Well, it’s that time of year again.  The time when (starting tomorrow) the planets and stars align and four national holidays in the space of 6 work days coalesque into what is commonly known in Japan as the “Golden Week”.  Prices for everything go up, the entire populace uproots and travels, and people finally have time to get busy.  While my friends that still have paid leave are flying off to exotic locations to imbibe lots (of everything), I am taking the low key route and will mostly be hitting the clubs and sleeping late.  I do have a couple of plans though, one to go camping with my new tent (thanks Mom! I mean, Santa . . .) and another to go wakeboarding.  I’d also like to use the opportunity to see some old friends and explore some climbing areas if I can find them.

My only real piece of interest is that I might be offered a job with a ski-touring outfit near Niseko next winter (cause if you didn’t know, I’m not re-contracting my current JET position).

The CEO of SkiJapan.com wrote: “I am confident that we should be able to offer you a position in Niseko for next season, and in fact we are looking at employing some people over the summer this year.”

A return to Niseko could be in the works.

Other than that there isn’t much big news this week, so peruse the site and see if you can find all the secret links.  My goal is to make what-what.com the ONE STOP SITE for all your entertainment needs. What-what more could you ask?

Another busy week.  There is less to write about this time than show- there are four new photo galleries available for view from my Europe trip and additions to the laughs section.  Furthermore, the “Bio” page is fleshing out and lots of links have been added to both that page and the links page.  You may have noticed the AMAZING new oh my surrogate children logo (that never moves) and I am now connected (or waiting for confirmation on) to two webrings (random links to other blogs/sites of the listed nature), browsable via the links to the left right.

At school we are doing a lesson on “introducing your classmate” and as part of it the students can draw a picture of their partner. Needless to say, giving the students the slightest chance to express themselves creatively can be greatly rewarding for both my (and your) amusement and their ability to get some aggression out.  This lesson and other experiences have raised in my mind the question of what role a school plays in the development of adolescents.  In Japan it seems that most high school students are treated as children, with far less responsibility or capability than their age would suggest. Thus it is not the school’s job to train them to be socially or even generally competent (as they are just children) as human beings, but rather to ensure that they learn how to follow directions and memorize information.  (more…)

Some recent statistics:

Number of kilometers on the motorcycle odometer:  1152
Earlobe pierce gauge:  6
Number of cell phone charms:  3 (one new!)
Final number of new team teachers:  3
Number of e-mails sent since November 30, 2004:  317
Approximate number of hours working on the website in the last 7 days:  15

So, by now you’ve heard quite enough about how boring my job is but we still have the matter of the 1.5 yet-to-be-met senseis in the English department.  The last week has given me surprisingly little new information on their political orientation but I HAVE learned that not only O-sensei, but also T-sensei (the quiet, unassuming one) are both recent graduates of what will henceforth be referred to as “Not-Clever University” (if it is referred to at all) in Himeji.  Encouragingly, she is not as meek as I was made to believe, and I think that with the lucky draw of some not-too-crazy classes we will do fine.  Disappointingly, her English isn’t much better than O- or N-senseis.  All these newbies have given me food for thought (as if I needed any more) about the paradoxical Japanese education system.  For example, as “cultural educator” is a part of my job description, wouldn’t it also be logical for the people I teach with and who presume to speak a second language to also have experience living in a foreign country?  My own high school language teachers were all either from the countries they taught or had spent serious time there and could speak fluently.  Obviously, my high school and this one are too different to really compare, but the basic tenet remains.  The new first-year students are cute and quiet for the moment, but soon enough I think their true faces will show.  They have already begun testing the patience of me and the other senseis with a little name-calling.  Opinions on corporal punishment are open for consideration.  My weekly schedule of 14 classes is now in full swing and I have picked up another private adult lesson (that sounds kind of risqué, no?) which I will do twice a week.  The Wednesday adult group class is continuing to go well (last week we did passives, oh joy) and we are trying to decide on a date to go get wasted again.

The Asian (after) glow of last year’s enkai.

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Well as alluded to in the previous post, the subjects of today’s post are my new team teachers. In total there are 3.5 new teachers, only two of whom I have actually met.  The other 1.5 are actually still under “consideration” by the vice principal and the English department.  Rumor has it that their on-the-fence status has to do with one being perhaps too prim, proper quiet and unassertive enough to work at this battlefield of a high school, and the other is a part-timer who may or may not actually be hired.  In truth this half-person is not a team-teacher but more of an extra drilling instructor and I will unfortunately not be able to work with them (you may have noticed I am not aware of half-person’s gender and thus used gender-unspecific pronouns).

The two people I have met are both young, relatively inexperienced and do not speak English.  The woman, O-sensei, actually just graduated from what she described as a “not-clever” local University, and Toban is unfortunately her first assignment.  Her enthusiasm and energy are admirable, but I am afraid already for her mental state.  Luckily K-sensei, the one who will be going to England for a year starting next week, has been showing her around.  My advice for her was: “there’s two things you need to know-  ‘shut up‘, and ‘sit down‘”.  The second teacher, N-sensei, is a man with 5 years experience (I think); unfortunately none of it was team-teaching.  “That’s ok,” I told him when we did our introductions (in Japanese), “team-teaching is kind of a joke anyway, like having writing class outside.  We just play games and otherwise attempt to distract the students from their busy schedule of gossiping, sleeping, playing on their cell-phones and complaining how much English sucks.”

So far we haven’t had time to really talk about who we are, and I am remaining optimistic about first impressions.  That said, I am now a “veteran” teacher, and I hope there will not be some kind of respect issue that keeps things overly formal.  My only impression so far is that you’d think that in order to qualify to teach a foreign language, you would actually have to be able to speak it, which the two newbies barely do.  Maybe I should start teaching Japanese back in the U.S. or somewhere.

So much to write and sorry to be absent the last few weeks, if you’ve read the previous posts then you know where I’ve been.  From where I left off:  Back in Budapest we went skating - me on the board, her with the fruit boots at a place called “Hero Square”, basically a giant open space and monument that definitely would have been off limits in the U.S. but was alive with kids that day and the cops weren’t stressing.  It was beautiful, and I even skated pretty well for not having done so in the last month.  I think it helped that the only other “skater” presence was a couple of little ‘uns on the decks and “Euroblader” (my name for him), who showed up with a bad-ass grimace, some bad-ass ripped jeans, some bad-ass fingerless gloves, a bad-ass bandanna, a bad-ass goatee and some bad-ass lean-on-the-monument poses.  I hope he had some bad-ass knee pads on though, because he wasn’t so bad-ass at rolling around.  All this bad-ass-ness kept the focus of tourists’ attention on away from me and the rollernerd GF, and for a few brief minutes I may have actually fit in with the locals!

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Flight: Kansai, Japan - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia via Kota Kinabalu (1 hour stop)
Time: 7.5 hours
Distance: Meh, bearable.
Meal(s): Edible
Movie(s)/Game(s): Dr. Strangelove, Some terrible jewel thief flick with Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek, Asteroids-type game.
Notes: Best flight attendant uniforms I’ve ever seen.

Flight: (After 5 hour layover) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Frankfurt, Germany
Time: 13 hours
Distance: Wicked far.
Meal(s): Barely Edible. Timing completely random.
Movie(s)/Game(s): Funny movie about Chris Rock being elected President. I’d vote for him. Super NES (!) games: F-Zero, Street Fighter II, Tetris Attack - HOT.
Notes: I can now say I’ve sat in a Business Class seat - if only for 15 minutes on the tarmac as the flight was delayed and I asked them to move me up so I could make my connection to Budapest.
 
Flight: (delayed, thank god, as I had 40 minutes to collect my 60 pound baggage, clear customs, take a train to another terminal, find the Lufthansa check in desk, check in, go back through customs and security, and make it to the gate - 90 min wait) Frankfurt, Germany - Budapest, Hungary
Time: 1.5 hours
Distance: Hop, skip, jump.
Meal(s): Cold and meaty.
Movie(s)/Game(s): Just the ones playing in my sleep-deprived brain.
Notes: Large group of American high school kids, high percentage of obesity.

Ah, Spring is here, finally! For the past week I’ve been traveling about central Europe, from Budapest to Gyor to Vienna to Prague and now back to Budapest again for a few more days before I head back to Japaland.

So far I’ve seen a bunch of old buildings, castles, churches, statues, mullets, and otherwise soviet-era delights to the eye, but by far the most enjoyable thing has been the food. I have with reckless, gluttonous abandon consumed mass quantities of beer, various cheeses, various breads, falafel, 6 kinds of Hungarian soup (vegetable, cherry, squash, 2 kinds of spinach, and 2 kinds of fish), beer, Absinthe, amazing Hungarian sweets and cakes, “spirits”, and more beer. Due to my voracious consumption of food and poorly pronounced but eager Hungarian for “mmm, yummy”, my girlfriend’s mom now loves me, and I can’t argue with a Dad that meets you at the door (at our first meeting) with a smile, a handshake, and a shot of his own plum moonshine. 

So far my impressions are all quite good. Budapest is a textured, somewhat mottled city, the graffiti mixing with art-nouveau architecture and crumbling facades to give a nice edge to a tourist destination and making it that much more real. Quite the opposite is Vienna, a sparkling and polished mass of gorgeous buildings and streets full of infinite skateable yet regrettably unskated objects and spots. We checked out an exhibition at the Leopold Museum of Schiele works and one Klimt - “Life and Death”, both of which were terrific. Prague was perhaps my favorite so far, and also the most touristy, but the city is alive with much energy and has innumerable vantage points from which to gaze at the faded reddish-orange tiled rooftops sprinkled liberally with pointy church steeples and narrow streets. Near the Tyn Church (famous place) we went to a gallery of great art-nouveau prints and posters by Mucha and much time was spent soaking up sun in outdoor cafes drinking Czech beer and eating the local specialty of camembert cheese in olive oil and peppers.

Back in Budapest we went to a car repair garage-cum-bar and then an underground spot with live gypsy music and dancing. Today we are going to a bath house and if we can get tickets, a dance performance. More when I get back to Japan.