Pre-Hokkaido Business

Early August 2009

From Friday August 7th until Saturday August 15, I will be on vacation in Northern Japan. My first stop is Hokkaido, which is the second largest and northernmost of Japan’s four main islands. In the old days, it was a rough and wild land, and even now, Hokkaido is known chiefly for its agriculture and delicious food. I will spend one day in the main city of Sapporo (famous for beer and ramen), and then move down to Hakodate, which was the site of a famous battle, for two days.

After that, I will move to the Tohoku region, which is the northern area of the main island of Honshu. My first stop will be Sendai, which is one of the larger cities in the region. Then I will move down to Aizu-Wakamatsu, the site of a famous rebellion and suicide tragedy, for two nights. Finally, I will end in Tokyo, where I will do some research at one of the museums for a short story I’d like to get published.

So, that will be my summer trip. Naturally, I will give you more details once I actually do my traveling.

But in the days before my vacation, I find myself unexpectedly busy. On paper, it looks like I should be winding down with the arrival of summer. Not so. Classes ended at the third week of July, and I found myself just getting busier. Technically, these days are filled with “office days” which usually means going to the Board of Education, sitting in an air conditioned room, and doing whatever they can find for us to do. Usually that’s nothing. Usually.

Except, that with the end of July comes a change in ALTs. The old Assistant Language Teachers go home and the new ones arrive. And this year, the two other ALTs in my office, Rachelle and Vickie, were both leaving. And, in fact, I was changing schools so I had my share of goodbyes.

Someone decided that rather than having us waste time going to the office, it would be better for each of us ALTs to report to a “base” school, which could relay information to us. These base schools would be Kanoya High, Kanoya Kogyo (Technical), and Kanoya Nogyo (Agricultural)—in short the three Kanoya schools. All well and logical—except two of those schools were mine. To make a long story short, I had to switch Kanoya Kogyo (technical) for Koyama High, a smaller school further from my house.

So, in the last few weeks, I cleaned out my desk, wrote instructions for my successor, and prepared a goodbye speech (in Japanese). Every time I went to Kogyo (admittedly only three times in July), I was struck with a heavy emotion, a mix of sadness and stress. I really hadn’t expected to leave any of my schools, and I had a special affection for Kogyo, my nearly all-boys school. I had started off having almost no classes and ended up averaging four classes a day and actually preparing lessons. Kogyo was the only school where I felt like a real teacher. And that was the school I had to leave.

So, after I said goodbye to Kogyo, I had about a week and a half to say goodbye to Rachelle and Vickie. The two of them were even busier than I was. They had to clean, pack, and say goodbye to everyone. Still, we found some time to spend together. We went to see Harry Potter and I took them out to dinner. The Kanoya girls met one last time for Shirokuma: shaved ice with condensed milk and fruit. Of the six girls present, I was the only one staying.

Yesterday (was it really only yesterday?), Rachelle and Vickie left Japan. I woke up early that day, not only because I had to be at the office before 8:00, but I was also a little restless. July 29th had been wedged in my mind like a splinter. The day my friends were leaving. The day the new ALTs were arriving.

Rachelle brought some friends with her to the airport, including Noriko, a teacher from her school, and Masako, a friend who was a volunteer English guide. They reminisced while we waited in the airport. Before long, Rachelle and Vickie were waiting in line to go through security. All this time, I had been with my two friends, wondering why I didn’t feel sadder… or really anything at all. It didn’t really hit me, until I saw Noriko with tears streaming down her face and Masako wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. And then I just felt heavy.

But this tender moment was broken by a bit of comedy—well, to me it seemed as such. Jinnouchi-sensei—a teacher Kushira Shogyo, my school, and her daughter Yuana were coming to say goodbye to Rachelle. But they hadn’t told anyone until Rachelle and Vickie had given everyone hugs and were about to pass through security.

What made this event funny to me was that Jinnouchi-sensei had only spent time with Rachelle maybe four or five times—she was more my friend than Rachelle’s. But if you knew Jinnouchi-sensei at all, you would know she’s a hyper-social butterfly and she really loves making friends with people. Plus, she’d had Yuana call me and ask me about Rachelle’s departure time a few days earlier, and so I suspected something like this would happen.

