Food

Someone brought it to my attention that bananas are MASSIVELY expensive in Australia at the mo. They are about $1.20 a bunch here. Cheap as (banana) chips... Let's compare fruit prices, I will write here what I am paying for fruit and stuff and you think about it;
(Unless otherwise indicated all prices are for ONE item, not per kilo)

Apple - $1.85
Cucumber - $0.45
Orange - $0.80
Kiwi - $1.00
Whole pineapple - $5.50
Whole watermelon - $10-50
Whole melon - $15-50
Avocado - $1.70

I think in the end it is kind of the same because we pay more here for stuff that is cheap over there and then vice versa too. It annoys me that the fruit is priced per item though, puts me off buying more than one of anything for some reason... Chicken meat is cheap as, although beef is heaps expensive, but proabably not too much worse than at home anyway, just can't find a T-bone anywhere. Fish is cheap as and they have EVERYTHING you could want to eat in the way of seafood just at the supermarket which is great. I have been living on salmon steaks. YUMMY. Hmm, all this talk is making me hungry, better go home!!

SUNSHINE and bananas

It's wonderful and hot today. The teachers have rigged up a massive fan in the staffroom because they are so hot and it blows right across my desk which is heaps annoying. Paper everywhere. It's not that hot. I might get my legs out on the English room balcony today. Hmm.

Today and tomorrow is the grade 6 "camp" so there are 5 teachers missing from the staffroom. It's great. Plus it means I get to eat lunch in the staffroom because my schedule had me in with the grade 6 for lunch this week. I actually got to eat my food while it was still warm! And there was even too much for me, couldn't finish it! I feel heaps sorry for the teachers who had ot go on the trip. They left at 6:15 this morning and will get home tomorrow evening 7:45ish having been to 4 different major cities in Japan with 28 kids. I think it is a bit excessive to have 5 teachers accompanying only 28 kids, but if they want to waste their leave and money on dragging whinging mopers around Kyoto and Nara that's up to them. I expect I will get a full account of the Run Up and Talk to Foreigners happenings which will be interesting. I'd love it if they ran up the one tourist who has just had it up to here with sightseeing, is hungry, tired, lost, beweildered, just fought with their spouse of three days and just cracks it when 15 kids start yelling Harro!! at them. If that would happen I could almost feel sorry for not having gone.

Since it is 4:59pm I am about skip off home. Do you know what the best thing? Frozen bananas. Seriously, peel a banana, wrap it in cling wrap, put it in the freezer and suddenly eating an otherwise ordinary banana is a massive treat. Be better if it was dipped in chocolate first of course, but I can't actually think of a single thing that wouldn't be improved by being dipped in chocolate.

Grade 5 SUPERCLASS!!

I just finished the big Special Class with grade 5. Their teacher is Kishino, who is all buddy buddy with my boss, Ishi, and so she was able to change the curriculum for this month and make out like it was a really big deal and invited all these teachers from other schools to come and watch the last class, which was today. All the other teachers had to watch too and pretend they were taking notes and stuff, we even had volunteer old people come in to practice English one (even though their English is not that much better than the kids'). It was a joke really, only one teacher turned up from elsewhere and all the Nishi teachers were like, "yeah, we know this." The kids were great though and they loved it. They came over heaps early from their classroom in two straight-ish lines while Kishino was greeting the volunteers and telling them what to do. So instead of just sitting their staring at each other I had them play this game I learnt at the touch tournament the other weekend.

The game basically consists of two people facing each other, standing with their legs shoulder width apart and about 80cm apart from each other. Using only your hands and pushing only on their hands briefly you have to try and push the other person off balance. So you can't grab their hands, or stand there continually pushing against each other, just a quick shove, the idea being to make them put in too much power and topple forwards when they miss your hands. It was great fun and made the SUPER genki so when Kishino rocked up she had no idea why they were standing in lines and apparently trying to shove each other.

The lesson itself went really well and the kids were able to do everything and had heaps of fun, but as far as the worth of having people come and watch it... If I were one of the other homeroom teachers I would feel a bit pissed at having to take time out of my day to watch Kishino do what they do in all their classes. And it is kind of irrelevant to them anyway because each year level has its own abilities (and behaviour issues to try and control). After the class I had the usual bevvy of admirers coming up and saying "Oh, you are such a good teacher!" Puh-please, I know the Japanese use compliments as a way of starting conversation, but why can't they just talk about the weather like we do? I wasn't even teaching, I was just being a dictionary for Kishino who seems to think her English is good enough to go "freestyle" during class and when she gets stuck (usually after the third word) she looks to me to read her mind and finish it up for her. Anyway, the whole bloody thing was videotaped so I am sure at some stage I will have to watch myself dancing around singing "Do you have the broom? No, I don't!". A prospect I look forward to with the same glee as I would having my teeth pulled.

