August 22nd, When Things Just Kept Getting Better

8/22
The next morning we were off and running. We met the musicians again and chatted a little before they got on stage. I got to watch the performance from back stage, snapping pictures the whole time. This was a truly professional event and I was shocked to be so wholly included! I did, however, feel like I was not fit to be a translator, so to make up for it I did my best to be a good host, friend, and spare hand. This resulted in Chica translating on stage by herself in front of 1,000 people, which she was super embarrassed about, but she did a pretty decent job from what I understood bilingually. Next year, I’m hoping that I’ll be fluent enough to do it and ease her of her burden! The only hiccough was that they’d told our musicians to prepare a longer set than they actually had time for, so when the performance went over, the very angry stage manager kept yelling at us and staring them down until they came off stage. He was practically in view of the audience the whole time he was doing this, which was kind of hilarious.

The rest of the day was spent having a good time, listening to jazz, eating good food, and bonding with very important Japanese people from my town and very cool people from Tennessee. We did a radio interview, for which I’d helped make the questions fluent and I read the questions for the musicians in English on the air. Fortunately Chica took care of the Japanese.

If I’d written this entry closer to when it actually happened, I’m sure I’d have much more to say, but it’s ok because we all know I’m too wordy anyhow. In short, it was a fabulous day!

The whole ordeal made me want to learn an instrument, so maybe I will.

When they took the group picture I somehow got pushed to the front row, and from there pushed to the center. I was pleased but felt a little guilty because there were DEFINITELY more important people to be put front-row-center holding the banner in this portrait.

At the end of the day I helped clean up the thousands of chairs and tables and such, trying hard not to carry too much by myself, lest I perpetuate the monster gaijin woman stereotype. Though really, I could carry quite a lot and for the most part I did. As a result, I inspired a rather robust Japanese woman to lift as much as me and so we had an empowered-woman bond after that.

August 23rd, And Better Still

8/23
The next day I was invited to go with the musicians and Chica to do a jazz workshop with a Middle School brass band. Again it was difficult, since I didn’t know anything about music, let alone translating musical terms to Japanese. I took the two of us plus the woman from the international center to do as much as we did. I also helped in another radio interview, but this time I could understand everyone and everything.

We had free lunch at the Middle School and it was delicious. They loaded up the plates of the musicians and that included plate after plate of fruit, which ended up having to be thrown away. The musicians didn’t know how much money they were wasting, since fruit is such an expensive delicacy in Japan, but I figured it wasn’t my place to say anything, since they’d eaten all they could and it was the fault of the lunch ladies for loading them up so thoroughly to begin with. I was surprised that fruit was even there to begin with, they must have really wanted to impress the musicians.

I also translated some impromptu conversations with the kids, which were considerably easier, talking about homes and music and the presents the musicians brought. The kids were tickled, the musicians were tickled, it was a good time. One little boy even asked me for my autograph, but I told him I was just a translator and nobody important. He looked like maybe he wasn’t convinced, but I would have felt a little phony had I even humored him.

And suddenly Chica was saying she had to leave, but they wanted to take me with them sight-seeing to translate and they wanted me to come to the goodbye party that night! Well sure, if you want me to spend more time practicing Japanese and hanging out with my new friends, then by all means, yes!

And oddly enough, I had no problem translating for the rest of the night. I’m sure my Japanese wasn’t great and I missed a context here or there, but when you have no one to rely on but yourself, things somehow get done. That was the best lesson I’d learned in Japan so far and this weekend was the most valuable to my fluency. Seriously, going back to school on Monday I was like a new speaker.

They took me with them up to the cape and cliffs and I saw beautiful fabulous things I’d been wanting to see for almost a month. Here I was, being chauffeured around by the president of the jazz concert organization and I was the only one who spoke his language. This got me a quick in with the other president, a local celebrity in town, the eccentric guy I’d mentioned earlier when I talked about the first meeting. Two very valuable friends to have. When dinner came around, he laid out about $100 for my admittance to the party in a swanky hotel downtown.

At first I was shocked. I wasn’t here as a translator, I was here as a guest! The musicians were at another table entirely and here I was sitting between the presidents of the jazz festival, the mayor, and various other local organization presidents and the like. This made me very nervous initially, but they fed me delicious food and Nippon Shuu sake. This was my first sake, but I guarantee it won’t be my last because it was DELICIOUS.

The fluency was building and I was talking to the Japanese people and helping them talk to the musicians when I invited them over one by one to discuss the weekend. Everyone was happy, which just goes to show how wonderful it is when a balance is struck. That’s the reason foreign people like each other so much isn’t it? It’s so interesting to talk to someone different, and you both get a lot of cool points for having a relationship with someone different from you. It got more difficult to translate as everybody got drunker, but I was sure to stay on this side of shit-faced so that my Japanese didn’t suffer as much as the Japanese people’s Japanese lol

Upon departing, the musicians and I had become very endeared to each other, so they gave me all sorts of little presents like University pins and stuff (which I plan to give to my students), t-shirts, one of their CDs, and a handmade sake cup from one of them who happened to also be a potter. I’d walked away with a free $50 admission to the festival to see world class musicians, I’d gotten free lunches and dinners, all-you-can-drink-sake, a whole fist full of business cards and networking contacts, pictures of myself translating (lol), and unmatchable Japanese practice. On the car-ride home, I told the president of the festival that I’d invite him and his wife to my conversation club for adults and he told me about “his daughter,” a Chihuahua named “Love” in Japanese lol There’s a boundary that leaves forever once you drink with people in Japan :)

I can’t describe how lucky I was this weekend, nor how at home I now feel as a result.

