On the edge

Even halfhearted blogs need closure.

What’s happened since the last post?

A few trips: the big ones...

Mitake-san: a low visibility hike with forest crabs and rare Japanese solitude.
5 action packed days in S. Thailand. Gorgeous place, can understand why everyone loves it there.
8 days in West Japan and Shikoku. A road trip with lots of udon, bright green leaves, and gorgeous coastline.
Hong Kong and Macau . Kauai.

Vegetable garden year 2: I created a new species, a hybrid of lettuce and tree. Onion flowers.

My Japanese skills went way up, especially reading kanji. Took the 2kyu exam last week and I think I just passed.

My surf spot has shifted about 2km’s north, luckily I acquired a bike attached surfboard carrier. Lots of fun swell, but nothing too epic.

Cooking: Japanese food skills: curries, gyoza, omelette rice, miso soups, fish, udon, and more

And I will be home August 5th

The Season of the Mask, Revigorated Blog Beginning Perhaps Post

When my parents came to Japan last February, what surprised them the most, leaving them in a continuous state of disbelief, more than anything other thing about this very different culture?

The face mask.

Yes, it is the season of influenza rates charted twice daily on the uninsulated walls of the teachers room, and the common cold as no mere possibility in the life of a school teacher. It is… the season of the mask. An average winter census in a public place will yield around a 1 in 3 probability of mask wearing.

My parents, as with I, had only experienced mask imagery in hospitals worn by doctors and nurses, areas of extreme pollution, or cities experiencing an outbreak of SARS. But in Japan, the reasons they are worn are many. But the foremost seems to be, no surprise, courtesy towards others. It’s like a personal quarantine. But also to provide a moist environment for the throat and nose and to prevent yourself from contracting respiratory diseases.

It probably does work to some degree, but I just cannot make myself wear one.

Strawberry Picking

Along with the season of the mask is the season of ….


strawberry picking.

What?

Yes, likely in order to use ample greenhouse space during an inconvenient growing time, strawberry season, along with all associated flavored products are winter’s domain. It all begins with red and white Christmas cakes in December, strawberry flavored, just like the great American Christmas tradition. This weekend I sampled the season firsthand across the Tone River. It doesn't come cheap at 1500 yen, normally 12$ but now over $16 due to the currency changes. This gets you a half hour of tabe (eating) ho-dai, unalterably linked with ho-down in my mind. I managed to count nearly 50 green strawberry stems.

Interesting Aside: Greenhouses usually used for melons are fitted with sulfur (a natural insecticide), a gas heater, and a hive of pollinating bees. Three minutes into a conversation with our strawberry purveyor, we (or really my girlfriend) were told that the previous year, with the prices of oil so high, two of his strawberry friends went deep into the red on their checkbooks and hung themselves in their greenhouses.

Coming Out of Hibernation

Regarding Staying Another Year

Although I occasionally have my 'what was I thinking' days, I consider my decision to stay another year a good one. Though it certainly isn’t all roses over here. Winter was rough and stagnant was the word. According to the JET handbook, I'm at the bottom of the one year culture shock curve. Obviously a curve with happiness on one axis is going to be oversimplified but does function to conveniently explain away the stagnation feeling. I do tire of the minimal degree of communication I can achieve with people every day and the required phrases every morning, afternoon, and departure. It can be lonely. The nearly inescapable cold certainly played a part, too.

And while on the subject of complaints, the job is too easy. It's like back at the tennis courts for me. I have so much free time while other teachers prepare lessons, spend weekends at club sports practice, and whatnot. They'd never act like it towards me, but there’s got to be at least some resentment. I’d feel begrudged if some unqualified kid was getting paid as much as I for spending 2/3rds the time and being able to mess around during that time. Some of the teachers are fond of me, but it wouldn’t surprise if others weren’t. And the students have mixed feelings, too. One assignment was to make a poll to ask classmates, and one girl used “Who do you like better, Evan or Chuck (my predecessor)?” This brought up some feelings of inadequacy over my skills at teaching and getting along with teenagers.

Elementary school is still a bit of a challenge, but not so stressful like it was in the beginning. This is where I get to actually be a teacher, and I usually have a genuinely good time. I just play games that use English every day. It's the only part of my job that’s truly rewarding, and the kids are much more open to talking even though they barely know any English.

Learning a language is still fun. I certainly have a new appreciation for language in general. I am speaking Japanese more often in school, extending my social sphere in preparation of the change-up that occurs. The school year actually ends this month. In Japan, many teachers are forced to switch schools. Yamaguchi-sensei, one of the English teachers I work with, is leaving. Ayumi, another assistant teacher who became a good friend and sits right next to me, (and also speaks great English) is also moving on.

