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!

BLANK Of The Day 6

An un-blank this time. I walked into one of my junior high 2nd year classes (14-year-olds) to find two girls singing to each other and jumping around in excitement. I said to them 'AKB48?' (anything longer than one word and they get lost). AKB48 are a ridiculously popular J-Pop girl group with about 75 members who all prance around in cheerleaders outfits and bikinis looking about 12, singing or chanting songs with 3 word English titles that still manage have mistakes in them. Sorry, went a bit Victor Meldrew then. Anyway...they said 'no...aburu labein.' I thought, I haven't heard of them before, they said the title was 'What The Hell' and thinking that that was incredibly accurate English for a J-Pop group, it dawned on me that they were saying Avril Lavigne!! All the most famous music artists in the world that these kids BLANK on, but they KNOW and LOVE Avril Lavigne!! Even to the point of them knowing a newer song by her than I do (not that I am exactly a big fan of the little weasel but still). Anyway, finally I have some kudos with my kids for being able to sing and understand some music that they like! This is what I was expecting right from the start of arriving in Japan, can't believe it's taken a year and half (except for I'm a Scatman)! So, I have fully jumped on the bandwagon and am a total Avril sellout, putting her on my English notice board and downloading the truly awful 'What The Hell' to play on the school radio soon. I am thrilled that Avril Lavigne is motivating my kids to like and learn English, but, I am slightly unsure as to how much of the lyrics of 'What The Hell,' a song that appears to be about not caring, sleeping around and being an annoying little weasel no matter what anyone thinks, I should explain to them...what a role model!

Happy Tanjobi To Me!

Enough of radioactive earthquake talk. Let's go pre-quake, when all in Jappy was still happy. At the start of March, I was particularly happy, as (aside from having to confront the depressing fact that I am now TWENTY FOUR meaning that next year I will be half way through my twenties, meaning that old age is a stone's throw away) I had the chance to celebrate my birthday! I think it's fair to say that birthdays aren't as big a deal in Japan as they are in the UK, but, I thought, poo you Japan, I am gonna celebrate it and I am gonna bloody well celebrate it in style. The celebrations were not one, not two, not three, but FOUR FOLD. Go me.

Celebration 1 - Pre-birthday cinema. Two of my lovely Japanese lady friends took me to the cinema and for lunch on the weekend before my birthday, buying me a set of postcards by 18th-19th century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, paired with a sushi pen with the names of all of the sushi written on it (useful in so many ways...that's actuallly not supposed to be sarcastic) and a truly horrible egg sushi keyring, which I now have to use as I see them all the time. They already plagued my phone with the most effeminate, impractically shaped, loud ringy belly mobile phone strap I've ever seen in Japan, with a design surely aimed at Ann Widecombe or someone equally awful old-lady fashion-y, which refused to break for about 6 months and they have now done something just as tacky to my keys...will it ever end? We saw "Hereafter" with Matt Damon (incidentally now off screens in Japan due to the graphic tsunami seen - that scene was horribly realistic anyway, I didn't enjoy the film much to be honest). Then we went for lunch at an Italian restaurant, where I had the traditionally Italian sweet French crepe filled with dry salad...Nigella eat your heart out.

Celebration Number 2 - On the day celebrations. My boss text me as it turned midnight on my birthday and asked me what I was doing in the evening, so that she could bring me a present. I told me I would be in, and then she said that she would take me out instead. So, we went to an izakaya with her husband and another colleague of mine. I hadn't been there since my first month in Japan, so it was so nice to see how much I understood now compared to the last time! We ate an awful lot, drank some "local" beer, which turned out to be from miles and miles away and generally had a lovely old chinwag. They got me a mug with the Japanese flag on it and I also somehow wound up with the rest of a bottle of sweet potato shochu (a Japanese spirit) that we couldn't finish on the evening (still in the fridge a month later, I might add).

Celebration Number 3 - Party Time! My lovely ALT friends and I, who spend our whole lives sticking out like sore thumbs in our respective rural dwellings, came together in Tokyo, to stick out like two big fat sore hands. Present-wise, I got the biggest set of bright purple blankets off of my crazy friend, who somehow managed to smuggle them around without me noticing until she whipped out the biggest package I've ever seen...not quite sure how that happened, plus some manga, some funny sticker things that you can stick on your phone or material too that will make me look super-cool (as if I don't already) and a ticket to a football match. I got more than I got when I was at home in the UK!

