time

I've been thinking lately about time, for a handful of different reasons.

One is what I am calling "Trial Week." They call it torai-yaru week, with yaru being the verb "to do," and then... maybe to do a try? Anyway, students in their second year here spend one week out in the community doing a job, like a sort of mini internship. They don't have homework or club activities that week, only their job. So in the middle of their JHS timeline they get a whole week of tasting the freedom and drudgery that comes with being out of school. The elementary schools have trail-weekers, as do the kindergartens, so I've hung out with some of the students working over there on Tuesday and Thursday. They're pretty hilarious, and they seem to have a pretty big following amongst the kids. Plus, they (like me) seem to enjoy finding the younger siblings of their classmates, laughing about how alike they look or how cute they are.

So because their absence prevents us from having English classes with them, I spent my second-year's day of the week hanging out and accompanying their other teachers on what seemed like inspection rounds, visiting the various places of work to observe, take some photos, and tell them to keep up the good work. The kids are all working at places you'd expect. Our rounds that day were two grocery stores, Sponic Park, a home and garden store, an electronics factory (!), and lastly (and pretty unexpectedly) a sort of old folks daycare.

That last one caught me off guard because although I guess it's not really so different in concept to have kids working at a nursery school and a nursing home, walking into it was a little startling. It's easy to play with babies. It doesn't feel the same to the sensibilities or something.

But the kids at the old folks' daycare seemed to be doing pretty well. We watched them conduct a game and everyone seemed pretty happy about having them there. The staff said it was because they liked having young people around, liked seeing them there.

Another thing is, I've been thinking about JET succession; someone asked me at the elementary if they've picked my successor. I said they probably have, and once again thought about what it's like to be new, what it might be like to follow a three-year JET. I was almost protesting to myself, the kids only love me because I've been here for three solid years. It doesn't take much to be a rock star in the eyes of the elementary students, but the longer you do it, the better they know your name.

So I started to think, the most important thing we have to give people is our time. It's one thing we stress in the PSG volunteers too. Giving time to the caller. Because everybody is giving their time to something, and sometimes you can feel like all you really need is for someone to give time to you, but you're hesitant to ask because they have so many other, probably more important, worthier places to spend it.

And there are so many places to spend it, so many investment opportunities there.

If you don't have the time to spend on a particular person or thing, that doesn't make you less good, or less caring, you just care more about something else. I don't think everyone should spend three years in Shiso, but I'm glad I did.

Just thinkin'.

Happy Monday

Monday, May 9th, was like some kind of anomaly in the world of Mondays.

I had the day off because it was my school's "Foundation Day," which fortuitously came at the end of the Okinawa trip. If I had known about the day off in advance, I might have tried to extend my stay in Okinawa yet longer, but as we have seen, that would have been a not so good idea. So, instead, I just had an extra day to recover from vacation before heading back to work.

Monday was dazzlingly sunny and quite warm. These are perfect laundry conditions. In the winter, laundry takes about a full day in the sun to dry. More often than not, it would end up hanging from my closet door while I ran the heater at night. One thing I like about spring and summer (rainy season excluded) is the way you can hang laundry out more frequently, with much faster results.

So I did some laundry, and I finished unpacking, and I made a foray into the garden which had somehow lost all its color (other than greeeeen) during my absence. And there I discovered 8.6 zillion motherfucking aphids on each cluster of leaves on my little plum tree. Any kind of insect, especially large numbers of very small ones, which is eating something in my garden makes me really, really, irrationally angry. I want nothing more in the world than to end their lives as quickly as possible. Because how dare those little bastards be destroying my poor innocent plants that are not hurting anyone and that are tenuously enough holding on to life as it is? The little flowers and trees out there are just tryin' to grow, and they are bright and a beauty and a joy and anything that brings harm to them must instantly cease to do so, or die.

From 2011_04_30

This murderous rage was the only blot of negative energy on the whole morning. The rest was spent relishing my plan to visit the Thousand-Year Fuji (wisteria) of Yamasaki. I decided to go and see it on a general foray into town by bike, the usual, bank (what's the damage, Okinawa?), post office (packages to pick up, letters to send). Osaki-san had said the best days of the fuji blooms were usually right through Golden Week (3rd - 5th of May), but I had resolved to go check it out as soon as I could get over there after getting back from Okinawa.

