An Interesting Three Days

Let’s take a little adventure through the past few days. I was back at な中学校for the first half of this week. There is a huge dichotomy of energy between each grade and each class. For one thing, the first year students are anything from shy to friendly to freaking genki…

Oh right. Genki. What’s genki, you ask?

“Genki” is a state of mind and well-being that the Japanese people live by: to be genki is literally to say that you are just about as well as it gets. When you ask someone how they are:

“Genki desuka?”

And they say:

“Genki desu.”

The near-to-English translation is “How is your state of being?” It’s sort of an all-encompassing frame of mind, to be genki. It is to be happy, to be healthy, to be energetic in body and mind. ALTs and NSs are expected to be 100% genki because that sets a positive mood for the class and helps you give off positive energy that will make students want to communicate with you.

Well, that latter half is a little “drink the Kool-Aid” but if you think about it, it’s better to put on a smile and give off that good positive energy when you’re working: best not to drag your baggage into the school with you. There’s not enough room under your desk or in your shoe locker for that.

Anyway, some of these students are genki to the point of hyperactivity! I love teaching the first years because the majority of students are very genki indeed. That said, Monday was an exhausting day! The students were practicing the “Do you like/have….Yes, I do/ No, I don’t” dialogue, and the teacher’s idea for the lesson was to have the students play Interview BINGO! They walked around with game boards and asked each other questions like “Do you have a car?” and “Do you like ramen?” to get signatures. Once they were done, the teacher asked everyone to sit and she called out students’ names (and her name and mine for good measure). Students who got BINGO came to me for a sticker prize! So of course, anytime you let hyperactive twelve year olds leave their seats and abandon the typical structure of the typical class, it’s like keeping a basket of puppies from licking your face; a fat kid away from the all you can eat patisserie bar; a honey badger away from the soft, tender, helpless baby abandoned in the woods. ..

At the end of the class, the teacher let the students practice the dialogue again by asking me what Japanese things I like. For the record, I like Godzilla, dogs, and tsukemono, I don’t like natto and I haven’t tried fish sausage yet so please stop asking! By far, though, the most interesting class was the one in which one boy kept asking what I like to drink.

Biiru?

Wiski?

Sake?

Wain?

Umeshu? (plum wine)

What could I do? The teacher kept calling on him: I had to answer. So as not to seem like an utter booz-oholic, I said:

No.

No.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes!

Of course, they got a kick out of it, so communication achieved!

As I mentioned on Sunday, my company was doing school visits on Tuesday to see how I’m doing. Anyone who has known me for half a millisecond knows I have a tendency to read too far into things and then subsequently stress over nothing. Turns out, this was another one of those cases, though I’m proud to say I wasn’t all that concerned. Any time you know your boss is going to be looking over your shoulder, you straighten up a bit, right? It was just like that, nothing more.

I was teaching a class at the time the company employee came around to my school, the last one she visited that day. So after school, I met her outside and we chatted a bit. She told me that the teachers think the students enjoy English class and the teachers think I am “very Japanese.” If you want a crash course in being Japanese, stay tuned for a mini lesson soon! Here’s a precursor: it’s not hard.

After the formal discussion, she asked me how my Japanese was coming along and I told her, with some broken Japanese-English that I was practicing…to which she said “Here, this is from the company! We all have one!” and she gave me a Japanese lesson book! It’s great! It’s written in hiragana and katakana, no English anywhere! The cute little illustrations help with translation so now it’s all about grammatical structure. If you keep in mind that you end up sounding like Yoda if you translate it to English, it’s pretty easy to keep up. 

When I got home, I received a call from my head teacher. He makes these telephonic rounds every few weeks to make sure we noobs are doing alright. You know:

“How do you like your schools?” (“Yes, no problems there.”)

“Are the teachers and students treating you okay?” (“Of course! Everyone is so nice!”)

“How do you like the town?” (“Yep, always something going on hereabouts.”)

“Are you getting out of your tiny apartment once in a while and breathing fresh air and blinking in the sunlight like a terrified Morlock?”

Really? I’m eating, drinking and bathing among other things like a human too. I’m okay. If I gotsa problem, I’mma let you know. I closed out the conversation by saying “Everything is going well. I have no complaints and the schools are all easy to get to. I haven’t been late yet.”

Big mistake.