Squeak squeak

I reckon recently I have gone on a lot about the grade 3 problem here, but it really is the only big deal at school. Today I went to join the class for music. This means sitting in a room filled with 8 year olds wielding recorders... and they are not shy of giving them a loud chirp. So I am sitting there among what sounds like the death throes of some as-yet unencountered alien being, trying Oh-so-very-hard to pretend that I can't hear what is going on around me and that I couldn't think of a more pleasant way to be spending the time I have left with my eardrums. Eventually a combo of three teachers manages to get the kids to place the recorders on their desk where, it is presumed, they will be unable to make any noise with it. The rest of the lesson consisted of the teacher trying to get Hiroki to apoligise for calling another kids a spaz (because of which she cried which really annoyed me, if you can't get called a spaz without crying, how did you even survive until grade 3 anyway?), Hiroki ignoring her completely or saying a lot of words that rhymed with "I'm sorry" but were actually more insults and meanwhile the other hooligan, Masashi is up the front bashing out his own version of a concerto on the electric organ. Finally the teacher just goes and unplugs the organ from the wall which and begins giving the class a lecture about what to do when Masashi goes mental; ignore him and concentrate on your lesson. Nice advice. While she is saying this Masashi is kicking her, pushing her, hitting her (he was really putting some effort in too) and she ended her speech while dragging him slowly out of the classroom to the hallway where he went completely bunta and used his recorder to bash the teacher and the TA and finally threw it down the hall where it broke into a few pieces.

As if it's not bad enough that there are even kids like this around, the rest of the kids have missed an entire lesson because the teacher cannot deal with Hiroki and Masashi without leaving the classroom. Out of a 40 minute lesson the kids had exactly 5 minutes of learning time and the rest was spent dealing with their unbalanced classmates. I feel really sorry for them, all they are learning is how the squeaky wheel gets the most oil, but that they should never squeak.

A quiet one

Well I had a tremendously dull weekend. No one's fault but my own really. Friday night was the speech by my fellow CIR, Mario. He comes from Peru and so spoke about his country since everyone is so curious about it. It was an interesting hour or so. Unfortunately he had some trouble with the computer and his powerpoint production was slightly painful but it was informative anyway. It made me want to visit and have a squiz around. After the speech was over we stayed and were jumped on by various Japanese people all eager to use their English. Personally I don't like the idea that someone is only interested in talking to me because I happen to speak the language they are trying to learn, so I made little effort to become friendly with anyone. When they did talk to me I replied in Japanese, which is my usual tactic for getting rid of those who are only interested in English and not in me. Unless I am being paid I am not going to stand around talking to native Japanese people in English, after all, I didn't come all the way over here for that. After the speech a few of the foreigners went out for some beer and I tagged along. Unfortunately my night was cut off early, as it tends to be, by the need to catch the last train home.

Saturday I spent a good deal of time in the library in Okayama looking for and reading books. It was nice, but way too many screaming children for absolute relaxation to kick in. If you can't keep your child quiet for 5 minutes together I will give you a tip; don't take them into places where it is expected you be silent! So after about an hour I left in disgust and sat under a tree next to the main road, which was somewhat quieter. The best part of the weekend was chatting to some old friends who have found their way back to Japan. Plans for catching up are under way and I am HEAPS excited about that prospect. Next weekend I am going to go somewhere interesting I promise, then I can write about something more interesting than children with no manners being loud in quiet places.

YAY!

I've told you before Skippy, use a bloody ashtray!

Here's the picture I included in my quiz about Aussie stuff yesterday. I thought that the kangaroo with a ciggie hanging out of his mouth would give away the fact that the rest of the picture is perhaps also misleading... but clearly I was mistaken. Plus, he's drinking it with a straw, what self respecting Aussie would do that??

