HAPPY NEW YEAR! *Confetti* あけましておめでとうございま〜す！

Well, I got back to Japan on the night of Sunday the 7th. My vacation felt way too short. There were so many things I wanted to pick up or photograph to use in future classes, and I just didn’t get around to it. Didn’t get my hair cut either. But, I did get to see friends and family, eat pizza, tacos, and pastel de tres leches. And choco-flan. And–

lemme stop.

^o^; It was bad enough I was smelling people’s bentou as tacos al pastor. I need to get my mind back on my favorite Japanese food.

Tonkotsu ramen. Yudofu. Beni-imo flavored anything. Matcha Milk. Matcha Ice Cream.  Matcha Cheesecake Set.

From Kyo Hayashiya in JR Hakata City.

*Slaps self back to reality*

So, what am I thinking about in the New Year other than green tea?

Actually, this has been on my mind for a while. What made me ponder it again was something that happened with some friends who were visiting me at home. We had ordered pizza so I had gone to the kitchen to make sure we had enough plates and such. Meanwhile, my brother and 4 friends had started playing Tekken Tag Tournament. When I got back, I sat down. The loser of each round would pass the controller. It seemed like they had decided a play order, so I figured I’d just sit back and join in at the end of the rotation. But no one passed the controller to me, and since I knew I wouldn’t be able to do much anyway, I just sat back and watched and talked. Eventually, someone realized I wasn’t playing and asked me if I wanted to. I said that I could, and when someone asked me, “Why didn’t you say anything?” I said, “No one passed me the controller.” The response to that?

“You’re so Asian!!!”

@_@

Okay, so the whole “Asians are submissive” stereotype is at play here, even though I think it’s odd for someone to think that Asians would be like that among friends in an environment as familiar as someone’s house. What struck me on a personal level was how a behavior I’ve ALWAYS had — staying in the background in social situations — was suddenly perceived as the result of my living in Japan. I can’t even say I’m a wallflower, cuz I wouldn’t even go to the dance! But no one said I was Asian in high school.

This reminded me of how I was never, ever, eeeeeever told that I spoke English with an accent until I went to college, where for the first time the majority of my classmates were white, and only after they found out I hadn’t been born in the States.

I think people accept things as simple personality quirks until they think they have something to blame it on.

From the standpoint of the individual whose traits are in question, I do think culture can be and is often used as a shield for fear, or as a Get Out of Jail Free card. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I seriously hope that my students aren’t really suffering from a crippling shyness that prevents them from speaking out in class (as teachers would have me believe) and that they’re just using the national excuse not to speak.

Another example: I hate going to parties, but I don’t mind hosting them. Given my background in AmeriCorps, I could tell you that it’s because I love my fellow man so much, nothing gives me greater pleasure than to serve. 思いやりの心 and all that. But it’d be a big fat lie. The simple fact is, once a social gathering becomes something more than 2 people talking, I feel immense pressure to have to be entertaining. To exude charisma, animal magnetism, which I have none of. But if I’m the hostess, I can let the guests entertain themselves, while I hustle about getting food and drink, making sure everyone is comfortable, without actually having to hold a conversation, without having to be ignored or interrupted mid-sentence (something I hate, hate, hate, hate, haaaaaaate). In short, it’s easier to fulfill the role of Caring Hostess than of Personable Human Being. Well, if only I were judged as a Human Being, which would mean as a Man, it would be easier. But that’s a rant for another day.

Hm, before my train of thought becomes even more difficult to follow, I’ma just stop. >o<; I’ll try to be more Happy Fun Times in the next post. Maybe. Ahahaha…

For kicks, here’s a photo I took early Christmas Eve morning. (And now I’ve got Cyndi Lauper in my head.)

Forgot to resize the photo before uploading. Ahhhh...don't feel like it now. >o<;

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Why do they always make the dark haired sister the hypocrite slut? Sheez.

Ahem, anyway, I came home for Christmas a little over a week ago. I’ve been enjoying relaxing, shopping, seeing friends and family, and lazying around with the cats and my unicorn Pillow Pets. ^o^; I wanted to make a sort of “look back” at 2011 post, but I don’t think I have enough witty things to say for such a task. Maybe later I’ll just post a bunch of random pictures.

Well, have a Happy New Year, O Reader! よいお年を!

Ahem, moving along.

The home ec teacher had invited me to one of the classes several months ago, a class with seniors. It seems to have been an elective. I tried to ask how the students picked that class, since it wasn’t the whole homeroom and there were 2 boys in there who obviously would have rather been elsewhere, but between my Japanese and the teacher’s English, it wasn’t completely clear to me. Well, the class also seems to have been only for one or two terms, as that group of students will no longer have that class starting 3rd term.

