The staffroom is not cosy

I finally managed to sneak a photo of the staffroom chaos to show you all. Taken from my desk, this show the amount of scheduling mania that occurs here. Up the front are the principal and vice-principals desks, behind which is The Blackboard which has a monthly planner and also a day-by-day schedule which tells me how many dull meetings I will need to attend and the like. You may also notice that each desk has an actual mound of books and paper and shit on it, most teachers also have a little shelf under their desk too, where I put my feet. The homeroom teachers also have a desk full of crap in their classrooms too. I don't have a photo of my desk but it is easy to describe; empty. I don't know about anyone elses primary school, but my school's staffroom was quite different. More of a teachers' retreat; lounges, a fridge, sink and coffee machine, no desks or schedules and what not. I think they had an overhead projector in the corner but I am dubious as to whether it was ever used. It was the sanctuary for the adults and being admitted in there was a great honour and really quite scary. The kids here run in and out of the office willy nilly. Sometimes they stand behind me and watch me type saying hayai!! (fast).

The whale issue

The school menu for June was released today. June 15: Whale. Eek. Now you know I have to eat it. I am not a vegetarian. I have no qualms about eating dead animals so how can I possibly take a stand against this particular animal? It's like 'vegetarians' who eat fish... four legged animals are somehow more worth taking a stand over than aquatic ones? But vegetariansim is a slippery slope at the best of times. Where do you stop? At some point you have to draw a line and say "this organism is not intelligent enough for me to care about its being eaten." Clearly for me anything that is edible is fair game.

Before coming to Japan I never really thought about it much. For some reason there is a disproportionately high number of vegetarian Westerners living in this area, some of whom eat fish and some who don't (I don't know what the hell they are eating though because virtually everything in this country is in some way fish-based). For me the whole meat eating thing is a non-issue I think. For a great many years humans have been eating meat, hunting and killing animals. Why would I stop just because society has found a more efficient way of finding said meat than running through the bush with spears? Yes, this is what I think, I have discovered today. It is good I think to check your opinions on such matters occasionally. Sometimes your opinions change so you have to keep updated. I could be a meat eating vegetarian for all I know!

Anyway, in summation. I will eat the whale for 3 reasons;
1) I try not to be a hypocrite
2) I am curious about the taste
3) If I don't eat it I will be very hungry indeed on June 15

The lunch woman told me that a previous CIR refused to speak to her because she served whale meat. I speak to the lunch woman. She's friendly and I am sure she has never been whaling, I am even sure that if the menu were up to her she would not serve whale because frankly, it isn't that popular any more. I suggested that they add kangaroo to the menu and their horror was something approximate to that I encounter in Aussies when I say I will eat whale. Hmm.

Undoukai goes off with a bang

Ah, the much awaited sports day finally arrives! Here we have the grade 4 relay baton exchange. The relay was the only real sports involved in the day. Other than that there was a lot of dancing and game playing. I was only involved in one event; The Ball in the Bowl. Our team lost. Bugger. It was fun though because I got paired up with one of my favourite kids. (yes I have favourites). For all the planning and general running around crazy-like that was happening over the past month, it was a very ordinary day though. I had to be at the school at bloody 7am to help set up tables and etc which of course was acheived in about 10 minutes because it usually doesn't take 15 grown adults an hour to move 20 tables 10 metres and tie a few signs up. But oh we felt really prepared because we got up super early on a Sunday. Luckily it hadn't rained much overnight so we didn't have to resort to mopping the sports field (see pictured patch of gritty dirt) using newspaper and towels which was the plan discussed at the What if it rains?? meeting we had late Saturday arvo. In the end the weather was good; not wet, not too hot and a little breeze so all the weather updates we had been getting from all angles every hour on the hour for the past week seemed even more ludicrous than when they had been happening.

One great thing that happened was during the tug of war picture left two kids ran into each other while racing to pick up the rope and bounced off each other and fell arse over in the dust. It was hilarious although I don't think I was supposed to laugh. At lunch time the kids all sat and ate with their parents and we retreated to the staffroom. The teachers were a bit overwhelmed by the dads being there too I think. Usually the school only sees the mothers of the kids so when the dads rock up they don't really have anything to say to them because a)they don't know whose parent they are and b) they don't know anything about them. But the kids were heaps excited about it and kept saying, "Look that's my dad!" In the end the white team won by 9 points which they didn't seem extremely excited about, just pleased I would say. They had organised cheers and the like, but when they won a game or something they never seemed particularly delirious with the joy of success, only about half of them would bother doing the bonzai (which was the designated way to celebrate a win as written in the schedule). Except the grade 1s, they were heaps excited about everything and even the losing team jumped around during their bonzai. In all I found it was a much more sedate affair than the sports days I remember as a child. But perhaps that is because I was a child then and clearly am trying not to be now... It wasn't an awful day. Especially when you consider that we had drinks afterwards in Shin-Kurashiki followed by karaoke. Can't go wrong.

