Don't Mention The War

Typical. My favorite group of students have spent the post-April period morphing into a band of noisy spawn hell-demons, much to my regret and disappointment. And then, when it comes to the week where I tell them I’m leaving, they revert to being the friendly, warm, earnest young people that I fell for in the first place. This would all be much easier if they could just revert to the brat-mode of a few weeks ago.

I think there’s a tendency amongst ALTs to exaggerate their closeness to students and/or the esteem by which the students hold them. ALTs do like to boast about:

a)How cool the students think they are.

b) How beautiful the students think they are.

c) The level of trust and intimacy they have with their students.

d) How much their students fancy them.

It can be a bit unattractive and ties into the supposed “film-star” status that some ALTs feel on arriving in Japan. I could write a lengthy post about the self-esteem boost that male ALTs receive on arriving here to be treated like movie stars by elements of the local female population. It’s a bit more complex than this, but we can’t pretend it’s not both played up to and a boost to the ego for some.

Anyway, one aspect of returning to UK life will be the absence of otherness. We will once again be just one of the crowd. In Japan, we are really only defined by our otherness. We are not Japanese and that’s what makes us stand out. But in the UK, it’s our own dress style, personality, interests etc. that mark us out as individuals. I’ve joked on this blog about my increasingly dodgy dress sense in Japan. Part of this might be that I have a 30 year-old’s increased focus on practicality. But it’s also in part due to the fact that no-one from home will ever see me in my waterproof jacket and stupid hat. So one part of my readjustment on returning to the UK is that I will again make more effort in what I wear and how I present myself-and this is mainly due to external pressures rather than any idea of “looking good for myself”.

Since arriving in Japan, I’ve taken part in a monthly English-language discussion group attended by some English teachers in Okayama. For the past few months, they’ve been reading  the book of The King’s Speech and having little discussions about it. The book itself is alright-it’s utterly fawning towards both the king and Logue, but it’s interesting enough if you like that kind of thing. One problem with the book is that it covers the outbreak of World War 2. This means the War is a difficult subject to avoid and it has come up intermittently in our discussions. I’d love to have full and frank discussions about Japan’s wartime and immediately post-wartime history. It’s kind of fascinating. But that’s never going to be feasible in this country. Any time the subject comes up, it feels uncomfortable. People aren’t especially comfortable talking about their opinions here anyway, so it’s a subject you have to be careful around.

Also, if you want to know just what a lot of made up monarchist crap, the film of The King’s Speech was, just listen to a recording of the actual speech here. See, it was a rubbish speech. The guy took half an hour to string a sentence together. That’s who we had as our ceremonial leader at the time of our greatest ever national crisis. If the head of state had been elected we’d have chosen someone who could string a sentence together, with better health, a less foreign background and a sprinkling of charisma. Instead we were left with this guy who couldn’t even read a speech that was laid out in front of him. And it may sound as if I’m picking on people with speech impediments here, but it seems to me that if the main duty of your job is to make speeches, then we ought to have had someone who could fulfil that function competently. So this story is actually the tale of a dysfunctional political system and the coaching of someone who clearly wasn’t up to the job, like a low grade civil servant on ineffective performance management measures. Sigh.

A Trip Round The Islands - Shodoshima

We climbed a gorge and made moody poses!

A few months ago we decided to do a series of island trips during our final months in Japan. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, we have to save money for our return to the UK and island trips are relatively cheap since they don’t involve hopping on the super-pricey shinkansen. Secondly, we’ve found the islands off mainland Japan (I’m not sure whether you can correctly describe the larger islands of Japan as “mainland Japan” but anyway…) to have a character of their own compared to the mainland. Usually they have been more laid back and there seems to be a larger number of “characters”, in our experience, anyway.

So last weekend, in the final part of our island odyssey, we made our way to Shodoshima. Shodoshima is the largest of the Seto Inland Sea islands (again, this is questionable geography, because I don’t know whether Honshu itself could count as a Seto Inland Sea island, but anyway…). It takes about an hour by ferry, which was enough time to consume my own weight in overly-salty snacks and sandwiches. The bagel that I bought from Bagel and Bagel was not a patch on either Carmelli or the Brick Lane Beigel Bake (sic) but it filled a hole nonetheless. We made the wise decision to rent a car, which gave us a lot of freedom over the weekend and meant we could do some cool drives along the coast and pretend we were in Thelma and Louise. I was Thelma of course, because K Chan never lets me be Louise.

