Caligraphy Club
“You want to join calligraphy club?” K-sensei asked, a sudden interest coming through in the normally dry, careful way she speaks in English.

“Yes of course,” I replied.

K-sensei had just finished showing me how to make newspaper prints for student worksheets in the downstairs office, a fairly small chore, but one that I always hesitate to ask. I really don’t like bothering the English teachers so much and it seems like there’s always something. I had tried on several other occasions to do so, but the senior teacher at my department had always made them for me, as he enjoys taking my drafts from under my nose like fresh meat. It’s a bit flattering, but also alienating since it’s hard to retain ownership of anything I do. And then he tries to change things…

“I am in charge of calligraphy club,” K-sensei continued, as we abruptly changed course to go to the calligraphy (shodou) room. K-sensei is still an enigma to me—I don’t really know what she gets out of teaching. When she said she’s in charge of calligraphy club, I think it’s mostly a formality since she doesn’t participate with the students. I had met some of the students before, maybe two of all five that were there.

I was introduced to the calligraphy teacher, who was a very warm, friendly woman that smiled and nodded a lot. She had drawn the Chinese characters for my name a month earlier as a gift, but I never got the chance to meet her.

The participants were all girls, except one boy, who was a third year student and just kind of hung out there while he studied—third year students have too much pressure from entrance exams so they quit their club activities.

There was a big debate over what I should draw first and it turned into more of an ordeal than I expected. Finally, I just pulled out a simple one—“TEN,” which is the character for spirit/energy, as used in weather and stuff. The boy student, y-kun—the kind of person that’s all smiles, asks the shiest girl in the corner to draw it for me.

“She is the besto,” he explains.

K-sensei nods. “She has been practicing since she was a little girl. Yeah,” she says, still nodding.

The girl wiped and wiped the brush, took some practice strokes over the page, planning her attack. Then, slower than I imagined, and with great care, she drew the character stroke by stroke. It looked exactly like the sample sheet she had from class.

Then I took a stab at it. I don’t think I did that bad for a first time, but there was a very obvious difference in my creation and her work of art. The teacher chattered in Japanese that I didn’t understand and worked with me on drawing, guiding the brush as I held it. Other students worked with me and showed me some of their favorite characters, or just talked with me about school.

I joined the club in order to learn the characters, but already after my first day, I discovered how beautiful the characters can be. The brush stroke is unbelievably sensitive, and although I have a very poor conception of the art, I can appreciate the power behind it. Learning Japanese, I’ve felt more and more like a kid playing with his dad’s gun, which I’ve never done. The more I learn, the more easily I see how I can make mistakes and make even offensive or at least impolite, crude statements, on accident, or because I don’t know any other way to phrase myself. But the students are unbelievably patient and appreciative of my effort, more than I could ask for.

In return, I drew their names in the Japanese alphabet, which they were amazed at, but shouldn’t have been—I’m ashamed at how little Japanese I can speak. I titled it “shodou club,” and the boy y-kun promptly pinned it up on the wall, looking sort of like a two-year-old’s fridge finger painting.

Tea at the Track
“What’s my name?”

“Ah, Chihiro-san.”

Another member of the badminton club pointed to her nose and smiled.

“Ooh. This one’s hard,” I said.

Another girl told me the wrong name, a joke that everyone understands but me. I’m assuming she changed the name to mean something silly like noodle or curious or worse.

“Kyoko-san.” And I continued down the line with moderate success. Just wait until tomorrow when I get all of them wrong, I think.

They smile when I get their names right. And when I get them wrong or don’t remember them, they act as if I just insulted their mother and their mother’s mother. So understandably, I hesitate to ask names—it’s a really big commitment, considering my memory is like a 70 page notebook with 69 and a half pages ripped out. I’m sure there’s some explanation for that—maybe it’s because my family used lead cookware up until last year. Or because my parents relived the hippie era for 9 months in 1980. I’m sure I’ll hear the story some day.

Even though I’ve come down with another cold, I decided to try and run with the track team. It started when I finished playing dodge ball, which I was invited to by chance when I was returning from my last class. I was on the athletic field, and I know that the track team met near there, but I wasn’t sure exactly.

I went to talk briefly with the chemistry teacher, who I can communicate only a little better with in English than Japanese, which boils down to about like two mice trying to describe how a star fuels itself. I’ve been roped into these weekly chemistry in English classes, which are about as much fun as bathing a cat. Make that 30 cats. Maybe that’s because we’re doing cat bath experiments. Better stop those. And this humor thread.

So I went back to the athletic field, saw no one, and started running around the castle area, where they practice. I caught up with random student groups and asked them what club they were in. I ended up running with members of the basketball club, volleyball club, tennis club, and of course, the badminton club.

Finally I found some of the runners on the track team, but only the sprinters, not the long distance runners, who were apparently taking the day off, except for one student, for some reason. After making a lame joke about the long distance runners being more lazy than the sprinters, I decided to join the sprinters.

They were doing an intricate series of exercises outside the athletic field on some mats. I recognized one of the more outgoing students form a first year class I taught, who happened to have played the role of a woman in one of the school plays over the ‘bunkasai’ (school festival).

The exercises were a lot like track exercises we did, only way different. Yeah. In a group of three, we took turns counting to ten, letting me count in English and Japanese. One of them attempted an English count to. I was happy they let me jump right in with them. After you say a number, the other guys answered back with “hai” or “ee.” It was something we never did in track at home, and it gave me a very strong sense of belonging and teamwork, like they were supporting you through the exercise.