Guess who forgot to turn on her alarm last night and ended up sleeping until 7:08am today? 

A grand total of 22 minutes before I had to leave! Cussing a mental blue streak vivid enough to knock any Care Bear on its ass in defeat, I was up and the race was on. I actually managed to make it out the door on time. Good thing every school comes fully equipped with its own Redhii Revival Kit, aka coffee and tea service: I had to skip that crucial a.m. cup to get to the school by 8:00, but at least the coffee and tea at な is free and you can help yourself to all you want.

It also certainly helped that the second and third year students were doing an English Speech Test today, so all I had to do was listen to each student give a brief speech about either their Golden Week or an aspect of Japanese culture, respectively, then give feedback. I learned mostly about origami, senbei (Japanese crackers), Tanabata and of course, natto.

Fun facts I learned from students:

Origami: Some students make origami as a sign of respect for their senpai, or their elders on their club sports teams.

Senbei: The most popular flavor of the large, round, flat cracker is soy sauce.

Tanabata: A holiday held on July 7^th where the legend goes two lover gods, Orihime and Hikoboshi, meet in the Milky Way. The Japanese people celebrate by setting off elaborate fireworks.

(I wonder what that’s a metaphor for?)

Natto: “it used to be made in straw but now it’s made by machine.”

Or, so says one third year boy. I’ll take his word for it.

Cool, ne?

To close, tomorrow, I move on to 矢中学校 for a few days. Tomorrow is actually when students are taking their first midterm exam, so I’ll spend the day in the teacher’s room planning for future lessons and studying this kick ass Japanese text book…and drinking all the sweet Redhii nectar my little over-caffeinated heart can stand. Also, on Friday, there will be no school lunch provided.

Mayhaps I’ll make my first bento? 

And now, because reportedly, June marks the rainy season in Japan, here are some pictures of the Contemporary Poetry Park near my apartment on the last sunny day we had this week. Enjoy!

Something Old, Something New...Japan!

Starting the weekend off right!

What a week. Nothing went inherently wrong, but it was a demanding week at いい中学校. With some of the schools, the teachers take a backseat role. At other schools, it’s more like car surfing: they’re not even in the vehicle anymore and I’m there alone with my white knuckles and 30 odd petrified/giddy passengers. Sometimes, I don’t know exactly what the teacher wants from me in the way of a lesson, so class 1 is a shot in the dark; class 2 lets me apply whatever notes and advice I can glean from the teacher during the 10 minute break and class 3 is typically the ideal lesson. Though, I do feel bad for the first class because I feel like they got completely shafted. But again, maybe I’m just paranoid. 

“Maybe?” I can hear you say. Shuddup.

Anyway, five days, 14 classes and two earthquakes later, it was Friday afternoon...

Kites!

Quick side-note: In the afternoons, Japanese students clean their school. It teaches pride and responsibility and makes for one squeaky clean establishment day after day. At いい, the fuku kocho sensei likes it if I walk around and supervise the students. It usually turns into a “Maa-ta Sensei!” free for all, which is fine by me: it lets me talk to the students less formally outside of the classroom and practice my Japanese a little while they can practice their English. Anyway, Friday afternoon, I was walking down the hallway and one of the girls was cleaning the floor the traditional way: taking a damp rag, laying it flat on the ground with both hands then sprinting across the floor! It’s quite a sight, really! I was laughing and the girl with the rag stood up and asked if I’d like to try.

Why the hell not?

It’s actually a little harder than it looks, mostly because the floor is slippery, partly because I was in my work pumps and lastly because oh my god, you go so much faster than you expect to! 

I slipped, rolled across the floor, knocked over the bucket of water and bowled over a cluster of first year boys who were taking out the trash from their classes. I broke my nose and split my lip.*

(*Note: None of that happened. It was fun and I enjoyed it.)

So anyway! Back to my hard-earned weekend! This weekend was National Marta Learns About Kitakami History Weekend. I went to the Michinoku Folklore Village and Kitakami City Museum on Saturday. The museum was opened in 1973 with the theme, “Nature and Culture Around the Kitakami River” and the intent of passing on Kitakami’s history to the people. 

Ancient Pokemon

See Jack. See Jack BEAST IT!

The exhibits range from taxidermied wildlife to religious and culturally significant artifacts of both war and everyday life. The oldest artifacts are the Jomon people earthenware, hunting weapons and tools. Then the exhibits move through the decades and go as far as the early 1900s. 

