Graduation as an anniversary, and cookie-baking

My last class with the 3nens was on their last actual day of class, from what I understand. This was unusual; normally our last class creeps up on us out of the calendar and I'm halfway through conducting it before we realize there won't be any more.

But this year was different. We planned ahead, and I wanted to make it special. So special, in fact, it would require the assistance of those abroad. I was callin' in the pudding cookies.

Other ALTs have done cooking classes with their students, but I never had before. Mostly I felt bad for asking to use the computer room, so the prospect of taking over and making use of not only a special room, but also a bunch of ingredients (which at first I thought, heck I'll just pay for, until I realized that chocolate chips have to be imported too, unless you want to bake with mini bags of mini chips and they just don't make cookies here like they do back home-- which is entirely the point of doing a class like this, after all), and making such a big mess and deal, well it seemed too much to ask, and to do. Plus, I'm not much of a cook. I don't know any really special recipes, right? Or super delicious representative foods?

But this year, I thought, no, let's do this. My favorite recipe is a fairly simple cookie recipe which is fairly cheap and did I mention really easy to make at home. The stuff you need is mostly already in your house. But for twelve groups of middle schoolers with a big shiny new kitchen classroom, it's a bit different. In Japan, everything comes in smaller bags and bottles, and since it was a class thing, we needed massive amounts of all the ingredients. First, we put in orders with Foreign Buyer's Club and YoYoMarket variously for all kinds of things. For the butter and eggs and sundry, we put in orders at the local grocery.

I was struck again with just how much butter and sugar goes into this recipe, but it's my favorite for a reason. The special secret ingredient (which my mom mailed me, thank goodness), makes the cookies really extra soft and forgiving. A few groups were instructed to make the regular "bag" recipe (that written on the choco chip bag) since we didn't have enough pudding mix packets for all 12 groups (that was my bad), but I think the substitutions of measurement and flour type and whatever the hell else happened in the process of procuring and measuring the ingredients in Japan vs. back home caused those poor groups to suffer very flat cookies.

All in all, the entire thing was a great experience, and a clusterfuck, and it gave me a cold. 

The clusterfuck aspect is pretty obvious: the recipe which is easy at home is not easy with a bunch of kids who have never made cookies before. I tried to tell them when a pile of the gooey dough was too big or too close to the others, but having never made cookies (having NEVER made cookies, at home), they couldn't really envision it. Also kids will be kids. I too remember looking at the pan and thinking, this extra dough could be one. GIANT. cookie. Oh awesome. Or, I wonder if we could make a pancake that was ACTUALLY the size of the PAN. So they had to try it, and it was pretty awful.

Also, there is the fact that this was all supposed to take place within one 50-minute class period, which I figured we could totally do. We could not.

Given one whole class period to clean up, we did restore the kitchen to order and were able to move the cookies during 4th hour.

Thirteen batches total. This is more cookieage than I ever made on my own.

The greatness of the experience was in their joy at being able to try it, and also at my own realization that they had just been given a little piece of something American iconic: cookies and milk. They didn't even know the two went together, and were horrified to see my dunk my cookie in the milk box. I was horrified that they had never heard of doing that.

That it gave me a cold is only in the way I stressed out about the whole thing in a manner that increased exponentially each day approaching the baking project. For me, colds aren't simply germs getting in and making a mess. Well it is that. But it's something else, because in my situation, that is, my age and general physical health and occupation, I am around germs all the time. Not like really bad ones, but I do work in an elementary school half the week. Shit goes around. Little kids TOUCH EVERYTHING. Germs are always there; I don't stay healthy by avoiding them, goodness knows. 

No. Getting sick is actually the rearrangement of stress and negative energy into bad physical reactions. It is conducted through the emotional wearing out of a person which leaves the mind and heart weakened against the ever-present opportunistic germs. It wasn't just the cookies thing that wore me out, of course: there are a great many things, mostly small, but too many of them nonetheless.

One is, of course, graduation. Graduations were not ever my forte, and this year there are the added bonuses of 1: these are my three-year students, meaning that when I arrived they were first-years, and now they are graduating, and 2: this is March, in Japan. 

March in Japan USED to mean spring (finally), graduation, and at the very end, hanami. But, and a lot of people don't think about this because it is so different from the western schedule, for a lot of us in schools, March 11th was, before it was the biggest goddamn earthquake of recorded history and tsunami of nearly unwatchable devastation, March 11th was graduation day. So we all sat in chilly gymnasia and cried a little while our teenage students fixed their wet eyes on the future and took flight from us. We all shook hands and took photos and sang songs and then, while we were puttering around the office, the chairs all stacked up, people already out of those black suits (always black suits for these occasions), while we were attending to paperwork or just now turning our attention to the next two weeks of school with the other students (graduates leave early or something), somewhere after the graduation while we were biding time before the evening teacher party, then that terrible disaster happened. 

I have heard other stories, from people in other places. One girl said they were already having the post-graduation party when they saw the shaking roll toward them across the horizon. Their boss said, "save the beer!" so they all grabbed one of the hefty bottles and held it up so the shaking table wouldn't spill it. 

So kind of.. in the way that you remember where you were when such and such a thing took place, and for those of us who lived in Japan, knew someone who lived in Japan, any of those related things, maybe this is one of those things. Everyone in Japan will remember where they were when they heard about the quake (or, if closer than we were, felt it). And for myself and many, many of my cohort, it was graduation day. I was exchanging e-mails, making plans with Sagramore in Tokyo, who noted in an e-mail at 3:05pm that there had been a "big ass earthquake just now, btw," and then failed to respond to my subsequent emails. I'm not into worrying, but I wondered just how big he meant, until others started getting phone calls and we turned on the TV.

So although it's not quite the year-anniversary of that event, it is, because it's graduation again, another Friday afternoon just like that one was.

Today, I'm in that in-between time again, just waiting til I can go home and hopefully take a nap. This graduation has been extra tiring because, as I mentioned, bonus number 1, they are my three-year kids, and also my last graduation, and I can't look at the departing students without seeing my own future, I can't hear their speeches without writing my own. I can't think about "Ichinan Family" without starting to cry. Splice that with the cold I got from cookie-baking and guess how many packs of tissues I've used up today. 

Tonight is the teacher party and once again, my head's not really in the game.

Some second years, being goofballs.