Then we did a lot of sprints, and I basically got my ass handed to me, although I at least was able to keep up through the whole workout. Another great perk was how they yelled, “Fight-too,” as their encouragement to each other. I didn’t actually figure this out until the end of practice. I thought they were saying maido (every time). It really sounded like that. Japanese is full of odd standardized greetings and cheers to meet different social situations, and as far as my narrow, hindered perspective can tell, they don’t vary much. For example, you always say, “otsukare sama” at the end of the day to a coworker, which means, “good work,” basically. Litterally, it means, you must be tired. In America, I would change it up with, “nice job, I appreciate your help today, go home and have a beer, man, you rocked the party, or you really put in a lot of time today huh?” and other longer personalized sayings. As far as I can tell, they don’t really vary them at all, or at least, not as much or often.

Along with some of the immature jokes that the guys try to do around me—like telling me their friend is a fag, crazy or foolish, etc., I had some good talks. I can’t communicate very well—I tell them what I think are useful expressions in English, like “how’s it going?” or how to respond to that question. My favorite part was after I helped myself to some water from the fountain, the only boy who’s name I knew offered me some of the tea the rest of the team was drinking.

“Here,” he said, handing me the drink.

“Oh, thanks. Tea?”

“When you’re done you just—“ he said, pointing to a bin where they put the plastic, multicolored reusable cups. I nodded and he smiled, going back to practice. It’s a big risk when you’re an adolescent boy to bring in someone to involve someone new with your group, especially a teacher, and especially someone who doesn’t speak your language. He did it with a kind confidence, but without losing his cool attitude. When I finished the tea, they were already lining up for another sprint series.

“Buria!” One of the students called. “Fight-too!”

I Speak English. I Don't Grammar English.
How many languages do you speak? I remember my mother introducing me to distant relatives or friends, saying, “Oh, and he lived in Italy and Spain. He can speak Greek, Italian, Spanish…” And I couldn’t understand how you could learn so many languages, when I was struggling to understand the Spanish news broadcasts they made us watch in college.

How much language do you need before you can say you speak it? Why do people learn language? Do you want to just be able to order at a restaurant or find a solid friend from another culture? I just want to be able to chat up whoever I come across.

These are the kind of things I think about when the teacher is going on about English grammar in Japanese in class. In one of the third year classes, there’s a girl who spent time in an English school in Europe, and she can speak better English than the entire staff. I can speak to her in a way that’s lost on the teachers, but the other teachers have a more expansive vocabulary and knowledge of the language, so she still takes the classes to help her on the exams.

I finally decided that this is what’s important about language, at least to me: expression. The superficial parts of language are the vocabulary and grammar. What’s important to me are the more elusive elements like the music in the language and the creative twists people invent. I like the way people change language in dialects and contractions—it sounds more natural. But that’s not what they teach in school.

No less than half the students were sleeping in Y-sensei’s class, who has a talent for engaging students, but the other day, in his 6th period class with me, he decides to embarrass me by asking a question about grammar.

“Ah, Mr. (whiteguyinjapan), I have a question.”

“Oh, good. I like questions,” I said, trying to sound interested and stir up some of the students.

“Many students are confused by the word, ‘home.’ You can say, ‘I am taking the bus to school,’ but not ‘I am taking the bus to home,’ that is incorrect. You are a native speaker, so can you give us a satisfactory explanation?”

“English is strange.”

“That is your explanation,” he says, still smiling wide.

“Yes.”

“Ok, I will tell you. ‘Home’ is adverb, or a modifier, so you do not need to put a preposition before it…”

Another look at the class and only a few stragglers are managing to stay awake. Most of them have collapsed on their desks.

I like being involved in the class, instead of hanging at the side, or walking up and down the aisles, glancing at the Japanese translations that I can’t understand, but I wish he’d involve me by letting me ask students questions or somehow engaging them. I don’t think me talking about grammar in English really helps them. Are they going to go to America and chat up a guy about adverbs? In L.A they’d be robbed, and in New York they’d get punched for bringing up adverbs.

I haven’t been able to make myself get up at 6:00 to run for the last two weeks. I’m just getting more and more lazy as time goes on. I’m waiting for something to change, but I’m the only thing that needs to change. I forgot my lunch and my tea thermos at home today, and I ride to school slowly. I don’t worry about how I’m going to get involved inc class today, no, when I’m alone I think of darker things. I imagine what it would be like if the big earthquake would strike today.

I go by the train station and people are running to catch their train. Businessmen suck down cigarettes, nursing hangovers. Kids in different uniforms ride or walk to their schools.

I get philosophical and wonder what people want out of life. The English department head wants students to pass the Tokyo examinations, and to deepen his understanding of grammar. My mother wants to see our family together at Christmas. I don’t really know what I want, but I think it’s something very simple. Sometimes I just want coffee or beer or a good gyoutsa. But I’m wrong. A student rides by me on her bike and smiles. I have no idea what her name is, but I can recognize her face. She’s in one of my 17 different classes of 30 students each. They all have black hair and the same uniform.

“Good moring!”

“Good moaneen!”

“How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

“Sleepy.”

“O, aa, me too!”

Laugh, I Speak Japanese Like an American
Now Playing: Radiohead, Greenday, Elliot Smith, Martin Sexton, (Old-school) Howie Day, Cibo Matto
If I ever complain about my job, I hope someone flies out here and slaps me. But I will critique the finer points that get me down. Bewcare, my English get's stranger each day, as I begin to think the sketchy English in the grammar books is correct.

The whole reason for the JET program is to improve the English speaking ability of the teachers and the students. Why does it need improvement? Because it doesn’t happen. Almost no one speaks the language except the teachers, and even they won’t speak it in the company of the senior teacher—they’ve been trained so well to be embarrassed of their miraculous language skills. No kidding, the teachers know so much English, although most of them have a pretty thick accent, it’s amazing they speak at all after the traditional Japanese school system has discouraged any spontaneous dialogue exchange.

