Just got back from the quasi-department store on the island. It certainly has what one would call "departments" but the whole building is about the size of the produce section at a Super Target. It's super cute. I wanted to pick up some goggles, so I can go swim laps in the ocean near my house, and a white t-shirt, so I can see if I still more or less fit the higher end of Japanese sizes. And I do!
On my way out of the store however, I walked over to where the bikes were, and threw my stuff in one of the baskets, only to look down and realize this was not my bike. There were two kids from the local elementary school sitting over on a bench who I had said "Hello" to on the way in, who started cracking up when they realized what I'd done, as I awkwardly walked over to the other bike rack and unlocked my bike. As I'm driving off I decide to stop and ask them which school they go to, first in English, which made them turn to each other and start frantically trying to figure out what I just said, and then in Japanese because they didn't seem to be quite at that level yet (they were probably about 5th graders, so that means they know like...colors, numbers, animals, "I am name"). They go to the Wan Elementary, which is the main town. It's also the biggest school on the island, and my predecessor had a hell of a time teaching there because it has classes with 60-70 kids in it.
A group of middle school girls walked out somewhere around this time, and I told them all I was going to be the new English teacher starting next month (in Japanese, it's a habit I need to start breaking. I want to speak mostly English with them at first, and maybe maybe fill in the gaps if they are completely lost.), and the customary losing of shits occurred. The middle school girls actually knew my name, I suspect from Ilsa, though who knows. Either way, I think the fact that I am inherently a very clumsy, awkward person 90% of the time is really going to help to not scare the crap out of all the kids. My alarmingly high tolerance for embarrassment plus my alarmingly high proclivity for doing embarrassing things might turn out to be my greatest asset. Also, let it be known that I am super cool among girls aged 7-15. Tell your friends.
From now on, I'm also going to be taking my camera with me pretty much everywhere. It's not like there's anything even resembling crime on this island. I suspect the ants come closest. I'll open up a flicker account or something and put the address up here, and start throwing the worthwhile photos up on there. For now, I'm off to the beach. I need to field test my new goggles, and go get really really tired. Summer festival tomorrow. Should be a riot.
Friday, July 31, 2009
War!
Kikai is an island, full of crazy-huge insects. Put it on the tourism brochure. The trees along the road as I bike up towards the office: palm sized spiders in tree sized webs. Some serious Arachnophobia-type nonsense. Truth be told however, I don't mind the spiders. They keep to themselves, they eat mosquitoes, they hang out. They're like Scandinavia or something: huge but harmless. No, my war is not with the spiders. My war is with the Mongol horde that has seen fit to infest my house. Tiny little brown ants, we're talking grain of sand tiny, but billions of them. I first began to suspect that the ants and I were going to have issues when I picked up my predecessors bag of sugar and the following conversation ensued:
"Ants. What the hell you doin' all up on the outside of my sugar?"
*Hundreds of ant voices in unison* "Wait till you open the bag, MUAHAHAHAHA"
I swear that bag was more ants than sugar.
But I have allies! I have the geckos! Chirpy, twitchy little speed-freak geckos! They're about 3 inches long, and there are at least 3 of them in my room right now. They fight like the devil, and are charming little bastards to boot. I saw one of them flying-tackle this big green praying mantis/ dump truck on a vertical surface. Do you know how hard it is to jump and land sideways? So I have a new enemy. Small, agile, as numerous as the leaves in the trees and the sand on the beach. But also some new friends. In Japanese, the kanji for gecko are "house" and "guardian". Apt.
Other thoughts?
Beaches are close, and the water is warm.
Coral is sharp, and my feet are sad.
Tamagoyaki is delicious, and cannot be made with any of the pans I have, but the failed scrambled eggs which came out of the attempt were still pretty tasty.
Rice is cheap!
Meat is expensive!
Green beans do not exist.
THIS IS JAPAN!
Back to cleaning, and putting my chaotic little life in order.
"Ants. What the hell you doin' all up on the outside of my sugar?"
