Catching Flies with Chopsticks:
Galvin's Japan Journal
That's right, I'm back, baby, I'm back! Back from ten days of rest and relaxation (well, sort of), only to now fully realize the folly of neglecting to leave a "buffer day" of decompressing house-hanging between vacation and work to take a bit of the edge of the transition. Anyway, my three-week break was just what I needed, but let me tell you I am not exactly looking forward ot the prospect of going back to work less than 12 short hours from now. But hey, part of me is actually looking forward to getting back to my regular life, to see what the new, unfortunately non-palindromic year brings, so I suppose that's a good sign, yes? Especially since I have to decide very, very soon whether or not I'm signing up for another year here, but I'll piss myself over that some other day. Right now I've got a headache that feels like there's a walnut lodged behind my eyeballs so I'd rather not think about it. Besides, I'm really only on here as part of my route on the three-hours-and-counting Internet Binge I'm on at the moment. Yes, I somehow managed to survive nearly two weeks without double-clicking a damn thing, which is really quite an accomplishment for someone who usually becomes fairly psychotic if he is unable to check his e-mail for more than a two-day period. But I suppose that just speaks to how relaxing this vacation was, since I didn't even really notice the complete absence of internet. On a completely unrelated note sometime over break I developed this curious itching sensation under the skin of my right forearm that felt like it could not just be scratched no matter how hard I tried; but now that I think about it, it just mysteriously vanished about three hours ago, about when I first signed on here. Well. I'm sure the two events are completely unrelated. I'll just assume it's crabs.
So I got home today to find my apartment in even more disarray than I remembered leaving it in, as well as a gi-MONGOUS new electricity bill waiting for me that basically dictates that I can choose freezing or going broke over the next few months of winter. I honestly thought I was misreading the damn thing but no -- it's about $140, which is oh, about 7 times my normal monthly electric bill. And, as the only new electrical product I have added to my humble home for the past month is my beloved heater that actually renders my otherwise sub-zero living space habitable, I think it's pretty obvious who the culprit is. So here I am, sitting under my kotatsu with my Ukranian geese-down comforter wrapped around about head and shoulders in a quite frankly pretty ghetto effort to keep my individual blood cells from crystalizing into tiny snowflakes while my basically brand-new heater sits in the corner stone-cold and inactive. This does not bode well for the next few months. And this despite the fact that I just got back from HOKKAIDO, the northernmost and by far coldest island of Japan; I mean you'd think I'd be used to it by now. I like to think I have it bad here, temperature-wise, but it ain't nothin' compared to Hokkaido. The second day I was there the heavens dumped no less than FOUR FEET of snow on us in a single morning, which should tell you something of the general climate up there. I mean, my toesies get a wee bit cold here in Nagano but up in Hokkaido it literally stung, sharply, whenever I'd venture onto the wood floor of my friend's home sockless. Up there, if you leave your house for more than a few days you'd better shut all your water off or else it will freeze and burst all the piping in your house. It's actually fairly amazing what a wide variety of weather one can find in Japan at any given time of year. It's really a fairly small country but I mean, today I came from Hokkaido, which for all intents and purposes should only be inhabited by elves and Bumbles, via Tokyo, where it was practically spring, back here to Nagano, which has relatively normal, East Coast USA weather. Essentially due to all my climate-hopping today my body is sitting here wondering whether it's supposed to be cold. Watching my breath float about in the air fills me in on THAT situation.
Well then, I suppose I'd better start getting ready for work tomorrow. It's honestly pretty weird wrapping my mind around the thought of going back to teaching after these past few glorious weeks off, but I guess I'd better snap to it quick else these kids are gonna eat me alive. My New Year's resolutions include not getting taken in for child abuse charges so I guess I'd better learn to take better, less beatdown-centric, control of these kids, particularly if I'm gonna be staying here another year. Of course my resolutions also include getting my various classroom fulls of small Japanese children to sing the Happy Days theme song under the thin pretense of learning the names of the days of the week, fully aware that no one else in the classroom would get the joke. That doesn't mean I'm planning that for tomorrow, either; no no no, I'm strolling in and winging it tomorrow, figuring I'll teach 'em whatever happens to come to mind, simply because well, it's a lot easier than preparing! Besides, if I can prove to myself that I can get through a day of classes just by winging it one day, that might mean I can get through ALL of my classes like that, thus rendering "preparation" as a strictly abstract concept outside of hemmoroid cream.
So yeah, I guess you could say: New year or not, some things just never change.
A harsh lesson I learned the other day is that even small Japanese towns-that-might-actually-be-a-cities are not safe from the villanous reach of American big business. It all began when I was strolling through the supermarket next door as I always do, looking for discounted spring rolls and the like, when I noticed something odd about a poster on the wall. It was an advertisement for the store's new "Rollback" price campaign. This normally wouldn't strike me as odd, since cumbersome English phrases are of course often used in advertising over here. Except there something about the font -- something about the color, and the way "Rollback" was written -- that seemed very familiar; I swore I'd seen it before. I also noticed that name of the store, Seiyuu, had been rendered with the kanji for "Western" and "Friend," which I don't believe it normally is. Something about the poster was nagging at the edges of my brain, but I couldn't figure out what it was, so I paid my 100 yen for 3 2-packs of Dole fruit cups and went on my merry way, blissfully unaware of the connection that would soon be made.