The village is an open air museum that displays about 30 preserved farmhouses and buildings from different historical eras found throughout the Tohoku Region, not just in Kitakami City. You can actually enter a few of the buildings including the 300 year old Kanno’s House. It’s a huge house with a thatched roof where the village head lived. Inside the large main room was an open fire pit with a large iron pot hanging over the fire from an enormous beam. Travellers and the family could hang their damp straw sandals from an iron frame hanging from the same beam. This frame could also hang meat, herbs and roast nori while you wait on the square benches around the fire pit. 

Other buildings included Tearasaka Checkpoint House where travelers between the Nambu and Sendal feudal border would be inspected. After, if you passed muster, you could have a nice cup of tea from the set kept in the corner of the room. There are also a few shrines, water gardens and vegetable patches. 

One of the most grand buildings is the Oizumi’s House and the Watanabe’s Gate: a samurai’s house and symbolic gateway which both indicate authority and power. There are two doors leading inside but you enter according to your station: the nicer, larger door is obviously for high ranking officials and guests, but everyone else has to duck in through a smaller, less impressively decorated doorway. 

A few of the houses show what it was like to live in an agricultural village. The Hoshikawa’s House is known as a nanbu magari house: it’s shaped like an L because in one part of the house was a stable for the horses! Not only did it keep the house warm in the winter, but it also shows the close relationship between men and their horses whether it was for use in the field or in battle. 

So during this whole excursion, there were a few people walking around the village, but since the was a bit windy, the place wasn’t crowded. However, there was one visitor in particular that really caught my attention: a man in full business attire. Three piece suit and he was walking around the houses, poking his head in and admiring the buildings. I’d see him on minute, then he’d disappear around the next corner. Then suddenly, he came sprinting up the hill and was gone like a shot! I was startled, but you know, didn’t think anything of it. I walked down the same hill and was getting ready to walk into a new building when….

Samurai house and gate

BEES!　A HUGE HIVE OF BEES was just a couple feet away on a small tree by the path! A giant buzzing ball of hatred and death! I did just like the salary man and bolted, but stupidly down the hill and right into a dead end. The bees weren’t chasing but damned if I had to go right back up the hill past them! Fortunately, no damage was done. 

But as I was walking back up the hill, I passed two other visitors, more locals to the area. They were going down the hill. I thought about how the salary man had just blazed by without a word, maybe out of fear of the bees or fear of the foreigners, but I didn’t want to risk their getting attacked. So after a little quick translation research, I jogged back after the couple calling, “Sumimasen! (Excuse me)!”

If you can't afford a horse, a goat will do in a pinch

The stopped and looked a little alarmed to see this crazy-eyed foreigner running at them, but with some charades—using my finger to draw loops in the air and making a buzzing sound—I was able to tell them “hachinosu…chu-i.” I may have also poked my arm and said “Ouch.” But the woman caught on and seemed relieved and grateful, but the sweet part was she actually was concerned and asked if I’d been stung! I assured her that no, I wasn’t, and she bowed with an “Arigato gozaimasu” as we departed. So, a great day!

So Saturday was the Old Japan, today was more about New Japan. There are a few things about Japanese culture that you would not expect to find here. Among the rice paddies, the obaachans hunched over in half walking to the market, and the beautifully tended bonsai gardens are incredible and often enormous second-hand stores!

In Kitakami, there is a tiny store that looks more like an episode of “Hoarders,” but up Route 4 is this place:

It is a wonderland inside. I’ve driven by it almost every day for the past two months and couldn’t figure out what it was. It has a 24hr sign with “DVD, CD” advertised, but you know, a big building with no windows…you automatically assume “pachinko parlor.” But after watching young kids, old men and business suits walking in and out of the place for weeks, I decided this was the day I’d squash that curious cat within me.

I was not disappointed! My local second-hand utopia is very similar to the one I posted about from Hachinohe: electronics old and new, used clothes, brand new guitars, and of course, claw machines! I’ve found my new playground, ladies and gentlemen. 

Pleeeease I can haz?

Chicken Teriyaki Pizza...la?

And that’s the end of my weekend. I have some new/old work shirts, a noggin full of Kitakami history and a good deed under my belt. Bring it on, work week! This Tuesday, three of my four schools will get a visit from the company I work for so they can monitor my progress and see if I’m living up to the high standard set for me. I’m trying not to worry myself sick over it. 

