Wh-Huh?

Today I brought in omiyage for the teachers at one of my elementary schools and met with an unexpected reaction. Omiyage are gifts, given to people when you've gone somewhere cool and come back home. Omiyage reflect or embody the place you've gone: either a local specialty product that's made or grown in the place you've been to, a postcard from a famous place, or some regional paraphanalia. Most often omiyage take the form of a small confectionary, perhaps molded to resemble some notable personage (often humourously) or else printed with the name of the place, usually containing a special local ingredient or made in some traditional fashion. Think of it as if they made tiny New York cheesecakes in the shape of IHeartNY t-shirts (actually, that's a good idea...beats Manhattan clam chowder anyway).

Usually you'll get omiyage at the office; it's a work culture here (excepting women of child-rearing age), and the idea is a staple--everyone work so diligently here that whenever anybody gets to go away for a weekend, it's a big enough occaision that they bring back omiyage for all the other people in the office. It's pretty cool actually, though it gets pricey. But imagine that in your office, every week or two weeks you'd get a little snack on your desk from someone who'd gone away somewhere, and then you get to ask them about their trip and everything. "Oh, you brought me a buckeye! You must have gone to Ohio! You know, my son went to school in Ohio. Now he's in Japan, but apparently 'ohaiyo' means good morning over there, so he's never really gotten out."

I've been doing some traveling wth Sayo-chan recently (in October we went to climb Ishizuchi-san, guardian mountain god of Western Japan, then later to Kochi city for a friend of her's wedding, and this past weekend to Kyushu together for a getaway...Flickr pictures to come soon), and I've been trying to do a good job of bringing back omiyage for my schools and dojos and places. Everyone is really surprised and really touched, and everyone likes asking me about where I've gone. I think no one expects to get omiyage from foreigners, or at least not from me (which is fair, it's not like I've been doing this regularly for the 15months). Today's school got a set of reeeeeally good wagashi (old-fashioned Japanese sweet cakes) from Kyuushu, and when I was passing them out the vice-principal says, "Wow! You didn't have to do this!" 'I know, but I thought it would be nice,' I tell him. "Josh, your life is so difficult! Don't you go worrying about buying us gifts! You funny boy! You go on vacation and you just go have fun, you!" Yay Japan.

THX1138

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"
"I think so Brain, but if we didn't have ears, we'd look like weasels."

I like school!

I love school! I even got here early today. EARLY! By a HALF AN HOUR! ME! Even my students know that Josh 先生is not an “early” person. But it was a lovely experience: I had a very relaxed, non-frantic bike-ride here and a nice sit-down cup of coffee when I arrived, and had plenty of “I’m here at school to work today” brain-change time before class started. Apparently it feels great not to arrive somewhere just-on-time. Who knew? I always thought it would be boring to arrive somewhere early. I wonder what it’s like to arrive early for a train, or not have to sprint to the bus stop. Just when you think you know everything about life, you learn something new. Will the wonders never cease?

And I’m already done with classes today, after three lovely periods with seventh and eighth graders. We did phonics games and had little conversations. Ahh, the easy life. They really treat me well at this school—they know that I can bring special things to their table and they encourage me to teach the students new and exciting things in new and different ways, and they don’t pretend like it’s my job to teach the students English (because it’s not—that’s their job). It’s a great life here.

And the students! Oh, I just love them here. They’re just great. Today I doled out special homework to one of my favorites, a great kid named Taiga, whom I call Tiger. Today Tiger came into the teachers office to say hello to me and when I said, “how are you today,” he answered “Josh, I’m very sleepy today.” So I asked him what time he went to bed last night and he said 2:30. Because he was studying! “Tiger,” I says, “I am giving you special homework tonight, to go to bed between 10:30 and 11:00, because even if you study all night, you still need sleep. In Japanese I added, 寝ることを忘れないで！勉強するも、寝るも、両方は大事なことですよ！もし２４時間勉強したら、０時間しか寝なかったら、次の日にテストをうけることがぜったいできません！生活することもできないね！今日、よく寝なさい！This all means, “don’t forget to sleep! Studying and sleeping are both important things. If you study for 24 hours and sleep for 0, you can’t take a test the next day. You can’t live your normal life either, with no sleep! Today, SLEEP A LOT!” The funny thing is, since I’m a teacher and the students are trained to do whatever the teachers tell them, when I give him “sleeping” as homework, he’s totally obligated to do it! And he knows it! “Tiger, your homework is to go to sleep between 10:30 and 11:00,” I say, and his face just lights up: “Ah, Josh, thank you!!” What a funny, wonderful place.

BED!