Rubbish is a serious business

This month with the grade 6 class we are practicing English they can use to "interview" foreign travellers when they go on their school trip to Kyoto and Nara in June. The interview process involves running up to people who look like they might be tourists (read: anyone who isn't Japanese) and bombarding them with odd questions like, "What animal do you like?" and "What subject do you like?". I'm trying to get them to cut this last question as it is strange to ask someone who went to school 15 years ago what subject they like, I think. But then again, the whole thing is strange. I am also pushing to teach them how to ask "Do you speak English?" before launching into the Inquisition since I know it annoys travellers who aren't native English speakers that the Japanese assume they are. I am just glad I won't be there to watch this display of overexuberant language practice.

Meanwhile, on the home front, I have finally rid my apartment of dani and am now contending with the multitude of mosquitoes that have taken up residence in my loungeroom and are keeping me up at all hours by buzzing around in my ears. Last night I caved in and purchased some insecticide stuff that is supposed to sit in the corner and exhude anti-mosquito fumes for the next 60 days. We'll see how that goes. I also had an infestation of funny little fruit fly thingies. In Japan you don't just have rubbish and recycling, you have to divide everything up and it all gets collected on different days. So PET bottles, drink cans and plastic gets taken on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of every month, burnable rubbish (like green waste, kitchen scraps etc) is taken every week on Tuesday and Friday and non-burnable rubbish... well I am not yet sure when that is taken but I don't have much of that anyway. Also you can put out cardboard separately, not sure when, I just tend to leave it there and at some point in the month it disappears. I am yet to figure out what to do with my cans from stuff like tuna... I don't think they are burnable, but I can't put them in the glass bag and they aren't collected with the recyclables. It is a very complicated business. Anyway, as a result of this, I had a bag of kitchen scraps sitting around for a while, clearly too long, and a small ecosystem developed in there. Japan is the bug capital of the world. When it heats up they just come out from everywhere. Big ones, little ones, creepy ones, cute ones, dangerous ones, harmless ones, flying ones, crawling ones... And the fucking cockroaches are unspeakably prolific. No matter what you do your house is bound to be infested with one or the other at all times, especially in the summer humidity. Thankfully their spiders keep to the outside mostly and aren't nearly as dangerous as the Aussie ones...

Kimiko and co. gave me an entire watermelon on Sunday after the welcome party. I still have half left, it is so big is fills up my entire fridge. It is a nice one though, I looked at one a similar size inthe supermarket yesterday; $40! I am eating my entire week's shopping budget in watermelon! You'd think for $40 they'd take the pips out for you though.

Why not take a cruise to Terra Australis?

For today's L&L time I reduced the entire saga of the First Fleet and British convict transportation to Australia down to a 5 minute story board. History has never looked so wonderful. A bunch of black and white striped people board a romantic looking ship in merry England, go for an 11 month cruise via Africa and various tropical islands before arriving in sunny Sydney Harbour in time to see Guy Sebastian perform at the Opera House. 218 years in the blink of an eye. The teachers loved it. Turns out most of them had little idea about Aussie history and while being vaguely aware of some connection we have with England they never quite realised what it stemmed from. No, we don't just think they have cute accents, they are us. Well, some of us... unfortunately explaining the concept of multiculturalism is too much for one week's L&L, I will attempt that one next week. Yes, I gave them a "to be continued..." today. Keep em all on the edge of their seats.

Meanwhile preparations for the school sports day continue at a frantic pace. Every single facet of the day has been rehearsed beyond belief. I reckon they even made the kids practice their Sport Day Poo. I am a participant in the "ball in the bowl" event which sees me jump on a wooden board to fling a ball up in the air which my partner (grade 4 Haruna-chan) has to catch in a bowl. We have practiced this. There don't seem to be any sports events though, not like athletics or anything, just a bunch of games. There are two teams, redhats and whitehats. I am in Redhats I think. I don't have a red hat though, only a green one. There are so many ways in which I don't fit in here; I also won't have my T-shirt tucked into the waistband of my trackie daks (which are pulled up Tommy McHighpants style), nor a towel around my neck, nor I fear, will I be spending any time in the sun without my sunnies on. Such a rebel.