*Hundreds of ant voices in unison* "Wait till you open the bag, MUAHAHAHAHA"
I swear that bag was more ants than sugar.
But I have allies! I have the geckos! Chirpy, twitchy little speed-freak geckos! They're about 3 inches long, and there are at least 3 of them in my room right now. They fight like the devil, and are charming little bastards to boot. I saw one of them flying-tackle this big green praying mantis/ dump truck on a vertical surface. Do you know how hard it is to jump and land sideways? So I have a new enemy. Small, agile, as numerous as the leaves in the trees and the sand on the beach. But also some new friends. In Japanese, the kanji for gecko are "house" and "guardian". Apt.
Other thoughts?
Beaches are close, and the water is warm.
Coral is sharp, and my feet are sad.
Tamagoyaki is delicious, and cannot be made with any of the pans I have, but the failed scrambled eggs which came out of the attempt were still pretty tasty.
Rice is cheap!
Meat is expensive!
Green beans do not exist.
THIS IS JAPAN!
Back to cleaning, and putting my chaotic little life in order.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
At a frenzied pace
First day of work and door to the desk my orientation consists of "this is your desk." I was forewarned that the Boards of Education tend to have little to no idea of what we actually do on a day to day basis, or if they do they're very Illuminati about it. "Your rank is...insufficient for the knowledge you have requested." They're all very nice though, and to be honest I kind of enjoy how it's a time honored tradition at this point to rely on your predecessor to know your job. They know it better than anyone, after all.
I spent the day sifting through my predecessors notes, and figuring out what I don't know. Ilsa kept a long day to day journal of what she did in every single class, and how it went over. 77 pages in all. I read the whole thing, and lived her last year. Today I think I might go back through and specifically try to figure out a little profile of each class, what they're like, and what they're learning right now. Because we come in to the middle of the Japanese school years, I'll be picking up with the same exact groups, right where she left off. "Your job at the Board of Education is to keep yourself busy," She wrote. Truer words.
Thoughts on my new Japanese family, my house and its army of geckos, and my ambitious new project of making my own bento-box lunch everymorning forthcoming. Off to the store to pick up lunch, and to see just how quickly I can sweat through my shirt.
I spent the day sifting through my predecessors notes, and figuring out what I don't know. Ilsa kept a long day to day journal of what she did in every single class, and how it went over. 77 pages in all. I read the whole thing, and lived her last year. Today I think I might go back through and specifically try to figure out a little profile of each class, what they're like, and what they're learning right now. Because we come in to the middle of the Japanese school years, I'll be picking up with the same exact groups, right where she left off. "Your job at the Board of Education is to keep yourself busy," She wrote. Truer words.
Thoughts on my new Japanese family, my house and its army of geckos, and my ambitious new project of making my own bento-box lunch everymorning forthcoming. Off to the store to pick up lunch, and to see just how quickly I can sweat through my shirt.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
And then there were the stars
Hundreds and hundreds of stars. That great big sea of white. You can see the Milky Way, if you sit for a minute, and let it come. And that's not all. Satellites. Dozens of them. Big, small, flickering in and out of your vision. And even one lucky shooting star, but you don't get to know what I wished for. I've been waiting for it to hit me, that I'm actually here. It has. I am. And man, the stars are beautiful.
I'm having dinner tomorrow with the Yoda's, a family who has been close with the last few JETs. And I can't help but think that it's going to be an amazing year.
A good night. Very good.
I'm having dinner tomorrow with the Yoda's, a family who has been close with the last few JETs. And I can't help but think that it's going to be an amazing year.
A good night. Very good.
Live from Kikai-shima
Internet works, and I will be speaking nothing but Japanese for a year what the hell have I done. Spent the day in buses, airports, airplanes, getting myself from Shinjuku to Haneda to Kagoshima to Amami to Kikai. Turns out, when you live on an island, getting home is hard.