Today I would like to say thanks to all the people who e-mailed me! No particular reason except that there's been a bit of a drought in the mail department recently and so when I found six mails waiting for me to read earlier on I was very excited indeed. You can never receive too much correspondence. Unless you are hella famous and perhaps have someone stalking you. That would be too much. Also it might be too much if you are dyslexic and find reading a real pain the arse. Or if you were receving heaps of correspondence from people you didn't want to hear from and they were sending banal crap or those chain letter thingos... actually there are a lot of ways that lots of correspondence could be a bad thing now that I think about it. I take my previous statement back, or revise it to; you can never receive too much correspondence from those you want to hear from who have something worth saying. Yep.

And what is with chain letters while we are at it? Do people actually believe that if they don't send it on they will get the badluck that is foretold? Because that is a whole other level of illogical thinking. It simply doesn't made any sense for you to believe that a letter typed up by an ordinary Joe Schmo can bring you good or bad luck, even if you believe in such a thing as good and bad luck itself. These letters never claim to have been written by anything like the omnipotent being that God is supposed to be, so what gives it the power to terrify people into forwarding them on? Or perhaps people really are just sheep and if The Letter says to send it on, they will.

Yay Socceroos!!

Whackydo! How fab is the soccer news! The Japs were all crying and acting as though the world had ended. They can be drama queens when it comes to sport.

Sank you bery muchu! And related articles

Haha!

Just when I was getting more desperate than a cat swimming with a lead bell inspiration hit me and I managed to scrape together perhaps one of the most enjoyed L&L times known to mankind. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. The inspiration was to look in the Aussie Kit that a previous CIR had left here. It is made by the Japan-Australia Foundation and it turns out is pretty bloody useful. Who would have thought? I found a little true or false quiz and thought I might as well use that. The questions were so easy I thought there was no way it would be up there with the fabulous "Where does Mr Kiwi live" story board of a few weeks ago. I will write here the questions I asked;

TRUE OR FALSE:
1. The Australian flag has another country's flag in it.
2. You can buy sushi in Australia.
3. It's OK for children to drink beer in Australia.
4. You can ride on a kangaroo.
5. More than half of Australia's area is desert.
6. Uluru is taller than Tokyo Tower.

The funny part was when I was doing the broadcast the kids operating the camera were all stage whispering what they thought the answer was. And the funnier part was when I came out into the staffroom and was told by teachers (adults) that all the answers were "true". I didn't laugh at them out right but just said they would have to wait until next week to find out and waited until I was in the hallway alone to laugh. I am learning tolerance of ignorance.

Someone who isn't very tolerant of ignorance though, is Yamamuro sensei. After my One Point Lesson on Tuesday morning with the staff during which I introduced and explained such phrases as "and pigs might fly" and "flat out like a lizard drinking" (a tough one to explain), several of the teachers said "Sank you" to me. I have gotten so used to the Japanese accent that I don't even think about it anymore. Even people at uni who are undertaking a major in English will say "Harro" and "Sank you". They just don't seem to place much emphasis on pronunciation, or are just lazy or something. But Yamamuro sensei had a bit of a rave about it saying "they can't even say "thank you" properly, it's a pretty poor effort." And I guess it is really. When I think about how much time and emphasis was spent on the correct pronunciation of sounds when I was learning other languages, it is comparatively lax here. I think maybe they have all just assumed that no matter how hard they try they will never get it right so there's no point trying and often when they are learning English from a Japanese person they have no opportunity to hear the correct pronunciation because the teacher themselves never learnt it. And there are a lot of sounds in the English language that are tricky for them because Japanese really has quite a limited number of sounds. This morning I just spent 5 minutes trying to get the year 1s to say the "o" in nose and toes properly. But forget about "th" and any 3 consonant clusters. Luckily the Aussie accent makes it unnecessary to pronounce the "er" when it comes at the end of words otherwise I would be having a hell of a time with the months. As it is, when they say "octoba, novemba, decemba" I don't mind at all!

The ideas pan is dry

I think I may have mentioned before that I have to do a five minute stint in front of the camera each week called L&L Time. It means that I have to come up with something amusing to show the kids each week that is both in very basic English also has something to think about in it (besides the fact that they can't understand it). I am getting extremely tired of coming up with ideas. Last week I finished up my swimming theme story boards and now I am stuck for ideas. What pisses me off even more about it is that the kids don't even watch it. Usually when Special Time comes on they are still organising their food, or just generally dicking around so they don't even listen to it, the only people who do listen are the ones who think it's so bloody important for the kids to hear English randomly that they make me do this stupid broadcast. So I am only doing it so the boss can go to sleep each night believing that her students are learning heaps of English. Not really a huge motivator. If the kids actually enjoyed, or even watched the bloody thing I might not mind having to spend hours scratching my head over ideas and longer yet trawling the internet for pictures that represent the exact idea I am trying to convey because they sure as shit can't understand what I am saying.

