September 13th, The TOS

9/13
In the morning, I woke up to fireworks. Because of the matsuri, the tengu - a long nosed, red faced goblin with white hair - goes around and blesses everyone and everything in the town. Some people believe the idea of a tengu was really based on a sunburned lost white person who showed up in the Japanese countryside. Us North Americans got a kick out of that.

The Canadian was among the “everyone and everything," his entire office needed to turn up in suits at the shrine to be blessed, so he left the house early while the rest of us took our time waking up to the mysterious and gentle sound of Japanese flute and taiko drums echoing in the distance. The drums went on all day and night, including during my awesome shower. The Canadian’s building is so close to the next building that you can leave the window open without anyone seeing you, it has the coolest bathroom stone floor, and the shower head hangs high enough that I don’t need to hunch. Throw the music on top of it, it was quite the highlight of my weekend lol

In The Town by the Other Sea (TOS), the gigantic crows, almost the size of small dogs, are terrifying and noisy, especially while you're trying to sleep. I commented on this, but CR seemed to have slept too soundly to notice. Unfortunately it was raining, so the Canadian came back soaking wet, but it didn’t stop him from making French toast with real Canadian maple syrup. Clearly “good breakfast” is the theme of my time with these people.

Rin-chan had to leave pretty much immediately after that, since it was Sunday and she needed to catch a bus back to Sapporo early for a thing with a friend, but CR, The Canadian, and myself wandered off around The TOS in search of the tengu, who was going door to door with his blessings. The Canadian was obsessed with finding him and relayed stories of how the man in the costume was *SO* into it that if someone who wasn’t supposed to be there showed up, he’d freeze in a fighting pose until his entourage of handlers would rush over and shoo you away, saying“It’s dangerous, it’s dangerous! This is a wild beast! Please stay back!” Apparently he also walks by thrusting his fists and knees into the air like some kind of muppet on 1 foot tall geta shoes. Wicked.

Well, we found the entourage but the tengu was harder to locate. It was raining on and off, but we followed in hot pursuit of the party buses playing music and holding lanterns and the children collecting tithes for the tengu. We got to see a lot of The TOS at that point, which looks very different from The City by the Sea because it’s so much more rural. When we found the tengu just as he was about to take a lunch break, so we watched a few theatrics and then the exhausted and soaked entourage disappeared into some municipal building. Ruined the image a little, but still, the idea was very cool.

We walked through an old graveyard and it began to pour like a storms on a Florida summer afternoon. Soaked to the bone in spite of our raincoats and umbrellas, we wandered through the tiny tiny matsuri (a handful of food carts), past a mural of the tengu offering sake to some fish, and up to an old temple. In the process we got invited into one of the party buses (a truck with a canopy and a second story) while it was parked outside the board of education. It wasn’t moving, thank god, stationary it was rickety enough. In the truck we got to play taiko and goof off with some kids for a while. Later we mulled about by the ocean, looking at blue and orange starfish and making dreams about the things we wanted to do in Hokkaido. CR had to say his farewells at that point, and The Canadian and I passed the afternoon until the bonfire.

The bonfire was something entirely amazing. They set a large fire of small paper curls which were continually fed in so that the flames roared 6 feet into the air. The tengu marched through them (not ran!) and people had to extinguish his costume every time he was done. After that, 10 people ran through the flames without any sort of protection, carrying a very heavy mikoshi (portable shrine). Now that was really amazing and dangerous! Definitely worth seeing.

Even in The Town by the Other Sea, they can throw a party.

September 14th, Cute Kids

9/14
The next morning I made us fried cheese filled onigiri and we went to the Elementary school. The Canadian wore a track suit, which is an acceptable uniform for an elementary school teacher (and often times also for higher level teachers on casual days) but I wore my all-out work dress clothes. The day began with an assembly, where they played a true or false quiz game, and it was the most adorable thing ever. The teamwork element between the students of a Japanese primary school really is evident, like everyone says. The kids monitor and regulate each other’s behavior while teachers are more like role models than disciplinarians or even instructors sometimes. Not a lot of the teachers spoke English and of course the kids only had pieces and couldn’t really communicate much, so my Japanese really paid off.

