Creeper Koopa

I’m going to deviate a little bit to talk about something funny that happened. One of the teachers, whom I’ve dubbed NA sensei, skipped lunch today and instead had to spend time talking with a student and their parent. Why he didn’t eat lunch after that is beyond me, but he seems to adhere to a strange diet regimen in the first place. At any rate, he starts passing out juice boxes to everyone, including me, he and I chat for a bit, and then go on our way.

Over the last two weeks or so, I’ve taken to calling him a creeper (to his face) because of the way he will sometimes approach me or walk by me or simply look at me: If we weren’t buddies, it could be construed as creepy or otherwise unnerving. Today I came to find that this whole time, he thought that I had been calling him “clever”. After my giggle fit subsided, I wrote down the two words and enunciated them so that he could hear the difference. Naturally, he asked what a creeper was. I handed him the dictionary (more like he snatched it from my hand when I found the page) and it said, “things that crawl,” and mentioned snakes and beetles. I told him that it was close but not quite, and left it at that.

Later in the afternoon he started beating on Yoko sensei, one of the English teachers, with an inflatable bat (she’s new this year so her sempais tend to pick on her like that), so I ran to her rescue. NA decided that this was a great time to try to find the translation, so he asked Yoko, “what is a coopah?” Yoko was of course confused, and I fell to the floor laughing when I realized what he was asking. I explained that he was trying to ask about the word, “creeper,” and she started laughing, too, much to NA’s chagrin. She told him simply that it was an American joke and kept it at that. I then told her that he thought I had been calling him clever this whole time, which she of course found funny, as well. NA then grumbled about us speaking English, or as Yoko later translated, “Stop speaking English!” since he couldn’t understand what we were saying and thus laughing about. I kindly patted him on the shoulder and said, “Sucks, doesn’t it?” and went back to my desk.

NA then took it upon himself to remind me that he was kind enough to give me a pineapple juice earlier, and I once again graciously thanked him for it, which got a few chuckles from the overhearing teachers, and a pencil thrown down in frustration and a disgruntled exclamation from NA sensei. XD

After he left, I drew a picture of Bowser, who goes by King Koopa in Japan, and left it on his desk to further add to his confusion on the matter.

I love my school.

Nature hike.

Yeah that nature hike?

It was horrible.

I wanted to murder things.

THAT IS ALL THAT I WILL SAY ON THAT.

Plus I had to miss a likely one-time-only concert that was three hours away. Why is that a big deal? Music and concerts are the main reason I wanted to come here. I can get anime and manga back home, but the concerts? No. Those are few and far between when it comes to Japanese bands.

Closing Ceremonies

So, I survived my first trimester teaching English in Japan. Today was the closing ceremonies, which is more or less just an assembly in the gym with a bunch of speeches and maybe a performance, just like back home. After the speeches, the brass band performed. That was pretty cool to watch and hear as all the sections came together after weeks of hearing each section practice separately. After that was the chorus club, with their angelic voices coming together for all of us to hear.

We were pretty much dismissed after that.

The 7^th grade teachers then had to give little speeches to the 7^th grade students, so we all made our way to the fourth floor and did our thing. I was told to prepare a “short” speech for them, and seeing as I was the last to go, I got to hear everyone else’s “short” speech, all of which were anything but “short”. 8| Then it was my turn, and I kept it short and in simple English, only to find that nobody was translating.

Me: *looks at Mr. Scissors* Aren’t you going to translate?

Scissors: *points to Mr. Shrimp, the JAPANESE TEACHER* He can do it :D

Shrimp: <_<…. “[Have a nice summer].”

Me: ….. Bah.

Not long after that, the kids all went home, and then it was lunch time for us. Bento time!

The whole rest of the week and half of next week I have summer training, including a nature hike with some students… “Wear comfortable clothes but no shorts and no long sleeves on account of the bugs and snakes.” In the middle of summer. There is no “comfortable” at that rate.

Neoguri

The same week as the Interactive Forum competition, a pretty hairy tropical storm started making its way through Okinawa. It got all the way up to a Class 5 Typhoon (Neoguri) as it blew through the tiny islands, causing quite a bit of damage and injuries. Reports put it as the biggest one in the last fifteen years. My BFF gave me a call to let me know about it, so I started making sure I had some supplies for when it did blow through the Kanto region. Come Thursday, I was getting e-mails about it from Sempais about how the enkai for that Friday had been canceled on account of the typhoon, how school was going to be canceled on account of the typhoon, how we needed to be ready for this huge typhoon that was headed our way. All this talk about this horrible, horrible typhoon coming our way, but teachers still have to attend school!!! One of the 9^th grade teachers got a fax saying that he had to go to the Board of Education (?) on Friday, and he of course was pissed about that. He made his displeasure known in Japanese, which was funny in its own right to hear, but I picked out a few words that made even me snicker. Because yeah, that sucks.

