Set Phrases

So, many of you may already know, but Japan is the indeed the land of set phrases. They are by their own accounts very important to Japanese culture broadly speaking, and one reason why you could describe Japanese people as being on the whole quite polite. Now, having lived here for a while I obviously become used to them, and as long as I get the occasional blunt smack down from my Western and Chinese friends here, then I actually probably prefer the slightly enforced formality that at least governs the work place. At the very least Im willing to say that its definitely better than its extreme opposite. Admittedly there are problems with the obsessive use of set phrases, for example, that people will blurt out something that they really didnt mean, which is probably the case about 50 percent of the time. That said, if my vice-principal meant it 50% of the time when he tells me ive done a job for the day, then I would gleefully take it, because I have this creeping suspicion that its not true (Emma will know what I mean).

Furthermore, there is the sometime tendency of Japanese people to interpret rudeness not so much as consisting of the act of being rude or doing something that inconveniences you, but in not laying down one of these set phrases to "atone" for the rudeness that was often quite meditated and intended from the start. Indeed, the official and formal apology, often backed up with a token (or not so token if your Japanese i guess) gift of green tea, can even replace money in Japan, legally speaking, as some of my friends have found out.

Anyhow, why I have even bothered to write this blog is to talk about one incident that happened the other day. First of all, some back ground. Now, generally speaking, when leaving work, the formality of the situation goes like this:

Eternally Disgraced Employee leaving work on the time of his actual contract: Osaki ni Shitsurei Shimasu (Lit: Im being rude (leaving) before you)

Honourable and Smug Employee/Supervisor staying behind and judging you for not being completely retarded by staying late when you clearly have nothing to do: Otsukaresama deshita! (Lit: Wow, you must be tired)

Otsukaresama also, in its implied sense usually means "you have indeed put up with a lot" and more simply "thanks for your great work". Its not only said when leaving work, but it can be said within work, it can be said in general society, at the end of a drinking session, or whenever else it may be appropriate. Even in this somewhat unexpected situation, as I found out:

Me, walking out of the toilet (thinking to himself): (Wow, I surprisingly dont miss the graffiti in the University of Canterbury Library toilets one single bit)

Building Cleaning lady: Otsukaresama Deshita!!

Holy, crap, what the hell??!!! Even if I go to the toilet in this country I get complimented..... my lord. Now, I do solemnly wish and pray to heavens and gods above that I knew the Japanese equivalent of the phrase: "You don't know the half of it lady". That would have been perfect. A few other things went through my mind at the time also, but it wouldnt be appropriate to mention in polite company. Im not sure who I am refering to when I say that, but its probably for the better. Now, i have been otsukaresama-ed in many situations before, but that was definitely a first.

Anyway, I thought it was odd. Maybe not newsworthy but if Dave can post, well, anything, then I figure I can talk about my experiences going to the toilet in Japan. I figure that they are substantively analogous, "Metaphorically" speaking.

I enjoyed this. Why, I dont know, maybe its japan's janken mania rubbing off on me. Maybe I am not drinking enough.

http://www.rockpapersaddam.com/

Finally, an act of spontaneity

So, for the most part, Japanese kids are obssessed about being cool. This is like kids anywhere, but I believe they are even more star-struck than Western kids. That said, for kids that are so much into what's in and what's not, they really can't pull it off. Why? Not because they inherently lack any sense of fashion, art, or whatever else, but basically because they lack spontaneity. God knows, me being my peculiar old self passes for "kakkoi" in this country.

Now, Ive given quite a few hi-fives since ive been here, especially at primary school, and the kids love it. The high five or "hi-touch" as its called here, seems to be one of the most treasured cultural gifts the West has given to japan. As lame as that sounds, its much better than what Japanese normally associate with Western culture, which is always Britney, Avril and McDonalds, and never say, classical music, ideals of equality, Football, Beer, Wine, British comedy and Burger King after a drunken friday night. But the "hi-touch" is always performed in contrived circumstances, and furthermore, unless they are six years old or under, they are completely awkward about how to do it.

Today, however, one of my special needs kids stepped up to the plate. It was beautiful. Now at this school, I actually spend a lot of time with the special needs kids, and yesterday, which is the beginning of the new school year, we had three new special kids enter junior high. These guys seem pretty cool, one of them walks around constantly smacking himself in the head, another is kind of oafish, perhaps he is a little slow but otherwise seems not terribly disabled, and then there is this other kid. He is short, he is round. But yesterday during cleaning time, after only having known me for half a minute, kid walks up to me, not even looking me in the eye, throws his hand up to shoulder height for a high five...bang! High fived, walks away like he is nobodies shit, not even looking back for confirmation like the other J-kids would. Excellent. And it took a special kid too. Now, the fact that he goes and pisses his pants five minutes later only adds to his legend in my eyes.

