The End

Well here we are. The final word. My apartment is empty, my bags are packed (or very soon will be) and I have bid everyone I have never met at the Board of Education and the City Hall farewell. I am leaving. Let's have some fanfare or something! So I will make this my last blog entry. Tomorrow it doesn't seem likely that I will get internet access and then I am off to Korea for 5 days. Thanks to everyone who was reading - I hope I didn't bore you too much! God knows that most of the time my life over here has seemed a drag even to me. Daily life is the same anywhere, in Adelaide, in Japan, in Paris - life is just life. Living overseas isn't day after day of excitement and being overwhelmed by new things and feeling like you are on an adventure. It's just like home - there are a lot of average days and a few tops ones, and a few bad ones. Simply the act of being overseas is not excitement in itself. It can be, but home can also be exciting too. Enjoying life is less about where you are and more about who you have surrounded yourself with. I enjoy life a lot in Adelaide because I enjoy the company of the people I know there. With the right people a tiny town out the back of Burke could be a tops place to live I reckon.

On that note, here endith the diatribe and the blog.

3 days to go

Last night I went over to the Yamamoto's place for dinner. They were my host fmaily the very first time that I came to Kamogata in high school. Their daughters were both still away, but their son came home from work at about 9pm. It was a really fun night. I just kind of ft into their family dynamic really well, it is just heaps easy to make conversation with them. Usually I feel very awkward and out of place when I go to Japanese people's houses because they never let me do anything, I just have to sit there like the Queen while they fuss around me. This family just treats me like a member and so I get to be more comfortable. Our sense of humour matches too, which helps a lot! I should have caught up with them more while I was here. The father gave me a few stamps out of his collection, I got to pick the ones I liked the most. I am now in possession of the daggiest stamps you have ever seen - they made me laugh so much I was crying.

Today I have to go and greet the Mayor and say goodbye. I will also be required to make up something about how much I enjoyed my time here and how lovely it is to be a teacher here. Better go and work on that then I guess, it's hard to lie convincingly!

In response to a query

One of my readers asks, "So what do you do with yourself now?"

Let me give you an account of my day so far;

08:03 - Arrive at work and discover my desk covered with random papers and a large wall hanging, assume everyone believes I have left the country already and wonder if it's possible I can just sneak back out of the staffroom and escape on the misconception.
08:04 - Too late I've been spotted by the vice-principal.
08:05 - Stamp my name in the attendance book. Note the 3 remaining empty places before I get to never see the thing again. Smile.
08:05 - 09:18 - Sit at my desk and stare at various objects. Possibly I am trying to levitate them, even I am not sure what I am doing at this point.
09:19 - 10:10 - Recover what's left of my senses, pull out a book and switch to staring at that for a while, at least this way it appears I am actually doing something besides practicing for a gig as the I Fell in a Paint Can Statue Busker in Rundle Mall.
10:11 - Am interacted with for a few moments by the head teacher who asks me to hang the pile of crap that was on my desk earlier and is now lying on the ground by the coffee maker in the English room. I nod eagerly in reply. The picture was filed under my desk where it will be about as appreciated as if it were hanging in the English room.
10:12 - I tire of pretending to read and decide to pull a laptop out of the cupboard, put it on my desk and make a start of translating the English Curriculum book into English.
10:17 - I tire of translating and instead look up "solipsism" on the internet. Wikipedia is a great time waster cos it has all those little blue links everywhere and in no time at all I am off on the biggest tangent since year 10 maths.
10:34 - Receive e-mail from a CIR at another school asking me to check if my school has an MD player capable of recording MD to MD. It does. He says he'll come by at 11:30ish and use it. I say OK.
11:14 - I am pulled out of my digestion of Sarte's biography by the arrival of my co-worker looking for the MD player. Thangod cos reading computer screens really hurts my eyes and my butt is getting pretty numb despite at least standing and walking around aimlessly every 30 minutes.
11:15 - 12:05 - We watch the MD player copy music and dance to the Hokey Pokey and Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes songs while our Japanese co-workers' fingers hover over the Mental Hospital button in their quick dial.
12:06 - I ask for permission to go to the bank and a granted it by my very distracted vice principal who is pulling bits and bobs out of the photocopier that I really don't think it's wise to touch. Off I go, how excitement, an excursion off school grounds!
12:17 - At the bank, brandishing my inkan and this time I am allowed to empty my bank account finally. The woman at the desk and I exchange glances, we had words yesterday about the necessity of a stamp with my name on it for accessing my money, a stamp I might add, that ANYONE can simply take out of my drawer and march around using. A stamp that anyone can have a likeness of made at any stamp shop. Yes, it's a foolproof identity verifier alright. She's still pissed at me for questioning her system.
12:20 - I start the walk back to school laden with a stack of banknotes about as thick as your average novel. I ponder just jumping on the train to Okayama and spending up a storm but then remember that I can't fit into any of the clothes or shoes they sell here and there are only so many books one can buy before the necessity of owning a car becomes apparent. I continue back to school.
12:21 - It starts raining.
12:25 - It starts REALLY raining.
12:38 - I am back at school with wet hair and a more than strong desire for the return of yesterdays clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine. I discover my co-workers all slurping 2 minute noodles and watching the baseball on a 20 year old TV hung from the ceiling at the back of the room.
12:45 - I finish off my sandwich and yoghurt and wonder for the millionth time how people who really are not eating any better than me can manage to stay so thin.
12:46 - I resume my Wikipedia digestion because there is simply nothing else to do.