The 9th graders have already left in a ceremony full of tears, songs, and bowing. The graduating class has been together since 1st grade but will branch out into high schools across the region. They have been studying for and taking stressful entrance exams for practically the whole year in order to get into the best schools around. Some are even moving away from their parents to live in dorms.

Back to me, and on to the Good News!

A few weeks ago, while still suffering through winter I was expecting big things out of spring, and it looks like my optimism was right on. I’m starting to do more exciting things on weekends.

I went to view the plum blossoms in our prefectures capital city three weekends ago. The next weekend I went snowboarding for the first time in Japan. It was so nice hanging out with the other ALT’s, and snowboarding was fun, too. I’ve still got some skills but I was unbelievably sore for days after. Last weekend was a biggie. Dinner with a Brazilian family Friday night, then into Tokyo for Toyo’s going away party. Three hours of all you can eat and drink with a bunch of cool people. After that I had my first awesome time out clubbing in Japan, up until 6, woke up in a stifling hot capsule. And now I’ve got South Korea coming up, visiting some people I met in Taiwan, Tokyo again, and a camping road trip of some sort in late April. Hopefully I'll also buckle down into some new hobbies (painting, keyboard, surfing again) to make weekday life a bit better.

I did have a 8 day respite from the working world when my parents came to visit. A facebook album is coming soon which will have accompanying anecdotes.

It's about time I give an update

The biggest news, I’m staying another year.
After 6 weeks of indecision, suddenly it just seemed like the thing to do. The job’s not perfect, I sometimes feel guilty as I have loads of free time to study Japanese, browse the internet, or read. But my Japanese continues to improve. I’m a bit tired of forming 50-minute-long snaking paths through the desks in class. The lukewarm school lunch is depressing to think about. My favorite time of day is recess, where I play volleyball or basketball, sometimes teaching American games to varying success. And I really like elementary school now. I’ve gotten better at controlling the kids, and I just always play games, which we both enjoy.

Winter. Though I’m grateful for four years of California ‘winters’, where occasionally we played shirtless beach volleyball on January nights, they obscured the full unpleasantness of real winter. There’s little central heating and houses are poorly insulated to boot. I use a kerosene heater for my bed/living-room but the warmth dissipates through my Japanese sliding door into my tundra-like kitchen. Schools are even worse, but at least I don’t have to wear a skirt. I wear the same pair of long underwear night and day only taking them off to wash them or myself.

I'm really looking forward to winter ending. The fortune I pulled at Narita shrine agreed with this. It told me to expect lots of good fortune in spring and summer. I'm kinda screwed for autumn and winter, but until then.

Since coming back from Taiwan, I've been kind of stagnating/hibernating. Partially because of two changes of plans concerning my parents 10 day visit. I’ll blame it on winter, too. I never wrote about Taiwan, but here are two Taiwan photo albums with accompanied text. Taiwan was pretty awesome, despite two considerable travel errors. Coming back to cold, working man’s Japan after a two week vacation made the decision to stay harder.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2062275&l=d71cc&id=13302886
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2062278&l=687a4&id=13302886


Our crew started a Friday tradition of dinner and drinking at a small izakaya (Japanese pub equivalent). It’s about 9$ for all you can drink for one hour. Not sure which variety of the scores of identical tasting Japanese beers it is. To complement a few pints, the four of us each get the set menu consisting of a plate of 4 types of raw meat and raw garlic to be grilled in the middle of our table, French fries, miso soup, white rice, and some radishes.

Should I Stay or Should I Go.

By the end of January, I have to decide whether I am going to stay through August ’08 or August ’09. Pretty big decision which I am on the fence about. Two years would have been out of question when I first signed up, due to it being a mind blowing amount of time to commit to.
So here's my pro/con list. I'd love to hear what you think, what would you do, etc. So send me an email or facebook message.

PROS
· It’s a pretty easy, comfortable life here. I don’t have much to worry about. Monday through Friday, I go to school at 825, stay til 415, assistant teach a few classes, chat with the teachers. I have plenty of free time at my job even, time to study Japanese, read, write lists.
· More chances to see Asia, experience Japan. 20 vacation days plus holidays isn’t bad for getting around.
·I’ll be able to speak Japanese very well by the time I leave. 5 months in and I can have basic conversations. It just takes me some time to formulate grammatically correct sentences. It’ll be nice to be able to talk with people. However this has been at the expense of Spanish which has disappeared.
·The surfing is good. I mean there’s always swell, and I’m a mile away from a great surf spot.
· I’ve got friends here, Japanese and other ALT’s.
·I’m saving money, probably about 10,000 by the end of the year. Not bad. The pay is pretty good here, especially with the yen strengthening against the dollar.
· The kids are pretty cool, easy going, etc. I’m starting to have more and more classes that afterwards I can say to myself, wow that was a lot of fun.
· What would I do if I went home? I’m still professionally lost. Whatever’s next I can just start a year later. Word from the home front is that it's not too easy to find a decent job in the US.
· I have the rest of my life to spend in America and I’ll appreciate the good friends and family that much more when I come back. If I leave, I’m not coming back.