Heat is melting the world around me, though I've got my air conditioned panic-room up and running. 34 Celsius in the shade. There ain't no shade. I stepped of the plane in a wool suit. Remind me not to cave to peer pressure in the future. "But everyone else will be wearing their suits when they meet their supervisors!" Yes. WHO ELSE IS GOING TO AN ISLAND WHICH IS ON FIRE!? But I survived it. And I looked good doing it. As long as you didn't look too hard at the river pouring down my forehead. Eesh.
Our last night in Tokyo Eli and I went out and got ramen at this little hole-in-the-wall we discovered independent of one another, 5 months apart. What makes this particular shop so novel, is it produces perhaps the single most diabolically, cripplingly spicy food I've ever eaten. Ever. And this is Japan we're talking about. A place where spicy is a concept like snow is a concept to Jamaicans. Heard of it, maybe saw it once, wouldn't put it in their mouthes. It was bliss. I walked out and felt like I'd been drinking for hours, and my ears felt like they had a bad metal-concert worth of hearing damage. Somehow, these are all good things when they come from a bowl of noodles. Trust me.
Tokyo to Kikai was 3 planes, which shrunk as we grew closer to the new home. Jumbo liner to domestic to prop-plane. The last flight was a literal 7-minute puddle jump. My supervisor Koizumi met me in Kagoshima city after leg-one. He doesn't speak much English, but my Japanese did alright. Cept the part where he asked if I wanted a drink and my brain went "it's a little early for drinking but if that's what he's offering" only to realize after saying something to the effect of "I have much fondness for beer" that his brain was also going "it's a little early for drinking". Drank a fine glass of tea, and at the rate of island news I guess I'm an alcoholic now.
The house is super cute. Like living in a postcard, if it were in such stark focus that the charming farmhouse in the rice paddy were also full of charming cracks, etc. They really are charming, I don't mean to diminish them. There's something very lived in, and very historic about this place. Generations of JETs, marveling at their hundreds of square feet, their three bedrooms, their hot water heater, their toolshed. I like it. But I need to move in. My predecessor left a bunch of fun stuff around. Ice cream, booze, ketchup. Also the name of an EMT who just moved into town a few months ago, who is apparently a cool dude, who I should call ASAP. Thinking I might give him a ring tomorrow, or the day after. I've got a lot of work ahead of me, and the part of culture shock which I always forget about, the "every single exchange will become impossibly difficult until you readjust to the language" part, yeah, I'm there.
While driving to get groceries, we drove past a little kid, who stared, jaw agape, until we turned the corner. A little girl in the grocery store looked like she just met Santa when I walked past. The local pharmacist told me to stop by and say hi, and then she showed me where the shrimp were.
I am so tired of wearing a suit, I may burn the damn thing.
I made a short, shaky, video tour of my house with a my little digital camera. I'll go post it on youtube or something, once I unpack a bit. For now, I need tangible progress.
Chibariyo. Fight. Kikai's native language.
The adventure begins. Chibariyo.
Heat is melting the world around me, though I've got my air conditioned panic-room up and running. 34 Celsius in the shade. There ain't no shade. I stepped of the plane in a wool suit. Remind me not to cave to peer pressure in the future. "But everyone else will be wearing their suits when they meet their supervisors!" Yes. WHO ELSE IS GOING TO AN ISLAND WHICH IS ON FIRE!? But I survived it. And I looked good doing it. As long as you didn't look too hard at the river pouring down my forehead. Eesh.
Our last night in Tokyo Eli and I went out and got ramen at this little hole-in-the-wall we discovered independent of one another, 5 months apart. What makes this particular shop so novel, is it produces perhaps the single most diabolically, cripplingly spicy food I've ever eaten. Ever. And this is Japan we're talking about. A place where spicy is a concept like snow is a concept to Jamaicans. Heard of it, maybe saw it once, wouldn't put it in their mouthes. It was bliss. I walked out and felt like I'd been drinking for hours, and my ears felt like they had a bad metal-concert worth of hearing damage. Somehow, these are all good things when they come from a bowl of noodles. Trust me.