Anyway, it was a two hour class on Fridays 3rd and 4th period, but I always had a class on 4th period, so I never got to see any of the recipes completed. The teacher or the students would take the finished dish up to me in the teachers’ room during lunch. In total, I helped make about 8 dishes and got to eat 5 of them. I don’t carry a camera to school, so most of these photos were taken with my laptop’s webcam.

The Fist Dish: Red Bean Mochi Cakes

Suffice it to say I made a huge mess with the flour. ^_^;;; The mochi flour was steamed for a bit, then the red bean paste was put inside, and the whole thing wrapped in a leaf to steam some more. Very chewy.

Chew chew chew

The Second Dish: だご汁 (Dagojiru)

The dagojiru was a type of Japanese stew featuring iriko (dried sardines), pork, gobou (burdock root), konnyaku, and shiitake mushrooms. I learned how to peel the burdock root (using the back of a knife’s blade) and how to cut konnyaku with the edge of a bowl to make the edges jagged and thus more flavor-absorbent. I seem not to have a photo of this. Whoops.

The Third and Fourth Dishes: White Stew (AKA Crew Steam) and Pumpkin Cake

This time I knew how to not mess up the flour, ahaha. I also worked with a group of students instead of just helping the teacher do the demos as I had been doing the previous two weeks. We talked about cooking and food in the States. Or rather, food in my neck of the woods. I told them I don’t know everything about food in the States since I’ve never been to half the country. I’ve never even been west of the Mississippi, ahaha. Since I don’t have class with these students, and they were obviously not wanting to speak English, we just conversed in Japanese. Though one girl was at least saying simple things like “please mix!” in English.

We didn't make the rolls. But when the students saw them, they erupted in cheerful yells of やった！！！

Since this recipe didn’t include any ingredients that I was unsure of my ability to recognize in the supermarket, I tried to make it at home on my own later! It turned out okay, despite the fact that I didn’t have any way to measure grams and was just eyeballing every amount that wasn’t measured in cc’s. ^_^; I made it the same week as the fourth dish, the pumpkin cake featured in the teaser post. Somehow, it ended up tasting totally like cornbread!

Stew contains chicken, bacon, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, and mushrooms. It took me 5 days to finish eating it all. >o<;

The Fifth and Final Dish: Deco Cake

Meaning, a “decorated” cake. I thought it would be Christmas cake, but it was too early for that. This was the last class. I also helped the students make “American muffins,” but what I got was a slice of deco cake. The decorations consisted of fresh fruit and star-shaped nata de coco.

Not too sweet, just right

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次回！ Uh…I forgot what I was gonna say…

↑ I made that! GASP!!!

This is just a teaser photo. ^o^;

I swear I must have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. Whatever way-longer-than-24-hours time span my body is set to has entered another phase of “I’m not gonna let you sleep at night.” I’ve gotten 8 hours of sleep between the past two days, but it’s only taking 2 small cans of café au lait to keep me from collapsing and snoring on my desk. (Though I did take 2 40-minute naps on it Monday, ahaha.)

Anyway, I don’t particularly feel like gathering up the photos of the foods I’ve made in the Home Ec class, nor explaining how that came about, but I did want to just update this blog. So, here ya go. >o</

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次回！The rest of this post!

Recently another ALT said to me, “You must have less work now that you’re at a high level school.” I gave a weak laugh and said, “No, I have way more work now. These students have more vocabulary which they can use incorrectly.”

The hardest thing at my new school is, without a doubt, checking the English compositions of the “advanced” classes of second and third year students. These are weekly assignments of 100-120 words on questions such as “Should people use cell phones in public places” and “What can we do to stop global warming.” Checking these assignments is mentally exhausting. So far, half of them make the most basic mistake of all: not answering the question. They also don’t understand that paragraphs exist for a reason and there should be order to the way you present your ideas. Half of them don’t seem to understand that lines exist on paper so that you can set the feet of your letters on them. The other half don’t have the common decency to brush the eraser shavings out of their notebooks before turning them in. This is the cream of the crop of a high academic high school? Coulda fooled me.

I’ve taken to typing up my comments so that the JTEs can just photocopy them and pass them out to the students. I did see an improvement in the eraser shavings problem, but the fact that high school students even need to be told something so basic is unbelievable and cringeworthy. One JTE told me that they aren’t taught how to write essays, and I internally screamed “then why in the world did you give them a homework assignment they weren’t prepared to do?! English isn’t just ‘writing sentences,’ neither is any language! It’s about communicating ideas!”

