Tuesday muesday

Last night I had a little meeting with B about the speech we are supposed to make in December which is now only 6 weeks away. No more progress. We have extended our deadline until next Monday now. Yeah, that's totally gonna work! AND that means it is only 5 weeks until the JLPT, for which I have not received my rego card yet... does this mean I will have to wait until next year? I hope not. My excitement about studying has worn off somewhat and it's been at least a week since I so much as glanced at a kanji flashcard or looked at my grammar exercises. It's just so DULL studying alone. Actually, it's kinda dull doing everything alone. But today it is the 31st, which means that in exactly 5 months I can come home! YAY. Let's all drink to that (when you get home, I am not suggesting you drink on the job, unless you think you can get away with it of course).

My first robber!

Last night the most exciting thing ever happened. I came home from R's house at about 11pm I think, a bit tipsy after an afternoon of beers (and the worst film to ever make it to the big screen but more about that later) and went straight to bed after setting myself up with an ample supply of water to stave off any hangover possibilites. Just when I was drifting off into slumber I was brought back to my senses by what sounded like someone walking around above me. There is currently no one living in the apartment above so obviously these noises were a tad concerning. My brain was reluctantly coming out of dream land so it took me a few seconds to figure out that the sound of a sliding door wasn't the cupboard in the apartment above, it was the screen door on my window about a foot from my head. Just as I realised this I heard the wannabe crim trying to open the glass door, attempting to come inside the house I guess. Just yesterday arvo I had been lolling around on the floor in the loungeroom where I set up my futon at night and had spotted these little squares right down the bottom of the sliding door frame. I pressed them - cos I like pressing buttons - and a little block that is desgined to enable you to leave your window open for ventilation while securing the window from being opened from outside popped out. Oooh, I thought, how cute. So I ran around the house to all my windows and popped this little button, thinking not of my safety, but just having heaps of fun with this very satisfactory little popping noise it made. And bloody lucky I did too because if this person had come by any other day that I have been here he would have been able to just slide the door open and waltz right in since I often leave the windows and that door ajar for the fresh air when I am at home, and even when I am not. I reckon this guy thought I was not at home because he was quite noisy really, although I guess he wouldn't have expected me to be sleeping in the loungeroom with my head a foot from where he was planning on breaking in. He was quite persistant, trying the door back and forwards several times but it kept getting stopped by the little safety catch. I lay there listening to him struggle for a few moments and then just decided somehow to do something rather than just lie there and wait for it to be over. I leaned up and pulled the curtain covering the door aside and was face to face with this bloke balancing on my railing, as I opened the curtain I kinda growled "Fuck off!" at him, without really seeing him, just a black figure and he got a huge fright, fell backwards off the railing, stumbled over himself a few times and ran off into the dark, turning a torch on when he was a few metres up the path that goes across the field behind my house. I like to think that he was more scared than I was, especially if he thought no one was at home. I didn't see his face because it was too dark and I wasn't really seeing anything, just looking, it all happened too fast. After he left I lay on my futon listening to my heart thump away for a while, contemplating what might have happened if I hadn't been obsessed with pressing buttons. After a few minutes I got up and went around the house checking all the other windows and closing them all the way. For about an hour I lay there with my ears pricking up at every noise before eventually falling asleep. In the morning I checked outside my window and there was a pair of my undies on the ground, he had clearly been after a souvenir. Lucky he didn't get them because finding undies to fit my massive foreigner bum is not easy here! He must have been an amateur though cos after unclipping them from my clothesline he had dropped them down in front of the door which is very hard to reach without actually climbing right down in there. I have no idea why he tried the window, perhaps he thought I had less daggy undies inside? This morning I considered going to the police and telling them about it, but knowing how inefficient they are, a task like that would likely be very time consuming and I didn't want to waste my Sunday morning telling them the same story over and over again, especially considering that they obviously weren't gonna catch the person who did it when my description of the culprit would be "a black figure".

Anyway, yesterday arvo I was at R's house and we drank beer and made okonomiyaki which was mega yum. We also watched a film called Alexander which I had previously never heard of. It had Colin Farrel, Angelina Jolie and was directed by Oliver Stone and we thought we would be guaranteed at least a half decent show with this kind of talent involved. But OHMYGOD is was so awful. I would go so far as to say it was on par, if not worse than Daredevil. Actually it is probably worse because I'm sure they spent a massive amount of money on this film. If any of you have seen this film I am sure you know what I am talking about. The script was just terrible, you never had any idea what the hell was going on, who was talking about who, or why. The characters had a tendancy to make these little soliloquys, but it was just illogical rambling and never made any sense, they would say one thing and then contradict themselves 2 lines later. The most ridiculous part of the film was when Alexander faces off against an Indian on an elephant with his little black horse! Yep, they have the horse and the elephant rear up in front of each other in slow motion, it is supposed to be all serious and stuff cos this is when Alexander gets jabbed with an arrow - and we were all in tears of laughter at the ludicrous sight of a horse and an elephant facing off. I didn't know that elephants were quite so bloodthirsty as they have been made out in this film! One guy gets skewered by an elephant tusk!! And possibly better than that was the point when, during battle, a few of his generals ride up behind Alexander and tell him some bad news about the right flank and all he says in reply is "AAAAAAARGH!" and then the next scene begins "8 years later". What the fuck?? I wanna try that at work. A Japanese teacher comes up to me all polite and stuff asking me if it's ok to change a class time and I just scream in their face. It's giving me the giggles just thinking about it!

ONLY see this film if you really really want to waste 3 hours of your life or if you are tipsy and feel like a good giggle. Also quite mirthworthy is Colin Farral's hair and his boyfriend's big googly sex eyes. They should put it in the comedy section at the video shop.

