To Keep You Busy

A philosphical question to keep you busy while I revisit the land of the Frozen North.

It's polite (and expected) that when a student slides open the door to the teacher's room, they say," Shitsureshimasu." (Excuse me for interrupting.) This ritual is very important-I've seen every student who's ever come near the threshold do it, and a few weeks ago, when a student did not do it loud enough or with enough of a bow for the teacher's satisfaction, they stood and instructed him for 5 minutes.

Today I have the odd experience of being the only teacher in the hideaway (I heard something about garbage, and cleaning time was suddenly still going on after the bell, but why explain things to the foreigner?) Anyway a student stuck their head in, said the required words, and inquired whether such and such a teacher was present.

So So a question for you… if there are no teachers in the teacher’s room, does a student still say “Shitsureshimasu?*

The Demise of Dating and the Rise of the Hook-Up Vampire

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/opinion/13blow.html?_r=1&em

I ran across this interesting article today (as well as Frank Rich’s opinion piece on why Bush is to blame for everything from the leak in the kitchen sink to original sin, but we just… won’t… go there…) and what really got me thinking is a point that was probably intended to be a side note. The author speculated that one of the factors that led to “hooking up” instead of “dating” was the group-think mentality; Supposedly one of the pros of “hooking up” is that it “emphasizes group friendships over the one-pair model of dating and, therefore, removes the negative stigma from those who can’t get a date.”

I’m 23, and thus livin’ deep into the hook-up culture and trust me… it doesn’t make you feel like any less of a loser. Sure, maybe in the “olden days” you were only one of your friends without a date Saturday night-you were at home washing your hair instead. But you could stay at home, and remain some of your dignity-no one would know for sure you didn’t have a date unless they were paying specific attention. Now, you go out with a group of friends-most of whom are hooking up with others in your group of friends, and now you’re the singleton stranded in the middle of a social orgy.

Using group friendships to hook-up also creates another very uncomfortable social situation… divided loyalties and awkwardness. I’ve bounced in among a couple of groups throughout college, and hooking up always managed to leave a deep dramatic scar on group dynamics. With serious dating, if two members broke up, one of the members would inevitably leave the group. This was sort of the expectation-one person would get to “keep” the group of friends. In-group dating has boundaries and rules that you are expected to adhere to while in the group, and while dating.

But the very spirit of hooking-up is to avoid boundaries, and avoid social contracts. “It’s just sex.” “It’s just us hooking up, it doesn’t mean anything.” And yet if partners are not exactly on the same page about what is going on between them, there will be hurt feelings. Since there are no social rules, the partners remain within the group, and the hurt feelings poison most of their dynamics. “Why didn’t he call me after?” “Why is she so jealous I’m hooking up with this other guy?” “Why will he have sex with me but not date me?” Who do the rest of the members side with-supposedly this was just a “hook up,” how did it turn into such big drama?

There are a myriad of reasons I prefer dating over hooking up. I cannot for the life of me figure out how a person can drop their pants to a near stranger (hook-up) but somehow sees conversation over a salad as a horrifying experience (dating.) Furthermore, I believe hooking up depends almost entirely on physical appearance and superficiality; dating allows you to get to know the person one-on-one. You would pass right over a person who is a 7 on your physical attraction scale for someone who is a 9 in the hook-up culture, even though if you “dated” both, you’d discover the 7 is a 15 on your overall emotional/intellectual scale, and the 9 a 2. I think the hook-up culture is exactly what it sounds like; a model you use to get sex. If you are attempting to use as a springboard to dating, as most of my peers are (“I’ll sleep with him a few times, and he’ll see I’m so good in bed he’ll date me!”) you’re barking up the wrong tree.

One of the comments said you can use the group setting to get to know a person, but this is a fallacy. Well, it’s a fallacy if you’re planning on spending any time alone with this person. If the rest of your life will be spent in a group setting, you’ll be fine. I’ve observed over and over people who are one way in a group setting (cheerful, energetic) then do a 180 when confronted individually (withdrawal, quiet.) Likewise, I know people who go the other way-terrified and shy in a group, especially if there is a stranger around, yet engaging and interesting when spoken to one-on-one. If you seek out partners based only on these group dynamics, you’re gonna pass right over those individuals.

Another Hydra head of this “hooking up within the group” usually is that your hook-up will be a friend; maybe one who you’ve had a crush on for a long time, or one that you just happened to get very drunk with. I think a relationship CAN blossom out of these situations, but from my personal experience, I’d say it’s rough at best. If you hook up with a friend, and it leads no where, it’ll put serious strain on the friendship, and the friendships around it. Or let’s say you just keep hooking up without making a commitment, and then when you do find a partner you WANT to make a commitment to, they might be too freaked out by your best gal friend that’s making the relationship a little too crowded.

That said, one of the few pro’s I see in hooking up is one of social regulation. If a person in your social group does something truly heinous and unacceptable, it’s in the group’s best interest to punish them, either through shunning or some other social penalty. Your friends are much more involved in the outcome of your hook-up/relationship because they have a vested interest… if your relationship sinks, your group has a good chance of going down with it.

Who Killed the Electric Car? Those Darn Redneck Rural Idiots, That's Who!

If there is no other benefit to living in another country, it’s this: living in another country grants you insights into your own society you might have missed out, either because you were living in the middle of the forest so you could only see the trees, or because you had nothing to compare it to.

This economic crisis has just been loads of fun, though I’m still expecting the sky to fall at any second. I’m being flippant, of course-I do not have a mortgage, or a family, or a retirement plan. I only have a college loan, and whatever expenditures I rack up in the present. There is also something to be said for working for the Japanese government. The Japanese business “culture,” until recent times, really leaned towards lifelong employment. If you got a job there, you had a job there for life (unless you quit.) This came with the disadvantages of hierarchy and at the expense of maybe turning you into a salary man slave, but lay-offs were unheard of. This has been changing (the loss of permanent employment is one of the reasons for all the crazies dropping children off of high rises, so says Japanese newspapers), but the attitude is still pretty prevalent in government. Even with Japan in a deep recession (according to the BBC World News, Dec. 9th podcast) JETs have a guaranteed job.* If they choose to terminate the position because of lack of money, they’ll wait until after you leave, and just not hire a new person. Also, learning English, and learning it from a native speaker, are such a hallmark of the Educational board, for every high school position they slash, they make one that’s elementary-school specific instead.

Anyway, I’m prone to reading far too many English newspapers, and a recent editorial in the New York Times sent me on a thinking spree. In it, the author discussed how the government should let the Detroit 3 fall through, and not bail them out as they did the banks. (My call is Congress was leaning towards no bailout, until the current strike in Illinois by workers who were laid-off sans benefits, because the Bank of America, who received-what was it?-$25 million in bailout money cut off credit to their company. Now Congress might look really stupid… or class-ist… if it bails out the well-to-do money lending banks, but let’s the blue collar auto industry swing.)

The writer spends enough of the article drooling over electric cars and opining how Car 2.0 will be to the iPod what Car 1.0 was to the CD player (or something) to get a hefty amount of criticism in the comments. I actually read the articles for the comments-I wish every article came with them equipped. (I’d have quite an earful to give on the Greek rioters.) For years, my generation has been told over and over how awesome electric cars are, how clean, how efficient!, and that if the Big Bad 3 just hadn’t killed them, we’d be saving the environment and there’d be world peace and all that. I agree that there needs to be a deep infrastructural change in America, but the more I hear of the electric car, the more I think it might not be it.

Living in Japan, I’ve come to love the train system. It’s pretty efficient, reliable, and cheap. Railways cover much of the nation, it’s very organized, and it’s often regarded as one of the best in the world. However, here in Shikoku… it’s still not very popular. The majority of people I see riding the trains are either children/teenagers, or elderly people. This might not be true in and around the big cities, but for being a society that is world-renown for their trains and their biking, there are still a heck of a lot of cars. I’d wager that if high schoolers didn’t have to travel to their school, buses and trains would lose half their revenue.

I bring this up because several comments remarked on how Japanese car companies are whopping American butt-and yet Japanese companies don’t make hybrid or electric cars either, even though the nation is small enough that one of the biggest draw backs to electric cars might not be noticeable (because of the weak battery power, they are very short range.) The places cited by comments as “electric car paradise” is Europe. I can’t speak for that, as I’ve only lived in the US and Japan, but I can say this… comments also, I’d estimate 70% of the time, add in the same breath as “Europeans are so much more enlightened and awesome and wonderful because they have electric car companies” that America would be so much better (ie, like Europe) if we just rode our bikes more.

It suggests to me that one of the biggest impasses we face as a country is the divide not only between the rich and the poor, but the urban and rural. Uh… you ever lived in a town that was not a major city? I imagine riding your bike in Seattle or Chicago is a heck of a lot more efficient than riding it in the middle of Wisconsin. A bike ride from my house to the university took about 20 minutes, in good weather-and I lived pretty close to the university. One of the biggest annoyances of living in Japan IS my reliance on bikes. You can’t carry a whole lot, the weather isn’t always agreeable (in 6 months, I’ve gotten caught in more rainstorms and come home soaked than I care to count), and it takes half an hour just to go to the bank, grocery store, and back home because they’re in such opposite directions.

I don’t know the future of transportation in the US, but living in Japan has certainly given me an interesting angle on it.

And to anyone that suggests that as a rural resident I should be forced to ride my bike for hours just within my town in the below-freezing weather and four feet high icy conditions of Wisconsin because YOU didn’t want to bail out the auto industry and YOU live in a comfortable city where everything is close and handy… just… shut up.

