March and April - The Arrival of a Japanese Spring

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I love this quotation,

“Because you know how to feel, and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel. Deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime, and if there is one thing happiness can do it is mask deadness of soul”.

So said Stephen Fry in his letter to his 16 year old self recently published in ‘The Guardian’. Why have I included this rather serious quote at the beginning of today’s blog entry? Well, it occurred to me recently that Ian and I do tend to talk about work rather a lot and most of what we say is quite negative. Ian is stuck in a horrible situation at work where his daily schedule is totally random (there’s no pattern controlling which days he goes to which schools) and he often has lessons dumped on him five minutes before they’re due to start. He’s been desperately trying to persuade his school to improve his situation but he has had little success. He also wants his teachers to complete simple planning sheets and talk about assessment after the lesson. Again, no progress. Talking to a somewhat unhappy husband last night I thought about what Stephen Fry had written and I felt very proud of my husband because he cares passionately about his work here and feels thoroughly miserable when people don’t listen to what he considers to be good ideas. He does have a soul.

I think I still have a soul too but this is less of an achievement because my current situation is not quite so bad. My schedule is planned a month ahead and I don’t get any nasty surprise lessons dumped on me. April has been spent introducing myself to the new first years (the school year starts in April here). At least it wasn’t as bad as the September - December stretch of ‘self introduction’ lessons since this time I was only required to meet and greet the first years. So the text book lessons have slowly wound in to action at my base school and so far they’ve gone smoothly enough. I’ve just finished an online TEFL course which is helping me to form a mental check list when planning lessons or reviewing the lessons other teachers have planned. Furthermore, I have a new supervisor at one of my visiting schools and she is enthusiastically heaping lessons on me, which is good. (‘The Gremlin’, as I nick-named her must have shuffled off down a hole… nasty women only giving me 4 lessons in 20 weeks). The main things keeping me sane are checking my bank account and laughing manically to myself (always fun in the staff room) and spending time with the other internationals and randomly acquired Japanese people. I am currently reading ‘Burmese Days’ by George Orwell and I can see a lot of parallels with life here. Burmese Days is about a group of Englishmen living out the last days of British rule in India but there are similarities. The undeserved and unnecessary admiration / fear from the locals, the never-ending culture shock, the absurdity of ones job, the inability to adjust to the climate, the gin and tonic (oh that’s just me) the missing of home even though you’re not entirely convinced that the values of your homeland are any better. I just need a hammock and a servant and I’d be there.

Of course ‘Hanami’ didn’t help with the levels of alcohol consumption. Everyone knows Japan is famous for its cherry blossoms. The tradition goes that in order to celebrate ‘Hanami’ you must do two things. First, find some cherry blossoms and admire them for roughly ten seconds. Second, forget all about the cherry blossoms and get pissed. Really horribly, disgustingly pissed. And for the Aichi and Gifu AJET community this was like giving the green light to getting in to the most horrible sake beer soaked mess ever imaginable. I won’t go in to much more detail. I know I shouldn’t have bought the 8 percent ChuHI (remember ‘Hooch’ from the 90s?) and I know I shouldn’t have combined it with Sake and I know, I KNOW how much I hated spending the next three days in bed chronically hung-over. I didn’t drink again for two weeks.

But before the relatives start phoning up in despair, rest assured I don’t normally drink that much and I have been doing some productive things. Spring Break (not Easter - doesn’t exist) stretched out from the 20th March to the 7th April. It was a bit odd at first because not doing anything at work means that not doing anything at home doesn’t feel like a rest. And for a while I got the blues something awful. I think I'm one of those people who needs to be absolutely done in from work to really appreciate and enjoy a holiday. It wasn’t all bad though, we went to see Beck in concert, http://www.modernguilt.com, we went to Meiji Mura http://www.meijimura.com/english/index.html and Nagoya Castle http://www.nagoyajo.city.nagoya.jp/13_english/index.html. Sorry for all the links but I figured that if you’re interested in these events / places then you’ll probably appreciate the websites more than my endless ramblings.

Another event on the calendar was my first work Enkai which I invited myself to on April 17th. I discovered that it is possible to eat a 15 course meal (if the portions are tiny and delicate enough) and I marveled at Japanese misogyny. I was curious as to why my supervisor had eaten so little so I went over to her table to make sure she was ok. She had spent the whole time making conversation at different tables because ‘that’s what the young female colleagues are supposed to do’. I winced as increasingly drunk male colleagues made increasingly inappropriate comments in her general direction and so I made it my mission to keep her out of harms way. She is a sweet and somewhat nieve girl who really doesn’t deserve it. The evening began with speeches (boring enough when you understand the language, painful when you don’t and there’s beer open in front of you ready to be drank) and ended with a succession of bizarre Japanese rituals including everyone forming an arch with their hands (think of the nursery rhyme ‘oranges and lemons’) and the departing staff, for it was an arrivers and leavers party, exiting underneath the raised arms. Then the men were given ‘the bumps’, then suddenly it was all over and everyone went back to being serious and proper again as if nothing had happened. Banzai.

Last weekend was JETS on Jitenshas which involved a group of us going down to Tahara and cycling 40 km in the name of this charity. http://www.pepyride.org/ The weather was warm and sunny but there was a fearsome cross wind which made going up even the slightest incline tough work. However this turned in to a tail wind for the last leg and blew us home. Despite the sunburn I was quite proud of myself for doing it and this was my first view of the Pacific which was very exciting. It was wonderful to see the ocean, I didn’t realise that the coast in Aichi was so pretty. And the stretches of farmland and hills were also really uplifting after all the concrete of Kasugai and Nagoya. Definitely worth going back for a day of sitting on the beach.

On Wednesday a group of us joined up with the Gifu JETs and went on a day trip to Nagashima Park. (No link for this one but if you put it in Google you can see some videos and stuff if you’re really interested!) It was so much fun! There was hardly anyone about so we got to go on all the rides. I especially enjoyed the Steel Dragon! The view of the ocean as you go up is almost as exciting as hurtling down the other side. My only objection was the commercialization of poor old Peter Rabbit. Turns out that the unfortunate bunny from Mr McGregor’s garden is now the symbol of this Japanese theme park and is therefore plastered across every paper cup and yaki soba takeaway carton. Kind of sad really. When the sunshine and dizziness had taken its toll a friend and I headed to over to the onsen which was very posh and lovely, despite being the most confusing onsen experience ever. (Three different lockers?). I have never seen so many naked women in all my life. My friend is an artist and she was very appreciative of the opportunity to take a sneaky peak at what real naked people really look like as opposed to the FHM air-brushed version. ‘This is great for my life drawing’ she exclaims. It’s all fun though, with the trees, rocks and waterfalls. Like some kind of Garden of Eden. Maybe that’s going too far. Back outside in the real world I managed to squeeze in a quick tour of the outlet shopping mall Jazz Dream (I know) but there's just too much there to do in one day. I wouldn't mind going back for another tour of the shops and maybe a dip in the water park if it's open.

And (deep breath) that’s it. Next up, my birthday and the wedding anniversary in Cambodia. Yay!

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