Tokyo to Kikai was 3 planes, which shrunk as we grew closer to the new home. Jumbo liner to domestic to prop-plane. The last flight was a literal 7-minute puddle jump. My supervisor Koizumi met me in Kagoshima city after leg-one. He doesn't speak much English, but my Japanese did alright. Cept the part where he asked if I wanted a drink and my brain went "it's a little early for drinking but if that's what he's offering" only to realize after saying something to the effect of "I have much fondness for beer" that his brain was also going "it's a little early for drinking". Drank a fine glass of tea, and at the rate of island news I guess I'm an alcoholic now.
The house is super cute. Like living in a postcard, if it were in such stark focus that the charming farmhouse in the rice paddy were also full of charming cracks, etc. They really are charming, I don't mean to diminish them. There's something very lived in, and very historic about this place. Generations of JETs, marveling at their hundreds of square feet, their three bedrooms, their hot water heater, their toolshed. I like it. But I need to move in. My predecessor left a bunch of fun stuff around. Ice cream, booze, ketchup. Also the name of an EMT who just moved into town a few months ago, who is apparently a cool dude, who I should call ASAP. Thinking I might give him a ring tomorrow, or the day after. I've got a lot of work ahead of me, and the part of culture shock which I always forget about, the "every single exchange will become impossibly difficult until you readjust to the language" part, yeah, I'm there.
While driving to get groceries, we drove past a little kid, who stared, jaw agape, until we turned the corner. A little girl in the grocery store looked like she just met Santa when I walked past. The local pharmacist told me to stop by and say hi, and then she showed me where the shrimp were.
I am so tired of wearing a suit, I may burn the damn thing.
I made a short, shaky, video tour of my house with a my little digital camera. I'll go post it on youtube or something, once I unpack a bit. For now, I need tangible progress.
Chibariyo. Fight. Kikai's native language.
The adventure begins. Chibariyo.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
On Shinjuku, Australians, and jetlag
Landing to hotel it’s one big parade. Not the banners, streamers and confetti kind, just a sea of purple shirts “JET 09” and signs “The bus ride to Tokyo from the airport can take up to three hours so take this last chance to…”. I think they used people instead of signs for most of it because they were, honest, cheaper. They’re all JET 2nd-5th years. They’re getting paid regardless. Might as well direct traffic.
The hotel is in the skyscraper district of Shinjuku, adjacent: Shinjuku entertainment district, red light. My old home. The rethread is seamless. 5 minutes and I never even left. Went out walking for photos and food. Found Australians and beer. It happened like this: my friend, Maggie, the other girl from Macalester, we can’t seem to not run into each other. 1000 new JETs in two towers of a hotel, reaching as high as 43 floors. Same elevator on the way down. 1000 new JETs spread over hundreds of cramped, crowded alleyways. Walk by her drinking with some other JETs about three minutes later. She laughs and calls it magnetism. I think “shared fate”. I remember a friend of Lisa’s and think “a glitch in the matrix”.
The boys she’s drinking with are Australians, Irishmen, Brits. I think most of them started around noon. Never caught the UK, IR kids names, they took off in a hurry. Tired, jet lag, etc. Smart money would have been to follow them home, but I was…you only get one first night back. Hugh and Adam. Funny guys. Two American girls joined us at some point. Tara and Marissa (a name I cannot ever remember for longer than a day). And I can no longer remember who started the adventure. We ran around the Kabuki-cho red light for an hour or two, stop in for a beer ever now and then, wander some more. Ended the night in a karaoke parlor on a 1500 yen nomi-houdai, a singularly elegant Japanese concept of unlimited drinks for a certain time period. Perhaps got slightly drunker than intended. It’s hard to keep up with Australians. Hugh could probably have drunk the whole table under the table. Beatles, Journey, Bon Jovi and other god-awful/awesome karaoke standards were belted out in a range of horrible off-key tones. But then that’s the point, and I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun at karaoke, because they seemed to inherently understand this. Screaming our lungs out. Dancing. Elaborate exchanges of air guitar riffs.
It was a good first night.
