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So time to do part two of my Japanese blog, and true to my word I have managed to keep on top of my blog, by doing one blog every month just as promised.
Of course I haven't, but then again not that many interesting things have happened. Japan is still here and is still cool, and I am still having a blast, but ultimately most things I've done have revolved around teaching, getting drunk, and sweating in the Japanese heat, and none of these things are particularly interesting to hear someone talk about at great length.
I've decided I'm not gonna do a chronological blog of stuff that has happened, rather I am gonna do a stream of consciousness style blog where I just write whatever comes into my mind, and I will go off on tangents at will (just like I do in real life)…you've been forewarned.
So the teaching is still going well. The students still make me laugh (well the young ones at least). I still have the autistic kid shouting "celery" for every answer (e.g. ME: What sport do you like? STUDENT: Celery!) And he keeps singing his "Viva Celery" song at every opportunity. I also had to deal with him running out of the room one day when we were playing a game called "Pass The Bomb".
Allow me to explain; for "Pass the Bomb", I have an empty Pepsi bottle crudely fashioned into "dynamite" and the students pass it around the room to each other while some ticking time bomb style music plays on my PowerPoint presentation. Then, when the ticking bomb "explodes" so to speak on the TV screen, whoever has the bomb at that moment has to stand up and answer a question. It's a right hoot, and the students love it but unfortunately when the dynamite got passed to the autistic kid, it all got a little too real for him and he threw the bomb in the air, and pegged it out of the classroom!!!
Now before I get abuse for laughing at an autistic child, let me just make it clear that his homeroom teacher was laughing the loudest at the time. He is a funny kid and often comes up to me in the corridor and randomly starts listing fruit and vegetables in English, though undoubtedly celery is his favourite vegetable.
Teaching the older students at the Junior High School (JHS) is not quite as much fun. With elementary students I've found if you just act like a court jester, then they will love the fact that you act like a big kid, which thankfully I've never found particularly difficult in life to do. However, if you act like a court jester with a bunch of grade 3 Japanese students (15 year olds), I've found they will just stare at you with that surly teenage look that says "What's this dickhead doing?"
My experience of Japanese JHS students is not that they're rude or angry or badly behaved as such. They are just quiet….very, very quiet. They don't want to speak in class, volunteer, ask questions, answer questions, or generally do anything. They don't fall asleep, or yawn, or act disinterested. They just sit there staring at you intently while you ask a question and let your questions or requests just hang in the air for what feels like an eternity. I feel I have a good idea what stand-up comedians go through now, when they tell a joke to an audience in a club that falls flat on its arse and they're met with stone cold silence.
Anyway, teaching JHS students takes up only about 15% of my total teaching each week and the younger JHS students (grades 1 and 2) aren't as bad as they still act more like children; it's just those non-pesky, non-meddling grade 3 students that are the bind to teach.
Well I write this with just one more week left of teaching before 6 weeks off for summer. I'll be glad of the break as it's been pretty tiring teaching the past few weeks during a Japanese summer. The classrooms don't have air-con or ceiling fans, and so usually it is case of opening the windows, and commandeering a pedestal fan from somewhere. I enter the classroom like some sort of boxer who didn't have time to fully undress…I have a hand towel draped around my neck, sweatbands on the arm, while wearing a white dress shirt and black trousers. My shirt is wetter than Rod Hull's roof by the end of each class.
I've also mastered one Japanese phrase as a result of the heat, as I spend all my days going "atsui des ne?" to anyone who will listen, which translates as "It's hot isn't it?"….
You see, you master this particular phrase because that is all anyone in Japan says during the summer months. I always thought the English were famous for moaning about the weather, (it's too hot, too cold etc) but the Japanese teachers love nothing more than talking about how hot it is, constantly throughout the day. I can suffer this though as I have already had plenty of practice throughout my life, listening to my own dear own mother constantly tell me how cold it is!
The weather has been pretty great so far really. The rainy season is a bit of a myth where I live at least. It rains the odd day here and then, but it still rains more often in Manchester, I'm sure of that. It's the high humidity that causes the most irritation I suppose, but I try and see it for its positive aspects. It's a chance to burn some much needed fat away, so I have been trying to go out running as much as possible in the humidity, despite the looks of dismay from the local population.
Mind you I still do contradictory things like I will go for a 6-mile run after school in 33 degree heat, and then later I'll get in my car and drive the 300 meters to the local 7/11 to buy 2 Dairy Milks, because I can't be bother walking. Maybe I shouldn't drive so much though, as I have recently managed to scrape my lease car on a brick wall when I was reversing out of a car park space. I'm still waiting to discover what my latest moment of clumsiness will cost me…
Though my car may have scratches, least it looks okay apart from that…it blends in pretty well with all the other compact, plain and small Japanese cars you see out and about.
Some cars I see driving around look like they've been pimped out by a 10 year old girl! I've never seen so many fluffy toys in a car before. Some Japanese people (mainly women) will drive around in cars with all manner of fluffy toys and stuffed animals on the dashboard!!! It looks very strange and even more so when you see a 60 year old Japanese guy driving, who has probably just borrowed his daughter's car to nip to the shops, yet he has a Hello Kitty cushion on the dashboard and a Doraemon toy dangling from the rearview mirror.
