Occidental, Not Oriental

2008-11-21T20:45:00.007Z

There has of late been perplexed disbelief in some quarters at the joyous reaction of Europe, and in particular the European press, to the election of Barack Obama. There has also been resentment of Europe’s apparent “pious dismissal of the past decade of [the USA]’s history”.

Firstly, let’s not forget that it was Le Monde that proclaimed in September 2001 that, “We are all Americans now.” This from the newspaper of record of the one country in Europe to which America historically owes the most, a country that a bare two years after September 11 would be vilified as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."

It is precisely because of who America is, and who she has been, that we Europeans have been so incredulous these past eight years. The election of Barack Hussein Obama is a return to the ‘shining city on the hill’ that America, for Europe, has always been. The fact that Obama is black, has a funny name, and is a progressive is just further testament to America’s enduring ability to realize it’s full potential; to stare down the regressive and fear-mongering elements that all proud nations have. To be able to shake off the fears and prejudice of uncertainty and ignorance. To rise above.

Americans believe their country to be exceptional, and to a certain extent it is. The American president is often referred to as ‘the leader of the free world,’ though tellingly mostly in the US itself. If you insist on taking on this mantle you have to actually carry it through. Walk the walk as they say. Who in their right minds opposes a treaty designed to tackle the universally accepted threat of climate change? Who would veto a bill that would provide the most basic of health coverage to children? Why is New Orleans still in ruins? Reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions? The suspension of habeas corpus? Guantanamo Bay? Abu Ghraib? Rendition? We all had a chuckle at George W. Bush trying to pronounce ‘nuclear’, but redefining torture as ‘enhanced interrogation’? This is not the America we all know and love.

Now obviously it’s not like you should be electing leaders based purely on whether Europe likes them or not. Nobody should tell you who you should elect -- because that would be telling people how they should run their country, and that’s just not right is it, er, America?

However, you should surely be electing the leaders who best embody the values and principles of ‘America’; the values that have endured and inspired so many nations for centuries. There’s a reason Obama beat out the formidable Hillary Clinton for the democratic nomination: hope is a powerful force. The desire for something different, something better, that something at the end of the long dark tunnel. It is a motivating force, the same force that America has used and embodied for so much of the past century. That Obama won in a landslide electoral college victory in the general election speaks to that hope.

Somebody has likened the jubilation in Europe at Obama’s election to “the popular high school crowd who suddenly wants to befriend you for your new car”. The school analogy is not totally out of place, given that George ‘Dubya’ Bush is known not to play well with others. But if there were a school-based analogy to be made it would be more akin to a group welcoming back a core member, one who went off the rails for a while and hung out with the bad boys, dabbled in petty theft -- maybe even smoked some funny cigarettes -- until they realized that that just wasn’t who they were and returned to the fold. If, you know, we were doing school analogies.

There was recently an article in Foreign Affairs pondering the future of US-world relations, it related an anecdote about how John McCloy, US commissioner of a defeated Germany after World War II, attended the Opera in West Berlin some thirty years later, during the 1980s. On hearing of his presence the entire audience rose to it’s feet and applauded him for several minutes. In June 2008 that same Opera house, now in a unified Berlin, played Beethoven’s Fidelio, a “universal celebration of love and freedom”. The actors playing prisoners wore orange jumpsuits, those made famous by the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Can you imagine anyone in a Baghdad opera house in thirty years time applauding Paul Bremer? “Within a generation”, says the author of that article, Dominique Moisi, “the United States has moved from being a symbol of freedom to being a symbol of oppression.”

For Europe, America had always been the benchmark, the ever-reliable defender of freedom and promoter of progress: The Marshall Plan, The United Nations, NATO, The Dayton Accords, The Oslo Accords, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, The Non-Proliferation Treaty; all enterprises of common good, benefiting not only the United States, but also the rest of the world.

It’s not that we forgot who America is, or how awesome it is, nor do we discount the courage and hard work and vision it takes to be in a position of leadership; we were just waiting to see it there again. With the election of Barack Obama, America has reclaimed it’s rightful place at the head of the "tea-table."

Good to see you again America, it’s been a while.

Geoff Is Update Status

2008-02-11T19:44:00.002Z

Whoo. It’s been what, three years since I last blogged? Feels like it. I’m in an entirely different country now, and was hoping that with a new environment would come inspiration and great new blog material – just like Japan! But no, since I’ve been here I’ve tried to blog a couple of times, but nothing. I have read through my last one hundred and thirty five blogs and marveled. What was it that made those so easy? Maybe I should relax a little, slide into it. So one evening I made myself a drink and sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop to see what would come. Gin and vermouth mix wonderfully, so why not gin, vermouth and blog? Why not a cigar as well, since we’re here…the next day, after my private little party, I checked over to see exactly what it was I blogged about, because, to be honest, it’s a little hazy. I remember great excitement, but I also remember a toilet bowl. What came out? A drunken rant against monotheistic religion, and a rambling discourse on Free Will. It was mostly illegible, and worse – it wasn’t even funny.

To tide me over in the meantime I have done what all my literary heroes seem to have done in the last few years – I have plagiarized my previously unpublished material. I found this little gem from last April:

I took my nephew and his friends bowling for his twelfth birthday yesterday. I’m depressed to say that his friends are awful, truly terrible, at bowling. I, however, crushed them with a 146, including a four-bagger – strike in the ninth and a turkey in the tenth.

Twelve year olds really are little shits though aren’t they? While driving them to the bowling alley they were all yelling at one another:

I sell your mum on the street to businessmen for £5 an hour!
Yeah, well you’re gay, and your dad is gay too!
At least I have a Dad!
Yeah, and he’s gay!
You look like a girl from behind!
Yeah, well you look like a girl from the front!
You're a penis!
You’re obsessed with penises!
You’re bisexual!

And this lovely exchange:

Shut up Chris, let Gareth finish his anecdote!
Yeah Chris, you’re just like my nanny!
This country is turning into a nanny state!
Bush is a greedy criminal, he just wants oil and WMDs!
You don’t know anything! Saddam Hussein was a criminal!

Twelve years old. I crushed them at bowling though, did I mention that?

I wonder why I didn’t post that at the time? Obviously had just too much good material as it was…

Much has happened since then of course. I’ve moved to the US for one – living in a very hip area of Ohio. If anywhere in central Ohio can be called hip it has to be Short North/Victorian Village area of Columbus. It’s young and it’s liberal; people don't plant flowers in their gardens here, they plant political flags: “Support the Troops, End the War,” “One People, World Peace,” and there are rainbow flags everywhere. One house has an “Impeach Bush” sign as part of their portico; it even matches the colour scheme of the house. They don’t measure storm damage in dollars here, but in the number of wind chimes lost. Seriously, they’re so liberal that in a recent election for sheriff a lentil won.

I am not allowed to work yet; immigration has not collected quite enough forms about me, another forest or two to go I hear. So I am pretty much free all the time. I thought I should use this time wisely - maybe learn a language, read up on whole periods of history I keep hearing so much about. Relearn the stuff I never paid attention to in school, and also keep up with my sister who is now studying philosophy and fast leaving me behind. I compiled a worthy reading list and joined the library. I go every morning for a couple of hours reading. Unfortunately it seems that every other unemployed man in Columbus has the same idea, and indeed much of the homeless population too: the main library isn’t so much the reserve of learning as it is a refuge for the city’s vulnerable. At 8:30am most mornings you can find men and women lying on benches inside the foyer, or pacing back and fore muttering to themselves, until the library opens at 9am. You can also find me, sometimes, hiding in the car – the only thing that marks me out as not actually homeless. You see, with so much free time it’s awfully hard to get out of my dressing gown before noon, let alone brush my hair. This lethargy permeates everything: learning Spanish has become playing Scrabulous on Facebook. Reading the Bible, as every good atheist should, has become debating religion – on Facebook. Watching documentaries about the Peloponnesian War has become catching up on the last three seasons of ER. Not on Facebook, but I could if I wanted.

Last week I decided to actually do something – I went to a human rights conference organized by Ohioans to Stop Executions and Amnesty International. The death penalty really is a terrible thing. I knew before I went that I opposed the death penalty; found it barbaric, unjust, and just plain wrong. I knew a few facts about it – that is does not act as a deterrent, that is actually costs more than life in prison – and other bits that I’d picked up in my general opposition. But I came away from this conference almost fuming at the ridiculousness of it. A couple of things stuck in my mind:

1) The prosecution has at its investigatory disposal the police and the justice department. The defence team has, well, the defence team. If you can afford one of course. This defence team you can’t afford is not privy to all the evidence either. If the prosecution deems a piece of evidence as not helpful to their case they don’t enter it into evidence. If they don't enter it into evidence the defence don't get to see it. Sure, if they find out about it by themselves they can use it, but if they weren’t aware of it the prosecution is in no way obliged to tell them about it.

2) You are 3.8 times more likely to get the death penalty for killing a white man than you are a black man.

3) 1099 people have been executed since 1976. There should have been 1125, but 126 innocent people were exonerated in time. That’s 10%. There are 3000 people on death row right now. How many of them are innocent?

But what really struck me about the death penalty was how it affects others – there were several parents and siblings of people on death row at the conference, even one man who had spent seven years on death row before DNA exonerated him. They were lambasting, arguing, crying – but they were all reasoning. Most of them were broke. For us armchair liberals these things are really just pursuits – the odd petition, forwarding emails to the Chinese government, signing up to Facebook groups. Until you actually meet people directly affected by it you can’t appreciate how something this terrible can actually happen in a developed, freedom-loving country like the US. The so-called ‘Axis of Evil’ countries have the death penalty. The Taliban have it. Great company to keep. In Nebraska they electrocute you. Hell, even Rwanda has abolished that.

But this is not funny.

I broke my thumb on a dog last week - that was pretty funny. I was at the dog pound. I thought it was just a bite, indeed the staff gave me two band-aids and a tube of ophthalmic antibacterial ointment - that would be doggy eye cream – and sent me on my way. It was only the nauseating pain that night that sent me to the hospital the next day. It turns out that this mongrel bit through the distal phalanx of my thumb. In effect separating the tip of my thumb bone from the rest of my thumb bone. It swelled up so much that the doctor had to burn a hole in the nail to release the pressure inside. He told the student doctor with him that she might want to back up from the spray. Nice. Also, turns out I broke my wrist – ten years ago. Straight across, there’s a piece of bone floating around in there and everything. The doctor told me this as he looked at me with sympathy – obviously I was abused as a child.

I am now trying to get the animal shelter to cough up for the medical bills because I am of course uninsured. Did you know that 45 million Americans aren’t insured? It’s ridiculous. Hang on, this isn’t funny either.

Maybe I should have a little drink, and why not a cigar while I'm at it…

Who ever compared The Beatles and The Rolling Stones? Seriously.

2007-09-13T19:56:00.000Z

You know how great TV shows like to keep you hooked with an off-season catch-up, a compilation show of the greatest moments of the last season? Just to remind you how good the show is, so you tune-in in four months time for the new season? Well, this post isn’t like that at all. It is however an amalgam of the shit I seem to have written in the last month or two, with some vague idea of blogging on it but never getting round to it. Cue montage music…

A couple weeks ago I got fired from a temping gig three hours in. This is a true story -- I'm a bum who cant keep a job down. I'm halfway through a massive stack of data inputting for this medical services company and the boss-lady taps me on the shoulder and leads me into a side office. She hands me a printout of the only two emails I'd sent that morning, one to Robin and one to my sister. Both said, more or less, "I'm at my crappy admin job, this is my email address.”

Boss-lady looks at me.

Yes? I say
I'd like you to leave, she says
Really? I ask
Yes, she says
Right, I say. And she escorts me to the door.

Seriously. Fascist.

Got a job with the Independent Police Complaints Commission a week later. Had an amazing interview, somehow I managed to be witty, pithy, and intelligent. This was a gem, though not too pithy:

What does a team mean to you?
What does a team 'mean' to me?
Yes, what does a team 'mean' to you?
Ah, I'd say that a team means working together and, ah…no. Let me put it like this: you know circuitry? Well, the standard circuit is a series circuit. If one link in that series breaks then the whole circuit fails. Now a 'parallel' circuit is designed so that when any one link breaks the circuit will not fail, because it is self-supporting. To me, that's what 'team' means.
Nice, she said, writing on her clipboard, Very nice.

I feel dirty just typing it.

I seem to have started playing skittles for my mother’s local pub league in the past month or two. Don’t ask me why, I was bored one Friday night and…anyway. There’s a lady there who I haven’t seen in a couple of years, friend of my parents, and she looks different somehow. Then it twigs:

Have you lost weight?
Yeah, three and a half stone
Really, wow that’s great!
Yeah, my husband left me.
Ah.

Have you ever been in a conversation and had that aside to yourself: This is weird, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. This guy is insane. I wonder if he knows he’s insane? Oop, my turn to contribute to the conversation, better pay attention. I wonder what I’m saying now…?
A couple of weeks ago I was mowing the lawn and the next-door neighbour came out to bring in her washing, wearing a muu muu. She leaned over the fence to me.

Seen who’s moved in across the road?
Uh, no, I noticed some moving vans though.
Saw them yesterday.
She looks around and leans in closer
Pakis
Pakis?
Hmm-mm, Pakis.
Do you mean Pakistanis?
Yeah, Pakistanis, Indians, Somalis, whatever
Well no, there’s a difference
I’ve been waiting ten years to get a bigger flat and this lot jump the queue because they’re ‘asylum seekers’
Really? Are they? Because they don’t look-
They have babies just to get on the list. He gave me a lift home the other day in his taxi.
Who did?
The husband. They’re opening a community centre around the corner, for their kind.
Really? Where the old sheds are? That's good, that area needs some-
Didn’t give me a discount.
Well, I’m not sure I would either.
What?
Well, if you were a stranger in a foreign country wouldn’t you want to have somewhere to go to meet other people like you, you know, people in the same situation? I know that wherever I’ve gone people have been very welcoming, but it’s always nice to be able to connect to things from home, you know? We’re all just trying to get by really aren’t we?
Yeah, well, I’ve been waiting years for a bigger place, and they’ve got this big house. Their kind always do.
Well, it seems like they’ve got a big family. Do they own the house?
I don't know. Council probably, always is isn’t it?
Uhh, well, I’ve got to get on with this grass and, er, you’d better get on with getting those brown shirts in before it starts to rain.

Great joke heard on NPR:

Ron Elving: Learned something new this week about Abraham Lincoln's face.
Ken Rudin: He's on the five dollar bill?
Ron Elving: No, his face - he was asymmetrical
Ken Rudin: He didn't like Jews? Actually that's not true because he was shot in the temple.

Happiness is not something you can define with things. It's a state of mind. You can be stacking shelves and be happy. Conversely you can have a high-powered job and the great house and car and still be unhappy. I was thinking this as I sat on the bus to work looking out the window at two girls sat on the pavement with their backpacks drinking coffee in the morning sunshine.

‘Infinity’ cannot be infinite. How can you define something that is infinite? You cannot define infinite – it has no definition. It is endless. You can define it in contrast to something finite, but you cannot say that something is infinite, you can only guess. When scientists say the universe is infinite they're not really saying that it is, they're saying that they don't know where it stops. And if the universe is infinite, how do they know this? The universe could be finite - it could have edges they say. But we can't see them, we can only suppose them. This is another way of saying "we don't know", so it is in effect infinite. This infinite universe is also expanding, potentially forever; it is doubly infinite, if you'll excuse the oxymoron.
If the universe is expanding then 1) how exactly can something infinite expand? 2) What is this infinity expanding into? 3) And what exactly is the turtle standing on?

Tune in next week for all new, fresh, Occidental Oriental...

A Perfect Game

2007-07-01T17:52:00.000Z

Am behind the reception at the Cardiff University School of Architecture. It's late on a wet and windy Friday afternoon during the summer recess. It's just me, some automatic doors, a very loud and ancient computer, and Tolstoy. They're paying me to sit here reading, and occasionally answer the phone to ask them to phone back Monday when people are here. There are some arty looking types wandering around now and then too; I'm hoping to learn something about architecture through osmosis, but all I've learned so far is that the tea in the urn on the second floor is pretty bad.

Spring has been strikes and gutters, both metaphorically and literally. At the beginning of June I temped at the offices of the Communist League of Cardiff. It’s not the Communist League of Cardiff of course, but their name does have the word "Workers" in it, which is good enough for me. At first I was pleased with the gig -- a progressive charity teaching the needy and vulnerable. By the end they were a dingy little office doling out money for Dough Sculpting courses taught by illiterate teachers for pregnant high school drop-outs who hang around outside between classes with their tracksuited boyfriends smoking joints and milling around the heroin addicts and tramps who loiter in that part of town.

The one good thing about temping, apart from the free stationery, is that ultimately you are your own boss. Take a few weeks ago. On the first day of a two-week assignment I was given a twenty minute introduction to the three filing systems, the four databases, and the dusty basement full of files stacked in rows. My boss looked me in the eye and said, "We need your help. Will you help us?" and I said, "Yes, yes I will help you," because I knew that there was no f------ way I was going to be there still in two weeks.

Sometimes I love being a temp, and three weeks later was why. "About these stacks of files here. Well, I'm not going to be able to finish them because next week I have to be in London drinking martinis. Now, could you sign this timesheet here, aaand here."

The year 2005-6 was a good vintage in Toyama. The parties were many and the good times were high. This past year I hear things have been more sedate, people have been paying more attention to cultural activities and studying -- in short taking advantage of the culture and making good on their time in Japan. Life back in Cardiff has been pretty similar for me; the parties are few, and when not working for Communists I find myself reading more and more educational non-fiction. So when Brad wrote to say he would be passing through London soon I got out the drinks menu to plan the three days he would be in town. Actually, both Emily Laurie and I planned the drinks menu, she even giggled slightly while doing it. It would be like the hey-day of Toyama, but in London.

On Tuesday morning Laurie and I walked into the tearoom of the Grosvenor Hotel, Park Lane to meet Brad. We’ll skip the tears and shucks and move right on to the first cocktails of the day. Brads parents, who were in London with him unbeknownst to us, introduced themselves, and fine people they were. We talked, we reminisced about the great times, we told great stories, ate scones, and drank tea. Then Brad’s father, the ‘Governor of Colorado,’ got in a round of champagne cocktails.

Our first stop of the day was chilled white wine under the trees of Hyde Park. It’s funny when you see someone after a long while. Initially it’s odd to see that person right next to you, in the flesh. But after a few minutes the oddness is gone and it’s just like it used to be. Oh look, it’s Brad, so yeah, bowling? And bowl we did.

Next stop was the Dirty Martini in Covent Garden. We drank martinis, we smoked great cigars. People ask why it is that good times must always revolve around alcohol, and the short answer is: because they do. Tell me the last time you had a really great time with your friends that did not involve alcohol -- and we had great alcohol. The next afternoon we spent bowling and getting sloppy. In the evening we hit many clubs and pubs and had excellent conversations with friends and strangers. The last place we stopped was the Guranabana bar where we danced samba for many hours and drank mojitos and strange Brazilian beer and smoked some more great cigars.

To put this post together I emailed Brad to ask his recollections and he replied, I quote: “I recall some very funny gay dudes dancing, especially one really sweaty gay dude, and gay dudes are always funny. Then throw in something about Emily puking. That's funny too.”

At the beginning of this post I said the spring had been strikes and gutters. I've been in a malaise of late, the type of funk that requires listening to Mahler. Waiting for things that you cannot control is always frustrating. Having no control is a real downer; this is why people believe in god, fate, and determinism. Recently though I've been thrown the line that has rolled me out of this gutter. I've been doing things better as a result, and I'm listening to jazz.

I’m not sure if you know this about me but I’m terrible at sports. Of course you know this, everybody knows this. I am terrible especially at sports that involve connecting with a moving object, like a ball of some kind. I have these enormous limbs, but put them anywhere near a moving ball and my limbs turn to some weird depolarized matter that is repelled by balls. Recently I no longer suck as much. At least, it no longer bothers me.

So, I’ve gone back to stationary sports. I've hit a rich form in snooker - getting down on the shots feels natural and tight. I've had a lot of free time recently and I've spent some of it bowling, and I've hit some rich form there too. Last Thursday I bowled ten games with a friend and scored 143, 157, 161, 167, 170 and a 179. I feel the 200 is not too far away.

So plans are coming to a head, and in a month or two I should be leaving for the US and Robin. I can feel the strikes.

Down and Out in Cardiff and London

2007-05-28T19:36:00.000Z

I might have mentioned recently how there is nothing happening worth blogging about. There is nothing really wierd, outrageous, or infuriating, in the same way as it would be somewhere totally alien like, for example, Japan. But, really, Cardiff is as wierd as anywhere else.

The other day I was in the registry office getting myself a replacement birth certificate as, according to my mother, mine was "lost in a move." In my family we keep important documents in a camphor box; everything is in there -- deeds, report cards, marriage certificates -- it even has a birth certificate for some guy born in 1881 called Samuel George Davies. He's got a birth certificate. Managed to keep that one for more than a hundred years. Mine though?

Thinking about it -- there are also no photographs of me before the age of six in the family albums either. Funny that.

Anyway, the other day I'm sat in the registry office waiting my turn when this teenage girl comes in pushing a pram. She's decked out in the pink baseball cap and the velvet tracksuit with her arse hanging out the back. After getting the form she needs she phones her mother:

"Mum, 'ave you gorra middle name? A middle name? No, mum, a middle name. Oh. Whorrabout Dad? 'As he got one? Really? Nah, I'm down the registry place innit..."

Pretty wierd eh? Do you know if your parents have middle names? I do. I even know my great-grandfather's middle name was George.

The other day in my office the admin girl was on the phone:

"Okay, can I take your name? Nial? Can you spell that for me? Uh-huh. What, November? Huh? Your name is November? I thought it was...oh, right! Okay, so: was that an M or an N?"

Crazy.

I went to London this weekend, again. This time it was for Yoshi's brithday, the boyfriend of my old uni roomie Becky, (and more recently a JET in Takaoka). London -that's another pretty wierd place. Despite being the capital of the UK, and of England, you will hear every other language as often as you will Englsih. In fact, London is almost like being abroad. Apart from the weather of course. As I was warming myself up in a Starbucks after a hellish bus ride down on the Megabus I noticed someone walk past the window. It was Emily Laurie! I have never before randomly run into anyone I know in London, even when I lived there for a while. A few hours later and we were both in Chinatown living it up at Yoshi's birthday party with Becky, Yoshi, Davyd and Adrianna, and a whole bunch of JETs we'd never met before. It was a hoot. We got to karaoke as well at a proper Japanese karaoke place, with Sapporo beer!

The next thing I knew I was waking up on Laurie's floor at 7.30am and I had 30 minutes to get to Victoria Station to get my bus home. I staggered around the room, gathering up my stuff and throwing on my bag, jacket, and umbrella. I stumbled down the road and jumped on the Tube. After one stop the announcer came on to say Victoria was closed due to flooding. So with 15 minutes to go, hungover, laden with stuff, trying to read my mini-London map without glasses, and desperately needing a wee, I ran from Westminster to Victoria. I almost died, especially after white-van-man sent me the wrong way after I asked directions halfway. I staggered into the station at 7.58am. Sweat was streaming down my face. I leant into the coach to make sure it had a toilet, otherwise I'd have to race to the station toilets and potentially miss my bus. Or I could just wet myself. I couldn't see that anyone had boarded yet so I sat down to wait. I was still desperate for a wee and wondered if I had time to run to the station toilets. A few minutes later somebody else got on, and I realised that the bus had people on board already who I hadn't seen, probably because my glasses were all fogged up. I got on, feeling a little stupid, and headed for the toilet.

London is a crazy city. This is what the coach driver saw that morning:

"So this guy runs up to the door of the bus, soaking wet right but it's not raining. He's got these glasses hanging off his face, and he's all confused and going on about how he's wet 'imself! He's real pale as well and I think 'uh-oh got another one here - 'care in the community''. Then, get this, he sits down on the bench and just looks at the coach! He's all shakin' and fidgetin', and looking around, and he keeps wiping his face with his sleeve and rocking back and fore. He's sat there for five minutes, rocking, and just as this Japanese guy gets on he jumps of the bench and into the bus and runs down the aisle. I didn't see him after that, but well...you get some wierd ones here I tell you."

Polonium!

2007-04-01T10:07:00.000Z

Smoking in public places in Wales has been banned. More specifically smoking in pubs -- where most people like to smoke.

I am an ex-smoker. ish. I smoked through University. I gave it up because a) it was expensive, and 2) I'd already apparently taken two years off my life.

When I think back about what I enjoyed about smoking two things come to mind: the rush, and it was cool. People do look cool smoking. Well, the right people look cool smoking; everyone else looks like a dick. Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, James Bond -- you want to be these people when you're smoking. That sallow-faced mustachioed woman in the pub with a lager in her hand and a fag jammed in her mouth? The fat guy down the end of the bar in the leather waistcoat? Not so much. The problem is that everyone thinks they are the right people. I know I did.

I’ve been listening to my mother, an ex-smoker, for weeks now about why the smoking ban is such a terrible and unfair thing. As much as I try to be objective and open-minded, I cannot help thinking how totally totally wrong she is.

However, last week a chap I work with popped out for a cigarette, “Well,” he said, “this time next week I will officially be a leper.” Does he have a point? Maybe. Look at it from their point of view: smokers are being incrementally hounded out of public spaces, pushed into the corner (the well ventilated corner) because the majority will not tolerate them. They are being villified for doing what they want to do, for exercising their free will.

It’s not like smokers are a massive drain on resources either. Did you know that the tax revenue from cigarettes more than covers the cost of treating smoking related diseases? Did you know that alcohol is as dangerous as smoking? So what’s the problem with smoking? Why not ban drinking?

These are valid arguments, and a strong philosophical case could be made for your right to smoke. Even if smoking is bad for you, which it is -- it's terrible, the worst idea ever. You may as well go wrap your lips around a car exhaust pipe as smoke a cigarette. Everyone knows smoking kills -- Smokers know this, they're not stupid; they don't need protecting.

But that’s not the point. If only smokers weren’t trying to kill other people too. And make them stink.

If smoking were punching yourself in the face then that would be okay. It would be weird, but hey, you’ve got every right to punch yourself in the face. But smoking is also punching the people around you in the face. Now, if you like to punch yourself in the face at home, and I come round knowing that I might get a stray bunch of fives in the chops then, hey, that’s my own fault. But when I’m out shopping, walking past the exits of municipal buildings, in the pub having a quiet after-work pint, at a restaurant –- I don't appreciate the ol’ knuckle sandwich. You punch my child in the face and we have a problem. You see the clumsy analogy I’m making here? Smokers do have a right to smoke, but that right is negated by the fact that smokers harm the people around them.

The act of drinking in itself doesn’t physically harm those around you. However, drunk people in cars do -- and that’s where the law steps in. Surely it should be the same for smoking?

The problem is that I like the occasional cigar, and in the absence of any decent martini places in Cardiff that just happens to in a pub.

What's Next?

2007-03-23T15:47:00.000Z

You know that walk-and-talk thing they do in Aaron Sorkin tv shows? Well, that just happened to me, only without so much of the fast-talking intellectualism. I came out a room at work and happened to fall in with a woman who was walking down the corridor. As we were walking along she looked up at me, and I looked down at her:

"Hi there" I said.
"Hi"
"This a long corridor eh?”
"Yep. I have to walk quicker than you though"
"I suppose, sorry about that"
"Isn't that discrimination?"
"What, that I’m taller than you?
"Yeah"
"No, it's just reality"
"Oh"

And she turned off around a corner.

The West Wing it’s not.

We Know Everything

2007-03-08T13:05:00.001Z

In the UK recently there has been some debate over the state's role in marriage and the family. The leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, recently backed marriage and the traditional family with a proposal to reintroduce the married couples' allowance (because obviously they hold marriage in such high regard they think people will hook up if you knock a few quid off their tax bill).

Then Tony Blair and John Hutton (Work and Pensions Secretary) came out. For the family that is.

So everyone loves the traditional family, the nuclear family.

Well, no. Alan Johnson (Education Secretary) came out in defence of single mothers and modern models of the family (e.g. cohabitation).

My first reaction was, "This again? Leave it alone Dave -- don't you remember the debacle of 'Back to Basics'? Anyway, not all marriage is a good thing. Sure, there is evidence that stable families raise stable achieving children, but there is also evidence for the less traditional models as well. The only thing the state should do is protect our property, our civil liberties, and our rights. And to help the most vulnerable. And to create equal opportunity and equality for all. Oh yeah, and healthcare."

Then I thought, "Y’know, that's a pretty liberal interpretation of the role of the state you've got there. A few years ago in the pub you said the state should exist purely to provide me with all the necessary freedoms that I need to provide for myself, my family, and to have a long and happy life? Anything else, you said, is social engineering."

I continued my conversation and it went like this:

Geoff: Surely it’s not the role of government to legislate relationships, but to provide stability and protection within which people can pursue whatever relationship they want with whomever they want.

Geoff: Yes, but look where these permissive attitudes have got us: look at the apparent social breakdown we are experiencing. Marriage is the bedrock of decent society and the springboard from which all wealth and stability flows. You want a stable society don't you?