I resist the charms of kittens

Today at lunch the kids realised that I am practically a walking dictionary when it comes to English words that they don't know and the whole time while we were eating they kept asking me what all the food was called in English. Trouble was that most of the food we ate today was actually Western in origin and so when they asked me "What's potato chipusu in English?" They were invariably disappointed to hear it was almost exactly the same. I was trying to explain that the foods generally keep their title from the country of origin, we don't call sushi "raw fish rolled in rice" just like they don't have Japanese names for Coke or hamburger. At least todays dessert was an improvement on yesterday's quarter of a lemon; we had icecream wrapped in mochi which is an absolutely revolting white substance made out of beans (I think, I hate it so much I am loathe to waste any of my time actually finding out how it's made). That little dessert is Japan in a nutshell for me; the great part is completely innaccessible without labouring through the rather horrid exterior.

Last night I went for a walk over the hill and far away and ran into the ocean! Well, more of a sea really, but I didn't realise Kamogata was this close to the water. I also got pounced on by 2 kittens while reading the Yoroshima town map. They were so cute and clearly very hungry (or very good actors, which I could easily believe because such is the craftiness of cats) and I wanted to take em home. But thought they were probably disease ridden already and besides which, where would I put them? So I left them to their inevitable fate of being run over by cars or eaten by stray dogs. There are so many stray cats around here, but I am yet to see a stray dog... must be because the Japs are obsessed with dogs. There is a massive industry in this country that simply caters for dogs; clothing, food, grooming. I saw a shop once where you could buy yourself and your dog matching outfits, including shoes. This kind of hilarity is the icecream part of Japan.

Quack-o

Making the news this morning in Okayama; a duckling that can paddle backwards. There was even an interview with a random elderly lady who looked extremely pleased with herself and said (somewhat predictably), "I have been coming to this park and watching the ducks for 12 years and I have never seen one go backwards before." Then they went to the trouble of ringing a "duck specialist" up and asking him what he thought to which he replied, "Hmm, I have never heard of such a thing before. It is strange." Then they cut back to the studio and the newreaders had to pretend to be all interested and surprised about a duck being able to reverse. I just feel so blessed to be living in the part of Japan that is home to such clever ducks.

The Japanese Inquisition

Today I found an internet cafe that is not only a whole 35yen cheaper but also has an icecream machine for free!! Can't go past that. It is kind of weird being out and about on a weekday, I feel like I am breaking the rules. But I have lots to do since yesterday was wasted at my welcome party hosted by the Mayor's wife. She and a bunch of her friends from the English conversation classes rocked up and force fed us sushi and mandarins. I kept turning around to find someone had slipped yet another roll of salmon and rice onto my plate. Most of them were OK but some of them were quite trying with constantly asking weird questions about our countries and it felt like we were the subjects of an inquisition rather than just around for a friendly chat. We went up to carefully crafted creek area and it was very pleasant to sit in the sun. Dylan was trying to explain that he doesn't consider man-made creeks particularly beautiful but I am not sure that they understood. I mean, they do try, they put rocks in there randomly, it's just that the rocks are cemented in place and there's no leaves or moss or debris around to make it "natural" I guess. The whole place looked like an elaborate water feature that you might expect to find in a top notch hotel lobby. Kind of pretty, but unmistakably man-made not natural and hence not quite so wonderful as the real thing.

I struggle with the Japanese interpretation of beauty in nature a bit too. Being taken to the sea and stood in front of a grey wall built on top of a landfill and asked "Isn't it beautiful?" is unfortunately common. No, actually I don't find concrete and murky water all that pleasant to look at, even if the sun is out. I think the Japanese find beauty in order; and nature is disorderly in the extreme. Obviously this isn't much of an insight on my behalf, anyone who knows anything about Japanese gardening also knows this peculiarity of the Japanese.

Towards the end of the day we did witness a life and death struggle between a small crow and a small snake which was quite amusing. The crow was trying to just pick the snake up and fly away with it I think but the snake was having issue with this plan and between trying to wriggle away was turning around to try and bite the bird. Eventually the snake gave up trying to run away and just coiled itself up and tried to look threatening and the crow flew off, clearly quite threatened! I went down to have a look, regretting as I usually do wherever I go, the decision not to bring my SLR with me. All the times I have encountered native wildlife in Australia I have never seen something attempting to eat something else. Maybe I should go to South Africa next where I am told I can watch cheetahs running down sprightly deer. Somewhat more awesome I am betting...