The homerooms that do these assignments are ones that I don’t have class with, but I told the two JTEs that I would like to go to one of their English classes and explain the how and why of essay writing. Otherwise, I’m going to ask the JTEs to give them a different homework assignment. There is zero point to having them write essays if they don’t even understand what the point of paragraphs is.

^_^;

Well, at least there is a small handful of students who do get it, and others improved from the previous assignment to the next. I hope it can get to a point where I don’t wanna jump in front of a train after each “essay” I read. >o<;

In much happier news, last weekend I went to go see GACKT and his side project band YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz for two nights at Zepp Fukuoka. Then this weekend I got together with some girl friends for a “Josei Matsuri” in honor of the YFC shows. We dressed up YFC style, watched music videos of GACKT, YFC, and our favorite female artists, and I even gave them a little quiz! ^o^ Enjoy a couple of photos.

I forgot to ask permission to post their pics on this blog, so I cropped my friends out. ^_^;

A 7-question quiz whose presentation was inspired by the Test for Becoming a Government Official as portrayed in the NHK BS drama "Tempest."

If the makers of the JLPT realized that giving out word lists was a bad idea, when will English educators in Japan realize the same thing? @_@ I don’t get it.

Ahem…anyway…

Sometimes things still throw me for a loop. Just when I think we’re all on the same page, I see that we’re not. It can be very frustrating, and sometimes I don’t handle it very well. Read: I state my opinions directly.  I wish we’d hold the meetings in Japanese so that my ability to express myself would be crippled and I don’t end up saying things like “All humans are born creative, they just lose the ability if they’re put in an environment that doesn’t nurture their creativity.” Whoops.

My plan stands though. I’m gonna work as hard at the new school as I did at the old school. Every time ALTs rattle off all the things that are wrong with English education in Japan, I always think, “if we know the problem, why don’t we try to fix it?” There are of course things we can’t change, but anyone who believes they received a “superior” education in the West because it was focused on critical thinking rather than rote memorization should put their critical thinking to the test and find the loopholes that will allow them to teach the kids something more useful than a list of words with no relation to each other.

Sidenote: I don’t believe critical thinking trumps rote memorization. You need to memorize some things before you can think critically about them. Do we need to think critically about the ABCs in order to learn them? No. But once you have learned them, you may discover many wonderful things about them when you do know them enough to think critically about them.

On a slightly different topic, one thing that surprised me about my new school is how much older the building looks relative to my previous workplace. My current school is less than 10 years older than my previous one, so why is the paint all chipped and faded, the lockers so rusty? I also had assumed that the new school would be in better condition because it’s supposedly so much higher level academically speaking, but I guess they don’t take that into account when figuring out the building budgets. That would be a bit cruel, and it’s the sort of thinking that makes ghettoes, but since I was used to it, I was surprised by its absence.

Another thing that I found interesting was during the Sports Day festival. During rehearsals for said event, the teachers all have to go outside and watch the kids practice. Myself and so many other ALTs are always left surprised and somewhat worried about the kids’ apparent total lack of both body fat and muscle mass. This is particularly obvious on the boys, who are running around in just their gym shorts half the time. I’ve seen boys who were count-the-vertebrae skinny. And I do mean all their vertebrae.  However, it seemed that at my new school, there were hardly any such students. I thought to myself, “No wonder they get better grades, they actually eat enough calories to support all their bodily functions!” ^_^;

This, in turn, made me wonder how many of the dangerously thin students were thin by choice, and how many were thin due to circumstances. Countless studies in the US say that the lower a student’s social background, the lower their grades are likely to be. But in a country were supposedly every one thinks of themselves as middle class, does this play a role, and to what extent?

Well well, I’ve no slick way to end this post, so I’ll just end suddenly like a piece of traditional Japanese music. Saku–

On with the show!

Glasses, 変身！I’ve been wearing Transitions lenses, the photochromic lenses that automatically turn dark when struck by UV rays, for over 10 years. Unfortunately for Transitions lovers living in Japan, they’re not well known here. Most people react with a surprising degree of disbelief when I tell them such glasses exist. Luckily, there is one store in Fukuoka Prefecture that sells them: Megane no Yonezawa in Tenjin. If you’re desperate for Transitions in Japan, here’s the store finder page (Japanese only): Transitions Shop List

This time, I went with a brown tint instead of my usual black. The lenses do go darker, but I guess there wasn't that much UV bouncing around when I took this photo. The frames are "Geometry 1004" by Glass Garden. ♡

Time Waits On All Men? Look at the sticker with the bananas. The piggy one is funny too.

Click for a larger view!