I had of course forgotten all about this when I got into the car of the teacher who had picked me up for school the next day -- and yes, this one school actually picks me up practically at my door, and yes, I am aware of the irony of being 22 and still being driven to school -- so I didn't make the connection when, in an effort to make casual conversation, this teacher actually delivered unto me some rather disturbing news. It turns out that while I was away on my vacation, the decision was made that the supermarket next door, my beloved Seiyuu, important to my life for both its twice-weekly 100-yen sales and its usefulness as a shortcut from my apartment to the train station, will close its doors at the end of February. And I can say with all seriousness that I became very depressed about this for the remainder of the day. In some of my classes I even brought it up in front of my students, telling them how much it troubled me. I conveyed my worry in an overly melodramatic manner that was of course superficially facetious, but on the inside, this was actually how I really felt. I was distraught
When I got off work, I headed directly to the Seiyuu and inquired about the rumors to the elderly man who with his wife runs the toy shop in the same building as Seiyuu; I frequently talk with them on my many trips through the building. He confirmed that unfortunately, the Seiyuu was indeed closing, but perhaps more surprising than that as the reason it was closing:
My Seiyuu had been bought by Wal-Mart.
It was then, of course, that I realized just where I had seen that cheesy "Rollback" logo before. That stupid smiley-face in place of the "o" now seemed to be laughing right at me in some kind of dimly evil fashion. Naturally Wal-Mart hadn't bought only MY Seiyuu, but every one in Japan and, in their infinite corporate wisdom, went through the profit reports of every unit of their new acquisition with a fine-tooth comb and decided that my Seiyuu, among apparently many others, was to be shut down. My Seiyuu, which is very important to me and many other people in the area who cannot conveniently get to the larger supermarkets miles away, has been killed, of all things, by Wal-Mart. I can't help but feel this is something like the commercial equivalent of the Darwin awards.
I realize I must be coming across as awfully melodramatic, but I don't think you can fully appreciate how sad this is unless you've seen my adopted town, or else ever lived in an area that is slowly dying due to the growth of bigger businesses further down the train track. Yes, I've only lived here six months, but it's pretty obvious to anyone who's seen this area what's going on economically, and why. My town is apparently attracting a lot less traffic than it reportedly used to, due to the mammoth growth of the neighboring city of Sakudaira, which was used as a conduit between Nagano city and Tokyo when the Winter Olympics were held here, and has been rapidly developing ever since. Now, I confess I love Sakudaira; I'll go the rather Western-ish mall there whenever I'm feeling a bit homesick, or just want to kill some time, or um, want to eat some KFC. It offers the most modern conveniences of all the cities around here, and with its bullet train connection, serves as my connection to even larger areas when the need arises. However, I have since realized that Sakudaira's economic success comes at the direct expense of my own town.
Prior to the Olympics, according to various people I've talked to, my town was always full of consumers crammed into the dozens of stores that were in the shopping strips here; but now, when you look at my city even on a weekend afternoon, you'll see no more than a handful of people milling about the shopping streets that now consist of about 90% abandoned space. There's this one building, Pallas, that ever since the first time I ventured into it, never fails to depress me anytime I go anywhere near it. It's this big, fat, three-story building that I initially assumed would be full of stores, but when I actually went into it, I found myself in a moldy, dusty, graying building with nothing to offer but three small stores and lots of roped-off escalators. Enter this building and I promise you will immediately understand why a significant slump in the economy is referred to as a "depression." What was once bustling has now taken on the heart-wrenching appearance of a run-down carnival. This in a nutshell is what is happening to my town; my Seiyuu is merely the latest victim.
I have my own selfish, childish reasons for lamenting the loss of my Seiyuu as well, of course. For one, having a supermarket right next door makes my daily life considerably comfier whenever I realize it's dinnertime and I in fact have nothing in my cupboard but a can of bees, or even when I remember at inconvenient times that I forgot to buy more toilet paper. The presence of the Seiyuu right next door is a large part of what makes my location so damn cushy -- I've got the supermarket/department store next door, with the train station a stone's throw from that, and alleys full of fun small bars a bit in the other direction. If I wanted to, I'd never really even need to go outside of a 1-mile radius to survive. I'd go crazy of course, but I could still survive. But without Seiyuu, my situation looks far less sweet. Never mind the fact that without it, I quite frankly have no idea WHERE I'm supposed to buy groceries now. I have no car, and there's only so much I can carry with me on a the 30-40 minute walk back from the next nearest grocery store. More than that though, as the Seiyuu IS literally my next-door neighbor, it's become almost like a friend to me, if I may anthropomorphize it so, and as such I'm pretty damn sad to see it go.
In a larger sense however, I suppose I just don't like what this means for other stores in my town; for instance, the toy shop run by my friends that I mentioned. Luckily my friends' shop is a separate entity from Seiyuu, so they're okay for now, but according to the husband of the pair, he honestly is not sure for how long. When I remarked that it seemed strange that the Seiyuu is closing since I often see so many people in it, he actually laughed right in my face. He didn't do this to be rude, he just honestly found it preposterous. Only two years ago, he told me, the amount of customers was several times what it is now, and thus I believe he interpreted my honest remark as some rather crass humor. He did reassure me that his own store is indeed fine for the moment, but mentioned that he has been looking into new locations for a while, because "not many people around here have the time and money to spend on toys and games anymore." Of course, it's entirely possible he was just trying to manipulate me into buying a video game or something, but I can't help thinking that maybe in another year or so, he and his wife may be gone as well.
