Tokyo: Tables and the Open Future

I wrote a bunch of posts while I was on the trains going hither and thither, and I still need to format and photo-ify most of them.
I was recently hesitant to post this one and I don't know why.

 Tokyo: Tables and the Open Future

Tokyo, like many things, is both hated and loved by me. I always used to say I like to visit and wouldn’t want to live there, but now I wonder if it’s not just the reverse of that. The thing I hate in Tokyo is the combined weight of lost-ly carrying a bunch of luggage in stations so incredibly full of people I don’t know how to maneuver. The truth is, stations would always be full of people, but if I were staying for a lengthier time, I might not have a suitcase under my arm at all times, and I might know exactly where I was going, which would mean I would spend a heck of a lot less time wandering sweaty and forlorn through a station that begins to resemble a clusterfuck the longer I spend there searching. This was in fact the case on Tuesday, but I get ahead of myself.

(Tuesday, just for the record, I visited the Mori museum in Roppongi Hills and had a wonderful time with a fellow PEPY JET friend and generally felt like one of the luckiest people in the world.)

What a pleasant spot on such a pleasant day

Mark shows how to interact with this map display.

The view from my lunch spot.

My lunch.

Monday, I had the delightful opportunity to stop in Yokohama and have lunch with Baye McNeil, author of Hi! My Name is Loco and I Am a Racist and of course, Loco in Yokohama. Alessandro and I had the chance to interview him for Impetuous Windmills. We waded through a Yohokama downpour to enjoy some seriously good ramen and seriously better conversation. I’m really pleased to have met this genuine and down-to-earth guy, and I hope to again some future day.

Talking with him made me think about writing in a more serious way again, and brought to the fore of my mind the story which I know I’ve mentioned and which everyone must think I have since abandoned, but I promise I have not, and in fact its development, to this point long and slow, has become something more like a boil after years and years (like, ten) of ridiculously slow cooking. For that story, ideas keep popping, and all the while I grow less and less satisfied with the level of the writing work previously done on it.

Anyway! Once I hit Tokyo and made my way up to the Orientation Info Fair, I was promptly installed as a PEPY representative. I met my fellow table-mate and we meshed well, as we were able to share different experiences from PEPY adventures. She having been on the ‘real bike ride’ (The PEPY Ride, across Cambodia), and me having been on a modified one-week adventure. I was also able to provide some photos from our Himeji rides, which I ended up thinking was and easier thing for new JETs to get into, idea wise. It’s difficult, the moment you land in Japan, to immediately start your planning to go on international trips! Much more accessible, I thought, is the idea of exploring your own prefecture by bike while donating to a good cause.

I’ve been back and forth from the PEPY website, especially before and after our winter break adventure, and I do want to mention that I respect what they’re doing out there a lot. Their whole teach a man to fish (or teach a village to educate itself) thing is something that I really get behind. More on this momentarily..

The table next to PEPY was the PeaceBoat table. I think I had looked over some PeaceBoat info before, I know I donated some money through them in March of 2011.. I did not really understand their voyages, though, or maybe I looked at them and thought the participation fee was pretty high for me and my life, or maybe IF I realized they were looking NOT for participants among JETs, but people to work on the boat as English teachers, I noted at that time that I did not have the time to spare, as the boat voyages are around three months in length.

But for a recently… retired? JET… you must understand that the moment I understood that I could apply to be an English teacher for mostly Japanese participants on a boat voyage around the world, the moment I looked at a map of the next planned voyage and understood that one could be part of that, doing what I already have the skills to do, and sail around the world with free time at various ports of call all over the world, I could have swooned, the prospect seemed so intoxicating (and to be honest, still kind of does).

(You’ll be pleased to know I was decidedly against applying for the voyage leaving in mid-December because I intend to spend the holidays at home this year, no matter how tempting the boat route map was for that voyage.)

