So, this won't be a long post, because I'm in a hostel in Kyoto borrowing a friend's computer. But, hey I'm in Kyoto! I picked up the overnight bus from Disney Land (how cool is that? 2nd star on the right, and straight on till morning!) and arrived in Kyoto at about 7am the next day. I checked into my hostel, slept on the hostel couch for a couple hours, and then started walking around. There are temples and shrines everywhere in Kyoto, but more importantly - they are big!
And beautiful, and they look so old and majestic. The other neat thing about them is that they are actually really real temples, with monks (priests? probably, I'm a bad tourist) and chanting and everything. At the last temple we were at, some monks (priests) came in and started chanting and ringing the gong and everything. It was way cool, but it definitely felt like it was time to leave.
I didn't really have a lot of particular plans in coming to Kyoto, other than to meet up with my friends who also came down for the winter break (I did, it was fun to see them) and enjoy some 'Japanese Culture.' Like I said, there are temples everywhere, and Kyoto seems like a lively and busy city, so I'm looking forward to hanging around for a few days.
We came with only tonight booked at a hostel because everywhere we looked was full. We figured we'd figure something out when we got here (haha, don't you love it Mom?) and it was sink or swim. We did, of course, our friend Joe is staying at a different hostel and has informed us that his place has room for us tomorrow night, so haha.
I always get more nervous about traveling in the planning stages, but when I actually get to my destination, I am content to just let things happen and know that I can make things / things will, work out somehow. They do; I love vacation!
The title is accurate, I suppose, but my week really didn't have anything to do with Christmas. It does, however, contain some good stories, after writing one of them, I think I'll just make this post about Tuesday. But first, apple juice is amazing. I have these vague memories of feeling pretty indifferent about apple juice as a kid - probably because it was healthy, and not as exciting as orange juice - but now it is completely delicious. I've been drinking it all week, and I even made a late-night run for another carton tonight before I started writing this just because I was craving it so bad. yum!
Ok, so, the week: it really kicked off on Tuesday, when I came in only to learn that one of the English teachers had hurt his back the night before. Unfortunately, all three of my classes for the day were with him, and I was asked if I could go ahead and teach 2 of the lessons myself (to be fair, it was the same lesson to two different classes)- the other English teacher was going to take care of the last one. Emphasis on 'myself'. It turns out that there were no other teachers available to even be in the room during one of the lessons, and there was a possibility that a teacher might show up for the other one. Also, the teacher who was absent never really goes over lesson plans with me (I have this hunch that he doesn't really go over them himself - he kind of just does it on the fly) so I had to build some kind of lesson plan, in about 2 hours. The lesson plan was the easy part, the hard part is figuring out how I would actually run the class: its as if the class had a substitute teacher, who didn't speak their language, and who isn't actually a teacher at all - I don't really have much of that, how do you say, authority.
But no time to worry about that, because as I'm running through my newly build lesson the hour before my first class starts, a student comes running into the teacher's room looking mildly distressed, and says something rapidly to the secretary. The secretary then turns to me and tells me that I should probably go to the gym. If you are confused at this point, good. So was I. I thought I deciphered something about how I should go because I was a dude (this all happened in Japanese) but I headed on over to the gym...to help break up a fight, apparently.
I arrive on the scene to see the vice principal (who is also a PE teacher - hence the gym - and used to be an English teacher - so I can kind of talk with him) trying to get between two boys who really don't want anyone in between them. Again, I am not really an authority figure at the school (technically I don't even work for the school, I'm just contracted by the school district, but that wasn't really on my mind during the events in the gym), so there was this pretty awkward pause for me right before I stepped in to take one of the boys by the shoulders, and a few steps back from the vice principal and the other boy. Fortunately, my boy is a good kid in general and was good enough not to really struggle with me. Eventually the boys calmed down enough to be lead away, and the whole incident never really escalated beyond some half-hearted lunging and posturing. Its difficult for me to describe how I felt about my part in the whole thing: On the one hand, I've been in Japan long enough to know that I'll never be Japanese - I'll never have the authority, responsibility, or rights of a Japanese teacher, and that made me really really nervous about being involved in (physically) breaking up the fight. You can imagine all the (potentially) scary ways that could be spun by teachers, parents, students, whoever. On the other hand, it was kind of cool, and combined with the fact that I went from that to flying solo-ish in the classroom about 15 minutes later.
The other English teacher did end up coming by and helping out in my first class. And, reality check, as soon as she showed up, the kids (and I) relaxed a ton. One of the kids even came right out and said it (in Japanese) when she asked why they wanted her to stay - the kid pretty much said "because you're a Teacher" - she said 'sensei dakara', for those of you who want to know the Japanese. Two steps forward... one step back.