When is lunch anyway? I'm starving.

Desperate need of mood stabilisers

There must be something in the air around here that is making everybody moody. Perhaps it is the heat, although it isn't really that hot yet. Or maybe I am just projecting my moods onto everyone else. The kids in grade 6 were heaps quiet today, like they are practicing for junior high when they will learn to sit in silence and passively resist every attempt their teachers make to get a response out of them. Two of them got a talking to by Moriya sensei and they then had to come back in and practice their speech with me individually. Then in grade 5 the really loud kid got told to shut up by the homegroup teacher, which he did for the rest of the lesson with teary eyes. Considering that it is so hard to get most Jap kids to say anything louder than a whisper I wouldn't be discouraging the loud ones, but then I am not Japanese am I! I might have a word to him later about approriate use of the loud voice so he doesn't think that he has to be quiet all the time now. All the kids are heaps hot and cold in general. One minute they are jumping around all smiles, the next they are sitting with their head on their knees looking for all the world like they have taken a shot of valium and have been told that smiling will cause a bomb to detonate under their family home. I don't know what to do with that, I have enough trouble manipulating myself out of the shits enough to get excited about singing the Hello Song everyday.

Today is my dedicated Hate Japan Day. For the most part it is in my best interests to look only on the bright side of life during my here. This is supposed to prevent me from slinking into the depths of depression and jumping on the next plane home after screaming nonsensical abuse at the Japanese in general, a phenomenon that occurs occasionally among Westerners who come to live in Japan. But one day each month I give up my pretence of tolerance and patience and cheerfulness and rue the day I ever set foot in a country that fails to satisfy my soul on so many levels. One day of indulgence in self pity seems to be outlet enough for me to continue the rest of the month without becoming overly frustrated by the many cultural differences that can create a build up of tension. So today I allow myself to hate my job, the inept driving, the cold lunch, the fucking huge bugs, the lack of blue sky and the fake smiles I receive from my boss. Tomorrow, and for the rest of the month, I will not care about these things.

Janken hoi!

What I just saw confirms my theory that this country is mad; the principal and the vice-principal just played paper, scissors, rock to decide where the staff vacation would be taken. Absolutely bonkers.

C'mon, move a little! It's MUSIC

Yesterday I drank 3.26L of Yebisu. That is a beer in case you are wondering, not natural spring water. The consequence of such indulgence was me seated in front of the TV abusing the various dippy hosts and guests of the awful Japanese "variety" show. It wasn't easy to find points about which to abuse them. One show was "let's look back at singers of the 70s and 80s and show them how horrid they looked in sequined kimonos." Horrid is the only word for it. Or, maybe horrendous might describe it equally. So far as I can tell, the basic formula for being a popstar back in the day in Japan was to dress with an excess of shoulder pads and sequins if you are a woman, or dress in a black suit if you are a man, assume an incredibly unnatural pose and hold the microphone as if you expect it to explode at any moment. Also, moving your feet is illegal, as is movement of any kind below the shoulders. The face should always have a painful looking fake "indulgence" smile on it if you are a woman, but should never change from "I am trying really hard not to cry" if you are a man. During instrumentals it is best to just stand there, arms limp at your side with a far away look in your eyes (or even better, just close them and pretend to be so touched by the music and lyrics that you might be reduced to tears). My god they were BORING! And none of these now aging stars seemed particularly bothered by how dull their performances were. All of them had the screen appeal of a used tea bag and frankly nothing much has changed. Do they realise how DULL they are? What happened to their personalities? Did they trade them for the path to success? I think they should have opted to sacrifice their souls, at least it would make TV slightly more exciting.

Whale meat news

Oh yes, the verdict on whale meat: it's not that flash. Certainly not flash enough to stir up international controversy over. Oh but they just LOVE a bit of diplomatic biffo.

What is the point anyway?

