Where the Magic Happens

And now for part 3 in a continuing series of blog posts about work that will, presumably, continue until I retire or die. The last blog post covered the journey: now for what lies at the end of the rainbow!

Sakishima High School is in Port Town Nishi, part of the larger Nanko Port Town area of Osaka. It's actually a really pretty place, from what I've seen; lots of huge project-type apartment buildings, lots of trees, parks, the occasional shopping center, even a few nude statues in front of the school (I know, shocking! They probably don't even have the 10 Commandments posted anywhere in the building, if you can believe it!). I've been told that this is one of the more economically depressed areas, home to factory workers and gangsters. I remarked about how pretty all the trees were, and I got a scoff and something about how that's "unusual for this area." Your guess is as good as mine.


This is the English office. All of the other teachers are cooped up in the much bigger room next door. Our cubicle technology is years ahead of theirs, as you can see.


And here's my desk. Most of the things on it were left by the guy who had my job before me. Incidentally, he quit halfway through his contract to go surfing in Bali. Also, his name was James Cameron. Not to sure what to make of these ominous portents.


No robots in my school (economically depressed, remember?), but they do have a TV-ray-gun. Or maybe this has something to do with that whole analog-digital changeover.


The view from the English office. I wish I had anything to say about the huge, sinister-looking black tower in the distance there. Anything beyond a halfhearted Mega Man/Lord of the Rings reference, anyway. The real view in the office, though, is this picture, which sits right behind my desk (possibly NSFW?):

Words fail me. The technical term for this would be yaoi, but knowing that doesn't help explain what it's doing in the English office. My only assumption is that 1. a teacher made this and is proud enough of it to leave it at school, or 2. a student made this for a teacher. Neither of these helps explain anything either. As if I had enough difficulty focusing on looking busy, I've got these guys looking over my shoulder.

Those are most of the sights, really. A couple more brief accounts of the Japanese educational system in action:

1. My students still struggle with difficult questions such as "How are you?" -- we covered potential replies to this for about 10 minutes in class -- but during a Halloween activity, my students are correctly able to say "chainsaw" when they see a picture of Jason Voorhees and identify Frankenstein's Monster as a "homunculus."
2. Bumping into one of my students outside the English office, I was greeted with a "hellohowahyou," which I happily replied to. The student, hair perfectly spiked and dyed, then said "cyamerondiazu" and looked at me expectantly. I just smiled dumbly; what the hell is the proper response to (what I assumed was meant to be) "Cameron Diaz"? He and his friends laughed, and I retreated back into the English office. Next time, though, I'll be ready to enthusiastically describe my long-running friendship with Ms. Diaz.
   

Scenes from a Commute

Sakishima High School is in Port Town Nishi, about an hour and 15 minutes away from Gaijin HQ here in Tondabayashi City. Apart from having to wake up at 6:30, it's not so bad a commute, really (incidentally, having been told by our South African friends that "commute" just means "going somewhere" in non-American English, I should point out here that I'm using "commute" in the proper way that God and Uncle Sam intended). Now, Internet traveler, let me whisk you along the beautiful early-morning rainbow-strewn puppy-ridden path from home to work. Pack a lunch!

Step one: walk the 15 minutes from our home to Osakasayamashi Station. It's a nice walk, just long enough to shake some of the cobwebs from my brain and catch still more cobwebs in my face (cobwebs generously donated by Tondabayashi's resident Deadly Spider population, more on them later). Just a 5-minute train ride away is lovely Kitanoda station, where the glee just hangs in the air:

7:34-7:35 a.m. is just the officially designated Break Time in the nonstop party that is Kitanoda Station. Soon enough, this pulls up:

I believe that the actual job of the guy with the OCD gloves is Train Stuffer. He makes sure that trains that are already at maximum capacity don't have any extra room on the ceiling through helpful...well, shoving, pretty much. The inside of the train:

I'm not exaggerating when I say that these trains could not be any more crowded. It's a little disheartening to board the train as commuters vainly try to edge backwards, crushing schoolchildren and the elderly whose heads dip dangerously below the tide of human beings in suits. Oh, and lest you think that I'm actually this much taller than everyone else on the train, the above photo was enhanced by my holding the camera overhead at arm's length (in the process, I elbowed three people). Ordinarily, as a gaijin, I get a fair amount of extra leg room on public transportation -- my invisible waves of stinkiness/menace give me a few extra inches of space, a boundary respected by everyone up to and including pregnant women and amputees -- but this is the first thing to go in the everyday rush for square inches of floor.