It would be a little presumptuous of me to just assume that out of what must be a relatively large pool of applicants for a relatively small number of spots on a voyage I would be selected, but in this I am a little bit presumptuous. In the same way that I knew – see, I didn’t want to be a JET, I just knew I was one, or that it was a perfect fit.. that I could be good at this, that this could be good for me—in that same kind of way, I suddenly felt like being an English teacher on a PeaceBoat voyage was for me.

So I guess this is what I mean when I title this “The Open Future.” I don’t really know what I’m doing after JET, and even if I were to go on a voyage, from what I understand most teachers are limited to one voyage (in some special cases, they do take on repeaters), that wouldn’t be a ‘real job,’ that wouldn’t be ‘my future’ or the rest of my life, it would just be the next adventure, a three-month chance of a lifetime the way JET was a three-year one; it also wouldn’t have to be next, or now. It just seems like ‘now’ is when I ‘don’t have any plans,’ or at least not a job.

But that’s what I realized in the same moment, the open future. I had all but forgotten the ties I left behind, which I am sure it would take time to restart, but the jobs I did have, in Kansas, the beginning of a background in a few different things. I’m not worried about what to do when I get home because I believed I had options, even if I had forgotten what they were. I remember them now, Kaplan if I want to work in private education for GRE prep or maybe even ESL. I’ve been a substitute teacher and I know I would be better at it now than I was then (though I maintain that being a sub is hard, and I don’t know that I wanna… the fact remains that I probably could). And if, at the end of a year, I had gone from nothing at all to having started these things, I believe that given proper time, there are lots of options.

People tend to ask me in line with finishing JET, ‘where to next.’ I have always believed, even if they don’t quite, that the path forward lies for me back toward where I began it. Not absolutely necessarily in my hometown or even state, but I have always just assumed I would ‘end up’ in America sooner or later. Those who know me more recently, without having seen my roots, tend to think I’m an international, a wanderer in some ways, and maybe I am. But that isn’t what I want to be forever.

Still, I can’t deny that I still feel that, at least after I get the chance to be back for a while, to reconnect, to readjust, to move past this particular life I’ve had for the past few years and dust off the clean slate, there is an appeal, a draw in the world-wide-view, in believing there is more out there to do and be done than I can do or could have seen from within the previous parameters of vision I once had.

I talk about PEPY a lot, but I’ve hesitated to mention that I still feel drawn, as often as I do research on it, to go there and do that thing, not forever, of course (ideally, the real hope of PEPY and the folks there is to become phased out as unnecessary), but for a little while.

So what does that mean? Three months on a boat? A year in Cambodia? Will I be back in Japan for any length of time in the future? I shrug and say I don’t know, that I have ‘no plans.’ It’s not a lie; I don’t.  I can’t hope for any of those things until I’ve spent three months in America. Or maybe a year. Doing what? I feel a little silly sometimes, to say “I don’t know.” Only because I think maybe the listener will assume me careless, listless. But once, having to say that would have panicked me. Now, I’ve been me long enough to see that I am never idle for long. And so long as opportunities exist (as they quite obviously do), I hope that I will continue to be the me that at least seriously considers taking them on.

The Long Hiatus Known as Winter (in review)

It's Friday, it's raining again, but at least a bit warmer than the last time. Or at least I think so.

We get the first day of spring off in this country, maybe because you are supposed to visit your ancestors on the first day of spring (I just learned). Whatever the reason, I think having the equinox off is an excellent practice. The better to celebrate.

Winter is all about the holding pattern, post Cambodia, it was a fairly happy or at least nonchalant cycle of work, reading, writing, various exercise, and housekeeping. It was like an endless ongoing movement of maintenance. Keep on trucking. Every week was not the same, but the entire season seemed to fall into a pattern of total sameness. Maybe you'll go swimming today or tomorrow, maybe you'll feel too puny. Maybe you'll buy more kerosene, maybe you'll cook something. Maybe there will be a get-together this weekend, maybe you'll be social by hanging out with one or two people, maybe you won't see anyone and will just indulge yourself in reading/the internet/pretending to do chores. Maybe you'll make coffee, maybe you'll avoid it because it's bad for circulation and your toes are freezing off. Maybe you'll go to kempo and rock it, maybe you'll go and suck, maybe you won't go.

