The transition from a pleasant tail end of Summer melding into a comfortable beginning of Autumn this year was cut short roughly two weeks ago when, as far as I’m concerned, Winter took it’s reign.  Since then we’ve had temperature highs of around 10ºC (50ºF) whilst mostly it’s actually been a few degrees lower and certainly felt as much.

Kerosene heater for classrooms.

Southern Japan offers the kind of Winter weather for which the bitter cold and snowdrifts of Minnesota did not prepare me, since it constantly permeates one’s life when one works at schools in this country. Without using a terribly inefficient electric heater like the one in my air conditioner, the entirety of my home outside of the small square taken up by my kotatsu table would be the same temperature as it is outside thanks to the lack of insulation.

No matter that this is my second year here, it’s perpetually a rude shock and a struggle to keep warm that leaves me feeling rather sympathetic to the students in their uniforms.  Their insane character building experience won’t stop me from wearing a heavy coat and sometimes my “hobo-style” cutoff gloves to class.

The truth is, sometimes a lucky day is one where I’m at a school where the staff room is properly heated and classes number in the few.  Despite the boredom of sitting in the staff room, classes do require one to venture out into the freezing hallways and classrooms.

My schools have just begun to use their big and very aged looking kerosene heaters usually placed in the rear of the classroom, though most wait until well into December to distribute them.  They don’t do much for those of us at the front, but it’s better than nothing!

This year I’ve built a new tradition, which came about after half a day of just not being able to get warm despite wearing long underwear and layers: If the staff room doesn’t properly defrost me, in my free periods I venture over to the school gymnasium and run twelve laps or so around the interior.  It’s nice to get the little bit of exercise this represents anyway, and it really does warm up the body core, however odd it might look to the rest of the school’s inhabitants.

One day I asked one of the two Christian Japanese people I know (and they’re married) who is an assistant teacher at one of my junior high schools how to say “go for a run” in Japanese.  There is indeed an expression for taking a walk or a stroll 散歩する (さんぽする　sanpo suru) but there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent expression for taking a jog with one’s portable music player.  The best she could come up with is 並走する（へいそうする　heisou suru) which essentially means “to line up and run” implying that others were involved.

Oh Japan, so group-centric.

For you today I have one shot from the island and two from off it, thanks to not-so Mid-Year Conference.

Hello Kitty makes an appearance at a local Maruwa, but on a product you really wouldn’t think is interesting enough.

Kitty-chan branded milk in a local convenience store.

A South African comes your way and “lo’ and behold” you find yourself slapped in the proverbial face with reminders of it all over!

South Africa, found at the unlikelist of places: A bar-restaurant in Nagasaki my iPhone brought us to.

During conference, I was happily surprised to find this deliciousness available practically all day all around the city.

Oden, a popular winter cuisine, available for takeaway at convenience stores.

Trolls: They're larger and still outdated in Japan.

Every year, junior high schools and senior high schools in Japan host a few major events for study, for fun, for character-building, and to invite people who are usually too busy working to come anyway, their families, and one of these is the Culture Festival.

Tsushima High School hosted its culture festival on a Sunday, so Rose and I were able to go check it out, thus we were one epic hill walk away from interest and intrigue.

School culture festivals are comprised primarily of three things:

1. Classrooms decorated on certain themes, arts, areas of study, or people.
2. Food booths with tasty things for sale.
3. Dance and music performances.

Upon arrival and locating Duncan, the new high school ALT paid to “work” by being in attendance for the day plus a day off for the sacrifice of a Sunday, the three of us partook in some traditional tea ceremony in the school courtyard. That came free with a rather ceremoniously served pastry and vessel with a modest amount of delicious matcha by little women in kimono.

First one is served the pastry, then the creamy green tea.

Normally tea ceremony takes place in a very traditional tatami house, in a room that one crawls in to not only out of ceremony but because the entryway is a square hole in a wall. However, the high school naturally doesn’t have its own tea house.

The classrooms had a wide range of themes.  One had cartoon renditions of all of the staff drawn by the students. Another was a Halloween-themed vampire’s crypt, another profiled some foreign countries, a science room provided attendees the opportunity to extract genetic material from broccoli, and yet another had a large map of the island on the floor marked with real seashells.  Even cooler in the latter room was the arrangement of rubbish collected from beaches around the island, in a sort of respect-the-Earth message way.

Mountains marked by seashells.

Another room featured large models of Anpanman and his rival, Baikinman.

Incredibly artwork by a Japanese high school student.

Sadly Rose and I arrived after the Culture Festival Marketplace closed, so we missed out on some tasty Japanese foods, which apparently also sold out rather rapidly.  Still, a former student of mine and one of the many I miss handed me a free little bag of sugar cookies that tasted like home.

Since the high school is one of three on the island, it’s student population is large enough (or at least was at one time) to warrant a rather large gymnasium.  That building was chock full of stairs, mostly filled with students watching the dance performances going on when we moseyed on over to there.

Later, the band came on and performed a medley of songs from various Studio Ghibli films, the famous Japanese animation studio that produced Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and several others lesser known in foreign countries.

Word is in that Swine Flu has finally hit the island, and in fact someone in the second grade of the elementary school at which I am teaching two days this week contracted the disease.  Twenty students are or have gone absent today, 13 from fever or influenza and 7 for various reasons.  The whole second grade, in an effort to curb the spread, are on holiday from tomorrow until Friday.

As a precaution, I’m wearing a sanitary mask provided by the school nurse, along with a number of other teachers.  During my first class I think I suffered a mosquito bite, though, so I’m a little worried I might catch it from that.  It wouldn’t bother me so much to take the sick leave, but I certainly would rather be healthy at work.

The news media in Japan have been repeatedly sensationalist, or have nothing better to report, regarding H1N1.  For a while updates seemed to be front page news almost every day, or so I hear.  Back when it first started spreading through Mexico and the States, people taking trips to infected nations were required to go through quarantine and report back twice a day to local health officials, as the nearest other ALT experienced, while interestingly enough coming back from Southeast Asia I didn’t.

