ill be coming back to sendai soon for sure
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
eto.......
Needless to say it has been a while since I last updated. Unfortunately I don’t have concise visual montage to summarize quickly HOW MUCH FUN I HAVE BEEN HAVING! Well I am just rubbing it in a bit, because none of you here to say otherwise. I have since started teaching (ie the “actual” reason I am here, or so I have been told) and been involved with a lot of other things.
Teaching is insane. Now before I came here I was perfectly aware of how much of a novelty/freak show i would be, but I would never have imagined that I would get standing ovations just for the simple act of walking into class. Now most other healthily adjusted people would see this for what it is, which is some sort of benignly patronizing xenophobic curiosity, but being the egomaniac I am, well, I am loving it. Actually the kids are pretty fantastic, even if they are bona fide nuts. My first graders are particularly liked, as even though they speak no English, they are just so engergized or 元気 (genki), and cute 可愛い (Kawaii). I also spend school lunch with the kids, which is also fun. I am scheduled to go to a different class everyday for lunch, ya’ know, for internationalization, so they can see how freakishly strange us gaijin are when it comes to eating. Because I am okay at using chopsticks 箸 (referred to as hashi from now on) then it has not been as entertaining as the children seem to expect. The one exception was when we had bread with our soup and instead of, I don’t know, eating the bread on its own bland self, I decided to do what I thought would be perfectly normal: dip my bread into my soup. Bad mistake. The kids were horrified and looked at each other and tried to comprehend what they just saw. Then they try to reason with themselves, by picking up the bread and motioning it towards the bowl of soup with quizzical looks on their faces. One girl even tried it, but her movements were so deliberate and slow that you thought she was performing her first autopsy. There are times while in Japan that you realize how some types of customs and habits that we have could appear strange to people. They feel natural to us, but there is some ability to comprehend why it might be strange to someone who had never done said custom before. This, however, is not one of them, and I still don’t get how the hell dipping your bread into your soup is that peculiar.
Other lunch experiences of note include the first time we had Udon noodles for lunch. Now as far as customs are concerned I am fully aware of the Japanese custom of slurping your noodles. Not only does the slurping indicate enjoyment and satisfaction but the action itself creates a vacuum of air that cools the noodles on the way to the mouth. It’s a little odd but something that is not really a big deal and probably has some practical merit to it, even if the aesthetics of it are a little unusual for those of us accustomed to Western manner modes. However, there is nothing like being in a classroom of 30 children for first time you have Udon noodles with them. Not only is there the collective sound of 30 people slurping, but the fact they do it in almost perfectly harmonious unison is the real definition of surreal as far as I am concerned. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Oh, and back to the issue of hashi, I think its quite interesting to see that the first person I have seen use a fork in Japan was a Japanese kid. I have not seen one gaijin here not use chopsticks despite the expectation that the Japanese have of us, because first of all it is not hard, and secondly, if you are vaguely interested in coming to Japan you have probably eaten in a Japanese, or at least Chinese restaurant before. This particular kid had broken his right hand playing baseball and thus had to use a fork with his left hand to eat, so needless to say I gave some gentle hassles. Now some of you might be saying to yourself “THE POOR KID BROKE HIS HAND, you evil, evil man” of which my reply to this would be either “are you surprised” or perhaps more that the kid just happened to be one of the cheeky ones in my class and really I wasn’t going to miss the chance to give it back to him as good as I got it. As the age old saying goes: “All is fair in love and war and team teaching at a junior high school in Japan”, or something. Actually the kid thought it pretty funny himself; such is the mutual respect that adversaries give each other after battle. And the fact that this kid is 13 years old should not lower myself in your collective esteem at all.
On a positive note however, one of the coolest experiences happened at lunch also. One of the classes was obviously quite pumped that I was coming to have lunch with them and did a big blackboard greeting “Welcome Corey from New Zealand, how are you today?” where not only had they figured out the correct design of the New Zealand flag, but had even meticulously coloured the damn thing in precisely. And that particularly day I had just finished learning Hiragana and so I replied on the board in kind, which of course made the kids go REALLY wild. This situation is probably a good metaphor for my whole time here. Surreal, a little patronizing, but on the whole fun, accommodating and amusing.