A familiar face One of the things I don’t like about now having to take the train to work is that I’m tempted every day to go to the chain bakery Train d’Or, one of which is set up in all bigger JR Kyuushuu stations. Now, when I was at my old school, I used to stop by the local bakery on my way home on Wednesdays, before going to Japanese class. I liked their “pizza” and their butter rolls, but everything else had a weird flavor, as of cheap vegetable oil, so it wasn’t a challenge for a bread fanatic like me to get something there just once a week. But Train d’Or, with their decadent lightly grilled cheese sandwich? My, oh my…

Anyway, I was so happy to see a tortuga there!

カメちゃん!

“Tortuga” means “turtle” in Spanish and is a common type of pan dulce (sweet bread). Basically, someone took a semita (known as “concha” outside of Honduras and “melon pan” in Japan) and put legs, a head, and a tail on it. This bread was labeled “kame-chan,” “kame” meaning “turtle.” As my brother pointed out when I emailed him this photo, the tortugas made in Hispanic bakeries don’t usually have faces painted on them.

Does throwing yourself through it count as defenestration? I did take three days off during the Obon season, and used the time most effectively to advance in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which I hadn’t had a chance to play in like 2 months. I noticed a pattern: there’s many levels where you get to the final boss/scene by busting through a window.

Why does Gabriel hate windows so much?! (Insert Windows joke here)

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for this game has cooled somewhat. Sir Patrick Stewart is still the bee’s knees as Zobek, but, even though I’ve advanced to Chapter IX, the music is still as exciting as watching wallpaper peel. I don’t understand how this soundtrack actually won an award.

Now for some art geekery Nearly 13 years since gaining international acclaim as the illustrator and character designer of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Ayami Kojima’s work was finally compiled into an art book. Santa Lilio Sangre -緋いユリ- (“Akai Yuri,” the whole title ends up meaning something like “Holy Blood Lily ~Crimson Lily~”) was released last December by Asuka Shinsha. I stumbled upon it online somehow, and ordered it within minutes of learning about it. ^_^; The photos in this English-language review are much better than the ones I can take, so I’ll post only a few of her less frequently highlighted works, those for novels and magazines.

The book's dust jacket, as shown on the publisher's website. When I realized that I had waited literally half my life for this, I felt both old and young.

Originally from 「巨人を挑んだ男たち」("The Men Who Challenged the Giants").

Originally from 「黎明に叛くもの」which translates to something like "The Ones Who Rebelled at Dawn", on the left, and 「異・戦国誌」and 「竜虎伝」on the right. (Not sure how to translate that. "Unusual Warring States Period Magazine" and "Legend of Naga"?) At least, thanks to Fuurin Kazan, I can recognize Sanada Yukimura's six-coin crest.

Originally from 「士方歳三の鬼謀」("Hijikata Toshizou's Devilish Scheme"? -- left) and 「維新の嵐・幕末志士伝」("Storm of the Restoration - Legend of the Patriots at the Bakufu Period's End" - right).

See? Not everything Kojima draws involves guts, insects, and/or pretty boys! ^o^

Speaking of scary things I really didn’t get on the fedora bandwagon until GACKT’s strange/adorable indecision about what to do with his hat in the music video for “EVER” made it absolutely necessary to have one, and I found the wicked Griffin Hat at Hard Rock Café (it has the specific location name on the other side, of course).

One evening, during one of the GACKT FESTAs that I’m wont to throw, my three friends and I decided to go out for dinner. Since we were gonna do karaoke afterwards, I grabbed my fedora, and one friend provided hats for the other two. So there we were, four foreign women walking down the street in fedoras. Man, it’s been a while since I’ve seen people cross the street so fast! >o< We weren’t even wearing zoot suits for cryin’ out loud…

We lined them up at the restaurant, and decided that the wearer of the grey hat was the Doña.

Older Brother Memorization I’ve never been a big fan of flashcards, but I decided that downloading Anki, the digital flashcard program, for quick kanji review wouldn’t hurt. Now, because “Anki” sounds like “Aniki,” and the default Anki icon is butt ugly, I had to change it to a picture of Aniki. That is, GACKT during the YFC lives. XDD

Now, I always want to click on it. XD

Change of Theme? I’m getting a bit tired of my black-gray-white-red blog theme. I think I’ll go back to something that lets me use a header photo. Hmm…

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次回！My Old School Costs More Than My New School?

On the 11th I went to the School for the Blind, potentially for the last time. The student who only goes to class when Final Fantasy is involved had the flu and went home after taking a make-up test, so I didn’t get to see him. The teachers said they were sorry that I might not be able to go to their school anymore, but both the principal and vice-principal said they would check with my new school to see if they could borrow me sometime. I don’t know how that went.