The 6% Temple Piligrimage

Shikoku, my Japanese island home, is famous for a couple of things. Udon is ridiculously well-known here (and quite tasty!), and mikans are a staple of any school lunch. But perhaps one of the best known traditions in Shikoku is the 88 temple pilgrimage. A famous Buddhist monk by the name of Koukai supposedly traveled or helped build these 88 temples around the end of the 8th century and the beginning of the 9th, and in homage, pilgrims visit the 88 temples in his honor.

Every prefecture has their own special little traditions, and yesterday, many Kagawa JETs gathered to do a small leg of the 88 temple trip, with 6 of the temples right in a small area.
We started at temple 77, in Tadotsu at about 9 am. We went all out; not only were we walking the 6 temple route, as per tradition, but we wore the traditional pilgrim (or "Henro," which is what they call the pilgrims) garb: a walking stick, a bell to scare away animals (and used in meditation), a white smock, a sedge hat, and a purple prayer sash. Next, we went to temple 76, even though it’s bad luck to go backwards rather than in order.

After we’d gotten lost, and then explored 76 a little bit, we took the very, very long route to temple 72. 73 was next, and at temple 73 we had lunch. Temple 73 has an interesting story: Koukai supposedly stood on a cliff, and said that either he would save humanity, or die trying. If he survived the fall off the cliff, obviously, he would succeed in showing humanity the road to enlightenment. So Buddha stretched out his hand and saved him, and Koukai went on to become an accomplished Buddhist monk, as well as one of the best calligraphers in the world.
Also, temple 73 was originally high up on the mountain, but about a century ago they decided that was very inconvenient and they moved it much further down. The site of Zentsuji from the current temple is still very impressive, and the ruins of the old temple way up on the cliff are still visible.
74 was a smaller temple, and had a nice steep climb up a cliff only to reveal a rusty children’s park.
75, though, is the big one. Zentsuji was actually Koukai’s birthplace, so the temple located around his actual birthplace is very impressive. There is a 5 story pagoda at one end, and a main hall with red carpet and dozens of old, golden lanterns hanging from the ceiling. There is also an 1000 year old tree right in the vicinity where Koukai wrote one of his famous texts.

When we finally reached temple 75 at about 3, one of the monks gave us a tour of the main hall, including the dark tunnel. You go down a flight of stairs into a tunnel that is completely dark; absolutely no light and no talking are allowed. The tunnel stretches from one end of the main hall to the other, and the only way you can avoid getting lost is to keep your left hand on the wall. The tunnel is meant to reinforce how dependent you are on your eyes, and to give you reflection on your deeds as a human being. Halfway through there is also a statue of Koukai and his parents, placed in the exact location where he was born.

It was an exhausting trip, but well worth it. The temples are spectacularly ornate, and as a lover of history, I was thrilled with how… ancient the places felt. You can also purchase a book that details each of the temples, and at each temple there is a brush master that will sign the page with temple's unique seal. The 88 temple pilgrimage is also a big part of Shikoku’s culture, and it granted me a glimpse into the fascinating history of Japan.

Also, just in case I didn’t mention, from temple 77 to temple 75, it’s about a ten mile walk. That walking stick came in very handy; though I heard bells for hours afterward.

I'm Thankful for Students who do not set Fires

I post this, because it is almost American Thanksgiving, with turkey, gravy, depressing holiday specials (I’m kiddin, I love Charlie Brown), and all the trimmin’s.
It’s also time to say what we are thankful for in our lives. (Oxygen?) I decided I’d do a Japan-Work-Related thankful note. Ahem.

Today I had one class, and a little bit of a depressing class at that. I was glad to see two of the groups were into the review game, and one group decided later on it’d try its hand and hope 3rd place got something (umm no, try participating from the beginning and then we’ll talk), but like most days at sFF, I wonder if I’m getting any traction at all.
Then I hear stories from other JETs, just random little tidbits thrown out onto the Internet, and it makes me thankful that I ended up with a pretty darn good batch of kids. Little angels? No… more like hormone-infused teenagers who seem to love you one second and then despise the very ground you walk on the next. When placed in the bigger spectrum, though… well Bad President, Above It Boy, Shortman… I’m grateful for you.
… But if you turn into little punks, I withhold the right to strip you of my divine American blessing.

Happy Thanksgiving!
* Note: I am not thankful for fax machines at convenience stores.

I’ve been bopping all over the place the last week or so, so you may have to settle for a quick summary of an entry.
The weekend before last, I got on a train and went to Osaka just to take a test that sucked me of my will to live for at least another month (the GRE, in other words.) I did, however, get to figure out the subway system all on my own, and the 8+ Electronics store in Umeda was well worth the cold side-journey. It honestly had everything electronic, though I was a tiny, tiny bit disappointed in the lack of DS/iPod accessories.
Last week, a brand spanking new mall opened near-ish to my town, and I spent a happy four hours exploring the stores, which include a sizeable book store, wonderful grocery store, and yet another electronics store. When did I suddenly like shopping? It’s like I came to Japan, discovered I had a sort-of disposable income, and my brain switched into girlie mood,” Oh this is sooo cute! I just have to try it on. And maybe this too… would this look good with these boots?” If you think it’s exhausting to read that, just imagine what it’s like to be trapped with a brain THINKING it.
A happy side effect of the mall shopping was I built up the courage to tackle the 1st Harry Potter in Japanese, which is 461 pages to the English version’s 200 something. I’m imagining that the 4th book will be split into something like five volumes… Anyway, it’s a struggle just to make it through a paragraph a day (I’m on page 3!) but actually understanding the stray sentence structure is refreshingly motivating.Lastly, the end term test is next week for both of my schools, and the kindergarten were I visited during mid-terms has requested my presence, so I get to go goof around, English style, with them again. That, the 3 day weekend, and my brand new space heater (my bedroom was 11 degrees Celsius last night, or 50 degrees for all you F-readers) really go a long way in improving my spirits.

The World Is Flat... Which Is Why We're All Falling Off the Edge

So lately, as I’m sure you’ve heard, there’s been this whole “financial crisis, the sky is falling” going on. As I mentioned a few weeks back, I’m really not attuned to economics. Don’t get it. Don’t understand it. It gives me a headache.
Last week, I picked up “The World Is Flat” and though I’ve only made it through the first hundred pages or so, I have to admit that coupled with this article, http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/11/11/opinion/11herbert.html?s=1&pg=4, I am extremely discouraged.
I am discouraged not only about the economy, but about people’s blatant inability to see past the ends of their own noses… and about the supposed “intelligence” of our international media.
Coming from a background in heavy-duty historic scholarship, I’ve always found journalistic writing a little, hmm how to put this, analysis-lite. “The World is Flat” is a perfect example of this. Essentially, the argument boils down to the idea that because of the Internet and world-wide communication strategies, individuals can now compete against individuals for jobs, instead of laboring under the old time “nation competes against nation” or “company competes against company” frame. The author backs up his thesis… over, and over, and over again… by visiting Elysian-like structures in Bangkok, Tokyo, and parts of China. He pushes… over and over again… that young Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and Russians (haven’t gotten to the part if he mentions Latin Americans at all) can finally compete for jobs at big companies with Americans, because of the magical Internet. And, you see, outsourcing isn’t because of greed. No, no, silly. It’s because individuals can finally now test their abilities against people all across the globe, and Asians just happen to be better at math, better at science, better at computers, better educated, more motivated, politer, and just more gosh darn efficient than Americans.
The author conceives that all of this individual competition is a good thing, because it means the more competent and talented individual gets the job he or she so richly deserves, and it can give generic college-educated Asians a leg up into the middle class. He also alludes that this is a good thing for Americans, because it will force us to be better at math, better at science, better at computers, etc. in order to simply survive in the world. And people are always at their best when competing, am I right?
The author is so excited at his own brilliance (that he can boil down complex economic and social issues into four words) he never really addresses how having a flat world might not be such a hot commodity. The thinking might have gone that the book won’t sell if he takes his own theory apart, but that’s analysis-lite for you, and I’m only speculating.
Ironically, he does allude to one of the largest issues that make a “flattened world,” at the moment, impossible, repeatedly. The issue is unsurprisingly, wages. In interview after interview with company presidents or managers or owners or what-have-you, the spokesperson makes sure to stress that the real reason jobs such as accounting, journalism, even secretarial duties, are being outsourced is that there people over in the other hemisphere are simply smarter, and want it more. A Microsoft executive mentioned how they had thousands of applications in their Chinese branch for software programming, and they simply gave the job to the guy with the highest IQ. You see? He’s just smarter than you, that’s why he got the job. It’s individual competition at work.
At almost every location he visits, however, the author makes a point to describe the wages each worker is getting, and how many Indian workers it takes to screw in a lightbulb, compared to how many American works. Unsurprisingly, it takes about five to twenty Indian workers for every American worker. The price of living in India is so staggeringly cheaper than America, that companies can not only pay a telemarketer a handsome salary of $600 a month, but afford insurance for the entire family. Additionally, because most of a telemarketer’s customers are American, since they work for predominantly American companies, they can work at night and still attend school or work another job during the day.
It isn’t surprising the author skirts this issue, because if he were to directly confront it, his entire thesis would fall apart. An American worker must ask for a higher wage to survive in a society of higher incomes… created by business owners, who live in the United States, and spend all the profits their company makes outsourcing driving up the cost of living. The world is not flat. Competition between individuals is not even, and is not based on merit alone. It’s based on money.
Unintentionally I believe, the author also ignores directly discussing something that nearly screams out from every sentence. Whether discussing how much more motivated Chinese students working for a Japanese outsourcing company are by learning Japanese, or how Indian students constantly go back to college to improve themselves, and citing that age-old urban legend that every other country in the world constantly outperforms Americans on the essentials of life (math and science, naturally), the author never addresses.. ethnicity. Or, if you want to be sloppy about it, race. The closest he comes is suggesting that learning is more valued in Asian societies, which is why Asian-American students outperform their Caucasian American peers in math.
Every country the author sets up as a front-runner to inheriting the American business empire is Asian (small quibble: yes, Russia is usually considered part of Europe, but it is hanging around on the Asian continent as well.) The author also rarely holds these countries up against scrutiny beside other Western nations like the United Kingdom or Australia or France. It’s always Asia, in some form, against the US.
This makes sense in an economic frame. America is considered the Goliath of business. Countries like India and China are often heralded in the media as the under-dogs, the scrappy competitors.
With my partiality to think “culture” in everything I see, I noticed that India, China, and Japan also have a striking similarity besides geographical location; they are, by and large, racially homogenous. According to the CIA World Fact book, China and Japan both boast an ethnic minority population of less than 9%, and India is compromised of two ethnic groups that make up 97% of their population. Only Russia’s 79% Caucasian compares to the United States 80%; however, Russia’s minority groups total about 4, while the United States have 5 to 6, including more interracial citizens at 1.61%.

