident alien card that had allowed me to take the fast lane, taken a trip to the ladies', and found my way over to the "please overnight my heavy and gaijin-sized suitcase to the back of beyond counter". Everyone loves the takyubin, especially yours truly. I was in the middle of congratulating myself for being able to write my former address in Chinese characters on the address form, when the multi-tasking counter helper-lady told me the total for my transaction. Just a moment, I replied. Let me get my wallet.
It wasn't in my purse where I ALWAYS put it. It wasn't in the convenient side pocket where I ALWAYS put it when I don't remember to put it in my purse.
No need to panic. I don't lose things. Except my mind, my temper, and occasionally my sense of proportion.
I remember I slipped it out of my backpack while in the bathroom, as I had taken a few things out of my big suitcase and placed them in my backpack for my overnight stay in Osaka. Of course, I knew where it was, where it had to be. I had zipped it into one of the many pockets of my jacket.
Upon investigation, however, I found I had zipped a plethora of useful items into my pockets, including my phone, chapstick, an extra sleeve of airport-purchased tissues, the cookie from my last in-flight meal, a tube of Gardener's hand therapy, my passport, and the little notebook wherein I wrote the reservation number for my next flight. But no wallet.
Mayhaps it's time to panic. I do lose things. Like my cool, my calm, and a billfold containing 20000 yen, my (useless here) driver's license, and my (vital to surival) Mister Donut Customer Loyalty Point Card.
Now I am in a blind frenzy thinking I have to run madly back to the restroom so I can search the grimy stalls for where my wallet must have plummeted from my pocket/backpack/sweating palms to the floor. I am breathlessly trying to ask the counter lady if she has change for the only bill I have with me, but it comes out as "oh no, I can't believe it, no way, *snort*, *fearful choking sound.*"
She gives me my change and drags my suitcase behind the counter.
I turn tail and run to the toilet like I'm having a bad reaction to too much sake, tempura peppers, and possibly an ill-timed bong hit.
Normally, in Japan, I wouldn't worry about losing anything. It's pretty common for folks to throw their wallets or purses down on their seat in the train while they head to the loo. And this isn't Thailand - people don't steal passports and phones out of your bag. Nor is it China - where they make it personal by knocking it out of your hands. Here there are monetary rewards for strangers who find lost personal belongings of other strangers. Last fall, I found someone's iPhone on the sidewalk and turned it in to the local police station. They asked me to fill out a contact sheet so that when the owner picked it up, he could pay me $100 for returning it. Like a fool, I cheerfully declined, as though I was just in it for the karma.
And look what happened to me.
I searched the bathroom, the stalls, the sinks, and finally began to take everything out of my bag, just in case I had accidentally slipped it into my suitcase and I was now sending that off to be shipped somewhere by shadowy beings with vague impulses and uncanny senses of direction and organization.
Thank God, I found my wallet stuff deeply into one of those convenient inner pockets, where you can place things to keep them organized and separated, and whose main purpose seems to be hiding your folding reusable grocery bag until you've returned from the Whole Foods where the checkout guy made you feel like you personally burnt that hole in the ozone all by yourself.
I figured I had had the scare for the trip. We'd covered all the frightened bases, and now it would be smooth sailing.
I continued to think that until the concierge knocked on my shoe-box-sized hotel room door to return my passport, which I left at the front desk after they copied it for their records.
It's going to be a great vacation.
I had made it through customs and immigration, desparately missing my relinquished resident alien card that had allowed me to take the fast lane, taken a trip to the ladies', and found my way over to the "please overnight my heavy and gaijin-sized suitcase to the back of beyond counter". Everyone loves the takyubin, especially yours truly. I was in the middle of congratulating myself for being able to write my former address in Chinese characters on the address form, when the multi-tasking counter helper-lady told me the total for my transaction. Just a moment, I replied. Let me get my wallet.
It wasn't in my purse where I ALWAYS put it. It wasn't in the convenient side pocket where I ALWAYS put it when I don't remember to put it in my purse.
No need to panic. I don't lose things. Except my mind, my temper, and occasionally my sense of proportion.
I remember I slipped it out of my backpack while in the bathroom, as I had taken a few things out of my big suitcase and placed them in my backpack for my overnight stay in Osaka. Of course, I knew where it was, where it had to be. I had zipped it into one of the many pockets of my jacket.
Upon investigation, however, I found I had zipped a plethora of useful items into my pockets, including my phone, chapstick, an extra sleeve of airport-purchased tissues, the cookie from my last in-flight meal, a tube of Gardener's hand therapy, my passport, and the little notebook wherein I wrote the reservation number for my next flight. But no wallet.
Mayhaps it's time to panic. I do lose things. Like my cool, my calm, and a billfold containing 20000 yen, my (useless here) driver's license, and my (vital to surival) Mister Donut Customer Loyalty Point Card.