After a couple of stops on the train, during which 500,000 more people board the train, I get off and walk from Tengachaya to nearby Kishinosato Station, passing through Tengachaya Station just long enough to ponder whether it would be too terrible if I just quit my job and lived at Mister Donut for the rest of my life. On the walk, my spirits are always lifted by this wonderful view of Japanese culture:

I have never wanted to go bowling more than I do at 7:54 a.m., Monday through Thursday. According to the sign underneath, it's a combination grocery store/bowling alley/karaoke bar, which, I believe, is a conglomeration of all of my hopes and dreams for employment since I was 6.

Afterwards, I ride the subway from Kishinosato to the end of the line. As you can see, the subway is considerably roomier. Cushy, even. Backrubs.

The jacuzzi car is behind me in this photo. There's always plenty to do in the train, though:

For instance, I have some time to think about all the Relaxing Time I would have later to Enjoy Rich Taste. Suntory: Be Amazed By It! Listen To It! Also, pixellation is apparently a big problem in Japan; take a look at what's happened to the traditional artwork of maybe a Christmas decoration that graces the wall of Kawagablayamnawa (or something) station:


Chilling indeed. When I get to the end of the line, I'm treated to one of Osaka's greatest structures -- nay, one of the pinnacles of human architecture: the Longest Escalator in the World:


Fighting elevation sickness all the while, I then board the Osaka monorail, called the "New Tram." Gives me a great view of Osaka's fashionable Port District, known for its...well, boats. Aaaaaand...ships.


I do get a nice view of one of Japan's most precious endangered species. Though it exists only in captivity now, these majestic creatures once roamed the Land of the Rising Sun without constraint:


This particular dinosaur is known only as Truck-Ra, Devourer of Vans. Unleashing destruction and bargain scrap metal from atop his imposing pedestal.

At last, then, school:

And now you know what the real Japan looks like, cheesecake, Tyrannosauruses and all. I should note that in the time it took me to write this blog post, I could have commuted to work and back three times. Plus, that would pay better.

Meet the Neighbors

I think it's about time to share a little of our neighborhood with all of you. As you may have gleaned from one post or another, we're living in Osaka* (emphasis on the asterisk): technically, we're in the outer reaches of Osaka prefecture, meaning a city called Tondabayashi. It's a lovely little bedroom community, meaning that it's only a convenient hour-long, 600 yen train ride and subway ride to downtown Osaka, with the added benefit that no one in Osaka has ever heard of it! Whee!

It is a nice little place, though. We've become thoroughly acquainted with the route between our house and the train station...and that's about it, really. It's surprisingly easy to get lost in a place where the streets don't have names, and even if they did, we wouldn't be able to read them. Here are a few pictures from around town:


Anytown, Japan, population: us! As far as I can tell, we're pretty much the only gaijin in town, meaning we're constantly greeted with amazed, bemused smiles. Just down the road is a bakery and a place that does fantastic katsudon. From what I can tell, we live in a pretty upscale neighborhood, as evidenced by the fact that roughly 90% of the real estate is either dentists or hair salons (neither of which is covered by the stingy health care service here...fascists!). Now for some details (read: complete speculation/lies) about our fellow Tondabayashians:


I wish I had anything more than speculation about this particular house. Please note the two identical Statue of Liberty replicas and what I can only assume is a batting cage on the roof of the house. Truly, the most All-American home I have ever seen. Also, there is laundry hanging only from one window, which, according to my Sherlock Holmes-cum-Lenny Briscoe detectivery, indicates that it is the home of a single family only.


This car is always parked in the lot directly across from our house. Considering this is the land of futuristic robot-cars, a bright green early-'70s Impala with gold rims really sticks out. I put it to you: is there any way that this car is not owned by gangsters? I took this picture in a bit of a hurry for fear of getting Hattori Honzo'd by paranoid yakuza.


Junko and Yuki, our upstairs neighbors. Yuki is crying in every known photo of him, though he is instantly hypnotized by the sound of the ABCs Song.