It is an odd thing that the Japanese are so adverse to exercise and yet remain one of the worlds healthiest countries. I don't know what it is. I am sure people have studied this phenomenon (with far greater scrutiny and attention to science than I have), but it seems to me that thinking that you know your purpose in life makes you live longer. Most Japanese seem to have this innate drive to work towards the same goals; education, job, money, house, family and back to eduacation again, although this time for the kids. For most of them there seems to be little time, or even desire, for recreation in the sense that I know it. A few hours each week hitting golf balls off a 4 storey concrete block seems to be enough fun for the average salaryman. Somehow they plug through life, doing an immensely dull job, the point of which they do not understand and are probably not supposed to, saving money to spend on their childrens' education so they too can find an equally dull job and save money for their kids... At what point does the fun happen?

And when do they decide what they are doing anyway? They seem to just wander from one stage of life to the next without asking themselves if they want to, a bit like most of us wander from primary school to high school... that same kind of inevitability. Obviously I am generalising and there are Japanese who break outside of this circle, but for the most part I have been partially disappointed to discover that the stereotype is true. Even the younger teachers I work with here would never even dream of nicking off to Europe, or even SE Asia for a few months to just chill out. They are still preoccupied with the usual business of findng a husband/wife before their bloom fades and they are relegated to spinsterhood at the age of 30. I am living in the countryside though, and it has to be said that the country is usually somewhat behind in matters of social progress, but even my friends from the cities are similarly minded. No wonder they find my seeming lack of direction so infuriating. Just as much as I am puzzled by their disinterest in the pursuit of personal contentment, they are puzzled by my disinterest in material concerns.

You could say it was their diet, or their lifestyle that makes them live longer I guess. But I reckon it's this determination to acheive all these things, get lots of stuff. Dunno about you, but I would rather wander around the world seemingly without purpose just discovering stuff about myself and my surroundings than work at a shitty job 12 hours a day even if does mean I might die a few years earlier.

No Takeshi's Castle here

They have this show on TV, I don't know what it is actually called, but I call it the Heee??! show. Bascially heee?!! is the noise that Japanese people, particularly girls, make when they are surprised. It is like a variety show, celebs sit behind a desk with a button that makes the heeee?!! noise everytime they press it. The host shows them weird facts and things and they press the button as much as they are surprised, the trivia that gets the most heee??!s wins. Last night's triva included;

1. If you stand on an empty, recently washed PET bottle for one minute and then jump off a cloud will form inside.
2. If you stack 2 cup noodle cups on top of each other, the bottom one will appear larger.
3. If a boyfriend leaves his mobile phone alone with his girlfriend and a message comes, 4 in 10 Japanese girlfriends will read the message.

It is a heaps annoying show because you are constantly hearing Heeheeeheheeheheehehee!!?, and sometimes the people add their own Heee!!?s as well. Such is the state of Japanese TV.

Japan realises women don't need men. Crisis point.

Even though my leave has been approved for August I still have to jump through some more hoops it would seem. I have to give my employer an itinerary for my trip that includes which hotels I will be staying at and how long etc... Clearly the concept of "playing it by ear" has not caught on at all with regards to vacations. Also, they need contact details. Like, how can I be contacted if there's an emergency, will I be taking my mobile phone?? What kind of emergency are they talking about? I don't have any family here so what could possibly happen that the school would think they need to let me know about immediately? I gave them my e-mail address and they were heaps concerned that it wouldn't be enough information for them to get in contact. Is not the whole point of a holiday so that you can escape your normal life and not be seen, heard or thought of for a few weeks? I would love to know what they think they are going to tell me that can't wait until I get home. Oh, the rainy season has started, did you close all your windows? Oh, we heard that there was a car crash in Thailand, it wasn't you was it? Oh, there was a slight earth tremor, we had better go and look inside your house and see if it is all OK, where's your spare key? That would be the best ever, if they could come up with an excuse to actually enter my house and have a snoop around. They'd be loving it.

Do they think that if I run into trouble I will be calling them for help? I think I might try my family or the Australian Embassy before I ring them. Someone was telling me on the weekend that when westerners go on holidays here, espcially to places in SE Asia their contracting organisation often freaks out when the teacher disappears off the radar for a few days and starts sending out distress signals to all other westerners in the area trying to track down their wayward employee. I find it really weird that your employer would feel they need to pay so much attention to your safety. It is a bit presumptuous to believe that they could be more concerned than your own family and friends and to believe that it is their responsibility to "watch" you because no one else is. Plus, being quite an independantly minded person, I just don't like the idea that they think they need to look out for me. Do they think that a 23 year old woman is incapable of handling travel alone? Clearly the answer is yes, because they are so impressed by my ability to do anything from travelling to driving alone. On the news the other night there was this massive expose about how young women are (shock horror) beginning to eat at restaurants, you'll never believe this, all alone!! What is the world coming to when a grown adult female can walk into a restaurant, order food and eat it all by herself??! What does she do while she eats?? Just think? Doesn't she feel embarrassed because people think she has no friends? Doesn't she feel intimidated by the men around her also eating alone? Other activities some highly adventurous young women are shocking society with include going to movies, walking and travelling alone, without a companion, without a man, without even another giggling girl for company!

