Me and My Kotatsu

"What is a Kotatsu?" I hear you cry! A kotatsu, not to be confused with the famous hot spring Kusatsu or the the delish pork cutlet and rice dish katsudon (not that I'm speaking from experience of course), is a short heated Japanese table that is used in Japan to keep warm during the winter. The Japanese winter is so so cold. Actually, I take that back...where I live, it's fairly similar to London I imagine, but it just feels ten times colder because the heating is so poor that you might as well be standing outside the whole time. To combat this, rather than installing good heating, the Japanese have come up with this cunning way to convince us all that we are warm. My normal table actually turns into a kotatsu in the winter. That makes it sounds like it's an automatic change, which, believe me, it very very much isn't. The table is heated electrically underneath and the top comes off so that you can put a thick blanket over it and let it fall over your legs, keeping the heat in. It can then be placed back on top of the blanket so that your table can still be used as a table. Does that make any sense at all? Maybe a photo would help, so here is a picture of my kotatsu:

It is very comforting to sit under it, but I know I'd rather be in an actual WARM ROOM and therefore not need the tiny bit of boiling hot space UNDER A TABLE that I am crammed into.

Advantages of kotatsus:

1. They keep your feet nice and toasty.

2. They allow you to use your funky floor chair if you are as cool enough to own one (as I clearly am). I love my floor chair.

Disadvantages of kotatsus:

1. It gives you only 2 square feet of warmth, which is just a few cm off of the ground.

2. It means that the only warm parts of your house are under a table and the toilet seat, with the fridge coming in third place...not the most practical of locations.

3. It makes you try to wedge yourself into the aforementioned 2 square feet of impractically located space, which even a contortionist couldn't do and then when you get the maximum amount of your body under it, you realise that it's so hot under there that you have to withdraw a bit every minute or so and sit in a sort of hovering semi-wedge.

4. You fall asleep in said wedge or semi-wedge position and wake up with boiling legs, a freezing head and an aching back.

5. It's name leads you to tell people that you ate a table for dinner or feel asleep under your pork cutlet and rice (may or may not have happened to me).

However, in spite of myself, I do spend most of my time at home wedged or semi-wedged under the thing and that is indeed, where I am now, writing to you. It's so very impractical, but when everywhere is so cold, it really is a God-send...me and my kotatsu have a true love-hate relationship. Floor chair is all love, as is katsudon and Kusatsu.

Back To School

Today's Gift Count (no word of a lie) : one cake, one sachet of posh tea, one home-made loaf of bread, one mini 2011 planner and two photos of myself (from two different people). Gave some more of my gifts from England today and had a text from one of the English volunteers about an hour after I gave her hers which said she was "sooooo happy" (you just count them os mate)...like I said in my last post, I am a quality gift giver (actually it was a Now magazine and a Jon Bon Jovi diary, but you've gotta know your audience innit).

So, on to my main topic...Being back at school has been going fairly well so far this term, except for being so jet-lagged that I have spent a lot of it feeling like it's 2am. Friday was the first day back, but in true Japanese style, the first day back isn't so much a "day" as a 3 hour session of ceremonies, meetings and cleaning, before the kids go home, leaving the teachers with another 5 hours of meetings, or, in my case, 5 hours of sitting gaumlessly at my desk trying desperately to stay awake. This is the second year in a row (out of two at the school) in which the Head Teacher has for some unknown reason chosen to use ME in his New Year speech, without informing me, or indeed speaking to me for at least 2 months prior, prompting 500 students and 30-odd teachers to turn around and look at me, whilst I am innocently staring out of a nearby window or picking my nose or something. I then realise, look shocked, grin and sort of nod-bow. Of course, all I ever know is that it's something about me, not what he is actually saying about me, so he could be saying, "Why on earth is that moron MARK still here, staring out of a window like that" and I am just grinning and nodding him along. No, actually, last year I know that he was talking about Susan Boyle (as you do) and just kept referring to the UK as "Mark-sensei's country," as if he thought that was its actual name. This year's was something about his favourite moments of last year, but, assuming that his favourite moment of last year wasn't simply "Mark-sensei" there must have been more to it than that.

Anyway, lessons have all been going very very well so far. Have been using some UK chart music with my second graders, which has been going down well (although I am rather supsicious that it's more just an excuse for them to chat, not that they need one, but at least they are talking about soemthing vaguely related to English this way.) With my third graders, I have had a whole lesson to myself, which is quite rare with that teacher (which I can understand, cos they are busy with exams and stuff and he has a lot to get through), but I did a talk and quiz about my trip back home, where they had to guess what I did while I was in England. Also, before the holidays I had them all write a question in English on a piece of paper, took them back to England and then I got my friends and family to write answers back to them. It was something that I really wanted to do, but was a bit worried that the English would just get too difficult for them (they aren't used to things that aren't lifted directly from the textbook) and that it would just put them off English more. Also, it was the absolute bane of my existance during my holiday, ruining precious catch up time with my mates (160 is a lot of questions for two weeks, especially when you have a year and a half of goss to catch up on!) "Friend: Marrrrkkkk!! How have you been? How's Japan? How's the job? You look amazingly beautiful and radiant! Me: You couldn't just quickly write down for this student what Japanese food you like or whether you prefer AKB48 or Arashi for me could you? Ten times!" Anyway...it was all well worth it in the end, because the reaction was fantastic and they all tried really hard to understand the answers and everyone thinks that all of my friends and family are absolutely gorgeous (I glued photos on the back). Anyway, wonderful lessons all round there so that was wicked.

The only problem of the last few days came yesterday. When I first came to Japan I started taking Japanese lessons with a teacher in my town. He rather incoveniently for me went to live in China for 8 months or something and that commute wasn't really gonna happen so I have been on a rather long break. Anyway, he's back now, and he always used to pick me up for the lessons and take me to his house for the lesson (so that his wife could feed me enormous amounts of green tea and sweet, Japanese bean-filled blobs which all taste exactly the same but are apparently all completely differently.) Anyway, in the meantime, I've moved house, and he didn't know where my new flat was so we agreed to meet outside the town hall. Still, because he felt bad making me walk 2 minutes to the town hall, he cycled (not sure why he cycled) the 20 minutes from his house to the town hall earlier in the day, in order to look at random nearby blocks of flats to see if he could see mine. Don't forget that the reason he comes to get me is to save me the very same cycle ride. It's almost too nice for words, but completely fruitless as he couldn't find it anyway so I had to WALK like some kind of WALKER 2 whole minutes to the town hall. And that was my big problem of the last few days...wanker. How could he do that to me??

No, no, that wasn't my big problem. I was feeling totally fine, was lovely to see my teacher and his wife after quite a while (I did actually see them briefly when he was back for a visit in October but still, even that's over 2 months ago). Anyway, about 5 minutes in to the lesson, I suddenly started to feel a really strong pain in my stomach, and I'm not the "ill" sort of person, who has a headache and takes a week off of work or calls a hospital in case they are dying, I'm more the sort of person who would have to be about 10 heartbeats off of dying before calling in sick for work, let alone ring a hospital (I waited 48 hours before going to the doctors after starting to feel ill a couple of years ago with what turned out to be a burst appendix). Anyway, it was so painful, that I just had to say something and ask if I could just go home. I couldn't believe I was saying it almost, but I knew that I just couldn't sit there, for fear of throwing up all over my bean blob. Being ill in Japan is definitely something that causes a fuss, so saying that I was ill, all of a sudden, at the table of somebody else's house, was a cue for the fuss of the century to break out. He called his wife back down (which he does with a very rude OI type noise as if talking to a criminal or a meercat or something) and they then set about touching various parts of their body (some rather compromising) to try and guess what was wrong with me, supplemented by my teacher frantically flipping through his dictionary and coming out with things like "are you nachiies?" (nauseous) and "do you have dyorihaa?" (I can't spell the real one, but you've got it right?) with his wife standing next to him doing incredibly accurate gestures for each potential illness. From a British perspective at least, Japan has a very strange privacy culture. I mean, if I reach up at school and somebody sees my tummy poke out of my t-shirt, they all find it so hilarious and hold their heads in their hands in embarrassment for me, yet, somebody just saying, I need to go home, I have a "dicky tummy" or something as I would probably say in the UK, does not get the response of "OK, I'll take you, take care" no more questions asked, but instead some kind of charades routine of the shits and vomitting and a broken English list of body organs...very strange and VERY embarrassing. All the time I just kept saying "I don't know" and concentrated very hard on not letting the pair of 50-odd-year olds in front of me doing impressions of vomitting and shougin words like "bowels" at me, actually make me vomit all over my textbook. Anyway, eventually I was allowed to go home with just a warning (it was like the Spanish Inquisition I swear), and I will just be polite and British now and keep my privacy by saying that all you need to know is that I'm fine now. I hope that will do in my next lesson and they won't ask for photo evidence of what happened!! Keep your bowels crossed for me please!