Tomi, Junko's husband, with his dog, Coo-chan. Coo-chan and Yuki make raucous noises in shifts for maximum efficiency. Tomi and Junko periodically turn up at our door to give us Japanese textbooks, meals, and candy, which clashes dramatically with the American cultural practice of ignoring your neighbors and occasionally complaining to the police about them.

We haven't really made the acquaintance of any of our other neighbors, though we are on nodding-and-bemused-smiles terms with many of them, especially the older folks. The old man next door, judging by the plate on his door and our poor literacy, is probably named "Mr. Old." I'm sure we've been introduced to a few more people in our neighborhood, but Jenn and I both suffer from American-Onset-Japanese-Name-Forgetfulness, a terrible disorder where any Japanese name (as well as most Japanese words) lose most of their meaning between our ears and our brains. So most of the people we know in our area remain Bakery Lady, Liquor-Store Guy (and his wife, Liquor-Store Lady), and Post-Office Man.

No Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom

(Formerly titled "Hot for Teacher")

Yesterday, I stepped into a classroom for the first time in over 5 months. This was my first time at the front of a high school class, my first time teaching Japanese students. At the worst school in Osaka, no less.

I'd had plenty of warning about what was to come: at my contract signing, my supervisor at ECC intimated that this school is "rather" low-level, and may in fact be "special needs." When I asked what he meant by that, he mumbled something about the students having "problems at home" and gave me a reassuring smile. My predecessor had quit halfway through his contract...lucky me, that's how I managed to get a teaching job midway through the school year. My immediate supervisor here at Sakishima High School explained that there are 200 high schools in Osaka Prefecture, and this one is on the bottom. When I asked a few other teachers about that, they all laughed, considered it, and said something to the effect of, "Well, maybe not the very bottom." Homework is not assigned at this school (as with most Japanese schools). Students are moved up to the next grade even if they fail the previous class, meaning that I could expect a good mix of A students and kids who hadn't understood a word of the last three years of English class (again, as is the case with most Japanese schools). Last week, seven students from my school were caught shoplifting from the same convenience store. Also, I'm only assigned to the 1st-year classes.

Still, in my two days at this school without classes, things seemed to be all right. The students that I bumped into in the hall or in the English office each greeted me warmly with passable "goomoningu" or "herrohowahyou". One of them even gave me candy, and believed that I could do magic on the grounds that I had the same name as Harry Potter (when I discussed this student with one of the teachers afterwards, she assured me that this student is nice but "very unintelligent"; I just laughed awkwardly). How bad could it be? I'm up for a challenge!

I was told that my first class had 23 students, so I made sure to have 23 copies of the handout I'd made. At the bell, 9 students were in the room -- 3 more trickled in eventually. Two students slept the whole way through, two more were messaging on their cell phones (I learned to be very thankful to have such quiet students in the room). When a student's cell started ringing, he answered it and began speaking; when the teacher approached to say something to him in Japanese, he shushed her. After a brief exchange, he stepped out in the hall to take the call. I just kept smiling. "Be genki!" I was told. "Your enthusiasm for English will inspire the students!"

I gave my introductory presentation, interrupted only occasionally (OK, frequently) by the students' yelling to one another, to their friends in the hall, or to the teacher (who spoke to them entirely in Japanese). At the end of it, I asked if anyone had any questions. One girl asked the teacher something in Japanese, and the teacher translated for me: "She...she wants to know what language you're speaking." Another student asked if my hair was permed or naturally curly.

I asked if there were any more questions. One student excitedly shot his hand up in the air. "DO YOU LIKE SEX?" The teacher turned to me. I blinked and felt a trickle of sweat roll down my back. I explained, as slowly and clearly as possible, that that was a very personal question. The teacher said something in Japanese that began with "gaikokujin wa...", meaning she was talking about all foreigners. I kept smiling.

The student raised his hand again and smiled broadly. "DO YOU HAVE BIG PAY-NIS?" The teacher turned to me again, waiting expectantly for my answer. Somehow, they didn't cover this shit in my 3-hour training seminar at ECC Best Career. I very shakily told him that that, too, was a personal question. I'll talk about my junk at work as soon as they start letting me drink at work. I asked if any other students had questions, trying to speak loud enough to drown out the student who was shouting repetitions and variations on his question.

By the end of the class, the students who had written anything on the handout I gave them (a paragraph about me with simple comprehension questions at the bottom, stuff like "what country is Harry from?") had answered 3 of the 8 questions; those were the ones that the teacher had explained in Japanese and written the answers on the blackboard.

My second class was considerably better, happily. Roughly the same amount of work completed on the handout, but thankfully, fewer questions, and the majority of the students were much quieter. That was the best class I'll be teaching, I'm told.

I've already learned to really hate the cutest girls and the boys with the ridiculous anime hair; the former, as in American high schools, seem to be the most aggressively obnoxious, and the latter are given to withering sarcasm. I'm 24 years old, I've been out of high school for 6 goddamn years, I've owned two cars, I'm married, I've traveled extensively, I've got two degrees, and I'm still scared as hell of the derision of the popular high school kids.

A disheartening start to the new job? Sure, a bit. But I really do believe what I told everyone who warned me about how difficult this school is: I'm up for a challenge, and this may be where I can do the most good for my students, even if it's frustrating or awkward. At any rate, I've hit a gold mine for blog material.

P.S.: I apologize if I have been bad about returning e-mails lately; as my Facebook status will bear out, Gmail seems to be the only website that's blocked on the school computer. This blog post is sponsored by Harry Not Having Much to Do at Work, Inc.

Fun with Clumps!

I'm not sure how many of you know about this (I'm gonna go with "everyone under 30"), but there's a particular line of video games for the Playstation called "Katamari Damacy." It has no real English translation (at least, not one that makes sense), so they just went with the original Japanese title when they released it in the U.S.; extremely roughly, it means "Clump Spirit" ("spirit" as in "school spirit"), named thusly because the two kanji look kind of similar. Visual pun, don'tcha know. Anyway, not important.

The point is that I had hoped, in my dreamiest of dreamy dreams, that Japan might resemble the world of Katamari Damacy, which looks like this:

Not David Bowie, but an incredible simulation.

The game centers around the efforts of the Prince of All Cosmos rolling around a sticky ball and picking up successively larger objects, from dominoes to cows to mountains; the purpose of this activity (as if you needed one) is to make objects to replace the stars of the galaxy, which the King of All Cosmos (pictured) destroyed during a particularly rowdy night. All in all, it's a raucous, hilarious romp through a world of whimsical whimsy, something that Japan does very well. Again, this game is one of the reasons I came to Japan: I hoped that, perhaps, there might be some place on Earth that actually looks like that (before you ask, I somehow forgot to mention this fact to immigration personnel and potential employers). Also, I figured that if Japan really is a world of dancing pandas and rainbows, it might explain some of Japan's weird behavior.

People of the world: yes, Japan does look like Katamari Damacy. Proof:

Any given street in Japan.

Whimsy? Check! Similarly-sized objects grouped everywhere you go for easy rolling?

Traditional Buddhist monasteries were constructed without regard for whimsical alien intervention.

Double-check! The only real letdown is the indigenous katamari of Japan. They do, in fact, roll around the house, collecting tiny objects as they go. Unfortunately, they look like this:
You lied to me, video game industry!

Hard Hats and Cymbals Required at All Times

For the last two months or so, Jenn and I have been enthusiastic participants in an exciting project headed by the Tondabayashi City Department of Public Works (Department of Loud Noises and General Obnoxiousness). All said, our apartment is a pretty sweet set-up: three tatami rooms (one for sleeping, two for sitting), spacious kitchen, bathtub, flower boxes, balcony, and all the spiders we'll ever need. More on all of this later, honest.

If I did have one tiny, niggling, eensy-weensy little complaint about our home, it would probably be the non-stop, 24/7 construction going on behind our house. Now, I didn't think to take a picture back when the lot was still vacant, but when we moved in, the lot behind our house looked much like this:

Not bad, huh? For the last two months, however, they've been building a couple of new apartment buildings right behind us. Now, they've progressed to this point in the construction (actual picture from our balcony, promise):
I suppose it's probably a miracle of modern construction that they were able to build these houses using nothing but hammers, nail guns, dynamite, bagpipes, and teams of irritable howler monkeys. And you all know me, I'm the world's biggest fan of construction, especially of new, faceless apartment buildings on previously empty land amidst hundreds of nearly identical apartments; hell, there's nothing I love better than surrendering what little view I have in the name of progress! Plus, in Japan, apartment buildings are called "manshion." Class-y!

No, my real problem with this particular construction project is one of selfless concern for the workers. I mean, working every day (including Saturdays and national holidays) from 7 a.m. until well after dark? How awful for them! This is why unions are needed, to prevent the ruthless exploitation of OH MY GOD WHY DON'T THEY STOP ALREADY. JUST YOU TRY TO SLEEP WITH THIS S*** GOING ON OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW AT 7 A.M.:


*Ahem* Anyway, the really bewildering thing is that the 7-8:30 a.m. shift is usually taken by just one guy. I realize that my experience in construction is rather limited, but when I'm the only guy at work, I'm usually not doing my busiest, noisiest work; I'm a lot more likely to get a few hours of Freecell in. Or, y'know, go home.

Thanks for commenting on these posts, everyone, it's very encouraging! Assuming we don't die of burst eardrums, we'd love to hear more!

St. Harry's Letter to the Osakans

Caution: The following post contains graphic linguistic content and should not be read while operating heavy machinery.

As someone who has earned two degrees in English and studied English for 18 years (I'm distinctly remember reading a book or two in 1st grade), I have ample opportunity to be pissed off about language, even in my own country: misplaced apostrophes, stupid puns, the word "irregardless," pretty much any use of the term "irony"...for more completely original examples that I came up with all by myself, see Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. Still, I'm (soon to be) employed teaching English to other people, so I guess I must know a thing or two, anyway. Hell, technically I'm a "master" of English, a point that I do enjoy bringing up whenever disputed in a matter of grammar. That's really one of my reasons for moving to Japan: having "mastered" (chuckle, derisive snort) English, living in another language and having to learn all-new means of communication provides me with...well, let's say "challenges."

I think I'm doing all right, too, all said. Three years of university Japanese has served me well enough to buy train tickets and avoid starving to death (so far). Sure, I'm still basically illiterate: there are over 3500 kanzi in the Japanese language, of which I know maybe...less than 100, which leads to ordering the same thing in restaurants over and over (anything with a picture next to it or anything written in katakana, such as "hanbaaga" or "sandoiichi"). See my earlier post on the "three alphabets" business, for instance; "I bought a television today" would be transcribed:

今日はﾃﾚﾋﾞを買いましたよ。

Yes, that's a mix of "hiragana" (46 characters used for native words) "katakana" (46-ish characters used for foreign-borrowed words) and "kanzi" (Chinese pictographic characters used for pretty much either). These alphabets are used interchangeably (some might say "arbitrarily"), meaning someone has to be able to read hundreds of characters to be able to do things like, say, read maps, take trains, or order in a restaurant. Compared to 26 characters used in English. Not that I'm bitter, mind you.

But this post isn't about written Japanese (sort of), it's about spoken Japanese. Though it might seem a little presumptuous to pass judgment on a whole language like this (especially one that I don't really speak), Japanese seems far less literary and far more straightforward than English. This has actually made it much easier to become conversational in Japanese; though there are certainly idioms and expressions to learn, simple sentences are used far more in real life than they are in English. Basically, everyone sounds like they're reading lines from introductory language textbooks.

Example: on a hot day, you'll frequently hear people say to each other (on the train, in restaurants, wherever) "Atsui desu." Meaning "It is hot." And that's the end of the exchange; maybe the other person will nod and smile, or give a simple agreement, but there's nothing more to say about how hot it is. This isn't meant as judgment (play along), but if you were in a waiting room with somebody in America, be they stranger or friend, and just said "It's hot," they would assume that you were no stranger to the short bus. No, you'd usually expect something nice and poetic like "It's a hot one, huh?" or "Hot enough for ya?" or even just a little more info, like "It's hot today."

Maybe this is why English seems to have such a more extensively-developed literary tradition than Japanese...I mean, if we're going to go on about triple redundancy, English frequently has three words for one concept with the same basic meaning originating from Latin, French, and Anglo-Saxon. I keep hearing about how context-driven Japanese is, but if that's the case, why would you even bother saying to somebody that "It is hot"?

OK, that's quite enough of all that for now. How about a nice picture to round out all this text:

We got this in the mail. And here I thought American Pizza Hut was gross. Blaaaaarrrrffffff.

Hey, you! Do you have anything to say about the intricacies of the Japanese language? How about something about English? Misusing words? Pizza Hut? Health care reform? Kanyegate? Great, then leave a comment, please!