If anything changed this winter, it was a change that felt built-in right away, and was in many cases a resumption of something old. I took up working on that novel again. I moved up a little on the coffee snob scale, because I started hanging out at Rocky just like I always thought it would be nice to hang out in a coffeeshop and 'write.' (Then I started buying coffee [at Rocky] and making it at home. I had a coffeepot for two years and used it twice [then sold it], and now I can't stop pressing myself cups of the stuff -- luckily I just got ahold of decaf, so now it's on day and night, and guilt-free for the circulation issues). I started swimming more frequently. I didn't exactly feel like I had all kinds of time to waste because I was spending all my time doing all these maintenance or resumption things.

Lately, I swim less often, partly because I wrenched out my shoulder on the only ski trip we took this year. I still go occasionally, and rent a kickboard so I can gimp along. I've also stalled on the writing, as I will now confide. The irony is that it happened because of something I did to help myself along in that department sadly backfiring. I had some comments on the first part of the thing, and someone referred to the George R. Martin series A Song of Ice and Fire to sort of compare how I used a bunch of different POV throughout the story. I had heard about the series before, and had seen one episode of it on HBO at Sagramore's (the episode with ALL the spoilers), so I kindled up a four volume set and stared in on it, telling myself it would be instructive and help my writing.

The first few chapters were okay, but once I was sunk into it, it built a nice ice wall between me and my ability to write or even edit my story. It was good. And that was a problem, not because I was so absorbed I no longer had time to do any writing (that is always and never true of life, rather than any book), but because as I read on I get the distinct impression that my story is nothing like this story.

I could never have written this story.

But I like this story, and that's a problem because suddenly all I can see is everything that this story has that my story lacks, everything I like about this book I'm reading that is glaringly absent from the one I'm writing.

An' lemme tell you, that shit'll stop your pen. Writer's block is and has always been a failure of confidence, maybe.

I'm sweet-talking myself back into it, of course. I've begun to find things I don't like about it, as a sort of salve. And I've also tried to explain to the little kid version of myself currently throwing an I-don't-wanna-play-anymore tantrum that, well of course you could never have written this story, it's not yours, you weren't supposed to, it's about a totally different thing, has a totally different appeal.

At first I was confused, because this is not by far the first good book I've read since I began working again on the writing. I've read a bunch of really good things, strong works, classics, award-winners. But I realized, they were all of some other genre, they were all something else. So I'm working my way back to a place where I can like this one and still make that one, different.

We recently set the date of my black belt (!) test, for early June, which set me off into a mental tangent about Shannon (while the June connection is obvious, if you can't see why Shannon and getting my black belt are related, I can't really explain it.. they aren't, and yet for some reason they are), which caused me to have a Shannon dream, which made me decide to resume my pilgrimage on March 20th after its long hiatus known as Winter.

The first temple of the season was Ichijo-ji, stop number 26 on the original route, and the second-closest temple to where I live.

I think I'll post that as a separate entry, because I don't have the photos ready yet anyway!

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!

a month and four days in

Well, now it's February. I've already written about 2011, the Year That Never Was, or the Year that I Forget.. but I just read over a few other blogs and their retro/pro-spectives and I am reminded again.

The other day, I began sorting the papers, the junk I've been saving. I decided if something was from 2010 or 2009, I should throw it away. So I happily progressed through all the bills I had stashed in a desk drawer since I arrived, saving only the 'new' ones, or the papers from startup I might need at shutdown.

Re-appointment papers appeared on my desk one day while I was in class. In that class, we did a comparative/superlative multiple-choice group quiz (think of it like pub quiz night... these kids had little chance of actually knowing the answers to the questions I concocted) in which, while reading out the extra info about the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world), I said it was opened in January 2010, so that's just one year ago!

Um, what? So not only is it confirmed I cannot count, it's also apparent that I do in practice forget 2011, sometimes. Or, I feel like it must still be 2011, because already I feel like I've got more documentable "accomplisments" under my belt (as of NOW, February 4th!) than I did in all of 2011.