Sing a song

Today I went over to the kindy as per usual. This week though they wanted me to help them with some English songs for the kids to sing at a concert they are putting on for the parents at the end of November. They told me about this on Wednesday and asked me to pick songs for them. I have no idea about songs for such little kids, sure if they were native speakers no worries, but I dunno how hard it's gonna be for them to learn say Twinkle Twinkle Little Star do I? The teachers picked out a song for the bigger kindy kids and the little ones out of the selection I presented. The little kids are doing Twinkle and the bigger ones are doing this song called Colours, (you'll never guess what that ones about!). So they line the kids up in front of me and say "there you are" and I am supposed to teach them to sing these songs - with actions. I dunno, I just make up gestures as I go along, and because I am just making them up I don't pay much attention to them and the second time we sing the song maybe they are different. So the kindy teachers have to step in and tell me to do the same gestures every time. And then when I finally get that sorted out they tell me to do different gestures, ones they have already prepared earlier. Why didn't they just tell me about these gestures to begin with? Would have saved me a lot of time and been less confusing for the kids. They continued to do this throughout the whole morning, asking my opinion on something, setting it up like that, and then just coming through and changing everything to the way they wanted it in the first place. Why didn't they just organise the kids themselves? Why did they ask my opinion if they weren't gonna listen to it? And why would they think I even care which way the kids wave their arms first? As far as I am concerned it doesn't matter, they could wave their legs if they wanted to, as long as they are having fun. She kept making "suggestions" and then looking at me for confirmation that it was a good idea and I felt like saying to her "I don't care!! Just do whatever you want so I can get out of here!" Never has singing songs been so freaking hard.

The upside of all this frustration was that I didn't have to do my normal classes so I just skipped back to the primary school when I was done with saying twinkle twinkle little star over and over and over and over. When I got back to the E-room there was a year 3 girl in there whose name I can't remember and she was just hanging out. I got her to play the piano for me and she was really good, dunno how her little fingers stretched that far but she was playing chords and everything. We hung out at recess and it was fun. She is the type of kid who is just happy to sit and watch you do your thing, she doesn't need constant attention or to be touching things all the time so it was fun. I don't mind if she comes in and plays with the stuff in the cupboard because I know she will put it back afterwards and won't break it. My Friday afternoons are pretty easy, the last 2 classes are years 3 and 4, they are the most well behaved ones. And they generally tend to be better because I am in a happier mood, it being Friday arvo, and I have practiced the games with the other year 3 and 4 classes during the week, ironed out any problems with games and organisation so it's much smoother running.

Tonight there is a speech at the BOE, a woman from Ghana I think. They have decided ot start charging people for going now, 300yen each. Apparently the money goes to the speaker, so if I do eventually get cornered into a speech myself, which has been threatened many times, at least I will get some compo for it. But then again, anyone who knows me also knows that paying 300yen to listen to me talk for an hour is a huge rip off so perhaps my audience will be very small!

In explanation of my technicolour blog entry today; As Sloth requests so shall he receive.

Vending Machine World

So yesterday I mentioned that the tiny construction site on the school here has installed its own vending machine. Someone asked what it was selling - incredibly boring I know, but it just sells drinks. Vending machines are a bit crazy here. They have them for everything - except food. Well, you will occasionally find one that sells hot food like rice balls, chips and lil frankfurts which I have never tried because frankly the idea of getting any of those things from a machine is a little bit shudder-worthy. But not the machines full of crisps, lollies and chocolate that you will find in Oz. The drinks machines sell lots of green tea, hot and cold, so much coffee and tea and sometimes cocoa. They have different soft drinks too - Fanta isn't just orange here, it is Grape and Melon and all sorts. The coffee is what freaks me out - there is so much of it and so many different kinds in these little cans. In winter though there is nothing better than getting a hot can of drink and putting it in your pocket to warm your hands up - if they don't have cocoa I just get a coffee one and give it to someone else to drink once it's gone cold! Aren't I lovely?

Besides that they have beer vending machines, ice cream vending machines, mask vending machines and I have heard that they have undies vending machines but I have never seen one. The beer ones are the best because they just have this little sign on the front saying "alcohol is only for those 20 years or older!" As if that's gonna stop anyone! Oh, cigarette vending machines are rife - the Japanese love to smoke. And when I went bowling there was a shoes vending machine, but it was called an Automatic Shoeser in perhaps the closest thing to a legitimate creative use of the English language so far.

I just remembered that I can change the colour of my font - so thought I'd make use of it. Doesn't that just enhance your reading experience?

Oh, speaking of dodgy English, there are public buses in the major cities in Japan that all proclaim in large letters that they are non-step. I assume they meant "non-stop" because that's what the Japanese in smaller letters next to it says and those buses also have a lot of steps. You'd think before they printed something in 2 foot letters on an entire fleet of buses across a nation that they'd run it past someone to check wouldn't you? Oh no, we know best, we studied English for 4 years 20 years ago...

Shokuin kaigi - Hell on earth

How long can a group of grown adults talk about the same issue without resolving it? Yes, I know this is a stupid question - else world peace would have been created by now. But seriously, do we need to discuss the various benefits of having the kids walk up the central staircase as opposed to the east stairs for quite so long? I'm dying here.