Anyway, this had a happy ending, because Jinnouchi-sensei and Yuana got there just in time. They appeared right before Rachelle was about to disappear through the metal detector and had about three seconds to say goodbye. For this they had driven two hours to the airport and would drive two hours back.

Rachelle and Vickie passed through security. We all—in true Japanese fashion—stood by the glass window, waving, until we could no longer see them at all.

By now it was about 11:30. Everyone but Noriko decided to go to lunch. Now, the silent figure in all of this drama—the person I haven’t even mentioned yet—was our supervisor, Shibahara-sensei. As the only male and the person with the least English, that really wasn’t surprising. But this is how much of a social butterfly Jinnouchi-sensei is. She had never met Shibahara-sensei before, so she immediately set about getting acquainted. We went out to lunch, and the restaurant was busy, so we had to break into two groups. Jinnouchi-sensei volunteered to sit with Shibahara-sensei.

Volunteered nothing. More like, she told us how it was going to be. They sat chatting, while Yuana, Masako, and I talked about castles in Saga prefecture. Of course, Jinnouchi-sensei paid for our lunch. This did not surprise me in the least; whenever we go out, she pounces on the bill. I don’t even try to stop her anymore; just make a note in my head and try to get her a treat later on.

After lunch, Jinnouchi-sensei, Yuana, and Masako left, but Shibahara-sensei and I stayed at the airport. The new ALTs arrived at 1:30. I had the laminated signs Rachelle and Vickie had made. I was anxious. I was waiting for people I had never seen before who I would hopefully make friends with. It wasn’t just me either. Half of all ALTs coming to Kanoya were on this same flight, so the people from the Boards of Educations from all over the prefecture were gathered together with signs of their own.

The flight emptied out, and out came all the foreigners. Matt, Vickie’s replacement, was the first one we saw. He was tall, with reddish brown hair and glasses. Since he was getting Kogyo, I had emailed him a couple times before. I knew he was a year older than Vickie, from New Jersey, and liked taking photographs and sports.

Andie, Rachelle’s replacement, took a lot longer to come out. Andie was short, petite, and black. I can’t say African American, because she’s from Jamaica. All I knew about her at the time was where she was from and her age (one year older than Rachelle).

So, there we were. As soon as I saw them, most of my anxiety left. I don’t know why, but knowing what they looked like was a big relief. They were both nice and polite and wanted to know a lot about Japan. So I told them. Whatever I could think of. About halfway through the car ride, we stopped at a convenience store for drinks. I remembered how my boss had bought us ice cream the first day, so I decided to do the same.

We went to the office and the ALTs made their self-introduction speeches in Japanese. Both Matt and Andie had, oh I’d say maybe a year’s worth of Japanese, and so they could manage that just fine. But when the boss made the speech in Japanese, I was the one to translate it into English. In my two years I’ve risen into the position as the unofficial translator, a post I hold with some pride.

I offered to take the new ALTs grocery shopping after work. Then we went out to dinner and I showed them around Rina City, a shopping center near our house. By the time I got home it was 8:00. For all intents and purposes, it was a 12-hour day. And by no means was I finished.

Today, in the afternoon, we went to the bank and city hall, while I explained the two hundred ways Japan makes us sort garbage (I’m only slightly exaggerating), helped fill out forms, and did more translation in general. I don’t begrudge the extra work or the enormous amount of information that must be passed down. I actually like feeling helpful, like an older sister. At the same time, I know these are adults (both of whom are older than me) who want to be independent as soon as possible. I feel like in a few weeks I’ll be obsolete and they’ll know more about Kanoya than I will. There are already so many things I don’t know, questions I can’t answer.

They both seem nice, but I haven’t had much of a chance to get to know each other. We’re still on polite, information gathering mode. I’ve been talking and talking, but all of it practical: how to tell soy milk from normal milk, where the coin laundry is, the way ATM cards work in Japan….

Besides all this saying goodbye and saying hello, I’ve been keeping busy with other tasks, which include studying Japanese (from 1-4 hours a day), finishing a chapter (and trying to write another one), taking a medical exam (but first translating the questionnaire into English), making dinner (hoping the food doesn’t spoil too quickly in this heat), fighting insects (they’re winning), reading reviews from fans of my fanfiction (some are threatening to kill me if I don’t write another chapter), and viewing a rare once in a lifetime eclipse (which I couldn’t see at all because it was cloudy). I might go see fireworks on Saturday. I definitely have to clean my house by Sunday.

To put it succinctly, lately I’ve been just a little stressed.

So, I’m looking forward to this vacation. A break from studying Japanese. Long train rides to read in. Beautiful scenery and good food with no cooking and no washing dishes.

Bugs, Mudbaths, and Fanfiction

Golden Week 2009

The weather has been lovely lately, warm and sunny in the day, cool in the mornings and evenings, and no rain in the longest time. The downside is that the spring weather has also brought out hoards of insects. There were four pesky flies buzzing around my house all weekend (although two drowned in my coffee cup when I was away at school), as well as the usual ants, cockroaches, and giant spiders. There are also giant black butterflies the size of my palm that dive-bomb me while I'm riding my bike, but those stay outside.

In other news, the beginning of May gave us the glorious holiday known as Golden Week, three consecutive national holidays, a five-day weekend for me. This is important because it's the longest free holiday we have and the last one until July. Most ALTs use this time to travel. Vickie went to China. But what did I do? I sat around my apartment writing fanfiction.

But in my defense I did spend one day traveling/ socializing. On Saturday, May 2nd I went to Kirishima with Rachelle, Jinnouchi-sensei, Yuana, and Shimizu-sensei. It was a nice little road trip. In the car, Rachelle, Yuana, and I played with some "What if..." cards Rachelle had printed off the Internet. (If you were an animal, what would you be? If you had to eat your friends to survive, would you?) We stopped along the way at an ashi-yu or foot bath and dangled our legs in warm water. The foot bath gave us the perfect view of our volcano, Sakurajima, and it was such a clear, fine day. Afterwards, we visited Kirishima Shrine and ate lunch.

The main event on our little road trip was sakura sakura onsen, a hot springs public bath complex of some local fame. Jinnouchi-sensei had been wanting to take me since I first met her, but I was... shy. (Let me remind you, you go into Japanese onsens NAKED.) However, a year and a half later my shyness was going down. I think you just have to live in Japan a while to understand. You just sort of get used to the idea; it's not such a big deal.

Anyway, what made sakura sakura onsen was its "mud baths." Now, I don't know about you, but those words evoke the image in my mind of sitting in a giant warm mud puddle. Actually, it was nothing like that. In the area outside (yes, it was outside; no, no one could see us, the area was well blocked off) there were containers of a special sulfuric mud harvested from Sakurajima. Apparently, it was good for the skin. So you slathered this mud on and then sat in a specially marked-off bath that you were allowed to murk up. Jinnouchi-sensei was in a playful mood, because she kept pouring mud down my back and let me tell you, that mud was COLD! I got her back though.

This mud bath was supposed to be good for the skin and I suppose it did make my skin softer for about a day. However, I don't recommend it. Sulfer has a very distinctive smell and not the good kind. What's worse, it lingers. I don't think it was overpowering enough for other people to notice, but I noticed. The smell stuck for a full three days. What's worse, it clung to the clothes I wore. I couldn't get it off my jeans despite washing them twice.

So, maybe that's some excuse for staying in the house for the rest of my weekend--I was smelly. For the next 4 days I didn't go further than the grocery store. I was so busy writing and rewriting the latest chapter of my fanfiction. And actually I didn't finish until two days after Golden Week ended. So much effort spent on one little 18 page chapter.

And yet it as worth it, because I got a review from Ninnik Nishukan. This is my favorite, FAVORITE fanfiction author, one who does such sweet romance stories, I rank her (I think it's a her?) right below Jane Austen on my list of favorite romance writers. (Granted my list isn't long.) So, she's a brilliant writer and she complimented my story. Not just, "Nice story," but "I didn't think there were still people around who actually wrote GOOD Ranma 1/2," and "I might even have to try to remember the password to my old Ranma 1/2 blog so I can recommend your stories at some point." I was practically dancing around with glee. I mean, I don't care if it is fanfiction, when an author you respect and admire compliments your writing, wouldn't you be happy too?

Spring Weather

April 25, 2008

Ochita Sakura

Hanabira ga
Uroko no you ni
Furitsumori.

Fallen Sakura

Fallen sakura
petals, like scales of a fish,
folded together.

It is now officially spring and the weather is nice. The sakura, the famous cherry blossoms, have bloomed and fallen; now the sakura trees are green with leaves. Other flowers are blooming, and the weather is warm. When it is sunny, it’s lovely weather.

When it rains, however, it pours.

The worst rain came on Wednesday a few weeks ago. I got caught in a downpour as I came home from school. The gutters, a foot deep and dangerous, were nearly overflowing with water. I huddled underneath my collapsible umbrella as if for dear life. In the fifteen-minute walk from the bus stop to my house, my pants were complete soaked. And then it got worse.

We had a drinking party later that evening, to welcome in the new staff. I changed my clothes and got out a proper umbrella. Fortunately, Rachelle offered to give me ride, so I didn’t have to traverse the waters again. Still, in the space of fifty feet from apartment to Rachelle’s car—with an umbrella—I was soaked.

And this isn’t even the zenith of rainy season. Apparently, it gets worse in June and July. Joy. I can’t wait.

Becky Goes Out to Dinner

February 26, 2007

For practically all of February, I have spent weekends at home. This was due in part to my cold, due in part to a lack of a social calendar.

The only thing I’ve done socially has involved dinners. Two weeks ago, on Friday, I went out with the English-speaking staff at Nogyou for a Shinnen Enkai—a New Year’s Drinking Party. Granted, it mid-February, really too late for anything but Chinese New Year—but better late than never.

I don’t know how much I’ve mentioned Drinking Parties, but they happen quite often at my schools. The name actually makes it sound wilder than it is. Basically, the staff of a school (this can be the whole staff or just a part of the staff) goes out to a really nice restaurant, which serves all-you-can-drink alcohol for two hours. Rest assured, the alcohol flows quite freely, but it’s no college binge and no one gets really out of hand. The party usually begins around 6:30 and ends at 9:00. It’s a good chance to socialize and get to know people you normally wouldn’t talk to very much.

I’ve been to 6 of these since the school year began (two for Nogyou, two for Kushira Shogyo, and two for the office—none for Kogyou). I look forward to them because I like to socialize with new people. But I also like that there’s a time limit. I can leave after 2 and a half hours—I don’t have to stay forever and all night. As far as drinking goes, it honestly depends on what alcohol they serve. If they’re serving nothing but beer, sake, and shochu straight, I drink juice or tea, because I don’t like straight alcohol. If they have mixed drinks, such as chuhais (shochu and fruit juice), I have two drinks. Usually two drinks won’t do anything more than get me slightly hyper.

Anyway, back to the very late New Year’s Party. Now, I like Nogyou’s parties, because they’re smaller and more intimate—six people as opposed to, say, 50 in Kushira Shogyou’s parties. As such, I also have more say in what we have to eat. I had mentioned that I’d never had shabu shabu, and so they arranged to have the party at a shabu shabu restaurant.

Shabu shabu is cook-your-own-food restaurant where you boil pieces of meat and vegetables. These kinds of restaurants are tremendously fun (and expensive). If you’ve seen Lost in Translation, I’m pretty sure the characters got into a fight at a shabu shabu restaurant.

When I went in, there were already two giant pots of water and two platters filled with vegetables, tofu, and udon (thick white Japanese noodles). The stove was built into the table and the fire was on. I fiddled with the range until the fire was hot. When everyone gathered, we ordered our drinks. They had chuhai in this restaurant and I ordered a peach one. It was very good. I couldn’t taste the alcohol at all.

After our toast, the waitress brought in platters of meat: raw pork and beef, cut into thin strips. The water was already boiling nicely, so we stuck the meat in. We moved the meat back and forth underneath the water, swish, swish—or, as the Japanese say, shabu, shabu—and soon the meat changed colors. We dipped them in a tangy sauce and they were delicious.

We ate the meat and vegetables and kimchi appetizer. I had my second chuhai, grape-flavored this time, good but not nearly as nice as the peach one. After we had eaten all the meat and most of the vegetables, we added udon and ate that too. The waitress then took our cooking water and made a rice and egg porridge out of it. For dessert we had mochi ice cream, pieces of persimmon sliced up, and coffee and tea.

All of this added up to a heavy price tag: 4200 yen each. (About $42.00.) That is, of course, the downside to Enkais—they’re expensive. But I had fun and enjoyed myself.

This weekend, on Saturday, Rachelle and I went out to Nero for dinner, since neither of us felt like cooking. Nero is a very nice local restaurant that I’ve been to—let’s see, this was my third time. The very first time I went was my first night in Kanoya.

At the end of the restaurant, the walls are glass and there are a few trees or vines on the outside of the building. At night, when the trees are in shadow and Christmas lights sparkle, it feels a little like eating inside an enchanted forest. For 1200 yen you get a main dish, an all-you-can-eat soup/salad/appetizer/desert bar, and an all-you-can-drink (non-alcoholic) drink bar.

First we got our drinks. I always get apple vinegar. Always, always. Apple vinegar is either a very light vinegar or else vinegar and apple juice mixed together. In the case of Nero, I think it’s the former, because it was very pale, almost white. To me, it tastes like apple juice with a bit of a kicker: a little sour, a little sweet, a little zingy.

At the appetizer end, Nero has some of the best fresh tofu in Kanoya. It’s very soft and on Saturday it was served with an ume plum sauce that was mildly sour. I also had edamame, a slice of pizza (too late I realized that it had tuna on it), bread, cheese and bacon fries, and two cups of soup. This may sound like a lot, but you have to think in Japanese proportions. The pizza, for instance, was no bigger than a personal pan pizza, was thin as paper, and had been cut into at least 20 different slices. My portion was only slightly bigger than a splinter. The bread, too, were the size of croutons. I’m not exaggerating.

The main dish was bigger. Rachelle ordered eggplant spaghetti with meat sauce (one of the more normal Italian dishes—no I’m not kidding either), and I had bibimba. Bibimba is a Korean dish. They serve it in a stone bowl that’s sizzling hot. Inside was rice, meat, bean sprouts, kimchi (spicy pickled Korean vegetables), dried seaweed, and the raw yolk of an egg. I mixed the ingredients together, letting the stone cook the egg, and ate it. It was actually pretty good and a lot less strange than it sounds. Rachelle didn’t find her pasta quite so appealing. Let me tell you, finding good Italian in Japan is hard.

There was a small desert bar with coffee Jell-O and whipped cream (a modern Japanese staple in buffets), tiny, tiny cream puffs (slightly bigger than the head of a Q-tip), and vanilla wafers.

You know, to me, Japan is not an exotic place anymore. It’s real, normal, and boring at times. But the food never ceases to remind me that I’m not at home. Even things that are normal are slightly off. It’s an endless source of fun and amusement.

Becky Catches a Cold

February 10, 2008

I have a cold.

Not just any cold. A nasty, persistent cold. A chameleon of a cold.

The symptoms began two weeks ago on Friday—that is February 1st. I had started to feel tired at work. My throat began to hurt. By the time night fell, I was shivering and moaning with a fever. Fire streaked down my throat. I decided to spend all Saturday at rest, hoping it would go away. It didn’t.

On Sunday, I decided to put my health insurance to the test. I had Rachelle drive me. It turned out to be quite an adventure. The first two hospitals we found were closed for the weekend. We went in search of the third one, Ikeda Hospital, following signs in kanji, or Chinese lettering.

After finding a hospital that was open, I filled out my forms and waited. Now, you’ve all been to an HMO before, right; you know the procedure: you fill out a form, you wait for thirty minutes, the doctor calls you in, you wait for another thirty minutes, the doctor diagnoses you, you wait for another thirty minutes, you get your prescription and pay, then you wait for an hour to get the medicine.

So, I filled out the form and gave it to the receptionist. Five minutes later, the doctor called me in. He looked at my throat and said they’d put something on it in the next room. I walked into the next room and they put something on my throat, a red substance that made my throat feel a little numb and tingly. Then he wrote a prescription. We went to the pharmacist and, in about 20 minutes, got the medicine. The whole process took less than an hour. Co-pay was about the same as in America: 1000 yen ($10) for visit, 1000 yen ($10) for medicine.

I thought to myself, wow, this is great. If only the American system could be this fast.

But then the days went by, and I noticed that the medicine wasn’t astoundingly effective. I’ve had my share of sore throats and ear infections and usually after I take medicine from the doctor for a day, it goes away. In fact, I usually stop taking the medicine before it runs out, because I no longer feel pain. Not so this time.

I faithfully took my medicine, three times a day, for three days. By the beginning of the 4th day, my throat no longer hurt. Unfortunately, my cold had morphed into other symptoms. In the course of the week my ears have hurt, my throat has been dry, I’ve been congested, I’ve had a piercing headache, I’ve lost my voice, and I’ve had a cough. And guess what? It’s been over a week and my cold still hasn’t completely gone away.

I began to think, rather belatedly, you know, the doctor could have checked my ears or taken my temperature, too. All he did was check my throat. But I did complain that I had a cold, as well as a throat ache. So why didn’t he check for other symptoms and prescribe something stronger?

Dealing with a cold while in a foreign country is not fun. There’s no medicine that I recognize: no Tylenol, Advil, Sudafed (it’s illegal), Nyquil, or anything else. The medicine is Japanese. There’s not even chicken noodle soup. So I’ve been getting recommendations from Japanese people. They recommend daikon (radish) soaked in honey, sleeping with the medical masks on, and certain types of medicine. I’ve chosen some of their suggestions. I’ve also stocked up on throat drops and orange juice.

Candybread Houses

December 17, 2007

One of my Christmas decorations with which I've been decorating my house is a newly made gingerbread house—or rather, a candybread house; it’s made out of graham crackers, for crying outloud. I made it myself yesterday at the KAPIC Center. The KAPIC Center is a sort of International Culture Center just outside Kanoya in the middle of the forest. Yesterday, Sunday, they had an event where we got to make our own candy houses.

Rachelle told me about the event and as she was going, I tagged along. After all, what is Christmas without decorating a little house with candy? Besides me and Rachelle, there were four other ALTs: Cara and Brett.

Sandy, the CIR, gave instructions in Japanese. The model house had a tall sloped roof, but as I knew from experience those things never stay standing, I disregarded the model and built my house my own way. I was inspired by a round Ritz cracker to make a hobbit house, with a round door—but it didn’t quite work out. I’ll send you a picture so you can see the final result.

Out of the 4 ALTs, however, I would like to point out that mine was the only one whose roof stood. Rachelle couldn’t get her roof to stay and, growing impatient, stacked two Graham crackers flat, like a cross. Cara’s roof splintered. She put the pieces inside her hollow house and raised a marshmallow as a white flag. Brett, who did such a meticulous job of picking out different colored sprinkles to decorate his house, found his roof sliding down. He yelled for me to take a picture. Three seconds after I snapped the shot, the roof came down, squashing walls and yard flat. Giving the project up for loss, Brett dumped the remains of his candy on the remains, and we made up an elaborate story about an earthquake reducing the house to rubble.

In short, we had a good time.

Soba Party

December 14, 2007

On Saturday, December 8, I was invited to make soba at school by one of the teachers at Nogyou. The teacher’s name was Shinkawa-sensei, which means New River.

I said I would come. I was actually very excited about receiving the invitation. I told Rachelle, and she became excited as well—and asked if she could come. I was a little hesitant to agree, but eventually I shrugged my shoulders and said it would probably be fine. After all, it was a casual social gathering—the more the merrier, right?

We came a little before 10:00 AM. I had thought that we would make soba right away, eat it for lunch, and have the afternoon free to go Christmas shopping. Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way.

Shinkawa-sensei had casually dropped that we would be making soba, but he hadn’t pointed out that this was goodbye party for Aket, a Malaysian exchange student who had arrived earlier that week. Rachelle and I came right in time for the opening ceremonies, which included a song, a couple speeches, and a self-introduction from everyone in the room, including me and Rachelle. (Fortunately, we were both well versed at introducing ourselves in Japanese.) Openning ceremonies ended at about 11:30. It was easy to see this was a longer event than originally thought.

We socialized with the students and some of the adult sponsors while we waited for lunch. Lunch was late. After lunch there was bingo. Rachelle and I, while we were having fun, were beginning to get impatient, because we really needed to do our shopping. We decided we would leave at 3:00. And just as the clock hit 2:45, Shinkawa-sensei announced we’d make soba now.

Soba, in case you don’t know, are buckwheat noodles. In Japan they’re common and cheap, but in America, they’re a little harder to find. Everyone was led into what looked like a lab, complete with a stainless steel steaming, sputtering pot in the corner. We put on lab coats and washed our hands.

The recipe was simple and fun: buckwheat flour, regular flour, and hot water, sifted, mixed, and kneeded together. After rolling the dough flat and flipping the dough ontop of itself, so it remembled a flat burrito, we began cutting noodles with a sharp knife. We were supposed to cut thinly, but I was worried about it coming apart, so I cut my soba thick. Afterwards we joked I had made soba udon. (Udon is a thick white Japanese noodle.)

Shinkawa-sensei stuck the noodles in the stainless steel vat of hissing water and boiled them until we were cooked. We got to taste our noodles, but unfortunately, Rachelle and I had no time to eat them. It was 4:30 and we really had to get going. We said our goodbyes and left—feeling happy for our experience.

Inaka

October 7, 2007

I hadn’t heard the phrase “inaka” (countryside) until I got to Kanoya. Once I got to Kanoya, I heard it quite often. Rachelle said it a lot, usually whenever we couldn’t find anything. No movie theatres. “Well, this is inaka.” No big clothing chain. “Well, this is inaka.” Buses that come once an hour. Well, you get the idea....

Of course, in my mind, inaka equated to a rural area, which meant cows, a couple of barns, and one streetlight. Kanoya, roughly the size of my hometown of Victorville, was a little more developed than my mental image of “the countryside.” We are probably one of the bigger cities in our area, with several schools, stores, restaurants, karaoke parlors, pachinko parlors, and even a famous attraction: the Kanoya Rose Garden. (Don’t look for it in your Lonely Planet guide; you won’t even find Kanoya. However, to our little city it's a big deal.) Therefore, I resisted the term “inaka.” “We are not inaka,” I said. “We are the suburbs,”

But the term “inaka” has grown on me the longer I stay here. The meaning of the word is starting to shift. What makes Kanoya “inaka” as opposed to a “suburb” is access to the city, or, in other words, a train. Kanoya is one of the few places in all of Japan that doesn’t have a train station; the whole eastern half of Kagoshima Prefecture has no access to trains. In California this is no big deal, but in Japan it severely limits your ability to get around.

Yesterday, I went to Kagoshima City. Just to get there, I had to first walk to the bus stop; then take the bus to the town of Terumizu; then catch the ferry from Terumizu to Kamaoike Port; then take the bus from Kamaoike Port to Kagoshima’s Chuo Train Station, where all the action was. It took me nearly three hours.

As I was walking around Kagoshima City, I couldn’t help comparing it to Nagoya. The difference was that, in Nagoya, when I wanted to go to the big shopping area, I sat in the subway for fifteen minutes. And in Nagoya, when I wanted to see the Art Museum, I took the train: ten minutes. When I wanted to go to the garden, I walked. Everything was close and easy.

Not now.

“I went to the bookstore here,” said Rachelle, in Kanoya, as we were walking in a department store. “I asked for English books. They led me to the TOPEC.” (The English Proficency Exam for non-English speakers.)

I shrugged. “Well, this is inaka.”

The First Week of School

Early September 2007

In case I haven’t told you this, I would like to state for the record that I have three different high schools I help teach at: Kanoya Kogyou (the technical high school), Kanoya Nogyou (the agricultural high school), and Kushira Shogyou (the commercial high school). As you can guess from my use of parentheses, none of these schools are academic; they try preparing their students for a vocation rather than from college. In addition, Kogyou and Nogyou are mostly filled with boys. There are just 24 girls in the population of 600 at Kogyou. Plus, I don’t have a car, so for Kogyou and Shogyou at least, I had to take the bus.