*Note: On the CIA website, minority ethnicities listed under China actually number around 8 or 9, but they are all grouped together because each group only compromises about 1%.

As you can see, Japan, China, and India all boast an impressive homogenous makeup. Russia and the United States are by and large similar, but this is only percentages. As we’ve seen in recent months in India, as the Hindus (80%) burn, threat, and maim the Christians (2.3%), religion can be a volatile factor as well.
In “The World Is Flat,” the author emphasizes that individuals in India, China, and to a lesser extent Japan (to the point Japan has started outsourcing to China) are merely more competent in subjects he claims the American education system no longer bothers with; math and science. But he never goes fully into depth with the educational system in either China or India; the most he mentions as at a college level, is a president insisting history majors take several courses in computer science as well, to make them more “employable” (which, as you can imagine, I deeply resented.) He simply laments with the old line about “bad teachers in poor schools,” “bad test scores” and “no one-except Asian Americans-caring about math anymore.” Gosh, this is turning into a long book review, and this is only with 100 pages under my belt. Of course, that isn’t too much of an issue, since the author goes over the same… material… again… and again. This is why journalists should stick to writing two page articles that require little in depth explanation, general presumptions unsupported except by “personal observation,” and dripping with an inability to see the other side of an argument.

So, the banana craze is over in Japan just as quickly as it began. Ladies, no longer will you lose 30 pounds by eating whatever you want, as long as you start the day off right with hot water and bananas.

But if my local Maranaka is any indication, the onion-and-potato craze has only just begun!

Word Count: 6000

Do Your Patriotic Duty and Give Candy to Japanese Middle Schoolers!

So this has been a very strange week for me. Usually, I have an average of 2 or 3 classes each day, and on Thursday it jumps up all the way to 5 a day.
However, at tSFF they’ve been practicing very hard for the Choir Festival this weekend, so many of my classes got switched around-and at tSRL, Thursday and Friday were midterms, so the most classes I’ve had in a day has been 2. At tSRL, I’ve only had 1 all week!
Today, I unfortunately had only 1 class-which was a huge bummer, since today is Halloween, and I had a couple of fun Halloween activities planned (okay, only one. The teachers here are always very anxious about time constraints, so I can’t do anything that will take too long or be too involved.) Since my Halloween plans were a little scrappy, I also planned an activity for free period, an “English Hour” that I plan for every Friday. Of course, it’s actually only about 20 minutes long, and since almost all this month students have been practicing for the festival during that time, I’ve only gotten 1 or 2 interested students.
Today I decided to hold a very brief, mock election, in honor of the actual elections on Nov. 4th. With the Choir Festival only 2 days away, I was actually very surprised that about a dozen or so students came and voted. Here are the anticipated results!
l Obama: 10 out of 14 (70%)
l McCain: 4 out of 14 (30%)

So if American voters are anything like Japanese junior high school students who have no real grasp of American politics (With my limited Japanese and their limited English, I had to really water the system down, and explain that McCain likes guns and Obama likes gay people), then Obama will win in a landslide!
Yesterday, because the tSRL was in midterms, I actually got to visit the town’s kindergarten, which is in fact made up of youngsters ages 3 to 5 years old. They had me wander out into the playground for about 20 minutes, and though the kids were a tiny bit shy at first, they quickly warmed up-and their English was great! When I ask my 7th graders “What is your name?” usually the response is petrified silence. Here I was asking 3 year olds, and the response was “My name is _________. Nice to meet you.” It was crazy! And also unbelievably adorable, especially when I tried to teach them tag, but they all simultaneously decided that chasing me was far preferable to chasing each other. I got to participate in a class with the 3 year olds, and I loved it. It was just kind of wonderful to work with a bunch of students who hadn’t yet built up this wall of anxiety between themselves and a foreign language. Of course, I got some of the treatment in reverse-tiny Japanese children chattering at me as if I understand every word.

The Pumpkin Carving Debacle

I get it. I do. It’s just deeply frustrating.
At one of my schools, nearly every activity I’ve planned goes great. The kids are into it, they listen more or less attentively (or just babble excitedly in my direction) and because I am there infrequently, the teachers and I have little time to talk, but the activity clicks anyway. In the last two months, I can only think of one or two activities that were a little shaky.
But at my other school…it’s as if every activity I have is a disaster. The kids either stare me blankly (it’s incredible, they bounce off the walls and down the hallways until you sit them down in a desk, and automatically, their eyes glaze over before you’ve even started talking) or they turn in their desks to talk to their friends behind them. I’ve tried using the same activities-but maybe the kids at my 2nd school are just not as flexible in English, so I try switching out activities. I even try throwing in some Japanese-and nothing.
It doesn’t help that one or two bad students in my 2nd school can somehow control the entire class. At my 1st school (designated from here on out as the School of the Rotten Lunches, tSRL) there are a few bad apples, usually in the way of class clowns. They chatter, the kids laugh at them, but they participate and are generally enthusiastic.
My 2nd school (designated from here on out as the School of Fifty Fity, tSFF) is either well behaved, but silent as a tomb, or totally undisciplined and in the iron fist of control by two to three bad students.

Any JETs who happen upon this blog are already aware of this, but for the rest of you, here’s a little background about the education situation in Japan. It is against the law to force a student to leave class. There is no such thing as detention, and I still haven’t gathered what sort of punishment the students do receive, beyond a harsh talking to. I’ve accepted “bad” students who sleep in class, for whatever reason-I’ve come to the conclusion that while I wish I could get them excited about English, it may just not be their cup of tea, and as long as they’re sleeping, they are not being rude or disruptive. And heck, maybe they were up all night studying for their math exam, which they need a good score on to get into high school. Maybe even talented and otherwise dedicated students can fall asleep in class.
But other bad students, well….
At tSFF today, I tried to teach a Halloween lesson to one of the grade’s selection classes. Unfortunately, this class contains two of the worst students, in regards to English; the Bad President, and Above-It Boy. They literally turned their backs on me during the, what, 8 minute Powerpoint presentation… Refused to participate… Shot me dirty looks any time I came near them. The JTE and I had planned to carve pumpkins and do a mummy wrap game, but the students just refused to do anything. Even the reward of candy wasn’t enough to motivate Above-It Boy. (After discovering she could get something to eat, which seems to be her sole goal when investing any time in English, the Bad President participated without further harassment.)

I know, two months in, it’s not the enlightened and teacher-y thing to do, to say I give up on some of the bad students. But I only have so much attention and motivation. Should I push all of it into “connecting” with bad students, even if that means neglecting the students who are actually trying? Should I spend my time being ignored and spat at by Above-It Boy, or should I give my attention to Tall Mouse, whom while not an exceptional student and with obvious struggles in English, stills says "Good morning" the loudest, always raises her hand, and really makes a titanic effort?

In my opinion…I’ll concentrate my efforts, and my rewards, on students who are trying. For instance, another student, who I call Shortman, had previously been one of the students that irked me the most. During last week’s class, however, I made sure to give stickers to him when he displayed any kind of participation, and I shot him thumbs up whenever I saw he was taking notes. To my surprise, by the end of the class Shortman was actually semi-paying attention and, while granted my Japanese is miserably poor, I think he may have even told off the Bad President for talking loudly to her friends instead of studying (or he could have been saying it in a sarcastic way… hard to tell.)

I’ve heard it suggested that the reasons students aren’t listening to me is because they don’t respect me… which is all well and good, I suppose, if I could find the hidden lever somewhere in the school with each teacher’s name on it, and switch it from “rude” to “respected.” But we all know that’s not how it works. Who in the world can tell why students respect me? Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, and from my modest observations, female teachers have a much tougher time gaining respect and admiration from students than male teachers. (It seems as if, just by virtue of being male, you are cool in the books of most students.) Maybe it’s because I don’t fit the image of a gaijin… tall, blonde, foreign-seeming. Maybe it’s because I didn’t dress in a bear costume on the first day of class. Who knows? I can make up hypothesis that are impossible to check until the end of time.

For right now, I guess all I can do is keep encouraging those students who are trying.

For Good

Below is a song from "Wicked," a song that's come crashing back into my consciousness. 

Rest in peace. 

"I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn, and we are led to those who help us most to grow if we let them, and we help them in return. Well I don't know if I believe that's true, but I know I'm who I am today because I knew you. Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes a sun, like a stream that meets a bolder halfway through the wood, who can say if I've been changed for the better? Because I knew you, I have been changed for good.

