Both Ways

It's Friday the 13th, and we return to cookie baking. I told myself, we're gonna do this again, and we're gonna do it right this time.

Planning well in advance, I got my wonderful parental units to supply me with a shit-tonne of the instant pudding necessary to make the cookies. The also brought along some chocolate chips to make my ordering load lighter.

I can't believe we're making them today. Not because it's Friday the 13th, but because this week has been so incredibly intense and it's only been like four days long.

I want to do a 'real' post about this.. complete with pictures and all that, but for now I'll just fill in the outline.

Last weekend was a sort of mess. Friday, I didn't go to work, but instead to Kobe where I was made an official Goodwill Envoy of Hyogo Prefecture. This just means that wherever I go I should spread the good word. This is easy; I'm liable to pimp out anything I think is truly any good (someone once told me I would be a good saleswoman when I vehemently extolled the virtues of some thing or other.. but the truth is I can only sell something I really know and love).

So that just meant no school that day. Saturday was supposed to be a school day, sort of.. we were to go to work and then after an hour of hanging out at school, go and watch kids compete all over town in various taikai things against the other schools (then get Monday off as a trade in day). But Saturday got rained out so hard they called in an O-ame (too much damn rain) warning, which cancels school in the city. (This happens way more than o-yuki, or too much snow warnings, actually... seriously, imagine a place where rain cancels school more often than snow does!)

So Saturday got pushed to Sunday, and we still had Monday off... I had a visitor in town to hang out and see the taikai, and we thought go to the beach Sunday, but no cigar.

Long story short, it was planned to be a sort of schedually challenged weekend and became EVEN MORE SO because of the rain.

This thrust me into Tuesday's 'last lessons day' at Small Elementary with little mental preparation (since I had Monday off and work on Sunday? I don't know). And then suddenly everything was happening at once. Tuesday was an exhausting run of six class periods conducted for all grade levels, including kindergarten, made heavy with the knowledge that it was the last one for each and all of them. By the end of the day I was a ragged mess. Wednesday was first-year classes back at the middle school (Mario Kart game ftw), and Thursday was the actual last day at the bigger elementary school, which left me less wrecked by still glad I wore waterproof mascara.

I felt better at the bigger school because they made a bigger deal of things.. I felt okay about crying because I could tell they wanted me to cry. They were doing things with the express purpose of making me cry. Then the entire school "hana-michi" style harassed me all the way to the front door. It was exhilarating, and exhausting. More about all that later when I get the photos ready.

In an oddly fitting gesture from the universe, the little girl who walked into the office on perhaps my first day (she was a second grader then) was in the office again during the end of my last day. She was the first student I have memory of speaking directly to; as a second grader she came up to me and told me that I was cute (which was a shocking thing to hear from an adorable second grade girl willing to walk right up to you), and gave a sort of botched self-intro in English. She's one of the special needs kids and is absolutely precious still. She's a fifth grader now and she thanked me for the time I've spent there before I slipped out to put all the presents I'd gotten near my desk at the middle school.

And since I realized (that afternoon) that I was going to be making cookies the very next day, I decided to just get all that stuff when I had my car, which I would on Friday, because I would need to transport said shit tonne of pudding mix (not heavy) and 5.5 kg of chocolate chips (kinda heavy) along with a few other odds, ends, and things.

So yeah. It's been a short week (too short... I almost wish I'd had Monday) and now I'm facing this weekend when I will rent that giant effing van I once drove, roadtrip to Shikoku with some of Shiso-plus-Alessandro, and go rafting and canyoning again. 

All that because it's a three-day weekend, which leads into another too-short (blasphemy, I know) week, which is the last week of this semester, the last week of my job in any actuality. Ending ceremony is the 20th, the day after our Salamander farewell dinner which is the same day as the BOE last 'greeting' for which I'll get out of school early (I am never sure these days whether skipping school time is a good thing anymore)... 

There is no time to think, little to plan, and I feel like I should have seen this coming, but I didn't realize it would come on so fast! I know there will be another quieter period once the school year ends (after my 'word' at the closing ceremony, etc.) for me to pack and clean and sort, but the way all this descended in a rush makes me feel like I should be packed and ready to go, like, tomorrow. Which just adds to the sense that there was probably a time to think and feel and plan, and that time has come and gone while I was marveling at June and how for the first time it wasn't a shit show. Whatever was missing from June has about hit the fan and here we are up on the final countdown.

So some moments I'm really happy, and some moments I'm hearing a song I just discovered on a CD I unearthed in the packing process and it's making me cry. And some moments I'm feeling relieved that I don't have to plan for/worry about/English educate this or that group anymore -- that their enthusiasm for or knowledge of English is no longer my responsibility. Other moments a particular face will come to mind.. a kid or a teacher, and I'll have to forget for the moment how much it sucks to leave a place.. how much I always did hate graduations.

One of the third graders summed it up pretty well at my send-off ceremony. "She's crying! Look! Now she's smiling. [confusion]" There's that saying, don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. But I was always one to have it both ways.