My Japanese is not really improving so quickly, just because I have become reasonably busy. I have been for the most part concentrating on the learning Kanji and vocabulary as they are somewhat easier than grammar etc, especially when you might only have a few minutes at a time to whip out a dictionary rather than look through study materials and look at complicated grammar points. Actually, except as far as particles are concerned, Japanese is not even complicated, it is just so vague, although the verb conjugation and the declining of adjectives are actually infinitely more rational and straight forward than English, or so I have learnt since teaching English. English is definitely harder to speak, but obviously much easier to read.
One of my more interesting language moments came on this cultural exchange camp I signed up for a while ago. I thought that it would be a good way to get immersed in some Japanese and actually meet people around my own age. I did not realize how much language immersion it would be, and I found myself at the “ice breaker” meeting in a group of people that consisted of me, two Japanese and two Chinese (who luckily also spoke decent Japanese). Now, I don’t know how this happened but somehow in this ice breaker meeting, through the combination of my limited Japanese, their limited English, an electronic dictionary and some timely gesturing I managed to dominate the conversation and the report back to the larger audience from our group basically involved one long discussion about this peculiar little place called New Zealand. It still bemuses me how this happened. However, this little triumph was quickly vanquished from mind later on the evening when I basically invited all the males, and one young 18 year old boy in particular, back to my room for a mass orgy.
I think this point probably merits further discussion, although it is rather tempting to leave it as it is. You see, I knew the dictionary form of the verb to sleep/go to bed, “neru” 寝る, which conjugates as nemasu for going to bed/sleep. Now I thought, when it got later on in the night and I realized we had to be up early in the morning that I would use my super elite Japanese skills and suggest to everyone that we go to bed, by breaking out “nemasho” which literally translates as “lets go to sleep”. Now, unfortunately, the literal translation is not the common usage of this word, and what I innocently though was a competent suggestion turned out to be something much more suggestive. I mean in English you would at least say “let’s go to bed TOGETHER” but alas I was politely informed otherwise. Stupid perverted gaijin. What is particularly disturbing is that my English is deteriorating quicker than my Japanese is improving, which at the current rate means in about 6 months I wont speak anything but gibberish in some sort equilibrium of stupidity. Perhaps there is some genius in not having completely finished my thesis and having to do so overseas.
Speaking of screwed up experiences in English, perhaps one of the most challenging things I have had to do since being here is attend a speech contest. Boy, oh boy, oh boy. Not pretty. Not only do these kids recite from memory the exact words of the speech that they clearly do not understand, and cannot even speak it properly, but they quite often will all use the same speech. So in a day of 44 consecutive speeches you will basically have 5 of the same one. This sounds harsh, but one can only be so tolerant of “Freddie the leaf” who has an awful lot of existential issues for a non-sentient object. And there were also moments of pure tragedy, like in the speech “limelight” (which is the most awful piece of writing in history - not the kids fault), almost every Japanese contestant, instead of “the audience laughed and clapped” suggested instead that the “audience laughed and crapped”. Now there is a school of thought that suggests that if the audience has such a good time that they crap themselves in humourous adulation of your performance, then this might actually be a good thing. However, I don’t belong to that school. Overall this day was basically an exercise in trying to prevent myself from finding out first hand whether or not pulling off my ears with my bare hands would be less painful than sitting there for 6 hours of soul sucking tedium.
Actually the same night as this particular speech contest the three Fukushima ALT newbies we had our Welcome Enkai, which is a party where we are the guests of honour. This was actually pretty fun, and in line with Japanese custom the others are supposed to pour drinks for the guests of honour in particular, so with 50 odd guests there at no point did our drinks go below a mouthful (which is problem because everytime someone offers to pour your drink you have to drink out of your cup so to allow them to do so). However, in some moment of inspired genius, when I was giving my welcome speech in Japanese I managed to mispronounce the word for Soccer (sakka) and somehow managed to imply that my favourite sport is playing soccer drunk. The funny thing is that the guests thought I meant to do this, and I was congratulated for the rest of the night on making a humourous Japanese pun. What made it all the more funny was that I spoke the least amount of Japanese of the three newbies (Me, Sartre, and Michael), yet somehow got the best reaction for what was probably the most inane combination of words I have ever spoken. Basically my speech consisted of:
“Hello every one. My name is Corey Wallace. I am from New Zealand. My favourite sport is soccer. I like playing soccer a lot. I like peaches (WTF?). I think Fukushima is much like NZ as it has many trees and mountains. Like New Zealand it is very beautiful. I am very pleased to meet you all.” Or something of the like, in reality I have no idea what I said, but it was a fun evening.