I’d spent a lot of time making our lessons in advance because I was so excited about them, but in the end we were at a bit of a loss for the 4th graders because we were teaching them movement verbs and they know almost no English (actual English classes don’t begin until 7th grade) and the school didn’t give us much to go on. While we plotted our plots, a teacher brought us grapes from the neighboring city. They were great big green grapes and they tasted quite different from the ones I’m used to eating. They were a lot sweeter and a lot more sour, and the inside membrane was kind of slimy and thick, not watery and crunchy. An interesting experience. The Canadian was drawing a bus to complete our flashcard set but something went horribly, horribly wrong and it ended up looking more like a piece of cheese, so I yelled Cheese Bus in Japanese, “chiizu baasu!” and he turned it into a legit cheese bus with holes and yellow and all its cheesey glory. I had a hunch and told him to bring it to class anyway.

We went to the fourth graders first and reviewed the basic verbs like walk, run, bow, stand, sit, etc. This meant a lot of fun Simon says stuff (though they always won because they were so hesitant and watchful of others that no one ever made a mistake) and then we let them call the motions. Then we taught them the transportation verbs and some nouns to use with them and made a few sample sentences. That went very quickly though, especially because they didn’t know sentence structure or verb conjugation. We found ourselves with a lot of extra time, so I suggested that we act out the transportation verbs too, “Sensei says, ride a bicycle! Sensei says drive a car!” At that point, the cheese bus was a HUGE hit, as kids pretended to be mice and held their noses yelling, “ewww stinky!” Kids will be kids :) Though, it was a little much for me when everyone pretended to be seasick and was “throwing up” all over the place during, “Sensei says ride a boat.”

In the 2nd grade class we taught them the body vocabulary words, which was difficult because in Japanese they don’t discriminate between leg and foot, it’s all “ashi.” I sang the Hokey Pokey and we all danced, which they LOVED. The Canadian pretended not to know the song well enough…Right. Like you don’t know the Hokey Pokey. Baby.

After that I whipped out my robots. At first it was a little disorganized and crazy, but we put all the pieces in the middle and instructed the students one by one to choose certain pieces to make their robots and then they returned them one by one when we told them to. CR had had fun making his own robot using ALL the pieces the night before, which shows I would have found a use for them had I taken them home with me again, but I knew the kids would have more fun being able to use them again and so I left them with the Canadian, seeing as I have no elementary schoolers to teach. They even named their robots, it was so cute :) It was also really cool because I had to teach the class in Japanese, which I’d never come close to doing before.

For lunch we went back to the fourth years to eat with them in the classroom. In Japanese Elementary schools, they all eat lunch in their classrooms. They bring around big pots and carts of food and the kids are assigned certain days to do the serving. They put on little aprons and hats and the like and make sure everyone gets food. If there are leftovers, they usually janken for them (rock, paper, scissors). Of course, the grape jello is always more popular than the milk and rice, but I did see a little boy pack away 3 platefuls of curry, so that was pretty amazing. In addition to those things, we had fried shrimp croquette and cabbage. I sat at a tiny little desk and smiled attentively as the kids told me in Japan what they did last weekend and what their favorite colors were. The boys didn’t have much to say, but some of the girls went on and on like a bunch of washer women talking about the matsuri and how they don’t like milk. I asked the kids if they liked curry, and they were all like, “Eh, futsuu desu.” (Meh, it’s normal.) I, for one, like curry. It was a little hot (though not really at all) so the kids made a big show of going “ahhh karai!” so we taught them that in English, karai is “spicy!” Maybe someday in English class they’ll remember the day in Elementary school when that the visiting teacher taught them “spicy.”