Jo's going down in Japan

Today has been so great. And it's not even over yet! I finally met up with all these people who are organising the touch rugby trip to Miyajima in Hiroshima next month. They are all good folk from what I can tell. The girl who I was put in touch with originally met me at Kurashiki station and drove me out to the playing fields where we met another Aussie (finally!) and three Kiwis. That isn't the whole crowd, but for various reasons there are people who couldn't make it today but are coming on the trip. We did a few drills and stuff and had a 3 on 3 scratch match. It was so good to run around again (although typically in this country, we were running around on coarse sand rather than grass)! I am excited about this tournament now. Everyone seems to be at a fairly good skill level so I look forward to picking up a few more tricks on the field... just getting used to all the different terminology is going to be fun. It seems Matt the Kiwi has a few new ideas, or perhaps they are old ideas that I never really twigged on before? How funny, I travel 1000s of kilometres to go to touch training run by Matt... (non touch related people are not going to understand this but it's nothing wildly amusing so don't worry)

We went out for lunch afterwards to a diner called Joyfull (no not a typo, this place is really just FULL of JOY) and this evening we are meeting up for some movie action. Although the film is The Da Vinci Code (and I may have perhaps alienated several readers by mentioning this), it is a chance for me to meet some new people and avoid sitting at home alone yet again. Such is the sacrifices one must make in order to acquire new acquaintances I guess. Sigh.

Tomorrow there is a small party to welcome the new English teachers in the Kamogata area, hosted by the Mayor's wife so I shall attend that and see what beer may be obtained and consumed before slinking back to my abode to ponder the weekend's activities. Oh, yes, that's right. Monday is a holiday too! Gosh, what will I do with myself??

Kids are weird here

Maybe it's just me, but I don't remember so many kids crying, falling into comas and throwing up when I was at school. I'm fairly certain that a technicolour yawn was such a rare event in fact that when it did happen it was enough to stop the class completely for as long as it took for the teacher to locate the kitty litter and wipe the offending child off. Here if someone throws up the teacher doesn't even bat an eyelid, nor do the other kids, they just tell the offender to get some tissues and clean it up before their socks get wet. As for crying, usually it was limited to the result of leaving five girls to "work together" for longer than 10 minutes, or leaving boys to "play" for a similar period, and was not something that happened with the somewhat alarming regularity and randomness it does here. Kids will burst into tears without apparent cause and refuse to share the reason for their sudden waterworks until the teacher has spent at least 10 minutes getting five different versions of what happened from a chorus of explanations offered by their classmates. More often than not they are crying because of something they thought someone said about them to someone else which turns out to be considered willfully misunderstood by the accused bad guy and the whole thing is resolved by the teacher saying "whatever you said, don't say it."

As for the coma thing... there are a few kids who will just freeze up and refuse to do anything at random intervals. There is one in grade 4 who is perfectly normal one minute and then next minute he is crying with his head between his knees and refuses to explain anything. This morning it was quite funny during the sports day opening ceremony rehearsal because everyone was sitting down and he was the only one left standing because he had decided to do his "limp rag" routine. Shingaki sensei pulled him outside and chatted to him for a while to little avail because when he came back he just stood at the back looking as though someone had stolen his soul and refused to participate in anything further.

Maybe I just have a skewed version of primary school because let's face it, I was one of the goody goody two shoes who always did her work quickly and well and who actually enjoyed reading and stuff that most other kids seem to hate. But it seems like there are no rules here. Or at least, there are no well defined consequences for breaking the rules. In every classroom when I was little there was a massive poster explaining the STEPS. ie. the steps the teacher would take to punish you if you broke the rules. Usually it was all warning warning warning, ok time out and that was as far as it went, sometimes a kid would get a detention but that was positively gossip-worthy. Here there are no set rules for disciplining the kids, each teacher seems to make it up themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I'd be interested to know whether the school even has a discipline policy and what each teacher thinks the steps are for dealing with troublesome kids. (And I'd also like them to use these rules in my classes so the kids don't fuck around so much and give me a headache) :)

I'm busy for once

Today I was requested to make a whole array of English stuff so I have actually been doing something! The grade 5 teacher has decided to just throw the June and July curriculum out the window (the one that the previous CIRs spent months making according to instructions from this very school) and instead of doing clothing we are doing cleaning materials. So lucky me gets to make a whole new set of flashcards and game cards accordingly. I have been searching the internet for pictures of mops and vacuum cleaners and so on. By the way, nobody should ever look up "dustbin" using the Japanese yahoo image search while there is a chance someone could see what comes up on the resulting page. Ick.

I noticed today that the kids don't speak to the teachers the way I expected them to. In case you aren't aware I will just say that in Japanese there are several different levels of politeness one can use when speaking, which changes depending on whether the person you address is your senior or junior. Clearly a teacher is always your senior and so you should speak to them in keigo (polite form) which is why it surprises me that the kids here speak to the teachers in the same fashion that they would each other. At first I thought it was just the little kids who were doing it, but even the grade 6s only use keigo when addressing the teachers en masse in the staffroom or when the principal is present. I'm going to ask someone about this and tell you why in a few days because I don't get it, except that maybe it is the symptoms of an ever-increasingly rude and "western" Japan.

