3:30AM blog

I've been in Colorado since Friday afternoon to visit my parents over winter vacation. I'm wide awake and bored at 3:30 and I have nothing else to do but blog (or read, but who the hell does that anymore?!) At first I just assumed I'd been suffering from bad jet lag, but I'm starting to think I have insomnia since I've had about 5 hours total sleep in the past 3 days...

Anyway, this my first time back in the past 16 months and the trip is going just about how I thought it would. My parents have moved to the ass end of Colorado to a place where I don't know anyone and there's nothing to do. Our new house is huge and is filled with new shit like a bar, pool table and a huge brand new HDTV. My dad even bought a new laptop for my mom and LCD TV for my grandma. I didn't know they had that much money; I guess you suddenly have a lot more disposable income when you no longer have a child to support.

The close quarters with my parents/grandparents is driving me crazy already. All the bickering and annoying habits of my family have been quickly griding on my nerves. I thought I could be more patient with them since this is my vacation, but I'm already looking forward to heading back to Japan just to regain my privacy, independence and to get some peace and quiet. My family brings out the worst in me I think.

Thankfully my parents gave me the ok to go around the state and visit my friends. My mom didn't even freak out. I wish I had stayed in touch with more people since I left college. It always feels weird trying to contact someone out of the blue. Nonetheless, some time with old friends will do me a lot more good than time with family I think.

I'm using this trip back home as a gauge as to what I want to do next year. I have to make my decision as to whether or not to do JET for another year in February. I think I'd stay for sure if my job wasn't so painfully, mind numbingly boring. I'm not sure if it's worth suffering through just for another year of experiences/time with friends/travel; however, right now I'm feeling that I don't really have much to come home to so I might as well stay.

Anyway, I think this blog went more like an emo diary entry than anything interesting, but thanks for reading! My Christmas didn't go so well if you couldn't tell...

がんばって!

One of the most stereotypical aspects of Japanese culture is the spirit of "がんばる" (ganbaru). It's basically the concept of always doing one's best/trying one's hardest. On the surface is sounds like a nice, respectable motto to base one's culture upon, but lately I've discovered a downside to this fighting attitude:

Ganbaru means you do your best when you're way behind, but also that you keep doing your best if you're way ahead. I learned this when I ran across this poster in the hallway of my school some weeks back:



These are some of the scores posted by our school teams at the last city-wide sports day. Here's the translation:

Soccer
First game vs. Yoshida middle school 0-7
Third place game vs. Asumi middle school 0-13

Boy's basketball*
First game vs. Shimyoshida middle school 14-137
Second games vs. Asumi middle school 6-193
Third game vs. Yoshida middle school 8-158

So there you have it. My school lost a basketball game by a score of 6-198. How does this happen? Well, my school is by far the smallest in the city and has trouble getting enough students to sign up for the club sports. This boy's basketball team has exactly 5 members which is the minimum for a game. In addition, the 5 members of the bbal team are all 1st year middle school students and they are all really short. They never had a chance against the other larger schools in the city that have dozens of kids signing up for the sports clubs.

Still, in America, that would have never been allowed to happen. The coach would have substituted in some weaker players, told them to focus on running down the clock, etc. I asked on of my Japanese friends why this didn't happen in Japan. His answer was "がんばる".

The Problem with Fruits Basket

Yesterday was my day to teach the 1st grade elementary school students at the school by my house. The kids are only 7 years old or so, so you have to keep things pretty simple English wise and have a lot of game time.

One of those games is called "Fruits Basket". It's a simple game where each child is given a picture of a fruit and sit in a circle of chairs. One student stands in the middle of the circle and calls out a fruit. Anyone holding that fruit card must change chairs and there's always one more student than chairs. The student without a chair stands in the middle, calls out a fruit and repeats the process. The game can go own indefinitely.

This game has become a fixture for JETs who teach in elementary schools because of the pure time wasting element of the game, the ability to attach just about any English words to it and because all the students already know it meaning you don't have to attempt an awkward explanation.

I was asked to play this game with the 1st grade students to have them practice numbers and I readily agreed to it since. Unfortunately, what nobody told me was that a girl from a school for handicapped children was going to visit class that day for my English lesson. The girl had some problem with her legs where she could only walk with the assistance of a walker. I didn't notice this until it was time to start the game because all the students were sitting on the floor and the walker was hidden off in the corner.

The girl's mom had come to watch the class too and looked concerned when I announced what we were doing. All the children were worried about the girl too and asked me how she was going to play the game. I didn't have an answer but the normal teacher stepped in and asked the girl if she wanted to try playing. The girl wanted to try so I just stood back and hoped everything would go all right.

The girl had never even heard of the game seeing as she went to a school where no one could play it. I was really worried that she was going to be stuck in the middle the whole game and start crying. Thankfully, I had forgotten about the kindness of kids when they are that age.

A group of girl students decided they would all help out by guarding a group of chairs until the girl with the walker could sit down. Usually she would just switch to the chair next to her, but she always had a huge, cute grin on her face when she would successfully switch, like she had just gotten away with stealing a cookie from a cookie jar. She ended up in the middle a few times, but I think it made her feel like she was part of the normal game and gave her a chance to try speaking English.
By the end of the game she was darting all the way across the circle to find empty chairs; that's a memory that I think I'll have in my head for a long time to come.

After class all the kids came up and swarmed me, as usually. I had to push through them because the girl was shyly waiting for me to come say goodbye to her so she could return to her normal school. I shook her hand, gave her a high five and asked her if she had fun. She said shook her head yes. The teacher told her to come visit again and she was on her way. I went back to giving all the other kids high fives.

This wasn't even the most eventful thing that happened yesterday. I could have written to write about the disastrous end of the year party with my co-workers, but I decided to write something more upbeat for a change. I just hope I get a little bit more warning next time.

One night in Sendai (part II)

I woke up the next day at about 7:00 with a killer hangover. I decided to completely skip another communal bath, which boggled some of the other teacher's minds, but I needed some more time in on my futon.

I stumbled into breakfast with about 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave. I told some of the teachers how hungover I was, but they couldn't believe I had that much to drink last night. I wondered if they were just trying to be nice or if it had something to do with my face not turning red (sometimes at parties here people assume I'm not drunk because my face doesn't turn red (most Japanese people's faces turn red after one or two drinks). I told them I'd be ok and quickly scarfed down my crummy Japanese breakfast.

We checked out of the hotel and went on an hour long bus ride outside of Sendai to somewhere in Miyagi prefecture. We went to a temple that had one of the officially sanctioned "3 most beautiful views in Japan". As you may have guessed, nobody told me about this until we had long passed by the spot. I didn't even get the chance to take a picture of it with my cell phone. We did some more sightseeing around that area until we headed over to the port to await our ferry.

This is where the trip /really/ started to go downhill. I couldn't read the itinerary very well, so I had just assumed that the ferry was going off to some remote island or something to that extend. I sat through the hour boat ride while several of the teachers went outside to feed birds that were hovering around the ferry. When we disembarked on the ferry an hour later, I was surprised to see our tour bus waiting there to pick us up. It turned out that we weren't going anywhere; the ferry ride WAS the attraction. I felt like ripping my hair out.

The bus took us to a raw oyster restaraunt for lunch. Raw oysters are the one food I can't eat because of my blood disorder (they're potentially lethal) and I made the mistake of trying to explain this when the teachers kept asking me if I like raw oysters. They thought I was just being obstinate and kept trying to pressure me into trying the oysters. I finally got one of the English teachers at my school to explain the situation to them. They finally backed off and just made me drink a lot of beer instead.

The trip continue to go downhill after that. Our next destination: a factory that produces this spongy fish byrpoduct food for a 30 minute tour. Thankfully, I wasn't the only member of the group that was less than thrilled with this part of the tour, so I ditched with three other teachers to go play pachinko. I wasted about 1000 yen, but that was nothing compared to the 7000 yen the PE teacher spent in the same period of time. He actually hit the jackpot on one of the machines with about 1 minute left before we were supposed to leave. This caused us to be about 15 minutes late leaving the fish paste factory. He made it up to everyone by using his winnings to buy drinks for everyone.