August 24th, Appearances and Reputations

8/24
It’s funny, looking at your students in the States I don’t get jealous or sad that I’ve grown up. I would never want to switch places with them in a million years because their youth and potential has nothing on the experiences I’ve already had. And yet, I get a little jealous when the Japanese college students come in to visit the teachers (which has been quite often because University vacation is much longer than high school vacation). I look at them in their Tokyo-hip clothing and I can tell that they’ve accomplished something and that they’re respected. It makes me wonder if it’s a societal thing. We don’t respect people in their 20s, they’re babies after all. In Japan, they really don’t respect school aged children, but they give them a lot more responsibility, and I feel like after all that time having a certain relationship, it means more when they finally grow up and move on. Being a college student is something to be proud of. Or maybe it’s that in U.S. society people just don’t socially respect others in general and it has nothing to do with age. I’m not saying Japan is a perfect country of respect and social grace, that’s certainly not the case when you break it down, but I am saying that having such prescribed roles definitely means that, while things may be unfair by and large by U.S. standards, it ensures that everybody gets a little time in the spotlight once in a while.

Another thing I enjoy doing at work is looking around at the people and trying to figure out what student will grow up into what teacher and what teacher was just like what student 20 years ago. That’s an internationally possible thing for sure, you can do it at any school. People are different, but not different enough that they can’t be categorized into personality types. Sometimes they surprise you and there are many directions you can take your personality, but development is development and I think it can be tracked.

Since it had been almost a week, I decided to start hunting down teachers to give them their omiyage pretzels when they were not in the staff room. (Unfortunately, even so the whole process ended up taking 3 weeks, so needless to say some teachers probably got pretzels that were a little old…) This brought me to the biology office and back to the teacher who’d shown me all the cool animals on my last tour. I gave him the pretzels and immediately he rummaged through his desk to give me some mango kuchen cakes in return! That was nice and before I knew it he was pulling me back out into the classroom to look at the new crayfish he’d gotten, inviting me on the new specimen collection outing, teaching me new kanji, and asking me to call him by his first name (which I won’t be doing, because I can’t remember it ^.^* ). We’ve become friends, which is cool. Yosh-sensei, which he will henceforth be called, has a monster of a comb over and is a small 57 year old man with a lot of personality and he never cares how long her prattles on and on in Japanese. He just likes to give me lectures on various things and doesn’t worry about whether or not I can understand him.

Japanese is coming more naturally, as is proven by my ability to converse with older men, because men are men in any language and the older they get the harder they are to understand. Walking around town running errands after school, I actually felt normal. I don’t feel like a visitor in a foreign country anymore. I paid my first bill at a convenience store at that point, which is like buying your utilities at 7-Eleven as if they were candy bars. You give them the bill, they take your money. Done.

Coming back into the apartment I ran into my Neighbor Dude looking through his telescope in the middle of the driveway. I stopped to chat a little out of obligation, but had some bad feelings about it. The other teachers were just starting to get home in hoards and I was a little embarrassed to be seen with him. His reputation is pretty bad, especially at school, because everyone thinks he’s lazy and rude. And an element of that is true, but he’s not a bad person all-in-all, just abrasive, so I make sure to return social calls when he calls on me and I hadn’t from the last time. I’d mentioned his history before in the blog, but as a recap, apparently he was so disliked that he had to be switched with The Pred and they dragged her out of her school and swapped them for their second year here. (The rumor is that Mick-sensei was mostly responsible for this) So yeah, he’s a bit of a social leper and here he was blocking the driveway right when everyone was coming home. I feel bad for caring about being seen with him, but mostly I feel justified because like I said, he often rubs me the wrong way as well.

And talking to him I realize that every day I get more and more affirmation that I’m doing my job right. I’m a good fit at this school and by and large it’s a good fit for me. I was telling Neighbor Dude about how excited I was and how I was introducing myself personally to all the teachers and how I loved talking to them and he was like, “Wow, you’re their dream come true. They’ve been looking for someone like you, did you know that?” So it’s nice to know that I have the chance to be everything they want and that I’m doing a good job, but still, I had a moment of doubt when thinking about my neighbor’s situation. When talking to both him and the Pred, I realize that they’re slightly careless people and maybe never really got the full story, but neither of them really grasp the depth with which they’re disliked by any given person. I don’t know if it’s their own delusions, or if everyone here needs to be careful because the professional realm is a very serious place and someone is probably going to judge you too severely for a honest mistake, let alone a careless one. I don’t know. I’ll stay on my toes. For now though, I think I have a lot of fans at school.