Geoff: Permissive is not a pejorative you know. I do want stable society, but marriage as an institution should not be encouraged by fiddling with the welfare system. People will marry if they want to, and more importantly, if they believe in it. Marriage tax-breaks penalise people who want to have a choice!

Geoff: Ah, but children do better in stable environments -- an environment which is inherently absent when two people do not commit to each other. Surely we should encourage that?

Geoff: What? You’re talking about marriage as an institution for the procreation of children! That’s not entirely what marriage is about anymore. What about gay people, hmm? Do you think people should only be marrying to have babies? Gay people should be penalised for expressing their commitment to each other?

Geoff: What? No I’m not saying that at all! Jesus, why does it always have to be about gay people with you? I’m just saying that marriage is a good thing generally and it should be encouraged. Statistically cohabitees separate more often than married people divorce. One in two co-habiting parents separate before their child's fifth birthday, compared to one in twelve married parents.

Geoff: This is true, but only really matters if your argument is about children.

Geoff: Well, as a society the argument surely is about children! Look at the gangs of directionless children terrorising communities. Surely a return to traditional family values can be no bad thing?

Geoff: You read the Daily Mail don’t you?

Geoff: Look, I see where you’re going with this; I’m not against gay-marriage, I’m for marriage -- marriage for everyone! I’m just saying that marriage provides a more stable environment for children, and for society as a whole, and it should be encouraged.

Geoff: You’re missing the point old boy. You can't regulate society into the model that you think best. Change is organic, and healthy. There's no place for the state in the bedroom, my friend.

Geoff: You want social breakdown? You want chaos?

Geoff: No of course not, I'm pro-marriage, marriage is an amazing thing -- I'm getting married! I'm just saying there is more than one concept of society, marriage isn't the easy solution to what you perceive to be society's ills. We should be thinking more in terms of the community than 'me'; we need to reintroduce the idea of civic-responsibility; we need to address the enormous gap between the haves and the have-nots; we need to take responsibility for our children, rather than leave them to the school or the state to look after; we need support from the government for social justice, and the betterment of society generally. Laissez-faire government is irresponsible government sure, but ID cards, proscriptive immigration policies, more prisons, rendition?

And your lecturing us about marriage and sex?

Geoff: I bet you’re gay.

Geoff: What? Nice, Geoff. Real mature.

Stockholm Syndrome

2007-03-04T12:06:00.000Z

Last week or so I went down to London for Emily Laurie's birthday. It was riot: bowling, karaoke, and drinking. So, not much has changed with Emily. Except for the karaoke, which was out-of-order. It was nice to be back in London, but only for a short while. London is best done in weekends I think -- you get the great bars, the great food but not that annoying everyday baggage of actually living there.

The London to Cardiff train is often a crowded one, so much so that people run down the platform when it arrives. I sauntered along the platform -- because I think I'm above all that, obviously -- and bagged an unreserved table-seat. A very foreign chap sat down near me. Now, I don't read the Daily Mail, I just mean he looked incredibly lost. Anyway, unfortunately he seemed not to know about the tickets on seats denoting their reservedness. He was soon evicted from his seat, and after being spurned from another I pointed him to a seat across the way: “That one,” I whispered, “is not reserved.” He thanked me and shifted across the aisle. As he moved a large Welsh woman and her two noisy children tumbled into the table-seats around me. I eyed the seat I had just given away enviously. These two children, only eight or nine admittedly, were the most retarded children I have ever heard. “Mam!” the boy shouted, pointing in amazement at my laptop as I tried to watch The West Wing, "look at the colours Mam!"

“Mammy! I need toilet! MAAAAM! I NEED THE TOILET!”
“Mammy! Rhiannon’s made a smell Mam!”
“No I didn’t Mam! Rhys is a liar! YOU’RE A BIG LIAR! ’Aven’t done nothin’ I aven’t Mammy!”

But indeed she had.

Before getting on the train I had bought myself a nice can of chilled beer with which to wind down and watch some West Wing. Who, though, can crack open a tinny while sitting next to a nine-year-old boy? A while into the journey I noticed that the chap I had pointed a seat out to was making as if to get off. As he stood so did I, and I moved towards him.

“Are you getting off here?” I asked, eyeing his seat. His childless seat.
“This is reading?”
“Sorry?”
“This is reading?”
“Oh right! Yes, yes this is Reading. Are you getting off at Reading? Because this is it.”

The boy was now bouncing up and down on the seat I had vacated, “MAM! LOOK AT ME MAM! I’M A GIGANTIC FLEA! BOING BOING! IF YOU ‘AD A MASSIVE SPRAY YOU COULD SPRAY ME AN’ I’D BE LIKE WAAAAAAAAAAH WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” I sank into my seat gratefully, and the Welsh mother looked at me with contempt. Her suger-filled son, meanwhile, continued bouncing, knocked over their empty cans of coke, and swept the empty sweets and chocolate bar wrappers to the floor.

An hour, one West Wing, some sushi, and a can of Fosters later I looked up. We seemed to have stopped at the next station – “MAMMY! I can read! I learned in school I did! Look at the station mammy! WE'RE AT READING!”

I have no idea what station the foreign chap got off at, but I bet he didn't find any great food or great bars, which is just as well because he probably wouldn't have found any in Reading either. He certainly wouldn't have found any on the London to Cardiff train anyway.

Good News For People Who Love No News

2007-02-14T10:35:00.000Z

Emily Laurie complained to me the other day that no-one updates their blogs anymore. For the past two years I have blogged at least once a week on average. Those of my friends who keep blogs have more or less kept as up-to-date. Recently however they've fallen off, as have I.

My only excuse for this has been a complete lack of interesting things happening in my life. Right now I am waiting for my visa for the U.S. and Robin. At this very moment I am waiting for two members of my team at work to get back to me with their work so that I can work with those on my own work. Then I'll be waiting for the bus home. Then I'll be waiting for bedtime. Then I'll be waiting for the bus again, to wait for my colleagues to send me their work, and then and then. What was the rush to leave Japan?

The only aberrations in my recently dull life have been the very occasional bouts of drunkenness, but even these seem to be waning and deteriorating in quality.
As I staggered home at some stupid hour a few weekends ago I fell over. Not a complete surprise I know, but I fell over on a flat bit of pavement. On nothing. I didn't just fall, I flew – I sprawled. As I lay there with my arms stretched out like some sidewalk superman, a couple across the road called over to ask if I was okay. "Oh yeah," I replied from the floor, "Life is great." The next morning my mother held up my trousers, which I'd shed somewhere in the house: they were covered in mud, and I have no idea how.

The hangover cost of drinking is also starting to tell; these days it takes me two days of spaced-out meandering to recover. In Japan the regular hangover didn't really affect anything as work consisted of grading elementary-level English and reading aloud to a room of kids - all staring quizzically at the floor -about how Daisuke hoped he would "bear up and make my school, family, and the emperor proud." At the Welsh Assembly however people actually expect you to interact, and exchange ideas.

So I think I'm pretty much done with drinking.

Hang on - news just in: I had an excellent curry pie for lunch. Pie – with curry in it! Yes indeed.

You see? Nothing.

We Were Aiming at the Moon, We Were Shooting at the Stars (But the Kids Were Just Shooting at the Busses and the Cars)

2007-01-24T22:48:00.002Z

I went to a Socialist Party meeting last week. My sister had been roped in by her leftist student friends from the valleys, so I went along with her, just for fun.

This is how the night went: we were running half an hour late driving into town to meet our soon to be brothers and sisters when Kirsty’s ‘phone rang.

“Hello?”
“Is that Kirsty?”
“Well now that depends, who is this?”
“It’s the socialist party”
“What, the entire socialist party?”
“….”
“Hello?”
“Kirsty, are you coming to this meeting?”
“Oh yeah, definitely, sorry I'm running late, I had to wait for the gasman and…well, anyway, we’ll be there soon. You’ll see me: I’m wearing a cord cap”
“Well, I can’t wait for you Kirsty; I have to go back up now. Kirsty.”

So we roll up to the rather swanky looking pub and order a large gin and tonic and an orange juice.

“That’ll be eight pounds fifty please”
“Eight pounds? Jeez. Are there any socialists here?”
“Socialists? Uh, no.”
“Ah, this isn’t Bar Incognito?”
“No”
“Hmm”

Ten minutes later, different pub, another large gin and tonic.

“Excushe me, got any shocialists? Hic”
“Upstairs”

And up we go

Chair: “…anybody second the motion? Thank you comrade, motion seconded. Oh, hello, take a seat. Okay, now we move on to the issue of the renewal of Trident and our nuclear deterrent and whether Britain needs these barbaric and oppressive weapons. Brian, you have something to say about this?”

Brian: “Well yes Reg I er, er…”

Chair/Reg: “Sorry, excuse me. Over there, you have something to add to the discussion?”

Me: “What? No, no, sorry about the noise, I, um, seem to have broken my chair, I’ll just move and um-”

Brian: “So, as I was saying I, er, these, er, disgusting weapons have got to go! If we, er, er, if we gave up our nukes others would join us and, er, er, we could prevent the, er, further proliferation of, er, er, weapons of mass destruction.”

Loretta: “Yes comrade! You see it all came from the United States who in history have been the only country to use nuclear weapons when they dropped the bomb on Japan, not once but twice!”

Brian: “Yes that’s right! The only reason we keep these nuclear weapons, er, er, is to keep American companies like er, er, Halliburton in business, exploiting the er, er, masses and er. Because of Bush and, er, the, er, oppression of American imperialism, countries all round the world are getting nuclear weapons, er, er, capitalism, er, er, overbearing American, er, er, dictator Bush and er, imperialstic, er,er,er if we gave up these monstrous er, er, er…”

Reg: “You have a comment? Yes? What’s your name please?”

Me: Hi, my name’s Geoff, sorry about coming in late, wrong pub, and sorry about the chair too, I don't know how that, er, anyway. Numerous countries now have the bomb, a few of them unfriendly, and as the gentleman behind me pointed out more countries are trying to develop the bomb, some of whom will actually succeed. Even terrorist organisations are looking to acquire a nuclear capability, possibly through sponsorship by one of these countries. Now, with various threats around the world, including a resurgent Russia; a confident and more powerful China; Japan looking to write the pacifist clauses out of it’s constitution in response to an increasingly belligerent and nuclear North Korea; and also the antagonistic nuclear powers of Pakistan and India, surely we should maintain, or even increase the level of our nuclear deterrence. In fact, there’s a theory that says the key to stability, and actually the best way to prevent nuclear war, is for everybody to have nuclear weapons. More nuclear proliferation, not less.

Reg: “Um...........................Okay, so for anyone wanting to go on the anti-nuclear coalition march in London next week, please see Brian who is organising the coaches, Brian?”

Brian: “Uh, this is the first I’ve, er, er, first I've heard of any coaches Reg…”

In Soviet Russia the Hangovers Get You

2006-11-27T15:32:00.000Z

"Come on now, seriously? The only way this could possibly pose a threat to a flight is if tiny tiny people were on board and I were to cut off their tiny tiny heads"
"I am sorry sir, but this is not allowed."
"But why?"
"Look, sir, see how my finger fits?"

This was me, having my cigar cutter confiscated by the officious little man at the x-ray machine in Stansted airport, London. We were on our way to Alex's stag-do, a friend of mine since the age of fourteen. There were eleven or twelve of us of us in total - it was hard to keep track to be honest - going to Riga, capital of Latvia.

The Foreign Office has recently issued this advice about Riga:

"British men on stag nights in Latvia are being lured into strip bars before being beaten up and forced to hand over cash."

So naturally that’s where we went.

Do you ever feel that everybody seems to be getting married apart from you? That everybody is doing really grown up sensible things like comparing pension plans and mortgages? Right now - I'm getting tickets for misbehaving from Latvian policemen.

Latvia is a strange kind of place: the buildings seem to sag against each other in a very unBritish kind of way. Beside each sagging building is an ultra modern building designed for the tourist. And next to that is a strip bar.

I’m not sure how it is in your country but in ours we like to humiliate our stags, so it was that we staged a kangaroo Court. Alex, dressed stupendously as a cross between Santa’s little helper and a gimp (complete with leather gag), was sat in the middle of the bar surrounded by his peers. In front of him were set twenty shots of liquor.

"Alex," pronounced the judge "you stand accused of heinous crimes against the Welsh people. How do you plead?"
"Sod off."
"Mr Prosecutor, please present your case"
Alex's brother Phil took the floor.
"Mr Welch, according to your wife-to-be Sarah, what is your favourite position?"
"...Ahh, um,” squirmed the stag. “Doggie-style?"
"Doggie-style? In rugby Mr Welch, what is your favourite position to play in rugby?"
"Ah."

That was the first shot. After several more shots the court also tried each member of the stag in turn according to the most convenient charge available. The trial was such a success that another stag party stood watching and eventually asked very shyly if they could put forward their own stag, dressed in spandex and on a leash.

I am ashamed, and relieved, to say that I cannot tell you much more. I apparently went home a little early on the second night after falling asleep at the bar of a strip joint. I do recall however getting lost in a deserted building on my way home; the kind of building that would not be out of place in a story by Kafka. It was black and smelled awfully of urine. I may have simpered for my mummy at some point.

The rest of the weekend was taken up - like so many others - by too much drinking and singing. Somebody spent all their money in the first night and had to bailed out, and somebody else spent all their money on strippers. It was the weekend of legend.

Did I mention the guns? Four of them. We were taken to a bunker on the morning of our trip and shot, in sequence, a Glock, a pump action shotgun, some other kind of massive shoulder shotgun, and a Kalashnikov. Needless to say that when I finally move to the US I will be joining a shooting club. As soon as the drunken sods with digital cameras get back to me I’ll provide you with ‘photos of the carnage.

The Stag, All Gimped-up and Shooting

Geoff. He's a Man!

You Talkin' To me?

"Ladsh, ladsh, 'ere, sssshhhh, no no shhhhh, I've gorra great idea right, we gorr these guns right and, nonononono, c'mon now, ssssshhhhh shhhhh, right - let's all 'ave a..."

"....PILE ON! WOOOOO!"

After the previous two nights of drinking, stripping, and general drunken wandering around the picturesque centre of Riga we found ourselves hung over on a Sunday and looking for somewhere to hide. Thankfully the only four star hotel in Riga provided a safe haven called The Sky Bar, and let me tell you: they serve the best Bloody Mary you have ever tasted.

Shep, best man, has taken great pride in telling everyone he meets about our flight home. If you had been a passenger on Ryanair flight FR2643 you’d have been treated to a half-plane load of drunken Welshmen singing the Welsh national anthem as we landed on home soil. As my old Japanese students would say: “I shed a tear.”

I Know Now What I Knew Then

2006-10-13T22:55:00.000Z

Yesterday a neighbour stopped me in the street as I was walking home:

“Alright mate, haven’t seen you around for a while”
“Heeyyy! Yeah, I’ve been in Japan for a year teaching Eng-”
“That’s great so me and the wife we had a garden business”
“Um…Right, yes, I see your van parked out here, with the banners, how long have you bee-”
“But we’re winding it down see – we have another income stream that pays us whether we work or not! And this is backed by a major British Plc! It’s a great opportunity to work from home and make money!”
“Ah. Umm...”
“I've got a DVD in the house, come and have a look, you can make loads of money just by recommending your friends!”
“Ah, well you see-”
“It’ll only take a minute…”

He’s a friend of my mother so I had to be polite. But then he took my arm, to lead me. I subtley shook free and he looked at me askance. The rest of the conversation was markedly less friendly.
See, I’m not a toucher. Many times good friends have hugged me or laid a friendly hand on my shoulder and I tense up. A psychologist would say I wasn’t held enough as a child. It's nothing personal; try as I might, I just do not know how to respond. I once tried to be more ‘touch-feely’ by laying a friendly hand on a friend's back, but being unused to this kind of thing I over-did it and ended up caressing his shoulder which, you can imagine, was not good. So anyway - I’m sorry, I’m just not a toucher.

I have seriously missed the comforts of Toyama since being home: my friends, the carefree lifestyle, the unqualified respect, the reliable trains, the martinis, and the bowling. I can't do much about these things, except for the bowling. A few weeks ago Robin and I headed down to Cardiff's premier bowling establishment. Sorry, Cardiff's only bowling establishment.

Yeah, bowling!

Strut. See me strut?

Do not click on the image to see the score.

We also went back to Swansea, to see how the place had changed since our halcyon days of university. It was a dump back then, but we were all far too drunk to care. Swansea has had all sorts of money poured into it since then for regeneration projects and I have to say, well, it is pretty much still a dump.

Where the money went: the cutting-edge 'Technium' at the university.

...nobody wants to go shopping though, right?

Look at the lovely, um, the lovely fountain.

Oh, hey everyone! It's okay - they've got a Starbucks!

Walking around the city centre I was struck by how many people there were with prams and children running around all over the place like they owned it. It’s the same in Cardiff – people with kids everywhere. Well, young women with kids. Okay - teenagers. Teenagers with their illegitimate children. Anyway, I’m not anti-child, but these little, er, darlings are everywhere, swearing their lovely little heads off – seriously, words I didn’t even know when I was fifteen – and their parents are chasing them around screaming at them about how exactly they’re going to f***ing batter them if they don’t f***ing behave. I don't know. Maybe it’s because they didn’t get enough love when they were kids themselves. Maybe they weren’t held enough; they're not touchers. When I have a family of my own I’m going to make sure to touch my children all the time.

La Rica Robusto

2006-10-03T17:54:00.000Z

In Japan my blogging friends and I used to refer to ‘great blog material.’ For example:

"So in school today I had to make two kids have an English conversation. Except they can't speak. At all. Seriously it was like 'urrrch-ch-ch' and then 'urch urchhh-guh-guh'"
"No way! Special school right?"
"Seriously, and the teacher's like, 'So, so, velly good' and I'm like, 'WTF mate?'"
"Great blog material though eh? But hey, this is a great cigar right? Am I right?"
"I'll say."

The other day I went to London for the JET alumni reception where Robin and I were to meet up with some really groovy people whom we hadn’t seen in a while. Robin, having the return part of a coach ticket, had left earlier in the day and I was waiting for the noon Megabus - the poor man’s National Express. After a while reading, finishing up Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, I noticed a slight uneasiness developing in the crowd of backpackers and students I was waiting with. The bus was an hour late. It had still not turned up an hour later. In fact it never did. By the time the next bus arrived at 3pm only I was left waiting, because really, where else was I going to go?

“Excuse me, I was meant to be on the 12 o'clock bus that didn’t turn up, it’s alright to get on this one though right?”
“No sir. You have to pre-book. It says quite clearly in the small print.”
“Yes, I did, but your bus never arrived”
“Sir, you cannot get on this one bus. If you phone the number, which is clearly displayed on this sign, you can book a seat on the next bus, which will be departing at this stop at seven o'clock. It says very clearly…”
“…In the small print yes. But my thing is at 6.30”
“I can't help you sir as you see as the small print clearly says…”
“…Right!...The small print…I get it.”
“Yes”
“….…”
“Sir?”
“….…”
“Umm, sir?”

And I stalked off, to where I had no idea. I stopped behind the next bus-stop to thrash about a bit in disbelief. I felt a bit silly, especially when I noticed an old lady looking disappointedly at me.
“The busses issit love?" she crooned. "It’s alright love, we all ‘ave bad days don’ we."

I finally got to London at 9.30, too late to get to my hotel and ditch my stuff, but in time to meet everyone in a pub after their five hours of free wine at the reception. Swines. For those of you reading from Japan, and indeed those of you now elsewhere: it was real nice seeing those people again. Back in the 'yama we would still have several good hours to go, but London is not kind to those broke or loaded with luggage and we had to leave, it seemed, too soon. Laurie saw me off nicely with a glass of very good red, because, well, she's a lovely human being.

London is a very expensive place to stay and so our hostel was more picturesque outside than in. The lift had a mind of it's own and scraped up and down the walls in a frightening manner.

Outside:

Inside:

People in London live in small cramped apartments and pay through the nose for it (at least that was my experience) but it's all worth it for this:

Hyde Park

JET re-union aside, picnicking in Hyde Park was the highlight of the weekend. I miss that about London - the park, the papers, and a bottle of wine. And it never seemed to rain. London parks are a lot more welcoming than Tokyo's:

Still, great blog material. ish.

Supermassive

2006-09-25T18:11:00.000Z

There’s nothing more fun than wearing a kilt, it's the great leveller. Weddings are pretty fun too: you get to dress up drink and give speeches. (A tip for those giving a speech whilst drunk: never sit beneath a low hanging light shade that when you stand up makes you look like you’re wearing funny-shaped wicker hat). The chap in the grey suit is the man lucky enough to have recently married my mother.

This however was the most beautiful woman there:

Robin has been here for the last and month we’ve been doing many wonderful touristy things. This is me at the Museum of Welsh Life:

Getting back to my roots. The Welsh had carpet in their caves you know.

Kissing a tiny cow's bottom.

And this is Robin:

You can tell who will be passing on the ‘class’ gene.

The last time I went to The National Museum of Wales they had the biggest dinosaur skeleton ever and a huge woolly mammoth and loads of wicked insects and spiders and okay I was seven years old. Today the main attraction is the ‘Evolution of Wales’ exhibit, like Wales is a separate entity from the Earth. We learned a lot; for example it seems that throughout the geographical history of the Earth there’s been a large red arrow hovering over Europe pointing to Wales.

We also went to Robin’s first ever British football match. And, er, mine too. Two giants of British football met in a legendary clash of the titans. Here in Cardiff Luton Town were beaten by Cardiff City 4-1. We watched the game in the home stand, which is the main stand to see fat hairless men insulting the opposition fans' mothers and singing football songs composed entirely of swear-words. It was a good game, though I learned the hard way that it’s generally a bad thing to congratulate a visiting team’s goal no matter how good it was. Whatever happened to sportsmanship? I have been back in Cardiff for a few weeks now and the thing that strikes me most is how loud and unforgiving it is. I have always held a romantic ideal of Wales as being a land of passionate hard-workers, fairy-tale castles, and of course an all-victorious rugby team. Toyama, for all its faults, was a small and quiet kind of place; a place where you did not need to be wary of a fight because you accidentally bumped into someone on a Saturday night. Maybe it doesn't help that I've been working in a city centre bar for the last week. Still. If we all wore kilts it wouldn't be a problem, surely.

A Flashback

2006-08-28T15:43:00.000Z

English Teacher Hit By Car; in Annoyed Condition

By A.Hack, Staff Writer
March 16 2006

TOYAMA - A man suffered minor injuries and was in an off mood Wednesday night after he was hit by a car while cycling across a pedestrian crossing near Toyama's CIC building.

The incident occurred at 5:58 p.m. when Pedro Alhambra, 27, crossing in the cyle lane during a 'green man', was struck by a white MPV driven by an obviously blind Toyama Driver, a local ALT reported. Glock Graduation, 23, of Higashi Toyama said "I didn't see it happen but Pedro looked sooo pissed afterward. Seriously, Toyama Driver was outta control!"

Charges were reported in the crash after a kindly passer-by provided the injured man with the licence number of the vehicle. "I was suplise. Man dlive away. Nihonjin suck at life" she said.

The man was later apprehended by police. Toyama's Finest gave the hobbled and blind old man a severe shouting at and forced him to point at his car and the wincing victim while the they took photographs. He was also made to pay 2man in damages to his foreign victim. Alhambra, a ruggedly handsome man originally of the United Kingdom and now of Sunshine 88, is reported to be on crutches after a visit to Dr Motoe, a knee specialist north of Toyama station. Police are appealing for more witnesses to the accident and "women who like policemen."

He'll Save Children...But Not The British Children

2006-08-07T19:21:00.000Z

For our farewell tour we planned to go to Osaka, Hiroshima (which I have learned the proper way to pronounce is the way the Americans do – hirro-sheema, and not, for the first time ever, the way the British do 'hih-rosh-imma), and Tokyo. I have travelled somewhat around Asia in my time here, but never really Japan. We complained initially about the ridiculous cost of travelling. Everyone we’ve met has said the same thing – travelling in Japan is expensive relative to the cost of living. In fact the cost of living is high itself. We both had visions of saving oodles of cash here, only to discover we were living with London rates.

First stop was Osaka. When you travel somewhere in Japan people always comment on so-and-so city’s ‘famous’ thing. Toyama, for example, is famous in Japan for it’s squid and pears. I can tell you from experience that only Toyamans think this. Osaka is famous, apparently, for it’s aquarium, which is the biggest in Japan and has a whale shark. It was all very impressive; my favourite part was the absurd-looking Ocean Sunfish. This was also pretty cool:

Osaka is also famous for its castle – Osaka Castle it’s called, you might have heard of it. From the outside it looks like a grand old thing; what used to be a small town and a network of moats surrounding the castle is now parkland that has been allowed, strangely for Japan, to gloriously take over. Inside however you would not know it was a castle at all but a very modern seven story museum. The ramparts (with osaka in the background).

So far wherever I’ve travelled in Asia there are districts that sell one thing. In Seoul you might have the hat district, the jewellery district, the handkerchief district. I thought it was very strange and not entirely conducive to healthy competition. In Osaka they have a kitchen supplies district where we bought a cloth banner to hang over our kitchen in our as yet undetermined house, and of course fake plastic sushi.

After Osaka we took the shinkansen (high-speed train) to Hiroshima. We were going to stay at a youth hostel in Miyajiomaguchi just outside Hiroshima, but after one night of the dirty cramped beds and vile smelling communal kitchen/living room/reception/smoking area we decided to splurge and stay in a hotel. If you ever go to Hiroshima stay at Hotel Flex. That is all.

Just off the coast of Hiroshima is an island called Miyajima famous for its Torii Gate (or just torii, as torii means gate. It’s like saying PIN (personal identification number) number or Mount Fujiyama (‘yama’ meaning mountain, indeed 'jima' means island so visiting Miyajima island is, oh never mind). I realise this is not interesting for you, but it irks me strangely.

If the first atomic bomb hadn’t been exploded over Hiroshima I’m not sure people would be so keen to go there today, which is a shame because it’s a lovely laid back, and strangely well-planned, city. I learned there that nuclear weapons are exploded over the target for maximum effect – an interesting yet morbid fact I think you’ll agree. Incidentally, it is no surprise that every monument in Hiroshima has the prefix ‘peace’ – Peace Park, Peace Memorial Museum, peace so and so and so. As a Japanese city it is set apart by its internationalist outlook, compared to the monoculture of the rest of Japan. The Peace Memorial Museum was not as horrific as I had expected and also was not coy about the militaristic history of Japan, unlike Japanese school history textbooks which rarely refer specifically to Japan's imperialistic past. Here are some photos, and yes that is me wearing a summer yukata.

Robin in front of the latest batch of paper cranes to arrive at the Chilren's Peace Monument

And on to Tokyo to see James and his lovely wife Hiromi. We’ve been to Tokyo several times and didn’t want to do it all again, so we planned a day trip to Kamakura, famous for having Japan’s second largest Buddha.

It’s not a hugely famous town, but it should be; it has excellent Chinese restaurants and Hawaiian shirt shops.

And then it seemed my bags were being x-rayed, and my water bottle being tested. I had been counting down the days until I could leave Japan and suddenly I was being asked to hand over my gaijin card; and it felt all too too soon.

Meanwhile, in Toyama...

2006-07-20T01:30:00.000Z

I had a leaving ceremony of sorts during my last ever visit to a special school last week (as a teacher at least). Whenever I leave there I feel like a totally overpaid incredibly handsome fraud. These kids, surely, get nothing out of me. Thirty minutes a week is not enough for them to actually learn anything productive. Each week we play a game that's a variation on the previous week and which is so easy that I could teach it tied and gagged from a thick canvas bag. Down a well. I feel incredibly guilty. I can see it in the eyes of the other teachers: "my god, you get paid to do that? I bet you're drunk right now as well..."

They gave me a send off though. First we played a massive version of snakes and ladders that I had made ("Kondo, roll the big dice, the box there. Here, roll it. Oh, um, kick, okay kick it, here let me…oh look you 'dropped' it, ah ha, so you got a five. Lets move five places…Okay, I'll move five places! Okay! Oh look you landed on "swimming"! Say swimming! Sw-...Swimm... okay, lets wipe that up...right! Tsugawa! Roll the dice, the big box thing here...").

After that (“Wow! Everybody won! Isn’t that great!?”) the teacher got out all manner of strange looking instruments. They were going to play "Edelweiss" for me. The lullaby. Anyway, Tsugawa gave a rousing performance with his breath-operated keyboard, Kuniya screamed unintelligibly but in tune, and Kondo kicked at a keyboard held at his feet by a teacher. Shimoda sat by staring at gosh-knows-what while a teacher played the triangle for him. The cacophony was actually quite moving.

Then we moved onto 'games'. Kuniya asked me to put my finger in a Chinese finger-trap snake ("Oh no! Kuniya! Oh dear! I can’t get my finger out - Kuniya! Arg! Heh heh, um. No, really, I cant get it out..." wild laughter all round), Kondo gave me an envelope marked 'scorpion' which when opened an elastic banded coin spun against the paper to sound like a scorpion ("Arg! Kondo! A real live scorpion! Oh no! Arrrg! Whoo-wee, you really got me there Kondo! Ha ha!" - wild laughter all round) and then Shimoda gave me a box wrapped in string. "Open quickly" the teacher whispered - and out sprung home-made springy snakes made of milk-cartons and elastic bands ("ARG! Snakes! Real live snakes – IN A BOX! Jesus! Shimoda! Arrrrg!" - wild laughter all round). It was pretty fun actually.