The current language system is based on getting kids to pass the college entrance exams—some of which I would struggle with. Teachers just teach grammar all day. Some of the books I teach out of are ironically called, “Grammar for Communication,” but have grammar constructs you might only find in a 19th century novel. No kidding. Things like, “A whale is no more a fish than a horse is.” Hell, I can’t even figure that one out. Or what about, “What with the weather, I became late to class.” When’s the last time you used that puppy? I think I used it in an English paper back in ’96, but not since.

The head English teacher writes most of the textbooks at the school, which are full of strange sentences. “If only you can improve on questions, that is our greatest joy,” I think was one of the lines.

It’s really amazing how much they know, but it’s so tragic that they’re trained to be ashamed of their speech. When I speak to them, I can see them hesitating to flinch, like a dog that’s been abused. They wince and smile when they finish a sentence. Most of them, anyway. Two of them are very proud of their English and successfully get me to make spelling errors in class.

So my job is to let slip minor errors. In a dialogue we a teacher and I made for class, I even said, “What is he talking [saying] to you?” as per the script. I do double takes at some of the sentences in class, and sometimes read them incorrectly in order to make it natural speech.

It’s hard to get myself involved in class beyond reciting things and speaking about my day in sentence constructs relevant to the grammar-of-the-day. More than that—kids sleep through class or restrain ADD impulses in sheer quiet for the entire course of the class. I see some of the more talkative kids almost shivering in their seats, wishing they could act out, but they never do. When called on, students speak in the quietest voice imaginable. Sometimes I whisper in class as part of my act, and you can hear it across the room perfectly. I catch smiles from students, but others pass out from boredom. And some students keep pace with the lesson—those who learn well from lecture.

But the teaching style isn’t likely to change, unless university exams become more focused on speech communication, but that won’t happen. So Japan’s solution is to throw ALTs like me to try and force teachers to let me chat up the students. It’s a kind of half-solution. It’s a very strange job—it’s as if your parents hired someone to be your friend.

Many of the students are responsive, and I make some meaningful connections. But it’s hard sometimes because I have no authority. I am rarely addressed as “sensei” by either teachers or students. Sometimes the students don’t even give me a “san”—just, “burai,” which they would never do to another Japanese person—you always give some kind of ending. They learn it from the teachers, and I can’t demand being called, “sensei,” since I am not a legal teacher. It would also be very disrespectful. It’d be like a secretary in the doctor’s office demanding to be called Dr. Sally.

Lately I’ve been losing my…I don’t know what you call it…urge to…do things well. Motivation? Maybe. I learn more and more Japanese every day, and I speak less and less, as I realize how little I speak. It’s also hard to motivate myself when I know everyone speaks English, and since they always laugh. Yes, they always laugh. One of the world’s oldest jokes is listening with arrogant pleasure to a foreigner attempt your native tongue. Okay, it’s funny at first, and there are some pretty comical things that come out of it, but it gets to be oppressive when you get laughed at every time. If I get the word wrong, oh that’s funny—that’s a no brainer. But if I get it right, that’s even more funny for some reason. I used to ask teacher how to say things all the time, but now I avoid it—I think it annoys them, and they like to teach me funny words too. Words that haven’t been used in common speech for over 50 years. I knew how to say, “parchment,” before, “paper,” for example.

I never really had a sense of humor, but I had a way of making things seem funny, and I seem to be losing it along with my energy. Every day brings something new. It’s neat to see everything in Japanese at first, but after a while it beats into you how little you know, and how long the language acquisition process is. I still don’t really know how to use my air conditioner, microwave, TV. How do I buy food? I guess, usually. I’ve been eating a lot of this red fish, which I think is mackerel, but it could be salmon. I desperately try to learn how to cook by inspecting other teachers’ and students’ “bentos” (specially packed lunches) which are intricately put together with all kinds of goodies. Everyone is genuinely entertained to see what I attempted. Each lunch basically has some kind of fish, something pickled, a steamed vegetable, and rice with some strange seasoning—anything from purple stuff (I’m not sure) to seaweed—I’ve memorized the four main kinds of seaweed too, I’m so proud of myself.

I dragged a teacher to the post office today to help me send a money order and it took three tries on the form for us to get it right. I was late to my next class, but I managed to turn it around by making up a story about my tardiness. The newspaper is written at an 8th grade level or so, so you have to know the 400 some characters in the phonetic alphabets (I got that down, believe it or not) and then 2,000 Chinese characters. More if you want to read other things. Like bills—forget about reading those—I have to ask teachers every time. I don’t like bothering them, and they don’t like being bothered I’m sure, but they’re very helpful.

And I guess that’s what always turns me around—someone smiles and decides to help me. A student gave me some minidisks of Japanese bands he likes, and I gave him Weezer. I don’t have a minidisk player, but someday…someday. Another student took the time to explain the difference between the 8 or so teas in the vending machine—that’s like their pop. There’s some really good tea—I know the popular one now. I easily impressed a student by opening the door for her and her friends, which they apparently don’t do here. “Oh, burai-sensei, sankyuu. “Radies faasuto (Ladies first)! Nihonjin otoko no hito wa...” Then there’s the boy in class who drew a fantasy car that could fly, naming it the “super bly,” with a sweet drawing of a man all too close to my likeness behind the wheel. And then that one student that didn’t laugh when I spoke Japanese. Yes, there is only one that doesn’t. One of the janitors fixed my bike after I inquired about a 14 mm wrench in my hack Japanese. He was so proud, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I worked in a bike shop for 8 years. And my last happy memory is the students who screamed when they saw me at the supermarket, and helped me find baking soda, which I used to make sweet and sour pork in my best “bento” lunch yet.