Poser

Now there are an awful lot of things to like and admire about Shodoshima. But it is a Japanese tourist destination and that means you do have to wade through a lot of tacky nonsense. As I’ve said before, Japanese tacky nonsense can have a charm of its own. Shodoshima is “famous” for olives. In that spirit we visited the Olive Park where there was a history of olive production on the island, some Greek ruins and er, a Dutch-style windmill. There really were “Greek ruins”, honestly. We also admired the Visitor Centre’s reproduction of “The Venus of Milo”.

For some reason, the caption on this re-production amused me.

I was continually frustrated by the gift shops on Shodoshima. They sold every type of olive-based product imaginable: olive bread, olive-flavoured seaweed, olive oil, olive jam, olive chocolate etc. But they did not sell olives. The only thing I wanted to buy was olives. This was frustrating.

Also, I had been told to try the olive ice cream. Unfortunately, there seems to have been some terrible olive ice cream related production crisis on Shodoshima because every shop we tried had run out. I did try the soy sauce flavoured ice cream though. I know that sounds dreadful but it was actually delicious-the salt and sweet flavours go together really well.

We hopped into what may well be our last onsen/sento visit in Japan and I enjoyed the excellent views over the ocean whilst chatting to a random Japanese retired gentleman who had previously been a professor of African-American literature and knew a lot more about Langston Hughes than I did. I absolutely love speaking to Japanese academics who have studied English as their range of knowledge is usually amazing and they often have an international perspective that very few people have here, in Okayama at least. This guy had lived in Harlem for several years during the 1970s which is fascinating in itself, but he also talked interestingly about the social and academic stigma of studying African-American literature when virtually nobody in Japan had even met an African-American, let alone read any African-American literature. He had apparently just read a Langston Hughes poem one day and loved it so much that he had decided to spend the rest of his career studying the guy. Man, I love enthusiasts.

We also took a drive along the coast to visit the recreated set of Twenty-Four Eyes, a famous Japanese film, itself based on a book and set on Shodoshima. We wandered around the 1930s-style school room and vegetable patches, wallowing in nostalgia for something we hadn’t even seen. It was pretty though and I really enjoyed the drive.

The Twenty Four Eyes "Set"

I don’t know if we’ll make it back to the Seto Inland Sea. I’m heading to Hiroshima next weekend and then that’s probably it for big trips until hometime. But I’ll always have fond memories of our island adventures. One month to go. We’re nearly at the end now.

There's absolutely nothing profound to be said about this picture of our dinner.

The teacher desk was a little small for me.

Onegaishimasu

Rain that lasts for 24 hours

A typhoon is heading our way. With luck, it should pass just south of Okayama and we’ll avoid the worst of it. I’ve enjoyed the rainy season so far-you get some uncomfortable humidity, but it gets relieved by the rainfall in the evenings. However, I don’t enjoy my commute to school as I get soaked cycling through the rain and then have to immediately change my clothes on arrival since I don’t own any waterproof trousers. I could buy some I suppose-it might just add to the rash of unfashionable but practical clothing that I’ve happily adopted in Japan, along with tights, silly hats and a variety of Uniqlo undergarments.

I shaved my head for the first time last week and I quite like the way it looks and feels. However, having to shave your head every 2-3 days is incredibly dull and it takes me about 20 minutes to do it. It’s almost as if you have to plan your evening round it. I hope that it becomes something you can do quickly once you are better practiced. I’m relieved that I don’t have a weird shaped head with my spinal column sticking out the top like a stegosaurus or anything like that. Although I’m happy with how it looks, it is a little strange since I feel like the appearance doesn’t quite match my personality. I don’t feel like a skinhead, but I do look like one.

Last night I stayed in and watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I was really impressed by it. The effects are excellent, particularly the way they’ve drawn the monkey, Caesar. It’s not really an action movie as there’s no real jeopardy or fighting until the final third of the film. Meanwhile, much of it feels like an SF drama in the style of Contact or Outbreak. James Franco is great as usual and it’s helped by a strong plot that sets things up nicely for the sequel.  No love of science-fiction or knowledge of the previous films is required.

