さようなら 富士山

Two weeks ago, David and I moved from Minami Alps, Yamanashi to Iwaki, Fukushima to get a pay raise and be closer to volunteering at Japan Cat Network.

Things have certainly not gone as expected since arriving.
David's job fell through last minute, so he went from having his dream job to working part time as a preschool teacher, I discovered my job was not what was originally described to me (still seems fun, but rather bummed), and we have so far not been able to volunteer much.
The worst part though is how much I am missing my students. It feels like there is a big void in my heart without them. I miss teaching them, making lesson plans, seeing Fuji from the classroom window, getting harassed during my down time, and I deeply miss being called 紅茶 先生

Ni-Nensei after closing ceremonies

Thank God I thought about giving the kids my e-mail address before leaving, it really makes the day seem infinitely brighter when a message from them pops into the inbox. Especially when they write in broken English or talk about how sad it is to not have me as their teacher. For a year, I called them "my kids," but I didn't realize how true that was until I had to leave them behind.


P.S. on the plus side, we are fostering cats named Ham and Egg. They're pretty awesome, and sound like cars when they get excited.  

oh and Egg sleeps in a TV

Down with the Sickness

I have been rather ill for the last few days, at first I thought it was just because it is so incredibly cold in my school (they do not allow any heaters on unless it is less then 10C outside), but then it continued at home. I would get chills so bad that being under a mountain of blankets just a few inches from a heater felt like being out on the tundra, followed closely with heat waves so bad that even without any blankets on me I was drenching my bed in sweat. 

This was uncomfortable, but still tolerable. Then came the horrible waves of pain, I convulsed pathetically even while lying in bed and spent most of my time lying around moaning while David looked on helplessly, he tried to comfort me, but it is hard to make someone feel better when they feel as if their organs are trying to explode through their body (all I could think of when writing that was the stomach scene from Aliens).

Then come this morning, I am faced with the decision of if I should go to school or not. I did actually start to get ready, but then doubled over in pain and thought this might not be the best decision. I called my company and the Board of Education, they both told me that that was quite sad but to try and feel better as quickly as possible, which is fine, that’s what you would expect from an employer. Disappointment in the situation, but understanding that you cannot change the current circumstances.

Then, I get a call from my school, telling me I should come in anyways. I explained that I have a fever, am in pain, and that blood is literally coming out of multiple orifices (lovely, huh?), they followed this up with, “so are you sure you can’t come in and teach?”

I bit my toungue, said yes it is a rest day for me, and hung up. This was closely followed with a call from someone at my company, asking me the same damn thing, “so are you sure you can’t come in and teach?”

Did these people miss the part where I said the words fever and blood?

I know quite well that here in Japan, most people still go to school or work while ill, they just simply “tough it out” and wear a mask, which has always been something that angers me, but I try to ignore it since it is their culture and it is not my place to pass judgment on how they run their nation. It annoys me whenever a teacher comes in quite obviously under the weather, sometimes they have even gone to the hospital and then come in to teach now that they have medicine to get them through the day, but that is not me. That is NOT how we do things in America. If you are sick, you do not pass it on to an entire school filled with children, you fucking stay home.  You do not allow yourself pass out in the middle in the middle of class from sickness. And you do not, ever, tell a person who is sick to “suck it up.”

If they want to do that, that is their prerogative, but there is no way in Hell you are going to get me to suffer through a day of work and possibly get 700 people sick.

I apologize in advance if this entry is not entire logical or sounds overly angry, still feeling ill and emotions/logic are a tad bit out of whack.

Example: cried like a baby earlier cause the cats knocked over a glass of tea. Fully know that that is not the normal reaction, but currently my brain seems to be saying “fuck logic.”

Local Cusine

This past week during school lunches, I had the grand chance to try two very quintessentially Japanese foods, natto and niboshi.

For those of you who are not accustomed to Japanese food, natto is fermented soybeans that are commonly placed on top of rice, and it looks (and feels) like beans covered in spider webs, it also has a very strong odor, akin to a very potent cheese, like, and –to me- tasted like soggy peanuts doused in way too much salt. To make things more interesting, this meal was had in the teachers’ lounge, so all of them were very eager to see what I thought of natto, and when I made a disgusted face and said “it’s… interesting,” everyone giggled and mocked me for the rest of the meal. The experience was made much worse though, because the smell made me want to vomit and while opening the container, I had accidentally got some on my fingers, so every single time I took a bite of anything, I got a strong whiff of the smell again and had to fight back gags.

Directly after our meal, the principal explained that all Japanese people love natto because it is so healthy. Liar. I have already had multiple teachers at this school state natto is vile and Debu told me nearly all of the teachers at his old schools thought it was disgusting, that being said, Debu likes it! He has in fact been told by some Japanese people that that makes him “more Japanese then most Japanese people,” because most of them can barely stomach it, but eat it because it is considered ‘un-Japanese’ and ‘immature’ to not do so.

yumm

The next delicacy, niboshi, is essentially dried whole sardines, and when I say whole, I mean even their tiny shrunken eyes and teeny crunchy bones….