For a country that doesn’t properly heat its schools during the winter and seems to treat resulting cold and flu cases as immune system- and character-building, it’s strange to see them freak out to this extent for a new but easily cured infection. Clearly it has proper medical care to facilitate it.

Most of last week after work I went cliff jumping and beach cleaning with two of the new ALTs, before the weekend of too many teacher parties.

One of those days, we arrived out at our leaping spot to find that there were two large red blobs floating in the water not too far away: The scourge of jellyfish.  One floated away and all was fine for a while, but then the other encroached on our swimming space, got washed up and decimated by the rocks, and left chunks of tentacles floating around thus spoiling our fun.

Jellyfish vs. Tennis Ball: Everyone loses.

In the course of this tragedy, however, we noticed a bunch of dark figures splashing away in the distance: Dolphins!  This was my first time spotting them in the wild, though from that distance I could hardly tell what they were.  They teased us, getting closer and then farther away, so it was impossible to get a good picture of them but we did climb over the rock bed across the beach to get the closest look we could.

Another beach evening I managed to work up the courage to do a dive from our three metres high jumping spot, nearly touching the sea floor on the first go.  My form was excellent except for the part where I forgot to somersault. There were no injuries to speak of and on the next dive I was able to curve up rather quickly.  Next challenge: Front-flipping.

I guess I must be a little too self-centred to think of it, and I actually took it as a bit strange when Shane first asked us to bring rubbish bags to clean up the beach.  Perhaps it’s a bit of Hawaii culture from his time living there.  Perhaps it’s a little strange for me because last summer, at least, there were beach attendants who picked up trash and sort of “combed” the sand, though I haven’t seen them around this year.

There isn’t much of a rubbish issue on these two beaches, probably because of the workers, but certain spots have piles of junk just sitting there.  It sucks to see all the polystyrene chunks, plastic bottles, and everything else.

Cleaning it up feels pretty good; we’ve done it every time we’ve gone out there.  The one problem is that we bag up the trash and leave it by the buildings, wondering if it will ever be disposed.  Japan doesn’t just have dumpsters sitting around that get emptied, and if nobody’s working at the beach then it’s probably not going to go anywhere.  I think it’s good that dumpsters aren’t there, because it just enables people to create more waste when they don’t have to think about carrying it away.

One thing I love about being here is being able to easily hike to see views like this.

In my childhood, I only got one chance to see the ocean.  The moment I did for the first time, I fell in love with it. It just goes on forever.

Izuhara from the peak of Mt. Shimizu

I was worried that being gone for all of August I would miss all the summer beach time. Considering the limited options to keep oneself entertained in general on the island, this is an important one to enjoy before the winter comes.

In fact, I hear that whilst I was gone the rainy season continued unusually long, but now it’s still hot and sunny enough to spend a day on the beach.  I did just that this past weekend, and then hiked Mt. Shimizu with newbie Shane.

Shane is the adventurous and partying type, and is already introducing me to things I never noticed.

Between the two best beaches of the south, there’s a nice spot he found from which to cliff jump into the sea.  It’s not so much a cliff as a walkway, but he’s nonetheless back flipping and diving off the 3+ metres height whilst I’ll be sticking to a mere vanilla jump for the foreseeable future.  Luckily there’s a closer spot below from which one can dive less dangerously.

Getting out of the water, actually, is more frightening with all of the spiky, black sea urchins settled about.

He’s also pushed me out farther into the sea for snorkel sights than I’ve gone before, and it was worth it for the various schools of fish one can see.

As for those huge, red jellyfish like the one I saw before I left, the two times I’ve gone since I’ve been back none have been in sight.

Or so explained the back of the t-shirt of one of my elementary students walking around the town centre on the tail end of my grocery errand run. I narrowly avoided her and her friend’s line of vision on my walk home that first day back on the island.

I forgot how purchasing a nonurban American-size quantity of groceries for one becomes something of a problem when there’s no gas-guzzling car around for transport. Lucky for me, as much as I suspect it’s got a plot against me, my apartment building hasn’t moved and it remains only two blocks away though up a steep hill. But this is what I must strive to do when my refrigerator’s empty.

Returning to my home-away-from-home was something of a journey indeed, clocking in at just under thirty hours in transit. I went from Minneapolis to Vancouver to Tokyo to Fukuoka on aircraft and then took a night ferry to the island.

The first leg to Vancouver it took four hours, then I found myself with a pleasant four hour layover in the airport that had a feature they all should: Free Wi-Fi. After enjoying a Tim Hortons lunch and dessert and locating a prime spot in the gate area with a table next to the power outlets, I was actually able to get a significant amount of side project work done.

Air Canada then took me to Tokyo Narita Airport for nine hours, spoiling me with a power plug for my laptop and a spare seat next to me with the tradeoff of proximity to the bathroom. On the advice of a friend I took it upon myself to guzzle wine instead of vodka this time, but I took it slow and it didn’t help me sleep; still, it probably helped make somewhat bearable that Julia Roberts and Clive Owen flick Duplicity and then the last half of Star Trek that I’d missed on the way to the US. Landing was fairly freaky on this end, as the aircraft seemed to bounce from side to side before settling down, me imagining it taking a roll.

Customs was a speedy process as usual, thanks to Japanese immigration and the fact that re-entry permit holders get their own special line. I had an easy two hour wait before the flight to Fukuoka; this took a bit longer than expected as we circled above the airport for some reason. Upon landing and picking up my luggage I was tired enough to hire a taxi to the ferry port rather than ride two buses, so I could more quickly go back out and grab the ramen I was craving. I did not appreciate how the driver, probably because I was a foreigner, didn’t bother to help me load or unload my luggage.

The attendant at the ferry port was kind enough to let me leave my luggage in the office without the usual charge, so I dropped it there and hopped on a bus to Hakata Station. The dinky Japanese version of a diner-like ramen shop nearby awaited my patronage, next to the rest of the unpaired businessmen. I ate a copious amount of noodles, since one can refill the bowl for just 100 yen (about USD$1), and for the most part felt much better.

