A Haze of Nostalgia

I am sitting in Classroom 3-1, helping a student with her speech for the upcoming speech contest, when the familiar strains of "For the Beauty of the Earth" come wafting from the band room, across the courtyard, and through the open window of the class. My head jerks up. I could have sworn I had heard this song last week at band practice, too, but had convinced myself otherwise. Now there was no mistaking it. Yes, it was "For the Beauty of the Earth," all right. A moment later, the song ends, and another takes its place. This time, it is "It Is Well With My Soul," the old hymn that I've loved since ninth grade. I try to concentrate on what N is saying. But my attention is wavering. The lyrics keep running through my head. After the song finishes, the students start to play a classical song I don't recognize at first, until I hear "Be Still My Soul," and I realize it is Sibelius's "Finlandia." Tears of nostalgia start to prickle my eyes. I interrupt N.

"Why is the band always playing American hymns?" I ask the English teacher beside me, who seems a little taken aback at my sudden change of subject.

"They're hymns?" she asks. "They just use them to warm-up. It's for practice with long sounds."

"But they have lyrics!" I insist. "I used to sing these songs all the time!"

She smiles politely and motions for N to continue her speech.

After practice is over, I return to the teachers' room. I take out a sheet of paper and write a note to the band director, Ms. N.

"I LOVE the music you play!" I write in neat English handwriting, hoping her English is good enough for understanding. "They are famous songs in America. I want to cry because they are so beautiful. I feel nostalgic. Thank you!" As I raise my head and put the pen down, Mr. K, the art teacher who teaches me Japanese and who just today told me I was sitting incorrectly at an assembly, comes by. "What are you writing?" he asks in slow, imperfect English.

"I love the music!" I exclaim, showing him the paper. "I want to leave a note on Ms. N's desk."

"No," he contradicts me, taking the note. "Come with me." He starts to walk out the door. I follow, pleading, "But she's in the middle of practice! She's busy! I can't interrupt her!"

Either he doesn't or chooses not to understand me, because we keep walking down the hall, across the sector that connects the two sides of the "H" shaped school. When we reach the band room, he knocks on the opened door.

"Suminasen," he excuses us from the doorway. The students stop fiddling with their instruments and look at us. I half-heartedly wave at all of them, wondering what to say. "Come here a minute," Mr. K asks Ms. N. She, confused, leaves her post in front of the band and steps into the hallway. I stand behind Mr. K, bow, and say I'm sorry to interrupt practice.

"Daijoubu, daijoubu," she says, waving her hand at me. It's okay, it's okay. She peers at the note Mr. K is holding in his hand. "What is this?"

"Jaimie-sensei wanted to tell you something," he says in Japanese, and hands the note to her. He reads it in English. When he gets to the "I want to cry" part, her mouth flew open and she looked up at me, worried that the tears were negative.

"Because it's so beautiful!" I reassure her. "I love it!"

Mr. K explains the note to her in Japanese, just in case it didn't make sense in English. A slow smile spreads across Ms. N's face. "Thank you," she tells me in English. I smile, say, "Thank YOU," and turn to go.

"Come in!" she exclaims, and motions to the door. I get up on the stage at the front of the band room, now facing a large grand piano with a cover over it, and a roomful of middle school students holding their instruments. They are all staring at me. The ones who have seen me in class are smiling or giggling.

"You play so well!" I tell them. "I love to listen to you!"

Mr. K repeats my praise in Japanese. The students giggle some more. Some manage to look proud.

Ms. N has fumbled around for a stool, and now sets it on the stage in front of the students. "Sit," she tells me, and I sit. She quickly steps to the front of the room and flips through the practice book. "Number Eight!" she calls to the students.

They find the piece in their own books.

“One, two, three!” she counts, and the music begins.

It’s a junior high school band. On average, the students are 13 or 14 years old. I am not listening to the London Orchestra. How is it, then, that this group of children playing some practice piece in their textbook, makes music that swells around me and causes tears fill my eyes so that the entire room blurs around me? I hope my glasses hide my eyes and surreptitiously sneak one finger, then another, under my eyes before my mascara runs. The song ends.

I smile, clap, and yell, “Bravo!” The students smile nervously.

“Number Fourteen!” Ms. N calls out. There is a rustle of pages being found and smoothed. Another song is played. I control myself better this time.

When it ends, I stand up. “Thank you so much,” I tell everyone. I am not lying. These kids that I see for only 50 minutes a week can do such beautiful things.

As Mr. K and I walk down the stairs back to the second floor, I tell him thank you again. “These songs just make me so happy,” I tell him as we reach the floor. “When I was litt—” I stop talking but keep walking. “When I was—” I start again. My voice breaks. I cover my mouth with my hand. “I played the piano at ch—” Suddenly I’m not capable of speaking. Tears are streaming down my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I'm okay.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, somewhat awkwardly, and disappears down the hall. I sniff a couple of times and open the staff room door. At 5:00, not many people are left. I keep my head ducked down as cross the length of the room to where my desk is. As I gather my belongings, Mr. T, my supervisor and the head of the English department, looks up from his desk across from mine. “Jaimie-sensei—?” he asks without asking, concerned. I manage a smile. “I’m okay,” I say. I grab my bags, “Shitsurei-shimasu” everyone, and walk quickly to my car.

The strains of some unknown song float down from the band room and accompany me through the parking lot to my car.

Tokyo Part Two

(My apologies for it not being very well-written. It was written in a hurry.)