And the end of the day is still 4 hours away...

Last Day of School - for the kids

This morning we had an assembly for the last day of school. The principal gave a little speech about looking after yourself during the break and not getting run over by cars and stuff. At the end of his speech he was supposed to say a few words about me and that was my cue to walk up on stage to give my speech. But he completelyl forgot about me! He just finished up on his flu talk and walked off, the head teacher had to make him go back up on stage and introduce me. I made a short speech thanking the kids for all the letters they wrote me last week and goodbye and goodluck. Then a year 5 kid came up as a representative of the school and read out a farewell letter to me and handed it over. As far as I can see the assembly is the only thing on the agenda for school today, they all go home at 11:40am. Until then they just stuff around I guess, get their reports. I'd forgotten all about grades, report day used to be my favourite day at school. That's just because I was a bit of a swot in high school though. It soon wore off after I started uni though!

So today is the 1 year anniversary of my arrival in Japan... This time a year ago I was probably struggling up any one of the seemingly endless flights of stairs installed in train stations specifically to annoy baggage ladden foreigners. In 5 days time I am facing the exact same struggle in reverse. It will come as no surprise to you all that I am very eager to be out of here. But there are some things I will miss about this place. The first thing that jumps to mind is the lack of spiders and creepy crawlies here. I have not seen a single spider inside my house since I arrived! I have had tiny flying insects and the occasional alarmingly huge cockroach and have had one Jesus Bug living in my bath. But on the whole, a very peaceful existence on the unwanted house guests front. Another thing would be the cheap and abundant ice cream - seriously I will not be able to pay $3.50 for an ice cream at home after paying only 70c here! I will miss the clean, prompt train service (although not paying for it), the most extensive recycling system I've ever encountered and the 100yen Shop - Daiso. Man, we really need Daiso in Oz. You can buy just about anything you need from there, for only a dollar. All my towels, crockery, cutlery, toiletries, cleaning products, everything that usually costs way more than you think necessary, you can get for cheap at the Daiso. The $2 shop is like a beggar's garage sale compared to the Daiso.

I will miss my mates down in Hiroshima. Perhaps if I had lived a little closer it would have been a funner year. I always have a good time with them and especially now that my Japanese is good we can actually have real conversations now. I will miss speaking Japanese, and being surrounded by it. Although sometimes it annoys me with it's fussy rules, there are many times when the first word that pops into my head for a situation is Japanese, because it's simply more economical than English. For example rather than saying "Did you eat?" I can just say "Tabeta?" Three words in one, easy :) Having said that it will be nice to get back to an English speaking environment and stymie the first language attrition that has reduced my speech to garbled sentences full of hesitations and gaping holes where a very good word I used to know would ordinarily go. Seems a bit of a waste to become so proficient and then just put it all on the shelf, but short of becoming a high school Japanese teacher (yuck), or spending more time in Japan (yuck) there's not much I can do about that. Plenty of other langauges to learn anyway!

