The Stray

In my year and a half in the field so far, I’ve observed some odd characters in the world of Japanese elementary schools. Today I’m here to discuss a phenomenon that I have observed in other schools and heard tales of at still more.

He’s called The Stray.

The Stray is a student, but unlike all the other students, The Stray is inexplicably never in class. At 11:55, right in the middle of 4th period The Stray can be see walking outside by the staff room window, sitting in the hallway, playing on the stairs, or running in the gym.

The Stray, when appropriately applied, can achieve great things. The Stray can participate well in an English conversation, he can run a really fast mile, and he can do better than others on tests, but only when he wants to. Unfortunately, that occasion arises very few times in a given semester. Yet his is not a bad child. Annoying? Certainly. Impossible to understand? Somewhat. Frustrating? Absolutely. But I’ve never witnessed our Stray in a fight or hurting another child. That would simply take too much effort and The Stray is very anti-effort. Once in a while he will work up the muster necessary to sass a teacher, and then, once again, The Stray will find himself spent and unable to care about anything.

Sometimes The Stray finds asylum in the weaker members of the staff room. He will saunter in during 1st period, having abandoned class, and talk with the Teacher’s Aide who happens to find herself lacking in projects for the period. She’ll coddle him and laugh at his jokes, and feed his strange, incomprehensible tendencies. Sometimes other teachers will try to push him back to class, but they know it’s for naught. The same applies when he walks by the window, outside, during class time. A teacher will open the window and shout at him to go to class, to at least get inside, but The Stray is undeterred. He is the Fonz. He is too cool for elementary school and class is the jukebox he could fix if only he wasn’t so completely out of give-a-fucks.

I taught The Stray at my base school last year. When he wasn’t hiding under his desk, he was getting up in the middle of class and walking out. The teacher, who has a reputation for being a hard-ass, would try to fetch him, often succeeding in bringing him back once, only to have it happen again… and again. Eventually, the teacher would understand that it was futile and would take comfort in the knowledge that class ran better without him.

Today I ran into another school’s Stray. Volunteering at an English Day, I was in the middle of a game when I noticed a small boy behind me. “Are you in this group?” I asked him in Japanese. He shook his head no and continued leaning up against a wall. ‘Not my school, not my problem’ I figured and later got him to join in the game. It was only later I learned he was the school Stray. Magnificent! To see another one in his natural habit, and this one displaying the ability to participate in some fashion. Fascinating.

I now teach my Stray’s younger brother in 1st grade. Aside from some spectacular nose-picking abilities, he seems to be entirely normal (albeit prone to replying to everything with “I’m sleepy”). For now we can all rest assured knowing that The Stray seems to be a singular event, wandering each school he attends, plotting when he’ll next slide down the banisters or take a nap in the hallway.

Be warned: The Stray can also be a girl. I have one of those at my mountain school, but she is, however, far less consistent in her Stray tendencies.

Tags: elementary school, Japan, JET program, JET Programme

Flossing Ad Campaign

          

          

          

So I did start flossing. I started and it wasn’t because I suddenly cared about my teeth for the first time in my life and it wasn’t from the guilt of my dad always saying, “we paid for braces for nothing ’cause you’re going to end up in dentures anyway,” it was because I was really bored one night.

And that’s how good habits start.

Probably.

In other news, I’m doing nanowrimo again this year. Here’s the synopsis I have on the site at the moment:

Part steampunk, part mystery, part science, part history – this is the story of Margaret and Alice in 1890s Japan. Passing as men, they gain entry into the tumultuous country grappling between tradition and westernization as foreigners pour in through open port cities. In a time where airships dot the skies, steamships are still the cheapest way to cross the seas, and Margaret and Alice arrive tired and direction-less, but eager to work as scientists in a country where scientific regulation in the foreigner cities is virtually unheard of. The possibilities for discovery are endless, but tensions run high as people fight over discoveries and tensions between Japanese and Westerners can occasionally spill over into the streets. All of which Margaret and Alice can easily ignore until the fight comes to them.