Oh, I noticed on my way in to school today that the construction area next to the staffroom, which used to be the old school building has not only a portaloo and small smoko room for the workers but a vending machine! This tiny little area with not more than 10 workers has had its own vending machine installed - BIZARRE

Whatever will be will be

Just another random photo. This is the Peace Dome which is , you guessed it, in the Peace Park in Hiroshima! Heaps of foreigners come to look at this building which is held up by a fanstastic amount of Selley's Allgaps and the occasional iron girder. They keep the building here to remind people of the past. But to be honest, it doesn't do much for me or for many Japanese people who weren't around during the war - an increasing number. It's not the kind of situation you can imagine very easily, and a random decrepit building doesn't help much, it's not obvious by looking at it what happened - you'd find buildings in a similar state of disrepair in any country of the world. I dunno that the problem these days is getting people to believe that nuclear weapons kill lots of people - it's getting them to believe that it is not the only option. It seems a lot of people think "yeah the bomb is bad, but what else are we gonna do?" and are quite happy at that. There's a Japanese phrase shouganai (しょうがない）that means "this is all there is" and they use it all the time when they are under pressure to do stuff. Like at my previous work when I was talking to a teacher about overtime and he was saying that it sucks and that no one wants to do it but because the boss still expects it... shougani - that's all you can do. Umm, no, you could just not do overtime! 50 workers leaving work on time aren't gonna be stopped by 1 boss. This is a cop out phrase and it is used way too much, not only in Japan but in Australia too. OK, so we don't say that particular phrase, but everytime we shrug our shoulders and say "that's life" we are doing the same thing - and we seem to do it more and more.

Crime wave or paranoia?

This morning on the news Minomonta was up on his high horse delivering a sermon about looking after the elderly. It appears the the incidence of elderly husbands killing their wives has increased recently (or rather, someone just noticed how often it happens recently). According to Grey Hair #1 expert in... well they don't tell you that, but he was wearing a really important looking suit and someone had clearly combed his hair for him, the reason why these blokes are killling their wives is because they are ill and can't look after them. So for example the wife gets Alzheimers, the hubbie has to suddenly look after her in much the same manner that she looked after him for the last 60 years and finds he can't cope with it. The cooking, the cleaning, the endless unreasonable demands. Oh, it's all too much for old Mr Tanaka who has previously never had to do much more than wipe his own face after a meal. Granted he is elderly too, but isn't it funny how the figures on elderly wives who kill their ailing husbands is not worthy of mention? But I guess these relationships are not always based on love and respect and so forth and the older generation aren't quite to accepting of the divorce culture. The other day on the train I watched an elderly couple get on and the husband bagged them a seat near the door and put their bags down and the wife starts saying "Oh, no lets sit over there" and walks off. The husband has already sat down so he kind of hesitates for a few seconds trying to decide if he should follow her or not, meanwhile she is saying "Come ON" with mega impatience in her voice and waving her hand at him like he's a disobedient dog. He decides to stay where he is and the wife sits down, clearly quite miffed, and is determined to stay where she is and sits staring intently out the window for the next hour of the journey. So they both sit alone, both sulking and more than likely adding to a growing sense of contempt for each other. You can't say they'd be quite happy to nurse the other for the last 5 years of their life!

But everyday in the news they find some statistic about crime in Japan with which to scare the population. Yesterday it was about the number of child abuse cases recently. Apparently a few people recently have been using starvation as a disciplinary tool with their kids. Funny how well behaved kids are when they are too emanciated to lift their head. While disturbing - when you look at the size of the population here, the incident rate is so low it's barely worth reporting, and certainly not worth the huge crisis talk status it's receiving. It's almost as though the Japs want their country to be dangerous. People are always telling me to be careful cos it's so dangerous - what?? You can't tell me a country where a person can leave their iPod on a park bench and come back in 5 hours and find it still there is dangerous. Shops leave their merchandise out on the street all night it's so safe! I have never felt unsafe here. Although I also have to say that I have never felt unsafe in Adelaide either, even with my "dangerous" walk across the bridge over the Torrens behind the uni. I think for the most part people wish Adelaide was dangerous too. Most of the residents seem to love a bit of self-deprecation. Aboriginals sit in the street - sometimes drinking grog, oh my god what a fucking nightmare. Have a look at Redfern in Sydney - that's a problem. Someone got stabbed in Hindley St - can't go there any more. What crap.

Well, I'd love to go on about this some more, but I have classes to prepare for.

Royal encounter

I forgot to say that I saw the Japanese prince on Saturday. As I was trying to cross the road all this blue rope was put up by the cops and we had to wait about 5 minutes for his procession to pass. About 15 cars full of security personnel I assume went past and then he flashed by with his window down waving. I didn't know what was coming so I didn't have time to get my real camera out and hence have only this rather dodgy mobile shot in which you can't really see him at all. His car was very shiny. The Japs were all heaps excited and afterwards I heard one bloke say to his wife, "Wow, his face is heaps tiny" - which is also something I get told a lot over here!

Hiroshima visit

Here is a picture of the Peace Museum which is found in the Peace Park (remarkable I know). Contained within are thousands of depressing photos and bits of skin and the like all designed to horrify and increase anti-nuclear weapon sentiment. I have been inside about 4 times already so I didn't visit it. Frankly just looking at the outside of it fills me with a feeling somewhat similar to that which Frodo must have felt gazing upon the black gates of Mordor - I mean it's a very ugly building. But it was built in the 50s I believe so there you go.