So, that was Tuesday, and by far the most exciting day of the week.
When I was younger, my biggest fear about traveling was about being in a place or situation where I couldn't communicate or talk with people. Then I moved to Japan. I faced that fear pretty quickly. 7 months later, I am surprised at myself and my level of comfort with my level of incomprehension of most everything that is said around me. I'm not just surprised at my acceptance that I don't understand very much of what's happening around me; I'm really shocked to see how much I am willing to put together the small pieces of the Japanese language I do know and just make up and infer the rest. In America, before I left for Japan, I used to hate missing even a word of a sentence in conversations, but in Japan I'm pretty thrilled to have conversations where I understand even one word in four. And I feel like I can follow them.
If I can read 1/2 of the words in a sentence, I feel like I can read the whole thing. (And if I can read a whole sentence - even short, subject-verb sentences - I'm absolutely stoked) If I can "read" 2 sentences in a paragraph I'm feeling good about my comprehension level. (This does not happen often) Even if I don't know how to respond or write back, I am still satisfied with just being able to (barely) manage the receiving half of a conversation.
I think its strange that I am so comfortable with such small amounts of information. It makes me wonder if being in an English speaking place will be totally overwhelming. Now, most conversations around me just sound like linguistic static; sometimes I barely register that people are talking. I can't really remember what its like to be able to listen to everything everyone in the room or train or street are saying and understand their conversations! Even the thought is slightly overwhelming and more than a little appealing.
The most disturbing part about all of this is that as I become more comfortable with my ignorance, the more complacent I get about learning Japanese. Since I am not bothered by hearing - to me- jibberish all day, I feel less and less drive to learn and decipher the codes. Fortunately, this is counterbalanced by my -increasing, actually - desire to be able to communicate back. I can't really help getting better at understanding Japanese, but I do have to work pretty hard at throwing it out.
These are transcribed entries from the journal I am writing in at school. I started the journal for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being that I didn’t have Internet yet so I couldn’t post things online. The other being that I had free time on my hands. These entries are slightly modified, but mostly for grammar. I suppose you’d never know either way. Surprisingly, I had way more to say than I thought. Unsurprisingly, I have been bad (abysmal) at keeping my online entries up to date with my written ones. Someday, the dates will match but for now…These are the voyages of a long time ago in a galaxy far far away:
Thursday, May 21, 2009. Sometimes I forget that Japan is a Pacific island / foreign place. I get lulled by the trains, cars, and concrete into feeling like I just live in a very strange, very large Japan-town part of America. But then a big mother 'effing bee flies into the classroom, and everyone (including me) freaks out. This bee was, no joke, the size of my pinky finger (while that doesn't really sound meancing, take a good look at your pinky finger, then imagine it had wings and a big freaking stinger, and friends) with wings as long as a dragonfly in the US. Also, they are supposedly pretty dangerous. (Truth: I saw a news report about them recently, and saw photos of a guy who got stung a couple times on his leg and his leg looed like it was swollen to twice the size of the other one) On top of that, yesterday Winston said that he saw a spider that sounded like it could have eaten my freakishly freaking large bee. And then I remember I live thousands of miles away from red wood forests, Point D, the opens space, and and realistically sized insects.
Back to the mundane, I just figured out that I am getting a pretty sweet deal on my travel expenses. My company reimburses me for my gas for driving to and from work at about 15 yen per kilometer. (No, I'm not doing the conversions to dollers per mile... ok, its about 20-23 cents a mile) For me, this translates into about 900 yen per week (9$) when I'm working at one of my schools. (Its about 3000 yen - 30$ - to drive to my other school, much further away, but not relevant to this post) I spend about 1000 yen a week counting random trips to the mall, Bobu Bobu's, restaurants, ect. I figured I actually spend about 10 yen per km. on gas, which is sweet for me. However, I was warned that the reimbursment stays the same over the summer (and over gas price changes) when I'm going to be cranking up the a/c, so maybe I won't count my chickens yet. (Update: I ended up not using the a/c much over the summer - I'm cheap that way, who's surprised? - and the savings really start adding up when I'm traveling to my school out in the mountains, which was nice when I was driving to the beach a lot during the warmer parts of the year)
So one of the more unruly kids started throwing around the word "bitch" today in class. That was a frustrating moment because I have absolutely zero punative power and only as much authority as the kids decide to give me, so there wasn't anything I could do about the situation. He started calling the teacher a bitch, and disapproving looks from me only egged him on, so I just kind of had to ignore it. It was slightly upsetting to hear cursing in the classrom and a bit jarring to hear a student swearing at a teacher, and equally confusing when I was the only person in the room who seemed to have a problem with it. Ahh, the perils of teaching foreign languages to 13 year olds. *sigh*