Good grief. Is this yet another social problem that needs solving? How do we get the girls back in their boxes?

Aussie Aussie Aussie!!!

Hehe. How fab was the soccer?! It was heaps dodgy all game, the Japs in the Aussie bar were really rubbing it in. But then in the last few minutes we creamed em! Oh yes, things have been very quiet at work today and Yamamura sensei has even called in sick. Shock. Poor man. To be honest it was the first game of soccer I have ever watched and it was fairly tedious at times but worth the waiting around in the end since the bloke running the bar had promised a free shot for every goal each team scored. So the Aussies had quite a bit more alcohol than the Japs in the end. A late night, but a good one. Gambare Australia against Brazil!!

Momotachi and the Sunshine Band go all the way

Weeee, I had a GREAT weekend. Plenty of running around, plenty of alcohol and plenty of happy people to drink it with...

My touch team, pictured here, was called Momotachi and the Sunshine Band. Our uniform consisted of Tshirts with various kanji on them (joyful, bonds, heal, push, vague...) purchased at the China town in Kobe. We ended up splitting the Okayama crew into 2 teams because Yamaguchi never rocked up and that left the competition with only 3 teams. Hiroshima was the other team, they were also divided into 2 so it was a very intimate little comp. We played from 12-5, 20 minute games. The field was covered in deer shit of course. Miyajima has more deer than you can poke a stick at (quite literally, if you don't keep beating them away with sticks they will eat anything you leave alone for longer than a minute). But it was grass of sorts and falling over wasn't catastrophic. The rules were that if a girl scored it was worth 2 points. The holistic drive that Matt taught us came in very handy and I scored a few tries by running through massive gaps created by it. There were a few domestics going on within the team, but luckily, being a newby, I had nothing to do with them and was totally unaffected by it all. The standard of play was great, the Japs on the other team were hella tactical but we had top notch defence. There seemed to be a good mix of people who knew what they were doing and people who were willing to listen to those who knew what they were doing. No ball hogs, only one whinger but luckily they tended to keep to the sidelines anyway.

Saturday night we had a BBQ down by the "beach" and fought deer away from our meat. Sunday morning we got up again for some running around and just played some scratch matches before heading back home. Our breakfast consisted of whatever food was left over from the night before but the other team had Japanese people in it who got up and actually cooked food. Scrambled eggs and miso soup and rice and stuff. Sad to say, but it was an example of what usually happens when Japs travel with Westerners; the Japs ended up doing all the catering and cleaning and organising and the gaijin just waltzed in in time to eat and run off again. Half of me feels embarassed by it, but the other half thinks that if left to themselves, the westerners probably wouldn't actually want a cooked breakfast anyway and would be happy doing what we did and making dodgy sandwiches. I caught a lift in a car and discovered exactly how expensive it is to use the freeways here. 2900yen for about 120km. No way you could afford to use the freeway without someone to share the cost with. I had caught the train down on Friday night which was only slightly more expensive and took exactly 2 hours whereas the car trip was about 3.

Anyway, I forgot to say the most exciting thing. WE WON! Yeah, Momotachi won the trophy, which is pretty small so you might have to squint to make it out in the photo here. I don't know who actually took the trophy home, oh, I will put a close up here for youse all!

We were going to drink out of it, but frankly it wasn't affording us the volume we felt we needed for celebratory drinks...

They're just so anal.

Is it really so much to ask for a little leeway? On Wednesday night I parted with 347yen to acquire the usage of a PC in an internet cafe. My time ran out on 20:28. I logged off and went to the front desk to hand back my card and the girl tells me that because I logged off at 20:29 I will hve to pay 87yen extra (the charge for 10 minutes use of the internet). What the fuck? I gave her a look that clearly said, "You have to be kidding." and she kind of shrugged her shoulders with a face that clearly said "I know it is kind of silly but that's the rule." and at least pretended she was embarrassed about it. But I guarantee you that at no point did it enter her head to just let it go.