Also, here is a picutre of my legs and shoe for no reason other than it is the only picture I have of myself in Hiroshima. Saturday night turned out to be a very quiet one indeed with no one drinking. But Friday night I did have rather a splendid time with R at his place in the sticks eating cheese, chocolate and drinking more than an appropriate amount of red wine. For some reason there was also a small amount of Cointreau consumed and let me just say now - I do not recommend anyone to follow my example because it sure makes for a messy recovery. Saturday I was sleepy as and needed all the concentration I could muster to keep my mind on whatever I happened to be trying to do. In the afternoon I wandered around Hiroshima for at least 2 hours trying to find just one item of clothing for myself. Nada. I did find a couple of nice tops, but they were all WAY too small for me. I asked the salesgirl, do you have anything that isn't a size M (which by the way, I could never have any trouble getting into in Australia, but here it is like a 3XS) and she says No sorry. I asked her if all Japanese people are the same size and she laughed. It wasn't meant to be a joke. She then said that the tops were stretchy so if I wanted to try it on, it would probably be ok. I said thanks, but I had no intention of looking like someone who has recently put on 10 kilos and is in denial because they can still squeeze into their one stretchy top. She laughed. Again, it wasn't a joke. So I bought nothing. I am convinced that I will have to just wait until I get home to do any shopping. It is a big ask to go 12 months without any new clothes - especially since most of the winter stuff I brought is already about 2 years old and it all has those funny little balls of fluff stuck on it. No problem for school, but if I ever want to go out somewhere nice it's pretty much impossible to avoid looking a tad daggy. I also didn't find any socks. But I did get in heaps of exercise I guess since I was walking for about 4 hours straight all up!!

Weekend combobulations!

This weekend I am off to Hiroshima again. This time for my friend's birthday celebrations. I am quite excited about the prospect of actually having some fun this weekend! The last couple of days though my throat has been heaps sore and I feel a tad weary - I fear that illness is brewing. And of course it would wait for the weekend to unleash itself upon me in order to be the ruination of as much fun as possible. I'll be hoping for a complete loss of voice symptom so I can skip out of school next week :) Not that that ever happens. I once had laryngitis (sp?) and didn't even lose my voice then - I am unable to be silenced, even by serious throat infection it seems!

I'm gonna head down on the train early tomorrow morning and spend some time in the library studying, do some shopping and then meet up with everyone for drinks. I like doing my shopping in Hiroshima because I know where all the shops are and don't have to wander aimlessly looking for things all the time. I need new socks because all of mine have holes in the toes owing to my feet being way too long for them. My socks generally have a 6 month life. Even in Australia it is hard to find women's socks long enough for me, the standard size is 2-8 and I need the 8-11 size... and they always make mens socks in heaps dull colours. I like the toe socks, you know like gloves for your feet? They keep your feet heaps warmer in winter here so I'm gonna stock up again. It's even better if they go right up to your knee cos it keeps your whole leg warm!

This weekend I was supposed to have finished writing my speech for December... it is SO far from being even started that it's not funny. Perhaps I will think about that on the train on the way down and back (if not sleeping). Have a good weekend everyone!!

Blah blah blah

Today the school lunch was the weirdest one yet. Some kind of weak soup with carrots, potatoes and onion, sultana roll, mandarin and this weird kind of deep fried something with chicken. They have all these weird vegies here that I have never seen at home and consequently always forget the name of . Anyway, it was one such vegie with the chicken, all covered in satay-like sauce which was bright orange. It didn't really seem to go together, like soup with sweet bread? What's with that? I reckon they must have been scraping the barrel when they came up with that one. The kids were equally unimpressed, especially when I couldn't say what the orange stuff was called in English!

After lunch everyday we have 10 minutes of school cleaning and the year 5s clean the English room. At the moment the naughty kid is assigned to my room. So he comes in and waves the broom at people, trying to take their noses off, runs the little carpet broom over the floor and tries to roll the string from the venetian blinds up inside it so he can have an excuse to sit down for 5 minutes and unravel it. At the end of the time he opens up the bottom of the thing and empties all the dust and shit he collected all over the floor next to the bin and buggers off to terrorise his next class. I do not know this kids name, but he is followed constantly by a "keeper". This teacher (I just assume he is a teacher, I don't know what his real qualifications are) just has to trail around behind this rowdy kid all day and make sure he doesnt kill anyone or interrupt too many lessons. He rarely comes to my classes, and when he does he gets bored is taken out halfway through because he is distracting the other kids. It's nice that htey have the funding to give kids like that individual care, but they are kind of just making him worse I think. He gets so much special treatment that he sees no reason to modify his behvaiour. He never has to attend class if he doesn't feel like it, he gets away with saying whatever he wants to whoever he wants and never uses his manners like the other kids have to. He just wanders in and out of the staffroom as though it were his loungeroom - if any other kids do that they get screamed at and told to go back and start again, saying "excuse me" and all that. So while it appears that they are doing something for him, they have actually just given up on him completely. Of course it is good that he doesn't disturb his classmates, but he himself is getting no help whatsoever. When he goes to middle school he won't be able to continue as he is now, but will have no concept of functioning as a normal student and will just get left behind again until he can leave school and the teachers can be rid of him. It's a bit sad really because he is a bright kid, he just has never been disciplined.

Splitsville

Yesterday I watched this TV show about divorce. It's getting more common in Japan, the stigma seems to be lessening with more and more celebrities being part of the club. They basically had a panel of female and male celebrities who just argued about whose fault what was and it was pretty funny. Apparently arguments over the temperature setting of the airconditioning unit is a really common way for divorce proceedings to be started. The major gripes of husbands include;
- Wives not letting them eat their food with heaps and heaps of mayonnaise and sauce on it.
- When holidaying wife packs heaps of clothes for the kids and themselves but only a T-shirt for them.
- Wife asking them which dress/skirt/pants they like and then ignoring the suggestion and wearing what they already had decided upon.
- Cooking too much food for them.

And the women's gripes are;
- Hubby taking the occasional weekend off of work, taking the kids out and buying them everything they want that she already said no to weeks ago.
- Having to go and visit hubby's family every New Years rather than her own
- Asking what hubby wants for dinner and he says "whatever" and then complains about what there is at the end of the day.