So yeah, I know I'm being overly dramatic and uncharacteristically sentimental, especially seeing as I've only been a part of this town for like half a year yet. But my town is something like one big Mom 'n' Pop store, an "everystore" that managed to do quite well for itself for a while, but in the end was doomed to slowly bleed to death in the shadow of big, faceless businesses. This is apparently the fate of all businesses that are not corporations, and you'll pardon me if I find that more than a little depressing. I'll joke now that I'm just pissed Wal-Mart -- WAL-MART, of all things -- is what is responsible for causing me and my neighborhood such terrible inconvenience, but in reality, I honestly feel as though I've lost, in a very literal sense, a friend and neighbor. And simply put, I just don't like it one bit.
Well, tomorrow's the big day, and I'm kinda nervous. Tomorrow, you see, I have an office day, which I of course would normally be excited about in my usual gleefully slug-like fashion. However, tomorrow's office day is a little different from the all the previous ones, because tomorrow, I have to decide whether or not I am recontracting for a second year of JET. Either way, by the time I leave work tomorrow I will have signed my name to a little piece of paper that will decide my life for not only the next year and a half. I'm a little nervous, or could you tell that?
It's not really so much that I'm nervous about deciding. For the past month I've been thinking long and hard about this, talking to various people, trusted and untrusted; till finally the various voices in my head seem to be nearly unanimously for me signing on for a second year. So I have pretty much made up my mind, but I'm nervous about actually putting pen to paper and making it official. This is why part of me is glad tomorrow's the day, because the sooner I just go ahead and sign, the less time I have to chicken out. Every responsible bone in my body is telling me that another year of JET is the best possible thing for me, while the remaining dregs are constantly reminding me how nice it would be just to lay on the couch eating an Arby's Beef 'n Cheddar while watching Seinfeld. I have to do this while I'm still energetic about my situation; the more time I'm given, the more comfortable that couch looks, the funnier that show seems, and the tastier that sandwich appears.
And that's just it, really: every reason I can come up with for going back to America is one that I feel is ultimately destructive to my character. That is to say, they're all BAD reasons. Sure, everyday life would be much easier, I wouldn't have to piss myself every time I want to communicate with someone, and I could eat all my favorite junk foods (Dunkin' Donuts, where art thou?), watch all my favorite shows, and see movies in the theatre for less than $16 a pop. And yes, I sometimes miss my friends and family back home, but it's not like this is the 20 years ago or something, where the only means of communication with people back home would be the sporadic letter or postcard. Even if I was back in the States I'd probably be able to communicate with them only marginally more; besides, I feel like it would be way to easy just to fall into old routines and never move forward, weighed down too much by overwhelming comfort. And well, I miss my dog, just because it's not like I can IM with HIM.
On the flip side, here in Japan, just by being here I'm working on the closest thing to a job skill I have, speaking Japanese. Since no one in this town speaks any frickin' English, my Japanese has improved tenfold since coming here, and I really feel like given another year I could really approach fluency. So yeah, it was pretty hard at first, but I can't say it hasn't gotten easier, and there's no reason it wouldn't continue to do so.
Other than that, however, by being with JET, I'm making a steady amount of money that'll help me do whatever it is I want to do when I DO get back to America. I think everyone is too sensitive about many things, including finance, so I'll just tell you the numbers specifically: if I keep up this pace, by the time I return to America after 2 years I should be bringing $20,000 with me, with $5000 more in pension. Now maybe I'm just young, but that is a LOT of money, and certainly a hell of a fuckload more than I could likely be getting in America, where I would likely be unemployed. I'm not exactly expecting a financially stable situation when I get back to the States, so JET provides me the means for a nice little cushion while I figure out what the hell I'm supposed to with the rest of my life. Or, y'know, I could just buy a whole lot of weed.
Other reasons JET is good: it makes me more independent, I love my town (despite the loss of the Seiyu), it's still good "decompression" from college, everyone here is super-nice, I'm under the umbrella of a government job in case anything happens, I get to tutor, and, this will sound cheesy, I do think I'm making somewhat of a difference here. When I first got here I thought I would be some kind of overwhelmingly positive influence on every young person I met, and when that didn't happen I got kinda depressed. Since then, I've scaled back my expectations to be much more realistic, and realized that in six months I think I have made a difference in at least a few people's lives. No, I don't reach everybody, in fact the people on whom I really think I have made an impression can be counted on my fingers. But every now and then, I'll meet kids whose faces literally light up when they see me. I have students in my junior high who love to just stop by and chat, or even ask for advice. Some of my special students have actually begun crying and wrap their arms around me when it's time for me to go. Dr. Suzuki really feels like he's ready to take his big test in New Jersey in a few weeks. And over the past four months, I've been able to watch Yuka, the high school girl I tutor, go from being too nervous to even look at me, to being able to maintain an hour-long English conversation, laughing and smiling for much of the way. Yeah, talking like this makes me want to punch myself in the junk, so I'll let you draw your own conclusions on how worthwhile I feel this all makes it.