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.

The Extra Day

At first, it looks like a present, an almost unexpected gift, a 29th day in a month that normally only has 28 (and wtf with that? Why do some of them have 31 and this one gets stuck with 28?)... when actually, it's like that gift of an extra hour, given right in the middle of the night on some weekend in the autumn (which only you lucky folk who live in countries that do daylight savings time actually have). But both of these are paid for in advance, or later on... the 29th is a day cobbled together from all the moments left over, that didn't fit into the calendar for the last four (or next four?) years. We get to use the time, today, but it was scraped off the edges of the last four years of your life.

So it makes me think, about the last four years. Starting with, where were you, and what were you doing four years ago? In February of 2008, I was a senior in college. I think I was getting my first rejection from JET (yeah I said rejection! ..that was at the end of January, '08) even though I knew then (as I still know) that I would be perfect for that job... I think I was cooking up plans for a future so blank and frighteningly empty..I'd never had such an empty calendar before, because one thing had always led to another. School led to school, led to college, and there I was, at the edge of that being over, and not having the GRE taken, not having applications filled out.

It was JET, or Kansas, then,
It was Kansas.

I looked forward to the summer, from February, as I do now. I made plans for spring break, I had a thesis to write. I had graduating to do.

But today isn't gleaned from last February, it's from all the months in between here and there. Everything that followed, year upon year. From all that time spent in all those places, from Nashville to Valdosta to Kansas and then to Japan, and Japan, and Japan. Working, waiting, and worrying, changing, learning, and living it up.

(Whack)
Ow! Jeez. What was that for?
It doesn't matter; it's in the past!
Yeah, but it still hurts.
Oh yes, the past can hurt.

And I'm okay with today. Kinda misty out again (not as misty as it was up on that mountain the other day...), no classes, but we'll have the graduation slide show for the 3rd years in a few minutes, and I'll get kerosene and groceries, and make a last attempt at writing some more in the month of February before giving in to the temptation to read Scott Pilgrim or The Name of the Rose instead.

As for the writing, at this moment, the February effort is at 38,574 words, which means I'm going to fall short of the 50,000 goal. But, if you add to that the 15,310 written previously to February (which is totally cheating, and I totally don't care), the grand total comes out at 53,884, which is a respectable enough number. February might not have produced 50,000 words, or anything close to a completed novel (it's going to take a lot more words), but it did at least get me writing, under the spirit of the idea that the only way to start writing a book is to start writing a book. This time, I get an extra day to do it (although if it were November, again, I'd have 30, not 28 or even 29).

Which also kind of proves that writing 50,000 in one month is pretty hard (especially if you have a job, and even if it's a light month for that job), and those who were able to do it whenever they did, hats off to y'all.

Otherwise, the view from here is in some ways similar to the view from 2008. I have ideas, I have designs, I look forward to June, I am going to move, a chapter is ending this summer just as graduation closed the chapter before, but if the last four years, with their ups and downs and figuring of things out is any indication of the scattering of moments to come, I think, whatever that blank space holds, it's probably pretty okay, and I'm gonna do what I can with it.

Emily, it’s been so long since you updated! What have you been doing that is so absorbing?

A whole lot of not much to write home about.

Well. Let me tell you what. At work, as things continue apace, rocketing toward graduation, I finally took all my marbles in hand and chucked them in the river (so you can’t call them ‘lost,’ exactly..). Idecided it was high time I tried the old ‘cooking class’ with middle schoolers. I also decided that, instead of some kind of culminating lesson with the younger elementary students, we’re just going to do a ‘cultural’ lesson for the end of the year instead (see: play foursquare and HORSE in the gym). This is essentially my way of giving up on teaching 4^th graders anything but the alphabet, God love ‘em.

As for the cooking, I have chosen my favorite recipe perhaps of all time, the delicious cookies I have been making since perhaps I myself was in middle school, recipe received from childhood friend Cindy. I thought of them because once, in high school, a few friends and I made a huge mess of them (like the way you might make a ‘mess of biscuits’ with Pappy O’Daniel flour) in lieu of other Valentine’s Day activity, then went about the school dispensing them in decorative baggies to our favorite people.

The problem with them is they require special ingredients not found in Japan, specifically instant pudding mix and chocolate chips. And I know certain Japan-familiar friends are going to give me shit about chocolate chips, because you can get them at Jusco, so let me qualify that by saying I went to Jusco and the chocolate chips there are MINI chips and they come in MINI bags, and are not appropriate for this LARGER THAN LIFE recipe of deliciousness.

So I sent away for some chips from Foreign Buyer’s Club (along with some oatmeal, taco mix, and other wonderful things, although I yesterday rediscovered a box of Reese’s cereal in my pantry I had forgotten I hid there.. basically I mean to say, I’m hitting the food jackpot)and found myself wondering why I haven’t ordered anything from them ever before, or in fact why I go to the grocery store at all, excepting the fact that I don’t think it’s a good idea to ship eggs to me, and also that bread comes in packs of about 3 slices, so you run out of that pretty fast (which is actually a good thing, because it goes bad just as fast), when ordering stuff online is so very easy.