You're So Jozu With Those Hashi

A few weeks ago, I saw someone had "shared" via facebook some article about how Japanese people need a lesson in diversity, and the headline had something to do with being "skilled with chopsticks."

It's kind of been a joke with JETs lately (and before lately), how you get complimented all the time on how good you are at using chopsticks. Until recently, I would just smile and say thank you, as with any compliment, occasionally adding that I "practice a lot," in a somewhat ironic manner. When I say that, the people I say it to tend to think I really mean practice. What I mean is merely that I get a lot of practice, because I kind of live here.

So I've been occasionally touchy lately, a little on edge, and when on Tuesday, the 7th, a teacher at elementary school had the whole class look and see how good I was with my chopsticks, I briefly considered flinging all the rest of my rice at her. It went on from there. Maybe I've just not noticed it and now I'm offended, but now it seems like every time I go to elementary, the class I have lunch with has a teacher who will feel the need to point out how damn skilled I am at using chopsticks!

(Punctuated, quite hilariously, by the first and only occasion I ever had someone -- being one of my middle school second year weirdos -- say in English "You! Can't! Use! Hashi!")

And I want to be careful, because I'm surrounded by 7-year-olds who perhaps do think of it as practice, and who maybe sometimes find handling those sticks a little difficult what with their hand-eye-mouth coordination all still in progress.

But I, dear reader, am a young adult, who can read and write and do long division. And though I am not the most coordinated among us, unless I am handling snakes on fire with my madly skillzed chopstick use, you need not tell me I'm so good. Because I promise you, reader, that even if you do not feel you are good at using chopsticks, you are really close. If I gave you a week of school lunch and only hashi to eat it with, you'd be jozu in no time, too. Two weeks if you're clumsy. You'll be smiling and thanking people for their compliments.

Two years in and I just want to fling rice.

Friday the 13th

(and the following Saturday) : banishing the rain.

So I'll skip right over the middle of last week because all I would have written then anyway was "omg itsstillrainin" (oh wait, I did). Friday the 13th came like a breath of not-so-humid air. Hazy in the morning, the air felt bright despite the “sand from China” hanging about the valley. I looked at the board at work to see that no one had any classes at all, everyone was on various field trips (the 3^rd year Mice in Okinawa, the 1^st year Fish somewhere else closer, and the 2^nd years were around, just about to go on their one-day adventure). I suddenly did not want anything to do with the busy work I’d made for myself, thinking I would have a normal staff room atmosphere. It was not to be a normal staff room atmosphere. I would be the only person there, aside from the one they leave to answer the phones, and it was the first sunny day after three straight solid heavy rain days.

Who, tell me, wants to sit at their computer on that day? Sure, I had plenty to do, but I no longer relished the empty day in which to do it.

To my joy, the band teacher asked, “Emily, what are you doing today?” I gave her an innocent and hapless look and shrugged. Nothing. I’m doing nothing. “Wanna go with the 2^nd years?” Um, YES. I love the second years (the Frogs). They are still my new favorite class. We stood under starling nests and gave instructinons, aAnd with that, we set off at a walk up the hill toward Sponic Park where the kids were to draw landscape sketches for the first part of the morning.

kids at work

From 2011_05_13

I wandered around a little, got bit by a leech for the first time in my life (those things are gross; but seriously, leeches, get some anesthetic to go with your anticoagulants, or you'll never be as successful with me as your brethren the gdmf mosquito) becuse they were living in the damn grass (what with all the rain). Some students were kicking them off their shoes as well, jumping on them to make them "kanpeki shinda" (I swear I heard that.. the first word is "perfect" and the second "dead"). Also saw a mukade (the poisonous Japanese manypede), all of these sightings/attacks were in the same area, too. The students jumped on the mukade, but it was not made perfectly dead before it was flung away off the hillside. We also saw a deer just chilling rather close to where we were drawing.

This is where the leeches live.

From 2011_05_13

Oh, mukade, you tiny dragons of the forest.

From 2011_05_13

After our juice break, we set off for part two, which was a walking "quiz rally" around the area. Kids were in their groups, all had maps of the checkpoints, and at each checkpoint there was a question. Lots of Japanese riddles, some kinda random questions (What number is equal to the ages of all these listed teachers combined?), for which kids would get points based on how close they got to the real thing. I carried my little parasol and wandered around with them, which of course led me to discover (as I had hoped it would) some new interesting points in the area.

Then we all ate lunch outside. After lunch, they went in to color the sketches, and I got done just a little of the work I had planned to spend all day on.

That afternoon I went back to the fuji, but it was pretty much destroyed by the rain. I stopped at Osaki-san's, and she gave me manju and cocoa, then I went to Miriam's, and she gave me some kind of apricot tart cake, then I went home, and really intended to eat a real dinner, but never did.

Saturday was really nice too, we're talking perfect weather. I spent a little time on the garden, then we had a little group picnic down by the river on the road to Himeji. Went home just in time to wash up and go to Young English Enkai, which went better than I expected it to go! The food was great, and everyone was very game. I thought only about half the group (err.. mostly the ALT half) would end up at karaoke, but actually everyone came but one! 

Strawberries!

From 2011_05_14

From 2011_05_14

From 2011_05_14

With the caveat that I may not actually know what I'm talking about

I was chatting with a friend recently, and we mentioned how as soon as the news broke about the earthquake, everyone back home immediately needed to know if we were okay.

“Geography, people,” he said with a shake of his head. Well.

Kind of. But who knows anything about Japanese geography, other than those of us with a really compelling reason to know? When I got posted to Hyogo, my friend Manderines said “Oh, that’s where Himeji Castle is.” “Oh, yeah,” I said, feigning understanding. I had no idea what Himeji Castle was, or where in Japan that might be. I’m sure I’d heard of it at some point, but nobody knows where anything is, unless it’s Tokyo, and maybe Okinawa, and Hokkaido on a good day.

It’s not just a question of geography. The news didn’t say “Massive earthquake strikes Tohoku region” (largely because no one would know what the hell that meant), it said “strikes Japan.”

Let's have that map again (I need it too, yes still; get off my back):

 Recently, by way of breaking my New Year’s Resolution not to add any more tasks or responsibilities to my list of crap I do in my free time, I’ve signed up a new e-mail account which I call “JET-information-gather” to a bunch of prefectural newletters. The aim was to collect info on various events going on around Japan in which JETs have some involvement, then digest the info into short lines for the reposted consumption of mostly JET alumni who want to have some vague notion of what JETs are doing these days.