Highlight of the day today was talking with Tsukihara san (Tsuki-chan) after ukulele band practice, he talked my ear off for a while telling me all kinds of things about playing music, especially about which hand is important to focus on when you're learning how to play--he says that although you'd think it's best to concentrate on the left hand, you should focus more on the right one; the left one's the shakaijin, the worker, and the right is the geijutsuhito, the artist, and the worker's going to learn his task because he just has to and that's the way of it, but the right one either has it or it don't, and if it's got it then it's got to work and work and work to really bring it all out...and besides, the right one's the one making the damn music happen. It was great to talk to him though; I think if he weren't there I would cry most nights after practice for feeling so cast adrift, but he really makes me feel like part of the group. It's hard there, like, very hard. I think everyone must not realize how difficult (as in impossible) their conversational Japanese is to follow. They speak REALLY quickly and with thick accents and slang and jargon and dialect...it's like if a Japanese native came to the states and sat in with a group of Italian apple sellers and tried to figure out their conversation using his middle school English textbook. This is what it's like. But I think they maybe think I just don't like talking with them...rather than, "I can't." Well, anyway Tsuki-chan likes me, and he talks to me, and I am a better ukulele player than any of the other Junior Ukulele Scouts, as I call us (with the exception of Nabe-chan, a relative newcomer and instant fanatic). I think it makes a difference that I have like a million other things going on in my life, and none of these people, lovely as they are, has much else. Like, my week's schedule involves practicing Japanese, studying Japanese, teaching at six schools and lesson planning and material making for each of them, doing lots of aikido, doing even more aikido, keeping an aikido journal, doing jodo, praticing jodo solo on my own time, going to ukulele practice, practicing ukulele on my own, staving off feelings of discouragement when practicing ukulele on my own, planning out and broadcasting a live radio show, teaching adult conversation class, and a million other things, not to mention that I bike everywhere except when I take the train into Matsuyama for aikido. Biking takes time! And energy! And all of this is on top of normal life stuff like eating and doing dishes and seeing my girlfriend and reading the paper (the American paper). So it's all well and good for Nabe chan to become an instant ukulele fanatic if he's got all this time for it, but me I've got to bike a half an hour to the store and buy some eggs, for which I first need to spend half an hour making sure I know how to ask for eggs in Japanese. It's a busy life! And if I spent all my time practicing the ukulele for you people, I wouldn't have studied enought Japanese to be able to talk with you at all! Sheesh, give a guy a break!

Okay, bedtime. I have to leave the house at 7:30 tomorrow, so counting backwards that means packing my bag at 7:25, breakfast at 7:20, getting dressed/teeth and contacts at 7:10, shower from 6:50, hunt for a towel at 6:48, out of bed at 6:47.999999999.
Tomorrow's breakfast is A BAGEL!!!! Or yummy cereal, but I may be out of bran flakes, and then I would cry. WORD.

NIGHT!

Good Heavens!

The funny thing is, this is the first day in a month where not too much notable has happened, and it's now that I'm sitting down to post and drawing blanks as to all the great things that have been making me too busy to write over the last four weeks. I've been busy! Life has been pretty good though. It's been full of good things. I've been having a much easier time writing about the bad parts that come between all the good things though; it comes out easier than recalling all the fun stuff. I guess that's the way of things; when it's all good, you think you'll write it down tomorrow or the next day, and then it's the day after that, and then it's never. When things are all six kinds of awful you're just burning to get it out of your system and down onto the page as quick as you can, but then they're not really worth sharing anyway. Well, some notable moments of the past month, in a very abbreviated fashion (it's late, apologies), and in no particular order.

• I went out to a Korean place with Judo man and his family, and their friends who we went to the beach with during the summer. I love those two little kids of theirs. And them, too; I really love them too, Judo man and Chie. They have some very basic kihon parenting skills to learn, which is a somewhat alarming and somewhat amusing and somewhat baffling thing to witness unfold as they wrangle with their two-year-old. I mean things like, if you don't put your kids to bed when they're tired--say, you take them out to a restaurant until 10:30 or 11 at night, say, when they're bedtimes are at 8 or 9--then they're going to be very cranky and unreasonable for the last two hours that you're out! Like: duhh! Things like that. It's like watching someone drive with the emergency brake on. Don't you know not to do that? But they're sweet and loving, and I do love them all.
  
• I'm back in amongst the aikido crowd in Matsuyama! And I LOVE them! I just love training there. One of the senior students there told me last week (at a demonstration in Kochi that I went to with Sayo) that the Sensei told her how happy it makes him that I come to class! How amazing is that! He's like the most amazing person I have ever known almost. The feeling I get whenever I train with him, their sensei--our sensei, my sensei--is seriously different than maybe anything I've ever felt from another person before. He smiles this big smile when you're training with him and it's every singly kind of feeling wonderful that you've ever known all rolled into one, like getting out of an onsen bath, winning a sweepstakes prize, falling in love, and tickling children all rolled into one thing. It's like being made of gold.
  
• I have gold in me! A teacher gave me omiyage from Kyoto, from the old imperial palace. Apparently all the teachers from this school went together during the one weekend in the year when it's open to the public and they bought me a special sembei (baked puffy rice crackers) with GOLD ON IT! I HAVE GOLD IN ME!!!!
• I broke it to Mayu-chan that I'm girlfriended, and she did not take it exceptionally well. She did not take it exceptionally poorly, and I suppose I should be flattered, but, well. I wish that it were easier for men and women to be friends here.
• I raced in a bike race! 50km! To an island! It was awesome! I am a demon!
• I am doing jodo! It's like aikido, except that instead of peacefully blending your body with your partner's body when they grab you with their hands, you hit your partner with big sticks when they try to get you with a sword, and everybody YELLS AND YELLS AND YELLS, ALL THE TIME!!!! One woman yells just like Chun-Li!
• Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii need to go to bed.
  

Love you all, more soon,
-josh