Because, why leave your house at all? Well, actually I’ve not spent as much time there as I had expected to. I’ve been writing, actually. That novel I keep going on about (do I?), I’ve actually started working on it again and have completed a lot more words. But before you say “send me the first bit,” halt, you who are ignorant in the ways of “NaNoWriMo” and other such ‘just-write-that-shit’ techniques, because the first bit is total tripe right now, because I’m just trying to push through to get any possible amount of the plot barfed through the keyboard into word documents, so it calls for massive revision, especially because on some days, I didn’t feel like writing ‘description’ of any kind, and those happened to be the days that certain scenes were set specifically so that I could describe the setting of the fantasy world as seen through the eyes of a visitor. So that section goes kind of like “There was a parade. It was colorful.” The end.

I got the best comment EVER from a first grader yesterday at go-home-kai. I’ve been swimming a few times a week, just to stay moving, and especially on the Thursdays where I have to skip kempo for evening English class (I just bring a bag and my car and spend the entire day up near work because the pool is right next to work, actually). So it was Thursday, and the week before, I’d been at the pool, so this little first grader said “You’ll be at the pool today, won’t you.” And I said, noooo, actually today I have shorinji kempo instead.

And that cute little kid’s eyes bugged out of his head and he cried out "Suge~ onna!" And I laughed right out loud, because “sugoi” is a word that means .. “awesome” or “incredible, terrific, impressive.” But sugei is the Kansai version, and truncating it is a way of intensifying the word to sort of import shock into that impression. Onna means woman, but is not the politest thing to say.. normally you say onna no hito, meaning female person, for woman. So overall it was pretty much an intense, very Kansai, rather rude, very flattering interpretation of me. The kid then went on to tell the kid next to him that I was scary and one should not mess with me. 

It was pretty much the highlight of the month.

Otherwise, things just keep on keeping on. Lots of changes on that horizon, lots to come. Keep feeling like the end is nigh (and it is, with graduation upon us as of the 9th), the end is nigh, but there's a lot to go between here and there. And beyond!

Saigai

I posted my last entry to the web at about the time a massive earthquake was shaking eastern Japan. A friend of mine who lives in Tokyo and I had been exchanging messages about plans for the upcoming three day weekend (I was trying to convince him to visit beautiful nature-filled Hyogo), and he added as a little addendum to one "Big ass earthquake just now btw" at 3:05 pm (my time). I hadn't felt anything and almost didn't give it much thought.


A little while later, I messaged a few friends in Yamasaki, to ask if they'd felt anything. My fear actually jumped to my apartment, because sometimes it's snowin' in Ichi and springlike in Yama. I hadn't cut off the gas supply to the water heater or anything and I wanted to make sure stuff wasn't going down at home.

I live in West Japan. The Kansai region was largely undisturbed, from what I heard.

But nobody had felt anything. I looked it up on google news, finding one article about a megaquake shaking Tokyo. But we were too far to feel that, and about halfway between the north and south coasts. Someone said the TV was on at their school, and not too long after, commotion started in mine. We turned on the TV.


It took a moment to realize what we were seeing. It was apparently a live helicopter feed. A corner figure of Japan flashed giant red patches over sections of the map. The teacher behind me said, "What is that, a river?" Not a river, the ocean, come too far in, and far too fast.

The aerial we were seeing happened at that point to be Sendai. Relentless water pushed fire and debris and boats and houses, sweeping across rice fields. I kept thinking something would stop the motion, slow the movement of the sweep, there, a river, when the water hits the river, it'll just go downriver and be a big river. But the tsunami that pushed houses into rivers pushed them right back out of those rivers the next second. It didn't stop, and didn't seem to slow down.

Teachers started texting family and friends, calling them on cell phones and asking in low serious voices if everything was alright. I guess it was.

All of this was right about my bus time, so I haplessly shoved my stuff into my bags and headed down to the bus stop, wondering what it all meant. I texted my Tokyo friend, and resisted texting my Okinawa acquaintance as I figured she'd be swamped with "Are you OK?" messages, since Okinawa was flashing all red (along with Hokkaido, and basically the entire eastern coast, and most southern coasts other than those protected, like us, by other large islands and peninsulae).

This is for the 12th, but it's the type of map we were seeing.

Then... we carried on as usual. We'd just had graduation, and we were worn out from that, everybody cried. I wanted a nap before the dinner/drinking party and got half of one before my co-teacher came to get me and take me to enkai. I wasn't sure how to be, what attitude to assume, whether to be quiet or solemn, but things were progressing as totally normal in my little town, so we ate chicken and soybeans and I got "a little bit whiskey" trying to keep up with the art teacher in drinking (I lost). We all gave speeches about how moving graduation had been, and then the party ended and everyone went home.