I’d managed to sign on to two major regions, and then got hit with The End Of The School Year, so the only emails flooding that box come from those two sections of the country: Shikoku and Tohoku.

Shikoku is the island just below Hyogo, in the west half of Japan, and south. They were barely affected by the recent problems, although I think they experienced a very small tsunami surge on the eastern coast of Kochi prefecture.

Tohoku is the northern end of east Japan, where Iwate and Miyagi (also Fukushima – though the danger for Fukushima is now a bit more nuclear in nature) are among the prefectures suffering most intensely. The eastern side, and tip top Aomori, seems to be more or less intact. JETs there are doing things like cobbling together van runs into the deeply affected areas to pass out extra blankets, water, anything that Aomori can give. Japan has largely been transformed, it seems, into two distinct camps: those who need, and those who can give.

West Japan JETs are signing up for couchsurfing crisis Japan, inviting strangers, JETs from across the east side to sleep on their couches and floors and extra futon until they can get back. They’re participating in Man Up for Japan, the campaign to donate ichi-man (100,000) yen on payday to the earthquake relief. Most events planned in the west are going along according to plan, with the change that most events that were not fundraisers now are, and fundraisers for other countries are now being either partially or wholly directed toward earthquake relief. I have to decide very soon what to do about my own fundraiser, the spring Pepy bike ride from which all proceeds are earmarked for education in Cambodia.

…Yeah I know I said I would have nothing to report, but I guess I was misinformed about my own proclivities. I’m notoriously bad at following the news under normal circumstances. My TV is not even near the cable jack. I don’t read newspapers. I don’t read internet news either, really. The only reason I know anything is because my info-gather project is signed on to two regions, and because my personal account is connected to my embassy registry and my own prefecture’s listservs. And also facebook, and everyone’s walls. I get more email every day from the JET organization, from fellow JETs, and from the US embassy updating me on the news of the situation and commenting on news I haven’t heard.

 I want to caution you all that I’m not really an incredibly reliable source. No one is totally reliable. But I will tell you what I know. I realize that it’s scary; you’ve never seen my town, and you don’t know what might have changed. All you have is my word that the big deal today is that it snowed like 5in (wtf St. Patrick’s Day?) and the 6^th graders are nervous because today is the day they go to the middle school to be shown around. This area was much more affected, I think, by the Hanshin-Awaji quake which laid the smackdown on Kobe about ten years ago.

Someone has mentioned that the US news might be sensationalizing just a bit with what happened or is happening. I’m not at all saying they’re making mountains out of molehills. What happened in Iwate and Miyagi was most definitely a mountain. More like a volcano (no wait, that’s down in Kyushu..). But here in my little cluster of molehills, I really am okay, and I really am checking my e-mail every forty seconds (when I’m online).

I don’t think the embassy or JET or my PAs or people have much reason to downplay the severity of things. They, like me, want to continue to conduct a safe and happy life. If they downplay, they’re just trying to reduce panic. If someone plays up, they’re trying to keep your attention. When getting news, always consider the source, and what they want from you. If they’re making it seem like I am in a totally dire situation, it’s likely that they don’t know you have a contact in Japan, and want to draw more attention to the situation in Tohoku so you’ll send money to Japan, which I support, or so you’ll keep watching their news. Everyone has a motive for what they say and don’t say; that’s not a bad thing, that’s just how it is. I know you all think I’m a minimalizer and maybe it’s so (like that time I totaled the car and called home to say I’d “had a bit of an accident”), but I’m responding partly in this case to my own judgement of the materials I’m getting and reading, and partly to the atmosphere around me. My coworkers are not worried, my bosses are not worried. So I’m not worried. Try not to worry. ^_^

Japan is on a huge fault line. It’s why we have so many mountains, and it’s why we have so many volcanoes and hot springs. Japan has to deal with earthquakes. I feel like they ought to know better than I do what they are doing when it comes to that. Being earthquake inept in Japan would be like living in the Midwest without a basement or fraidy-hole. Still, it’s unsettling sometimes when I look at the houses I pass each day out the bus window. None of those farmhouses or corner stores would hold up in a real shaker. I don’t know why more buildings are not built to a stronger code.

Well, yes I do. Some people don’t have the time, space, money, etc. to build for exigency. Some people live in the Midwest with weak walls and no basement because it’s better than no walls somewhere else. Or because they think they’ll only be there for a short time, and what are the odds?

On the upside, the construction on the new school building is supposed to be done this summer (whee! Newer is always better.. I used to think old meant it was tough enough to have lasted this long, but now I just think newer means better techniques and reinforced concrete!). 

Volunteering is still a no-go, because it’s still too big of a mess out there.

The other concern is the nuclear reactor in Fukushima. Some radioactivity was in fact leaked, and the area surrounding the reactor is under close monitoring and advisory. I think something like a [edit in here: I thought it was 12 miles.. that is the radius from Japan's goverment; US citizens have been sent from 50] 50 mile radius of the plant has been evacuated or advised to stay indoors to avoid contamination. Beyond that, right now, we’re not affected. Or, I personally am not. Fukushima is kind of closer to the middle of the east coast of Japan. If they clear out the whole area (and I have no idea where they’ll put the rest of Tokyo, because God knows there isn’t even space IN THAT CITY for that city) I may have a houseguest in the form of college pal Sagramore. We’ll do a podcast from my little inaka home; it’ll be awesome.

Insofar as I want to make generalizations, I want to mention that from what I’ve heard, Japan is terrified of the nuclear. If I remember right, there was some resistance to nuclear power plants earlier on, which might have been easing as time goes on, memory and generational turnover being what it is. If Japanese officials are downplaying danger, and I don't want to think they would, this might be a reason. Also if they freak out more than necessary, this might be a reason. It goes both ways.

But as Sagramore pointed out, the mountains protect you. They do indeed; I’m lucky to be in the middle of nowhere-really.

As of now, I find the threat of aftershocks something to brace for (I'm actually making an kit! An incaseofshit kit) and the nuclear power plant a troubling thing. Mostly the plant. Fukushima is far away, but that is one thing that hasn't gotten any better... and has actually gotten worse since the weekend.

