Jaredventures

New Website!

2009-08-31T01:21:00.000-07:00

After a great deal of wishing that I hadn't gotten a D in web design my freshman year, I've finally completed the new site! This one will be effectively dead, so please update your bookmarks and mosey on over to www.jaredmiracle.com for your (weekly?) dose of Jared. I'm going to be writing a good deal more in the coming months, so you might subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up. Lastly, for you martial addicts out there, I've created a separate page for my adventures in training. Later days!

one more thing

2009-08-06T23:35:00.001-07:00

I've recently made the decision to purchase a real domain name (as in www.applemonkeydishwasher.com). What I haven't decided, however, is what the domain should be called. Given that a certain nefarious jewelry corporation has already snagged my given name, what suggestions do you have? Feel free to comment here or on Facebook. Your help is much appreciated.

Wrasslin' Mongols

2009-08-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from Mongolia, so you can expect a post pertaining to that in the near future. In the meantime, please enjoy what happens when your friends goad one of the local nomadic herdsmen into making you wrestle.

By the way, now that YouTube has updated their software I can upload videos in high quality. Just visit my channel and click the "HQ" button when viewing one of the files.

The Greatest Thing Ever

2009-06-29T02:15:00.000-07:00

This kid learned this and other speeches by listening to recordings. As a result, she picked up the speakers' accents.

A Day in the Life

2009-06-29T02:14:00.000-07:00

Generally speaking, I have a sweet deal going here. Living costs are low, my job is easy and (sometimes) rewarding, and I get to study martial arts (though not as much as I'd like) with some very interesting people. Life is good. Every once in a while, though, the Powers That Be feel compelled to remind me that, no matter how small the wrench thrown into one's plans, it's still a wrench.

I'm in the process of procuring a Japanese driver's license, which, of course, isn't as simple as it appears. To that end, I had to go to the Municipal Hall of Traffic Enforcement in a town called Minami Alps. This wouldn't normally be much of an issue, but the previous evening I had been driving through Kofu when my engine decided to make a noise rather akin to a dying camel spider. As it turns out, my radiator hates me enough to commit suicide. Fine, radiator. I don't like you either. I told it as much, but that didn't seem to motivate the device into doing anything, so I poured about a gallon of cold water into it and waited. After a couple hours of driving two kilometers and then stopping to cool the engine down, I finally arrived home where my car has sat since.

Figuring that a trip to Minami Alps (a forty-five minute drive normally) would take roughly six hours, I thought better of that plan and called my supervisor, Capt. Reliable-and-Patient. After explaining the situation to CRAP he hummed and hawed for a few minutes, then called me back and said that he'd come pick me up. Score. So after CRAP dropped me at the Hall of Enforcement he said that he'd be too busy for a return trip and good luck. One thing at a time, I thought, and proceeded to my interview.

The interview had been described by several people as “simple,” “easy to understand,” and “I wouldn't worry about it.” Two-and-a-half hours and several accusations of fraud later, my interrogator said that I could proceed to the driving portion in a couple of weeks. (As an aside, if you're reading this and will need a Japanese license in the future, bring a Japanese person with you because the cops refuse to use simple language for explanation.)

So here's the thing about Minami Alps: no train station. Japanese taxis are prohibitively expensive, so when I stepped out of the traffic center I simply started walking toward Kofu. At this point my old friend Chris called to say that he was alive and well in Tokyo (he did a sort of college tour trip of Japan and Korea the past two weeks) and we agreed on a place to meet. Tokyo is almost two hours away on the super-duper express train, so the sooner I could find a station the better. It was about an hour's hike, but I finally ended up at Ryuo station (I would later find out that Shiozaki station is much closer) where I caught the super-duper express train.

Chris and I hung out in Tokyo for a few hours and he is now on Jared's Big List of Awesome People for bringing peanut butter and Strongbow, not to mention a snappy portrait of the New York skyline, which somehow elicits a sense of home despite my never having seen it in person. Then again, I feel the same way about the White House without having been to D.C. And the Full House without having been to San Francisco.

That night I caught the last super-duper back to my town's station, which is about forty-five minutes from my apartment on foot. The seats were all filled, so I sat with some uncharacteristically stinky salary men in the space between cars. Don't you wish we had such efficient public transport in the U.S.?

My Japanese Physical, Part 2

2009-06-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

Fortunately, the physical was less than exciting. I showed up at the town hall where various doctors and nurses were stationed in meeting rooms and cubicles, prepared to spend several seconds apiece on the evaluation of my well being. As I stood in line awaiting access to the registration table I entertained myself by gawking at the rogues gallery amassed in that hallway. Two things became immediately apparent:

1. I was the youngest person there by at least two decades.
2. Everyone else looked worried, which is generally a good sign that I should be worried.

After some confusion over whether the nurse was asking for my signature or my phlegm (I thought the former, she meant the latter; you would think that I'd have figured it out when she asked if I'd put my signature in the provided test tube for the prior three days) I was told to donate some urine. This is normally a simple enough procedure, but I was again thrown when the nurse handed me a paper Dixie cup.

It turns out they only needed to expose a paper test strip to my urine, so everyone pees into paper cups, the nurse dips the strip, and then we pitch the cups into a waste bin next to the registration table. Thinking of streamlining the process I inquired about going Number One directly on the strip. That, she said, would be unsanitary.

I made my deposit in the cup, attempting to gauge a conservative amount of urine. Given that the nurse must see hundreds of these every day, I figure that she's experienced with all kinds of piddle. Black, green, clear—this woman has seen it and, since we wouldn't be holding a full conversation, I imagine that she has to judge people by the contents of their Dixie cups. Too much pee indicates an overachiever; too little and you'll be labeled a miser. Holding the flimsy receptacle over a Japanese style squatter toilet, I kept poring out little by little, hoping to find just the right volume. Once I was satisfied with the quantity of the sample, I stepped out of the restroom to find that the hallway had transformed into a minefield.

Say what you will about video games, but had I not mastered both Frogger and Pacman as a kid the whole situation may not have ended as well as it did. Old men, middle-aged women with vision problems, doctors reading clipboards while they walk, all of these suddenly became a potential disaster.

Contorting into positions that would have won a television dance contest had I been the washed up star of an 80's sitcom, I managed to fit sideways between the old men from the Muppet Show, then around two people who, for some reason, both required crutches, and finally, by taking the Statue of Liberty position, past some of my kids' parents—all the while imagining what stories would be spread the next day at school about the sociopath foreigner who throws pee on unsuspecting city employees.

The nurse dipped her piece of paper into the cup and told me to throw it away, thereby bringing about a very anticlimactic end to the whole scenario. She sent me to a room where I was handed a card with instructions to take a large rubber band, tie it around my arm like a heroin addict, let one of the nurses take my blood, then grab a swab of cotton and try to stop the bleeding.
“No, thank you.”
“But your blood must be drawn. This is the blood drawing station.”
“Nope, I'm good.”
“...I'm going to ask my supervisor.”

Supervisors were called, as well as supervisors of supervisors. Ultimately I was able to escape from their syringe laden clutches with the aid of Heidi, one of the JET's in the next town over, whose Japanese is substantially better than mine and who happened to show up with perfect timing. Many thanks to Heidi and her powers of persuasion.

From there the report grows rather dull as I had an ultrasound (I now have incontrovertible proof of my liver's existence) and a chest x-ray (because they're also afraid of tuberculosis). As of this writing I don't have word back about any of the tests, but I hear they'll likely tell me that I'm too fat (a common diagnosis here in the land of fish and rice) and that I don't drink enough. I really need to write a post on the rampant alcoholism here. It was certainly a new experience to have the ultrasound monkey express jealousy over my liver ownership.

My Japanese Physical, Part 1

2009-06-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

I've been disgorging my phlegm into a vial of preservative liquid for a few days now.

The local board of education (the mostly-powerful holder of my visa and work contract) informed me last month that it's time for the employees' yearly physicals and, for whatever reason, they mailed me this plastic tube containing some manner of grayish “product.” The 50's style educational cartoon drawings on the side indicate the appropriate manner in which one should regurgitate (or is it just gurgitate in this instance?) mucus every morning and see that it reaches the interior of the tube. The purpose of collecting my own bodily fluid, according to one of the accompanying forms, is to discover if I have a particular variety of cancer.

Such is the story with most of the tests that take place during the course of the examination. Japanese people, I'm told, have some of the highest rates of stomach and intestinal cancer in the world. As such, they prefer to check for such things as often as possible so that one has plenty of forewarning when scheduling a freak-out session. People are very busy these days, after all.

At twenty-three years of age I don't particularly suspect myself of any of the various flavors of cancer, so I suppose this is the type of thing that I could skip by simply playing the Foreigner Card. I had considered doing just that until I read “ultrasound” on the registration form. As happens from time to time, I wondered when my next opportunity to have such an experience would be and deemed this an excursion worth making. Haven't you ever wanted to see your own liver in real time?

Sometimes I'm a Sixteenth Century Foot Soldier

2009-04-28T01:09:00.000-07:00

I like Japanese martial arts. The locals find this excessively unusual, not only because I'm foreign, but because Japanese folks, much more so than Westerners, have no interest in such things. A good illustration of this is that, in the States, just about every YMCA has a judo club. Meanwhile, here in the heart of Japan, the same prefecture that contains Mt. Fuji, I have to drive half an hour (on a good day) down the highway to train with middle schoolers two days a week. As a result of my dedication to this “unusual hobby” some of my Japanese friends came up with a nickname: Last Samurai (well, it's really more like Rasuto Samurai).