The first thing to hit me when the lunch lady brought in the bowls of food, were the fishies' eyes staring blankly at me, and their mouths gaping wide, as if trying to get just one more breath. The second thing to hit me occurred when the clear cellophane wrap was removed from the bowl and the smell was released into the room, thankfully it was paired with sweetened peanuts, so the smell was not too terrible, but it did still remind me of a market’s fish section near the end of the day, when everything isn’t quite smelling it's freshest anymore.

So came the first bite of this meal, with all the staff once again looking at me and giggling, as if we were playing the “what can we get this foreigner to eat?” game… the first one was not too bad, very crunchy, and rather spiky from all the teeny scales, but the peanuts covered the fishiness to a tolerable extent. But then, bite two, the peanuts did nothing! All of the teachers giggled and asked “you like?” to which I gestured a “so-so,” because I didn’t want to open my mouth and risk spitting out the tiny fishes that did not seem to want to be devoured. Somehow, I managed to eat all of them, even with their tiny eyes staring at me and their teeny mouths screaming “Why?!” but it was not an easy task, and one that is going to be even harder when I begin eating with the students, because I will then have to smile no matter what is on the plate and simply say “healthy” and eat it up.

Don't look into their eyes

The best part of these two experiences, were that both times I asked a few of the teachers “do you like?” and no one said yes, just “…it healthy,” as if that were a good enough reason to consume such items.

So, needless to say, these two dishes are not really for me, but don’t let that discourage any of you from trying them out.

Both of these can be purchased at most Asian super markets back in the USA and, who knows, you may actually like them.

First Week Down

I know, I am a horrible person for not keeping up with this blog, but it's just so easy to get distracted by, well, an entire new country to explore. I will try to back track later on about how training went and our very interesting experience of moving into the countryside of Yamanashi, but first I wanted to make sure to write about the first week of school while it is still fresh and relevant.


On Monday, the 4th, I had the wonderfully awkward experience of getting to meet the principal, vice principal and 'head teacher' of the Junior High (JHS) that I will be working at for the year. When I say awkward, I do truly mean just that too, because the Borderlink reps came along and so everyone talked around me in Japanese for about 15mins, while every now and then someone would look at me and smile or ask a simple question like:  "are you sure you can ride a bike to here?"
Once all of that was over (only took maybe 20mins), I left without having a single clue as to how many kids there were, what I would be doing, how many classes there would be, or really anything else at all, except that they were all confused by my name.

So along comes Wednesday,  the coordinator has e-mailed me saying to go in at 8:10am for an introduction ceremony that is being held to welcome all the new teachers, and that we will be done and out by noon, but then when I arrive, everyone in the office is surprised to see me and explains to me that the ceremony actually begins at noon and will not be done until at least 3pm. So that means that I not only arrived 4hrs early, but will not be going home early anymore either, joy of joys, it turned out to not be all that bad though, because I need the next 3 whole work days to get rid of the immense piles of useless crap that the previous ALTs had left behind for "help."
Now, to give you an idea of just how much "helpful" material was left behind, the previous 4 ALTs (some of which were here for multiple years) all saved every single sheet of paper they used, and there are roughly 600 students in the school, so multiply 600 by every project they did throughout a school year, and then add all the stuff that has their information on it, so it is also useless... and you're starting to get a feel for what was handed to me. To make matters worse, during my searches, I even managed to find papers and books that were from the early 90's, and an amazing American textbook that had a section about this new epidemic called "the AIDS."
To make matters even worse, any piece of paper that had "secret information" aka even a students name, had to be shredded down in the office, so a decent percentage of the 3 work days were spent shredding piles of paper while an office of Japanese teachers looked confused and sad, because they had thought it would all be "helpful," and here I am destroying it upon arrival.

On the plus side, since my last name is nearly identical to the Japanese word for tea, it was quite easy for everyone to remember my name, and there were quite a few conversations consisting of "is that really your name?, Do you like tea?, etc", and since my name was so easy to remember, it only took the children hearing it once to start yelling "Hello! Koucha-sensi! Hello!" anytime that they even spotted me down the hall (which isn't hard since I'm taller then half of the men and, well, am blond). The only issue that has come up so far with asking everyone to call me "Tea" is when the tea-lady comes around and asks if anyone would like some more, because anytime she asks anyone I hear my name.


That is about it for the first week, there was not a single class to be taught, and supposedly next week might be quite similar because the fitness teacher wants to claim all the students to do tests to see what levels everyone is at, if that ends up being the case, I will either be immensely bored, or I will be learning Japanese quite a bit while getting paid.

Now please enjoy one of the many tranquil views that is along the route to the JHS