So I was in Tokyo for two days. Day One I have already described up to the point where we ate at some creepy restaurant, which reminded me of a Disneyland experience. To enter the place, you go up an elevator to the fifth floor. When it stops, you exit into a dark hallway, where you have to put your wrist into a tiny guillotine in order to open the door (it uses infrared, though, not a blade). You’re guided through a dark room into the actual restaurant part, where you wait until the waitress, dressed like a sexy jailkeeper, snaps a handcuff to your wrist and leads you on a chain down into the dungeon that is the eating area. You dine in an actual cell (not locked though), looking at pictures of dead things on the walls and listening to blaring hard rock music. In the middle of dinner, a large whistle sounds and someone screams in Japanese, “There’s a monster on the loose! Everyone get in your cells!” All the lights go out. Then a few come back on again. Suddenly the Ghostbusters theme music comes on and for 10 minutes, the restaurant/cell/dungeon is alive with Jason (as in, Halloween Jason), Freddy Krueger, and a bunch of unknown but scary-looking creatures howling, jerking on the cells (that you are inside of), and running around. One scary thing snuck into our cage and scared the [--] out of L, who was taken off guard. It was pretty scary, but funny, too, because who can be really scared when Ghostbusters is playing? The skit ended with the sexy police woman shooting the monster, and all was restored to its rightful order (except that our entire order hadn’t gotten delivered yet . . . ) That was Night One.

Stephen and I took a train back to Omiya, went to sleep, and got up the next morning to have brunch at a restaurant that served hamburger steak, which will do in a pinch. Then we got back on a train to Omiya to meet L and M at the Shinjuku train station in Tokyo, which we were able to do after much confused entering and exiting of the station.

That day was fun: we saw another shrine (The Meiji Shrine), and washed our hands and mouth before entering (you have to be clean before coming in the presence of God). Then we threw a 5-yen coin into a slotted something, clapped three times, and bowed, so hopefully our wishes will come true. Afterwards, we went shopping in a terribly crowded shopping district (and why is Forever 21 popular in Tokyo?!), for a few hours before going to a cool izikaya for dinner. That night we left Tokyo around 8:30 and I went back to Takasaki on the 9:50 a.m. train.

When the train stopped in Takasaki, I had the truest sensation of coming home. I passed through the gate with my suitcase in my hand (well, wheeling it behind me actually. . . ) and thinking, “I’m back in my city.” Omiya was cool, and Toyko was cool, but neither one of them are home. And Takasaki, for all intents and purposes, is.

I felt a confidence that had been lacking all weekend. Here, at last, I knew what I was doing: how to catch the bus to the mall, how to get change at the little change station, how to walk back to my house. It was all familiar and sweet, even in its unfamiliarity. I guess a few days away makes even a new place feel more like home.

I have so much more to say about the week, this past weekend, and my Japanese class tonight, but it will have to wait. Oyasuminasai, friends.

Saitama/Tokyo Part I

I have never really been all that interested in Tokyo. To be honest, Tokyo always scared me. I know I would never be able to live in a city of such enormity, and just thinking about visiting made me nervous: not that I would get killed or mugged, but that I would get lost, make a fool of myself, or not be cool enough to fit in. Because of this I-don’t-want-much-to-do-with-any-city-over-a-million attitude, I haven’t been in a terrible rush to visit Japan’s capital, even though I only live about an hour-and-a-half or two-hour train ride away.

I felt the same way about New York, too, until I visited for the first time in April of this year. With the help of my three friends who live there, I was able to have a fantastic New York experience without looking (too) foolish, getting mugged, or dying. Even though New York worked out, I’d imagined Tokyo a bigger, faster, scarier city, in Japanese. As it turns out, though, Tokyo, once you get past the mad rush of people, is quite doable, as long as you have good company and a good map, with emphasis on the good map. Even though I would never live there, I had a fantastic time visiting there this weekend.

One of my friends from UNCG who is in JET as well is stationed in Omiya (Oomiya, draw out those o’s!), Saitama, one prefecture over and an hour’s train ride from Takasaki. On Friday night, I walked from my house to Aeon Mall (5 minutes), took the bus from Aeon to Takasaki Station (30 minutes), the train from Takasaki to Omiya (90 minutes), a bus from Omiya Station to Stephen’s stop (15 minutes) and then walked from the bus stop to his apartment (15 minutes). Oh, travel! We had a very chill night eating home-cooked hamburgers and watching Zoolander, planning the weekend’s adventures.

Omiya is maybe two or three times bigger than Takasaki (or four, maybe). After a breakfast of PB&Js and bananas, Stephen and I set about exploring the city. We took a bus back to the station and started wandering around. I found a gigantic used bookstore with a relatively big English section just a few blocks from the station. There were even books in Spanish: outdated copies of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series printed in Spain that had somehow ended up on the shelf at Book-Off. I didn’t want to carry them around all day, though, so I gave them up for another day.

After the bookstore, we took a side street down a narrow alleyway with shops on either side that reminded me of the mercado in Oaxaca. We ducked into a used clothing shop on another street, but ducked out after we realized that “used” and “vintage” meant “over-priced” at that store: a 1980s t-shirt was 4,000 yen, a 60s-style skirt was 7,000.

It was a beautiful day, not nearly as hot as the summer was, with a brilliantly blue sky and a cool breeze. We made our way down the street and into another part of town near Omiya Park, which stretches for miles between two major roads. At one end of the Park is Omiya Shrine, which may or may not have a better name. It was my first time visiting a real Buddhist shrine, and it was an interesting experience. I kept thinking about how the kanji for “gate” is supposed to mimic gates to shrines, and it’s so true. If you cut off the tails on the actual gate, the perfect kanji appears. Characters from pictures, it’s true.

We walked under the enormous gate (100 meters high?) and down a gravel path under a canopy of green trees. There were a lot of other people around as well, mostly Japanese, but a few Westerners as well. After about ten minutes of walking, we crossed a red wooden bridge that arched over a small river. There were trees on each side of the bridge leaning into the water. I peered down into the river and saw swarms of gigantic catfish at the top of the water with their mouths open, begging for food. It was a sight.

The shrine itself was beautiful, made in a Japanese style and painted a bright red. There was another building that we didn’t enter, but through the open door we saw a Buddhist priest with his long blue and white robe and black wooden shoes waving a stick of incense near a well-dressed mother and her baby. After that ceremony, the participants walked out of the building and posed for pictures in front of the shrine. I later saw the priest blessing one participant’s car with incense. Nearby was a wall of white paper notes tied to strings that I hear are wishes, or perhaps prayers. After looking around for a bit, Stephan and I left through the same gate we had entered.

