Precious moments part one

Lunch time today.

Since we are on the short road to the Interactive Conference, I am usually working with my Interactive English Team preparing them for the conference...

But tomorrow is the big sports competition. And thus, all clubs are concentrating on their club activities.

So, I'm free.

I grab my big fuzzy die (It's about twice the size of the ones folks put up in their rearview mirror, with different colors on each face) and I head out to play one of my favorite games; "What's the number?" In English, of course. :)

I find Genki-Chan crying right off the bat. Her friend tells me that it's because she is suffering from a broken heart...

So, I give Genki-chan a "Chin up" and leave them alone...

I go by the "Special Classroom" and discover that it looks like Mouse-chan and the older "Special" children are all just sitting there, staring at the wall... (Direct-kun was absent today) They look totally miserable.

I open the door (They had the doors closed, too... it's 30 degrees outside! It has to be, like, 35 or 40 inside... Okay, so maybe it just feels that way to my Colorado blood...). So I go into the room (Leaving the door open behind me... the windows in the hallway are open, so there's airflow now...).

Mouse-chan jumps up as soon as I walk in and she wants to see the dice. The nice thing is that the older kids have already played the dice game with Mr. Second year and I (Ms. First Year is in charge of Mouse chan's class, so we don't play dice there...). It's recess, and I'm feeling generally overheated and thus generous, so I don't actually play the number part, we just throw the die around the classroom and catch it. They are laughing and smiling and having a lot of fun...

I leave when the bell rings, and they are happy as kids can be. Smiles all around.

They pay me for this job :D

---Me.

Some phenomena are indescribable…

I will therefore try to describe it anyway… lets see how I do.

My area of Japan (MyPrefecture), is a ways out from Tokyo, and thus has it’s own sort of way of life. I really like said way of life, it’s very quaint and pleasant, and very much like the areas I grew up in… well, except they don’t speak English here…

Of course, one could argue that children rarely speak English, so perhaps they are almost functionally identical…

Anyway, this area has an accent. It’s a cute accent (I’ve noticed that Maia has the accent). But since I was taught Tokyo-dialect Japanese, I’ve sort of picked up on the weird accent.

You see, the folks in MyPrefecture all seem to put in extra syllables. Generally when they are thinking of what to say next (As in where we’d put in “um”)

“Watashi wa Sensei desu” means “I’m a teacher”, but, for some inexplicable reason, folks around here will say “Watashi wa-AH Sensei-EE desu” With an emphasis on the newly generated (theoretically non-existent) syllables.

This is curious enough by itself… but the accent is transferring…

Today, one of my students came up to me, and clear as day she said: “Sensei, Do-OO you-OO like to play Soccer-RR?”

Since she said the sentence perfectly (Save the fact that it was seriously heavy in MyPrefecture Dialect), I had to do everything in my power to not laugh at her…

When I came over here, this wasn’t something I really thought I’d have to worry about… looking at a 14 year old and trying desperately not to laugh at her because I realized that not only does her English have a Japanese accent, but she has a MyPrefecture accent…

These are the things they don’t warn you about in training :D
---Me.

Mutated Girls

I have discovered the dirty little secret of my school:

A cosmic radiation wave struck my school in late 2001 or early 2002...

Or maybe it was that radioactive spiders bit only the girls during that period...

Perhaps it was that secretly all of the girls were replaced with aliens at that moment in time...

Whatever the deal was, something changed the girls in my school... because, unlike all the other Japanese schools, my girls are super-with it...

and my boys are asleep.

You see, I have felt rather bad that I seem to know the names of 15 or 18 girls, and only 2 boys... I actually was beginning to wonder if I was favoring my girls more or if it happened to be my stunningly good looks and movie-star-like personality (Ahem...).

It turns out that it is not me, it is indeed that there is something strange about my school.

I was talking to Mr. Second Year about this and he noticed it too... We had just selected our entries for the English Interactive Forum (Competition) that will be taking place in a month...

And we have seven girls and two boys.

We will likely lose one of the boys before all is said and done, leaving us with seven girls and one boy... (We can only enter eight students)

I don't know what caused it, but I discovered when it happened...

You see, in our entrance hall, we have the portraits of our Kendo and Baseball teams up on the walls. The portraits are yearly dating back to 1993. I was looking at the Kendo club pictures (Naturally), and I noticed something odd.

In 1993-2000 there were mosly boys with a single girl or maybe two token girls...

in 2001 there Kendo team was all boys.

Then, in 2002, the Kendo team was 8 girls and 3 boys.

From there on out it's been 50/50

See? There! No, right there! In 2002! The girls mutated!

I think that's where it all happend... I don't know what "that" exactly is, but it happened then.

Anyway, I have extra-mutated girls... but they are pretty darned cool...

---Me.

Refreshingly honest...

I just love this country. This is exactly what you think it is;


















(It's the piggies that make my day :D)

Or this, a Golf Garden (I'll have to explain that one later):





















I fear this isn't what you think it is :)

Here's one, a truck I happened across at one point... I wonder if they know what they are selling...:





















And finally, here's my toilet paper... Keep in mind the Japanese have issues discerning the single "o" from the double "o", and they often only put one "o" in when they mean to put two... :)



















Maia would like to add that it is recycled :D

---Me.

I won my kids, but lost to lunch.

No, I did not LOSE my lunch, but, for the first time since I got here, I pretty much turned my nose up to everything on my plate save the rice and the milk…

You see, we had a strip of tire. Yellow tire… with tread still on it… it tasted kinda like what you’d expect a tire to taste like (Well, what you’d expect a radial to taste like, I figure all-weather snowtires taste slightly different, depending on the vintage…).

This strip of yellow tire came complete with a splattering of green somethings that were pickled in vinegar and then fed to an animal to be regurgitated (Okay, so maybe the last part isn’t very accurate…) It did, however, look exactly like what Luna would puke up if she had eaten grass… It tasted worse, however… (To be honest, I have never tried to eat what Luna could not, but I can safely speculate that this was worse). This was with a side soup of rotten pterodactyl eggs and spotted Nautili parts soup (Straight from the Jurassic periods…)… except it was minus a broth… (What IS a soup if it comes in a bowl but isn’t liquid?).

So, after trying everything (Yes dad, I DID try it… I was hungry enough that I even tried to eat it after I really decided I didn’t like it…), I gave up on the Blowout Surprise and ate the rice and moved along.

But that was totally offset by my kids.

I love my kids, they love me, it’s a wonderful thing.

First, Ms. First Year had to go to CapialTown for some reason (I don’t really know what that reason was)… But, of course, the first I hear about this is when Mouse-Chan and Direct-Kun nearly kill me running me down in the hallway.

Direct-Kun, as much as I love him, still has not figured out that I can’t understand him when he talks at normal speed in Japanese… and at this point he’s agitated, which means I REALLY can’t understand him.

He wants to know where Ms. First Year is, because it’s time for English class (This is not on my schedule, so this is news to me).

I say I’ll go find out, and I hunt down Mr. Second Year. He didn’t know our intrepid pair had class today either. But that’s okay, because Ms. Home Ec. is going to be taking over the class for today.

I happily note that’s awesome and I didn’t know Ms. Home Ec could speak English.

…She looks at me blankly.

Uh oh… Okay, back to Japanese: I tell her I have no classes this period, and would she like me to help her with the English class? I see a grateful smile and she enthusiastically says yes… And with Mouse and Direct in tow, we head back to the class.

We are doing numbers, 1-10 , then 11-19, then 20-100 (Because you only need to explain once that 21 is Twenty and One...) And to practice this, we are playing a game called “Karuta”.

Karuta is slap, pure and simple. You lay out cards on the table (In this case with all the numbers in question on them), then someone (Ahem…) calls out the numbers and you slap the card. The ones with the most captured cards at the end of the game, wins!

This is great! Except that we only have two kids in this class… and -I love Direct-Kun- but Mouse Chan can wipe the walls with him…

So I’m kinda dreading this…

Except Mouse Chan actually can’t… She doesn’t know her numbers. I’m floored. Completely floored. She spends the entire class struggling through 1-10… Direct Kun and I play by ourselves (Ms. Home Ec. works the entire class with Mouse-Chan…). I close my eyes and point to a number in the textbook, and then… well, I sorta let Direct-Kun slap the cards. I’ll capture a few cards to make sure he feels he is getting the upper hand.

He won all three games. :)

I gave him stickers that Dad sent me of the Statue of Liberty and such. He was seriously proud of those stickers… (He got three of them, after all :D)

I could have cried, I swear.

Then Mouse Chan gets up from her work and without saying so much as a single word, conveys to me everything about how disappointed she was to have not managed to beat Direct Kun in one single look with a “What can you do?” smile (I have decided that to make up for her inability to speak properly, this girl is developing ESP). Direct, of course, is rubbing it in (No matter how much I tried to discourage him for it).

I gave her a Liberty Bell sticker, and told her to notice that the bell is cracked… That cheered her up.

But only a little.

Even though it's depressing that Mouse lost, it was a good class. Does that make any sense?

Then I go to my FAST class, and we play Battleship. Well, as usual, my 3rd years are asleep, so there wasn’t much happening there. But my second years come in and we have a recitation test. This is still something I find to be rather odd, but it is something that they do here. They recite a piece of dialogue from somewhere in the book, they have to memorize it and everything.

So I divide the class up and Ms. Team Teacher takes the left side, I take the right.

I get to the first girl (She’s one of my star pupils, I’ve decided, she’s pretty sharp), and she recites the piece. Perfect (She’s a star pupil, I expect no less from her). So I pull out my Shinkansen (Bullet Train) stamp, but like the kids in Bill Cosby’s skit, she has seen that I have stickers… she wants a sticker instead. I shrug (These aren’t my American Stickers, these were purchased here) So I put one on her record sheet. She’s shocked. She tells me I’m pretty darned cool (Which makes me nod knowingly and compels me to say things like: “Stay in school” and “Don’t do drugs”… which sort of makes me worry about myself, really…). I move to the next girl (Whom I love dearly, but isn’t as good as Star-Chan). She does a passable job, and so I go for the Shinkansen stamp…

“Um… Sensei…” She nods subtly toward Star-Chan’s page. Right… I get it. I give her a sticker too… This is totally going to mess with Mr. Second Years’ setup… They are supposed to have the record sheets signed or stamped… But it’s Mr. Second Year, and I think he’ll be just fine with it.

A half a sheet of stickers later (The boys were okay with the Shinkansen… the girls… they loved the stickers… they were shiny…erm... I'll skip the monkey references... my girls were being really good today, and not acting monkey-ish) , I get to one of the other girls, and she does a good job so I ask for her record sheet and she says she doesn’t have it… I say, “Okay, I’ll stamp your workbook, and Mr. Second Year can stamp your record sheet next class.” She looks at me with big brown doe eyes (Which, likely she uses on her parents to get that extra hour to stay up and watch TV) and says, “Sensei, would you please give me a sticker?” It should be noted that I understood every word that little rodent said. Which is noteworthy because when I learned Japanese, I dropped out before we got to colloquial Japanese… So if I understand it perfectly, that means she was using her best, most formal Japanese she could muster.

I gave her a sticker… I’m so doomed when I have kids.

But she was all kinds of happy to get her sticker.

A couple of the boys came up to talk to Ms. Team Teacher, they had their arms around each other (This culture is very odd about that, the boys are very affectionate toward each other. They are as affectionate to each other as the girls are back at home… more so, I’d think.). Anyway, they come up to the desk, and they are standing next to me, so the boy on the far end puts his arm around me too… So I put my arm on his shoulder, I mean, what else can you do?

I was accepted. I’m now officially a part of this school.

I keep hearing that the Japanese are a very closed culture, that they distrust foreigners and never include foreigners into their inner circle… I’m certainly not experiencing that…

Maybe it’s the foreigners’ attitude that causes that feeling? I don’t know.

Today I feel like I’m really lucky. My school is really good.

---Me.

So I cause a stir....

Well, it was bound to happen; I was running on 3 hours of sleep, I was sick, a student had decided my name was "Gay" (And thought it was funny), and Ms. First year decided this was a good time to tell me I was doing things wrong in Fast class...

I complained.

This may sound like nothing. But these are Japanese... and my simple venting to Mr. Second year ended up as a three hour discussion on how I hurt Ms. First years' feelings.

(She was right, by the way).

The Japanese are really subtle. And a big American venting and complaining simply because he was having a bad day is pretty much the equivalent of dropping a 500 pound bomb on the gymnasium...

When I showed up at school this morning, the entire English department was involved.

Ms. First year was (Rightfully) hurt that I didn't bring my problems to her first. She had heard slightly butchered versions of what I had said to Mr. Second Year (As much as I love him, his English isn't the best... so he misunderstood a lot of what I said... and... well, to be honest, I said some stupid things... I think my brain was boiling or something...). It took the better part of the morning to explain where I was. I ended up writing an apology to her (And an explaination)... I did this of my own free will, by the way. She did deserve an apology; It's not just Japanese tradition I sorta side-stepped, we don't go around people in American business, either...

But, this had great results, I got to explain a lot of my feelings, and she assured me that the limited operations I am experiencing right now was simply due to how early in the year it was (And how difficult it is to communicate with me... I don't speak Japanese, and it takes an awful long time for them to get a point across in English... Time which is still rather at a premium), and that as the year progresses, she intends to utilize me more in classes.

Damn, I hate it when I mess up... It sucks...

The trick now is to pick up and move on, though.... Well, and try not to be too horribly embarrased...

Of course, I guess posting to all of the world that I made a major mistake, though technically thereputic, isn't the worlds best way to avoid embarrasment...

Ah... but two wrongs may not make a right, but two Wrights do make an airplane...

---Me...

I am an American... Honest...

All I want to do is order software...

Here's a little background:

I am running an American computer with an American OS (For you folks in Colorado, it's my little black laptop... I haven't changed anything... it even still has some of Kevin's bookmarks in it).

All I want to do is order Manga Studio (A comicbook making program).

I go to their website and find that I can order anything for download except Manga Studio... which I must purchase a boxed copy of... and they will not ship the boxed copy to Japan, sorry.

I call technical support, they say, "Well, the Japanese version is called "Comic Studio" (Now THERE'S an irony), you could buy that.

No, actually, I can't. 1) it's Japanese Windows, which may or may not work on an American Windows system, 2) It's all in Japanese... which, as amazing as I have become in Japanese over the last three months (Read: Not at all), I'm still not ready to spend three months trying to figure out how to open a file...

Right, well (Continues Technical Support). Then here's a link to the US store, go on ahead and go through there.

Cool! (I have to get all kinds of other things together for the purchase, so it's not until yesterday that I actually start the process).

I go there, order the product and everything, and before I get to payment screen, I get "This item is not available in your area. Check with your local retailer". The website had figured out I was connecting from Japan...

Here we are in a global economy, and people are able to figure out what part of the internet you are "calling" from?

My options are to wait until I return to America, Order a boxed copy and have it shipped to me (At an additional $40 expense... since the program is $50, that's doubling it's price, not to mention making dad or someone have to repackage it and ship it over here). Or (And here's where things get all kinds of messed up), have someone in the States download it, then upload it to my server space, and then I can download it from there...

All of this because I happened to be an American using an American PC overseas...

Instead, they are absolutely sure I am Japanese using a Japanese PC who wants to really mess up his system by installing American software which was purchased with American Dollars which were exchanged from Japanese Yen just for this nefarious purpose...

Well, I'm glad they have a plan to stop that... it must happen more often than Americans using computers overseas...

---Me. (Stuck with whatever I came over here with for three years, until I figure out a better plan, anyway)

...And the Geek shall inherit...

So, we have a recitation test in my first year class today. We are supposed to be repeating the text as many times as possible to practice for the test... I, of course, repeat it as many times as well, so that the students can hear me... but one kid in my front row suddenly starts repeating after me... Since I'm talking slowly (No one can understand me at normal speed), it sounds rather odd...

So I stop...

So does he...

So I walk up to him:

Me: This is your country (I'm quoting from the textbook)

Him: This is your country.

Me: Yes, Canada is my country.

Him: Yes, Canada is my country.

Me: This is our classroom.

Him: This is our classroom.

Me: These are not the droids you are looking for.

Him: These are.... a-reh (Japanese for "huh?")?

Me: (In Japanese) Sorry.

He decided the repeat after Guy Game wasn't as fun as it seemed at first.

All I could think of as I walked away was:

"You fell for one of the classic blunders! The most famous is; never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is never send in a geek to do a teachers' job! HAHAHAHAHAH HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA HAHAHAH...."

---Me.