Weird Divide

HEYYYYYY

I'm on holidays now! I'm on holidays for the next 5 weeks or so and in anticipation of a very busy August with Sally and David I am doing next to nothing to fulfill my days and you know what? It's working out for me! I like doing nothing when I know that I'll be busy in the future so that makes it ok. I have been doing a lot of subbing at the conversation school next door as many teachers have gone back home for the holidays. It's nice to meet some new people/students and it's not really all that hard.

Last weekend was the Yamaage festival in Nasukarasuyama which is the town over from where I work. This means that everytime I drive for work I see signs pointing to this place but I've never properly been there. I had dinner there once or twice but that was in the outskirts so it may as well have not been. In any case, the same teacher that invited me to the Firefly festival invited me to this one and again, my pal Kevin was keen to go. He was more keen to go to see some of his students - he teaches primary school so it's ok to see them out and about as they're children and they love that sort of thing.

I teach junior high school, and it's not so ok... I guess? Remember the morbid fascination of seeing a teacher outside of school? It's like they DO exist when we can't see them. I remember Ms. Liberts (my 5th + 6th grade teacher) used to shop at a supermarket waaay out of the way to avoid seeing students and let's not forget Ms. Jones the drama teacher who lived over an hour away from school and now I can understand why.

On the first day our pal Vera came and we all got drunk for some reason and we really, really enjoyed ourselves. I saw a few of my students including the weird one that likes to touch my face and stand inappropriately close - turns out his father works in one of the food stalls but even though we stood there for a long time I couldn't possibly tell you what he was selling. We watched some outdoor kabuki (as that was the whole point of the festival) which we didn't understand but it looked interesting! Kevin speaks Japanese and he couldn't understand it so I guess I was on equal footing with most of the audience ... albeit a bit taller so I could see better.


The NEXT day we dressed up in our festival gear which is essentially shorts and a wrap-around robe type thing but it's all super thin and perfect for summer. We got there pretty early and gorged on festival food (it's all so amazing!) but that night for some reason I saw crap loads of my students. I couldn't walk two meters without seeing one and while I'll admit it was fun to see a few it was really awkward for me to see this many. I saw some teachers too, but that's ok as I can just smile, say konichiwa and that's all I really need to do.

So after a while of dealing with "ooh~~ kurisu sensei?!" we met up with one of our managers who had decided to come with his family. We went to go visit a friend of his and get some burgers (with burger buns - I have not seen burger buns in Japan until this point. They were wonderful) and after a while of looking around we left. Overall I think the first night was better but both days were really enjoyable so I hope to go to many more festivals in the summer!

P.S. They had some foreigners working at the food stalls and when I tried to speak to them they claimed they didn't know English. But they were speaking in a form of broken English that only English speakers can do - you know the kind? There's no break in the sentences to think of the English word it all came out smoothly and the way they said it too... SCAM ARTISTS!

Yayyyy. kris.

Reproduction

Written at school;

I'm in the school gym. I'm in the gym because the students are having a lecture on 'Adolescence'. I don't understand what is being said but from the pictures on the projector screen it probably has something to do with puberty and child birth. It's been some time since my last post despite my best intentions otherwise but I thought i'd make the effort and give an update. I guess the main things going on right now was the visit from Eliana and James, and the fact that summer holidays are coming up soon. But before I get into i'll run you through the little things that have occured since we last communicated.

I was invited to attend a firefly festival (hotaru matsuri) by one of my teachers. I wasn't really massively keen to go as the teacher in question speaks next to no English what-so-ever but I thought maybe if I could russle up a friend then a festival can't be too bad right? So I got the friend (Kevin) and we arrived maybe one or two hours after the festival had started.
Only this 'festival' was actually a collection of about five families that set up a tent and use a big barbeque to cook food. This 'festival' was not really a festival at all so upon our arrival we were announced to everyone via the karaoke machine they had set up and we recieved a round of applause. It was a good thing that Kevin speaks Japanese very well as I certainly don't so with his help I think everyone had a good night.
## The fireflies were smaller than I imagined and their light was this yello/green neon. For some reason I fully pictured dragon fly sized insects with a light the colour of ET's finger. Optimistic? They were still nice though.


The next weekend was a barbeque by the river. The Japanese people often can't go to the sea but they insist on the water component. So we went out to the riverside which is mostly rocks and crappy pointy grass and had a Japanese style barbeque even though none of us are Japanese. Tell you who was Japanese? The two kids that walked by our barbeque and ended up being invited to eat something. Then, very much like seagulls, they left and came back with more friends who were hungry. I got drunk so I had a good time.
## Not to suggest that getting drunk is the only way to have a good time. But it helps.

(picture; fireworks at the bbq. Melted my glasses and some of my hair)


So THIS weekend James and Eliana decided to haul ass up to visit me as a part of their travel plans around Japan. They had to drop a friend off at the airport and they missed the originally planned bus so I ended up picking them up around 12:00am which was a bit of a drainer but it was alright. They stayed at my place for two nights and on the Sunday we went to Nikko which is this really beautiful place up in the mountains. It's pretty much bursting at the seams with shrines, temples, and visitors. It's only about an hour away from my house though (down one road!) and it was a lot of fun to see the old shrines and explore the place. We found this really nice black shrine up this long, uphill path that didn't look regularly visited but was surround with this electronic monitering machinery (I guess they need to put it somewhere?).

(pictures; the aforementioned shrine and sake bottles.)

So summer holidays are coming up soon! I get 6 weeks off and I have Sally coming for 2 weeks (Aug 1st - Aug 14th) and then David is coming up for two weeks (Aug 15th - Aug 28th) so I'll be a pretty busy douchebag! It's good though as it'll be fun to see Japan with different people and I'm massively excited to see them and to show them around my town and what not. It's going to be grand.

It was so hot today.

Oh and I found some NEW glasses. Real Ray Bans! Club Masters! 3100 yen!

Faith

I'm beginning to question my faith... such as it is.

For if there is a god - then how can Natto exist? How can such an inhumanely vile substance that offends my sight, my olfactory and (most importantly of all) my taste senses not be proof alone that there is no hope for humanity.

Even the wikipedia article doesnt know where it came from... for it has existed long before this Earth.

It's like half eaten ass that's been left out in the sun for too many years.

It looks CHEESY. I think I'm going to be sick. *dry retches*

Apparently the terrible, god forsaking smell is due to a chemical call pyrazine which reduces the likelihood of blood clotting. I'd rather the blood clot ... I'm sure it would taste better.

...

Otherwise all OTHER Japanese food is wonderful! :D

Business Time

Let me document my day;

A smooth wake up at 6:30am and a shower and breakfast of tomato on toast gets me out the door right on time and into the car. The drive to Bato JHS takes about 35-40 minutes on the speed limit but I arrive much sooner than that and say the usual 'Good Morning' to a few students and 'Ohayo Gozaimasu' to the teachers and thus, at 8:00am begins my day.

I've got a pretty packed schedule and my first half of the day are third year classes. 3-1 were pleased to have English as lately they've been trialing out bizarre English phrases that are pretty funny. Today they were talking about a 'society window' which they gleaned from knowing words 'social studies' and 'window' ... can you guess what it means? I'll tell you at the end.
I teach three 3rd year classes before lunch begins and it get's a little tiring but I have about an hour free so I go and sit at my desk for a while.

For some reason about 5 kittens were found around the school which it would seem have been left as the owner couldn't take care of them and figured some students could. In any case some students are playing with them. This one student seems to think he's going to take one home which is a shame as this kid is obnoxious and would probably kill and eat it sooner than love it. I'm pretty sure kittens don't 'meow' like that around people they feel safe with ...

This week I am eating lunch with class 1-3 which have been a lot of fun to eat with lately. Their only first years so they have really only just learned the alphabet and are now onto saying things like 'This is a pen' and 'I like dog' but they've picked up some English from movies and games so it's always fun to see what they come up with next.

Lunch today is some kind of yellow soup, a bread roll (that comes with a jam/margerine spread), some fried hot chips and sausages (cold), milk, chocolate syrup to put IN the milk and a half of a frozen apple. It was a really unusual lunch mostly due to the chips/sausage component and the presence of the frozen apple - It was good though!

After lunch was 2-3 and as I like that class too it also went down pretty well. Howeverrrrrrr, then I had class 1-1 which have lately been a pain! It's all due to one student - Kawanishi-san. What a bastard. He's the type of kid that is remarkably clever at being disruptive and getting away with things but is stupid when it comes to doing anything else. His brother is in the third year and he's cool as (he's tiny!) so it's generally a bit of a chore to teach this class. I think to stop the English teacher from getting the students to say 'I like your Mother' but it's really uncomfortably hot and humid at this point so I don't really bother. I smile to myself.

Cleaning goes down without a hitch. I clean with 1-3 but this time they have out dictionaries so they've got some more English words to say. We say our 'Gokurosama deshita's' and that's it for teaching for the day!

The students have what's called a 'Suri-suta' day today which is a combination of the the English words for 'three' and study' (three = suri [soo ree]/ study = sutadi [soo tah dee]) which is a little bit of a loose link for what it is but it just involves the students studying for tests. I waste some time, drink some tea, make some conversation with the teachers until it's about 5pm and time for me to leave.

That concludes my day. I wanted this to be short and snappy.

The Audience

Open day is a day for parents to come and observe classes at any time throughout the day should they wish to. Bato had their open day a while ago and it was pretty standard really as not many parents are all that keen on seeing the classes because let's face it - if the classes are shit what are they going to do about it?

I wasn't scheduled to be at Ogawa for their open day but they wanted me there so they organised a swapping of days and so this morning I walked into the staff room to a slightly busier than normal crawl. So while teachers were doing important things I whipped up some flashcards of places so the third year students could learn the uses of once, twice etc. (eg. I have been to Kyoto 3 times). I introduced it to the students who have already learnt how to use 'have' with a past tensed verb so it was essentially tacking on something at the end. I didn't really think it would be overly hard and it wasn't. I was right. Yey.

I could go into the adventures of the first graders but it pretty much consisted of me saying
'I have a ball in my bag.
This is the ball.
I like football very much.
I often play it.'
Over and over again with the students repeating over and over again. I had to pronounce 'often' as 'offen' which isn't my natural tendency but it wasn't too tricky. Unlike saying 'learned' instead of 'learnt' which involves me changing my accent a little to get that r sound in. I hope I don't sound like a dick when I return.

I had to do a lot of correcting for the aforementioned exercises and it was refreshing to see the third years writing something new and interesting. The first years are really just learning nouns other than sports so they were still pretty boron. I tend to over-circle answers when the students do well which renders the paper unreadable for future revision but I think they appreciate it. They don't care what I write but they like the colours and watching me as I join my letters together.

I kind of do too... only a little.

New Day

Today my favourite English teacher had her last day at school before going off and having a baby. Her name was Shimuzu (I never did get her first name) and she is being replaced by Ogane whose name in kanji reads 'big' and 'money'. Shimizu means 'Origin/Source' and 'Water' which is much nicer right? She is an enormous fan of waterfalls but insists that it's not related. I beg to differ.

Whats interesting is that the kanji for 'Mizu' is the same character for 'Wednesday' - and 'Gane' uses the same character as 'Friday'.

None of this is relevant as today is Monday.

This is the beginning of my more frequent and much shorter blog posts. Pay Attention.

Fit But You Know It

It had rained the night before so when I arrived at about 7:50am the students were already out there soaking up some of the water with sponges. I sort of lingered here and there as I hadn't been given a task and saying good morning to everyone can take a while! After a brief teachers meeting we all headed out and that's when the sports day begins.

In true Japanese fashion the sports day begins with an opening ceremony involving each student in their respective classes walking around the perimeter of the racing track lead by the head student and the student committee. There are speeches that I don't understand by the principle, coordinator and some other important douchebags and the warm up begins. It's short lived and it's hilarious but eventually the students regroup into their perfect lines to run off through the designated field exit area.

The various events throughout the day aren't so much 'athletic' in the traditional sense of the word and instead revolve around the students doing fun or unusual things with only a little bit of a skill involved. I was told as this gives every student a chance at winning and I fully agree with it! It's so much more fun and even complete genetic hiccups can still cross that line first. They often don't ... but they have the chance to!
I'll give an example; the first race involves students putting a baseball bat to their forehead and to the ground and spinning around several times, finding a treat in a big pan of flour by slamming their faces in. After this they dash over very narrow beams; throw a ball into a basket; they must bite off a piece of bread suspended in the air and then finally dash to the end.

You just wouldn't see that in athletics days in Australia! For us it's all sprints, hurdles, high jump, long jump, triple jump and several other events that actually require sporting prowess that I'm afraid to say that I just didn't really have at the time. I will point out though that at our sports days we were at least allowed things like face paint and ridiculous costumes in our house colours. Every student in Japan must wear the same uniform with only a headband / hachimaki to tell what class their in. Class 1 in year 1/2/3 all wore red, all class two's across the year levels wore blue and then there was only one extraneous class (2-3) that had yellow head bands. They didn't win though so forget I mentioned them.




Events during the day ranged from;
various relays;
An event involving one student running on a path made of the backs of the other students in the class (a kid running on the backs looked like an asian version of Tyler Newstead, Jays brother. Isn't that wierd?);
A tug-rope war;
A mock cavalry battle which for some reason required all the boys in the school to remove their shirts?;
A race for girls to run into the centre of the field to grab pipes / wrestle them off other girls and drag them back to their side. The innuendo was not lost on me but unfortunately it was lost to those around me;
One relay with just the third year girls involved a piggy back race, a wheelbarrow race, a double-skipping race, leading-the-blind race and finally a 3-legged race all in one. It was epic.


Sports Fests are held on Saturdays so the families of the students can come and watch which is clever. Some people had started to arrive as early as 8am and everyone didn't settle for just a tarp nosiree! They had the portable tables and chairs and everything which coincided with the presence of food stands selling takoyaki, fried chicken and shaved ice. Highschool students came to visit and it was pretty social thing for the town. Some of the highschoolers talked to me but they weren't very good at English... Although if they were going to school around that area then they wouldn't have scored very high on their entrance exams.

And the music! Oh the music! I would hear snippets from Indiana Jones, Rocky, Star Wars, Tatu (remember them? The psuedo lesbians), other English songs, some Japanese songs, classical music, anime themes and so much more! The commentary was done by the students but it wasn't terribly exciting / I didn't pay much attention. I was having a fantastic time taking photos of the events until my camera battery died after the event involving a football being hit around a witches hat by a baseball bat. Which means I missed out on photos from a lot of other events but that's alright as I have another school in which to take photos of in their sports fest. I might be able to get some off the school later but they're a bit iffy with that sort of thing.

The big competition throughought the day was between 3-1 and 3-2 and it all culminated in the final relay between the two classes. Every student in the classes must participate in this relay (so failure can't be traced back to any one particular person except if they really truly suck ass) and when this race comes along they like to make a parents/teachers team to compete against the students. I offered to run as part of this team as I like running and I was pretty sure I could hold my own against the students. Turns out these kids are FAST! But it also turns out that my competition in the relay were two girls. Yui-san and Ri-san. Yui-san likes to laugh, isn't very sporty nor overly studious but she's fun - Ri-san plays the saxophone, has a cool hairstyle and is shy to the bone so you can imagine how they run. You can imagine it right? Anyway, I got the baton coming last out of the 3 teams and I got us all back to even. I wasn't the fastest runner out there by any means but the students managed to turn 'Nice Fight!' into 'Nice Run!' so I dedicate their English creativity to my skillz.

The final event was the folk dance and it was JUST before this dance that it started to rain pretty heavily. This didn't stop anyone though and the students were forced to dance together in the pouring rain and oh lordy they could not have hated it any more. It was .Hilarious. to watch. I joined in at the end for fun and had a few turns but they eventually stopped and ran under cover. I wish you could have seen their faces, most of the male students wouldn't actually touch the female students on the hands so the teachers made them.

By the end of this you're probably thinking that the teachers are all dicks and the students hate them but it's quit the opposite! The students and the teachers have a great relationship especially in a school as small as this. The staff room is always open and students can come in at any time to talk to teachers and what not so when a teacher *makes* a student do something it's usually with good will.

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In other news I had a house warming party and it went magnificently! Awesome people came and we all had a fantastic time. My house was sufficiently warmed and although we're coming into Summer I don't think it was physically warmed as I don't think it works that way so I should be fine. How is that for an awkward phrase that could be misconstrued as me thinking thats how house warmings work? Some people from Gunma (the next prefecture over) came and bought their N64 and they even bought Smash Bros. with them which some of you may know is a game that I am exceptional at. We made punch, there was a karaoke stint and only two people threw up but not on the floor so I don't care. I probably wouldn't have cared if they did anyway!

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I had dinner with the staff of Bato-jhs and I was given the seat opposite the principle who pretty such he was very happy to have me at the school which is awesome! His English is pretty broken but I can generally piece it together, it's my Japanese that needs some work! I found some textbooks in storage below my apartment so I'm using them.
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|---> To elaborate on that. My apartment is owned by Joytalk (the company I work for) and was originally used for storage for ages so there is a heap of useless shit. In my alone apartment there is a snow board, some guitars and speakers, old records, fans and so much more! UNDERNEATH there are chairs, tables, desks, tarps, books, more tables, a display case, awkward shelving, a PIANO, mattresses, fans, various appliances and so much more. It's a gold mine!

So until next time!

kris.


P.S. Class 3 -1 won in the end which is good as I like that class.

(Here is the link to photos from Sports fest! Anyone can see these; http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=263098&id=680155088&l=b5dc9080b4 )