(a major departure from my usual writing, but I am excited by the change!)

Man, don’t you want to read that motherfucker? Doesn’t it sound like I know what I am doing? Tricked ya! (and yea, my synopsis totally includes that meta self-reflection at the end; I can’t resist the chance. I am doing it right now.)

Tags: dentists, flossing, life, nanowrimo, random, whatever

Burnable Garbage Day

Tags: Japan, JET program, JET Programme, living in Japan

The Apple Uses the Word Meta

Holy crap it became September.

This post is going to be meta. I am going to blog about blogging. I am going to talk about why I quit posting, basically. I am going to admit that the only reason I know the word meta is because I watch “Community” and saw that episode about the Jesus movie, but in this dog-eat-hipster world we all have to use words with no meaning.

The reason I stopped posting was, somewhere along the line, I gave up on my promise to be funny and interesting and starting just writing about Japan again. I went back to my first post:

I promise to make this blog as intersting as possible. Because, you see, I want to grow up to be Davis Sedaris. Not like him, I want to be him. I want to live the expat life with my partner and write books that make people spit-laugh onto the pages. A boring-ass blog (boring ass-blog!  ha) about generic Japan crap will not make me even 1/100th as interesting as I’d like to seem to the world. That’s why this blog is not called “Apple in Japan” or “Apple and her JET Program experience” because those are lame, sad, and boring. The last one even sounds like the title of a terribly written Freshman essay.

All my posts, including the ones that sat in the draftbox for ages, sort of sounded like all that latter garbage.

There’s nothing wrong with writing about Japan, per se, and in fact, it gives me a lot to write and think about in my own life, off the internet. But the crux of it is, if I am writing about life in Japan, it’s one thing, but if I am writing about recaps of large swaths of time, or narrowing everything down into whatever the heck the JET experience is, then it’s all going to be so, so boring.

The problem with thinking about this whole “living in Japan” thing as an experience is that it makes you want to look at it through the lens of a study abroad department or… some other metaphor I can’t think of. Either way, I think it puts it in the realm of “look at this weird/cool thing I’m doing” and not “this is my life.” Sometimes life here is fun. Most of the time it’s pretty regular. If you come to Japan expecting to have some life-altering experience where your personality drastically changes and you become every special thing you ever wanted to be in the world, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. Life is normal. I go to work, I eat, I talk to Blueberry, I sleep. In between that time, we watch a whole lot of TV, just like we did in the US. Only difference is I have this kickass job that tires me out like no one’s business, I live in a place where I have no car and am constantly humbled by the shittiness of it, and also I can hop a train and go to Kyoto whenever I want. You win some, you lose some, and mostly you maintain an even balance of life, just like you had before.

That’s why so many JET blogs die. Once you run out of “tee hee! this is different!” steam, it becomes hard to continue in that same trajectory.

So back to basics, well, my basics.

I could quit the blog, but I like having a means to share rambling and I think forcing myself to keep it open will keep me writing on a more regular basis.

So yea, super meta. Right? Did I use that right? Absolutely not, probably. I missed out on some key hipster vocabulary by watching nothing but ANYTHING OF LOVE on VH1 and NBC comedies over and over (I have since dropped the VH1 addiction, but NBC has stayed, mostly because when it comes to downloading TV, you have to look your choices right in the fact and decide what they mean to you).

Here’s a bee I made.

And I’ll post more. Not regularly or anything. What am I? Serious?

But don’t think for two seconds I’ll ever stop listing my posts with JET Programme tags. How else will anyone ever read this ever? No one goes to a website to see someone’s apple pictures and shitty, awesome bees.

Tags: blogging, Japan, JET program, JET Programme, life, writing

Almost a year now…

I am approaching the end of my first year at a time when, like every year, tons of new JETs are about to make their way to Japan. This, combined with the 6000 degree heat inside of my schools, has inspired some reflection.

