Blond Jesus and Emergency Toilets

Good evening dear readers.  Another long week of squeezing English out of reluctant Japanese children is in the books, so I thought I would bring you up to speed on this lovely Saturday night.  Fall semester is in full swing, although it’s still 80 degrees here most days.  The main change lately is that three Americans have left, which brings our total down to nine.  The last couple of weeks we were able to get in a lot of fun, including Karaoke and $1 drinks at the nearby German tent restaurant. 

The kids are settling back into school and thankfully I only have 2 or 3 new students this term.  I am still struggling to remember the names of kids that I’ve had since April, partially thanks to the fact that at some branches my classes are “optional”.   This means the kids can skip them if they have a test coming up or if they got hit in the head with a basketball and can’t remember how to do their homework.

One class of all 9^th grade boys has begun to suspect that I speak fluent Japanese and has been trying to make me laugh by whispering ridiculous Japanese words in class.  I asked them if they knew “coming of age day” (a national holiday in January) and one boy responded “graduate from virginity day?”  I burst out laughing, and now my credibility is lost.

Last weekend the whole gang of went to a Japanese wedding which was actually a first for me.  The groom is a coworker, although I don’t teach with him so I only see him once a week at our Friday meetings.  The ceremony was very short and spectacularly choreographed, including a choir dressed in all white singing amazing grace in English.  It was also in a chapel, although not a real chapel, just a fancy wedding-venue-only chapel.  It had rows of pews, white marble flooring, and stained glass windows complete with a Madonna and blond baby Jesus.  Thankfully the couple didn’t hire a white man to pretend to be a priest, which is common here.  After the ceremony there was a lavish banquet where members of the wedding party took turns pouring beer for each guest.  The groom must have about 16 brothers and sisters because I consumed about 2 gallons of beer without requesting a refill once.  Thankfully there was also an after party where they rented out an entire restaurant for two hours, also with unlimited alcohol.  We played bingo and I won an emergency survival kit.  It contains items such as rope, nail clippers, a tarp and an “emergency toilet”.  Not quite sure how that one works yet.  It was fitting prize though, since just as we arrived home a typhoon passed through.  No one was swept away, and sadly the water supply was not disrupted so I didn’t get a chance to try my emergency toilet.

Okay, hopefully something exciting will happen soon and I’ll have more to write about.  Until then, Sayonara!

Fall is here!

Hi everyone!  It’s September already and I’ve been back to work for two weeks after a refreshing vacation in Minnesota.  The weather took a much needed turn towards fall just a few days ago, so I can run outside again without my scuba mask.  Actually I joined a small gym above a super market last month so I would have a place to run inside.  Now I’m torn as to whether I should get my money’s worth or enjoy the nice weather.

It’s Monday here and the kids should be back in school starting today.  That means when I show up for work the school will be empty instead of having a dozen 9^th graders milling around the lobby.  That should be nice.  The bad part about work is that I have classes all this week while all the other Americans are off.  Last week I only had one day of class, which I found out on Monday.  I wound up taking Wednesday through Friday off and doing very little.  I may have another vacation in October, when Shimon shuts down and all the teachers go to Hawaii for 5 days.  (The other Americans will still be working though.  Confused yet?).

Also September is a big transition for the American crew.  A new teacher has arrived and we’re losing three old ones.  Since we’re in the overlap period right now there are a total of 12 of us (I think) and we’ve been having a lot of festivities and generally being social.  Last week we had a banquet for all 20 Hellos staff.  We rented a private room at a nice restaurant and had all you can Sashimi and Sukiyaki for two hours.  There was also a tremendous amount of alcohol.  As the party was starting I learned that it was also my (belated) welcome party so I got to sit at the same table as the company president (again).  No palm readings this time, as he was much more focused on the young female teachers around me.

Last night we went to a soccer game.  We had a group of ten and we got tickets to sit on the big grassy area behind the goal.  Our hometown Gifu team is in division II, so tickets are just $10.  Our team won 2-1, although the real highlight was the cheering section, when like a hundred people sang fight songs in unison for the entire game.  Like singing and dancing for two hours straight. 

Okay that should be enough paragraphs to satisfy most of you.  I’m off to get ready for another work week!

