Saturday the 31st, 2004: Complaint Theater

There was a JET ski strip this weekend, which I signed up for but in typical form forgot to actually pay for. So while I could be sliding down the slope of a mountain at ridiculous speeds right now, instead I get to sit here and write about niggling little complaints about my life in my web journal. On the flip side, given the probable end result I may as well just go diving pelvis-first off the high dive into a swimming pool full of sledge hammers, so maybe I'm better off. At any rate, feel free to join me on my own little trip of bitterness that follows:

When I stepped out for a while today I left the window open to air out the headache-inducing kerosene fumes perpetually emitted by my heater. When I returned I found it had actually frozen solid in its wide-open position, to the point where not even my considerably masculine, horse-like biceps were enough to budge it. Which is not to say that I didn't try. For five minutes I engaged in more futile yanking and pulling than Terry McMahon as the only man at an all-girl orgy and still it wouldn't budge. Finally I resorted to standing there blowing a hair dryer on it for 15 minutes all the while feeling both stupid albeit somewhat resourceful, kind of like MacGuyver were he played by Harry Anderson instead of Richard Dean.

On a related note, it has been so cold around here recently that when I take a kindofcrap it is literally steaming when it hits the bowl. I'm sure you all wanted to know that, but I just needed to tell you all that so I could inform you of how much that rules.

The JET recontracting window closes Friday next week and naturally I am nervous. Not about making up my mind -- that I decided pretty concretely fairly long ago, much like my feelings on oversized genital piercings -- but about telling my supervisor, who could after all, if he really wanted to, decide to make my remaining six months living hell as retribution. He told me not too long ago that, even though the position I'm currently filling was not technically planned to continue past this year, he would be willing to bend the rules if I wanted to stay. I'm well aware of how many rolls of red tape he has to go through for every single decision made about JETs, so I'm realy grateful for his offer, but naturally this just makes me feel guilty for leaving. Doesn't help that he then told me that my staying would really help him out, and just as a person he'd like me to. Our working relationship has been a lot better ever since the End-of-Year Party in December (as I've said before, bathing naked with your co-workers tends to break the ice a little), but I still wouldn't put it past him to indulge in a little misplaced revenge, done subconsciously or otherwise, when making my schedule for the last few months of my contract.

Ever since I bought actual seating for my apartment I find myself unable to sit on the floor without my legs falling asleep within ten minutes. Today I went to this temple dealie with a friend where I had to sit cross-legged for an hour and a half. When it was over I got up it took me like five minutes to stand, and then only so I could stumble around like Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot. Actually, I've never seen that movie, but I assume he's retarded in that movie, and looking at my recent writings it is apparent that I very much enjoy mocking the severely retarded. On a related note, I'm going to hell.

A side effect I've noticed from being an elementary school teacher is that I absolutely cannot stand the popular Hollywood notion that children are smarter than adults. Listen, fuckers, I didn't live 23 years just so the American movie and television industry could tell me I'm not as smart or clever as Macaulay Culkin or Malcolm in the Fucking Middle. Who, by the way, I would very much like to see sandwiched in the middle of a 500-pound boulder and a big box of pressure-sensitive explosives. Plus, as someone who works with dozens of real, actual children every day, I can tell you with absolute certainty that most kids would likely spend entire days just walking into walls if most of them weren't placed so far apart. All I know is before I got this job I used to appreciate Home Alone as a wonderful slice of cartoonish violence, yet now I view it as just one more infuriating example of pro-Child propaganda and am moved to write an angry letter to the Screen Actor's Guild denouncing Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern as Uncle Tom bastards. With God as my witness, if someone made a movie called Adolf Hitler vs. the Jewish Little Rascals I honestly don't know which side I'd root for.

Uh, yeah. Don't mind me. I'm just bitter because I'm not currently in traction and some idiot blew out my four-dollar hairdryer unsticking a frozen fucking window.