This past week, a friend of mine had family members visit. After I parted ways with them after dinner, I asked Blueberry, “Am I super negative about Japan” thinking back to the comments about the distrust of airconditioners.  He answered no, but I couldn’t help thinking about it, fussing over it. Did I leave people thinking “so why the heck is she here?” Again, Blueberry said no, but rational thought never stopped anyone was harping over one point, has it?

I recently joked with a friend that I am capable of being “joyfully ornery.” I can be complaining or cracking jokes about living in Japan while still being totally happy. To those people not within the inner circle of understanding my awful humor, I would probably seem pretty negative.

Damn.

The truth of it is, I am happier than I was last year. Last year I was working an ok job (better cause I had nice co-workers) but I wasn’t making nearly enough money, especially once Blueberry got laid off. My car kept trying to tell me to just let it die through a series of huge problems, we had to bargain with ourselves to decide which bills could be paid, and there was a nest of copperheads in the apartment pool.

So when I got in to JET I was relieved. No, I was ecstatic. I was getting to go back to Japan, I was going to be living in a city where I already had a friend, I was getting to teach Elementary school, and I would be making more money.

In the months leading up to it, I thought more about Japan, the prize of Japan, and less about my future job. But I think that was only because I had idolized Japan as a place where I had been really happy.  When I studied abroad, it was the first time in my life where my wallet felt nearly bottomless. I had won two substantial scholarships and relished the first time I had ever not been forced to watch every single penny I was spending. And even though I knew this 2nd time around wouldn’t be like that, I thought, “hey, you know, a lot of my problems got left behind the last time I went to Japan, maybe it will be the same.” But of course that’s silly. Loan collectors still want their money, they just become a lot more difficult to pay. Family members still fight and tell you all about it on the phone, you’re just not there to do anything.

About a month before I came over, I really started to think about my new job. I looked at my current job. I had good co-workers, yes, but I also had hours of wishing I had something to do but was not a prominent enough employee yet to have many clients that wanted to work with me directly. I was bored, wanted some more responsibilities, needed money, and was ready to move on.

I remember when I first got to Japan, landing in Tokyo. I remember being exhausted, missing Blueberry, being incredibly psyched… and then being disappointed when I didn’t feel that same sense of wonderment that I had on the bus from Kansai Airport to Kansai Gaidai back in 2008. When I landed in Kansai airport in January ’08, I was awestruck. I will remember that bus ride forever. I was exhausted, sleepless, and high on life. I took pictures of everything from the bus windows and glued my face to the windows when I wasn’t joking about having the need to completely power-down like a robot after all this madness.

But in Tokyo? None of that. I landed in Narita happy, and then could only think about how I had to pee. When we got to the hotel, I was psyched! And then the meetings started. Suddenly, all I could think about was how stupid Orientation was and how disgustingly hot it was. (And yea, orientation is about 95% useless for Elementary teachers. I stand by that opinion.)

It didn’t get much better when I got to Shiga. My apartment was dreadfully empty. Without having a predecessor the only things that were in my apartment were the things that the BoE provides. I had a stove, a fridge, a table, one chair, a TV, one aircon (for a 2 story place), one futon (would need another one for Blueberry, and fast!), and a washer/dryer. And then that was it. No plates, no silverware, no curtains, no fans, no towels, no nothing.

I remember going to a store with my vice principal once she realized that my house was sad as hell. She was dropping me off from dinner when she looked around, flashed me a sweet smile and asked me if I needed things, like a towel or toilet paper. She was like a savior on a white horse in that moment.

That first night my aircon broke and I lied awake, sweating on my thin-ass futon on the hard floor just going, “What terrible mistake have I made?” 

As my job got up and running, and I felt a little more on my feet a few months in, I was happier. I finally had a job where people cared and noticed if I put effort in. If I did a good job, then my kids learned and my teachers noticed. Blueberry and I were still pretty broke, but it was better than the months prior and things were looking up.