Jetlag and The Furies kicked me awake at around 4:30. One of my roommates is an EPIC snorer, but only when he’s lying on his side. He shifted in his sleep some time around 4:30, and bulldozing air-raid sirens shook the walls awake. Because my body was pretty sure it was some time in the mid-afternoon, it went ahead and stayed awake. I didn’t really mind though. I will later, when I die, but until then I’m thankful it got me up in time for breakfast, and to see the sun rise through the skyscraper district high rises.
The hotel is in the skyscraper district of Shinjuku, adjacent: Shinjuku entertainment district, red light. My old home. The rethread is seamless. 5 minutes and I never even left. Went out walking for photos and food. Found Australians and beer. It happened like this: my friend, Maggie, the other girl from Macalester, we can’t seem to not run into each other. 1000 new JETs in two towers of a hotel, reaching as high as 43 floors. Same elevator on the way down. 1000 new JETs spread over hundreds of cramped, crowded alleyways. Walk by her drinking with some other JETs about three minutes later. She laughs and calls it magnetism. I think “shared fate”. I remember a friend of Lisa’s and think “a glitch in the matrix”.
The boys she’s drinking with are Australians, Irishmen, Brits. I think most of them started around noon. Never caught the UK, IR kids names, they took off in a hurry. Tired, jet lag, etc. Smart money would have been to follow them home, but I was…you only get one first night back. Hugh and Adam. Funny guys. Two American girls joined us at some point. Tara and Marissa (a name I cannot ever remember for longer than a day). And I can no longer remember who started the adventure. We ran around the Kabuki-cho red light for an hour or two, stop in for a beer ever now and then, wander some more. Ended the night in a karaoke parlor on a 1500 yen nomi-houdai, a singularly elegant Japanese concept of unlimited drinks for a certain time period. Perhaps got slightly drunker than intended. It’s hard to keep up with Australians. Hugh could probably have drunk the whole table under the table. Beatles, Journey, Bon Jovi and other god-awful/awesome karaoke standards were belted out in a range of horrible off-key tones. But then that’s the point, and I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun at karaoke, because they seemed to inherently understand this. Screaming our lungs out. Dancing. Elaborate exchanges of air guitar riffs.
It was a good first night.
Jetlag and The Furies kicked me awake at around 4:30. One of my roommates is an EPIC snorer, but only when he’s lying on his side. He shifted in his sleep some time around 4:30, and bulldozing air-raid sirens shook the walls awake. Because my body was pretty sure it was some time in the mid-afternoon, it went ahead and stayed awake. I didn’t really mind though. I will later, when I die, but until then I’m thankful it got me up in time for breakfast, and to see the sun rise through the skyscraper district high rises.
Midflight
So we’re what? Hour, buck and half, into the flight right now? Just passing Fargo ND. A few minutes ago we flew past St. Paul. “Saint Paul. That’s where I went to college.” Went. Went.
Went. I then proceeded to spill sierra mist all over myself in an attempt to get this laptop out. “Don’t worry” the flight attendant says to another. “It’s only water”.
Tomato juice has less sugar than most things you can get on an airplane. In exchange, you are given about half your daily values of salt. We’re just trading one vice for another. Again, and again, and again.
Things I’ve learned from Amy Hempel: Keep the thoughts short, the sentences shorter, and your writing smacks of brilliance; Occasional punctuate one paragraph with a thought from another; Lie if you have to.
And don’t force it.
Went. I then proceeded to spill sierra mist all over myself in an attempt to get this laptop out. “Don’t worry” the flight attendant says to another. “It’s only water”.
Tomato juice has less sugar than most things you can get on an airplane. In exchange, you are given about half your daily values of salt. We’re just trading one vice for another. Again, and again, and again.
Things I’ve learned from Amy Hempel: Keep the thoughts short, the sentences shorter, and your writing smacks of brilliance; Occasional punctuate one paragraph with a thought from another; Lie if you have to.
And don’t force it.
Friday, July 24, 2009
On the Eve of Departure
We can't all be poets. We can't all tease out the profound from the ordinary and throw it up in a few lines to reveal hidden beauty. But. We can all, every one of us, every once in a proper rare while, sit in front of a window, in an airport hotel room, and watch the rain. And feel...ripples of something profound in the ordinary.