It well may be that we will never meet again in this lifetime, so let me say before we part so much of me is made of what I learned from you. You'll be with me, like a hand print on my heart. And that whatever way our stories end, I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend.

Like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea, like a seed dropped by a sky bird in a distant world, who can say if I've been changed for the better? But because I knew you, I have been changed for good.

And just to clear the air, I ask forgiveness for the things I've done you blame me for. But then I guess we know there's blame to share, and none of it seems to matter anymore.

Like a comet from orbit as it passes a sun, like a stream that meets a bolder halfway through the wood, who can say if I've been changed for the better?... I do believe I have been changed for the better.... And because I knew you, because I knew you, because I knew you, I have been changed for good." 

Flashing Green Button Miracles

To quote Bridget Jones, at times like this, eating the entire contents of one's fridge seems inevitable. Due to money and woe-begotten forgetfulness by me, most of my plans for the weekend fell through, which could be quite depressing, since it's once again a holiday weekend-a perfect excuse to ditch the previously mentioned RS like a blind date who expects you to split the check 50/50 even though they OBVIOUSLY had twice the amount of food you did.

I was recently inspired, however, by a thoughtful Tao of Pooh post, and decided I would try to focus on tiny miracles. And make a list!

1) I have managed to be on time for the train and bus every time for the last month and a half. I think. 

2) I have labeled trash cans, AND a nifty calendar so the neighbors never again have to call my city's school board to complain that I put the unburnables out on the wrong day across the street, instead of in front of the vending machine like is the obvious, if not at all labeled, place for it.

3) We're making pizza in the ninensai's English selection class on Tuesday.

4) I now have an adorable green sweater.

5) And purple boots! Yes; purple... boots.

6) Last of all... you ready for this one?

I HAVE INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Wha?....

So today my kids discovered “American” rock-paper-scissors.

In my Japanese class at university, we played the “Japanese” rock, paper, scissors…”Junkenbon.” But we did it with the gestures we’d learned as kids, hitting our closed fits against our open palms (and having arguments about whether you showed your hand on “three,” or “shoot.”) I was a little surprised to find that my students play by doing this sort of shaker motion with their fists-it’s hard to describe, but a lot more suspenseful than the American way. Who knew you had to be multicultural to enjoy a game of rock-paper-scissors?

Anyway, in the course of teaching today, I joined in, and did it my typical American way. Both the students and the teacher were amazed and amused at what I was doing-wait, you… you hit your hand?! You hold your palm flat, instead of vertical? What are you doing, you crazy American??!

Just to experiment, I tried it in my following classes, all with the same result. Well, maybe, I thought, it was because they were ichinensai and ninensai. I decided I’d try it one more time on the sannensai, my lunch group.

I’ve been meaning forever to write about school lunches, but I just haven’t had the strength, so I’ll preface this by saying I’ve only scratched the surface. Anyway, they always give us/me way too much food. I’ve had a very hard time even giving my extra food away, which was what the other JETs suggested; even in the boys in my class didn’t want it. Today I tried out the advice of a particular JET, who plays Junkenbon with his students over the food… except doesn’t mention beforehand who gets it, so if they win, here you go, you won!, and if they lose, here you go, you lost! Classic win-win/lose-lose situation. I challenged a boy for the cucumber-white-shavings-that-might-be-fish-product salad, and just like predicted, the boy took the food when he lost without any protest. Works like a charm.

And my students were vastly entertained by the palm-hitting.

So, win-win day for me.

(Note: I was a little confounded when a student bumped into me, and cried,” Oh… my… God! Samimasin!* I am sorry!” I could have sworn she was making fun of me… so, okay, 95% win-win day for me!)

*A slaughtered version of “sumimasen.”

*Today's Random English: From a sannensai, in the middle of a lesson and totally off topic, "Guard rails help protect cars from going off the road."

Missing Cheese Curds and Conversation

Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don't mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.
-T.S. Elliot

I’ve never been a big drinker. This has always caused some small amount of friction in the past. It’s easy to be friends with people who might prefer basketball while you like tennis, but it’s always been a challenge to be friends with people whose main leisurely activity is drinking. After turning 21, I fell into a very comfortable routine of hanging out in a bar to chat, having philosophical conversations or sharing life experiences, sipping my one or two favorite drinks (I have been craving cheese curbs and a Bloody Mary like you would not believe.)

Well I’ve hit a dead wall in Japan. I find myself suffering from what I will refer to as Responsibility Syndrome. RS, as it’s casually called, is usually a dormant disease, but has been known to cause large amounts of guilt and regret in sufferers. A few weeks ago, there was a large prefecture JET party that unsurprisingly featured alcohol on a Saturday night. It just so happened to fall on the weekend of one of my school’s Sports Days. Friday was my city’s speech contest… Saturday was treated like a regular school day… and Sunday promised to go from sunup to sundown, with set up and take down and all that. I could have stayed out all night. I could have drank enough to be more than buzzed. I could have taken the last train home. Instead, I had one drink, and was snuggled into bed at the very reasonable hour of midnight.

Most weekends I go somewhere. While relaxing, it’s just too darn depressing to stay locked up in my apartment all weekend. But when I go somewhere well within striking distance, I am always home at reasonable hours, and I get the suggested 8 hours of sleep. I rarely drink, because I am exhausted enough from the school week without the possibility of a hangover, well, hanging over my head. I’m amazed… and confounded… at how often other people can get away, and how often they can party.

Drinking in Japan is one of those urban legends that perpetuates through the Gaijin mythos. If you can hold your alcohol-and more notably, can’t hold your alcohol and don’t mind-Japan is an amazing place. All you can drink specials for $30! Karoke bars, beer gardens! It’s a schmoregusboard of drunken possibilities. But for the light weight, it just doesn’t make economic sense. Being placed specifically where I am, and suffering from RS, it doesn’t make practical sense either. I have yet to find someone who enjoys my preferred drinking habits-one or two drinks and lively, but personal, conversation.

Honestly, I’m having a rough time making friends. Or, I should say, a large amount of friends. I’ve never been a popular person. When I go somewhere, 9 times out of 10, I go alone. I am not destitute, not yet. But I am, at times, incredibly frustrated. I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to demand, why, why are we left out?

I mean, it’s hard not to feel lonely. If I had a penny for every time I heard “Oh my kids just love me!” or “Oh I’m so popular at school” or “My other teachers never want to stop talking to me, isn’t that SO annoying!” I can barely get my kids to wave hi to me. They certainly don’t cluster outside the teacher’s door waiting for my glowing, charismatic self. I just feel so alienated-not from Japanese people, but from other JETs! Where are the JETs like me, who go to work, who do their job, but aren’t loved, aren’t worshipped? Where are the JETs who are lonely, where are the JETs who don’t have their cell phones always ringing with invitations? I can’t be the only one.

....Can I?

Large or Small? For Here or To Go? Bailout or Recession?

I consider myself pretty Renaissance-lots of interests, more than one “intelligence.” But economics has always escaped me. I actually fell asleep in my economics class in high school, which was a feat for me-I think it’s the only class I slept through. I mean, I at least made an attempt with math, and with sizeable effort, I managed to get a little through my head. But economics? Nothing. It doesn’t help that any article-even the journalistic ones-write as if you already know what the hell “” is. I mean, economics isn’t just confusing to me-it’s downright impenetrable. It’s as if you already need to know and understand economics to understand anything in economics!
It also doesn’t help that, since my debt-ridden parents have always steered me very, very clear of a credit card or anything similar, and the fact that I just graduated college and have not started a career and thus have no retirement plan, I haven’t the least idea about mortgages or equity loans or… what have you. It’s a whole big total mess to me. The media is already doing a fantastic job of fear-mongering (“Recession! The sky is falling! Recession!”) but my own ignorance is taking a toll too. I’m really not used to just “taking somebody’s word on something,” whether that be a politician’s, a journalist’s, or my next door neighbor’s. (Professors are the exception-they actually grade you on how well you take them at their word.) I investigate for myself, and I draw my own conclusion.
But this, what would you call it, Wall Street vs. Main Street Fallout, is perplexing, and I can’t make heads or tails of it. Wait… $700 billion to buy back bad… what? Bad securities? What securities? And… where will these bad securities go? Will they just disappear? How did this happen again, besides the obvious answers of “greed” and “capitalism?” Is the bailout a good thing-the World seems to hate us for failing to pass the bailout? But wait, why does the world hate us (more than usual, anyway?) Didn’t they play a part in it too? I mean, if the world’s economies are coming tumbling down because of the fall of mortgage and insurance giants (how are the two fields related again??) doesn’t that mean the other countries’ own Wall Streets played a part, as well?
When it comes to money and all that, I really am quite simple. I work this amount-you give me this amount. I use that said amount and that said amount only to buy goods and services. If I don’t have said amount, I don’t buy said goods or services.

However, I might also be kind of lucky. If I read the newspapers correctly, hellfire is raining down onto America even as we speak, and homeless, jobless zombies roam the street in search of low-interest loans. Meanwhile, in Japan, the newspapers in English seem by and large uninterested, except to note there are a few lessons for their own balancing economies. (Though here I show my ignorance again-aren’t economies always balancing? Are they ever stable? It seems every time I stumbled onto the Economics page, it was perpetually tipping one way or the other.) I continue to work, they continue to pay me, and an article about the out-of-work NOVA teachers finding jobs as onsen translators dominates the front page.

In other news, the teachers at my one school like to start English class off with an English song, which we listen to all month. Great! I think it’s a fantastic idea. Except my English teachers seem to have a knack for picking songs that make me grind my teeth in irritation… today we started off October with “We Are The World,” that corny, ridiculous anthem to self-important celebrities that just so perfectly sums up the mid 80’s. To be fair, the darn song is actually in the textbook as an example of “English songs”-and glancing through the list, it’s one of the better selections.