On the 2nd of February, I took my 1-kyu test for Shorinji Kempo, which is the highest rank I've ever been in any martial art. I'm not particularly coordinated, and and actually not very 'good' at martial arts. I do kind of like them, and I don't mind the repetitive practice. I lack technical skill, especially in a heated or otherwise important moment (so like, tests, tournaments, etc.) and end up more often flailing around performing something that would, let's face it, on the street probably work out okay in defending me, but under the watchful gaze of judges just looks like a baby deer kicking with sharp hooves. In some ways it makes me feel like I prefer the Yoshikai style of all-day testing. Where all you really have to do is outlast the day to show what you're made of, and that your technical skill has already been observed in repeated practice.

Still and all, it's something to be a first-kyu. That's right below black belt. We're still hoping to get me a black belt before I leave here this summer.

As mentioned, I also got my TEFL certification, which may not be small beans in the future. Right now it seems to make little difference in the fact that I have a job, or what I'm asked to do.. but it has changed a bit how I go about planning lessons or what I think should be happening.

But both the TEFL thing and the 1st kyu aren't just results of 2012, they're fruits grown in 2011 that happen to have just been harvested here in 2012. Comparably, I've started giving the push-and-go treatment I'm calling "FebNoWriMo" (because the weather in November and the schedule then are just not conducive to novel writing, here, and February is actually the shittiest month, weather-wise). I am also writing an unrelated 750 words a day to "clear out my mental junk" (at 750words.com, if you are interested). Even the novel I'm trying to write is not a spontaneous generation, fully formed, from this head-of-Zeus, it's a set of ideas that's been on slow cook and the backburner for years and years.

Also, in 2012, I went on a date. And this isn't like big news, and I don't see this thing 'going anywhere,' but it's kind of nice that a guy had the stones to declare his interest and invite me out to dinner and a movie. I don't really have "love and relationships" goals for 2012 (well, except for one secret one), but I think maybe I should, and if I did, maybe having a date would fall under the heading of "progress." (See: 2011 - A Year Without Climax) But even this has roots in 2011.. I wasn't ASKED on this date in 2012, I went on it then. I was asked before the winter trips.

Neighbor and fellow ALT encourages my dating life. But I wonder if her heart is really in it...

I also got wireless (which I might sell just as quickly to my neighbor) in the apartment, bought a mini-PC, had Kameron configure it, and then got it on the school network with the help of Mikan-sensei. I've been introduced to a couple places in town I had never known existed, one of which has the cutest coffee-shop atmosphere I've seen yet.

Sam is good at finding places. Remind me to take you here when you visit!

I've also been reading at a rapid rate. It began with my two winter-trip six-hour plane rides (for which I failed to pack or book video entertainment and therefore plowed through novels instead), and carried through to now. The winter cold helps. All I want to do is read books. On kindle, on kindle-fire, in paperback off the inherited shelf...

Anyway, it's about time for me to do important things like eat, do laundry, and possibly attempt to tidy up that other room. Oh and the writing, 1750 words at least.

Em writes things...

I have decided to try to do a little more networking between all the different things I write in different places. So, I'ma share this too!

You'll get some more on PEPY in the coming months...as we prepare to take a tour with them in Cambodia (as opposed to lead one in Himeji)!

PEPY Ride Hyogo (aka, the article I write like every six months to promote my bike ride event)

Decent

You're probably wondering, did she even go to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur? I haven't seen any evidence.

Don't worry.. those posts are coming.

For now I've got this to share: Hyogo Times Online

I spent Sunday night in a gleeful reverie, as you may have read. Then I spent Monday harried and wanting to tear out all my hair by the roots, rushed and irrational and pissed off for no good reason because people were just being jerks is all, only they weren't really. Also I had four classes and then one period of standing in the freezing gym while the kids received a bosai lecture about how to handle fires and earthquakes.

Monday night, my HT staff members rallied (turns out, they are actually rock stars, and not the 'jerks' I spent all midday believing every last person on earth to be) and I woke up Tuesday happy and ready to roll.