Because Sometimes You Are Wrong

So I mentioned that I spent the post-graduation drinking party trying to keep up with the art teacher. I misspoke; he's actually the math teacher who is an artist on the side. He's the teacher I sat next to last year, and we got along rather well. Then this year I suffered the painful delusion that he hated me for disrupting his class by making our English games too effing loud (they were pretty loud, but I was happy about this.. the class in question is normally that blank-faced staring type problem). When I say suffered, I really did. It bothered me a lot. I really want people to like me, especially people that seem interesting or cool, or whom I respect. I used to tiptoe around and avoid looking at him or getting in his way. My cabinet of extra crap is behind his desk (my old desk location), so I would actually wait until he left the office to go and get stuff out of there.

Because I didn't want to feel the burning wrath of him hating on me, of him judging the fact that I wasn't a "real" part of this school, or that I wasn't good to the Mice class, or that I didn't work as hard as the other teachers... all of which are kind of true and are serious insecurities I have had about my job. The Mice class has been a thorn in my English-speaking side since day one, specifically because of their silence and lack of motivation. For this reason, I was always a lot more likely to hang out with the other kids whenever I had the chance. I didn't go after the Mice.. in some ways I let them go, because the Cats and Frogs actually appreciated me. A little. But what I should have done, were I a more dedicated person, would have been to reach out to them more, and work harder for them and with them.

And why are we paying so much to have these western youngsters sit around studying kanji and blogging all day?!

Anyway. After a while I knew I must be imagining things, but I went right on imagining them until the last drinking party when I sat across from him and in my whiskey, confessed that I thought he didn't like me! I also asked about the girl in all the new paintings at the pizza place, because there are a bunch of the same girl, and last time I was at the pizza place, we speculated as to who she might be, and what significance.

So I was happily reassured after his insistence that he doesn't in fact hate me. He said I should visit his house and that his wife makes a mean pasta. Sometimes your paranoia is all in your head.

On the Monday after a drinking party, usually no one speaks about anything that was done or said.. it's like enkai exist in a parallel universe, or in Vegas. Everything just stays there. My memory had begun to function as such. I was totally caught off guard when Monday morning rolled around and he clapped me on the shoulder with a comment about my drinking strength. I blinked, then laughed with a grave "I lost."

Later, though he stopped by my desk to ask a question that was really gratifying. He asked if I would sit as a model. And I mean, I know it's kind of because I am foreign and I have interesting features that are probably fun to try to capture, but I've never had anyone ask if I would sit and be the subject of scrutiny, and I'm vain enough to be really happy along with nervous. I am always curious about how others see me, and how it differs from what I see. The girl in the paintings at the pizza place has a sort of serious, sometimes almost creepily intense look to her. I wonder if that's his style of painting, or if it's something of her personality he's getting. I wonder how I'll turn out. It'll be Monday kind of all morning, and then we'll all have lunch (pasta) after the session. So once that happens, I'll let you know how it went.

Me and my Comb

I just got the Hyogo Times file to proof before distribution and I'm having to make myself not go over it tonight.. I'm just excited about it, is all. I imagine the kick I get out of Being Editor will die down eventually and become just another thing I do.

But right now, I don't just do it. I want to do it and have to go to bed instead. Haha. Seriously. The PDF looks sweet. And I've already found a bunch of "errors" and nitpicky crap to ask to be changed.. I want to read over every last little detail and smooth over every last photo caption.

Do you ever do something and stop to consider maybe you were born to do it?

Here's to tomorrow, and my fine toothed-comb. (I also get to do letters with first years tomorrow... I love that pack of weirdos)

Students in the USA

How much do you remember from middle school?

I'm supposed to present to the first-years (7th grade age) on Friday about American schools, and I am specifically targeting MS and JHS level just because that is what they are in and that is what they would identify with, I think. But it's staggering to me how much of my memory and even photo collection is almost entirely from high school.

I'm trying to recreate in my mind the kinds of classes we had, what it was like to be there, the lunchroom and food, the school bus. All things pretty much foreign to these kids who bike to school and eat in the classroom every day.

First of all, a "middle school" is different from a "junior high school" in that MS is normally grades 6-8 (in my case, 7-8), while JHS is 7-9. I didn't know that. But it does explain why 中学校 (chuugakkou), which is quite literally "middle" and "school" gets translated as junior high school.

The major differences between my middle school life and the lives of my Japan JHS students might surprise you. I've already mentioned taking the bus to school, while most of my kids bike or walk. This is perhaps part of the reason for the small sizes (relatively) of the school where I work, compared to where I grew up. (The other reason is shrinking population and location of course) There are more schools serving smaller areas. I went to a larger school serving a larger geographical space.

Teachers where I'm from have (more or less) their own classrooms which they decorate to their subject, and students rotate based on their schedules into the corresponding rooms. Here, the teachers ferry themselves and their materials for each class from the teacher's office into the classroom. Ownership, then, of that room is more the class. The major advantage is that the kids are more responsible for taking care of it, here. In the US we do not have "souji," or cleaning time. In Japan we have it every day, about fifteen minutes in which everyone cleans their assigned space. This eliminates the need for a custodial staff (kinda.. there is the one lady who is in charge of all that, but she doesn't clean every room each day) which makes sense, at least in a school as small as this one (student population about 170).

But the major drawback of teachers not having their own subject-specific rooms is that every room looks the same. In this case, pretty dingy (old building, years of half-assed cleaning technique by generations of students), and each classroom is decorated with general announcements and some photos or memorabilia of the class's achievements to date. Rather than the math room being full of math posters, stocked with math materials. I like to have all my shit at hand in case I want to change the plan (ever so slightly) on the fly. There is a special room for science lab, and one for art, and a music room, but all the more regular subjects just use the class's room.

This also means that all the students in a class will be taking their classes together. Where I'm from, we mixed it up. It was more exciting because, even if your BFF wasn't in your homeroom, they might be in your science class, or English, or something.

Of course the food is different. The eat in the classroom and everyone gets the same stuff. You don't really get a choice here, and are expected to eat all of it. At my MS, there were like four lines of choices, and if you had some extra money you could buy an ice cream or some other little side item. The cafeteria experience is so fundamental to my concept of school lunch that I hardly differentiate between elementary, where there was one line and you chose your food as you moved along it, to the upper schools where you first picked a line, then the sides that went with it.