I'm a life saver

OK for some reason the Japanese weather has decided to revert to wintery cold so just when I thought my jumpers and thermals were safely out of sight and mind we get a dip in the temperature to the tune of about 10 degrees. The Japanese persist however, with informing me that it is hot today. Really? Do I seem hot to you with my scarf wrapped up to my nose? Yesterday's discussion about the opening of the pool never seemed more of an innappropriate subject matter to me. For some reason I have been entrusted with pool watching duty four times throughout the week... do they just assume I have life saving abilities? Because frankly if I am watching grade 3 I might be tempted to ignore the oddly child-shaped blob floating at the bottom of the pool, particularly if his name is Hiroki. English lessons are my priority after all, and they would be vastly improved by his absence.

Preparations for the school sports day are in full swing which means teachers are doing extra overtime and generally acting extremely busy indeed while I sit around doing my usual; nothing much. The sports day is of course on a weekend which means a long weekend this week and no weekend at all next week. I am planning my escape on Friday night, straight to Osaka I think. Gotta make the most of the holidays since it seems my "let's have August off" proposal isn't getting very far...

What kind of poo did you do today?

This has to be the best reason to visit the library at a primary school; to find out what a nation thinks its kids ought to know. And right on the top of the list in Japan is poo it would appear. I found this book sitting on top of the shelf entitled "recommended books" this morning. It is called The Poo Book and within it are detailed descriptions of the various types of poo you may encounter when you peer into the toilet bowl after dropping one off. It is hilarious. All the different types of poo have names and are introduced by a man wearing a poo as a hat who claims to know "a lot about poo." And indeed he does.

"What kind of poo did you do today?" He asks as he bends over a brown heap sitting in the bowl. Yellow and smelling like off eggs? - too much watery sugary stuff. Yellow and smelly but slightly firmer? - too much junk food. Brown and kind of like a banana shape without much smell? - perfect, nice diet. And etc. They don't have the Post-massive-night-out Poo represented though which is quite poor form. Obviously they didn't research this book as thoroughly as Mr Poo Head would like us to believe. My favourite page is where they explain about manners after doing a poo. A poo is sitting in the toilet bowl and yelling out "Hey, you forgot to flush me!" to the kid who just parked him there. So there you have it kiddies; poos like to be flushed.

Nishi crew DO know how to have fun

Well as if just to prove me wrong the Nishi crew turned out to be pretty fun on Friday night! It started quite dubiously though with me waiting at Kurashiki station for about 30 minutes for everyone with the teacher who sits next to me in the staffroom. She isn't a real teacher, she doesn't have her own class but she helps out Shingaki sensei with the grade 4s a lot. She is one of the really really polite Japanese types who is always saying "please excuse me" when it really isn't necessary and it kind of gets on my nerves. Instead of just saying what she wants to say she will dance around the issue, bowing and talking so quietly and nervously that you can hardly understand her. It makes me want to shake her. So I got to have 30 minutes of quality time with her asking me how old I was and saying that her son is turning 20 next month and wouldn't it be good if he were a few years older... Umm, not really! Then she gave me a lolly and actually apologised for the fact that the wrapper was hard to open and again when there was no bin handy to put it in. Luckily the rest of the teachers started arriving before her meekness could drive me completely insane.

It seems that the meeting I snuck out of at 5pm on the dot ran until 6 so that's why everyone was late. A late meeting on a Friday? Yuck. It was all Hiroki's fault. He is the absolutely uncontrollable kid in grade 3 who it seems is wreaking havoc not only in my English class but everywhere he goes and they had to have a massive meeting to figure out what to do with him. Before I left they were getting each teacher to report what naughty stuff their kids had been up to and Outani sensei started crying when she was tyring to explain what was going on with Grade 3. Everyone just kind of ignored her and she just kept trying to talk while sobbing which I think everyone knows is pretty tricky. Obviously I left before they got to the bottom of it so I don't know what they decided to do about it. I guess I will find out next E-time!

So the result being that everyone was hungry as and ready for fun. We went to a little Japanese/Korean restaurant and got stuck into the beer. When you go to a restaurant in Japan if you order drinks they automatically bring out food too. Not a meal, just little bits and bobs but the thing is, you have to pay for it. So they just bring stuff out and even if you don't like it, can't eat it or just don't want it you still have to pay for it. So we just ate the food they brought out and didn't order anything. Well, someone ordered yakiudon later on and I found out that it is really really yummy. Everyone got quite merry and loud and it was a good night. I had a few good conversations about why Japs do some of the weird things they do and learnt heaps of new words. Of course the night ended with karaoke during which Yamamura sensei and I discovered we were the only 2 present who knew any music made before the early 80s. He kept saying "Why do you know this song? This was out before you were born!" So I had to explain how falling asleep listening to the Doors and Rodriguez and etc as a child gives you a certain affinity with them.