Though, my students continue to surprise me. While getting ready for Sports Day on Saturday (an entry that is coming, I promise,) I weeded the parade ground with a bunch of ichinensei girls, who very sweetly tried to speak English with me by pulling out phrases from their textbook (“Large or small?” “For here, or to go?”) The biggest shock, however, was when one 7th grader girl asked “Obama or McCain?” When I just sort of stared at her in stunned silence, she said,” Obama!”

Indeed.

A Weekend in Kyoto

So I love Public Holidays in Japan, especially since I work within the school system. Schools in Japan, or at least the elementary and middle schools, don’t get very long “holiday” holidays like schools in the States do… three weeks for Christmas, one for Easter/Spring Break, two to three months for summer. Instead, Japan loves to sprinkle the 20 or so national holidays all over the calendar. This past Monday, we had a day off from school for the Respect the Aged day, and next Tuesday is the Autumn Equinax. October 13th (Monday) is Health and Sports Day, and November 3rd (also a Monday) Culture Day. So instead of the long summer and long fall semester with perhaps 2 days for Thanksgiving like in America, instead there is the month long summer holiday in August and then 6 day-long holidays from September to December. I can’t say just yet whether I like this system better, but it sure does break up the weeks nicely.
And… it’s great for traveling.
As a JET, you only get so many days off, and only of a certain kind. For instance, out of the school year, I can get 3 days sick leave, and 20 days just for general use.* Well those 20 days are quite precious things, especially if you’re planning to return to the States over Christmas or summer like I am, but what’s the good of being in Japan if you don’t travel a little? So, you keep a keen eye out for public holidays, especially those that land right beside a weekend, and you seize them, because it ensures one more day of sightseeing/travel time without the need to take nenkyuu (aka, those 20 special days.)
This weekend I seized on that Respect for the Aged Day weekend, and I visited Kyoto. Fortunately, I have a CIR (Coordinator for International Relations-the “other” JET) friend who is nicely settled only 25 minutes away from Kyoto by train, and she invited several of us unfortunate inaka JETs to visit.
Now my prefecture is tiny. Very tiny. So tiny, in fact, I take for granted just how big the rest of Japan is. From my humble little train station to the capital city, the “slow” train takes right around an hour and fifteen minutes, and I’m on the other side of the prefecture. Logically, I know that my town to Tokyo is not a day trip, but it’s difficult to appreciate it until you’re actually living it.
Friday night, the ride to a transferring station, and the hop off my island, took around an hour and a half, no more. And suddenly, I’m in Okayama, with no idea how to buy a shinkansen bullet train ticket.
For those unfamiliar, the shinkansen is God’s gift to the wary and wealthy traveler. From Okayama, Kyoto would take about 3 1/2 hours by slow train. But by shinkansen, it’s barely an hour. However, by virtue of this, the bullet train is quite expensive. You can go with an unreserved seat, which is generally $20-30 more expensive than a slow train ticket, or a fancy reserved seat, which is $20-30 more expensive than the unreserved. The dumb answer is to go with the unreserved, but a bullet train with 16 cars may only have the first 3 or 5 for unreserved seats, so they go like hot cakes.
I, unfortunately, didn’t have a whole lot of time, so I just ate the cost, after the hour it took me to figure out where I was going and how to say where I was going. (I’ve gotten used to the geographical kanji of my area, which can be just as annoying as name kanji, but unfortunately I hadn’t had the presence of mind to look up what the kanji for Kyoto was.)
Overall, the shinkansen is pretty darn nice; big seats, a trolley, and if you don’t get too easily car sick or travel at night, some nice snapshots of Japanese countryside. The landscape from Okayama to Kyoto was primarily tunnels, but there were some very nice views of towns tucked into picturesque mountain valleys.
But if I was overwhelmed with Okayama, Kyoto Station was a whole new beast. We spent quite a bit of time in there over the weekend, and I’m still a little confused as to where the shopping area is in relation to the Shinkansen Line and the regular JR line. I was the first of the delegation to arrive, and even with cell phones, it still took us a few minutes to find each other. Worse yet, living in inaka, I’ve gotten into the habit of, if I’m meeting JET friends, to just look for the tall and/or white person. This proved impossible in Kyoto, not only because of the sheer mass of humanity, but because-well, I hadn’t seen that many foreign people in one area since the Tokyo Orientation! I am calling the kettle black here, but they were all quite obviously foreign, too… With traveling backpacks stuffed to capacity or several large rolling suitcases. I felt quite at home, with my small-ish duffel bag and purse, quite as if I lived so close I hadn’t bothered packing for more than two or three days. But then, you’ve never known real frustration like lugging a huge backpack around somewhere like the prefecture capital.
The delegation slowly began to arrive, until we got news that one of our party, coming from the far North, had gotten stranded in Tokyo. Apparently the last train to Kyoto runs at 9:30, and he missed it by about 5 minutes. He tried the night bus-which the attendant said was full-and got taken hostage by Tokyo Station security guards who wouldn’t let him leave without a ticket, even though a police officer had let him in so he could just cut through the station to get to the east exit. Between this and that, he spent the whole night wandering Tokyo-which, apparently, isn’t as interesting as you would think, unless you’re into street racing and 50 year old prostitutes.
But the next morning, our delegation was complete, and we set off for the first sightseeing item on our list: the red Tori gates. I unfortunately am pitiful at place names, but these Gates are one of those sites that’s recognizable on sight. They are absolutely breathtaking in person, especially since they just seem to keep going and going, up and up the mountain… so we too kept going, up and up the mountain. What an amazing view of the city, since the Gates are only one or two stops outside Kyoto Station on the way to Nara. But geez, what a climb. I’ve never been more resentful of Japanese etiquette against tank tops-at least those avoid the monstrous pit stains that ensue with any kind of traveling here whatsoever. Japan has to be one of the most humid and hilly areas I’ve ever been to, and yet the general populace seems to insist on being covered head to toe whenever possible (see “Sports Day.”) Still, the Tori gates were worth it, for the beautiful sights and giant spiders.
The crazy thing about sightseeing is that even if you plan your day well ahead in a reasonable fashion, it still somehow ends up taking longer than you expected. After the Tori gates, we traveled right into Kyoto and took a city bus to the Kiyomizudera Shrine, tucked up into the corners of the mountains surrounding the old capital. It was not quite as cluttered as other shrines had been with buildings, and the shrine itself seemed to grow out of the mountainside. Best of all, there was a part of the shrine that only opened about every 30 years, and we happened to land on that 30. Inside were candles lit in prayer, and enormous statues, made of both stone and metal. The metal was obviously very old, in that it was starting to turn that green rusting color even though it was clearly polished. The stone statues featured men-demons with terrifying, glowing eyes and breastplates that looked like monsters. In the dark, with just the flickering candlelight, the effect was both terrifying and awe-inspiring. There was also a beautiful little baby pavilion surrounded by trees, and a waterfall that supposedly gave wisdom, health, and longevity (but not all of them-you have to choose two of the three.) On the way back down, we stopped in one of the many, many shops and had some delicious green tea ice cream. A young Japanese guy also came up and introduced himself-his father had had a job somewhere in Illinois, and his English was impeccable enough that he kept throwing “like” into sentences (slang-the true mark of someone who has learned by living.)
The next stop for sightseeing was the Silver Pavillion, and then possibly stopping into Gion on the way back to the CIR’s place for a taste of the nightlife. By that time of the day, we were all getting a little run down, and the only thing we’d eaten all day was some Starbucks for breakfast and the ice cream. We stopped in a nice little sit down restaurant for supper, but by the time we finished, the Pavillion had closed. It’s not totally surprising that attractions around Kyoto closed by 5:30 or 6… it’s dusk by 5, and night by 7 pm. So instead, we took the subway into the “hip” part of Kyoto where all the young people and foreigners hung out, grabbed some snacks, and sat next to the river, enjoying some spontaneous band music on the bank.
The next day we started off as early as possible for the Nijo Castle. Nijo Castle was built by the Shoguns around 1500-1600 as a home in Kyoto, right beside the emperor before he moved to Tokyo. For another who has read “Across the Nightengale Floor,” it’s also the place the story was based on. The Shogun was worried about ninjas attempting to assassinate him in the night, so they invented this genius type of floor… it squeaks when you step on it, but it’s impossible to predict. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take pictures inside, but the place was very spread out and huge; most of the paintings on the sliding doors were still in tact, and even four hundred years later, the place gave off a sense of grandeur. The grounds were especially lovely, with a nice deep pond, and a moat filled with giant koi fish.
After Nijo Castle, we took the long ride into Nara, to the south of Kyoto. Nara is very famous for its deer population-smaller than white tails, but tame as can be, tame to the point of being really annoying if you have any kind of food. About a fifteen minute walk from the train station, you’ll also find the giant Buddha… and when I say giant, I mean GIANT. You can see the building from three blocks away… it was wider than my high school, and at least 10 stories high. Inside was housed three figures, the central one the Buddha sitting on a giant lotus petal with figures floating around behind him. And it was… HUGE. I estimate that one of his fingers is just about my height. There was also a pillar with a hole in it that I might have been able to squeeze through… If you make it, you’re guaranteed a year of good luck. But we got there right before closing time, so the guard wouldn’t let us try.
After the Giant Buddha, we all headed back to the CIR’s place and had some delicious home-cooked Japanese food (though strike me down if I can tell you what it was, or even what was in it.) By the next morning, our adventure was over, and I was back on the trains, winding my way to the island.
It’s too bad about the whole stupid-Internet thing, because I had a fantastic weekend. Sometimes when I’m just hanging out in my apartment or sitting at my desk in school, I forget that I’m actually halfway around the world from where I started, but traveling around-and trying to figure out the train schedule-really makes me feel as if I’m in Japan.
Well, that, and school lunches. But that’s a topic for another day.

