SEPTEMBER II
Yep, its happenned again...I'm sending Webspawner threatening e-mails!
Sunday 21st September
Sorry, I am still alive, despite Japan’s best attempts to dispose of me! Yesterday the greater Tokyo area was rocked by an earthquake measuring 5.5 on the richter scale. I think a few people were hurt when a temple wall collapsed on them. Many had been predicting the “big one” this week, something to do with changing magnetic waves in the air or something. The method had successfully predicted the two most recent earthquakes before this one. When it hit I was planning my Eikiwa in Mr. Donuts with Ricky. The whole place rocked back and forth for about half a minute, but amazingly nothing fell over, and none of the Japanese seemed in the slightest bit perturbed!
We are also in the proceedings of being hit by Typhoon Choi-wan, a kind of super-natural disaster double whammy! It’s been raining non stop for three days now, temperatures have plummeted to a measly 19C, and winds will reach 90 miles per hour tomorrow (when I of course must cycle to school on my jitensha). So, I’m holed up in my apartment, without even the courage to go to the video store incase I get soaked!
My Japanese is struggling along, but I’m about to start on my “250 Essential Kanji for Everyday Living” to get myself acquainted with the bizarre pictographic symbols I see everywhere. Curse the alphabetic systems over here. I’ve also observed, since learning Hiragana and Katakana, that the Japanese don’t use spaces between words in their scripts, so you have to guess where one word ends and another begins, which is possibly the most retarded thing I’ve ever come across. Considering that 90% of what I read I don’t understand, how on earth am I meant to know when a word ends? Jeeeeeeez.
So, a very boring update. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to inject a bit of drama, for example, when a tree is blown over on top of me and cripples me. Half the crap on this site will only serve to show me how far I’ve come when I begin to despair that I’ve made no inroads into Japanese language and culture. See you later.
25th September
Well well. Nearly two months down. Can’t believe how quickly time is hurtling by! I finish at Seiga J.H.S. tomorrow, and I’ll be sad to leave it. I’ve grown attached to the kids, who it has to be said, are a fairly decent bunch. The teachers are a good gang too, and they’ve invited me to an “enkai” tomorrow evening (when colleagues eat and drink together, and maybe even some karaoke if I’m lucky). It’s not so much leaving that’s bad though, as starting afresh, and having to make umpteen self-introduction speeches again. I really started to hate the vile little person that I am, and the horrid little life I lead when I was telling the kids all about myself the last time. Lies and half-truths such as “my favourite hobby is playing the guitar” or “my best sport is football” – it’s a good thing none of them have heard my guitar or watched me play football, lest they find out that I’m merely trying to ingratiate myself by saying what I think they’ll find cool!
It’s mainly the children that I’ll miss though. There are the Mothra/monster girls who claim to be creatures from Godzilla movies, and hang around the staffroom asking me to wink at them (for some reason a lot of Japanese people can’t seem to wink). There are also the boys who I’ve affectionately termed the “gay boys”, who take every opportunity to yell “love and dangerous!” at me down the corridor, or accuse their subordinates in lower grades of being “erotic boys” whatever that means. Ahhh, I love the Japanese take on the English language, it produces some of the most hilarious concoctions ever (please visit engrish.com). I’ve even occasionally been known to stoop to their level (that being of first graders) when I take classes with the substitute teacher. Why, only today I was hurling around a packet of apple jam behind Miss Hagihara’s back much to the amusement of 12 year olds, and much to Hagihara’s confusion.
Other than this, nothing much new is happening here, besides my studious effort of memorising about 30 pictographic symbols this week. This is what I both love and hate about JET. On the one hand, I hate the fact that my job is really easy, and that if employers in Britain find out what the job is really all about, I’ll slip to the bottom of any list of applicants. That’s also, paradoxically, what I love about the JET. It’s a massive prestige scheme through which the Japanese hurl vast sums of money in importing under-qualified foreigners and paying them well to appear to be improving the English skills of its youth, which are the worst in Asia. Countries much poorer than Japan (e.g. North Korea) speak better English, despite spending much less money on English education. There’s something seriously wrong with the system, which no number of foreigners or prestige expenditure is going to fix! Yep, I enjoy high status, get an ok salary which I supplement with illegal private tutoring, and spend many of my “working” hours studying for what I hope will become a worthwhile skill in the future. Wizard.
27th September
Bonjour. The international conspiracy to kill me with earthquakes took a rather more sinister turn two days ago when three absolutely huge earthquakes hit the northern island of Hokkaido. Amazingly, despite living hundreds of miles to the south, the quake was strong enough to wake me at 4.50 am.
Yesterday evening I went to the Enkai. It was surprisingly good fun. On seeing the low table, I though I was going to have to sit cross-legged, but the ground had been hollowed out underneath the table to give leg room. Why can’t they just use chairs like normal people? There was lashings of food and alcohol. I tried my tastebuds on sashimi (raw fish) again (scallops, octopus, fish, shrimp), but to no avail. I really am not a big fan of both the taste and texture of raw fish in my mouth (though raw octopus isn’t bad at all). Sometimes it’s an advantage to have arrived in Japan with next to no Japanese, as it makes conversations that much funnier. Rather than trying hard to be witty and urbane, I only need to say things like “Your food tastes disgusting to me” or “I couldn’t find a pair of trainers to fit me in the shoe store” to have my colleagues rolling around in stitches thinking (ahahaha, he’s a foreigner, he’s so strange, he’s not Japanese, wahahahaha). On which note, try the following address in your search bar :
http://www.jti.co.jp/JTI/delight/corp_cm/party.html
These long-nosed freaks have been appearing inside trains, on TV, everywhere. Now I know what might’ve given that drunk old man the inspiration for his explicit racism in the train a wee while ago.
I simply can’t believe how much older my colleagues are than I had guessed. Truly the Japanese remain youthful in appearance for much longer than their western counterparts. Mr Shibuya, the comedian/mathematician/English speaker, who works opposite me in the staffroom, is 42, with three daughters. I wouldn’t have guessed a day older than 35! And the pattern repeats itself again and again. By the end of the night there were emotional goodbyes, and a realisation that I’d actually really enjoyed working there. I just don’t have the energy to go through the whole fresh introduction thing again come Monday!! Plus my next school is much bigger and I’ll have a lot more classes. Hmmm.
September 30th
I feel like Goldilocks, and not just because my blonde locks are about four inches longer than when I arrived, becoming ever more straggly and ungainly with each passing day (can you tell that I’m terrified to go to a Japanese barber with minimal language ability?). No, it’s because I’m always complaining about the weather here “This week was too hot”, “This week was too cold”, but finally I can say “But this week was juuust right”. Autumn in Japan is pretty nice so far. And with a change of seasons, a change of school.
Shinozu, that’s where it’s at (it being a lazy, tired and hungry assistant language teacher). It’s a much bigger school, and the kids are much brighter, which would unfortunately seem to herald the end of a free ride for me, at least for the present. It’s just not home (nor is it cricket). Somehow the coffee doesn’t taste as good, the chair isn’t quite as comfy, and the kids aren’t as friendly (actually, that’s a lie, call it poetic license). I’ve had to do nine hours of self introductions in the last two days, and bore myself to death with the same bunch of nonsense, and can now say that I thoroughly despise myself!
The teachers speak a lot more English at this school. Superficially that would seem to be a good thing, but unfortunately it means that I can’t eat my lunch in peace. Actually, the principle is hilarious! He prides himself on his English ability (mysteriously), and quizzes me thoughout lunchtime about life in “Igirisu”. I feel forced to look like I understand what he is saying, even though most of the time I haven’t a baldy notion!
However, what has been a welcome surprise has been the reaction everyone has taken to the news that I went to OXFORD. Ahhh!!!! HARRY POTTER!!!! Joy Joy! ALICE IN WONDERLAND!!! Tea and Crumpets!!! Gondolas!! (gondolas? Punts!) Eton!!! You must be rich!!! So, I warmed their little hearts for half an hour at lunch time, and even took out my matriculation photos, so that they could crow over my gown and sub-fusc. KAWAII!!
Question. What do you do when you’re 21 years old and you start finding white hairs on your head? Answers on a postcard to: Shiraoka-Piatown…..
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