We briefly went to one more shrine before heading back for home. I was more than ready to get home. I was actually thinking I could still get home early enough to go to a Thanksgiving dinner planned with some of the other JETs in the area. I should have predicted that a traffic accident in Tokyo would cause our 6 hour bus ride to turn into a 9 hour trip. I managed to stay sane by drinking myself into a coma and pestering my friends via texting. I got off the bus hoping to not see any of these people again for awhile

...unfortunately we had work the next day.

One night in Sendai (Part I)

The following is the tale of the annual teacher's trip that happened last week. Seeing as I forgot my camera AGAIN, there will be no photographic evidence.

I was awakened at 6:00AM by a phone call from the non-English speaking PE teacher at my school. He was wondering where I was since the bus for Sendai was due at 6:00. Turns out I had forgotten to set my alarm the night before, probably because of the drunken stupor I was in. For some reason the school had decided the have a drinking party the night before in spite of our early departure time the next morning. That didn't stop me from getting hammered though.

I told the PE teacher I was on my way. Thankfully I had already packed my bag and set out clothes to wear that day, so I was only about 5 minutes late (the bus was waiting at my school which is only a two minute walk from my apartment). I got on the bus, said good morning to everyone and sat down in the back. So began the 6 hour bus ride to Sendai.

The first thing I did when getting on the bus (at about 6:10 AM remember) was crack open a beer. As part of the drunken stupor I was in the night before, I had promised the PE teacher that I would drink at least 5 beers with him by the time we got to Sendai. He held me to it. After that was just normal banter between the male teachers for the next 6 or so hours, mostly about Pachinko. I kept my sanity by drinking, sleeping and sending early morning texts to all my friends, which probably pissed them all off, but oh well.

We arrived in the outskirts of Sendai around 12:15 and stopped for a traditional Sendai lunch at a restaraunt in an outlet mall. By "traditional Sendai" I mean we ate the food for which Sendai is famous: gyuu-tan (cow tongue). We had a 5 course meal with gyuu-tan cooked every which way imaginable. I had actually had gyuu-tan before; it's a common food served at yakitori places. There flavor isn't actually too bad, it's just a little chewy. The flavor is a lot like beef, so I see no reason to eat the chewy tongue over the rest of the cow, but I digress...

After lunch we went to a temple called Yama-dera. It was a quaint temple built on a mountain (I guess that's why it's called "mountain temple"). Visitors have to climb over 800 stairs to get to the main area of the temple. This proved to be a problem since Sendai is in the north of Japan and had gotten heavy snow the night before we arrived. The 800 steps had all been iced over causing the climb and especially the decscent to be much more of an ideal than it should have been.

We all headed off to our Japanese style hotel after about an hour and a half of sightseeing around the temple. I was put in in the room with all the young male teachers. While this may sound fun, we spent almost all of our free time before dinner by playing with a wooden puzzle that was in the room and then going down to take a quick comunal bath. Whoopee!

Dinner was the traditional Japanese party fare: lots of seafood and a ton of beer. For some reason I got abnormally drunk at the dinner. I think it's because nobody was talking to me so I had nothing to do but drink. Dinner lasted for 3 or so hours before we went down to do karaoke.

I was already way too drunk before the karaoke started, but i would be absolutely plastered by the end of it. The karaoke room we got included all-you-can-drink whiskey. Since I was the only one who drank whiskey, they kept pouring it down my throat (without too much resistince from me). I got so drunk that I actually agreed to sing some Japanese songs. While most of the teachers gave me the standard Japanese praise, one of the teachers said one of my Japanese songs wasn't so good. This really set me off for some reason and I was in a bad mood the rest of the night. It culminated in an outburst about how much I hate ramen when we went to a ramen shop after karaoke. I'm still not living that one down...

I passed out pretty soon after that. I was actually upset because all the teachers got a massage ordered except for me, but in hindsight it's a good thing because I was about to puke...