I’ve also rented My Neighbour Totoro from Tsutaya. I sometimes feel that I’m the only person in Japan who hasn’t seen it. I’m doing my research Ghibli-wise as we will soon be visiting the Studio Ghibli museum near Tokyo and I want to know a bit more about the films before I go.

I’m not gonna be running tonight…

Welcome To My Home

This weekend, we had friends visiting us from the UK. Some of my favourite nights out in Japan have involved visitors from abroad. I’ve really enjoyed showing visitors round the city. It’s funny how quickly you develop a sense of civic pride about a place. I was so proud of Manchester when I lived there, even though I had only actually been a resident for a couple of years. Now, I always feel that I really want to show off the best that Okayama and the surrounding region have to offer.

Sometimes in London, you see foreign tourists walking along Shaftesbury Avenue or Charing Cross Road at about dinnertime, desperately looking for somewhere decent to eat. And then, invevitably, they make their way to the Angus Steak House or Aberdeen Steak House. You want to rescue them and guide them off the main road towards Soho proper, but you can’t. Fortunately, this is not something that could ever happen in Okayama.

Okayama doesn’t really have an equivalent of Shaftesbury Avenue. Sure, it has some slightly touristy areas. The Bikantiku area of Kurashiki for example is tacky as hell, full of shops selling junk and overpriced cafes (this is not to slate that area totally as it’s quite pretty and the Ohara Art Gallery is excellent).

Okayama isn’t somewhere that you’d usually visit as a foreign tourist. It has a beautiful garden, some historical areas, a history of pottery craftsmanship and some other bits and bobs. But the Lonely Planet only devotes a couple of pages of the “you could actually spend half a day here” variety. In the end though, a karaoke booth in Okayama is much like a karaoke booth in Shibuya, Tokyo.

So there’s a Hefner song I like with the line “How can she love me if she doesn’t even love the cinema that I love?” That’s basically how I feel when it comes to visitors. If they don’t like the Korakuen Garden or aren’t impressed by the lush countryside I get doubtful about whether we have anything in common really. This shows that a) I am the most tremendous snob, b) I am a poor judge of character and c) If you want to deceive me Hustle-style, you should just, on meeting me, casually drop Pulp b-sides into the conversation until I hand over my bank details and the keys to my flat.

Highlights of the weekend: Lounging in my favourite Okayama cafes, trying blue beer, encouraging others to pay money to try blue beer, amazing yakitori (how did we survive before yakitori entered our lives?), playing an arcade game where you have to overturn a table in an onscreen bar by flipping a piece of wood on the control panel, discovering that Soundbeat karaoke has Rip It Up by Orange Juice.

The above picture of Ted Hughes has nothing to do with any of this but he does have an impressive jaw.

Sleepwalking

I’m sleepwalking through my job right now, pretty much on autopilot as far as my day to day duties are concerned. It’s difficult to be genki when your inclination is to lie down and catch your breath, but I am trying. Nonetheless, the past couple of days have been pretty satisfying.

I had a great conversation with some of my junior high second year students yesterday about the perils of juku (cram school) and homework. Even though some of my second year classes have become a bit rowdy these past few months, they are probably my favourite group of students. Their level of English has advanced at a frightening rate. This is one advantage of teaching at an academic school. When I first met them they could barely do a self introduction. Now, they are intermittently confident English speakers, able to express themselves and capable of understanding 60% of what I throw at them.

I don’t mean to imply that this improvement is down to me. It’s mainly due to the excellent teachers at my school, its emphasis at early junior-level on genuine communication skills and the students’ hard work. They have put my lazy Japanese skills to shame.

I feel really proud of them in a way that I never expected to when I came here. Teaching English was never a motivational factor in my decision to come to Japan. It was merely a means to an end, which was to experience a foreign culture and properly explore a country I was fascinated with. I have no particular love for kids, especially teenagers and the idea of spending my time surrounded by them made me slightly nervous to be honest.