Okay this is dragging on a bit, so ill regale you with one more story. Now in the expected reverse of all “Asians look alike” or “All black people look alike” we have the “All Gaijin look alike thing” going on here. Nothing surprising here. However, the amount of times Sartre and I have been mixed up has been quite a revelation. Sartre is a cool guy and we probably do most things together, as we are similarly keen to get involved and have a bit of fun. So we are seen together a lot, so you would think people have learn to distinguish us. The first incident of note was when we were in Koriyama getting our multiple re-entry permits and instead of giving the right change and documentation back to the right person, they screwed it up. Even more outstanding was when I went running one night and when we were both up in the BOE the next day one of our own co-workers ran up to Sartre and said “oooh,ooooh, I saw you running last night”. Now this sounds like I am overdramatising the issue a little, so ill explain something. Sartre and I do not look so much alike. Okay so we are of similar height, but Sartre wears glasses. He also has very short hair. And he is Canadian. Oh, and he is black. And not just common garden variety black but 2nd generation Haitian black. Me, well, I have a small amount of white ancestry in me, ya know…..needless to say both of us are shocked and completely bewildered whenever this happens. I mean what sort of universe do these people live in!!!!! So this has become a running joke between us, and it is only a matter of time until Whitney, the very tall, blonde loud American girl gets confused with Sartre. I have taken to calling the poor soul “cracker”, which of course goes down well, but as much of a novelty I am here, poor old Sartre is even more so. But as this particularly long diatribe has suggested, being a novelty has its upside.
To be honest so much more has gone on, but Ill leave that to another time, as I have not even begun to talk about the endless partying going on. We are off to Nagano this weekend for a soccer tournament which has a rag-tag Fukushima-ken team that I was responsible for organizing and captaining. This is the first year we have entered a team in the JET ALT soccer tournament, which has been going on for about 10 plus years, so it should be a very interesting.
Later all
またね
Teaching is insane. Now before I came here I was perfectly aware of how much of a novelty/freak show i would be, but I would never have imagined that I would get standing ovations just for the simple act of walking into class. Now most other healthily adjusted people would see this for what it is, which is some sort of benignly patronizing xenophobic curiosity, but being the egomaniac I am, well, I am loving it. Actually the kids are pretty fantastic, even if they are bona fide nuts. My first graders are particularly liked, as even though they speak no English, they are just so engergized or 元気 (genki), and cute 可愛い (Kawaii). I also spend school lunch with the kids, which is also fun. I am scheduled to go to a different class everyday for lunch, ya’ know, for internationalization, so they can see how freakishly strange us gaijin are when it comes to eating. Because I am okay at using chopsticks 箸 (referred to as hashi from now on) then it has not been as entertaining as the children seem to expect. The one exception was when we had bread with our soup and instead of, I don’t know, eating the bread on its own bland self, I decided to do what I thought would be perfectly normal: dip my bread into my soup. Bad mistake. The kids were horrified and looked at each other and tried to comprehend what they just saw. Then they try to reason with themselves, by picking up the bread and motioning it towards the bowl of soup with quizzical looks on their faces. One girl even tried it, but her movements were so deliberate and slow that you thought she was performing her first autopsy. There are times while in Japan that you realize how some types of customs and habits that we have could appear strange to people. They feel natural to us, but there is some ability to comprehend why it might be strange to someone who had never done said custom before. This, however, is not one of them, and I still don’t get how the hell dipping your bread into your soup is that peculiar.