By then it was a little after 1:00 p.m. We were supposed to meet my Canadian friend L (who does not want to be mentioned by name on the internet) and his girlfriend for lunch, but, as usual, they were running late. We finally got up with them at the station and after too much discussion and several closed restaurants, found a nice Italian place to eat at. (Katakana comes in so handy at Italian restaurants. I understand su-pa-ge-ti and chi-ke-n.)

After lunch, Stephen, L, M, and I went back once more to Omiya Station, this time bound for Tokyo! It was a fairly quick ride, and easy since Stephen had his JET Diary with its list of train stations and since M speaks fluent Japanese. We got off at the Roppongi shop, famous for its ubiquitous gaijin (and oh yes, every other person was not Japanese) and shops. We wanted to go to Roppongi Hills, what Wikipedia describes as a “mega-complex [that] incorporates office space, apartments, shops, restaurants, cafes, movie theatres, a museum, a hotel, a major TV studio, an outdoor amphitheatre, and a few parks” if that helps you visualize it.

Our first stop, after taking a picture of the gigantic spider statue, was to enter the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower up to the 52^nd floor to Tokyo City View, where we spent a good hour snapping photographs of the skyline in the setting sun. Promising to return after it was dark, we went down a floor to the art museum and saw a fantastic exhibit of “Sensing Nature” by three Japanese artists: Yoshioka Tokujin, Shinoda Taro, and Kuribayashi Takashi (listed first name last). After being bowled over by exhibits of feathers, glass “water,” papier-mâché forests, videos, and woodcuts, we returned to the tower to see Tokyo at night. The city sparkled under us, not like fireflies like before, but like steadily burning. . . lightbulbs.

We descended the tower, maneuvered our way through the gift shop—every exit always makes you go through the gift shop—and went out onto the street. The original plan was to meet one of Stephen’s friends at Roppongi Hills, but once we got there, he never answered either phone calls or texts, so we went in by ourselves. The place was massive, just like Wikipedia had told us. Inside gardens, posh restaurants, a gigantic grocery store on the bottom floor, it looked like a gigantic mall but with more things to do. After wandering around for the better part of an hour, we realized that we couldn’t afford anything there and that we were looking for a different experience. So M took us to a creepy Creepshow-themed izikaya restaurant in another part of town.

Part II Coming Soon….

A Kind of Boring Post About Nothing Important

This week has been full of unfulfilled plans! I want to write more, I want to clean my house, I want to watch more episodes of "True Blood" (yes, yes, I do), but I end up biting off more than I can chew (fancy that) and I don't get enough done. Or I just start wasting time looking up random things online or chatting or texting, and I never finish my list of things to do because I'm distracted all the time. I think I need to work on that.

I don't study enough Japanese either, but I'm working on that, too. As for my real Monday night class, Sakura wasn't there this Monday so I had the teacher to myself. Before I even took Mr. Bear and Mr. Fox out of my bookbag, I told her, "I have a lot of questions tonight" and proceeded to bombard her with questions about going to the post office, ordering food in a restaurant, conjugating the plain form of verbs, talking on the phone, and the connectors "and," "but," and "or." Then we talked about taking cooking classes, and then the two hours was up. It had been a very good class, even though we had to fumble through our dictionaries several times to make ourselves understood. When we finished, I looked up a word on my dictionary and showed it to her, saying, "Sensei wa [show dictionary] desu"-- you are very patient! I left feeling much happier. I've noticed that I'm understanding more, too: today at the speech contest, a man came out at 3:20, said something to the crowd, and walked out again. "We'll start at 3:30, please wait, I'm sorry?" I hazarded to the girl next to me, who speaks perfect Japanese, and I was right! It's moments like these when I mentally high-five myself.

The art teacher at my school really wants to learn English, and he has about double the English that I do Japanese (that is to say, not a whole lot, but enough to converse) and he wants us to exchange our languages. We are writing back and forth bilingually and talking in-between classes to practice. He also makes me worksheets and gives me homework every night--it usually involves writing a sentence in Japanese (with perfect kanji!) 10 times: for example: Watashi wa nichiyoubi ni Toukyou ni ikimasu (I am going to Tokyo on Sunday).

This week was really busy at work; I've been teaching four or five classes a day (out of six) and planning like mad during the 50-minute breaks. I really like my school and the teachers there, but I'm also really busy! I'm actually working from 8:00-5:00 or 5:30, and that's impressive. :) I've also been having to stay after school for the past couple weeks because one of the students was going to participate in the Takasaki City English Speech Contest. It was today, and she was the first student to speak. Five hours and 33 speeches later, they called the results, and she got 5th prize out of six! That means she's going on to the prefecture-wide speech contest in October. Her mom and I were so happy, but we've really got to practice more now!

We've been having terrific weather recently. Another typhoon blew in from the south and covered Gunma in a beautiful, temperature-dropping rain that cooled off the city and made for several days of coziness. I've been coming home from work in the rain and laying on my couch for an hour after work reading or watching something on my computer before I tear myself away to do something productive: usually make lesson plans or materials for class.

I am enjoying living in this apartment: reading a book on my soft futon with my quilt wrapped around me before I go to sleep, drinking hot tea out of a pretty china cup (made in Japan, not China), connecting my computer to these external speakers so music can fill my apartment, eating breakfast and drinking coffee, wrapping up my new robe. None of these things are particularly Japanese, but they make me feel happy.

Monday is a holiday--Respect for the Aged Day--and I don't work. I'm going to Saitama tomorrow (Friday) to see one of my friends from UNCG who is also in JET, and maybe to see some other folk I met at Tokyo Orientation. I'll be there for the weekend. Thursday the 23rd is a holiday, too, the Autumnal Equinox (oh, Evan!) and we also don't work. This also means that the sun will start setting even earlier than it does already . . .

I apologize for the not-very-well-written-ness of this entry, but I wanted to let you know that I'm still alive, and just maybe a little lazy. No great adventures this week, although I did get a free lunch at Denny's today. (NB: Japanese Denny's isn't like American Denny's at all. It is, after all, really De-Ni-Su.) I'll write more soon. I miss you, America, but I'm getting used to this new life, too.