But it hasn’t quite turned out how I expected. Firstly, the kids are great. There’s a unity to the group and a carelessness about their nature that’s really appealing and which can totally put you at ease. I’ve found myself really rooting for them on so many levels. So much so that it makes me want to work hard for them and improve my teaching on their behalf.

Secondly, I’ve enjoyed the creativity of teaching. I’m pretty decent at it. There’s nothing like watching a lesson you’ve planned run perfectly with happy students cavorting around the classroom and enjoying English. It is a genuine thrill and I envy my friends who are teachers who get to do that on a regular basis with the proper experience and skill that teaching for a living imparts upon you.

Thirdly, through family and friends, a whole rash of babies and young children have entered my life in the past few years. Now I’ll be honest. Babies are really boring. Only if they are your own do they hold any real appeal. They moan, they cry, they have very little personality and they are incredibly demanding. They drive the parents crazy. It’s just the inevitable side-effect of 24/7 babytime.

But toddlers…toddlers are fun. For a start, you can talk to them. They are little people with individual personalities. You can play with them and hang out. Sure, they are, if anything, even more demanding than babies. But you get something back from a toddler. Babies just ask for your attention, get it and go to sleep if you’re lucky. Toddlers can actually lift you and make you feel good. So I suppose my attitude towards children has changed in the sense that I can actually envisage enjoying their company to some extent.

I’ve enjoyed the teaching, even if I have major reservations about the specific role of an ALT. I will miss being on my feet for 3 hours a day and the challenge of interacting with people on a personal level so regularly. But if I’m honest, I’d rather be a civil servant. Which is lucky, because that’s what I’ll be again on August 7^th.

I’m not pregnant by the way. I don’t have Danny Devito as my doctor. I’m really not.

What is the collective noun for a group of monks?

With my newly-shaved head, I increasingly resemble a monk. A Jewish monk. Which made last week’s trip to Koya-san even more appropriate. It’s a beautiful place-all forests, hills and impressive temples.

But the most impressive part was the Okunoin graveyard. Now, I know it’s a Smiths-fan cliché, but I do enjoy a good graveyard wander. Even though I’m acknowledging the indie affectation, writing that does make me wince slightly. It’s true though-one of my favourite sites in Paris is the Pere-Lachaise cemetry (sic-get me, I can even spell in an irritatingly referential way) where I spent a delightfully pretentious afternoon back in 2002. The graveyard at Koya-san was huge, mossy, varied and had a whiff of Indiana Jones about it. We spent much of our time wandering off the path and being unsure if that was allowed. But it felt great to walk inbetween the graves and let them surround you. As with Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, it was surprisingly easy to escape the crowds and find a bit of solitude amongst the grave stones.

Man, I’m so wet sometimes.

I loved all the moss.

We stayed in a temple at one end of the graveyard. The temple itself was amazing-absolutely massive with beautiful gardens, a friendly band of monks (what is the collective noun for a group of monks?) and a really serene feel to the rooms with a pretty view. My main memory will be the constant chorus of frogs that provided the background to our stay. The frogs are so noisy in Japan this week! Seriously, last night they kept me awake in my apartment!

My nemesis.

One reason to stay in the temple lodgings is that you can eat shojin ryori food. This is a type of vegan cuisine. No meat, fish or anything meat/fish related. There were a few highlights. I really liked the main piece of tofu, which was well flavoured. Tofu is great at taking on other tastes and although I sometimes dislike the consistency of it, this time it was excellent. There was also some especially tasty tempura that I’d have liked more of. But on the whole, I wasn’t a fan. There were too many bland components, overcooked veg, foamy textures and a lack of satisfaction about the whole thing. Still, it was great to try something new.

In separate news, I’ve continued to be a bit under the weather these past few days. In fact, it’s been almost a fortnight since I last felt genuinely okay. I don’t get sick very often but I have had an increasing number of minor medical complaints this past year or two, which is one of the reasons I’ve been attempting to be a bit healthier. But my current problem (a recurring shortness of breath and occasional stomach pains) is really irritating as it saps your energy. When it started it would only last for twenty minutes or so at a time, but recently it’s been lasting whole days. Very annoying, especially at a time when my general health is improving. I’ve been running 3 times a week, doing taiko once a week, cycling and eating better food. I’ve cut down on alcohol since Christmas and I’ve also barely smoked in the last few months. I suspect that all the above symptoms are related to the nicotine withdrawal, but still. It’s actually started to stop me doing things and that’s a major headache. Getting treated properly here is hard work without good Japanese skills and my doctor here seemed pretty clueless about what was going on. Though that didn’t stop him from prescribing me tranquilizers that I’m almost certainly not going to take. I’m hoping that it will go away on its own as it’s starting to majorly piss me off.