Actually, im wondering why some of these kids, aside from oafishism and tendencies such as the ones mentioned above, are in the special class at all. One of the girls, who again is kind of oafish and would probably rip my arms from their sockets if she ever was inclined to, can now speak at least more natural english than 80% of my students, even if the range of things that she can say is more limited. And whats more, I have come to appreciate them more because they are actually acting like human beings towards me, which in turn, makes me feel like one. What do I mean by this? Well, they talk to me, in English or Japanese without basically metaphorically shitting their pants.

For example ive sat at lunch for the last three days in 3rd grade who theoretically can speak slightly complicated english, without having uttered more than a whole sentence. In Japanese or English. I try and they just sit there stunned or ignorant, fully understanding what I said, but too concerned with trying to either look cool, or not look uncool to even respond. Some of the kids are just simply lame. Others are trying to point score off you, because you are different, which is common the world round. However, aside from the bright group of students who last year only after three mere years of weekly english tuition finally mastered the complicated grammatic construct known as "Do you like......" when they figured out how to ask me "Koori sensei, do you like dick?", the point scoring normally just involves imitation followed by giggling. Which really is quite annoying when they do it right when you are sitting there. Especially when beating them is lamentably not part of my job description.

So what is my point? Not sure, but im wondering if the major reason why the special kids are in the special needs class is because they can actually interact normally with other human beings. You see, Japan seems to have gotten things backwards. Yes, fair point, going around smacking yourself on the head isnt exactly normal human interaction. But somehow, I feel that despite that, that kid really is quite sincere in the fact that he feels the need to smack himself on the head every 30 seconds. I can't say that about anything most of my other students do, with a few notable, and gleeful exceptions.

Actually in a small aside, for some reason in the last month of the academic year, the word "dick" seemed to gain some traction here. I figure this because after I had the aforementioned experience at one of my schools, I went to another school where the school bad asses informed me that "Koori sensei, you have a nice dick". Really. Thats interesting. What a week that was. Actually the first group asked me on quite a few occasions whether I liked penis and after a couple of times of trying to ignore the fact that I understood what they were saying, decided to play their game by countering them with "why? do you?". Not terribly witty I know, but remember the language barrier. Furthermore, one time, they were stupid enough to ask me this when one of their group had his hair up in pig tails, (for what reason I dont know and really have learnt not to care about) which gave me the golden opportunity to retort with "I don't, but I think he does!". The fact i tacked on the Japanese word for cross dresser only intensified the smack. Especially gaijin smack. In Japanese. Thats the worst kind for Japanese people.

A trivial victory it is, but its mine. If you were here, you would understand.

Its a shame that those guys have now moved onto high school, because I really was starting to build up a rapport with those guys. Instead im stuck with the super lameness of this year's 3rd grade, who sucked as second graders and continue to suck even more this year.

I really miss my third graders from last year. They were so much less lame. Lame to be sure, but much less so.

Actually I have unknowingly bumped into a few of them around the place and lately as I have been beseiged by shouts of "Koori-sensei, how are you?!" from high school girls, which initially surprised me (and caused some confusion and concern) until i realised they were my students from last year. High school and junior high school uniforms are quite different in so much that the high school uniforms here are worn EXTREMELY skankily and dont have huge big name tags blazed across the front. I dont know if I could deal with becoming a high school sweetheart, despite the implied destiny of my name that Simpsons episode 9f12 suggests.

Soccer tournament again this weekend. Timely, because if it wasnt for the fact im constantly starving, i would have become a bit of a fatty due to inactivity. Right, chocolate biscuits. And strawberries.

Earthquakes suck

So i was in Kyuushu which is a pretty substantial island at the bottom of Japan. For the most part it was quite nice, nothing terribly unremarkable happened. As much as I like discussing the peculiarities of life in Japan it was good to actually go away and not be constantly beseiged by ridiculousness on a daily basis.

"For the most part" being the key words here.

Actually, the people in Kyuushu were a mixture of people who were awesomely retarded or helpful. Some people just out and out didnt know anything and told me to go the wrong way. Actually, you know something is wrong when not only does your citizenry not know where anything outside of 15 minutes from their house is, but when taxi drivers dont know how to get around the cities they have lived in their whole lives and currently ply their trade within. Name your bloody streets guys. I can accept it, if it was only foreigners who got lost. But its not.

On the other hand, other kyuushu folk, would leave their boxing gym where they were in the middle of a class, take me down to a convenience store, talk with the attendent and find out exactly where i was supposed to go. Others, kindly speaking perfect english (which doesnt happen often i can assure you) would get me to jump in their car and take me to the party district in a city of some many millions of people.