Given the situation, you can understand their amusement when I agree to dress up in fake armor and parade through the streets of various towns as a part of that favorite pastime of rural inhabitants everywhere—historical reenactment. This has happened on three occasions and at this point I think that I understand the routine.

1. Denial
Alright, so maybe you did sign up for this, but you're not going to be a public spectacle or anything. There are at least a hundred other people doing this with you. Besides, the point is international understanding, so let's chalk this up as one more experience and go find the snack table.
2. Anger
There was no snack table. Your feet hurt. Badly. No one warned you that there would be sandals made of straw that are far and away the most uncomfortable thing in the world. You want someone to pay for giving you blisters between your toes. They also didn't mention the six mile walk. And this right after changing clothes in a middle school gym with a hundred other people!
3. Bargaining
Maybe you can get out of this, or at least hitch a ride on one of the horses that the guys playing daimyo are given. A glass of water would be good, too. You could probably convince the nerdy guy on your right to hold your spear while you break formation and make for a vending machine.
4. Depression
This isn't going to end, is it? You're not in Japan at all. You died in a plane crash nine months ago and this is purgatory. That still exists, right? The Pope didn't abolish that, too? You're an English teaching Sisyphus, pushing this cart full of actors portraying the royal family up and down hills for all eternity. If you killed someone with your fake spear would anything happen, or is this like Groundhog Day?
5. Acceptance
If you can't beat them, embarrass them. They like to take photos and make jokes about the foreigner dressed as a samurai, but they weren't expecting you to run over and hug their kids, were they? And later you can hang out with the Thai tourists who think that the parade is cool, but the Japanese folks are insane for singling you out based on your skin color.

In retrospect, other than the footwear, it's really not a bad gig at all. Imagine having the opportunity to stand in for Chip 'n/or Dale at Disney World for a day. Now imagine that you get a groin protector to boot and that's more or less the sort of experience we're talking about. Every older man with whom I've discussed the festivals has said the same thing—that he joined in those events as a young man and it's a sort of rite of passage. Plus, you know, sometimes they give you a commemorative bag or cloth or something, which is pretty sweet. Wouldn't Joseph Campbell be proud?

From Shingen-ko Matsuri

I Can Talk About This Now That It's Spring

2009-04-22T01:21:00.000-07:00

A few of you have asked about daily life in these parts. I can't turn down a quarter of my readership, so let's talk about the cold.

I know that living in the Japanese countryside sounds like one of those adventure-a-day sort of experiences, but the fact is that things just aren't that exciting here. This comes as no surprise to me (although I was shocked by how few people here practice martial arts, but we'll discuss that later). One aspect of life that you might not consider is the effect of climate on sanitation. Winter here is a different type of cold than back home. The coldest it ever seems to reach is about twenty or so degrees Fahrenheit and there is almost no snow. That sounds easy enough, right? The catch is that no building, anywhere, it seems, is constructed with either central heating or insulation. In short, my apartment is the same temperature as outside at all times. One JET aptly stated that “this is the closest you can get to being homeless with actually being homeless.” At the prefectural orientation they suggested that we pretend to be camping.

Due to the perpetual cold, no doubt in combination with being a new teacher, I was sick frequently this winter. I blame the weather in confidence because, since my saintly mother sent me an electric blanket, I haven't been the least bit ill. Let's put it this way: when the newspaper says that someone died of “exposure” that's short for “exposure to the elements” or “they sat outside too long.” What does this have to do with cleaning? When attempting to conserve body heat you tend to neglect things like sweeping and washing the dishes in icy water.

As is generally the case when I'm not sure what to do, I asked my ninth graders. They said to buy a kotatsu (a coffee table with an insulatory skirt and an electric heater on the bottom side). I replied by inquiring what to do about the rest of my body and they came back with that standard of Japanese solutions, “endure.” Tired of not feeling my toes in the morning, I went out and invested in a space heater. My range of livable space expanded by a couple of feet, thereby constituting progress. Unfortunately, my apartment is quite large, so a few weeks later, as the weather was becoming a real problem, I asked one of my favorite kids, Natsuki, about heating an entire room. The only option, apparently, was to purchase a kerosene heater. “Don't those put off deadly fumes?” She shrugged her shoulders, made a pitiful expression and suggested, “endure?”

The PS138 Graduation Special

2009-03-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I realize that this entry rambles and meanders more that would be ideal, but think of this along the lines of a "Dear Diary" type of addition. I wanted to record this story for the aftermath of my inevitable case of amnesia which will be brought about by a tragic accident incurred while trying to win a boat race around the world for charity. Enjoy!

The Japanese like to cry. After horror, melodrama is probably the most popular film genre with the locals. There's even a TV show called A Liter of Tears (it's based on the real diary of a girl who knew she would only live to age twenty-five; the book was published under the same title, if you're interested). I'm told that this is part of a common Japanese aesthetic—the beauty of the cherry blossom is that it will soon wilt. Naturally, today's graduation ceremony for the ninth graders was very, very depressing. Luckily your intrepid social usurper was there to lighten the mood.

The first intimation as to the nature of Japanese commencement came last week when I had my final classes with the recently departed (for high school). In order to connect with what the young ones are experiencing I tend to reflect on my own angst-ridden teen years. Most folks in the western world don't “graduate” from middle school, but rather just go next door to the larger building where they will be summarily beaten and humiliated for the remainder of their compulsory education. As a result, high school commencement was the only ceremony by which I could empathize with my students, but this proved to be of little value as we Americans were all quite elated to be rid of secondary education. Thinking that they must be excited, I approached last week's lessons cheerfully and reminded them often that they would soon be on their way. My bad.

It turns out that I missed the memo (or perhaps couldn't read it) wherein they explained that middle school is often the end of freedom for at least a few years. My friend Ken pointed out most eloquently that Japanese high school sucks. The kids will be spending twelve hours or more each day at their institutions and usually receive sub-par education (except in any English class they might have with an ALT (that's my job title), in which case their socks will promptly be rocked off), after which they will either work or go to college. At work their souls will be further ground up and fed to the gruesome machination that is the Japanese bureaucracy, but at college they will be given another few years of freedom (unless they go abroad in which case please see the above statement regarding soul grinding [thanks, Purdue!]). The result of all this is that my kids aren't ready to leave middle school and they're sad about it, hence the weeping, which was made worse in class by my chipper behavior.

Now, I've made small children cry in short order for most of my life. At this point I only need look at them and they'll usually collapse into bereaving masses. Sixteen-year-olds are fully another matter. It made me feel bad. As a result, I showed up to the ceremony with a pocketful of tissues, ready to provide succor for the blubbering teens. Following the usual twenty-or-so speeches by PTA members who have never met the students there was about an hour of handing out diplomas. I figure that each kid took about one minute to get across stage due to the bowing and honorifics. After that were more speeches, this time by the students, and then more yammering from the PTA. Roughly sixty percent of those present were crying when one of my favorite eighth graders (she wants to be an English teacher) stood up and delivered a legitimately touching speech about her time with the graduates—and I choked on my own spit in a loud and violent manner.

Can you blame me? I was betrayed by my own salivary glands! I could feel the blood welling up in my face, eyes bulging out. I leaned over in an effort to contain my hacking, but it just seemed to grow worse. As little Maho spoke, soft orchestra music accompanied her. This moment should have been inspirational, the sort of thing that Maho would tell her children about, but my gullet continued to to rebel. The process of choking brought tears to my eye (the other one doesn't produce them) and so I did my best to show off that I was crying, surely due to this child's outpouring of feeling. The audience seemed to buy it as they soon returned their attention to Maho.

The remainder of the morning was quite uneventful. The graduates went outside where their parents and teachers formed a bridge of arms under which they ran. There were plenty of photo opportunities. One of the students that I coached for the speech contest tried to talk to me, but was bawling too hard to say anything coherent. I told her that I was proud and made her promise to come visit. I'll sure miss some of those kids.

The afternoon brought a surprisingly fun time cleaning the gym with the eighth graders. The boys were fascinated by knots, which, it turns out, their fathers never taught them how to tie, nor is there a Boyscout troop in these parts. I do what I can for the people. Then I somehow ended up playing basketball with the school's club. I'm still terrible at ball sports.

In the end I'm happy that the kids finally had a day that concentrated on them rather than the PTA, despite its best efforts. Of course, to make things complete, the ceremony was wrapped up by a woman from the PTA who spoke about Bushido and told the students that they should continue the proud spirit of their samurai ancestors somehow by studying hard and becoming professional athletes. Did you know that, in the whole of Japanese history, roughly five percent of the population have been samurai? How interesting.

Update!

2009-03-04T00:06:00.000-08:00

Gentle Readers (and Peppler),

I assure you that I haven't forgotten about the blog! Rather, two or three days out of the week I attempt to write a post only to realize that I've been performing the same routine for the last few months. Winter time in these parts is less-than-exciting and most everyone runs home at the end of the day to hug their space heaters--your beloved sojourner included.