It's just not quite right, but a fair effort...

The milk which had just been squeezed was made to ferment carefully, and the strong cheese of the taste was completed.

Bag me a bag

Haha, seems everyone was quite amused by the photo of my co-workers! The dude standing on my left is Mizukawa Sensei and quite a tops bloke. He is heaps laid back and likes to talk about real stuff rather than just how good my chopstick skills are. He suggested that we all make silly faces for the photo and I guess the only person who took him seriously was himself... My principal does have a largish head doesn't he! Speak of the devil, he's just come out to gaze about in here for a few moments. I swear he does absolutely nothing, just like me then! But perhaps a little more concerning because he is supposed to be running the school. He isn't a very hands on principal. At some schools they get involved in everything and run around with the kids at lunch and so on. This bloke just sits in his office and sighs when he has to leave it!

This evening I am going to jump on a train to Hiroshima and have a night out with some mates down there, the last opportunity for fun before I leave this country for good. If there is one thing the Japanese do well, it is bags. They have a million different types of bags here, well made ones too, leather in all sorts of colour, not just boring old black and brown like you seem to get in Oz. I have been keeping a look out for one for months but the stars just never aligned for me. If I find one that I really love, I am not in the mood for spending that much money on a bag, if I am in the mood, I can't find one that I love! Might be better off leaving it for Seoul actually, something tells me the Koreans will have plenty of bag action happening too. It's a bit hard to explain, the Japanese obsession with bags. I mean, in Oz everyone carries handbags too after all. But here it just seems a bit more like a hobby rather than simply an easier way to cart your shit around. It is not uncommon to see a girl walking around with 2 or 3 largish (in my opinion) bags hanging off her arm. And rather than hold the straps of the bag in their hand, they will bend their arm and make a hook out of it and hang the bags from it. I have no idea what they are carrying in these bags or why they need to be so big, but they just often are ridiculously over-bagged (that is totally a word). One problem seems to be that they don't believe in backpacks. They are fine if you are going backpacking, or are a school child, but it seems that women my age, just on their way to work, do not use backpacks - not stylish enough. Granted most women my age on their way to work are wearing a suit and tottering on high heels and stockings, not a look complimented by a backpack. But even when I was at uni here, all my Japanese friends would be dragging around heavy bags, dangling them off their arms, knocking about their legs - it's not very practical. It's not just real bags either, they love a shopping bag and will re-use it again and again, just to put their green tea bottle in, or their umbrella when they go out. I should point out that shopping bags here are not plastic rustlers like at home, they are full on glossy cardboard numbers with cord handles. I have a cupboard full of them at home because whenever someone gives you something it must be in such a bag. The more prestigious the name on the bag, the better too. Someone who has never been overseas in her life once gave me a peach in a Harrods bag. I would have been happy to stick the peach in my backpack!

Well, that became quite long winded didn't it! It's the small differences.

My Co-workers

Engrish

Here's an amusing item Miss BV and I found while she was here. We ate at an Italian place called, rather predictably, Mario's. At Mario's they had pizza which looked half decent in the window display (or should I say harf decent?) but turned out to be absolute rubbish and we had to turn out evening into an impromptu progressive dinner, filling up at another restaurant. We did get a Harf & Harf pizza, one side red, one side white. I cannot wait to get back to Australia and have a real pizza! There is way too much corn on Japanese pizza, and nowhere near enough cheese.

The Japanese have no problem with "r". They have many of them in their own language. The reason why they stuff it up in English though is because they can't say "l". In this case it's pretty obvious what's happened, the l in half just sounds like an r to them. But sometimes you get an l where there should be an r and you wonder about that. Usually this is because they have just overcompensated for their difficulty in hearing the difference and just guessed an "l". So I get stuff like, "Plesantation" sometimes. It's heaps cute.

Bow

Yesterday was the Spring Equinox - that's a day off. Tuesday night I had a couple of people over to my house for drinks by way of a farewell event. I made spaghetti and garlic bread (found the aluminium foil up the back of the cupboard so it didn't burn this time!) and drank an entire bottle of Yellowstone Chardonnay... and a few other items too. But all things considered I was feeling pretty tops on Wednesday morning. Did some cleaning and reading and then in the arvo I had a siesta in the sun streaming in through my lounge window! A cat's life.