It strikes me that most of these concern domestic matters, like it is obvious from the complaints that the women are still doing all the housework and cooking and apparantly even packing! Bloody hell if you can't pack your own bag then you deserve to spend your holiday in the same clothes. But I guess the men have to put up with housewives, which means that they get stuck with someone whose main preoccupation is getting the stains out of the kids' clothes. Actually the surveyed the audience and 80% of the men admitted to being bored by their wives' conversation! How's that for a happy marriage.

Engrish

It's been a while since I put some Engrish up here so I thought I'd add this one that I found in the supermarket the other day. Seriously, can they not run things past a native speaker before they print it on their products?

Next stop Kashmir?

Yesterday afternoon was a little bit mental. The kids at Nishi had organised some activities for us to do and so on. They gave us prizes and I ended up with a massive piece of newspaper folded in to a paper crane, a kangaroo, a koala and a Christmas themed pluto doll. I gave the toys back to M after the kids had gone cos I didnt really see what I could do with them except put them in the back of my cupboard until I leave Japan whereupon I would throw them away. It was a bit tiring really. When I got home I ran into D from upstairs who invited me up to see his holiday shots. They were pretty interesting, it made me want to go and check it out for myself really.... add that to the list of places to go. Well, I really didn't know that much about Kashmir before, but now I know a little. He visited this town, I have unfortunately forgotten the name of it, nothing a little Googling wouldn't sort out I am sure but I am already signed in here. Anyway, we had a look at it on Google Earth and a whole bunch of this town is built over a massive lake. Some of the houses are houseboats, some are built on re-claimed land and some are on stilts, but they have encroached quite dramatically on the lake which is apparently quite shallow. D says that they live on the lake because the land is overrun with Indian soldiers who are "protecting Kashmir from Pakistani invasion" or making sure they have a good possie from which to invade Pakistan - either or you know. The trekking he did in the mountains looked really beautiful and well worth having a look at, even though it was quite expensive they got looked after 5 star style with people carrying all their equipment and cooking for them and everything. Turns out the riot that happened while he was there was about a Kashmiri who had sentenced to death by the Indian courts. The Indian soldiers are there to supress such uprisings of the people of Kashmir with a few stray bullets here and there I guess. So Kashmir is in Pakistan, China and India and they each wouldn't mind owning the whole thing of course, and the Kashmiris wouldn't mind being independant. So it's not the stablest of regions, but I'd still like to go and have a squiz.

I wish you a merry rainfall

This morning we had a music assembly. Each month the school has a different song for the students to learn. This month it is the creatively titled Sing a Song which makes the tuneful yet dubious claim that any time you are feeling any emotion what so ever you should just sing a song about singing a song. Hmm, I remain unconvinced. The kids have been practicing it every day for a while now and so they are pretty much all over it. What makes these assemblies annoying for me is the music teacher. She has one of these voices that is perpetually just a tone or two higher than what you would consider a normal range and I cannot be sure whether she is putting it on, or if she really does speak like that. Today she was attempting to explain to the kids how to create a good sound with their voices by screeching down a microphone at them, there hasn't been such a paradoxical lesson since I told my kids off for swearing last week.

Having survived this ordeal at 8:15 on a Monday morning with my pleasant mood intact I feel somewhat optimistic about the rest of the day. That is until I am reminded about having to go to my old school and participate in "english activites" with the grade 5s this arvo. Someone has allowed our weekly CIR meeting time to be taken over with meeting kids and letting them practice their English on us. I am not impressed. Monday is child free. I have no classes, I skip out early for the meeting - it's practically the weekend for me and today it is going to be ruined by being forced to say nice things about some kids' crap English skills. If this were a pantomine this would be where the BOO HISS cards were held up.

In more exciting news; I have had mail today from a friend who is talking of the possibility of coming to visit me here in Japland. YAY! This is the best news I have had since... I can't even remember when! Sightseeing plans are formulating in my head already - concentrating mainly on the sights from the inside of the closest bar of course - but still a quality holiday.

Sat'day

Well Saturday evening approaches and there isn't a skerrick of fun in sight. R cancelled his birthday celebration plans and nicked off to Osaka because no one responded to the group e-mail he sent out inviting everyone. Of course, as soon as he cancelled it everyone replied saying they'd be there, but it was too late by then, he had cracked the shits with Okayama prefecture in general.

Well, in a State of the Ricefields update; they are harvesting the rice now so all the fields have black stumps sticking up out of the hardened mud and rows of bundled rice plants hanging upside down over A frames to dry. Everything is getting quite brown now, as things tend to when winter approaches I guess. Brrrrr

It be the weekend again!

Yeah this week there is no poem - sorry. My creative juices have been sucked dry by thinking up new games for next week's classes. So this weekend again nothing on the cards. It is R's birthday on Sunday and there were tentative plans for a party of some description the last time I spoke to him - but it is likely that nothing will actually happen. I have been trying to call him all week but his phone reception is just the worst over the hill in whoop whoop where he lives. He's got more genki than me I tell you what, if I lived over there I would probably never ever see anyone cos the hour walk to the train station is just a pain, especially when the weather is awful. A taxi ride costs him 2000 yen, which is about $25 so it's not the best of locations from which to party.