The weather should warm up soon and with it will come more stories of international iniquity. Until that time I will be uploading new photos, largely from around school, so be sure to check them out by clicking the slide show on the right side of this page.

I am much obliged by your patience. Until next time, as the man says, Excelsior!

*Note: Yes, guys, I am aware that I used Stan Lee's phrase and posted a cover from Action Comics, which is published by DC. I accept that I'm a nerd, but that doesn't mean I have to display brand loyalty. We all know that Marvel makes the best comics overall and that DC is hanging on thanks solely to Batman.

Brainwashing

2009-03-03T23:53:00.000-08:00

In Japanese middle schools they have a special subject that works out to something like “moral philosophy” (lit. “path virtue”), but that many foreigners prefer to call “brainwashing and racism class.” That moniker seems harsh, or at least I thought so until a couple of weeks ago, when I had the rare opportunity to observe this educational nightmare.

Let's make it clear that I like Japanese people. Mostly. They, like all other people, are individuals to be judged individually and so I don't want to make any blanket statements pertaining to the merits or ludicrous nature of their decided cultural values. That said, I am going to make fun of the Ministry of Education's attempts to teach the children illogic because it's not only laughable, but also sad and kind of frightening as an American living overseas.

I came to school and, as happens on most days, there were papers on my desk to be sifted through and dismissed to the recycling bin because A) I'm not a club advisor 2) I have nothing to do with the PTA or III) it doesn't affect my life when the badminton team loses another game to the kids at the “special” school. I'm not even sure why we have a badminton team. Did you know that it's an Olympic sport? I'm waiting to hear about a twelve-year-old badminton prodigy (whose father obviously has some inadequacy issues) winning hundreds of thousands of dollars at an international badminton championship. Or, you know, at least, as Prof. Sekine would say, a “gutsy sports hero” movie.

Jared's Top Five Badminton Movie Titles:
5. Net Jockeys
4. Courting Danger
3. MTV Presents: Country Clubbin'
2. Racquet: The Peter Gade Story
1. Bad Bad Birdie

Anyway, on this particular day I found a packet explaining that the youngest English teacher with whom I work (she hasn't really earned a nickname yet, so we'll call her Deer In Headlights) would be having her final exhibition class to solidify her teaching license. Rather than have it be at random like back home, the teachers here have lots of warning and, instead of just the principal, every available teacher comes to watch them squirm. This sounded like the kind of shindig that I would jump in on regardless, but I grew very excited upon reading that the class was to be not English, but “moral philosophy.”

The idea behind this moral education business is to bring about cohesion in the larger society, which is a noble enough goal, but where other nations teach their children broad, nearly universal values (don't steal, don't murder, don't use illicit substances) the Japanese are tackling much more specific issues (find the owner of a lost wallet, don't let your pervy uncle molest you, Americans are rude and emotionally weak). Wait a minute. What was that last one?

Yes, I was excited about this morality lesson not just because I wanted to see a brand new teacher try to convince teenagers that they should be respectful of others, but also because the attached excerpts from a comic book clearly explained why Americans are unpleasant to deal with and, what's more, should be educated about honorable social behavior. Needless to say, I was brimming with anticipation.

I showed up to the appointed class (my favorite homeroom) with my camera, but apparently it's not proper to record this sort of thing. How would I have known that? You know, boorish American and all. The lesson went by very quickly, but there were a few highlights.

The comic that she used is about a middle aged American man (who speaks fluent Japanese, has a Japanese name, and a very Japanese-chic fashion sense) who goes to work for a shipping company in the capital, but must be rescued at every turn by a morally upright Japanese salary man. Along the way we are educated on things like how to bow and how to use the correct honorifics with your supervisor. It also contains one of my new favorite phrases, which translates to something like, “In Japan you must follow Japanese social rules. If I lived in America I would follow American etiquette.” Indeed.

At one point the bumbling “American” completes his tasks in the office and walks out the door. Luckily for him, our heroic salary man runs after him to explain that in Japan we wait until everyone in the office is finished with their work before leaving. The reality of the situation is a trite more sadistic, having to do with age and position, but this is more or less how things work here. That explains why I see the teachers' cars at school on Sundays, holidays, and eight o'clock at night. To involve the young ones DIH asked if they think the American should go home or stay in the office, then had them place their names on the board near what they felt was the most reasonable option. Twenty-five kids chose to go back and sit in the office until their peers were finished. Of the three who made the same choice that I do five days a week, she asked them to explain themselves. One boy gave the best possible answer: because staying is a silly waste of time. DIH wasn't pleased.

There are other things to be discussed, but I won't ask you to endure any further of my long suffering explanations. The point is that the kids really are being instructed to have a distaste for foreigners and to place a great importance on recently developed cultural values of the ilk that Natsume Soseki complained about in his books and essays. I submit for consideration that practices like staying at the office for hours after completing your work are worth repealing when the guy whose face appears on the 1000 yen note labels it absurd.

Rest assured, I have looked the beast in the eye and it is hilarious.

Wine Festival Video

2009-01-29T16:18:00.000-08:00

It only took me about four months to get around to doing this. More videos as soon as I finish editing them.

The Case of the Hanko Mammoth Cult

2009-01-22T06:19:00.000-08:00

I visited a cult compound last weekend.

It all started when Morgan, one of the fellows who's been here for a few years, made a list of interesting places to visit in the prefecture. Among these places was, apparently, the answer to a question that has vexed the foreign community around Kofu for some time: what is that strange-looking building on the hill west of town?

The building is quite odd, to be sure, as it is shaped rather like an art nouveau Christmas tree ornament and is visible from a major highway. The trouble was that no one could discern where the access point to this structure connects to the local roads, but Morgan, explorer that he is, ferreted the place out. And what is it? A cult dedicated to ivory sales, woolly mammoths, and hanko (personalized stamps that Japanese folks use in lieu of a Herbie Hancock). If that's not obscure enough for you, they have a mini-golf course.

When you approach the compound there is a large gateway welcoming you to the headquarters of “Alliance” and informing you that they have a museum, restaurant, gift shop, and, yes, mini-golf. The bunker itself is called “the Hill of Happiness” and, indeed, there is eerie, soothing music being played outdoors at all times of the variety that one might hear prior to becoming Soylent Green. It makes you... uneasy. Next to the parking lot is what appears, from a distance, to be a Shinto shrine, but upon closer inspection proves to be a sort of mock up of one, the inside of which is filled, floor to ceiling, with discarded hanko. Millions of them. Apparently we were in for some interesting company.

Walking up to the main building, we were greeted by the sight of a monumental coniferous bush trimmed to look like a crane. Of all things on the Hill, this was the least strange for Japan. The interior of the museum was ill lit, empty, and thoroughly creepy. The first half of the exhibit is dedicated to a fellow whose biographical pamphlet I'm still translating, but appears to have been the founder of these loonies. He professed that one's hanko could be used to tell about the person in every facet, from love life to health to ability to pass high school entrance exams. Apparently he was popular with celebrities here in the 80's as there is a wall of photos in which he is posed next to actors and baseball players (he had some sort of relationship with the Yomiuri Giants) who are holding certificates indicating their analyses.

Of particular interest in this area was a massive sign reading, “This is the only proof that you exist on Earth.” By this reasoning we can presume that people don't exist outside of Japan. That almost sounds like something one of my kids would say. As we progressed from one section to the next there was always a middle aged woman in a blue uniform pointing the way (and quite definitely blocking our progress down certain darkened hallways). In the pathway between the hanko segment and the mammoth area was a table with forms that would allow you to divine your own stamp, but the uniformed lady was quick to point out that, as foreigners, ours aren't written in Chinese characters and, thus, we aren't real people. No joke necessary.

The second half of the tour consisted of a genuinely impressive collection of carved ivory. It was here that we began to piece things together. You see, Japanese folks, jokingly as they take religion, are also unwilling to break from form. This attitude is pervasive in their art, writing, and even the Japanese space program (they've never put a manned rocket through the stratosphere because they refuse to change the design). What this means for Buddhism is that these Alliance fellows have dug themselves into a hole with regards to widespread acceptance because they worship a fake Buddha (that is, one not manufactured prior to this century). For this reason, so one of my coworkers tells me, is why they remain small and obscure.

So why would a group with such appealing messages as “foreigners don't exist” intentionally alienate itself from society? Simply put, we think that the whole operation is a front for ivory dealers. Consider that transporting ivory across borders is illegal in most countries. If you were a dedicated purveyor of such wares, how would you go about delivering them? Most civilized governments are willing to give a lot of legal slack in such areas when it comes to religions, if only to avoid hairy political issues. Couple that mentality with the fact that the Alliance gift shop sells “handmade ivory goods” and you've got yourself one mighty lucrative racket.

Unfortunately, the mini-golf was closed that day, much to our collective chagrin. I was hoping the whole time for some sort of confrontation with or attempted recruitment by the members, but once we realized that they weren't a scrupulous cult then all chance seemed to go out the window. On the plus side, while driving around in an effort to find the place Kelly and I saw a sort of giant white cone on the side of a different mountain that doesn't seem accessible by car. With any luck we'll find some religious zealots yet.

Testing Day

2008-12-19T05:09:00.000-08:00

There is the occasional day when my job isn't mind-blowingly exciting and, indeed, leaves me clamoring for something to do. This is one of those days.