Everyone in the teachers' room was making a big deal about this typhoon, to the point where they would come up to me and tell me I should take a day off etc., etc., the traffic would be bad, the busses might even stop, yada yada… I told them that as long as the busses were still running, I'd probably still go, but I'd call if I wasn't able to make it. “You should really just take a day off.” I told Eikaiwa sensei about it and she checked with her kid's nursery school. She found out it, too, was canceled so she'd have to take the day off and stay with her kids. Well, that settled it: I asked for Friday off, as well.

On the way home I stopped by the Mega Donkey to get a lantern, just in case. I also filled up my empty water bottles with tap water just in case. I had a dozen cans of fish, just in case. I had a good supply of food in my fridge, just in case. I took some newspapers home from school to keep water out, just in case.

I felt ready.

I stayed up a little later than normal, keeping tabs on the course of the typhoon as I had been all week, assuring family and friends that I had stuff prepared and that I wasn't too worried, but finally went to sleep.

The next morning…

There was sunshine, intense heat and humidity, and a stillness only outdone by death itself.

The typhoon had been downgraded (upgraded, technically) to a Class 6, no longer considered a typhoon but merely a subtropical storm or some such, and had drifted south east onto the water.

I kept the curtains closed and stayed inside the whole day, much like I would have had there been an actual typhoon to hit. <_<

The end! 

Interactive Forum

I suppose I should talk about this since it’s something that all junior high schools do here.

What it is, is a speaking competition that pits students together in groups of 3-4 per round. They have five minutes to converse on a given topic, in English. Sounds pretty cool, especially as you review the topics for the 8^th graders. They have things like, favorite music, favorite subject, sport, school event, etc. Very basic topics that you’d expect junior high EFL students to be able to answer.

But then we get into the 9^th graders; topics. What do you think about video games for children? What do you think about junior high students having cell phones? What do you do to save the earth? And my personal favorite: What do you do to understand your classmates? As a language learner myself, I'm of the mind that these are high school level, if not flat-out college level, questions. I studied Japanese for a long time in college and I am not capable of holding a quality conversation in Japanese about such things. In fact, the last question about understanding one's class mates? I couldn't even hold a decent conversation about that in English. I had a lot of trouble helping them practice with that one.

One trick I told my four kids to go for was to allow the conversation to drift onto tangents, since that is something that normal conversations do. By the time of the actual competition, they and the other students managed to do that fairly well, with that question in particular, but then we came to find out, during closing ceremonies, that they aren't supposed to do that. “Please try harder to stay on topic,” we were told. I'm sorry, but conversations should not be so structured and rigid, I don't care if this is a competition. The entire point is to see if they can speak English coherently, and if they can wander off topic (as young people often do) and keep talking with each other in English, they are obviously doing that. So, that bit of feedback didn't sit well with me, especially since nowhere in the practice and info packets did it say to do that. These topics are awkward enough. I couldn't even fill the air for five minutes talking about what I “do to understand my classmates”, and it's my damn language.

All that aside, I did have a lot of fun prepping them for the Save the Earth topic, but unfortunately neither of my 9^th graders got to have that one. M-kun was rather disappointed about that, because he was looking forward to using my trump card should anyone mention global warming during the topic. Instead he got the cell phone topic. M-chan, the poor thing, got stuck with the understanding one's classmates topic. She did really well with it, and I made sure she knew how proud I was of her, because sadly…

M-kun was the only one of our four students to go on to the next round. He had vastly improved in his speaking ability during our minimal practice sessions, and obviously the judges noticed. His pronunciation still needs work, but he did a great job with leading and redirecting the flow of the conversation. When there was dead air, he was always the first to pick things back up and keep talking, and he had a strong voice and listened to the others very well.