So the night ended with rather long taxi ride back to Kamogata. The driver was very nice though and switched off the meter as soon as we arrived in Kamogata and just dropped us all off at our respective houses without it costing extra. She did spent most of the time talking on the phone though which was a little dangerous considering it was raining and she was going at least 20kmph faster than the speed limit. But I have already discussed Japanese driving techniques I think...

So in the end the Nishi staff have just been hiding a delection for fun and alcohol under their busy busy exteriors all day at work. This discovery makes me look forward to the nomihoudai planned for Sunday evening after the school sports day at the end of May. The other great thing about the sports day is that to make up for the fact that I am working all weekend I get a long weekend in a couple of weeks. Better start formulating travel plans now...

I get excited about the weekend

Ahh, Friday, the smell of the weekend is just wafting through the door (along with an icy cold breeze thanks to the staffroom CleanAir Nazi and her open window policy). Every Friday I think "Didn't the week just fly by!" and every Monday I think "This week is never going to end." So I guess the relative proximity of a day off increases the positivity with which I view my working life and the passage of time in general. Imagine how excited about work I will be when faced with an entire week or 2 off! Good lord, I won't even have the words for it.

Tonight is the staff drinking party loosely entitled "Jo's Welcome Party". At least I think it is since I haven't heard another word about it since someone mentioned a date and time a couple of weeks ago. I just hope that it isn't going to be one of those events where we do all you can eat and drink that ends after only 2 hours with everyone else heading home and me standing in front of the train station half cut with a deep desire to talk to anyone. The Japanese have a reputation for being heavy drinkers, but I have to say that unless there is a particularly crazy drinking fan among the bosses no one really puts much of an effort in. During a 2 hour all-you-can-drink frenzy, or nomihoudai, my Japanese friends will drink an average of 3 drinks. I, on the other hand will drink as many as the waiters can bring me and still be feeling a little ripped off at the end of the session. The other strange thing is the Japanese "late night". Any time I return to my abode before it is the next day is not a late night out. So after only 2 hours worth of eating and warm-up drinks I am ready to move on to say, dancing, standing in loud bars, drinking further and having ambiguous and slightly bizarre conversations with people I hardly know. While heading out to do this by yourself is slightly overwhelming and a little draining I think that is what I will be doing this evening. Hey, at least it isn't raining!

Teeth schmeeth

Today I taught the grade 1s for the first time this year. They are brand newbies and it is GREAT. They are so new that they think teacher is god and listen accordingly. The teacher is also new so she didn't know the Nishi practice of taking over the English classes and only letting me operate as a dictionary, so I got to actually run an entire 45 minute class all alone. It was great. Well, I did only teach them how to say Goodmorning, Goodafternoon, Yes and Thankyou... but that is something! And they seemed to enjoy themselves so YAY for me. We even ran out of time for all the stuff I had organised which is great because it means left overs to supplement next weeks lesson and so on so I am never stuck for things to do.

I have noticed an alarming number of small children with black teeth. When they smile at me (which is getting to be an increasingly common occurance these days) I get a great view of the kind of rotting teeth I have only previously seen in pirate movies. It seems that the Japanese have decided that having their kids brush a set of teeth that is only going to fall out anyway is a complete waste of time, water and toothpaste, so they just let them rot away. Trouble is that when their second set of teeth come in the kids are not used to having to brush and so end up with a head full of fillings by the time they are 12. Every kid whose mouth I have seen inside (which is a surprisingly large number) has heaps of silver in there. Apparently the denstist is quite cheap in Japan so the parents don't have any financial reason to make their kids keep their teeth clean, and clearly concern for oral hygiene isn't a big motivator either! Which is odd, because at school every lunch time there is 5 minutes of hamigaki (teethbrushing). Just like a lot of things in Japan, appearances count for more than substance. If we appear to take care of our teeth, it somehow means we are... despite the cavities.

Why does it always rain on me?

I know so many people who love the rain. It is wonderful, it makes you feel refreshed, it cleans the air, it rejuvenates the landscape, it is fun to walk in, it is great to listen to on the roof... and so on. NO! It is the only weather that prevents me from walking to school, or indeed anywhere. If you walk in the rain you get wet, even if you use an umbrella your feet and legs get wet, so that when you arrive at your destination you are soggy, and then uncomfortable and often quite you get steamed in your own clothing as the heating tries to dry you out, or your own body heat does it for you in the horrific humidity in this country. Rain makes you get that trail of road crap up your bum when you are riding and fills up your shoes when you are running. The only time rain is good is when you are swimming. And how often does that happen? As for walking in the rain for enjoyment?? I don't understand that concept at all. How can wet feet be enjoyable? Especially in Adelaide where if it is raining it is also likely to be absolutely freezing cold. What annoys me the most about the rain is that when I walk a little bit of water flicks up onto the top of my shoe with every step to absolutely ensure that my socks are thoroughly saturated even if I do manage to avoid stepping into a puddle.

