Hanamaki Onsen

I've been feeling a bit low for the past couple of weeks. I've been in Japan for six months now, and the halfway point of my contract is coming up rapidly. I wouldn't say this is a case of burn-out, but I was seriously needing some relaxation time. 

One of the schools address my presence with more indifference than enthusiasm. It's not uncommon for me to wait until 10pm or later for the week's schedule with the lessons I need to prepare for. I've also shown up at the school with no schedule and have endured some seriously stressful scrambling to get a lesson together. This never feels good and usually makes for a lackluster lesson. This is also the school where, despite the fact that I gave my self-introduction to the staff in my very poor Japanese, they assume I don't know when they are talking about me. It feels like being in high school: looking up from my desk and noticing the head teacher talking to someone else and laughing and gesturing in my direction. Not awesome. 

He is also the same teacher who either walks to class without me then proceeds to call me "gaijin" to the students or just doesn't walk to class with me at all and shows up halfway through the lesson. Those are actually the better days because without him there, I can relax. 

But at the same school, some of the other teachers are much kinder. I can hold small conversations with some of the teachers at our desk cluster. And the students, although quieter than the other schools, are very sweet. 

Fortunately, the company is good about supporting their teachers and I can talk to them about whatever is bothering me. Still, it's good to get out and just have some therapeutic time for yourself and what better way to go about it than spending a day at an onsen!

Limor, another ALT and a resident of Ofunato city, and I decided to hit up the famous and luxurious Hanamaki Onsen yesterday. This place is incredible! It's only about a half hour drive from Kitakami out in the mountains, surrounded by lush green forests and golden rice paddies. Three hotels connect to each other to form a large and tranquil complex where you can walk through the halls in your yukata from one onsen to another. 

Limor and I met at Hotel Koyokan. There was a wedding happening later in the day: the lobby was full of men in shiny suits and women in beautiful kimono. While Limor and I sat and chatted over a cup of coffee, three little boys toddled around the lobby chasing one another until the party moved on. By then, it was onsen time. Limor had been there recently and recommended the public onsen upstairs.

She was right: it was amazing. We sat in a sheltered outside onsen with large natural rocks surrounding the pool and a hot waterfall in the center. We were surrounded by slender pine trees with deep red bark, glimpses of the sky just visible through the topmost branches. 

We sat and talked for a long time, just two foreign women indulging in some traditional Japan. The rest of the day consisted of wandering through the shops outside the hotels and stopping in a cafe for a snack. We both had coffee and cake and had a wonderful surprise when the waitress struck up a conversation with us...in both Japanese and English! Her friend is studying in Washington D.C. and she was very interested to hear we were from America and New Zealand and working as teachers in Iwate. It's nice to meet people who are legitimately enthused to see a foreigner in their country.

After our lunch, we strolled up the hill to Hanamaki Onsen's rose garden. Unfortunately, just as we walked up, a shamisen player was leaving. The price for a cup of coffee was steeper than we thought.

 

The garden was beautiful. We were both surprised at how many roses were still blooming this late in the season, and how many more are still budding! I'll definitely be going back to try and see them before the end of the season! We looked around the garden for a while and decided to take one more soak back at the hotel. 

I'm a Barbie Bride

As we walked off the elevator, we ran into the bridal party complete with bride! I surprised myself by calling out "Omedetou" (Congratulations) to the bride as they walked onto the other elevator. Believe it or not, that Japanese studying I do every day actually paid off. 

This little trip was desperately needed. I'm not going to say I'm cured: the therapeutic qualities of onsen are highly regarded in Japan but I think of it more like taking your One-a-Day vitamins. If you want to reap the benefits, you have to take your medicine regularly. 

That's a pill I don't mind swallowing.

Morioka Baeren Brewery & Pub Oktoberfest!

Oktoberfest: The word brings to mind visions of golden brews splashing on pants, suggestively long sausages (or wurst), leiderhosen, braids, and the Chicken Dance set to merry melodies of brass horns. There is no such thing as a lousy Oktoberfest. Anyone who goes always walks away with a story to tell, and here is mine:

Japanese taxi! #1 rule: Don't open the door yourself!