After lunch, we had the basic verbs class with the third graders, so we knew we needed to generate some new material, since we’d taught that entire lesson and then some to the fourth graders and still barely filled the time. We concocted a game similar to “No Walking, No Talking, No Showing Your Teeth,” that we’d be allowed to use the gym for. We kicked our Simon Says up to the next level as well, with the Canadian running out the door for “to run,” and getting the whole class to bust a move for “to dance.” On a whim I grabbed the flashcards off the board and held them behind his head so the kids had to shout the instructions to him on my prompting. We let a few kids take a turn at this too, while we sat in their desks pretending to be them (they loved that, of course!). The game went well, though it kind of broke down into a game session than an ENGLISH game session. Still, we all had a good time, though at the very end they took awkward to a whole new level when they switched from constantly ASKING the Canadian and me if we were a couple to TELLING the male teacher that he and I should be a couple. They *really* liked this idea and kept going on and on about how they thought it would be really good for us. Fortunately I didn’t have to look the teacher in the eye again after that because I needed to catch the bus back to Sapporo.

I had to go alone, since The Canadian wasn’t allowed to leave school. I was a little worried for a bit because the bus was about 10 minutes late, but it got there and I got to Sapporo without incident. The view on the drive was beautiful, though I spent most of my time sleeping. When I arrived in Sapporo, the bus was very late, so I figured I could wait an hour and a half and take a very expensive train back or I could wait 2 hours and take a cheap bus back. I ended up spending less than half on my return ticket in one direction than I did on my arrival ticket. If I go again, I’ll be sure to take the bus! It really doesn’t take that much longer and it’s not that much less comfortable.

So I had some time to kill in the city, which I wish I had anticipated because I’d been meaning to go shopping in Sapporo for a while (there are some things I can’t find in the City by the Sea), but there I was carrying a crap ton of stuff and completely disorganized. I walked around a bit outside through the , though I ended up buying nothing. Then I got the bright idea of checking out the station? They HAD to have western sized clothing, right? Or something I could buy?

Underneath the station is literally a city of shops. Several districts in fact. I’d been down there before, but I got so disoriented I couldn’t find anything and I didn’t want to go into any of the clothing stores, no matter how cute it all was, because I was so self conscious that the Japanese women were judging me, thinking, “You will never find anything your size here. Ever. What are you doing?” This was all in my head, but I couldn’t help it :( I ended up just buying some dinner, a Chinese shrimp rice dish, and 300 grams of dried mango for $25 (fruit here is so expensive! >,<) I don’t know why I did it, I just did. I could’ve gotten the same tiny portion from Trader Joe’s for $6. Saaaad.

Got on my bus, slept the whole way home. The City by the Sea was just as I’d left it, except now my Japanese was worse having spent so much time with English speakers. Still, I needed the reprieve from 100% immersion Japanese life.

September 15th, The REAL First Day

9/15/09
I tried to wake up slowly, peacefully, and early today, but I ended up getting up at almost the same usual time because no matter how hard I try I just can’t seem to get to bed early. I was making okay time, but then the internet wouldn’t connect, and then it would, so I tried skypeing with The Pred to figure out what I was supposed to do. I’m not sure she gave me any real answers, but I can definitely use this information to help me figure it out.

As a result, I was a little late, so I got to school with no make-up on. Fortunately I was having a good face day, because my first class ever was first period! Ichi-sensei came up to me in his characteristic meticulous and uninviting way to remind me that I was with him during period three, and that made me realize I should probably touch base with the other teachers. Things were so busy prepping for the Open School and the weekend that I’d completely put off any preparation other than my game. Also, I thought K-sen had told everyone. Apparently I was wrong.

When I went to Mumbles-sensei, he almost shit a brick. He had no idea and I could tell he was terrified by the thought of me watching him teach. I understood, but at the same time, he’s an English teacher and I’m not threatening. I think it would have been better had he had time to mentally psyche himself up, but his sheer terror lead him to running over to the other teacher and asking in Japanese instead of continuing the conversation with me in Japanese or English. I was a little bothered by this, but I realize not everyone can put themselves on the line when it comes to foreign language. I definitely couldn’t have 2 months ago.