*20 days is about the average, but ESID (Every Situation is Different), so the number of days off really depends on the contract.

This Isn't Culture Shock. This Is Culture Rage.

So in case I haven't mentioned, I hate Internet in Japan. I mean I hate it... a LOT. I have been without Internet connection at my house since I moved here, and honestly, while word processing and chess are swell, without Internet my sparkling new Mac is really just a pretty paperweight.

Yes, I can use Internet at school, and yes, other JETs in the area have offered it. But the things I desperately need to do or want to do-putting together grad applications, emailing professors, reading academic articles to keep up on coursework, chatting with friends, and playing videogames-are all time consuming things that are generally not encouraged when I'm sitting at a desk working. At the moment, I'm waiting in that 15-20 minute nexus when my contract is done for the day but I have English speeches to grade, so I say to hell with etiquette, I'm pissed.

Two weeks ago I spent my Sunday fruitlessly trudging around my capital city, a good hour train ride and $10 one way, trying to find wireless connection. Other JETs swore by both Starbucks in the capital, but I tried BOTH, and both failed. (I'm not sure if they were broken or the free wireless had been suspended... the language barrier is especially annoying in technical situations.) This was a week and a half after my supervisor said he would look into Internet, and I haven't seen nor heard hide nor hair of him. I finally got so fed up last Monday I signed up for YahooBB through yahoobbapply.com, and hoped that within two weeks or so they'd hook me up, send me a modem, and we'd be set.

But no. Of course. What was wrong with me? This is Japan. Japan hates Internet.

Today the guy in charge of YahooBB Apply emailed me and told me I was on hold to get service. See, there are only so many avaliable "ports" in my area, and they're all being used, so I can fill out ANOTHER application and wait a month to just sit here and hope somebody stops using the service, OR I can go with another service that costs about $50 a month WITHOUT "extra" instillation costs, which will be about $30-60, and that is if they don't have to ripe out any wires.

Worse part, the guy is emailing my Yahoo account, which I can read at work, but for some bizarre reason emailing BACK is prohibited, so I either have to wait until Friday when I can get to my OTHER school, OR try to text-reply on my cellphone.

This is so unbelieveably ridiculously stupid. I think if Internet service took this long and was this red-tapped in the States, there would be mutiny. I'm close to it. It's been nearly two months, and that's the longest I've gone without Internet, well.... ever. At least at camp I had the weekends or the occassional free time on Eric's. And while other people may scoff, Internet is my only connection to the outside world.

Worse yet, it seems as if everyone else-even the new JETs-have it. How did they get it so fast? Why am I having such hard luck with it? Who do I have to kill to get a modem around here?!!

At the Tokyo Orientation, they warn you that while learning Japanese will make your life much easier here, your job is actually to speak English, and speak English you should. Fortunately, my Japanese is far too weak to have anything but a mere scratch of a conversation, so I end up speaking English to students purely out of need to get SOMETHING across. However, I don’t imagine that my English teachers mind overly much. Still, the kids aren’t eager to speak in English, and despite very hyperactive talk around me at lunch, not many of them make an attempt to speak with me. It’s actually kind of bemusing to say “How are you?” to a student, who was able to answer the question just fine at the beginning of every single English class of their lives, but somehow when you say it, they must hold a UN conference with their friends before they reply in English,” I don’t speak English.”
Still, I was afraid I would get no Japanese practice in at all, especially not practical sentence structure, which I need the most work on. Then today I taught my first classes, since my self-introductions were finished (correction: I taught my first five classes. It’s pretty rare to have five classes in one day-at my other school it’s only two or three-but it certainly makes the day fly by) and I found, to my delight, the teachers explained English sentences on the board with both verbal and written Japanese. Fantastic! While the kids were scribbling notes on English, I was scribbling them on kanji and sanuki bun, the local dialect. It’s the perfect opportunity to review or explore grammar forms.
At this point, I haven’t proven myself yet, so I’m still kind of a tape recorder/thing for the kids to parrot, but so far, I’ve been having tons of fun. The hardest part is standing for five of the six hours of the day, but otherwise I’m really enjoying myself.

In other news, still no Internet at my apartment, but I finally said Hell, and just signed up for it myself (with help.) With any luck, I’ll have Internet within 15 days, so just in time to post pictures of both my junior high school’s Sports Festivals.
I’m pretty stoked, actually. I’ve never seen a Sports Day, and they seem like such a corner of the Japanese education life- it’s like not knowing about Homecoming in America or something. And at my base school, I’ve apparently been signed up for the Teachers’ relay team.

… The kids have chewed through my stickers though. Why, oh why, 100 Yen Store, must you be a 20 minute bike ride away? I’ve still successively resisted the temptation to buy a car, scooter, or something similar that I don’t have to sweat through my clothes to drive, for which I pat myself on the back. As I think I’ve mentioned, my town is quite nice, but damn if it ain’t a one horse kinda place. I have a grocery store, sans avicados, and a tasty udon shop, so I suppose in a really strict sense I’ve got everything I need, but darn it, I need stickers! These kids demand stickers!

Another activity this month that I look forward to with anticipation is my city’s English speech contest, held on a Friday near the end of September. My city is actually split into quite a few towns, and I am assigned to two of the six or seven towns, which has created an interesting dilemma for me. I tutor a sannensei and ninensai (so, 9th and 8th graders respectively) at both of my schools, and of course the objective is to get them as polished as possible so they can win. I’ve been trying very hard not to have favourites, and not to compare in my head who is better-honestly, every single one of them is a trooper. Harking back to my high school years, I remember how unpopular public speaking in English was, but these students are willing to stand up and speak, memorized, in a foreign language before they’ve even hit high school. The Forensic nerd in me weeps at the very beauty of it. And each of them has their own particular strengths. One sannensai has hilarious delivery-he manages to be funny in a foreign language. The other one has fantastic pronunciation with only the barest accent. And all of them have their weaknesses. I just hope that my direction is enough to get them a high rank. It’s not so much about the trophy, but I want them to walk away with solid confirmation that they have a certain finesse with English. I think it would really help boost the confidence of some of them, who are intrinsically shy.

In a last bit of personal news, I have 1 day to decide if I am doing the 3kyuu, and if I am, I must somehow figure out how to get a 3x4cm picture of myself AND how to pay at the post office or bank when the damn post office and bank are ONLY open during the hours I am at school! Seriously, this thing is harder to apply for than a passport! If I do end up missing the deadline, I’m not too heartbroken; I was nervous about spending that money and failing, with only 3 months to prepare, and while I’m studying for the GRE in November. If I study for 3kyuu for next December, I conceivably have a shot of doing very well, and who knows… if my tutor thinks I’m good enough, maybe I’ll study for 2kyuu in July instead. That’s a complete cake in the sky dream, of course, but hey, Japan was made for dreaming.

Riding Trains

One of my favorite features of Japan is the trains. Mass transportation in general fascinates me, since in America it's practically impossible to find decent public transportation in smaller cities or towns, and in Japan, it's just so gosh darn amazingly efficient.
There is nothing quite like sitting back in a seat, knowing you'll reach almost any destination in a reasonable amount of time, and watch the beautiful countryside roll by. From my town to the capital, there's a particularly amazing stretch where the train rides right along the seashore, with dark little islands popping up out of the flat horizon like turtles in a dark, steamy pool.

Still no Internet at my apartment (I'm borrowing from a fellow JET.) It's nearing on painful, communication with the outside world... Or communication at all. I'm trying to just soldier through, but it leaves a slightly bitter taste in my mouth that the first one or two months is the hardest time to adjust, and yet the time when they leave you the most vulnerable... no phone, and only very expensive contact with family and friends back home. So the only people left to talk to are those here, who are inevitably wrapped up in their own stuff and largely uninterested beyond the polite ackowledgement. After all, THEY made it through culture shock, why are YOU having such a rough time with it?

During the week, it isn't so bad. The school day can be pretty draining, and what with studying for various tests, it sucks up the daylight hours with satisfaction. I'd even wager that the weekdays are when I like being in Japan the best. I feel like I have a purpose, and I have at least a vague idea what I' meant to do (Speak English!)

The weekends, though, can be downright depressing. Most of the other JETs have already made plans, conveniently forgetting to mention them to you-or perhaps just generally forgetting. But when you're hungry for friendship in a foreign country, any sign that you're not welcome, even an unintentional one, can be quite a sting.

I mean, really. Making Japanese friends is notoriously difficult, and so if you're lonely, you're sort of stuck with who's around. But what a way to be friends... not accepted, or maybe even not liked, but just sort of a tag-along. I'm not looking for my bestest friend in the whole wide world, but I have too much to accomplish to spend time with people who don't want me there, out of either general dislike or mere indifference.

And it's never a nice thing, to be forgotten.

It's all so strange... they warn you about adjusting to another culture, but they never warn you about having to deal with people from your own. Then again, such lame Powerpoints urging you to "be friendly" and "just be yourself!" wouldn't be very helpful. Who can teach you to be a popular and likable person? And if such a thing could be taught, well, I wouldn't have this problem.

I suppose it's just all part and parcel of this experience. Shut up and soldier through. Take comfort in what you can.