Or, rather, I went to karaoke to join the others who had just finished their enkai, and I was so whiskey by then I didn't order a single drink at karaoke. I sang loudly and pretty badly, and fielded worried text messages. We stopped for snacks at Gusto on the way home. Still a bit whiskey, I got online and posted to facebook again, just to let everyone know I really was still in touch, and then I went to bed at 2. Embarrassingly, it was a really fun weekend night.

People asked me to keep them updated, but I had nothing to report. Nothing changed in my town, nothing happened here this time (we had flash floods shortly after my arrival, but that was from a typhoon).

I'd had plans to go to Nara the following day for the Omizutori festival, which you can see a bit more about here and here.

I had no real reason to cancel those plans, especially since it seemed good to go to a religious festival in the very-old capital. The festival was still on, I had bookings at a hostel, and my traveling friend was still up for it. So we went, and it took forever to get to Nara (it just always does), and we hung around and attended the last bit of the fire part of the festival (saw the last torch or two), and then meditated in the hall and hung around until 2, when the sacred water was drawn, made it back to our respective overnight places by 3 (I counted seven pairs of shoes in the genkan, making me the last to return for the night) and went to sleep.

This morning, I got up a bit after 9 and went to have breakfast. There was a free piece of toast per person, along with coffee and tea. I had the odd status of being a lone traveler at this place, and I also talked to the proprietor in Japanese. I didn't really know he knew English until I heard someone else talk to him. It's literally the smallest hostel in Nara, and we were all in the common room, me getting breakfast, the proprietor sitting at the table watching TV, one (English? Australian?) guy doing sudoku at the table, and one guy sitting with headphones and a laptop on the floor by the TV. Another guy was in and out of the sleeping room where the computer also was.

The proprietor asked me about Omizutori and I answered in English. Then I couldn't stop staring at the TV. It's all they are talking about, of course, and showing. The map of Japan was still there and flashing yellow now. It took me a while to realize it meant that those areas were still under tsunami warning, "but just a little one," the hostel guy explained to me when I asked in surprise.

There were interviews with people (some who knew their families were safe, others who did not), pans of the wreckage, before and after shots, aerial footage from all over Japan, charts showing numbers by prefecture of the missing and the dead. It was horrifying. I was transfixed. The guy on the laptop burst out laughing, in his own little world and I wanted to kick him, then felt bad for being in my own little world just like that.

Because much like my readership, I didn't feel it, I only heard about it, I only worried about the people I knew or had met who lived in east Japan. I only saw what they showed on TV (which was unbelievably amazing in a terrible way). Then when I walked by the station, I threw my change into a box held by some high school students who had turned out in droves to chant please and thank you to passers-by. I saw a poster and made a mental note to give blood soon. Because in my mind, that's what it takes when disaster strikes, money and blood, and you give what you can of both. The other thing I hear we are giving is power. Kansai electric has asked people to be super conservative with electricity as we re-route some of our supply to the Tohoku region (the top part). I don't really know if everyone is okay. I don't know that knowing would help me.

On the bus home, I started thinking about what I could do. Part of me wanted to raise my hand and get on a bus (once they start organizing buses, as they likely will) to Tohoku to volunteer to help with cleanup the way high schools in Kobe sent their kids here to help haul away the mud and debris after our floods. Another part of me suggests that that kind of maneuver would not be in line with all the recent injunctions to stay safe.

Can you stay safe just by staying put? Apparently not entirely, not when the earth moves and the sea leaves its bed.

But what I did want to do was make a request to all my friends and family, to anyone who was glad to hear it wasn't Shiso and it wasn't me: please donate $2 to the Japan effort. You can do it any way you like.. I'm sure collections will be happening around you soon, and if not, collect some yourself and send it to me. I think the exchange right now is like 83 yen for a dollar, but I'll round every one to a hundred yen (they have direct deposit bank numbers on NHK, and you can give directly at kiosks in convenience stores). And give blood if you are eligible (this is always a need, but in times of any major disaster, the need increases). Thank you all who thought about me, and trust me, I'm just as glad as you that my evening was about graduation speeches and beer, not mud and broken beams.

I'll keep you updated, such as I can, but once again, what I know just comes from about the same sources as what you know. Stay safe, everyone.

Sotsugyou

I'm thinking today about the future.

It's graduation day. I hate them. I forgot that I hate them. They're never quite what I want them to be. I mean, I went, and we sang, and I cried, and it was poignant. But it was also like stay-awake-challenge 2011, and not only for me, when the speakers got up to say their pieces. Maybe it's because their speeches are all in some level of Japanese I don't really understand. But they were the ones who looked bored when the kids started singing badly, and when the class VP started to give an account of their memories, her voice broken by little sobs.

I had come to terms with the idea that it's not really for the graduates that we put them through all this crap. It's for us, the teachers and parents. It's so we can wallow in the weird feeling of imagining them taking flight, of how happy we are and how sad, that we maybe taught them something, that they needed us, that they don't anymore.