I'm trying to recall it, and I think we had seven classes a day (my students here in Japan have between five and six). Rotating within your "team" you went to math, science, social studies, language arts, and English lit, then there was the trifecta of chorus, band, or PE (of which you were in one), and finally a six-week stint in each of the rotational classes: art, technology, Spanish, French, computers and typing, and possibly music. I feel like there had to be six, but I can only generate memories of those first five.

Sports at my middle school were never my cuppa, but I'm looking at their webpage now and it seems like there isn't much on offer. Basketball teams exist, then there is an intramural volleyball thing, then all the clubs are very service-intellectual oriented (Jr. Beta, Science Olympiad, Yearbook, Peer Helpers, Student Council, etc.), and I remember only meeting with my club like once a month or something (I was on the Perspicacity Press, or student newspaper, you betcha). Here where I work, clubs are a huge deal and meet every day, morning and afternoon, to practice. Most of them are athletic clubs, with the exception of maybe the band, because they don't march much.

The band at my old middle school looks like it's still in swing, along with chorus and an orchestra. Nice.

Anyway, I'm going to have a field day because the first-year class is the group who likes to ask questions and is full of kids who show genuine curiosity about what I have to say. It is for this reason I love them.

Finally, I'd like to note that the photos from American schools in the textbook are all pretty awful. I'm trying to figure out whether it's the awkwardness of that age, or because all the pictures are from the early-mid nineties. I think it's both.

jerksvent

People are jerks.

You might overlook this in your day-to-day life because it makes the living of it easier. It’s much more pleasant an experience to think things are “funny” rather than “annoying as hell,” or that they are “cute” instead of “stupid.” Inquisitive, not invasive, a teaching opportunity, not asinine… the conversion list is endless and it’s an interface on operating system that you wonderful kindhearted souls must use to function without your head exploding all over everyone all the time.

But when you find yourself short on patience, let’s say, you didn’t sleep well that night, or you got a cold, or something, suddenly all the jerk actions of all the bastard people become way too apparent. Suddenly it’s possible to have a beef with everyone. Suddenly you don’t have the internal resources required to rise above shit like you normally do. The irony being that other people will during this time think that YOU have suddenly become a jerk, when actually you are just seeing the jerkiness of all others clearly for the first time in a while.

Soooo I have had a cold recently. And I have about had it up to here with basically everyone. Okay the kids are actually mostly okay, except for those smartasses who make a point of not trying and then make sure you notice it. And there are a few staff members who have stayed out of my way (what, because they just can’t be bothered to even think of having my back? Thanks a lot!) and I can think of two staff members who have been, dare I say it, nice to me today.

Everyone else just wants shit from me and doesn’t have any idea how to be courteous, helpful, or understanding.

Mostly today I am just frustrated at Miss Piggy because I’m sick of her complaining; today she is really energetic, rushing me off to class five minutes early when I clearly have too much crap all over my desk and papers IN MY HANDS that I am trying to sort before my next class.. thinking she is cute or clever or whatever. But like.. not helping students on their worksheets for some reason. Getting me to make her copies for her because… whatever. Arg.

Also, I feel overworked today because I have four classes at the middle school. This is silly because until recently, that was the norm. But lately, two is the norm, giving me the rest of the time to do things like plan elementary, and then catch up on other important life tasks like trying to keep my email inbox under better control, or trying to study Japanese.. (None of which I have done today, nor will I ever be able to EVER AGAIN, JEEZ) Now, I do recall that I was always astonished at how behind I always seemed when I was trying to cram even just staying on top of work (that elementary planning and creating materials will get you every time) into the time I had, so the change was secretly kind of awesome. But I never felt overly put-upon to go to four classes in a day here.

But TODAY good GRIEF you want me to sit through FOUR classes?! Two of them with the awesome awesome crew of first-year (frogs) but with Miss Piggy, the others with the sweet and kind-approaching Newbie-sensei but with those awful second-year kids (the mice) who just stare at you rather than participate in anything ever?!

It's been a few days. A couple days back I sat at the sushi bar with Big Brother contemplating why no one in this town gives a damn anymore.

Having a cold makes me crotchety and entitled. So all you jerks had better start treating me better and at least PRETENDING to give a shit~!

Thanks.

/vent

If there were a kilter, we’d be a bit off it.

This is the new story of my life: I keep thinking I’ll do things, and then I never do them. Mostly I have good reasons for it, but it’s still lame as an overall experience.

Things have been outside of normal for, oh around a month now.. ever since graduation, mostly, things at work have been changing, and being on vacations, and having visitors (not me personally, but our ShisoJETparty-all-the-time has been lately, well, a party all the time)… and there isn’t anything wrong with a party all the time provided of course that you are not trying to have work alongside it. I got some new furniture, so my apartment is completely different than it ever was (so if I refer to my “new apartment,” I did not move, I just rearranged out of necessity to accommodate the new couch and the kotatsu, aka The Biggest Flat Surface In The House). I’m still going to write about Kyoto, Tokyo, and Okinawa, and also the Himeji bike ride I helped to captain. Or I might not, since I think the photo sets are like photojournals in a way, and the visual might be the most interesting part!

Suffice to say I’ve had a lot of stress lately.. both good stress and bad stress, unexpected incidents and things I should have anticipated but somehow miraculously failed to.. I thought I would have a whole day Wednesday at my desk (because I had one class scheduled.. ONE), and I mostly did, but it was interrupted by the fact that, oh man! I have to make elementary lesson plans! And now I make them bilingual, so it takes about four times as long. THEN I was interrupted by the destructive antics of our Most Disruptive Student, who is usually such a good-natured little delinquint, I was totally not bothered when he came raging into the staff room Wednesday after lunch (someone had spray painted his bike with pink) because he and I are cool. He doesn’t participate in my class, but he always says hello to me in the hall. For example:

Kid: Hello!

Me: Hi! What’s up?

Kid: I .. am.. CHAMPION!

Me: Of what?

Kid: eh?

Me: (in Japanese) What kind of “CHAMPION”?

Kid: …………… Champion of WORLD.

Me: hahahaha, awesome. Okay be careful, don’t climb on the roof today.

So anyway, it startled the bloody freaking hell out of me when he kicked a plastic bucket and made it explode into shards. I began to pay attention to his words, which included “important thing” and “break/ruin”… he and his circle of big male teachers orbited near my (now conveniently at the center of the room) desk and the VP and other female teachers were like, Emily, come here.