The website is under construction. I gave both my designer and my web editor long laundry lists of notes about changes of all varieties. Not everything is quite finished, but it's in the works. And it's decent, for now.

Nengajou

I like the Japanese tradition of sending New Year greeting cards. It's basically the same idea as Christmas cards, only non-affiliated to any religion, and if you don't know what to say, there are a bunch of sweet set formula phrases to use. Congratulations on the New Year. Please regard me kindly this year as well as last.

Last year I took a bunch of cards home with me to mail out as New Year cards in the US. I did this without realizing that some of the cards you buy already have the Japanese postage built right in, to save you the trouble of affixing postcard stamps. This year, I decided I'd be smart and just attach 20yen additional stamps to them, because 70 yen is the cost of sending a postcard international.

I just got word that the built-in-stamp cards are special and might not go abroad. I assured the bearer of this news that I had put my return address on my cards and they were totally not returned.

But I don't think I put my return address on them, come to think of it. So if you are expecting a card and didn't get one, the JPost might have eaten it for a holiday supper. I apologize. Those of you to whom I am sending late cards, well, yours will be fine.

Yoi o-toshi-o!

Update: I also managed to leave all my cardmaking material at school today even though it was the last day the building would be open until the 3rd. But by the 3rd I'll be in Penang, hopefully lying on a beach, and not back to Shiso until the 10th. At which point New Year cards are kind of moot.

I actually had my vice principal and Kam-kam collaborate to retrieve them for me.

So much fail. But so much kindness, too. I guess if I did everything right, I would have no call to feel this kind of gratitude that my boss and my fellow JET would go out of their ways like this for me.

Life is Study

As the lovable Kintaro, hero of Golden Boy once said, "Life is study."

And I often spend working holidays catching up on my studies. I've tried to stay on some kind of schedule, and to some degree I have kept up with things.. the problem is mostly that I'm doing too many different things and trying to maintain them all (alongside all that lesson plannin' and other stuff I do at my desk).

SmartFM has proved to be an excellent tool for studying Japanese vocabulary (and the countries of the world), and I try to do lessons regularly. The lessons go quickly and are kind of fun.

My kanji benkyo-ing has been going slowly. You might remember a time when I said I wanted to "nail down" the 508 I "knew" before moving on to the next lesson. Well, the process of nailing down those kanji, begun in the summer, has reached its.. um.. halfway point today.

And it's not that I've been slacking. My methods are just very.. methodical. I get confused by all this "kunyomi" and "onyomi" stuff, especially when there is more than one of either of them for a character, so I figured the best thing to do would be just learn some words for each kanji. Then I would get exposed to more vocabulary, and see how the kanji fit into the meanings of their respective words.

But writing a handful of words for each character is ridiculously time-consuming. It's working, I'm remembering, if not all the words, at least I'll be able to feel like I've seen that before... when I encounter them, and possibly even produce the correct sounds in reading the words.. but I'll get the meaning, and that's what is important.

I've been doing the kanji review quizzes regularly (the screen shows a word in English and I write the kanji on my scrap paper, then hit spacebar to show the correct kanji. If it's right, I type Y, if wrong, I type N. The N ones have to be redone and then they go into the box to be reviewed soonest and most often. Kanji work their way out further and further into the 2-times reviewed box and beyond depending on the number of times I give them a Y response. Every time, a handful of them make their way back into the first box because I've forgotten them since the last review.

As of now, though, the boxes are like this:
One review: 12
Two reviews: 25
Three reviews: 9
Four Reviews: 33
Five Reviews: 95
Six Reviews: 325
Seven + Reviews: 9

After a set amount of time, each kanji expires and comes up for review. On any given day, I can have just a couple, or 40-something. If I wait too long, a lot will have expired and I'll have to plow through a hundred or so. If I get a kanji right, it goes to the next box, and wrong goes back to the first. The first boxes expire at a faster rate, and I assume further boxes just get exponentially longer times.

But yeah. I'm at 254 "nailed down" and still sitting at 508 in process.

