Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my relationship with the language. In some ways the longer I am in this country the easier it becomes for me to get discouraged by the fact that I am not yet fluent in the language. Then recently I found a lovely, and perhaps quite insane individual who espouses the following basic method of learning Japanese:
Spend literally every waking hour(or in his case even the sleeping ones) doing something in Japanese
He went on to go from zero to fluent in 18 months, in the middle of Utah, while carrying on a full course load, and a social life.
He has a wonderful collection of surprisingly motivational articles up on a site of his, but the sheer insanity of the idea as first presented really got me thinking about my own relationship with the language.
I spent 4 years "studying" Japanese, but in that time how many hours did I actually spend listening to and reading Japanese? Probably surprisingly few, especially given that I was clinically lazy outside of class. And often in class, for that matter. 1 hour x 3 days a week x 52 weeks x 4 years = 624 hours. Maybe 1-2000 if you add in Tokyo, and some out-of-class work. The average Japanese toddler has somewhere in the range of 40,000 hours of Japanese listening practice. To poach a quote: "It is a poisonous combination of ignorance, arrogance and innumeracy to expect to have even passable Japanese WITH AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE LESS EFFORT than even a typical Japanese toddler has put in." I am a miserable failure.
Or maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm just finally coming around to the wonderful reality that life is not a matter of talent, genius, or education. It's not even so much a matter of effort. Your work need not be painful for it to have value. It's persistence. Just showing up, day after day after day.
New Years is fast approaching, and in the traditions of America-land, we generally view this as a time to change ourselves. New Years resolutions have always been one of those surreal practices which I have never quite been able to grasp. This year, I am going to will myself to enact some sort of change, not so much by actually changing anything, but by WILLING IT SO. This year, I will go to the gym every day, despite the fact that I find it cripplingly boring and tedious, and would really rather pull out my fingernails with pliers. Maybe the answer is not to resolve to fight harder, struggle through the pain for a brighter tomorrow, and blame our failures on our own weakness. Maybe we just need to play more.
Next year I'm going to play more.
...and ask that waitress out.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Dive Shop Bounenkai
it begs mentioning that I am still at least moderately intoxicated, but I shall try not to make a fool of myself while recounting the events of the evening.
Tonight was the first night of what I am dubbing the mid-year exam for my liver. We've trained hard for this day, and survived with flying colors. I do not believe my cup ever dipped below half-full all night long, because a table full of toothless but ever vigilant fisherfolk would spring up to refill my glass the minute it was lowered from my lips. Still, I pace myself moderately, bringing all the drunkenness avoidance tips I had at my disposal to ensure that tomorrow I would still be among the living.
The dive shop I frequent is on the opposite side of the island. On such a small chunk of land, you would not believe how drastically different each of the tiny villages of no more than two-hundred people can be. They're all fiercely independent, competitive, and proud. Soumachi is the 2nd biggest town on the island, home to its own middle school and something that constitutes an infrastructure: food store, restaurant, etc. There is a motley collection of fishermen, construction workers, dive rats and middle schoolers pretty much perpetually gracing the halls of the Yonemuri household/dive shop/restaurant. I do not know how they know, but when ever there is any kind of food being prepared, they descend like clockwork flies.
Tonight was no normal night though. The meal began with what I can only describe as shark jerky. Not as chewy as the dessicated beef stuff designed to survive nuclear holocaust, but certainly with a certain dried, salted quality to it. It was delicious. The meal proceeded through to steaming nabe, a pot of broth into which various sea critters are thrown, along with vegetables. No less than 300 dollars worth of Kikai giant prawns found its way into those pots. Along side were plates of fresh caught squid, faint purple skin-tones drawing praise from a very discerning audience, and garlic marinated yakogai, Kikai conch which may or may not be endangered, depending on if I ever ask anyone.
After the nabe had been bubbling along happily for a while, and I had dodged my social obligation to drink to unconsciousness by playing with the Yonemuri's kindergartner Nao (who will one day be just an absolute nightmare of a grade schooler, but I love him anyway. He says hello by kanchoing you, and refers to me as "grandpa".), a chef who had been brought in specially for the event began churning out plate after plate of sushi, using fish which the locals had caught probably earlier that morning. Yakogai, raw sweet shrimp, and the mother of all sushi toro, a fatty tuna which can command tens of thousands of yen in high end sushi shops. After the first round began to dwindle, slices of raw horse, basashi, and its rice-bound brother basashi-zushi found their way onto the table. I am not the type who would go out of my way to order raw horse, they're one of those animals which humans have just gotten a little too close to for us to overpower the empathy of consuming Mr. Ed or trusty Silver, but I do rather enjoy high-quality raw meat when it's put before me.