Just in case you haven't figured it out yet; it is raining today.

Adelaide, the pleasure of provincial life

I found this fabulous book in the library that was given to Nishi by my old high school teacher in 2002. It has heaps of brilliant colour photos of Australia, but when you read the text it is quite disturbingly anti-promotional. For example, I will tell you what the author chose as the closing paragraph on Adelaide entitled much as my blog entry today (which forewarns the reader not to expect much praise in a very sneaky way indeed);

"But there are no skyscrapers, traffic, crowds or nightlife to speak of here. One or two dubious places stay open until midnight in Hindley Sreet. The Mall only gets crowded on Thursday evenings, when the shops stay open for late-night shopping. The Festival Centre, a fine example of modern architecture decorated with Aboriginal wall-paintings, only makes proper use of its facilities as a mulitmedia complex every other year for the Adelaide Arts Festival."

Yikes. I know a lot of people have something against Adelaide's generally quiet nightlife, but it isn't as though there is nothing to do! They make it sound like the art centre sits under a shroud of cobwebs until we dust it off at Fringe time once in a blue moon. And I am fairly certain I have had some very successful all nighters without going anywhere near Hindley St. But the author's somewhat bitter description of Australian cities isn't limited to Adelaide. The pages on Sydney are entitled "Sydney, beautiful, cultured, single-minded." and Brisbane is the best; "Surfboards and oriental faces." and continues on to make barely disguised snide remarks about Japanese tourists lining up to get photos with koalas.

So perhaps this book is telling the truth, and in all liklihood it is the type of book you might expect to result if I wrote a travel guide, but it doesn't feel right here. If you are going to give a book to someone overseas and they are going to place it in a public place as a source of information for those who are perhaps considering visiting your country, you might consider giving it a quick read first to establish if it is selling your country as a great place to visit, or if it is pointing out all the flaws. We should focus on selling the Good Stuff, then once they are in the country they can discover the Bad Stuff for themselves. It's called culture shock and who are we to deprive any traveller of it?

You local?

To be asked for directions by a passerby must surely be an indication that you look like a local. I am not sure exactly what it takes to pass for a Kamogata local, but I have it! Yesterday on the way home from the station a car slowed down next to me and asked me where Myobin was. I didn't actually know and couldn't help her.... but that is entirely beside the point! A Japanese person actually asked me, clearly a foreigner, where something was. Plus, she asked me in Japanese! It was great. But maybe I shouldn't be so pleased because I recall being asked for directions in George Street in Sydney about 5 times in one day while I was there for my AEON job interview. Clearly I must just look like someone who knows where she is. A wholly misleading perception at most times.

Driving without a care for public safety popular in Japan

Today I would like to discuss Japanese driving. You would think that with the roads being so very very narrow in my town that people might show alittle extra care when taking a blind corner. Nay. Instead the town has installed many convex mirrors allowing you to take a mere cursory glance at an incredibly distored version of what may lie on the road ahead of you before swinging your car at full speed around the corner. Also, although every car is fitted with indicators at the front and rear of the car (as is fairly standard everwhere and hardly seems a detail I need of provided), this must be much to the puzzlement of Japanese drivers who seem to find their usefulness somewhat questionable.

It need not be debated that Adelaide drivers are perfectly horrid at most times, but I think Japanese drivers are worse. While following a car at a distance necessary to my avoiding trouble I often observe it suddenly veer across the road in what appears to be an attempt at a right hand turn without the slightest hint of its intentions. Having thus cut across and seriously scared the shit out of approaching traffic, the car finds itself on the wrong side of the road and heading into a collision with another car which has unwisely considered that sticking to the correct side of the road will ensure their safety. The trouble is with physics these days; it is very hard to make a 90 degree turn in a car without slowing down from the 10 or 15 kms over the speed limit you happen to be doing, and still keep within what the law determines is your rightful area of the road.

Thankfully slow drivers are not much of an issue here since even the old folks can't help but exceed the speed limit wherever they may be. But impromptu turns and bizarrely timed manuovres seem to be prolific. And if one needs to pull up to say, reapply make up/ answer the phone/ stare about, all one need to do is stop where you are and switch on your hazard lights. In the middle of freeways, in the middle of one way streets. It really doesn't matter, so long as you switch those hazards on.