CONS
·It’s a pretty easy comfortable life here; I SHOULD push myself to try something different. It’s becoming a bit habitual. It’s been fine for the last 5 months, but somewhere into the other 19 months, I might go crazy.
·I’ve already gotten a ton of new experience from a year here, is another year really going to add that much to it. Experience is kind of how I’m measuring worth nowadays. I could try something new instead or start building towards a career.
·I miss my friends and family, and perhaps they’ll be a little mad at me, but much worse is maybe friends will start to forget about me.
· It’s not the most challenging job, its tough to communicate with the kids, and I don’t feel like I make a huge impact on the students. Though they do like me. Elementary English is not the most enjoyable thing to teach or learn. Tough to get too creative when the Junior High’s follow a strict textbook itinerary and the elementary age kids have about zero English skills.
·A desire to live in NYC, or a city, or in a place where I can FULLY communicate with people. I miss being able to use English.

Three Busy Weekends

Week 1
Kamakura was the capitol of the Japanese Shogunate around the 12th and 13th centuries, a time in which Buddhism was also flourishing. It was here that I planned to spend my Thanksgiving weekend with some hiking between temples in the fall-time forests. However, there wasn’t a bed left in the city. So after only an afternoon exploring, I headed back to the cheapest district of Tokyo to sleep (Cheap probably because the area is almost exclusively composed of elderly, destitute, drunk, and crazy-looking people). There I met two Brits and embarked upon a big night of drinking, not ideal when the next day’s plan is a serene stroll of temple grounds.

Weekend highlights

An awe-some statue of the Amida Buddha. Sidenote: there are many Buddhas, this one’s not my favorite, he’s a pretty Christ-like Savior Buddha. It was once housed in a building but in the 1400’s, a tidal wave made it the km or so inshore and washed the building away.

Japanese people with good camera equipment clustered around maple trees getting their obligatory fall colors shot.

The Kannon 11-headed statue. In the 800’s, a giant camphor tree was found. It was decided it would be carved into not one, but two 30-foot tall statues. The second was thrown into the ocean, and 15 years later it washed up close to Kamakura.

Zeiten Beiran, or as most people know it by, the money-washing temple. A tunnel brings you into a 360 degree valley. Water drips or pours out of cracks in the moss-covered vertical stone walls. Then there’s a grotto, smoky with incense, and with a pool to wash one’s money. Any amount you wash is supposed to come back to you double, paying for my debacle that night in Tokyo. See two photos.

Spinning a giant bookcase full of important books on an axle, supposed to grant me all the knowledge contained in the books.

Scores of hawks gliding low along the cliff faces of Enoshima Island. And an awesome tide pool on a 65 degree day. Looking towards shore, seeing hundreds of black specks dot the water’s edge, all surfers, waist high surf. Surprise, I later discovered I was on the Shonan coast, maybe the most famous surfing area in Japan.

Week 2: Kashima
After an all-morning surf at a new spot, it was a rush to catch my ride to Kashima, the closest city, 45 minutes north. There, I went to a soccer game with two teachers. It was the last game of the season and a very important one. If the local team, the Kashima Antlers, won and the 1st place team lost, then the Antlers won the championship. However, the stadium, built for the 2002 World Cup was far from full. Kashima is one of those cities that many Japanese don’t even know, picture Albany, Trenton, or Fresno.

Well the Antlers won, the 1st place team lost, and an hour of celebrating and speeches ensured. It really wasn’t that exciting, nor even that interesting. There are some die hard fans that compose a section behind one of the goals who seemed pretty happy. Here are some photos of them, color coordinated and with a flag blocking the view of 200 or so. and one of me in front of the stadium, wearing my red and black. Normally I wouldn't like a team with those colors.

One of the teachers was one of those fans, and he got pretty drunk that night. I fell asleep to the soothing sounds of his wife yelling at him from a room downstairs. The night itself was real long, about 7 hours sitting on floors at one of those low tables.

The Japanese don’t know how to leave when they want to. After everyone looked exhausted after 5 hours at the first place, we went to a new place because the teacher had promised to meet someone there. Well, that took about 2.5 hours, and the 3 teachers were all asleep at one point, just leaving me and the guest, an interesting Sri Lankan businessman. You’d think it’d be more rude to fall asleep in someone’s company rather than say I’m tired and need to go home.

Week 3: Tokyo, the next weekend. Highlights

Akihabara: the electronics and nerd district. If you tell the class you went there, half the class will love you and the other half will be like “you otaku (freak)”. My favorite store is Don Quixote, a labyrinth-like discount store which has very narrow halls and weird goods piled to the ceiling. The only thing I bought was a ridiculous surfer Rasta ashtray.