You see, my purpose at the school is to entertain. Whatever I teach these kids has no bearing on their futures unless they want it to. This isn't the result of any coincidence, mind you, but has been revealed to me as a minute piece of the overall plan to make the students “diverse” without cramming tolerance down their gullets. It's so un-American. Naturally, one consequence of this framework is that I teach only when the students have nothing else to accomplish. In short, I'm the game guy.

Not that there's anything wrong with this, mind you. Indeed, I quite enjoy never having to lecture them about pronouns or worry that I'll lose my position if they fail en mass during exam season. The end result is that I can have a real impact on the lives of two or three kids who want to communicate with me outside of class and, meanwhile, the others might not hate me, which seems like a solid way to do business as far as I'm concerned. My goal at this point in the game is to convince two kids to study abroad before I leave—a goal that strikes me as thoroughly doable. I already have them picked out, too. One has been a hard sell, but the other asked yesterday if she can wear her school uniform (the famous Japanese sailor suit) when she goes to American high school. Tears welling up in my eyes, I told her, “Yes, Peach. In fact, I insist on it” (that's not a nickname, by the by; her parents named her Peach).

Anyway, today is not one of those days when they let the kids goof off. No, today is the big exam day. As a result they told me when I arrived this morning that I was to have no class (like I ever do! nyuk nyuk). Now, in America there's some chance that, at such a juncture, the principal might tell you to go home because you have no work to complete, no classes to supervise, and it's Friday, but that's America and this is not. So what did I spend my day doing? Let's go to the list!

Jared's Top Ten Ways to Kill Time at a Japanese Middle School:
10.Go to CNN.com and hit reload for an hour.
9.Look at grad schools and try to decide what to do with your life.
8.Read a bad translation of Botchan via Project Gutenberg.
7.Go to CNN.com again.
6.See how long you can drag out a visit to the restroom.
5.Keep a record of said restroom trips and try to beat your personal best.
4.Listen to the tea lady and the secretary make fun of you because, after four months, they still haven't figured out that you can understand them.
3.CNN.com again until you figure out that the school's server has died.
2.4 minutes, 47 seconds
1.Write a rambling blog entry.

That's right, thanks to one of the ludicrously rare thunderstorms that we get here in the Basin the Internet is down. The trouble is that, as much as I love writing, I have to do research while I work in order to smooth the narrative process. My preferred means of research? The Intarwebz.

On the other hand, having gone to a fancy schmantzy school, libraries are also suitable to my purposes. So I headed upstairs to see what might be available in terms of an encyclopedia and discovered this school's horrible, mortifying secret: they have questionable taste in books. I mean simply unfortunate taste. It's as if someone asked J.K. Rowling which authors inspired her to write Harry Potter and the Absent Thesaurus*. Of course, like any middle school library, they have several copies of each Harry Potter book, but also other, incredibly similar volumes. What struck me as even more unusual is that almost every book in the library is a translation of some foreign author. One gets the impression that there are no Japanese writing young adult fiction. I'm shocked that there are this many Rowling knock-offs out there (although I'm sure these folks were around long before she reared her head, Putin-style) because I've never heard of them in our native language. My mission is now clear: when next the library is open (no librarian means that a teacher has to volunteer to hang out in there) I will take down the names of these writers and go hunting on Amazon to see if these guys are any better than their de facto leader.

Luckily for me the Internet has just become operational again, so I'm off to check CNN, make a trip to the restroom, and read Wikipedia.

*Other titles that I was considering for that potshot:
-Harry Potter and the Marketing Scheme
-Harry Potter and the Formulaic Plot
-Harry Potter and the Indian in the Cupbo—er, I mean 'Muggleswarzik'
-Harry Potter and the Death of Book It!
-Harry Potter Puts the Much More Talented Brian Jacques Out of Business
-Harry Potter Makes Robert Louis Stevenson Cry
-Harry Potter Can't Lose

Update:
Not since Magellan was beaten to death with sticks by a tribal chieftain in the Philippines for interfering in local politics has a discovery this great been made. I produced tears while trying not to laugh aloud in the staff room at these synopses:

http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/reading/elem/PotterAlt.HTM

Although I am disappointed at the presence of some legitimately reputable authors on this list, you just can't pass by a gem like this without sharing it:

Half Magic by Edward McMaken Eager
Jane thinks she's found an ordinary old coin, but she's quite mistaken. It's magic! A wish on this coin gives you just half of every wish. Half Magic is the first and best known of Eager's Tales of Magic series.

That's right: it's just one of a series. There are more of these.

Thanks, Fairfax County Public Libraries!

Halloween

2008-11-26T01:03:00.000-08:00

Sorry, guys; I wrote this a while ago and it somehow slipped through my clutches:

I haven't decided if it's some inborn quality about the people here and their collective social construct, the strange hive mind from which they seem to operate in almost all instances, or if it's just a matter of me being foreign, but I somehow tend to organize activities entirely by accident. Such was the case with Halloween.

It all started when I made a passing joke (one poorly worded and not unpleasantly received, but rather not received at all) about how the students seemed like zombies and must be preparing for Halloween. The teacher with whom I was working then gave me the usual blank stare and said, “oh, I suppose Halloween is coming up soon. It's in November, right?” These poor people. Later that afternoon another teacher, the one responsible for all seventh graders, came to me and asked if I could teach about Halloween, as she'd heard from the previous teacher that it was coming soon. Naturally, I was happy to accommodate, at which time she said to make an entire lesson on the subject. This is, of course, no mean feat at this point—my coworkers have prepared me to teach at the drop of a hat by virtue of their inability to tell me when the schedule changes (*see the above comment about their hive mind).

The following weekend I went to a festival and purchased a pumpkin. As there would be no jack-o-lanterns in the neighborhood I felt it my duty as an agent of internationalization to carve one and create the stuff of the local children's nightmares. You're welcome, Japan. I further thought that some of the young ones would find it entertaining to design the face of my ghastly creation, so I brought the pumpkin to Little School and told the ninth graders to go nuts. Following a misunderstanding over the definition of the word “pencil” (they interpreted it to mean “largest black permanent marker available”), I had one thoroughly disfigured pumpkin. That same day I told the students about trick-or-treating in the States, at which time one of them jokingly asked if he could come by my house and receive candy on Halloween. I jokingly replied that, of course, everyone was welcome to knock on my door. Did I mention that sarcasm doesn't work here?

Word spread. Kids at PS138 began to ask about the trick-or-treat event. I was unaware of an event, but quickly realized that I was the progenitor of it. I also, for the only time ever, taught every single class in the school that week because, once the teachers heard about my fantastic Halloween lesson plan (and saw the jack-o-lantern) they wanted me to fill up their otherwise pointless elective classes, study halls, review sessions, or whatever else they had. I even hocked my educational wares to the brass band. As a result, the same thing continued to follow me around all week. I would teach a class, show them the opening of The Nightmare Before Christmas as that's the only Halloween film that came to mind and wouldn't cost them a week or so of sleep, and then one kid would raise his hand and ask about the trick-or-treat business at my house that Friday.

I was worried and so the night before All Hallows I purchased several bags of candy, figuring that, if no kids showed up, I'd be the most popular guy at the foreigner Halloween party. This was not an issue, as it turns out, because, rounding the corner to my apartment, I started to see kids in school uniforms. Lots of them. In my parking lot. I estimate that there were about thirty children present at the time and an additional twenty or so stopped in over the course of the evening. I handed out prodigious amounts of junk food.

The young ones seem to have trouble grasping the proper form when trick-or-treating. Some of my favorite moments from that night include:

-A group of the troublemaker boys stood in my parking lot for over an hour after I gave them candy. I went out to ask them what they were doing and they responded by inquiring if any girls were going to come. Lovely. They posed for photos with the jack-o-lantern
-Four girls stood outside my building, discussing how best to ring the doorbell without getting close to the pumpkin. Luckily, I heard them talking from the kitchen, so I went outside and brought the candy to them. Only one ventured to touch the jack-o-lantern, then promptly ran for her life, yelling, “the pumpkin's scary!”
-One boy who came as part of the initial group that was waiting for me, then came back after a while with two of his friends, then they came back after some time with even more friends who then tried to fill their backpacks with treats.
-A pair of seventh grade girls who weren't bothered by the pumpkin, but when I opened the door they jumped back and extended their Go-Go-Gadget arms to pluck candy from the bowl and run for the safety of a parent's vehicle which was sitting in solid view of the door. I imagine there was some discussion beforehand between the kids and their parents about how dangerous foreigners are because we abduct and devour Japanese youths.
-The mother/son team from the Mr. Baseball Underpants Incident showed up with cotton candy, shrimp chips, and a delightful item of clothing called a “hanten,” which is an amalgam of a quilt and a bathrobe. Nice folks, those.

Beyond that, my Halloween wasn't all that interesting. Class was fun since we wasted plenty of time on toilet paper mummy races and I told them the story of Jack of the Lantern. I also taught them how to properly toilet paper a house. Basically the whole day revolved around T.P. I'm doing my part to breed vandals and ne'er-do-wells in this far too wholesome country.

The Greatest Photo Ever?

2008-11-11T11:21:00.000-08:00

It's important to keep a professional photographer around for these rare occasions.