Thursday the 29th, 2004: Heads or Tails

You know, I've decided I'm just going to stop having any sort of expectations at all while I'm in this country, because lately I've been noticing they always end up being horribly wrong. About a month ago a lady at school invited me to her house to have dinner and practice English with her supposedly international-minded son. I begrudgingly agreed only because she was really nice and I thought it within my duties to help nurture such a reportedly strong interest in internationalization. However, when the lady picked me up, we ended up going not to her house, but to the nearby town center. And instead of just her son, there were two junior high school girls, three elementary students, another middle-aged lady and a grandmother. No son to be found, incidentally. For roughly the next hour, we played various English games, listened to the impromptu speech about America I was goaded in to giving, and, most hilariously, stood in a circle loudly and insanely repeating the words of an English-education tape playing in the background. This was the part that freaked me out, really, standing there in that circle hearing the tape player say something like Deborah, that certainly is a very nice green dress you are wearing only to hear it immediately followed by everyone in the circle screaming DEBORAH THAT CERTAINLY IS A VERY NICE GREEN DRESS YOU ARE WEARING no more than a half-second later like some kind of insane echo. It literally took me four or five sentences just to ascertain that I was not going crazy and hearing voices in my head, and four more after that to reassure myself that I had not landed in some sort of foreign-language centric cult. Anyway, it was a...nice little organization for all involved, but the point is it was completely apart from what I was expecting. To this day, I haven't figured out if my Japanese just sucks and I misheard what I was getting in to, or the lady knew from the beginning that lying would be necessary to get me to attend BatshitCrazyFest2003.

I had a similar experience this evening, when I went to a teacher's aunt's house for dinner. About two weeks ago while having lunch at school, the phone rang and surprisingly it was for me. Now see, the phone at school, as you might guess, rings seemingly dozens of times per hour and it is NEVER for me. Why would it be? It can't be very often that someone calls a school and goes "Yeah, I'd like to speak to absolutely the most retarded member of your staff." But this time, it was indeed for me, and as I put my ear to the receiver I half-expected it to be covered in glue as part of some elaborate prank. But no, it was one of my favorite teachers from the special school, Baba-Sensei, asking me if I might be willing to give a young relative of hers a lesson or two. Now truthfully, I'm pretty sick of tutoring these days except for that one student who comes in every week and talks about how humans are a disease for an hour, but I agreed because a) I can easily be made to say "yes" to anything, which explains these warts, and b) hey, it's the special school, and it's only right that I return the favor.

Anyway, for the course of the next couple weeks I had sporadic phone conversations with Baba-Sensei detailing the specifics of the upcoming lesson. Through those conversations I learned that the student was the offspring of her sister, and had spent some time at an International School in China. Her sister and the fruit of her loins in question would be returning to China and February, and thus they thought it might be nice to brush up on their English before then. Lastly, Baba-Sensei thought it would be nice to have the lesson over dinner, since her Grandmother lived nearby and would love to cook for everyone.

Okay, see, now going by the above information, I had decided for myself that the student was probably college-age gearing up to return to whatever fruity school schedule China is on. Hearing the words "grandmother" I immediately pictured this stately elderly woman who always wore kimono and would lovingly serve me endless cups of green tea in between bites of sweets she had just baked. Kinda stereotypical of me, yeah, but really, isn't that what just about anyone would expect, minus the slight embellishment I'm putting on for emphasis? However, when I got there, I found the student was fucking TEN YEARS OLD with absolutely amazing English skills for his age, and what's more, the 'grandmother' was actually Baba-Sensei's aunt ("Grandmother" and "aunt" are extremely similar words in Japanese, so in this case at least it's my fault) who runs a beer and alcohol shop that also serves as her home. Not only that, the aunt "boxercizes" and to prove it had my student stand there punching her hands as hard as she could for nearly 10 minutes. When my student mentioned getting into a fight at school she in all seriousness related to him the worlds of wisdom, "If someone punches you once, you punch them twice. If they punch you twice, you punch them four times". Anyway, you can probably imagine that, instead of having the tranquil, quiet, "Japanese" dinner I was expecting, I found myself pinned to the floor by a 50-year old lady so she could instruct my 10 year-old student how to properly manhandle someone:

All in all she was an awesome lady who insisted I come back sometime so she could cook me dinner and have someone to pound whiskey with, and believe me when I say I fully intend to take her up on that offer. Regardless, I'm really going to give up on trying to predict how even the tiniest events in my life will go in this country because it really just never works out. Living in Japan is like flipping a coin but instead of it landing on heads or tails it transforms into a donkey while in mid-air and explodes. Sometimes, it's just better not to even try.

Tuesday the 27th, 2004: HUGE EARTH-SHATTERING ANNOUNCEMENT

Just a quick note to let you know I made a rather large update to the Engrish section. So, to whoever it is that has the son that owns the T-shirt currently featured at the top of said Engrish section: are you happy now?

Boy, you can tell I've been doing a really good job of updating the Engrish section when I need to update the journal section just to tell you that I actually updated the Engrish section for once. I swear, this site gets more masturbatory every day.

Monday the 26th, 2004: Unsolved Mysteries

Something I've really come to dread recently is grocery shopping. I mean, I used to be pretty decent about cooking for myself -- looked forward to it, even, as yet one more outgrowth of my ever-increasing 'independence' -- yet, after each vacation I take, it just gets harder and harder to convince myself not to just go to KFC or McDonald's or Seven-Fucking-Eleven. It doesn't help that this country is a bachelor's paradise in terms of quick and easy sustenance. I mean, if someone really wanted to, he could eat dinner every night at a convenience store without repeating the same meal for at least a month and not come off quite as nutritionally carpet-bombed as you might think (though still pretty bad). In fact, I've known more than a couple people who have done that. In fact, I'VE done that: for nearly every day of the last month of my year abroad in Tokyo, breakfast consisted of two cigarettes and dinner 7-11 chilled ramen, and yet I survived to sit here and write the tale. True, I lost nearly 15 pounds in one month and basically peed out my ass the whole time, but the point is it was doable. It didn't kill me, so it made me stronger, I figure; all the more tempting to do it again.

Actually, it hasn't quite reached that point yet, if for no other reason than I go to great lengths to avoid having to use school toilets, but I have reached a compromise by eating at least one meal a week that involves no more preparation than pulling something out of a bag or peeling back foil covering. The only real reason I don't do it more, actually, is because to do so would just make me feel like too much of a Pathetic Bachelor. A feeling I've recently learned to hate is the shame I feel when approaching the register lady at the supermarket with a basket full of items that just blare my ineptly single status. Canned fruit, instant noodles, prepackaged spaghetti sauce, soda, assorted snacks -- these are items i like to keep stocked up for nights I'm feeling particularly lazy -- but every time I go to buy them the look I feel I get from the cashier (that I'm actually probably just imagining) almost makes me wish I was checking out with a basketful of Maxipads instead. It doesn't help that my town is really small, and I always buy said items at one particular store because they're really cheap there. I get pegged pretty easy. I know this one girl recognizes me every time I go in there, but I feel she doesn't quite remember who I am until I actually go up to the counter -- "Oh, that's right, it's 'Mr.Ginger-Ale-and-Eggplant-Marinara'." Then I imagine she runs off to titter with her attractive spoken-for culinarily talented friends about the PATHETIC FOREIGN BACHELOR who's always coming in to her store to buy canned peaches and spicy-miso-flavored instant noodles. I swear, one of these days I'm going to go up to the register with just her address and a spool of piano wire just to get myself a different sort of reputation.

Anyway. Switching gears, it is now time for a special treat: A pop quiz! I've had this picture for a while, but never got around to using it till now. At any rate -- there are six things wrong with the following picture. How many can YOU find? Give up? Move your mouse pointer over the picture for the answers!

Well, how did you do? Shitty? Wow, just like real life. Anyhoo, the above pic comes courtesy of another JET in the area some three months ago, but better late than never I figure.

Now, see, my primary concern here is of course, #3, the fact that someone wrote "Do you play Handjob?" on the chalkboard. Its presence raises many thought-provoking yet ultimately unanswerable questions. For instance, who wrote it? Did he/she know what the words mean? Of all the sexual words to learn, why/how 'handjob'? Do the girls in the picture realize realize how ironic their innocent smiles look? Furthermore, does one really 'play' handjob, when in fact it can really be a lot of hard work? And isn't 'handjob' just such an underrated word when it comes to humorous sexual vocabulary? I mean, just try saying it to yourself a few times and see if you don't laugh: handjob handjob handjob handjob! Ha!! See? Hilarious! With a sense of humor like that, it's a wonder I'm still single.

Saturday the 24th, 2004: Coming Attractions

Excellent news: I have again been tapped to serve as translator for this year's International Curling Festival. Basically what this means is I get to miss a day of regular work AND get to pat myself on the back for taking lots of easy shots at the competitors, which is kind of like being proud of beating a bunch of burn-ward patients in a lemon-juice-swimming competition. Anyway, that's not till February 5th, so until then you'll just have to deal with me trying desperately to cover the fact that winter pretty much robs me of what already little life I have.

In other news, seems I will be taking part in a play the 9th graders are putting on at the special school. The main story consists of the students trying to raise a sakura cherry tree that was knocked over in a storm; but there's also some weird stuff involving one student dressed up as a bus slamming into another student dressed up as a bus and then another student dressed up as a doctor coming over to help. Then they sing a song from the Lion King or something; I don't know, truth be told I had a tough time following it. Mostly because if you think regular children's productions are psychedelic enough; brother, wait till you see a retarded children's production. After the big storm scene the students sit around holding glittery streamers to their eyes to simulate crying, and even though there's y'know, the odd kid just staring off into space, picking the scabs off his hands, or eating the streamers the whole thing is just very disturbing as it goes on for like ten minutes.

As for me, I have been tasked to play some kind of magical Forest Sprite that is the keeper of one big-ass technicolor four-leaf clover that can help the cherry tree right itself. Jesus, I can't wait to see my costume. Anyway, fortunately or unfortunately, I only come in at the very end, as the students prance into my purported forest kingdom, AKA the gym, and find me standing on a milk crate that I'm guessing is supposed to represent a stump. Then I present them with the magical clover and together, we prance gaily back to the cherry tree to the accompaniment of some contemporary pop music and with some magical incantations from yours truly, bring the cherry tree back to life. They wanted the incantations to be in English so naturally I got to write my own lines, which because I am an asshole ended up being LET THIS MOURNING WOOD STAND TALL! Then the kids repeat that four or five times, the tree goes back up, there's one more musical number and we all take a bow, three or four kids will probably drool on themselves, and then I go to hell for ever bringing this whole thing up in the first place and particularly for discussing it on my web site. Anyway, that, too, is in February, so maybe I'll write more of it later as soon as I figure out whether or not I should feel bad about it.

Wednesday the 21st, 2004: The Plane

Boy. Whenever I start feeling down about work, I can always count on the special school to cheer me right back up. The high school and junior high sections of it are fun enough, the kids are all cheery and eager to learn; but the elementary portion, where I was today, is even better, because since 80% of those students have a learning capacity somewhere around the level of three-month-old fetus all the teachers do is throw a series of bizarre distractions at them in lieu of y'know, trying to have them learn. Note that I am not criticizing. Just because I see it as my own personal severely retarded version of Fantasy Island does not mean they don't do good work there.

So, let's go through my day. I get to my assigned class for the day, and almost immediately I find myself faced with the following teachers:

Something I love about the elementary teachers in the special school is that each and every one of them has some kind of wacky alternate, costumed personality like the two pictured above. Some even have two or more. One teacher walks around inside a giant yellow ball with a smiley face painted on it, another is a crazy ethnically vague professional wrestler; yet another fit himself into a giant pair of bongos and walked around making music by beating himself. Naturally, the kids get a great big kick out of this and think it's the coolest thing in the world. Of the two above, on the right is "Show Guts" ('guts' as in 'moxie'), a January-only character whose name is a pun on the Japanese word for New Year's (shogatsu). As you can see, they tailored him up a bit to match my visit today. As for the one on the left, I wasn't able to catch his name but as you can see he's a cross-dresser, which is something like this country's equivalent of the knock-knock joke in terms of being a humor staple. You'll also note that he's carrying a doll of sorts, which I basically ended up making out with in a bit of ad-libbing on my part. Don't ask.

And that, after a few miscellaneous games, was basically the morning. But the after-lunch activity, you ask? Oh, we just played PlayStation. Yup, rough day. Frankly I was a bit concerned that this one kid whom I would not trust to tie his own shoelaces without having them explode kept winning first place in the racing game they were playing. But y'know, I just kinda figure Japanese kids are naturally good at PlayStation or something, even if they're retarded.

After that grueling session came the, pun soon to be intended, "main event":

Does this outfit make me look fat?

Yes, that's me in a Sumo suit, which you may remember seeing in such movies as Charlie's Angels and Low-Budget Sumo Adventure. Every morning when I wake up I like to lay there for a bit and think of how my day will go, but whenever I have the special school now I just give up. After all, there's not really any point when it somehow manages to consistently throw me curveballs by landing me in situations that no one in their right mind could ever reasonably anticipate. But I guess I'm used to it now, as these days I barely blink an eye as I rationalize the situation away in the time it takes to think one simple sentence like Okay, I am now going to climb into a sumo suit and wrestle retarded people; check.. Then bam, it's off to the races without a second thought. Hence, that is how I came to find myself spending my afternoon tossing severely retarded children about a mat. But, as they say, showing is better than telling, so I thought I'd take advantage of my newly robust bandwidth and show y'all a sample match. It's not me, but pretty much all the matches were like this:

I especially love how he gives him that last little shove at the end.

Oh yeah, we also all had to pick Sumo names, as actual Sumo wrestlers do. And I have no reason for telling you this, other than my now finding myself really wishing that I had myself announced as E.Honda.

Anyway, that was pretty much my day, and seeing as I'm headed there again tomorrow I'm in pretty good spirits. If nothing else, the special school is a always an excellent reminder that no matter what hand one is dealt in life, a healthy sense of humor is always helpful:

Although in the case of this kids' parents, maybe they oughta forget that lesson when it comes to dressing their son.

Monday the 19th, 2004: Check

Oh man, I am NOT looking forward to school tomorrow. More than usual, even.

I think I'm going to stop taking vacations until I never have to work again. It's almost invariably great when I'm on it but it makes coming back to face roomfuls of moron students that much harder. It's like some super-addictive drug that is wonderful while it lasts but when you start coming down it's like someone giving you a judo-chop right in the wingwang. It's like...man, the notion of vacation being better than work sure is novel commentary! But it's original insights such as these that must keep people coming to kindofcrap.com. Let's move on.

But let me tell you why I am particularly dreading going to school tomorrow. Because tomorrow's school contains the classroom in which I let loose probably my worst flare of temper -- or at least the biggest spectacle of one -- in my short-yet-still-too-long teaching career. There's this group of sixth graders that drives me absolutely nuts. They're not bad kids by any means, just THE most unmotivated and irreparably apathetic kids I teach, and given the general attitude of my body of students that is really saying something. Usually it's difficult to get any sort of significant reaction out of sixth graders just because they're at that awkward stage where they realize that everything they do is an opportunity to look uncool and therefore figure it's safer to do absolutely nothing. These kids, though, are on an entirely different level. This is one of the first classes where I engaged in the tried-and-true teaching bluff of coaxing a stubborn student into answering a question by saying that I would wait all period until he said something. Now, in most other classes, within thirty seconds peer pressure will do my job for me as the other students goad the kid into answering because they don't feel like sitting there silently waiting for him to say something. In this particular class though, no one said ANYTHING; they were all too busy staring at their hands, and as a result we all ended up sitting there for, no exaggeration, nearly THIRTY MINUTES. Naturally I never intended for it to go that long, but I guess once a standoff like that reaches a certain point, it's difficult to abandon it without losing a great deal of authority. I don't mean to make it sound like a bad nature documentary or anything, but really, blink first with a group of kids like these and be prepared to be eaten alive.

Later, the homeroom teacher came up to me and told me that perhaps the class was too difficult, what with each student having to say "I like _____" and then filling in the blank all by themselves. Maybe, and he said this in honestly the nicest way possible, it would be better if I prepared just one pre-made "I like" sentence that all of the students could say TOGETHER ALL AT ONCE so they wouldn't have to deal with the stress of deciding on something they personally like and then saying it in English. And let me tell you, after blinking in disbelief a couple times, I just about lost it. I like to think I'm pretty good about the whole cultural sensitivity thing, but this is the first time since coming to this country that I can distinctly remember thinking DEAR GOD THAT IS THE MOST LUDICROUSLY STEREOTYPICALLY JAPANESE WAY OF THINKING I HAVE EVER HEARD.

Let me tell you something: I work with a whole school full of severely retarded children, and y'know what, even if they can't even feed themselves or remember how to work a doorknob I sure as fuck can get pretty much even the worst-off of them to say something goddamn simple like "apple" without any major fuss or nearly half a fucking hour of wasted class time. I can get wide-eyed first graders who have in all seriousness asked me what color the sky is in America or whether we have an ocean to say simple English sentences without even batting an eye. And here was this teacher telling me that my horribly, really embarassingly easy, straightforward class, was too difficult for a bunch of MOTHERFUCKING SIXTH GRADERS because it involved too much INDEPENDENT FUCKING THOUGHT?! Christ on a bagel that was just about the most backwards thing I have ever heard...but no, this wasn't when I blew up. Like usual, I smiled, nodded, and said I'd keep that in mind, when really I was thinking duuur i guess i'll go write nasty things about him in my blog that'll show him durrr. Hmm, took me a while though.

No, the 'incident' took place months later, when the teacher decided things had been going well enough recently that he felt he could leave me to teach alone for a while. I'm sure you can guess how that worked out. Within five seconds, all but three of the entire male poplation of that classroom were blatantly ignoring me, literally huddled in one corner hoping I would just like, forget them or something. To their credit, the girls were being quite active in the game; but seeing how the teams were Boys. vs. Girls, that just wasn't gonna cut it. I put up with it for over twenty minutes, chanting "atleastigetpaidforthisatleastigetpaidforthis" over and over in my head, well-used to situations like this where I know a class is gonna suck even before it starts and knowing I just gotta get through it and hope the next one's better. The breaking point came, absurdly enough, when two of the students brought out a chess board and blatantly began playing it on one side of the room. And for some reason, the sight of this just made me snap. Overt disrespect is one thing, but fucking expressing one's rebellious nature via fucking chess struck me as such a ludicrously farcical affront to the age-old act of proving one's bad-assity that I just flew off the handle. Next thing i knew, I was marching over there, paused a few moments for the offending students to realizing what's coming and get out of the way, and then, about as calm as you like, booted the pieces halfway across the room. As I watched the pieces clatter on the floor I thought to myself, "this is what I've become. I've become that funny, wacky teacher everyone's had that once in a blue moon blows up for the oddest reasons." And of course, that was when the homeroom teacher decided to come back.

Naturally, I pretty much thought I was fucked, but that was only because I had briefly forgotten that in my 1 and 1/2 year teaching career I have seen a middle-aged man throw a first-grader spine-first into a desk and somehow had that come across as an acceptable disciplinary measure. Of COURSE the teacher took my side. After all, he knew what his own students were like. Immediately he began yelling, probably more ashamed of how they were reflecting on him rather than of what they actually were doing, before turning to me and asking that I tell them off. Now, I don't exactly have a lot of experience with 'Angry Japanese,' but somehow, I rose to the occasion. I told them that, you know what, I teach at 9 other schools, adding up to somewhere over 3000 students, so quite frankly, if they didn't want me there that's fine with me because I wouldn't even freaking notice. But they would have to tell me straight, to my face, that they just weren't interested in learning English and that they'd just rather I not come. Later I sort of wished I had told them they were probably the worst group of kids of that group of 3000+, but in hindsight I'm glad I didn't cross that far over the line. Anyway, by the end I wasn't angry at all anymore and said all this over again, this time in a much calmer voice, letting them know that seriously, if they just weren't interested in learning, I of all people understand and it's really all right if they don't want me there. And it would have stopped right there if not for this one smart-ass in the corner.

I forgot to mention this kid's role in this. This is the kid who originally brought out the fateful chess board, who had been continually making smart remarks in the corner the entire time I was speaking thinking I couldn't hear. Realy, he just pushes my buttons in general, both as a teacher and both as myself specifically. He's obviously very smart -- he answers questions for nearby students just to lessen the chances of his general area being called on again -- but speaking as a trained educator, he is a lazy apathetic piece of shit. He's the type of kid that absolutely refuses to do anything he does not personally find enthralling and will go into scowling fits of superiority if you try to make him. Which is a shame. Because if he'd just try, if he'd just waited a few years later in his life to conclude that he could never be hurt if he never cares about anything, he could do great things, I know it. And as infuriating as this is for just a teacher, for me specifically, it's like looking at my own past self and god damn it the irony just murders me. I'm certainly not saying I was any sort of boyhood genius but let's face it I've never been very good in the making-the-most-of-potential department. Earlier in the class he, in a tone of mock cheerfulness, sarcastically congratulated the Girls' Team on winning the game (which of course, only three total boys were playing), and dear God, it was like watching my own past walk by and realizing I was still just as helpless to change it.

Anyway, just hearing this kid make dumb-ass comments, considering the mood I was in, was enough to set me off all over again. Right as I finished speaking he whispered something like "A cold wind is blowing..." and giggled, and well, that was that. I marched over, wanting him to have respect for something, grabbed him by the collar, pushed him against the wall and well, not yelled, but at least SAID IN BOLDFACE TYPE, in English: "I'm not going to tell you again: SHUT UP. And I know you can understand me, even though it's English, but just in case: SHUT UP." I then let him go, and calmly walked out the door.

Afterwards, while sitting in the teacher's room, there was a knock on the door. The teacher had sent the students to apologize...that is, all the students who were actually playing the game and being GOOD. Jesus Christ. Sometimes things are done so backwards around here that it can just drive you nuts.

Well, this entry sure went on a completely different path than I'd originally intended. At any rate, I go to that school for the first time in nearly two months tomorrow, and I'm really hoping I don't have to deal with that class tomorrow. They're hard enough to handle as it is, without that past spectacle hanging over my head. I'm not sorry I did it, don't get me wrong. I had to get through to these kids and I did it the only way I could see how. Because sometimes, not to end on a cliche, learning to speak the language of a new environment has very little to do with words.

Friday the 16th, 2004: The Other Half the Battle

Every winter, this little school I teach at up in the mountains freezes over the neighboring rice field to construct a little makeshift skating rink for the students. Myself, I think it's a rather inspired, resourceful idea; even though it is somewhat akin to a Chinese artist painting his works on the walls of the laundromat which he owns. Naturally the children have loads of fun skating around the rice rink by themselves, but hey, like I secretly suspect all the teachers in the area always say -- isn't ANY activity automatically made twice as fun if it's done in the company of a goofy incompetent foreigner? Particularly if said goofy foreigner had never skated before in his life? Yes, children, doesn't that sound like LOADS of fun, in the spirit of "it's funny 'cause it's not me?" Fucking bastards.

Actually, I am lying. I have indeed been on ice skates before -- once, last year, at the same school, on top of the same frozen rice. That was a happy time spent mostly trying to at least fall in ways that would make sure my groin tore into the fewest possible pieces. It didn't help that the kids, like sharks smelling blood in the water, realized that hey, Chow-Sensei is completely defenseless on the ice and subsequently went to town on my anus faster than a convicted pedophile walking into his jail cell to discover that his new cellmate was a paraplegic midget. All in all, happy memories that I no doubt shall be relating to therapists for many years to come.

At any rate, this year went much better; not because I actually learned how to skate but because I quickly decided that, much like organized sports and sex, my body is simply not built for skating and I'd really have a lot more fun if I just gave up. So that's what I did, and what do you know, walking around in regular shoes shoving passing kids onto thin patches of ice proved a lot more fun than falling over ever 15 seconds and getting laughed at by groups of children none of whom are even old enough to understand my retaliatory remarks about their mothers. I am completely making this up, of course, because in reality I have never seen my students treat me nicer, except for the initial "You don't know how to ICE SKATE??!" and gawking at me in the manner of a lifelong cannibal meeting his first vegetarian. I don't quite understand it, but even kids who are absolute brats in class went out of their way to try to teach me, or at least would occasionally call for my attention so I could watch how fast they could skate. I suspect that most of the kids that give me trouble in class are just acting out because my speaking a language they have no hope of understanding makes them feel stupid. But after seeing just how inhumanely bad I am at skating, something that all of them are quite good at, well, maybe they were able to see me as more of a human being and didn't feel the need to put up any fronts for once. Like I said, I don't really understand it; but I made a special note to punch them slightly less hard next time they are insolent.

A particular fun little instance yesterday: a first-grader loudly proclaimed that she didn't want to participate in a relay race the kids were going to play because, quote, "I might lose." Being an awesome teacher and a professional-level bullshitter, I went over to the little girl, patted her on the head, and pulled every cynical muscle in my body by telling her that even if you lose, just trying something can be fun. Immediately, the little girl brightened up as she whirled ecstatically over to her friend and yelled "CHOW-SENSEI SAYS THINGS CAN BE FUN EVEN IF YOU LOSE!" and then scampered off the play the game. I was of course in total shock that, despite sounding like those stupid public service announcements at the end of episodes of GI Joe, my condescending prepackaged Cup-O'-Wisdom worked so effectively and immediately. Thus, I walked away from that feeling like educator of the fucking year...not because I had potentially changed the course of a young child's life, but because I had inadvertantly discovered the secret to proper emotional education of a child: telling them a series of outrageously simplistic lies and hoping they don't get wise to it for a good, long while.

Wednesday the 14th, 2004

Just a quick update to let you know that the oft-ignored photos section has been updated with pictures from my Kobe trip. I was going to just post them here, but when writing in the journal I feel compelled to try to be funny, whereas with the photo section it's all right to just dump a bunch of photos with all the probable interest that comes from essentially viewing slides of someone else's vacation. Anyway, enjoy.

Also, I completely forgot to mention that it seems I indeed won the Asia Blog Awards in both categories in which I was nominated. What does this ultimately mean? Nothing of course; naturally now that the awards are over I have since lost interest in them. Still, I'm quite happy about winning, and I do appreciate the support. Especially seeing as I won only by one vote in one category and two in the other. So thank you people; it appears my votes were slightly less fradulent than other sites'. Or at least, you people are better at cheating.

Monday the 12th, 2004: Homecoming

Well, I am indeed back. And how was my vacation, you ask? Well, let's put it this way: Kobe (and surrounding areas) was a wonderful, slothful affair, full of nothing but crepes and curry and tall buildings and relatively balmy weather. I remember strolling its streets at night with my companions, with a jacket ever-so-gaily unzipped, wondering what wondrous item we might eat or gawk at next. After that it's all kind of a blur, but what I DO remember is getting back on a train a week later and riding it for TWELVE CONSECUTIVE HOURS until I got back here, where as soon as I stepped off the train I was greeted by frigid 17 million miles-per-hour winds and that familiar yet briefly-and-blissfully-forgotten paranoia of thinking every kid I pass by is one of my students. Yes, it's quite good to be back, so much so that you'll pardon me for digging out my own intestines with a soup spoon just so I have something with which to hang myself.

I exaggerate, of course, on both counts. Vacation was indeed a good time, though I'm embarassed to speak of it simply because we spent half of it sleeping. Y'see, early on we decided that there was no point in getting up at the crack of dawn to see sights we'd then be far too tired to at all appreciate. Hence, we immediately agreed to just get up whenever we all happened to wake up, eat a nice breakfast, then catch a train and see what we could find for the remainder of the day. Which is a very sensible plan on paper, but of course what this quickly lead to was waking up a bit before noon every day, having some lunch and calling it breakfast, and then finally getting on a train at about the time most children get out from school. All in all, we ended up seeing a whopping total of three sights over the whole week...two of which were seen from the train window, and were in fact, the same temple, except we passed by it both coming and going so god damn it that counts as two sights. At any rate, I of course wholly enjoyed this vacation of sleeping and eating too much and watching Karate Kid, but I'm assuming it wouldn't be very entertaining to read about it here.

Anyway, that about brings us back up to speed. Work resumes on a normal schedule tomorrow, so it seemed like a good time to revive kindofcrap, just so I have somewhere to bitch. Recontracting for JET comes up in a few weeks, and you'll notice that I am rather calm about it as opposed to last year, where I whined about it for a good two weeks straight. That's because, unlike last year where I really was quite conflicted about whether to sign up again or not, this year, short of Satan himself jamming his scaly hand up my arsehole and manipulating me like a hand puppet, there is NO WAY I am doing a third year of this. Don't get me wrong -- two years seems just about right, but three years would be suicide. Check that, murder-suicide. Of course, we'll see what I have to say about that as the recontracting date draws even nearer and I start panicking about my future, but as things stand now, fair warning! Only seven months of kindofcrap to go, so get your fix now!

Before I go, what y'all think of this here new journal design? Pretty spiffy, right? You can thank whatever free template site I stole it from. I figure instead of changing to a new eye-searing color scheme every month, I'll just do it to that little bar to the right, which I shall populate with fun links if I get a chance. Sound good? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Oh, and one last thing. I just changed domain hosts which allowed me to set up a new Message Board, which is faster, smoother, and allows me to mod posters with a much wider range of options. The old is now DEAD as of this moment, so update your bookmarks and I'll see ya there. As soon as I get over the shame of successfully setting up a working message board by myself, that is.