And I was like, no, man, I don’t want to leave my desk, first of all this kid should not be allowed to disrupt me (not as in ‘they should physically subdue him,’ but as in ‘I am not scared of this kid and I do not believe he would lay a hand on me and if he did, I could probably take it.’), but second of all, I couldn’t tell if he was griping about his own PERSONAL “important thing” that had been “ruined” or if he was planning to ruin some other important thing. I realized right then that NOT standing between this kid and my precious little computer, lifeline of all I do, was not what I wanted. I mournfully looked at it and considered taking it off the desk with me into the hall, but I didn’t want to be THAT GIRL so I followed the other teachers out and sulked around. It was a beautiful day, that day.

Which is a comparative RARITY which is another problem: Spring has been cancelled due to lack of hustle? There are notable exceptions. Wednesday is one. The Himeji bike ride weekend is another. On the whole, the weekdays are shitty (rainy, grey, cold… right now it’s 10C. TEN.) and the weekends are a bit warmer with more sun, which is not too bad a deal I guess.. five for two. But the overall sluggishness of spring’s arrival is really annoying.

Anyway, that was a tangent. What I am trying to talk about is how Wednesday I guess I must have gotten a lot done, but it was none of the blogging/photoworking/recon I had hoped to do. I actually did not have time. When I am at work, basically, I do work stuff.

Which is how it should be, I guess, and I am getting used to that. But it’s still an expectation shift from doing all sorts of things for myself in those brief days of spring holiday.

My new teachers are pretty cool. I have mixed feelings about Miss Piggy-sensei. She is sweet enough, but I swear she has not yet HAD a good day. Every single time I see her she is suffering from something. Trouble is, she whines and sits there while the teacher on the other side of her (Hot Band Teacher) sneezes into her handkerchief, then glares at the handkerchief like she is SO NOT OKAY with having a cold because, man, she just has SHIT TO DO. I can really identify with not having patience with colds. It’s a far better mental place to be than the moany-complainy place, anyway. But oh, MP-sensei has a cold, or oh, a sore throat, or oh, her stomach hurts.

I mean maybe she’s just having a bad… three and a half weeks, right?

Miraculously, somehow, the classes I’ve had with her (three so far) and the first years have been more or less Wonderful. I won’t ask you to identify with the thrill of standing in front of fourteen Japanese children all grunting the “short u” sound in unison, but anyone who ever tried to get their kids to say “BIRD” instead of “BAADO” will feel me here. The last two weeks we’ve had what I guess I can call “phonics Friday” where we tackled vowels, first short, today long, and wrestled them to the ground.

Seriously, today I did a listening quiz that was brutal. I gave them a handout with squares, and letter sets like “P __ N” and “N ___T” four times each. Then I had them write the vowel in while I chanted “PIN” then “PEN” then “PUN” then “PAN” at them. Meccha muzukashii, since in Japanese, the short A, short O, and short U are all just “a”.. but I’ll be darned if they weren’t volunteering to put letters in the giant squares on the board, getting it right and making mistakes and generally just being awesome all over the place.

Partly this is thanks to Miss Piggy-sensei, because she asked me if we could do phonics for the whole lesson. Somehow between her suggestions and my materials and lack of accent (see: some Americans pronounce PIN and PEN the same) and coffee induced enthusiasm, we are hot to go. Partly the kids are just awesome. The first-year group (frogs, I’ve called them) is, I think..? made up of a lot of oxen (by the Chinese zodiac system), which happens to be my animal too. The mice class is actually made up of a lot of rats/mice by that calendar, so I find that kind of fun. (But that class is starting to come out of its shell a bit under the tutelage of Sweetie-sensei, my 22-year-old team teacher)

Those are anecdotes.. there is, of course, more. Elementary with its triumphs, challenges, and changes. The BOE being more bullheaded than even me (well, we’ll see about that). The Himeji ride (along with seeing my graduated dog-class boys biking all the way to the HS in the town where I live all the way from the town where I work) has made me think seriously about biking as a mode of transportation. I am hoping to buy a decent bike very soon. My closet unit collapsed, so my clothes are everywhere (but I am getting a much cooler clothes thing from George since he is moving out this weekend)…  Making new friends, seeing old ones, seeing old ones change, seeing people get closer to you and others further away… Losing chances for shit, gaining chances for other shit. The long and short of it is I have a lot of (mostly good) stress going on!

Now we (I) am gearing up for Golden Week, too. This is a string of Japanese holidays which basically makes the first week of May vacay. I am going to Hong Kong, and I am excited about it. It’s one more, perhaps the capstone disruption to the long string of disruptions since graduation…

Sometimes I think I am wrong to imagine that there is such a thing as “normal life” here… but I know there was a time when I had a schedule and I understood it. It’s not that I don’t want to do the stuff I get to go.. just that there’s a balance. Costs to things. Lots of thoughts on that lately (good things and their costs).. I think I’ll perhaps distill a more coherent entry on that later, as well.

If I have a moment. In which to do so.

Ready, Set… Change!

When I left, it was chilly and rainy, my desk was by the coffepot window, the cherry blossoms were in bud, and I had just lost two JTEs (Kermit, Awesome), a principal (Epic-sensei), cutie-sensei, and the school nurse.

I went to Okinawa which was awesome even though it rained most every day.

When I came back, my desk was in the middle of the room, I had two new female JTEs (nicknames pending, but one is 22 and one is like 50ish), my principal looked like a Japanese Michael Scott, it was 17 degrees and the cherry blossoms were in full explosion, I mean bloom.

We had special bento complete with squidlets* (to celebrate?).

I actually had to come in and set my stuff on my desk in stunned silence as people circulated through the room. Six newbies. Spring having this effect like I been here a year now. I know enough to get by, I realize, but not really enough to help the new English teachers much.

My new desk (same desk, new spot?) now comes with my own set of drawers. So my desktop is wider! But now I’m in the middle of the room, instead of at the outer edge. I can no longer look up and just see the whole room from my little corner. And when people walk by they will SEE what I am DOING, which isn’t a huge problem, only I’m on gchat all the time these days.. or doing things like writing blog entries.

It’s bad enough that teachers don’t get to go on vacation because they are too busy, or even if they aren’t, they have to look busy/be at the office alllll the time, so it’s extra not-nice of me to rub their faces in the fact that I have more freedom by sitting here paging through photos of Kyoto/Tokyo/Okinawa like I want to right now… (those posts, totally coming soon!)