I got rid of my car finally. It had been sitting in my driveway for two months just reminding me every time I came home of how slack I have been/continue to be in not doing anything about it. I called the insurance man and he came to my school last week and got the key and took it away to be scrapped. It cost me $100, which is cheap compared to the $1000+ it would have cost to re-register and try and sell. So a 4 year old car is dead. Nothing is built to last anymore because nothing is allowed to last. If I did try and sell the thing the only people who would have shown any interest would have been other foreigners. Cars over 7 years old cost an absolute fortune to register and the annual safety check is wildly expensive too so most people would trade their car in at about the 6 year mark (if that) and get a new one. This means that having a car loan to pay off is virtually a permanent feature of most household budgets which is crazy to me because there's no way I would ever borrow money to buy a car. The real shame of it is that there are so few real old cars around - you know back when a bumper bar was actually capable of bumping something without collapsing. It makes the road scenery kind of vanilla. Sometimes I see an old mini or something, but a lot of the cars are the new brightly coloured boxes - all the same but with different trimmings.

So now I am committed to a car-free lifestyle all through the cold cold winter... Hmmm, I may come to regret this decision when I am walking to my new school at 7am and it is below zero. Higashi-sho is a good 30 minute walk from mine I reckon so I will have plenty of time to lose all the feeling in my toes before I arrive. The schools aren't heated here. When I arrived at the beginning of this year the schools were so cold my toes were constantly numb and I had goosebumps all day. Bring on winter!!

Well, one of my tasks this weekend is to come up with an appropriately amusing costume for Halloween. Since there are so many Americans here there tend to be a few parties going on so I'll no doubt be going to some such event for fun and games. Last time I was here my friend and I dressed up as Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. It involved a fair amount of papier mache and cardboard action and we looked absolutely fab - but no one knew who we were meant to be of course! The best part of the evening was riding the street car into the party with big green gumnut hats and gumleaf skirts on. When we arrived everyone was like "Oh, are you elves?" and we started talking to these Japanese girls who had arrived just wearing civvies - we asked them what they were dressed as and they shyly pulled these cute sparkly cowboy hats out of their bags and put them on. Zero for effort there! And they said they were embarrassed on the way in cos of how they were dressed! They took the hats off straight after that, apparently even in the company of two gumnut babies they were embarrassed to be seen with hats on. Well, I am pretty certain that whatever happens this year it will never live up to my last Halloween party experience, but it still could be fun!

Hey you! Yeah, with the hair and stuff...

Today I scared the hell out of my grade 5s by telling them that they would have to perform a skit for me in 2 weeks time. In order to practice the new sentence patterns I have been trying to teach them and to try and actually have some fun in class I decided to just let them make their own fun under the guise of English learning. But turns out that putting on skits and so on and so forth is not much fun for these kids. A couple of the kids were almost excited but most of them looked like they were trying to think of a way to be absent from school that day. Anyway, I told them that I don't want a Broadway show, I just want to get a laugh out of it. We'll see if they can come up with anything interesting.

Today I had an awkward situation where I needed to call out a teacher's name but realised that I didn't know it! I've been here for a month and half now so I should really be getting around these names - but I still only know the more common Japanese names. So I sat down for 5 minutes today and made myself memorise all their names and what grade they teach so I don't get caught out again. Maybe I should have done that a few weeks ago... hehe

Oh stop it!

Yeah so Japanese news was going off about the North Korea issue of course. They always go to South Korea and interview people on the streets and ask them how they feel whenever North Korea does anything that could be interpreted as trying to start a war. Actually they interpret an awful lot as this very intention... So from what I could gather with my dodgy Japanese that unfortunately doesn't yet include much of the vocab used to talk about nuclear weapons testing, they've exploded some kind of bomb of similar size to the one that wrecked havoc on Hiroshima 60 years ago. Everyone is freaking out left and right. I am not sure why. I mean, clearly nuclear weapons are bad, but everyone has em! Cept Australia of course. But we just assume I think that we are too far away and small to be bothered with. The Nth Koreans would have to be mental to go around dropping bombs on their neighbours, and despite all their bravado I don't reckon they are that mental. They do occasionally fire missiles over Japan and South Korea - just to keep everyone on their toes, but they are not gonna go around dropping nuclear weapons on people. That's America's job. Anyway, I love how they go over to South Korea and revel in how freaked out everyone is. Like Japan is SO much safer being practically swimming distance from that very penninsula! I've got my little alfoil hat - I'll be fine.

Mr Grim

On the way to school today I passed another dead turtle. The climb out of the big pond next to my house and down the grassy bank and fall onto the road where they get run over. Usually I just see black, turtle shaped figures on the road, but this one just had his shell cracked where a tyre had hit him I guess but aside from the he looked normal - only dead. It must be hard for wild animals here to live without encountering humans since we are bloody everywhere so I felt a bit sorry for them. Death has been the theme for this weekend. Everywhere I go it is written about, talked about and just plain there.

It's just me & myself these days

I have had a very very quiet weekend. Saturday I stood in my kitchen and embraced the lovely warm feeling that is given effect by the contemplation of 3 long days of nothing stretching out before me. Ah, yes and doesn't it seem nothing but a distant memory now. I spent Saturday in Okayama, doing some shopping for birthdays that are coming up soon and in my usual internet cafe haunt watching dodgy movies. I did not speak to a single soul all day. I didn't even realise that I had done this until I thought about my day late Saturday evening. I came home with 4 books from the library and was halfway through my first one when I laughed out loud and realised that was the first time I had heard myself all day. So I sat back and reflected upon how strange and kind of exciting it is to be so surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of people and yet be so very alone. For an entire day my existence mattered to no one, I was not part of anyone's plans, I basically did not exist! I spent yesterday in this very same cocoon, I did leave my house for a walk or 3, but mostly I was just reading my books lying on my loungeroom floor soaking up what sun I could through the window and listening to Mr Fucking Snippy and his mates cutting down the last of their rice plants and doddering around in the field. I was forced outside for a walk when they all decided that nothing would top off the days work better than a quick run around the bottom of my windows with the whippersnipper. Nothing perhaps, except then lighting a fire to burn the cut grass a way down the hill from where the easterly breeze carried the smoke with much nonchalance, in the way that smoke has, straight into my house.