Of course, it's not as if everything is all wine and roses here (I'm not THAT deluded). My main complaint here is...the job. It's rough, I'll say that. Much of my time at work is spent trying desperately to maintain the attention of 30 hyperactive kids; when the students get out of hand, the real teachers often just leave me to my own devices to reign them in, in a language that is not my first. Quite frankly, I feel quite taken for granted in that department: a)Discipline is NOT part of my job, it says so, in bold print, in my job description, and b)Japanese language ability, similarly, is not a requirement, not even a consideration, in the JET application process, yet everyone around here seems to almost EXPECT it of me. But the JET powers-that-be researched me, discovered I've studied the language, and stuck me in 8 schools that contain zero English-speaking staff members. Not to toot my own horn here, but if someone who didn't know the language how to do my job, he or she would be, quite frankly and pardon my French, FUCKED. As would every teacher and student I work with, not to mention my Board of Education itself. There is NOTHING in my contract requiring me to speak Japanese yet this is what I speak 80% of the time; if I wanted to, I could simply decide to stop speaking Japanese at my schools and they would have to accomodate me. Quite frankly, I feel taken advantage of, taken for granted, and it's not that I'm asking for compensation or even appreciation, but you can bet your pretty little ass I'm using this as a bargaining chip tomorrow. That's something I just realized the other day: I have LEVERAGE in this situation. My BOE only wants a JET for one more year, so if I leave, it's huge trouble for them; they need to go through the whole reapplication process again to find someone who speaks Japanese and will agree to stay only one year. For just a one-year contract that's an awful lot of hassle, and I, and they all, know it. So if they want me to stay on, you can be damn sure they're accomodating ME, and not the other way around. Yes, I pretty much have my mind made up to stay here regardless but THEY don't know that. Tomorrow at my contract signing, I play HARDBALL.
...okay, so maybe it'll be more like slightly-less-passive-ball. It's not like I'm going in tomorrow and demanding higher pay and more vacation, plus my own pony (they couldn't do any of that stuff, nor would I ever ask it). I'm just going to see if maybe I could teach at slightly less elementary schools (where I teach 5 periods a day by myself, in Japanese), and slightly more junior highs (where I am an assistant, speaking only English), to balance out the stress levels. I really don't think this is too much to ask, especially since I do know they're pretty keen on having me stay on. So even though my mind is pretty much made up, barring any last-minute panic attacks, I'm gonna go in there tomorrow and pretend to be pretty damn wishy washy: "Well, you know, I really WANT to stay, but..." and see what they're willing to offer me.
And, if I'm feeling particularly plucky, I'm going to institute a policy that states that, the exact instant I feel a tiny pair of fingers wriggling around in my butt, I get to go home. That would basically translate to 15 more days of vacation a month; which might be, of course, worth it.
Well, contract signed. I talked with my supervisor for about half an hour, expressing my various concerns (and demands), and he listened intently and promised me changes could be made. So I guess we'll see. Still, I can't help but think he was just humoring me to get me to sign the contract. Again, I guess we'll see. ...someone just tell me, did I just make a big mistake?
In other news of life-threatening importance, the other day I updated the photos page with pictures of my recent vacation in Hokkaido, but forgot to mention it. Anyway, go, look, be merry.
No, really. Have I made a big mistake? It's not too late to tear up the contract, you know...
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Now, I promised myself I'd do actual work during my office day today since I actually have a fair amount of it to get to for once, but then I got a pop-up ad for Classmates.com and I just couldn't resist. Now, I want to get back in touch with people from high school about as much as I want to replace my bicycle seat with a pitchfork, but I could not fight the uncontrollable, primal urge inherently present in man to verify that he indeed ended up better than most of his classmates. Unfortunately, it turns out Classmates.com is little more than a scam to make a quick buck off gullible nostalgic people, as I got about as far as entering my new married name (Galvin Botzlowsky) before it asked me to pay $3 a month to do literally anything else on the site. Not willing to cough up even that amount of scratch for people I don't really want to get in touch with, I instead clicked on the "See photos of singles in your area!" link, hoping to find people I know that I could mock THERE, and found myself on Match.com. I believe the proper expression here would be "Jackpot".
Okay, so the question, cruel as it may be, must be asked: Who on earth is sad enough to sign up for an internet matchmaking service? Personal ads in general are kind of a catch-22 in that the only people that would actually seriously answer them are the kind of freaks you're trying to avoid in the first place;the internet only intensifies this since generally an overall nerdy activity can only be made nerdier by adding the word "online" to it. Actually, it's not so much people signing up for these services that mystify me -- I'm sure I've signed up for one sometime just for a lark, and I KNOW Terry McMahon still routinely answers inquiries from Crush.com with a glimmer of hope in his dimming eyes -- it's how these people still manage to come across as entirely socially inept even when a medium such as the internet affords them the ability to express and present themselves however they choose.
Okay, I'm probably going to hell for this, but come on -- I sympathize with social ineptness, believe you me -- but are you telling me there exists a person who actually believes it will help him with the ladies by referring to himself as famed awful WWE professional wrestler The Big Show? Yessir, nothing lures in the chicks like public confessions of interest in professional wrestling; particularly likening one's self to an allegeldy 500 pound member of such profession. Then there's this pretty-attractive (I'm picking on personalities here, remember) single mom looking for a nice, responsible, financially secure man, and this I have absolutely no problem with. But how does she present herself to eligible internet men of that description? "Nurse Seeking Her 'Doctor'". Oh, that's just glorious; heaven knows the best way to attract nice, responsible men to help with the upbringing of your infant child is to LURE THEM IN WITH SUGGESTIONS OF FETISHISTIC MEDICAL IMAGERY. Why not "Precocious Schoolgirl Seeking 'Older Businessman'" or "Buxom Provacatively Dressed Female Driver Looking for 'Highway Patrolman To Let Me Get Out of a Parking Ticket Just This Once'"?
And finally, and I am most certainly going to Hell for this one -- I indeed found someone who went to my high school on here. I wouldn't even bother posting this since it's not like any of you know him, but last summer he stopped his car in the middle of the street just to swear at me and then sped off (I guess I was higher up on the nerd food chain in high school, hence his bitterness), so consider this my revenge: Yessir, an opening line like "I AM THE WIZARD OF MAGICLAND!!!" is a sure-fire way to really bring in the babes.