So when people visit and I spend ages ragging on Japan’s inherent misunderstanding about how AC can be used (because that is not culturally relative, that is just insanity), I also spend ages going on about the hilarious things my kids do or how well they can shout “HOW ARE YOU?” to any foreigner they see (which is really just Blueberry). I can make jokes about Japan (especially when it’s the aforementioned 6000 degrees in the staffroom) but I wouldn’t have this job if it weren’t for Japan. Though, really, I am pretty hard on any place where I live. Just ask me about the last city I lived in… it goes back to being joyfully ornery. 

So when I was brooding after the “family” dinner, I kept hounding on questions like, am I doing “Japan” wrong? Should I be doing more touristy bullshit (though, the fact that I call it bullshit kind of answers that one, I suppose)? Am I going to miss out on whatever the fuck it is I am supposed to get out of this?

Then, with my dear Blueberry, I decided that train of thought was stupid. Really, really stupid.

What it really comes down to is that, most of the time, I could take or leave the whole “living in Japan” thing. It’s really not my favorite part of my normal life. In my every day life, all the Japan thing adds is an extra dose of frustration to things that used to be simple. Plus I can’t do all those touristy things people do that helps keep Japan awesome because I have another person to buy tickets for. Zipping down to Kyushuu? That’s cool. I can’t.

But also most of the time, I love my job. I can see how I will probably be keen to leave after year 2, but I think a lot of that will be due to Japan and being thousands of miles away from friends and family, more than my job.

The things that bug me about work are coworkers that can forget to inform me of important things, or certain people in offices that blab my business to other people when I am sitting in the freaking room. The communication barrier bothers me a lot. The fact that no one seems to remember English meetings bothers me a lot more.

But my kids? Even with the ones that act like little satans, at lunch I still like talking with them. I like teaching them English and thinking up new games. I like seeing how they improve. And I definitely like when they serenade me with the pokemon rap over some school lunch curry or when 2nd graders perform a synchronized dance to Arash’s “Happiness” to thank me for the school year.

And this school year has seen a huge improvement in my teacher relationships. Part gained self-confidence, part teachers understanding the role of English in their schools (I was the first JET ever; it was a learning experience for everyone), but it’s led to some productive meetings where teachers have ideas for activities, feedback on students and class, and stretching meetings out because we’re having too good of a time just talking and laughing with each other (yay for 4th grade being full of young, awesome ladies).

The times when I am happy about being in Japan, specifically, are times like when I went to hanami with a coworker, or when I am riding a train with Blueberry, relishing in the fact that we live in a place where we can zip off to Kyoto for the day if we want. Or best yet, this past weekend Blueberry and I were running errands and ended up at a festival. I love that! Only in Japan can errands end with you eating Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki as a bunch of kids around you try their best to catch fish in tiny, paper nets.

The other times I am happy are things I could have anywhere  and are the things you don’t take pictures of – sitting in a restaurant with friends, watching movies with Blueberry at home, having a friend come over for the weekend. I could do those things anywhere, but I am also happy I can do these things here. They just have nothing to do with Japan, outside of the fact that something about Japan brought us all here to begin with.

If I had come to do JET just for the chance to be in Japan, I would be leaving after this year. I am pretty sure of that. If I had come just to be a working tourist, then I would be tired of it all by now. The frustrations would have overflowed by now and I would leave knowing I did some cool shit and then left.

ha! A Japanese apple stamp!

But, for me, JET was more than just moving to Japan. After being unemployed I felt like absolutely no one cared that I had ever done anything in school or tried my best at anything. Even at my last job I wasn’t given too many opportunities to prove myself, and even when I did, sometimes I just fucked it up. So it’s been wonderful to have a chance to see that when I try harder there’s an actual reward; my kids can look at me and say things like “what’s ちんちん in English?” I might not want to teach them the word “penis” but I am proud they can use the grammar.

Everyone does this whole “Japan” thing differently. Everybody is looking to get

different things out of it, and some maybe don’t have something they’re looking for and are just enjoying the ride. It’s all good.

Tags: Japan, JET program, JET Programme, life, teaching