My plan for class was to ask them what they remembered from my formal self-introduction, and then I stylized questions based on my introduction to ask them in a game afterward. If they answered yes, they had to stand up and find a new seat, and if they couldn’t find a seat, they had to answer the question out loud. So in the end, I did my 10 minute activity (the teachers were very strict about me keeping to that limit so as to not inconvenience their lessons :P) but Mumbles-sensei wanted me to continue so he wouldn’t have to talk, so he had the students ask me questions. It was awkward goings, but we all survived and I ended up playing human tape recorder for a while at the end, which was fine because it’s better than sitting at my desk. The kids were quiet, and because of their reservation you can never tell if they understand or if they think your jokes are funny, but it was fun all the same.

Third period with Ichi-sensei was a little heinous. I’d refined my game so that it went really well, I learned you have to ask tangible questions or the kids will lie to get out of using English…And then immediately after, Ichi-sensei said, “ok, you can go back to the teacher’s room now.” Part of me understood that maybe he was self-conscious or thought that since I didn’t have a part in the lesson, I had better things to do, but most of me is just a little bitter that he’s so keen to get rid of me. His personality seems a little arrogant, like, “why use the foreigner just because she’s foreign? I’d rather do it on my own thanks.”

But what he’s forgetting is that I’m a real teacher and that I’m a native speaker on top of that. Or maybe that’s what he’s remembering, and that’s the problem.

The last period of the day was the most fun, Shadow-sensei came out of his shadows, sat down with me for a long conversation before hand, and then used me for the whole lesson.

In Japan, the kids have a classroom that is “their room,” and the teachers go around to them, instead of the other way around. I think I like that better, actually, it’s more fun. Though it makes me wonder whether the kids get bored sitting in the same place all day.

At the end of the day I went home and made curry, entirely homemade except that I used roux for the sauce. It made two huge meals already, and I still have 3 cups of it left in the fridge! When the mailman came by to drop off some registered mail (wtf, 8 PM again. Crazy, Japan, crazy!) he sniffed the air a few times and said, “…curry?” and I said, “un, sou desu.” And it was cute.

I went for a run, this time to the old downtown. I didn’t make it quite as far as downtown, because it’s about 20 minutes by bus, but I suspect I got really close. I’ll have to check the map. I went past the bikkuri donkii restaurant that looks really cool. It’s famous for being open until 2AM. Not only is that a fun name to say, but it means “Surprise Donkey.” I also ran far enough to find The Lion of Oz, which made me very happy. I’m kind of hoping that by bike all these places are accessible, because if I have to pay for the train to get to my English conversation club every week, I will be very bitter and poor.

September 16th, Delicacy

9/16
Now that I’ve taught with all the teachers, I can’t help but expect the real cold shoulder from Ichi and Mick-sensei (or Batman as I’ve begun to call him behind his back). I find this upsetting. They both kick me out of the classroom when I’m done with my activity. They’re both proud men, so I suppose that makes sense, they may feel like they’ll embarrass themselves in front of me with their English, but somehow I don’t think that’s it. And so, I have less respect for Batman.

Mumbles-sensei is great because he doesn’t care what we do in class, so he uses his insecurity to give me free reign, which has lead to some hilarious Q&A sessions (though I did get the “what are you hips, waist, bust measurements?” from a boy today, fortunately for his sorry ass he changed his question when I asked him to repeat it). Even K-sen kicks me out, but at least he’s warm in the classroom. Shadow-sensei is the real surprise, however. He’s probably middle of the road as far as English skill goes, but he has me stick with him the whole time and we team teach together. I’m very pleased and I respect him a lot for that.

I’ve been meeting with a lot of kids for the big English competition, even though it doesn’t start until next school year lol. Literally, the last competition just ended a month ago! I finally know all the rules though, that was a big pain.

Cooking wise, along with my huge-ass pot of curry, I made what I call “Pizza Tofu Rice,” which consists of sticky rice with a tomato-sage-garlic-cinnamon sauce with tofu squares and cheese melted on top. It’s AWESOME. I’m so glad to have found something easy and delicious that I can make in Japan! Also, I don’t need to use much tomato paste, which is good because it’s expensive here. Another easy and delicious meal I made was pork miso nasu, I made little pork meatballs and stirred them in a miso sauce over baked eggplant. With my fried onigiri and shimeiji tamago, I almost have a full week of legitimate homemade meals that are more complicated the sandwiches! :D Not like I ever eat sandwiches here though.

