Everyday's a Saturday

Tuesday 20^th September

It never ceases to amaze me how students can be so hesitant to answer questions and yet you turn something into a competition – and they are pushing their chairs back in preparation to be the first to jump up and score points for their team (in reference to what to turned out to be an incredibly competitive game of charades).

Sleeping students part 2: double act

Life lesson: it does not pay to be over tired when you’re sitting in the front row of a class with a teacher that has a sense of humour. Two third years just could not keep their eyes open and the rest of the class had great enjoyment from watching their heads bobbing up and down as the dozed in and out of consciousness. The flying plushy Doraemon made another appearance, though he was nearly taken captive when he got thrown under one of the girls’ faces and she hugged him to use as a pillow (the teacher had to wrestle a little to get him back). Some whispered scheming from one of the boys saw H-sensei borrowing a cut out of a face which the entire class waited with baited breath for him to plant on the girls7 desks when they finally dozed off again. The first girl made absolutely no reaction when she saw the cut out (though the silence while everyone waited to see what she would do was entertaining enough). The second girl however woke up, glanced around the classroom acting like she had been paying attention the whole time, before looking down and letting out a terrified shriek.

Thursday 22^nd September – Autumnal Equinox Day

After a half asleep jaunt to the supermarket, followed by worrying all night that I hadn’t packed enough food it was a sprightly 5.40am wake up.

Mission: to conquer the looming beast that is Mount Chokai. I swear every time I saw the sodding great mound it looked taller, now that I was aware that I had to climb it.

Our group consisted of Dave, Liam, Cari, Josh and myself. You couldn’t help but feel a little worried for your well-being when we stopped at the picnic area/lookout about 5 minutes in and were already puffing.

The way was often consistent of chunks of rock that had been mashed together to form some sort of (uneven) path – we pondered who the poor sod was that had to lug them there. The first stop was at the Crater Lake for snacks and some photos. The path was dotted with small shrines the whole way along – and when I say small, I mean about the size of a microwave. Many had small offerings in them; lollies, a can of coke etc. The rocks that had been a path became a climbing wall in some places where the track suddenly became vertical.

We reached the ridge after a couple of hours and inadvertently made it to one of what turned out to be 2 peaks (at which there was what looked to be a small graveyard). Given that none of us could read the kanji on the sign posts we decided it was probably best to ask an elderly gentlemen which path we needed to take to get “over there” *points at the other peak*. Ironically when people speak fast it takes twice as long to get information due to comprehension difficulties.

Our fears were confirmed and we began the decent, which in my case involved some ungraceful bum shuffling over the loose gravelly, rocky slope. We passed an ice shelf at the bottom of the valley before beginning the accent of the second peak.

View from our lunch spot

The final leg involved navigating ever tiring limbs through a bit of a cave (not a pleasant notion for those who aren’t fond of confined spaces but it opened up again almost instantly). From here to the top it was a matter of hopping from rock to rock, following the arrows and dots that had been painted to mark the way. We found a flat slab of rock to collapse on and eat lunch. One of the blocks of Whittakers that Nana and Grandad had sent over got passed around (I feel like we had more than earnt it). Around the corner came the cacophony of English that warned of approaching gaijin – and so we found the other group of ALTs that had been climbing the mountain that day. With Andrew, Misa, Richard and Jackson we headed to the summit for a group photo and to relish in our victory. 2,236m certainly felt like the top of the world.

On the way down to the summit village we bumped into the third group: Isabel, Steph and Daniel. There was a quick break at the village to make use of the only toilet for a few hours (the prospect of squat long drops isn’t as terrifying as it used to be). And check out the temple (which was so new that the wood was still a bright golden brown colour.

We had added on at least an extra 40 minutes to our trip by taking the ridge route on the way there so we followed the other path that Andrew’s group had taken on the way up. Andrew pointed out the area where he had been ready to give up before Richard threw a lollipop at him which shut him up for a good half hour. As we were crossing the valley the mist came rolling in and made visibility so terrible to the point where we were calling out to the other half of the group to make sure that they had found the path again alright. From experience mist is usually described as “creeping”, this was certainly not the case on Chokai, it rushed down the valley with concerning speed, turning a beautiful vista into an impenetrable fog in a matter of seconds.

The climb had taken a toll on everyone’s legs and the way down was speckled with slips, trips and skids and the rain rolled in and made it even more fun to try and stay vertical. I was throwing my foot out in the general direction of where I wanted to step and letting gravity do the rest.

The rain, mist and wind accompanied us for the remainder of the trudge homewards. There were a couple of instances when we rounded a corner only to discover that the carpark looked o closer that it had 15 minutes ago, there occasions were met with a unanimous vote to call a breather and crack out the mitsuya cider lollies.

A small leap of joy when we hit an actual concrete path again and with that I trotted the rest of the way like a small school child with my bag bouncing off my back and burst back into the car park.

We survived Chokai – or as our old mate Sir Ed put it – we knocked the bugger off.

Otsukaresama.

                                         

Friday

Aches for days.

Saturday 24^th September

Perks of Japan’s nutcase schooling : they seem to enjoy putting school events on weekends which means you get the following Monday off.

This week it was the Yurihonjo/NIkaho sports tournament. So to sound like a bit of a truant – all you have to do is make sure someone from your school sees you at whatever sport you decide to watch and you’re sweet!

I opted to go and watch the Volleyball which involved driving through enough rice paddies to wonder if Liam hadn’t cocked up the directions he had given me. It’s very easy to forget how young some of the students are when you watch them play – and then you remember that they practice for 2 hours every day after school. Was quite chuffed when we beat Liam’s team – and decided to stay on to watch Konoura’s next game that afternoon.

That night we headed back into Honjo for drinks at a local bar with some of Liam’s Japanese mates. We were treated to some veeeery tipsy locals wailing the Japanese version of “Let it Go” from Frozen (“The cold never bothered me anyway” was translated as “The cold isn’t that cold really”…). Everyone had a decent enough grasp on either English or Japanese to mishmash a conversation out.