A nearly endless stream of rice-riding fish and horse flew forth from the skilled hands of the sushi-chef, but the valiant fisherfolk steadied their wills, poured themselves another glass of 20-year old shochu which had been tapped specially for the occasion, and made short work of the would be challengers. Nao ran around with a large length of green rubber tubing, and demanded people hold it up to their ears while he spoke, and then blew, collapsing into fits of laughter. Eventually this was met with reprisal, when one of the fisherfolk tied Nao to the banister with his green plastic tubing, and left him to find his own way out.
I chatted with Taka-sensei, and his strangely young wife Chi-chan, an activity which has become a lot easier now that I understand a) Taka is totally cool with me speaking English at a normal pace, with a few simplifications and b) Chi-chan, whom I was originally quite intimidated by, is actually rather intimidated by me, a relationship I tend to do much better with for some reason. I can make people feel at ease, as long as they're not myself, I suppose. Taka has offered to loan me another one of his wetsuits, double thick and slightly larger, so that I can continue diving through the winter. I might go this weekend. That would be fantastic.
The meal finished with a chocolate Christmas cake iced with chocolate mousse, and just because it's Japan, and just because tomorrow is Christmas, for once I just raised a fork and dug in, instead of denouncing it a false prophet, herald to a heathen Christmas. It was quite good.
I left early. Yoda-san doesn't drink and from that point on all that was left was the endless, sloshing, march towards oblivion. I was glad to escape before the truly awkward drunken Japanese banter struck up in full. Though seconds before my departure one of the men said something along the lines of "you should get a girlfriend, because you're a man, and men need relief", cue the lewd hand gestures, which is actually a fairly common sentiment when Japanese men start drinking and I tell them I am single. I believe this particular man was either trying to set me up with a friend of the man sitting next to him, or perhaps even with the man himself, I was unclear on the point because the man had a fairly strong accent either because he was raised on the island or was missing literally every tooth in the visible spectrum.
Bounankai. They're worth a story or two.
Tomorrow: Yakuba (Kikai public office) Bounenkai.
Monday: Live concert with Yoda-san, his wife, and his older daughter.
New Years Eve: Live concert with Yoda-san, his wife, and both his daughters.
New Years and beyond: I haven't the foggiest. It will be marginally traditional, and brand new.
I can't wait.
P.S. Thanks Dad. It means a lot.
Tonight was the first night of what I am dubbing the mid-year exam for my liver. We've trained hard for this day, and survived with flying colors. I do not believe my cup ever dipped below half-full all night long, because a table full of toothless but ever vigilant fisherfolk would spring up to refill my glass the minute it was lowered from my lips. Still, I pace myself moderately, bringing all the drunkenness avoidance tips I had at my disposal to ensure that tomorrow I would still be among the living.
The dive shop I frequent is on the opposite side of the island. On such a small chunk of land, you would not believe how drastically different each of the tiny villages of no more than two-hundred people can be. They're all fiercely independent, competitive, and proud. Soumachi is the 2nd biggest town on the island, home to its own middle school and something that constitutes an infrastructure: food store, restaurant, etc. There is a motley collection of fishermen, construction workers, dive rats and middle schoolers pretty much perpetually gracing the halls of the Yonemuri household/dive shop/restaurant. I do not know how they know, but when ever there is any kind of food being prepared, they descend like clockwork flies.
Tonight was no normal night though. The meal began with what I can only describe as shark jerky. Not as chewy as the dessicated beef stuff designed to survive nuclear holocaust, but certainly with a certain dried, salted quality to it. It was delicious. The meal proceeded through to steaming nabe, a pot of broth into which various sea critters are thrown, along with vegetables. No less than 300 dollars worth of Kikai giant prawns found its way into those pots. Along side were plates of fresh caught squid, faint purple skin-tones drawing praise from a very discerning audience, and garlic marinated yakogai, Kikai conch which may or may not be endangered, depending on if I ever ask anyone.
After the nabe had been bubbling along happily for a while, and I had dodged my social obligation to drink to unconsciousness by playing with the Yonemuri's kindergartner Nao (who will one day be just an absolute nightmare of a grade schooler, but I love him anyway. He says hello by kanchoing you, and refers to me as "grandpa".), a chef who had been brought in specially for the event began churning out plate after plate of sushi, using fish which the locals had caught probably earlier that morning. Yakogai, raw sweet shrimp, and the mother of all sushi toro, a fatty tuna which can command tens of thousands of yen in high end sushi shops. After the first round began to dwindle, slices of raw horse, basashi, and its rice-bound brother basashi-zushi found their way onto the table. I am not the type who would go out of my way to order raw horse, they're one of those animals which humans have just gotten a little too close to for us to overpower the empathy of consuming Mr. Ed or trusty Silver, but I do rather enjoy high-quality raw meat when it's put before me.