On Monday night I went with another CIR to his house for dinner and to play some game called Guitar Hero. It was heaps of fun but unfortunately I didn't really know many of the tunes on the game - the did have some Franz Ferdinand though. Anyway, on the way home we stopped at an optical store to purchase a pair of sunnies that R's girlfriend had coveted last time they were there. He knew which ones they were and we basically marched in, pointed at a pair of sunnies and said "These ones!". There were about 5 employees at this shop, all doing nothing, so they all jumped up and started running about looking after us. We got to sit down at a little table, R had to choose a case for the sunnies, decide about a warranty, whether he wanted gift wrapping, what colour gift box he wanted, they also wanted to fit the sunnies to his face (even though they were clearly women's style) and I had to point out that they were a gift which started the gift wrapping commotion. Then when we thought it was about to be wrapped up, so to speak, they brought out tea for us! They were still figuring out the warranty card so we had to wait a bit longer and they spent that time fussing about the bag to put it all in and sticking gold shiny labels with their shop name all over it. Finally they had everything sorted and we left to a chorus of ARIGATOGOZAIMASU! and some serious bowing action. They even followed us to the doors of the shop and stood there bowing some more as we walked out into the carpark. It was a HUGE fuss of the kind I imagine you never see in Adelaide shops unless you march into Max Mara and purchase the entire line.

In Japan there are lots of different bows. The most common, the one that happens in general conversation everywhere is the little head nod. The shoulders don't really move that much, it's just the head bobbing up and down. The next step would be a head and shoulder bob, but not leaning right over, just as though you have bad posture. That one happens when the school gets a random visitor, or you meet a kids parent outside of school. The next step is The Bow. That's when someone actually "important" comes along. That means you bow from the middle, your back stays straight, head down and you're really supposed to take your hands out of your pockets. You don't see this one very often. Sometimes in assembly, at the Board of Education, but even there they are pretty casual these days it would seem. At the glasses shop we got The Bow.

Congrats

Today is the Year 6 Graduation Ceremony. It's all a bit chaotic over here with people running all over the place frantically. So I decided to just sit here and look at stuff on the internet...

***

Here I am several hours later still surfing the net... No I haven't been doing that the whole time! The ceremony kicked off at 10 and finished an hour and a half later. There were thankfully no tears. The teachers seemed just relieved rather than sad to be seeing this bunch of kids off. The ceremony itself was very stiff and dull. A rather long speech by the principal made it slightly excrutiating, he is a man of many words but with little to say. All the parents came dressed up inthe same black garb as the kindy kids' parents last week. Same bunch of flowers pinned to their jackets. 2 mums were dressed in kimono but the rest all looked like mourners. I don't understand why they feel the need to dress in black. It is possible to appear formally dressed in something a bit more cheerful than head to toe black! Everyone must be in uniform it would seem. After the ceremony there was a lot of standing around of course, a staff photo - one of my eyes is half closed in it because of the sun and I look like I have some kind of palsy. Finally it is lunchtime and there is much organising to do - biscuits to be handed out, tea to be made. Finally everything is ready, but no one will sit down and eat, they are all faffing about waiting for the tea and miso soup to get cold. Nothing irks me more about eating in Japan than the whole waiting for everyone else to start eating habit. There are a lot of things that irk me, but that is the most annoying by far, primarily because it ensures that I never have a hot meal.

After lunch I took a book to the English room and have been reading ever since. But my bum went numb from sitting on the cold floor so I came back to the staffroom to warm it up. A job that is too busy is certainly a hassle sometimes, but there is nothing more likely to induce depression and life ennui than a job that is too slow. It just leaves way too much time for self reflection and thinking in general. If I must be at work, let me be run off my feet, the time goes much faster that way.

Are you even here?

The count down begins in earnest now. Only 9 more school days left until I am officially doing NOTHING AT ALL for an as yet undetermined period of time! I'm very much looking forward to not having to be at work every day, and not even having a point at which I have to return :) I'm sure in a few months time when I am broke I might feel differently about that, but how many times do you get to truly do nothing like that in a life?