Ryogoku: The Sumo stadium and training grounds are here. Sumo wrestlers and their stylish bodyguards stroll in and out of the gates on their way to or from eating. I also went to the Tokyo Museum housed in a structure that when standing under, makes you feel like you are in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, underneath those giant walker robots on the frozen planet battle scene. See photo.

Harajuku
A stroll from Shinjuku to Harajuku through Yoyogi and its park. Nice fall colors. Harajuku is nuts, I’m definitely taking my parents there. It’s the young/teeny bopper/hip center of Tokyo: crepe shacks and expensive second hand good outlets, goth Lolita stores next to hip hop style outfitters. Human sidewalk traffic jams.


Daft Punk
The reason I was in Tokyo this weekend to begin with. I meant to buy tickets for the Saturday show but apparently I can’t work a calendar. The Sunday show meant I couldn’t drink (much) and had to get back by Monday 730am for work. Pretty big hassle.
But more importantly, Daft Punk, so soo good, they totally integrated all the best tracks from their three CD’s, plus a packed, freaking out crowd, and an incredibly good, impossibly bright, full LED (though possibly seizure inducing), 11 tons of equipment light show. Dressed in their robot costumes, they spin tracks from the upper portion of a light pyramid, surrounded by more triangles. Who doesn’t want to rock out to intergalactic robots from the future, introducing electronic music to the masses. I want to be back there right now.

Check out this video of five cuts from the Tokyo show. The first song is probably the most skippable if you’re pressed for time. The vid is 15 mins, maybe a little long if urn t a big dp fan. You definitely had to be down in the crowd to experience it.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3pi1f_daft-punk-in-tokyo_music

Culture Festival and Language Learning

School Culture Festival

Bunka-sai, or the Culture Festival, was two Saturday’s ago. And yes, occasionally you have to work on a Saturday, for the price of a Monday off. At least they got rid of the 6-day school week a few years ago. Though most students, and most teachers still end up at school 6 or 7 days a week.

After each class performing two songs in a singing competition, the real fun began. Each class then competed for the most fun and interesting room. My job was to walk around and have fun.

My three favorites were
-Target Practice: One class created a horse out of a rolly-chair which you then got pulled across the room on, shooting arrows at targets for prizes.
-A giant board game with mini-games like guess the weight, mini-fishing and transferring beans with chopsticks.
-A Spring theme where I got my photo as Totoro.

I also lost in an arm-wrestling to 15-year old, with lots of people watching. In my credit, he’s the only one in the school who seems to have already hit and probably finished puberty, and it was a real battle.

The day ended with most of the losing 3^rd grade class crying because they lost. I’ve been told the time spent in Jr. High school is considered to be the best years of ones lives and each class wants to go out with a bang. Tough to celebrate and listen to the winning song while hearing sobs and sniffles.

Learning Japanese and English

Today I had no classes because of end of semester exams. So I studied almost 6 hours, all from a grammar textbook. This drive to study has only just arrived for me. I think I realized I could be putting a lot more effort into learning Japanese. Also that learning grammar is much more essential than learning vocabulary or kanji (characters). Now it still takes me a little time to plan out what I’m going to say, but I can make quite a variety of sentences. I think it takes additional time because one has to rearrange the sentence components in order to translate. For instance...

I want to say. At 3pm, I read a book in the library.

In Japanese, the order is I, at 3pm, in the library, book, read

So in Japanese Watashi wa, gogo no sanji ni, toushokan de, hon wo, yomimashita

Sticking with language, while drinking in Tokyo, some dude mentioned speaking Spanish, and I said I could. I was wrong. When I tried, nothing but a 50 50 mix of Span-nese came out; Japanese must be pushing Spanish out of my brain’s foreign language center. I had always heard you should try to learn a 3^rd language in a 2^nd language and so forth. Pretty interesting.

Another funny thing is that most Japanese have a lot of trouble with saying English syllables. Which is not a surprise. I’ve come to realize the great difficulty of speaking and learning English. In Japanese, there are about 80 or so distinct syllables which are strung together to make words, which sounds like a lot but really isn’t. English must have at least double that, and then there's the combining of syllables together and the choice of which to stress or draw out.

How do Japanese people deal with this?

They use their syllabary to create the English syllables which works surprisingly well, but still with far from perfect results. Thus words like oh-sue-tah-rah-lee-ah, (Australia), which look ridiculous can sound like English when the syllables are combined. Also, some of the Japanese syllables are perfect matches, but you wouldn’t think so. To pluralize any noun, they had –zu. Zu? Yes. i.e. Speakers. Su-pee-ka-zu, besides that final R it is right on. Well maybe you have to hear it.