A nearly endless stream of rice-riding fish and horse flew forth from the skilled hands of the sushi-chef, but the valiant fisherfolk steadied their wills, poured themselves another glass of 20-year old shochu which had been tapped specially for the occasion, and made short work of the would be challengers. Nao ran around with a large length of green rubber tubing, and demanded people hold it up to their ears while he spoke, and then blew, collapsing into fits of laughter. Eventually this was met with reprisal, when one of the fisherfolk tied Nao to the banister with his green plastic tubing, and left him to find his own way out.
I chatted with Taka-sensei, and his strangely young wife Chi-chan, an activity which has become a lot easier now that I understand a) Taka is totally cool with me speaking English at a normal pace, with a few simplifications and b) Chi-chan, whom I was originally quite intimidated by, is actually rather intimidated by me, a relationship I tend to do much better with for some reason. I can make people feel at ease, as long as they're not myself, I suppose. Taka has offered to loan me another one of his wetsuits, double thick and slightly larger, so that I can continue diving through the winter. I might go this weekend. That would be fantastic.
The meal finished with a chocolate Christmas cake iced with chocolate mousse, and just because it's Japan, and just because tomorrow is Christmas, for once I just raised a fork and dug in, instead of denouncing it a false prophet, herald to a heathen Christmas. It was quite good.
I left early. Yoda-san doesn't drink and from that point on all that was left was the endless, sloshing, march towards oblivion. I was glad to escape before the truly awkward drunken Japanese banter struck up in full. Though seconds before my departure one of the men said something along the lines of "you should get a girlfriend, because you're a man, and men need relief", cue the lewd hand gestures, which is actually a fairly common sentiment when Japanese men start drinking and I tell them I am single. I believe this particular man was either trying to set me up with a friend of the man sitting next to him, or perhaps even with the man himself, I was unclear on the point because the man had a fairly strong accent either because he was raised on the island or was missing literally every tooth in the visible spectrum.
Bounankai. They're worth a story or two.
Tomorrow: Yakuba (Kikai public office) Bounenkai.
Monday: Live concert with Yoda-san, his wife, and his older daughter.
New Years Eve: Live concert with Yoda-san, his wife, and both his daughters.
New Years and beyond: I haven't the foggiest. It will be marginally traditional, and brand new.
I can't wait.
P.S. Thanks Dad. It means a lot.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Christmas in Japan
"Are you going anywhere for winter break?" it's a question I get a lot. Half the time the question is not "are you going" but rather "where are you going". There is an inherent assumption that if I'm going to be anywhere this Christmas, it will not be here. I generally explain my decision to stay here as financial "going home is expensive" or seasonal "I hate winter, and cannot in good conscience move any closer to it". These are valid points, but half-truths at best. Honestly, I'm just really curious as to what Christmas alone, in a strange land with only the vaguest grasp of Christmas, will be like. I have explained my theory of novel unpleasant experiences to some of you before. Even if it's awful, depressing, and soul-crushingly lonely, I've never actually done it. Maybe it'll be interesting. I'm the kid who probably touched the stove full aware that it would burn him, because he was curious what being burned felt like.
Christmas in Japan is what you would get if you observed an American Christmas from a long range spy plane, with a telescope. Cosmetically, things manage to come out as an eerily close approximation of the American tradition. There are lights on houses, things resembling trees,albeit made of plastic or fiber-optic cables (which are way cool, by the way). Presents are exchanged, people sit out front of grocery stores and collect money for charity (although when I asked them what the charity was, they couldn't actually tell me. I'm hoping this was a language issue, although I suspect it was not). Occasionally one even witnesses the wearing of tacky seasonal sweaters and ties. Christmas music fills the radio waves, classic Christmas favorites remastered in Japanese, and rarely some that manage the trans-Pacific almost entirely intact. Aside from the pervasive Christmas cake phenomenon (French, I think?) Japanese Christmas is pretty darn close, as long as you don't scratch at the foil. The problem is that somehow, thorough all this, the part of Christmas which always made Christmas a special time got overlooked. It reminds me of Jack Skellington, from The Nightmare Before Christmas. "This looks like fun this looks like fun, oh could it be I got my wish?" But then what he tries to make once he goes back to Halloween town just goes horribly awry.
I have never been particularly imbued with Christmas cheer. I have fond memories, but by the time I was in high school Christmas had started feeling like a day I was quickly outgrowing. I think it happens to a lot of people. The awkward gap between the time when you are a little kid, sweating with anticipation unable to sleep with thoughts of the bounty that is to come, and the the time when you have little kids of your own. The gap between believing the story of Santa and getting to turn around and tell this wonderful lie to future generations. Still, despite this relative lack of giddy Christmas excitement, I have always appreciated how the season itself manages to feel somehow different. Everywhere you look, people seem to be conspiring together in the cause of general mirth. I once challenged a friend of mine who was still head-over-heels for Christmas to explain why she liked it so much. "The true spirit of Christmas" she replied, without irony or embarrassment. The true spirit of Christmas. It is the one part of Christmas which Japan does not have. And the only part which you really need in order to call it Christmas.