I was a little surprised that M-chan didn't do so well in their eyes, but on the other hand there were quite a few students that had an edge on her, such as stronger pronunciation ability. Once we were all dismissed, I could tell she was a little upset about the results, so I did my best to remind her that it didn’t matter, we were all proud of her for going as far as she did and doing as well as she did. The other thing about her is, I know what she can do. The week prior, I had walked her home after school and she chatted with me, in English, about anime that she liked and how she was going to meet a voice actor in a couple weeks and how excited she was about it. None of the others kids so far has done anything like that. I drew one of her favorite characters on the back of her paper to try to cheer her up, and it made her smile. :3

All this talk about the 9^th graders and hardly a word about the 8^th graders. Here's why: At first, during practice, they showed interest in wanting to compete and do well, and they began to improve. The last week or so, however, that improvement disappeared and they didn't seem to care too much anymore. Come the competition, it was obvious that they were done. They didn't seem to care that they had lost; they were happy to be done with it. XP They did fairly well, and there were quite a few students that did worse than they, but yeah. They didn't care anymore.

As for how the school handled the whole thing… I'm of the mind that it wasn't a top priority to them. Some schools start practice in early May, and we didn't begin until June. We'd get 15 minutes after lunch most days, and 50 minutes after school (unless it was a Monday or the week of a test, in which case there was no practice at all). They could have used a lot more time, but we weren't given that, and in my opinion it showed. I figure they care more about sports events.

So, enough about my kids and the prep work. Let's talk about the actual competition some more! Ono sensei and I were to accompany the kids to the event. I was told to dress up like I do for my bi-monthly meetings, which meant pants and button-down blouse in July. And we stood out there waiting for the taxis (and one of the students) for a good ten minutes, in the sun… I could feel the sweat dripping down my legs and back and the day hadn't even started yet.

Nevertheless, we finally took off. I knew almost all of the ALTs that were there, but two or three were complete strangers to me. One ALT was the MC, and two elementary school ALTs were the judges, to avoid partiality. There were three rooms with 4 groups of students at any given time. Each grade had 3 rounds that alternated, and the set up more or less allowed for us to jump from room to room if need be to give our students support. After the first three rounds we broke for lunch, which was rather interesting: I had been told to bring my lunch to this thing, only to find out that there were bentos provided (and I'm assuming we had to pay for them). I sat down with our students, whom all had to bring their own lunches, and I overheard a teacher behind me saying how she looked forward to this bento each year. I could kind of see why: It was pretty fancy looking, but honestly I felt bad for the students and was happy to have my meager home-cooked meal alongside them. Seemed a little arrogant to make the students do all this practice and put all this pressure on them, and have the teachers eat a congratulatory lunch while the kids eat whatever they were able to throw together that morning. But I digress.

The final three rounds worked the same way as the first three, but we were fortunate in that, for the final pair of rounds, both students were in the same room and both Ono sensei and I were able to stay with them both and cheer them on (silently).

Once that was over, we all piled back into the main room for Closing ceremonies, but while we waited they decided to have an Interactive Japanese Forum with the ALTs. My students goaded me into the second, intermediate round, where I was more or less drowned out by the four guys as they talked about what they did during recess (which I don't have…). But whatever. The students got a kick out of it. :D

Then the feedback was given about how they need to work on their pronunciation and clarity (yep…), their volume level, listening skills, and finally staying on topic. After that, the winners were announced. None of the MC's students was going on to the next round, and while they were of course bummed about that, he saw it as a relief: No more practice! And I don't blame him. After getting a taste for this competition, I'm not all that impressed with it. I'd rather they focus on having a practical conversation with another person about things that interest them. Fifteen-year olds discussing saving the earth? How far do you expect them to take that? I encouraged mine to keep it local, like picking up trash and turning off lights and faucets. When they asked me about global warming, I gave them a crash course in terminology and what certain things mean, and gave them the phrase, “climate change”, and what it meant, as a way to shut down the competition. XD They both got a kick out of that. I was bummed they didn't get to talk about it at all.

Well, once the winners were announced and certificates handed out, we took a few commemorative photos and then called the taxis back. Headed back to the school and announced to the vice principal how well they did. All in a day's work! Heh…

Bath houses

Recently I was invited to go to an onsen, or a hot spring bath house. If you’re not familiar with this concept, it’s a public bath house (typically gender segregated) where you wash first, bathe and soak next, and then wash again before you leave. And everyone walks around stark naked. No towels except the kind you set on your head (the point of which I know not).

It was a spur of the moment invitation at 8 o’clock at night after dinner with a group of people I’d just met, to which my initial response was, “There’s one open this late?”

There was indeed.