We were also introduced to the drink “Kamikaze” and of course with a name like that and plans tomorrow that we couldn’t afford to be hungover for – we threw caution to the wind, and being mature worldly ALT’s of course there were no poor taste puns…

Sunday 25^th September

Fueled up with coffee Liam and I headed up to Sanbeen park for Chey’s birthday barbecue. The park was up a hill and had a stunning view of mountains in the distance looming over rice paddies.

We continued north onto Akita city where we invaded Cari’s flat to chill out with a cup of tea and watch an episode of human planet. I realised with everything being so flat tack at the moment it had been close to 2 months since I had just sat down and watched a movie of something with mates. It makes you feel a bit more at home when you can do stuff like that without feeling like you constantly have to be making the most of your time.

We graced a local Nepalese restaurant for dinner before scuttling into Hard Off (yes that’s its name, yes we all laughed when we heard it too) to scavenge some second hand goods (I now have a winter jumper to mope around in in the steadily cooling autumn mornings).

Monday 26^th September

Thank god for short weeks.

An incredibly lazy start that involved finally figuring out when the bloody post office is open (virtually never), before heading back into the Honje (Honjo) to meet Liam, Katie and Dave and go for a drive to the Kameda Waterfall. Today was a little humid again to standing near the running water in the mist was amazing.

We continued on to an abandoned waterpark in Iwaki. Iwaki was supposed to be a seaside hotspot, complete with Hotel, waterpark and ice skating rink – all of which have now shut down. Though with the Japanese being very honest – they haven’t needed to take any precautions about locking the gates. I was under the impression that we would have to look at it through the wire if we didn’t want to jump fences but you could stroll straight in. 

There was still water in the pools, bridges had collapsed into the water and in the bathrooms there were still toilet slippers laying around. 

(culture note: Similar to how you have to take your shoes off when you go inside, Japanese often have “toilet slippers” that you put on when you go into the bathroom so that you don’t contaminate your indoor slippers/shoes).

Climbing the stairs of one of the water slides gave you a wonderful view of the township, the park looked quite eerie as the sun started setting. Dave had a god at sliding down one of the slides only to realise when he got to the bottom that he would have to climb back up or jump into the stagnant water at the bottom (and it the shade of green wasn’t overly appealing).

Pizza for dinner in front of an episode of South park and it was back to Konoura with the notion that tomorrow was a school day looming overhead.

Eastward Bound

Monday 12^th September

Rabbit Manju for the harvest moon
tea ceremony

The weekend festivities made for a rather slow Monday. I have become so used to having to translate everything in my head that when I was reading out a Japanese sentence in front of one of the third year classes, I read it out in English – translating on the fly (before I start sounding completely arrogant can we nb. That this was very a very basic Japanese sentence that I had written myself). The problem with this was that I was supposed to read out the Japanese and have the students translate it into English. I realised what I had done half way through the sentence, muttered an exasperated “far out”, watched as the teacher cracked up laughing when he clicked as to what I had done and witnessed the dismayed looks on the students faces when they realised that I had just read out the answer but none of them had been paying enough attention to notice.

I had my second trip to the kindy scheduled that day as well, this time with 4 year olds instead of last week’s 5 year olds. They were just as small, just as energetic and just as noisy. Having the different age group fortunately meant that I could recycle last week’s lesson, with some adjustments to ensure that no one got dog piled this time.  So going through the colours again and this time tried to teach them the rainbow song (“red and yellow and pink and green” etc etc) given the kids were only 4 it seemed to go fairly well although it does bruise your pride a bit when you have someone that is barely out of nappies miming yawning at you. I decided that in order not to look like a complete doofus I needed to give the kids some incentive to sing a little louder (mainly to cover my tone deaf warbling) perks of being a gaijin: a hi-5 is a perfectly sufficient reward for the kids. That is to say – there was a substantial increase of genki-ness when they were presented with this offer.

Tuesday 13^th September

Little eye openers – the first years were studying how to say what time they did something/ how to ask “what time is ~” I had made an activity that involved them filling in a timeline of their day, then having to ask their friends what time they did things to fill in a second timeline (heyo speaking practice). Only I had made the timeline from 6am until 9pm, and almost every single student in the class had to extend their timeline until 11 or 12 so they could fit in when they studied and when they went to bed. FYI – these are TWELVE YEAR OLDS. 

Wednesday 14^th September

Display for the tea ceremony

It was on this day that I came to the horrid realisation, that thanks to one 180cm tall kid at the primary school, the only place that I can guarantee that I am taller than the students, is my kindergarten. Other than being dwarfed by a 10 year-old I got to do yet another self-introduction for a 3^rd year class who then had to come up to me one by one and introduce themselves and shake my hand – which apparently was absolutely terrifying (though some of the boys that went back looking embarrassed were welcomed to their desk groups with whoops and cheers).

In a desperate attempt not to fall asleep at my desk during the last hour of school, I went for a stroll, bumped into one of the English teachers who promptly delivered me to the tea ceremony club. The Baa-chan that ran it patiently nudged me through the precise routine (it turns out it can be that hard to make green tea), while a 6^th year next to me whispered instructions. It was the day before the harvest moon – when the moon is supposedly at its most beautiful, so of course we had Rabbit manju to go with the tea. To explain: In Japan, there isn’t  a man in the moon – there is a rabbit pounding mochi, so rabbits and the moon have a very strong correlation in Japan (If anyone has ever watched Card-captors, in the Japanese version (the proper version) there is a character whose name is Tsukishiro Yukito lit. Moon-Castle Snow-Rabbit, so the myth permeates even to popular culture.

Thursday 15^th August

On this glorious and momentous day – I.got.a.CAR.

There have been issues with realising that in automatics you need to be in park before it will start, figuring out what to do with your now superfluous left foot now that you don’t have a clutch, and jabbing buttons on the built-in screen navigation until it stopped talking at me in Japanese while my phone was trying to give me directions. Straight into the deep end – I drove myself to the English class in Nikaho for the group of students that are doing an exchange to Oklahoma next month. It wasn’t until they walked into the room that I realised that two of my second years from Konoura were also going (it is primarily an exchange between Nikaho Junior High School and the sister school in Shawnee.