There is plenty of other stuff to look forward to during this season on Japan. There are the endless Bounenkai, end-of-year parties which are written using the kanji forget-year-party, a feat which they take both seriously and literally if the amount of drinking is any indicator. There is Oshogatsu, the Japanese New Year, which is the real winter holiday in Japan which I'll be spending with my dear friends the Yoda's and their two daughters who are in from Tokyo and Kyoto. And I'm quite glad to be able to have these experiences, wonderful, rare and certainly new. But tomorrow, on Christmas Eve, when I'm sitting around in the office learning Japanese since classes are over for the year, I can't help but wonder if I'll be a little bit sad that for the first time in my life, the 25th will just be another work day.
Christmas in Japan is what you would get if you observed an American Christmas from a long range spy plane, with a telescope. Cosmetically, things manage to come out as an eerily close approximation of the American tradition. There are lights on houses, things resembling trees,albeit made of plastic or fiber-optic cables (which are way cool, by the way). Presents are exchanged, people sit out front of grocery stores and collect money for charity (although when I asked them what the charity was, they couldn't actually tell me. I'm hoping this was a language issue, although I suspect it was not). Occasionally one even witnesses the wearing of tacky seasonal sweaters and ties. Christmas music fills the radio waves, classic Christmas favorites remastered in Japanese, and rarely some that manage the trans-Pacific almost entirely intact. Aside from the pervasive Christmas cake phenomenon (French, I think?) Japanese Christmas is pretty darn close, as long as you don't scratch at the foil. The problem is that somehow, thorough all this, the part of Christmas which always made Christmas a special time got overlooked. It reminds me of Jack Skellington, from The Nightmare Before Christmas. "This looks like fun this looks like fun, oh could it be I got my wish?" But then what he tries to make once he goes back to Halloween town just goes horribly awry.
I have never been particularly imbued with Christmas cheer. I have fond memories, but by the time I was in high school Christmas had started feeling like a day I was quickly outgrowing. I think it happens to a lot of people. The awkward gap between the time when you are a little kid, sweating with anticipation unable to sleep with thoughts of the bounty that is to come, and the the time when you have little kids of your own. The gap between believing the story of Santa and getting to turn around and tell this wonderful lie to future generations. Still, despite this relative lack of giddy Christmas excitement, I have always appreciated how the season itself manages to feel somehow different. Everywhere you look, people seem to be conspiring together in the cause of general mirth. I once challenged a friend of mine who was still head-over-heels for Christmas to explain why she liked it so much. "The true spirit of Christmas" she replied, without irony or embarrassment. The true spirit of Christmas. It is the one part of Christmas which Japan does not have. And the only part which you really need in order to call it Christmas.
There is plenty of other stuff to look forward to during this season on Japan. There are the endless Bounenkai, end-of-year parties which are written using the kanji forget-year-party, a feat which they take both seriously and literally if the amount of drinking is any indicator. There is Oshogatsu, the Japanese New Year, which is the real winter holiday in Japan which I'll be spending with my dear friends the Yoda's and their two daughters who are in from Tokyo and Kyoto. And I'm quite glad to be able to have these experiences, wonderful, rare and certainly new. But tomorrow, on Christmas Eve, when I'm sitting around in the office learning Japanese since classes are over for the year, I can't help but wonder if I'll be a little bit sad that for the first time in my life, the 25th will just be another work day.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Adventures in pedagogy
If you work out my relative pay rate I make about 10,000 yen, or around 100 US, a day, if you just pretend that weekends are work days. I don't feel particularly bad doing so, because aside from the fact that I am not physically required to be somewhere, I probably do about the same amount of teaching as I do on school days. Probably more, depending on the day. Like tomorrow for example I am being paid approximately 100 dollars to go eat lunch. That's all. No classes or anything. Just lunch.
I'm not particularly complaining since it's at the criminally large elementary school, and as much as the kids there are generally charming little bastards like the rest of them (often times more so) I tend to have a much higher rate of classroom train wrecks there. I think it has something to do with the one-shot ALT situation, the fact that I only show up at any given elementary school once, maybe twice a month.
At the smaller schools, where I can get to know the kids in about 30 seconds since there are 3 of them, the fact that I only visit once a month doesn't actually get in the way of me getting to know the kids and form a relationship. At the larger schools there is certainly a degree of frantic celebrity which I just don't get at the small schools which is a lot of fun for about 10 minutes. Then you have to try and teach them something, and end up spending hours of your life trying to get them into a line so they can play a game. I don't think the Japanese on that one is particularly hard. I fail to grasp which part of "ok, make 2 lines!" is causing them to stick. I suspect it's that they're afraid of being the first person to try something, and then if they get it wrong the will be publicly shamed, if not stoned to death. So usually 5-10 minutes of dragging and prodding later, we have two lines, and class time is up. Good thing I was teaching fruit, which they have probably learned 4 other separate occasions, and probably knew before they had to learn it the first time. The jump from "ba-na-na" to "ba-NA-na" is not particularly taxing.