But for me, I love their faces as they march out into the swirling snow (yeah, snow) through the back doors of the gym. Tearstained and squared jaw, they go forward; they have no other choice. The future is there, and they'll go into it. They couldn't stay behind if they wanted to. Not that they want to.. some are glad to get out, and some are glad to go wherever they are going. Some are sad to be leaving, some are scared of where they're headed, or of not knowing where they're headed. And some are all of the above.

But scared or sad or happy or excited, we go, because for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure (that isTom Stoppard).

But something else. Before the graduates came into the gym, while I was wandering around trying to keep warm, I stopped and smiled and chatted and joked with the younger students. The first-years squabbled over who was number one, two, or three coolest. The second-years called me beautiful. Then during the ceremony, next year's student body president started crying during his speech, and continued to cry through the rest of the ceremony (I didn't know this til I saw him, red-eyed, at the end).

I remembered the phrase just a judo kid, and choked on it watching the irrepressible Minato deliver his ceremonial paper to the stage. He was never just anything. Now our new class president is just a table-tennis kid, but he has a good heart, and he's sharp, and he has a steady voice. And he cried through the whole ceremony!

At the risk of sounding like a horrible person, I like working with kids whom I've seen cry. I actually have more respect for the kids I've seen moved that much, because it means they give a shit. I like kids who give a shit. The future is brighter for them.

I've been thinking lately about the future, about education and how we're all in this together. About how we need kids to give a shit, and to learn about things, even if they don't think they want to, because the future needs better people. I hear about how this country has a growing population and that one has a shrinking one, but I feel like what we need is not more people (oh hey massive population jump in the last several centuries and the fact that our resources and infrastructure may not be able to keep up at that rate), just better ones.

The world needs people who are smart, sure, but more than that, the world needs people who give a shit. The other day, an acquaintance said "Stupid scares me, because I am afraid it's winning." Sometimes it does seem like stupid is winning, but I have hope. And it's kids like next year's class president that give it to me.

And who make losing last year's class president bearable.

In the style of LNF, only partial, and Japanese

lies.

This, my third enkai, and “Graduation Enkai,” was by far, for me, the best, even though we all had school the next day (and it was Wednesday night—which means the next day? Yeah, was one of those dreaded Thursdays).

The office was so quiet Thursday afternoon when I got back from Big Elementary, though. Everyone was a touch hungover. But I get ahead of myself.

After most big events, school staff groups will have enkai. So graduation could be no exception. Ours happened to be at the same venue where we had Bounenkai, so out in the far mountaintops of EvenMoreRural Japan at a sort of resort up on top of this mountain. I had thought to myself, back in December when I was first there, that when the weather got better (oh you know, maybe in like March or something?) I might go back and explore that area a bit more.

The weather was not better in March. There was in fact more snow.

This time, I also did not go enjoy the hot-bath facilities, which is too bad because it would have been really pretty at the outdoor bath with all that snow still falling like mad.

Anyway. I've learned a few things about enkai by now which help me better enjoy them.

One: shit starts on time. It's not like the kind of party I'm used to, where we say 6, and you get there at like 6:20, and hang around until everyone arrives, and start eating at maybe 7:15. This wasn't a problem because I got a ride directly from school to the venue, but I did really appreciate it, since I (we all did) had work the next day. Anyway, if you aren't there and seated at six, no one is going to wait for you, unless maybe you are the principal and held up by a major earthquake or something. And we don't mess around with 'water now, drinks in a bit,' no sir. Things are properly kicked off with a toast at 6:03, everyone drains their little cute glass of sweet plum wine, and then we start on the rest.

Two: it is your job to fill everyone else's glass. It is also your job to make sure there is space in your glass if someone wants to fill it for you. I decided I needed to get out of my shell a little and make rounds with beer pouring, which I have never done in such capacity. I used to look up, see that everyone had a full glass, and feel silly for not participating in the custom of (especially junior staff members) running around filling glasses. How did everyone else do it? Finally I just got up and started to make rounds. I noticed an awesome thing. Anytime I got to someone whose glass was full, they would notice me, make a sound of surprise, and then drink some of whatever they were drinking so I could give them a tiny refill.

This is excellent because I felt like such a pusher. Here I go, round the table, basically forcing everyone to drink more. Such power. People are generally surprised/delighted when I/any foreigner make an attempt to do something Japanese, also, so there was that extra level of good-job. The English speakers asked me about whether we do that in America and I was like, naw, you help yourself, or the bartender (my brother or mother) helps you, or the waitress is in charge of that mess.

But it's a pretty cool way to socialize, and you can talk to those you really want to, and just sort of be polite to those you don't, as you work your way around the table.

When I got to the principal, he took the lid off his miso-bowl and filled it with sake. And I drank it pretty fast, then filled it ("only a little!") for the VP, and then filled it for the principal, who drank it, and then I drank another one. Basically, I was comfortably drunk by 6:45. Which is good because enkai also end on time, I rightly assumed 9pm, which I appreciated so I could work the next day.

Whenever anyone came across me while doing their rounds, and asked me if I was drinking sake or beer, my reply was always, oh whatever, both are good. Because I am a team player, yes.

Three: there might be drinking games. And not like games where certain things happen and therefore you drink.. more like, you are drinking, so the game is more hilarious/difficult. The games this time were some more "which teacher are the students describing" kind, and a couple of memory games. The teams are always divided by year-level teachers, also desk clusters.. but even though I sit at the 1st-year desk cluster (in the office), I was on the 4th-year (extras) team for games.. so it was me, the principal, and VP, and we lost every game, but had a lot of fun. At some point, the non-English-speaking principal took up my habit of yelling "Waitwaitwaitwaitwait!" when we needed another moment to write our answer down.

Four: the food will be really good, and it will probably never stop coming. This was good, considering how terrible I'd been about dinner the night before. When I say 'comfortably drunk,' I mean on a full stomach and everything.

Other than these things, there were speeches by all the 3rd-year teacher block, one at a time throughout the night. It was weirdly reminiscent of the spirit of LNF (Last Night Fun.. the party after the kids leave GHP.. when the staff half-celebrates the success of the summer, half mourns and drowns the sorrow of the fact that it's over), in both tone and level of abandon. But, I dunno.. like, with adults instead.

I heard later from Big Brother JET that hardly anyone drank at his enkai, since they had work the next day. So, you know, so for them as for me.. it would have been responsible of me to attend, drink very little, and be ready for my classes the next day. But we laughed, and I really appreciate the "screw that idea" spirit of my school's staff. We were totally going to play as hard as we work. And I was ready for my classes the next day.. it was better to do enkai right than it would have been to do enkai wrong and resent my 5th graders the more for it.

VP and Kermit-sensei burst into song right at the end (I think it was enka music.. there was a karoke machine in the room, so..) and were way more epic singers than anyone predicted.

I caught the bus at 9 and went home to sleep. When I returned to the office Thursday afternoon, the VP asked if I were 'tired.' I thought he meant from dealing with 5th and 6th graders all morning (to which, why yes, I was tired). "You drank a lot of sake last night," he said. I laughed and said it was okay. But I imagined the staff meeting that morning being about as productive as the post-LNF breakfast meeting.

Graduation: Still Fighting It

Everybody knows, it sucks to grow up, but everybody does. ... The years go on and we're still fighting it. (Ben Folds, "Still Fighting It")

As promised.



So the day before graduation was, if you recall, The Worst Weather ever. Graduation day itself was a lot clearer, cloudy, cold as hell (for March, I mean), snow on the mountains and all, but it made for pretty photos I'm sure.

I wasn't very good at the ceremony. It takes effort for me to pay attention to people speaking a language that isn't English, and even when I apply that effort, I can only get some of the gist of what is being said. It takes a lot of guesswork, and I never like to assume that I am right. Still, it requires me to do that. So for that reason, the speeches by the various distinguished dudes? Had me fighting sleep.

The calling forward of the graduates' names was something to which I wish I'd been more attentive, though. I had watched them in practice a few times, but in actual ceremony, I wandered. It was cold, I was actually sitting down, I had a cough, whatever.

I really did sit up and take note when the new president came up to deliver what I think was a message to the graduates from their underclass peers. And when one of the graduating students gave what I think was a speech on behalf of the class.

Hmm... wonder what this is like.

I tried to sing along when everyone sang "Goodbye, goodbye, we won't forget you," and then I really started to choke up when the graduates got up to sing their graduate song. Because at that point I noticed that a lot of them were crying. And my brain went into sympathetic-mode.

Aw, don't make them sing, look at them, they don't want to sing... change is hard.. but they are so brave. Be brave, kids!

But it was kind of awesome to see my badass, really-huge-especially-for-Japan boys crying at their own graduation. I feel like, at the few graduations I've attended in the US, the prevailing mood is one of victory and escape, almost. Like you finally conquered and completed school, got what you came for, or something like that. And I had a hard time with that, at least personally.

It might be different here because the school system is different. For one thing, your grades and performance have very little (um, I think nothing?) to do with whether to advance to the next grade or not. You don't flunk/fail/get held back around here. So graduation? Maybe doesn't have to have that association to accomplishment. It was easy for me to identify with this, not because I was an underachiever, but because achieving in school was just what I did, and I didn't feel like it was a big deal to have accomplished what came naturally to me. Graduation was a lot more like being evicted from a lifestyle I had finally learned to appreciate.

So that is apparently expected at their graduation, a sort of simultaneous happy-sad, a kind of mourning for what is lost, but excitement for what comes next.

Anyway, I'm in a place in my life where I watch things like graduation with the understanding that, at least for some of us, change is pretty hard, but it's also pretty important, and so we have to just kind of be brave and go into it.