Would you like fries with that?

Most recent Sunday mornings have begun with me packing up my possessions in a rush so that I can vacate my lodging by its 10am check out time. One aspect of my life in Japan over the past year has been that I’ve stayed in more hotels and hostels than at any other time in my life. Thank goodness, then, that Japanese hostels have been of such a ludicrously high standard. I remember travelling around Spain and Italy for a month when I was 21 and a large number of the hostels were awful. This was particularly true in Italy where many of the hostels were run by religious groups. They would often have a 10pm curfew, be based in the drug-dealing centre of the city and chuck you out all day so that the rooms could be cleaned. Which was ironic, because the rooms were usually quite dirty when you returned.

In Japan, on the other hand, almost every place I’ve stayed has had something going for it. Staff have tended to be overwhelmingly helpful. And even though some of the rooms have been on the small side, I’ve not stayed anywhere that wasn’t reasonably clean.

One aspect of living in Japan is that your expectations as a customer change significantly. I noticed this immediately when I visited the UK in March. There are definitely bad sides to the Japanese way. God knows-the overly servile and clone-like impressions of some Japanese service personnel can grate and I sometimes do wish that people would just shut the f*** up and stop greeting me every time I turn a corner in a shop. But on the whole, it has been hugely refreshing to be treated so well here. There seems to be a much lower tolerance of shoddy service and expectations are just a lot higher than in the UK. I’ve really appreciated this during my time here. It’s always nice to be treated well. I rarely have to worry that the cheapest hostel will be a dive.

Euro 2012 starts today and I feel a bit weird to be so disconnected from it all. The current England team are both rubbish and totally unsympathetic. But if I were in the UK, it would be a really big deal and I’d be making all sorts of preparations about where to watch the games. I do enjoy the big tournaments but I will probably not see a single match of this one. England play on Monday at 5am local time and I will most likely be asleep.

In other news, I’ve booked my flight home. I return to the UK on 2^nd August. I may have a few days in Tokyo beforehand to say goodbye to Japan and get set for departure. After that, my lifestyle is going to change dramatically.

A Trip Round The Islands - Naoshima

The island trips continue. Naoshima is a very special place and it was great to spend the night there, without the pressure of a 5pm ferry on our minds. We camped out in yurts by the sea, had a BBQ for dinner and drank prosecco on the beach (champagne is beyond our budget).

This time we got to see all of the Art House Project buildings. It was interesting to see traditional spaces converted into something altogether different. There was a great variation in quality though. One or two of the buildings made you wonder why they had bothered at all. Nonetheless, I enjoyed wandering the streets and not knowing what to expect each time I walked through the door.

We also finally made it to the sento, which is really unusual and almost a work of art in itself. The bath had a mosaic floor that was pieced together from photographs, drawings and other oddities. Above the bath stood a life-size model of an elephant. It was a strange atmosphere but it did feel relaxing which is the point I guess.

The James Bond Museum was a real oddity. They’ve centered the museum around a post-Fleming Bond novel in which the climax is set on Naoshima. It has lines like ““Japanese women are the most beautiful in the world” thought Bond, as he sipped his Martini”. They’d made their own Bond film/documentary which involved some unusual “acting”. Still, it made me laugh and I enjoyed browsing through the Bond tat that they had collected over the years.

I’m sorry this entry reads as a bit of a list of stuff that I did. I’ve had a funny week, really. I got a bill from Softbank that was as much as a shinkansen ticket. It floored me. The lesson is to never, ever use your Japanese-contract phone abroad. Even for a minute. Feeling totally screwed, I handed over my not especially hard-earned money at the combini and muttered to myself in a crazy person fashion.

Crazy person muttering is not a good look for me.