It is times like these, where I know that no matter how far I get from the so called somewheres of the world, there will always be amazing things to see and do, if I'm just willing to keep moving and keep my eyes open.
Tomorrow, I will be in Japan.
Tonight, I sit and feel the thunder.
It is times like these, where I know that no matter how far I get from the so called somewheres of the world, there will always be amazing things to see and do, if I'm just willing to keep moving and keep my eyes open.
Tomorrow, I will be in Japan.
Tonight, I sit and feel the thunder.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Thoughts from the road
I must fight the urge to make this into anything more than a place for me to vomit up thoughts, and keep you all abreast of my actions. The urge to be profound is stifling, melodramatic, and nearly irresistible, so it's best to avoid the problem all together whenever possible.
As per usual "zomgblog" protocol, I'll hopefully get this blog prettied up, formatted, etc. once I'm island-side and established. For now though it gives me something to do, and a way to keep track of it all, so forgive me if I ramble on a bit.
IMPORTANT NEWS ITEM THE FIRST:
Eli has just escaped from perhaps an hour locked in the bathroom. We had arrived safe at our lovely host Alex's place, and gone out for dinner at a fantastic Southern/Creole place. I got this amazing plate of Jambalaya, Gumbo and red beans and rice: the meat was all superbly tender, perfectly spiced, and I forgot my camera so you'll just have to take my word for it that it was a beautiful plate. It was also easily 3 meals worth of food. As a point of pride, and in preparation for a solid year of nothing but Japanese food, the whole plate was consumed. Walking home was...expectedly difficult.
Sitting around the house resulted in a proper food coma, curled up on the couch, mind running wild grabbing hold of little bits of the world around me, and incorporating it into the half-dreams. At some point, I became aware that something had happened in the outside world. Struggle back to reality! And find that Eli is locked in the bathroom. What had happened was: the knob on the bathroom door doesn't actually work. This was never explained, and poor Eli shut the door. Eventually the super, a farily hilarious Italian gentleman, came up and busted him out by cracking out the frame of the door and hammering a butterknife into the lock. When he first arrived, he didn't actually realize someone was locked inside, and the moment where Eli said something before he was busted out was priceless.
Tomorrow we head up to the airport, and the real shenanigans start. Till then, I'm going to get back to the real world. Much as I love the internet.
As per usual "zomgblog" protocol, I'll hopefully get this blog prettied up, formatted, etc. once I'm island-side and established. For now though it gives me something to do, and a way to keep track of it all, so forgive me if I ramble on a bit.
IMPORTANT NEWS ITEM THE FIRST:
Eli has just escaped from perhaps an hour locked in the bathroom. We had arrived safe at our lovely host Alex's place, and gone out for dinner at a fantastic Southern/Creole place. I got this amazing plate of Jambalaya, Gumbo and red beans and rice: the meat was all superbly tender, perfectly spiced, and I forgot my camera so you'll just have to take my word for it that it was a beautiful plate. It was also easily 3 meals worth of food. As a point of pride, and in preparation for a solid year of nothing but Japanese food, the whole plate was consumed. Walking home was...expectedly difficult.
Sitting around the house resulted in a proper food coma, curled up on the couch, mind running wild grabbing hold of little bits of the world around me, and incorporating it into the half-dreams. At some point, I became aware that something had happened in the outside world. Struggle back to reality! And find that Eli is locked in the bathroom. What had happened was: the knob on the bathroom door doesn't actually work. This was never explained, and poor Eli shut the door. Eventually the super, a farily hilarious Italian gentleman, came up and busted him out by cracking out the frame of the door and hammering a butterknife into the lock. When he first arrived, he didn't actually realize someone was locked inside, and the moment where Eli said something before he was busted out was priceless.
Tomorrow we head up to the airport, and the real shenanigans start. Till then, I'm going to get back to the real world. Much as I love the internet.
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