Bon Odori and English Days

Okay kids, I’m going to keep this one short as I’ll be home in a few days and will be able to catch up with you all then.  My classes started back up again after a week of sitting around the office.  The kids are on summer break but most of them still stop by our branches to keep us company from time to time.  Actually our schools are extra busy and open extended hours.  One branch was so full I taught four classes of “English conversation” to junior high kids in the office.  Like the teacher’s office with the copy machine and the ringing phone and all.  I think the kids deserved a refund for that one.  At one branch my high school classes are canceled for the summer.  At another branch I have high school classes, but with different random students each week.  My elementary kids get the a special summer course called “Popcorn S” where the anthropomorphic popcorn man in the Power Point now wears sunglasses and a summer hat. 

This weekend there was another festival in town.  This one was the “water city festival” where people make little paper lantern things that float, and then send them down the river.  The first float to go was a huge one with a giant picture of the face of the city planner guy who is in charge of the festival.  I put a picture of it on Facebook.

The festival also featured a group dance called Bon Odori.  Somehow I lived in Japan for three years without getting roped into doing it once.  Basically everyone just dances in a huge slow moving circle to some slow 50 year old pop songs.  It’s kind of fun, but I could never remember when I was supposed to go backward, so I the people behind me were a little uncomfortable. 

Well tomorrow is our “English Days” camping trip.  About 20 staff members take 70 elementary aged kids on an overnight trip to a rustic nature center.    I have to up at 6am the next two days, and literally every hour of both days is filled with scheduled activities that we get to run.  My main activity for the first day got changed at the last minute, so now I’ll be in the video room showing Pixar shorts.  I am lucky not have to be outside in 90 degree heat.

The trip ends Tuesday and I’m flying home Thursday for 10 days.  See you soon!

Birthday Palm Readings and Paper Fans

Hello again internet comrades.  Thank you for sparing a moment of your valuable internet time to catch up with me!  First off, this week I did not teach a single class!  Since it was the first week of our summer schedule, basically everything was canceled and many of the branches were actually shut.  I didn’t discover this until after I had bicycled 6 miles to my Monday branch.   I think I actually should have been off this week, but due to lack of planning I spent the week cutting strips of fabric for an upcoming craft, and handing out paper fans to promote our new branch in Nagoya.  The root of the problem is that I work at Shimon schools, but am actually employed by Hellos English.  So while I was fooling around all week the other Hellos teachers were administering finals and holding parent teacher conferences.  I wonder if they noticed me twiddling my thumbs in the corner…  But never fear, I’ll be back to work tomorrow with a confusingly altered class schedule.  I learn as I go.

So the week before last I had my birthday brunch.  Over 20 July babies went out to an Italian restaurant and had a 5 course meal complete with a happy birthday serenade from the staff.  I sat next to the company president who demanded that I make a speech in English and then translate it into Japanese.  I told everyone that even though I was born in July I don’t like hot weather.  Deep, huh?  The president also gave me a palm reading and discovered that I will live a long life despite having my heart broken as a young man.  He is not your typical boss.

I also had my birthday one week ago.  I got a couple people to go bowling with me and we managed to knock over a few pins.  Then some other Americans surprised me with rice crispy bars and cake.  It was subdued but a big improvement over my last birthday when I worked and four buses overheated in the span of two hours. 

This weekend I went to an Opera concert.  My coworker and former classmate Ryan is an avid singer and invited all of us to his yearly performance.  The event was sold out and people were actually lined up outside the door.  I couldn’t figure out what language they were singing in most of the time, but I enjoyed the extremely shiny and provocative costumes.  Afterword we had a big a party at the apartments and took shots of carbonated sake out of square wooden shot glasses. 

Well that’s all for this report.  I’ll be back again in a week or two!

Summer!

Hi folks, time for a quick word from Japan.  The rainy/crappy season continues here and the past couple of weekends have been humid, cloudy and 90+ degrees.  So no outdoor adventures unfortunately.  I am looking forward to nicer weather though, as yesterday I bought a unicycle at a second hand shop.  It was 50 bucks and rides pretty well.  The seat is too low for me though.  I’ve fallen off quite a bit from my prime, but I can still ride in straight, turn and stop pretty well.  It will be fun to see if I get even more stares riding down the street on one wheel.  I also found a gym inside a shopping mall near my house that only costs like $25 dollars a month.  I am debating if I can motivate myself enough to go when it’s too sticky to run outside.  It’s in the same building as the 24 hour supermarket (five minutes from my house).  The supermarket is ridiculously convenient, but it’s impossible to go to without seeing coworkers.  On Friday at 1130pm I ran into to three Japanese Shimon teachers in one shopping trip.  None of them mentioned that the strange fruit liquor I had selected was actually intended as a base for brewing your own home made fruit liquor.  Oops.  I found that out after I opened it and started drinking.