Alyssa and I teamed up with Sloan, the American English teacher from Kisakata, and burst into the scene bombarding the kids with English. To be perfectly honest – I’m not sure if it was the kids or myself who was more nervous. We darted around the tables spitting quick fire questions at the kids – I had to summon all my genki and try not to feel like a bit of a plonker. The main aim of the night was to get the kids talking, and actually saying when they didn’t understand something or had a question rather than sitting in silence. Alyssa and I both had our photos taken and a small interview afterwards so we’ll see where that ends up popping up (not in too many places I hope because we had to draw a map of where we came from on the white board for the photo and my drawing skills are crap).

Friday 16^th September

Friday saw a leisurely dinner at home before I got into my metallic bulldog of glory (I think I’m going to nickname the car “pommy” given that it looks like a small grumpy English bulldog) made it to Alyssa’s flat in Nikaho, and then after a small debacle that involved me forgetting how to work reverse gear in an automatic – we were off for a night in Honjo. Was quite chuffed when it only took two attempts to back into a car park outside Liam’s flat.

The Abridged version of the night is that we met Adam and David at one of the local bars and invested in a night of all you can drink. Alyssa and I got annihilated at darts (resulting in a punishment of the alcoholic variety), and for the 3^rd time in my life I had someone tell me that I looked just like Emma Watson (Japan has been really good for my ego so thus far), so of course when Liam bowled up with his dark hair the girl started shrieking that he looked just like Harry Potter.

Saturday was resultantly a bit of a write off.

Sunday 18^th September

The procession that we stumbled across on our way to Dave's

In this episode of ‘Chloe finally starts repaying all the lifts she’s sponged’:

Took Pommy out for a trot to Alyssa’s, and this time with no issues re. finding reverse gear – set off for Dave’s place in Honjo. After precariously backing into the apartment’s horribly cramped car park (which only took me two goes – chuffed) we loaded into Dave’s slightly more powerful white plate car and set off for Ugo.

Pause for debriefing. Dave and Andrew (Australian) were headed to Sendai to meet up with a cricket team, so in True gaijin fashion they invited extras along (myself, Alyssa and Priscilla (Australia) ) and planned for an evening on the town the night before (as Monday was a public holiday).

There was a slight delay in Ugo as Andrew had three different addresses for the BnB that we were staying at and hadn’t figured out which was the right one yet. Destination locked in we all squished into Dave’s car and set off.

Sendai - view from our BnB

After three or so hours of driving through winding country roads and then being slapped with Sendai traffic we were checked in, and off into the city to meet up with a mate of Andrew’s. Fluent in Japanese, Jess ordered us a delectable array of dishes at the restaurant that we ended up at, including the local delicacy: cow tongue, served in patty form with raw egg yolk and soy dipping sauce (believe me when I say it tastes a damn sight better than it sounds). With stomachs lined and a couple of beers to warm us up we headed further into the bustling streets of Sendai in search of nomihoudai. After a couple of months of being in the inaka the city felt like Tokyo.

Perks to the substantial lack of gaijin in this country: it makes it bloody easy to spot other ALTs. While Taku, Jess’ boyfriend was trying to bargain with a bartender as to how cheap we could get nomihoudai my gaijin radar went off and picked up Didy and Damien, a couple of JETs from Akita city. Once they heard the deal that we were getting for drinks – they joined the mob. The rest of the night consisted of the usual winding each other up about their strange accents and cultures.

 Monday 19^th September

A more reasonably sized portion of pancakes

With cricket cancelled due to the rain we opted for a western breakfast at Mitsubachi38 (nb. Mitsubachi means honeybee) (also nb. I made this sound easy but between finding the restaurant and finding a park there was a lot of driving in circles). The three girls watched in amusement as the lads attempted to down a ‘pancake tower’ each – consisting of 10 pancakes. It didn’t take them long to decide that this was a poor decision and not entirely beneficial to their hangovers.

We wandered through the shopping arcade for a while then headed out to the batting cages to meet a couple of guys from the Sendai cricket team. As it turns out you can adjust the pitching machine at the baseball batting cages to pitch low enough to practice cricket. Needless to say – a bunch of white boys with a strange wooden bat got a few stares.

Facing 5 years-olds and Dragons

Monday 5th September

I spend half my life trying to be well behaved and not crack up laughing at the students. The students generally have a set phrase that they recite when they enter the staffroom “Excuse me, I’ve come to see ~ sensei for ~” Today’s incident was when two students entered the staffroom at the same time but through doors at either end of the room and recited the phrase in perfect unison – before looking utterly confused as to why there was an echo.

That morning I had my first trip to the Kindergarten, I had had a number of people warn me about how ‘genki’ (lively) the kids were (Jayden – my predecessor just straight out said that they were crazy). The kids had just finished playing in the paddling pools when I arrived so I walked in to see bunch of 3-5 year olds running around starkers.

I was introduced to the 3 year groups (which meant 60 excitable kids in one room) before the younger ones were herded out and I was left with 20-something 5 year olds to entertain for the next 30 minutes.

I Had a number of games up my sleeve as I had very little faith in the kids’ attention span – my suspicions turned out to be accurate. The kids were  learning colours so I decided to adapt the popular game of “fruit basket” – each kid gets a coloured piece of card, when their colour is called they have to get up from their spot and run to a different spot in the circle that another kid had vacated – last one standing has to stand in the middle and call the next colour. This worked well until the kids decided to dog pile one little girl. The next game involved flashcards for the kids to call out the colours that were held up “but, there are some scary monsters too! So when the scary monster comes up, you have to hide!” in reference to the Halloween flashcards that I had mixed in. This worked well, though my ears were a bit shot afterwards as the kids started screaming when the monsters came up…

I feel that a slight bridge is needed between this and the next paragraph so hopefully this sentence will suffice…

In 2001 there was an incident in Osaka where an armed intruder entered a primary school and 8 children were killed, since then there has been increased awareness of the occurrence of such situations.

Image from: http://inventorspot.com/articles/teachers_expel_
school_intruder_twopronged_people_pusher

The whole staffroom stopped abruptly today when someone called out “There are strange people in the building!” when they saw a group of people enter the school foyer through the CCTV. The male teachers all bolted out of the staffroom, two armed with sasamata – long posts with a “T” joint at the end used to hold off attackers and take their ankles out from under them (or just to bash them with).

