September 10th, Physical and Mental Challenges

9/10
Today at the taikai I watched them play basketball all morning. Everyone is steadily getting better as the bad teams are being weeded out. It makes me really want to go play basketball again, so maybe it's good that one of the teachers keeps badgering me to come to women’s basketball practice. Though, of course, it could be a little awkward, since everyone is so much smaller than me and it's my coworkers and students (a difficult group to be aggressive with). Anyway, the 2nd year president of the International Club is a basketball beast, and you'd never guess for as small and bookish as he is.

I missed the end of the volleyball tournament regretfully and I didn't manage to get a picture of "Darn" and "Shit," two boys who nicknamed themselves inappropriately on the back of their class team jerseys. Voltex was also one of them, though I don't know what that even means lol I've been watching basketball all morning because we're close to the finals. Though it’s getting more impressive, the kids have the same problem U.S. kids do, where the girls are too weak and the boys are too aggressive and on account of both extremes they can't make baskets or get through a screen! Like I said, it really makes me want to play. Still, I might enjoy helping with the basketball team after school once in a while!

Apparently after work I'm meeting Mochi and The Actress at the train station so I can go to English lessons with them. Apparently the Mormon missionary who runs them wants to meet me, and then I get to skitter on my way (Or maybe I'll watch and judge the teachers, not only on teaching ability but also on religious affiliation! I'm such a bastard). People keep telling me "______ wants to meet you!" and I’m beginning to wonder whether all these foreigners actually do want to meet each other because they’re feeling a foreign connection or whether the Japanese just all want us to meet each other so they TELL US we want to meet each other.

*Time passes and the night is over*
Well, I went. The walk was very awkward, and The Actress was putting up a huge show about having her period. She was weaving all over the sidewalk like she’d pass out at any moment and every 3 minutes for an hour she’d complain about how tired she was. Then she’d snuggle into my arm and say, “Oh, Stefu, please help me! I think I’m dying.” I’m sure she felt pretty shitty, but I was also pretty sure it was mostly just a show to get some attention from Mochi. Girl, whatever you’ve gotta do, you’ve gotta do – but I don’t want to see it.

I’m sorry; in the vein of airing grievances, I’m going to lay it all out there and admit that the overly proselytizing religions bother me. When they prayed at the opening and closing and talked about their door to door evangelism and I got a little sour faced. Still, I was a good girl and said nothing.

It was cute enough for one session, but very boring and I wouldn’t want to go again. I was kind of hoping to see some teaching methods, but the teachers were missionaries first, English teachers second only because they spoke English. The guy in charge is actually an American-Japanese. His mother is from Nebraska but he was raised in Japan. It was kind of cool to see that, since every bilingually raised person I’d met before has identified strongly as an American first. It was interesting perspective, and I made him a little self conscious because his pronunciation wasn’t 100% native-like. He kept making comments and stuff about it and asking me if it was right, which was strange, because to me he looked and sounded like an American except for maybe 1 word every 5-10 minutes. It was very confusing to see!

I got really tired halfway through and by the end when we were milling around in the typical way-too-long Japanese goodbye, everyone kept asking that I come again. It’s not because I helped or because they enjoyed my company though, it’s because they need 10 people for the church to continue the lessons and they only have 8 people. Eventually I was so fed up that when the Actress asked, I just turned to her and said, “I already know English, thank you.” She insisted that I could learn Japanese, but truth be told I understood the Japanese they’d used and could definitely invest my time in a better way. I only learned one word, and that’s only because I hadn’ t looked it up in the dictionary yet.

By the time we were standing outside, it was 9:00 and I’d spent almost 3 hours in the process of doing this even though I had told Mochi I could only spare about 45 minutes. A wave of sleepiness and aversion to Japanese hit me so hard that I could barely focus on what anyone was saying. Part of me just couldn’t, and part of me just refused. This makes me a little nervous. I guess I’m burning out! I definitely need to get more sleep. If this wasn’t bad enough though, Mochi started handing out schedules, which after 10 minutes of looking at it and not being able to read the kanji, someone finally told me it was our schedule for meeting for my English conversation group. I might be mistaken, but I think there were already lesson topics written. I was kind of pissed. Since when do you invite a teacher to do your bidding and not let the teacher call the shots? I wasn’t consulted on any of this stuff except for a few frustrating emails about what time would be good to meet. By then I was livid and sick of it all and there were definitely better things I could have been doing, what with Open High School lessons on Saturday and preparing to visit The Canadian for the weekend. There was a lot I needed to do, in fact.

What’s done is done, I don’t regret going, but I certainly won’t go again no matter how much they balk.

September 11th, Little Things

9/11
I reformatted my computer today and ran some errands, hopefully things will all work out and my crazy weekend will come off as a success.

I had a wonderful rush this morning when I realized I can read all the kanji on the television. Also on the television I watched a man make a flip book out of the 20 pairs of underwear he was wearing…oh, Japan.

As I was walking through the halls today I pulled a big piece of lint off my shirt. I was about to drop it on the floor when I had a vision of the kids sweeping after school as they do every day, and I said, “Y’know what? I’ve gotta throw this away.” This reminds me of something Mick-sensei said about how the kids take better care of the building because they have to do the cleaning. I guess he’s right because here I am doing it too!

September 12th, School Part

9/12
OMG my first classroom lesson!

Going to school on a Saturday was weird, but kind of fun because it’s different. I plunked a giant suitcase into my bicycle basket so I could excite the students. It was the day the middle schoolers could scope out our high school and I wanted to pretend I’d JUST arrived from the States. I wanted to impress them, so I also brought nattou (fermented soy beans), which most people outside Japan hate. I can eat them, but I don’t like them. Still, I wanted to introduce the point, “to try new things,” and I wanted to impress them a little, so that was that. Though I pretended to like them while I was in class, the experience really reminded me that I hate nattou. It’s slimy and mealy and it tastes like the feet of an old man. Not to mention it’s got strings that float behind it and stick to your face.

No, I don’t like nattou.

I spent most of the morning making robots for my 2nd grade lesson with The Canadian on Monday. I thought about doing Mr. Potatohead, but they were really learning body parts, not face parts, so I decided to make robot body parts so the kids could build their own robots as we dictated which parts to pick. Before I knew it, I was doing it in a grand scale, with 4.5 robots worth of parts, all in brightly colored markers and mounted on cardboard to make them more substantial. I covered my skirt in cardboard schnibbles in the process and I had to scour the basement for discarded boxes when I ran out of cardboard. The other teachers were fascinated by my project lol

I taught the middle school lesson that afternoon with K-Sen. The students were very intelligent, one might argue more intelligent than my high schoolers! It was cute to see them walking around and gawking at me. In the lesson, they were kind of quiet, especially at first, but I quickly made friends with the vocal ones and the rest followed suit on the confidence coattails of their chatty friends. Our activities went really well. I played up my personality a lot, which again was difficult because they’re so subdued, but I decided to keep trooping. They didn’t really look at my props while I gave my self-introduction because they were so busy writing the answers as I spoke, and they don’t really respond to jokes, so it’s difficult to tell if they’re entertained by you or not. Still, it went well and both K-sen and myself were happy.

After I walked around school on the high of open houseness. I ran into Chikka, attending some meetings on behalf of her younger son, and I stopped to talk to Nana from the art club, while she was hunting for new art club recruits (she’s the student who loves Johnny Depp). Nana’s got a lot of personality, and it’s cute how cool we think the other is just for being herself. Even the classic awkward high school girl behavior of “omg let’s link fingers while facing each other” is becoming more natural when I see her lol I also ran into my smartest student (who is also a member of the international club) while she was attending an info session on a prestigious university. She is only a first year and she’s already checking out universities she can attend in order to become a diplomat! What??

Good times.

September 12th, The Travel Part

9/12 (2)
I snuck out of the office a few minutes early to go change into jeans and I waited quietly in the locker room for 4:25 to roll around. At that point I sprinted from the building, got on my bike, and raced to the station with my bag. I made it in time, though I had some embarrassment at the station when I tried to scan my ticket in the turnstiles and it kept rejecting me. I looked to the little old man behind me for instruction and he just smiled blankly. I made some comments in Japanese, making it clear that he could tell me what to do in Japanese, but it was a no-go. After several failed attempts and a line forming behind me, I finally caught the eye of the window manager and he scanned my tickets himself. What the heck. Going through a transfer later, I saw a sign that said, “grey backed tickets at the window, please” in English. So maybe it’s the same at all stations, just my station doesn’t have a sign.

I took the suzuran to Sapporo, so it was a lavish limited express train, and I had a reserved seat so it was even better. Unfortunately it was about 65 bucks for the two trains and bus it took to visit The Canadian in one direction. Mostly I slept and looked out the window and saw some cool stuff, like a half pipe built in someone’s driveway in a small town and some construction cones in the shape of monkeys lol

I then had 20 minutes to transfer to a different train in Sapporo, which I thought was more than enough time. I looked up the words I’d need in advance so I'd be ready if I needed to ask for help, and I knew the kanji for the cities I was heading for...but when I got off the train I couldn’t find anything about what route line was which. I knew I needed a specific one, but there was no signage and Sapporo station is GIGANTIC. Finally, after walking around for 10 minutes, I asked a man in a window for fare adjustment and he told me platform 4, which happened to be right next to where I started. How was I supposed to know it was the right one?? It’s very stressful, because the train pulls in for 20 seconds and then it leaves. You have to make decisions fast and if you miss it, it’s gone! I don’t like Sapporo station at all for traveling. In the future, I will avoid it if I can.

It was especially stresful because there were people EVERYWHERE and the train was so crowded. Waiting in line for the train, I realized there was no seat number on my 2nd ticket even though I’d asked for reserved seating. I thought maybe I had the same seat number as before so they'd omitted it, and I headed for the reserved car when the train pulled in.

There was a guy in my seat. It was pretty empty in the car though, compared to the others, so I just sucked it up and sat somewhere else, waiting for the ticket taker. When he arrived, he came over, looked at my ticket and said, “...uhh...oh...reserved...this...reserved.” I answered him in Japanese, “They didn’t give me a reserved ticket? I asked for a reserved seat.” He was relieved to hear Japanese and reiterated that they didn’t. When I asked him how much the extra fee was, it was only 3 dollars so I paid it and wouldn’t have to go into the crowded cars. Not quite worthwhile, especially because it was a short time, but it was better than moving and causing a ruckus. When he left, he told me I had good Japanese, which made me feel conflicted because I knew I used the wrong version of the “to give” verb. Again with the, “in Japan everyone tells you your Japanese is good even if you only know one word” business.

The whole thing just kind of sucked, because I really didn’t need the reserved seat on the way to Sapporo on the empty train I was familiar with, so if he was going to make a mistake giving me the ticket, I’d rather it have been the other way around. Plus the reserved seat to Sapporo was 1800 yen and the reserved seat from Sapporo was 300 yen :/

Pulling into the moderately bigger city, I realized this might be a place I’d like to go back to. I got off, went to the bus station, bought some bread and waited for the bus. Unfortuantely I screwed up, I thought I was buying beef filled bread but really I was buying milk bread (kanji, y'know?). So...I just ate a loaf of bread for dinner.

After riding for an hour, I panicked a little because I heard a similarly named bus stop to the one I was looking for, then I stopped panicking when the one after it wasn’t the one after mine, but then I panicked again as another 10 minutes passed and already the fare was up to the amount mine was supposed to be. It all worked out though, and I stepped off the bus, turned to the first woman, and asked her where the shrine was. Not a block later, I saw very strange looking Japanese people walking my way. When one of them crouched to the ground in a ready pose and stuck out his arms, I knew they weren't Japanese, they were my Canadian friends.

We picked up some goodies to snack on and eat for breakfast at the conbini and I got a “Chestnut and Milk flavored Love Love Sand,” (lol, they like to shorten sandwich to sand, which is pretty Engrishy). Together, we drank $4 wine, which is nowhere near the quality of Two Buck Chuck, and with that wine we set the mood for a drunken showing of "Labyrinth" – now that’s what I call a party! As a friend in Madison put it upon hearing this story, “Drunk and watching David Bowie…that just sounds redundant!”