Weekend

I had a lovely weekend with a balance of Japanese and English, city and country, at home and away. I’m still a little exhausted, but content.

On Friday night, my friend Anna and I went to a shopping center called Unicus (it has a different Japanese pronunciation, something akin to Unix) to the bookstore and coffee shop there. Oh, to be in bookstores in Japan is both lovely and terrible! I love to be surrounded by my book friends, loving the nostalgic feeling of being at Barnes and Noble’s or Border’s: the huge selection of books, the people milling about, the coffee shop next door. Anna and I discovered the stationery section and spent an hour looking at greeting cards, colored pens, and some of the most beautiful paper/letter writing sets I’d ever seen. I want to check out the one used book store in town; maybe they have a nice English-language section! After the bookstore, Ann and I went to Shoe Le Roo, a super hip women’s clothing store with a country/western/Japanese motif, and I coveted everything I saw. I believe I could spend my whole paycheck on clothing here—I love their style!

At 8:30, I dropped Anna off at the train station and drove to the McDonald’s at the corner of 17 and 25 to meet my new friend Shuka, the one whose number I asked for when I bought my couch at Nitori. She was there with two more of her friends, two guys who also work at the same place. The four of us piled into my car and we drove 15 minutes to a bar/restaurant where we spent the next three hours talking in rapid, Americanized English about work, school, future plans, growing up, and Japanese culture. The place was a reconstructed warehouse with posters all over the walls and low leather couches grouped around wooden coffee tables that were just a little bit higher than the seats. All three of the friends had studied in the U.S. for an extended amount of time, so their English was absolutely perfect and slangy. While we talked, Feist, Queen, The Cure, and other American bands played over the speakers, and I again felt that prevalent “Where am I?” feeling. We stayed talking and drinking non-alcoholic drinks (because you can’t have a sip of wine and drive in Japan) until almost midnight, when I went home, thoroughly satisfied with my evening.

The next day, after a morning of laundry, sunning my futons, and breakfast, I took the 12:40 bus to Takasaki Station to meet my other new Japanese friend whom I had met at Lush last week. We finally found each other at Yamada Denki (the huge electronics store beside the train station) and as we passed by the Softbank counter, the employee who always helps me with my phone issues politely ducked his head behind the counter so he wouldn’t have to talk to me. (That would not be the first time.)

Rie is pretty, 27, wears cool clothes, and speaks good conversational English with an occasional polite “Sorry?” when she needs something repeated. We walked the six blocks from the station to the park in the 95-degree pounding sun, alternately saying, “Atsui!” and “Hot!” Once we got there, we were sorely disappointed because there were only a few tents up, and a quite un-international-ly feel in the air. We ate an ear of roasted corn from one tent and a “kebob” (which I recognized as a gyro) from another tent, manned by a guy from Iran—the first one I’ve sen here, Ali! Rie and I exchanged musical interests, discovered we like a lot of the same stuff, and listened to the Japanese drummers perform on stage. At 3:30, though, we had to leave: her for work and me for the train station.

We said goodbye at the gate with promises to meet up again soon, and I jumped on the 4:02 train to Gunma-Haramachi, where I was meeting my friend Jacob at 5:00. We went to a Ramen restaurant to eat and to meet his friend Jonas, who successfully navigated us over the twisty mountain roads to Minakami after we ate. About 30 other JETs were already there, eating dinner and drinking at the picnic shelter by the river. They had all gone canyoning (something to do with a waterfall and a river) earlier that day and were going to stay at a hotel there that evening.

The place we went to felt like part mountain-cabin, part beachside bar, and part pool hall. The floors were all made of wooden boards and one of the bigger rooms was filled with rows of wooden picnic tables. Another room housed pool tables and foozball games. There was space for a bar and live bands at one end of the building, and speakers for the DJ and floor space for dancing at the other. The place was filled with the coolest mix of people: Japanese people with dreads and cool clothes like no one in Gunma wears, uber hip and cool musicians and music aficionados, and foreigners! So many foreigners! Black people and White people and Hispanic people and Asian people from all over; everyone speaking Japanese or English or their version of the two. There was a swarm of New Zealanders there also because a hip NZ band was playing, and it was so nice to see such diversity and good cheer (well, you know) all in one place. Sometimes the people from various English-speaking countries can be mean to each other (i.e. some Canadians and Americans almost had a little skiff during the party), but most of the time we all get along well despite our countries of origin. I will say, though, that I don’t think my Southern accent is all that Southern, even if I do pronounce “pen” and “pin” the same way. But even if it is, this is the way I talk. So quit making fun of me.

I jumped quickly from group to group—it was so nice seeing my “old” (6-week old) friends that I see often, making new friends, and even running into people from Tokyo Orientation that I never thought I’d see again. The music was good, the company was good, a lovely evening! That night I crashed on Jacob’s couch.

The next morning, after a stellar breakfast of cereal and eggs, we drove a few kilometers into the mountains to go exploring. After getting lost twice and asking directions from his friend, we finally found the road to the waterfall. It was absolutely beautiful—not high and tall like Multnomah Falls, but still gorgeous. It was reminiscent of the waterfall I saw in Oaxaca last year, but, as my Mexican friends continue to tell me, “There’s only one Mexico!!!” (Touche.)

We started climbing the path on the left side of the waterfall that went up a hill past what looked like a picnic shelter. A few feet up, we saw a cave above us. “Let’s explore!” I said rashly, and proceeded to hike up. A few feet into the darkened cave I saw a length of chain, which I grabbed on to (thinking of course about the scene in The Goonies when they pick up that rope connected to a booby trap) and hoisted myself up the rocks. At the top I saw light, and a ladder made out of steel rods. I checked for spiders but only saw one web, so I jumped up and saw that inside of being inside an actual cave, I was on another path out of the cave and into the woods. However, someone had placed tiny (some headless but replaced with rocks) statues in some of the crevices of the cave. It seemed sacred, almost, in there. A few minutes later we were climbing over even more rocks, and following another path. It seemed like we were in the middle of nowhere: the waterfall below us, the trees all around us . . . until clambering to the top of another hill we see where we are: directly beside the same blacktopped road we had driven on earlier. So much for picturesque beauty.