This weekend I went out to Okayama on Saturday to visit the library and get a few volumes to keep me company while I am at school this week. Trouble being that I already read most of them yesterday! Oops. In the evening I had arranged to meet up with a girl whose travel books I had borrowed months ago and return them. Turns out she, and a bunch of other foreigners, were going out for dinner to celebrate someone's birthday. I tagged along to have a chat and catch up with a certain Sydney-sider. After a dinner during which I endured such scintillating conversation as "How to identify skim milk" we left to wander seemingly aimlessly for half an hour before they all decided to go to karaoke. I excused myself there because I had run into my neighbour and some more interesting people going elsewhere and wanted to catch up with them. Very relieved to be leaving the group I had dined with because they make a great spectacle of themselves wherever they go. The way these people choose to live in Japan is very different from what I know. They make no effort to learn the language and just speak English unashamedly at people, they cling to each other for no reason other than that there is no one else around. I have no interest in making friends with people based only upon the fact that they speak the same language as me. A dickhead is a dickhead in their native land, or here. If you need evidence of the fact that they simply tolerate each other so they can kid themselves into thinking they have friends, just consider how quickly the group crumbles every time there is something to be organised. There is a kind of association or some such set up by JET which is supposed to help the foreigners adjust to Japan and keep each other company, they organise such things as trips to Mt Fuji and so on. Initially I was a little bit jealous that they had such support and just something to do. But I soon revised that thought after hearing all the bitching and moaning that inevitably follows every outing.

Saturday night I just felt embarrassed to be seen in such a large group of foreigners who were doing everything they could to perpetuate the stereotypes of gaijin that I have been trying to break the whole time I've been here. No wonder the teachers at school STILL don't believe that I can read their alphabet when most of the foreigners around here actually can't. Sunday arvo I was at the travel agent paying for my ticket to Seoul (YAY!) and an American walked in and announced loudly, in English, that he wanted a ticket to the USA. He wasn't a tourist, he lives in Okayama, and yet something as basic as asking about a plane ticket, he can't manage it. To me learning the language of the country you live in is as important as following the laws of that country. Living in Japan for an entire year and being unable to say a single sentence at the end of it is simply lazy and disrespectful. If you cannot speak the language how can you even say you were living here? Anyway, the evening was just a bit of an eye-opener for me about how many foreigners really do just bring an Australia/America/Canada/England bubble with them, blow it up on the day they arrive and never step out into the real Japan.

Moving along... Sunday wasn't planning on going back in to Okayama but I received a letter from the travel agent confirming my reservation for my ticket and asking for money, since I can't get in there this week at all I decided to just get it out of the way straight away. Luckily I hadn't used my return ticket the night before because there is never anyone checking the tix when you get off the last train so I just kept it and used it again! JR is such a rip off you take whatever opportunity you can to get a free ride. I went back to the travel agent where I'd sorted my flights for Australia out to see what was going on and they STILL can't tell me how much it's going to be. It's such bullshit, it is now less than 3 weeks before I fly and they are still saying that it's too early to pay for the flight because they don't know how much it's going to be and the "taxes are still fluctuating" or some crap. How do people organise a holiday if they can't pay for it until the week before they go? It's just plain weird.

On my way back through the station I stopped at Anderson's Bakery for a little yummy roll they make and a quite peculiar thing happened. I was just sitting there minding my own business when an African bloke asked me if anyone was sitting opposite me. I said no, so he put his bags down and said he'd be back in a second. Off he went to the Jupiter (foreign food store), he came back, handed me an apple juice carton and the newspaper, sat down and we started talking. It was a very strange experience our behaviour was as though we had known each other for a while. We spoke only intermittently, I was reading the paper the whole time, and yet it wasn't uncomfortable when it was quiet. Generally I hate meeting and talking to new people because of that uncomfortable silence that inevitably creeps in after a few minute of exchanging the usually information about oneself. After 15 minutes or so we both stood up and left.

It's Friday again

Have a great weekend everyone! It's my second to last weekend in Japan and I am doing NOTHING :)

Some flowers

It's not often you receive flowers so I thought I should celebrate it by posting it here. These were given to me by the kindy kids at the end of their graduation party. It's a pretty odd mix of flowers I think - but then not having received bunches of flowers in the past I guess I wouldn't really be the one to judge! Anyway, they are currently brightening up the kitchen in a way that dirty dishes can't.