Sunday night I returned from my late arvo walk over the hill, sat down to read my book, looked around and realised that I might quite like some beer. So out I went again, this time purse in hand, and off to the supermarket where I was waylaid on my way to the beer fridge by the sight of some rather cheap red wine. It is a pretty well known fact that a cheap bottle of red is a far more economical choice than beer when you compare the price/alchohol volume ratio. So a few minutes later I was marching back home with my $6 bottle of CabSav from somewhere in Chile which made me feel extremely international indeed. I sat in my lounge with my music turned up very loud and a glass and bottle next to it, still not quite up to drinking straight from the bottle even if I do live alone, looked around and realised there was nothing much for me to do but carry on reading. So I did. 3 glasses later and I was still reading - although suddenly finding what was before me a lot more amusing than I had been previously. Before I could continue on to finish the bottle R from over the hill rocked up and barged into my house without knocking - he is turning Japanese. He made short work of the rest of my wine and the we moved onto demolishing the beer he brought with him before he disappeared back over his hill home having served his purpose as a distraction to my tipsy mind for long enough to make me sleepy and I subsequently nodded off, fully clothed and sprawled across my futon like the wino that I clearly have become.

This morning I was famished, having had a somewhat liquid dinner, and also a tad foggy headed. In an attempt to combat the decidedly festy feeling happening inside me, I had a shower and blow dried my hair, put some make up on and got dressed as though I was going to meet someone I very much liked. This wasn't the case of course, I was just doing that thing they say to do when you are feeling sad or grumpy; smile and your mood will follow. I figure if I look sharp on the outside, the rest of me might stop grumbling and pull itself together. So far this seems not to have worked but my hair looks damn fine. I am here now in a what will surely prove to be a vain attempt to get some study done and also research for my bloody speech in December. It is only 2 months away I realised this morning, and I have done precisely diddly squat - except spend an awful amount of time imagining myself delivering this speech in marvellous Japanese without a hint of nerves and the bare minimum of cock ups. I do have a vivid imagination don't I!

Ode to Friday

Friday Friday
Means the end of work
Too bad that it chooses
The end of a long week to lurk
I say we make a change
And loosen up a bit
Make the weekend the week
And chill out a little bit
Alas there are very few
Who approve of my plan
They talk about productivity
My idea goes in the can
So we must make do I guess
With the Friday as it is
And cherish it as it deserves;
Heading out and sinking piss

Thursday Schmursday

Today I have a work thing tonight. Some kids are coming over from TTG in Adelaide and staying with host families for the weekend. They are having a reception to welcome them and some Chinese students too and I am "translating". This means I read a prepared statement off a page right after the Japanese read a prepared statement off a page. But I am told that the food is massive and I will be taking advantage of that to stuff my face. I was hoping maybe for some free beverages too but there will be kids there so no beer. BOO.

Last night I got paid for the private English classes I took for my neighbour while he was away in Kashmir avoiding riots. It was quite a bit of money so I am heaps stoked. I was running on low this month cos of my rather indulgent trip to Hiroshima on the first weekend after I got paid. Stretching finances over a month is heaps not fun. I also received a package from a friend with such Aussie items as Arnotts Bush Biscuits, Charlesworth Party Favourite mix and a hankie with Aussie animals on it. :) I went for a walk in some weird big fat slow rain and wondered briefly whether I had perhaps turned into Superman and had the ability to run really fast which was why the rain seemed so slow. But no, still just Jo.

I am eating with the grade 3 class this week and they are SO great. They made a list of questions they want to ask me and they take it in turns to stand up and read one out to me after we finish eating. They ask me stuff like "what's your favourite flower?" (a question I recently learnt how to answer) "is your mum's cooking yummy?", "which country do you most want to go to?". They are probably the most curious bunch of little kids in the whole school. The grade 3 classes are heaps smaller too because there are 3 of them, only about 25 kids in each one so they are much better behaved and a real pleasure to hang out with mostly.

Being vegetarian in Japan - harder than you might think

Last night I had a few beers and stayed up a bit late so I am a little sluggish today. But it is an easy day. The grade 3 class is gonna happen in the gym where I am gonna get the Kanga Cricket set out and just let them play that for 40 minutes or so. They'll love it and I'll occasionally yell something out in English and it will totally pass for E-time.

There are a lot of school excursions happening this week so lots of classes have been distrupted. The grade 2s are away today, yesterday the grade 3s were away so I got to eat my lunch in the staffroom while it was still hot! Yay. It was a terrible lunch though, half a bowl of rice with a whole grilled fish balanced on top, miso soup and spinach salad. Not very filling and not particularly yummy either. The fish was ok, I just left the tail though. I am fine with eating fish heads now, but not tails. Miso is yum, but not filling, it is just water with seaweed in it after all. Sometimes you get an occasional piece of tofu or carrot, but mostly it's just water. Today it's rice and pork soup. They love a bit of pork over here and consider it a vegie. Some vegetarian people here have told me that often the Japs will say to them, "you can eat today's lunch, no meat" and then they look at the soup and it has pork in it, or the salad has ham pieces in it. No meat my arse! It is really quite hard to be vego in Japan considering that traditionally they are a culture without much meat in their diet.