Going down was easier than going up, even though I almost had a panic attack on the edge of one rock when I saw how high up we were. We landed easily back to where we had come from, though, and turned around to see the fruits of our impressive labor. We saw only trees, though; nothing looked as impressive as our dirty clothes made it out to be. We started on another trek.

This time the going was much easier: there were actual steps carved into the mountain. The forest was prehistoric, old and full of unrecognizable trees that waved beautifully above us. Again, there were caves, again filled with stone statues. We passed the ruins of an abandoned gold mine, wondering aloud when the last time those mines were ever used, but not daring to enter the cold, airless space.

The woods were enchanting, but we were going on little sleep and a lot of walking, so our journey ended there. I took the train back to Takasaki, but skipped the International Festival. Instead, I almost fell asleep on the bus ride home, and was knocked out cold just a few hours later.

(NB: My Japanese class on Monday night was so much better this week than last. I’ll tell you all about it soon.)

Telephone (not the song)

Typhoon Number Nine is making its way across Japan, but so far it has brought nothing to these far reaches of Gunma besides a light drizzle. The principal let us go home early today, but I wonder what for, since nothing is really happening.

In other news, I have that shaky nervous feeling from having done something I'm not good at! I remember all during my time at the CNNC, I would tell my clients, "You've got to learn to do it for yourself; I can't do it for you all the time." So I'm telling myself that whenever I have to do something that I don't really want to do. Like make telephone calls in Japanese.

Telephone calls are the worst in a foreign language, because you have nothing to go on, no eye contact, no hand gestures, no sign language, just a voice and your ear. I had received a call from Nitori, the sorta-kinda Bed Bath & Beyond where I ordered my couch from, and I needed to call them back. Luckily, the girl who helps me speaks English, but I had to get to her first.

Also luckily, I had just, this very day, learned how to make a telephone call! One of my JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) and I were discussing next week's lesson plan, which just happens to be on telephone conversation: Hello, is so-and-so there, I'm sorry he's not, do you want to leave a message, etc. I wanted to know how to do all of that in Japanese. We only got to saying "This is Jaimie, is so-and-so there?" but that was good enough for what I had to do today! (Side note: there are three, count 'em, three different ways to ask if whoever is there, depending on hierarchy and respect level. Actually, I think it's more like fifty, but Ms. Ishimatsu only taught me three. "Iru" for low level, "imasu" for middle level, and "irashaimasu" for top level. Also, they do the Spanish thing and say "I am Jaimie" instead of "This is Jaimie", and "imasu" actually means "to exist/to be", so you're really asking if Ms. So-and-So exists or not. Fun times.)

I digress. I called Nitori, my stomach churning anxiously. When the helpful sales assistant answered the phone, I said politely, "Moshi-moshi, is [name of the sales lady] there?" in Japanese. He said something I didn't understand, but I caught "namae" (name) so I thought maybe he was asking my name. I said my name. He put me on hold. Music began to play.

A little while later, the same, or maybe a different, sales assistant came on the phone. And then I said something I didn't think I could: "I'm sorry, I don't speak Japanese, but [name of sales lady] speaks English. Is she there, please?" "Oooohhhhh!" was the reply. "Of course!" And after the music played a little longer I got to talk to her. (This is the same girl whose number I got two weeks ago when I ordered the sofa. We're going out on Friday night with her friends, and I'm excited.)

When I hung up, I still had to make one other phone call, which didn't go quite as well. The microwave I bought a few weeks ago from a thrift store has suddenly decided to quit working. It just beeps at me angrily every time I ask it to heat up my food. I need to know if I can return it, even though I don't have the receipt. However, when I called and asked politely (twice) if anyone there spoke English, the sales assistant gave me a rude "inai" (not a very nice way of saying "there isn't). So I said thank you and hung up.

It's the little things that make life in a foreign country so fun. Remember back in the States when I was competent? When I didn't freak out about telephone calls? When I was on the phone all day long in English and Spanish? I am suddenly back to zero, feeling that same nervousness that I'm sure invaded all of my clients when I told them to call themselves and ask if anyone spoke Spanish. (Somebody speak-a Es-spanish?) Now I am that girl. Oh, living here is good for my self-esteem!

Nihongo 101: Japanese Classes at the Local Community Center

How many times can my Japanese teacher look at me sadly and say, "Wakarunai" (you don't understand)? She doesn't even say it with a questioning voice, only with a disappointed downward glance as she stares at the book and tries to think of another way to explain some obscure word to me without letting me resort to my newly-downloaded Kotoba! iPhone bilingual dictionary. Instead, she just speaks without gestures as if I understood, while I watch her mouth and catch maybe one of every ten words, usually words that don’t help me with meaning, words that mean “but” and “so” and “therefore.” The Vietnamese girl on my right continues to work diligently at her book, and I continue to stare dismally at the open book in front of me, half-understanding the tale of Mr. Bear and Mr. Fox and some mishap with Mr. Bear’s letter.

Today was my first day of Japanese class at the local community center, a 10-minute bike ride from my house. I was the first to arrive, a full 15 minutes early for the 7:00 class. In my best Japanese, I asked the receptionist, an older gentlemen with a yellow polo shirt and khakis, if this was where the Japanese class was, and he nodded "Hai, hai" several times. Taking a key from the desk, he stood up and joined me in the hall, leading me to the locked classroom a few doors down. After fiddling with the lock for a second, he opened the door, and my surprised eyes saw a completely empty classroom: no desks, no chairs, nothing. I turned to ask him where the desks were, but he was already opening another door and extracting the furniture we needed. Together, we took out five collapsible plastic tables and twice as many grey stackable chairs, placing them on opposite sides of the room: two against one wall, and one each against each of the other walls.