The girl behind the camera: http://www.kbryanphoto.com

Catchup

2008-11-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but we went nearly a month without any updates (travesty!). I'll do my best to truncate some of the more interesting happenings and see if we can't bring everyone “up to speed,” as the young folk say.

Speech contest

I wrote a post detailing the events of the English speech competition, but it devolved into a sordid rambling about how the teachers were largely incapable of dealing with their students' lack of success. On the plus side, I was quite proud of my kids, especially the girls who were in a bad way prior to the contest. None of them placed, but I brought them gifts anyway because I'm awesome like that. Thanks to Heidi for insight on the minds of middle school girls.

Kyudo

I started taking Kyudo (or Japanese archery) lessons shortly after the last post. It's all manner of nifty and I get to hang out with some of my students who have particularly bad attitudes. The dojo is open on Friday nights, which puts a wrench in some social activities, but I'd usually prefer to launch arrows at a target than sit around some bar anyway. Plus, let's face it, archery is just cool.

Culture Day

November third is a national holiday on which everyone is supposed to go participate in traditional Japanese activities like flower arranging or calligraphy. A while back I was invited by the older part-time teacher (let's call her Madam Wong) to attend a tea ceremony. As I had no plans at the time and I've never been through an entire ceremony (only a few make-believe demonstrations at Purdue) I agreed to go. What I hadn't the foresight to consider was why this nice lady was inviting me to such an event. I made the mistake, as I often do, of assuming her motives to be outright. And then I met her niece. Now, don't get me wrong—I enjoyed the tea ceremony and there was even bonsai gallery, of which I'm a big fan. For the play-by-play we'll need more explanation:

Christmas Cake

On December twenty-fifth most Japanese (save the handful of Christians in Japan [pun!]) celebrate the birth of our Lord by eating a special cake and... going to work because it's a Thursday like any other. Christmas Cake, though, is not just any cake. You have to specially order this stuff weeks in advance. It comes with layers of filling, icing, and all manner of decoration. Purportedly, it is “berry dericious.” Shortly after the birthday of the Lamb of Hosts, though, any uneaten cake tends to go stale and become useless. Applying Japanese logic (rogic?), then, it stands to reason that, after a woman turns twenty-five, she will also find herself dry and without prospect. Such women are called “Christmas Cakes.” I hear tell that they can be a mite imposing when it comes to dating. In fact, they're known to follow a body around for most of the afternoon on Culture Day, hitting on him in a manner that embarrasses all involved parties. And people say that Americans are obsessed with youth? (note: If you're at Purdue and want more info on Japan's troubling treatment of unmarried women over twenty-five, ask Prof. Wei for some crazy stories.)

Marathon

Ten kilometers isn't an awful distance (6.2 miles), but let me tell you, folks, that ten kilometers is a lot longer when running backwards. You see, every kid in Japanese public (and most private) middle and high schools is expected to participate in the school marathon. Some of these are half or even quarter marathons while others are very much the real, twenty-six mile, shin-destroying Olympic version. Did you know that Japan has a lot of mountains? I do. The trouble began when the other newbie teacher (Joe Cool) and I were talking about how rough it is to be the low guy on the totem poll in this country. After explaining what a totem poll is, he agreed and mentioned that he was being made to run the marathon along with the kids. I joked that, being a year younger, I would be subject to the same fate. It was at this point that he stopped walking, looked me in the eye (unusual here) and demanded, “you promise.” So on marathon morning I showed up (late) and was grouped with the slowest students. Who are they, you ask? Well, they're not the sumo boys, nor the mathletes, nor even the retarded kids. No, dear readers, I ran ten kilometers with the preppy girls. No one told me that it would be fun, and so I wasn't let down. And how did I end up running in retrograde? My job was to encourage them to run rather than walk (which would have taken a good three hours, minimum), so I thought, foolishly, that the best way to accomplish my goal would be to stay in front of them and shout encouragement (“You just got passed by a blind guy!” *true story*). My ankles haven't quite been the same since.

There have, of course, been many, many more goings-on, but I haven't the time or memory to recall everything, nor you, I imagine, the interest to hear about harvesting sweet potatoes or climbing the wrong side of Mt. Mizugaki. I will, as promised to a few of you, complete a writeup of my Halloween deeds because they were just that outlandish. At one point there were some twenty middle school students in a mob (henceforth referred to as “the Horde”) outside of my apartment.

Coming soon: new photos including the world-famous tanuki costume and my kids carrying torches.

Dodgeball

2008-10-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

In high school gym class we used to play a game that our teacher called "German batball." Naturally, we found it amusing to no end that the German exchange students informed her, in no uncertain terms, that such a game does not exist in their homeland. I learned yesterday that such falsified origins are not unique to my own insular people.

I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business (reading Wikipedia) when The middle-aged English teacher (as she is that teacher who fills the at-school void of every kid's mother, let's call her Mom Sensei) looked across the desks at me and asked, "Jaledo, are you free?"

By this time I've learned that "are you free" is the universal setup for one of two things: A) you're about to do some heavy lifting or 2) you're about to do something with which no other teacher will sully his hands. In this case it was the latter. "Let's go play dodge ball."

I followed her outside and up the hill to the civic gym where the kids play volleyball and kendo after school and found her entire homeroom class (with whom we were supposed to be doing an English lesson) waiting to be let in. The kids kept saying "American dodge ball," so I was preparing myself for the vicious combat, the PTSD-inducing mire of a gymnasium afflicted with middle schoolers gone Lord of the Flies to which I became accustomed during my own childhood. I know people with scars from playing dodge ball, both tangible and emotional.

I unbuttoned my shirt, removed my belt, and emptied my pockets in anticipation of the coming dodgepocalypse. The gym teacher not present, I inquired about the reason for playing dodge ball during the regularly scheduled English class. Mom Sensei said, "they were tired and wanted to play something." Herein lies one of the myriad differences between American and Japanese middle school--if the kids don't want to do something, they don't have to. I know, it sounds crazy, and it is, but I find it very interesting that most Japanese folks with whom one speaks don't have the kind of complex that Americans do about their junior high years. I remember my middle schools quite well, no matter how hard I try to forget, and that was not a fun time for anyone, so it's perpetually confusing to see how happy most of these children are. And they asked to play dodge ball, which should have been my first sign that something was amiss.

As we've discussed before, they don't organize very efficiently in these parts. While Mom Sensei and I hung back the boys attempted to plan the game, which went about as swimmingly as it would in the States, I think. And yet, despite half the kids wandering about, a group of girls diving at the floor and sliding on their jackets like penguins, and most of the boys going about their usual creepy business of rubbing against one another and holding hands (awkward!), the students slowly began to find themselves in the designated playing areas, and on teams, no less. How this came to pass is a mystery that continues to elude me, but it fits with the usual Japanese approach to management; don't explain anything or give orders and somehow everyone will figure it out. Hey, it seems to work for them.

And then they began to play. I think. As it turns out, they don't really have a grasp of "American dodge ball" as they thought because the activity (let's not call it a game) consisted of two groups of kids within a confined area on each end of a basketball court while another group passed the ball back-and-forth from the outside edges. The goal seemed to be hitting the students in the middle with the volleyball (there was only one), but the only consequence for being struck or having your ball caught by the defending team was to switch places with a player in the other corralled group. In this way the game never ended, nor did anyone win or lose. How very Japanese.

They asked me to be on one of the "teams," but the children were too frightened to give me the ball, so I spent the duration of the game standing still in a sea of kids who were ducking and weaving from the ball. It also turns out that Japanese women never overcome their fear of physical activity as I turned around to see Mom Sensei in a semi-fetal position behind me, ostensibly using me as a sort of meat shield. The girls, of course, screamed and ran any time that the ball came anywhere close to them, and when forced to throw the ball would shuffle to the line, timidly drop it, and then shuffle away, presumably to pay honor to their proud samurai heritage.

Eventually we ran out of time and headed back to the school. On the way I asked them which team had won. They failed to comprehend my question.

Videos!

2008-09-28T05:31:00.000-07:00

Here are the videos that I've been meaning to post for a while.

This is every child at Little School on the Mountain. Don't you love middle school choirs?

Shin smiting in honor of Becky and Stephen, the finest shinkickers I know.

I call this game the Human Stairs and fully expect to see this used as a warm up on the Challenge Course.

The Festivus Pole in action.

The greatest game EVER.

This one is especially for Pep. Fighto, oh!

School Festival part 2

2008-09-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

This is the part where the aluminum pole comes in. I really wasn't kidding.

After much pointless mulling around (which seems to be the national pastime and makes me feel thoroughly awkward when I don't have anything with which to be occupied) we finally went out to the sports field to watch the children push themselves through grueling physical endeavors in hopes of winning... nothing, because this is Japan.

Pretty much every sports festival here is organized the same way. Competition is based around three teams, designated by colored headbands, each of which has an equal distribution of seventh, eighth, and ninth graders. At Little School on the Mountain this means that each team is composed of about ten kids, but at PS138 the squads are massive, their immutable columns reminiscent of centurions, battle flags performing their war dance in the breeze of the warm afternoon sun, bearing maxims like "only one class in the world" and "we are friends forever." Their pastel war paint is a primeval augury to smurfs and Kirby alike.