I'm also not too far behind in my grammar studies. I've persisted in scraping what understanding I can from the free books we get from the government as JET participants. Last year I failed to finish the 6th and final book, but they sent me a certificate anyway. ^_^ This year I'm doing the blue (advanced) set, and I'm on book 2, week 4, day 3, which is where I would need to be, exactly, if I weren't about to run off traveling and leave the books sitting on the table for two weeks.

I'm not allowed to do more than two days of CLAIRbook in any one day because it causes my eyes to glaze over and for me to pass out at my desk. I'm not kidding. I drooled on my kanji notebook once. I don't retain more than two lessons at a time, and even those I like to space out these days (so I'll do one of those, then some kanji or smartfm).

So this is part of why I do not have free time at work like other JETs might. I'm just not equipped for that.

I have also developed some kind of inability to study at home. I can write letters at home, and watch pirated American TV, and I can clean the house and do laundry and even cook a little, and I can write at home, and I can leave the house for my other extracurricular stuff, and I can socialize at home. But I find it very difficult to actually do "homework" there.

Tomorrow I'm expecting me to do some, though, so we'll see how that goes!

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.

November

You might have noticed an increase in the frequency of my blog updates since November began. This is not merely because of the fact that October, which was the busiest month of them all, has ended, although that is a contributing factor.

It's also because November has begun. November is, for many, "National Novel Writing Month," or NaNoWriMo for shortsies. I have had a novel lurking around my brain for far too long, and have decided that last year's sad excuse ("but I have to prepare for the GRE!" ... in retrospect, I suppose I did alright at this, as my GRE score helped to employ me through March) will not stand. I am not signed up for any test to take its place (missed the deadling for the Japanese proficiency exam signup.. ohh darn. /sarcasm), so that means November is as open as any month is going to ever be.

When I considered doing NaNoWriMo, I have decided that is it more important to me to "be a writer" this month than it is to finish 50,000 words of a novel. NaNoWriMo urges that quantity, even above quality, which would not be okay with me, considering that my story idea has been cooking for too long now to give it the short shrift on quality. So, my goal is broader: "Be a writer."

How should I consider to do that? Well it's actually pretty easy. A writer writes. So that's what I'll do.

I've made a daily task list, five things, of which doing all five is Awesome, but doing three is Important. Work on the novel, write a blog entry, write a letter (or e-mail of letter length/quality, write a journal entry (this includes any random vignette short story, also), and study Japanese. Of course, the "study Japanese" injunction doesn't fit in perfectly amongst the others, but it too is important, it too should be considered daily, and it too is related to language and will improve my life as a writer as well as in general.

In addition, JET upstairs, JET-M and I are creating a writing circle. I'm not sure what this will mean, except that I suppose I'll produce my novel-to-date and all the silly little vignettes I've written every two weeks at a local coffeeshop for their approval. This is intended to carry on much longer than November, of course.

I looked up NaNoWriMo (to make sure I had it spelled right, mostly) and discovered that it was assigned to November "to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather." On the first of this month, I scoffed, thinking, whoever made up this idea clearly did not live in Japan in the bright beautiful autumn sunshine while the mountains were patching out in bursts of vivid color.

Last night, I was thinking, it must have been invented by someone in Japan who realized that November would best be spent under the warmth of a kotatsu typing than by attempting to venture out into the room, much less outside the house.

November has come and I will probably buy a heater today. Because life without it will only suck more as time goes on. Seriously, I am learning what it's like to live in a castle: drafty, un-insulated, and populated by bugs. Last night, I complained to the JET next door, "But it's only 50!" remebering how in Kansas, when it was only 50, I wasn't complaining so much.

But, she pointed out, it's not only 50 outside, it's 50 in here, too, and that makes all the difference. And indeed it does. In Kansas, where it was 50 outside but still 70 inside (68 when I started winning the energy bill battles against Roommate), well that was a whole different thing.

I am a southerner, which is kind of a different species, and I'm afraid my blood is going to freeze at a distinctly lower temperature than Northern Folk, and the Japanese.

Long story short, I'm going to write more, and I need a kotatsu.