Students were hurrying past the staffroom to get to the gym and the remaining teachers in the staffroom were quiet. It was just a drill, but it was eerie.

Afterwards the whole school met in the gym so that the “intruders” who consisted of 3 members of a community safety program and 2 cops could address everyone. They went over general safety stuff, although the whole thing was in Japanese so I not only missed some of it but also switched off as the hall was quite toasty. The students were also taught how to free themselves if someone grabbed their wrist.

While I’m on the subject of unwanted intruders – after the assembly had finished I had my first encounter with the Japanese hornet that we heard so much about during orientation – before the principal stomped on it. Everything here is about double the size it is back home.

I can’t think of anything overly interesting that happened on Tuesday so moving right along…

Wednesday 7^th September

After weeks of after school practices, over accentuation the difference between L and R and trying not to laugh at the students’ various quirks and mistakes, the day of the Speech contest finally rocked around.

We were picked up from school on a bus that also had the students form Kisakata that I had helped out, Sun and Luna (reminder: all students’ names have been changed). We picked up Alyssa and her students from Nikako and continued on to Yurihonjo where the contest was being held.

I don’t know whether the seating was assigned or if my students just chose to sit in the very front row but either way I spent the next 3 hours trying to make it look like I was totally away with the fairies, particularly because our principal is the president of the committee so he was sitting just off to the side of us.

I hate watching speeches almost as much as I hate doing them, because I hate doing them, so I feel sorry and nervous for the people doing them. However, all was well. There were no unsalvageable balls ups and no tears and both of my kids spoke really well (in my not-so humble opinion).

There were two speeches that stood out for me; the first was a boy who had lost his father in the 2011 tsunami. There were a lot of emotions going on, between being nervous about speaking in front of people, and talking about how he and his mother and siblings were coping without him. His speech was in the form of a letter to his late father, and needless to say, moving.

The second was a girl who everyone had eyes on before she had even opened her mouth. The reason: she was “half”. She spoke of the insecurities and trials that she had grown up with, being half American, dealing with the same stares, the same questions about her father’s nationality, and being treated like an outsider even though she had lived here for most of her life. She explained that at a young age, she did not want to draw any more attention to herself, so asked her mother to spek to her only in Japanese. As a result her English was accented, but this bubbly young thing had come to terms with who she was as a person. It highlighted the stigma that is around mixed nationality here.

 If you want some more reading: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/9/hafu-in-japan-mixed-race.html

After the 3 hour spectacle, the ALTs got to scurry off to a tatami room where we were fed bento and coffee and unwound a bit after having to sit there behaving ourselves and looking like teachers. We were a little concerned at the fact that they had let a bunch of gaijin with questionable chopstick skills lose on a tatami floor with nothing to stop us dropping food all over the bamboo.

After lunch was the “cultural” activities that the ALTs had prepared. Alyssa and I had organised tongue twisters to challenge the kids with (and in some cases, ourselves). Dave and Liam had coin rugby going on in their corner – this version of rugby also turned out to be a contact sport when Dave sent a coin smacking into the bridge of Liam’s glasses during a practice round. The game that quietly crapped on all of our planning was Jeff and Katherine’s Pokemon go game. Kids had to through balls into buckets with various pokemon on them to “catch” the pokemon and if they could get a ball into a plastic cup taped to the wall – they got to take home a plushie Raichu.

For each category (recitation and speech) there was a top prize, and four merit prizes. Atsu received a merit award for his speech as did Sun, and Luna received a merit award for her recitation. Both of Liam’s kids got Top prizes in their respective categories so he was looking pretty chuffed – until someone reminded him that this meant another month of late evening practices in order to prepare for the Prefectural competition.

Thursday 8^th September

The struggles of Japanese schooling – when you play a game that involves students “going to sleep” you have to be prepared for the fact that some of them will genuinely conk out in the middle of class. However one of the teachers planted the idea of sneaking their pencil cases away when this happens and making them ask for it back in English…

The new ALT for Kisakata, Justin, arrived this week so my supervisor got me to go with the two of them to get Justin’s phone organised. I was able to help a little when communication lapsed but Justin also had a basic understanding of Japanese and his knowledge of technology and computers left mine in the dust so I pretty much sat in the phone trying to figure out what sort of car insurance I needed vs what I was willing to pay for while they did phone stuff…

Friday 9^th September

Beware the sleeping student….

One unfortunate soul at the very front of the class just couldn’t keep her eyes open. So she got her eraser balanced on her head numerous times, the “creep the hand as close to her face as you can before she wakes up” trick and then the grand finale.

Each class room has a timer/alarm clock in it. I had to bite my fist to stop my giggles as soon as I saw H-sensei setting the timer for 1 second. Just as he was about to hold it next to the girl’s head, she woke up. So of course the entire class (including me standing down the back faking coughing fits to try and cover my escaping giggles) sat there for the next five minutes waiting for the poor girl to fall back to sleep. They were not disappointed.

Saturday 10^th September

In this episode of “Chloe gets driven around places because she doesn’t have a car yet”…..

After I had straddled my futon to try and get string around it to make it more transportable, and nearly taken myself out getting the cricket set off the top shelf in my wardrobe – the items in question were loaded into poor Alyssa’s car and we were once again at the mercy of google maps to get us to East Jesus nowhere.

There were a couple of small tiki tours on the way to the south block welcome party –the google maps voice seems determined to send us through rice paddies and to old baachan’s  (grandma’s) houses.

Lake Tazawa

Finally made it to the barbecue in Yokote and it was an afternoon of relishing in eating food that you hadn’t cooked for yourself (which is such a novelty now). After braving the long drop squat toilet that had no light, natural or electric (I’m going to take a moment here to stress how disconcerting it is not being able to see where you’re peeing…) we stumbled upon an obstacle/ropes course set up in the park and indulged our inner children for a wee bit. Then back to the bbq to indulge in food.

There was  a real mix of ALTs, a few of us were freshies but there were also a couple of “unicorns” who were in their 5^th and final year.