Kiddie suicide

Yesterday turned out to be a bit of a waste of a day off for me. I went to the bank to transfer money home but couldn't because I didn't know the address of my credit union at home, I went to the doctors and sat in the waiting room for an hour and a half before deciding if I wasted any more of my day off there I might well be truly sick and I didn't find a birthday present for my friend, nor go to the post office! Nice work. I did, however, see a movie. I ended up seeing The Lake House since there were no Japanese films worth struggling through screening. It was an ok film, the dialogue was a bit stilted I thought but they got their general message across. They ruined it (CAUTION SPOILER AHEAD) by making the ending happy. I came home and did a bit of study, ate a bunch of mixed nuts for dinner and choofed off to bed. I have just recently discovered cashews. I have always hated them and picked them out of mixed fruit and nut bags, but now I have decided that I quite like them! So now my nut eating has spread to peanuts, almonds, pistachios and cashews. Still not a fan of walnuts or macadamias though.

This morning on the news they were talking about a grade 6 primary school student who killed herself in her classroom. I didn't hear the story from the start, only when they were discussing it afterwards so I am not sure where it was, I think up north somewhere. Anyway, they had this girls suicide note all blown up and on a massive screen so that Minomonta could read it out word for word and comment upon it. I don't take much notice of these kind of things at home, perhaps because it doesn't make the news as much, but do they usually publish the suicide note? Anyway, she said that she had been a victim of bullying since grade 3 and had just gotten sick of it so decided to top herself in the classroom. The note is addressed to "everyone at school" but I wonder how many of them will actually feel any guilt about what she did. It seems a bit crazy to me that she could have been picked on for so long and no one saw it or did anything about it, but I guess there are schools where that happens in Australia too - just fewer kids are likely to tops themselves over it for some reason. Pretty big issue though when you have 12 year olds killing themselves - didn't anyone tell her that there's more to life than school? While I feel sad that she was a subject of bullying for so long - the bullying she describes is nothing worse than what I and I am sure others have experienced at school, mainly name calling. Why do these kids let it get to them? Obviously the kids who end up killing themselves have a different personality from me so it makes it hard for me to be fully sympathetic to their plight - why do they believe what they are told by these idiot bullies? If someone calls me disgusting I think, "according to you, and what do you matter?" Not that it doesn't make school life a bit tricky, but it's no reason to go removing yourself from the world - then the bullies have won.

I am interested to know what approach Japan takes to bullies - if it just concentrates on eradicating them - or if it puts efforts into toughening up the victims too. I reckon the kids here could do with a boost in self confidence, especially the girls.

Wet weekend

Well, my open day class is over and done with. It is always heaps weird to conduct a class with a bunch of adults just standing there watching in the back. My technique so I don't get flustered is to just ignore them completely. I never look in their direction and never refer to them being there to the kids. It seems to work, mostly the kids ignore them to. But there was one dad today who decided to lean in the window near the blackboard and shout out the vocabulary words while I was putting them on the board. Wanker. The kids were kind of less energetic than usual at first but by the end of the class they were ok again - livened up by plenty of game action.

So now I have 2 hours to kill before the end of the day and I can go home and just relax again. Tomorrow I have lots of odd jobs to do. I was thinking of going and seeing a movie as well. Just because I don't get to watch much quality here since the TV is crap and I don't have a VCR so I can't hire videos. I dunno that there is anything quality screening at the moment though anyway. The ladies I was teaching yesterday told me about some film with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in it which is a re-make of a Korean film about 2 people separated by 2 years but communicating through letters or something. I reckon the original is probably better. There might be a more appealing Jap film out I can see.

This evening I am meeting up with R and B to sort out our Aussie speech for the event being held on Dec 10. We have been asked to make an hour long speech about Australia after they have a screening of Rabbit Proof Fence so I am trying to sort something out. They would like us to do it in Japanese since they want everyone to come, not only those who can speak English. Big job. I was thinking of just giving them each a beer and a Tim Tam and getting them to watch a footy game... Actually it's quite hard to find footage of stuff like that to show them. I was trying to find a video of cricket to show my grade 3 class but I couldn't. Doesn't help that DVDs have the whole area code thing going on so you can't just get something sent over from Oz. Well, we will have a few beers and sit on it for a while and I am sure inspiration will strike!

Friday night I went out into the city and met up with some foreigner friends I haven't seen in a while. We went out for tea and then on to the Aussie bar where we drank them dry of Coopers Pale Ale :( and then on to drink in the street for a while. There is no law in Japan against open bottles in the street so upon failure to gain entry to a karaoke box due to the apparent need to make a booking on a Saturday night we went to the local convenience store and bought beer. We sat around on some steps being all untidy and stuff until about 2am when the last of us decided finally to push off to bed, which for me was an internet cafe of course... I met some new newbies who have arrived only a week ago to teach for private school, Nova. The foreigner circle in Okayama is a little bit incestuous - everone knows everyone so whenever new blood arrives it is pounced upon and examined thoroughly before an assessment of character is made and quickly passed along to the rest of the crowd who will surely be kicking themselves for having missed the opportunity for a first hand squiz. I had a very pleasant and refreshingly intellectual conversation with one such newbie, enough to make my evening worth while. Sometimes going out and talking to other foreigners here is a little like smacking myself in the head with a knobbly stick with boring carved into the end.

Saturday morning I had to get up quite early and choof back home to teach those private English classes I am doing. Their rightful teacher comes home today so I am all done with that now. It wasn't a fun time really. Most of the students are elderly and sometimes they just want to talk about pretty boring stuff. I was struggling against not only my boredom but slight hangover and severe lack of sleep. We ended up talking about tattoos and why they are so bad in Japan. Do you think that when I am old I will have as little capacity for broadminded thought as these old people do? Or have they been narrow minded their whole lives? Anyway, one of them gave me some fresh vegies from her garden which was lovely and I had some sauteed green beans, eggplant, capsicum and asparagus for dinner. Yum. I had a bit of a nap in the late arvo and then went to bed fairly early so this morning I was all back to normal ready for work.

Yes, it is raining.