DECEMBER II
10th December
I have some fairly disgusting pupils at this school. I got to teach them all about Christmas today (yeah, Mrs Orihara is great, she gives me free reign over a class once in a while). The notion that “Christmas” was a religious festival was completely alien, and no-one had made the link between “Christmas”, “Christian” and “Christ”. To be more accurate, 95% of the pupils had never heard of Jesus. Fair play I say. Anyway, in the middle of drawing an obese bearded Caucasian clad in red being drawn by a debilitated reindeer called Rudolph, Mrs Orihara pulls a putrid festering bowl of ming from a cubby hole in the classroom wall. “Stone Age” Japan heats its classrooms with noxious fuels too, and a pipe leads from some kind of George Stevenson failure in the middle of the room to the wall. It creates pollution (or “black something” as Mrs Orihara eloquently renders it) which collects in said cubby hole and must be emptied once in a while.
The bowl of ming was accompanied by mouldy chocolate and a rotten banana. “What’s this?” we asked. Someone piped up from the middle class in perfect English “Research!”. It’s frankly incredible that I made a kid cry today because he couldn’t read “Thankyou” (I only told him to try harder, nothing nasty I promise!), but here in this class, a child knew the English word “research”. I’m at a loss to explain this rationally.
Research, in this case, involved mixing the remnants of pot noodle, with brown tea, sugar, chocolate and miso, then leaving it to stew in a quagmire of fossil fuels and banana. A legitimate Science class experiment. Just what this wonderful concoction was intended for remains a mystery, but does illustrate how once in a while, this job can be absolutely hilarious! And I didn’t even start on how I have to sing songs by obscure 70’s band Chicago in Mr Kameyama’s class, or how he gives free reign to pupils playing with STANLEY KNIVES!!
PS - Wow, just realised its only 9, count them, days till I leave here. Wooo hoooo!!!!!
December 11th
A bit of a glut of updates at the moment, but there won’t be any for more than two weeks after I leave, so bear with me. I quite like this school still, which goes a lot towards condemning the last place I was at.
Today Mrs Orihara gave me some third year (15 years old) scripts to peruse, concerning the grammar point “so”, which turned up a plethora of gems. Seriously, marking students work is a veritable comic goldmine, but they didn’t let me do it at Shiraoka-chu. Anyway, some of my favourite:
Seemingly violent tendencies Category:
“My cat is so big that I fight against the cat”
“I wanted to act violently so much that I acted violently”
“I was so tired that I wanted to kill myself”
“I was so happy that I wanted to kill myself”
“She is so irritated that I hit her”
“He was so foolish that he blew up”
Hidden anxieties and complexes Category:
“I am so short that I drink milk every day”
“I am a fool so much that I am useless”
“I am crazy so much that everyone think stupid me”
“I am so sad that I will die by myself”
Third Place:
“He was so tall that he didn’t fit the coffin” and “He is so tall that I use him for tennis” – just the sheer inventiveness springing from such a mundane root was worthy, in my opinion at least, of a bronze prize.
Second Place:
“He is so tall that he is born long big unko” – not as simple as it looks. “unko” means feces or excrement, so for gross impropriety this student is awarded silver.
Grand Prize:
“Japan is so strange that I break the government” – well, it was about time one of the natives said so!!!!
December 12th
I think those student papers I was marking yesterday got to me. One of them was
"My cat is SO big that I fight against the cat" - I was plagued by giant dinosaur sized cats last night with huge claws that went around killing people!! Only marginally more terrifying than the dream I had about Snoopy getting into my sister's rabbit hutch and then lying on his back as in the cartoon, thoroughly stuffed but with bloodstained little pieces of fluff here there and everywhere!
A very strange fusion I believe of primordial fears and Japanese nonsense - a lethal combination!
Had my bonenkai with the Eikiwa group at a Chinese restaurant in Hasuda. Picture Ricky and I, sitting uncomfortably on the ground with 7 or 8 mature women, chatting in broken English - FunFunFUN!! That's not fair, we had a good time, and I ate my fill then more. They're not such a bad bunch when they're a bit more relaxed.
7 days 'till lift-off.
Last update of the year
A spot of shopping over the weekend and maybe a few interesting photos. This is Snoopy Town, mother shop of various Snoopy Lands, harbinger of disaster and scourge of my dreams. A short distance away are some Tokyo Goths, unwittingly drawn to Snoopy’s latent evil. Being Saturday though, most of the Goths were still working in McDonalds trying to make enough money to buy a set of matching blacks for Sunday’s major gathering. Other assorted pictures are a traditional wedding at the Meiji Shrine, some night views from Shinjuku…
I’m very much looking forward to getting back to normality for a little while. Looking back over the past five or so months, the most scary thing is just how quickly it’s gone, nearly half a year! It’s been a time of mixed fortunes and mixed feelings. The work is, as I suggested to Yasho, “tedium personified”, but it is only after all, a means to an end. I have on the other hand, immersed myself in Japan and to a lesser extent, the language. When I return, I imagine that things will be a lot simpler, and I won’t need such a long adjustment period just to understand what’s going on next time. Hopefully I can come back in the New Year with an improved focus and enhanced energy.
I read through all my old journals and nearly wet myself! The early ones especially are hilarious in their misplaced optimism. I strove to find things that were weird and zany, but was met mostly in the beginning by the boring and mundane. It’s only now that I’m beginning to re-appreciate the weird and the zany. I came to Japan full of hope, which was crushed out of me when I realised how crappy the set-up with the Board of Ed was; maybe the cycle is turning round on itself again as I begin to think of the opportunities and possibilities during the rest of my time here.
I remember hearing from a psychologist at one of the conferences we had, that we could expect to go through cycles of culture-shock, periods of elation and periods of depression, peaks and troughs. Maybe my month at Shiraoka-chugakko was a trough, but I prefer to believe that my mood has been influenced more by the teachers I work with and the weather, than something as lofty as culture shock. The question for the New Year will be to weigh up the pros and cons of another year here as the deadline for re-contracting looms. Can I bear to stand another summer in an office doing nothing? Is it worth it to learn Japanese? What would I be doing in Britain otherwise? Could I afford taxation if I returned to Britain?
I’m also eagerly anticipating the possibility of reverse culture-shock when I return to Britain. Will I be disgusted and appalled when people walk through the house with their shoes on? Will I find British food bland and tasteless? Will I continue taking photos of anything and everything because its “kawaii”? Don’t lose any sleep over it now!
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