Of Festivals and Gold Medals

So it's very nice to know that three years worth of kanji studying (Japn 101, 102, 201, 202, and 301) has prepared me for.... the JLPT Level 4, the easiest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Seriously... No, really, seriously?? There are even some kanji and adjectives I haven't yet learned. *Sigh* Well, at least I have my work cut out for me. I was really, truly hoping I could conquer Level 3, since Level 4 (the grammar and kanji at least) are largely review, but with the GRE to study for as well (the GRE needs to be taken sometime before November, and the JLPT can only be taken once a year on the first Sunday of December) I'll just have to resign myself to being really lame.

In other news, I'm trying very hard to get over the guilt of using the Internet in the teachers room. I've pretty much been using it only for Japanese study, but... I mean, come on. Gimme a break, huh?

Transitioning is a tricky thing.I haven't spoken to many of the teachers who are just floating around the teachers' room... I'm too nervous about how bad my Japanese is, and they seem either uninterested or too shy to approach me. I hope once my books arrive from the States and I can begin properly studying grammar forms (my worst spot; off the top of my head I can manage only simple sentence structure like "X は Y です.") Until then, I smile and try to say good morning and good night to whomever looks my way.

I tried cooking bread in my rice cooker yesterday. What a fiasco! Not because of the rice cooker, itself... I'm not sure if I added too much milk, or water, or what, but the batter was just sort of a slimy wet mess. I tried adding more and more flour, but even after half my bag of flour it was still too sticky and runny to form into a ball. Still, it's bread that for sure doesn't have a stick of butter in the middle of it. (The last-no kidding-five loaves of bread I've bought at the store have looked perfectly normal but had some sort of butter/paste in the middle.)

The last week has been festival on top of festival. Last Wednesday　after work I took the train　into our main city and watched an hour's worth of fireworks. Quite different than American fireworks, with the constant big bangs until about 15 minutes later you get a final, definite HUGE bang and then its over. The fireworks for the festival were about an hour or so long with 3 to 5 minutes sudden pauses, and no one could tell when they were actually over. The food was quite good, though I stayed ｆａｒ away from squid on a stick. On Friday I visited a friend on her island, and there were-you guessed it-more fireworks! I think I'm actually firework-ed out.

Unfortunately, I missed the biggest festival this side of Japan because I had to visit with my English teacher, and Thursday was the only day she was avaliable. I regret it... but maybe next year I can steal away. I'm trying to save all of my vacation days for either visiting the States over Christmas, or visiting far reaches of Japan/Asia like Hokkaido or Korea.

Unfortunately I still don't have pictures for you all. ごめんださい。Photobucket doesn't want to recognize my computer. Like I said... technology is becoming my savior to recognize my computer. Like I said... technology is becoming my savior and my oppressor over here.

If there is one part of my experience with Japan I am almost completely unhappy about, it is how much I have missed the Olympics. Because of the time difference, all of the best events are during the day, and the news coverage at night is usually only of Japanese athletes and particular victories. That said, it's very interesting to view the Olympics through the lens of another country....I admit, I have never found badmitton so enjoyable to watch. And I find myself adopting Japanese athletes as my own; for instance, cheering on the Japanese women's softball team against Argentina (they kicked butt, by the way) or actually yelling when Kitajima won his first gold in the 100 meter (though I saved the jumping up and down for the relay race when the Americans destroyed the French in the final 10 seconds.) Considering how bad the American coverage has been towards American athletes (like the men's and women's gymnastics team, or the men's track and field) maybe it's a good thing I'm hanging out in a corner of the world that just gets extra excited when one guy wins one gold.

Stealing the Internets

I consider myself a bit of a technophile. I just love the electronic gadgets, the fiddling around and the discovery of some brand new application or tool deep inside a device that may fit in the palm of your hand.

But Japan has proven more than a challenge to my love of technology.

First off, I get computers at both of my junior high school desks. Hurray! Unfortunately, they are both completely and totally in Japanese. Ive figured out some tools, thanks to the reliability of PC functions (I was quite impressed with myself for setting up the language tool bar so I could type words in English) but some others are still a complete mystery. And when it comes to more impressive, more complicated functions, well, I might as well be beating a rock with another rock. And of course using the nifty Japanese keyboards is an adventure unto itself, where it seems absolutely impossible to get an apostrophe in English.

This would not be such an issue, except that last Sunday, the Internet mysteriously died at my apartment. My predecessor informed me he had left it on until the 20th, by which time I would have my gaijin card and could begin the long, red-taped process of creating my own. (One of my first lessons in Japan: there is no such thing as too much red tape.) I tried everything, turning it off, turning it back on, turning the computer off and on, the modem AND the computer, unplugging every wire I could get to. Nothing. No response.
The logic would be that my predecessors Internet simply cut out early. However, my phone is also tied to the modem, and thus the land line, and it functions just fine. So why would the phone, which arguably seems to be linked to the Internet, work, but the Internet itself doesnt?

The short story of it is, I am resigned to using whatever Internet I can steal away here at school.

As a rule, I try not to use the Internet except for Japanese studying or vocab/kanji checking. However, this week is the Obon festival, and though my vice principal has been fleeting in and out all day, there have only been two teachers in the staff room, and one of them left by about 10 am. Ive been correcting a speech for the English competition, but translating from Japanese into more proper English is making my brain explode a little.

(Ex: `It readily went to McDonalds in Japan and was terribly courageous though was able to order in the United States.` I translated as `I could order bravely from McDonalds in Japan, but in the United States I wasn`t very courageous.`)

So, a small... um, two hour long... break was in order.

Honestly, not having Internet was a little bit rattling. Having no Internet and no cell phone here is rather like to being left on a deserted island. A deserted island with lots of rice. I cant contact my supervisor, any of my teachers (for those days that I, oh, I dont know, get lost on the bus for two hours), or any other JETs in case of OMG CULTURE FREAKOUT.

Fortunately, this weekend was quite busy with prefecture orientation and a Japanese baseball game. On Monday, after hours and hours and hours of confusing applications (youd think I was buying a kidney and not a keitai) I received my very own phone.

And it has a TV function! No, seriously, I can watch TV on my cell phone! And browse the Internet (the TV is free, the Yahoo! browser is not.) I have even an email address on my cell phone... I think. I have no idea quite how to work all of it (they call texting email, and actual email is something else, and then theres SM and SMS! Mail, so it all gets very confusing.)

But still, cell phone! And I also received my gaijin card, so Internet is only a few more dozen applications away. I am a card-carrying member of Japan... literally!

Work has been both overwhelming and boring. Helping with the speech contests has become kind of like a hobby, trying to think of new ways to help them wrap their mouths around l and th sounds. The kids are great sports... though in one speech, a student sometimes substitutes an h sound in the middle of -sit- and..... well, I managed to take a few deep breaths and not fall over laughing as he said it over, and over, and over again.

I miss everyone from back home, though honestly, it still feels as if good ol Wisconsin is just a hop, skip, and jump away. Which is weird, since an hour long train ride to the capital city of my prefecture feels like an eternity whenever I start making plans with people.

Im starting to have my surprises and my `well this sucks` and `this is cool!` moments. I am trying very hard to focus on the positive, and not let snags mess up the upcoming year for me.

But I must say one thing. Bicycling in Japan, or at least in rural Japan, sucks monkey balls. Hard. All the streets are pretty narrow, and sidewalks are an act of God when you actually come across them... otherwise you have about three feet to four feet wide shoulders, with zooming vehicles of death on one side, and Gaijin traps on the other (otherwise known as rice paddy irrigation channels.) Additionally, my prefecture has the highest number of automobile accidents in all of Japan.

Which is bizarre to me, because it seems as if nearly everyone in Japan at least owns a bicycle and uses it fairly frequently. Ive certainly seen more bikes here in these past few weeks than I think I saw all year in Wisconsin. Just one of those interesting dichotomies, I guess.

Though Im not thinking -Interesting!- on that long bike ride from here to the next town over. Next time... Im just gonna take the train.

Springtime for Hitler

Another hot day. Ready to test your Calsius skills? Today is Kagawa-ken, it was 35 degrees. Take a guess how much that is Fahrenheit-that's right. Over 85 degrees. Ah, hot, sticky goodness.

It's been a busy weekend. Today has been very chill... Mostly me sitting here at home, taking a feeble stab at Japanese cooking. Instant curry, hey! It's fun to not be able to read instructions on food-thank God for pictures! Course pictures can be just as confusing... I think I might have bought chips that taste like buttered bread. And getting my rice cooker to work has consisted of randomly pushing buttons and seeing what happens. With early evening setting in, I'm going to take another look around town and get some pictures, if I can. I'd have pictures for you all, but my darn card reader is putting up a fight. Far as I can tell, I've downloaded everything I need, but still my computer stubbornly refuses to recognize it. Which is a real shame, because I've got some wonderful pictures from the last few days. 

Friday was a lot more relaxing at school. One of my JTEs brought me some delicious lunch and salted rice balls, which were DELICIOUS. The music teacher also invited me to listen to the Brass Band Club, who has a competition on the 4th. They were doing a compilation of Broadway songs, and I made the mistake of singing along to "Springtime for Hitler." So, they asked me to sing the lyrics for them. For anyone who isn't familiar with "The Producers," it goes a little something like this....

"Springtime for Hitler and Germany,

Rhindeland's a fine land once more

Springtime for Hitler and Germany,

Watch out, Europe!

We're going on tour!"

Well my JTE was having some trouble translating, so I said," Oh, it's a comedy musical about Germany invading Europe!" She explains it to the students, and their faces just sort of freeze in shock and horror. Unfortunately, my Japanese is too weak to fully explain "satirical humor," so... poor kids. It was like I told them they were playing a song from "I Killed My Puppy With a Crowbar." 