There used to be three desk clusters of six desks each, and I was tacked on at the end of one along with the tea lady to make a cluster of 8. NOW there are only six in each cluster. We eliminated two desks..! I guess that is because we needed more support staff last year, and our special-est needs kid has graduated.

And of my two new JTEs, one is fresh out of college, and younger than me, as my VP kept pointing out. She keeps looking to me for pointers and I’m totally still half in Okinawa/recovering from that (catching back up on email, etc.).. the other was a counselor at Heke’s school. Both are fine at English when speaking to me so far… although the sum total English classroom teaching experience amongst the three JTEs and me is the same as the total of just me and Mikan-sensei. The two newbies have none.

But it was nice to watch the brand new students walk by in their ceremony, or check their helmets and shiny new bike stickers before they rode away in their new pressed uniforms and blinding white shoes, and see that their faces aren’t new to me, I have some idea of their personalities already.. and I have their names all written down on cards with their photos. I have some grasp of shit this time around, which is a nice thought.

I’m still not in overdrive yet.. I just put up something on the bulletin board, but mostly I’m just drifting.

 

Just as an FYI: Now that my 2nd years have become 3rd years and my 6th graders are 1st years, etc, I’m going to go back and assign them all animal names. The graduates were the 犬組 or dogs group.. the third years now are cats, below them rabbits/mice, and the new first years are frogs.

 

*tiny whole squid, served chilled, with some kind of yellow sauce.

The View from Friday, or Because shit is worth doin’.

Well, it’s Friday again, and you know what that means!

Actually, with the way the end of the school year is changing all the schedules, it does not necessarily mean anything at all.

But, it’s bright and pretty warm, so the window is open. I’m dressed down in my KU fan gear because of NCAA stuff happening far away (Vandy.. I heard the tales.. I am saddened). I spent the first part of the morning cleaning my desk, wiping off all the dust and organizing the binders. The sum total effect is it feels like a college weekend, right now. In which I would be at my desk a lot, but pleasantly so.

I didn’t have any classes to teach today, and yesterday’s intro to a third of the incoming 6th graders (I’m heretofore assigning animals to the classes to differentiate them so I don’t have to keep saying ‘current whatever-years, about to be nantoka-years’), or FROGS class, went really well. Awesome-sensei had approached my desk on Wednesday to ask if I would teach English with him to elementary students. For just an instant I thought he was personally informing me that he had been transferred to one of my elementary schools in the end-of-year teacher swap, but I soon realized he meant just the one class on Thursday afternoon.

Which I planned and prepped and which went off more or less without a hitch..! I am absolutely floored by his ability to interact with a class, somehow simultaneously joking with them and putting them at ease, and not taking any crap from them, expecting nothing lower than his exacting standard. Although Awesome-sensei has been difficult for me to work with at times, doing this class with him reminded me that his nickname comes from somewhere.

But I’d been looking forward to today for a long time. My first class-free day, without plans for the next day or even next week? Sounds like time to clean my desk! And catch up on a lot of things I had put off.

One of those was “look into PEPY riiiide”.. because one day I innocently inquired when and where the Hyogo-ken charity bike event would be held, if you please, though I have little biking experience or knowhow, and ended up being asked if I wouldn’t like to organize it myself!

As of yesterday I was thinking, oh yeah right. And honestly, I don’t think I could do it by myself. My initial reaction upon reading a bit more about the event and thinking about doing it was to ask Big Brother JET if he wanted to co-lead with me, but that makes little to no sense, because he has a marathon on the weekend the ride is supposed to take place.

So I asked The Illustrator JET what he knew about it, since I knew he biked to Himeji from time to time, and Himeji would be a lovely city in which to hold this ride… were it to occur.

But he immediately was able to tell me about last year’s ride, in which he was a participant, and ways he thought we might be able to schedule and plan it. I know very little about Himeji and bike riding, but I’m more than willing to do some of the legwork. I’m not very good at research, but I am good at planning when I put my mind to it. Plus I’m at the stage of my Japanese language learning experience where I see trying to make bike rental reservations as a fun, potentially impossible challenge and not an impossible task. It’s been a while since I put together a group event, and on this sunny Friday afternoon, doing it seems like a very good thing.

I intend to evaluate the route and plan as we formulate it as though it were my personal ambitious afternoon.. Where would I want to stop, what would I want to see or visit? This is probably not a bad idea, since I personally am not in super-biking-shape, but I am eager to get out there and try it. All of this is going down (weather permitting) April 17th, maybe with room to push back a day or a week for weather reasons. I’ll write about it more as it comes together. Today’s brainstorm mostly only washed out a “yeah, let’s do this,” and notions of beginning near the station where there is a handily located bike rental place, and talk of Shosha-zan around lunchtime.

In other news, my weekend-event schedule was changed without warning yesterday when my Kyoto-sensei informed me that the Okayama enkai to which I so looked forward was not any longer an Okayama enkai, but a Shingu enkai. And rather than an overnight stay (see: mental visions of carousing and karaoke late into the night, inexplicable images of poker games in a smoky room), the women are all leaving that evening. And I was like, where the hell is Shingu? Who is this bag?! What about my plans to spend the rest of the weekend in Okayama City’s environs?

But the view from this Friday is? It’s going to be great anyway.

Coming weekends:

3/19 – Three day weekend Tokyooo!
3/26 – Non-Okayama enkai and subsequent Himeji-area/Shiso weekend
4/2 – Okinawaaaaaa (from the 1st to the 5th)
4/9 - (take a deep breath)
4/17 – PEPY riiiide!
4/24 – Pepy uberrain date; 25th Hanshin Tigers baseball if I can get off the waiting list and onto the ticketholders list…
4/28 – leave for Hong Kong, return 5/4.

Lunch with Sixth Graders

Yesterday, I was at Small Elementary. I laughed an evil laugh to see that I was eating lunch with the 6th graders again.

The last time I ate lunch with that class, the room was totally silent, and it terrified me. The girls in that class never participated, and to make it worse, that was back in the swine-flu scare of late 09, so they weren’t even sitting in desk clusters. I tried to make conversation after about fifteen terrible minutes by pointing to the nearest girl’s pencil case, which was sitting on her desk.

“Very cute,” I said. In general, people know the word “very” and they know the word “cute,” and I know these kids have had ALT training in their lives for a while now, and being a class of only like ten people, they totally get the attention they should want. So she understood the words I used, I am almost certain.