Okay, so I am feeling a bit guilty about this, really, although not enough to actually delete this entry, as I feel that would be dishonest. That also didn't stop me from creating my own profile on match.com, under the handle "lonelywithherpes." Waiting for that special someone...
"I [read your journals] because you call japanese schoolchildren "fuckers," and damn it, if they tend to act like fuckers, it's what I want to hear." ~reader mail I got today from someone called "EvilLunch"
Damn skippy I do. Because damn skippy, they do.
Hello and welcome to another edition of the random PCP-induced ramblings I like to refer to as not-a-blog. Fair warning, this is gonna be one of those "two hours before I normally go to sleep with nothing else to do" entries, i.e., more boring and haphazardly-structured than usual, so bear with me as I pinball around topics.
Yes, shut up Carl, I know the match.com links don't work. Turns out they were only temporary urls for my login name only. Alas, probably just as well, I was feeling a mite guilty anyway. Anyway, you get the point, they're losers, blah blah blah.
I started yet another tutoring job last week, this time with a friend of Dr. Suzuki, Dr. Iuchi, who needs to brush up but quick for a presentation he needs to give in Hawaii in February. Poor guy, I get the feeling this is the first time he's had to speak English since about high school. The first lesson I had with him he was literally SHAKING; I had to take things off the table because they kept rattling. Also, whereas with Doc Suzuki I usually find myself in humorous situations portraying vaginitis patients or something, this new gig revolves entirely around one case, where a construction worker was doused in hot asphalt when a hose accidentally burst. The best part was when he showed me pictures of the patient's face, which looked like a bumpy blacktop with eyes, a nose, and a mouth peeking out. I guess I can't count on all my various tutoring jobs to be ha-ha material but this is just GROTESQUE. I feel faint if given even a marginally nasty papercut; the mere word "surgery" gives me mental images of doctors ripping open patients' ribcages like one would a Christmas turkey and makes my sternum feel all tingly and weird. So just imagine how I reacted to pictures such as THESE (read: wussily). The rest of the presentation pertains to the various rates at which ointments such as butter, salad oil, and Neosporin are able to dissolve asphalt. Never mind that my mental images of an asphalt-encased man are not at all improved by adding liberal slatherings of butter to the picture; the presentation involves lots of big words like "fluorescence," "petrolatum," "n-hexane," and "Celsius," which means science, which means boring. Somehow, after sleeping through god knows how many science classes as a student, I've now ended up teaching about it -- only this time I actually have to pay attention, since I'm now on the other side. Woefully ironic moments such as these are becoming somewhat of a trademark of my life here.
I'm not sure if I've ever complained about this particular aspect of my job here yet, but part of the reason elementary schools can be such a nightmare is that not only do I have to teach screaming children for 5 periods a day, I also have to eat lunch with them, too. Now of course this is supposed to be nice gesture wherein the bright-eyed little boys and girls get to socialize with their interesting-by-default teacher in a more casual setting, and part of me, the part which contains the withering remains of my social conscience in a dank and dismal dungeon, is happy to do it. However, what this is also means is that instead of getting a break period in which I may enjoy a nice and quiet meal, I get to be the Human Sideshow while I eat, as well. Today's lunch was spent with hyperactive 1st graders who all decided that they wanted to know what their names are in English despite my repeated explanations that names don't change when put into English. Of course, that didn't stop them from asking me one by one. Then after they exhausted that little line of questioning they decided that they needed to learn EVERY SINGLE WORD in the English language right then and there at lunch; after telling them the English for words like "book," "cover," "persimmon," and "Chinese Zodiac," I eventually just stopped listening and answered the remaining 7,000 or so vocabulary questions with whatever random words came to MY mind: "Chow-sensei, what's _____ in English?" "Oh, uh, mailbox." "What's ____?" "Uh, chalkboard." "What about _______?" "Fluorescent petrolatum hexane." "How about _____?" "Oh, that's easy; it's FOR GOD'S SAKE YOU LITTLE MONSTERS LEAVE ME ALONE FOR JUST 2 MINUTES SO I CAN EAT MY GODDAMN CURRY RICE IN PEACE" At one point I was half-assedly fielding these various questions while one kid was giving me a backrub, another was trying to fit his hat on my head, another was trying to tickle my armpit, another decided he needed a piggy-back ride right then and there, and about three others were trying desperately to remove my glasses because apparently spectacles are some amazing oddity of the future that I'M SURE AT LEAST HALF OF THEIR PARENTS DON'T HAPPEN TO WEAR
On the bright side, however, I think I'm getting a little better about projecting authority. I didn't have any real problems in actual class today. At one point kids were starting to hang off of me mid-class as they often do, but instead of getting rid of them with my usual method (shoving them so hard they slide 10 feet across the room, no exaggeration), I just said "Let go. Now." and they actually DID. Huh. Maybe this teacher thing might work out after all. Well, hell, for the next 18 months, I don't really have a choice.
I could go on and on about my various shortcomings as a teacher, in fact I often do, but not today, because today, well, I hit one out of the fucking PARK. Actually, forgot the goddamn park; I hit the ball so goddamn hard that by the time it broke orbit and landed on the surface of a planet in some distant solar system it got amnesia and introduced itself to the alien natives as a Hare Krishna. It doesn't even remember the goddamn park; it's selling Venusian Moon-flowers at some outer-space airport near Takron-Galtos; THAT'S how how hard I hit it. And it feels good, so goddamn good I'm indulging myself in horribly nerdy metaphor. Because by all accounts, today should have sucked.
