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)


Wednesday 21 April 2010

Japanese People Are Lovely

I have just been speaking to a friend on Skype and it's official...I have been away from England for too long, and I am now scared of going back. Everybody in Japan is so nice all the time, I can't bear to think of going back to being suspicious and angry and having to listen to loud people talking and playing music on the train.

The last few weeks have provided many many examples of Japanese kindness, and, as I can't be arsed to structure this post in any way whatsoever, I am just going to bullet point them:

* Possibly the shyest lady in the world, the librarian from my junior high school, took me to and home from the enkai last week (YES I am totally in the loop!) and has asked me to go for drinks at her house with her and her husband.
* My new landlords (husband and wife) have just come round to help me fix my TV, but couldn't (as my TV is too old to connect to this new flat's digital whatever) so they have just GIVEN me a TV that they 'weren't using' (which has 2011 written on it, so it is not only new, it is from the FUTURE) in an unfurnished flat for free and brought me chocolates and biscuits too! HOW NICE IS THAT??
* When I moved three people from the town hall wouldn't let me pay for a van or anything, they all used the town hall's van things and spent essentially a whole day helping me take things from one apartment to the next...one of them paid for lunch too and just wouldn't let me pay even to say thankyou (I gave them some sweets instead in a pretty little bag which is definitely the Japanese way to thank people).
* The home economics teacher from my school who is lovely and who I speak to sometimes (I go to the cooking club sometimes) went to Kyoto and bought me a fan there! I don't know her that well so there was absolutely no need, and I totally bum fans, so that made me so happy.
* I have started up a new scheme at school where every week I choose a conversational English keyword, the sort that isn't in their rubbish textbooks (so far: week 1-long time no see, week 2-easy peasy) and if the students come and say five of them to me over a term, they can have a prize, and it has gone down so well! Everyone has been so supportive (the teachers I mean) and loads of kids are taking part even though they don't really know what the prizes are...that would NEVER happen in England. They are even allowing me to announce the keyword once a week on the school speaker thing ( you know like the ones you wee on American TV shows like Saved By The Bell) even though it's blatently not important enough for that. Eveyrone has been so nice happy to support me with it, I'm over the moon! (Oooo, that could be week 3's keyword).
* When we turned up at the football, 3 of us had tickets and one of us didn't, and the ticket and no ticket entrance was different. Instead of just sending my mate off with a point and a grunt as I imagine they would in England, this little old man in a fluorescent yellow jacket walked my friend all the way round the stadium to the other entrace, helped her buy the ticket and walked her all the way back to find us. Later on, we were trying to quickly pour some beer out of the cans we'd bought in the shop outside into our paper cups and this man came over...in England it would be to confiscate them, shout at you, possibly kick you out, in Japan...it was to offer us the can recycling bag, and just kept telling us to take our time pouring, he would wait next to us until we'd finished.

This list could go on forever.

I heart Japan.

Hanami and Footie

Sorry for the delay guys! I have been without internet for a couple of weeks or so. Time for an update on my last two weekends of fun, which have involved two things...one very Japanese...hanami, which is "flower viewing" and one very British...going to see the footie, but it was oh so very Japan-style.

The flowers that you "view" at a hanami party are called "sakura" or "cherry blossoms". They are Japan's national flower and their blooming is awaited with great anticipation (and much Japanese fuss) all year round. The joy and beauty of sakura and the hanami parties were sung at me on a more or less daily basis right from the onset of winter, as they would signify the start of spring and were just "so beautiful" etc. To start with, I was very excited, but, after a while (as I got to know more about Japan and it's fussing ways) I began to suspect that cherry blossoms were in fact just going to be exactly the same as the annoying pink blossoms that we get in the UK that are pretty for about 20 minutes until they got washed away by some drip drip drop little April huge fuck-off storms and become a horrible mush that sticks to your shoes. However, this time, Japan had a right to fuss. They were truly beautiful. The last of them are just fading now, which is such a shame, but there are so many trees that blossom all at the same time, which just floods the country in white, creating many a Kodak moment. A hanami party basically consists of sitting under the sakura trees somewhere and having a picnic and drinking yourself silly...so I was all up for a bit of that. I enjoyed myself very much, and it is nice to say that, after 4 months of feeling quite a lot like an icecube, that spring has FINALLY sprung! (except for the brief interlude of SNOW last Friday that I have still not forgiven Japan for yet.).

Last weekend, I did something very British...I went to watch a game of football (or soccer as I have disgustingly now started calling it, just to make myself understood by Japanese people). Me and some other English teachers went to see our local team play (and lose 3-1) in a home game in the second league here. The atmosphere was actually incredible. Forget your drunken racist wankers making slurs at every other fan/player/ref etc. (ok, so I'm a West Ham fan) and replace it with a very family atmosphere and thanking the players when they do well (or even when they don't), not criticising/abusing them. The guy in front of us kept shouting "Thank you goalkeeper" in English for some reason, even though our goalkeeper was truly awful. In the UK, I would be sure that that was sarcasm, but in Japan, I am equally sure that it wasn't. The chanting literally lasted from before the start until the very end, without barely a pause for breath (or even to actually watch the game), which suits me, cos 90 minutes is a long time right? Haha. The chants were ridiculously organised and joyous, with leaders announcing which one would be next and everyone joining in word-for-word. Me and my friends were maybe not so good at working out when to start and stop and how many claps to do etc, but it was great fun. I the Japanese crowd are wicked at the World Cup. In true Japanese stlye, I finished the day by buying a "strap" for my phone, which is a little string thing with the mascot on to hang on your mobile and jingle jangle wherever you go...no Japanese experience is complete without something cute and annoying like that.

Wednesday 7 April 2010

The Japanese Enkai 宴会

As I mentioned in my previous post, I finally, somehow, wangled an invite to not ONE but TWO of my school's end of year "enkais" , after 8 months of being totally left off of the invitation list. An enkai ressembles an office party in the UK to a certain extent I suppose, in that there is a meal and lots of alcohol and everyone attends, but in Japan there is (as always) a much greater sense of ceremony I think. There were many speeches, and everyone was wearing suits etc. In fact, it's possibly the smartest I've ever seen my teachers dress, that includes the all-important, over-rehearsed graduation ceremonies. The meal at both the enkais was incredible...sushi and sashimi (which is quite an expensive treat in Japan and not eaten by everyone, every day, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as my pre-coming-coming-to-Japan dreams painted it), various other dishes, mostly seafood, mostly delish, both had a slightly questionable hot salty egg mousse thing which stank to high heavens and tasted just as bad, but all in all, let's say that having been to these two enkais, two days on the trot, I didn't need to eat again for at least another week and I can't believe this nation, that can make and enjoy such incredible food, puts up with SCHOOL LUNCH every other day!! I was also slightly bewildered to see that this huge delicious, expensive banquet received a similarly enthusiastic cry of "delicious" as the school lunch does every day, but nothing more. Did they really think that is was just as oishii (delicious) as school lunch?? I know which one I'd rather...

The only thing in more abundance than the food is the drink. Mostly beer only, with a little bit of Japanese sake going around. All the teachers pay a fixed fee for the meal and all-you-can-drink alcohol. Japanese people get drunk very quickly, which was very amusing for me. It didn't take me much longer though, as I was a bit nervous about the prospect of a whole night in Japanese, where I knew everybody would be watching me and fussing over me as the first ALT (and therefore foreigner) to be invited in this arsecrack town for years. Another reason for getting drunk so quickly, from my point of view at least, is the Japanese custom that you never pour your own drink, but you pour others and wait for them to pour yours. It's kind of a way to start a conversation with someone...you pick up a big bottle of beer from the middle of the table and offer it to the person you want to talk to. My glass was a fairly popular choice, even if it was already full to the brim. By observing others during my time here, I've noticed that most people who are offered drink when their glass is full, still don't say no, but just take a huge swig and let the other person refill it....I followed suit. I had no idea how much I had drunk, and that can be a recipe for disaster. Still, I wasn't as drunk as my Japanese couterparts, so all's well that ends well I suppose.

Each enkai seems to have a group of people who are the enkai organisers, the "kanji" 監事. They choose the restaurant and officially invite people etc. Even though one of my English teachers, who speaks very good English was a kanji for one of the events, he still didn't ask me, but luckily one of the other ones did (very brave of him too). At both of mine, the kanji also went round making sure they spoke to everyone over the course of the evening, which gave me some really interesting conversations with some lovely teachers I'd never spoken to before, and some incredibly awkward ones with teachers who had clearly been dreading coming to me all night. All in all, it was great fun and AMAZING for gossip, which is always a good thing.

After both of them, we went to karaoke...the same karaoke on both nights which was rather embarrassing and gave the staff a bit of foreigner shock/deja vu I think. When I arrived on the Friday with the primary school staff, two of my other three primary schools were also at the SAME karoke place...this shows how lively the next city to the arsecrack (the arsecheek if you will) is. All enkai fun happened in the arsecheek, as there is officially no fun to be had whatsoever in my town, the arsecrack. I think arsecrack fun might even be illegal, if you'll pardon the pun. Anyway, karaoke was all Japanese songs, so I used the time to get more goss and to drink myself silly, as opposed to listening or joining in. I was forced to sing twice at both parties in English, which mainly got the response of "wow, your English is so good", which I think is typical Japanese politeness for "wow, I will compliment you on being able to speak your native language, as a distraction from the fact that your singing sounds like a cat being suffocated by a school-lunch choco-bread." Oddly enough, but unsuprising in Japan, is that in the second enkai, they chose an ABBA song for me AND a Beatles song for me, and I didn;t know either of them!! I thought I knew every song by both of those artists...but not the ones that hit it big in Japan. I was honest with the Beatles one, which came first (they could not believe it...possibly the biggest gossip of the night) but for the ABBA one I just couldn't cope with seeing their shock again and so I just sang along and hoped that they would admire how well I could pronounce the words again!

All in all, the enkais were wicked! It was a great way to get to know my colleagues outside of class and with a bit of help in the form of beer. PLease keep your fingers crossed for me that I am now in the loop and that I will be asked again!!