How did this kid respond to my attempts to bond over personal taste in school effects? She did not look at me, nor speak to me, but removed the pencil case and shoved it inside her desk, and continued eating.

Terror. Oh my GOD, get me out of here! She probably felt the same way. Eventually the boys (who do participate in class) asked if they could ask me questions and proceeded to do the whole stand-up-and-push-in-your-chair-to-address-a-teacher thing to ask me questions like “What countries have you been to?” .. which were a bright step up from my usual slew of “What’s your favorite color/animal/sport/food?” and “Can you eat ___?”

Aaaanyway, that was last time, so yesterday was round two, and this time I was ready and unafraid. I try to joke around with the students when possible. When I first got to the classroom, no one was there at all. Then, the girls arrived. They began to giggle and exchange glances, which I actually kind of hate. It makes you feel like you’re under glass or something. They won’t try to reach you, they’ll just talk about you and something that is hilarious to them from which you are excluded. I looked at them mournfully and said “Don’t be like that. You’re killin’ me!”

Then one of them asked me how old I was. Oh thank goodness, we are talking. I told her, and then she asked if I had a boyfriend. I was back on my joking bandwagon so I said “Oh yeah, I got three!” .. they did not seem impressed, so I went back to the standard answer which is, “No, no, no.”

I had used some Kansai-ben in class that day, when a kid asked me a question in Japanese I TOTALLY knew he could form in English if he tried, so I drawled out “Nihongo ga zenzen wakarahennnn..!” (I don't understand any Japanese!)

Anynway, next the girls were a little confusing, and they said something about Kansai-ben and then laughed a bit, then said Kansai-ben “Why?” and I wasn’t sure if they were just saying it to be Kansai or if they were still asking about the boyfriend thing, but right then the boys returned to class and were meccha excited to see that I was their lunch guest.

Once we got our food, this crowd of tiny kindergarteners came in to say thank you to their “big brothers and sisters” and present them with cookies of gratitude and congratulations for their coming graduation. It was possibly the cutest thing that has ever happened. I also somehow got cookies out of the deal, just for being in the room to witness this.

Once all that was done, they started doing the formal questions again. They were generally upper-elementary level of though provoking. “How big was your elementary school?” I did some math in my head and estimated it at 500. I don’t really know, though. I just figured, about five classes a grade, twenty kids a class, six grades. That came out to 600 and I figured that was way too high, but it’s probably about right. It’s still staggering to work in schools where the population does not swell, but actually tends to drop, with every incoming class. They were astonished to hear 500, though (their school having 60), and I tried to explain that it’s partly because kids can go to school by bus instead of walking. If we had to walk like the do in Japan, there would be smaller schools because there would be more of them.

Then one kid asked, “When you graduated, were you sad? Did you cry?” That one sort of startled me out of my fried-tofu-scarfing fest.

I’ve had several graduations.. the ones from elementary and middle school kind of not counting as much as the high school and college ones. I don’t even remember graduating from the lower schools because for the most part it was just moving myself and everyone I knew already into another building.

I wanted to give him an answer that was close to the question I thought he was asking; I wanted to go for the lower graduation so I settled for high school. And then I basically lied to a kid. I told him I didn’t cry. He said, “Not sad?” No, not not sad. I didn’t cry at graduation, but I was sad inside.

And I guess I was. I did cry, but not on graduation day. I was a lot of things, at that time. I was happy and excited (and I knew where I was going.. something I only half had at college graduation), and I was scared, and I was angry, too, about the actual graduation ceremony. I was frustrated with others, and with myself too I’m sure. I had a great graduation party at which I was happy, but also felt sick. Graduation is just hard. There’s just so much pride, loss, excitement, love, regret, happiness, promise, and uncertainty in it. College was worse. I brave-faced my way through the ceremony, hugged my friends, genuinely enjoyed those strawberries, and went to my dorm to bawl about it in the first free moment I could find.

And I know that I’m just in my own head on this one, but I do want to think that these 6th graders are interested.. maybe even the girls, who have (maybe??) just been intimidated by the outgoing presence of the boys.

Thursday vs. Tuesday

No, I really had to work today to push the fifth graders into saying the two such that I could distinguish what they were saying. They see the letter "u" in both Tuesday and Thursday and somehow just slur it all into the same word.

In the continuing saga of Thursdays, this one should have been just banner. You haven't heard from the Thursday front for a week, because last Thursday was National Foundation Day which allowed me to hide from gale force winds indoors, watch Coming to America unedited, and pine for my far-off lover, rather than attempt to wrangle fifth graders into some kind of English learnin'.

Today it's back to the wrangling and the deck looked stacked against me from my waking vantage point. I still had that sore-throat feeling you get while a cold is starting its engines. I had forgone a shower in favor of those extra twenty minutes' sleep. I still almost missed the bus. Oh and Jermaine-site, AKA "Yakedo" is still around/infected. So you know. I'm on drugs for that and no longer to wear shoes with backs, according to the doctor.

And I was facing fifth grade again.

Yesterday, the Powers That Be sold the rights to My Life, The Sitcom. Coming soon is My Life, The Motion Picture! Yesterday was absolutely insane. If the sun hadn't been out, I might have had to cut someone. I pleaded "kaze" (I have a cold) and made some vague reference to the idea that I would eat with the second years on Thursday since I didn't feel well enough to do it Wednesday. I was secretly looking at taking the whole rest of the week off lunch duty, though.

So someone tell me why I feel great? Not only did I walk back from Big Elementary smiling, I did eat with the 2nd years, and I feel fine. Someone tell me, was it that MyLifeTheMovie has a greater budget for special effects (which I noticed when snowflakes began to float lazily from a relatively clear sky.. also, despite the lack of shower, it's not really a bad hair day--I still felt fine about the fact that it was picture day and no one told me)? Was it that I gave up on freaking out about never getting everything done and just tried to enjoy those brats? Was it the drugs I am now on thanks to Jermaine? I have no explanations.

Over the weekend I met a high school JET who mentioned preferring to work with the littler guys. I sighed and remembered how hard I hoped I'd end up in a high school. But when I was in class today, I wondered briefly how that HS JET would handle things in that ES class.. I tried to emulate the way I figured he'd enjoy just being there.

One of the 6th grade classes was like.. total bomb of plan. The other was epic win. I can't predict these things and I have no idea what comes next. But I am glad to be here, even on a Thursday.