Monday 12th September
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| 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 13th 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 14th September
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| 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 3rd 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 6th 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 15th 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 16th 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 3rd 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 18th September
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| 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.
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| 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.
 |
| 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.
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