Alyssa then had to go back to Nikaho as she had a part marathon the next day so I swapped my gear into Liam’s car with Dave in tow and we headed into Akita city for Cari’s surprise party. A bunch of us met at Satisfaction Burger (what a name) but not before we had popped into a combini so that Dave could pick up a Smirnoff ice for Cari (explanation re. ALT antics involving smirnoff Ices can be found in a previous post).

We loitered in the parking lot next to the restaurant and waited until we heard Cari and Josh arrive, then went stampeding in after them. If Cari had hoped that Josh was taking her out for a romantic dinner – the notion got shat on pretty quick.

Dave had stashed the Smirnoff in my bag so when Dave gestured frantically for me to beat Cari to the bathroom so that I could plant the Smirnoff I had to scuttle off with my bad like a complete weirdo. The gesture was appreciated though – by everyone except Cari . The restaurant staff were also very good about Cari dropping a knee and downing a bottle – perks of gaijin being a novelty over here).

From there we continued on to Karaoke complete with nomihoudai – all you can drink, so you can imagine the quality of the singing…

Liam and I crashed at Josh and Cari’s that night and were treated to a breakfast of rice and miso (accompanied with the necessary coffee) for breakfast. After only 4 hours sleep, a 7 o’clock wake up to balzing sunshine penetrating the rice paper sliding doors, paired with the school nextdoor having its brass band practice – wasn’t overly great for the head after a night on the booze…

The four of us loaded into the car, picked up Johnny (another ALT who had been there for the festivities on Saturday night) and headed up to Lake Tazawa.

Tazawa is Japan’s deepest lake at 423 metres – which is what all of the locals will remind you of when you say you went swimming there, like we tried to touch the bottom…

The legend of Lake Tazawa is that there was a beautiful girl called Tatsuko, who worried about preserving her beauty. A goddess instructed her to drink from the lake which turned Tatsuko into a dragon and she morbidly slunk into the lake. Hachitaro A man who had also been turned into a dragon in a nearby lake heard of Tatsuko and the two eventually fell in love and Hachitaro abandoned his own lake to be with Tatsuko. Without its master, the second lake grew shallower every year. However, Lake Tazawa would not freeze over, even in the harshest winter, supposedly due to all the ….activity….

We didn’t go around to see the golden statue of Tatsuko, instead found a beach off the beaten track and relished in the fresh water. Best way to brush off the cobwebs. The water was perfectly clear and the scenery absolutely stunning, as jellyfish season starts around mid-August,  you can’t swim in the ocean so this is  definitely the place to be.

Cari was hit with no less than 4 Smirnoff ices that afternoon, the final one being in the car on the way back to Akita city so Josh pulled over as soon as she found it so that She could drop a knee. Another was to follow back at the apartment and the 6^th and final one turned up with Dave’s arrival just as we were about to leave for dinner – we worked out her sugar and calorie intake from all the smirnoffs meant that she didn’t need to eat for a couple of days  she didn’t look impressed.

That evening we met up with the other ALTs again (after everyone placed bets on how late Johnny was going to turn up) at Cosicosi – an Italian restaurant. Decent pizza received a warm welcome, however a mix of food coma and running on 4 hours sleep meant that everyone was pretty shattered afterwards.

 Dave and I hitched a ride back with Liam and back in Konoura I had time for a brief video call before I conked out completely – ecstatic at the notion of having to teach 4 year olds at the kindergarten the next day.

So I Lied...

Douhara Shrine

After I had given up all hope of doing anything constructive yesterday afternoon, I received a wee message from Liam asking if Alyssa and myself wanted to go on a mini roadtrip.

We drove for about an hour, (conversation was with raised voices as Liam's aircon is still bust so we had to have the windows down the whole way) dipping down into Yamagata prefecture - the prefecture directly beneath Akita. The drive took us part way up Mt Chokai (which straddles the border of Yamagata and Akita) to Douhara Shrine. I have just completed a vain google search to try and find some information on the shrine to accompany the photos, but given that two of the results were Liam's post on Intagram, I don't think there's much on it.

It was a pleasant walk over a winding path through the trees and under a weathered shrine gate. The track took you over planks that straddled the stream trickling down, and finally to the shrine that was framed by twin waterfalls either side. It was rather nice to be able to drink water that wasn't luke warm and there was a noticeable drop in temperature around the running water. The other thing that was noticeable was the signs warning of bears....

We started heading North again and, while still in Yamagata, stopped at the 16 Rakan. These are Faces that were carved into rocks by a buddhist monk around 1864. The Images of Buddha are meant to protect those on voyage, or the local fishermen. Our timing was perfect as the sunset was glowing a brilliant red when we arrived at the waterfront. On our clamberings, Alyssa discovered a pile of coins in a depression in the rock, you had to laugh when the majority of the coins were those pesky 1 yens that nobody wants.

The Shrine Gate

Sunset at 16 Rakan

16 Rakan

The most use 1 yen coins will ever be

The Gaijin Bubble

Saturday 3^rd September

As of today I have called Nikaho my home for a month.

It seems to have flashed by, but when I think back to the first night I stepped foot into my new apartment (read: stumbled with my suitcase containing 23 kilos of my life) it seems like another world away. There have been ups and downs – the daunting realisation that when you hang up from that skype call, you are alone in your silent apartment with only the cricket songs outside your window to break the quiet ringing in your ears.

It has gotten easier though. Video calling most nights makes it feel less like you're in a house by yourself (this is where I get myself into trouble for talking to the significant other more than I do my family - sorry mum! ).

I am slowly but surely breaking out of my “gaijin bubble” at school, and finding my feet - even if I am apparently incapable of setting up a points accumulation card online with my local supermarket, the down side to being a gaijin: they KNOW that they gave you that card to set up so when you bowl up without it – there’s going to be questions….

By gaijin bubble I am referring to the initial state of isolation from co-workers, students and everyone else in your town… You’re there physically, people notice you, but to them you are the strange white person that floats around and they vaguely know teaches at the local schools- you are a personified English textbook – nothing more. This is one of the times that I am so very grateful that my substandard Japanese is actually utilisable. Though the conversations may be basic, and my grammar poor (read: absolute crap) it is enough to go from the random gaijin to Kuroi-sensei, who is from NZ, and likes anko and wants to visit Hokkaido  -she has a family, she does not exist in a void.