But all is not sunshine and rainbows. I had my second meeting with the International Club and there were a good 8 new people there. Among them was a girl who seemed excited about me, but is otherwise what I’d describe as a “delinquent.” The Pred had told me she was a cool girl but she had an attitude and she once wore a necklace of bleeding plastic bear claws (?). She was very nice and she’d been nice when I met her in class that afternoon, but as I taught the lesson she looked really upset and grew less and less cooperative to the point where I walked over and asked her to do something and she just shrugged and smiled and ignored me.

I got the sense that the class was a little too bookish for their tastes and I resolved to put more fun games in. But I don’t consider it entirely my fault, the Pred said “make a lesson plan,” and K-sen had said “make a lesson plan,” and last week no one said anything, so I figured it was ok. The kids from last week are really academically aggressive, so y’know, whatever.

And then the delinquent hurt my feelings. I was talking to the club president who was being kind of strange, he kept repeating himself without giving me any information. I just kept thinking “you sound stupid. Why are you saying this stuff once, let alone over and over?” That should’ve been the indication for me right there - as soon as I start wondering why someone sounds so stupid, that usually means they’re trying to say something negative. I’d noticed the delinquent girl hanging around just out of our conversation circle. She’d gone to talk to K-sen and come back, I was kind of waiting for the club president to shut up because I wanted to catch her before she left so I could tell her next week would be more fun. Finally, the kid stopped talking and the delinquent girl actually came to me.

She flagged me down and looked at her handout like she was going to ask me a question about something we’d learned. Boy was I wrong.

“Stephanie. I hate this club now. I hate the club that is like class. It’s bad. I want talk. We should be…circle. I hate this.”

Well, shit.

I told her I figured she’d been upset based on her face and I apologized, promising things would change. I was kind of upset, so ordinarily I wouldn’t have been so self-deprecating, but I’d already prepared this speech in my head so I went with it in my surprised state. Fortunately she did go on, “Stephanie is not bad! This is bad.”

I was feeling kind of emotional to begin with, so I was pretty hurt. I knew she liked me, she’d been in the awesome class the other day when I made all the students fall in love with me. Still, I couldn’t help but feel sheepish like everyone was going to think I sucked now. I wish her delivery had been better, but all things considered that’s all she could do, barely being able to speak English, let alone politely.

I went straight home after that, which I’m glad I was able to do. It ruined my trip home and the first few hours of my night. Eventually I shook it off, but I’m sure there’ll be lingering feelings of embarrassment and bitterness. I’ve always been a sensitive person, after all. I gotta be able to shake this kind of thing off though: Welcome to Teaching.

September 17th, Behaviors

9/17
Last night I went to Mister Donut to meet Mochi and the English conversation group. I’ve decided they’re the most difficult people to understand in Japan. They don’t slow down, they don’t know how to slow down really, they use strange words but they’re smart enough to use original ones each time, and they’re not old enough to be comfortable throwing away all formalities for the sake of conversation. I just can’t understand them in Japanese.

Still, it’s normal for me not to be able to, I’m new to the language, and I need to not beat myself up for that.

I figured out that the piece of paper covered in kanji that they gave me last time was a club charter. I was still a little surprised at the degree of rigidity, but this is Japan so I guess I shouldn’t have been. I am a little bewildered by the fact that they told me straight out that I am second in command, but I didn’t want to ask who was first, lest that be rude like I should already know. So I guess I’ll just have to figure it out. We’ll be meeting on the other side of town in a public building, which is nice, but also means I’ll probably have to take the train in winter. I plan to take my bike or run even though it’s far. I don’t need to spend 3 dollars every week and then go out for exercise later anyway.

