Sushi-less

BLANKs (things that seem to have inexplicably never made it to Japan)

Random Events (things that made me go "WHAT?")

Fusses (self-explanatory)


Saturday 28 May 2011

Fuss Of The Day 7

Missing M-chan

About one minute after the bell for the start of third period went the other day, a teacher came running into the staff room, said something that I didn't really understand and, quick as a shot, every teacher in the room stands up and the fuss of the century breaks out. All the teachers started opening doors, going in and out of the toilets and stuff, evidently searching for something. I asked, and then followed suit, on finding out that they were searching for a boy (we'll call him M-chan) who was one minute late for class. It crossed my mind what would happen if a 13-year-old was one minute late for something in the UK, and just how long they would have to disappear to cause a scene of 10 teachers strutting around the school shouting at eachother "Have you checked here?" "Have you checked there?" etc. I actually think somebody would have to be missing overnight. It turned out that M-chan was wherever his PE kit was somewhere downstairs. What did they actually think could have happened to him in one minute anyway? Especially as this is a boy whose mind works about 10 minutes behind everyone else's anyway, testamented to by the fact that he is often referred to with the little girls' suffix -chan instead of -kun for boys. He's like a toddler trapped in a late 13-year-old M-chan body. Still, very dramatic fuss all round.

Thursday 26 May 2011

Random Event Of The Day 12

Video and DVD section in the library in the local community centre. Loads of awful Japanese TV series, some anime films and the odd Hollywood blockbuster. I just happened to glance at the videos for the first time other day to find a row of Rowan Atkinsons grinning at me. An ENTIRE SHELF of "Thin Blue Line" videos, a British policing sitcom from the 90s with Rowan Atkinson in it...what the hell is that doing forming about a third of my library's video section in Japan???

Random Event Of The Day 11

Me : "How are you?
Student : "I'm hard."
Pause.
Me: "What?"
Student : "I'm hard." (and his mates weren't around so I don't think it was to make anyone laugh)
Me: "Ermm...hard isn't really a feeling, do you mean angry? strong? clever?
Student : "I'm....hard. Every day I'm hard."

Good Little ALT Post Script

Just another little project I've done recently (although receiving far less support from wanky useless teachers.) It revolved around the Eurovision Song Contest 2011. For those who don't know what it is, please Wikipedia it or something, because I have spent the last 3 weeks of my life trying to explain it in both Japanese and in English and I can't bring myself to type it. It's a very famous music competition that happens once every year and is broadcast around the whole of Europe is the bare bones of it. Anyway, I went around the classes and they pulled 3 countries flags out of a hat. Then, I gave them the flag and some information about the country to put up in their form rooms, like how to say hello in their language, where it was on a map etc. and they became the supporter of that country. It was great...quite a few classes really got behind it. I played clips of one of the songs each class was supporting after the lunch menu on the speaker system every day the week before the contest and announced the winner on the Monday after the event, with the winning class getting little presents that my Mum has kindly sent from the UK for me/them. Of course it was sod's law that this year's winner would be just about the least famous country in the whole competition, Azerbaijan! Quite the anti-climax...and it's barely in Europe, which was another explanation I was rather out of my euro-depth in. The Eurovision Song Contest is only well-known in Europe, of course (although I've heard that some Australians give a sneaky peek). Any road, as Peter Kay would say, Eurovision is naturally not known in Japan at all (I found online that a couple of Irish pubs or sports bars in Tokyo do screen it every year, not that I'm enough of a loser to be that desperate to watch it!). It was great to hear that some of the kids really liked some of the music, and could understand parts of the lyrics. Its that perfect cheesey pop with really simple cliche lyrics aimed at non-native speakers. Their favourites were Denmark and Norway, the same as me! Especially Norway's African-vibey "Haba Haba" went down really well! They were all running round saying "haba haba" (or things that sounded vaguely like it). Strange that it literally came right near the bottom even in the semi final when it was catchy enough to get my kids onto it after a 15-second clip. It was also nice to teach the kids about an event from abroad and for them to see just how many countries (many they'd never heard of before, quite understandably as there are a couple I know nothing more about than their Eurovision entry every year...Andorra anyone?), people and languages make up Europe. Foreign does not just equal English and it certainly does not just equal the United States of America. However, I don't think any of them will be booking a ticket to Azerbaijan, in fact, I doubt if any of them can remember how to say it in Japanese, let alone English!

Good Little ALT




Just allow me a couple of minutes of your time to boast about how brilliant I am at my job. One of the problems many ALTs in Japan find is that some schools just want you there to tick the box that they have a foreigner and can show you off to the parents on open day, but don't actually want your input for anything at all. I feel like that with regards to lessons at my junior high school I must say, so I contribute in other ways like the amazing person that I am by organising various things outside of lessons.




Don't worry, I won't go through everything I've ever done in 2 years in Japan as if I'm filling out an application form for a job, but, I want to tell you about one such project. In February, after months of asking for permission and fussing, Ita-where's Junior High school had its first (and possibly only as I'm leaving in August, but I will tell my replacement about it, so here's to hoping) English Week. It was fantastic for me, because, once it had the title of "English Week," it seemed that I had the permission to do a whole host of English related things, that I would never normally be able to do or would have to wait for months of permission discussions for, just because it was "English Week." Thanks for your love of categories Japan. The art club made me posters that were hanging up all around school to get the buzz going, and I put up a table in the entrance hall full of little bits and bobs from England, such as magazines, comics, newspapers, stamps, money, postcards, photos, food.... There's a very rubbish zoomed-in picture above there, because all of the decent pictures have my kids in them (not my babies, my students, but they feel like my kids, because I'm just so brilliant and loving and perfect...ooo this is beginning to sound like one our lovely lovely ALT "training seminars" (aka listen to how great I am at my job and how much I know about Japan speeches). Anyway, there was a nice crowd of kids around it all week long, and it lead to many questions, which was cool. Very few of these kids have travelled, so they enjoy looking at foreign articles (came up in class today actually....only one out of forty students had a passport "Where have you been?" "Nowhere, I just had a passport.").


Also, we translated the lunch menu into English every day and broadcast it on the speaker system (in Japan the kyuushoku (school lunch) menu is broadcast every day so we just did it again in English after that. Then, I did a speech in English, with some Japanese for help about school lunch around the world and put posters about it up on my English White Board (see Norway there with one of the amazing art club posters too (there are no hot lunches in Norway by the way, everyone brings packed lunches...school lunch is quite the institution (and fuss causer) in Japan, so Norway's lack of lead to mass hysteria fuss indeed in my school.)) Then we played some of the latest pop music from the UK (quietly so that the Head Teacher couldn't hear through the door, because he said it was ok as long as there were no guitars, electronic noises, rap or too many drums, before suggesting the national anthem of the UK for one day.....secret naughtiness there by me, but surely it was allowed, because, it was English Week after all!) To complement this, the amazingly lovely nutritionist (Japanese schools often have nutritionist who are there just to plan the school lunch menus combinations and calorie balance...mentalness really, especially when you see how odd/unhealthy some of ours are, but, that's not for here) arranged for us to have FISH AND CHIPS and a jam sandwich for lunch that (plus the not so British cabbage soup) with English Week making an appearance on the monthly mantra that is the school lunch menu handout!! It tasted of nothing but salt and I think I've given them all a bad impression of British food now, but, who has a good impression of British food anyway?



The most popular part of English week (apart from the for the school dinner ladies whose favourite part must have been shaking their salt shakers and getting carried away) was an orienteering type task where the kids had to find pieces of orange card hidden all around the school. There were 53 cards in total and each one had a reason for why it is worth studying English written on them in Japanese (it just had to be in Japanese or otherwise nobody would have bothered...it was not an exercise for learning new English, but for motivation as to why they study it). It proved quite the talking point of the week, and even prompted some of the most button-lipped-I'm-petrified-of-that-foreigner-type teachers to talk to me. I sort of assumed when I arrived that everybody knew there were many reasons to study English in today's globalising world, yet, on being questioned, my students can only ever muster up "to talk to foreigners" as a response, which isn't particularly meaningful to them when they live in the countryside of Japan, not exactly abundant with foreigners. So, I wanted to introduce them to a few more.


My favourite part of the week was my English newsletter. I made various articles, either in English, or about English in Japanese. Through the various activities I took part in in order to create the newspaper, I learnt a lot about my kids and about Japan's attitude to English. I asked some of my friends and acquaintances (plus somehow a friend of a friend who is some amazingly important person at Nintendo apparently) from Ita-where, to write about why they are happy they can speak (some) English, even though they live in the countryside and might not have any foreigners to speak with. It was really nice to read the responses and to see how happy they are to be able to understand English and how interested they are in travel, international news, culture and media, in spite of the overriding impression I often feel in Japan of a general ambivalence to these things. I hope some of my kids took note. I also did a quiz about Christmas and asked my kids to fill it out, which taught (or confirmed for) me that they know absolutely nothing about it at all. I came home for Christmas in the UK and before that I gave all of my third graders (15) a piece of paper and asked them to write a question in English. I took the slips home and got my friends and family to write answers for them and I took them back in January. I printed some of the more interesting answers in the paper. They were so happy to get their little slips back, and, many kids who don't normally show much enthusiasm for English, were really trying hard to work out the meaning of the answers by asking their friends, the teacher and me for the meanings of words and hunting through dictionaries. It was really funny for me to see the reactions to people of other races too (I put photos with the answers). They couldn't believe that black people were English and they pointed at my friend who has Chinese parents and said "nihonjin (Japanese)" straight away. In spite of mild racism, thanks to all my friends for filling those out if you are reading this, they really appreciated it. Equally as interesting was a survey I did with the first grade. I asked them if I said to my friend in the UK "Japan," what would be the first things that would spring to mind? I will show you the top few answers of each class (I did it with four classes of first graders, 13-year-olds):


1-1 : sushi, samarai, Mount Fuji, big Buddha statues, harakiri (I believe it to be a traditional type of ritual suicide or something ??), kabuki (traditional Japanese theatre)

1-2 : AKB48 (J-pop band), Ichiro (Japanese baseball player), One Piece (Japanese manga), Sky Tree (a new skyscraper in Asakusa, Tokyo), Dragonball (manga), Anpanman (kids' character), Keisuke Honda (footballer)

1-3 : Sky Tree, AKB48, sushi, Mount Fuji, manga

1-4 : Sushi, Tokyo, Sky Tree, samurai, Kyoto, Pokemon


I asked my friends and family to name five things they think of when they think of Japan each and the actual top 10 went as follows:

1. Sushi

2= Geisha

2= Kimono

4. Noodles

5= Tokyo

5= Anime

7= Mount Fuji

7= Crazy Fashion (that word crazy popping up many times)

7= High techonology

7= Fans


I was surprised as to how many traditional things came up, and also how many people thought of Mount Fuji and of cherry blossoms (a bit further down the list), two things which I don't think I'd ever heard of before coming to Japan!!


I can't think of a nice ending to tie this up, but, if any ALTs are reading...try out an English Week!

Monday 16 May 2011

Random Event Of The Day 10

I've just watched a 5-minute news report on TV about two old people who got sick after drinking what they thought was oolong tea but was actually pesticide, followed by a man in a suit telling us that the colour, smell and taste of pesticide is different to that of tea, so checking should help us make the decision...maybe my level of Japanese has made me misunderstand something and this might actually be some huge new story that is going to come back and bite me on my backside, but surely in a country still half in ruins from one of the biggest earthquakes in history with a broken nuclear power plant has something more important to report about? If you're interested, pesticide is white not brown, it smells horrible, not nice and tastes of poison not tea.

Sunday 15 May 2011

Random Event Of They Day 9

I was waiting in the photo printing shop, whilst the photo lady was behind a screen taking photos of someone...photo photo photo. There was a lot of "kawaiii" (cute) being screeched by her and another woman with no response, so I was assuming that it was a baby or a shy toddler being photographed. Ten minutes later and what walks out? A woman holding a DOG dressed in a wedding dress! Dressing up your pets is fairly popular in Japan and there are lots of shops dedicated to costumes and dog spas etc. (believe me the dog was dressed better than the woman). She sat down on the seat next to me (the woman, not the dog) and set about changing her out of the wedding dress into her normal clothes and putting the ribbons on her ears into a box full to the brim with doggy accessories, before replacing them with slightly less fancy ribbons (just the everyday ribbon as opposed to the bridal one)...Craziness!

Friday 13 May 2011

Random Event Of The Day 8

Bumping into one of my 1o-year-old students at the supermarket, and the man with her pointing at her and saying "My father"...that is one confusing family!

Thursday 12 May 2011

BLANK Of The Day 7

We had a new deputy head start in April. I have introduced myself to him personally, to all of the new teachers together, and to all of the new students in front of him, each time stating that I was from the UK, I also have an English notice board almost directly in front of the staff room door with Union Jacks and posters about the royal wedding and The King's Speech all over it, plus I wear a Union Jack bandana when dishing out the school lunch (a hanky I use as a bandana - don't ask me why serving school lunch necessitates a bandana, let's just put it down to Japanese fuss). Anyway, other other day I was comparing Japan to the UK when talking to the deputy head and he said "but you're from America right?" I mean, how many times does he need to be told? And, it's so weird, because he was obviously fairly sure of himself to not just think it to himself but to just abruptly say it, in spite of never hearing that I was American once (white person = American) AND, he didn't even apologise afterwards, even though most Japanese people spend most of their lives apologising anwyay...I mean, some people in the UK might see a Far Eastern person and think China immediately, but I don't think many would forget after being told many times, and I think everyone would apologise a million times and want the ground to eat them up after making such a mistake. He then proceded to declare that he'd been to the UK and he didn't like it much because it was dirty, old-fashioned, scary and impractical (to name but a few of its problems) AND, WORST of all, he said that he preferred France!! Never say that to an Englishman! Deputy Head lost about a million brownie points in 3 minutes flat.

Monday 2 May 2011

Fuss Of The Day 6

One of the teacher's car alarms going off in the carpark around lunchtime on Wednesday...I don't think I need say anymore.

Random Event Of The Day 7

I went to a huge gay night this weekend at a club called Ageha in Tokyo. It's not always a gay club, in fact, the event, Shangri-La, only takes place about three or four times a year so it's a pretty big deal, and loads of people come. The normal gay scene in Japan, centred around Shinjuku's Ni-chome leaves a lot to be desired, so this was a refreshing night with various styles of music, dance performances, a pool, an outdoor eating area and a whole host of fit guys. Needless to say, nobody came on to me, but, following sod's law, on the way home, whilst waiting for a train about four stations from my own, hungover, bedraggled and half asleep on a bench, I apparently gave off some kind of irresistable charm to a mid-40s, Hulk Holgan stylee bleach blonde mulleted Japanese man, who stank of sick, booze and fags....lovely. He talked to me for 20 minutes at the station on my bench, and all the way back to my station on the train, announcing "kakkoi" (cool) at everything I said and trying many times (unsuccessfully I believe) to take my picture...WHY ME???