Just a few minutes later, two instructors walked in: a tall older man with an unlined, kindly face, and his wife, shorter than him, with curly hair and beige capris. The woman began talking to me in medium-speed Japanese, short sentences that I mostly understood, and I answered her questions the best I could: Yes, I'm from America. Yes, I'm an English teacher. This is my first time in Japan. I arrived on August 1. "Seito, doko?" (Students, where?) I asked her in broken Japanese, since I can’t ask the complete sentence yet. “Amerika, Australia...?"

“Mmmm,” she thought aloud. “Vietnam. Thai. Pakistan. Chugaku (China)”.

“Ahhh, soo desu,” I replied, my hopes of meeting some Brazilian or Peruvian dimming slightly.

The students started to walk in. A middle-aged Chinese man with a huge grin, followed by his younger friend/brother (I never did figure out which) greeted us with a resounding, “Konbanwa!” (Good evening!) They were followed by a pretty Vietnamese girl with long hair, who ended up sitting beside me for the two-hour class. While the other students were coming in and tables were being set up, the lead teacher motioned for me to sit at a desk and register for the class.

The registration form was bilingual, but I attempted to respond in Japanese to all the questions: name, address, date of birth, home country, date of arrival in Japan, date of departure, languages spoken, etc. It was the smiling Chinese man’s first day in class also, so he sat beside me and filled out his own form in impeccable kanji (Lucky duck, I thought, he’s been writing with Chinese characters his whole life.) He looked up at me. “Kanji wa muzukashii ne?” (Kanji is hard, huh?) he asked. I smiled, thinking, “Yes, yes it is.”

After we finished filling out the forms and paying our 500 yen (~$5.00) with the round gold coin that would be used for the cost of copies, all the students and teachers formed a circle in the empty space in the middle of the room. There were about eight students and five teachers. The lead teacher bowed to everyone with a “Konbanwa,” and we bowed back. He said a few words that I didn’t understand, then introduced himself. Afterwards, he motioned to the man on his left to continue.

It was the same man who had sat beside me at the registration desk. His Japanese, albeit with a slight Chinese accent, was almost perfect, from what I could tell. He spoke for one or two minutes, saying his name and some other things that went over my head completely. When he finished, everyone applauded.

Then it was my turn. Stumbling a little, and suddenly nervous that everyone was staring at me, I slowly said that my name was Jaimie Foster, that I was from America, that I taught English at a middle school here, that it was my first time in Japan, and that my Japanese was really bad and I was sorry for it. I finished with a bow and a “doozo yoroshiku onegaishimasu” (literally, please be nice to me, an expression used with introductions) and everyone applauded again. I felt a little better.

The rest of the introductions went quicker. The man on my left was from Thailand, and seemed comfortable with Japanese. The teachers also introduced themselves, although as soon as they said their names I promptly forgot them. The Vietnamese girl, whose name is Sakura, talked for a while in heavily accented Japanese that still made sense to me. Maybe it’s easier to understand foreigners speaking a foreign language. . .

After we finished our introductions, the lead teacher looked at me, said something, and waited for my answer. I stood still, a little bewildered, waiting for some non-verbal cue to tell me what to do. Another teacher, a short Japanese woman with glasses, motioned for me to cross the room and join her. I walked over and stood beside her, only then realizing that they were pairing up teachers and students for the evening. We all dispersed to various corners of the classroom, one or two students per teacher. I sat on one side of the small table with Sakura; our teacher sat across from us.

“What books have you brought?” she asked me in Japanese. I reached into my backpack and pulled out Japanese for JETs, Genki Book 1, Essential Japanese for ALTs, and a kanji workbook. “OK,” she nodded, and asked Sakura the same question. “Very good,” she told us, and immediately handed us each a thin paperback textbook that had been sitting on the desk. I returned my books to my backpack.

I looked at it. “Kokugo: ichinensei.” A first-graders’ Japanese book, the green cover bright with a white anime bear holding an apple, surrounded by heart-shaped leaves. Well, I thought, You’ve gotta start somewhere, I guess.

“Read, please,” our teacher instructed us. “I'm going to go make copies.”

I opened the cover. The first page repeated the title and had a picture of a rainbow-striped spider sitting on his web, with raindrops falling around him. This was followed by a table of contents (mokuji), and then the first story.

“Mr. Bear and Mr. Fox,” I read. “Oh.”

“Mr. Bear went out to mail a letter. ‘It’s a beautiful day. I feel nice.’ Something something something Mr. Fox walking. Su-ta-ta-su-ta-ta” (pitter patter, maybe?) “Mr. Bear looked at Mr. Fox. Mr. Fox looked at Mr. Bear. The two something something something friends.”

“Wakarimasuka? (Do you understand?)” asked my teacher kindly when she returned with a stack of printed copies.

I picked up a pen and wrote “70%” on a sheet of paper. She laughed.

“What don’t you know?”

I pointed at a few words. “Are they friends or not?” I asked, not quite as eloquently as I would have liked to: Friends? Yes? No?

“Jyanai (They are not friends).”

“Ahhhh, okay, thanks.”

A few sentences later, I asked her again for help with another word, which she tried to explain. This time, there was less success. I stared at her blankly. “Wakarunai,” she whispered. She sat for a while. Then she said what I believe was an explanation of what happens when two verbs connect in Japanese. This was what I wanted to learn, and I tried to ask a question. “Why?” I wanted to know. Why do you sometimes put “ni” between two verbs, but sometimes “te”? I immediately regretted asking the question, though, because she launched into a heavily-worded explanation that I couldn’t even attempt to follow. “Dajoubu desu,” I said, going back to the book and trying not to sigh heavily. “It’s okay.”

I kept reading. As I sat there, though, struggling to make sense of the hiragana and the unpronounceable kanji, I kept thinking about everything I have learned about adult second language acquisition over the past ten years. Aim for 80% success. Too little success and the student gets frustrated. Too much success and the student is bored. Students don’t need to understand every word in a passage, as long as they understand the main idea. Make the classes relevant. Don’t use children’s books. Use materials appropriate for adults and their daily life in another country. Thinking all of this and wishing desperately for an interpreter, I pointed at a word that my sensei had been unable to explain to me.