Since the Japanese school year ends in March, I'll soon by saying good-bye (GUDDO-BAI!!!) to the 9th graders at Yachiho Junior High. For today, however, I helped greet next year's incoming freshman -- current 6th graders at the local elementary school. Now, don't ask me why I, of all people, was handed the responsibility of filling 3/4 of the hour-long welcoming ceremony. I've a sneaking suspicion that they quite simply couldn't con of any of the regular teachers to do it, so sometime during the 3-5 days a week I'm not there they held some farcically democratic meeting and thus railroaded me into candidacy completely unopposed. Not only that, they dealt with the little scheduling hiccup of me already having to go to Nozawa elementary school today by persuading them to let me out right after lunch so I could haul ass to Yachiho to take part in a ceremony in which I both desperately wanted nothing to do with and by all rights should have nothing to do with. And, it snowed again last night, thus putting my bike was out of commission, meaning I'd have to trudge an hour through the snow on foot to get to Nozawa in the morning, only to trudge another hour back to the train station right after lunch. So, in short, last night was one of those nights where I don't want to go to sleep because of the high probability of actually waking up in the morning, as well.
The situation didn't look much better when I got to Yachiho today, either. The 6th graders trudged in wearing the standard, apathetic, spoiled, waa-my-mom-hasn't-bought-me-Pokemon-yet facial expression that often characterizes kids their age; also it did not help that I had a crack team of idiots for assistants -- 7th graders who were thoroughly convinced that I a) know very little Japanese, and b) am a helpless idiot. I should clarify that their way of thinking is not meant in any sort of malicious way, nor did it come about completely unintentionally on my part. Since JH kids should theoretically -- theoretically -- be able to hold simple English conversations, I almost never use Japanese at my JH, and NEVER in the classroom. Hence I can't blame them for thinking I know no Japanese, nor for making the usual Japanese-grade-school leap of logic that automatically equates lack of Japanese fluency with drooling idiocy. I actually love my JH kids, particularly the 7th graders, who are crazy and funny and hyper as all git-out. However, I saw none of that today as they were pissing their shiny little turquoise pants over the thought of delivering their 30-second speeches to their soon-to-be subordinates, and seemed uncharacteristically concerned about my inadequate explanation of Simon Says in the outline I gave them last week ("Simon??!! Who's Simon??!"). Things only got worse when the actual teacher opened things up with a 10-minute, heavy-handed speech about duty and responsibility, delivered in the same fanatically stern tone that is normally reserved for describing the futility of your friends' pitiful efforts on the forest moon of Endor. So there I was, soaking in the collective urine of 5 hypeventilating 7th-grade "assistants," while Emperor fucking Palpatine up there warmed up the audience.
By the time it finally became my turn to go up there, it really did not look good. Half the 6th graders looked ready to kill themselves, and the other half looked ready to quit school and join motorcycle gangs. My so-called assistants, trembling nervously on the side, were probably secretly hoping I would instruct them to shit their pants just so they could claim they'd followed orderss. The teacher who was manning the video camera, who never speaks to me, actually took time to do so right before I went up, just to remind me that he was taping and everyone in the school would see it. And Emperor Palpatine was sitting on his throne in the background, ready to shoot lightning bolts out of his fingertips should I step even slightly out of line. The nightmare was truly coming together, and I opened my mouth, squeaked out a "hello," and got ready just to get things over with.
Now, I'm not exactly sure just what happened to me then, but somehow, against all odds, I managed to have the. absolute. BEST lesson I have ever taught in my six months as a teacher, by FAR. I launched into the most lucid, fluid Japanese I've probably ever spoken since getting here. My English was phrased perfectly, nearly completely free of difficult vocabulary and complicated grammar patterns. My gestures and body language were so spot-on expressive that they hit all the few marks that my spoken words did not. I literally saw the room come alive before my goddamn eyes. I had the entire room in the palm of my hand, and they looked damn thrilled to be there. I COMMANDED the room's attention with charisma, showmanship, wit, and presence; I practically oozed authority; my mere manner asked for, nay, DEMANDED respect, and actually GOT it. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. For forty-three minutes, I was actually a teacher. By the time I was through, literally the whole room was applauding; I had changed the atmosphere so incredibly much that when Emperor Palpatine got back up there to finish things up, he actually started to crack JOKES. When I went back to the teachers' room afterwards, I overheard the camerman poking fun at him for "hastily adding jokes to his script only after seeing the kids would laugh."
But you know what the best part was? The look on the faces of my 7th grade "assistants" as they witnessed someone who they thought barely even knew the language launch into a cohesive 40-minute class conducted primarily in Japanese. Ten minutes into my presentation, I glanced them out of the corner of my eye and saw that their jaws were LITERALLY gaping open. I honestly think some of them felt I had deceived them. When I joined them back on the side after I was done, they were absolutely speechless except for one girl who let the word "awesome" escape from her lips. None of them had anything to say, not even the chubby kid who had mocked my Japanese just days earlier. I had completely invalidated all criticisms and concerns that they had of me just simply by being so goddamn good.
Don't get the wrong idea. I know that kids have short memories, and soon enough they will go back to thinking I'm an idiot. I know that today really was just a rare moment of inspiration, a rare instance of everything just happening to come together perfectly, and not the norm. But that's okay. Because I also know that today, for forty-three all-too-short minutes, I was a teaching GOD. Monday, I suspect, will bring your regularly scheduled bitching and moaning, so rest easy. However, the image of my 7th-graders standing there wide-eyed and slack-jawed as all their negative preconceptions of me crumbled into dust, is one that I think, will stay etched in the corner of my retina for a long time to come.
You've probably noticed a few changes have gone on around here. If you tried to reach this site yesterday, you weren't able to, because I was busy moving from www.geocities.com/whatever/someotherstuff/69/blahblahblah to my own mother-f'in domain, the appropriately-named KINDOFCRAP.COM!!! That's right, I finally bit the bullet and did it. If you go to Engrish.com right now, you'll see the featured piece is this site's namesake. The webmaster of that page started telling me how people might start stealing the image now, thus making me paranoid that someone ELSE might register kindofcrap.com. Because, y'know, it must be in high demand. Well, I was gonna do it sometime ANYWAY, this just happened to push me over the edge.
To celebrate the birth of KindOfCrap.com, I have decided to...uh...well, the front page is a different (some would say, uglier) color. And uh, the Engrish moved to its own sub-section. And uh, wooo, I'm just gonna go ahead and claim this is my 100th journal entry, woooo, yeah, yippee fuck. Oh, what the hell do you want from me here? My domain name is www.kindofcrap.com! Isn't that ENOUGH??!! But seriously, this site should no longer have bandwidth problems, meaning it won't frickin' crash every week, and also, I can put up more pictures, and possibly, if I find the means, videos as well. I'll get to all that in time, I'm sure. Right now I'm just basking in the glow of having my own domain, and having the accompanying address crapmaster@kindofcrap.com.
On the negative side of things, I've lost all my hits prior to the move. Man, I had about 40,000 hits between all the pages, too. There goes my daily ego boost. Alas, I've moved on...so go on, enjoy yourself, at KindofCrap.com!
And no, that did not intentionally rhyme.
The school I'm at right now has all these banners that the PTA (yes, there's a PTA in Japan -- motto: "No porno comics for our kids until they're old enough to breathe") emblazoned with positive slogans like "I won't tease anyone! Let's all be friends!" and "Answering questions makes me feel good." It's probably pointing out the obvious but does anyone think these banners actually serve any real purpose other than letting the PTA think it's anything but the deluded circle jerk that it is? Surely the Fat Kid won't stop beating up the Skinny Kid for his ramen money just because he spotted some banner saying "Bullying shames me"? If the PTA really wanted to have an effect they need to drop this touchy-feely, impractically optimistic bullshit and get some REAL slogans. Something like "I shall heretofore halt my bratty ways else Chow-sensei will clothesline me through a pane-glass window." Or how about "Hey fuckhead, don't be a dickhead or I'll write 'BITCH' in marker on your forehead"? Tell me that doesn't have a certain ring to it.
Teaching has made me a huge proponent of the Empty Threat; sure, I know I won't really send a kid pieces of his cat in the mail, but THEY don't have to know that.
Truthfully I am only making an update right now for the sheer thrill of iconoclastic badassedness that is updating a web journal at work. The way I see it it's quickly become the white collar goof-of-at-work method of choice, and I am pleased to partake in this growing part of American counterculture even half a world away. Quite frankly it wouldn't surprise me if sometime soon, someone got the bright idea of making a horrifyingly bad romantic comedy based around the concept, possibly starring Ben Affleck and/or Meg Ryan. They could call it Blog in the Name of Love or something. Lord knows some of the e-mails I've received recently could serve as source material (Not that that means you should stop sending them, WyldGrrl17@aol.com).
Speaking of folk writing web journals on paid time, Chas Budnick, longtime friend/former running joke before usurper Terry McMahon, has recently begun keeping his own web journal, which can be found here. I read it, dammit, thus so should you, even though I will basically never forgive Chas for having voluntarily seen <>Blue Crush. Really, what's with that?
The time has come to tell you of my favorite school: Komoro Yogo Gakko, or the "Special School". This is a school where I have never -- NEVER -- had a bad day or even a bad 10 minutes. Every time I go to this school I am actually glad to be teaching. Unlike most of my other schools, which always include at least a few funeral-faced teachers among the staff, at the Special School, EVERY teacher is just about the friendliest, happiest person on earth. It's no secret why, either: because the students LOVE them. Sometimes I think the only thing actually wrong with these kids is that they lack the ability to be assholes. If you ask me, the greater a person's mental faculties, the larger the chance he'll start acting like a jerk-ass.
Every time I go to this school I am greeted with a sea of happy, smiling, albeit sometimes drooling, faces, belonging to students who are eager to learn and just gosh-darn happy to meet a new person, particularly one from a foreign country. And seeing them happy and innocent, usually makes me think about how crappy the real world is, and it just breaks my goddamn heart. It kinda brings out the parental instincts in me: the first time I taught at this school, I wanted nothing more than to take all the students home with me so I could cook for them, clean for them, and just generally try to keep them happy. Also we would live in a shoe, but I'm not really sure why that became part of the vision.
I admit, I had reservations about the school at first. For one thing, the first day I taught there I spent the entire morning making pottery with the kids, which then were reportedly to be sold at local crafts stores for pennies a piece. The next time, I accompanied the students to the soy bean fields, where we spent the entire morning harvesting. And today, I spent the morning in the woodshop, as again, the students spent over two hours making simple wooden toys and trinkets to be sold at local stores. Couple this with the fact that, whenever one of the students would begin lagging behind, say, because he decided it to be a better use of his time to sit there as his body violently displayed symptoms of his disability, one of the teachers would sternly scold the student for not working at full capacity. So I kind of put 2 and 2 together and thought, "Hmm...workers of minimal mental capacity...an inordinate amount of time spent on craftwork...their work sold, in bulk and uncredited, for dirt cheap at generic chain stores...wait a minute!" and began thinking I had stumbled into some sort of secret retarded sweatshop. Until I realized that the point of all the menial labor was to teach them actual job skills, skills they could actually potentially hone quite greatly, handicap or no handicap. And that just made me love the school more, so much so that I actually bought a few mishappen pots and crooked toys, and watched as their faces lit up.
Probably my only other bad experience was again the first time I was there. This school has, let's just say, a rather flexible curriculum. Meaning, the students who are ready, and, quite literally, able to learn, will sit there quite attentively, while the ones who are physically or mentally incapable are simply left to do whatever they like. For instance, as I was teaching the really-quite-bright 16 year-olds, one of them, a severely diseased boy named Ken, simply lay writhing on the floor in the back of the room reading maps. The problem came at cleaning time: obviously, Ken could not be trusted to handle a rag, so someone had to keep him diverted while everyone else cleaned. And well, seeing as I never participate in cleaning, the task fell to me. I had no problem with this of course, even as he wrapped his arms around me attached himself to my back, while flakes from his many scabs attached themselves to my shirt. The problem came when, 10 minutes later, after he had dragged me around the whole school, he decided for whatever reason that he desperately needed to jump in the bath. And no matter how much I begged, no matter how much I ordered, no matter how much I pulled on the arm of this shrieking, spasming, scabby kid, I simply could not divert him from his goal. Finally as he was about two steps from dragging me into the large Japanese-style bath with him, thankfully a teacher showed up and was able to calm Ken down. This counts as my sole problematic experience at this school, and even given that, at least it's something that was reasonably funny when thinking about it afterwards.
Another thing that baffled me about the school for a while was that some of the students seemed a little TOO bright. The school features a pretty wide variety of handicaps -- some of them are confined to wheelchairs wearing almost painfully comedic-looking orange helmets, literally unable to do much more than drool, while some are merely a bit slow, and act 12 when they should be 17 or something. However, there are some students that laugh at and get all my jokes, are able to answer just about any question I throw at them, and outside of class, act exactly like every other junior high student I've taught at my other schools. For a while I figured they had just really blossomed, but it turns out that about 1/5 of the students at the Special School have nothing wrong with them physically, mentally, or even, medically speaking, psychologically. It turns out that some of the students are in fact completely 'normal', and attend the Special School not because of any birth defect but because they simply do not WANT to go to regular school, either because they were the constant target of cruel bullying or elsewise just did not fit into the system. Yet, as I watch them interact with the other students, I detect no signs of shame for having to go to a "Special" school, nor any notion of superiority over the rest of the students. Rather, they honestly treat them as 100% equals, or, failing that, act like older siblings to their disadvantaged colleagues. And they in general, it must be said, really just look like they are, pardon my French, enjoying the fuck out of their current school environment, and I can't blame them. As someone who often witnesses first-hand the idiotic cruelties of children, I can well understand why they prefer their current learning environment. Because were it up to me, I'd be there all the time myself.
Yep. Those goofy little bastards are just about the best thing I've got going in this crazy world.
Man. It seems like the little ones grow up and leave the nest so fast these days. Yep, I just had my last lesson with Dr. Suzuki, who, in just a few days, will be on his way to America, coincidentally enough, right by where I went to college, to take his English-language licensing exam for which I've been helping him to prepare for nearly the entire last half year. Thinking about it today, as I realized that during the lesson I was speaking entirely as I normally do -- and not at a slowed pace, with simplified vocabulary and grammar patterns, as I often do during tutoring -- I realized just how much the good doctor has improved over the last six months. I do have full confidence he will pass his exam, although of course I will be anxious to hear the results in a couple months. For the way I see it, it's as much a measure of his ability as it is mine. But dammit, I am going to miss pretending I have a diseased vagina practically every Thursday night.
Actually, something I've noticed lately is that I've definitely started to live vicariously through the students I tutor. Since my official job has me teaching different sets of 20-30 kids just about every single day, I never really get a chance to see much improvement or progress in them; probably, quite frankly, because I never get any time to actually promote any in them. The only thing that could feasibly even be considered "knowledge" that I impart upon my regular students is derived from my regular demonstrations of my vast array of wrestling maneuvers. That's why it's so gratifying to see, say, Yuka lately, who has been astouding me repeatedly by actually introducing subjects of conversation, when just a month ago she would mostly just passively answer whatever questions I brought up. In the six months I've been a teacher the rumored rewards of the profession have been unknown to me, but just by Yuka saying "So, it rained yesterday!" I practically felt like I had given birth. I realize that this is, on some levels, sad, and on others, even a little sick, but it's a pretty comforting feeling knowing that I've actually made noticeable changes in at least a few people's lives here.
Yeah, I know, I've been getting pretty sappy lately. Hey, gimme a break, I just had to perform a major life reassesment when I signed my contract a couple weeks ago; I have a right to be a little annoyingly introspective for a bit yet. However, worry not, for tomorrow, I leave for a bigass ski-trip, which basically ensures loads of forthcoming humorously painful comedy. Me strapped to some form of unwieldly winter recreational transportation careening down the side of a mountain is always good fun, at least for anyone but me. To prepare yourself, you may read this, which chronicles my first time skiing about four years ago. If you're too lazy to read one of my older writings, let's just say it wasn't pretty (the skiing NOR the writing), and since I'm trying snowboarding this time everything is in place for this time to be even UGLIER. Anyway, assuming I figure out way to type while encased in a full-body cast, I'll give you the full report around Monday. Till then, uh...well, visit here anyway, repeatedly, and help me regain my lost hits.