Today I have my last English class in Japan. Year 5s. That means that of the 9 hours I am at school I will only be actually working 45 minutes! Wacky-do. And next week I am here for a grand total of 45 hours without actually working a single one. Might have to visit the library in Okayama and get a fair few reading materials out I reckon. On Wednesday my year 3 class gave me letters they had written thanking me for teaching them through the semester. Some of them were heaps vanilla and probably copied off each other, but others were heaps funny. It's good to get feedback from the kids on paper I think because they aren't standing up in front of the class and thus are more likely to say what they are actually thinking about it all. One kid said that she hated English last year but now she loves it and will work harder next year so she can get really good. A lot of them noted that in the beginning they couldn't say "ambulance" but by the end they could and they were happy about that - but they all wrote the word "ambulance" in Japanese script, so spelt phonetically, and they all had obviously heard a different pronunciation because they all spelt it differently which was interesting.

Congratulations, you're 6

Yesterday I attended the kindy graduation ceremony. It started at 9:30am and lasted for over an hour. The kids had to go up one by one and receive their certificate from the principal and then walk to the back and hand the paper to their mum who rolled it up and put it straight into a tube they had all brought for that purpose. The mums were all crying, and soon afterwards teh kids were all crying too. One boy cried, no, he was hysterically wailing for the entire ceremony. Through all the speeches you could just hear this one kid hicupping and choking and carrying on like a 2 bob watch. It is pretty insane when you consider that in less than a month they will all be starting school just over the road with the exact same classmates! And what, exactly, have they achieved anyway? They just got older. Let's not waste 4 hours of my day because some kids got older.

Everyone was dressed all in black like it was a funeral or something, and had big flower arrangements pinned to them. I had to wear my suit even though all I did was sit there. After the ceremony was finished all the guests went into a big room and had coffee and cake - I was shuffled off to the staffroom where I sat alone in front of a cup of coffee I couldn't drink for 20 minutes. Finally they came and said that it was time for photos. We all lined up, the kids, the parents, the teachers, everyone in the one photo. They love a good group photo I tell you what! I then managedto escape back to school for an hour but had to go back at 12 for lunch. They had prepared bento boxes for all of us. For 2 hours I sat and listened to the parents banging on at each other about their kids. Finally they started wrapping things up and speeches were made, I had to say something, and they gave us flowers and a present which I discovered later was a photo album. It was such a fuss over nothing!

Well, if that was the kindy graduation, I hate to see what the year 6 graduation will be like next week!

A resolution to a mystery

Saturday night I have a return of my wannabe burglar. This time I turn my light on and call my upstairs neighbour. Thankfully he answers and jumps up immediately and runs outside to investigate. I fully expected the intruder to be gone, scared off by the light, but my neighbour discovers him still standing in front of my window, hands in pockets as though contemplating something. He recognises him as one of the teachers from a school I have taught at this year and calls out "Sensei!" to him at which point said sensei runs off. Neighbour gives chase, probably behind him by about 15 metres or so and calling out to the teacher by name to stop. They run for about 500 metres I guess before sensei disappears up a narrow alley or somesuch and my neighbour doesn't want to follow cos it is pretty dark and he doesn't know the area at all. But he has seen his face and knows for sure who it was. At the time all this is going on I am running around the house perimeter trying to find my neighbour who had yelled for me to get outside before he gave chase.

Eventually my neighbour returns, puffing, and tells me the name of the troublemaker. We are both heaps surprised and shocked at who it is. I am tempted to call the police immediately but my neighbour thinks we are better off giving this bloke a chance to sort his shit out privately. If we tell the police he will lose his job and never be able to find another one. This teacher is in all other respects, a nice guy. So we call his mobile, which he of course doesn't answer, and we leave a few angry messages (we are pretty riled up what with all the action) requesting that he call us back and meet us tomorrow morning to discuss this or we will tell the police. We go back to bed (not for sleep in my case) and wait for the morning.