“Taisetsu desuka?” (Is it important?) I asked her. Now it was her turn to look bewildered. She seemed confused by the question. “Meishi desuka? (Is it a noun?)" I tried again. She nodded.

“I Japan here,” I tried. “I want to learn. Important.” I stopped. I could feel tears of frustration prickle my eyes. How could I explain to her what I wanted to say? That reading about Mr. Bear and Mr. Fox was not going to help me go to the post office and ask for stamps. That it wasn’t going to help me get on the right bus, or withdraw money from my bank account, or ask where the vinegar is in the grocery store. Yes, reading is important, it helps with fluency and certainly with recognizing kanji, but even a first grade book is above my level, and it doesn’t teach me what I need to learn. In that moment, I suddenly understood every ESL student I’ve ever had, those hard-working refugees and immigrants who come to the U.S. eager to learn English and fit in, but who are hindered by their well-meaning but ignorant volunteer teachers who insist on teaching as if they were all children instead of adults with real life experiences and intelligence. I am guilty of being that ignorant volunteer teacher as well, not knowing where to start or how to communicate with beginning students, not knowing what to do or how to react. And now, since I lacked the vocabulary, I couldn’t tell this nice Japanese woman who gives her Monday nights to émigrés from other countries, that I needed her help and expertise on another level. I needed her to explain grammar, verb conjugations, particles, and kanji to me. I needed her to let me use a real textbook. I needed her to teach me casual conversation. I needed an explanation in English, dammit! But I couldn’t. I couldn’t explain.

The teacher noticed I was getting internally worked up, and she put a soft hand on my book. “Yonde, kudasai” (Just read, please), she told me, and turned to help Sakura. So I read, running my pinky fingers under my eyes, keeping my head down. I didn’t even try to make sense of the hiragana anymore. I just read, letter by letter, without comprehending more than a word or two, hating Mr. Bear and hating Mr. Fox, their pictures blurry on the page. But I swallowed hard, set my jaw in a hard line, and took a deep breath. I am not going to cry here, I told myself. I will cry at home if I have to. But I will not cry here.

Just a few minutes later, Sensei interrupted us again and instructed us to close our textbooks. Sighing gratefully, I set them aside to make room for an enlarged 11 x 17 copy of two textbook pages, containing 50 typed questions.

“Wakaru?” she asked me politely. Do you understand?
I nodded, not knowing if I understood or not.

“Daijoubu desu,” she said. OK.

The first set of questions had to do with particles. Watashi WA Maiku Miraa desu. Sore wa watashi NO hon desu.

I got to work, reading each sentence painstakingly and thanking the editors for putting furigana over the kanji. After three sentences, though, I realized that I was completely unprepared for these types of questions. Having only had half of a semester of formal Japanese study two years ago, the only particles I had ever really studied were wa, no, ga, ni, and o, and even those I got mixed up. I quit on sentence four and moved to the next section.

This one was on Miraa-san’s daily schedule. I was supposed to look at the pictures and the clock underneath them and write a sentence about each one. Miraa-san wakes up at 6:00 a.m. Miraa-san studies from 9:00-11:00. Miraa-san eats lunch at 12:00. I did a little better with this one, but had to keep referring to another textbook to remember how to write time expressions.

The third and final section that I worked on was a review of question words. BLANK is this? It is a television. WHAT. BLANK is that person? That person is Mr. Sato. WHO. And so on.

Although I didn’t finish this part of the worksheet, I felt like I learned a lot from it. My only experience with question words had been when I asked another teacher at my middle school to write them down for me, and I only had about three of them memorized. Sensei was very helpful when I had a question and I grabbed at that glimmer of understanding with gusto. Here, here at last, was my 80% success.

By the time class ended at 9:00, I was feeling better but still overwhelmed. I had communicated in only Japanese for two hours, using and reusing the 10 verbs and 30 nouns in my possession, and I felt lonely for authentic communication.

Sakura and I left together on our bicycles. Before we left the community center, she reached into the basket on her bike and pulled out an orange. “Suki desuka?” (You like?) she asked. “Hai, suki desu!” (Yes, I do!) She handed it to me, then rooted around in her bag for some more vegetables, an oversized (for Japan) potato and two small eggplants. “From the teacher,” she told me in Japanese. “OK, thank you, teacher!” I replied, placing them carefully in my own basket, and she laughed.

Sakura doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Vietnamese, so our conversations were brief. Her Japanese is also twenty times better than mine, but she is patient and uses hand gestures to explain herself to me. We rode quickly down Highway 25, the air finally a bit cooler than it is during the day, the wind blowing our hair back. The sidewalk was bumpy and narrow in some places, and the lights from our bicycles barely illuminated the way in front of us. I almost ran off the curb twice, laughing and screaming that I couldn’t see—miranai! The switch to the bicycle light was rubbing against the front tire, too, making pedaling difficult, but we rode the kilometer or two back to my street in just a few minutes.

Near my house, traffic was light, and the iridescent neon glow from the hot pink Pachinko building tinted everything with color. We stopped to talk a little more and to exchange phone numbers. I found out that she is 32, that she is married to a Japanese man but has no children, that she has been in Japan for three years but that she wants to move to America, and that her sister lives in California. It was nice to be able to talk a little, and being with her half-reminded me of being with Latin Americans: the touch on the arm, the lack of personal space, the constant questions about boyfriends. She put her hand on my arm every time she asked a question, and when I said something particularly witty, she threw her head back and laughed heartily from her stomach. I discovered that I had missed this kind of human interaction: in Japan, personal space abounds and we are always quiet. As Sakura and I were talking, an older Japanese couple walked by, opening gawking at the sight of at these two foreigners trying to communicate in a difficult language. I wanted to wave, but I restrained myself. Instead, Sakura and I said goodbye with a friendly pat on the shoulder, and the promise of dinner someday next week.

