東京 (Part 1)

after sitting in the office for a full two weeks of spring break last year, i decided this year’s break would be a good time to travel a bit. . . so. . .nina, the alt at the local high school, and i decided to pay the ￥40,000 for roundtrip tickets on the shinkansen (bullet train) to tokyo. . .one of the major drawbacks of living on shikoku island is that transportation off the island is insanely expensive. . . .it was worth it thought since we managed to hit almost every district of the city in the one week that we were there. . .

after viewing the first cherry blossoms of the season, our first stop was tokyo tower. . . tokyo tower is essentially the eiffel tower in tokyo . . .only it’s orange and white to comply with aviation standards and it’s a full 13 meters taller and 3000 tons lighter than the eiffel tower. . . trivia everyone in japan seems to know . . . weird, right?

anyway, it really was the perfect place to start. . . we went up just before the sun went down and were able to see the entire city by day and night over the course of approximately two hours. . .

after that romantic experience (the tower was packed with couples after dark), we headed out to roppongi to find a club where i could dance salsa . . . after several attempts (including one club with bongs . . . and a number of customers who we decided were quite high), we found a great club with a nice dance floor and two or three experienced dancers to lead me around the floor. . .guess that will have to be enough to last another year or so. . .

day two included. . .
a trip to akihabra, the insanely large electronic district. . . not particularly my thing, but it’s a large part of japanese culture. . .
lunch with a japanese friend from kochi who has been living in tokyo for the year. . . we met a really peaceful neighborhood, where a lot of the foreign diplomats live with their families. . . it felt quite separate from the rest of our time in the city. . .
and, finally, glass blowing. . . all my kochi friends found it amusing that i went to tokyo to blow glass (an activity typically associated with life in the inaka). . .

we made our own wind chimes from start (blowing the glass into a nice sphere) to finish (painting our own designs. . .which I found to be quite stressful). . . I mostly just enjoyed the fact that I understood his instructions when not a word of english was spoken. . . anyway, he let us try once all on our own, which resulted in random bubble-like things. . . and then guided us through our second attempt. . .

here are nina’s attempts. . .

and mine. . .

to be continued . . .

quick update on the situation at work. . .

kagamino junior high school, the large school in tosayamada, wanted me to work there next year as the main/only ALT, but. . .

1) that would mean teaching only junior high school. . . since i am still bitter about losing my preschool kids, there is no way i am about to give up my elementary kids as well. . . they are so adorable!

2) that would also mean that i would never even begin to know my students. . . the junior high has well over 400 students. . . i already have trouble remembering my students’ names in my small schools. . . at a large school, i couldn’t even remember all their faces!

3) finally, my (now former) JTE (japanese teacher of english) asked me to push the board of education to let me stay in kahoku to help train in the new JTE. . . side story: my JTE had been at kahoku junior high for five years, which meant that her time had come to transfer. . . teachers in japan rotate schools every five years on average (which i think is why they find it so easy to continuously change the ALT positions as well). . . anyway. . .

i apparently got what i wanted, which was to stay at my schools in kahoku (elementary and junior high school) and to gain two smaller schools in odochi (again elementary and junior high school). . .now i just hope the other two alts are satisfied with their new positions. . .

also relating to changes at work. . . tsuyoshi was transferred again this year. . . he will now be an elementary school teacher at a teeny-tiny school (18 students grades 1-6) in the middle of the mountains near the dam he likes to fish at. . . the picture is actually of him fishing on his lunch break in a suit (don't worry, the students are still on spring break). . . should be a much more peaceful year for him!

the art of the apology in japan

foreigners in japan tend to make a lot of mistakes . . . which require apologies. . . for those of you who are planning to visit me in japan next year, this should be a good chance to begin your cultural studies. . .

http://www.glumbert.com/media/apology

mother do not read this post!

whoa! kochi made the news . . . international news none the less!

** japan plane in emergency landing **
a japanese plane completes a dramatic emergency landing, sliding along kochi runway on its nose.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6444819.stm
here's the story from the national news. . .
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20070314a2.html
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070314a4.html

(if you ignored the title and read the post anyway, please note that it made a perfect emergency landing and no one was injured)

まだ？いやだろ！

i’m going to save myself some time . . .

go to stephen's blog (stephen is the alt in the town next to me . . . which is technically part of my town since we all merged last year):
http://www.golly-in-inaka.blogspot.com/
find the post called ‘pissed off’ written on march 8th . . . remove / read past the bad language, and you have our current situation. . . the two of us are not too happy about it. . . especially since we already signed the papers to stay a third year. . .

while you are on his blog, take a look at the cherry blossoms. . . i like the last one with the river and mountains in the background. . .

february showers bring march flowers?

this weather is insane. . . the lady on the radio this morning was talking about the cute cherry blossoms that were already coming out in parts of kochi. . . we never even had winter (aside from a thin layer of snow one morning that melted by noon). . .

guess it is only appropriate that i went to see 'an inconvenient truth' (al gore's documentary on global warming) last weekend. . . i thought he did a pretty good job of presenting the facts on a level that everyone could understand and clearly see what was happening. . .

i didn't actually realize there were so many people out there who still thought this whole thing was a myth. . . and then there are all the people who have the knowledge and can see what is happening but just don't change their ways (i'm guessing we all fall into this category). . .

living in japan has made me more aware of my actions. . . i'm sure i have mentioned how insanely hot the classrooms are in the summer and how insanely cold they are in the winter. . . while i still don't fully agree with making my students suffer like that, i have learned to adjust my clothing before adjusting the thermostat. . .