On a  Friday in mid-July I had a farewell party with all three English Course homerooms and some of the English teachers. Each homeroom performed a song for me. The first years did a song called “Niji,” but it was neither the one by L’arc~en~Ciel nor the one by Yuzu, so I don’t know which “Niji” it was, but it was good. Some of the girls singing sorprano were amazing! The second years performed “We Rock” from their rendition of Camp Rock that they did during bunkasai, only the male lead picked on random boys instead of the female lead for parts in the dance that were originally done with the girl. The third years made a circle around me and sang Southern All Stars’ hit song “Itoshii no Elly,” and I was no longer able to hold back my tears and I cried like a fool in front of them. ^_^;

After the music, we played a “maru batsu game,” which is a true/false game. Before the party the students emceeing had asked me several questions, so that then they could use them in the game. In the first round, nearly everyone was eliminated when they answered that the statement “Eli is from Michigan” was false. ^o^; I guess between being from Honduras, the States, Michigan, and Detroit, they just couldn’t keep it straight.

That same day was my farewell dinner with the teachers. We went to a Japanese restaurant. In the room the teacher figured I should sit at the seat of honor, called the “kamiza” (上座), but then I’d probably be far from everyone, as it most likely was a seat deeper in the room. So I said I should sit in the middle aisle to be able to talk to people at both tables. But I guess it was unsatisfactory, so the teacher asked the waiter where the kamiza was.  After answering, he suddenly spoke to me in English: “Are you special today?” I said I was, and he then asked me, “Are you on the JET Program?” I was surprised, but before I could ask how he knew about JET, some other customers came in and he went to attend them.

Throughout the dinner, the teachers made speeches. I was happy to hear that they had appreciated my work at the school, since it’s not something you always hear in the course of everyday work. When it came time to make my speech, I asked if I should do it in English or Japanese (since the two vice-principals were also in attendance), and they said, “Both! Translate for yourself!” So I rambled on a bit in Japanese, translated it, rambled some more, admitted I hadn’t actually prepared a speech because my head was just full of all the different speeches I’d have to make, and then just said “thank you.” I couldn’t think of a smooth way to wrap it up, ahaha. Then, they gave me a present that many teachers in the school had pitched in to get: a gold necklace with two charms!

I couldn't photograph the necklace well, so here's the box and card. One of the English teachers had sat down to write the names of the 70+ teachers and staff who had contributed to the gift! @_@

After the dinner, we went to karaoke. There was only one hour left before the last train, and since it was my nijikai and they knew how much I liked karaoke, everyone decided to either stay in a hotel or share cabs back home to be able to stay longer! We finished at 1AM. My co-ALT and another teacher split a cab back to our own neighborhood. Between 3 people it was only 2000 yen each, which I think isn’t bad at all.

Of course I had to shower after getting back, so I ended up not going to bed until like 3AM. My new predecessor was leaving Japan that morning. I was awakened in the morning by the sound of her luggage being carried down and several people talking. I went outside and saw who I figured was her – and soon to be my – supervisor. Unfortunately, I was exhausted after having slept only 5-6 hours a night for the whole week. I didn’t know for sure if the woman was who I thought she was, and when it was just sorta thrown out there that she was the supervisor, it was a bit awkward and I didn’t know what to do. Granted I was so tired I really didn’t care if I was making a bad impression or not, but later, I wondered about it. ^_^;

I was pretty unsure what to say for my farewell speech to the whole school at Closing Ceremony, since I never imagined the terms in which I’d be leaving. So I just started with the usual feel good stuff: some poetic descriptions of the scenery on the way to school, memories with the students in brief, and thanking the teachers. I was a bit worried about my “message to the students,” because of the possibility I was oversimplifying Japanese culture.

I talked about the dreaded nail that sticks out.

I said, (to translate from the Japanese): “When I was in college, I learned the phrase ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.’ This way of thinking exists in the States too of course, but no one ever expresses it so bluntly, so I was surprised. At the time I thought, ‘wow, that’s strict.’ But I also thought, certainly, there are times when this way of thinking is useful, for example, so that everyone does the right thing. But at this school I saw the downside to this way of thinking, and I thought it a terribly unfortunate thing. That is, I saw students who hide their true ability. Not just the ability to study, I saw students hiding various kinds of abilities. If you want unity, isn’t it more useful to yourself and to society, to have the nails that don’t stick out do their best to meet the level of the nails that stick out, instead of hammering these nails down?”

I don’t really know what people thought of it; though some teachers told me, “Great speech,” I have to wonder if that means all of it was great, or they were just impressed that it was in Japanese and I had it mostly memorized. Later, one student said to me that it had been “moving.” What mostly convinced me that I hadn’t stuck my foot in my mouth was that I was reminded to write something for this year’s school magazine shortly after the ceremony. Yayz!