In order to grasp the experience that is the sports festival one must first understand what happens in gym class here. They do not play sports. Not in any sense that you and I have of what that word means, anyway. Rather, they have, perhaps toward the end of saving face, invented games that shed a good deal of light on the reasons for the existence of shows like Unbeatable Banzuke. Examples of this include the giant ball race, as depicted in my Picasa album, and an extraordinarily injury-inducing game in which most of the kids crowd together while a few others run at them with a giant pole, over which the mass of children must leap or they will be smote in the shins.

One of these games was pure brilliance. Five long aluminum poles were set out on the middle line of the athletic field, a whistle was blown, and every member of each team bolted to the poles in hopes of bringing them back to the side. The kids fought over these poles in a way that I can only describe as bellicose. The same game was played at PS138, but with car tires and the competitors were all girls. This proved to be one of the most amusing things thus far; I was even privy to one girl tackling another headlong. These are the same girls who won't even look me in the eye at lunch, refuse to respond during class, and often barely giggle when I do something outrageous to get a reaction from the students. I don't know.

At Little School on the Mountain the students competed in this type of game all afternoon, largely strung together to form relay races. Interestingly, there were winners and losers (I know because they had to run a victory lap after each event while carrying a designatory flag for the place that they won in said event). This is a boring detail, but important in so much as, at the end of the day, there was no winning team. I kept score, but the team that should have won was not congratulated, nor was there any seeming reward for outdoing the other teams. This is an aspect of Japanese society with which I've yet to reconcile. They even invented tied baseball games.

Regardless, the kids were excited to take part in the events, which is pretty much the most important thing. Again, I won't go into detail about the events, but check out the photo album for examples of what took place. At one point I was dragged into the PTA relay race by the president (for those of you who aren't up on these things, the PTA in Japan is the singular deciding power with regards to school activity, which makes El Presidente the only two-legged guy in the administrative butt kicking contest). So Chavez-san charged me with leading the team of parents through hula-hoop challenges and, as it turns out (much to my surprise, I assure you), I can hula-hoop like nobody's business. We won handily, thereby solidifying my good relations with El Presidente and earning me a victory prize from the kids: a box of tissues. I was prepared to gloat about my victory tissues (victissues?) when I realized that, in true Japanese fashion, everyone was receiving them. I suddenly felt a lessened sense of accomplishment at my defeat of middle aged Japanese people in a hula-hoop contest, but my spirits were placated by a moment of silence for our proud samurai heritage.

Following an afternoon of family-friendly gladiatorial competition the fire department showed up and lit a thirty foot fuse which then detonated some sort of IED and a pile of scrap wood that the children had been amassing went up in flames. I, of course, was not in on the plan to light the fire in the most absurdly safe manner possible, so following the loud pop and subsequent fireball, I was the only one on the ground in the duck-and-cover position. Awkward. While I was recovering from shell shock I had a lovely conversation with an elderly Japanese woman about her daughter, who is the same age as me, and Patrick Swayze's work in Ghost and Roadhouse. Despite my insistence, she maintains that Ghost was the superior movie. No wonder they lost the war.

Then the kids joined hands in a circle around the fire, dragged me in with their lot, and we proceeded to "dance." Based on the music, my best guess is that the dance was Russian in origin, but we'll never know as these folks are often incapable of discerning what the Japanese did or did not invent*. I know for certain, though, the birthplace of one dance. My ears went up and some part of me, the blood most infused with hilljack DNA, began to move of its own accord. Turkey in the Straw was playing from the speakers. After a good twenty minutes of square dancing one of the teachers asked if I had ever heard the song before. "No," I said, "no I have not."

Then there were fireworks. There isn't much to say about Japanese people and fireworks that hasn't already been covered in my post about the Ichikawadaimon festival. They like their fireworks and are quite proud of them, so don't burst any bubbles by explaining the august splendor of a Fourth of July show. For some reason it upsets them. Apparently.

After cleanup we finally wrapped the twelve-hour day. I would launch right into a recap of the next day, when I went to the PS138 sports festival, but it was more or less the same thing. In fact, it was almost exactly the same in every way, save that PS138 is about ten times larger. At the end of the day we went into the gym (it was raining) and proceeded to dance to Turkey in the Straw, although due to the large number of boys I was left dancing the girl part, which offered a new perspective on square dancing, I reckon.

*Jareditor's note--the following is a list of things that Japanese people have insisted to me are original products of Japan:
-the automobile
-tobacco
-rice
-curry
-peaches
-famous Chinese literary work Journey to the West
-ramen noodles
-kung fu
-chestnuts
-tug-of-war
-raccoons

School Festival part 1

2008-09-23T06:23:00.000-07:00

We had the school festival last weekend. I've known about these events for years, but never having witnessed one before I was wholly unprepared for what took place.

First, let me explain the premise and manifestation of the festival. There are actually two different events that take place over the course of the weekend--the culture festival, which is mostly a means of showing off student artwork, short plays, musical performances, and the like, and the sports festival, which is like a ten-hour-long gym class (which ring of Hell did Dante reserve for impertinent middle school teachers?). The culture festival is sort of like a giant recital of everything that their parents pay for while the sports festival allows the kids to compete for the sake of competing, which in Japan means that there are teams but no winners or losers, but rather a silent moment at the end of the closing ceremony to honor their proud samurai heritage.

Ordinarily schools will have one of these on Saturday and the other on Sunday, which was the case at my base school, but the tiny school that I visit every week (let's call it Little School on the Mountain) has so few kids (about thirty) that they held both events on Saturday, pretty much forcing me to miss my base school's (let's call it PS138) culture day, about which the PS138 teachers seemed strangely touchy. The secretary had a chat with me one day about how Little School on the Mountain is always vying to snatch my loyalties from PS138. I don't see it that way, but office politics are what they are and so I nodded solemnly to honor her proud samurai heritage and went on with my pretend work (rereading Dubliners).

Of course, I was just happy to see what the kids have been working on every afternoon for the past month, even if it did entail showing up early on a Saturday, camera at the ready. I knew that some universal force was working against me when I walked into the Little Town on the Mountain event center and saw all of the teachers in formal attire. Very formal. One had tails. I'd contemplated what to wear, but foolishly decided that morning to follow CNN press conference rules (no tie or coat on the weekend, and if you're not hosting then polos are acceptable) and so was swathed in a polo and khakis, the universally acceptable uniform. On the other hand, I thought, I wasn't slated to go onstage or even meet the parents, so it didn't matter a great deal. And then the policeman showed up in his dress uniform.

I won't go into detail about the content of the presentations, but here is a list of some high points that should give you a taste of what happened:

a twenty minute, off-beat recital of the Mickey Mouse March on xylophones, after which an encore was demanded by the audience (by shouting "en-koh-leh")
speeches by: the girl who made announcements all morning, student council president, student council vice-president, PTA president, PTA vice-president, PTA safety patrol council chairman, PTA safety patrol council vice-chairman, half-Thai kid, the principal, PTA snack council chairwoman, PTA safety patrol snack council vice-chairwoman... the two disturbing things about this list are 1) I'm honestly not joking and 2) it is much, much longer.
a surprisingly well-orchestrated rendition of Faust (one girl even made a superb oil painting of Beelzebub which was used in the play and is now hanging in the hallway outside the seventh grade classroom)

After the closing remarks by all of our featured speakers the culture portion of our Peake-style exercise was over and we all headed to the school for a rousing afternoon of student athletic competition to earn their parents' affection.

The Mr. Baseball Underpants Incident

2008-09-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

It was the Sunday before classes commenced and so I thought, given my recent sojourns to commune with friends in the North (and the ensuing food poisoning), that I should lummox about the apartment for the day as preparation for the hordes of junior high students who, I had been told at orientation, would surely plague me in the manner of the late Gary Gygax at a Dungeons and Dragons convention. This was my first mistake.

My second mistake was forgetting to lock the door. I realize that even in as uneventful a place as Indiana this is nearly tantamount to suicide, but you have to understand just how absurdly safe it is here. This is a country where you could leave a wallet crammed with money and crack cocaine on the subway and it would be returned to you within the week, probably cleaner than it was, and perhaps filled with flower petals or pictures of kittens. Of course, you can't fault the folks for that. What you can fault them for is a complete lack of privacy.

I was sitting in my underpants on my futon watching the legendary Tom Selleck in Mr. Baseball (elsewise known as "Magnum P.I. Does Japan" or the European title, "Three Men and a Little Gook") when I received quite a shock. The doorbell rang and while I debated the relative virtues of answering it or pretending to be dead and rotting in my bathtub I sensed the presence of someone else in my bedroom (futonroom?). I removed my headphones and turned around to see a very confused and frightened middle schooler. He then turned and bolted from the room, back out my front door. Once I found pants of sufficient dryness to wear I opened the door to find him standing alongside his mother, head lowered and unwilling to look at me.

She explained in broken Yoda English that they had gone to a famous zoo in Yokohama and had brought me/Taylor (we're all basically the same) a t-shirt. I explained that I was washing my clothes and didn't expect to have random tweenagers invading my Fortress of Solitude--note to self: begin locking the Door of Solitude. I also introduced myself, which then caused the conversation to take a turn to which I've become somewhat accustomed.

I call it Chewie Talk. You see, Japanese people come in two varieties; either they're frightened beyond comprehension of even sitting next to an English speaker or they want to practice at every opportunity, no matter how inconvenient. I've been trying since getting here to practice Japanese, which worked splendidly for about a week, then suddenly everyone switched to English. I see no need for my coworkers or folks about town to practice a language that they're not actively attempting to master, so I continue to speak Japanese with them. This arrangement looks something akin to the scenes in which Chewbacca yargles at Han Solo, who fully understands and responds in English, and Chewie operates inversely.

After they left I pulled out the shirt and found that it bore the visage of an okapi, which has been in the news enough lately that you may not have to Google it. It's white and huge, so I don't imagine that I'll be wearing it much, but I will always remember where it came from, the day that an adolescent Japanese boy saw me watching Tom Selleck in my underwear. C'est le Japon.

Festivus

2008-09-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

When I was in the fifth grade my cohorts and I performed one of those ancient rites of passage that gradually ushers one into adulthood. It was called "Heritage Trail," a three hour excursion encompassing the entire history of the United States. It was, to say the least, an exercise in brutality. We were dismissed early from classes every day for weeks to prepare for the beast's coming, made to dress in absurd costumes, and, probably the part that Mom will remember most clearly, the parents "got" to sit (or in her case, stand) through the final product. Did I mention that it was three hours long? Not that I'm complaining; I now know all of the words to half of the Beatles' anthology. And I can dance the Virginia Reel.

Given my colorful history with school productions, I was initially apprehensive about the idea of my students having to take the afternoon off every day to prepare for the "school festival," two eight hour days, over the course of a weekend, during which the kids will perform feats of strength ala Festivus, play traditional instruments, perform dances... is this beginning to sound familiar? There is, however, one important difference that I noticed very quickly: the students are excited about this. Kids who I can't goad into reading a sentence aloud in class are doing back flips and screaming their lungs out. Who knew?

So it's actually pretty interesting to watch the sweat that they're putting into this thing. The class clowns are even behaving themselves, largely because the teachers don't organize most of the events. For instance, the music teacher asked me to sit in on the bass choral practice a couple of days ago and I was surprised to see that they were under the direction of a ninth grader. They're not too shabby, either, but the nifty part was when one of the especially obnoxious boys made an off-color comment and the whole crowd came down on him with reprimands. Maybe American schools could learn a lesson and let the kids fail if they want to? I don't know. Someone would probably get shot.

It's also been amusing to note the similarities between the school festival and that most secular of holy days, Festivus. There are, as I said, feats of strength. The kids will show off their impressive balance by sitting on their butts, placing their arms out in a T, and lifting their feet in the air. They'll also be forming a sort of human tower, which is an exercise that those of you from the Purdue dojo know well, in which five or six kids huddle together, then three stand on the backs of their necks (a technical point of contention between myself and the gym teacher, as I foolishly expressed concern over the children's safety), and one will hop up on top, at which time she looks confused, shrieks, and the tower collapses, leaving the teachers to catch as many of them as possible before they hit the ground. At least that's how it went at practice.

The kids, again, are suddenly capable of confronting one another. The Airing of Grievances. In case I haven't explained before, it's important to this point that I mention how shy Japanese children (and, often, people in general) tend to be. True story:

me: "What... is... your... name?" (I have to talk like that or they can't understand)
kid (avoiding eye contact): "uh... um..." (turns to neighbor) "quick, what's my name?"

I don't know. But they've promised me that there will be a large aluminum pole involved in the weekend's activities. High strength-to-weight ratio, you know.

Tokyo Samba

2008-09-04T07:19:00.001-07:00

The largest number of "nikkei" or people of Japanese descent born outside of Japan live in Brazil. This is the result of several very open immigration policies that were in place in Brazil during the early part of the twentieth century. Interestingly, a lot of those people come to Japan, perhaps to reconnect with their roots. Whatever the reason, they're still Brazilian, and so they love to party. This is why I agreed to attend a samba festival in Tokyo on Saturday, but, as with all plans, it didn't go quite as anticipated.

The parade was to start at one thirty and go until six, so I thought that I'd be able to make it into town via train by about two, enjoy some Brazilian culture (i.e. food and capoeira), hang out with the other ALT's, and be on a train home after dinner so that I could sleep on on Sunday. Once again, my downfall was in logical planning.

I was to meet one of the other JET's on the train at ten fife five. As the train pulled in I received the message that she was taking the eleven thirty instead. No worries, I thought, I can handle this on my own. Little did I know that I know very little when it comes to the Tokyo subway system, because once I arrived in Shinjuku I discovered that I had to go to the metropolitan station and take a line from there, which was a bit more complicated than I was ready to tackle with no prior experience, so I grabbed a burger and waited for the others.

They showed up and we all headed to Asakusa to see the festival. We stepped out of the train and it was raining like I haven't seen in months. Naturally this didn't phase the festival folks, but the rest of us had a problem with being soaked and sought shelter in a nearby Curry Kitchen (sort of like the KFC of curry restaurants). So, maybe there wouldn't be any samba for us that day, but why waste a trip to Tokyo? So we made plans to visit Ikebukuro and, our favorite Brazilian all-you-can-cram-down-your-pie-hole place, Tuscanos. Unfortunately, the restaurant was full up and we had to find someplace else, so we decided on Mexican as it's closer to Brazil than Denny's (yep, Denny's is alive and well here).

Mexican food, in any approximation, is very rare here. So much so that a lot of JET's have their families ship them tortillas, chili powder, and the like. I've not felt a hankering so strong yet that I needed to have the food shipped to me, but I imagine in a couple of months I'll be begging you all for root beer and frozen pizza crusts. For the folks with whom I was hanging out, however, Mexican food struck their Joseph Campbell chord as the Hero's Boon, and we would have it or die trying.

First, though, we were bound for Ikebukuro and a very strange sounding place called "Nekobukuro," which is a play on the name of the town and means "cat house." I asked for an explanation and was told, "Kitties. Lots of them. You pay, like, five bucks and you can play with them as long as you want." How does one even find out about things like this? I see the potential profit in such a venture since Japan is very expensive and inconvenient for pet owners, so most people have never had one, but coming from the States it sounds like a scam, much like the time at the county fair that I paid fifty cents to see a "miniature stallion" that was very obviously a pygmy horse.

And yet we went anyway. And it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. You see, Japanese people, and zoos here in particular, have a well deserved reputation for being cruel to animals without realizing it (like the white-tailed deer at Zoo Asia that were living on top of roof shingles with no cover and made to eat nothing but dried waffle cone). Not that I'm a loony animal rights activist by any means, but I hate to see an animal suffering just like everyone else. It was a pleasant surprise, then, to see that the cats, while unusually stressed from being harassed by cat-crazed Japanese people all day every day, were well groomed, properly fed, and even had handlers to ensure that the animals weren't "played with" too roughly.

Here is a good spot for a tangent about breeding. Japanese people are aware of the fact that animals can cross breed, resulting in the ubiquitous mutt, but they don't seem to realize that such animals are more often the rule than the exception. It takes a good deal of explaining to get across the rarity of dogs like purebred German Shepherds. In Japan, if you're going to buy a dog, you treat it as a fashion accessory, which means dropping substantial funds on one of those irritating little lap dogs instead of a utility animal or a reliable companion. Whatever floats their rickshaw, I suppose.

After paying five dollars to visit the Humane Society, we headed over to the Mexican place where, to my honest surprise, many of the employees were Mexican, as well as the manager. When you walk into an establishment in Japan the employees will almost always let out this mash of syllables that supposedly means "most humble welcome:" "irasshaimase." Normally this has been said so many times that it comes out the same way that I used to produce "may I please be excused" at the dinner table when I was a child; the phrase comes across as one sound that may itself be devoid of meaning, but perhaps points to a more true meaning in its etymology. The Mexican's know how to do this properly. We walked in the door to the entire crew shouting, quite startlingly, "irasshaima-SE!" with a hefty Mexican accent. Yared was quite pleased.

The food was about what one might expect at Don Pablos, but with smaller portions, of course (I've taken to ordering two entrees at some places). Overall it was a good deal for Tokyo, although I didn't realize until too late that eleven o'clock was nearing and my pumpkin was going to leave without me, so I caught the express back with one of the Hokuto crew and managed to grab the last taxi from Enzan back home, which cost a lot more than I wanted to pay, but was nicer than walking on that particularly humid night.

All in all it was a successful trip since we got to see the festival post-downpour, but I don't think I'll be heading back to Tokyo in the near future as it is prohibitively expensive.

Mr. Popo and Me

2008-09-04T07:16:00.001-07:00

I met the police. I had been in Kofu with a bunch of other JET's at the unofficial foreigner watering hole, the Vault (free pool!), and someone who lived in my direction suggested that I get going because the last train for my town leaves, it turns out, at eleven o'clock. I managed to catch it, but because the line was running late it stopped at the next town over before returning to the big station for the night.

I thought that an over-priced taxi would be in my future, little did I know that those also stopped running at about eleven. As such, I pulled out my compass (thanks, Teresa!), approximated the general direction of my apartment, and started walking. And walking. And walking. I finally came to a road sign that said I had another eight kilometers to go, which, near as I can figure, is something like two miles.