I found where you left your childhood

The verdict later this week!

Wednesday Blurgh

 Yay for lazy blog day! Here's a small collection of some random Japan.

Walking through Kitakami, there's this great covered street full of all kinds of clothes shops, produce vendors and some really great restaurants including a Thai place of all things! Some stores have little wooden windmills over their doors so on breezy days, the alley echoes from the hollow rattling.

What are Laurel and Hardy doing in Kitakami, you ask? Beats the hell out of me, but here they are, hanging out in front of a restaurant. For my parents' benefit, note the clear glass bottle in front of Laurel and Hardy: my parents have one just like it, only blue. And they didn't get it in Japan!

More Hachinohe seagulls: they make their nests just about anywhere...including right out in the freaking middle of the walkway. So little green frames are placed around some of the nests so tourists and visitors don't step on the eggs. Really, though, it'd be hard to miss the large, angry bird ready to snap through your Achilles tendon.

Why yes. Yes it is. Just so there's no mistake: this was a hamburger sandwich and it was a snack food. A delicious snack food.

Oh, Ninohe Mama-san. Your food is so amazing! For the record, a mama-san is a woman who owns a bar who makes it a part of the business to socialize with the patrons. This mama-san in particular takes very VERY good care of the foreigners who stop by for the occasional drink and snack. Every time I see Mama-san, she makes amazing food. Last time, it was tori-niku and cow tongue. This time, soy sauce flavored onigiri (riceballs), Japanese spinach from her own garden, and yaki-soba! Love her!

A little bit of home in Mama-san's: my mother uses the same Kikoman bottle. Love you, Mom!

Ninohe fireflies: I'll be back for you come summer. Just you wait! I'm counting down the days until your glittery butts again light up the night!

And because they never made it as far as my first blog, a couple of firsts:  

My first taste of Japanese fast food a la Sukiya...great for gyuudon! After a very long day including the flight from Baltimore to Toronto to Narita and a long evening of orientation, this was the most succulent and decadent thing yen could buy!

The products of my first grocery trip in Kitakami. Look how healthy I thought I was going to be! Oh, Me from two months ago, what were you thinking?

What? Ninohe Again?

Beautiful Ninohe!

What is this feeling, so sudden and new?

My calves are throbbing but beastly to boot! 

Just got back from another weekend in Ninohe, this time for some hiking! Yes, friends, you heard it right here: I’m apparently an athlete now. I jog, I hike, I will supposedly be snowboarding (though a friend tells me Geto Resort’s future hangs in the balance!)…who am I? I don’t know, but she’s got some awesome calf muscles and a not-so-gluteous maximus. 

Hiking came in two servings: the appetizer hike and the entrée hike-lite. So it was four of us for this delicious adventure including myself, Patrick, Scott and Yoko, a fellow teacher of Scott's. We first walked through town, crossed the street and began our steep hike up the side of one of the hills that closely surrounds Ninohe. Thankfully, there were walking sticks provided for the near vertical climb. Not so thankfully, that morning there was a general announcement over the town’s loudspeaker system warning people that bears had been sighted outside of town. Spring has officially arrived and with it come the bears. The hungry bears. Yoko sprung this on us just as we began our hike up the hill: nice, Yoko, thanks for that. Afterwards, every snapped twig, every tumbling pebble was Bear….BEAR! Then all of a sudden

Note the lack of bears...

thrash thrash rustle 

Yoko and I jumped about twenty feet in the air and grabbed each other. If that bear was hungry, it was going to get a two scared shitless girls for the price of one deal.

Turns out it was just a wild goat but one of the craziest goats I have ever seen! At first I thought it was a boar: it was brown, pretty stocky and there wasn’t much of a neck to speak of. But Yoko figured it out and told us, no, that is indeed a Japanese goat. Unfortunately, they’re as fast as they are weird-looking, so I don’t have a picture to show you. For my fellow Studio Ghibli fans, imagine the Forest Spirit from “Princess Mononoke” only less shika and more serow. We continued up the hill and reached a lookout point…which also happened to be the end of the line. We looked around for more of the trail but realized quickly that that was it: game over. Enjoy the view while you’re here. And we did. But now our appetites were whet and we needed a real challenge. Looking out over Ninohe, Yoko pointed across to the opposite mountain range, Oritsume, I believe. Apparently, she said, it’s very good for hiking and you can go all the way to the top.