The Kirtitanpo Wielding Masked Hero

There are cues that it is slowly dissolving. Yesterday I wandered down to check out a small fair at Whale Park, by the Shirase Antartic Museum. I actually bumped into Greg – A kiwi living in Kisakata with his family – and his kids on the way there. There was a small flea market where I had a chat with a baa-san (lit. grandma – but it’s not considered rude) who was selling handmade bits and pieces, and chatted to a couple of kids that recognised me from school – basic stuff “that shaved ice looks good” “it’s hot isn’t it?” etc (I couldn’t go into too much detail as I wasn’t 100% sure if they were from the Primary or Middle school – perks of being the only foreigner in your town- everybody knows exactly who you are and it makes you feel a bit guilty when you can’t remember who they are). I watched a performance of …raider? Where the superhero fought of the villains with his kiritanpo sticks (pounded rice sticks) and then stayed to watch my middle school brass band perform – which involved an appearance from my science teacher donning a wig and singing along with the band.

Seishi Park with Mt. Chokai in the Background

Having said all that rubbish about the gaijin bubble  – we do tend to abuse it (nb the previous post on “gaijin smash”) when a group of JETs get together and it’s all English, with the occasional code switch to Japanese whether it’s due to a lexical gap, or that we’ve just forgotten what the English equivalent actually was.

Last night was an example of this – the Akita Welcome party. Alyssa drove us to the beach that it was based at. We wandered down a dark winding path (back home I would have been terrified – here you know the chances of something happening are virtually nil), passed several beach front cafs that were full of Japanese people – and then finally heard the cacophony of English that meant we had found the place. It was a good time catching up with JETs that are further afield – getting shit from the Australians, giving shit to the Aucklander (sorry I hid your drinks Alan….). Along with the Western Hemisphere JETs finding it absolutely adorable that we refer to “coolers” as “chilly bins”.

Given that it's 2pm and I'm sitting here in my PJs without even having bothered to put my contact lenses in yet - I don't think there is much to report for Sunday.

Kia Ora! I Know EXACTLY What I'm Doing...

Monday 29^th August

More introductions. And more English classes. I was finally subjected to playing the “glorified tape recorder” a task that every JET is warned about. It effectively means that the teachers use you to read out passages in the text book so that students can copy you pronunciation and intonation. As well as reading out vocab lists (slight stumble when the gloss in the textbook informed me that I have apparently been saying Buenos Aires wrong all my life…). I also realised that I had been tasked with this exact exercise numerous times during my exchange, but this time I was getting paid for it.

There was a meeting after lunch to address the incoming Typhoon and to confirm that the students wouldn’t be at school the next day. However in true Japanese fashion it was stressed that the day off was to be treated as a sick day (which you pretty much have to be on your death bed for) and they were not to leave the house even if it was sunny outside.

There was a small glint of childish hope and innocence that thought maybe the teachers didn’t have to go to school either, then I remembered what country we were in.

Tuesday marked one month since I had left Wellington. In ways it doesn’t feel like that long at all, and in ways it feels like forever ago, another world away.

We were warned of fierce winds and rain, encouraged to bring objects that could fly away inside and draw the curtains – I walked out to brilliant sunshine. It reminded me of when Wellington had 2mm of snow a few years back and they called a snow day for the following day – it was blaring sunshine and not a speck of snow in sight.

The pessimist in me grabbed my umbrella on the way out anyway (wouldn’t want to get caught in the rain on my 2 minute walk home). This turned out to be a rather good idea, half an hour after arriving at school, the skies opened, and then they cleared up, and then it pissed down again, and the sun came out again, and on it went…

Kyuushoku was cancelled as none of the students were here so I made the most of the free hour and trotted down to the bank in about the 4^th attempt to pay my bloody power bill. It’s really quite handy that you can also go to a combini to pay your bills – that’s provided that your town actually has a combini. Internet banking is now a long distant memory of a futuristic society outside of Japan…the irony. I was beginning to doubt that the bank ever actually opened. The momentous relief that I felt after getting that $6 power bill off of my shoulders (yes I have been stingy with my air-con).

S-sensei called for a quick break towards the end of the day, "Last Saturday there was a birthday" oh shit....that's me. He had bought cake for everyone to share and I mean - NICE cake. After I got first pick of what I wanted the principal took no time in diving in :)

The Typhoon came over later that evening, while it was quite windy and the building had a wee creak and groan, it was nowhere near as bad as it was being hyped up to be (don’t worry guys I’m still alive!) though at one stage I may have paused a skype (sorry- google hangouts )session  to check what on earth was going on outside, with nothing amiss I put I down to noisey neighbours to ease my mind.

Wednesday 31^st August

A whole new level of genki.

And cluelessness.

I’d been given a timetable for what I would be doing on Wednesdays at my primary school, so was quite happily pottering away at my desk in the morning as I supposedly had no classes until the afternoon. One of the English teachers came up and explained what we would be doing for the 4^th graders, ok cool….oh wait right now? Gotta love those curve balls.

The kids were substantially less reserved than those at the Junior High School – the teacher did feel the need to sensor a couple of questions and say that I didn’t have to share my private information about my age and whether I had a boyfriend (we’ll just forget the fact that I got both those questions in nearly every single class at the JHS (Junior High School- coz typing is tough) I did disclose that it had been my birthday on Saturday – there was a wee hiccup when several renditions of “Happy Birthday” started at slightly different times, yet somehow all managed to sync up in time to simultaneously come to an unsure halt when every single kid forgot my name.

The teacher got the kids to write their names and something that they liked on little cards to give to me – he asked them to do it in roomaji (roman script) which was fine for their names but became an issue when they tried to write things like “soccer” which is サッカーsakkaa in Japanese, however the double “k” or short “a” sounds is achieved by adding a smallッtsu which is not voiced – but this fact appeared to skip a students mind when they wrote it as satsukaa, looks like I’m going to have to be very quick about learning how to think outside the box.