But going back to closing ceremony…it was actually a bit funny. That morning I was in the jimushitsu ordering a bentou when I noticed one of the English Course students walk in. I didn’t pay much attention, but when I heard one of the secretaries say, “The person themselves will see you!” I looked up and saw the student walking out with a bouquet. I thought, “ah, it’s my farewell bouquet. I wonder if that student will be the one to hand it to me?” Indeed, it was. It was a student who had lived in the States for a couple of years. The Student Council President said some remarks on behalf of the students, and the English Course student translated these to English. As he handed me the bouquet, it looked like he was blinking a lot not to cry, and I thanked him by name.

Once I got home I cut the stems so that the flowers would fit in the only vase I had in the apartment. Then I proceeded to take a bunch of artsy-fartsy photos of the bouquet, cuz that's just how I roll.

Now let's try without flash and with backlighting!

Just two hours after the ceremony, some art students came up to the shokuinshitsu to give me goodbye letters. One of them had drawn this:

The message reads, "Fight on at ◯ High School! The Graduation Exhibit is January 24th through 29th next year, so please come!"

I was impressed; since they had grade assemblies after closing ceremony, it meant the girl had come up with and done this drawing in under an hour!

In my last week, an English Course student who I had been helping practice a speech brought me this bentou she had made for me:

I had said that inarizushi was my favorite food in the maru-batsu game. Waaaa! おいしかった！

Now, I had given calligraphic nameplates to the current 3rd year English Course in what had been my last class with them the previous academic year,  and I wanted to make these for the other English Course homerooms. I got some scrapbooking paper with nice designs at InCube, cut it up, and did most of these freehand. Unfortunately, it took me two tries to do most of these. I used gold or silver ink to create a 3D effect.

I used the simplest form of romanization because I don't know what the kids' individual preferences are. (Also, it's easier because then there's less letters on which to possibly mess up. ^o^;)

Apparently, there’s lots of bakers in English Course, because three other girls gave me baked goods before they went to Summer Camp. T^T+^o^

From left: Banana Cake, Chocolate Cake, (Sugar?) Cookies. All three girls can bake so well!

In my last day, a student who never talked to me happened to see me in the hallway as I collected my things from the LL. From down the hallway, she yelled to me in Japanese, “Sensei! I have a question about sentence structure, but…” She took out her Target Word Book and showed me the sentence in question. I don’t remember it, but that’s not the point. I’m pretty sure she just wanted to say something to me, so I was touched.

As I returned to the shokuinshitsu, I happened to see one of the boys who, when he was a 1st year, had found out that I like the group Soul’d Out. One time while cleaning the school, I half-jokingly said to him, “we should all go to karaoke sometime!” So when I saw him standing outside the shokuinshitsu, I said to him, “Oh! We never got to go to karaoke…next time.” I don’t really know if he remembered or understood what I said, but he just laughed and said “Yeah, next time.”

It might be awhile before anyone uses the LL, so I wonder when my “So long, and thanks for all the fish” message will be discovered. ^o^

Completely unexpectedly, one of the teachers of Japanese gave me a present too. I had only talked with her a few times.

A furoshiki (wrapping cloth) with instructional DVD showing how to fold it in different ways depending on your purpose.

So, there I was. I had cleared out and cleaned up my desk, turned in the keys to my desk, locker, and the LL card key, gotten some documents from the jimushitsu to take to the new school, and finished uploading my essay for the school magazine, which will be published in March. How should I spend my last moments as a teacher of my first Japanese high school? I decided to go watch the art students working on the backboards for taiikusai. There was an English Course student there watching, so I went up to him. He was having his mind blown by the students’ mad skillz. Even though he was a third year, he said he had never seen the backboards from the very beginnings, from the sketch stage. We talked about art and drawing while watching the students work. It was a great way to end the day.

The red one will be blue, the blue one will be yellow, and the black one will be red. Got it?

Taming the wolf

While we watched this, it started to rain heavily. I hung out a little longer in hopes that the rain would ease up, but since it showed no signs of doing so, I decided to just go and get soaked. I had told my successor that I’d be leaving my emergency raincoat in the locker for her, but I ended up taking it. Somehow, I had known that would happen. I had known Tenjin would see fit to soak me on my last ride down that hill.

I began at my new school the day after my last at the old school. We got some administrative details done, and immediately after that jumped into practice for the English Recitation Contest. The next day I spent the morning cleaning my new desk. It was full to the brim with pens, pencils and markers, half of which I knew were probably dried out, and indeed, they were. As I sat there scrubbing with my bottle of Orange Clean I wondered if it was a rude thing to do on my second day, but…I couldn’t stand how dirty the desk was, and I was more than a little ticked at my predecessor for leaving it in that state. It was obvious the dirtiness was built-up over the years; I found an OWLS handbook (OWLS is a company providing ALTs), and the JET ID numbers of the JETs from 2003 and 2005 written in marker on the inside of the top desk drawer. *FACEPALM* But other than this, things seem to be going okay. The teachers and office staff are kind. The woman in the office in charge of handling the ALT stuff is on top of things and seems pretty spunky. She’s got 3 piercings in each ear!

Well, it isn’t completely over with my new school; when the two schools’ events don’t overlap, I can go to both. I plan on going to my old school’s taiikusai.

View from the bottom of the hill my old school is on. Taken in March. See the airplane?

☆

次回！A particularly random RLS post.

One of the things that I think kept my feet on the ground was building problems. Who has time to be culture shocked when your bathroom door won’t shut, or your metal sliding doors need oiling, or your 2nd floor apartment has a mysterious leak during rainy season? It doesn’t matter how you feel, if the drain is clogged you gotta unclog it. The banality of these tasks is the same everywhere in the developed and post-industrial world. When I have to go buy drain cleaner, I think, “This doesn’t change no matter where I am.”

Well, now I’ve got some warped tiles in my bathroom to help me get through this school shuffle, and getting my new predecessor’s appliances, most of which are newer than mine.

While the anger has mostly worn off, now I’m just feeling ho-hum. There are tasks to get done, and I do them, because it’s my duty to do so. That’s how I feel about everything involving moving to the new school. Getting briefed by my new predecessor, arranging to get her appliances, trying to contact the ALT who will come to my school twice a week…

Unfortunately, the new school either guessed or found out that I don’t want to go there. I mean, I don’t know if they understand that it’s not that I don’t want to go to their school, it’s that I don’t want to leave my school. Japanese teachers may get shuffled around, but they don’t have to work so hard at building relationships with their co-workers. Even if they get moved to a new school, they never really start from zero. But that’s where I’ll be. Well, I guess if when I first came to Japan was zero, this’ll be like starting from 1 or 2.

But I wanna go out with a bang at my current school. I’m planning a Scavenger Hunt with the new English Club (that everyone assumed I would be running TT_TT). My co-ALT, a video enthusiast, and I made a HILARIOUS video to serve as the set-up to the hunt.  I also wanna make the calligraphic nameplates for the 1st and 2nd year English Course, even though I wanted to give these to the 2nd years when they were on their way to becoming 3rd years, the way I did for the current 3rd year English Course.

The teachers all found out about the change at morning meeting on July 6th. That day, one of the teachers of Japanese, who would say something to me only rarely, came up to me to ask if the phrase “If it should be that way” in English is understood as being the same as the word “goodbye.” I said that it wasn’t, unless the context made it clear that the “that way” referred to parting. (But even as I said it, I couldn’t be sure if that’s the case, or my mind has just accepted the phrase because I already knew what “sayounara” literally meant.) He said something about how in Japanese, さようなら（左様なら) means “If it should be that way,” and that the phrasing difference of this sentence and “goodbye” expressed the great culture distance between Japanese and English. At least, that’s what I think he said. He totally caught me off guard, since I assumed when he asked if we could talk that he would ask me a grammar question, and when he started talking about sayounara, I couldn’t help but wonder if he really even had a question, or just wanted to say goodbye without saying it. @_@

As for the students, I’ve been telling them the news after giving them back their graded 1st term finals, as for half the homerooms, this is their last class of the first term, and therefor the last time I’ll see them. The English Course homerooms found out earlier from their teachers.

Actually, the first year English Course did something very interesting.

We were running a little late for their class, and were in the hallway approaching their room as the bell rang, and a student (a very lively one) peeked his head out the door. When he saw us coming, he went back in the room and shut the door. Just to fool around, I opened the door only a little and peeked in in a similar manner. They simply looked at me and stayed silent. But when I set foot in the room…

…they exploded into woo’s and hello’s and indiscriminate noises at the top of their lungs!

I thought I must’ve had something on my face! Then I wondered if I’d done something wrong by peeking in the door like that. The JTE was similarly confused, so I figured they must’ve simply gotten the news of my transfer, and wanted to do something for me. ^o^ + T_T

Once they got sort of calmed down, we moved on to the greeting, which went something like this:

Me: Good afternoon, everyone!
Kids: GOOD AFTERNOON ELI, J—, F—-!!!!!!!!! WOOOO!!!!!!
Me: Ahahaha…I feel like it’s my birthday.
Kids: WOOOOOO!!!!!
Me: F, is it your birthday?
F: No. It’s the day after tomorrow.
Me: Really?!?!
F: Yeah, but they couldn’t have known that.
Me: Wow!
Kids: WOOOOOO!!!
Me: Okay, well, how are you today?
Kids: I’M FINE, THANK YOU!!! AND YOU?!?!?!
Me: Well, I was a little tired, but now that I’ve felt your energy, I feel awake! So thank you!
Kids: WOOOOOO!!!