After that part, we went outside to see them off, but they didn't actually leave right then; they hung around taking pictures and talking to everyone and saying their sort of goodbyes. At one point, this lady was talking to our vice principal, thanking him for something, then all of a sudden she turned to me and said, "And Emily-sensei, thank you," (in Japanese) and continued to say how her son had talked about me teaching English to him, and had showed her the truck I gave him as a present.. at which point I realized I was talking to our special needs kid's mom, and had no idea what to say.

Because really, it never occurred to me that I had much of an impact on that student, even though we did have one-on-one-on-one (the VP, the student, and me) classes about once every week or two.. but like, we hardly ever did anything where I saw English progress, really.. mostly we watched YouTube videos of trucks, because the kid just likes trucks, is all. Sometimes we'd ask him what's this, or what color? And he always said "pink," and we always laughed and said, "Not pink! Green/blue/red/white/black/whatever!" And, especially because I have trouble understanding Japanese most especially if it is accented or in any way different from the standard stuff I learned in school, I basically had no idea what this kid was thinking, ever, except that I got the impression he was a generally happy kid who "talks a lot," as the VP always said.

So it was really cool, I guess, to find I'd been doing a different job than teaching English all along, and even more, I'd done it well. The VP always used to say "Why don't you find more videos of trucks, because he likes them," and occasionally I would wonder, what does it matter if I do it or someone else does it, it's not like I'm making any kind of impact over here English-wise. But in the end, I knew about YouTube, and I was patient and nice, and I also happen to be a foreigner, and so I guess that part of my job that is just "be foreign in Japan, but be a good foreigner," was what I was up to, those days.

Anyway, the students milled around, and I liked just sort of standing back watching it all. I saw my speech-contest girl and took a photo with her..

What up.

Took a few photos of groups that had gathered to pose. Got invited to be in a few. Then I sort of stood back and watched the chaos and love unfold, because I think it's kind of just cool.. I can see that these kids mean a lot to their teachers, their parents, and each other, whether I am part of it or not. I thought about crying because I really will miss the way Giant Student 1 talked both in the halls and in class (he has this way of repeating a word or phrase, including names, really fast over and over to get your attention or something), or how he always yelled "Good morning!" when it was afternoon. Or the way Giant Student 2 would say, "Oh, Emily!" and then give this I'm-too-cool kind of wave, and say "Hello." (not "Hello!".. there was definitely a graveness to it every time).. and when he was my dust-hockey partner for cleaning time.

Awesome-sensei and some of the boys.

And at that point, my speech-contest girl came back up to me and said "Emily! [something in fast Japanese I didn't understand]" So I just kind of stared at her and said "What." She stopped and thought for a second, then said super enthusiastically, "Don't! Forget!"

So I naturally burst into tears, because honestly I don't know what they think this is, but it's kind of sweet to think they're all making much deeper impressions on this ferner than they realize. I was bent over, laughing and crying at the same time, and I finally stood up and told her, "Don't worry." Then she said, "Don't cry?" in Japanese, and I laughed again and said that wasn't really something I could do for her. And then she hugged me and went away again.

I shook the hands of some of my favorite students that I'll miss the most, and I headed back inside because I knew then that I was done. Yesterday as I walked up to the school, it felt oddly empty just knowing that whole band of bright and boisterous students was not there. And today, it's Friday, and I used to eat lunch with them on Fridays. (They were always really excited to have me come to their class so they could be too shy to speak to me.. haha, but no.. that class was very good about giving it a shot, which is why I'll miss them.. they didn't take it seriously enough to worry about fucking up, which freed them up to try.)

Chaos and love at graduation

Things Lately

So sometimes I pop on here to gush about how it's the Best Weather Ever and life is better than predicted and my kids are awesome, etc.

Lately, things have been busy, not because they actually are busy, but because we have graduation practice every day, which requires us to stand in the gym for two hours each day. And two hours isn't that long; considering that normally I am in class about 4 hours a day, having only one class and then two hours of grad practice gives me a net of one more hour to do random stuff at my desk.

But here's what we didn't reckon with: I hate grad practice. Well. Odi et amo, I suppose. It allows me to get all emotional and watch the graduates walk by and hear all their names called and hear the younger students sing "Goodbye, goodbye" to them. But I have absolutely no function at grad practice. And some days I am either so emotional or else so bitter about having to stand around doing nothing at all for two hours (NOT SIT, STAND) that I don't even help move chairs or anything. I did at the last one. But not the one before.. heh.

It just sucks to spend two hours actively doing nothing at all. When there is so much stuff you would have yourself doing, both work-related and non! I finally got some of the stuff done by Monday that I had planned to do Wednesday, and let me tell you that is great for your ego.

Then there was today. Two weeks ago, I had an elementary-stack day at Big Elementary. This was the day with the photos from recess. Because it was like 65 degrees, sunny, and awesome, so even though it was a stack-day (all six classes), it was still great. Today was also stacked, only instead of 1st, 3rd, and 4th, I had 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. And the weather?

This is my favorite part because this is where my life goes back to being a movie about extremes. The weather was perhaps the shittiest weather I have seen in Japan. Made worse for what came exactly two weeks before, you know, back in February, when it was spring or something?