Game. Frickin’. ON!

Asparagus. In someone's yard. Yep.

We walked back to Yoko’s apartment and climbed into her car. The adventure continues! Or so we thought. We drove for a little while, but then we missed the turn to the trail head. Driving a little farther, we found another sign for the trail. Or so we thought. We drove.

And we drove.

And we drove. Switchback after switchback, looking for signs for parking so we could start our climb, but we soon realized that we wouldn’t be stopping. We were what will forever be known as “car hiking.” A couple more hairpins and another monster-goat sighting later during which Patrick punched me in the head attempting to reach for his camera phone, we were at the visitor center parking lot.

Phew. What an exhausting hike!

Nevertheless, it was a beautiful view. We looked down on Ninohe, gods of car hiking. From the parking lot, we could see Mt. Iwate in the misty distance! 

So right now you’re thinking, that’s it? Well, at first, that’s what we thought too. There wasn’t much at the top of the hill, but there was a visitor’s center, a restaurant, an inn connected to the two…and a trail map! There were trails all around the top of the mountain, so we randomly picked on and off we were!

The weather’s been great for the past week, so finally everything is turning a rich and diverse range of greens, and flowers have been blooming like crazy! We were walking around and through flowers the whole way, listening to birds and keeping an ever-wary eye for those bears. 

It was a fairly easy hike, but every once in a while there’s be a steep climb up a hill or some stairs but there was always something to see at the top:

Including this great look-out platform! 

What a view! On a clear day, we'd be looking at the ocean!

Scott and Patrick all impressed and shit

When we made it back to the visitor’s center, we were all good and hungry. We stopped in the restaurant for some curry rice, udon and ramen. The great thing about this place? The owner uses all natural ingredients from the mountain side including mushrooms and fiddleheads or zenmai! So many zenmai!!!

Look, Ma! Fiddleheads! I mean...zenmai!

The walls of the restaurant are also covered with newspaper clippings about the mountainside. It’s also a nature preserve so among the stories about bats and pheasants were incredible pictures of glowing fungi! Through some translating and Googling, we figured out that there is a bacteria in this specific fungus that seems into the trees and will actually make the branches glow on the inside if exposed to light for a short amount of time! Most spectacular, though, are the fireflies. Actually, they’re so famous that Ninohe’s manhole covers are designed with a firefly on them! Finally, after talking to the owner, Yoko discovered that for just over 400 yen each, we could rent a room at the inn and stay overnight! One weekend this summer: a group of us all, sleeping in one room after a day of hiking, a BBQ dinner outside with other guests and an evening of watching the famous fireflies covering the mountain? It’s a plan all but etched in stone! 

 

We’d had a long day, so naturally the dessert course? Nap. 

Today was absolutely gorgeous: warm, lovely breeze, blue sky. Prime park weather! By the way, there are some incredibly beautiful birds in Japan…but I have yet to figure out species. Today was all about the hawks, the ducks, these gorgeous little black and white birds and even a pheasant! Little buggers are fast, though, so no pictures. Sorry. 

The park itself was nice, and there were steps down the bank so you can sit by the cold river and watch the birds and enjoy the sun. 

It was a truly nice end to the weekend, and I’m looking forward to getting back to いい this week: tomorrow I’m actually doing my 50 minute self-intro for four classes…

I know! Still! But I think tomorrow is the absolute last day I prance around talking about my favorite season or sports and how the American Beauty is the national flower of America. Though it never fails: no matter the grade, students love when I pull out a bouquet of paper flowers or a blue crab plushie. It’s an easy “lesson,” so I’m not complaining. 

But really, now. We’re two months in. But with four schools and the rotating schedule I have, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles, them’s the breaks and other such clichés. Though I must say, it is a delicious, decadent, buttery cookie considering I’m completely wiped out and don’t have it in me to prepare a proper lesson! Weekends are serious business in Japan: after a week of hard work, it’s time to play even harder. I feel like I accomplished that and can’t wait to get back to work, refreshed, alive and rabid for the next adventure!

Like something out of a Miyazaki film

And then of course, this thing, which looks like something out of my nightmares...

Seems legit...