Although I’d booked and already paid for a night at the nice youth hostel of Fukuoka, I really wanted to just be done with all the travel so I sucked up the cost and waited four hours for the midnight ferry, another four-and-one-half hours trip back to the island. By the time I arrived at the bus stop on the other side of the station, I discovered that the buses that go to the harbour stopped almost an hour prior, so I decided to get some standing time by walking the mile back there.

Up until this point I hadn’t really slept, so I was actually able to get a little bit of rest on the ferry. Only for a minute or two did I get up to use the washroom and then see what the open sea looked like at night, gripping the bars on the side of the ship lest I get bounced into the sea. I wondered what it would be like if I did fall in, but I figured I’d die of hypothermia or be disabled by a giant jellyfish before I could get philosophical about it all.

From the port on the island side, it’s just a fifteen or twenty minute walk to my place, so I “manned up” as some might say, threw my bags over my shoulder, and hobbled home. It wasn’t until the next day that I noticed the small amount of mould that had quite unwisely decided to attack a few of my clothes and accessories in the absence of ventilation caused by a day-to-day resident.

This is a snippet from the 1969 film The Battle of the Japan Sea, directed by Seiji Maruyama. The nautical scenes are quite impressive. It appears that the director made use of actual WW2 era (American?) destroyers and added some smoke stacks and flying bridges to them– to simulate Japanese pre-dreadnought ships. This ain’t CGI, folks. I’m a naval stickler, I wince at what they’re trying to pass off as period ships.. still, the movie has a certain style.

This was available as a complete movie (in sections) on youtube, it has since been yanked at the request of Toho studios. I’ll have to shop around for a DVD. If it exists.

The past few weeks I’ve been up to:

• Teaching English conversation night classes to adults twice a week.  Our eight students first dropped to five, and then down to a regular three.

• Watching too much Will & Grace.

• Co-hosting a BBQ for on- and off-islanders that went quite well despite the not fantastic but still nice weather.  We camped next to Miuda Beach on the north end of the island with everyone and had a fabulous time.

• Getting to know Preston, Jess, and Allan a little better whilst touring them around!

• Watching not enough of True Blood and Weeds.  Supply rate not meeting demand.

• Translating a local tourist pamphlet to English at the request of the Board of Education, probably just for new incoming ALTs.  Luckily, most of the content was available online so I could use Rikaichan and JEDict to go through it faster. This is my excuse for not studying much at all otherwise.

• Packing for my visit home and cleaning yea old apartment.

• Travelling to Kumamoto (Yatsushiro) to visit Eiichi, and then showing him around Tsushima.

• Indulging in island restaurant and café delicacies.

• Not studying enough!

• Occasionally going for the occasional “guilt run.”

• Dinner and karaoke with my local Empty Nester Parents, who treat me to delights like raw abalone (yum) and other goodness.

• Biking to the beach and almost running into a huge jellyfish!

• Having a nice goodbye party BBQ for Gavin with the Board of Education, in which two whole squids were grilled (and delicious) among many other items!  And sending him off at the airport!

Recently some schools have been celebrating the 七夕 Tanabata holiday, which is not a national holiday in Japan but just a fun thing for children.  I got to participate in the custom at a couple of my schools.

Tanabata or literally “The Night of Sevens” comes from the Chinese folk tale about two star-crossed lovers.

It is said that when it rains on Tanabata, the magpies cannot come so the two lovers must wait another year to meet.

The biggest Tanabata event was at one of my small elementary schools, which has just five students this year.  After my English classes for the day, everyone went to the gymnasium which was set up with two long rows of chairs, which were to be filled by just five guests.  Behind those stood a few tables with craft supplies and in front of them was a whiteboard, and before that a poster on-stage.

Premade wishes by the school's five students.

Except for the principal’s introduction, the students ran the rest of the event, which involved some hop-scotch performances and a two-team game to throw balls into an umbrella held by two respective students.

In between those, in Tanabata tradition everyone wrote out wishes on the provided papers called 短冊 tanzaku and then hung them on the tall but thin bamboo tree placed in the gym.  We made some other decorations and hung them as well, some representing constellations like Cancer with a crab made from construction paper, others less relevant like my sort of centipede-crab which came out of an attempt to copy a distinct design.

Tanzaku hanging on the bamboo tree.

The wishes for Tanabata seem to usually have to do with becoming more skilled at something, though other times kids will ask for things like “lots of money” which erred on the junior high school side. Sometimes people write them as poems, but in any case it’s traditional to write the wishes vertically on the tanzaku.

At one of my junior high schools, as part of the English classes for one of the days I was there that week, students wrote out wishes in English and pasted them to a large poster paper on which my partner teacher drew a bamboo tree.

Tanabata in English!

As far as I’m aware, my island didn’t have any special Tanabata festivals, but some places around Japan do.  Sendai, according to the internets, has the largest one.

The month of June is supposed to be rainy season, but this year it didn’t hit until about two weeks ago.  Climate change appears to be shifting things about.  Here and there have been sunny days, but mostly it’s been overcast when it’s not raining.

Storm run-off

On one of my recent junior high school days, the taxi ride was rather interesting during a rather strong rainstorm as water streamed down the mountains and cars at various points on the narrow, steep, and windy roads came close to colliding.  Near the school, debris clouded the water, which took the appearance of the River Amazon, murky with eroded sediments.

The same day as the big rainstorm they made the first performance of a ten minute version of Snow White written by my partner teacher, edited by Rose and I.  Unfortunately the storm’s clattering on the roof of the gymnasium and a lack of stage microphones made some portions of the play inaudible, though their effort was sound (no pun intended).  At least the storm let up briefly before the play, so the small audience actually made it there.

Snow White is almost killed by the Hunter.

There were some oddities.  Unexpectedly the play was preceded by a video of these students reciting their favourite little poems and a little explanation, probably to add some time.  Part of the Seven Dwarves’ introduction involved a springboard flip onto a mat.  The song “Memory” or “Memories” was inserted in the story, sung quite well by the girl playing Snow White.  The prince, inexplicably, was played by a female cast member.  The school’s Christian assistant teacher taught all the narrators Japanese Sign Language for their parts, which done in tandem with English lines was probably the most impressive.

The “Director” asked a TV crew from the local cable channel to come and film the performance. Later they interviewed all of us involved and I was surprised to find that one of them spoke fluent English, the best I’ve heard from a local on the island so far, and had lived in Orange County for a time.  We bonded on No Doubt’s album Tragic Kingdom, and I was interviewed on camera for a third time in Japan.

Before this performance, my partner teacher asked me to edit the script, though he insisted on using “Oh my god!” in lieu of “Oh my!” He also had the other town ALT and I record the lines with him, to help the students practice.  The recorder was so fancy that it had two microphones built in for a “4 channel” mode that splits the audio into separate sound files, and thus we had to record it again another day to fix the problem.

I’m in a chipper mood this morning.  Despite a day with zero classes, a day of mundane sitting in the staff room all day (except when I go to eat lunch with the students), the upside is that now I have even more time to cram for the upcoming JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) coming this July 5.

I have just 591 more words to go through, then review, and also practising for the listening section.

Meanwhile, I spontaneously thought of a rather appropriate-for-me song by famed lesbian singer Ani DiFranco.

The one person who knows me best
Says I’m like a cat.
Yeah, the kind of cat you just can’t pick up
And throw into your lap.
No, the kind that doesn’t mind being held –
Only when it’s her idea.
Yeah, the kind of cat that feels what she decides to feel
When she is good and ready to feel it!

Don’t mail me any cocaine, okay?  Sometimes they actually check, and you’d be in a world of trouble if they found it.

They might send out the Hello Kitty branded police vehicles.

Inspected by Japan Post.

And your bonus today is…

Junior high school island-wide track and field tournament.

Here’s a gem for you.

Hysteric mini devil in car

Adam took Rose and I to see the fireflies on the other side of the mountain from the northern side of our town, about a twenty minutes drive away and well worth the trip. We were amazed by the “preview” of where the river they hover and mate above runs out of tree cover and into free sky, before the breathtaking display farther up the road.

Japan is a very seasonal, transitory place and these fireflies are just one of the many temporary beautiful displays people here flock to see at a particular time of year, really because they’re only viewable in June. When there aren’t autumnal colours, cherry blossoms in April, and snow festivals in December, there are lesser celebrations depending on where one lives for flowers like hydrangeas now in June as well or religious festivals like Obon.

We arrived around 8 PM, when it was beginning to turn rather dark outside, and stopped along a little bridge where we could see the fireflies calmly flying over the river. I caught one easily, thinking of times past at my grandmother’s house in West Virginia where they were often viewable over her yard at night. Up the road we drove farther, following the Japanese folk to the real viewing spot, parked and walked over to a walking bridge.

To our left and right on either side of said bridge, a cascade of tiny glowing, living bulbs lit up the night air like pulsing stars from one end of the river to the other. As if they were doing “The Wave” they were naturally and magically synchronised and in numbers far greater than I’ve ever seen before nor anticipate seeing again. It was such a romantic spot, I wished I had a special heart friend to share it with. A random collared dog probably from the village ran up to the three of us and licked us hello, then followed us to our next destination.

Farther up the path there was an even more magical spot, on a bridge surrounded by woods, and on either side a huge array of fireflies dazzled us and a bunch of Japanese people ranging from quite young to quite elderly. We left as two old ladies were putting up a net across the exit, for no apparent reason.

On the way back, Adam treated us to the closest thing we’re going to get to cheese curds in Japan – Some batter-fried cheese balls with a hint of cheddar flavouring to them that he randomly found at a supermarket.

In reality it’s not much of an invasion, but it was enough of one to have me hopping around screaming like a little girl (or boy, for that matter) who’s just come face-to-face with the monster hiding under their bed.

This isn't my photo, but mine was rather like this.

I was innocently webcam Skype-ing with one of my sisters when I heard a faint scratching sound, like that when something rough is brushing up against a surface, somewhere behind me and I got up to investigate. At first I didn’t find anything, but finally lifting up the sarong decorating my large closet doors behind which lies my futon bedding in wait, I came mere centimetres from kissing an adult-sized mukade centipede, the large and poisonous variety that is notorious in southern Japan.

It could have even been a little cute, peeking it’s head above the sarong after I found it, if I wasn’t in a state of sheer terror.

Once I got ahold of myself, I located and grabbed my insect and relatives death spray, set a flattened cardboard box below it’s approximate position and sprayed the life out of it. Or rather, I sprayed the life out of the poison spray while the centipede slowly tried to escape into my closet, at which point I frantically knocked it down onto the cardboard whilst again screaming.

It just wouldn’t die, even after crushing it with the spray can with a paper towel in between, but it was definitely slowed down, so I picked up the cardboard and showed it to my sister before tossing it off my balcony. Then I spent the night wondering how the hell it got into my apartment and feeling fake itches and crawly things, hoping with all my might that it wouldn’t be as the saying goes, that the centipedes come in pairs. It probably had crawled up on my sheets that were drying on the balcony, or perhaps inside the hanging plant that I brought in to give room for one of my hanging laundry drying racks.

This centipede was the biggest I’ve ever seen, bigger than the one I saw chilling on a spiderweb right outside the door of my very first apartment here.

On the bright side, unlike the snake that comes out in the mountains in the summer that is poisonous enough to kill a bitten victim in as little as an hour, the poison in these poisonous centipedes isn’t so serious. One of the current island ALTs was bit once, and is quoted to say “It hurt like a bitch” but I don’t believe he even went to the hospital as is recommended.

We interrupt this normal broadcast of tales from Bali and Taipei for a special report on something driving me absolutely nuts on the island.

There are cars driving around constantly blasting out messages all around town, and this will continue at least until Sunday.  They’ve got loudspeakers strapped to the top of the vehicles and there is no stopping them.

You see, it’s election season and this appears to be the primary campaigning method – Or at least the most obvious.  Rather than go door-to-door, which must just be too intrusive for Japanese people, instead politicians drive around and around blasting their names, many thank yous, and whatever other little slogans they might like well into the evening.  So instead of intruding directly into one’s home and carrying on a conversation, they intrude by sound waves in a rather one-sided way.

The funny thing: Except for the one I looked at directly this morning before my taxi passed it by on the way to work, the rest seem to just play a recorded message most often spoken by a woman with a announcement-friendly, soulless voice from the cute levels of hell.  Only that guy this morning was actually doing the real work.  

At least the vote is on Sunday.  I’m assuming this will stop then.

I have half a mind to drive around blasting hip-hop on my car stereo.

Monday was a bit rough, coming back from being on holiday for two weeks.  I was surprised to find that at least for this month, one of the taxi companies that’s been transporting around the other local ALT is lugging me around now.

At the friendliest of my large elementary schools, I met the new staff who transferred in, including the vice-principal, the tea lady I knew from the nearby junior high school.  There’s another guy who may be in charge of the second grade class, but I’m not entirely sure yet, and one more.  The former second grade teacher and after me the youngest staff member is now the one I will probably be working with most, as he’s now the combined fifth- and sixth-grade class’ homeroom teacher.  He invited me along to the staff’s party on Friday, which turned out to be quite fun.

The third and fourth grade class reviewed numbers one through ten with repetition, a marbles game, and a simple dice board game.  More interesting was the debut of the island-wide curriculum for the fifth and sixth grade class, which includes dreaded Dancenglish and practicing the name of some countries as well as their local language’s greeting.

• America/Australia: Hello
• Japan: こんいちは (Konnichiwa)
• China: 你好 (Nǐ hǎo)
• Kenya: Jambo
• Russia: Здравствуйте! (Zdra-tsvi-tsya)
• South Korea: 안녕하세요 (Ahn-yong-hahseh-yo)
• Brazil: boa tarde (actually, this is “good afternoon”)

Tuesday saw my return to the junior high school at which I have the most limited relationship with the staff.  Although a couple of them have been friendly in the past, I think they think the opposite of me for my level of reservedness and absorption in my studies when I’m not planning lessons or teaching them.  Still, the Japanese teacher is always nice to me and even strikes up little conversations here and there.

In any case, I arrived in the middle of the mornings staff meeting, at the end of which I was asked to give a little introduction for the new staff.  Unfortunately I didn’t take initative to get to know them afterward, but I knew one of them already from the junior high school nearest to my apartment.

Oddly enough, shortly after I arrived the network printer stopped working over the network.  I don’t see how I could have caused it since my computer doesn’t have any special network settings that would screw up the infrastructure, but I stepped a little outside my usual shell in fixing that.  The geeky will find this entertaining: I could still print to it via the AppleTalk protocol.  For some reason, whoever set up the printer on the network opted for a non-IP based setup, so I switched it to that.  It’s still a bit of a silly system, being a network printer but nonetheless shared to all the other office computers from the shared desktop PC, but oh well.

More geekiness: When I arrived I noticed right away that I couldn’t browse the Internet because for some reason, the DNS servers weren’t being supplied by the network.  I copied them down from the shared computer and put them in to my computer manually, and helped a few other people put it in theirs when they also had trouble.  Then, in Japanese I wrote up a guide on how to put in those settings in and take them out.  They were pretty impressed.  I worried about becoming the new IT guy.

I met the new first graders, most of whom I knew from the previous day’s elementary school, but a couple from a school at which the other local ALT teaches.  It was a little odd teaching twelve year olds the alphabet, but none too difficult.

Wednesday brought a second day at the same junior high school.  The second graders practiced simple past tense with “was” and “were” and most silly but most functional, actually, the third grade class wrote and performed some show-and-tell bits.  After lunch I played volleyball with some of the second and third graders.

Thursday was different than usual not only because I visited an elementary school, the one with the newest and made largely with wood building, but also because my Board of Education supervisor set it up so that I could sleep in and go there shortly before lunch because I didn’t have any morning classes.

Naturally I met the new staffers there, three of them including the new nurse, support teacher, and combined third and fourth grade class teacher.

This school is the first to decide that with the new required, once a week English class curriculum for fifth and sixth grades, I will only be teaching English to that combined class.  I taught pretty much the same lesson as the one on Monday.

Friday brought me to one of my five students-only elementary schools, where the vice principal was curiously absent for the day and there was one new teacher who was really friendly.  The school is not unlike a big family, anyway, so that was pretty much guaranteed.

Usually my two classes for the day at the school are consecutive, but this day they were during first and fourth periods.  The first class’ plan was made for all the students, practicing simple self-introductions and concluding with me reading a cute moral story called “The Rice Balls and the Mice” that is apparently part of early Japanese moral education class, except not in English. The second class, taught by me and the new teacher, was from the island-wide (or city-wide) curriculum, the same lesson I’d taught twice this week already, but since the school was so small and there was just one sixth grader and two fourth graders, the fourth grade was included too.

Hitotsu Batago flower.

In between the classes, I had some casual conversation with the very bored principal.  He told me about a stark white flower that will bloom widely up on the north end of the island at the beginning of May in the mountains at places like the viewpoint where one can see the coast of South Korea, in the area called 鰐浦 Waniura (Crocodile’s Inlet).  It has a number of names: ヒトツバタゴ (hitotsubatago) Translation?, 海照らし (umi-terashi) Sea Shine, and 鉈むらし (nata-murashi) something to do with a kind of blade.

The afternoon at the Board of Education wasn’t so eventful, except that I found out that my already modest rent decreased by 41% from April, which I should have noticed on the rent bill slips I was given a couple weeks ago. Woo hoo!

On my way out for the day, the friendly, young, new guy in the office asked me a question that I didn’t understand properly until after I left.  He said “帰ると？” (kaeru to?) which I processed as “So you’re going home?” but actually meant “What’re you doing after you go home?” in such a way to see if I had plans and if I might want to do something.  Now I feel rather dull, but I hope that he doesn’t think I’m too unfriendly when I didn’t get it… I just didn’t expect him to want to get together, for some reason.  In any case, I couldn’t have gotten together anyway, as ahead there was already a party scheduled with the elementary school staff from the Monday school.

That party was my second at the bar-restaurant of the Self Defense Force base, this time with a slightly different menu featuring most prominently some artfully-arranged lobsters already on the table when I arrived after being picked up by one of the new teachers.  Later I found out that the lobster was actually in sashimi form, so I had raw lobster for the first time and it was delicious!

Don't play with your food. Looks like a Zerg queen from StarCraft 2.

That was less shocking, however, than the live shrimp held semi-still under the weight of a plate.  Though mostly on the edge of their graves, I was treated to the new experience of snapping their heads off their bodies, peeling off their outer shell, and devouring the raw interior.  I’ve had raw shrimp before on top of sushi, but I believe it was a different kind and in any case, the taste of these fresh ones was far superior.

Also new were two sort of grill things set up.  On top of a portable gas stove, one of the cooks at the place came in and quickly slammed down two tall, black-coloured cooking stones.  On top of that we grilled a number of things, sliced fish not meant for sashimi as well as some of the shrimp.

Why stone grills on top of gas stoves? To keep them heated.

Like last time, there was an arrangement of fish and squid for sashimi and an au gratin lobster, and two of the large fish encased in salt blocks with the tan appearance of naan that one slams with a hammer to get to the tasty fish inside.

I was somewhat relieved that it wasn’t random seating, though it was arranged seating nonetheless.  Still, I lucky got sat near the middle, next to the third and fourth grade class teacher and the new vice principal, who though already nice got friendlier as time and alcohol passed.  My contribution of the 5000 yen ($50) charge for the all-one-can-eat and drink session was generously returned to me by the principal, neatly disguised folded inside a slip of paper, suggesting tongue-in-cheek that I could use it for the night’s second, third, and fourth parties.

I felt bad because it seemed that everyone else brought alcohol, which I was rather surprised about, but I guess it was a shared pool that nobody told me about.  None of my school parties have involved that before, and this was the first one I’d been invited to or been able to attend with this particular school.

Before we rounded out our stay at the venue, we had a sort of formal ceremony to welcome the new staffers, which curiously I was included in although I’ve been working there since September.  The principal made a little speech before addressing the four of us one-by-one with a happy and joking message, after which everyone gave a little speech of their own.  I took the opportunity just to say that I am always happy to work at the school and apologise for my poor Japanese.

We all piled into respective taxis and went off to the second party locale, a fourth floor karaoke venue along Canal Road I’d never heard of before.  It went surprisingly well with our group of one twenty-something, two thirty-somethings, the rest consisting of forty-somethings and up.  The fifth and sixth grade class teacher, who I have just recently realised I am a tad attracted to, spent most of the time cheering and dancing around leaving me wondering if in this sort of situation it’s up to the youngest guy (foreigners excluded) to take on the role of the energetic sort of party manager.

I was surprised because there wasn’t to be a third party of the night, and to get home before midnight, even.  On our way out, the vice principal kept insisting that I take a taxi with him while I kept replying that I could easily walk home (which was true).  He quietly admitted he wanted to invite me over to his place, for who knows what, and now I wish I’d gone just to see what was going on in his head.  It was pretty shocking to me, though I’m sure it was innocent.

The penultimate day before Spring Break, as it were, my schedule read that I should go to an elementary school whose staff were very surprised to see me upon arrival.  No English classes could be done that day, so I was at a loss as to why my board of education supervisor hadn’t informed me, wondering if I had just forgot.  That morning the taxi didn’t come to my apartment, so I thought they forgot for the second time in the morning, and I just called the up to request a ride.

In any case, it was decided after the vice principal contacted the board of education that I’d spend the morning through school lunch at the school and then head back to the BOE office for the remainder of the day.  In the time at the school, I was invited to make 団子 (dango) sweet dumplings with the first and second graders, in two sessions.

These dumplings don’t have a filing, rather the extra element is put on their exterior.

The first graders made 黄粉団子 Kinako Dango, a rather simple version of these sweet dumplings and the variety topped with sweet soy powder and eaten with toothpicks.  It’s a five step process:

Steps 1~2: Mix rice powder with tofu and roll 1-inch balls.

Steps 3~4: Boil in water until the spheres rise to the top.

Step 5: Let cool for a minute, then spread sweet soy powder over them. Enjoy!

These taste like what you might expect: A mochi version of powdered doughnuts with their own little unique flavour.

The second graders made a more ambitious version of sweet dumplings, the 御手洗団子 Mitarashi Dango variety, which uses a sweet glaze with the appearance of caramel from caramel apples.  Also, I learned how to make a moth-shaped cut of apples that’s really cute.  This time, not only was the second grade teacher there, but also a few moms.

Step 1: Mix tofu with rice powder and knead until mixture has the consistency of one's lower earlobe.

Steps 2~3: Roll 3 cm balls and boil until they rise to the top.

Steps 4~5: Put dumplings on skewers and gently fry and turn until it shows a light brown colour, like that of a fox.

Step 6: Make the syrup topping - heat sugar, mirin, and soy sauce in a saucepan until it thickens.

Step 7: Scoop the thickened syrup onto the skewered dumplings.

Step 8: Stuff yourself full of sweet dumpling goodness right before school lunch! Oof!

Like I said, I made and was obligated to eat my share of dumplings in the periods leading up to school lunch, which was a tasty and not-beef-based curry but still was too much food.  It was a different experience, with only the two fifth graders and the fifth and sixth grade teacher there, a little lonely, since the sixth graders had graduated already and weren’t coming to school anymore.

A bit of an exciting thing for a geek, I discovered a Cultural Asset of Japan on the island last week on my way to and from my dentist appointment.

Historical Stone Fire Wall in Imaya Village

A sign around the corner provides background:

Designated a Cultural Asset.

In the middle 19th Century, tall stone fire walls were built along the line that divided the town in order to contain a fire.  Only a few of them are now left and this site is in the best condition.

Traces of being burnt are left all over the wall, illustrating these unique remains that protected the citadel of Izuhara.

Stone fire walls used to be found in Edo (now Tokyo) also, but today they can only be seen here.

A significant number of houses in Japan are still built with considerable amounts of wood, tatami mats, and paper for sliding doors depending on how traditional the house happens to be.  However, these stone walls have given way to zoning and other methods of inferno prevention.

After sleeping in, cooking a breakfast of bacon and eggs, and venturing into the Board of Education office to print the tax form required to extend my filing deadline a further two months for the foreign income exclusion to be valid, I was feeling restless and in need of some cycling.

A painful but pretty ride up an down mountains, through valleys.

Originally I thought of making a larger loop to turn back and return east at Komoda, about 10 km north of point C on the map.  I’m glad I didn’t, because this ride already turned out to be an unexpected 50 kilometres.  I thought it was going to be more like 30 km, but now I see that it’s because I took the route leading all the way to the southern coast.

Not only was this 50km, most of it was up and down mountain roads leading far higher than I’ve done up until now.  It was enough that I had to briefly rest a few times on the way back, partially because the chain was giving me issues getting to the lowest gear.  It wasn’t so much that it was so steep, but I was worn out.

I just hope after eating a full bento lunch, an azuki and sweet rice pastry, and then some of the blissfully wonderful dark chocolate plus caramel bar, arrived just today from my mum, for dinner I haven’t completely undone the calories burned.

I fear tomorrow’s soreness.

A couple nights ago I had a three-stage dinner and drinking party with the elementary school teacher who’s kindly invited me out with his two drinking buddies (same school’s nurse and a local meteorologist office worker) a few times now; we started with a varied, all-one-can-eat and drink pseudo-izakaya (tavern) owned by a carpenter, then moved on to a snack bar that luckily wasn’t shady, and finally to a bar with darts and billiards.

The first venue was almost on the edge of town by the port, and was unique among the local restaurants: It had no menu.  Instead, it serves up quite a variety of foods, basically whatever one wants, provided they have the supplies or can run to get them.  In fact, one of the staff ran out to bring back three bottles of shochu (very popular, 25% alcohol, clear liquor like sake but made from rice, barley, or sweet potato).

Sashimi with daikon radish and wasabi, on a hand-carved boat.

Nabe, which means "pot," is a popular dish during winter and because it's easy: Boil vegetables, meat, and/or tofu in fish broth. This one had a miso base.

The four of us dined first on slithery seaweed in a variety I hadn’t had before.  The owner was, or perhaps still is, a carpenter and so next we were served on hand-carved wood boats sashimi from three fish and squid, delicious and fresh, with the typical arrangement of refreshing daikon radish.  Along with our beers and next shochu, we had plates of batter-fried meats and vegetables and a small dish housing a small but whole batter-fried fish, whose head I did eat.  Next came our own miso-base mini nabe pots full of tofu, chinese cabbage, and mejina — Girella punctata or largescale blackfish.  Last, probably to try and freak out the foreigner, they served up cooked parts of the sashimi fish: The heart, stomach, and bowels.  I went for the first two but stopped there, reaching my limit of culinary experimentation for the night.  Ka-ching: ¥5000円 (USD$50).

We left that place for the snack bar.  While I may have reviewed this already, snack bars are places where women are essentially paid to join one’s table, appear interested, and basically be eye candy.  This is opposed to hostess bars, where the chances that you may also take them home as glorified prostitutes increases.  Some snack bars are shadier than others, some charge quite a lot and others are divey.  However, the one we went to was the most like a normal bar out of the now three times I have reluctantly visited them, and didn’t seem shady; they even let me mix my own drink, though I don’t think I will be combining vodka, curaçao, calpis, and grenadine again after having it described as cough medicine. The teacher leaving was monopolised for most of our time there by the parent of one of the now graduated sixth grade students.  Ka-ching: ¥3000円 (USD$30).

Songbird's nest in an open-air entryway to a building.

What became my first “third party” in Japan, we next headed off to the darts and billiards bar on the fourth floor of the building that used to hold my trendy little salon of choice.  The crowd, by which I mean a group of over six people, was very surprisingly far below the average age of the island and even more shockingly comprised mostly of attractive self-defense force boys from the local base.  The only other soldiers I’ve seen around town occasionally have been late thirties plus, except for a couple at a party up north back around late November.  Lucky for me, the not-yet-officially meterologist paid for the three of us.

The teacher who is leaving and this weather service office worker are both into darts as a hobby, moreso the latter fellow.  He owns his own darts, which he carried to the bar in a fancy little case… Except he forgot the tips.  Apparently darts is something of a racket, as one can order quite the variety of fast- or slow, plastic or aluminum darts in various sizes and shapes with various wing styles.  A salesperson, or at least someone associated with the bar actually came over that night to hand us a printout of new model information.  Kits run for about 8000 yen ($80) or that may have even been only one part of the dart.

The last day of work before Spring Break was followed by the Sendoff Party of the middle school closest to my apartment, serving as a goodbye to the teachers transferring and an excuse to get liquored together.  We had an amazing Western European-style meal in seven or so courses, with four sets of forks and knives plus two spoons.  I managed to move around the room and talk to a few different people whilst others were doing the same, but for the last chunk I got stuck talking with the old principal, who admittedly is quite nice.  Oddly enough, we were in a room with Japanese-style, low-table and tatami room seating whilst the other municipal ALT Rose was with a school party having a Japanese meal in a Western-style room.

Somehow in the plethora of free time I am drowning in thanks to that double-edged blade we call Spring Break, until now I have yet to find time to write.  Though I am but four days in to this terror, I am reaching dangerously close to pondering about life beyond the day-to-day.  Still, this hasn’t brought me into focus on something I actually do need to be looking into and planning: A rough itinerary for my trip to Bali during the next break.

Random but Cool: Quite a significant sales booth set up one day at the local mall.

Since last Friday night at the overnight cabin birthday party for and put together by the prominent non-commercial party organiser ALT of the prefecture, where I spent part of the time sleeping quite incorrectly on my right shoulder, it has been aching and consequently the past few days when I could have been doing some cycling training I instead spent them more or less entirely on my bottom in front of a book or computer screen.