I'm also closing in on my last days at Kureha High School. I had my 'farewell ceremony' at Kureha this morning. It's the ceremony where I stand on stage and get my Japanese speech wrong, drop the microphone, and generally entertain the students. Just like class actually. The principal to gave a quick speech about me, and then the students had to send me off. 568 of them parted down the middle and I was ushered through like Moses, to ecstatic applause. As I walked I waved to a few kids I knew. Several boys ran out to shake my hand and run back again. As I got to the back of the hall the calligraphy teacher, Mrs Yamazaki, gave me a thick envelope saying "puresento!" and then "go staff room," because it seems I can't hang around for the rest of the ceremony if I'm 'leaving' (though I still have until Monday to clear my desk). The present was a very beautiful kanji print she had made, the meaning apparantly: ‘Spring Has Come, The Water Is Clear You Can See Forever.’

As well as Robin and I several other JETs are leaving Toyama this year. The bulk of the second years are leaving and around half of last years crop. Some people are sad to be leaving, others cant wait to get out, and a few are being left behind. It’s always sad to leave friends behind and to see them go. Being here for just a short year I have made lots of friends, many of them I’m sad to leave, but this is the price you pay for being a Drifter Junior Grade.

As part of the leaving comes the drinking. It seems like everybody has been leaving for the past month; the JET community in Toyama is a close knit one and so several parties have been needed to properly say goodbye to everyone. Two weeks ago for the England v Portugal world cup semi final there was a party in Uozu, a town several train stops away. The build up to the match was a set given by Toyama’s resident band The Bento Boys, who like nothing better than rapping on the life of a JET. After the tragic hush that followed several highly paid sport stars totally failing at what they practice every day of the year, the bar emptied quietly and people started to go home. I missed it all however as I was arguing politics with some guy whom I will probably never meet again. I was told a few days later that we then went on to another bar until the early hours of the morning. I’m also told that Brad and I had had a conversation on the train right up to his stop, one before mine, in which he told me not to fall asleep. I woke up in Kanazawa, an hour away and in the next prefecture. I woke totally confused as to where I was, where I had been, and indeed who I was. When I finally got back to Toyama at 9am I discovered that I had lost my umbrella, my Bento Boys CD, and my book (Salinger).

The ‘official’ leavers party was in on a campsite in Toga over two days – because that’s just how JETs roll. The campsite was actually the venue of the Welcome Weekend, which was nicely cyclical. I remember little of it other than a power hour with Max, Brad, and Emily and a football game in which I, as usual, slide tackled sopmebody and tore my knee and my elbow to shreds. On the Sunday afternoon we decided to have a Nepalese curry at a nearby restaurant. Tucked away in deepest Ishikawa-ken is a Nepalese restaurant and museum. A group of Nepalese run the place during the summer and escape during the winter as Toga, and indeed much of Eastern Japan, is buried in snow. On the hour each day the chefs and waitresses perform a traditional Nepalese dance, like fools they asked us to join in.

Nice Men

Nice Ladies

Uh? Oh dear, it's all gone wrong

Very wrong

Of course, Toyama JETs can’t just leave it at that. On the final weekend there was another party. The theme of this party was Toga - as in the bedsheet wearers of yore. It's enough for the Japanese to have to witness the rabble that is drunken JETs stumbling through town but when they're not quite wrapped in bedsheets I really feel for them. Many people were leaving the next morning so there were teary farewells and manly handshakes all round, and copious irresponsible drinking. This is what happens when you down someone else’s drink only to discover that it is a tequila poured by an overly generous barman. Ahem.

Arg! Togas!

Gandhi?

Hey, nice sword...

At some point during the last two weeks I have a hazy recollection that we went on a 'Beer Tram.' Imagine this amazingly simple and amazingly awesome concept: beer, on a tram. Commuting, but with none of the drawbacks and all of the benefits. I'll let the photos explain.

Hey, I've got a great idea...!

In the last few weeks it hasn't all been high jinks and hedonism, there has been some culture too. Ikebana is the Japanese art of arranging flowers, in a very particular Japanese way, and so we went to the annual Toyama Ikebana Competition last saturday. I was mightily impressed by the displays, here are a few:

The best of course was this one:

Hang on, I recognise that! Isn't that a...Robin Burfield?

Robin has been attending ikibana classes for the past few months and has made considerable progress, so much so that she entered to rave reviews.

However, I dont think this chap was impressed by anything.

So this is the end. It was fun, mostly. A lot of it was entertaining, a lot infuriating, but this is surely the charrenge of living in an entirely alien culture. You may remember back in April my agonising over recontracting. I can look back now and know that I made the right decision; I am ready to leave; to get on with the next thing. The thought of staying another year gives me a stomach ache, but recently so does the thought of leaving. It’s a strange place this.

Flies In Your Eyes

2006-07-11T00:24:00.000Z

One aspect of working in Japan that I certainly will not miss is having money demanded of me every month from one or more of my teachers for parties and trips that a) are extremely expensive; b) I do not want to go on but must; and c) I never enjoy.

First of all I hate the way they ask:

"Geoff-san, you give two thousand yen for teacher party"
"Geoff-san, now give me four thousand yen for school excursion"
"Geoff-san, you must pay now six thousand yen for school party"

And they always ask me for it all at once a few weeks after payday, when I have budgeted all my money and have nothing left.

Today my supervisor told me to give her money for the school trip.

"Eh? That was months ago, I thought I paid for that. Plus, it rained, it was awful."
"Geoff-san, you must pay. You have pay for English teachers party yes. And, ne, you have pay for school enkai?"
"What? I thought that was free?"
"Maybe it is a lot of money ne?"
"Well, it's over a hundred dollars altogether"
"Maybe you can complain to someone..."
"...count to ten count to ten..."
"You are counting?"
"Yes, er, no....I mean...Why am I only told now?"
"...?"
"What I don't get, you know, I've never had to actually pay to go to work before."
"..."
"Right, well, okay, I'll see Mitsuda-sensei and, okay...five six seven eight...."

I have to pay about $100 to have to pretend to have fun with teachers who ignore me most of the time in school.

Another thing I wont miss is the tendency to 'pass' every student, regardless of his or her actual grade. While assessing students' communication activity presentations the ALT and the JTE separately grade the groups out of five. Then the mean must be taken between the two grades and each student in the group gets that grade. I think this is unfair since the mean of any two grades out of five will always end up being three, penalising the good students and rewarding the bad. I questioned my supervisor about this system, "Ah but it is fair ne?" She replied. Not really, no; in the first term every student got the same mark.

In the second term I attempted to correct the system by introducing half-marks, in effect increasing the range of potential scores. However, the JTEs caught on to this and instructed me to round up every half mark. Funnily enough for the second term every student got roughly the same marks, but higher.

During my third and final term I decided that I had had enough. At the end of one presentation one student in the group still hadn't said anything. The JTE started applauding, signalling the next group to come up. As they started to shuffle off stage I stopped them and pointed to the girl, "anata wa?" I said pointing at the girl, "are you going to say anything?" She stepped back on the stage and, looking at her feet, said: "Sank you.” According to the grading guidelines, for her one line, she should get the average 3/5 mark for the group. It was at this point that I started to dock marks from the individual students that didn't try. It was also at this point that I began to disregard each JTE score that disagreed with mine. Throughout the entire year here I have compared the JTEs evaluations with mine and repeatedly wondered if they have been watching the same presentations as me. One group I graded 1.5 out of five, as they had spent the entire presentation giggling and got out about three words in English. The JTE gave them a four. Out of five. She’s just passing them all through.

Think you're making a difference? You're really not.

"...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped"

2006-07-03T02:56:00.000Z

I had my last ever lessons last Monday. I had been looking forward to it for quite some time. In fact, in my diary I marked the day with one word: "Freedom"

1st Grade commucation activity presentations were scheduled for that day. A communication activity is where I set a project, to be completed over the last ten minutes of four lessons, culminating in a 'performance' in front of the class. Activites include simple things like 'Holiday: You are in a foreign city. Hail a taxi, have a short conversation', or 'Commercials: write and present a commercial for an imaginary product. Go mad. Really." The idea is for the students to have fun with English because they have creative control. Unfortunately if you put three Japanese students up in front of the class they will do one, and sometimes all three, of the following: giggle continuously; stare at the floor while doing side-to-side head motions; or talk absolute nonsense, thanks to the wonderful electronic dictionaries the teachers encourage students to get.

Performance day is a very trying day in general. For my last day however I was determined to be cheerful - Hey! Not doing this again! Excellent mis-useage of that verb Kenji! Well done Yuka, good job staring at that floor! By the third lesson I had welts on my palms from my own nails, but, it was my last ever lesson so I persevered. At the end of each lesson that day the JTE asked me if I had any final advice for the kids. Well, yes, actually. Now, everyone, pay close attention...and I explained in very easy English with funny little cartoons on the board to illustrate why mixing up 'a' and 'the' can change the entire meaning of a sentence. Lots of staring. This happens a lot and whenever I try to explain anything. I tried to get the teacher to explain in Japanese, but, as always...

"OK. Sensei, I'm not sure they understood that. Could you explain in Japanese?"
"The students have understand."
"Hmm, no. You see I'm not sure they have understand, er, understood. I've explained this many times and they still get it wrong."
"No, they have understand, it is okay."
"Yes, but really, I dont think they have, and this is quite important, fundamental even..."
"Fun metal?"
"No, fundamental, funda- it's really important"
"It is okay, they have understand"
"...Well."

This is the standard response I get from JTEs and normally it riles me because if they don't/can't explain what I say to the student's understanding, then what really am I here for? Certainly not job satisfaction. However, it was my last lesson ever, I was fine with it, even expected it. Would have been odd not to get it.

At the end of the lesson all the English teachers suddenly appeared in the classroom, then the class leader stood up with a massive bunch of flowers he had been magically hiding under his desk. He came to the front and, staring at the floor and rubbing his eyes and scratching his head said "Geoff, sank you..eto...thank you teaching...sank you. Uhhhhh...thankyougoodbye" and gave me the flowers, a decorated piece of board with little messages from every student written on it, a bag of origami cranes with little messages inside them, and the prop he used for his commercial for 'Jom Juice' ("It high warm up forever drink!"). I swear I almost sniffled during the applause. Bloody kids.

Click for larger image.

HAIR!

2006-06-28T10:00:00.000Z

The other morning I woke up looking like this:

...and it occurred to me that maybe I should get a haircut. And maybe see a doctor. Actually, a haircut first occurred to me a few weeks ago when Robin began to call me Farrah. At first I was flattered; who wouldn’t want to be compared to that crime-fighting tawny-haired angel? Then it occurred to me then that Farrah is a ridiculous name. Also that she is a girl.

Still, I resisted. Many are the afternoons I have whiled away remembering fondly the days when I had long flowing locks; when ladies, young and mostly old, cooed and drooled over my soft mane. I was vital and carefree; a vigorous young sprite. I can have that always, I thought.

Unfortunately the only thing hair like this says is that you need help. And some personal hygiene tips too:

The last time I visited a barber in Japan I knew absolutely no Japanese, so I took with me a photo of myself of when I was young and handsome, and had hair. Unfortunately it was a long distance shot and the barber was one of those ‘clippers only’ types. I came out of the salon looking like this:

I have since tried to stay away from the barber, sculpting my increasingly lengthening locks in the mornings with my cap.

When I turned in the classroom yesterday and caught my reflection in a window. I had had a wild two inches of hair poking out at a right angle from the side my head and a single thick curl dangling down my forehead for the entire lesson, and indeed most of the day. I knew I could not go on. Straight after school I went to the barber and whipped out my phrasebook for “not too much off please.” I was more nervous getting a trim than I was performing in the charity show. Thankfully, I didn’t need the phrase which was situated handily at the end of the ‘At The Salon’ section of my book: “You fool! I should never have let you near me!”

Well done. Well done everybody on that one.

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave

2006-06-21T04:52:00.000Z

You know who I used to really hate? Involvers. Those bloody happy can-do people who are involved in every worthwhile thing you can think of. Charity working, volunteering, bloody social-organisers. Those types who insist on playing those ridiculous get-to-know-you games at company seminars or parties, and think it’s cool. Those cheery bloody people. I hated them. However, since doing JET I have this horrible feeling I might have turned into one of them. I’m the kind of guy who sits at the back, who will grudgingly get up and initiate something only if absolutely no-ones else looks like doing it, and wasting my day. I have been known to dive into a shop merely to avoid small-talk when spotting an acquaintance in the street. Or feign sleep on the train. Or so I thought. I was, until recently, involved in the Toyama Jet Charity Show, specifically 'Cinderella' (the musical). On hearing about this my friend James, a university friend and former-JET now living in Tokyo with his lovely Japanese wife, said: “Geoff? What? You sad bastard, you’ve not become one of them have you?” and I knew exactly who he meant.

When meeting and talking to Japanese people, and teachers, you know the conversation will certainly go nowhere, but you still have to have it. Part of the JET job-description is 'small-talk.' Being involved is mandatory, so practice is useful.

We started way back after Christmas, and rehearsed twice a week. Eventually rehearsal started to eat into my bowling time, into my ekaiwa time, into my Robin-time. So the only thing for it was to make it enjoyable – by drinking through it. Brad and I (another unfortunate) resolved to never be sober for rehearsal, and indeed to be drunk on the day of the performance. For this reason I can say in a loud clear voice – I am not an involver!

Last Saturday was the big day. Two performances were scheduled for the morning and evening. We of course had to be there at 9am to have a run-through. After the run through, over some refreshments in the dressing room, Brad suggested a change.

“Hey Geoff, we should totally fight”
“Well I am feeling feisty...”
“No no, when we’re guards, we should have a fight at the beginning of the scene, y’know, because are characters are so bored. A hand slapping girly fight, with nunchucks”
“That’s a great idea! More champagne?”
“Why yes, thanks!”

Just before the first performance I found Brad slumped near the lights rigging:

“Brad, I’ve thought of something totally funny”
“Is it my penis?”
“No, though that is hilarious. I should do a ‘Kenny’ in the third scene. I should mumble really loud, y’know, because, hic, we’re wearing these ridiculous ninja head wraps, and then, hic, put my finger up, all Monty Python-like, and take off my mask and then do my line”
“You mean like breaking the fourth wall?”
“Exactly”
“That’s a great idea! More beer?”
“Why yes, thanks!”

So on we went, and of course the crowd went wild. A stunning success.

Before the second performance we were sequestered in the dressing room by the director, to ensure we wouldn’t get ‘lost.’ We watched the preceding variety show on the in-house monitors.

“Brad, would you look at that!”
“What?”
“Jimmy. I’ve just been in the wings watching him, you’d totally think he’s singing Pavarotti rather than miming, he’s even got the sweat down!”
“That Jimmy sure is a legend”
“Yep. More wine?”
“Why yes, thanks!”

At this point a Japanese lady with a microphone burst into the room with a man with a TV camera. Ah, foreigners! Let's make them eat natto and film them vomiting ha ha ha ha. We quickly hid all traces of wine and beer and made welcoming noises. First with a camera in his face was Adam, who plays the part of Prince Charming's Best friend 'Hard Gay', this is him:

He politely ate a few beans. Next was Nick, Footman to the Prince, who shovelled down the natto like he loved it, which he did. The camera didn't find this entertaining. Next up was Tim the director. He made a great show, proclaiming to love natto as much as he loves his dear old mum. He obviously finds his mother vile. Then it was my turn. "Mmmm" I said, "Mmmm....Um. Mmph! Hur! Hhhurrrrr. Ack, ack! Wine! Wine, quickly now!" And so to Brad. Brad is a strange fish. Somehow he can do totally disgusting things - like dribble spit and natto down his chin while making retching noises and half crying - and it's more funny than it is disgusting. As soon as they put the segment on tv I will upload it here.

Unfortunately it is not yet possible to show you the outcome of the show. We ended up extremely sweaty, and some might say drunk. Until the JET nerds figure out a way to get the theatre feed onto a DVD I give you:

(Click on images to enlarge)

Salad Days at Rehearsal

Rehearsal Video (with sound)

Pre-show English Practice

Trees

Ninjas

Prince Charming and his 'Best Friend'

Mr and Mrs Cinderella

Finale

Party Hardy

Buggered

"Our Chief Weapon is Surprise..."

2006-06-08T06:39:00.000Z

Japan really is a country of extremes. In winter there is three feet of snow for four months solid. In summer it is so hot you have to wade through sweat and melted pavement. Throughout this it rains. All the time.

It is also a country of personal extremes. I haven't experienced such high highs and low lows since puberty. The slightest thing will touch off an almost hysterical good mood, or a black dog of a bad one. In the final stretch of this grand adventure I find myself becoming more and more unwilling to tolerate the slightest incompetence, inconvenience, or oversight. Whilst in a perfectly pleasant mood cycling to school in the mornings I have found myself shouting at the driver who fails, again, to even consider looking left as he shoots out of a side road. Sometimes, in the face of the stunningly inconsiderate intractability of my supervisor I have had to leave the room to prevent myself from snapping. I once had to go to the empty meeting room as I could feel a 'Basil Fawlty' coming on. For the last year I have thought of these moods, these situations created by external factors, as challenges. As a growing experience. In the last two days however I have lost my temper in school, twice.

8.15am
Me: Ohayo gozaimas...good morning... ah, Honda-san, high five, yeah!....Hey there!.....and ohayo gozaimas to you too kyoto-sensei......So sensei, what's the schedule today, pretty bare eh?
'Supervisor': Ah good morning Geoff-san. You have only one lesson today.
Me: Wicked, is that 6th period?
'Supervisor': Yes Geoff-san, ne, 6th period.
Me: cool.....doobey dooby dooo....

10.30am
Me: Aaah, what a good book that was. Hmm, what time is it? Plenty of time til my lesson at 2pm. Hmm, should do some marking...maybe a coffee first.
JTE: Geoff-san, ne, etto, please... kind of paper.... lesson.
Me: Sorry?
JTE: Sorry....throat....voice...chotto.

12.55pm
Me: Hmm, lunchtime I think. Sausage sandwich, caesar salad with ranch, mmm, apricots. I'll just pop this in the microwa-
JTE: Geoff-san, let's go.
Me: Excuse me?
JTE: Lesson... now, 12.55.
Me: Ha ha, no, it's not 'til 2.20, 6th period. Ha ha, you must have made a mistake.
JTE: No. Now. Schedule is changey. 6th period is now.
Me: ......Of course it is! Of course it's now! Because as usual nobody tells me anything!
JTE: ...?....
Me: Okay, right! I'm coming I'm coming, but I have to just ... Excuse me, Kishida-sensei, I thought my lesson was at sixth period?
'Supervisor': Ne, maybe it is now. The board, hmm, 1.55 it is.
Me: 1.55? But, it's 12.55 now. Mase-sensei, she's...why did no-one? Nobody ever... fine.

You see, I'm the kind of chap who doesn't like things sprung on him; not a fan of the 'last-minute' (at least, when it's being dictated by somebody else). Especially when it's as inflexible as a Japanese teacher blinking at you.

After the lesson I felt a bit abashed and apologised for my behaviour:

Me: I'm sorry I got annoyed before, it's just it's frustrating when-
JTE: Yes, you are eating your lunch.
Me: Yes, well, it's not that, I don't mind missing lunch, it's just that it's very difficult when nobody-
JTE: I have lost my voice.
Me: Yes, well, yes, so - it's sometimes hard to prepare when nobody tells me when the school is on the alternate schedule...
JTE: You will eat your lunch?
Me: Sorry?.............yes. I will eat my lunch now.

Today. Arrived at school at 12.30 after visiting the special school where I was made to make two students who cannot speak , at all, have a conversation with each other entirely in gurgles.

12.45
Hmm, nice lunch. Do some marking now.

12.46
Oh no. What? Oh for the love of...! Grrroan. Ohhh gaaawwwd. Maybe I'll check my mail.

1.30
Have agonising conversation with supervisor about flights.

1.55
JTE: Geoff-san, lets go.
Me: Hmm? Our lesson is not until 7th period, no?
'Supervisor': Now, Geoff-san. Only 45 minutes today. Different schedule.
Me: Oh. Right. Now? You're telling me this now?
'Supervisor': Only 45 minutes.
Me: ......
'Supervisor': ......
JTE: ......
Me: Right! Come on then, let's go! Actually, I'll have to meet you in the class sensei - I have to run to the toilet, because I thought I had more time. Because nobody told me anything. Again!

Mars Ain’t the Kind of Place to Raise the Kids

2006-06-07T10:49:00.000Z

“You know, Max is right. We have found the loophole in life here,” said a friend of mine the other day as he sipped on his extra dry martini with three olives.
“You might be right,” I replied, pulling on my cigar, “this could be the greatest gig ever, if you were so inclined”
“Well yes, if you were so inclined”
“Still not contracting for another year though eh?”
“Hoss, you know I handed in my refusal forms a month after I got here. Bar-keep, another round of martinis for me and my friend…”

You see, teaching English is hell when the people you teach with cannot themselves speak the English that you know and love, i.e. proper English.

As a child my father was constantly nagging me for my terrible use of the vernacular; for implying things totally other than my intentions. Conversations would often go like this:

“Daaaad, can I go over Ian’s house he’s got this new lego see and it’s wicked and his mum’s making orange squash and I haven’t done my homework yet but I will and Dad why is the sky grey?”
“You want to go over Ian’s house, Geoffrey? Are you going to jump over it? Fly over it perhaps?’
“……can I go to Ian’s house?”
“Yes, I’m sure you can, it shouldn’t be too difficult”
“…May I go to Ian’s house?”
“Yes. And the sky is grey because we live in Wales”

One of many. Now of course I am highly grateful to my father for instilling me with the ability to speak English properly, and to be able to take the piss out of those who can’t, especially England footballers. However, this ability is becoming my undoing. In Japan it is slowly driving me mad.

You know of my daily battle with essays and various homework, and with the unbelievable ‘wrongness’ of the English used by students in spite of being taught the correct way not ten minutes previously. I also have to endure the idiosyncrasies of the teachers. And by ‘idiosyncrasies’ I am trying to be kind.

Here is a selection of classroom English that my JTEs often use:

Whilst explaining a handout:
“Pick up this kind of paper. Look at this kind of paper.”

JTE explaining why you have to do something:
“In case of me I do not do this so from you.”

JTE wrapping up the class:
“So much for today’s lesson”

JTE instructing students which page to turn to in their textbooks:
“Open your textbook pagey sirty-seven.” In the middle of a lesson.

“You look at these sentence. These sentences is important.”

Explaining to me when what exactly to do about my flight home:
JTE: Ne, you, ne, so, tuesday, you had to send.
Me: Had to send, when? Send what?
JTE: Form.
Me: What form?
JTE: This form, ne.
Me: When?
JTE: Maybe next tuesday. To someone. Someone will look at it. Ne.
Me: So I had to send it maybe next Tuesday? Rrriiiight.

Every few weeks we receive an 'update' newsletter from the Toyama Board of Education on the exciting things happening in the world of internationalisation. This week, because I was so incredibly bored with marking essays, I decided to mark the newsletter. In two paragraphs of ten lines each I found 34 grammatical mistakes. Seriously.

I can't blame the kids for their terrible English, as it seems they are taught that way by those who can't. I'll leave you with some posters you can find around my school. I used to think they were quirky, funny even. Now they merely drive me insane.

Every Situation is Different.

2006-05-25T05:02:00.000Z

Depicting the life of a JET accurately is sometimes a struggle. It’s hard to get across the absurdity of life here when it’s actually mixed in with so much mundanity. It’s also difficult to make it funny, because a lot of it is not actually that funny. Many blogs you read (or at least would read if you were as bored at work as I often am) are just one- or two-line entries every day. This is because after a while ‘normal’ life is just plain boring; you run out of things to say. Although some of the best blogs are written by people in strange and foreign situations – ahem – after a while even the ridiculous becomes boring. The bizarre becomes commonplace. Things that used to thrill merely ‘are’.

Witness this conversation last week (lifted from Brad's blog - American Expat):

Yesterday there was this festival uptown in which each neighborhood of a certain city built a huge wooden float, and then they rammed them into each other all night to booming bass drum accompaniment [...] There were cataclysmic crashes of paper lantern covered, fifteen foot tall, floats happening one after the other right in front of me, and this is the conversation I remember having with Geoff:

"What are they hitting each other with, those floats?"
"I think they have battering rams attached to them. They hit each others battering rams."
"Oh. Cool."
"Yep."
...
"Can you imagine if one of your nuts was taped to that
battering ram?"
"Ooh, yikes. That would probably hurt."
"No kidding, right?"
"Yeah. Geez."
"That's funny. It's a-...what a funny thought that is."
"No kidding. Sure is."
...
"So how have you been?"
"Good. Pretty good. I think I elbowed a guy in the eye coming over here. Little guy. Japanese guy."
"Oh no. When did that happen?"
"Coming over here."
"Right. What did he do?"
"Nothing. Just kept on walking."
"Huh.”
...
"I think I'm going to go get a coke. Do you want a coke? I'm gonna go get a coke”
"I'm ok. Thanks though."

Crazy festival madness, booths selling everything from squid to airgun ak47s, and this is the level of discourse. I swear, it’s like everyone’s been doped.

-------

To combat this fatigue this post will report on last weekend’s activities. It will be reportage and nothing else. Hemingway always said (a personal friend) that less was more. Perhaps you can grasp the absurd which is eluding me.

Friday
Went to an onsen in the evening for only the third time in Japan. An onsen is a series of baths and pools in a garden filled with scalding hot water and naked men. The idea is that an hour spent slowly boiling yourself is relaxing, and for Japanese men this is an essential need. To start off I sat, with Brad and his supervisor Obata, in a deep picturesque pool, complete with waterfall, soaking up the heat. After ten minutes we moved onto the One-Incher. This is a very shallow pool that covers less than half of your body when you lie down in it, the rest is exposed to the chill night air. It’s a highly relaxing experience (once you can get over the fact that your flopping your bits everywhere). After the One-Incher came what Brad described as the ‘Barcalounger,’ only made of granite. This is more comfortable than it sounds. With your arms on the arms of the lounger the water and bubbles support the weight of your body. Floating without drowning if you like.
After ten minutes in the loungers followed what was promised to be the highlight of the evening. Imagine a deep scalding pool with tiled seats along the walls that you sit in. These are electrified. Electric chairs if you will. The current actually only passes through your hips and arse area, and indeed the ‘boys’. I made sure with Obata before sitting down that this wasn’t going to actually sterilise me. In answering he leant over a little too quickly and the electricity caused his back to spasm and to almost smack his face on the tiled arm of the chair. I got out.
Half an hour in 80-degree water will make you dizzy, so it is recommended to cool down – in an ice bath. If you don't actually move in the ice-bath you can be fooled into thinking you’re warm. Until some git splashes you. After the ice bath we moved on to a sauna so hot that you can only stay in there for a few minutes at a time. Finally we finished and headed over to the plastic stools to wash off at sinks.
I was so relaxed biking home that I almost crashed. I was like a Salvador Dali clock.

Saturday
Robin and I signed up a few weeks back to help out at the Fushiki Kite Festival. For two hours work supervising children flying kites in the glorious sunshine we going to be paid 3,000 yen (about fifteen pounds) and given lunch. A fun Saturday morning, but paid. Of course when we woke at 8am it was raining in Toyama, and Fushiki, and indeed the entire ken. We were previously told that in this eventuality the whole thing would be moved into hall where we would just play games with the kids. All round a win-win.
We ‘phoned the organiser on the way to ask where the hall was. He told us that there was no hall, because the festival was still going ahead outside. In the rain. This is Japan. When we got there two JETs were assigned to each group of children and shown into several large, but still sodden, canopied areas where we would play with the students. I don't teach elementary so I don’t really know any games. Unfortunately neither did my partner, a JET called Augie. So like all good JETs we bluffed it. However, the kids soon caught on that we were clueless and started teaching us games. After half an hour the organisers came to their senses and bussed the kids home, leaving us envelopes of money, goody bags of kite festival souvenirs, and a free lunch. All in all an easy Saturday morning.

That afternoon I was to meet Max and Emily for a beer before meeting up with everyone else to go to a roof-party being held by some JETs in Takaoka, Toyama’s second city. We went to an izakaya (restaurant bar) in the main station, where they serve gigantic beers.

“So Geoff, how’s it going?” Max asked as I sat down. I told him of my morning adventure.
“The Japanese, man, they’re crazy.”
“What you get up to last night?” Emily asked
“Umm, er, can’t really remember actually. Probably watched TV, relaxed y’know, school, knackered.” We all pulled on our huge beers.
“Wow” exclaimed max, “check out that orchid next to the escalator, a cymbidian orchid. What a place to have an orchid. I’ll bet it’s real as well.”
“No way is that real! Any money that’s not real – this is Japan, nothing is real.”
“Any money?” Emily asked, incredulously, “You’ll bet ‘any money’? Do you have ‘any’ amount of money? I bet you don’t have ‘any money.’”
“Oh yeah? How much will you bet? ... Anyway, so I went to this onsen last night, it was sooo relaxing I was like a Salvador Dali clock on the way ho-“
“Who did you go with?” asked Emily.
“Brad and his supervisor Obata. That Obata is a cool guy, young too”
“Geoff? Er, gay? You went to an onsen with two men? Naked. With two men?”
“It’s not gay.”
“That’s way gay dude,” joined in Max.
“Geoff, you just said you couldn’t remember what you did last night. There’s no need to cover it up. If it’s something you feel you need to lie about…”
“What? No, it’s just I was so relaxed I totally forgot – I was like a clock, like-
“A cock? Gay, Geoff. Gay.”
“No, no, a clock. A Salvador Dali clock, y’know, droopy, er … I, so. How come you know so much about orchids Max...?”