"Oh, it's only a minute, which she probably spent packing her bag up, I'll just press clear and forget about it..." is what she should have thought. Instead she saw the computer asking for 87yen and thought, "I must get 87yen, I must get 87yen, I must get 87yen." Actually, knowing the Japs, the computer programme probably doesn't even have a just forget about it function. But clearly arguing about it with Miss Mascara isn't going to get me anywhere so I just paid and left and wondered if I will ever get used to how fucking fastidious the Japs are about such things.

I have concluded that I will never.

OhMYGOD it is absolutely pissing down and I have to walk home. Bugger. Oh well, saves showering later I guess...

Sneaky surprise cake

Poor Shingaki sensei. It was her birthday on Monday, which everyone who she had told apparently forgot about. She told me at about 4pm so I brought in a cake for her yesterday, but not before she managed to get a ribbing about getting old from all angles. She's only 28. 2 of her students from last year dropped by on the way home from the middle school and when she told them she had to go and finish her marking so she could go home they said, "Why? There's no one waiting for you." How mean is that! I think being 28 and single (and a woman) here makes you qualified to be called christmas cake (somehow all the Japs know this term and use it freely to describe many of the single foreign girls around here). A woman I met a few weeks ago was taken to a shrine by her private English class in order to "pray for a boyfriend so she doesn't end up on the shelf" in their own words.

Anyway, yesterday at about 4:30 Shingaki sensei gestured urgently at me to follow her down the hall and we went into the sick room where Moriya and Saito sensei had a contraband birthday cake together with candles waiting. So the 4 of us spring chickens (all defying the norm by being single) celebrated her birthday properly with a full bitch session about the rest of the staff. It wasn't too subtle, what with the smell of burning candles wafting throughout the hallway, but I thought it was heaps great to see some Japs finally breaking the rules and being all sneaky around their superiors. Maybe there is some hope for this country yet...

School days

Wow, you know the days are really flying by now that I actually have stuff to do here! I haven't sat down with nothing to do at all since Monday morning. I am loving it! First pool duty today also. That was fun too. Be better tomorrow when I actually remember to bring my bathers and all the rest of the bizzo...

Grade 3 class was cuuurazy again today and I ended up going off at Hiroki because he was pulling up the green tape on the floor. Once he was gone though the class was great. And then when I came downstairs earlier he was waiting for me in the staffroom to apologise and offer to help me fix it! On the way up to the classroom he told me that when he's worried about stuff he goes a bit mental and he can't really help it. That's all well and good I say, but how about just having a quiet fit by himself rather than disrupting the whole class with it? He reckons he will work on it. He really is a very smart kid, just either bad parenting or trouble paying attention or probably some combo of the two has made him a real shit to handle. I figure it's probably in my interest to try and befriend him if it means I can have a quieter grade 3 each week.

Meanwhile my grade 5s are working their way through the dictionary and surprising me each day with their new vocab. Today I got "penis, penis" yelled at me down the corridor. Except they pronounced it more like "penice" which was hilarious. I asked them to work harder on their pronunciation and try again next week.

Bookworm

Yesterday I spent 9 straight hours reading. It was so lovely. I sat on top of the railing surrounding my tiny "garden" with a pillow in the sun and read 2 books. Actually the first one, Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho (of The Alchemist fame) was a bloody good read so if anyone else has a few hours they need to kill, get onto it. The second book wasn't quite so challenging but still better than the alternative plan for yesterday; cleaning. On Saturday I went to the library in Okayama and signed up and borrowed 10 books which were terribly fun to haul home on the train. It is a good library, a massive English book section and heaps of computers with internet access. They are closed for the next 2 weeks for inventory though which is why I borrowed so much paper! Probably I should be spending some more time studying Japanese rather than reading in English... but sometimes I just get sick of it and want to be able to understand something immediately with little effort.

Japan is inefficient - my pet hate

Japan is, as I think most will agree, a highly technologically advanced country. They have machines that do everything, from GPS navigators as standard fittings in cars to spy-cams on school childrens' backpacks (also fitted with GPS trackers). And yet, I cannot go down to my local travel agent and book a flight. No no, if I want to take a vacation that hasn't already been mapped out to the minutest detail for me by Nippon Travel then I have to make a trek into the nearest large city to make a booking. But do not attempt to make a booking in simply one visit, especially not if that visit is made on a weekend. Because even though the agency is open for business, they are not selling anything. Yazanami and I drew up a travel itinerary alright, but then she informed me that the place that they apply to to check seat availability and ticket prices is closed on the weekends. So not only can I not pay for my flight, I can't even find out how much it is, or even if there are seats available. Does this not seem odd to you? All this fabuous time saving technology around and no one has managed to come up with a programme that allows travel agents to click around on their computer and tell you prices and seat availability immediately, much like they do in Australia?

So Yazanami is going to give me a call on Monday evening and tell me what the price is and if there are seats which should be an exceedingly painful conversation given her propensity to use massive keigo and my brain's inefficient keigo translation function. If, by some miracle there are no futher problems and I want to book the flights I still have to make the massive trek back to Okayama in person and pay the deposit before the end of the week.

On a related topic; Japanese lifestyle trivia point #16 - Japanese ATMs are not 24 hours. They open at 8am and close at 6pm everyday in the small towns. I am not sure if they are open longer in the cities, but I remember when I was living in Hiroshima getting stuck one evening without any cash and being unable to find a single ATM that was still open. Unlike at home where ATMs are just stick into the side of buildings, here they are set up iwth their own room so only one person can go in at a time, like a little toilet cubicle (cept it's all glass so you wouldn't want to be dropping your daks in there) and come 6pm the shade goes down over the glass and the door locks. No more cash for you. There are also withdrawal fees applied if you take out money outside of 9-5 Mon-Fri. I think they have rather missed the point of ATMs. What makes it even odder is thefact that Japan is a cash society. Nobody uses a credit card at restaurants or supermarkets here (I don't even think you can), they just carry massive wads of cash around with them. Pickpockets' heaven.

Pointless meetings

I am fairly certain I have mentioned this before but the amount of time that is wasted on meetings in this place is simply astronomical. Clearly, being new to the type of workplace where meetings occur, I am not the best person to critique such behaviour, but it strikes me that most of these meetings could be bypassed without it resulting in the collapse of the school. Yesterday there was a surprise meeting called at 3:30 for the grade 5 teacher, Kishinou-sensei, to read out what she had written on the handout she had put on everyone's desk that morning. Obviously I am not the only person here who it is thought cannot read kanji, (I can't see any other reason for the habit they have here of reading aloud everything that is written down. I thought the point of written communication was to reduce the need for assembling physically in order to announce events thereby increasing the time each teacher has to complete their own work on their own schedule). At regular intervals Kishinou-sensei was interrupted to clarify a point, by which it was made clear to me that my poor Japanese was not in fact responsible for my misunderstanding of her proposal, it was just the way it was written. I already knew what she was on about because she had asked me to make the materials for the new June module fo rthe Englihs class she is proposing. Turns out that even though she has already had me make all the materials she is yet to get approval from everyone to change the module anyway! Why the grade 5 English module has any bearing on the rest of the teachers I have no idea, but they all had to sit and listen to her explain herself and be questioned to the enth degree by Yamamura-sensei (who was clearly against changing anything). It was quite amusing in some ways I guess, and a good insight into how to oppose and support arguments while maintaining respect in Japanese.

After an hour and a half the meeting closed with absolutely nothing decided except that Kishinou sensei should re-write her proposal so that at least the native speakers could understand it. Tough crowd. I still don't know why all the teachers need to have an opinion, or even know about this change to only the grade 5 curriculum though. Surely this would have been better nutted out between only those who actually have an interest in the outcome? I guess it's just another way to force everyone to sit at their desks and pretend to listen for an extra 90 minutes each week, because we clearly need more practice at that.

Don't have kids, they kill you

The sun is SHINING! What could be better than that? Today the kids get to find out the answers to the questions I asked about the First Fleet last week. I bet they can't wait. Imagine having to wait an entire week to find out how many ships were involved in the perpetration of white Australia.

Last night yet another couple were stabbed to death by their own son. That seems to happen a lot here. I figure as long as I don't have children my chances of being murdered here are about as low as my chances of flying to the moon this year. The best bit was that the reporter went down to the scene of the crime, but for legal reasons (I assume) they are unable to show the actual house, so she is standing against a backdrop of fuzzed out streetscape which leaves me wondering what the point of her going down to the actual scene is. To add to the mystery she speaks in hushed tones, as though they are broadcasting from the actual funeral or something. Bizarre. So far no word as to why he did it, but I am betting it was an arugment about either work or study. ie. him not doing any and his parents wanting him to.