Sensei!
Whoah, man, that last entry was pretty heavy. Whew. If you just read it before this one maybe you should get cold, artificially-flavored grape drink or at least stand up and stretch. Me, I’m going for the grape drink. Do they sell those in America?

After my predecessor mentioned something about the office social structure, I’ve been noticing little things beneath the surface that escaped me before. The head of the department is an experienced female teacher, but that just means she has more paperwork and responsibility for little extra pay. The authority in the department is the once-retired, now returned H-sensei, who is a little too involved with his job.

He takes his work home and brews up strange projects for everyone. He’s overly interested in nutrition—I think because he’s realizing how old he is. He eats something in the morning—it must be like a pickled fish, or something, but it smells like something died.

One of the events he organized recently was the visit of some Australian high school students that were taking a tour of Japan. The lesson consisted of lining them up in a panel on one side of the classroom and grilling both them and the Japanese students with questions like, “What country do you like and want to visit?” “What comes to your mind when you think of fruit?” “Do you think an army is necessary?” That last one was very sensitive, especially for the Japanese students. He dragged answers out of them and the tension in the room was so thick you could bounce a sumo wrestler on it. I guess it would have been too fun and social to let the students talk over green tea ice cream or something.

Besides H-sensei, there are some very talented teachers that I work with, but they always submit to whatever he has planned. He’s so used to getting his way, it’s fed his arrogance to the teeth. The guy even makes the textbooks, which are full of strange English. If he has me proofread something, I usually point out maybe a quarter of the mistakes, so as not to threaten our working relationship. He’s always very surprised when I do show him a mistake, and before I can correct it, he suggests another way of rephrasing, which is just as bad as the first.

The other teachers aren’t spineless—they have their opinions, but because they follow the traditional culture of not challenging the elders, they never say anything. They avoid eating lunch in the break room most of the time because then they have to discuss things with H-sensei, and he’s very invasive in conversation. If they do come in their with me, they are totally different people. First, I noticed that they don’t speak any English to me—only H-sensei has the privilege of translating when he feels like it. They also are much more reserved than usual. I could tell they’re putting on an act, but it made me feel more excluded and alienated than before. I think they don’t speak English to me because they’re afraid of being criticized by H-sensei.

I also haven’t earned the “sensei” title that they referred to the previous ALT with. They just call me my last name with “san,” “kun,” or sometimes no suffix, but then only in English. Sometimes I get a “sensei” from them in the classroom, but not always. And the students pick up on this.

The lessons are very traditional and I have a hard time getting involved with them with some teachers. Sometimes I’m just a tape recorder. The other day, a student began hyperventilating in class, and I was completely useless. A student yelled, “sensei,” cutting me off halfway through my pronunciation drill. The class sat still and looked at their desks while the teacher went back to attend to the student. It was like that for maybe three minutes, but it felt much longer.

In most classes, I think I learn more Japanese than the students learn English, since most of the lesson is in Japanese. On the other hand, sometimes I learn English, as one teacher insists on giving me spelling tests in class, in order to prove that “even native speakers sometimes make mistakes.” I’m not a goods speller, and I can only spell if I write the word down, not in front of the class.

One teacher, T-sensei, who loves American comedies, I’ve been very involved. We organized a mock court trial with the students one week, which was fun. Last week, following a lesson on etiquette, we had students invent good and bad things they’ve done in the last week and share them with a partner. It was priceless hearing students say, “I told a lie!” “I crushed father’s car,” “I smoked.” At least I’m getting somewhere with one teacher.

Girls
Now Playing: Lost Prophets
I wouldn’t say I’m an emotionally stable person—ask my mom. Raising me involved a lot of tantrums and headaches on both sides of the parental equation. But I have to say, they did a pretty sweet job. I mean, I don’t know where my good looks came from, but after taking my genetics course I figured that what I call the “handsome” gene must be recessive. That’s not true, no, my mother is the best-looking woman in the world. And my dad…he’s got…he’s smart.

So I have some intense emotions, but I’ve found a way to either express them without hurting anyone. I remember when I was little I used to just do pushups over and over at night until I couldn’t feel my arms. It was sort of a way of avoiding crying. I still do that, among other things.

My friend Mr. Mi, Miss C and I headed into downtown Osaka to buy me an electric guitar (one of the most important things in a man’s life, replaceable only by a motorcycle or an even sweeter electric guitar…or maybe a horse, I guess, if you’re a country boy, but I’m most definitely not). Miss C is this Japanese girl we met at a bar that speaks near-perfect English because of her Canadian boyfriend. Make that former boyfriend, as Mr. Mi informed me the night before at a bar. He was a verbally abusive drunk and also paranoid about her having other boyfriends that didn’t exist. Ironically, he ended the relationship.

As Mr. Mi announced the news at the bar last night, Mr. Ma and Mr. Mi, who are both trying the long distance relationship thing, turned to me. “So what are you going to do about this?” Mr. Mi asked me.

“Yes, let’s discuss this,” Mr. Ma said. Again, he’s the black dude from LA. Mr. Mi is a Japanese/Chinese mutt with an overdeveloped sense of skepticism.

I shrug.

“Oh come on,” Mr. Mi said. “She’s like the coolest girl we’ve met here.”

Mr. Ma nods and briefly looks up from his cell, which he’s using to send a text message. He gets an email at least every five minutes or even more often.