We arrived at Laura’s flat at around 5 o’clock. I brought store-bought kimchi and a bottle of red wine, and Robin some home-baked cupcakes. Soon enough everyone moved to the roof where we rocked out to Beck, ate cheese, bread, kimchi, guacamole, and drank immense amounts of beer, wine, and chu-hi until it began to get dark. At around 7 o’clock word got around that the landlady had arrived and was not pleased. Those of us on the roof quickly packed up and snuck off to the shops for a bit. Those still downstairs in Nick’s flat hid while the landlady berated Nick. From what I heard after this is what was said, in Japanese.

“You are not allowed on the roof. It is forbidden to have a party with your friends”
“But the construction workers, who don’t even live here, are always having parties up there, and they never get in trouble.”
“But you are not Japanese”
“What?”
“What are your friends’ names? And their schools? I will ‘phone their schools”
“What? What do you mean ‘I am not Japanese? And what has that got to do with-”
“I will ask neighbours…”

And off she went to ask the neighbours - who have never met any of the thirty of us - who we were and where we worked. Meanwhile we wandered around the block, having bought beer from a nearby conbini. A phone call told us that the landlady was not leaving, so we glumly decided to go finish our beers in a park, and decide what to do from there. Soon enough a few more JETs turned up at the park. Then some more. Then some with guitars. The party was in full swing when, an hour later, an Australian JET turned up with a barbecue and assorted meats. We drank, ate, and sang into the small hours until disturbed by the police – who put in requests for songs from one of the guitarists. Who knew Japanese policemen were so obsessed with The Carpenters? The rest of the JETs at this point started tidying up (although we are drunken rabble-rousers we are considerate. And can be deported on a whim). As we were all strolling towards the train station somebody suggested karaoke. Half the group went off, while Robin and I went to Sara and Mike’s place for some beers and The Simpsons. When you go to a JETs place the first place everyone looks is the book, CD, and DVD collection. It’s mostly open-house borrowing between JETs. I bagged a stack of jazz, and ‘Catcher In The Rye.’

Sunday
Woke up feeling terrible. Sara and Mike made some breakfast and we tried to decide what we would do for the rest of the day. Sara gently reminded me that today was the five-hour rehearsal day for the charity show. I politely suggested what she could do with that. “Now Geoff, we can’t do that, I am one of the directors.” Oh right. Darn.

As the rehearsal venue was on the way back to Toyama, Robin and I caught a train together. While walking through the carriages looking for a booth we came across Sharon, a JET who was at the party but disappeared at some point (possibly for karaoke, possibly not. JETs are like that). I got off at my stop, said goodbye to Robin and headed for the rehearsal. As I was a little early I walked across the park that surrounds the Kureha Arts Creation Centre and sat under a concrete pagoda to practice some lines. As I’m sat there an old Japanese lady arrives on her bike and sits opposite me.
“Konnichiwa” I say.
“Konnichiwa, yoroshiku onegaishimasu. Daijobou desu ka?” She replies as she gets her lunch stuff out.
“Dozo, kudasai. It’s fine really,” I say, looking back at my script. This is the single most successful conversation I’ve had with a Japanese stranger.

I try not to think that at this moment, in glorious sunshine, other JETs are in Takaoka playing a game of cricket that I initially suggested and have been looking forward to for weeks. Rain had postponed it the previous two weekends and this weekend – the weekend of my five-hour rehersal – was the first sunny one of the spring. The old lady finishes her lunch a little later and as she goes to leave she totters over to me and gives me a handful of sweets.

Five hours later Brad and I emerge desperate for a half bottle of nice Chianti each at the Italian place in town. The other cast members head off for a curry. Unfortunately we arrive too early for opening and wander around the station for a bit. A little later we go back to the ‘Fiorentina.’ It is resolutely shut.

“Maybe he’s behind the blind, preparing to open?” I venture. We both press our ears to the roller door, willing to hear activity inside.
“Nope, nothing. Beer?”
“Nah, the good beer place is closed on a Sunday. Think I’ll just head home.”
“Yeah, alright. Me too. I can’t believe it’s 7 o’clock on a Sunday and I’m sober”
“Feels weird doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. Weird.”

Joey

2006-05-24T13:12:00.000Z

Regular readers of this blog think that I have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with the number of ‘special’ people in Japan. Reading back over my various entries it seems I might indeed have a bit of a special problem myself. If you think I talk about it a lot it is because here, at least in Toyama, the prevalence of children and adults with severe learning difficulties is high, and I am constantly wondering why this is.

People I have talked to claim it’s the highly limited gene pool; immigration is not encouraged in Japan. Others blame various cases of water pollution and such by Japanese industries. If you look around it does indeed seem that there is very little of the natural environment that has not been in some way concreted. Even the most hard-line will tell you that messing too much with the balance of nature will eventually come back at you.

I mention this phenomenon because the other morning I met a new chap. By now you know of The Jumper - the guy who jumps up and down on the spot. And you are no-doubt familiar with Rambling Man - the menopause-obsessed lunatic who yells torrents of brand names at every passing westerner. These days I have several special friends who accompany me to work every morning. Allow me introduce them:

Smiley. A very cheerful looking chap who does everything with his tongue stuck firmly out the corner of his mouth. He always gives me a little wave on my way to and from school while chuckling non-stop to himself.

Split Personality Boy. He likes to have conversations with himself. He has a normal voice, and his alter ego a high pitched one, and he often has entertaining arguments on the train home. Every time I see him I wish I could understand what he was saying.

There is a teenager who normally sits across from us on the last carriage of the train to school. I’m toying with calling him Napolean Dynamite. He gets on the train, sits down with a purpose and gets out a tall can of coffee. Then he sits up straight and takes long head-back slurps at one-second intervals until it’s all gone. Then he turns the can upside down and bangs out the remaining drips. Once happy that all is consumed he sits forward looking purposefully ahead, no doubt for the next coffee machine.

Constantly Lost is a very tall Japanese man in his mid twenties who seems, well, constantly lost. He jitters everywhere very quickly, peering over everybody’s heads as though looking for someone in the crowd. He never apparently finds them. He can often be seen talking into his train pass.

The Wall Sitter’s special need is beer, as he is a drunk. He sits on a wall outside the main station every day and enjoys long - obviously highly funny - conversations with himself over a can of beer. He’s there when I go home and when I’m back in town later at night. Though not technically ‘special-needs’ I feel he belongs on this list.

I mention these travelling companions because the other day I came across a new chap while getting off the train. In fact he almost killed me. A short man stopped abruptly in front of me at the door, sat down, and shuffled down the steps on his bottom - much like a four year old in a hurry. I’ve seen him a few times now and every time he gets off the train he gets extremely dirty looks and tuts from those around him. Which I think is slightly unfair. Indeed I thought it unfair a week or so ago when an elderly Japanese man stared in visible disgust at Split Personality Boy and very deliberately moved a few seats down from him. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t understand Japanese.

Where is this special ramble going, I hear you mutter to yourself. Well, last week a student came up to me in the staffroom to ask what the various clubs did at an American high school she is going to visit. Going down the list she came across the ‘Special Olympics’ club. I looked it up and found that it caters for sports-minded students with learning disabilities, but I could not quite explain it to her understanding. I turned to my supervisor:

“Sensei, what’s the Japanese word for learning-difficulties?”
“Cripple?”
“What? No, like with dyslexia”
“Spastic?”
“Excuse me? Learning difficulties, er, problems”
“Oh, you mean retards”
“Right. That’s great, thanks … so Yamamoto-san, leaving Japan eh?”

Mein Gott!

2006-05-16T02:18:00.000Z

Back when I was a high school student and, I realise now, a little shit, I used to mercilessly torture my German teacher Mr Owen. I thought that this chap was the strangest, dorkiest, man ever. He had huge rubbery lips, a near lisp and he taught this bizarrely nonsensical language. To be honest I doubted his competence. What on earth, I thought to my thirteen year old self, is he doing in this dump if he can speak German? Shouldn't he be in Germany? He obviously cant be very good at it. Which was a great reassurance to me.

One lesson he returned my exercise book to me with big red slashes through many of the pages. I can't remember what exactly he said, but I'm pretty sure it was along these lines:

"Geoffrey, what exactly are you doing? None of this makes any sense. Have you been paying any attention in class at all? This for example. Let's read what you've written here: sons noch etwas"
"But sir, what's wrong with that, sir?"
"Well Geoffrey, it means nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's like you just wrote 'table chair sky'. It is completely nonsensical"
"But sir, they are German words sir, I've seen them before. Sir."
"Sigh...Yes Geoffrey, but together they mean nothing."
"Oh."
"And Geoffrey? Please stop drawing swastikas all over your exercise book."

You see that was the year I was obsessed with swastikas. I wasn't a Nazi of course, I just liked swastikas. And drawing them on my German book. I also drew what I thought was a magnificent rendition of the Fuhrer, with demonic eyes, standing in front of a million mark note with the words "millionen stehe hinter mich" beneath (the only thing I picked up in history class that year, and indeed the only correct German I wrote that year). Months later in my German exam I sat dumbfoundedly staring at the massive space they had left for me to write my essay. Everyone around me was scribbling away. That was the year I realised that I should probably be doing some actual work in school.

I dredge up poor Mr Owen now because I've just spent the morning growing more and more angry and depressed. During class the students here nod, they scribble, they write on the blackboard, and all is roses. When it comes to marking their homework I get this:

I watched the MOVIE in my free time. The MOVIE is loved According to may see by you as long as it is at time all day long. The MOVIE goes to feelings to have the dream to see in the MOVIE theatre on the weekend because it makes it do. Especially it is the one of the MOVIE comedy system that sees by the hour now.

Mr Owen, Ich bin sorry.

Black Dog

2006-05-11T03:34:00.000Z

I am doing nothing here. Sure, I teach fifteen classes a week. They each require around 30 seconds of preparation, which I usually do as I'm walking through the classroom door, humming or whistling to myself. I also have 250 essays and 250 short pieces of homework to mark each week, but they all make exactly the same mistakes every single week, so really it’s a checking off exercise. I'm considering having a rubber stamp made with the words “Please refer to the corrections I made last week.”

A fellow JET once told me of a teacher at his school who doesn’t mark papers anymore; she just stamps them with a big red 'received' stamp. Yup got this, ta. She may as well just flick the pages across a red pen; it would be quicker, and would save her no doubt sore wrist. They would pass anyway, regardless of what grade they might have received. They will graduate school regardless of their marks; they will graduate because in Japan nobody gets left behind. Physically left behind that is. These kids have 'education' thrown at them for three years of high school and at the end they come out of it hopefully having learned something.

A corollary of this system is that bad teachers don't often get fired. They just get moved around in the yearly shuffle. Even the good teachers. On JET I have only ever heard of one ALT getting fired and that was through default as they had been deported for growing massive amounts of marijuana in their apartment. It’s like there's a bureaucrat in the ministry of education whispering in every teacher's ear “Look, just turn up and do whatever it is you do so that I check this little box here and pay you. Then my boss can check his little box and pay me. Alright?”

There's a growing issue in Japan about the number of NEETs (Not in Employment, Education, or Training); young folk who basically do nothing because they are either not qualified or there are no jobs for them. The females actually have a uniform - black sweat pants and a black baggy jumper, usually accompanied by masses of hair dyed a horrible blonde, far too much make-up, and nasty silver or gold spangly high-heels. I wonder what they are thinking when they first don this garb? Actually, I try not to wonder. If you are not a NEET then you probably work in a convenience store or an office, and this is no appetising prospect either.

You may recall a few posts ago the most depressing of graffiti; lonely figures drawn so intricately on a window ledge of a train. Here it is again:

In train stations there are posters strategically placed to remind commuting students just what is expected of them:

After seeing this poster several times a day for months it doesn't surprise me that the most blatant graffiti I have seen in Japan was where the school kids park their bikes by the train station on their way to school.

Yesterday a lyric to a song by The Flaming Lips I was listening to went, “Do you realize, that we're just floating in space?” Which when you think about is what we are doing. “We're just an illusion created by the earth spinning round” it continues. Which is great. Thanks for that one Mr Lips. Makes me feel good.

Pull back and take the broader view. Consider: what are we doing? What are any of us doing? Does any of it matter? And even if it does matter - does it matter that it matters?

Oh, and here's that graffiti by the bike shed I mentioned:

Have a nice day.

.

The Green Ink Brigade, Part II

2006-05-05T08:35:00.000Z

Dear Tweedledum and Tweedledee,

Thank you for your concerned letter. While Tim is away, I, the assistant director, would like to take a few minutes to respond to your inquiry. I feel your nervousness has been sparked by the sudden, and large amount of music being put upon you for the good of starving children in Africa. That is to say, in your humbleness, I feel you are afraid you are taking parts away from other people who signed up for them.

Lets rewind to your audition. Due to your ecstasy at being allowed to try out, I feel you may have forgotten this valuable experience. Fortunately for all of us, I have copies of the audition sheets you filled out, expressing your interests in our program. You have explicitly stated wanting to be involved in the chorus, and even did a fabulous air guitar rendition of California Dreamin. The passion for which you sang this song was surprising, especially for two boys who are not from California. It was through this that we realized what a team the two of you are, and realized you would be excellent to have on board. Other than a slight scheduling problem involving Geoff and REDACTED on Thursdays, we feel the application process was immaculate with the two of you.

I also sense a lack of confidence within the two of you that I would like to address before it becomes problematic. Lets look at “Exhibit A” from your original letter:

”Exhibit A: We are always leaving on “bathroom breaks” You are smart people. We are not. What could have tipped you off? Could it have been our girlish giggling? Perhaps it was that one time I loudly whispered to Geoff, “Hey, let’s get more” before demurely asking for a fifteen minute toilet break.”

Frankly, I am appalled and very concerned that you and Geoff feel Tim and I to be biased towards your lifestyle. We accept people in all shapes and sizes. It doesn’t matter to us that the two of you prefer to spend most of your time alone in one another’s company. We don’t care which of your organs are malfunctioning from abuse. You are special people to us, just the way you are.

Let’s move on to your “Exhibit B”:

”Exhibit B: The fact that not once in five months have we ever been on time to practice. Not one time.”

This is entirely untrue. For example, a couple Wednesdays ago, Geoff actually rode up the elevator with me, and I arrived at practice Ten Minutes Early. In fact, it isn’t uncommon at all for Geoff to be at rehearsal promptly 5 minutes before it begins. Mind you, these all happen to be the rehearsals Geoff was not written on the schedule to attend, that is, they were his days off. However, I don’t think you can call the man untimely. Let’s be fair.

“Exhibit C”….

Exhibit C: The fact that, despite having practiced at the Kureha location four times now, we still cannot find the goddamn room.

…is just plain nonsense. As stated earlier in your very own letter you come in and out of practice at will, taking small, secretive breaks with Geoff. Surely, your secrecy depends on the ability to find the room. I have seen you slip out for a rendezvous several times. As you stated previously, we are not thick, and we have noticed. Also, as stated previously, we choose to respect your choices.

Then you bring to my attention “Exhibit D:”

Exhibit D: The fact that, up until last week, everyone in the entire production knew Geoff Davies’ lines except Geoff Davies.

Once again, here you have your facts mixed up. Even after last week, Geoff Davies still does not have his portion of the script memorized. This portion should not be referred to as “lines” in the plural sense, but as “line” in the singular sense. We are slightly afraid we will have to pull this line from the script, thus taking away some of the responsibilities you strongly requested during your audition. Therefore, we feel it necessary to add in new roles, in the unlikely even Geoff can’t learn his line.

Now we come to your final request, and I believe the point of this letter: the pixies. I don’t know why you thought you were a pixie. Just because, you go over and place a flower crown in your hair does not entitle you to be a pixie. I have seen your abilities, and while I do think you show extreme daintiness while you lick sugary nubs off the end of long sticks, your size, build, and voices just won’t do for the role of pixie. Honestly, why would we choose you, when we have seven beautiful Japanese women, trained in dance, to fill this role. I am sorry for any confusion that might have come from the choreographer allowing you to do some prancing one day. As stated several times, we do not want to discourage you from being yourself. Please feel free to prance knowing it won’t be on stage.

Further we don’t think your “foolish, fast-living ways” need changing. We think you two seem perfectly content in what you are doing to your bodies together. And we DON’T find that a liability to this organization. I feel by suggesting it, you are insulting other people in this play.

I hope this letter has resolved some of your inner issues about the show. I hope you understand that you are a valuable part of our team here, and that what you see as failures to us, we merely see as lifestyle choices. We would never be disappointed in you, and we think you can handle your load. As for the pixies, even if you should change your minds, I am sorry to say you simply cannot have that role. While you were obviously made for many things, this reaches past the gifts you were given.

Sincerely,
Princess, Friend, and the Director of your Ass.,
Sara Ray

The Green Ink Brigade, Part I

2006-04-30T02:39:00.000Z

Dear Charity Show Directors,

Hello, my name is Brad, I play the part of Tree Number 1 and Guard Number 1 alongside the indomitable Geoff. We are usually drunk during practice. You may also remember me because it was I that suggested we take upwards of 500 dollars from the profit made on the Charity Show and use it to fund a booze-cruise cast party. I stand by my assertions that the two charities that we are donating to will not miss it: The UN Sack Lunch Program is already doubtless receiving millions in kickback from the Oil For Food scandal, and the World Guide Dog Foundation could at least take a 250 dollar hit since I remember reading some report somewhere that said all blind people are totally loaded. The choice, however, is up to you.

I am writing on behalf of myself as well as my co-star to ask of you, nay, plead with you, nay again, beg of you to please not assign us with any more responsibility. It has been made abundantly clear that the two of us are single-handedly running this entire charitable operation into the ground already. We clearly cannot be trusted at all. It took us five months to memorize a collective ten lines. When we attend practice we are running solely on coffee, peanuts, beer, and adrenaline. I’d like to call your attentions to a few cases of our ineptitude:

Exhibit A: We are always leaving on “bathroom breaks” to the nearest convenience store. I am not going to kid myself into thinking that we’ve fooled either of you. You are smart people. We are not. What could have tipped you off? Could it have been our girlish giggling? Perhaps it was that one time I loudly whispered to Geoff, “Hey, let’s get more beer,” before demurely asking for a fifteen minute toilet break.

Exhibit B: The fact that not once in five months have we ever been on time to practice. Not one time.

Exhibit C: The fact that, despite having practiced at the Kureha location four times now, we still cannot find the goddamn room.

Exhibit D: The fact that, up until last week, everyone in the entire production knew Geoff’s lines except Geoff.

I could go on and on, but no doubt you are aware of the complete spectacle we make of ourselves every Wednesday and Sunday. You have both shown yourselves to be paragons of patience. The real “charity” shown in this charity show is demonstrated weekly in the simple fact that you haven’t kicked both of us out on our asses.

In fact, far from being relegated to the waterboy and sweat-mopper positions, we seem to actually be acquiring more responsibility. Just last practice we learned that we would be memorizing an entire song, for instance. Now, we will do our very best here and we will succeed, no doubt, because doe-eyed orphans are counting on us and because that's the kind of men we are, but what we think you should rethink is assigning us to the rolls of Pixie #1 and Pixie #2 as well. Although there are no lines for the prancing pixies, there are a myriad of dance steps that are very hard for two goliaths like ourselves to memorize and perform.

Now, I don’t know many things for certain in this life, and my experience as a JET has taught me that I know even less than I once thought, but I do know this: If you make us try to memorize the pixie dance, it will be the death of the charity show. It might just also be the death of everyone involved as well. Even the orphans, somehow.

As time progresses and we get closer and closer to curtain call, you might be tempted to think we will change our foolish, fast-living ways; this would be a mistake. We are what we are: And what we are is one massive liability for this organization.

Thus far, damage has been minimized. Should you see it fit in your directorial ways to make us try this Pixie thing, or, heaven forbid, give us any more responsibility, well then, God help us all.

Respectfully yours,

Brad “Rosencrantz” Griffith
Geoff “Guildenstern” Davies

Ah. Ummmm...

2006-04-27T06:19:00.000Z

Because I am not a 'real' teacher I don't have a lot of the responsibility, and therefore stress, that other teachers have. I'm also at more of a liberty to do mostly what I please when I'm not teaching. I might go for a stroll around the school, or take a very comfortable seat in the men's lounge and read for an hour or two. I might, if I were so inclined, spend a few minutes on the internet.

I'm a pretty laid back chap as it is so this freedom can sometimes be a distraction. Sometimes in class I don't have anything to do other than recite some of the highly original and totally believable 'English dialogue' from the textbook, so I'm often interrupted from staring out of the window by the teacher. Actually it's not unlike the last time I had to spend most of the day in classrooms...

Sometimes I get bored, so I like to liven it up a bit. I might have a little joke with the students, lead them in a rousing "Heeeeyyyyyyy!" halfway through a class, or I might doodle on the board (I was particularly admired for my rendition of Dracula during an "I am playing the lead role" dialogue the other day).

The 'Dracula' day was one of these days - I did pretty much nothing - all day - and was bored throughout the two lessons I had, both of which I'd given verbatim to different classes for the last three days. I didn't rush to my last lesson of the day, indeed I stopped in the gents on the way for a quick tinkle. I entered the class, "Heyyyyyyy guys! English time again!" I looked down for the textbook and - oh no! Sprinklage on the trousers! Those urinals can be pesky things, especially when you're over six foot in a land of midgets. Can I teach facing the board? Probably not. Hold the textbook down there until it dries? Might look a bit weird no? Then - ping! It came to me. I looked round quickly and VOOM, raced off to the sinks in the corridor. I washed my hands and shook them all over, much like a wet dog, and walked back into the classroom distractedly wiping at my trousers with an exaggerated disappointment - oh darn, water on my trousers again....

Long Walk, Short Bus

2006-04-21T12:51:00.000Z

This hour commute. Wrenched out of Koshi. Is this my punishment for staying only one year?

Last Thursday I got up at 6.15am, was on the train by 7.30am, and at Komadori school by 8.15am. I read for an hour and a half, waiting for my lesson. I 'taught' for 30 minutes and then read for a further hour until I had to leave for my tram. I didn't just sit around; I did actually get up and wander around the school, trying to bump into some other students or teachers to shoot the breeze and spread the English love. But no, I found only empty draughty corridors.

For the first twenty minutes of my arrival I had to discuss the lesson plan for the day with one of the four or five other teachers (i.e.tell him what it would be). But, we hit a snag -- he looks concerned, then confused. "A minute..." he says, jumping up suddenly cheery. He goes over to a door and opens it up to a walk-in cupboard. He rummages around, slowly disappearing into the dark and dust. Out comes a big old brown box, and another. Finally he emerges with another big old brown box, bound with disintegrating tape. He roots around inside, finds what he is looking for and takes out a small white package. Out of this he slips two slim and stained volumes. "Again," he says, "please say once more..." and he flips open the school's English dictionary...

My planned activity was the "My name is/how are you?" game, as it was last week, and indeed will be next week. You'll see why - it goes like this:

Me: "Hello!"

JTE: "Hello!"

Student: "Nnnnng"

Me: "My name is Geoff, what is your name?"

Student: "Nnnnnng nnnng"

Me: "Ah. How are you...um......Kodo?"

Student: "...nnnnng..."

JTE [Japanese]: "How are you?"

Student ...dribble...

Me: "Iiiii'm..."

Student: "Nnnnnng......nnnnng.............nng"

JTE: "Fine! He is fine!"

JTE: "Now ask Geoff-sensei, 'how are you?'"

Student: "...."

JTE: "How...."

Student: "...nnnnnnnnnnnnnng"

Me: "Great! Well done, have a tiger sticker! you're a tiger!"

JTE: "Tiger!"

Student: "Nng!"

Me: "Right, next! Yuki, my name is....

"Alas, I have little more than vintage wine and memories..."

2006-04-21T02:46:00.000Z

To prove that we're not all lushes; that we're not just overpaid clowns who turn up Monday mornings hungover to bluff and blunder our way through 'teaching' English; who stumble about town in non-school hours 'internationalising' Japan by allowing people to stare at us with our drunken pockets overflowing with fistfulls of cash; to show the community that we didn't come to Japan only for the free ride and the sweet paycheque - to show that none of these things are true the Toyama JETs are giving something back: a show for charity.

That age-old, inspiring, lyrical, captivating, and highly original stage-show 'Cinderella' will be performed for all! Come see what your kids see -- gigantic overpaid westerners prancing around a stage! See them sing! See them dance! See them in public not drunk!

Months ago when we were sober we were urged to sign up for what we were assured would be a roller-coaster of cutting-edge acting and thespian high-jinks; acting hard and playing hard. I imagined the rave reviews that would undoubtedly be written of my portrayal of the lead role -- an anguished genius tormented by demons who dies a tragic Shakespearean death. I'd make a great actor! I was born to walk the boards, to join the ranks of the great and good - Gielgud, Guinness, Hasselhoff. Yes, I thought, planning the coloured lights my name would be in, I was made for this!

"No, no, no!" the director screamed last week in rehearsal, grabbing my shoulders, "tree number two should be over here!"

---

"How's rehearsal going?" our producer asks me in a coffee shop the other day.
"Great!" I reply "Really, it's going well. Seriously. Whu-why are you looking at me like that?"
"Have you ever done theatre before?" he sighs.

You see, this is how it goes. Brad (Tree #1, Guard #1, Pixie #1) meets Geoff (Tree #2, Guard #2, Pixie #2) before rehearsal and complain about how no one told them this would be twice a week for the rest of JET; how this would actually be work. They buy beer. They drink, they whinge some more, they buy more beer. They walk into rehearsal a little late and resume drinking beer, they prance around, and they give each other dead legs. While the leads are up front emoting the huge number of lines they have in every scene, Brad and Geoff are sat to the side, vandalising each other's scripts with obscenities -- or they're actually on stage, acting out the the three lines of dialogue they each they have:

Prince [in Japanese]: line line line emote emote line line emote
Cinderella [in Japanese]: emote emote line line line emote line emote line line
Prince: emote emote line line emote line line line.....
Guard #2: Koko wa Nippon itchy scratchy... oh, hang on, ummm, koko o Nippon cheesy ban..
Guard #1: What are you doing? That's not your line...
Guard #2: Hang on, I've got it. Wait a minute, oh yes, ichiban cheezy toray...cheesai toyra... Bugger (hic).
Guard #1: Dude! You are outta control!... (hic)... Is this my beer or yours?
Guard #2: Um, mine, that's yours.
Guard #1: Oh yes, where were we?
Director: Okay okay...sigh...Cinderella, could you take it from...line line line

This is what happens to your acting ambitions when you realise that you'll never play The Dane.

Me English Fun!

2006-04-15T06:38:00.000Z

As part of the April shuffle the Toyama General Board of Education have 'wisely' decided that for the last three months of my once-weekly special needs teaching career I am to teach elsewhere in Toyama. I was told this a few days before I was due to go to my 'old' special school.
"So I'm not actually going back to Koshiyogo?" I asked? No. A day later I got a fax from Koshiyogo:

"How are you doing? We were very surprised to know at the beginning of april that we cant study with you this coming term, we are very disappointed and I asked Toyama Prefectural Board of Education for your stay at Koshi in this term, But it answered "no you can't." We were looking forward to seeing you soon We enjoyed English with you and students like English very much thanks to you. Of course we all like you very much. We wish your good luck in the future. Thank you for everything can I pass Richard your sneakers?"

Which just goes to show what a super chap I am and that even Japanese people can't stand my trainers.

My new school is called Koshiyogo Komadori - a branch school of Koshi but in Takaoka, a city three stops on the train from Toyama.

So to my new school I went. With a train and tram timetable printed out for me entirely in Japanese by my 'supervisor', and some actually helpful directions from JETs in Takaoka, it took an hour to get there. Having been told merely where to get off the tram by those in authority, and not actually where the school was, I got off the tram and looked around.
"Hmmm. I know, I'll walk a little down the road. Oh, there's a huge complex of buildings. Ah, it's Takaoka City Hospital. Stands to reason its in there eh? I should go in there and ask. Now what is "where is Komadri school" in Japanese, ah yes..."

So, I ask at the hospital where their special school is and get absolutely blank faces in return.
"I am an English teacher. An ALT" I try in Japanese. Still nothing. Often Japanese people will look at you when you speak Japanese to them as if you are a magically talking bear whose voice causes actual physical pain. Obviously in this case the nurses must have been in shock at seeing such a tall and handsome talking bear. Out I wander to phone my base school,and to leave the nurses to jabber in astonishment to each other. I get a telephone number, and after a quick conversation with the special school I finally find it - 50 feet to the left of the main entrance of the hospital.

"What will you teach?" I am asked as I'm still taking off my coat.
"Um, English? What have you got planned?" I reply, hopefully.
"..." he stares at me.
"What kind of lessons do you do?"
"..." he stares, this time at the ground.
"What level are the students?" He looks at me, looks back at the floor and finally replies,
"...low."

After half an hour I discover that for the piddling three months they've wrenched me out of Koshiyogo (with whose students I had built an excellent rapport) and thrust me into a different school that:

- I'm teaching four students

- most of it is in Japanese

- by the FIVE other teachers there.

- Two of the students can't actually talk. English or Japanese. They. Cant. Talk.

The other two students cant keep themselves upright, and they are not given any other support by the teachers, so, they sit there - in their own laps. This makes the speaking of English dificult. And strangely enough also the teaching of it. Also, they only really know "my name is..." and can only say it after a ten-minute build up, several boxes of tissues, and the Japanese teacher finally saying it for them.

It is not in fact a school for the physically impaired as advertised (and like my old school) but for kids with severe learning difficulties.

What, you might ask, am I doing there? It seems I'm there to fill that function that the Japanese education and skills ministry define as 'internationalising' - I am the funny foreign man. I just 'be' there.

Capitally Flowing

2006-04-15T06:30:00.000Z

In Japan the job is all. Employment is, or should be, for life. Your job is more important than your family. At least it should be. In the novel Jennifer government the world is run by corporations, and employees take their surnames from their employers; John Nike and the like. This is what Japan is like, but without the actual names. To this end teachers are treated as assets, that is they are moved around as needed, even at random On a whim you might say. At my school for example one third grade teacher, the vice-principal, and the principal have all been moved and new people installed from other schools. The teachers find out in in April who is going to be given the requisite week's notice. When the list went up in my school the teachers all crowded round. An hour later my kyoto-sensei was packing up a box and being bowed to by most of the staff. When I got back from Thailand he'd been replaced. Which is a shame because he was the nicest guy here and he seemed to like me; we'd talk about the weather, we'd point at things and laugh; we'd pick flowers. Plus he handled my time-off requests. His replacement is his deputy, who does not like me. The replacement for the deputy is a chap from some other school. Right now he is sat in his chair swinging from side to side and staring at the ceiling.

Cogito Ergo Sum Gaijin

2006-04-11T06:53:00.000Z

In Japan we, gaijin (Japanese for foreigner) have peculiar powers. Gaijin Powers. Due to our existing outside of Japanese reality we are able to move about within Japanese society with almost no effect, and no response. There are many manifestations of this power, some of which are listed below (with thanks to Gaijin Boards posters):

Gaijin Perimeter - The ability to project an invisible barrier around yourself that only the Japanese can sense and thus be repelled by it. Its range and effectiveness grows exponentially with the addition of other gaijin - particularly tall males.

Gaijin Telepathy - This is the ability that gaijin use not only to communicate with each other, but also to gather necessary information from their Japanese co-workers when such information is otherwise being withheld.

Gaijin Locator - The ability to instantly locate other gaijin amongst large crowds of Japanese people.

Gaijin Invisibility - Confusing Japanese people by speaking to them while being an invisible non-socializable entity, and forcing them to turn immediately to the nearest Japanese person and ask for confirmation of what the wind just said.

These are merely some of the powers that we Gaijin possess. Below is a picture of a Gaijin displaying not one but two of these super-secret powers. Can you guess which ones?

Dark Sarcasm In The Classroom

2006-04-11T02:14:00.000Z

These kids, seriously.

When I first came to Kureha High School I was mildly alarmed by the number of injured students I saw everyday. After a while though I came to accept it - these kids play hard and they work hard. They play so hard it looks like work.

What makes me a tad uneasy now is how many students I see collapsing about me. At the beginning and end of terms we have ceremonies. Lots of them. We have so many ceremonies that before long the teachers and students will be lining the corridors to mark my journey to the western toilet each afternoon.

These ceremonies usually last between one and two hours and you have to stand for most of them - the rest is bowing. These ceremonies are punctuated every 20 minutes by a 'thunk' of somebody somewhere in the student body hitting the deck. Several teachers will rush into said mass of students and emerge a minute later dragging a body - usually a girl - head hung sickeningly on her chest and feet trailing behind her. The longer the ceremony, the higher the body count.

This, I thought during the summer, is what happens when you make kids stand in the heat for two hours.

In winter it is mostly the same, except the kids sit on the floor. During an hour long speech by the Principal this winter on the perils of the 'flu season three kids were dragged out after listing far enough to the side to be lying down.

This, I thought during the winter, is what happens when you heat only classrooms and not corridors, and then make kids sit on a cold floor for two hours.

Yesterday was the opening ceremony for the new school year, which in Japan is in the spring. The ceremony lost two girls that day. And this gave me pause. It's spring - it's positively balmy outside: what was wrong with these girls?
"Maybe they are sick, or they did not have breakfast this morning," a JTE explained to me.
Breakfast? These are not delicate little flowers - I've seen them play football. Missing a slice of toast in the morning will not floor you by 10am! On my way into school this morning a black SUV drove up to the front doors, two teachers met it, the car door opened and a second grade girl was dragged out and into the school. What is going on? Is this not a cause for concern for parents? The mother might as well as flung the car-door open and pushed her daughter out onto the tarmac before screeching away.

There is something more fundamental here than the odd cold, or skipping a bowl of rice in the morning. These kids need a break.

The Shoe Event Horizon

2006-04-06T01:29:00.000Z

In Japan the job is all. Your job is more important than your family. At least it should be. In the novel ‘Jennifer Government’ the world is run by corporations, and employees take their surnames from their employers - John Nike and the like. This is what Japan and so on, but without the actual names. To this end in schools teachers are treated as ‘assets’ who are moved around schools, to keep things fresh. The teachers find out every year in April who is to leave and are given a week's notice when the names are released. At my school for example one third-grade teacher, the vice-principal, and the principal, have all been moved and new people installed from other schools. Last week ‘the list’ went up in my school, and the teachers all crowded round. An hour later the kyoto-sensei (vice-principal) was packing up a box and being bowed to by most of the staff. When I got back from Thailand yesterday he'd gone. Which is a shame because he was the nicest guy here and he seemed to like me; we'd talk about the weather, we'd point at things and laugh; we'd pick flowers. Plus he handled my time-off requests. His replacement is his deputy, who does not like me. The replacement for the deputy is a chap from some other place. Right now he is sat in his chair swinging from side to side and staring at the ceiling. Anecdotal evidence suggests these moves are mostly at random, regardless of ability. In some schools there are teachers who are so incompetent that other teachers don’t give them anything to do – but it’s impossible, or improbable, that anything will be done about them. They’ll be shuffled on to the next school because – well that’s just how it is.
As all the teachers were gathered around 'the list' I asked one of my JTEs about it:

"Gosh, the teachers must have been very nervous this week"
"Ah yes, many teachers do not know, so they are knowing now"
"It must get frustrating, being moved around every three years"
"No, the teachers must move"
"Yes, but isn't it annoying to have to move?"
"All teachers must move at some time"
"Hmm. Where is the principal going?"
"He is going to ****** school"
"Ah, so, is that a promotion for him?"
"Ummm, it is not important. It is a different school"
"So it's a sideways move? Is it a better school?"
"...."
"Hmm. I see. Won't it affect the school though? Wouldn't it be better to have continuity? Isn't it difficult to have these upheavals?”

To which she looked at her feet and did the head-side-to-side thing that Japanese people do when there's a possibility of expressing their own opinion on an official matter - they might want to disagree but they actually really cannot do it. You can almost see the words DOES NOT COMPUTE scrolling across their eyes. The Japanese, my teachers at least, can’t disagree with anything official. Many times I have suggested something or tried to correct something, for example the textbook which is always using incorrect words out of context - it's either written by Japanese speakers of English or merely morons - and the teacher will look at me like I've just defecated on the desk. Many of my conversations end with me trailing off – after realising the futility of trying – and them going obliviously back to their work. Sometimes when I’m discussing something with them I feel like they have put their hands over their ears going “lah lah lah I cant hear you lah lah…”

The Total Perspective Vortex

2006-04-05T05:02:00.000Z

When you're a JET there's a certain degree of emasculation you must put up with. You're no longer as independent as you were. Much of the frustration of this job comes from the fact that you have very little independence to do what you want. In school most things you want to do have to be cleared first, and often those things are judged to be "too difficult" to do. To go to the bank at lunch you have to get permission from the vice-principal. A few weeks ago we had a rare warm afternoon and the sun was shining. It put me in a rather good mood,

"Sensei" I said "I'm just going out to the quad to mark my papers there; it's such a nice day, and I have no actual classes, so I'll be outside. Marking"
"Ah but Geoff-san, the students will ssee you"
"Well, that's okay, we can chat, they won't be a nusiance I'm sure. be nice to get some fresh air, heh heh"
"No, you can mark in here ne? Too distracting for students"
"But, fresh air. Sun. I have no classes. Students have no classes"
"Ne, distracting..."
"...sniff..."

When we got back from Thailand (oh Thailand, you seem so far away now. Thailand, Thailand....) the Gas Company (that's their name: 'Gas Company') had cut us off. No cooking, no washing, no shower. Bit of a pickle. So, off I raced to pay the bill and have the gas restored. We waited all night, but no gas. Next morning - no gas. So today I asked my supervisor to give them a ring, to see what was going on exactly:

"Sensei, would you mind awfully giving the Gas Company a ring to ask when they’re switching our gas back on? We got cut off while we were away. But we paid the bill last night. Look, here’s the receipt with our details on it. Could you give them a ring?"
"Geoff-san, You have not paid your bills geoff-san?"
"No no, we hadn’t, but we have now."
"Maybe there is a way, you pay at a conbini"
"Yes, we paid it last night, this is the receipt. Could you phone this number. On the receipt?"
"Normal Japanese teacher have bill out of bank account, it is, they take it out for me, uh, uh…"
"…automatically?"
"...ne, they take it automaticarry. You can do this.."
"Yes, but paying it at the conbini is more convenient for us"
"But not this time ne?"
"Well no, but that’s because we were away. But we have paid it, no problem see. So if you could just phone…"
"Ehhh. They have sent many bills? They send you a bill to pay with?"
"Yes, yes, we got two bills, but we were going to pay it after we got back since we were up to date. We thought it was too soon to be cut off. But we paid it last night and the lady said it would be turned back on,“tonight” she said."
"Tonight? Maybe you should wait…"
"No no, last night, she said last night that they would turn it on, but they didn’t. So if you phoned…"
"Somebody, you Robin, has to be there to turn it on. The gas. Ehhhhhh. Hmmmmm. Maybe we can phone. There is a number here….…….they said they did not switch off gas. Is safety system. They will come tonight. They said they were not going to cut you off , it is too soon…"

Why do so many conversations go like this?

Thailand Ffotos

2006-04-05T00:25:00.000Z

Koh Samui

Robin on the Beach

The Daily Grind

Sand Bar. geddit? Sand Bar? Never mind...

Ssiiiigh

Bungalow

I'm Drinkin', I'm Readin'

Ah!

Hmmm?

Hmmm. Drinks?

A Totally Believable Action Shot

Bankok

Geoff and Buddha Hanging Out

Khoa San Road

Robin and Buddha's Toes

Really?

Beer Leer

The Good Times Are Killing Me

2006-04-04T04:27:00.000Z

It’s always 12 o’clock somewhere. That’s what Robin told me as I sipped my first cold one of the day at 9.45am last Tuesday. I justified my brewski using the following evidence: We had been up since 3.30am, almost six hours before, getting from Bangkok to Koh Samui – our tropical island getaway off the eastern coast of Thailand. We had spent the previous two days in a state of semi-conscious head-lolling, travelling from Toyama to Tokyo, Tokyo to Narita airport, to Bangkok, through crazy Bangkok to hostel, a quick evening in Bangkok, a cab, a plane, a long wait, a bus and eventually to our hotel on Koh Samui. Who had never heard of us. A couple of phone calls to our agent cleared everything up, but we could not check for another four hours, it being 8am. But please, we were told, have full use of our facilities. So, I rationalised, why not beer? And why not, I’m on holiday.

But, consider you’re not on holiday; what time can you have that first sup and not have a problem? UK pubs don’t open until 11am, but if it’s not a weekend and you’re ordering the pub’s first pint of the day then you have a problem somewhere. On holiday the rules go out the window. Christmas Eve: morning Irish coffee. Spain or Greece: a nice cold white wine with breakfast. France: cheese, croissants, red wine. Bank holidays, on tour, week off work and the sun is out? Why not start the day with a game of snooker and a pint of bitter? And there’s nothing quite like a cold pint of Guinness as the Dublin sun is rising above Temple bar.
Many times I have woken up in the middle-morning, washed, dressed, and headed straight to the pub – normally to meet Alex, or Gagsy, or some other reprobate friend of mine. How many times have you Brits had two pints too many with lunch on a workday? How many times have you popped out to the shops for lunch and had to convince yourself it would be a BAD idea to get that refreshing looking tall-boy in the fridge next to the bottles of water? In Japan it’s a constant struggle.

But back to that tropical island.

“Ah” I said to Robin as we made the 10-yard stroll from the bar to our sun loungers on the beach, “the sun is shining, the sea is shimmering. I have a good book, excellent company and an enormous girly cocktail. Does life get any better than this?” Imagine this: lunchtime, under a thatched canopy a wicker table, laden with Thai curries and fruits. From there a short green lawn dotted with exotic looking flowers stretching to a low terracotta wall, beyond which the shade of a row of palm trees, a strip of white warm sand, and the soft lapping waves of a clear blue sea. Further out: a sand bar, some kayakers and tree-covered island in the distance. Blue skies, intermittent fluffy white clouds, a very slight refreshing breeze. A gin and tonic. Do you hate me?

Thailand is a truly wonderful country - the people are nice and friendly and speak excellent English. In every asian country there are those that try to cheat you or drag you off on a special trip where they try to fleece you of your money. Thailand is no different in this, but the people generally are nicer, more polite, friendly.

This is our first grown up holiday – our first holiday on which we have spent more then 10 pounds on a room per night; where there is room service, and the staff call you “sir”. I’ve never stayed anywhere with a mini-bar that I am paying for. It made me strangely restrained. With this slightly higher bracket though comes the Germans: fat middle-aged Germans and Russians. The hotel library is entirely in Dutch. The hotel we’re staying in is called the The Coral Bay Resort, an eco-friendly place where they recycle their water through a system of streams, rocks, and charcoal, spread around the ten hectares of natural gardens. They urge us to re-use our towels (but insist on replacing them every day); they remind us to conserve our use of the water they store for each bungalow in a rain tank on the roof (but use 10 litre flushes in the urinals).
It is a very environmental resort – in that we are surrounded in it. The environment that is. One morning I chased a frog out of the shower. For our entire stay a rather large lizard kept watch, attached to the wall above our front door; birds demanded toast and coffee in the mornings; enormous colourful butterflies escorted us up and down paths and alighted on my cocktails; local dogs took shelter beneath our loungers. As we were waiting for a lift to the airport a frog very calmly made the ten-minute commute from his home lily-pad on one side of reception to his other lily pad on the opposite side. I regard my Thai chicken curries with suspicion.

Just down the road from our resort was the lovely town of Chaweng. Lonely Planet describes the island of Samui as an already beautiful woman who goes and spoils it by using too much make-up. This certainly applies to Chaweng, which resembles the Costa del Sol more than it does a tropical island town. We ambled in now and then, to get some dinner and a drink and then escape back to our peaceful and clean resort. What is it about hot climates that attract the shirtless, tattooed, skinhead, lobster-red, drunken Englishman? You want a pint of Heineken? Full English breakfast? Fish and chips? Chaweng. The restaurants advertise ‘western food’ and make much of the use of bottled water used to wash the vegetables. Shops sell Palmolive soap, Heinz Ketchup, The bloody Sun newspaper. There are of course lovely small Thai restaurants and out of the way cafes and bars, but soon enough I’m sure they’ll be overtaken by ‘development.’ When Robin worked at Traveler magazine she says that the editorial team would decide whether to do an article on a place depending on if it would attract the wrong kind of tourism; whether it would be spoiled by too many people going there. I think maybe Lonely Planet should leave Thailand alone for a while.

Robin and I have discovered ourselves (okay, just me) to be the uncouthest of the uncouth. In Japan you don’t tip, you just don’t. For me this has not been a hard habit to adopt, being from a skinflint country as I am. For Robin however it took a while of servers chasing after us with our ‘forgotten’ change. It didn’t occur to us until too late in our stay in Thailand that we should probably have been tipping the staff at our very nice hotel. At the end of our stay we made envelopes of generous tips for housekeeping, the restaurant, and the very pleasant chap at the bar who had been making my G&Ts for the past week. Smiles all round. However, while sat in reception we saw a couple of fat Germans tipping their cab driver as he dropped them off. Oh dear, hadn’t thought of that; another demographic alienated.

Is it only Asian countries that have currencies where the 100th denominations are worth so little that they’re never used? Thai Green Curry – 45 Baht. Korean Beer – 250 Won. Japanese house – 47,000,000 yen. Brad insists he can get drunk every night because “we’re meeelleeeeonaires!” I was extremely excited when I first heard I was going to get paid 3.6 million yen a year. But Geoff – a friend of mine e-mailed me – that wouldn’t buy you a car. Oh.

If you have to be delayed in an airport it might as well be at an airport where Terminal One is only called terminal ‘One’ because it is nearest the bar and Terminal Two is a palm tree covered lean-to and security wears shorts and flowery shirts. Unfortunately the delay meant we wouldn’t get to Bangkok until 2am and our tenuous hostel bookings might be gone. We were leaving our idyllic paradise to sleep on the streets of Bangkok. Thankfully though, it turned out our hostel reservations were still there. Unfortunately, however, it turned out our hostel reservations were still there. Lonely Planet lists ‘Prakorp’s Hostel’ as “a nice break” and as having “the best guesthouse coffee.” He might have added, had he not been so high, that “it is the ideal place to collapse after a hard night of drugs and drinking. Because you will be oblivious to the grubby mattress, the grimy hole-filled plywood walls and the deafening screeching of the bars upstairs and immediately to your left.”

Being wary of a booking not being kept we had reservations at two hostels. ‘Rannee’s Guesthouse’ deserves it’s own chapter in Dante’s ‘Inferno.’ If I were a washed-out, end-of-the-road junkie, down to my last pennies, skin hanging off my ravaged body, who had lost all faith in man, god, and liquor, and only sought a way out of the hell that is humanity, Rannee’s Guesthouse is where I’d come to overdose. Even the cockroaches looked desperate.

We credit-carded our way to an upgrade at the local branch of the Sawasdee Hotel chain.

Bangkok is the kind of place that you come to get wasted; to overload on the hedonistic voyeurism that is the Khoa San Road. The beer is cheap, the spirits cheaper, the vendors raucous, and the traffic rudely oblivious. Do not go to Bangkok for a getaway; it’s loud, smelly, and full of foreigners. Drunken foreigners. I liked it, but it was not what I was looking for. We were surrounded on all sides by gap-yearers, hippies, students, and old time hippies who never made it home.

We strolled down the Khoa San Road on our last night before the next morning of solid sightseeing. The night was banging on, and the road was heaving with people in dreadlocks, goatees, Birkenstocks and at least one item of native clothing – mooching from stall to stall. We stop in the 7 Eleven (seriously, they are the world over) for an ice-cold beer. Strange – the beer fridge is locked, with a rope. The shop fills up suddenly. People try the fridge. There is a murmuring; a very quiet desperation is creeping in. “What’s going on with the beer?” someone worriedly asks. Outside in thee street people are sat at tables in the bars with cokes and juices in front of them; they fidget and twist, they don’t know what to do with these strange drinks. “What’s going on?” a Londoner cries as he races down the road.
“No beer in the pubs. No beer anywhere” gasps somebody else. We hurry back to our hostel before all hell breaks loose.

Elections, a wise old hand tells me later. We came to Thailand in the middle of a constitutional crisis. The Prime Minister of the last ten years is being increasingly harangued for corruption and has called elections for the Sunday before we leave. Opposition parties have boycotted, there are daily demonstrations in Bangkok. People are appealing to the King to intervene. It appears that Thais cannot be trusted to drink AND vote; with every election alcohol is prohibited from the night before to the night after the election – emotions run high perhaps? At home you would have to force-feed the public with hallucinogens to make them that excited about voting. Hell, you almost have to drug them to vote at all. Back safe at our hostel a few streets over from Khoa San we discover the manager doesn’t care for these rules “are you selling?” we ask, looking furtively over our shoulders. How many? he replies. All his guests sip quietly, not wanting to attract attention from the masses. We sit down, quietly rejoicing that the night has been saved. Not so for the Londoner on the Khoa San Road “it’s my last night in Thailand,” he told me, grabbing my shoulders “I wanted...wanted, to go out…” looking quickly around him, “The clubs! The clubs must be selling…!” he yelled as he ran off into the crowd.

Korea

2006-03-22T03:29:00.000Z

We booked a bus tour to the DMZ. Any of my uni friends reading this would grimace at this thought, but such is the way with the DMZ; you cannot get in to the world's largest minefield without an escort. Before I left my 11-year-old nephew sent me an email:

"woah, NK or SK? (north Korea or south Korea) chances are if your goin to NK youll get taken down by anti air! while your visiting the DMZ (yes i know all about that!) can you take some pictures of the tanks and AA vehicles? and any other military things you see? thx!"

He's my nephew so I am contractually obliged to say that he is cool, but that IS cool. I also had a healthy obsession with guns and the military when I was 11. Unfortunately I was not able to oblige the little chap as everything worth photographing was prohibited.

A little history. After several hundred years of sporadic Japanese invasion and occupation the two Koreas were created in 1945 after the occupying Japanese surrendered to the Americans. Much like in Germany, Russia moved into one part (in this case the north) while the US controlled the other (the South) where each set up their own provisional governments in the bitterly divided country. After the Korean war of 1950-53, which the allies came very close to losing several times, a cease-fire was agreed and the border set at the 38th parallel. Technically the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the north - always a give away there - putting in the 'democratic' bit), is still at war with the People's Republic of Korea (the south). In the actually democratic south the demilitarised zone is now a tourist attraction.

We were taken out of the city and to the DMZ, barely 50km from the border. While on the way to the DMZ the helpful guide informed us that we would be seeing one of three tunnels that North Korea had dug into South Korea. The "Communist North Koreans" had planned to dig these "infiltration tunnels" all the way to city hall in Seoul and have a bit of the old surprise attack. She referred to the North Koreans either as "the Communist" or "the starving" North Koreans. This tunnel was alarming, she said, as these three are only some of many many others that they don't know about. After a little while it occurred to me, they weren't "only 45 km away" as out guide exclaimed, but actually 45 km away. They only got 10km, and that apparently took them 15 years. At that rate, she hurriedly told us, they would have taken another twenty years to get to Seoul. Isn't it possible, I asked her, that with the myriad tunnels still undiscovered could it be that at this very moment a tiny, starving, North Korean communist is waiting to thrust his spade through the surface and invade the centre of Seoul? (And get run over by the 602 bus picking up tourists to take to the DMZ?)

But no, of course not. That would be mad.

I wonder how those tunnels, and indeed the DMZ, is portrayed in the North. "Tunnels? What? No, there are no tunnels. DMZ? What is this DMZ you speak of? South Korea? What's wrong with you? Guards...!"

Seriously Geoffrey, here?

Peace Out at the DMZ

It's Over There!

Chilling With The Grunts

Wall of Lost Ones

Robin Planning The Old 'Suprise Attack'

There Must Be Some Way Out Of Here, Said the Joker To The Thief

Last train to Pyongyang

Random Ffotos

2006-03-17T03:25:00.000Z

Sliiiide

2006-03-17T00:45:00.000Z

The whole being-hit-by-a-car thing is turning into more of an inconvenience that I would have at first imagined. After a day of strange clicking noises coming from my knee and a total inability to bend my leg I went to see a chap behind Toyama station. A doctor that is, that's where his surgery is.

He prodded around a bit and suggested some X-rays and an MRI scan, all done within minutes of my arrival. The MRI part was my favourite. If only all things medical could be done with MRI; with the soft monotone thrubbing and dull beating noises I was soon drifting in and out of a very pleasant semi-consciousness. I wonder if they do them for the bedroom? I was told that the whole thing would take about half an hour, so before I was overtaken by the soothing noises I thought I'd do well to practice some of my lines for my part in the JET charity show.

"Hennatoko-te? Shiranai no? Ouji-sama no asobi nakama da yo. Haado Gei da yo ne---!" I tried first. "Koko wa Nippon de ichiban ookii shiro desu. Ichiban chiisai toyray, demo nana jou mo aroon desu yo!" I went on. Of course, I didn't get it totally right. After a bit I notice that the hot young nurses the other side of the dividing glass were looking at me strangely. I then realised what they were hearing, I imagine their conversation went something like this:

"What's that the tall handsome foreigner is saying?"
"Uh, something about being Hard Gay. Hang on, oh yes. He can't let Hard Gay into the biggest palace in Japan, which has a toilet 70 tatami mats big"
"Really? Handsome, strong, and witty he might be, but man - foreigners are strange..."

The number of times I hurt myself last night after banging my leg on something was ridiculous. I limped into the kitchen and hit my foot on the door, jumped back to avoid hitting the door again, causing more pain and hitting my head on the doorframe. Repeat x3 in different rooms. It's amazing what a desperate happy singing to yourself can do when you hurt yourself - "Happy place tra la la going to my happy place la la la laaaa..."

Thankfully the crutch the doctor provided was not necessary today as my leg seems not to hurt quite so much, which is a good thing as I'm going to South Korea tonight. It was however handy to take the crutch into work (have to go back to Doc's tonight) to guilt my totally unsympathetic supervisor. After I got to the police station the other night and realised how long it might take I 'phoned Robin. She in turn phoned my supervisor to let her know - just in case I needed some Japanese help or something, things that supervisors are for - and get her to phone me. "It is alright" she said "they have interpreter at police, he is alright." Robin had to persuade her to call me. It now seems I will have to go back to the police station as the 20,000 yen is not going to cover my medical bills AND my bike - my supervisor's response? "You should go back." Helpful. Thanks.

Gosh. That last paragraph wasn't at all humourous was it?

Toyama Driver

2006-03-16T13:15:00.000Z

While bicycling in Japan you have to have not only foresight, but long-and-round-the-corner-sight.

Barely a day goes by when Robin and I don’t narrowly avoid death due to idiot Toyama Drivers who do not stop to look before pulling out of lanes into the main road. If Toyama Driver doesn’t zoom out, oblivious to the pedestrian traffic, he’ll slowly pull out but without actually turning his head to see if there are any pedestrians coming the other way. Why? Because pedestrians do not concern Toyama Driver. We mere bipedals are of no consequence. Toyama Driver only cares about getting onto the road so he can join his Toyama Driver chums at the traffic lights. By the time he has pulled out, oblivious, I am stood above his window yelling at him. But he still doesn’t turn around. I am waiting for the day when I can safely throw myself across the car bonnet with a concealed blood pack and vomit blood on his windscreen and scare the crap out of Toyama Driver.

Yesterday started as a great day. I had a day off school, which I had booked to recover from the hangover of my birthday the previous day. I also had a rugby game to watch (Wales vs. Italy), and a massive bottle of beer to get through courtesy of Flipped Lyd. Needless to say by 4 o’clock I had music on full blast and was dancing round the flat in my undies. It was in this mood that I left to meet Brad for dinner before two excruciating hours of rehearsal in the evening. I was in great spirits - until I got hit by a car at a pedestrian crossing. Was the light green? No. Was Toyama Driver looking? Of course not. My bike went horizontal, and I hit the tarmac in a way that soft fleshy bodies really shouldn’t.

As I lay on the floor, stunned by the stupidity of Toyama Driver, a form of some sort emerged near my head. “Wa gkjjskj ieieiweoowmmkd” said the form, which turned slowly into Toyama Driver. “Jafhwadnanoski dodjafan skalaslkd” he said again. “Chotto matte old boy...errr...quite some pain actually...oooh....leg” I gasped as I pulled myself up his bonnet. As I was orienting myself – there’s the floor, there’s the sky, there’s a strange blurring at the edge of my vision – he scarpered, like the rat Toyama Driver is. I stared, in a wincing half-stand, as he drove away, and then limped to the side of the road to inspect my bike and myself. As I looked over the wreckage a kindly Japanese girl came up to me to ask how I was and started to scribble something furiously on a pad, “Number. You report,” she said as she handed me the man’s license plate number.

Oh. Oh Toyama Driver!

With the written details of the event from a Japanese friend of Bryans (thank you Bryan) Brad and I went to the local cop shop. I thought it would be a simple form-filling exercise and off I toddle while they look into it. however, being Japanese they wanted to go to the Central Station to make a full report. Suddenly I saw the entire evening stretching ahead of me. After limping under escort with my bike I was sat down while a friendly young copper with excellent English skills grilled me. Soon enough they summoned the offender to the station. Phoned him – shouted, told him to get the hell down the nick. In the UK we would fill out a form and the police would go visit him the next day, after their tea and biscuits, maybe the next day, or next week; depending on what's on the telly. In Japan it is immediate. Get the hell down here now matey. And along he came.

Toyama Driver was a shrivelled looking old man who shuffled in with his strapping son and bowed profusely to me.
“Is this the man?” the fuzz asked.
“Well, maybe, you see I was on the floor at the time officer”
“Lets go see the car.”

Five rozzers escorted us to the offending vehicle, the bumper of which I remembered only too well. They matched up the scratches to my bike and started taking photos of Old Toyama Driver pointing at various offending items. Point at car, SNAP. Point at the bike, SNAP. Point at wincing foreign man, SNAP. Then we went back inside. The same five policemen crowded around and made the Old Toyama Driver fill out numerous forms, took his licence and papers away to draw big red marks all over them, and gave them back. The friendly copper explained to me that the old man had been given some points on his licence, and judging by the stern looks and yelling, quite a telling off.
“How much was your bike?” the policeman asked me. 10,000 yen I replied, maybe.
“He will give you 20,000 this is okay, you get a new bike and maybe have a meal?”

(Damn, should have said 20,000)

How could I refuse? After the scolding he got from the sergeant I just wanted doddery Old Toyama Driver sent on his way. Shake the foreigner’s hand they told him. And he did, more bowing. Do you want to go to the hospital they asked, do I have to? Do you want to? Not really. OK then. And that was that. All settled.

J-Police: Could You? They can.

Thoughtcrime

2006-03-13T00:50:00.000Z

This is some graffiti I found on the train this morning, scratched into the metal of the window frame. It made me a little depressed.

Here's a closer look

Somebody spent a lot of time scratching this very accurate and delicate picture. What was the message behind this melancholic act of defiance? Was this person lonely? Certainly they were sad. Were they drunk? I'd normally say that was a cert, but as you can see there was no small amount of concentration involved in this most polite of vandalisms. I can only conclude that it is only too Japanese.

A friend of mine was telling me the other day about some of the third graders in his school who came back a day or so after graduation to say hello to their teachers and generally check in. As soon as they'd been set free they had rebelled against the rules that had kept them in line for the last three years by changing their clothes and dyeing their hair. Unfortunately, they only swapped one conformity for another - they all wore exactly the same punk clothes and dyed their hair exactly the same colour as every other high-school graduate in Japan.

"Rule four: I don't want to catch anyone not drinking in their rooms after lights out."

2006-03-09T05:49:00.000Z

Another week, another enkai, another headache.

The weekend started, as it normally does here, with a raging hang over. The cause this time was the school enkai - the one where everybody goes. And because it's everybody, and the Principal, it was held in the ballroom of the poshest hotel in Toyama. After we finished sweeping out the remaining straw and droppings (b-boomtsssshh thankyou thankyou) we were sat at down and served appetisers and drinks by silver service waiters. Luckily I was randomly selected to sit between the librarian and Takeguchi-sensei, both Englishers. It began with very formal speeches by the Vice Principals and Principal, but soon descended into screeching laughs, beer, crying, more beer, and a rousing rendition of the school song. Which I managed to hum.

After recordings of various students talking about their time at Kureha were played over the PA the third grade teachers got up in turn to give short speeches about their graduating classes, to Lifetime Channel-esque backing music. It was highly orchestrated, touching, and very Japanese.

Beer, it seems, serves a fourth purpose - as champagne. After the speeches - and between courses of unspeakable shellfish and molluscy looking dishes - all the ladies stood and began to mingle with bottles of beer to refill all the men's flute glasses. Soon the chaps joined in and before I knew it forty drunken Japanese teachers were staggering around with bottles and glasses spilling beer here and there forcing me to gulp an inch of beer every minute so that it could be refilled by the next teacher. Of course I got wasted. Again.

More food and drink followed but in a smaller, cosier, side room which "you must pay 1000 yen more to come in." And what a party - in the course of two hours I drank two bottles of hot sake and uncountable glasses of beer and became best friends with the carpenter and the janitor. At some point the hard-as-nails P.E. teacher who had blubbed so much at graduation also came over and the three of them grilled me about the differences between Japanese and British beer and whiskey. They were much surprised to hear I like Yebisu, and much satisfied to hear I detest happoshu (nasty tasting pretend beer). They also reacted with near pain and tears to hear I was not staying an extra year - this from two men I have only ever seen through a classroom window working in the gardens, and from the other who only seems to notice me in school when he has to walk around me to the coffee maker.

Finally the janitor made horns with his fingers and said he had to go home, "Wakarimasu? Wifu? You wifu?" Thankfully Brad called at that point to demand why I wasn't the Jazz Bar enjoying fine martinis. I made my excuses to the principals - which involved more topping off and drinking of beers, and escaped.

And back to waking up with a raging hangover and pounding headache. As I opened my eyes Robin turned to me and said, "Hello beery boy, what time did - MY GOD! What's happened to your tooth!?"

Which is never something you want to hear when you're so hung over you can’t see.

Somewhere between leaving the Jazz Bar and waking up the cap on my chipped front tooth had fallen out and now I look like a pirate.

I'm going on the wagon. But not for my birthday of course. Or the long awaited "Pub Quiz Night." Beach cocktails in Thailand. Oh, and the "Spring Formal." After JET. After JET I'm going on the wagon.

For a bit.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Toyama

2006-03-08T08:25:00.000Z

A friend of mine recently pointed out that it seems, from reading this blog, that I'm not having fun. Of course, I am; this is a wild and crazy experience which I wouldn't exchange for (almost) anything. It's just that it's easier, and more satisfying, to point out the wierd and annoying aspects of Japan - and make fun of them.

For example.

Toyama seems to have a bad reputation with foreigners. In fact it seems to have one with Japanese too - many have never heard of the home of the world's largest zip manufacturer (YKK), and if they have they pretend not to. I think I have worked out why this is, with foreigners at least: it's not the weather, which is generally atrocious, and it's not the scenery - which varies from depressing industrial wasteland to scrub to glorious mountain ranges to concrete monstrosities - but the people. And the reason I think it's the people is that the only people who talk to us outside of school are the drunk, or, the special. People. Toyama, as I have definitley already mentioned, has more than it's fair share of them.

Today on my way to school The Jumper was, as usual, jumping around all over the place. On my way home from school I sat in the little train station with the same three disabled chaps I do every day. As I got on the train I said my now customary hello to a very cheery special dude who everyday says hello and gets a kick out of me nodding and saying hello back. And I, of course, ride the special bus every thursday.

Now, take this chap who pulled up next to me at the lights on my way home from the station:

"Hello" he said,
"Well, hello to you"
"Hoonanoonanoo. Humanuhum godoo gudoo mumble mumble"
"Ah, well, yes. But I'm afraid I dont quite understand you"
"Yes yes thank you humberoo nana doo change the rifle korea china ryfu hunan minnypasses"
"Hmm. Still not getting it I'm afriad"
"Hunn hun minny passes changeru ryfu"
"Change of life did you say? Menopause?"
"Yes yes korea pepsi changer ryfu"
"Okay..."
"Hunun boomarunoo shibiba nommoramo"
"Ah, I see where you're going with this, but I'm afraid I don't entirely - oh look the light's changed, byeee"

After he said hello I recognised him from many a night out in 'town'. I'd always thought he was a raving drunk, but in the light of day riding a bike he seemed rather sober. But a little disturbed.

Of course, I'm a mere first-year. Given long enough I'll meet lots of lovely japanese people (and indeed I already have), but in the day to day grind the company seems, well, a little worrying.

"We've made as much ground as an asthmatic ant with a heavy load of shopping."

2006-03-08T06:33:00.000Z

I have just discovered the limit of the leeway that my boss will give me. Generally teachers here either wear a tracksuit or a suit to school. I however seem to be allowed to wear shirtsleeves, or just a tie, or even just a sports-coat/jumper combination. Today, however, my limit was reached. The following conversation will also give you an insight into the Japanese mentality. Translations in italics.

"Hayashi-sensei, why are all the chaps wearing suits and ties today - even the PE teacher?"
why, yet again, do I arrive at school and see everybody dressed up again, and why did nobody tell me, again?

"Ah Geoff-san. Today is entrance exams. We look our best, make a good, ah, a good..."

"...impression?"

"yes, a good impression on new students"

"I see, maybe it would be good to know when we have to dress up, so that I could also dress smartly"
I'm getting a bit pissed-off that nobody tells me anything around here, whats wrong with you people?

"You do not have to dress up. Maybe you are in here? "
You are not involved - it doesn't really matter. But dont go wandering around okay?

A little later...

"Geoff-san, ne, you are a young man!" What the hell are you doing?

"Well, you know, I try..." What now? Um, best make like I dont know...

"You have short sleeves, and arms!" You're wearing a t-shirt

"Oh, yes, well, it's pretty warm in here today" Damn, I bloody knew it!

"Ah, maybe, maybe it is warm...." Not really, look at me, I am wearing three layers. Do you see me stripping off?

"No t-shirt then eh? Not good?" Seriously?

"...hehehehehe" wanders off... yes, put your sweater back on you scruffbag

Survival of the Nanni Nanni Redux

2006-03-03T06:53:00.001Z

Student, when asked about school uniforms:

"I think that personality is important, but I think that cooperation is more important than personality"

"To you The Renaissance was something that just happened to other people wasn't it?"

2006-02-28T02:32:00.000Z

Q: How are these two sumo wrestlers different? Write your answer using the phrases learned in lesson 18.
A: Asashoryu and Kotooshu are foreigner rikishi [sumo wrestlers]
Kotooshu is Bulgaria yogurt. Asashoryu is Attack.

Q: Do you think school uniform is necessary?
A: I am agreeable in their being a uniform. [this is a good start, but then...]
Because one is because I understand that there is a uniform well probably because it is school of any place. However, correctness of rules is considered it to be understood another person well by just that much. One is already because is because convenience. The reason because is because it is troubled to wear what every morning. And it finishes it. Therefore I am agreeable to uniform.

The Enkai

2006-02-28T01:14:00.000Z

The Japanese, much like every other nationality I have met, like to mark their special occasions by getting wasted. Why is this? Why do we all see a special event as an opportunity to drink until we can’t see? A few weeks ago I was asked to explain the annual events we have in the UK, like Christmas, New Year, Halloween, and all that. Alcohol seemed to be the common theme, no matter how I tried to spin it. Last night I attended the English department enkai – a party, it seemed, for getting to the end of the school year. I left the apartment, as usual, in a hurry and banged my head, as very usual, on the light fitting in the porch. I got to the restaurant four minutes late to find them almost finished with the first course – four minutes. “You are rate Geoff-san!” Me? I replied, I’m always late ha ha, and they all laughed. Just a little too much.

The theme of the night was established early on – it seemed to be ‘Let’s Enjoying Mixing Our Drinks’. Geoff-san, here is beer. Have gin-tonic Geoff-san. This is special sochu, drink, ah here is hot sake. Have more beer. Beer, for them, is for three things – a starter; something to wash other drinks down with; and as a palate cleanser. The running joke of the evening, that Koizumi-sensei didn’t like alcohol – told most often by Koizumi himself – never seemed to tire. Ha ha. For some suicidal reason the Japanese love to mix their drinks, indeed to drink anything and everything.

As well as looking interested in the mainly Japanese conversation going on around me I was also expected to eat anything put in front of me - which in Japan is unrealistic, and a little mean. As I was forcing down my third mouthful of raw fish flesh I was asked
"Is there some kind of food you cannot eat?"
I replied squid and octopus (because really, do you want to put that in your mouth?)
“Are you allergic?” they asked in surprise.
“No no, I just don’t like them.”
There was a sudden silence. Awkward stares at plates. They really seem to take it personally if you happen not to like a Japanese dish (which for me happens often).

After finishing dinner Koizumi-sensei asked where we should go next as, it seemed, none of them actually lives in Toyama. I suggested some fine martinis at my new favourite find, The Jazz bar. “Ha ha, but I don not like alcohol” - cue much hilarity.

The bar was a surprising success. The barman, handily, recognised me from the sports bar where I used to watch the rugby. I ordered a martini for myself in Japanese (not very hard) and handed menus around to my amazed colleagues (really, they make little excited claps when I help them with their English queries - they are not hard to impress). After a little the music began to get a little downbeat so I asked the barman to put on some John Coltrane. And of course for another martini. “What is this Geoff-san?” asked my supervisor as I coolly handed back the CD which the barman had brought over for my inspection “Oh, this is John Coltrane, he’s quite good”
“And what is this playing?” she asked ten minutes later
“This is, ah, Everytime We Say Goodbye”
“Ah soooo desu kaaa!” And I was voted Jazz president. Honestly, it was only the second time I’d been to that bar; it was a freakish coincidence that that particular barman was working that night and I totally lucked out at knowing the one song they asked me about. Still, I’ll take my kudos where I can get it; at least I didn’t fall over, or spill my drink. Or vomit.

After several more gin-tonics, martinis, and shingaporshlings, we left – the ladies to go home and, apparently, the two male teachers and me to go for ramen. It was over steaming bowls and more beer that the real purpose of the enkai is revealed – to bitch about work, specifically, my work. They are all majorly pissed off it seems at my decision to not re-contract. Not because I’m a dreamboat, but because...
“when predecessor was here at this time she signed contract again but she changie her mind right now to go back to boyfriend. It was very difficult for us. As for you we think it was ok because your girlfriend here with you. Why will you leave Geoff-sensei?” There followed some horribly embarrassing explanations on my part – getting married, want a career job and so on.
“Why did you not think this before you come?” Hmm. No real answer to that, but I tried to explain the one-year nature of the JET program – where re-contracting is an option but is not pushed. This, it seems, is a major inconvenience for JTEs, as they need continuity –which I can understand. Finally the incredibly awkward ramen was over and it was time to go, home I thought.
“Tell me Geoff-sensei,” asked the younger JTE “where do ALTs go? Ah, the Pot Still? Let’s go there…”

I finally got in at 1.45am, or so Robin tells me (sorry Robin…), for a couple of hours sleep before work. I spent the next day mostly lying down in the male teacher’s lounge trying to stop the world spinning. Why do they do these things on a school night?

"When the going gets tough, the tough hide under the table"

2006-02-24T07:11:00.000Z

For the last few weekends I have been undertaking the mammoth task of internationalising the Japanese. It's been a tough slog, but after two weekends of intense communication I have finally managed to rid the Japanese of their terrible accents; I have harmonised relations between Japan and the rest of Asia, and I have single-handedly increased tourism to Wales from Japan by more than 700%. How have I done this? International Festivals.

Two weeks ago AJET put on the annual JETFest: a festival to celebrate and encourage relations between the Japanese and everybody else. Proud folk from such far flung places as Russia, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ghana, and China represented their nations with great aplomb. Cambodia was also represented, but alas by an English and a Scottish girl. The UK, being inhabited by a factious people, was represented by the various home nations. England was proudly displayed with drinks (tea, gin and tonics) and food (biscuits, bread and marmalade) and some fine English people; that pretend place the Isle of Man was represented by the only person from the Isle of man that I have ever met outside of the Isle of Man, with some impressive slides, brochures and videos; and Scotland was represented by two of three Scots in the ken (the other one having defected to Cambodia) with posters, flags, general Scottish paraphernalia and, most importantly, Scotch. Being sandwiched between the stands offering G&Ts and Scotch I was nicely provisioned for the afternoon ahead. Ireland was represented by a small can of Guinness.

As the only Welshman in the ken it fell to me to create and man the Wales stall, accurately located between the UK/England and Isle of Man stalls.

Like my erstwhile compatriots, but more so, my booth rocked - Welsh cakes, leeks, rugby on a laptop (Wales beating Australia followed by Wales beating Scotland), Welsh rock blaring from a stereo (Manics, Catatonia, 'phonics, The Morriston Orpheus Male Voice Choir) and assorted maps, brochures, and posters of the fair and beautiful Land of My Fathers. It's a shame the Japanese didn't realise quite how much my booth rocked - they seemed more drawn towards the Isle of Man (and I'm pretty sure that that is the first time that particular phrase has ever been uttered by anyone, anywhere).

They might have a point, the Japanese that is. Dylan Thomas is said to have commented, "Land of my fathers? They can keep it", he is also quoted as describing Swansea as an "ugly, lovely, town." More recently the film "Twin Town" described Swansea as a "pretty shitty city". On the floor at the threshold of Swansea train station are emblazoned the words "Ambition is Critical", as if the founders of Swansea knew what they had in front of them. It's a shame that they chose to put that inspiring slogan on the floor, where people tread on it all day. So, the Japanese might be onto something when it comes to Swansea.

Much of "internationalising" involves of pointing, one-word dialogues and smiling. And embarrassing silences. Take this exchange I had with a very pleasant J-girl (please...)

"Never I Englando"
" Ah no, Wales, this is Wales"
"Wayurzu? Ah. Never I Englando"
"Oh, well, Wales is ichiban! Have you been to Wales before?" (Number 1/ the best)
" Ehhh...................mmm......................... London doko wa desu ka?" (Where is London?)
"In England. This is Wales. The Capital is Cardiff. Here is a photo."
"..........."
"Have some cake."
"oishi.................................sumimasen" (Delicious.................um.......... excuse me, I'm off)

Some Japanese of course know where Wales is as there are rather a lot of J-factories in the valleys of South Wales, and those that did asked me awkward questions, the answers to which I only vaguely knew, but after a G&T and a Scotch I was more than happy to bluff it, and indeed the rest of the day.

"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb."

2006-02-24T00:23:00.000Z

In the JET community we have an internet message board - a place to discuss important JET-related issues with other JETs in the ken and swap teaching ideas. It is a vital tool for the efficient exchange of information; a resource for all.

The biggest section is 'Rants and Raves', which is where we slag everybody off.

JETs do not always have a lot to do, so this is where you can usually find most people. There are various 'threads' that cater to subjects from the weather to how much the Japanese suck at life. My favourites are the "I'm Not A Commie Bastard" thread, which is mainly about politics. The title of the thread is an exercise in newspeak, as it seems to be the main forum where Western, European, and Canadian liberals gang up on the two or three right-wing republican JETs and blame them for most of the world's ills. Favourite quotes sources are the BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Daily Show. The words "Fox News" are an abhorrence in this thread. "In The News" is where those of the politics thread lament the state of the world before moving to the politics thread to blame the Americans for it. "In The Sports News" is the thread where mainly British and former Empire countries lament or rejoice in the latest rugby, football, and cricket scores. Occasionally some Americans will post about weird sports and talk gibberish about things in decimal places.

There are, at any time, around 20 people posting. There are regulars who seem to be able to reply to every post in seconds, and there are those like me who, by the time they've finished typing a reply with two fingers, find that the conversation has leaped ahead and they're talking to themselves. Some people you should never get into an argument with for they seem to have the unnatural ability to consult Wikipedia and Google in seconds (the fonts of all modern day knowledge) and crush you with reams of facts and figures.

There are also the entertaining posters - the nihilistic and the outright strange. The most entertaining are those who lament the naiveté of the pinko-card-carrying-commie-liberals. According to an article I read recently, on a long enough timeline all men will develop prostate cancer. And so it is with the message board; given long enough every subject will turn into the 'USA vs. Everybody Else' debate. I used to rant endlessly on the Everybody Else side until I realised that I don't always disagree with them (the USA side). I can understand their point of view. I don't always agree with it, but I can see the rationale. The realist side of me will always win out against the idealist, but I just like to argue.

The great thing about the boards is that is really is a meeting place for everybody, and nothing said on it really affects you in the real world - it's for shits and giggles; a place where we can all vent about the retardedness of Japanese bureaucracy. The teaching threads are a goldmine: if you ever need another English-speaking opinion, or a last-minute teaching idea, you are guaranteed an almost instant response.

The boards are, however, a finicky mistress - an hour of vent or verbal dueling will brighten up your day, but you'll always find yourself going back, just to check. The amount of time JETs spend on the boards is a subject that has been apparently brought up at Education Board meetings. I'll certainly miss it when I leave.

I Smell Bacon.....

2006-02-23T09:07:00.000Z

Originally uploaded by pedroalhambra.

Last week I took part in the annual JETFest - an international festival held and run by JETs for the local community to learn about where we all come from. More about that later. For now: this is a sheriffs badge that I picked up from the American booth and wore around for a bit, because, y'know, I'm a retard. A few days later I was taking off my coat in the apartment and, oh - what's this? Ah. Oohhhhhhh. I realised that I still had on said badge of the law and had indeed been wearing it most of the day in the staff room. I was wondering why the kyoto-sensei kept drawing his imaginary gun at me...

Trust me...

2006-02-23T09:02:00.000Z

Koizumi
Originally uploaded by pedroalhambra.

This, my fine freinds, is Japan's venerable Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. He's recently won a general election here by taking out a lot of his own MPs, who disagreed with his over the privatization of the post office, by fielding his own "assasin" candidates. Japanese politics - the continuation of war by other means...

Let's hear it for the...

2006-02-22T12:31:00.000Z

Win one for the Gipper!

2006-02-22T01:52:00.000Z

In Russia, as recently as 1990, if you wanted to work for the state or join an institution of some sort you had to fill out a form declaring whether or not you, or your relatives, had ever been a prisoner of war in Germany or had been sent to the gulags. Obviously if you answered yes you were immediately treated as suspect - not to be employed or trusted. This was Russia - a country ruled by successive paranoids.

In the U.S. when you are about to enter the country they have you fill out a visa form. On the back they ask various pertinent questions. They basically boil down to:

1. Are you insane, or indeed a junkie?
2. Are you a criminal mastermind?
3. Are you a Nazi war criminal? And while we're here - are you a terrorist?
4. Are you here to kidnap someone?
5. Hang on...have we thrown you out of the U.S. before?
6. Um, do we want to arrest you?

They give you this form on the plane before you're about to land. Beneath the questions they helpfully remind you that "if you reply YES to any of these questions....you may be refused entry to the United States."

Truly, I can't think why the intelligence on Iraq was faulty...

Divine Wind-Up

2006-02-21T12:07:00.000Z

The Japanese never seem to look up.

Every morning Robin and I have to weave our way to the train station. We ride on our bikes most days and admittedly, we ride on the pavements, but it's okay; the pavements (sidewalks) have bike lanes, it's a bike kind of society. You wouldn't think it though to see the Japanese blithley walking wherever the hell they like, staring at the floor. Oh, they wont cross the road if it's red - even when its so quiet that tumbleweed slowly rolls by - they'll even queue in orderly demarcated lines for when the train pulls up. But walk blindly through crowded shopping centers, down crowded streets, through crowded train stations? you betcha.

I've never seen them collide though. I read once that ants have this sense, that though they can't see in their swarming dark nests they know exactly where everybody is and what they're doing, due to some special receptor. It must be the same with the Japanese. However, they don't seem to be able to 'see' me, the six foot foreigner. In fact, like moths to burning death, they're attracted: they veer toward me without being aware of it. I can spot the 'veerers' from a hundred meters. I can tell they're heading straight for me, head down. I veer left, they match me. I veer right, they veer to my right. Right before the moment of impact I leap aside and - they don't even look up, they continue, oblivious. They have no idea what just almost happened. In World War II kamikaze pilots weren't intentionally crashing into American ships, they just had their eyes glued to the cockpit floor.

"Is this an essay, or dog poop? I'm not wearing my glasses today."

2006-02-21T01:11:00.000Z

I walk in at 8.15 this morning, which is always a pain in itself. Normally I'm slurping my third cup of coffee from my travel mug, so I'm apathetic and jacked. I look at the schedule to see if there are any changes (often the whole day will be different to the published schedule. I'll walk in on a two-lesson monday to find I've been given four extra classes. Sometimes the entire day has been cancelled) and indeed two classes have been swapped and several added.

It's okay, it's okay. Just get more coffee.

My head of department comes over - I can see her shuffling towards me from the corner of my eye. I strain, desperately trying to be invisible. I end up farting. Classy.

"Geoff-sannnnn. Today. Three more classes..."
In an effort to prevent a five minute verbal beating of "eto eto ne ne eto eto" I interject, breezily,
"Ah yes, our class has been moved from third period to fourth. Also it seems a couple have been added at third, second, and fifth. Yes, that's wonderful, ok then..."

But no, she continues, oblivious. This morning however there is a slight variation,

"So we have OC for only half a class"
"Ok, so you only want me for half the class"
"...Eto eto...."

Eventually she goes. I'm free and clear. But I know I have to ask the obvious questions, otherwise she'll just assume - and then there will be the awkward silence in class when she turns and says to the class "Geoff-sensei will now tell you all about...."

"Which half?"
"...eto..." Oh bloody hell.

I manage to drag out of her, through various probing questions that yes, she wants me for the second half. Yes, she would like me to prepare an activity (the subtle hint "we will do something else" was the key phrase for me there. 'We' often means 'you', and "something else" means "make an activity that will take 45 minutes so i don't have to actually teach. Ta"). Finally it's done. I have five minutes til my first lesson. I eye the coffee pot, planning my route, i can still make it...

..."Geoff-sannnn. Geoff-san, eto, we, uh, eto, I make, eto"
Oh sweet Jesus...
"....I make mistake. Ne. We do full class."
Which means you, Geoff, you do full class.

OK. I can deal. I am a smart young man with several degrees. I chose to come here. This is fine. I am learning, if you like: growing.

I have two minutes, I can still make the coffee...

......"Geoff-senseeeei..." Crap. When it's 'sensei' you know you're going to end up doing something for someone... The head of third grade comes to inform me of the details of the upcoming English department enkai (party). But he doesn't just show me the map with the arrows and times drawn on that he's brought - he sits down and explains in detail the very complex workings of going to a party,
"This is a map. This is the station. This is block. You walk two blocks. This is corner. This is..." DUDE! MY COFFEEEEE!! ....aaaand then the bell for first lesson goes.

My fiancee rocks - Valentines Day present....

2006-02-21T00:39:00.000Z

Fw:
Originally uploaded by pedroalhambra.

Your soul may belong to Jesus, but your ass belongs to Kureha

2006-02-16T01:19:00.000Z

Walking into my school is like entering the aftermath of a battle. After a brisk lunchtime walk (to McDonalds) I entered my school and proceeded down the hallway. On the way I stopped to "talk" to two second-graders, one of whom had immense amounts of strapping on her leg - basketball injury. A second or two later I overtook a boy on crutches - track and field mishap. Then I passed two girls shuffling by like Typhoid Mary herself - 'flu. This morning I excused a boy who came to write his answer on the board because his writing hand was heavily banadaged after baseball practice. It seems we don't have a nurses room here, we have a triage.

One's never alone with a rubber duck

2006-02-16T01:06:00.000Z

One definite highlight of the weekend was Saturday when Robin and I went to a town called Toga for the Toga Soba Festival with an Australian friend of mine and his Japanese girlfriend. The festival was an impressive affair with some fine soba noodle dishes and surprisingly spectacular ales. There were also a variety of remarkable snow sculptures. I say sculptures; I mean architecture. These things were thirty-foot high monoliths ranging from Hello Kitty to the Parthenon, including a Police Station with actual policemen inside. The whole show was headed by the main stage, which seemed to be an homage to the Valley of the Kings with pyramids so intricately sculpted I expected Tutenkarmun himself to emerge to complain about the noise. The festival ended with a wedding ceremony. Of course. A local couple, bathed in lighting that would have made Jean-Michelle Jar weep, stood in the pouring snow for an hour while various speeches were made. The best man, wearing a tux and a pair of neon yellow snow boots, stood by the side holding an ineffectual umbrella above the bride. To mark the end of the ceremony they rang a bell in a small snow carved chapel, setting off a tremendous fireworks display. It was all rather affecting actually, but in a very Japanese kind of way.

And now it seems I am famous.
“Geoff-san” said my head of department at the speech contest the next day “did you enjoy Toga yesterday?”
“Um, yes, I did. How did you know I was there?”
“I saw you on the news”

At first I as rather worried as I had consumed rather a lot of the wonderful local brew. But the local news station, who it seems had very little else to report, had caught me peering at the local produce in an unusally interested and local way.

“Well” I replied, recovering somewhat “have to do my bit for internationalization you know…”

Survival of the nanni nanni

2006-02-16T00:57:00.000Z

This morning Robin and I were discussing the homework we each set for our students, and which subjects have got good responses (i.e. more than three lines per student) and which have not. We realized that the similarities between all the students’ answers begs the question: do they meet beforehand to decide the line that they as a group are going to take? I think they do – the commonality of their answers, and their reasoning, reflects the nature of Japanese society to think en masse and stick to the agreed opinion. It's no wonder that they’re having a problem with the birth-rate – somebody somewhere decided that having babies was rubbish. Now they’re stuck on the mobius loop of extinction.

Quickly, strangle it before it starts trying to make friends!

2006-02-15T06:04:00.000Z

Eating ramen in Japan can sometimes be like accidentally taking in a mouth of brine while boogeyboarding. Since being in Japan I have generally tended to stay away from alot of Japanese food due to the horrendous things they sometimes do to it - sprinkling fish-product where fish really ought not to be, mixing foods that should never be mixed (often involving fish), cruelly calling things 'dessert' and 'sweets' when they are the farthest thing from dessert that you could imagine. And involve fish. I have been a very bad internationaliser in this repect. I did however eat at the best restaurant yet the other night with some of the Sunshine 88ers. It was wonderful. I might yet venture into the land of japanese cuisine.

One of the stranger things in Japan happens in restaurants: they shout at you. And in shops too. In fact in many places. They shout at you when you arrive and they shout at you when you leave. You'd think that it might be off-putting for customers, but it really is just the Japanese version of hospitality - customer service. They're actually thanking you for coming and welcoming you/seeing you off. The Japanese, unfortunately, only have one way of doing this and it involves monotone shouting. Imagine walking into McDonalds and having the surly tenager behind the counter, the spotty teenagers at the grills, and the ugly teenager washing dishes in the back all turn around and shout "HELLLLLOTHANKYOUFORCOMINNNNNNNG!" in the loudest and screechingest voices that their pubescence will allow. And again on your way out. Imagine the librarian standing on a chair at your arrival and announcing to all "EVERYBODYLOOOOOKHEEEE'SGOING TOTHESELF-HELPSECTIONNNNN!"

Imagine it at the doctors'...

Smarter than a brain pie...?

2006-02-13T02:48:00.000Z

In Japan there is such a thing as the speech contest. As if school itself wasn't stressful enough. To my knowledge I don’t think we do speech contests in the UK, although I vaguely remember being involved in a debate contest held by a rotary club when I was in high school. The All Toyama High School Speech Contest 2006 was held last Sunday – for some a nerve-wracking hell of excitement, for other an annoying intrusion into my, er, their weekend. One silver lining for the ALTs is that after two painful months of coaching students, mainly girls, in the subtleties of speechifying the day had finally arrived when we would be relieved of our burdens and set free back into our world of free-wheelin’ English speakin’. No longer will we be subjected to the butchering of ‘She Walks in Beauty’ by Lord Byron. No more will ‘The Great Gatsby’ be reduced three times a week merely to ‘Gatsby.’ No more will my student’s impressions of Stephen Hawking stalk my dreams.

More of a celebration will be when we will get the chance to return to our schools, trophy-less, to be able to say to our JTEs in a loud clear voice “If you hadn’t waltzed in and interfered on the last day of practice we would all be dancing right now.” Because we would. A common theme of the contest, so I hear from my fellow ALTs is that for weeks the ALTs trained and coached the students to speak near comprehensible English only to have the JTE appear for the final session and change everything:

JTE: ...Lots of Japanese that only Geoff can't understand...
Student: ...More Japanese...Geoff-sensei...Japanese Japanese
Geoff: Sumimasen? What?
JTE: Geoff-sensei, I think maybe she does not have to raise the inflection at the end of that sentence.
Geoff: But it is a question
JTE: No, the question was before
Geoff: It’s a multipart question that’s quite long. You have to raise the inflection at the end to make sure the audience knows that you are still posing the question.
JTE: Maybe (Japanese for “no”)
Geoff: Uhh, OK.
JTE: ...Japanese Japanese Japanese... annger, not anger
Geoff: What? There’s a ‘g’ in anger, ang-guh! Oh, whatever…..

And the session continued with the JTE changing everything, even adding ridiculous gestures worthy of the Thunderbirds puppets. I started to doodle on my pad…

Come Sunday I turned up to watch my four girls. Not only had the JTEs changed the pronunciations but they also thought it best to turn the speech into a vaudeville act. Yuka, a first-grader, threw her arms up in the air at the slightest words – like ‘and’ and ‘it’.

The eventual winners of the contest turned out to be half-Brazilian Super-English School students with English-speaking parents. I saw one of their performances, and performance it was – I could’ve taken some bread and made sandwiches with all that ham flying around…

I'd rather french kiss a French man

2006-02-12T23:34:00.000Z

Among the various discussions Robin and I had about whether to re-contract, a common factor against was the very raison d’etre of a JET – teaching in a Japanese school. This far outweighed the all periphery benefits of our crazy life here.

The normal working day is 8.30am to 5.10pm. That adds up to 45 hours a week, of a possible 168. Add to that the need to sleep at least seven hours a night – 49 hours a week – and you get (I’ll wait while you do the maths….dooobeydoobeydoo…) that’s right - 94 hours. Now, add on all the hours involved in the rigmarole of having a job (commuting, preparing etc.)and you get around 104 hours a week, of 168, that we have to spend on, or preparing for, teaching in school.

Now don't get me wrong - this is part of having a job, I know this and indeed am well acquainted with it. Everybody everywhere who works has to do this. But when it is a job that you don't necessarily love (and I've had one or two of those ) then it becomes something to think about.

I did have a point before the mathematical ramble, and it was this: I spend so much time at school with people that annoy me that I should really talk about them more.

Due to the public nature of this medium, and the possibility that the higher-ups at the Toyama Board of Education might read this (as has happened to some JETs here), I might - when I am being less than pleasant - slip into a somewhat obfuscatory style of writing.

A certain teacher (whose main function is related to me in a somewhat overseeing nature), I think, hates me. Well, not me (surely not!), but me as an ALT. This person has a habit of not telling me things I need to know until the absolute last minute, sometimes even after that, with the helpful comment “maybe I should have told you that before…” In class this person will use inappropriate subjects concerning my private life as pedagogic examples. Nothing rude, but stuff that I would generally not talk to you about unless you were a very good friend of mine or I was drunk. (Don’t be offended when reading this; if you and I have been involved in the latter then more than likely you’re also the former). Her choice of Anglo-communication is sometimes contradictory to what she is trying to say and is often so abrupt as to be rude.
When announcing the end of every lesson with me she’ll say “So much for today’s lesson.” When trying to get my contribution to the teacher’s party fund she’ll say “You give me X yen, now.” Yesterday she told me ten minutes before I was leaving, “There are two student outside. You have to coach them for the speech contest. It is ten minutes before your working time is over. They are waiting.” This, however, is a trait that many Japanese speakers of English apparently share, because of the way Japanese is spoken. It does get on my nerves though.

Of the colleagues with whom I am most often occupied in my present vocation I really enjoy my relationship with less than one of them. I can bear, however, two of them because they are actually pretty decent at what they do and actually use me effectively.

Of my other colleagues who hang around the staff room there are a few who, if I were to stay longer, I would try to get to know. One is concerned with a science of a numerical nature, and also a subject more concerned with machines and their informational ability. He is the obvious ‘lad’ in the room; our conversations normally revolve around the kinds of beers we like. The other is culinarilly inclined, and is quite domineering. She is also quite a lad, and funny judging by the laughs she gets (that might however be forced laughter – she is quite scary).

The kyoto-sensei (Vice Principal) is a likeable old kook. He often jokes around with the students (especially Matsuda, a second grader who knows enough English to be annoying but is a useful English-teaching tool as a class clown). Now and then we’ll have a conversation about the weather. This is because I know the Japanese words for hot, cold, snow, and rain and he knows the English equivalents. Knowing these words in Japanese is a must in Toyama; if Toyama were a state in the union it would be called ‘The Umbrella State.’

Our photocopying lady is worth a mention; she is extremely quiet and has a shitty job, but she always looks if not apathetic then at least not pissed off with her lot. She’s young compared to everyone else here. She’s one of those people who you can imagine either spending their nights at home in front of the fire surrounded by cats and drinking cocoa, or, out on the town downing shots and dancing on tables to the latest tunes.

And back to the beginning point – I spend five days a week with my co-workers. This week I spent six days. And. They. Drive. Me. Crazy.

Apologies for the lateness of this post, and indeed it’s dullness, but little has happened of late worth writing about. Anyway, I might have some excitement soon; I’ve just realised that if any of the learned people at the Board of Education come across this blog my circumlocutionary style will not save me: they’ve only to look at the address bar to know who I am.

Hmmm, nice.

2006-01-30T00:19:00.001Z

Of all the trains I have ever had the pleasure to ride on Japanese trains have to be the worst.

In Wales the train system is pretty shoddy, but generally ride-able. The announcer normally has either a soft lilting valleys voice, or a reassuringly local Cardiff twang. Either way he's as apathetic to the whole train experience as you are, which gives the ride a very comradely feel.

On the London Underground the drivers are unequivocal and pretty much pissed off all the time. And who would blame them? One time I was catching the central line train home to Shepherd's Bush. The train pulled in and came to a strange juddering stop before rolling back a foot or two. Everyone got on, and after sitting on the tracks for five minutes the driver made an announcement on the PA system: "Sorry for the delay ladies and gents, this is due to an idiot who decided to try to throw himself in front of the train. Unfortunately he missed. We're going to have to stay here for a few minutes while we make some checks on the train. You can thank the joker in the third carriage wearing the denim jacket."

In Washington D.C. the drivers really just don't care. They're not annoyed; they're just 'there'. Except for one guy who occasionally drove the Red Line train that I got every morning. Imagine a cross between The Cat from Red Dwarf, Roger Moore, and Smooooth Mike Jazz, now hum "Take The A Train" to yourself. It was like being caressed all the way to work: "Gooood morning llllaydeez and gen'lmen. You are on, The Rrred Liiine, bound, for, Mmmetro Cennner and, Cooooolsville..." Now and then he'd riff depending on the time of day, "Llllaydeez and gen'lmen. Thisss, is Chinatownnnn. If you're goin' t' th' movies I'm afraid you're gonna be late. If you hurry, you might make - the eight peee em showwww...Yournextstop: Ffffunky Town"

It seems though that in Japan, Toyama at least, there are no such niceties. As each train approaches a deafening electronic "hwooooooooooo" will thrum through the station, and your body. When the train does arrive and sits on the platform for ten minutes the driver will squack at you from tiny speakers which have been strategically placed to pierce your soul from every angle. It will take him at least two minutes to convey the pertinent information about the train and where it’s going, so loudly that conversation is impossible. This piercing staccato will repeat every two minutes until you get to your destination. Robin plugs her ears with her fingers, I wince while looking out the window, and we both dream of Smoooth Mike Jazz.

"A maternally crazed gorilla would come in handy at this very moment."

2006-01-28T15:21:00.000Z

This morning the doorbell interrupted my toilet scrubbing. Not a disaster at all at that point, but when I opened the door my heart sank – she was middle-aged and Japanese and she was carrying the Good News Bible. Jehovah’s Witnesses are not something you’d think to expect in Japan, the land of Shinto and general non-Christianity. But there she was, smiling in all her dental-inglory, willing me to accept the truth and the light. As with most conversations I have with Japanese people I started off on the defensive, as my language skills are shameful.

“Do you know Jehovah?”
Well, not personally.
“Have read the Good News Bible?”
Ah, I’ve certainly read of it.
“Would like to read pamphletto?”
Ah, no sorry, I’m not actually a Christian.

To which she looked rather crestfallen and a little bemused. “Thanks for the offer though, really” I said. And off she went with many sumimasens and gomenasais (excuse me’s and sorries). I wanted to be mean to her. I wanted to be sarcastic and rude, but of course you can't can you? They’re just trying to be nice; they really do want to save you. Besides, she’s traipsing around on a Saturday morning in Toyama (i.e. in the rain), she could do without abuse.
“Get the hell out of my tiny porch way!” I wanted to shout “How dare you patronise me with your arrogance! Do I come to your church and politely ask you to renounce Jesus and all his works? Do I come and bother you at home just to remind you how wrong I think you are?”

Don’t get me wrong here; yes I am an atheist and yes if I’m wrong I’m going to really regret it come the big day. But really, if God has a design, and we were all meant to believe and follow his rules – don’t you think he’d have made sure of that? Doesn’t Free Will get in the way? I don’t believe in conversion, you either have faith or you don’t; it’s not something that can be introduced to you on a doorstep. Also, if He’s all He’s hyped up to be, he’ll give me the benefit of the doubt. A few years ago I might have continued this into a general rant against religion, or more specifically the church, but I’ve come to the realization that it really doesn’t matter what I think in this regard. I’m of the Tyler Durden School, from the eminently quotable ‘Fight Club’:

Tyler: “How’s that working out for you?
“What?”
Tyler: “Being clever”
“Great”
Tyler: “Keep it up then”

Until of course you try to bring it into the courts. Or government. Or school. Then we might have a problem. But I’m not going to get into that.

2006-01-28T15:09:00.000Z

When you keep a blog, an online diary if you will, you sometimes forget that other people, even people you don’t know, can and do read it. I recently discovered that people as far afield as Quebec, Canada, and Victoria, Australia, have read my blog. I also noticed that more people in the US, than in the UK, and as many people in France as the UK have read it. Which gives me pause – why are more French people reading my blog than my friends and family from home? Ah well, it’s actually quite a thrill to think that Australians are taking time out from their hectic schedule of surfing, drinking, and staging racist protests on beaches to learn of my antics. Which is nice, because sometimes I feel I’m writing to the ether, that really, it is my diary. Then I remember that people I know have mentioned stuff I wrote. People do read it, and this really came home to me with a thunk this past week in an email from an old friend whom I have not seen since the bad old days when I worked for ‘the man’:

“Well Geoffrey, you may be surprised to receive two emails from me in such quick succession but it would be remiss of me not to rebuke you for your clear betrayal of a friendship forged as it were from the despair of having a crap job and no-one better to talk to. I am, or course referring to your blog, for in your recent reply to my heartfelt congratulations you provided me with the URL to said blog. As I have recently started one myself (still very much a work in progress) I thought I would take a look at the work of a fellow (more experienced) blogger. Yours is indeed a blog of the highest quality and I congratulate you - I will now be a regular visitor. However, as I do when I visit all blogs, I decided to refer to your debut entry, to see how it all began as it were, and what should I find? Well I have taken the liberty of copying and pasting the offending passage below:

"I used to get regular updates like this (although these probably won't be regular - I can be tardy, as most of you will know) from a friend who is doing a degree in Paris, they would be so long and interminably dull that I'd rarely get through a whole one without wandering off in search of, well, anything else"

I am hurt, dear boy, and currently straining to hold back the tears. I can think of only one suitable punishment and that is that on no account shall you ever be removed from my mailing list, so be prepared to receive updates on my amazingly fascinating existence until the end of time!
On a lighter note, I notice that you are teaching English in Japan. (Previous updates form your good self have suggested this may be the case but I appear only to be on your mailing list from time to time and was therefore not entirely sure) As this is something I am considering doing as of the end of my degree I was wondering if you would recommend it? I'd imagine your blog probably will tell me all I need to know but I can't be bothered to sift through all of it."

Stinging. Witty. Pithy. Certainly pissy.

I am tempted to start a feud – a literary punch-up in the style of Martin Amis and Julian Barnes, or Tom Wolfe and, well, everybody else – but of course my Parisian friend is right. And I heartily apologise. Also, I'm no Martin Amis. 'Shame.

Vive la mort, vive la guerre!

2006-01-27T05:54:00.000Z

Today was the winter sports day for the 1st and 2nd grades at my school. Japan is very much at one with the ‘gender role’ and so on this day the sports were Judo and Kendo for the boys and dancing for the girls. The girls were up first; the warm up act for the bamboo-wielding, people-hurling boys. They put on a nice whimsical show, some cutesy jazz-hands and cartoonish dancing to Disney songs. Though i did enjoy class 22H's pretty funny ‘Chicago’ number.

And onto the boys who, after all, were the top billing.

These boys – so quiet, so unwilling to display any enthusiasm in class for fear of ridicule - quite willingly threw themselves into the whirling slashes of each others bamboo swords. My perception of them from class totally changed: no longer will I consider them the entertaining distractions to teaching I once did, for beneath those aloof exteriors lies the samurai lust for violence that Japan seems to keep so well hidden. The boys, whom I thought to be sensitive clowns, turn out to be capable of the most blood-curdling screams of violent intent. As they skipped around the gym floor, part scorpion, part rearing stallion, and thunderously stomped their feet to deliver crack after shattering crack upon their opponents heads, arms and shoulders, I felt intimidated and ashamed. Wrapped up warm in jumpers and coats, travel mug of coffee and digital camera in hand, I stood – a mere teacher of English to these ferocious Asian gladiators.

The stickiest situation since Sticky the Stick Insect got stuck on a sticky bun

2006-01-20T02:18:00.000Z

Every Thursday morning I have a battle of wits on the bus. Yes, Thursday mornings are when I go to my special school. And yes, I have a battle of wits with a mentally disabled person. This is not particularly fair you may say, but it is harder than you think. The fare for the bus ride must be paid at the end of the journey, rather than the beginning, and there is always a queue of excitable peopele scrambling for change. Most of the people on the bus are attending appointments or classes at the special hospital so it all takes some time, and I like to sit and wait, rather than rush to the front and spill all my money on the floor and then be totally unable to actually count when I do get to the machine. Which has happened. There is one girl however who also likes to sit and wait and get off last – and every week this severely handicapped girl and I have a 'wait-off'. Normally I am the one to crack first – after all, have you ever tried to stare down and impose your will on a vulnerable person? It’s impossible (unless of course you are Ming the Merciless), and every time I have to stop myself from doing it “Geoffrey Davies!” I say to myself (always the full name when in trouble – a habit picked up from mothers) “what do you think you’re doing? Let the poor girl go last if she wants to, for shame Geoffrey, for shame...”
(Reading this makes me think that maybe I actually belong on the ‘special bus'.)
Recently however this girl has not been joining in, she’s been leaving her game at home and scrambling to get off with the rest of them – in short, I win. Ha!

This special school, - it garners a lot of blog material you think? A blogging friend of mine (who for now shall remain nameless as others have resentfully commented how often he, or - er - she, has been mentioned in this blog) and I had a discussion about how once you start writing a blog suddenly everything else becomes material for it. This came from an argument we had a few minutes before. We were talking about the previous night when we had exactly the same thought at exactly the same time: what excellent blogging material! Then we argued about who had dibs on it. The argument was not won by either of us, so, like Mussolini in the Aventine secession, I am seizing victory:

Last Saturday night Brad and I went out for a curry before meeting up with some other JETs at the Pot Still - the local pub-themed pub (has a pool table, darts, and sells Guinness, Bass and Heineken, all at extortionate prices). As often happens so soon after pay day Santoshi was full of other JETs and, well, to cut a long story short, Brad and I and the English crew – Jake, Emily, and Emily – ended up out on the town.

We also picked up a Singaporean and Dutchman at the Pot Still, both of who work in oil and were in Toyama on business and had spent the last few days in their hotel bars wishing they’d met up with us sooner. The Singaporean, Vejay, was such a big fan of Liverpool FC that he’d had the badge and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” tattooed on his entire back. He was awfully flush with his money, buying bottles of vodka and flashing his Rolex everywhere. But he was a fun sort of guy that you want to have around when trying to have fun. He was a total letch though. After showing us photos of his beautiful wife and kids back in Singapore he then started to describe his sexual adventures whilst travelling the world on business. The Dutch guy, Raimi from Rotterdam, was quiet, but in an engaging European kind of way.

At 1am we were trawling around Toyama looking for a decent nightspot, and eventually decided on the red light district. Among the various clubs, and signs listing ‘massages’ by the hour, we came across a bar we know called ‘Penny Blacks’, or as the JET community calls it, The Russian Bar. Its main clientele, obviously, is Russian, so it’s a little shady. However, any bar that only serves beers in multiples of three can’t be that bad, can it? Well apparently it can. After a few beers Emily wanted to dance so we went to the floor (about three inches away, it was that kind of place). Three grunty-looking Russian guys were on the dance floor, not dancing – just standing there, among the crazy Japanese girls. “You, Russian!” shouted one at me as I tried to dance, very badly. “Uh, no, British!” I called back, and resumed my 'dancing'. “No, Russian! You Russian, you dance with us!” and he pulled me over to them by my hand. Okaaaay, thought I as he kept hold of my hand. I looked for escape routes while Emily looked on, slightly perturbed. "Oh, Emily, look – over there!" I made exagerated motions of waving at somebody at the bar, said lovely talking to you to the Russians, and made our escape. Several minutes later we judged it safe to go back to our table. On the way one the Russians, rather sulkily, put a stool in my way. I walked round it and back to the table. Whilst standing next to the table another of the Russians danced into the back of me and then, as I turned to apologise, offered me out. Then the Singaporean dude said he used to box in the navy and offered to hit him for me. And then it was time to leave.

The next morning I felt like a Frenchman had moved into my head and was trashing the place with his drunken arty friends.

Happy as a Frenchman who's invented a pair of self-removing trousers.

2006-01-20T01:55:00.000Z

The other day Max, Brad and I were at the Toyama Golden Bowl discussing that most important issue of our time: why we never got to bowl the much-lauded "Golden Bowl", that ball reserved for the great and good, and ceremonially handed out every so often to those of note to try and score one strike in front of their peers. We’ve seen it handed out a few times, each time to be totally fluffed by those bowling it. Give it to us we cry! Are we not most faithful and high-rolling customers? We also noticed that day that everyone apart from us had a special fruit machine effect happen on their screens, a kind of fruit lottery. We watched it happen all around the alley, yet totally miss us.

We decided it is a race thing – they wont give us the “Golden Bowl” because we’re not Japanese, perhaps we’ll try to attack them with it? (Maybe they think we’re Russian?) This led, as it invariably does, onto our positions as foreigners in Japan and our treatment by Japanese “Maybe this is what it’s like to be black” suggested Max. Then I scored a strike, and the fruit machine effect happened to us.

We are constantly, it seems, thinking in racial terms. We instantly assumed it was because we were foreign that we didn’t get the special fruit machine treatment. Obviously it was based on your scoring ability. We still think they’re not going to give us the golden bowl treatment though.

Stange Things are afoot at the Circle K

2006-01-20T01:51:00.000Z

Everyday a funny little man in a pale blue turquoise tracksuit comes into the staffroom and hands out a small pot of yogurt to select teachers from a transparent plastic box strapped to his chest. He has come in everyday for months, leaving his little gifts. After months of wonder (and sneaking suspicion as to why I am always left out) I asked my head of department what was going on. Apparently, the teachers have ordered these little yogurts, as little snacks if you will. I can understand this as I bring a yogurt to work in my lunch most days. They can be very handy little fillers. But, I asked my Japanese colleague, why the man? Why the silly plastic contraption? Why order-in an easy, and readily available, dairy snack everyday? I was slightly perturbed by the idea that there is a company devoted exclusively to delivering individual yogurts to people all over Japan. Who thought of that niche market?

- So, Mr Bank-manager, my idea is to deliver one little yogurt to all teachers in the land. Imagine! Tiny yogurt joy! All I need is a start up loan...
- [Bzzzz] Joyce, call security

The Fundamental Wrongitude

2006-01-14T07:22:00.000Z

It occurred to me this week, while I was explaining why you cannot say "another example" before "for example...", that most of them just do not understand. It was a revelation - I'd been fooling myself for the last five months that I was actually teaching them something. My main clue was when I asked the teacher to explain in Japanese what I had just said, to make sure they got it. She said no, it was ok, they understood. Which was a Big Fat Lie. Even the teachers don't care.

In the homework I set them every week they make the same mistakes over and over again, regardless of how many times I teach them the correct way. For one assignment I had them write an argument. While introducing the homework I explained to them all for ten minutes why you should not, at least at their level, begin sentences with And, But or Because. I even wrote the guidelines on the homework, in very simple easy English. In fact, it was the basis of the homework. I even offered them them extra marks if they did it correctly (and most of them really need those extra marks). Of the 210 students I teach maybe four got the extra marks.

They'll spell a word wrong, even though that word is in the essay question, 0.5 centimetres above where they are writing. Then they'll spell it wrong again, but in a different way - IN THE SAME LINE!

At my special school this week the dude in charge of the elementary kids devised a shop game involving cards with different items written on each that the kids had to buy and sell (3oo dollars for an apple, I ask you!). Most of the products were, of course, wrong - the 'Meet Shop' sold hamberg, and the 'Drugstor' sold eye lotion. The dialogue he had prepared for them, however, was even worse

A: Are there [bandage]?
B: Yes there are
A: How much money?
B: X dollar

This was the format, regardless of the singular or plural nature of the product being bought. "Are there hamberg?" No, there are most surely not. After ten minutes of me correcting his spelling he was so disheartened that I spent the next 20 minutes teaching his total wrongness to poor retarded children.

Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.

2006-01-13T09:34:00.000Z

There is little in this life more wonderful than a 100yen tie. In Japan there are hyakuen (100yen) shops everywhere. They are the equivalent of your local pound stretcher, or dollar store. They sell literally everything. Need coffee filters? 100yen. Need an umbrella? Stationary? Underwear? Bike accessories? Fuses? Instantnoodlesgardenwareslipperskitchencleanertoolstoystapes-
thingsemblazonedwithBritishorAmericanflags? Everything. It doesn’t seem to have the stigma attached to pound stretcher or dollar stores either – it’s mostly quality stuff too (apart from the shelf brackets – dont get them they’re rubbish). The crockery is Sainsbury’s or Kohl’s quality but at low low prices. Almost everything is 100yen (well actually, 105yen), so much so that the few items that are more are pointed out to you at the till: “This 30 piece tool set is 200yen – is that ok? And this twelve shelf mahogany corner unit, you do know it’s 300 yen, yes?” The great irony of course is that everything has ‘Made in China’ stamped all over it.

In class today we had a quiz – a map with arrows etc pointing at various Asian countries and the kids had to shout out in English what each was. We got to China and the teacher said “well, I don’t need to tell you what this one is” and quickly moved on. Also, they frowned slightly when I answered their “what did you eat in America” question with “Chinese food, I’ve really missed it.” And it gots me t’ thinkin’. They really don’t like China here. Understandable of course, but they do go on about their unique Japanese culture, most of which came from China (tea, sushi, miso soup) and their unique seasons (apparently Japan is the only country that has four seasons).

Before Christmas I was asked by the librarian to write something for the library 'newsletter' (a 50 page glossy magazine) that they’re giving out at graduation. She showed me my predecessors effort and told me to follow that. So for your edification:

(Bear in mind that it’s written for a parent/student audience. Also, you may have read some of this before in a different form...coughcough)

An Occidental Oriental
Geoff Davies

Introduction
I have been in Japan for nearly six months now. So far the most notable thing about me is how tall I am. Almost all of the students at Kureha High School have asked me how tall I am, and all of them have been amazed at my answer of 190cm. Where I come from many of my friends are the same height. In fact, many people are over 185cm. So, where do I come from, The Land of the Giants? No, I am from Wales, a small country that is part of the United Kingdom. The UK is the home of soccer, rugby, cricket, and parliamentary democracy.

Adaptation
It has been a strange experience, getting used to life in Japan. When I first arrived I was highly intimidated by how much my predecessor here, a Canadian girl called Mariette, seemed to know. I thought I would never know as much or be able to find my way around as well as her. Over time however I started to figure things out, I learned what I needed to know and how to do things like pay bills, work the ATM, go shopping, and a few essential Japanese phrases. Eventually things didn’t seem quite as daunting as they did when I first got here.

Bowling in Toyama

However much you might get used to life in Japan there are things that will always stand out for a foreigner: vending machines everywhere; individually wrapped everything (fruit, candy, cookies); people saying ‘sumimasen’ or ‘gomenasai’ all the time; queuing in strict lines for train doors; strange foods often uncooked; students wearing blankets in class but wearing just a thin jacket outside in the snow; loudspeakers blaring music in the street; people yelling into megaphones in shops, malls and the bowling alley.

As I was stumbling through the snow out of the train station the other day I found that I had lost my train ticket. I did not notice it before because I was so wrapped up in coats, gloves, and scarves to battle the cold. I stopped and looked around me, almost instantly a ninensei student from my school skipped up to me with my ticket in her hand. This is the thing with being a foreigner in a small city like Toyama – almost everybody knows who you are and what you’re doing. From the teacher who sees you holding your girlfriend’s hand in the street, to the student who sees you shopping for groceries, to the neighbours who see you in town with your friends on a Saturday night. I do it too – I notice foreigners all the time in Toyama, I can’t help it because they stand out so much. Some foreigners find it annoying that everybody knows them, however other foreigners find it comforting.

A facet of Japanese life that is a constant amazement to me is the ability and energy of the school children. When I get to my school in the morning, at around 8.15am, there are always many students already there, practising their musical instruments or studying. When I leave in the afternoon the students, who have had seven lessons already, are getting ready for their after-school club activities, usually sports, music, or academic clubs. When they get home from school around 6 or 7pm they might then go to a cram school or study at home until as late as 11pm. This workload would never be tolerated in the UK, but the pressure in Japan to get into good schools and universities means that many students have to work extremely hard.
I have travelled a little in Japan so far, I would like to travel more but it can be difficult finding the time. So far I have visited Tokyo, Kyoto, camping and the onsen in Toga, the gassho Houses in Gokayama, Kanzawa, Shimao beach, and Shiminato. I have also climbed Tateyama and Mount Fuji. Of all the places I have been my favourite by far was climbing Fuji in the dark. It took most of a day by bus to get there and in order to see the sun rise at the top of the mountain we had to start climbing at night. We finally reached the summit at 3am - I have never been so cold, hungry, and tired, or so happy to pay 500 yen for a small can of hot green tea.

While I’m in Japan I plan to travel more – to see Osaka, Hiroshima, Okinawa and the Sapporo Snow Festival. While I am in Asia I also hope to visit some of the other countries around Japan such as Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea and Russia.

Visiting Kanazawa
Anecdote
Unfortunately my anecdote is a prime example of how easy it is to misunderstand and be misunderstood in a foreign country. It also demonstrates the importance of being able to read Japanese train signs.

It was very late on a Saturday night and I was at the train station heading home from visiting some friends. I was a little out of sorts and very tired because I had been up late the night before as well and it was very cold. I trudged up the stairs and down the stairs to the platform and got on the train and buried my face into my coat collar. After about five minutes I realised the train was totally empty, but I didn’t think it was strange because it was very late and the train station wasn’t very busy. All the train doors closed. Then all the lights went out.

I became very concerned, in the dark and all alone. When the engine started, I realised I’d got on the wrong train, that this train was finished for the night and that I was about to spend the night in the railway yard! I got up and tried the doors, but they were all locked. Then I ran from one end of the train to the other. Suddenly a man in uniform saw me and wildly motioned me to get off the train. I didn’t know what to do, because I didn’t know how to get off the train while all the doors were locked. After a minute the man walked down to me, talking rapidly in Japanese, and took me by the arm. Suddenly I remembered that the Japanese signal for ‘come here’ is the same as the western signal for ‘go away’ and I was very embarrassed. He pushed me out of a tiny door in the driver’s cabin and I was finally off the train.

Camping in Toga 　

2006-01-08T12:56:00.000Z

Its been a while as they say, the reason for this of course being Christmas – ah Christmas. It really becomes apparent to you that you might really have left home when you spend more than one Christmas in succession away. Despite the disapprobation of my family I chose to spend the hols in the US this year. It seems it is twice as expensive to travel to the UK than it is the US from Japan; it makes sense geographically when you think about it. It is, however, about two days worth of travel. Jet lag meant that for most of the hols we were knackered by 6pm, in bed by 9pm and up and about at 3am. We spent Christmas and New Years Eve trying desperately to stay awake. By the time we had readjusted it was time to come back. I am nodding off as I write this (though that might be because this is a tad dull no?).

So, Christmas with the Burfields was a laugh-riot; Larry and Sharon are some of the nicest and welcomest people I know (though of course I know they’re reading this, so I’m bound to say that. Incidentally I learned over the break that quite a few unexpected people read this blog. I was much surprised on shaking one of Robin’s relatives’ hands to hear “Great to see you Geoff, say, I laughed my ass off over that clap your hand song!” Several of Sharon’s co-workers apparently also find a strange comfort in my ramblings. I’m trying awfully not to get stage fright). A Burfield Christmas is much the same as at my house – lots of sitting down, snacking, drinking, generally relaxing, punctuated by family meals (Sharon’s chilli – mmm chillllliiiiiii) and board games. It’s also reassuringly western. I say this in contrast to Japan of course. It was great being back in a land where I didn’t spend every single morning in pain after smacking my head on my own doorway; where I didn’t have to bend way over to do anything that involved sinks; where I could wander to the shops and ask about products; where I could work out by reading whether this sauce or soup is infested with some fish-related affront; where I could buy clothes and shoes that fit me; or, if I were so inclined, make idle chit-chat with the natives.

We spent the ten days in Columbus trying to get in as many of the things we couldn’t do in Japan – we saw ten movies at the cinema, we went out for pizza, giros, Red Lobster, decent coffee, we slept two feet off the floor. We got haircuts (you can of course get your hair cut in Japan but you really wouldn’t want to). Robin went to the dentist (you do not want to do that in Japan); I drank more decent beer than is good for me. We spent a few days in Washington DC, where we met up with some friends, saw museums, and I got to go back to the funnest place in toyland, the Hawk n Dove pub.

We also spent a day or so in Tokyo seeing my friend James and his lovely fiancée Hiromi. James, the kind of man who can use the word ‘Byzantine’ properly and quite easily in conversation, was in fine form

06-01-08_03-35.jpg
Originally uploaded by pedroalhambra.

It was just like old days, but without the drunken violence.

The first day or so back in Toyama was taken up by general unpacking and grocery shopping, and in a general sense of foreboding at the coming first day back in work. Being back in Japan has pretty much cemented our opinions against staying a second year. It took not long for work to get back to the constant effort it is, except for the entertaining opening ceremony: the Principal gave a stirring speech on the perils of influenza, with colourful ‘virus’ props. It would have been more effective I think had the speech not taken place in the gym, where the students stood in only their school blazers in temperatures below zero. I muffled a cry of disbelief as a student interrupted the venerable principal halfway through his speech by collapsing from a fever and having to be dragged away by some teachers. Somehow the word ‘ironic’ just doesn’t do it. Here’s an idea to ‘the man’: illness should not something to be endured in school; neither should temperatures of -3 degrees C.

Robin, the other day, showed me once more the ways she is generally cleverer than me. We were discussing church weddings. “Church to me” said my esteemed partner “is just architecture, I’d really rather just admire the buttresses…”

Though we differ in our beliefs in the divine (some versus none) we’re both generally uncomfortable with the establishment of religion – churches. I, particularly, am uncomfortable with the trappings of religious ceremonies when you’re not religious – christenings, weddings etc. People want the white wedding in the lovely country church, but really, when was the last time they went to church, other than for the banns and the rehearsal? The ‘faith’ community can be of great benefit to society, despite their sometimes-divisive beliefs, but it is a sad and hypocritical reflection of society for their great edifices to be reduced to merely ‘pretty places’ to get hitched in.

Test

2005-12-25T16:11:00.000Z

this is a test post. will explain later.

So to explain. I posted this message on Christmas Day to test whether my new present worked - an iBook G4. For those of you not in the know it is a lovely Mac laptop. And it's wonderful: a present to me, from me, with much love and appreciation.

All Pine

2005-12-19T00:11:00.000Z

Toyama is surrounded by, what what they call here, the Japanese Alps. Most of the time you can't see them because it's raining, or more recently, snowing. Some days however the air is so clear that I am taken aback (aback I tell you) by the stupendousness of the sight. This photo (kindly stolen from my friend Bunny dayoldwasabi.blogspot.com) is from her apartment. I've tried to get good shots from mine but they never come out well. My view is FAR better than this one. And this is one rocks.

For best results click on the photo. Serve with peas.

Brrrrrrr

2005-12-18T13:13:00.000Z

05-12-18_12-21.jpg
Originally uploaded by pedroalhambra.

It's snow fun in Japan

2005-12-18T13:12:00.000Z

Being grown up responsible types here in Toyama a bunch of JETs and some japanese friends decided that it would be a spectacular idea to go play in the snow on saturday. After a thorough soaking from snowball fights Robin and I built this chap, we call him Calvin.

The amorphous consciousness of inanimate matter

2005-12-14T01:09:00.000Z

Too much yuki. Which means snow. Which is what we have. The first of this plentitude was signalled the night before when "god", or somebody very much like him, dropped an infinite number of "god"-sized saucepans and l on his our apartment building. That one crack of thunder lasted for about five minutes. Then it started snowing and hasn't stopped since. It is now up to one and a half feet. I asked my JTE yesterday when it would ease off or stop and she just looked at me, baffled. I rephrased the question: will it stop? No. Before it started snowing there were fifteen consecutive days of rain. Now it is so cold it has turned into snow. And here's me with no winter boots. Oh well.

One of the many many facets of working in Japan is what Robin has termed "The Eyes of God." As we were stumbling through the snow out of the train station this morning I noticed that my ticket had disappeared from my double-gloved hand. I stopped and looked around me, in that stiff way you do when you are wearing eight inches of solid clothing, and almost instantly one of my school students skipped up to me with it in her hand (in a light school blazer and skirt with no tights - the girls here are fearsome impervious to the cold. They are protected by 'fashion' see...). I am almost constantly surrounded by these kids every morning and afternoon.
And this is the thing with being a foreigner in Japan - at least, in a small city like Toyama - everybody knows what you're doing. From the teacher who saw you holding hands with your girlfiend in the street, to the student who sees you shopping for groceries in the evening, to the other students who see you staggering about town on the weekend with your drunken friends.
Whilst doing interview tests yesterday with the first grade one student said he lived in Kamiichi, a town just outside of Toyama. Do you know the ALT there I asked - "oh yes, Maxu! He is curl!" because they all know him, or about him, in that tiny town.

I see the same foreigners all the time in Toyama, I can't help it - and if I see them then the Japanese must see them. If I were to live here any longer than a year I think I would have to radically readjust my mindset and my perceptions of personal space or time.

Taxnorage...?

2005-12-05T23:34:00.000Z

The following is probably why I wont be staying that extra year:

Scene: Cloakroom, removing coats etc. Mostly wet.

JTE: Ah, good morning
Geoff: Good morning! (overly-enthusiastic)
J: Do you have a heater in your apartment?
G: ......yes, yes we have two
J: Ah, an air conditioner?
G: Oh yes, but it is very expensive to run, and not good for the environment
J: The air conditioner can heat as well
G: Yes, but it is expensive. Our space heaters are good though. Also last night I went around the apartment 'battening down the hatches'
J: Batting down hatches? This is an expression?
G: Yes, it means to get ready for the storm. But I was getting ready for winter - covering up vents, draughts, hanging extra curtains...
J: Oh, are the electrics out?
G: Sorry?
J: You have no batteries?
G: Are the what what?
J: The electricity, is it out?
G: Oh, ah, no. We have elctricity.
J: Oh good, I am relief
G: Ha ha. Um, yes. Thanks.

"I like the cover - Don't Panic. It's the first useful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day...."

2005-12-03T00:02:00.000Z

Today is Saturday. I only know this because the calendar tells me it is. Everything else is screaming otherwise. You see, I'm at school. On Thursday we had a half day for the kids to revise for their exams. On the free afternoon all the teachers went for an enkai, that is, went out and got plastered. Not me though, I still had to go to my special school, but, I did have most of the afternoon off at home - which is just as nice. Weekends don't mean anything here (just ask the kids who never seem to be out of their uniform). Oh, didn't we mention that when you signed up? You had a weekday off because of some curriculum thing? Oh, then you must make it up on the weekend. Waht? Overtime? Noooo.

Tell you what - why don't you keep your little day off and let me have my weekend, hmm?

Ah well. I prepared myself for this hell in the only way I know how - last night I went bowling. And drinking. Of course now I feel like a big bucket of warm vom, but at least I'm incapable of doing any work - that'll show them.

I got a little confused on the train this morning. I was trying not to look up, as in above knee level - I just couldn't handle that kind of stimulus so early. This combined with the reeling fact that it was Saturday at 8.30am and I was going to work. This and the pounding headache. And the shaky hands. Oh, and the cold. Anyway - I got on the wrong train. Not in the "oh dear I've ended up in Newport" kind of wrong train but the wrong train; the train that's going to the railroad yard. This is what happened: I humphed down the stairs to the platform and humphed on the train and humphed down in my seat and buried my face into my collar. Being a weekend the train was empty. Ah well, I thought, at least I can sit by myself for five minutes until the train leaves.

Then all the doors closed.

Then they turned the lights off.

Hang on, I thought. I tried the door to find it totally and firmly closed. I looked up and down the train: nobody. Ah. I half-jogged, in that I-don't-want-to-look-like-I'm-panicking kind of way, up and down the bloody thing trying every door hoping to god that I don't end up spending the day in the yard in a locked train. Finally I saw a man in uniform at the end of the train. He started to wave me away, saying something in Japanese. I thought he meant to go to the other end of the train where there must be an open door. But no, too late I remembered that in Japan what we do to shoo somebody away they do to say come here. After ten minutes of me vacilating between carriages he finally walked down to me, ushered me to his end of the train and pushed me out of the tiny tiny door that the drivers use. Ah bugger, I thought, now I actually have to go to work.

Marking exams. Listen to the dialogue and fill in the blanks.

"Sometimes I'm the only westerner for miles around. I really am a _________ here"

One student's answer: taxnorage

Fritter, anyone?

2005-11-30T10:56:00.000Z

As a JET there are certain obligations that our schools must release us for, such as meetings, seminars, and stonings. This is generally a very sweet deal as it means we get a paid day or two away from the brats to socialise and generally pretend to be 'busy'. A few months ago we had our first meeting about lessons and strategies; it was all rather exciting as none of us had really started teaching classes yet and we were itching to go. We also all had quite a bit of money, so an after-party was guaranteed.

A month or so later we had another day long affair which our JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) came along to. This was even more fun because all we really had to do was share our exciting and fresh experiences, look good in front of our JTEs, and have a blinding laugh at the guest speaker - the editor of the Japan Times - for whom nothing went right: his laptop broke, losing both his notes and his slides; then the projector that was projecting his broken laptop broke; and then the magnetic board he had resorted to fell off the stage. Halfway through his 'show' he stopped and looked at us and with a look of dejection said "you know, this isn't how I saw this going..."

We had our Mid Year Seminar this week - two glorious days of skive. Or so we thought. It was not the workshops that ruined it for us, they were moslty ace, but the end-of-day guest speakers. Yuzo Kimura is some sort of professor who taught high school English for a million years or so before becoming an expert in linguistics. His enthralling lecture was called "Comparative Practices of English Teaching in Neighbouring Asian Countries", or something to that mind-numbing effect. After an hour and a half of slides, videos, and endless statistics (we did not understand the relevance, or indeed point of any of the statistics. However each one evoked a gasp of amazement from the japanese third of the audience, making us feel all the more numb) a JET asked the question everybody wanted to hear: "What can I, as an ALT, take away from this lecture - what are the practical applications I can make?" The lecture had, after all, highlighted the stark and depressing disparities between successful high-tech teaching methods in China and the awful, unproductive, chalk and blackboard methods of obviously backward Japan. The reply: "Um, I can't answer that question."

Oh. Oh, well that's ok then.

Nothing. No applications. One might say, no relevance at all to your position as an ALT. Other than, of course, apply to teach in China next time. Thanks for coming to my lecture though, really.

The second day's guest speaker was a lady who, at the age of 45, tired of being an interpreter and instead went to uni for a few years and emerged as a professor and radio personailty. As you do. Needless to say her speech was far more interesting and entertaining, mainly by dint of her being able to speak pretty passable American English. But still - an hour and a half long. Why? Why must they do this?

It was Special School Thursday today, the delights of which you know all too well by now. Today however I have been transformed, from Geoff-sensei to Geoff-tarou (pronounced ta-roh). This is my new name, decreed by the elementary students. According to the teacher tarou means 'ordinary Japanese boy'. I'm assuming this is a compliment as I doubt the kids have the vindictiveness to actually patronise me, no matter how many times I am forced to put them through "If You're Happy and You've Got Them Clap Your Hands."

Brad...

2005-11-24T06:10:00.000Z

you may have got stung, but at least you're a snappy dresser...

Flimflammery I tell you...

2005-11-24T05:06:00.000Z

Well, that was quite possibly the cruellest experience I have ever had to put a child through.
Teaching at my special school this morning: “Ah, Geoff-sensei. 'If You’re Happy and You Know It'. Teach yes? You. Yes.” And she put up the words to it on the board. OK. I only have to do this for 40 minutes, I can handle that. Right then. It all goes fine for the first few words and then BAM! “what your what?” they all queried? Your hands, clap your hands. Hmm. Why are you looking at me like that. Oh. Ohhhhhhhhhhh.

I’m sure they really wanted to. Daichi has no arms and only half a leg. Saeya couldn’t make her hands meet if given a few hours and a some rubber bands, let alone meet with enough force to clap. In fact most of them have trouble controlling their arms generally. Maybe three could’ve done it. The sensei however insisted we continued. So I finally get through it, mostly it's just all me. Onto the next verse. No. No no no. Those that could just about get by with the clapping in the first part certainly cannot join me in the next: stamp your feet. Really, if they could I’m sure they’d love to. I spent 40 excruciating minutes basically showing off to a bunch of disabled kids what I can do with all four of my working limbs.
“Hey, Daichi! Check this out – Yeah! Stamping! Oh yeah! Yo, Takahiro, look at me woooo-wooo woooooooo! can ya do this? Can ya can ya?”

Recently I’ve been pondering the great question. No, not that great question – I sussed that one ages ago. This question is the one that plagues all JETs at around this point every year – should I re-contract?

JETs start to feel out who’s staying, who’s going. Teachers begin dropping subtle hints (which in Japan is very hard to catch unless you’re really concentrating). Yesterday my supervisor sing-songed “So, Geoff-san, neh. Have you madeupyourmiiiiiind? Neh, neh. Maybe one year is tooooooo short neh.” Which is the Japanese way of saying “please stay.” I was rather surprised at this as I was sure she cant wait to see the back of me. No, they want me to stay.

But do I?

Maybe I should write a pros and cons list:

Pro: Money
Con: Teaching Japanese kids
Pro: Great friends
Con: Teaching Japanese kids
Pro: Excitement, adventure, and really wild things
Con: Teaching Japanese kids

Actually, the teaching is not all that bad, it’s the things that go along with it: the terrible unresponsiveness of Japanese students; the highly boring essay marking; the ridiculous bureaucracy; the demand for TOTAL commitment to the school; the assumption that you know everything so there’s obviously no need to tell you; having to get up at 6am during the week; being totally unable to have a decent lie-in on the weekend because you get up at 6am during the week; teaching elementary kids and having to torture them with “If You’re Happy and You Know It”; the frustration of being unable, most of the time, to get an idea or a question across to an ‘English teacher’; the slight resentment from teachers that I earn more money than when they started.

Hmm, that’s quite a list isn’t it?

Then again there’s the actual thrill of everything coming together when you teach a successful lesson; the coolness of living, even succeeding, in an entirely alien culture; kids talking to you in English outside of the classroom; fun weekend trips; the great people I’ve met and will meet; the JET community; a guaranteed income every month.

Nope, that didn’t really help.

Before I came out here my mother told me never to come back. Well, no, of course she didn’t. She did, however, suggest I stay for longer than a year because of the great opportunity and the great pay. How many people can say in passing: “Japan? Oh yeah, I worked there for a few years when I was younger.......so this Aston Martin, does the price include a sunroof?” She has a point. I could actually get round to learning Japanese if I stayed an extra year; I could pay off all my debts and get round to starting some savings; I could totally breeze next year’s teaching because I’ve already done the prep.

Robin and I have discussed it and we still don’t know (though we are definitely starting from the “no” side). We’ll discuss it more by January and make a decision then (Robin: We are/are not staying.
Geoff: OK

Have I resolved my dilemma? No. Have you been entertained by my anguish? Maybe. At least someone’s getting something out of it.

2005-11-18T04:44:00.000Z

This is indeed my thrid or fourth post of the day (not much on right now). But I had to do this one.

Last week I gave the students an essay to do, the question was "What do you think you will be doing in ten years time?" If I didn't know better I'd say this one girl was messing with me, but I doubt her English skills are developed enough to be able to do this intentionally. Read on:

"When I give up a big dream, I can't be absorbed elsewhere, but I have begun to be interested in psychology recently for a while. There is still little it.
In the inside to go out with a person, I thought.
Why she work such a thought?
I consider perception and power of observation to be good one from old days. When I analyzed a person without permission I worked out a countermeasure.
I don't yet understand whether I want to take psychology-work.
I'll interested in a completely different thing if I lent it and may take the work."

Now, how do I mark/correct that? Eh? Eh? No, really, tell me how....

2005-11-18T01:45:00.000Z

VFSH0029.JPG
Originally uploaded by pedroalhambra.

Will the bowling pics ever stop? Not as long as there are great pics like this they wont! These shoes are so big that only I rent them, nobody else in Toyama would need them. I like to think the GB stands for Great Britain or Great Bowler. It doesn't though. Hmph.

2005-11-18T01:43:00.000Z

It becomes difficult to think up new witty names to bowl under everytime. One Saturday afternoon I decided to distinguish Brad (an American) from myself with the kooky differences between British/American insults. Unfortunately it seems the employee couldn't really read English all that well...

2005-11-18T01:40:00.000Z

I bowl quite alot here in Toyama. It helps that there's a bowling alley (Toyama Golden Bowl) five minutes from my apartment. However the jukebox selection is limited so I play the Scatman at least three times each visit.

This is The Scatman. I can't bowl without him.

2005-11-18T01:39:00.000Z

where there's...

I'm sure there's a pun, if only I could find it......Iraqnid?

2005-11-14T03:45:00.000Z

05-11-12_15-14.jpg
Originally uploaded by pedroalhambra.

I saw this little bleeder over the weekend - or rather, she saw me. They're all over the place. The Japanese Wood Spider (for it is she) is the commonest spider in Japan, with the strongest web. It also bites and is poisonous, this one was the size of my palm. They also have a habit of pitching their two metre wide webs across the bike sheds at my apartment. Woody here, though you cant see it, was actually spinning a web as I took this.

Oiishi mizu baby, oiishi mizu...

2005-11-10T01:34:00.000Z

An update for Sharon:

"From 1950s to 1960, Japan enjoyed technological revolution, modernization and rapid economic growth. At the same time pollutants discharged by large industries caused many disabling conditions among citizens and this became major social issue.

In 1955, arsenic milk poisoning in Morinaga milk, and in 1956 in Minamata disease due to mercury poisoning drew public attention. This was followed by “Itai-Itai” disease in Toyama prefecture caused by discharged water by mining companies and asthma due to air pollution from Yokkaichi oil refining industries and so forth which caused disabling conditions among many citizens."

From Disability Movement, Trends in Major Disability Specific Organizations. http://www.dinf.ne.jp/doc/english/resource/z00009/z0000903.htm

Bloody Kids...

2005-11-10T00:50:00.000Z

Every Thursday I teach elementary, junior high, and high school lessons at a special school. I know I've mentioned that, but, it is special, so it needs constant reaffirmation right? Also every Thursday I wake up in a bit of a grump because I don't want to go to special school (bit of a re-run of my childhood actually. Without the special school of course, despite what my sister tells everyone). I’m grumpy because, dammit, I didn't sign up to teach elementary school or junior high school kids. Also, unfeeling of me as it is to say - I definitely didn't sign up to teach handicapped children. I have no training and - despite what I told the JET interview board - very little patience.

So every Thursday I get on the early bus for the 40 minute ride to the hospital that the school is attached to and sit down to glower at people. If they're lucky I might have a book to glower at instead. Then I trudge into the building, fall in my seat and silently pray that no-one will bother me. And then I get to my first class and I really have no choice but to be the very antithesis of 'morning Geoffrey'......and damn these kids if I don't leave Koshiyogo in a good mood, chipper even. They're just so bloody happy and enthusiastic all the time. They speak better English than their teachers and they're quick too. Sometimes I think they're better than my senior high school students.

There are probably myriad reasons for their genkiness compared to 'normal' kids. They're surrounded by people who really want to be here to teach them (except of course for me, at least for the first 20 minutes of the morning), they are constantly praised, and are in very safe and colourful surroundings and are taught either one-on-one or two-on-one. Also, lessons are actually fun.
This is almost the opposite of high school where the teachers often end up being assigned the subject they teach (apparently this is why some English teachers can barely speak English - it wasn't their idea...) and they have to be reminded constantly by the local education board to praise and encourage the students: 40 kids spend seven hours a day in the same dreary classroom taught by a conveyor belt of teachers, some of whom cant always remember their names.

This morning when I arrived a very interesting thing happened to me. I was walking from the bus to the 'special' building when a rather short smelly chap said to me, almost in passing “you come here everyday?”
I had to ask him to repeat it because it wasn’t in the normal stuttering vowel-laden English of most Japanese ("hello-oo-wa how-oo-oo are you-oo-oo..." and so on).
“Ah, no, every week,”
“So you are a teacher then?”
"Well yes I am"...and I had a rather odd, yet pleasantly frank, conversation with a 60-odd year old Japanese man –
“I am handicapped you know. In that building there are many handicapped men like me. No, we don’t exercise, we work for Toyota Motor Company.”
Apparently Toyota are making use of the unemployable sector by having them make electronics. In a hospital. Of course I don’t know the full story but I’ll certainly ask him next week when I hopefully see him.

You see! Damn this place; it’s making me positively interested!

On an unrelated note I see Tony Blair's plans for a police state were defeated in the House. Let's hope it turns out all 'John Major' for him: slapped about by the opposition and stabbed in the back by his own party...

The Jumper

2005-11-08T01:19:00.000Z

On my train to and from school everyday there is a boy I call "The Jumper." Not because he has suicidal tendencies but because he jumps. On the spot. All the time.
His constancy is sometimes reassuring in this crazy town called Japan, other times of course he is absolutely maddening. However, the effect he has on me is dependent on my morning mood, which fluctuates wildly.

So, The Jumper (for it is he) is about 17 years old and very special needs. A common scene on the morning run is him doing laps around the train station concourse, or side skipping up and down the length of the platform. Sometimes he dashes wildly out of the station and halfway down the road, only to turn around and look slightly confused as to how he got all the way down there and dash back. More often though he is jumping on the spot, much like a footballer stuck in an endless loop of headers. It's fun when he does it on the actual train too. Rocking trains: fun. He looks like a sweet enough kid, not actually dangerous (apart from that latent threat of strength which a lot of special needs kids tend to have) and he's always cheerful. At least, he is always grinning wildly (trying my best to avoid the word 'maniacal' - oops, there it is).

He's one of many people with special needs in Toyama, who seem to have more than their fair helping. Something to do with a water pollution scandal back in the 60s. I teach at a special school on Thursdays and the bus I get there is always crammed with severely handicapped people. This is why the water in Toyama is much lauded as "Oiishi Mizu" ("Delicious Water") by the tourist board, to distract attention from the stigma of poisoning half their population. And here's me thinking when I first came here that everybody was being ironic (because really, it's nasty).

Not too much of this.....

2005-11-07T06:43:00.000Z

I was so excited - the best in the world versus the best of Europe! How I hyped it up to the myriad Americans that seem to surround me. How I waxed poetic on the exciting spectacle that surely lay in front of us. How I danced with joy when I found a bar that we could go to for it. I am of course talking about Wales vs New Zealand.

Well, we all know what happened so I'm not going to go there. Anyway, I got incredibly drunk before during and afterwards and fell off my bike on the way home. I had "borrowed" a bike from the bike shed in Sunshine, one of those tiny things that look like you can fold up and pop in your pocket, and tried to a come stop sideways after zooming across a road only to totally buckle, go over the handlebars and end up sprawled on my back. Hurt my knee rather as well. Brad and Lucy (thems what were enticed by my propagandizing) laughed thier arses off.

The weekend wasn't a total bust though. Had some lovely Italian wines at a newly discovered wine bar, almost got blown into the path of a tram by some freakish winds, and had some more wine in a restaurant atop one of the tallest buildings in Toyama. I was also introduced to the joys of the morning mimosa - basically a bottle of champagne and orange juice with breakfast. Cleared up the hangover wonderfully (and was a major factor in the next morning's as well).

2005-11-02T05:55:00.000Z

A young girl had what they call and "episode" in my class today. Or what I like to call an "eppy". When I was in high school we called them "Andrew Tarr."

When I asked her to come up to the board she started backing away and flapping her hands. I thought she was special needs or had personal space issues (which in this sardine-can of a country I can understand) because she kept freaking out when I came near. It turns out that she does indeed have issues, but one of them seems to be my "perfume."

Basically - I smell bad.

I, of course, smell like a fresh summer's day and Old Spice's best, but this apparantly is abhorrent to this small girl's dog-like nose..... (and maybe it is: having smelled some of the other teachers here maybe my smell is the exact opposite of what they're used to....pheewww). She's a bit of a nut apparantly. Last year she leapt at a trainee-teacher's throat. She's a bit of a loneras well; doesn't really have any friends and prefers to sit on her own reading. Hates the whole group thing (she really is buggered in Japan). Her grades are great though - I looked back to see what I've given her and she's one of the best in the class. My teacher's advice was "she is very strange. Keep away."

I asked him after the lesson if I do indeed smell and bless him if he didn't stick his nose in my armpit, inhale deeply, and say in a sweet comforting voice "Jeeeeeezus Chrrrrist!"

When us they were now.

2005-11-01T01:08:00.000Z

A lot of my "job" is marking homework. It normally starts out like this: the first paper I will mark properly, making corrections where necessary and giving little bits of useful advice. The second paper I'll do much the same, correcting the same mistakes and giving the same advice. By the fourth paper I'm just correcting. By the eighth or ninth I am scoring the page in big red slashes. I don't bother with the other 243 that I have to get through until the next day, when it starts all over again.

Often an entire sentence will be made up of prepositional verbs. Or entirely of nouns.

No matter how many times I try to correct them they never seem to be able to get it. This is because they've been taught that way since the were even smaller than they are now.

Picked Last In Gym

2005-10-26T23:55:00.000Z

My school had a sports day yesterday. My supervisor had told me that I was not expected to take part and so I turned up in trousers and a rugby shirt. Of course that morning I was almost instantly asked to play football and softball (baseball but with a larger ball), the softball being Teachers vs Student Champions. So, a quick trip back to Sunshine to get appropriately togged up (and a cup of coffee, and a ten minute sit down, and a bit of a read, and a sandwich) and back I came. Needless to say I was awful. During the football I was variously ran rings around by not only the opposing players but also by my own. I tried one seering run up the middle, dodging at least twenty players (again, many of them my own) to heroically slice the ball away from the goal.

Softball was not such an embarrassment thankfully. The whole thing reminded me rather of that scene in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life where the Masters play the Boys at a rugby match and take great glee in grinding, stamping, and generally beating up all the schoolboys. Of course there was no actual beating in the softball game but when the PE teacher slugged the first of many homeruns the scenes of jubilation were very Pythonesque. A la: