BLANK Of The Day 8

Mid-skit, where I was a shopkeeper and the teacher was a shop assistant, in front of a class of 40 and a few men in suits from a super-duper important office somwhere in the back of beyong who we were demonstrating too, my teacher says 'My Father would like something to eat'...'F***' I think. We are doing a skit about shopping for souvenirs to bring home from England and he is buying something for his Father to EAT in spite of me asking him roughly a thousand times to choose READ (matching my typically British Harry Potter flashcard) or LISTEN TO (matching my typically British Beatles CD flashcard) but he chose EAT, one that I had specifically asked him not to choose as I looked at the board to see that I had a choice of his three carefully prepared flashcards as options for souvenirs to take back for his Father from England....a bowl of curry and rice, and ebi fry (a deep fried prawn) on rice, and an omuraisu (an omelette filled with rice). What the hell am I supposed to do with that??? Offer him a Japanese dish of deep-fried prawn and rice to take back to Japan on a plane as a gift?? I said, how about chocolate, choosing to ignore flashcard situation and said jokingly 'omuraisu isn't not really omiyage (souvenirs) of England'...'It's FROZEN omuraisu,' he laughs and says to a class who don't understand the word frozen. I understand frozen but I don't understand the reason he said it. A whole big, fat portion of misunderstandings and rice is my souvenir of that lesson!

Fuss Of The Day 10

Calpis, the Japanese sort of milky and very sweet drink, named after its taste of bovine urine, have made a new product called "Calpis Cream" (カルピスクリーム) to spread in a cake or on a sandwich, giving it that lovely hint of cow's piss, that had always been missing from your sandwiches until its invention. We got TWO TINY samples (sort of half a McDonald's ketchup size) for a staffroom of almost forty people! It was like sekihan in reverse...how to share two mini portions between four people. Fuss-o-rama (this was fuss number two, after the first overreaction (screaming, panting, orgasming) over the fact the new product in itself) broke out. I think it was still going on when I left to go home, but there was talk of someone bringing in some bread and trying to share it round us all tomorrow...watch this space. I'm sorry, but this was clearly someone at Calpis' marketing department having a laugh about how big a fuss they could cause in Ita-where's staffroom...FORTY people and TWO samples!!?? Evil, cow-piss-creaming bastard!

Fuss Of The Day 9

Wow! Do I have a big-fat-mama-sized fuss for you today or what? Yesterday was sekihan-gate. Sekihan is a sticky rice dish with red beans. The rice is soaked in the bean juice before it's cooked or something or nothing to turn it pink. Yesterday, there was no school lunch due to exams, meaning the kids go home early, which is enough to cause a bit of fuss anyway, so we were already in the mood for a big old overreaction.

We have bought a new rice cooker at school (another long, drawn out, fussy decision). I feel like this is a history lesson of sekihan-gate with the "Causes" and "Triggers." So...they decided to test the rice cooker (not sure why a new rice cooker wouldn't work) on exam day by making shit loads of sekihan, thereby hopefully ending both rice cooker fuss and the "what should the teachers do for lunch fuss?" simultaneously. Which I suppose it did, only to offset it with the biggest fuss I have experienced since being in Japan. The first huge box of sekihan arrived. 21 plastic boxes inside. Large plastic boxes, each one with enough sekihan to feed two people probably. Bear in mind that many staff take time off on exam day, so we are looking at about 25 staff and 21 boxes (42 portions) of sekihan. Then comes big box number two. That's 25 staff, 42 boxes and 84 portions of rice. Cue fuss. Dishing out lunch is fuss enough at the best of times. Mid-fuss, along comes big box number 3. That's right: 25 staff, 63 boxes, 126 portions of sekihan. Sekihan hysteria is breaking out. The secretary yells at the 20/25 staff who are for some reason ALL needed to give out the sekihan (I dont know why I'm criticising - I was one of them) "Still only start with one box per table, in case there's not enough for two." OK, Japan's culture might be different to many, but even here 63 boxes of rice go around 25 staff twice. Everyone is discussing how much they should eat, how many family members/neighbours/passers-by they can dish their sekihan out to and we just about settle down to there only being about 10 boxes (20 portions) left over, when, I kid you not, I yet out a yelp as BIG BOX NUMBER FOUR comes in. Keep in mind that it's the lady responsible for school lunch carting them up the stairs, so no-one can be rude, we all grin (if she can see us grinning behind the pile of sekihan boxes on our desks) and go "mmmm, loooovve sekihan, thank you!" until she leaves the room and we all burst into tears. We are now on 84 boxes, 168 portions of sekihan, and what's worse, we are down to about 18 staff as 7 others have taken holiday only for the afternoon and the selfish beggars have got away with only one box each.

It was at this point that I thought to myself...THIS is going on my blog as fuss of the f***ing year. Little did I know that it was only just beginning. I refused to take a third box of sekihan, saying that I lived alone, it wasn't fair. I've been told that it's freezable, so I have two portions eyeing me up from inside my freezer as we speak...I never want to see the stuff again, let alone eat it. ANYWAY, the fourth big box is sitting on the side being ignored and the fuss is dying down, when stupid stupid stupid me (full of one box, two portions of sekihan that I've wolfed down, because I didn't want to take 3 portions home) decide to throw myself right into the centre of the fuss. Why oh why I thought any more sekihan-related discussion, no matter how simple it would appear to be, could go down without a massive fuss, I do not know. I was thinking mid-original-fuss that we should have just rang the community centre across the road, or the town hall, or any other workplace in Ita-where the day before and mentioned that we were going to create a world's supply of sekihan and not to bother bringing lunch the following day...but that would have been too simple I suppose.

However, I thought (STUPIDLY), all is not lost. I was about to go to the Board of Education in the town hall for a meeting. I mumbled to the nurse next to me "maybe I could just take a few boxes with me to the Board of Education, seeing as I'm going anyway", thinking that it would just help to ease the problem. She said "good idea!" Let's ask the nutritionist, who had to ask the secretary, who had to ask the Deputy Head, who had to ask the Head (I'm late for my meeting already). We spent a long time discussing (all 6 of us, including the two most important people in the school (wages well spent)) who I should hand it to at the BOE, how much I should take, whether there would actually be any left over at the end of the day (!!!). I said "don't worry, don't worry, nobody's asked me for it, they aren't expecting it, it was just an idea." In face, I said that almost as many times as I'd been offered sekihan. I wanted the ground to swallow me up, even hell would be better than hearing the word sekihan again. I wish that I had never ever spoken, when will I learn??? "Do you think they want it?" chirped the head teacher. "Well WE clearly don't, the town hall has more than 18 staff in it, and we already have at least 4 portions each - the fact that I didn't want it didn't stop me being accosted with it" is what I thought. What I said was "sou desu ne." But I was in for the long haul now - I couldn't get out of it. The Head teacher wound up ringing them to warn them it was coming. (Mid-conversation by the way, another bowl of sekihan arrived, as there were no more plastic boxes). Then they remembered that I go around by bicycle. "You can't take it by bicycle!!!" The whole staff room starts wetting themselves. "Mark-chan" whimpers someone. I was like "I can." It's all in boxes, I have a basket and a backpack, I wasn't gonna take the whole 84 boxes, I was thinking about 10? "No, no, no." "muri muri (impossible)" We fussed it out for another 15 minutes (my meeting was supposed to have been over by now), and the final decision was that the poor school nurse, had to get signed out by the head teacher to make a special trip to the Board of Education just to deliver 10 boxes of sekihan that they didn't even want!! Let alone a blog post, I could write novel about this one sekihan episode.

Fuss Of The Day 8

茶毒蛾, chadokuga, which Wikipedia tells me is Tea Tussock Moth Caterpillar in English, although I'm sure you all knew that already were out and about in Ita-where a few weeks ago, and BOY, was it the talk of the town. If they get on you, you get a rash it seems. A rash in Japan, at least in my school, is often enough to get you sent home to rest (after the potentially 45-minute bike ride that is), so, you can IMAGINE the mega fuss that comes when somehow a boy gets a rash ON HIS FACE. An announcment was made in the staff room between lessons, saying that all teachers should tell students about it, and then, after a supplementary mini-fuss, it was decided that it would be better just to put an announcement over the tannoy for all students to beware of caterpillar-face related rash danger. Then, quite literally 15 minutes later, an exterminator-type man, just like the ones I've only ever seen on the films, because in the UK our biggest problem is probably woodlice or something, was in the school, spraying all of the trees. In a country where I am currently undertaking a 3-week-long discussion with no sign of ending about when/where/how/whether to throw away a virtually rotting kotatsu futon from my flat, how can these things be organised in 15 minutes??? Maybe if I told someone my kotatsu futon had given me a rash...can I cope with the fuss that would result though? Catch 22!

Random Event Of The Day 14

Whilst volunteering at an adult English conversation class in my town the Saturday before last (when I was originally asked I was told it would be mid-week...not too happy about the change in schedule there), I was given a list of "important phrases." We are going to focus on these at the start of each lesson, because if they are so important, I was told by the main teacher. We set about repeating after me, Japan's favourite learning method (there are literally about 80 of them, so it's taking half of the lesson every week it seems), starting with "hello." It's a beginners' class, but none of them are such beginners that they can't say "hello," especially as towards the end of the lesson, we have moved onto repeating a whole entire cabin crew aeroplane safety announcement after me, just in case they go abroad, the flight attendent faints, or gets stage fright, or loses her voice and one of the people in my English conversation class has to do the announcement for her. Anyway, one phrase that struck me as being particularly important, was the Japanese ハクション！　In English : achoo. Yes, I had a room full of 50+ year-old Japanese farmers repeating how to sneeze in English after me...words fail me, they really do.　

Random Event Of The Day 13

I've been eating lunch with the kids over the last couple of weeks and have taken some photos I've pinched from online of school dinners in the UK. One has an innocent little black boy in it, eating his lunch, blissfully unaware of the fact that not one, not two, but three of my students has looked at this page of 8 photos or so and immediately pointed at him and yelled "Obama!" and burst out laughing...casual racism alive and well in Japan. I asked them what they would think if a Brit thought they looked like Keisuke Honda, just because they were Japanese and all three went "Keisuke Honda's cool...yay" Point safely lost there. I have also been told that I look like Justin Bieber and Daniel Radcliffe this week (probably the only two famous young white men in Japan). My internationalisation work has clearly paid off.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.