July 2004!
otherwise known as June 30th
Well just strap me to an ice-berg and spray me with a fire-hose! There’s just no other way to survive this humidity! It’s not even that hot yet (well, if you think 35C isn’t that hot), but it’s the humidity that kills (I type as I sit melting in my seat). Luckily there are air-conditioners in Japan, unluckily there’s always some whiney cow who complains that they give her a head-ache, and runs around opening all the doors and windows to render them ineffective. Anyway, to Aidan and Ben, you might want to pack your luggage in a cool-box, because that’s what you’re gonna be living in when you come to visit!
I’m back at the smoky school, which has recently been liberated from all but an evil whiff emanating from the principles office. Sometime during all that reshuffling back in May a fairly enlightened Principle arrived at this school. A teacher at my last school did me a favour, contacted the nurse here, she had a word, and hey presto! It was that simple! I have a sneaky suspicion though, that they’re waiting ‘till I exit the room, owing to a suspicious glass ashtray sitting on the lunch table containing extinguished cigarettes!
I’m still going to Aikido, and am trying to up my attendance to twice a week. My joints are killing me at the moment, as most of the moves involve someone simulating breaking my wrist or elbow, and usually coming scarily close to achieving it! I bought myself a dogi (i.e. white training suit) for Aikido. I found a tiny sports store along the back streets of Shiraoka. Sure enough they stocked dogis, but unfortunately not for Aikido. The Judo ones were too heavy and thick for summer training, so I settled for a Karate suit, with a Judo belt (as hilariously there were no white Karate belts). So I march into the dojo, a mish-mash of assorted other martial arts, and discover to my pain that the difference between Karate and Aikido dogi is that the latter is slightly padded; my knees, elbows and shoulders are all now skinned from getting chucked across the room by old women!
Actually, that’s not an exaggeration. Unlike other martial arts, this one relies in no way on strength, but in cruelly exploiting the body’s weak-points. I’m consistently humiliated by a woman half my height and more than twice my age. After one particularly cunning, smoothly executed twist I ended up being carried on her back, face towards the ceiling, as helpless as a trussed up lamb for the slaughter! I thought several times about resorting to dirty tactics and biting her hand or blinding her with a two finger assault to the eyes. But she’d probably kill me…seriously.
Anyway, no classes today. I got a rather weak explanation along the lines of “students…do sport today…sorry”, so that’s the reason for the long update. I’m about to “go to the post office” so I can get some laundry done and take in a newspaper over a relaxing brew. And they call it work!
July 2nd
It’s been decided that I’ll be running four workshops, chairing a panel discussion and introducing guest speakers at the next Saitama Orientation…my anticipation is almost tangible, is it not? No buggers volunteered, so all the work has been shifted onto 5 hapless souls whose BoEs have imprisoned them. Everyone else will be backpacking across Asia, partaking in Hemp and other nocturnal activities in Bangkok no doubt. In a somewhat incredible twist of fate, one of the classes I have to organise is on “workplace relations”…I’m possibly the last person you should be consulting on such an issue! “Yeah, ok, so my advice is, if your Supervisor asks you to do something you don’t want to do, knee him in the balls and spit on him for good measure. He won’t be bothering you again!” to iu koto. I might hold myself up as an example of what not to do, and analyse my mistakes, a rather peculiar and insightful way of dealing with it I reckon.
Having said so, workplace relations have been on the mend. Shiraoka Chugakko has leapfrogged into joint 2nd place in my list of favourite schools, having cleansed itself of cancer inducing fumes of late. I’ve been forcing myself to make trite observations on the weather to all and sundry as a means of ingratiating myself. Unbelievably, my efforts were rewarded today when the erstwhile pig of the lunch table (the VP) OFFERED food to ME! What’s going on?!
I was also invited to the special class today. It’s the first time I’ve been brought along, and ranks as one of my favourite classes now. There’s no effort in impressing these kids. All you have to say is “I’m from Britain, so is Harry Potter” and they go ape****.
I passed out some Harry Potter pamphlets that I acquired about a year ago, and one of the little mentalists (no offence intended) was so overjoyed that he started whacking his little head off the table! Now if that’s not a good class, I don’t know what is!
25 days shy of a year.
5th July
Japanese people constantly ask me “do you like Japan”, and I always tell them that it’s a difficult question…and leave it at that. I think the truth falls somewhere in between 2 variables; I absolutely detest my excuse for a job, but, I’ve decided that I quite enjoy living in Japan.
It’s easy to concentrate on the negative aspects of Japan, especially when you’re a foreigner who feels out of place, slightly depressed, missing friends and family, and bored to death of his/ her job. However, I’ve come to appreciate some very positive aspects of life in Japan. Firstly, whilst they may privately hate you and wish death upon you, most Japanese people are outwardly quiet, non-confrontational, polite and non-threatening. It’s really nice to never have to worry about aggressive idiots on a psychotic rampage after a few drinks. Crime is really quite low, and most people, myself included, leave their doors and windows open on sunny days for ventilation…not something that you could easily do in Britain. Another great thing for me, as I enjoy eating, is the multitude of restaurants, variety of food, and cheapness of it. North Americans may disagree, but I’ve never eaten so well so cheaply; from what I can remember British restaurants charge ridiculously high prices for pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, and then heap the insult on top by guilting you into leaving a tip. Not in Japan, no tipping, wonderful! And how about public transport? An oft quoted thing, but entirely true, that you never have to worry about a train being late (unless someone has committed suicide of course), and the service is so frequent. I could go on and on…but I won’t.
But this job…ooohhh this job!
Good points: The students are usually friendly, happy and cheerful. I never take my work home. I have plenty of free time.
Bad pints: I have no schedule. I asked for a schedule but my team-teacher just chuckled, said “your Japanese is good” and then walked away. I’ve sat here since 8.30 not knowing if I’ll have a class for the rest of the day, and it’s so demeaning! I haven’t had a class since last Tuesday. This is crazy. One has to be really careful about trying to stop-oneself from getting too bored, or one gets cabin fever, the IQ drops rapidly, skill in the native language goes out the window completely; one begins to deliriously imagine that the other teachers are plotting against you…that they’re coughing and sneezing on purpose just to piss you off! You begin to notice every side-ways cock-eyed glance and interpret some kind of meaning for it, as in that teacher is probably fantasising about killing you or worse. What are you looking at? Oh yeah, you and what army! Oh…I see, the zombie samurais…Dementia sets in…you need to leave the country, or you’ll wind up in prison or dead!
The crazy thing is, the fool will come along when you’re not expecting it and ask you to come to his class. This is annoying because 1.) he hasn’t discussed what he will be teaching, and you know therefore, that you are scheduled to be a very expensive floor decoration (albeit a speaking one) for the 50 boring minutes that the class lasts; 2.) how dare he intrude upon your free time like that? You’ve been forced to devise elaborate schemes for preventing boredom (a list of 50 websites to visit every day, check e-mail, news headlines and currency rates as often as possible; study for a bit; write a journal; eat the cakes in the fridge that were probably intended for prestigious visitors to the school) and once you’ve switched on the auto-pilot, you don’t want to be disturbed, dammit! What does he think you are, a teacher or something! I’m doing it again, aren’t I?
Sorry, got a bit carried away there, haha! Life away from school is good though. Hopefully on Friday I’ll take a holiday and climb Mt Fuji. My Aikido teacher invited me to come along for the overnight trip, and I’m really looking forward to it now. You need something to preserve your sanity…you need to keep busy!
Fuji again
Climbing Mount Fuji is something most Japanese people aspire to do once in their lives. In ancient times, people made it a pilgrimage, trekking by foot from their home towns all the way to the mountain, which they believed to be the domain of the gods. For me it was much more an excuse to get out of school (and eikiwa) for a day with the solid approval of my colleagues who seemed pleased that I was doing something “Japanese”.
Anyway, I met up with my Aikido teacher, one of his friends Mr Kawashima, another Japanese man, a Chinese student (Ri) and a Danish homestay student (Lowra). Lowra, not yet 17, could speak Japanese perfectly. Moreover she could speak English and German fluently; I wanted to kill her. Clearly I’ve been going about this whole language learning thing completely the wrong way. What I should’ve done was arrange to leach off a Japanese family for a year as a “homestay student”, and be submerged in Japanese 24 hours a day. She’s been here exactly the same time as me, speaking Japanese like a pro for 6months, and claims not to have looked at a textbook since January. I felt so ashamed and stupid! Still, living by myself, “teaching” English as a job and so on, I guess conditions haven’t exactly been equal.
Anyway, we got to the 5th station (about half way up) of Fuji by about 11pm. Its incline is so gentle that walking from the very base would take days! Driving through the night we narrowly avoided hitting a few tanuki (bizarre Japanese animal like a raccoon) and some American students who thought it’d be really clever to walk up a pitch dark road without any lights or reflective clothing! We started out at about 4.30am, having spent a few sleepless hours in the van despite the help of Beaujolais and Camembert. Sunrise was beautiful over a sea of clouds.
Incredibly, it took about 7 hours to reach the top. The shallow incline betrays just how tall the mountain is; it’s not a difficult climb but definitely a very long one. I never cease to be amazed by Japanese old people who were literally (no, really) running up and down the mountain. Groups of “obachan” i.e. middle-aged women all in identical mountain wear and identical hats, marched relentlessly up the slope coming closer and closer. Lowra and I were overcome with the fear that we might be overtaken by them and hurried as fast as we could to the top. Even at the top there were seemingly decrepit elderly folk who could barely walk, but had managed somehow to get there.
By this stage I was a bit worse for wear. My shoes which I’d always suspected to be about half a size too small (honestly though, finding shoes big enough to fit me in Japan is a real challenge!) had really begun to hurt my feet. Whilst sitting down and appreciating the view over the tops of the clouds really would’ve been enough for me, my group decided to walk all the way round the crater of the volcano (which is dormant rather than extinct!) to the other side where the “real summit” is. After so many false dawns, we got there, and I got my picture, looking somewhat dishevelled, on the roof-top of Japan. The weather was just perfect; pure blue skies, about 25 degrees cooler than Shiraoka and without the humidity. There were some people working on the summit tending the souvenir shops, Fuji post office, the Fuji shrine, the Fuji weather station and so on. With the weather as it currently is, a low-paid job fixing visitor’s futon to the rooves of the shacks to dry during the day, seems an ideal occupation!
Going down was another story; I kinda forgot about this bit! Whilst the path up is a genuine route, the path down has been carved out of the hillside by heavy machinery to make descent faster, but not necessarily easier. With every step my toes shot into the front of my shoes and I was in such pain by about half-way down that I thought I might never walk again. Teams of junior high students shot down the path in their trainers at ridiculous speeds, egged on by their PE teacher. Japanese people may be smaller than western people, but they’re definitely tougher and more hard-core when it comes to any kind of physical endurance (heck, even in school they sit through full days of nearly 40C/99% humidity without any form of Air Conditioning!).
We finally made the trip home, our legs aching, filthy dirty, sun-scorched, to Tokyo, where we had dinner at the Hard Rock Café Roppongi. My first time there (strange for a westerner I tell you), good fun and really delicious. My hosts had been generous to a fault, and Mr Kawashima secretly paid the huge bill by himself. I’m still feeling guilty today about the whole trip, as I only knew one of the people previously, yet was given the five-star treatment free gratis. In retrospect, despite the hardship, thoroughly worth the effort (but I will never, ever, ever countenance the notion of climbing Fuji again!). Check out the photos on the Gallery page.
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