Now I am in a blind frenzy thinking I have to run madly back to the restroom so I can search the grimy stalls for where my wallet must have plummeted from my pocket/backpack/sweating palms to the floor. I am breathlessly trying to ask the counter lady if she has change for the only bill I have with me, but it comes out as "oh no, I can't believe it, no way, *snort*, *fearful choking sound.*"
She gives me my change and drags my suitcase behind the counter.
I turn tail and run to the toilet like I'm having a bad reaction to too much sake, tempura peppers, and possibly an ill-timed bong hit.
Normally, in Japan, I wouldn't worry about losing anything. It's pretty common for folks to throw their wallets or purses down on their seat in the train while they head to the loo. And this isn't Thailand - people don't steal passports and phones out of your bag. Nor is it China - where they make it personal by knocking it out of your hands. Here there are monetary rewards for strangers who find lost personal belongings of other strangers. Last fall, I found someone's iPhone on the sidewalk and turned it in to the local police station. They asked me to fill out a contact sheet so that when the owner picked it up, he could pay me $100 for returning it. Like a fool, I cheerfully declined, as though I was just in it for the karma.
And look what happened to me.
I searched the bathroom, the stalls, the sinks, and finally began to take everything out of my bag, just in case I had accidentally slipped it into my suitcase and I was now sending that off to be shipped somewhere by shadowy beings with vague impulses and uncanny senses of direction and organization.
Thank God, I found my wallet stuff deeply into one of those convenient inner pockets, where you can place things to keep them organized and separated, and whose main purpose seems to be hiding your folding reusable grocery bag until you've returned from the Whole Foods where the checkout guy made you feel like you personally burnt that hole in the ozone all by yourself.
I figured I had had the scare for the trip. We'd covered all the frightened bases, and now it would be smooth sailing.
I continued to think that until the concierge knocked on my shoe-box-sized hotel room door to return my passport, which I left at the front desk after they copied it for their records.
It's going to be a great vacation.
2014/03/01
Part Deux
The funny thing about air travel is that one-way tickets are ludicrously more expensive than round-trip tickets. Actually, it's not so much funny as annoying. I don't know if it's a conspiracy between immigration and United, or if it just ensures a body in a seat on at least two flights.
There are some perks, however.
For instance, when I left Tano last August, I bought a round-trip ticket. Because escaping rural Japan and staying in your home country can cost you $3,500, or you can come back and irritate your former coworkers with your unintelligible Japanish for almost fifteen hundred less.
"She may not even use the return ticket," my CIR argued on my behalf.
That's what hooked them. My town bought me a round-trip ticket, several sets of chopsticks, and waved good-bye to me at the Kochi airport, world-renowned for having one terminal with one breakfast shop, and seventeen life-size cardboard Ryoma Sakamoto cut-outs. Patted me on the back and said, "Sayonara sucka-san."
But like a bad one yen coin, I'm turning up again.
I worked holiday at a coffee shop, fished around for some permanent work, found that most fish, unlike St. Peter's do NOT have gold in their mouths, and decided to take a holiday. I'm heading back to Tano, (country rooooooooooad, carry me hoooooooooome), back to the land of too much yuzu and not enough cheese.
Back to the place where American coffee is instant coffee that's been watered down to a poor imitation of dirty dishwater.
Back to the town that's only on the map because of some rather crooked and usurious tendencies back in the day.
Back to always having in the back of your mind, "Is it going to be today? Or tonight? That huge wave that's going to wipe this place off the face of the earth?"
Back to fish fresh off the neighbor's boat, fruit straight out of the mayor's orchard, rice you plant and harvest with a bunch of ten-year-olds, and wild-boar caught on my boss's property with a snare and an old spear (true story).
I can't wait.
There are some perks, however.
For instance, when I left Tano last August, I bought a round-trip ticket. Because escaping rural Japan and staying in your home country can cost you $3,500, or you can come back and irritate your former coworkers with your unintelligible Japanish for almost fifteen hundred less.
"She may not even use the return ticket," my CIR argued on my behalf.
That's what hooked them. My town bought me a round-trip ticket, several sets of chopsticks, and waved good-bye to me at the Kochi airport, world-renowned for having one terminal with one breakfast shop, and seventeen life-size cardboard Ryoma Sakamoto cut-outs. Patted me on the back and said, "Sayonara sucka-san."
But like a bad one yen coin, I'm turning up again.
I worked holiday at a coffee shop, fished around for some permanent work, found that most fish, unlike St. Peter's do NOT have gold in their mouths, and decided to take a holiday. I'm heading back to Tano, (country rooooooooooad, carry me hoooooooooome), back to the land of too much yuzu and not enough cheese.
Back to the place where American coffee is instant coffee that's been watered down to a poor imitation of dirty dishwater.
Back to the town that's only on the map because of some rather crooked and usurious tendencies back in the day.
Back to always having in the back of your mind, "Is it going to be today? Or tonight? That huge wave that's going to wipe this place off the face of the earth?"
Back to fish fresh off the neighbor's boat, fruit straight out of the mayor's orchard, rice you plant and harvest with a bunch of ten-year-olds, and wild-boar caught on my boss's property with a snare and an old spear (true story).
I can't wait.
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