Come 9am Sunday morning there has been no phone call. I decide to go the police and am just leaving the house when my neighbour calls. We discuss the options and what to do for a while. We drive around the area where we know this teachers lives and look for his car. We leave another message asking him to call us. My neighbour says let's leave it til 11am and then if he doesn't call we'll tell the cops. (The reason for so much hesitation on our part about telling the cops is more than just the hassles it will cause our crim, but the hassles it will cause for us - or more particularly my neighbour. The police here are very distrustful of gaijin who don't come from white western countries and will likely not believe my neighbour, or at least cause him heaps of hassle by coming to his school and questioning him a lot. He had one such experience once when he witnessed a car accident and wasn't keen to repeat it. Plus there was the concern that the cops would do nothing at all). At about 10:30 my neighbour gets a call from sensei; Help me please. We agree to meet at 11am in the carpark of our apartment. From there we drive to a nearby restaurant and sit in a secluded area. At this point I am feeling quite like laughing because it's so like a bad movie. We are sitting, the three of us, in the booth of a smokey diner with morose expressions on - we could be about to rob the joint. I leave all the talking to my neighbour and he does a good job. The sensei explains why he was at my window - an explanation which seems a little dubious upon reflection but which I will take because I don't want to think about the alternatives. I won't elaborate here because who knows who is reading this. Needless to say, it will provide for a good story when I return home!

The thing was resolved anyway. Sensei won't be coming to my window any more and he is contrite as all hell. Just another weekend in sleepy Kamogata town!

Sunday's pondering material

If you had a lovely work colleague, a person who is well respected, who is great at their job, who participates in many extra curricular activities that help many many people what would you do if you discovered they were committing a crime that, if exposed, would mean the end of their employment and employability - forever?

This is the conundrum I am facing today.

Wax on wax off

Little footsies.

It's waxing day here and the kids are all barefoot in the classrooms running up and down with cloths to get the boards clean. It's about 10 degrees - if that were me my toes would already be frostbitten!

Here's one of my year 4 classes;

Social society

Another week draws to a close. I now have 3 weeks left of work. The time seems to be passing both quickly and slowly. Something to do with relativity I'm sure. I remembered this morning something that happened to me a few weeks ago. I was walking home from school on a gloomy day and it started to rain very very lightly. A car pulled up in front of me and a woman hopped out and began waving an umbrella at me "sensei, sensei, would you like an umbrella?" I had never met this woman before (that I can remember) but she clearly knew me, perhaps I teach one of her kids. I refused to take the umbrella because I had no way of returning it to her but I thought that it was a peculiarly kind gesture. How many people in Australia would see a teacher they recognise from their child's school and just offer them something like an umbrella! Perhaps it is a product of living in a small town, or perhaps the Japanese are just kinder to strangers than we are in Australia. I'd like to think not. But I do recall several occasions in Australia where I have been very disappointed with people's behaviour. For example once while running for a bus in Adelaide I watched a young woman struggle to get a stoller, an infant, a toddler and a large nappy bag up the steps. Those lined up behind her, mostly middle aged business men, simply stood and watched her looking impatient at being held up. I folded the stroller up for her and lifted it onto the bus (hence skipping the line :) and voila! problem solvered. Why are people so slow to just give a simple helping hand in situations like that?

There are of course other less desirable effects of living in a small town. While Miss BV was here we had the contents of our shopping bags assessed by a man working in the bottle-o. He decided we were having nabe by looking at the vegies we had purchased and when we contradicted him and said "no, Curry." He was all in amazement, "You put mushrooms in curry??" And generally made a big deal about the funny things gaijin will put in curry.

Some of the spazzes I teach at this school...

My birthday cake!

Chocolate chocolate!!

One bottle of red = little or no tolerance of small children the following day.

Freaky behaviour - all in the eye of the beholder

I was just stood up by my year 6 class! I organised some super fun games for them and everything since it was supposed to be their last class. Huh.

Oh well, just means more internet surfing time for me. Yesterday in class at the end of a game I had the winners stand up and do the "champion dance". It's a way of making sure no one gets the shits at not winning because if they DO win they are forced to perform a silly dance in front of their classmates making it not altogether a good thing. The kids were all standing around looking at each other waiting for someone else to start them off so I started dancing around like a dickhead to encourage them. One of the girls goes "How come you're doing such an embarassing dance?" (nande sonna hazukashii koto suruno?), to which I replied "Because I'm not embarassed." (hazukashikunaikara) and she was heaps weirded out! I love freaking the kids out with stuff like that. Especially because they are so easy to freak out. That reminds me of a story my neighbour told me. When he was living in America he once pretended to blow his nose on the inside of his jumper and totally freaked out the girl he was sitting with! I don't think she realises it was a joke to this day.