Then there was the moment where we picked the club name. I was completely unprepared for this. The most I’d thought about was lesson plans and meeting every Tuesday to talk. Still, to them it was the most important thing we did all night. Some people wanted to name it “Cherry” which I thought was cliché and also with their poor pronunciation it sounded like “Charley.” I was kind of tempted to go for an Engrish, name, it would have been *SO* easy, but I would have felt guilty in the end. Then, as they were prodding me to contribute I said, “Hm…I don’t know…it should be cool,” and then The Actress wrote down “Should Be Cool.” At first I was like “no no no, that was a comment, not a suggestion,” but then I kind of liked it. In traditional Japanese style, we shortened it down to “shu be coo” and then we Japanese-ized it into “Shubikuru,” which I think is a cool name. And then, since “kuru” is a verb in Japanese (to come), they used the kanji for the second half of the word.

I’m not kidding, everything is named in this process around here, including grocery stores and companies and rock bands. It’s a little amazing.

I’ve been seeing a lot more friends on Skype since I’ve been trying to get up early and a lot of people responded to my entry on The Most Heinous Class Ever. It’s been really nice hearing from people all around. It’s good to feel connected.

Today during first hour I walked into a class and I knew I didn’t like them. Even though I called them out on it right away with a joke, “What is my name? HINT: NOT THE PRED,” they continued making jokes (not even funny ones) about me being The Pred. And they’d go ballistic laughing. They were throwing out all manner of jokes in Japanese, but I was just annoyed because they SO weren’t funny. Quite uninspired and boring, actually. I wanted to be like, “I can understand you, y’know, and you are not saying anything funny. Quit laughing.” I can only assume they had such low respect for The Pred on account of some class they had with her, because for some reason just saying her name was funny. The Pred as an idea was funny to them. My next class was boring. We’ll see what the third has in store, it’s the only class I haven’t met yet. Hopefully they don’t suck, and with that said, I am so ready for Silver Week vacation.

The other day I said you can tell how a class is going to go based on the ikemen haircuts, but now I’m also thinking you can tell a class of delinquents based on their squirrelly-ness and attempted ikemen haircuts on skinny rat-like faces. This is a horrible stereotype, I know, but I think stereotyping is a different thing in Japan. With all the social conformity, I think it raises the likelihood of correlation between a stereotype and a behavior. For example, the only kids you see with dyed hair and baggy pants are like the ones I saw last night while I was walking through the train station. They were the kids lying on their stomachs in the middle of the traffic path smoking cigarettes and casting dirty looks. I smiled at them (I’m from America, I’m not threatened by your quirky behavior. Nice try.). Still, it’s really startling how much more likely you are to be sneered at by a rough looking person than a typical one. It kind of makes me angry, like they’re ruining it for everyone else who wants to be different. Also, part of me feels guilty for making a statement about stereotypes being true, but like I said, I don’t think I’m making this up. Whether the kids start acting that way based on how they look or they start looking that way based on how they act, I’ll never know. What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

I did enjoy their hip hop dance routine in the station though.

An interesting thing, in the class full of rat-faced laughing bastards, there was a picture of two boys from the class kissing pasted right next to the clock. Another interesting statement on Japanese youth culture and sexuality. You see this kind of thing in manga, two beautiful young boys about to kiss, passion fusing them together. This kiss though was kind of hard to look at, because they didn’t have the chemistry. You could tell they were heterosexual. But it’s very counter-intuitive from a U.S. standpoint where such a picture would have to be so good it’s hot or so bad it’s hilarious. I get the impression the kids thought this picture was cool, neither hilarious nor sexy. It wasn’t blended in with a million other pictures either. There was maybe a note or two, a clock, and the photograph on the wall and that ‘s it. In the States, a teacher would have definitely taken it down. This leads me to believe that 1) gender expectations are very different between boys and girls, and 2) it’s so non-sexual that it’s allowed, and they’re so not homophobic here that people can think it’s cute. That’s not necessarily a feather in Japan’s cap, however, considering they might be so non-homophobic because they so don’t consider homosexuality a legitimate thing. I’m not sure. I’ll keep my eyes open.