Update long overdue

Hi everyone,

No promises for how interesting this blog will be as there is nothing much happening here.  Although, I feel like I could give birth to alien spawn and consider it still 'nothing much' when everyone up north is going through such trials.  I feel shallow worrying about our little concerns when there are still thousands and thousands living out of school halls, unable to let their children drink the water and without heat, in the freezing cold. 

Compared to that, our little ups and downs don't seem such a big deal. 

So what have we been up to?  Working (Jeff) and not working (me - although I actually did work last week), helping out at English class and trying to save money.  That's us in a nutshell! 

We were supposed to be at a hanami (cherry blossom viewing) party last weekend in Onomichi, but it got postponed because the blossoms are late this year - a bit disappointing.  This weekend we were supposed to spend in Hiroshima staying at Nishikawa-san's apartment (or 'aparto' as they call it) for another hanami party.  Which also got cancelled, this time apparently because Nishikawa-san and Sonoko-san were too busy.  Next weekend we are supposed to have a hanami party in Shobara, but I start to see a pattern here... 

Instead, on Sunday we went to Okayama city.  We had been told that there was a pub that served meat pies - the food Jeff had been craving since hitting Japan - but it turned out to be a bit of a wild goose chase as they only have them occasionally, for big events.  Luckily we had a really nice walk around a huge garden on an island and took photos of Okayama castle.  The garden looked a little the worse for wear at the end of winter, but the ponds, moss and plum tree blossoms made us (and by us I mean me) determined to go back again later in the season.  It would look very different - but very beautiful - in each different season, so I'm keen to visit often.  We concluded our Okayama trip by visiting the book store that has a decent English selection and stocking up at the imported food store (three bags of muesli?  Check.  Seven boxes of peppermint tea?  Check.  White chocolate covered pretzels?  Check - oops!!).  Altogether we had a nice day, even if Jeff was snuffling his way round looking a little like that famous reindeer. 

Time for me to go make some lunch now.

I hope you are all keeping well and that NZ is recovering from the quakes.

Charly

Compilation entry (written offline and finally loaded up)

2/3/10

Well, it’s snowing again – that long talked of cold snap is here.  So far it’s not cold enough for it to stick around on the ground, though. 

Btw, I have dated this entry because I’ve decided to try to be more onto it with my blog updates.  As such, rather than writing my updates online (where there is online shopping and facebook to distract me!) I will try to get into the habit of writing a few lines on here every day.  Then, when I take my laptop online (happens once a week or so) I can put this straight onto my blog.  It’s a good idea, we will just have to wait and see how well it works…

This week I’m making the most of being unemployed (well, not working, anyway).  Starting next week, I have two five day weeks and a three day week.  I know you will all be rolling your eyes and thinking ‘welcome to the real world!’, but the thing is with the five day weeks, I won’t be coming home at all over that period.  I will have to pack a bag Monday morning and not see Jeff or home again until late Friday night.  At first it was kinda fun packing my things to go down to Mukaishima, but I am now well and truly over it. 

I was only going to work two weeks in March, but I decided we need the money (I took home all our savings to put in our NZ bank accounts, so we are back to square one in Japan), so I decided I will just suck it up and accept that for two weeks I will live out of a backpack, only seeing Jeff in the weekend.  We will be grateful for it when we get the pay cheque.

Last night I came with Jeff to the English conversation group, attended by our super-cute group of local oldies.  As it is a Tuesday night, I haven’t been able to attend before, so it was fun to go along.  Present were the Yamamoto’s/Yamamot-san’s (not sure how the ‘san’ thing works with plural…), who have fairly good English and instigate the group, Fuji-san and his wife, a younger woman whose name I’ve forgotten and – although I would never play favourites – my personal favourite Tokura-sensei. Tokura-sensei is super old, has not so many teeth, HUGE black-rimmed glasses, a ready smile and grows BEAUTIFUL apples which he often gifts to Jeff at language class.  He is such a cutie I just want to take him home and keep him.  He also has better English than you expect – sitting there quietly, then coming out with an understandable explanation about his daughters and grandchildren. 