In the way of celebrations, I managed (not without a large helping of fuss) to book a ridiculous bargain in the centre of Shibuya, one of the young fashionable night-out districts in Tokyo on a Saturday night. It was in the izakaya where everything on the menu is 270 yen, not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I love the place. It's a chain that always seems to be full. It has a computer menu which you use with a touch screen pen and also has an ENGLISH BUTTON! Woo! This particular branch is full of young people on Saturday night. It's the one near Tokyu Hands, if that helps anyone that knows Shibuya, but it probably doesn't because you are falling over those chains once every 3 steps there. Oh, it's the one by Outback Steak House. A pretty cool branch if you ask me. For 2,480 yen each (about 20 quid) we got 8 different types of food, including big nabes (huge Japanese broth type meals) and 2 hours all-you-can-drink. BARGAIN. We played silly animal and pointy drinking games, the rules I can't really recall and then some of us went out to Club Asia around the corner.

It was my first time there....main impression is that two people were sick on my leg in the space of about 10 seconds. I was literally mid-schock at the first sick episode and, before I'd had a chance to even tell my friend next to me what had happened, it was happening all over again. Apart from that, it was a club with a nice atmosphere, a lot of dancing, and, more than one room, allowing you to change when you got bored, or when you got sicked on. The night was called "Flash" and involved lots of Japanese people pretending to be cool and love electro and house music all night (including a lovely song in English that clearly only we understood, about needing the toilet) but then giving the biggest reaction of the night to the new cheesey K-Pop band Kara (see left). I ended the night with a kebab, a Japanese style breakfast, a sleep in a manga cafe and then a McDonald's and a Starbucks ham and cheese panini and painfully sweet sakura cherry blossom latte (I think I let out a groan at the sugary taste, when will I learn?). However, in my defence, it was my birthday and I did have two people's vomit on my favourite pair of jeans. Thank you friends for a wonderful evening in spite of various fusses and impracticalities!

Celebration Number 4 - More Food and Drink. Rather inconveniently scheduled on the evening after my big night out in Club Asia, i.e. on the same day that I'd been trapsing around Shibuya in sick jeans with a hangover, eating junk food, was a dinner and drinks with three Japanese friends in Tatebayashi. We went to my Taiwanese friend's Taiwanese restaurant. What I thought would be a simple and small affair, especially given that not a huge fuss is usually made in Japan for birthdays (just for things like choco chip pan and broken magnets), turned out to be truly one of my best evenings since being in Japan. My lovely lovely friends had invited more people (some that I knew, some that I didn't), making a total of 10 or so, I receieved gifts of handkerchief things (very common in Japan), a bath bomb from Lush which was shaped as a frog and turns into a prince when it goes in the water (yet to try it...sounds interesting to say the least) and, a VERY cool and for the first time since I've arrived in Japan, NOT tacky strap made of leather, and, indeed, made BY the friend that organised the party as he is a leather thing maker. I love it. Love love love. I am so cool now and I wear my phone so that it comes out of my pocket and everyone can see how cool I am. So lucky to be in Japan and not in the UK where doing that would lead my phone to get nicked as quick as the second sick episode followed the first. My Taiwanese friend gave us champagne and my friends had also had a cake made with my name on it. It was all just too nice for words, I actually didn't quite know how to react. I thought I was going to cry! But I didn't...that wouldn't have been too cool. I also got a two parcels sent to me, one from my friend at home with WINE GUMS and one from my parents with various chocolatey things and some money in my account from my family, which was spent on various clothes in Harajuku at Uniqlo and We Go a week before it was my birthday...so much for saving for travelling in South Korea in May :(. Everything I bought was on sale, and, what can I say, I'm weak. Embarrassingly, we had been studying birthdays in sixth grade at primary school, and in practice conversations I had been telling people my birthday at school. One of the teachers remembered and, on the day, had the kids sing happy birthday to me, and one of my kids from another school remembered from about three weeks before and that class sang to me the following day (the closest day that I was at that school). Lovely kids. Lovely friends. Lovely Japan. I may have had my ups and downs with living in Japan, but this was a week that truly made me sorry to know that I'm leaving in the summer.

Me and My Bike

Before arriving in Japan, I was informed that I would be working at many schools, all over the sushiless village and that my mode of transport, come rain, come shine, come snow and indeed come typhoon blowing in the opposite direction, would be a BICYCLE. The last time I had used one of these evil contraptions, I was not long out of nappies and it had a pair of stabilisers on it. I wasn't good even then, but, fifteen years out of practice and first time on an adult bike was truly catastrophic. I couldn't go straight, I couldn't turn, I couldn't stop...the bike basically went wherever it wanted and I just obeyed and pulled faces. In a village where there is barely ever anybody around, it was amazing how crowds of people seemed to emerge from the rice fields just in time to see me fall off in to a muddy puddle, crash into a tree, or (all of these things really happened) drop a mini can of sweetcorn that I'd bought in the supermarket out of my old biddy basket on the front of my bike and somehow simultaneously run over it and pop it! I thought I was hiding my crapness quite well, but in fact they prompted most of the very first awkward communication sessions with the people in my village (I won't call them conversations, as I don't think being able to say nothing more than "konnichiwa" really qualifies) being them laughing and doing gestures of handlebars whilst wobbling and pulling scared faces...ha bloody ha.