I'm rather looking forward to 2-3 weeks off of class for winter vacation. I thought about going to Okinawa for part of it to do some diving, but a good friend of mine pointed out that the water will be just about the same temperature, and going to Okinawa in the winter is kind of silly. People do it for sure, but I'd much rather enjoy the place when it's sunny, bright, and I can dive without restraint. It looks like I'll be kicking it here on Kikai, counting my money. Turns out that unless my spending changes drastically over the next 3 months, I will be debt-free by spring. Ahh, the world is full of possibilities. Maybe I'll get my sport diver license, and start planning that trip to Fiji I've been pipe-dreaming about.
I'm not particularly complaining since it's at the criminally large elementary school, and as much as the kids there are generally charming little bastards like the rest of them (often times more so) I tend to have a much higher rate of classroom train wrecks there. I think it has something to do with the one-shot ALT situation, the fact that I only show up at any given elementary school once, maybe twice a month.
At the smaller schools, where I can get to know the kids in about 30 seconds since there are 3 of them, the fact that I only visit once a month doesn't actually get in the way of me getting to know the kids and form a relationship. At the larger schools there is certainly a degree of frantic celebrity which I just don't get at the small schools which is a lot of fun for about 10 minutes. Then you have to try and teach them something, and end up spending hours of your life trying to get them into a line so they can play a game. I don't think the Japanese on that one is particularly hard. I fail to grasp which part of "ok, make 2 lines!" is causing them to stick. I suspect it's that they're afraid of being the first person to try something, and then if they get it wrong the will be publicly shamed, if not stoned to death. So usually 5-10 minutes of dragging and prodding later, we have two lines, and class time is up. Good thing I was teaching fruit, which they have probably learned 4 other separate occasions, and probably knew before they had to learn it the first time. The jump from "ba-na-na" to "ba-NA-na" is not particularly taxing.
I'm rather looking forward to 2-3 weeks off of class for winter vacation. I thought about going to Okinawa for part of it to do some diving, but a good friend of mine pointed out that the water will be just about the same temperature, and going to Okinawa in the winter is kind of silly. People do it for sure, but I'd much rather enjoy the place when it's sunny, bright, and I can dive without restraint. It looks like I'll be kicking it here on Kikai, counting my money. Turns out that unless my spending changes drastically over the next 3 months, I will be debt-free by spring. Ahh, the world is full of possibilities. Maybe I'll get my sport diver license, and start planning that trip to Fiji I've been pipe-dreaming about.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
In which our hero is a moron
Those who know me best, the cohabitants of dorm rooms past, the occasional snuggle buddies, and the odd parent or two, are probably aware that I am, despite my many to borrow a Japanese expression "charm points", a profoundly stupid human being about 90% of the time. Do note that relatively speaking, the average human might be profoundly stupid upwards of 99, even 100% of the time, so I may be well ahead of the curve. Still, there are certain things, which I routinely find myself doing throughout the course of my life, which to the outside observer would seem like an elaborate system of self-handicapping. As if the world were simply too easy, and required additional self-inflicted challenges to give it a sporting chance.
For example, for the past 2-3 weeks I have been showering by using a tub spigot, and a large plastic basin. This was because my shower-head decided one blustery fall day that it would only accept vague suggestions as to what were acceptable temperatures. It understood the far ends of the spectrum pretty well, the freezing cold, and the literally boiling, but the whole middle habitable bit was apparently beneath its refined sensibilities. For a while I attempted to dance in and out of the liquid fire shooting from its mouth, and then when that failed, attempted to switch the temperature from boiling to freezing approximately every 13 seconds so as to maintain a temperature somewhere in between the two. It was a lot like flossing with a cobra, which is to say impossible, not to mention dangerous. Eventually I gave up and switched to the romantic, but all together ridiculous bathing procedure seen in Japanese period pieces, involving long takes of a steamy room, and quaint wooden buckets which samurai and ladies of the court would use to pour water over themselves. Only my bucket was molded plastic, and my tub, in so much as it was apparently designed with whales in mind, takes about 1-2 literal hours of water running to fill it to the point where one could scoop water with said bucket. So why not, I think to myself alight with cleverness, just fill the bucket right out of the tap! Aha you old dog! You've done it again!
This method of bathing turned out to suck. Increasingly so, the colder it got. It turns out that the period when you're actually dumping water over your head is all well and good, but the minute intervals in between treatments are just long enough for the thin sheen of water on your back to practically frost over. Apparently samurai and ladies of the court were tough old bastards, at least in so much as cold was concerned. But I soldiered on, freezing and huddling around the faint trickle of the tap, and counting the days till spring.