I followed this route for a good two hours (it turns out that I took the long way around the station as I would accomplish the same feat a week later in a solid ninety minutes) before realizing that I was only a few hills away from home. It was at this point that things became interesting.

You see, people in my part of Japan tend not to be out late at night. In fact, once the sun goes down they all run inside as if to fortify against a zombie attack. Or maybe Godzilla. I'm not really sure since they haven't had either since I've been here. That I know of. As such, my contentedness to be outside and have my windows open after dark, once the air is finally cool, is yet another thing that sets me apart as the weird foreigner. This is very much like my legendary bravery against bugs.

I was team teaching (read: doing what I'm told) with one of the English teachers last week when a bee flew into the room. She screamed. Then the kids screamed. Everyone was freaking out because a bee was flying around the room. In times like this my dichotomous thought process goes to work. Option A: these people are wusses. Option B: these people are afraid of that bee for a very logical and warranted reason. Fool that I am, I went with Option A and chased the thing out with a textbook, at which time they actually applauded. Having no other recourse, I gave a stage bow. Yesterday a very similar thing happened, except that we were at my mountain school where the kids aren't afraid of (harmless?) insects. That time it was a dragonfly and one of the kids caught it. The teacher there was screaming as well.

Anyway, I was walking back to my apartment on the lonely street at about one or two in the morning when a car pulled onto the curb in front of me and two men stepped out. I thought that perhaps these were troubled motorists (which is how ubermensch like me refer to people who operate vehicles) and that I was going to have to explain that, what with my lack of Japanese and all, I'd be of little use to them unless they needed a tire changed or a baby saved from a fire. One of them blinded me with a flashlight, so I put up my fists and prepared to run as, knowing my luck, I'd somehow managed to find the only violent criminals on the island, but then he pulled out a badge and said "keisatsu." "Police."

It was at this time that he looked at my face and expressed the usual shock/confusion/bemusement that I'm not of proud Yamato heritage. We had a congenial enough exchange about my foreignness, the fact that I'm a foreigner, and my history of being a foreigner as long as I've been here. He inspected my water bottle, asked if I'd been drinking "juice," which I believe is code for "not juice," and told me to call them if I had a car accident or anything. They made certain to copy down all of the info off of my green card, which lists my name in American legal order, and thus they now call me Tyler, which is a bit too easy since my predecessor's name was Taylor. It's at least less awkward than school, where I keep thinking that the kids are talking about Dad.

Update

2008-08-23T22:13:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the recent absence; we had the Kofu orientation and then things just sort of kept piling up. I was in Hokuto with my unofficial crew for about three days and had to walk home from the next town over (twice), which was quite the adventure. And by adventure I mean I was stopped by the police for being suspicious. More on that later.

I'm working on some new posts, but in the meantime I wanted to put up a couple of links. Tonie and I are training at KTT Boxing Gym right now and if you go to their site:

http://ktt.blogzine.jp/blog/

you might notice someone familiar on the front page. They're apparently quite happy to have us there, which is nice. It's the most welcoming place that I've found here thus far. More on the gym later, as well.

This is their roster of amateur fighters (there are some professionals there, as well):

http://ktt.blogzine.jp/blog/4/index.html

Scroll all the way down for a scary photo of me (and a decidedly less scary photo of Tonie). To be fair, this was after a ninety-minute session and two rounds of light contact with Taro, so I was a little on the exhausted side. Man, that kid is fast.

Firecrackers and Fist/Fish Fights

2008-08-10T00:38:00.000-07:00

I've had a rather tiresome week, so I'm going to discuss each event individually and save the actual writing for another post.

Ichikawadaimon fireworks festival
On Thursday we went to the fireworks festival in a town called Ichikawadaimon. The pyrotechnics were about on par with a large Fourth of July show, but they went on and on. And on. They had already gotten started before we arrived and continued for a good hour before Tonie, Kim, and I decided to check out the rest of the festival (read: find food). It was more or less what one would expect; stalls selling overpriced noodles, octopus balls (also the subject of another post), candy-coated bananas, and plastic wares that light up. There are photos in my Picasa album, which can be found by clicking on the slideshow to your right. There isn't much more to say, really, except that I still haven't figured out why Amazing Grace was playing over the loudspeakers when we stepped onto the train platform.

In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by her trade...
My friend Tonie is a boxer. She boxed back home and would like to continue boxing in the future, which, as with all other things, is not that easy in Japan. She had tracked down the locations of the few boxing gyms in the prefecture and we set out on Friday to find them. It somehow took the better part of the day to get to one of them, KTT Boxing, and once we found the location indicated on the map, there was no gym, but rather an abandoned laundromat. As we were retracing our steps in hopes of discerning where we had waved from the path, the heat became wholely unbearable and so we stepped into a small French pastry shop where the chef was kind enough to sell us Hello Kitty cookies (of the highest caliber) and walked us to the gym. I'll write more on this later, but rest assured the next three hours involved sitting in a hotbox as Asian children practiced disfiguring people before our eyes. On the plus side, Tonie got to punch at an elderly Japanese man while I discussed the pragmatics of karate with a professional fighter.

YETI welcome party and bad movie club
Kevin will be happy to know that I met people who have watched Gym Kata in its entirety. Yes, of their own free will. The official welcome party for all of the new Yamanashi JET's was on Saturday in Kofu at a very "Japanesey" restaurant with fantastically mediocre food and some of the worst service that I've ever seen given the amount of warning they had about our coming. Possibly the finest moment of the evening went to the group of vegetarians who were seated at a special table just to avoid any confusion amongst the staff, who went about serving them dish after dish of pork. Apparently the logical breakdown of the Japanese thought process goes something like this:

vegetarian --> no meat --> no fish
pigs /= fish --> pork = OK

Naturally, we had some very hungry vegetarians. And a kosher Jew. Maybe next time they'll know better and just make lamb.

did you ever see Karate Kid II?

2008-08-06T05:09:00.000-07:00

The Kofu Basin doesn't get much in the way of precipitation. As such, I was shocked (pun!) and delighted at the sudden appearance of a lightning storm the other night. Incidentally, the locals aren't exactly accustomed to this sort of thing, so whilst I was standing on my back porch, shirtless, eating a sandwich (or, to complete the image, 'sammich'), most everyone was rushing into their homes as the emergency sirens made, interestingly, the same noise that they do when Gamera drops by.

My supervisor commented to me the next day that his son, age six if I recall correctly, was mortified by the sheer magnitude of the thing. I recall (as I'm sure Mom and Dad do quite thoroughly) that until adolescence or so I was also afraid of storms. Afraid is an innacurate word. Discomposed? But I wonder why that is the case for so many children. To me the sound of thunder is rather reminiscent of someone stomping on the floor of the next level up, as if angry, and perhaps yelling. I hate yelling, but it didn't occur to me until Friday night that people here, by and large, don't yell. They don't even laugh outrightly, hence why I live across a small patch of grass from an elementary school and almost never hear any noise, even during recess. Perhaps especially during recess, I'm not sure. The people here are almost childlike in that regard, I think; they don't make a ruccuss, no matter who is around or where they are. As a result I tend to frighten even more people here than back in the States with my booming guffaw. C'est la vie.

Anyway, before I go off on a seven page Anthony Bourdaine-style inflection, here's a video of the lightning as best I could record it:

apartment tour

2008-07-31T16:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, team, here's the video that you've all been waiting for (for which you've all been waiting? freaking prepositions):

Jared, a posteriori

2008-07-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

My butt hurts. This illustrates that humans have, in fact, surpassed natural selection as we know it because, if our society truly rewarded those most well suited to survive in a given environment, then computer programmers would be among the top dogs on the heap and more of us would have cushioning sufficient and pliable enough to counteract the effects of long periods of sitting. Marathon sitting, even. In comparison to the sitting that I've done lately a twenty-six mile jog is actually quite tame. But enough about the sitting.

So I'm on the JET Programme now, which sort of entails being in Japan. My Japan is a very intriguing cross between Appalachia and the South of France. The people here are hillbilly wine snobs. They produce most of the wine in Japan just around my town, which is thoroughly believable when you walk around and see nothing but grapes everywhere. The Japanese word for grape ("budou") is homophonous with the word for martial arts ("budou"), which has made my quest to find a local school very interesting. Maybe I'll strike gold and meet an old man who teaches grape fighting ala Iron Wok Jan?

Anyway, the flight from Chicago to Narita was painfully long. It certainly hasn't helped my recouperation efforts that CLAIR had us running around like a mob of frothy-mouthed Niel Diamond fans at Tokyo Orientation, although I did manage to glean some useful info from their two day long reiteration of the handbood that we recieved over a month ago. Also, it was an excellent bonding experience as we'll all be relying on one another for at least the next year. I'll write something later about Monday night when some of us went out to a small bar called Colorado Bound and met a fascinating man named Mr. Oka. There was also fully contact karaoke, at which he thrashed us most soundly.

For those of you who are champing at the bit to see the apartment (Mom), I'm working on a video, so I'll post that as soon as I figure out how the software that came with Vista works. Or doesn't, depending. Either way I now have wicked fast Internet access, so hopefully I can update this blog on a somewhat regular basis. As far as other subject matter is concerned, if you want me to write about something in particular or see a photo or video of something just e-mail me or leave a comment and I'll see what I can do.