Attended the next class after morning tea and due to an apparent timetable change I actually have no idea what age group I was with (leaning towards 5^th years…) what I do know is that when we were going around the class saying what season we liked best, the kids misheard when their teacher said “autumn” and so we had about 10 kids saying that they liked water…

I then spent the next period trying to figure out what spell it actually was and whether I was supposed to be in a class… A quick chat with one of the teachers left me armed with a timetable and rundown of how many students were in each class.

Despite the fact that there are only 170 students there the school is quite new and ..well – posh. A book stashed in the drawers of my desk led me to discover that until 20 years ago the whole area (including where my flat is) was rice paddies. There’s a courtyard out the back where the kids can ride around on unicycles at lunch time (some of them are pretty nippy on those things! Though I was quite relieved to see how gracefully they dismounted when they lost their balance). And in the foyer is a piano and electric keyboard that the students are (apparently) allowed to play during break times. Did I mention the pool?

I was scheduled to eat lunch with the 6^th graders in the lunch hall – on the menu today was the usual soup and rice, accompanied with fish and hijiki which according to my dictionary is “edible brown algae” believe me when I say it’s a lot more edible than it looks.

Lunchtime entertainment involved kids choking on rice after trying to mirror their friends eating and an incident that nearly ended in a milky snot rocket – gotta love kids.

3^rd and final class of the day, the teacher got the kids to write their names on a little star shaped piece of paper, and the test was to see if they could write their name correctly in English characters. So I had 30 nervous kids coming up hoping that when I read out what they had written on the paper it would sound at least vaguely similar to what their name was.

Trotted back to the JHS to help with speech practice again – and though progress has been made, there is still a small issue where one student can’t quite get the hang of the intonation. We’ve tried to explain that he needs to add a little more drama to his voice, particularly when he’s reciting the part about Martin Luther King Jnr getting shot and killed…

And while there are dishes on the bench, my flat is gradually descending into a state of disarray, and I still haven’t translated the instructions on how to sort the rubbish – my blog is finally up to date.

Thursday 1^st September

The first day of Spring! …wait no… hemisphere issues.

The first two classes of the day were with second year students who are learning how to say “there is~” “there are~”. I had prepared an activity for them that involved separating them into groups and giving each group a picture to describe. To add a bit of a cultural aspect to it I had picked out illustrations from Dr Seuss; “The Cat in the Hat” (although some of the kids were convinced it was a monkey…) Quentin Blake and Peter Pan. As was expected there were some sentences that required a little tweaking- one in particular was in describing the picute of Matilda standing on a pile of books: “There are books on the girl.”… Japanese sentence order differs slightly in that where English is Subject Verb Object (I kicked the Ball), Japanese is SOV (I the ball kicked) leading to confusion when it comes to describing WHERE things are in relation to others. Some kids were pretty quick on the uptake – managing to get out sentences such as “there is a girl on the giants hand” while others had their own quirky way of approaching the issue: “There are many crazy men”.

While I was doing a bit of reading on Akita-ben I stumbled across an explanation that described how they draw out their s’s at the ends of sentences: arigatou gozaimasssssss. Having paid a little more attention to it, I’ve realised that there are more levels to this feature. It is often slurred and shortened to what sounds something like zaimasssss and the most entertaining one is when they just greet one another with a ssssss and it just looks like everyone is hissing at each other.

This afternoon there was a meeting at the Board of Education which Alyssa and myself as well as the English teachers from NIkaho city attended. It was a 90 minute session on ways to make learning English more enjoyable and engaging, as well as an opportunity for the Head of the Board to introduce Alyssa and myself to the other teachers in the city.

Afterwards Alyssa and I trotted down to the office for a quick meeting with our supervisors. My chat involved sorting out when we could go and have a look at cars so watch this space!

More speech practice this evening – we had been evicted from the computer room and were instead in a meeting room with lino floors, which meant echoes, which meant when Tiger (I won’t put the kids real names here) projected his voice from the other side of the room Atsu had to soldier through the distraction – I personally think this turned out to be good practice for him because the kid still managed to recite almost his entire speech by hear, when even I was having difficulty thinking because of H-sensei and Tiger practicing in the same room.

Friday 2^nd September

Japanese etiquette at its most entertaining.

Every time a student comes into the staffroom they must stand in the doorway, bow, say shitsurei shimasu (I’m sorry to interrupt/excuse me) and state why they are there. So when 8 kids come in to see the same teacher and there’s  miniature production line of bowing students entering the staffroom one by one, it’s rather amusing.

I was with H-sensei teaching the 3^rd years again today, and was quite relieved to see that the young lass that sits at the front of the class managed to stay awake this time. Last Friday she had H-sensei’s hand waving in her face, slowly getting closer and closer until she finally woke up. Tthis is one of those times where it’s not good to have a childish sense of humour, ie. When you’re standing in front of the class trying desperately not to crack up laughing.

There is a culture in Japan around sleeping in class, at work, on trains. It’s known as inemuri in business it’s seen as admirable as it suggests that you have been working hard. At school it just means that the poor kids have stayed up late studying and are now suffering for it.

The students each have a number assigned to them, so when a teacher needs to pick someone to answer a question they will call on a number at random. H-sensei got me to do this, and I felt like a complete turd when the poor kid that had been sleeping through the entire lesson stood up.

Today was another round of “Let’s interview Chloe”, a lot of the same questions came through, though when Atsu (Speech student) got up with his group, he sort of owned the interview and actually had the knack of making it and interview rather than simply asking me a question and then choosing at random one of the example replies (nice, great, really? Me too) that were written  on the board.

During my self-introduction the other week I briefly touched on Maori culture and taught the kids how to say kia ora,  so when one group got up and greeted me with kia ora! I was pretty stoked. I think one of the lads in that group in particular had picked up on it because he said it to me in the corridor that afternoon as well. Cue me smashing out a sheet on Maori culture, complete with a few greetings to whack up on the English noticeboard.