The appeal was the nearby vicinity, the affordable pricing, and the fact that it had only opened a few months ago, so it was still “clean”. All things considered, I don’t think I’ll be wanting to set foot inside an older onsen…

With that in mind, we headed off and arrived at an artificial bath house that looked similar to a small shopping center. It even had a small arcade, and a café loaded with comic books to read. I don’t know how other bath houses operate, but this one in particular gave you electronic wrist bands that served as your wallet: If you ordered something from the café, for example, you scanned the wrist band and your total would be rung up at the cashier when you were finished with the entire experience.

After we were given our towels (you can bring your own or rent them) and wrist bands, we headed upstairs to the locker/changing room. There was a vanity area for drying your hair and applying face and hand lotion, and past that was the changing area where the sea of naked women began. As an American visiting a public bath house for the first time, this was of course a little unnerving. I am not used to such quantities of nudity, and what made it worse was the fact that I was the only foreigner there, so there was a slight fear that I would be stared at more than anyone else.

Amazingly enough, there was no open staring. Less amazing but still worth noting, nobody approached me and tried to test out their English skills. Everyone kept to themselves or their little groups that they’d come with, much like my group did. I will admit that while I wasn’t truly staring, I did observe the different shapes and sizes of bodies around me (I’m an artist; it’s what we do…).

After washing and soaking in one of the hot tubs, the four of us took a dip in the children’s pool, playing with the massive amount of rubber duckies (I’m not kidding, there were all sorts of sizes of these rubber ducks in the children’s pool) and squirting each other with them like the mature adults that we were. For as late as it was, there were a considerable number of young girls milling about with their moms. I found that interesting.

When we’d finished demonstrating our collective mental age, we then stepped outside (open air) to where the acid baths were. There were three varieties, all of which had the water temperature gauge in the corners. Each pool had only a few degrees centigrade difference at most, but it was still noticeable. Keep in mind that this was a lukewarm summer evening, as well. The first, the largest pool, was specifically labeled as the low concentration acid bath. I took care not to get my hair wet with it, as well as to keep my gold necklace above the water line, just in case. There was a large screen TV at the end of the pool with a drama of some sort playing.

We sat there for a few minutes and then moved over to the silk water tub. Unlike the acid bath, the silk tub had micro bubbles and a murkier appearance. It was slightly warmer than the acid bath, and the tub was raised and thus much smaller. It’s so named on account of the water’s ability to leave your skin “silky smooth”, and it did just that! My skin felt very soft after getting out of there.

Afterwards we moved to the individual buckets. The water seemed like normal bath water and not acid or silk water, so I am not entirely sure what was so special about these. But when I say buckets, I mean giant vase-like things that you climb inside and sit in, spilling water over the edges and letting it pour back over you. The placard talked about the history of these things, saying that at one point they were used for bathing but later became torture devices or death traps, because they were made of iron and heated with open flame. The placard made a point to assure us that such a thing was not a concern now! These were made of ceramic and not heated over an open flame! If I had had my phone as well as been allowed to use the camera function (expressly forbidden, as you might guess), I would have taken a picture of it.

Then it was off to the saunas. We first went into the salt sauna, which was a small room with plastic chairs and a basin filled with salt in the middle. As one might expect with a sauna, it was hot and steamy inside, and it smelled like salt, which just about smacks you in the face as you walk in. You can then take some salt from the basin and rub it over your skin to exfoliate, etc. Once we had done that, we rinsed off and went to the steam sauna, which was much larger and had tiered floor seating so that you could watch TV while you broiled. We only managed to stay in there for a minute or two, as it was much warmer than the salt room. The gauge, I believe, read 60 degrees Centigrade, which is just ridiculously warm. For comparison, the warmest of the baths was about 42 degrees. Between it and the humidity, I felt as if I was broasting in there and could barely breathe.

There was a pool of cold water (about 16 degrees) but we opted not to use it. Instead we got some water to drink from the locker room cooler, and then washed the bath water off before going to get dressed. Once dressed and dry again, we went downstairs to the café and got some dessert. We all got ice cream of some sort, but there was quite a variety to choose from, alongside actual food and meals. What’s more, by the cashier and the arcade is a very small produce section. (!!) Other than needing a place to sleep, it’s very possible to live there quite affordably, it turns out.

After paying, we made our way out and headed home. All in all, it was a very relaxing experience. Getting used to the nudity happened quickly, although it’s still fairly unpleasant to think about. That being said, I’d look forward to going again with the girls. :)