On top of the fairly large number of the population who drive as I have just described, there are also those who would fall into the Nervous Driver category. These are the people who, in spite of presumably having sat a test and learnt the give way rules of the road, are always trying to give way to others everywhere. I was lucky enough to witness such a display from within the very vehicle of a Nervous Driver. My principal gave me a lift to the city office for the welcoming of the new mayor meeting (the one where we sat around in a big circle and nodded silently at each other for 30 minutes) and it was the second most frustrating car trip of my life (the first being when my friend's uncle drove us into a hotel in Sydney and we ended up going through the tunnel instead of over the bridge and then he took us down a series of "short cuts" which were always foiled by roadworks which I knew were there but he wouldn't believe me and then getting stuck in a bunch of one way streets taking us further and further away from our destination...ARGH!!). We approach a 3 way intersection where we have right of way, all the other streets have stop signs. There is a car to our right and she stops to let it through. Obviously the other car was expecting to give way to us to it took some waiting and silent nodding and arm waving to get them to go ahead of us. This happened at every intersection. Even the lights. We approach a green light and she is looking at the waiting cars to our left and pumping the brakes as a physical indicator of her complete lack of confidence in red lights as a deterrant to people pulling out randomly. There was a lot of bowing and "please go aheads" and all that bizzo from our car and a lot of puzzled expressions and shrugs of shoulders coming from other cars who were constantly being let in the road ahead of us despite the obvious impracticality of doing so. All in all a good experience in the practices of the chronically nervous driver, but frankly it would be safer to just walk next time.

Poor tora-chan

Today I visted the ZOO! It was a fairly massive bus ride up through the mountains near Hiroshima and by the time I got there I was starting to feel the hangover that I thought I had avoided. But it was surprisingly cheap to get in and they had lots of good things for kids to do. The animals themselves were a little bit under the weather, aside from the baby elephant which was kicking a soccer ball around with its keepers. I felt really sad about the tigers who had a tiny cage no bigger thanmy apartment for two of them. They were both just lying there with their backs to us as if in protest. The lions had a better enclosure, I think because they were more popular, the kids didn't seem to know what the tiger was but were heaps excited to see the lions (even though they too were just lazing around).

I got plenty of sun today and even managed to get my legs out it was so warm! There should be umbrella protocol though, like you have to fold it up in any place where you aren't alone because I saw heaps of people nearly lose their eyes because some woman was using her umbrella to advance her way through the crowd to get a better look at an animal. They love a bit of the old parasol action over here.

Travel is surprisingly Fun!

Crazy day. Spoke to a Frenchman! First time ever I meet a Frenchman in Japan. He was lovely. Spoke to lots of randoms. It was exhasuting for me. But I did have fun. Better than sitting at home at any rate! There is a festival of some description happening everywhere tomorrow it would seem. So no matter where I go I can't go wrong. I like that idea. Today I saw lots of marching bands, some with skirts and some with pants. I like the skirts better... except when they are so short that you can see the undies. That is not so flash and frankly, kind of manga-pornish. But the pants just make the girls all look like grandmas. One word; Slacks (that was for you mum).

I have to say I never thought just going on random holidays would turn out so well! Must do more of this! Although possibly could graduate to organising real accommodation instead of internet cafe... the smoking is driving me nuts. Not to mention the snoring. Snoring is practically a national sport here and I reckon the champion is sleeping right next door...

I go on a school excursion to the park

Firstly, excursions should involve more chocolate. If you are not taking the kids to a chocolate factory there should be at least two points during the day when you all just sit down and eat a nice chunk it. Then I wouldn't have to sneak it while no one was looking.

Secondly, there should also be a limit to the number of consecutive minutes an adult who has not chosen to study education at uni should be allowed to be in direct contact with kids. Sure it was all fun and games while they were trying to trip me over on the way to the park. And it was fabulously amusing when they were using me as a climbing pole and a merri-go-round at the park. But by the time they were trying to get sympathy out of me for the many and various cuts and bruises they had rather clumsily acquired throughout the day I was all out of patience for it. Why can't they just walk a straight line? And why, if they find the Smelly Dog so smelly, do they have to stop and peer over the fence at it for five minutes? And why do they have to stop to pick weeds and put them in their backpacks?

So all things considered it was good to get out of the school, but the whole thing was somewhat dampened by the presence of 199 demented kids. All I can say is, anyone who chooses to go into primary school teaching as a profession must be bonkers. You are constantly have to come up with ways to divert them and get them to shut up. I really don't have the patience for it, not that that was something I didn't already know, and I am very glad that most days I am just the English teacher not a Real Teacher.

But the day did end on a high note with one of the teachers arranging a day for a "welcome party" for me (in name only, let's face it, I have been here for a month now). It will involve drinking and since it is a work party it will get extremely rowdy but of course, whatever happens will never be discussed again. Excellent, I can't wait.