Other lunch experiences of note include the first time we had Udon noodles for lunch. Now as far as customs are concerned I am fully aware of the Japanese custom of slurping your noodles. Not only does the slurping indicate enjoyment and satisfaction but the action itself creates a vacuum of air that cools the noodles on the way to the mouth. It’s a little odd but something that is not really a big deal and probably has some practical merit to it, even if the aesthetics of it are a little unusual for those of us accustomed to Western manner modes. However, there is nothing like being in a classroom of 30 children for first time you have Udon noodles with them. Not only is there the collective sound of 30 people slurping, but the fact they do it in almost perfectly harmonious unison is the real definition of surreal as far as I am concerned. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Oh, and back to the issue of hashi, I think its quite interesting to see that the first person I have seen use a fork in Japan was a Japanese kid. I have not seen one gaijin here not use chopsticks despite the expectation that the Japanese have of us, because first of all it is not hard, and secondly, if you are vaguely interested in coming to Japan you have probably eaten in a Japanese, or at least Chinese restaurant before. This particular kid had broken his right hand playing baseball and thus had to use a fork with his left hand to eat, so needless to say I gave some gentle hassles. Now some of you might be saying to yourself “THE POOR KID BROKE HIS HAND, you evil, evil man” of which my reply to this would be either “are you surprised” or perhaps more that the kid just happened to be one of the cheeky ones in my class and really I wasn’t going to miss the chance to give it back to him as good as I got it. As the age old saying goes: “All is fair in love and war and team teaching at a junior high school in Japan”, or something. Actually the kid thought it pretty funny himself; such is the mutual respect that adversaries give each other after battle. And the fact that this kid is 13 years old should not lower myself in your collective esteem at all.
On a positive note however, one of the coolest experiences happened at lunch also. One of the classes was obviously quite pumped that I was coming to have lunch with them and did a big blackboard greeting “Welcome Corey from New Zealand, how are you today?” where not only had they figured out the correct design of the New Zealand flag, but had even meticulously coloured the damn thing in precisely. And that particularly day I had just finished learning Hiragana and so I replied on the board in kind, which of course made the kids go REALLY wild. This situation is probably a good metaphor for my whole time here. Surreal, a little patronizing, but on the whole fun, accommodating and amusing.
My Japanese is not really improving so quickly, just because I have become reasonably busy. I have been for the most part concentrating on the learning Kanji and vocabulary as they are somewhat easier than grammar etc, especially when you might only have a few minutes at a time to whip out a dictionary rather than look through study materials and look at complicated grammar points. Actually, except as far as particles are concerned, Japanese is not even complicated, it is just so vague, although the verb conjugation and the declining of adjectives are actually infinitely more rational and straight forward than English, or so I have learnt since teaching English. English is definitely harder to speak, but obviously much easier to read.
One of my more interesting language moments came on this cultural exchange camp I signed up for a while ago. I thought that it would be a good way to get immersed in some Japanese and actually meet people around my own age. I did not realize how much language immersion it would be, and I found myself at the “ice breaker” meeting in a group of people that consisted of me, two Japanese and two Chinese (who luckily also spoke decent Japanese). Now, I don’t know how this happened but somehow in this ice breaker meeting, through the combination of my limited Japanese, their limited English, an electronic dictionary and some timely gesturing I managed to dominate the conversation and the report back to the larger audience from our group basically involved one long discussion about this peculiar little place called New Zealand. It still bemuses me how this happened. However, this little triumph was quickly vanquished from mind later on the evening when I basically invited all the males, and one young 18 year old boy in particular, back to my room for a mass orgy.
I think this point probably merits further discussion, although it is rather tempting to leave it as it is. You see, I knew the dictionary form of the verb to sleep/go to bed, “neru” 寝る, which conjugates as nemasu for going to bed/sleep. Now I thought, when it got later on in the night and I realized we had to be up early in the morning that I would use my super elite Japanese skills and suggest to everyone that we go to bed, by breaking out “nemasho” which literally translates as “lets go to sleep”. Now, unfortunately, the literal translation is not the common usage of this word, and what I innocently though was a competent suggestion turned out to be something much more suggestive. I mean in English you would at least say “let’s go to bed TOGETHER” but alas I was politely informed otherwise. Stupid perverted gaijin. What is particularly disturbing is that my English is deteriorating quicker than my Japanese is improving, which at the current rate means in about 6 months I wont speak anything but gibberish in some sort equilibrium of stupidity. Perhaps there is some genius in not having completely finished my thesis and having to do so overseas.