This carried on for about another 5 minutes. LOL

The class had started to drag after going over two tests and practicing for the recitation contest, but in the ending greeting, I told them, “Thank you for…for whatever that was at the beginning of class. For your 気合.” They laughed and seemed to go back to their cheery mood.

God it’s gonna be hard leaving this school…

☆

次回！Eli tries to stop moping around by lightening up the mood with an RLS post!

Back in April, the principal of my school told my co-ALT and I that the school, along with other schools with 2 ALTs, would no longer employ 2 permanent ALTs. Instead, one would stay, and there would be one ALT who worked at 2 schools, visiting the base school 3 days a week, and our school 2 days a week. He wasn’t explicitly clear about the cause for this, but when I asked if it was due to money issues, he merely said “probably.” He said that he didn’t have a say in who stayed or anything.

So, we chewed on that for a while. It couldn’t be helped that they were downsizing, the economy’s not in great shape. Okay. So I figured I would be moved because I speak Japanese and therefore am better prepared to go to a new school. My co-ALT figured he would be moved because I had seniority. It could have gone either way. But then, the teacher of an ALT who’s returning to her country told said ALT that their school was “getting an ALT” from my school to replace her. So, I figured, if I get moved, it’ll be to her school, which is still in bikable distance, and I’ll still get to visit the school I’ve spent so much creative energy on. I was ready for this.

My co-ALT was ready for being moved also. The ALT supervisor at the school we thought one of us would move to invited me and my co-ALT to his house for a BBQ. I was too busy with stuff at home and didn’t go, but my co-ALT went. Met the guy’s family and everything.

So imagine our surprise when we get called down to the principal’s office and learn that my co-ALT would be staying, and I would be going to a completely different high school!

I was blown away. I wasn’t ready for that at all. Visiting two days a week, I could still see the things I implemented in motion. I could see if my kaizen panned out for the whole year. I could see how the new English Club would go. I could see the first batch of kids I had when I came to Fukuoka graduate.

I really wanted to see them graduate.

I was furious over the decision, as it seemed to make no sense. After all, the school still needed a visiting ALT, and that other one school still needed one too. I happened to get the low-down from another ALT, and later, got the cleaned-up, “diplomatic” version from the ALT in the Prefectural Office. There was something extra in play, something that didn’t have to do with money. It’s something that made me very angry.

But there’s nothing I can do about it.

Politics. *Exasperation*

I’m slowly calming down from the rage that kept me from sleeping for a week. It doesn’t matter if I come to love the school I’ll be starting at this August, the simple fact is I’m leaving something unfinished, and I’ll be leaving behind my kids. Sometimes they do things that make me wanna bang my head against the wall, but that’s only because I care about them and want them to do better.

The teachers have been telling me that the kids at the school I’m going to are very smart, so I’ll like working there. But the fact that that school is such a high-level academic school means I might not have the freedom to run the classes how I want to (e.g., becoming the dreaded human tape player). There’s also the matter that sometimes such schools do grammar classes in the time slot of the OC classes, which is one of the reasons you hear of high school ALTs not doing anything for days on end, or not having fixed schedules.

And there’s another potential casualty: my relationship with the School for the Blind. Said school has always had one of my school’s ALTs go do teaching visits periodically, so I have to wonder if they’ll be able to request me from the school I’ll be going to, or if they’ll want to maintain the tradition. While I really like visiting that school in general, my main concern about this is the student who barely goes to classes, but shows up for English classes when he knows that Final Fantasy is going to be worked into the lesson. I don’t think the person replacing me knows FF and will be able to do the same. I’m scheduled to go to that school the Monday after the next, and it’s going to be tough giving them the news after they asked me several times if I would be staying in Japan and staying at my school. *Sigh*

When I hear the English teachers planning my farewell party, because I’m not leaving Japan, it feels so strange. Knowing that they want me to write an essay for the yearbook, which will be published long after I’m gone, is also painful. I don’t know how many teachers know I’m leaving yet; it won’t be officially announced until after finals are over next week. But I’m sure many do know. It was a bit hard to miss the uncharacteristically flustered Eli that fateful day. (And when I say flustered, I mean “crying angry tears in a stall of the teachers’ bathroom.” ^o^;;;)

I know that it’s not the fault of the school I’m going to that this is happening, so I’ll do my best to work as hard for them as I did for my current school. But it’s gonna be a tough year.