That Sunday night I had restless nightmares about missing the bus, and I awoke at 6:00 AM, filled with nervous energy. I got on the right bus, thanks in part to a kindly old man whose job seems to be to direct people at the Kanoya Bus Center to the right bus. I got to school all right, and almost immediately after that, I had to give an introductory speech in front of the whole 600 students and staff. I got through that short speech and had nothing to do for the rest of the day. But doing nothing was almost worst than giving the speech. I was awash with anxiety.

After lunch, both students and teachers must clean, so one of the English teachers took me to her classroom. On the way, we passed through the hall and the students peered at me through the window and called my name. Now imagine walking through the hall and having thirty or forty teenage boys who you don’t know all calling your name in a half-friendly, half-leering sort of way. It was intimidating. I mean, I’m used to being sort of invisible, tucked-into-a-corner-with-a-book. The sort of “instant celebrity” status I had, just from being a foreigner and a new teacher, was unnerving.

In fact, I was so unnerved that, when I got home from school at just after 5:00, I immediately called Rachelle, another Assistant Language Teacher from my office, and asked her how her day was. We decided to have dinner at Joyfull, a cheap, chain restaurant. (I wanted to go there because it has a cheap drink bar with unlimited refills—a rare thing in Japan—and I was parched.) I vented my anxiety out to her for at least a couple of hours. It was 8:00 when I got home, and I sank into bed shortly after.

The next day I woke up at 6:00 again and went to Nogyou. I didn’t have to give a speech in front of an assembly, thank goodness, but I did have to give introductory speeches to about 3 classes. I felt nervous and awkward, but I tried channeling that energy into something productive, a technique I learned in drama. I don’t really remember much of that first speech, to tell the truth, but at least the ice had been broken. I had taught in front of a class.



I went to Shogyou on Wednesday, taking a long bus ride (half an hour) to get to the school. Here I had to make a speech in front of the school, again. I didn’t have to do anything else because the school had a Sports Day coming up and had to practice. I watched the school march across the field in slow columns. I asked the teacher about Sports Day and she said that the students would perform racing, cheering, six-legged races, etc. Sports Day is, apparently, an important school wide event all over Japan.

The week went quicker after that. I had to make my introductory speech to classes at Kogyou on Thursday and make my speech to more classes at Nogyou on Friday. The result of this was that I’m now getting very good at introducing myself. I know, for example, how loud I must speak and when to write on the board. I’ve also gotten to see the teaching style of the English teachers. Some, after I speak, ask questions to me and the students, so that the conversation is continued. Some translate every word I’ve said into Japanese, so that I wonder what the point of me speaking was. Some make the students take a quiz. Some dismiss me after I’ve given my speech, others make me stay and read the textbook loud. Some English teachers have avoided me altogether.

As I’ve gotten more used to being in front of a class, two major frustrations have already emerged. First, in all the orientations I’ve been to, in all the speeches that have been made towards me, people say, English is bad in Japan, please try to help improve it. Whether they make this request in earnest or not, I’m taking this seriously. I remember taking five years of Spanish in High School and Junior High. I remember getting a 1 on my Spanish AP test, and worst of all, knowing in my heart I couldn’t speak or understand it. I don’t want the students to feel that way. But I feel restricted. How can I improve English when I’m so inexperienced? And again, how can I even get to know the students (let alone have an impact on them) when I see them so little? (I think some classes I’ll see as little as 2-3 times a semester.) Plus, I’m not in charge of the classroom: the English teacher decides what we will or will not do. Sometimes I feel like I’m no more than a tool to them, like a flexible tape recording or a talking textbook.

Which brings me to my second problem: What is my role supposed to be? That’s tough to figure out. If I’m no more than a teaching tool, does that mean when I’m not in use, I can do whatever I want? Or should I be walking around, making myself seen? I feel like I’m part-teacher, part-ambassador, part-English-speaking-native-brought-to-Japan-to-improve-pronounciation, part-novelty, part-tool, part-in, part-out. My official role is as a teacher’s aid, but I haven’t figured out what that means. I’m above the students, below the teachers, and in a limbo that’s all my own.