Fuji-san – the male – (I am always unclear with this Japanese custom of using the last name how to denote if you are speaking about the husband or wife…  Which reminds me, I expected to be Mrs Wigg, or perhaps Wigg-san over here, but we are Charri and Jeffu [approximate phonetics] and I almost never have to explain about the different last name thing, although the Japanese always want to know why if it does come up) – anyway, the topic under discussion was our trip to Taiwan.  We were required to slowly and clearly, in simple English, describe our trip to Taiwan.  The group would listen, then ask questions.  The Fuji-san’s go to Taiwan themselves in March, so Fuji-san (male) was asking lots of questions.  As Jeff said, “He is very difficult to understand, but he tries so hard I don’t want to be correcting him every time.”  Personally I was impressed Jeff was understanding at all.  Evidently the group relies on Jeff’s Japanese to help him understand, so much of the time they appear to say what they can in English (key words they have looked up in their electronic dictionary), then say the rest of it in Japanese.  Considering yesterday was my first time studying Japanese all year (yes, I’m that slack!), that helps me not at all, but Jeff was getting the gist of things. 

Speaking of Japanese study, I was relieved yesterday when I picked up my textbook after a study break of almost three months (yikes!).  I thought I was going to have forgotten everything and have to start at the beginning again, but when I tried the exercises I found I knew more than expected.  In fact, often if I didn’t KNOW the answer, but simply let my gut instinct pick the correct answer, it was correct.  Attributable, I believe, to having heard the language enough that I can pick what sounds correct.  That made me feel much better – despite the fact I haven’t been studying, clearly I am taking something in! 

And, in that vein, time for me to take my end of chapter Japanese test!  It’s open book, so failing isn’t an issue, but I am still hoping I know most of the answers without having to check back too much…  Cross fingers!

5/3/11

A couple of things to update…

Firstly, I have had a wee breakthrough on my writing.  When people asked about my working in Japan, I always said that if I couldn’t find work I would use the time to try to be A Writer – as I’ve always dreamed of.  The reality was that after years of essays and factual writing, my style had become overly analytical and self-conscious.  Also, they seemed to be an amazing amount of laundry needing washing, the toilet always needed cleaning, emails needed answering, facebook needing checking… you know how it goes!  Anyway, to try to help me knuckle down, Jeff started giving me creative writing tasks, such as ‘write a whole page about one flower’ and ‘write a story about someone’s first taste of ice-cream’.  At first this was really hard, but I started to get into it and after a few days I had a burst of motivation to finally turn my blog from my year in the US into a book.  It is something I have always talked about, but on Wednesday I finally had the get-up-and-go to make a start!  This is big and exciting news and I now feel like a Writer, even if I do start back at work next week and probably won’t write anything again for weeks…

Riding on my high from being motivated, I decided to visit Jinseki Junior High school (the school next door where I spent a week or two in September).  I contacted the English teacher to tell him I would come in for an hour or two on Thursday, and what time would be best.  His text reply read ‘pmJ’.  Ok, fair enough, I thought.  Assumedly English classes are in the afternoon.  I rocked up about 1:30pm and helped out with half an English class before we were all called to the gym.  With a conniving smile, the English teacher explained, “Today is volunteer day.  We will clean the toilets.  You will follow this student.”  Wtf???!!!!  Someone clearly didn’t explain the definition of ‘volunteer’ to these teachers!! 

Looking like a stunned mullet, I followed my student to the outside doorway.  Here a group of five students all stripped down to shorts and removed their shoes and socks.  This was a BIG deal because a) it’s the first time I’ve seen anyone barefoot in Japan and b) it was so cold it was actually snowing.  The students then ran to the door and indicated for me to follow.  I was wearing shorts over thick stockings so, indicating my stockings, I put my Ug boots back on and went to follow them.  “No, no!” they cried, unable to let me follow in shoes.  One of the girls ran and got the PE teacher, telling her “Stockings, stockings!” and pointing at my legs.  “Oh!” cried the PE teacher, indicating for me to follow.  She led me down the hall to a largish storage cupboard, ushered me in and shut the door behind me.  Not, as I mistakenly believed, escorting me to a different group that DIDN’T involve running around in the snow with bare feet, but so I could remove my stockings in privacy!

When I was attired like the students (eg. Freezing) I followed them outside to some outside toilets.  Here I was handed a sponge and pointed at the sink, while the other girls got to scrubbing the squat toilets with pieces of mesh (no gloves or anything fussy like that!!).  If this was their idea of spring cleaning, they also had a fairly shite definition of spring!  To cut a long story short, I spent the next hour or so helping the students scrub every surface of the toilets (being careful to avoid actually touching the toilet itself), spending the greater part of the time on hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a brush.  I was laughing at the absurdity, but was also unimpressed at the English teacher.  I’m not sure if he thought it was a good joke, or whether he felt it was educating me on Japanese schools, or whether he was just pissed off with me and being mean.  But while I scrubbed the damn floor, thinking of my own toilet at home that really needed cleaning and of my book that I could have been writing, I swore to myself it was the last time I would be visiting that school in my free time!!

8/3/2011

Ok, so the other odd thing that followed that day was my book request.  The other ALT and I were discussing this book I had started writing two days earlier.  Luc was trying to convince me to publish on my own without a publisher, while I kept reminding him I had to write the things first and that that was jumping the gun a little.

However, the next morning I got a phone call from someone jumping the gun even more – Ken, the crazy English teacher, was calling to ask if his students could have a copy of my book.  I tried to explain I had only been writing it for two days – I thought that was fairly self-explanatory – but apparently not so…  I have noticed over here that often the problem with second language speakers is a lot gets lost in translation.  Not just obvious issues where they don’t understand what you’re saying, but with the fluent ones, they seem to THINK they are understanding what you’re saying, but they are not actually listening to the meaning in your sentence and totally miss the point of what you are saying.  I have noticed this not only with the Japanese, but also with Luc, the other ALT.  He is from Canada and his first language is French.  Although he is considered good enough in English to be an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher), I often find in conversation that his answers don’t make sense, because he is taking SOME of your reply but not understanding/listening to the whole meaning of your sentence.  Before I get any snide remarks about the length of my replies, he does the same to Jeff, too!

Anyway, so somehow ‘my book has only been being written for two days’ wasn’t explanation enough – I didn’t even bother going into the (too obvious to mention!) fact that the language would be way beyond his students understanding, never mind the content being unsuitable.  Finally I told Ken that I had had a story published when I was in high school and that I would contact my family back home to see if they could give him a copy.  I didn’t bother telling him his students would really struggle with the language – if he thought he could get them through it, who was I to say it was way too much??  So I got on the phone to Mum and we got a copy of the story through to him.  He said ‘thanks’ and I didn’t think much more of it.

Finally, today I got a message from Ken.  It reads:

‘the story is 2 diff 4 stus plea send ur letter 4 graduates’

I happened to know that the students graduate in two days’ time, but this did not make the letter reference any clearer!  I got back to him to clarify and he said he wanted me to write a 200 word letter for him to print off for the students.  Glad to see he really knew how to ask a favour politely!!  I got back to him to explain I was in Innoshima this week and couldn’t email him until the weekend, so he finally conceded that a very short message sent off my cellphone would be appreciated.  I’m not sure if this is Japanese male arrogance, if he is still shitty at me for not staying at school or if the politeness is all just getting lost in translation, but the manners certainly aren’t making it through the cellphone! 

Currently I am on a break between classes at work.  Today I’m teaching in the branch of the school that I stay at, so on my breaks I can go chill in my bedroom.  The first class was a little stressful – my boss had told me the class would start at 3:40pm, but come that time there were no students and no Japanese teacher (who had the schedule including the names of my students!).  Turned out, after the students turned up five minutes late and I surprised the Japanese teacher by finishing ten minutes early, that my boss had told me the times the students would turn up and I was expected to play with them from (eg. Ten minutes before their class).  I’ve been working here since September and he has never done that before, so I understandably hadn’t picked it! 

Anyway, five minutes till I have to get back in there, so I better finish my drink and get downstairs…