Sometimes, I have what I have come to call "good" days. Feel free to use the term, I'm quite proud of it. On these days, for reasons perhaps outside my control, something incredibly small goes right, very early in the day. Today, it was class getting canceled, due to the teacher being absent. I was informed of this before I even left the office, an utter rarity, and thus had a whole eight-thirty to four-fifteen stretched out ahead of me, brimming with possibilities. I spent the entire day whacking around the kanji charts, learning words such as: memorization, mnemonic device, record (world, and court), standard, and crushing defeat of the soul. I even managed to produce a fine set of cards, so that I could continue practicing these kanji in my ample downtime on buses and the like.
I return home to a world still inexplicably brimming with possibilities. I go for a run for the first time in...actually I don't think I've ever gone for an actual run in which I moved and the floor did not. I went for the first run of my life! On the way back to my house, I ran past my favorite little swimming hole, but in its place was an Atlantean continent of algae-covered coral. Apparently I have never been there at low-tide, which is indeed quite low. It was beautiful. I ate real food, which I had made the night previous, paid off my loans for the month, and checked on the yen-dollar rate and found that despite its brief rebound it was again forecasting a very bright future for the yen-earning JET. I went exploring, and found a Christmas tree, and ornaments, which I placed beside my television. Hidden cleverly next to the boxes, disguising itself as a space heater, was a space heater. How wonderful! I can turn it on in the mornings, and instead of facing the horror of stepping out into a world tens of degrees colder than my warm cocoon of bed, I can ease into the transition. And then to cap the night off, I hopped into the shower-cubicle to throw buckets of water all over my head!
But then I got to thinking: it has been one of those "good" days so far. Why not see if I can't keep my streak going and fix this shower? About 3 minutes later, I have done so. I, ladies and gentlemen, am a moron. Somehow in the entire time between the shower-head rebellion and the great reconciliation (as the events shall be known in the history texts) I never once actually sat down and TRIED TO FIX THE DAMN SHOWER.
I apparently inherited, if not the raw mechanical acumen of my father, at least the basic ability to put the things I take apart back together, most of the time. It turns out that this can solve an amazing number of problems. Like for example, when one removes the shower head and finds that the "hose" portion of the shower does not have heat-schizophrenia. Or when one removes the metallic plate with the holes in it, and finds that there is a cumulative cup and a half of sand lodged in them. Apparently, and don't as me exactly how or why, the makers of this particular water heater/shower unit decided that obstructed water flow could potentially cause explosions or the apocalypse if the water were at an appropriate temperature for bathing, and some sort of fail-safe was put into place for the sake of unborn generations.
I will not say that the world is looking brighter. I will however suggest, that the world has always been plenty bright. If you can just get over yourself long enough to take the blinders off.
For example, for the past 2-3 weeks I have been showering by using a tub spigot, and a large plastic basin. This was because my shower-head decided one blustery fall day that it would only accept vague suggestions as to what were acceptable temperatures. It understood the far ends of the spectrum pretty well, the freezing cold, and the literally boiling, but the whole middle habitable bit was apparently beneath its refined sensibilities. For a while I attempted to dance in and out of the liquid fire shooting from its mouth, and then when that failed, attempted to switch the temperature from boiling to freezing approximately every 13 seconds so as to maintain a temperature somewhere in between the two. It was a lot like flossing with a cobra, which is to say impossible, not to mention dangerous. Eventually I gave up and switched to the romantic, but all together ridiculous bathing procedure seen in Japanese period pieces, involving long takes of a steamy room, and quaint wooden buckets which samurai and ladies of the court would use to pour water over themselves. Only my bucket was molded plastic, and my tub, in so much as it was apparently designed with whales in mind, takes about 1-2 literal hours of water running to fill it to the point where one could scoop water with said bucket. So why not, I think to myself alight with cleverness, just fill the bucket right out of the tap! Aha you old dog! You've done it again!
This method of bathing turned out to suck. Increasingly so, the colder it got. It turns out that the period when you're actually dumping water over your head is all well and good, but the minute intervals in between treatments are just long enough for the thin sheen of water on your back to practically frost over. Apparently samurai and ladies of the court were tough old bastards, at least in so much as cold was concerned. But I soldiered on, freezing and huddling around the faint trickle of the tap, and counting the days till spring.
Sometimes, I have what I have come to call "good" days. Feel free to use the term, I'm quite proud of it. On these days, for reasons perhaps outside my control, something incredibly small goes right, very early in the day. Today, it was class getting canceled, due to the teacher being absent. I was informed of this before I even left the office, an utter rarity, and thus had a whole eight-thirty to four-fifteen stretched out ahead of me, brimming with possibilities. I spent the entire day whacking around the kanji charts, learning words such as: memorization, mnemonic device, record (world, and court), standard, and crushing defeat of the soul. I even managed to produce a fine set of cards, so that I could continue practicing these kanji in my ample downtime on buses and the like.