Well, it’s mid-July and that means my birthday is coming up.  Tomorrow I’m going to a birthday lunch that the company president throws for all employees once a month.  We’re going to a fancy Italian place with a three course lunch.  Word is I have to make a speech at some point.  Not sure if it will be in English.  I don’t know how many people will be there, but there are at least 5 July birthdays just in our section.

The kids are nearly to the end of the semester and are behaving wildly.  On Wednesday a 10 year old boy said the F word several times in class.  When I scolded him he insisted he had no idea what he had done wrong.  The he turned to the boy behind him, whispered “Fuck fuck” and gave him a double middle finger.  I blame the TV.  Summer vacation should start any minute now, but I still am not sure what my teaching schedule will be for July and August.  The kids come to the branches any time between 10am and 10pm, and they often have special study camps, where we challenge them to study for 8 or 10 hours straight.  Fun times. 

The one thing I do know about my summer schedule is that I have a plane ticket to come home from August 10^th to August 20^th.  I put this at the very end of the blog to see who reads it all the way through.  Congratulations for making it this far without a half-naked picture or the promise of a free credit score.  See you soon!

Not much new, but here you go.

Hi friends.  It’s been a couple weeks and I really don’t have anything new to share but I thought I would check in to give you your much deserved peace of mind.  The rainy season is here in Japan, although it seems to have started a couple of weeks later than usual.  I’m not sure if that means it will end later or not.  Work is about the same.   They continue to throw new classes at me every week which continues to piss me off.  I have realized that for almost all of my students, my class is their first English speaking class ever.  This Thursday in one of my elementary classes, one boy started shouting all the answers.  With him being the largest student in the class, all of the other children naturally followed.  Now I have 11 fifth and sixth graders bellowing in unison at my command.  Not sure where to direct this energy.

Outside of work, I’ve been running a few times a week, reading some Japanese on the internet and trying to figure out ways to meet more people.  I’m slowly getting to know the Japanese people at work, but they all seem sort of stressed out and don’t chat much before or after class in any language.  I’ll continue working on this, and hopefully find an alcohol based solution soon.

Well this morning I was shaken awake by a 5.2 earthquake in Nagano, a couple hundred miles away.  It was the first one I’ve felt since I’ve been here.  I think my room being one floor higher than last time makes them seem stronger.  It’s either that or my reoccurring nightmare of being stuck on a malfunctioning mechanical bull.  Okay, I will check back in in a while.  Have a super night!

Full Trains and Empty Mountains

Another fairly bland week is in the books folks.  The highlight this week was a hike I took to a mountain called Shizugatake.  It was about 90 minutes by train from my house and the hike to the top took another 90.  The summit offered a 360 degree panorama including two major lakes: Lake Yago (the small one) and Lake Biwa (the biggest Lake in Japan, where I lived during study abroad.)  My original plan was just to hike around the smaller lake and I didn’t even realize there was a trail to the top of the mountain.  Overall one of the coolest views I’ve seen anywhere, and not a soul in sight anywhere on the mountain.  See my picture on Facebook if you haven’t yet.

Other than that work is about the same.  Next week I am going to start a four week one-on-one class with a fourth grader who is going to the US over summer break.  I have no idea how these classes come into existence.  I imagine someone just walks into a branch and asks if they can whip up a custom course for their kid.  My boss must be hoping to rope in a 10 year old who will continue for the next five years.

On Friday I rode a full train for the first time.  You must be thinking “that’s impossible, he’s ridden hundreds of trains.”  Well the trains out of Nagoya run every 15 minutes and the 10:30 train was delayed 35 minutes.  (Yes, 10:30 pm).  Then when it showed up it was four cars long instead of eight.  So three trains-worth of people in half a train.  I was literally shoved against the wall with four people pushing into me.  Lovely.  Now I understand why groping on trains is a problem.  One guy actually got his watch caught on my belt buckle while trying to check his phone.  I’m really glad I don’t commute in rush hour now.

On Saturday night a few Americans watched the movie Tusk.  I highly recommend it if you’ve ever wondered about surgically altering a human to resemble a walrus.  It has Johnny Depp too!

Okay, back to work tomorrow.  I’m off to practice cooking rice and learn those last 700 Kanji!!