Nonetheless, shockingly I made a few unexpected accomplishments starting at the tail end of the last work day before break.

Weeks ago I translated via affixed mini post-its the required Vision Report form that goes along with my home driver’s license renewal application. Not only did I need to get an vision examination and the associated form filled out by a “licensed vision examiner,” I also needed to find a notary public to sign as a witness on my application form.  With the help of the Board of Education office, I managed to take care of this within a couple hours and at no charge thanks to the kind notary who came to our office.  The next morning at the easy-to-find clinic that doesn’t take appointments, I completed the eye examination with little difficulty.  I couldn’t hardly believe working through these bureaucracies would be so simple.

Although I’m thinking that my bedroom is beginning to looked cluttered in design with the posters, Vietnamese flag, pictures, postcards, and plants, I decided to do a little additional decorating with this free time.  For quite some time now I’ve been meaning to make some simple decorations with strung origami cranes to brighten the place.  Now there’s one made in greens and white and another like a sunset gradient, from dark red to bright yellow.  I’m planning one in pinks and purples, perhaps with blues too.  The possibilities are almost endless.

I also decided that whatever the discomfort, somehow I needed to immerse myself more in Japanese by listening to Japanese songs, reading books in the language, blogging in Japanese, and stop watching so frequently English television programmes.  So far I’ve listened to the music and managed to read a chapter of a children’s novel called Sky Flying Cats by Haruki Murakami.  I also started Shogun, an English language book apparently made into an American television show during the 60s or 70s; In the middle of it, I found two 10,000 yen (US$100) notes left in there by the past ALT owner, I suppose — Score.

It’s safe to say that while Californian senior high school graduation ceremonies may be plagued by attacks by gargantuan, pure-demon snakes, those of southwestern Japanese junior high schools surprisingly come free of attacks by giant lizards bent on destruction. They are fairly strict, though, and described as favourable if the students break into tears.

It’s strange and yet sense-making that Japanese society would see fit to set a standard of emotional outburst for a particular occasion, making it both appropriate and satisfactory within those confines. Perhaps it’s even looked down upon if one doesn’t have such strong feelings or at least make a display of them. More on this comes later.

I was invited to participate in the graduation ceremony at the junior high school I most frequently visit, excited to see it whilst being warned at least for the students it involved a very strict ceremony. I had no idea that it wouldn’t end there.

The ceremony took place in the gymnasium and stage building, arranged with the graduating class sitting front and centre before the stage, board of education officials and other honoured guests along a long table perpendicular to their left and to their right a table of the same length for the faculty, behind them the underclassmen, and farthest back the parents.

My JTE, dressed most formally in kimono as she was one of the graduating class’ homeroom teachers, apparently arose at 5 A.M. so as to get dressed and fully prepared. Everyone else donned suits or similar formal-wear, while the students wore their standard full uniforms.

I was in quite a mood before the ceremony, feeling both generally nervous about the event and perturbed by one of the stranger teachers’ reproachful “Thank you” to our spontaneous, few second long conversation that he started and ended, as if to imply I was intentionally avoiding socialising with the other faculty. My JTE, who had plenty else on her mind to worry about me, thankfully asked the support teacher to be my guide whilst I was worrying about what to do. The last time there was a ceremony, when classes resumed after winter break, all of the teachers disappeared without mentioning a word to me so by the time it started I was already too late; this time I was not going to let the same thing occur.

Before the ceremony, I went upstairs from the teachers’ room to witness the ribbon-giving pre-ceremony, as the underclassmen gave an initial congratulations to the graduating class. It was fairly simple, the students were in formation with their respective classes and one section of the third graders received their ribbons, after which the second section received theirs.

The support teacher led me to the gymnasium and signalled for me to sit alone along what was to be the teachers’ row. Feeling not a small bit awkward about that situation, with some teachers standing behind, I got up soon after and stood until the principal and vice-principal came and took their seats. The underclassmen were practising songs by the lead, of course, of the music teacher.

The ceremony itself was a bit shorter than I expected, thinking it would be more drawn out. A brief introduction led into the diploma-giving, which involved very particular walking patterns and standing positions.

Very formal diploma-receiving procedure.

Once all the graduating students had received theirs and returned to their seats, there were a few songs sung first by the student body and then one by everyone, along with a few speeches. The strictness I mentioned before applied a little to the teachers and honoured guests, who had to stand at attention when called to, a few times. Things relaxed, however, after the procession of the third graders out of the gymnasium, some already crying.

Back in the classrooms, the graduating students returned to their seats, their parents standing in the back and the homeroom teachers in the front, whilst they went through goodbye rituals. I walked between the two adjacent rooms for the two sections of third graders, listening to the students’ goodbye messages and later the musical performances from the guitar-playing teacher. Then that class got up and sung the tear-jerker “Letter to Your 15 Year Old Self” song that had only a few not actively bawling their eyes out at the same time.

Help, we've got three more years of extreme pressure.

Congratulations display, with flowers.

At long last, the underclassmen waited outside to give a final goodbye to the graduating class, who literally walked between them to meet their parents or in any case walk off the school grounds. I shook their hands and gave my congratulations in English, a bit sad that I hadn’t gotten to know them better outside of class.  Still, I managed to snap a few peace-sign photos with ‘em.

Peace out.

The good news is that the half-Filipino, half-Japanese student I was worried about was at least allowed to graduate by her stupid father.  The bad news is that she is not presently lined up to go to high school, and may face a very boring and difficult life stuck doing housework or working some part-time job at least until she’s old enough to escape.

For lunch, after embarrassingly but unexpectedly arriving late to interrupt a group おつかれさま “otsukaresama”– “Good job everyone for working so hard” pow-wow speech in the teacher’s room, I ate there for the first time with all of the teachers. The day was actually a half-day, all the students departing before lunch, and afterward I just planned for the two classes I would have in the next two days.

Someone gave or made all the teachers and the graduating students some tasty muffins, bringing you yet another piece of beautiful Engrish.

The story ends with "and."