I ran to the bus stop thinking my coat and umbrella were going to be enough. And for where I live, south amongst the mountains, it was enough. But as we traveled the whole 18 minutes northward, the windy chilly rain gave way to windy chilly snowy rainy winterskyvomit, which persisted all day. The worst part was that it all happened sideways, which meant that if you had an umbrella it was 1, useless, and 2, broken. I had a ball with the "how's the weather?" question today because the kids were throwing out everything from "cold" to "rain" to "snow" to "wind" and "cloudy" and beyond, and I had magnetic weather cards for all of that (my predecessor? was/is amazing and I will be in her debt until I pass her materials, assuming they survive, on to my successor).

For all that, the classes went pretty well. I tried to pull some alphabet games that were a bit tough on the firsties, but for the most part, kids were okay.

I took a photo just for kicks.

Why yes, that is snow on the mountain in the background, and frozen slush on the ground underfoot. The only reason their umbrellas work is because we just stepped outside for dismissal, just now. (Even so one of the kids came up just before this to borrow a new umbrella since his was mangled by the wind)

Because I could not imagine worse weather. It's like winter turned around to bitchslap me for doing a little happy dance that it was almost gone.

Oh and my house? Which I was going to clean.. or anything else I wanted to do today? I bet you can guess how done it is about now.

I was supposed to go to the doctor's again today, possibly for the last time..! On my last visit, he said I could "take a bath" with Jermaine now (since I had not, in like five weeks.. only showers with my leg all propped up on the side of my square tub), which to me meant all bets were off. I think Jermaine just didn't do anything at all in the cold. Once it was kinda warm, there was healing happening, or something. Today when I got home from work, I opted to take a bath, rationalizing that I had not yet, and maybe it was not safe to drive across town..?

Okay but really I ought to go and do something with my evening, like run a vacuum, a laundry cycle, or read a book.

I'll bitch about graduation more once it's over. ^_^

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.

Graduation Approaches

Today, my VP asked me to access this ridiculously obscure folder in the staffroom computer and write a message to the graduating class of third-years. “All in Japanese? Why don’t you try?”

Once I stopped laughing (internally only) at that suggestion, I told him I would give that a shot if he promised to read over it for me, because there is nothing worse than trying to be wise/philosophical/graduation-speechy and tripping over language you don’t know. I would expect you’d just come off sounding like a pedantic ass. It’s too easy to sound like that even in your own first language.

So, let’s challenge! I only feel like even thinking about doing such a thing today because the one class I thought I had was cancelled, so I’m totally up for some nigh-impossible school related task. Not that I have anything else to do (like keep hacking away at my inbox, try to catch up on blog reading, write about Naked Man Fest, finish February’s Japanese lessons already, etc.).

Anyway, I am not and have never been very good at graduation. Basically, I’m a stubborn personality and I like to just stick with something until I feel I am really doing it right. And then, well shit, I am doing it right, why would I want to quit? I don’t like change, even when I know it’s important. Even when I know a change is coming for the better, I resist it out of some weird nostalgia.

It is mostly because I want to have everything, and change or moving on requires leaving something behind in order to gain something new. I have not yet found the way to gain something new and KEEP all the old stuff. There just isn’t room.

I mean I am excited about the fact that as the new school year begins, I’m one teacher the incoming first-years will know. They will be my ex-6th-graders. I’m excited because some of my current-6th-graders are freaking champions at English, and I believe, however wrongly, that this will prevent them from being those kids that stare at me and won’t volunteer an answer for all the Emi-dollars in the world. (By the way, I don’t give dollars just for right answers. I give them for making a freakin’ attempt to answer. The behavior I am encouraging is not perfection, for goodness sake, kids, it is willingness to try..!)

And I’m looking forward to my current 2nd-years becoming 3rd years and ruling the school like seniors are supposed to do. When I first arrived, one of the teachers told me that the 3rd years (this year) are very “bright,” bright being a personality thing, like just very personable and outgoing. And the second years, not so much. I like the second year group though, because I’ve had good experiences with them in class and communication. I want to see what they’ll be like when given that sannen spotlight.

At the same time, I like goofing off with my third years. I hate teaching their class because it’s so stressful for me. I’m too proud to ask their regular teacher to help me and I’m still dying to impress him (by showing him how awesome a class I can do without his help), and impress the students who despite being seniors here are really just 9th-graders in age range… so I HAVE to do classes that are fun and engaging and interesting but OH GOD they have to be educational too, or their regular teacher will just look on my attempts as playful interruptions in the serious business of instructing them on English grammar.

…Anyway, I don’t want them to go, because they are bright, and they are hilarious, and the truth is, they are in large part very willing to try and even willing to make mistakes, which is something I value in my job increasingly every day. They are confident because they are older, and their confidence makes them fun.

So I am going to write them a message for the pamphlet. And I’ll even try to make it Japanese. Crap.

Graduation, though, is easier when it’s not my own.