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.

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!!

Clubbing in Tokyo and Staying in a Manga Cafe

This weekend was a mega party weekend, in which I went clubbing on both Friday and Saturday night, staying at a manga cafe in between...a manga cafe sandwich if you will. A manga cafe doesn't really do what it says on the tin at all...there is manga, and there is coffee, but it's sort of like an internet cafe, but each computer has its own booth with a closing door (yeah...high tech I know, a door that closes) that you can sleep in, there is a shower room and then you can help yourself to as much free manga and as many free drinks (HOTTO and COLDO if you don't mind) as you like for the time that you're there. I paid 1,500 yen, about a tenner, for 6 hours, which with the free internet, drinks, and shower, is almost cheaper to buy than not to buy by my reckoning. The drawback is that you have to sleep on a sort of padded floor, instead of on a bed, but I've been thinking that in the cheaper hostels here, you only get a futon, and I sleep on a futon in my flat, so what is a futon if it's not just a moving padded floor right? I know you might be thinking that in Europe you can find hostels for that money and have the luxury of sleeping in a bed, but believe me, in Japan, you can't. This was right in the heart of Shinjuku, one of the main areas in central Tokyo too, and where I'd been clubbing AND you don't have to book them in advance, you can just roll in. Basically, I bum manga cafes and I think my friends here are starting to think that I'm working for their marketing department, the amount I bang on about them!

One other disadvantage is that they smell of smoke and you feel like SUCH a dirty stop-out the next day when you are leaving, looking like a train has just hit you, trying to wring kinks out of parts of your body you never knew you had, and some (relatively) normal people are arriving to use it for it's actually for, which is to read manga. But then, they are getting up at the crack of dawn (or maybe more like midday :D) to come and read manga in a smelly manga cafe, so let's face it, nobody is in much of a position to judge if they are in a manga cafe.

Anyway, on to the actual nights out. I went out in Shinjuku on Friday and Roppongi on Saturday (we saw SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO wooo!) and I had a great time on both nights...I've made some new friends, both Japanese and foreign, so it was a bit of a success all round really. Clubbing in Japan is so strange. The etiquette of clubbing in Japan is just amazing...it's so polite, it's unreal. Nobody is bumping into you all the time, you have space to dance, the queue is orderly and quiet, the bouncers are nice, there's no litter/broken bottles/sick all over the place inside...it's wicked! But I will probably be desperate for a dirrrrty night out when I get back to London, cos maybe the fun in a Japanese night club is just a tad too controlled, but still, at least you're not scared to bump in to someone in case they punch you and you don't arrive home (or at the manga cafe) with sick on your shoe!

The Tokyo Marathon and Tokyo's Alice in Wonderland Cafe

So, Tuesday is my birthday and living in the arse crack of Japan doesn't present a whole lot of opportunity for birthday celebration...especially not mid-week so today I met up with six friends and spent the day in Tokyo, a very fun time had by all. It was great!

We went to watch the Tokyo Marathon (unfortunately it was pissing it down with rain...not that I should complain cos any much further East and we would have been likely to have been hit by a tsunami, so rain I can cope with, and cope with well, being British). The main rain issue was that the umbrella's made actually seeing anything of the marathon a rather tactical affair. We wound up ducking and diving all day by Asakusa (a bit touristy area by a large shrine in Tokyo) and it was really fun.. There were people dressed up as all sorts of things just like in the London marathon...we had Japanese characters like Anpanman, Duraimon and Pikachu, plus a Spiderman, people in suits, and even a man dressed as a Swan Lake style ballerina who stopped to give us a five-minute ballet rendition in the middle of the course!! It was also really funny to see so many people stopping mid-race to take photos...how Japanese!! We were right by a stage two which had some traditional Japanese music and dancing...including these poor old women wearing next to nothing in the freezing cold, who were doing the most pain-stakingly boring dance to the most pain-stakingly repetitive song for about 45 minutes....I bet they were just dying for the tsunami to hit Tokyo to put them out of their misery!!

After we had finished watching the marathon (which is very tiring....much worse than running I'm sure) we stopped for cake (as we often do when we have nothing else to do) and then made our way over to the posh part of Tokyo, Ginza, to go a themed Alice in Wonderland Cafe Restaurant!! It had a wicked atmosphere, all the waitresses are dressed as Alice and they have Alice music playing and all the dishes are laid out to look like faces and animals of things that are in the books and the film. It was all very random and very Japanese...but then that's just how I like things really! A great time had by all I think!