I do enjoy driving though, and the fight with the wall aside, I've enjoyed driving around my local area and further afield. Japan is a very scenic country, and driving on the expressways through the mountains is very relaxing.
I have driven to a few places so far in the Chubu and Kansai regions like Nagoya, Gifu, Hikone, Shizuoka City and to near Mount Fuji. I'd love to drive across Japan one day in the future, though ideally with a few mates in the car to split the toll costs. Of course I need to find some mates first! ;-)
I'm planning on driving up to Toyama in a few weeks time so I can see Maki. Maki, for those that don't know, is a Japanese girl I have been seeing from Nagoya. She is working in a restaurant in a mountain resort in a place called Tateyama for a few months, which on a map looks like its pretty close but it's actually a good 5 hour drive away from my town. After spending the last 3 or 4 weekends with her in Kosai and Nagoya, I won't see her for a little while now, but I am looking forward to seeing her again in a few weeks in Tateyama.
You do find a lot of places in Japan that look like they're close to each other on a map, but are actually a lot further away in reality owing to the routes the roads or trains have to take to get anywhere.
Speaking of mountains, I am also hopefully attempting to climb Mount Fuji at some point soon so I look forward to doing that and having a well deserved can of Strong Zero at the summit.
I'm trying to think of some other things that have happened in the past few months….. I've been to Kyoto, Nagoya a few times, celebrated mine and Jason's birthday, been to a disappointing fireworks festival where the fireworks exploded behind a big wall of low hanging cloud, spent time with Maki, sung karaoke a few times, and that's it really. It's not been crazy busy, and I've not done lots of tourist things so far, but it's still been enjoyable.
So before I finish the blog I thought I'd do a quick list of some of the quirky, interesting, good, bad, and ugly things I've encountered so far while in Japan… Here are 15 to start you off…
1. Japanese school lunches are incredibly plain and s*** really. The meal usually consists of far too much sweet corn, dry bread, bland unseasoned soup, creamy milk, and some questionable meat that was probably warm an hour ago when it was first dished out! Japanese students don't sadly eat for lunch all of the foods that you might hope they would eat like tempura, sushi, Kobe beef, sashimi and shabu shabu. ;-) At least the lunches are cheap, and you get a lot of food so you're not hungry from all the boring food you've eaten.
2. I saw a Japanese vending machine that sold onions a few weeks back. A vending machine that dispensed nothing but onions…only in Japan would someone buy their onions from a vending machine!
3. Japanese elementary students have to wear special helmets just to walk to and from school. Even though they're just walking on the pavements and not walking through a building site, it is still deemed appropriate that they wear helmets for that treacherous walk on the footpaths.
4. Japan has some big ass spiders and weird bee type insects.
5. Japanese people seem to love famous British things and famous British people. There are a lot of English style pubs in the cities called things like the Rose and Anchor, The Nelson, and The Red Lion. A lot of teachers at my school always talk about the Beatles and also a lot of random old British 80s artists. One teacher told me of her love of Limahl from Kajagoogoo when she was a student growing up in the 80s, and I think she was even more shocked when I knew all the songs she was referencing.
So far watching Japanese news on TV in the morning before school, I have seen the top news stories range from Kate Middleton's pregnancy, David Beckham's retirement, Alex Ferguson's retirement, plus Japanese interviews with the British boy bands The Wanted and One Direction amongst other things.
6. In the big cities like Nagoya and Tokyo, you can smoke in a lot of the bars and restaurants, but you're not allowed to smoke in the street outside.
7. I can get 4 large chicken breasts from the supermarket for about 1 pound 50p, and I can get just one solitary red pepper for the same frigging price!!!
8. Japanese people really struggle pronouncing the words "flip-flops" and "Woolworths".
9. No one in Japan seems to own a Kindle, a Blu-ray player or an IPod. Everyone still buys CDs, watches DVDs, and reads physical books.
10. People go to Japanese internet cafes not really to play computer games, or surf the net. No they appear to go there to read comic books, drink unlimited tea and soft drinks, and sleep. Japanese internet cafes are open 24 hours and have partitions separating the computers and they have reclining leather chairs, so often people go there to sleep if they miss the last train home. A lot of them even have showers.
11. 7/11 fried chicken contains about 8% chicken. The rest is fat and gristle!
12. McDonalds do deluxe quarter pounders that are named things like Black Diamond, Blue Sapphire, Sparkling Ruby (apparently people in Japan find jewelry appetizing). These quarter pounders cost about 7 pounds too just for the burger!
13. Public toilets go from one extreme to the other in the level of comfort they offer. There is no normal toilet. They are either the modern, crazy-space age toilet where the seat opens automatically as you approach, and they have a habit of shooting jets of lukewarm water up your "ricker" without warning when you sit down, irrespective of whether you wanted it to happen or not (you didn't). Or they are the typical Asian, stinking, fly infested squat toilet that is very difficult to use without removing your jeans and boxer shorts first.
14. Did I mention how hot Japan was???
15. Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the…..
….and you thought I'd struggle coming up with 15 "interesting" things.
Jamata
Mr. Jonny
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