Anyway, I did get used to it and managed to stay away from trees and even safely transport sweetcorn. In April (8 months after I'd arrived) I was given a new biked. Well, it was newer than mine, but still second-hand, I was very grateful of it though, because my original bike had had "Tatebayashi High School For Girls" written on the back of it as it was a stolen/borrowed/lost/mystery bike prescribed to students of that girls school (not that anybody told me that until it was changed!!!) I was checking the bike with my boss and I was like...the pedals turn too easily, it's way too light... she said "it's on first gear, put it up" so I did and I was like "Oh! It's changed!"...she said "Yeeeess...it's a gear, that's what it's for!" Then I said "yeah, but normally they don't change that much" dawning on my mid-sentence that when I said "normally" I was referring to the one other bike with gears that I had ever sat on in my whole life....we got out the old bike....the gears had been broken the WHOLE TIME I had been using it and I hadn't even noticed because I didn't know what a gear felt like!!! I was so embarrassed!! I had been innocently turning away the little gear knob when it wasn't even changing a thing! To make it worse, it had been stuck on top gear, explaining why there was a hill in town on which I always had to get off and push my bike up and another hill that the first time I went up it I was following a 50-odd year old woman who was showing me the way, who got up it no problem, whilst I broke out in the sweat of the century and caved in and pushed. I had thought that I was the weakest person in the world but it had been a broken bike made for 15-year-old girls all along!

Even if I do say so myself, it may have taken me over a year, but I am a bit of a pro now...I can use gears for starters, I can go really fast and I can EVEN stand up when I cycle. My next aim is to do that thing where you sort of start pushing it and have a foot on pedal before you get on it and then sort of fling the other leg over the seat once the thing is moving...I have been a bit too scared to try that one as of yet though, due to the incredibly high chance of a large amount of humiliation. Half the number of legs on the bike, double the chance of embarrassment, I reckon.
It is still ever so slightly depressing to live in a place that makes you quite literally reliant on your bloody bike to be able to get ANYWHERE, but it is a darn sight less depressing, now that I can get there really fast, whilst standing up and knowing what a gear feels like. Success (albeit slow) on the bike front!

In other news, latest fuss at school is about music. I am doing an event next week (originally) entitled "English Week" (I'm not being too sarcy though, because I chose the title) and I am arranging a few different little things for it. I hope to post about when it's over and when I can be bothered (that's a combination that could be quite a long time coming) but, with it just a few days away, fuss is through the roof. I wanted to play a recent UK chart hit every day next week over the announcer (they have a radio type system here like you used to see on Saved By The Bell or something) during cleaning time. The aim is to teach them about other cultures and to motivate them to study English. They usually have music anyway, so I thought it would be no problem. My teacher told me that lunch time would be better (apparently there is a worry that all the kids are just going to stop still in their tracks in order to listen for five minutes and not do anything whilst the music is on, which I feel is incredibly unlikely to happen, but still...).

Anyway, the upshoot of it being changed to lunchtime (and this an upshoot that has shooted its little head up after I have gone and downloaded 3 rubbish new pop songs from iTunes) is that the head teacher feels the music must be "good for eating lunch to." What precisely this meant was a bit of a blur to me for a few minutes, until what I realised was that they mean slow and boring. Firstly my teacher said "no rock...no guitars" (?) but on playing him clips of the 5 songs I'd selected and watching his eyes pop out of his head and hit the computer screen, I realised that guitars and rock were not the only problem...fast, loud (I'll just turn the volume down??), electronic, rap and DRUMS are also issues...I think I can sum up the severity of the reaction by telling you that he recommended I use the UK NATIONAL ANTHEM as one of my song choices!! I am not kidding!! Is that going to inspire 14 year-olds?? I have spoken to a few other teachers about it, who all seem to think that drums are fine but all said "It's not rock is it?", whispering the word "rock" as if it was a swear word and looking uncomfortable...especially surprising as I'm sure the rock they are imagining is about as risquee as Coldplay after they have had a foot bath and a cup of herbal tea. Ironically the songs are indeed NOT rock, and are in fact poppy things like JLS and The Saturdays who are aimed and kids much younger than the ones I am aiming at in reality. I asked my teacher if drums and fast would be ok if it wasn't too electro and was truly "poppy pop"...which he now thinks is an actual phrase and is throwing it about willy nilly so I am now frantically searching the charts for poppy pop that is good for eating lunch to - not an easy task! I know I shouldn't have said poppy pop but, funnily enough for an English teacher, I rarely have time to think about the accuracy of the English I am using here as I am just thinking about how to make it as simple as possible...I certainly didn't want to introduce the word cheesey into the conversation because who knows what confusion that could have led to?? I've found an older JLS song which seems less electro and that awful Cheryl Cole one "Fight For This Love" which is sort of electro, but has no rap, guitars, drums or indeed tune at all. Let's see if we can come to a compromise which will put the kids off of English slightly less than some choir dirging out "God Save The Queen!" I will let you know!

Good Luck Always Comes in...SEVENS!!??

Basically guys, I am so happy at the moment. This is why these two new posts have taken so long, because, the problem with a blog I am finding is, that when I have a life to write about, I have no time to write about it. When I do have time to write, it is probably because I have not life and hence have nothing to say....hmmmm the trials, tribulations and issues of being a blogger. Anyway, the reason I am so happy are seven-fold (or more really but seven that I can be arsed to write about, so here it goes...)

1. I had a wicked weekend last weekend. It was long weekend (apolgies of the overuse of the word "weekend" there. I went to a famous town called Nikko, which isn't that far from me but I hadn't previously got round to going. It is beautiful with lots of temples and nature to be seen etc. Then I went to Tokyo for a proper party weekend. I made some new friends and got to know some other friend better. I got to practice loads of Japanese etc. It was very Japanese partying...I did karaoke, purikura (which are these wicked photo booths where everything is cartoony and colourful in the background and you can add patterns and writing afterwards...google it), went to two izakayas, which is like a Japanese pub restaurant, erm.... and just spent the whole time with Japanese people to be honest. Saturday night was a leaving do for a Japanese mate, who is actually going to live in London ironically. It was in a really cool modern bar, owned by Fiat the car people, for some reason. On Sunday, one of my new Japanese friends was DJing at this bar called Hell's Bar, which had crazy decor and stuff. It was a wicked atmosphere and great music...I had a great time. Previously to that we sort of started a mini-party in the convenience store down the road, to save money on drinks. It had a little table and we asked the guy if we could drink our drinks there, and wound up staying there for hours and popping back in during the night (hence a huge hangover). Anyway....can you even imagine being allowed to drink in a Spa or something for a few hours in the UK? It must be illegal, and people just aren't nice enough to let you do things like that....I heart Japan.

2. Everything is changing at work for the better. One of my main English teachers is changing next year (as of 1st April) and I've found out that the new one is YOUNG! WOOO! Maybe he will actually understand the importance of English and maybe he will have covered in his training what he/she is supposed to use me for, instead of just ignorning me/making me read from the textbook. I will talkk about my frustration with English education in Japan another time, but let's just say, that my relationship with my juniou high school teachers really couldn't get much worse...so a new, young one will be a refreshing change...he/she has only just graduated from uni so they should at least bring an open mind with them.

3. Another change at work is that I am getting a new supervisor. My supervisor is sort of my boss I suppose and just co-ordinates everything and sorts all things out like my schedules and my taxes and stuff. I really really like my current one, so it's not that I needed her to change. But she can speak no English, which can be a challenge, when talking about taxes etc. especially, and the new one can speak really good English. and I already know her! She's one of my mates from the town hall. And with all due respect to Yamada-san, my current one, who is incredibly Japanese, in a shy, indirect, don't want to cause any fuss type way, the new one is kind of open-minded and a bit ballsy for a Japanese woman, so will probably more pro-active than 10 Yamada-san's put together.

4. I am moving appartment! Mine is horrible, dirty and expensive. No details yet, but the new one should be newer, cleaner and cheaper, if a little smaller, but bothered. I am OVER THE FUCKING MOON, if you'll pardon my French.

5. There are things called enkais here, which are work parties basically, but they are kind of more important somehow...I can't really explain it. Anyway, I am not exaggerating when I say that I do not know one other JET who doesn't get invited to their schools enkais (I'm sure there are a few somewhere), and in fact, nearly every single one I have spoken to had their own welcome enkai in their honour when they arrived. I had....nothing. I have been invited to....zero. I hope this is not to do with me, but to do with previous JETs here being a bit shit or rejecting them and them giving up, and also that I am in so many schools, nobody really feels that I am important enough or something....I have no idea why but it's actually bothered me a lot because I would love to get to know my colleagues outside of work, with some social lubricant in the form of beer etc. Anyway, all this has changed...I was invited to the West primary school's (ironically my least favourite school haha) end of academic year enkai! Woo!! I will report back with how it went later.

6. Almost unbelievably...literally, Japan is random but this takes the biscuit, I was also invited to my juniour high school's end of academic year enkai at the last minute!! I am SO SO SO thrilled...it's about fucking time though.

7. I have ALSO been invited out by some people at the town hall, which many other JETs are regularly, especially the ones at lots of schools, but I never have been. My current supervisor apolgised that it had never happened before and we are going out together at the end of April. How all of these things have happened at once I have NO idea, but I am asking no questions. I am so so happy! Woo!