I can’t believe I have to sit through lady advice from these two. Mr. Mi is on the phone with his woman every time I go over to his place and he told me that she cries every time he’s called her. Mr. Ma, on the other hand, has a girl that gets overly paranoid about his activity here. Whenever I go over to his place he spends about ten minutes convincing her that the sound in the background are not from a girl. They both seem to enjoy trying to deal with those head-cases, so I guess they’re puzzle-piece fits.

“I just—I don’t know. They’re just really good friends of ours and we’re lucky to have Japanese people that help us out so much,” I said.

“Oh, don’t give me that, that’s such a lame excuse,” Mr. Mi said. I think he’s just been out of the dating game so long, he wants to live through me. I’ve seen his dance moves and he’d be really good at picking up the club women, I’m sure.

“Yeah, I don’t think it would last long and that would make things weird with our ah, our friend circle thing we have going, you know?”

“Whatever, man. She could teach you Japanese so fast.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Ma confirms without looking up from his cell.

I never really thought about using women for language acquisition, and it doesn’t seem to be either ethical or an attractive idea.

“I’m just not into her like that.”

“Come on, it’d be good for you. Your pad’s got to be getting lonely by now. She could be the perfect addition to the place,” Mr. Mi said.

“Let me repeat myself: No, there’s no use in that. Let me rephrase myself: I don’t have any feelings for her.”

They still didn’t seem to understand, but I’ll spare the agonizing trail of the hours that ensued.

Mr. Mi and I met Miss C on the train and headed into Osaka. I threw a lot of Japanese out and she’s very complementary towards me. She said I spoke without an accent, but I don’t believe that. If you can spit out one syllable of Japanese here, you get showered with praise because the Japanese study for years but are too shy to speak any English. She’s an awful teacher—I have to drag things out of her, and once I say it successfully once, she moves on to something else. I have the memory of a dog that lives with a hippie, so I never remember anything I ‘learned.’

My apartment’s getting pretty lonely with just me, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a meaningful relationship with a girl. I’ve noticed that most people date in order to test whether they’re in love with someone or not, and then after a messy breakup they kind of go, “wow, I really wasn’t falling in love with them. I was just using them to relieve all the stress from my demanding job. Oh well, at least I have you, Ben and Jerry.”

I have the opposite approach. I fall in love with almost every girl I see, if only for a few seconds. If it lasts for more than a week I know I’ve got a problem, but it usually doesn’t. I remember there was one girl I had a crush on in a class and never even talked to her. There was just something that was amazing that I couldn’t get over—I still remember her today, even though I never even met her.

It’s the most awful feeling in the world when I’m dating I don’t feel anything for. Don't get me wrong, I get lonely just like the next guy, but even when I give in to an opportunity I always want out, and I get out of it immediately. That’s why most women don’t last more than one or two nights out with me. That and I’m a hard person to enjoy spending time with. Sort of how most people don’t like stabbing themselves repeatedly, most people don’t like the raw form of my seemingly random and intense personality. And that’s why I can’t understand why Mr. Mi thinks it’s a good idea to date someone in order to learn a language.

School Festival 2 (Bunkasai...kishikokosai)
Now Playing: Sum 41
During the school festival, K-sensei came to crash at my place. I was a bit self-conscious since my place was an absolute mess with stuff everywhere and even garbage bags piled in one corner—I’m still trying to figure out what goes out on what day. You have to like be able to do abstract algebra to dispose of a bottle.

After she left, some of my clever JET friends had the insight to ask me, “So did you hook up with K-?” or I think one said, “Did you guys turn this into a love couch?” That’s the most ridiculous euphemistic phrasing I’ve heard this year. And no, I was a good Christian, better than most “Christians” I know, even though I don’t affiliate myself with Christianity or any other religion out there, although I’m thinking of starting an iconoclastic religion centered around the comedy of Family Guy.

Just as an interesting aside, the word for “love” in Japanese is “ow,” our word for something that hurts.

We went to the festival early to get in line for the “geki” (plays), and ran into a class I knew pretty well. I tried learning some other names, with moderate success. They were painting their nails green, the color of the sports team they would be on the following Monday, their “sports day” celebration, which is pretty much just a track and field day. After some pleading, I let a girl student paint my nails with “bly” and two hearts drawn on them in green and orange. I got lots and lots of complements on the nails in the week following that.

We got good seats and I struck up talking with some of the students around me. One of my better moves was figuring out how to say “lonely,” and “sensitive,” in Japanese, and then turning around to introduce one of the girls behind us to the boy sitting next to me. I introduced him as a “lonely and sensitive man.” Students are still talking about that one.

I also broke up a fan fight…yeah I don’t know how else to describe that. Everyone brings fans everywhere. And towels. Everyone has a feaking towel for sweat. Even I do now.

I was blown away by the plays. One word to sum them all up: intense. There was an intense samurai play that was for the most part serious, but had some odd slapstick humor to break things up in addition to the sweet fight scenes with super dramatic music. The kids broke like two swords by accident in the plays. And it wasn’t just guys hacking it out in the fights, there were some pretty scary girls kicking ass. It makes me feel as though my public education experience was missing something, specifically, sword fights. In other plays, they had a lot of old school video game music, from Mario Bros. to Zelda.

Cross-dressing was definitely popular among the guys, and there must have been at least one drag queen per play. In my favorite play, by my favorite class, the ones that painted my nails, they put on a version of the Japanese story “Peach Boy.” There were a lot of jokes even I could get where they start dancing weird to hokey music and things. Or someone was like dying and then they’ll spring up singing a Brittany Spears song or something.

One of the highlights was when an entire sang, “Dancing Queen,” as part of “Mama Mia.” God I wish I had that on video. Another memorable part was at the end of Peter Pan, when everyone was finished, this girl comes on and says, “arigato, Peter Pan,” and all the characters come on stage dancing to some video game music—pirates and lost boys alike. Such brilliant screenwriting.