I return home to a world still inexplicably brimming with possibilities. I go for a run for the first time in...actually I don't think I've ever gone for an actual run in which I moved and the floor did not. I went for the first run of my life! On the way back to my house, I ran past my favorite little swimming hole, but in its place was an Atlantean continent of algae-covered coral. Apparently I have never been there at low-tide, which is indeed quite low. It was beautiful. I ate real food, which I had made the night previous, paid off my loans for the month, and checked on the yen-dollar rate and found that despite its brief rebound it was again forecasting a very bright future for the yen-earning JET. I went exploring, and found a Christmas tree, and ornaments, which I placed beside my television. Hidden cleverly next to the boxes, disguising itself as a space heater, was a space heater. How wonderful! I can turn it on in the mornings, and instead of facing the horror of stepping out into a world tens of degrees colder than my warm cocoon of bed, I can ease into the transition. And then to cap the night off, I hopped into the shower-cubicle to throw buckets of water all over my head!
But then I got to thinking: it has been one of those "good" days so far. Why not see if I can't keep my streak going and fix this shower? About 3 minutes later, I have done so. I, ladies and gentlemen, am a moron. Somehow in the entire time between the shower-head rebellion and the great reconciliation (as the events shall be known in the history texts) I never once actually sat down and TRIED TO FIX THE DAMN SHOWER.
I apparently inherited, if not the raw mechanical acumen of my father, at least the basic ability to put the things I take apart back together, most of the time. It turns out that this can solve an amazing number of problems. Like for example, when one removes the shower head and finds that the "hose" portion of the shower does not have heat-schizophrenia. Or when one removes the metallic plate with the holes in it, and finds that there is a cumulative cup and a half of sand lodged in them. Apparently, and don't as me exactly how or why, the makers of this particular water heater/shower unit decided that obstructed water flow could potentially cause explosions or the apocalypse if the water were at an appropriate temperature for bathing, and some sort of fail-safe was put into place for the sake of unborn generations.
I will not say that the world is looking brighter. I will however suggest, that the world has always been plenty bright. If you can just get over yourself long enough to take the blinders off.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Repetitive Stress Injury
Winter and I have never, in so many words, gotten along particularly well. There have been times, knee-deep in the Minnesota winter, watching the snow fill the sharpest silences I have ever experienced, when we have put aside our differences to appreciate a rare moment, but when the magic wears off it's right back to teeth and throats.
I came this island in the middle of Kikai-summer, a season characterized by heat which leaves you a sopping, naked puddle every time you step back through your door from say, a trip to office, or your mailbox. I loved every sweat-drenched second of it. Not so much out of any perverse pleasure in my resemblance to a lake, there is just something about it being that hot which throws you into overdrive. When the simple act of cooking dinner pushes your fragile human cooling systems to their limit, everything seems inexplicably alive, and imbued with purpose.
"Winter" on Kikai is, as with most things on a sub-tropic island a decidedly relative term. When you can go to work in short-sleeves in early December, I hesitate to raise any kind of stink about "winter". But there are other parts of the season which snuck up on me.
When it gets past a certain point, diving and swimming become, not so much impossible acts, as desperate ones. Yes, you can enter said water, and if you're attired in the latest in modern wetsuit technology, you won't even be that cold. But there's a certain feeling, like Christmas decorations in April. You're out of season, and you know it. Something just feels wrong.
More surprising is the daylight. I hadn't really noticed it before this week, but these days the ven-diagram of "daylight" and "time at work" are an eclipse drifting towards totality. I get home from work and have maybe an hour of daylight, and for some reason this is incredibly depressing. The weather gods are, as expected, also in on it. I think it rained maybe once in the first 3 months here on Kikai (aside from, you know, the typhoons). I believe the ratio has definitely shifted towards the polar opposite for weeks now. Too many clouds. I think I miss the sun. More than the cold, I miss the sun.
I think as far as winter bottom-outs go, this one won't be particularly bad. Winter is a very hard time for a lot of JETs. Japan is a land imbued with robotic, talking toilets, who greet you with something disturbingly similar to a grin, launched from automatic-rising toilet seats. For all this unbridled technological prowess, Japan stubbornly refuses to believe in insulation, or central heating. It's not even something which "some" people do. They are mythical creatures, like unicorns or mermaids. This leads to the unfortunate kerosene heater solution, which has you juggling hypothermia and asphyxiation, or foregoing a heater and sleeping huddled in a ball on your heated rug. Add to this the lack of Thanksgiving in Japan, and the even more damaging vague hints of Christmas, just enough to remind you that somewhere in the world there are real Christmas-like events occurring even as you ponder where the hell Christmas cake came from, and wonder why Japanese kids are willing to buy a skinny, blonde Santa (more on this in later posts). Plus you will probably at some point realize you are completely and utterly alone in a world of bobbing black hair, and suits. Cold, lonely, homesick, plus all the usual work stress and whatever cultural adaptation problems you were having before you became cold, lonely, and homesick. Yes, winter does indeed suck.