it is also mandatory that people sort their garbage (and therefore recycle). . . t/th/s are for burnable garbage, every sat for plastics, 1st and 3rd thurs for PET bottles, other days for metals and old appliances. . . the list goes on (i was so confused when i first got to japan that i couldn't throw my garbage out for over a week). . .

i am required to walk or ride my bike to work every day, as are all city employees who live within one kilometer of the office. . . many areas of japan have excellent public transportation (somehow kahoku got left out of that system. . . guess it's too rural??). . .

my house has no dishwasher and no drier (this is common to most houses in japan). . . the dishes are washed by hand and the clothes are hung outside. . . takes a bit more time, but it's the japanese way. . .

so, yeah. . .these people have some good ideas. . . they still have their downfalls (like tons of excess packaging on everything), but they are way ahead of americans. . .

anyway, if you haven't yet, go see 'an inconvenient truth' . . . here's the website: climatecrisis.net . . .

don't just watch it and then forget about it the next morning. . . do something about it. . . oh, and look for the line during the credits that includes 'tell your parents to stop ruining the world you live in' as one of the solutions (i found that to be rather amusing wording) . . .　じゃね

the LONG overdue post

tsuyoshi and i went back to america for the holidays. . . yes, i’m talking about christmas and new years. . . i said long overdue. . . anyway, everyone seems to want to know how it went and what i thought and how the reverse culture shock was and yada yada yada. . .

basically, i didn’t really feel much reverse culture shock. . . just like culture shock didn’t really hit me when i came to japan. . . yeah, there were things that i forgot about (like how large meals are at restaurants). . . but for the most part it just felt like my other home that i hadn’t seen for a while. . .

i think having tsuyoshi around may have actually made the return easier at times because, as someone said along the way, i “brought a piece of japan home with me”. . . with all the time i spent trying to teach him about the way things worked in america and all the japanese i had to use in the process, i didn’t really have a chance to miss japan. . . and i enjoyed being able to teach someone about my country as we experienced things as opposed to my million visual aides and oversimplified english descriptions in the classrooms of japan. . .

so. . . christmas. . .

in japan, christmas (and most holidays as far as i can tell) are not a very big deal. . . apparently children receive one present (while they are still young. . .which i am not). . . otherwise, christmas in japan seems similar to valentine’s day in america. . . i.e. for “lovers” (that’s the most popular engrish term for the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing). . . for tsuyoshi, christmas in america was huge. . . i think he got at least six or seven presents. . . and a stocking. . . that’s pretty much unheard of for someone his age in japan. . .

hmmm. . . instead of narrating the entire trip home, i’ll just post a few pictures . . .

we attempted to bring some japanese culture back with us. . . but seemed to fail slightly with the origami. . .
calligraphy was a bit better. . . i love calligraphy, but it’s so difficult when you are a perfectionist. . . kids in japan start learning this stuff when they are in elementary school. . .

as for american culture. . . there is ben. . . my kids are stunned by the fact that i have a friend who is two meters tall. . . who i saw on new year's eve (hence the second pic). . .

and there were snow angels. . . actually the snow in general was a pretty big jump from our 60degree winter weather in kochi. . .

tsuyoshi was obsessed with squirrels. . . if we were talking and he spotted one, the conversation went on hold for a full two minutes. . . they are pretty cute. . . and we really don’t have them in kochi. . . we do, however, have poisonous centipedes and spiders as large as my head (or at least as large as my hand. . . but much juicier). . .

which brings me back to cross-cultural communication. . . once we returned to japan, i listened to tsuyoshi’s retelling of our time in america many times. . .

i used to get rather annoyed when people constantly told me how large everything american is. . . when i returned for the holidays, i realized that they do have a point. . . we spent hours and hours driving only to cover a small stretch of the midwest. . . we spent ten dollars on a meal in a restaurant and ended up with leftovers for the next two days. . . we sat for fifteen minutes in front of the orange juice display at the supermarket trying to decide whether we wanted a gallon or half gallon, pulp or no pulp, straight orange juice or cranberry orange juice, tropicana or the cheap store brand. . . these are things that are really just not so much of an issue in japan. . . if you drive for twenty hours in japan, you can probably cover most of the country. . . if you go to the restaurant, there are no leftovers or doggy-bags. . . if you want orange juice, you choice from medium or small. . . so, yes, people in japan do have a point. . .

BUT. . .it is a bit of a pain in the rear to sit and listen to people over-exaggerate things again and again and again. . . every time tsuyoshi told his story, his gestures of a large pizza doubled in size. . . as did the size of the cars. . . the warmth of the houses. . . the size of the people. . . yeah. . .

anyway, here are a few final random pictures from our trip to the states. . .

before i end this blog entry, i suppose there is one more thing you all want to know. . . what i decided about next year. . .

to stay or not to stay?

apparently the answer is. . .

to stay. . .

that means one more year with. . .

the adorable kids i played dodge ball with today. . .

the ocean! it’s still so new and beautiful every time i go. . .

my insane (yet amazing) dance instructor. . . have i mentioned all my upcoming performances? the next few months will be quite busy. . .

spring, which seems to be coming soon this year. . . while i will be sad to see my 3年生students graduate, it will be nice to relax under the cherry blossoms (which are absolutely beautiful) . . .

so, yeah. . . come visit! (no excuses now that i'm giving you all an extra year). . .

lots to look forward to. . .