Of course, as with any season-dependent plant life, dates only give general ideas of when the best time will be. There are photos on display at the shrine by the sen-nen fuji showing it in full bloom on May 10th, and another year, April 28th. People come from far and wide to see this thousand-year fuji (recall our own pilgrimage to the thousand-year sakura tree in Yabu), from Osaka and maybe even beyond, so I figured I was pretty lucky since I could just bike a few blocks.

Last year, I went to see the place when it was just past its prime. I had heard of it, but didn't even know where the shrine was until it was too late! A few hangers-on wandered in the pleasant shade, and there was the mild scent of dried flowers, some of the fallen petals crunching softly underfoot.

From 2010_05_16

I went a few more times to that shrine just to poke around and enjoy it. I think of it (quite all made-up by me, I assure you) as the shrine to Japanese Venus, or sort of like that equivalent (femininity, growth, fertility, love, etc.), partly because I went there at a time when I was thinking about Venus and new beginnings and healing and growth, and partly because of this statue:

The shrine is called 大歳神社, or "Otoshi shrine" .. and it turns out that is more associated to Jupiter, than anything.

From 2011_05_09

This year, as I rode up the hill to where I thought I should park my bike, the warm breeze wafted a lovely floral scent over me. I realized with a start that it was coming from the wisteria. I was prepared for the color, and the crowds of old people, but I had not thought about the way the place would smell (I, being lately rather sensitive to smells; recall how a whiff of the moldy smell in our condo made me queasy). I went into the main area to sit in the shade and breathe in the fresh gentle smell of it all. It was absolutely awesome. The photos don't do the warmth or smell any justice, but at least you can see some of the blooms (click through to go to the album):

From 2011_05_09

From 2011_05_09

From 2011_05_09

From 2011_05_09

I thought this was cool, the blooms coming out of this vine near the ground! The main trunk in the center of the pavilion did not have this.

From 2011_05_09

I also really liked the idea that I could go run my errands, then come back again and sit for a minute, if I liked. I resolved to do so, and also to stop at Osaki-san's "open garden" (she lives really close to the Sen-nen Fuji) and ask her advice on those gdmf aphids back home.

When I went to Osaki-san's, I didn't know what to really expect. What we had there was, older people, mostly ladies, wandering in in nice dress to take traditional matcha tea (complete with a sweet) in Osaki-san's beautifully appointed tea room, with a view to the garden. Then she walked through the garden with the lady I happened to sit next to and take tea with, and pointed out some stuff for both of us. Before I left, she gave me a nice big bottle of AphidDeath (named by me) to borrow, and also some riceballs, which I took back to the fuji to eat for lunch while basking in the ancient plant's sweet presence.

As I biked home, there were cars lined up all the way to the main road, and people walking along the street between the Michi-no-eki (road station) and fuji. There's really no parking up by the shrine. I felt even more pleased to be on a bike, and decided to visit the fuji every day for a little while, if I could (of course, this plan was foiled by three straight days of heavy rain, which also did their part to take out most of the blooms and leave the display in worse shape than I found it last year!).

I spent the early afternoon doing a bit of gardening, finishing up some chores, and getting ready for the evening. At 4pm I had my second HPV vaccine shot. The paperwork runaround eventually led me downstairs where a nurse with a "I'm new" badge on her nametag asked me which arm I preferred to take my painful injection in. Another nurse corrected her, showing her that it was already written on my form, that these things were all decided ahead of time. I thought, awesome, the last shot left my arm sore for two days. This is going to be hurt like a bitch and a half with sweet nurse Newbie stabbing me.

She was super sweet, though, and as she got ready to stick me (with all the seasoned nurses, including the one who got me last time, standing by in a line against the wall, watching), she said "It's going to hurt, so be brave!" I took a breath and tried not to remember how, when I was 13, a nurse had to try like five times to get the IV in my hand properly because she was new. But just because it was Happy Monday, maybe, the shot didn't even burn like the last one did, and the following day, the muscle was only a little sore (nothing like the time before!).

I hurried home to get ready for homemade okonomiyaki dinner at Heke's dance teacher's house, which was excellent, and of which there was too much food, of course. Wrapped up the night by going over trivia questions with Lester for the Pub Quiz at the end of the month. All in all, an excellent day.

You Look American

I overheard a comment the other night that gave me a bit of pause.

You see, Little Brother JET (the replacement of Big Brother JET), who is very gung-ho, polite, and friendly, does not look anything like his predecessor either. Big Brother got his nickname partly because he has red hair (like me!) and so I figured we could pass, especially in Japan, as siblings.

But Little Brother JET is half Laotian by descent. He doesn’t look Asian to me, not exactly. I remember thinking the same of other half-this or half-that people I’d met before. She doesn’t look Japanese. She just looks American, to me. A dark-haired, brown-eyed sort.

But when we were doing our meet-and-greet with some group or another, and he mentioned his hereditary background, someone said, “Oh, that explains it. I thought you didn’t look American!”

What, then, does an American look like? I wondered.

Because after living here a year, I can almost see the difference between who looks Chinese, who looks Japanese, and who looks Korean.. kind of, almost. And I like to think I can spot British and Dutch and Italian. But when it comes to American, all bets are off. I assume that looking like an American looks like anything and everything, because it very often does.

I know a bunch of Americans. In the same way that, as a little kid, you just kind of assume everyone’s life experience is pretty much the same as yours, I tend to assume that people are American until I have reason to believe otherwise (an accent, a statement in a self-introduction). I’ve more than once mistaken dudes I have seen around the cities in Japan as being black Americans when they are actually from Africa. Not African Americans, dude, just African.

And the dark-eyed, dark-haired half Asians? Look just as American to me as African Americans, and dark-haired, dark-eyed Italian-descended Americans, and yeah, the pale-as-death Irish-rooted Americans too. It’s not that I maybe couldn’t have picked out the Asian in someone’s features, it’s that I never thought to look for it. My own heritage is half Dutch, the other half a mix of British, Irish, and some Native American too (plus some other stuff I can’t remember). The sheer variety of all that is sometimes a little bit mind-boggling for some of our Japanese students, because Japan tends to be pretty Japanese.

Some people get married outside of the nationality/culture/Japanese race; it’s not like it’s taboo or unheard of. But a lot more don’t. Because it’s who’s around. For a lot of Japanese, where you’re from and your nationality and your racial heritage is all connected to being Japanese.

Being American, though, is a whole different system. Virtually everyone there traces back to somewhere else before, at least partly.

What does it mean to look American? Is it a complexion? An eye shape or color? Is it a stance or swagger or haircut? Is it a fashion statement? Do I bear the stamp unconsciously, just because I was born of ‘mixed’ heritage in the state of Georgia, because I went to school in Tennessee, all the while pledging allegiance to the flag and memorizing things like “Give me liberty or give me death!”?

Whatever the reason, I am assumed on first glance to be foreign. I often feel like people ask me where I came from just out of politeness, although I suppose it’s possible that they can’t tell by my accent I’m not Australian, New Zealander, or European.

The other afternoon, Little Brother and I were up at Haga Castle. The caretaker there, an old man speaking only Kansai-ben chatted with us at length. I was proud of myself for following almost everything he said. He speaking pace was slow enough to allow this, and it made me kinda smug. I figured Little Brother was probably following it too, although he said later that it got difficult in places. Little Brother is good at Japanese (prrrobably better than me), but Kansai-ben is still kind of a trip for the newly-arrived; however versed one may be in classroom-taught proper Japanese, get yourself into the middle of nowhere (like, for example, Haga) and up on top of a mountain, and the local people aren’t going to talk that way. Anyway, after a few minutes of going on about the castle and the area and his job being to shut the gate when we left, he commented that kanojo wa nihongo zenzen wakar’en, na?

Hey guy! I do so understand Japanese! The conversation turned there and we realized that he’d not only recognized the half-Asian-ness of Little Brother, but he’d figured it was half Japanese, and assumed that was why he spoke Japanese and that this was what qualified him to be an English teacher in Japan. He missed the part where I was a teacher too; I guess he thought I was a visiting friend. I wasn’t offended, just kind of surprised. Like I said, Little Brother looks (sounds, acts?) really American to me. If anything, I kind of feel like my more reserved demeanor and conservative nature are more “Japanese” than his outgoing directness..!