Morioka's Baeren Brewery and Pub was hosting an Oktoberfest over the weekend and on Sunday, I journeyed north for the event with a few friends. It was beautiful weather and there was a respectable crowd at the brewery. Tents with tables and chairs were set up as well as the customary food carts. The nomihodai concept, paying a flat fee and then drinking as much as you want/can for a set number of hours was made for Oktoberfest. At one table was a sentry post of kegs ready for consumption. There were four set up, all beers crafted locally and you could taste each or just stick to your favorite until you couldn't stand anymore. Myself, I sampled a few, including the house specialty, but found the lemon beer was my favorite.

Now, I was told ahead of time that this was a BYOC (Bring Your Own Chalice) event, so the night before, I ran out to the local 100 yen store and bought a kitschy plastic mug. But I'm a quirky gal so I grabbed one of those mugs with liquid inside it so that you freeze it overnight and the ice inside the hollow mug keeps your bev nice and chill. 

You'd have thought I had the freaking Holy Grail in my possession. The (drunk) Japanese men who noticed my mug were at first impressed that it was always so full...then they peeked inside to see what I was drinking that had such an oddly green tint. They then reeled backwards in surprise when they saw my empty mug! At this point, the liquid had melted so I laughed and told them "This is my magic mug!" and would proceed to "pour" it out over my own head. They were astounded. Flabbergasted! And they loved it.

And because parents need to have fun too, there was a big bouncey bunny set up for the kids. 

I ended up chatting with a few of the Japanese locals who speak very good English and some of the other ALTs for the afternoon. I also met a very, very, very sadistic German who was walking around with a plate of red peppers and trying to get people to eat them. I made the mistake thinking they were no big thing, but oh my God...Satan's hemorrhoid-filled anus could not be spicier. 

Taking a break from beer with chess...classy

I thought I was going to vomit but instead began hiccuping, which is not fun when you've been drinking beer as your hiccups take on a very unpleasant taste. Fortunately, a friend took me over to the tent when some other teachers were snacking and he offered me his remedy: cashews! 

I've used yogurt and milk and cream to stifle spice but I had never heard of using fatty nuts. Believe it or not, they work! So while I healed, I watched the entertainment: some very skilled jump-ropers...rope-jumpers?

But, as all good things must come to an end, Oktoberfest wrapped up and our party decided to move on out. However, it was only early evening, so we first went to a local bar for snacks and drinks. We met some very genki young men presumably back from a wedding. They also were not shy about talking to us as we explained where we were from, why we were in Japan, why we were in Morioka and which of us what the bigger "baka." For some reason, it was me, but it was also agreed I was the cutest so I'll take that. 

Shameless

Afterwards, we continued on to a local karaoke bar, Pirates. We met up with our friends Limor and Annik and chatted for a little while before deciding it wasn't nearly rowdy enough and the karaoke remotes came out. As the night went on, the bar filled up and we met some very fun Japanese patrons. The highlight of the night was definitely when someone chose "Salve Maria" from Sister Act and everyone sang it perfectly...even the Italian! I wished my voice wasn't shot so I could have belted it out too but I sang as best I could because this is Japan: sing even if you can't and sing as loud as you can! 

AAARRRRRRR!

Drinking culture in Japan is something else. There's actually a common belief that there is no "alcoholism" in Japan, just a lot of people who like to drink a lot. There are alcohol festivals, deals like nomihodai and business parties called "enkai" where the goal is for a team to bond over alcohol, food and maybe onsen. I don't think even is my wildest dreams I could compete with the Japanese way of drinking, but it's amazing to see this part of the culture in such fervent action. Kanpai!

3am jya jyamen: Morioka style ramen

Like one of your French girls

Red-eye? What red-eye?

What's Japanese for "Awwwk-warrrrd?"

In honor of Hump Day (an oh-so-awkward phrase in English, only made worse when explaining it to a Japanese teacher), this post comes to you choc full of awkwardness. 

