August 2004
1st
Sorry for the long hiatus in updates folks. Somehow ended up quite busy over the last week. The old AETs departed and the new ones arrived; Peter (Australia), Alexis (America) and Janet (Canada). It hasn’t been a bad week by any stretch of the imagination, as by careful planning Ricky and I avoided doing a single full-days work at the B.o.E, thereby staving off boredom for the time-being at least. Some trickery and ass-lickery was employed to get Yamaguchi to agree that we could take a few half-days off from our oh-so-important task of doing nothing in the office to show the new guys around. It’s been a very strange flashback to last year, except that I’m in the leadership role this time, taking the new guys around all the local amenities, shops and facilities, explaining the system for surviving and what not. Of course such exertion has resulted in rather long lunch-breaks for all of us, every day, which has also been nice.
Speaking of which, I may have hit upon the secret of Japanese slimness. I haven’t been using my air conditioner much, have been out of my apartment most of the time, and fat has clearly been oozing out of my pores at an inexplicable rate owing to the weather. Inexplicable because I’ve certainly been eating and drinking more in the last one or two months, and expected it to go in the opposite direction. The belly is still annoyingly prevalent, but have hit a new low of 66.25kg making me about as light as Toshi. Which is also nice.
Perhaps the only depressing and demoralising event of the last week has been the realisation that I am still (as far as I can tell) the worst Japanese speaker in town. There are reasons for this; Peter has lived in Japan twice before…he’ll take the 1st grade test this year which, if passed, means practical fluency (and maybe a better understanding of grammar than many Japanese people!); Alexis is half Japanese, and I think she’s studied it before; Janet lived in Japan for two years previously. Anyhow, these are merely excuses, and perhaps I’m gonna have to face up to the fact that languages are just not my strong point. However, I’m about to fill in the form to do the test in December, 3rd grade, a little consolation prize for my effort thus far.
6th August
It’s getting longer between updates…I must be getting busier! Have continued to stave off boredom merely because we’re being utilised more this summer than last. We got to teach Primary School children on Monday and Tuesday, which was both refreshing (because they looked genuinely happy and interested) and painful. Yes painful. It would appear that I’m a bit of a soft touch; it didn’t take long for these miniature monkeys to realise that and exploit it to its fullest potential. Strangely, they didn’t seem to think the same about the other AETs.
Perhaps I’ve explained “kancho” to you before – you form a trigger with your hands, and ram them into someone else’s orifice. It’s perfectly acceptable it seems, for young children to do that to foreigners they’ve never met before. Whilst holding off the prying, grabbing claws of one little menace is possible, when you’re being simultaneously attacked by five, it becomes an awful lot more difficult. Sensing defeat, I abandoned all sense of decorum, scurried to the nearest corner, where I crouched with my arms around my ankles and my head against my knees. It was however, to no avail, the attacks were relentless. Several hundred “enemas”, rib and indeed penile kanchos later, I escaped from the classroom a gibbering wreck, and traumatised…in a deep psychological way that you cannot appreciate. It’s a little difficult to hand out corporal punishment when your supervisor is watching you…
In a completely unrelated topic, Peter and I encountered, by pure chance, an elderly woman the other day whose daughter is married to a foreigner. And not just any foreigner…the first AET ever to come to Shiraoka! He moved back to the States with her daughter, where they now live in New York with their children. “The JET Programme: International love at a grass roots level”. Anyway, the story was notable for another fact…this guy, this Stephen Myer, reportedly achieved fluency (Level 1 in Japanese Proficiency) in the same time that I’ve lived here. In my case, I’m scheduling that fluency would be another 5 years of study and graft in the future. It really does seem that some people have a natural propensity for picking up languages that I don’t possess. He may not have had the distractions of other foreigners or the internet, but it’s still an amazing achievement that I cannot fathom. Less than 4 months now to the 3rd grade test, and I can’t help but think it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.
I’m still attending Aikido. Some classes are better than others, but last night’s was great. Some weeks, sweltering in a purposely non-air-conditioned room, when I can’t remember the previous week’s moves, when there's still an hour left and I need to go to the toilet, I have felt like giving up. However, for whatever reason, I was in the *zone* last night. I wasn’t really using my brain much at all; my body was just taking over, and I had to teach a black belt how to do one of the moves that I’d managed to remember just by sight! The only downside to the evening was another old guy (also a black belt) who just seems to wince every time he has to practice with me. You practice in pairs, taking it in turn to be beaten by the other guy. However, I get the feeling he just doesn’t want me to touch him. For example, the move where I have to grab both his wrists…he kept shaking my grasp away, as apparently I wasn’t holding his wrists correctly. Yeah well, what are you going to do in a real fight situation, say “Excuse me mister violent hood sir, could you perchance adjust your grip so that I can trounce you”?. Ricky suggests that the old guy is clearly afraid of catching AIDS!
So I guess I’ll maybe post again next week, maybe not,
Later.
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