When I went to look at the calligraphy, I got to see some pretty amazing things. One of the students interpreted a girl’s work as “porno. It’s a porno.” And he kept repeating himself until he was sure I got what he was saying. The girl was very embarrassed, and it was really something like, “wind from the moon through a window.” Boys will be boys, and sometimes girls like they were in the plays.

The other students had shops set up with food and crafts. I bought candy and gave it out to all the students I saw. They also had all kinds of strange games that involve fishing out balloons or rubber balls with tissue paper-plastic instruments. It’s hard to explain, but trust me, they do it.

I also got to see several of the school’s rock bands. They like punk rock. I like punk rock. They treat guitars like chainsaws; it’s awesome.

At night I was up late because K-sensei was trying to pack to leave the country, so I didn’t sleep much for a while.

Day two of the festival was a lot like the first, but there were people there before us even at 8:30 for a 9:00am start. By 11:00 the place was packed beyond the fire code—people were sitting in the isles and standing in the back of the auditorium to see the dance team. Japanese dances are difficult to describe. They put on the most extremely emotionally indulgent music possible at double time and with a thicker beat. The happy dance was very happy—I think it might even get Saddam Hussein to smile. Hey, whatever happened to that guy? Is he still alive? I gotta give him a call. One of the dances I was definitely not comfortable watching, but not as uncomfortable as the 80-yearolds in the front row waiting for their grandsons or granddaughters to star in Peter Pan or whatever. The best way I can describe it is that it’s as though the dance girls took all of their sexual and flirtation energy and compressed it into about a half-hour show. They smiled way to hard during the show, and then at the end they were all crying, “because they were sad it was over,” according to a student. I don’t get it.

The most awkward part was how some of the girls asked me if I liked their dances, and some, if I thought it was, “sexy.” There’s no right answer to that one, Christ. I wanted to say, “I’m not sure it was legal for me to watch,” but that’s hard to translate so I said, “I thought it was good.”

After the festival was over, we began getting things ready for the sports festival, which consisted of the entire school all pitching together as a functional team to transform the baseball field into a 200 meter track, one of the marvels of Japanese teamwork I’ve yet witnessed. Growing up with my dad, who couldn’t do manual labor without screaming and hurting himself multiple times, it was a rather strange experience to watch people move heavy things together without damaging any personal relationships. Truly, this must be witchcraft.

Then I practiced running with two of the other English teachers. There were five of the English teachers along with the other staff that were running two relays on sports day on Monday. I also had mentioned that we might make t-shirts for “Eigo no chiimu,” (English team), and two of the female teachers went to town before I could even begin to help and made hilarious t-shirts. They had a felt cut-out heart with the teacher’s name on the front and a crazy slogan on the back. Mine was “appears out of the blue,” which was funny to everyone that read it.

That night I talked a long time with K-sensei, who was taking off the next day. I had a hard time sleeping again. It’s hard sleeping by myself in the same room as an attractive female—one of those things you think you could get over as you mature, but I don’t think I’ll ever change.

Danjiri Festival
Now Playing: Martin Sexton...so sexy
We had Danjiri festival last week, which is probably the most famous festival in Osaka, located mere blocks from my current residence. It consists of large packs of Japanese people pulling these huge, ornately carved wooden caravans. The festival has it’s origins in harvest, so I assume the carts originally carried food, but now they carry drunk Japanese men playing drums, flute and dancers on the roof, going break-neck speed around corners. It’s common for someone to die each year, although no one did this year. I thought that was a joke when I first heard it—why would they continue something that killed…it’s Japan. It’s hard to explain why it’s so cool, but it is.

I actually got to pull one of the floats for a while—there’s like 50 or more people pulling on ropes that extend for like 50 meters. The corners are the only time they go really fast—they stop, line up the pullers around the corner, and then scream, “soorya!” to the drum beat, which is just a 4-4 time beat with three quarter note beats and a rest, like a horse galloping.

Anyway, this story has a soap opera part to it. Here goes.

So there’s this girl, (that I don’t have a crush on, come on guys) and she had a boyfriend when she came to Japan—I’m still trying to figure out these people that do this. I saw it happen in college and now. You know, if you want to give the long distance relationship an honest shot, I respect that, but some people don’t even try, and that’s just cruel. Why don’t you just play volleyball with the dude’s heart…SPIKE!

Okay, so like I said, there’s this girl, Miss A, and she decided after the incredible resilience of living without male companionship for three weeks to ditch her man of a year for this clueless asshole, Mr. E. For all of my women readers out there, which I’m guessing are just my mom and grandma, I have a question: why do girls like guys that are ass holes? Is it really that attractive? Because I can definitely be an ass hole, but I’ve always though it was harder to, you know, think of others, try to make people feel good about themselves, help people, and, I don’t know, not convince a girl to leave her year-long relationship so that I can have sex with her for a couple weeks and move on, which is what the gentleman Mr. E did.

Of course, they’re both at the Danjiri festival together because they’re mature adults. We see the festival, hold some crazy small chicks that they sell for some reason, ate some omlet-soba noodle thing (the food here is really creative), and throw back a few beers. One of my friends here kept successfully bumming beer off the Danjiri beer carts—dude’s haul their own beer and other alcoholic drinks. The guys with a beer in one hand, a cigarette and a hand on the rope pulling the float are my favorite.

When I first met Mr. E, I immediately disliked him. I immediately dislike a lot of people, but I usually come around after a while. But he had such a foul aura of such oppressive arrogance, with this wooden smile over his face, the kind of person you usually see selling used cars or drugs or running an illegal pornography business. It was like when Harry Potter met Luscious Malfoy—I wanted to hit him from the first time I saw him.