That said, cities in Kyuushu dont seem to be any where as near as irrational as cities in my part of the world. Im noticing a rather sad correlation between the amount of bombing sustained during world war II and the manageability of the cities themselves, in terms of basically everything. My city, which is one that time really did forget, is just stupidly planned. Really. If they find a gap anywhere, they will build some type of prefab there. And it will be up in about six seconds. However, cities such as Fukuoka and Nagasaki were brilliantly set out, almost pretty even. Actually Nagasaki is one of the nicest cities I have seen since I have been in Japan.

On the matter of Nagasaki, it was an interesting experience. Walking around in a city that once had a nuclear bomb dropped on it is indeed a strange experience. Walking in a reasonably pretty park which only 60 years before was the hypocentre for an atomic bomb, more so. The museum about the nuclear bomb was also quite interesting, although it was a time when I wished i had a New Zealand flag clearly drapped across the back of my backpack. That said, as disturbing as the museum was, it had nothing on the War Crimes museum I saw in Saigon. Once you have seen some of the photos in that place........

Also learnt that Japanese people in my part of the country do indeed actually speak deformed japanese. I always suspected it, but now i know. In Kyuushu, I actually understood people on a regular basis. It was great! Here however, again, I was thrust back into incomprehensibility. They dont open their mouths, or utter full syllables here it seems. Apparently because its cold, which is definitely in my top 10 stupidest excuses for speaking like a permanently drunken Rottweiler.

So, what was the most unusual thing about my trip? Well, I guess it would have to be the earthquake. Going on holiday and falling victim to an earthquake is not usually good. Its really not good when it happens in Japan. To be honest, even though it was reported internationally, it was super lame. The earthquake itself was a little bit strong, but only in so far that it knocked over a few plants. But this is Japan and when strange things happen, stranger things must thereafter occur.

First of all, i was checking out of my hotel in the morning to take a train out of Fukuoka to meet my friend Keiko (a Japanese friend of mine who I first met in CHCH) who was to graciously be my tour guide. It hit and it lasted for about 20 seconds or so and everyone was a little bit shook up. I walked out of the hotel and spoke to some Japanese people half patronisingly asking them if it surprised them. Of course it did. Seriously, in the 15 minute walk from my hotel to the train station EVERY SINGLE JAPANESE PERSON was on their cellphone. No kidding. Everyone. Im not even slightly exaggerating here.

Of course this brought down the system so I couldnt call my friend to arrange a time to meet. Then I got to the train station and of course, the trains were not going to work for the rest of the day. Then I tried to catch a bus out to Beppu to meet my friend. Unfortunately there was also a suburb in Fukuoka called Beppu, and in this case being able to read the Kanji was a hinderance. Bused back to Fukuoka central, by which time most of the people realised the trains were going to be down all day and thus had all proceeded to the bus terminal.

I finally figured out where to go to catch the bus to the Beppu i wanted to go to. And this is where it got bad. Now, to be fair, Japanese people are normally really quite politie. Sometimes too polite, but its definitely better than the opposite. Nonetheless, when there are no rules to govern a situation and when the gloves are off, they can become some of the most barbaric people anywhere. Seriously, common sense guys! The scene at the bus terminal was just horrible. It took me hours just to get my ticket. No one lined up, and being bigger was a limitation, because it just meant you got pushed more by cunning little grandmothers who in tandem would push you off balance enough so they could sneak through. It was ugly, especially since this is not a Third World country. I dont have the time to describe it but it was cramped, people just didnt give a crap what anyone else was doing, and I really dont like being pushed around. Not by people that little. What really bugged me though was I finally got to a ticket lady and she told me I had to go see another one. Why? Dont know. That women didn't do tickets for the place I wanted to go. Of course this had to be done properly, because god knows walking a metre and asking the other lady to print me out one ticket would have been too hard, especially in a situation where mayhew otherwise ruled. Nope, I had to run the gauntlet again, from the back. Why she insisted on this in that situation still escapes me. Again, common sense.

Long story short, 7 hours after my intended departure, I finally left the city. And it really could have been worse. However, the rest of the trip was fun. Even got to stand next to some live and kind of erupting volcanoes.

Life here has really ground to a stand still. School is out, but of course we all must "go to work". However, there is nothing for us to do. Literally, nothing. So the six of us just sit in our office, with nothing to do. We did it last week. We will do it this week. Needless to say, we going a little bit nuts. The things that happen in that room, will truly stay there. Forever.

I am also the proud owner of a new Ipod Photo