Compared to this, my life remains comparatively fantastic. Hell, the winter solstice comes at the end of December, then my biggest gripe starts to turn itself around. I'm in kind of a Middle-school arc of my job right now, but honestly I like middle school. All my English teachers a) speak fairly respectable English and b) have me actively participating in the planning of lessons despite the fact I only show up once a week. These are both awesome. The kids are hilarious little bastards, and I could see how they could drive the occasional ALT to madness, but they're not malevolent or anything, even when the entire 2nd year class of 60 kids runs up to you and starts grabbing your fat. "IT FEELS LIKE MOCHI!!!" my favorite little bastard Keisuke screams. Hahaaa...he'll pay. As soon as his back brace comes off and I can throw him again.
I'll try and keep the posts coming more regularly. November was...just one of those months. Life gets a little bit ahead of you, and before you know it three weeks have passed.
I came this island in the middle of Kikai-summer, a season characterized by heat which leaves you a sopping, naked puddle every time you step back through your door from say, a trip to office, or your mailbox. I loved every sweat-drenched second of it. Not so much out of any perverse pleasure in my resemblance to a lake, there is just something about it being that hot which throws you into overdrive. When the simple act of cooking dinner pushes your fragile human cooling systems to their limit, everything seems inexplicably alive, and imbued with purpose.
"Winter" on Kikai is, as with most things on a sub-tropic island a decidedly relative term. When you can go to work in short-sleeves in early December, I hesitate to raise any kind of stink about "winter". But there are other parts of the season which snuck up on me.
When it gets past a certain point, diving and swimming become, not so much impossible acts, as desperate ones. Yes, you can enter said water, and if you're attired in the latest in modern wetsuit technology, you won't even be that cold. But there's a certain feeling, like Christmas decorations in April. You're out of season, and you know it. Something just feels wrong.
More surprising is the daylight. I hadn't really noticed it before this week, but these days the ven-diagram of "daylight" and "time at work" are an eclipse drifting towards totality. I get home from work and have maybe an hour of daylight, and for some reason this is incredibly depressing. The weather gods are, as expected, also in on it. I think it rained maybe once in the first 3 months here on Kikai (aside from, you know, the typhoons). I believe the ratio has definitely shifted towards the polar opposite for weeks now. Too many clouds. I think I miss the sun. More than the cold, I miss the sun.
I think as far as winter bottom-outs go, this one won't be particularly bad. Winter is a very hard time for a lot of JETs. Japan is a land imbued with robotic, talking toilets, who greet you with something disturbingly similar to a grin, launched from automatic-rising toilet seats. For all this unbridled technological prowess, Japan stubbornly refuses to believe in insulation, or central heating. It's not even something which "some" people do. They are mythical creatures, like unicorns or mermaids. This leads to the unfortunate kerosene heater solution, which has you juggling hypothermia and asphyxiation, or foregoing a heater and sleeping huddled in a ball on your heated rug. Add to this the lack of Thanksgiving in Japan, and the even more damaging vague hints of Christmas, just enough to remind you that somewhere in the world there are real Christmas-like events occurring even as you ponder where the hell Christmas cake came from, and wonder why Japanese kids are willing to buy a skinny, blonde Santa (more on this in later posts). Plus you will probably at some point realize you are completely and utterly alone in a world of bobbing black hair, and suits. Cold, lonely, homesick, plus all the usual work stress and whatever cultural adaptation problems you were having before you became cold, lonely, and homesick. Yes, winter does indeed suck.
Compared to this, my life remains comparatively fantastic. Hell, the winter solstice comes at the end of December, then my biggest gripe starts to turn itself around. I'm in kind of a Middle-school arc of my job right now, but honestly I like middle school. All my English teachers a) speak fairly respectable English and b) have me actively participating in the planning of lessons despite the fact I only show up once a week. These are both awesome. The kids are hilarious little bastards, and I could see how they could drive the occasional ALT to madness, but they're not malevolent or anything, even when the entire 2nd year class of 60 kids runs up to you and starts grabbing your fat. "IT FEELS LIKE MOCHI!!!" my favorite little bastard Keisuke screams. Hahaaa...he'll pay. As soon as his back brace comes off and I can throw him again.
I'll try and keep the posts coming more regularly. November was...just one of those months. Life gets a little bit ahead of you, and before you know it three weeks have passed.
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