So we do the scene, and then Miss A wants to go home and doesn’t know where the train station is, so being the nice guy that I am, I offer to show it to her. So I take her back to the station, and, for someone who went to Harvard, somehow managed to talk about the most superficial aspects of our experience here. At least she’s a very attractive girl, or it would have been a wasted twenty minutes.

So I get back and Mr. E says, “Oh, you’re back.” His wooden smile has been replaced by something more genuine—an expression of anger.

“Did you think I was going home, or something?”

“No, you just didn’t want me to walk her back is all.”

“Hey, where’s this attitude coming from? I was just trying to be nice,” I said, our other friends were starting to notice now. There were maybe eight other people. We were standing at the side of the street while a Danjiri passed by, the drums thumping their gallop-beat. They have lanterns on the front of them at night, so they were really a spectacular sight.

“And I can’t be nice?” Mr. E said back, a sneer growing out of his own insecurity over his sensitivity.

“I’m sure you could be very nice. Why don’t you start by buying me a beer?”

“Fuck you, man,” he creatively responded.

“Okay, I’ll buy you a beer. You can get the next one,” I get surprisingly calm when I get into arguments over nothing. Quite the opposite of when I feel I’ve been offended.

“You got something to say to me? Just say it. Don’t be a pussy.”

“I already said it: I’ll buy you a beer. What else could a man want, other than a free beer?” I was starting to falter here, and my wit failed me.

“Fucking pussy,” he repeated himself. He likes to talk about female anatomy. He walked away from me at this point. I’m sure he could have hurt me in a fight, even though I’m a good head taller than him, but I didn’t let it escalate to that.

Mr. M and I met up with two Japanese girls we’d met earlier—and yes, they’re just friends. Mr. M has a lady in America and the girls both have significant others as well. We took a lot of “for fun” pictures, as is the Japanese tradition, and ended up at a bar. I was really tired, and no one seemed to be interested in talking to me, as I wasn’t interested in talking, so I slipped off without saying anything and no one seemed to care. Usually I get a text message, as everyone has each other’s cell # here, but nothing. It takes a very strange person to enjoy talking with me, and so far, I haven’t met any in Japan.

I Was a Loser in High School, It's True
Now Playing: Perpetual Distortion (I made that band name up, is it real?)
This Japan story begins when I was in high school…

Whenever I get close to someone, I explain how I’m “not normally like this around most people.” I’m really a shy person, but if you manage to gain my trust—it’s not hard, then I jump out of my shell. Some people I trust in mere seconds--like the blogwriters I've linked too--Buckwalter, Aphelion Swing (did I spell that right?) and that Flock Report chick something. Some of my relatives have tried for years but for some reason, I just can’t do it-I don't feel a connection. I feel bad about that, but I can only be me (myself).

I tell people I was very unpopular, shy and disliked in high school, but no one ever believes that, knowing me now. The truth is, it took me a very long time to get used to expressing myself verbally, and I’m still working on that. I’ve always been confused about people, mainly why people are mean. I still don’t get it, but I’ve at least learned to fight back now, even though I don’t like doing it. Trust me, you don’t want to get me angry—thanks to learning from my lawyer sister and bull-headed father, I can get pretty intense. It’s a side of me I hide until I turn on the offense like a switch—and only when I know I can win. I’m kind of a fascist in that sense, but I know my boundaries, which are very forgiving and reasonable, but some things I don’t jive with, “you know,” to quote my sister. She says “you know,” after every sentence. And sometimes introduces sentences with “but don’t you think that.” I change it up and say, “You probably don’t think that…but I do.”

So, given that I was a shy, pushover in high school, I take on the complete opposite roll when I stroll into school now. I wouldn’t call it acting—I’m just being what I always wished I could be, but never had the confidence to pull it off. I had all these intense feelings when I was younger—I wanted to express myself humorously or righteously, but never knew how. My older sister taught me how to be funny, and my younger sister taught me how to be sensible. My parents, well, they bought me food.

I always wanted to be in a band in high school, but I knew I wasn't cool enough, and no in my small circle of my friends liked my music. I liked a lot of pop punk and rock--Weezer, Smashing Pumpkins, Gold Finer. They liked Paul Simon, U2 and Pink Floyd--and they're good too, but my youth was better captured by the former.

By fluke, as I was just leaving school to get my running shorts so that I could run with the track team, I stopped to talk with a student. In the course of our short conversation, I found out she was in the school’s pop music club. I’d been trying to find out whom the hell I talk to about this, so I asked her to come and get me in the English department after school. She smiled and said she would.

So I came to the music club and I was surprised to see that it was mostly student run, and despite some of the non-conformist attitude that the students have, they cooperated very well together. The way it works, I guess, is that they’re about four different bands, and they all split up rehearsal time, but they also hang out together some days, and just play.

I was very nervous about how I would be received into the goup, but I was touched that all the students welcomed me smiling. I expected everyone to ignore me and try to shy away. Not so, my friend, not so. One group did mostly Japanese pop covers, another did their own songs, and I fell in with a group that covered punk bands. They wrote down rehearsal times for me and tired to translate what they decided in their meeting. So I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do, but I said I would learn the songs they’re going to practice—two Good Charlotte songs, two Lost Prophets songs, and two Avril Lavigne songs (sung by their one female singer). The kids are so great—in America, people who get into bands do it in garages, not at school, and try to exclude whomever they can. Here, it’s more like a party. I then taught some of the guys how to say, "rock out!" in a high falsetto.

I can’t express in words how excited I am to do this. I was floored when they said they liked some of my favorite American bands, and I’m glad it’s something I can share with them. Every now and then I find ways I can cross the language barrier, but in this way, with music, I can skip it altogether.

School Festival Preparation
Now Playing: Good Charlotte
Nothing says Japanese like plays packed with intense music, intense fight scenes, slapstick comedy, and intense, soap-opera-type scenes. That was my favorite part of bunkasai—or Kishikokosai, the school festival.

I had no idea what to expect for the festival. I knew there would be some kind of performances and things, but no one really gave me much description other than, “that weekend is the school festival, so make sure you come to school like a normal work day.”

As I later found out, mostly through my predecessor JET ALT and mentor, K-sensei, the students get really excited for this time of year. It’s the playtime before the storm of studying for midterms and college entrance exams. Since they wanted students to focus on their studying over summer vacation, for the first time, the school prohibited practice until two weeks before, when they let students off of afternoon classes every day so that they could get ready for the big show. Since I had less to do, I wandered the school, trying to disturb as many students as possible.

I was brave enough to leave the English department under the newfound power I have—that I am not a direct employee of the school, but of the board of education. In orientation they always preached about how you design “your own JET experience,” but I didn’t really know what it meant. It’s clearer to me now—I’m not an ordinary classroom teacher.
My job, really, is to get students to speak the language of my country, which they have a college level vocabulary in, but a primary school level in speaking. I can’t emphasize this irony enough. I’ll ask someone, “What time is school over?” and they’ll look at their friend inquisitively while I wait for an answer that won’t come. On the other hand, while I was watching students perform one of their plays, I asked what one of the characters was, and they answered, “A Japanese traditional monster.” To extend this thread, when a teacher asked a student to explain the word, “suppose,” the student answered, “Infer.” I don’t even think I could infer the right meaning of, “infer.”

So, while some of the academically focused teachers, one in particular, try to trap me in projects that involve me writing complex things to teach to students that will only put them to sleep, I’ve decided I’m taking over the school. As I understand it, the only way I can get fired, is if I stop going to class or seriously violate the teacher code of conduct, so I’m redefining my work. I’m going to start going to calligraphy club and pop music club, where I will learn traditional Japanese and Japanese pop music respectively.

It’s funny how I found out there was a rock/pop club at the school—I stopped some kid who had a guitar in the hall and asked him where he played.
“Popu curabu.”
“Pop club?
“Unn.”
Why was I not told immediately upon my arrival that there was a rock club? I knew there was a classical guitar club and a jazz band club, but I didn’t expect a rock club at the most academic school in the area.


Anyway, with my new job description, dictated by myself, I started hanging out in school. One of the English teachers encouraged it—I like this English teacher. “It makes the students so happy!” she said. “And they can practice their English.” Finally, someone who realizes I’m worth more than playing the role of a tape recorder, reading scripts in class.
I can’t say how touched I was at the willingness of students to talk to me and get to know me even though they were crazy busy trying to get ready for their festival. After teaching in America, where students try to avoid making eye contact with me in the halls, I’m overwhelmed at how easy it is to make a connection here—I just say, “hello,” to someone and they come over smiling, ready to tell me their life story or whatever else I’ll stand for. I really enjoyed this new, “hanging out” job, and I started staying at school past my required 4:30 clock-out, until students left the school.

I started my hangout one day by going into the cafeteria. I sat down with random groups of students and tried learning their names. This is the most painful part of my job—the names are impossible to remember, and when I forget them or call a student the wrong name, which I almost always do, they are either angry or visibly let down. I try so hard to remember, but having been born from hippie parents, I understandably have a fraction of the short-term memory cells as a hormal bruman nain.

In the cafeteria, I mostly just ask simple questions like “What are you eating?” “Is that your boyfriend?” “How are you?” When students are asked the latter, they always answer “I’m fine, thank-you.” I’ve made a kind of running joke out of it where in class I yell the question and they yell back the same answer. So in the cafeteria, I told a group of boys to each answer differently and gave them their answers, “Awesome,” “Great,” “good,” “okay,” “all right,” “not so good,” “tired,” “I’m dying,” and “I hate you!” I ran through the list, and at the last answer I pretended to be startled and walked away. Thus go my typical interactions, although that’s probably one of my better improvisations.

I fell in love with one class in particular, that was practicing their play in the courtyard one day. I made a very important decision, that goes against the teachings I had from Mr. C, my mentor teacher from Minnesota. The boy students are constantly testing my authority since the last ALT was very friendly with the students. As a teacher in America, you have to be a disciplinarian as well, but here I noticed a very distinct difference between the student-teacher relationship. They are much, much closer here. Teachers are not people you try to avoid eye-contact with in the halls. After classes are over, it’s common to see students and teachers hanging out outside. They’re not talking about the day’s lesson or when the next test is, they’re just chewing the fat like people do. The students are tremendously respectful of the teachers, but that doesn’t keep them from being able to talk like good friends.

And so I relaxed my iron discipline fist back to allow for some immaturity, which may have been the wrong move, I don’t know.

The class I watched was doing a twist on a traditional Japanese story, “Peach Boy.” The longer I stayed, the more students tried to talk to me and explain the complexity behind the plot and characters, a lot of the jokes and subtleties lost in translation, of course, but that only made it that much more mysterious and admirable to me.

The real miracle behind all this, is that the students took almost complete ownership of the festival—they organized and rehearsed on their own time and of their own motivation, and they didn’t slack off. They worked hard and had a good time. They respectfully watched and helped when they weren’t in scenes and cracked jokes with each other on the sidelines. There may have been some social abuse, but it wasn’t apparent to me—all students were included. They worked together in their homeroom classes without purposely excluding less popular students as would be the case in America. This kind of festival would never go on with such success in America, not a chance.