I pedaled towards home, thinking, like I always do, of Robert Cormier’s I Am the Cheese (“I am pedaling, pedaling. . . . ") and of the past few hours in my first Japanese class. I felt the stress of the past few hours catching up with me, but I feel proud, too. “Be happy, Jaimie,” I told myself as I passed the garage, closed now, and biked slowly uphill towards the street I live off of, "You just had a long conversation completely in Japanese. You can do this. You can.”

And I think, maybe, a little, it’s true.

Nice Folk

(I wrote this piece back in August but never got around to posting it. Enjoy!)

I have the sweetest neighbors! I met them because the first night I slept by myself I couldn’t find the apartment in the dark, and I was going up and down the streets with another ALT completely disoriented. When I asked them for directions the woman took me to my house, which was about a block away. Since then, we have become some kind of friends and she takes good care of me. She even has a piano she lets me play! Last week I had dinner at her house, which was fantastic and such an experience!

Yesterday, I stopped at her house with a map in one hand and a “notice of non-delivery” from the post office in the other, asking her for directions. Instead of telling me what roads to take, she said, “Come on, I’ll take you!” in her broken English mixed with Japanese, and she took me to the post office! Tonight I had dinner at her house as well. We had a grand old time; she taught me how to write my address in kanji (quite an impressive feat) and I showed her pictures of my family and friends. I mentioned that I had to go to Shibukawa on Friday, and she says, “Oh, I know a bus that goes to there” and proceeds to put me in her car so she can take me to the nearest bus stop, just so I’ll be sure what time to leave.

I’ve had a lot of people be so nice to me here, even when they might want to strangle me for not knowing any better. The other day I was taking the train to Maebashi, and I asked a girl standing on the platform, “Does this train go to Maebashi?” (in Japanese, thank you very much!) She nodded and we ended up in the same car. When the train stopped and an announcement was made over the loud speaker, I sat there like a fool while everyone else got off the train, and she came back for me and said, “Maebashi, right?” and signaled for me to follow her. Apparently we had to switch cars but I didn’t know it. It’s so nice to have people, random strangers that I might never bump into again, make sure that I get to where I’m going okay.

I appreciate that kindness more than I can ever express to them with my doe eyes and “Doomo arigatou gozaimasu”es, because there aren’t words enough to express the feeling of relief that someone is helping you when you alone would be going the wrong way. Thank you, Japan, for providing me with kind people along this track. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Hello, Internet!

Just a quick note to say I have internet in my house, now! The guy from NTT knocked on my door at 11:30 this morning, spoke really quickly in Japanese, in which I only understood "You're Jaimie Foster, right?" and came in, searching for my phone jack. He looked at me and kept talking, while I was scrambling for my cell phone to call my host mom. I finally got ahold of her, and he related to her that it would take an hour or two to finish his work, and that I could leave if I wanted to. So I left, and when I came back an hour later, he was gone and a nice happy box with a blue ethernet wire connected to it was sitting on the floor near the jack. My friend who spent the night last night had done this before, so she quickly programmed my computer, typed in my password, and suddenly "CONNECTED" flashed on the screen. And oh! the bliss, the joy, the rapture, that I can use my computer with its real keyboard, and watch movies and TV shows, and finally download that huge Japanese-English dictionary file that I've been coveting for two weeks. Ureshii desu!!! (I am happy!!!) I can finally write long emails again!

School (Again) and Unorganized Thoughts

I don't have much time, but I thought I'd write a bit about school. It's going really well. So far I've taught about 10 classes, the same lesson every time with just a few variations, and I think I've got it down pat by now! I could probably do it in my sleep--! It's my self-introduction, in which I tell the class about my family, my city, my cat, of course, the food I like (they love hearing about mole--"Ugh! Chocolate sauce on chicken!?!"), and everything else. Then they get in groups and write questions for me; I can't count how many "Do you have boyfriend?" questions I get. I think I get 3 or 4 in each class every time.
The schedule changes a lot here, especially since we just got back from summer vacation. So for one day, Tuesday's schedule will really be Wednesday's schedule, but in reverse order, or Thursday's schedule will be Monday's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd period, but Friday's 4th, 5th, and 6th. I get confused so I just wait for my team teacher to come get me and tell me when and where we're teaching.
Yesterday I went with the Special Ed. students to make edamame. It was a lot of fun, especially when the lead teacher started writing in romaji on the board, as if I could understand "arau" better than the real characters. (I learned it means "wash.")
I love hearing the school band play every afternoon. For the few days before the performance that I wasn't invited to, I would walk to my car with the strains of Sibelius's "Be Still My Soul" (not sure its real name...) wafting through the window. It was beautiful, and to be a middle school band, they're great!
I'm trying to study Japanese every day, but sometimes I get frustrated and quit. I'm getting there, though! I even was able to ask the librarian in Japanese if a certain book was in the library, and she understood me! Hooray for small victories!

This weekend one of my friends and I are going to a restaurant with some other ALTs, then she's spending the night a la middle school. Tomorrow morning, hopefully, the NTT folk will be at my house with an internet connection, and then tomorrow evening I have a shopping date with a Japanese girl. I've been passing out my email address like a fiend; any time I go shopping and the salesgirl speaks English, I get her number! (Well, it's happened twice...) I'm going to hang out with the girl who sold me the couch next Friday, and with the girl who works at Lush next week sometime. I think this could be the start of some good language exchanging! Speaking of language learning, I start my Japanese classes at the community center on Monday night. The center is only a few blocks from my house, a good bike ride away.

I'm exploring the area on my bike in the evenings. I knew there was a park near my house, but I didn't know how beautiful or vast it was! There is a pond in the middle with paddle boats, and a tumbling waterfall that runs into a small creek. There are already leaves on the ground like it was fall, although it's in the mid-90s almost every day. We just got (another) advisory that it'll be over 100 next week--oh, autumn, doko desuka?!

If all goes according to plan, my next update will be from my computer at my house, but of course you never know what could happen.....

I hope everyone who's reading this is well, and that you would let me know if you read this blog. I'm trying to see who's interested....