Speaking of screwed up experiences in English, perhaps one of the most challenging things I have had to do since being here is attend a speech contest. Boy, oh boy, oh boy. Not pretty. Not only do these kids recite from memory the exact words of the speech that they clearly do not understand, and cannot even speak it properly, but they quite often will all use the same speech. So in a day of 44 consecutive speeches you will basically have 5 of the same one. This sounds harsh, but one can only be so tolerant of “Freddie the leaf” who has an awful lot of existential issues for a non-sentient object. And there were also moments of pure tragedy, like in the speech “limelight” (which is the most awful piece of writing in history - not the kids fault), almost every Japanese contestant, instead of “the audience laughed and clapped” suggested instead that the “audience laughed and crapped”. Now there is a school of thought that suggests that if the audience has such a good time that they crap themselves in humourous adulation of your performance, then this might actually be a good thing. However, I don’t belong to that school. Overall this day was basically an exercise in trying to prevent myself from finding out first hand whether or not pulling off my ears with my bare hands would be less painful than sitting there for 6 hours of soul sucking tedium.
Actually the same night as this particular speech contest the three Fukushima ALT newbies we had our Welcome Enkai, which is a party where we are the guests of honour. This was actually pretty fun, and in line with Japanese custom the others are supposed to pour drinks for the guests of honour in particular, so with 50 odd guests there at no point did our drinks go below a mouthful (which is problem because everytime someone offers to pour your drink you have to drink out of your cup so to allow them to do so). However, in some moment of inspired genius, when I was giving my welcome speech in Japanese I managed to mispronounce the word for Soccer (sakka) and somehow managed to imply that my favourite sport is playing soccer drunk. The funny thing is that the guests thought I meant to do this, and I was congratulated for the rest of the night on making a humourous Japanese pun. What made it all the more funny was that I spoke the least amount of Japanese of the three newbies (Me, Sartre, and Michael), yet somehow got the best reaction for what was probably the most inane combination of words I have ever spoken. Basically my speech consisted of:
“Hello every one. My name is Corey Wallace. I am from New Zealand. My favourite sport is soccer. I like playing soccer a lot. I like peaches (WTF?). I think Fukushima is much like NZ as it has many trees and mountains. Like New Zealand it is very beautiful. I am very pleased to meet you all.” Or something of the like, in reality I have no idea what I said, but it was a fun evening.
Okay this is dragging on a bit, so ill regale you with one more story. Now in the expected reverse of all “Asians look alike” or “All black people look alike” we have the “All Gaijin look alike thing” going on here. Nothing surprising here. However, the amount of times Sartre and I have been mixed up has been quite a revelation. Sartre is a cool guy and we probably do most things together, as we are similarly keen to get involved and have a bit of fun. So we are seen together a lot, so you would think people have learn to distinguish us. The first incident of note was when we were in Koriyama getting our multiple re-entry permits and instead of giving the right change and documentation back to the right person, they screwed it up. Even more outstanding was when I went running one night and when we were both up in the BOE the next day one of our own co-workers ran up to Sartre and said “oooh,ooooh, I saw you running last night”. Now this sounds like I am overdramatising the issue a little, so ill explain something. Sartre and I do not look so much alike. Okay so we are of similar height, but Sartre wears glasses. He also has very short hair. And he is Canadian. Oh, and he is black. And not just common garden variety black but 2nd generation Haitian black. Me, well, I have a small amount of white ancestry in me, ya know…..needless to say both of us are shocked and completely bewildered whenever this happens. I mean what sort of universe do these people live in!!!!! So this has become a running joke between us, and it is only a matter of time until Whitney, the very tall, blonde loud American girl gets confused with Sartre. I have taken to calling the poor soul “cracker”, which of course goes down well, but as much of a novelty I am here, poor old Sartre is even more so. But as this particularly long diatribe has suggested, being a novelty has its upside.
To be honest so much more has gone on, but Ill leave that to another time, as I have not even begun to talk about the endless partying going on. We are off to Nagano this weekend for a soccer tournament which has a rag-tag Fukushima-ken team that I was responsible for organizing and captaining. This is the first year we have entered a team in the JET ALT soccer tournament, which has been going on for about 10 plus years, so it should be a very interesting.
Later all
またね
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