Friday night a bunch of local JETs gathered a local eatery (and by local, I mean 15 minutes by train and 10 minutes by foot. Close enough.) I forgot how awkward it is being around new people. I haven't had to dance the Social Scene jig in a while, and I felt quite rusty. Constantly reminded yourself not to talk too much or be too perverted is quite exhausting, but everyone seems very nice, and the food wasn't so bizarre. Though I think they fed me chicken knuckles.... and Japanese mayonnaise.

Saturday we went to a barbecue in Tadotsu, and me and another new JET got to compare notes. I really miss everyone that I met in Tokyo-the JETs here have been incredibly nice and helpful, but there's something about sharing fears and excitements with other new people... for the other JETs, it's totally old-hat, and for us, it's AMAZING. I still find trains a thing of wonder. 

After the barbecue, we went to a festival in a nearby town, which was a whole lot of standing and water-throwing. Mostly men from the town carried this 80 meter straw dragon through the streets, and people threw water on it to wish for rain and good luck. I managed to avoid getting drenched... except for my pants. Those didn't avoid the onslaught. 

I haven't experienced culture shock just yet, I think. Unless shock involves extreme confusion and nerves. I'm missing people back home a lot, but I suppose I'm lucky... I get along pretty well no matter where you stick me. Of course, I'm not cut off from people just yet. We'll have to see how well I fare then. I just hope I can get a hold of someone, when and if that happens. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for a Gaijin registration card so I can get a phone, Internet, and bank account. Until then, I send this message out into the void.

Good night, sweet void. You've served me well this day. 

He Mele No Lilo

My first day at work-as if yesterday hadn't felt overwhelming enough as it is. I am not proud of my poor Japanese skills (and they must be incredibly poor indeed, since the mantra we've gotten is you'll constantly be hearing "Ooo nihongo o jyosu desu ne!" and I've only heard it from 3 or 4 people) but I think if I had walked in without any I would be panicking even more. 

I just feel as if I am doing everything half-ass backwards, and it doesn't matter that I'm a foreigner, they still look at me like an idiot. The teachers I interacted with today-the vice principal, and largely the two English teachers-were very nice and helpful, but huge mounds of the conversation were in Japanese and flew right over my head. I got the impression I was embarrassing or inconveniencing them constantly... I automatically told the vice principal "Bless You" when she sneezed, but that apparently just embarrasses them. I forgot everyone's names, and stumbled over the simplest pronunciation. Seriously, "なまえ" is not that hard! I had only chicken for lunch, since I can't cook any complicated dishes, and the teachers giggled over my lack of rice. 

So it's been a pretty strange day. JETs who took me out for food this evening said it's completely typical, so maybe survival is an option. Who knows, I might even form a coherent Japanese sentence someday. 

"Kalakaua is his name, a flower that never fades in the sun. It blooms on the summit on the mountain, Mauna Kea. Burning bright at Kilauea, illuminating Wahinekapu."

We All Live In A Yellow Submarine

I am here, in humidity-soaked Japan. What an experience the last four days have been. After I've finished reeling from the jetlag (no pun intended) maybe it'll sink in. Or maybe it won't sink in for days yet. I still kinda feel like I'm back in the States, even though in reality I am halfway across the world. 

Internet helps, I think. My predecessor was absolutely wonderful and lent me his modem until the 20th of August, around which time I'll hopefully be well on my way to getting my own. The apartment is quite lovely, as well. It's filled with odd little ends and crannies, and there are a couple of things I'll need before I can fully call it home, but it's very nice. I also visited one of my two schools today and meet my supervisor, principal, and all of the English teachers I'll be working with. Needless to say, it was nerve-wracking, and I'm glad to have it out of the way. 

Not even a week in, and I've checked two "Experience Japan!" items off my list: karoke (never again will I tackle you, Celine Dion) and this evening I went to my first revolving sushi place. It was... pretty interesting. Especially for 126 yen a plate!

Goodbye America, Hello Japan

And here we......go. 

Away From Her

I have about 8 more days in the States. I move out of my house tomorrow (ish), and the nail-biting anticipation and horror of what I am actually about to set into has not yet sunk into my plan-idled head. I have spent the last few weeks so busy planning-planning money, planning transportation, planning packing, planning go away meetings with local friends-I've at times downright forgotten the whole purpose of the planning: that in 192 hours, I will be bound for a country halfway round the world.

It starts to feel a little strange. I hear announcements on the radio about how such-and-such fair, or play, or movie is coming out on such-and-such a date, and my immediate reaction is," Cool I want to see that, what am I doing on.... Oh yeah." I'm emerging onto a whole new social scene. As the Planning For Japan comes to a grinding halt, I am filled with a kind of nervous void, because I have no idea what to expect once actually landed. I have no expectations with which to plan around. So planning, which had become a way to venting my anxiety, has finally at long last failed me.

My planning always involved a touch of paranoia. Everyone on the boards of course says the same: "chill out, just come in with good intentions and be open to new experiences and you'll do fine," but I feel myself wanting to play the indignant teenager-screw you, you can't understand what I'm going through, you were never a first year JET, blah blah. I mean, honestly, my logical brain knows that the road to hell is paved with unrealistic expectations and that "it takes more muscles to frown than smile" is an annoying but necessary mantra, but come on, chill out? I'm moving to a small town in a foreign country with two suitcases, $2,000 (that's 211,640 Y for the folks playing at home), and an apartment that might, hopefully, be clean, though my predecessor said he's applied at least three loads of bleach to it.

But hey, I'm chill. I'm cool. I can fight every natural urge in my nature to form some kind of expectation about what the next year of my life 'll be like. A-okay Skipper.

Thankfully, I did finally get my contract, and it clarified what had been predicted: I am in Mitoyo City, which is to a city what a hybrid is to a car: has the same general appearance but is distinctively different in the gears. Mitoyo was created by combining 7 smaller villages, and it is in one of those villages I am actually situated. I am teaching at two middle schools, and a handful of elementary schools whenever they feel. I have an apartment with a bed, a TV, a fridge, a cooking stove, and a bicycle. I may not have Internet for months, and I may get my underwear stolen if I leave it to dry outside, but overall, the living seems suitable. And functional. I like em functional.

Though it may be selfish to admit, the thought that 2,000 are going through the same turmoil as I am somewhere in the globe is not comforting. But maybe it will be in Chicago, and then Tokyo. I'm looking forward to sharing my frenzy with people other than the posters on the JET board-ya know, that whole Teenager Angle.

Until then, I have packing and shipping plans to preoccupy me, at least for a short time. And the Dark Knight. I will take comfort in the fact that I'm crazy enough to spend a year alone in Japan, but I'm not yet crazy enough to put on a bat suit and fight psychotic clowns.


PS: I am putting together a Powerpoint, which is actually pretty enjoyable. I'm contrasting Wisconsin with Kagawa, my college town with Mitoyo. However, some of the more "nuanced" aspects of American culture I'm having a hard time articulating, especially in my limited Japanese. I mean, how in the world do you explain Ren Faires?
"Um, people dress up in really tight bodices and linen shirts with hose. They talk in accents that are kinda-sorta-accurate. And pretend they're living in the Renissance. Except it's usually not placed in Italy. Usually it's in England and Scotland, which were still kinda stuck in the Middle Ages even in 1423. But they call it a Ren Faire. Except this one has belly dancers. Oh! And giant turkey legs."

Books To Read

In view of my impending free time in Japan, I have started to compile a list of books to read, some for fun, and some for study. So here we go:

• GRE Examination. This is the book I went with: http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=1889057363.
• Flexible Eugenics: Technologies of the Self in the Age of Genetics. By Karen Sue Taussig. R. Rapp and D. Heath, , 2001
• Enchantress of Florance by Salman Rushdie.
• The Great Pigeon Massacre: The Bestiary Biopolitics of Whiteness in a Deindustralizing America. By Hoon Song. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming.
• The Illusion of Consent: Language, Caste, and Colonial Rule in India: Colonial Subjects: Essays in the Practical History of Anthropology, University of Michigan Press, 117-152, 1999. By Gloria Raheja.

Waxing Paranoid

Well kiddies, 'tis about one month before that terrifying time when I board a plane to destination unknown (okay, not quite so unknown.) In fact, in one month flat, I will be sitting, probably twitting with nerves, at a pre-Departure Orientation, asking myself if this could really be happening, if I forgot anything, who are my fellow Kagawa newbies.

They've started releasing information about the Tokyo Orientation, and AJET has sent us all a pretty PDF file crammed with bureaucratic goodness. Still no word from my predecessor or BoE (Board of Education) though. People on the JET forum say not to worry, that I'll most certainly get contact information before I leave, but I am the eternal paranoid. Lately I've begun packing boxes (mostly of books) only to unpack them, realizing that even if I did finish packing them I'd have no idea where to send them. At least I have a better idea now how to ship them.

With only a month left, the inevitable questions have started floating to the surface on the JET forum; these questions largely consist of one common theme... "What the F*** was I thinking??" One in particular-a post about dealing with long distance relationships-touched a little of a raw nerve. I've been awful lonely 'round these parts this summer.... What with most of my friends up and graduated and gone. Soon I'll be leaving too. Will I fall out of contact with everyone I know on this side of the Pacific? Will I make any friends in Japan... or will I be as lonely there as I am here?

It's such a strange realization, that time has crept up on you. I've been planning and schemeing and dreaming about JET and Japan since my early years in high school. Even once I discovered I'd been short listed, I was 98% excited, 2% nervous. But as the time grows shorter and shorter, I'm becoming 50% excited, 50% terrified. What will life be like, I wonder? What will the people be like? I guess... there's nothing to do but jump in and find out.

And blog about it, of course.