You said wha??

Ah, so today I was asked again what i thought about taking off from work from March 26th. I asked her if it would mean that my pay would be affected. She said yes, so I said that I would stay until the end. Having 4 days off is not worth losing that much pay over. The kids won't be here so I'll just be reading books in the English room anyway, which is exactly what I'd be doing at home. Might help the time before my flight pass quicker I think. So I am here for 4 more weeks rather than 3. oh well.

I have a small cold today and it has affected my voice for some reason. During this morning's classes I was just whispering at the kids. Actually it works well cos they have to be quieter to hear me. Maybe I should start talking like a mouse all the time? Nah, mousey voices annoy me, can't be doing one myself! Just gonna go home and rest so that I can play soccer tomoz...

Mega Toast

3 more weeks of work. Heheee!

Had a slow weekend. We got around Okayama and did some shopping. Well, I would have done some shopping had I found anything I wanted to buy. I got sick unfortunately and so wasn't feeling much like partying really. Very quiet Saturday night then. We went out for dinner at some pizza place called Mario's or something and it was SHIT pizza. Didn't feel all that full after that so moved on for the second course at another place and then had toast at yet another place. So it was an impromptu progressive dinner. The toast probably needs explanation since it's not usually the first choice when dining out. In Japan restaurants often have the menu in plastic form behind a window out the front. We saw on one plate a HUGE piece of toast. It was basically the same size as your average house brick. We had to have it. We went in, ordered, only to be told that it was sold out! NO! We looked so disappointed that the girl felt compelled to go into the kitchen and double check. It turned out that they did have one piece left so we had our house brick toast after all! It was foul. A huge chunk a white fluffy bread with fake honey (they call it honey syrup - honey with sugar water mixed into it) and butter. We have photos, they'll make it up later on I'm sure.

So that was the Saturday evening excitement. My neighbour had invited us to a party, but we just felt too bushed to enjoy it properly so we just went home and crashed. Sunday was spent doing some more window shopping in AEON shopping mall and watching a horrid film. I guess the lesson learned there is that if the movie is discounted, there's probably a reason for it! This morning Miss BV set off for Oz again :( Now I'm all lonely again. But not for too long. I'm almost ready to pack myself. Still don't have plane tickets though. Not for lack of trying. According to my travel agent, she can't tell me the price of tickets until it's less than a month til my flight. And I certainly can't pay for it until at least a week before I fly. I don't know what the story is there but it seems pretty odd. I just want the tickets in my hand now! Apparently I can leave work on March 27th and I might take advantage of that I think....

Here's a ratio I can approve of...

My fridge on Friday night; Beer/Food = 50/50

My fridge on Saturday morning is a somewhat frightening 1/99 ratio... And there was a fair collection of aluminium in the sink too. How in gods name did that happen?

YUM

Hehe!!

I've had Miss BV at work with me today and yesterday. It was tops fun! Just did classes together and bitched about the kids in front of them and stuff ;) The kids went a little bit mental and were showing off left and right in front of her. In the year 5 class today one girl asked, "If you and Joanne Sensei are from the same country, why don't you have the same colour hair and eyes?" Haha! Where to even start answering that one aye!

Last night we had a bottle of red between us and this morning I was a bit more than sluggish getting out of bed so I will be very happy to get home and relax of a Friday. Plans tonight are for some home cooking and perhaps some visitors - some chat, drinks and all that good stuff. Tomorrow might head out for some shopping and some good food in the big smoke. She's going home on Monday so gotta make the most of the time we have left! I can't believe 2 weeks has passed so quickly, it's crazy! She also fixed my dodgy haircut, it's amazing how much difference it can make to just cut a few strands of hair in the right place. She's now got her head down on the table behind me having a little power nap I think, all tuckered out! Anyway, here's another random picture or two...

Hot jar of sake anyone?

I'm a classy chick.