I had assumed that, along with 80% of what I was saying, the greeting had flown straight over their heads. So the fact that they had not only paid attention to it, but had also gone out of their way to use it was quite exciting. The first couple of days were a bit flat as the students were quite nervous around me and I was effectively just the strange new gaijin that they were forced to speak English to. Yesterday felt a bit like a turning point, when I was in the corridor organising the English noticeboard, several of the students greeted me in English, using my name and I even got some smiles. Even if one of them did say “good morning” at 3pm…

Being given a whole notice board to decorate when you’re completely crap at art was a bit nerve wracking. A few people commented on it as they were walking past, motioned to the mountain that I had made out of coloured paper and asked if it was Mt. Fuji “oh no, it’s about New Zealand – it must be a New Zealand mountain.” Meanwhile I’m standing there thinking “mate, I’m just stoked you could tell it was a mountain…”

Hijiki (photo from: http://www.japanesecooking101.com/hijiki-no-nimono/)

Kyuushoku (school lunch) threw it’s first curveball when I was at the primary school on Wednesday, the side salad was hijiki edible brown algae…try to believe me when I say that it is actually edible and while I wouldn’t describe it as delectable, it definitely tastes better than it looks.

Lunches seem to provide either rice or bread as a staple. On Thursday the bread came in the form of “sugar toast”.  An inch think slice of toast with butter and, as the name suggests, a sprinkling of sugar on top. Part of me wonders if this is some “sneaky” way of trying to get the kids to eat their carbs…

Speech practice again with Atsu and Tiger, I spent the first couple of run throughs trying not to crack up laughing and had to address them both afterwards and let Atsu know that he had been swaying side to side the whole time and Tiger back and forth. Tiger hadn’t managed to look up from his script at all during his recitation so I asked if this time when he did it, could he glance up at the audience occasionally. “Ok” did his usually rolling his shoulders before he starts talking, puts his script  face down on the table and proceeded to recite the ENTIRE thing by heart WITH EMOTION. Where the F*ck did that come from….

That afternoon I went with U-san to a car yard to have a chat with the lady that owned the place. U-san has said that there this place was particularly cheap for leasing cars (easily $100 cheaper than other places that she’d looked), she also said the one that they had was pink. I took a wee moment to remind myself that it was a car, it had four wheels and it would take me places. I also starting mentally preparing myself for the shit that I would no doubt get from the other ALTs.

Owning old cars in Japan is not a thing, their biennial shaken gets really expensive really quickly so they churn through cars pretty quick and even in tiny little towns like Konoura you don’t see any old dingers, as it’s just not feasible – can I just take this moment to remind everyone of how many Japanese imports Australia and NZ get? Willing to bet that this a major part of the reason.

Due to this, the lady had assumed that I would want a newer car, which was a bit more to rent, and obviously I was a girl so I’d want pink. As an alternative there was an older car that was cheaper, and chocolate brown. Um where do I sign?

The car was in amazing condition, despite that it was practically a write off by Japanese standards it’s almost definfiely in a lot better nick and a lot newer than my NZ car (I’m still claiming it’s mine Chanelle).  I mentioned that I would have to get used to driving automatic and the lady said that there was a blue manual coming in In the next month or so, so I could rent the Toppo (Mitsubishi Toppo) for a month and then come in and check out the manual and see if I wanted to swap cars. Easy as. Tomoko is good friends with U-san so communication between the three of us is easy as and I know that she’s going to look after me (such a relief). By the time I had found a car cheap enough to make it worth buying instead of renting, it probably wouldn’t be in that great shape, shaken would be through the roof and if it broke down, I’d have to cough up to get it fixed. With leasing through Tomoko, it’s all sorted for me. Went home with a spring in my step at the prospect of potentially having a car next week.

Nobody Likes You When You're 23

Saturday 27th August

It’s my birthday, and I’ll sleep in until 8am if I want to (it’s a sad day when that’s considered getting up late). Mooched around at home and finally got around to posting my blog (which I am still behind on – I’m writing this entry on the 31^st…)

The agenda for the evening included catching the train to Nikaho where Alyssa bundled myself and her friend Aki into her car, drove us to Yokote (90mins north…a little longer as we may have taken a couple of wrong turns) where we parked the car, walked 20 minutes to the train station and caught the train to Omagari. Omagari being the location of the 90^th annual national fireworks competition, so no surprises it was PACKED, hence parking in a neighbouring town instead of trying to battle the traffic.

None of us had any idea where to go so we found a parking lot, shifted our picnic mat when we realised that the coaches parked there were obscuring our view, and got comfy for the 2 hour epic.

These shows have music to accompany the fireworks, which is fine when you’re sitting right underneath them, but it doesn’t take a genius to realise that if you’re sitting a couple of k’s away and light travels faster than sound…it doesn’t make much sense. Accompanying music included: Japanese opera (which the drunk guys behind us were having a grand old time wailing to), Amazing Grace, a string arrangement of one republic, a dubsteb remix of Michael Jackson, Skrillex and the Star Wars theme…

18,000+ fireworks to draw a 700,000+ crowd, not a bad way to spend your 23^rd birthday.

Sunday 28th August

Some JETs talk about going to church on Sundays, I personally prefer spending it at a beer festival suffering through harsh reminders that Japan’s humidity has quite the effect on how much booze I can consume. All that training that my liver went through during uni seems to have worn off.

Thanks to Konoura being east jesus nowhere – the trains don’t run al that frequently (as I may have mentioned previously…). Google had nothing to say on how long the ride would take or what time the it would reach Akita city so I braced myself for what was probably going to be a 90minute trek, and armed with my 3^rd generation ipod nano (the little trooper is still going strong 8 years later) I headed off to the station. My 90 minute session of worrying what on earth shuffle was going to turk up next was abruptly interrupted when the train pulled up at Yurihonjo station and a wild gaijin came flying into the carriage – said wild gaijin turned out to be Liam.

Caught up with the other JETs at the festival – It’s been far too long since the last time I had a craft beer. 1500 yen got you 4 tickets for drinks and a further 800 got you a souvenir glass which (now that it has been washed finally…) is proudly sitting in my cupboard.

Met one of the few other Kiwi’s in the prefecture, Josh, and had one of those “Oh god is that really what I sound like” moments – it gets to you when you spend the majority of your time around Japanese, Americans and Brits.

As one of the new comers the lads kindly introduced me to a fun little game This involves planting Smirnoff ices around the place and the poor sod that finds them has to drop a knee and skull. Not that we abuse the fact that it’s not against the law to drink in public places in Japan…