The Kitakami Sports Festival is this weekend, and that means schools have crammed all their classes into the morning so that the afternoon is given over to practice. What do they practice? It's not just about the sports: the peanut gallery is just as important as the players! Japanese cheerleaders are very different from American cheerleaders in a few regards:

1. No scantily-clad tweens twerking like Miley. Actually, it's just the opposite: students are covered practically from neck to toe. The uniform usually consists of a jacket that buttons at the throat and crisp white gloves. Gloves? Why gloves? Did Mickey Mouse design the dress code? This brings us to the next big difference...

2. Less gymnastics, more gesticulating. While that sounds dirty, that means "waving your arms around" for those of you sans the layman's terms dictionary. In junior high schools at least, mostly, the guys clap and wave their arms in crisp, precise patterns while screaming their uplifting message.

3. Guys? Huh? While in America, a male cheerleader is often considered a minority (and in some cases, an evil genius...in G.W.'s case, just evil), at every school where I teach, all the cheerleaders are boys! I don't know why, I couldn't explain it: maybe it's a macho thing, yelling your school's battle cry like William Wallace charging the British. 

So that being said, I was in the gym with the rest of the teachers, watching the school cheer on the athletes of their school, gearing up for the weekend's sports festival. While everyone was filing in, one of the male teachers was asking what I thought of Japanese cheerleading. 

"It's very cool," I said. "Very different from America. More boys cheer in Japan."

He nodded and hmm'd for a moment before saying, "Yes...but I like the girl cheerleaders better." 

Last week at another school, the second year English teacher asked me to evaluate the students' intonation and "th" sound pronunciation while they recited a passage of text. We stood in front of the class as he asked me the give a "thumbs up" for a good evaluation of the practice drill. But when it came to a negative evaluation, he faltered, trying to think what I could do. Naturally, I thought a "thumbs down" would be the natural counterpart, so with both arms high in the air, I made a silly face and two very VERY dramatic "thumbs down."

Half of the students laughed. The other half looked horrified. The teacher thankfully laughed.

"E to," he said. "Maybe no? This," he made the gesture discreetly. "Means 'to die.'" I basically just told my students their English was so bad, they could just do me a favor and drop dead. Greatness bundled in awesome, right here. 

I'll finish up with a conversation I shared with one teacher on the way to class today. As a foreigner, I'm prone to questions that seem a little obvious on the surface but are really a matter of cultural differences. The most common is the one he asked: 

"Do you drink? Do you drink alcohol?"

"Oh yes," I said. "Yes, I do."

"Do you drink every night?" I laughed and said not every night to which he came back with, "I drink every night. Sometimes a few beers sometimes more." 

"Well," said I. "I can understand that. You work very hard every day. Sometimes, a beer or two is a good reward."

He went on. "Yes, yes. Last night was very good. I drank a bottle of wine myself. It was...very good."

Hands in the air, even at my sorriest, I can't compete with that.

Hanamaki Matsuri

Summer matsuri are winding down all across Japan. This weekend, Hanamaki city, just a short drive north of Kitakami, had their festival. I teach at two schools in Hanamaki, so all week, teachers and students have been talking about the upcoming float parades and shishi odori. There was also a lot of concern about the weather: this is also the time of year when typhoons are pretty common and one was on it's way.

The weather was still good on Saturday, if a bit muggy, so I ventured out into the streets of Hanamaki to see what was what. This is what I found:

Some of my students, waiting for the parade...

Some more of my students and fellow teachers in the parade!

 The floats are all hand made. Some of them have themes based on folklore. Pictured above we have the story of Momotaro, or "Peach Boy."

 

These kids had a great view. In fact, up and down the street, families were hanging out the windows of their above-store apartments to watch the parade go by.

 Sharks and rabbits and tigers, oh my!

 A very typical Japanese festival game involves a trough of goldfish, a paper net and a little skill. For a few yen, you get a bowl and a paper net and try to catch as many fish as you can before the paper tears. I didn't get a chance to try it myself, but watched for a while. It looks like the trick is to not so much scoop a fish but to sort of ladle it into the bowl. I watched one kid catch about 10 fish before his net fell apart, but another kid dipped his net only to have a fish swim right through it.

Might be one of those "easier said than done" things.

Frugality in Japan or Romancing the Wallet and Picking up Tips

Today, it’s all about a few little hints I’ve picked up along the way. After living in Japan for about five months, it would be heinous to even think I’m in any way savvy, but I’ve survived this long on some basic common sense and a ton of luck. But again, as I’ve only been here for a short time, and my great ideas are usually leaps and bounds ahead of my initiative, we’re starting small. And by small, I mean miniscule. 

#1 Newspaper is an amazing(-ly cheap) deodorizer! 

Now before you go stuffing your armpits with the classifieds, let’s start at the stinky source. When it first started getting warmer, I quickly adjusted. I’ve worked summers sans AC at a summer camp on the muggy Eastern Shore of Maryland so I’m no stranger to humidity. I’m even disturbingly ok with sweat dripping down the back of my knees. That’s not usually a place you think gets hot but once a blessed cool wind finds its way down there: oh. Heaven! But as time passed and the centigrade climbed, I found I had a little problem. Two, actually: my feet. In this job, open toed shoes are a no-go and it’s unthinkable to wear sandals without socks while you’re teaching. (They said this in training and I thought, “Really? Who wears socks with sandals?” Japanese teachers, that’s who.) 

But anyway, I was leaving one school for the week and taking my inside shoes with me as I am a woman and I need all my shoes near me at all times. As I cradled my books with my shoes stacked on top, I became suddenly aware of a putrid stench radiating from my shoes. They weren’t merely smelly: they were borderline nuclear. I was reminded of Theon Greyjoy and sobbed to my steering wheel on the drive home, “Reek. My name is Reek!”

Here is where the Helpful Hint comes in. I remembered reading that newspaper is good for drying car windows after you wash them because the paper is very absorbent. I thought, if it works on that kind of moisture, why not its evil twin? I sometimes buy flowers for myself and the store clerks always wrap them in newspaper, old school style. I also get weekly Sunday ads, so I have no shortage of newsprint. When I got home, I store off some squares, crumpled them up and molded them loosely into all my shoes. Then we played the waiting game.

A couple days later, my shoes were cured! I’m not going to go and sip champagne out of the toes but they’re a lot better! 

#2 Member Cards

I can’t stress this enough: Member Cards are lovely little items. No matter where you live, no matter when you use it, no matter what you buy, they benefit you. The trick, however, is getting a hold of one when you don’t speak the language. I’ve tried a few times to get a member card at Family Mart, my local convenience store. I’m in there enough, I wish I had a card. I’ve tried asking for one, but my Japanese still stinks or something because I am still cardless. The cards I do get plenty of use out of are my Nitori point card (like Ikea, I go there for all my home amenity needs…and I’m just racking up the points until I can get something nice!), my Mister Donut (free coffee and all kinds of other benefits) and Honey’s Cinema Club Fashion gives you a discount on your total purchase after you much so much yen’s worth of product. 

I actually got a new card today too: a gas card! As a foreigner in a rural Japanese town, I stick out quite a bit. And since there are only so many affordable gas stations, I frequent either the Shell or Cosmo. Finally, today, after not being asked since I got here, when the guy came back to my car with my receipt, he had a card for me! I guess he just remembered how many times I’d been there and realized it was time he did me a favor. Sweet!

#3 Schools Are Willing to Take Pity on You 

Generally, the teachers at my schools want to be hospitable. They want to be nice. Some of them will go out of their way to talk to me, even if it’s in Japanese and I can only understand the odd word. At today’s school, the geography teacher who sits next to me always makes small talk with me. Once in a while, she’ll pull out her electronic dictionary, but most of the time, we stick to weather. Today, we talked about Hanamaki Matsuri which is the big event of the upcoming weekend. We  determined that it’s like a “chisai Nebuta:” a little portable lantern float parade, as compared to the giant floats of Aomori and Akita. 

The groundskeeper is also very nice. He always makes sure I know when he’s made fresh coffee, like a good enabler. At Japanese schools, students plant a school vegetable garden along with summer flower beds. It’s wonderful to see these impressive little gardens cultivated by tweens! These are skills they carry with them for the rest of their lives: everyone in Japan has some kind of garden or houseplant! I think more schools in America should embark on this kind of endeavor. Like school cleaning time, it gives the students something to take pride in and it builds a lasting sense of community cooperation.

 

And where do these veggies go? Why to the NS, naturally! Ok, not all the vegetables find their way to me, but when I come to this school, the groundskeeper runs outside and picks a grocery bag of produce. This gesture has also been regular enough that now I’m able to say “Totemo yasashii desu. Domo arigato gozaimasu” (That’s very nice. Thank you very much!) like the fastest gunslinger in the far east.    

    

And there you have it. Use at your discretion.

Dear America, Love Japan

I did a lot of talking on Wednesday, so here's a collection of pictures some of my students drew. 

In an effort to get my Japanese students practicing their grammatical structures, I have an ongoing project with Bohemia Manor Middle School back in America. Thanks to the wonderful efforts of my mother and some of the other sixth grade teachers, Bo Manor's sixth grade students are conversing with my Japanese junior high students at various schools. So my kids get to practice writing proper English grammar...and the American students get to learn how to write something longer than a text. 

Honestly, the art of letter-writing is just about as archaic as Ancient Greek or the correct use of "whom." But it's a fun project for my students and they love reviewing what they've learned with something other than another worksheet. And they're letters are often pretty cute. 

At this school, the third year students were reviewing "I know how to..." and "I want you to..." by saying what they can do and asking an American student anything at all.

"I know how to make popcorn. It is easy for me to make popcorn. I have a question. Do you like popcorn?"
All grammar points: nailed. A+

"A yukata is a traditional Japanese clothing. Have you ever put it on?"
Points for originality 

"I have played piano for eleven years. I have a question. Do you play a piano?"
Keep in mind these kids are 14 and 15. 11 years! 

"I have a question. Do you have a girlfriend?"
Actually, this student wrote "Will you be my girlfriend." I helped him along.

"I don't know know how to read English. It is difficult for me to use English."
Could have fooled me!

"I know how to cook cake. It is difficult for me to cook cake."
Love that can-do attitude!

"I know how to make omelet rice..."
"I know how to cook omraisu..."
"I know how to make Japanese omelet and cakes."
"I know how to make rice balls."
The most common things my students know how to cook.

 "Have you ever listened to Japanese music? It's growing colder here. Please take care of yourself."
Borderline haiku!

Rant Day Wednesday

The downside of being an NS: it’s in our contract that we’re not supposed to collaborate with the Japanese teacher. 

Ok, now put your blown mind back together and try to reason it out with me: how are we supposed to put together a cohesive and more importantly, beneficial lesson, if we can’t work with the teacher? It’s one thing to get a schedule that asks you to cover one section of a chapter, it’s another thing entirely to get that lesson through their precious little skulls in an interesting and understandable way. Every class in every school is at a different level of comprehension, so it doesn’t necessarily benefit anyone to have a go-to lesson plan for every chapter. That means having to the same grade, the same lesson, but make different activities and lessons for each one because one school might be a little more advanced than the others! Even that is do-able. I can do that.

It’s the showing up with what I think is a good activity and getting it torn to shreds by the teacher…after the first class!...that I can’t compute. I’ve ranted about this before: on days like that, the first class is screwed, the second class is a little better off, and by the third class, the lesson is bastardized completely, the class has a good time and the first class of the day is still sitting there scratching their heads. 

And there’s no fixing that! There’s no going back, trying again with them and helping them through it. The curriculum  moves on. Too bad, so sad. 

My beef this time is with the lesson I had to teach: the “when” clause.  Example:

         I called you last night.

                           When you called me, I was sleeping.

         What were you doing when your mother came home?

                              When she came home, I was cooking.

These are actual examples in the book. I made an activity where the students had to answer 

“What were you doing when I ….?”       

                                                with     

                                                        “ When you were …., I was….ing.”

There were boxes, a sample and lots of simplistic pictures. An ideal worksheet. This was based exactly on the samples in the text, and they could do that no problem. But they were less than genki when it came to starting the activity.

Side note: it took me way to freaking long to figure out that each school has a verbal cue or something to get the students to start an activity. For a while, I just asked “OK?” and got blank stares. They actually need permission sometimes to stop paying attention to the teacher and start working! 

So I gave this class the “Ok, start” they needed. First thing in the morning, they were sluggish getting to it. So I walked them through the first sample. Still, it was slow going. 

After class, I could just feel this foreboding. I like getting advice, but still, it’s…it’s nonsensical to work this way! I know, you’re thinking “Well, just make up a mock-worksheet the day before.” That’s cute. Sometimes I get my schedule coming off a weekend, so there’s no talking to the teacher beforehand. Sometimes, I don’t learn what I’m teaching until right before the teacher ducks out to a PTA meeting at the end of the day and won’t be out until 6pm. So yeah, hush. 

Anyway, we talked. Mostly it was him saying the activity is difficult. I disagreed but kept my Noh-face firmly in place while I mentally swallowed my own tongue. He asked if I could change the grammar. The grammar! I ended up with:

When I was cooking dinner, what were you doing?

When you were cooking dinner, I was watching TV.

Yeah…not only is it not like that in the book, it just doesn’t sound right, does it? That’s not the point of the “when” clause. It took me a minute to figure it out, but this is actually more suited to “while” instead of “when.” But, I just wanted to get them saying “When this, when that” so whatever. The ultimate goal was to have them say what they want to do when they’re 25. Easy as pie. 

“When I’m twenty-five years old, I’ll be a …”

So whatever. I changed the worksheet, made new copies, and did the next lesson. Still like pulling teeth, but at least this time, it was like the patient was strapped in: less resistance. And this time, the teacher consented that it’s a difficult lesson to teach. I agreed but kept my Noh-face firmly in place while I mentally did victory cartwheels. 

At the end of the day, I’ve conquered another stint at this school. I deal with quite the butt-load. The first years are ridonkulously hyperactive. It’s a great way to spend a morning, actually, running around a room, playing games with the little cuties. There are also special needs students in all the classes, but sometimes I forget which ones they are because the most common cases involve being non-verbal. So I’ll go to a student to demo a dialog and end up talking to a brick wall. Oops. But the most awkward turtle of all is this third year group of boys. 

Somewhere they learned the word “sexy” and now they abuse it on me. “Good afternoon, Sexy Marta.” “I am sexy, and you?” “Marta is sexy.” When I’m saying it to myself in the mirror at home, it’s empowering. At school, not so much. I ignore it and move on, hoping at this point if I don’t react, they’ll get tired of using it. It has nothing to do with how I dress. I dress like goddamn Angela Martin from “The Office,” so they need to just chill. 

Then there are the girls: they’re so sweet. A bevy of them make it a habit to attack me with hugs when they see me or screaming “I’m very very happy!” when I ask them how they are. I love it. It’s positive reinforcement regardless of how a lesson went or how I’m really feeling. The best part of my week by far was lunch with one third year class.

Don’t mistake me: the best part was not lunch. It wasn’t terrible, but it certainly wasn’t my favorite. This was my first time eating squid. Not calamari, the whole body. I’m pretty sure it was just boiled, no sauce, and just a hollow, purple triangle on your tray. Taste wise, it was like a mix between fish and pork as weird as that sounds. It had fishy taste, but the stringy texture of pork…which made it pull apart like string cheese! It doesn’t come off in “bites,” but ribbons! So while it was interesting, it’s not my favorite. 

No, the best part of lunch was after the meal. The girl sitting across from me noticed I didn’t have a cookie for dessert. I just had the almond and dried fish snack pack (probably the first thing I’ve eaten in Japan that I just can’t do. I tried to like it! I really did, but it wasn’t doing it for me. Something about the sweetness of the fish makes my stomach churn). I didn’t think anything of not having a cookie, but this girl actually opened her baggie, broke the cookie in half and gave me half! How sweet is that? Just to make it even better, I held up my half to hers and we said “kanpai” before eating. No matter what else happens, I have that to remember.

I’m also a happy girl for another reason: I’m not teaching tomorrow! Instead, I’m going to Morioka to watch the English Speech Competition. Two of my students from this school are going to give speeches. I’ve been working with them all week, staying an extra hour drilling pronunciation and intonation. I wish them the best tomorrow! I think they’ll do well: the boy reciting a story about a girl singing a lullaby to a boy under a tree in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing almost had me in tears. I’m going to be a hot mess tomorrow if I have to hear that story delivered with any more emotion than he gave. 

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts!