Big John's Blog

Today's Question of the Day

Who in the heck eats miso soup and rice for breakkfast?

The First Swear

Folks, today I broke my silence, in the form of swearing anyway. I was walking into class during fourth period today. Feelin' fine. This kid we will call him AH for the purposes of this communication (guess what AH stands for? I tell you this much it aint Japanese). Anyway, AH stands up, class has not started yet, and chucks a pencil eraser across the room and it hits the board right above my head. Now, I dont know if it was throw AT me but I know that at once I clicked, I was back in New Orleans in front of a class of screaming miscrients. The first thing out of my mouth, about a half a second after the eraser hit the board was my old tried and true statement, "Have you lost your damn mind?!?!" Needless to say, all the students stopped and Im pretty sure that the student knew, that he had messed up, bad! A couple of cood things came from this. First, I picked on AH all period, he had to stand up and give a speech and answer a plethora of questions for which he was highly unprepared. And second, students thinking that it was cool to play like that now understand that that aint exactly how its going to be round these parts. Thankfully the English teacher had not come to the room yet, so anyone who heard me curse has no idea what I said anyway. All they knew what that I was pissed. It also gave me my first REAL conversation with a student. I pulled him aside and gave them a little tounge lashing, letting him know that would never happen again. Wakaru? Do you understand? At last the lightbulb goes off and this dude knew what the deal was. Once again triumphant over thirteen year olds! Mark it down, a great day in the history of me.

A flower

Saw a nice flower, took a picture. Like to see it, here it is.

The 44th Annual 4th Block inter school blah blah blah

Today was the speech contest that I have been working on with my students. Check out some pictures. I had to catch the ohmi line (ohmi is japanese for old, slow and expensive train line) to Taga, a very small Town about 25 minutes from my house. Taga is famous for its National Shrine, which I did not have a chance to check out but I will go back. Pictures forthcoming, of course.

The contest itself went well. We took four students and two of them placed in the top three for their speeches which means they will compete in the Prefectural speech contest on October 14th, which also means I get to miss another day of school. All four of them were highly competitive. Only a few points seperated the other two students from placing. The were a little bit broken up but they had a hell of a good time. They were the most genki kids at the whole contest and did actually enjoy themselves regardless of the outcome.

Anyway, most places you go in Japan you cant wear your outside shoes in (I'm sure youve heard of this tradition) so they always have these cubby holes where you can put your shoes and they have slippers for all the visitors. Which is cool, you dont have to worry about bringing shoes with you wherever you go and they are not nasty like bowling shoes or anything. Note: Bowling shoes in Japan are also not bad, at least they dont smell very bad (mental picture - me, amidst a pile o' bowling shoes, smelling to my hearts content) and they appear to be clean, which is all I want. Hey wait, I dont even know if Im looking for that. But I digress, again, the shoes are all super small. No one wears bigger than a size eight in Japan, I guess, so I have to shuffle around in these things. No need for a mental picture one is posted below.

Can a man get a decent pair of free slippers, please?

Hey check me out. Wearing a new shirt, sent to me by the raddest freaking lady on the whole planet, my mom.

This is Kawamura sensei and the students. Mrs. Kawamura is a hip teacher. I dig her style, and I dig that the students dig her. Cool lady. Back in the day she used to be a DJ for a local radio station. That's awesome!

The Tanukis

Folks, these are Tanukis. Apparently they are some kind of rodent. But there are statues of them all over Japan. They are interesting for a few reasons:

1. The have HUGE testicles. Check it out they are hanging down by their feet. They look like penguins trying to keep their eggs warm for the winter.

2. Just because I wanted to give a shout out to Julie for letting me borrow and read the book Villa Incognito, where the flying tanukis play a major role. Thanks Jules!

A final shout out to the blog for letting me make a bulleted list, takes me back to the engineering days. Oh where have those wonderful college days gone? Im sure that Rob can attest to the great time had by all engineering students. How are those problem sets going, Rob?

No matter what you do . . .

No matter what you do or where you go, there always seems to be Big Boy. I dont know if it is a shout out ot me or what, but I lived about two blocks from a Big Boy in Detroit and now I live about two block from a Big Boy in Hikone. I will save the suspense, the menu is slightly different. They still have the soup and salad bar but somehow it's not the same. :)

Inappropriate Pencil Cases

This kid has no idea what this case says, its not even his, but he loves posing for pictures. It belongs to a kid names Nose (thats no-say). A truly fed up eigth grader. School is such a gride for him he can't even pose for pictures.

This kid is one of those smart kids who hates school because its soooo boring and no one understands him. I think I get the message.

I told you so . . .

This is a picture of, I know its hard to believe, but children cleaning the school. Insane, I know, but somehow it happens everyday.

The stuff you find carved into desks

I always new that Metallica was popular but I think that this seals the deal

I dont know if this is a basketball or a porn reference

Great Hike

My fellow JET, Colette and I took a hike up into the mountain through one of the shrines in Hikone. We encountered breathtaking views from the hills, an incredible numbers of mosquitoes, some of the biggest spiders you'd ever want to meet dangling a few feet above the trail, and even a snake. Sorry, didnt get a picture of it but I did have flashbacks to those nightmares where all the snakes are biting me, thank you very much.

All along this shrine were these statues of the Buddha that I thought were pretty neat in the sunset.

The building, which I thought was gold when we first happened upon it but I think it is made of copper. Looks awesome in the sunlight.

Japanese Music

I got a kick out of a couple of these bands. They have Virgin Megastores all over this world apparently. Too bad!

This is one of the boy bands that is HIGHLY popular in Japan. I dont know where the heck they got that name from. Bump of Chicken, I dont know what to say.

Ramblings

Today I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. Sorry, I didn’t take any pictures. Thought I might spoil it for some reason. Anyway, it was about sixty-five degrees and there was a nice steady breeze. One-foot waves were crashing into the shore. There was a family (Mom, Pop and Kid) happily spending time together. Very peaceful and calming.

Then, I think it hit me finally that I was in Japan.

It kind of sounds funny but I always have this feeling when I go to some new place that everything will be different, that I will magically be transformed in some new form of myself having something to do with this new place that I will be in. However, as it has proved a few times now, that I am myself, nothing has really changed except the surroundings (and its not like I’m on Mars or something, gravity still works, the sun rises, and sets, citibank is still making money hand over fist off me).

Safe to say that my trip to Japan has not been hugely filled with the stresses that you might think, about meeting new people (there are always a few special characters around everywhere you go, it seems) or finding the right foods to eat or not being able to communicate with people (I don’t often have anything to say to stangers anyway), on the contrary it has been full of the things that I normally go through in daily life (i.e. what the hell is my alarm clock doing going off at 5:45 am, do I have any clean drawers to wear into today, what the heck am I going to eat when I get home?) and my own personal struggles that I have always made it a point to make myself suffer through (What’s up with the laziness, and the buddha belly, etc.). I guess that is part of the reason that I am here though. I am trying to come up with the answers to the questions that I have not been able to solve for myself in my short 25 years on the planet. I don’t know that I am running away from anything per se, or trying to find myself I think I just need to the confidence to know that I am me, and that is good enough. I think friends and family have always made this point to me and I have just tangled with it on so many occasions for some reason. I think that Dr. Suess summed it up best by saying, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those that mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind.” Thank you all for proving that to be true.

I have always been my harshest and most outspoken critic for what reason, I don’t know. I gotta work on that.

Don’t really know how I have gotten to this point in my entry but thanks for reading and listening. The positive vibrations are with me. I can feel them all around, thanks for sending them out.

But, I digress back to the sunset, I was watching the water and it seemed to be wanting to leave the lake. The waves were trying to build up and jump out of that darned basin but gravity and air pressure were trying to hold it down or something. See, even water is caught up in the struggle (whats up Fern!?) However, the water is succeeding at eroding the shoreline away, slowly as it does, and that does make the surface area of the water larger, aiding in more evaporation. Maybe the water would like nothing more than leave that chasm and be airborne. Dude, the water cycle totally just blew my mind!

That’s enough rambling for today. Peace and love my people.

The Shrine

I was just riding around on my bike and checking out the sites in Hikone. I happened on this shrine which was pretty cool. I took a lot of pictures. I hope I didnt disprespect anyone ancestors. But it seemed cool so I went for it.

This is a statue that is right at the entrance of the shrine right off the road. I have no ideas what it is wearing, kind of looks like a bib. They have a ton of smaller statues with the same bid kind of thing. Highly interesting!

Cool Statues

As I walked through the Shrine, through the grounds, up the hill (which is another huge cemetary) I came up seven statues. I dont know what they represent (I dont know, thats my answer for everything, reminds me of You Can't do That on Televison) but I liked this one the best, kind of reminded me of myself, I guess. Beneath each of the statues was a little pedestal where people put money. I put my money on this guy, seemed real cheary, Two yen. A proper investment.

I loved this ones HUGE head. Kind of reminds me of "Hammer Time" or Doug or myself.

The Silent Shrine

Next to the cemetary, set off to the side, is an overgrown patch of forest. I could see a building at the top of the steps from the road. I thought I would check it out. It seemed really quiet and mysterious. I realize now why there were not any people around this place, as there were other visitors at other parts of the shrine. There was a serious mosquitoe presence, working as an axis of evil, if you will, trying to keep me from moving in and taking pictures. What I wont do for a few good pics. As I sit here now, scratching like a five year old with chicken pox, I tell you it was well worth it.

I will go back in the fall so I can properly examine the place.

By the way, the weather here is quite like New Orleans. Thats right, Fall won't start, i.e. days when the temperature dips below 70 F until about mid October. Highly tropical!

This is that building up close. I would have taken more pictures but the mosquitoes were relentless and numerous.

This is the entrance way to one of the buildings.

At the shrine there are several different buddhist cemetaries. This is a grave markers. People come and periodically place flowers on the markers. There are also what look like cups (about the size of shot glasses) placed on the grave stones.

The Ammenities

Guys check it out, my own washing machine! I can do laundry whenever I want.

And my own personal dryer!

Feild Day

Most of the students had these cool tattoos on their arms. They say things like Go, fight, win or some other stuff. I dont know!

If you click on any of these pictures you can see a bigger image.

Ladies and gentlemen, Fukao-san, the great! He's the one with the blue tower around his neck, front and center.

This is a couple of teachers getting close to the students. Everybody was having a pretty darn good time.

This is the leaning tower of Hikone. Glad we didnt have an earthquake while they were trying that one.

In this picture, I dont think they wanted to stand next to me. I swear, I took a shower that morning. I also ran in the 100 meter dash that day. Came in third. I think I'm a little slower than I used to be.

Damn, that's a cute little kid!

This kid got about five and a half feet for this attempt. Which is pretty good considering he's in nineth grade and has been practicing for about a day.

I got a tattoo from the students. I think it says, "Your English lesson are awesome". The first day of sports festival got rained out, thats why my arm is so wet.

The Lawyers name was . . .

This kids name is Kobayashi, and no, he hasnt seen The Usual Suspects. He can speak english pretty decently. Cool kid.

Last Two Days

The last two days have been very interesting. We had our sports day, pictures to be posted, which was partly postponed by rain, which means we had a full
day of school on Saturday. I think any one in a union in the US just had a heart attack. No one seems to mind. We do however, get Monday off so I can run some of those thousands of errands that must get done. We also had our first enkai (all school part), great stuff.

The party is awesome. I have been to one of these before. The serve you about a 6 course meal full of soups, sashimi, sushi, your own personal beef broiler,
not to mention, all the beer and sake you could drink. So anyway, people go around the room and serve each other drinks, it is impolite to pour for yourself. It always makes the Japanese laugh to hear that we drink out of the bottle. Its a good way to be social, walking around pouring drinks for people. There is
also the Kansai (the region that I live in) tradition of giving someone your sake
cup so they may drink from your cup. I have had the superintendent of school and the principal of my school do this for me. What rapture!

So anyway, this 'formal' enkai (its only formal for about 10 minutes) the school had decided that I need to be introduced again. So they have one of the better
english speaking math teachers (ie he knows about 300 words of english, but a very cool guys) introduce me again. Only this time the questions that everyone asks are a little more personal. Finally, we get to the do you have a girlfriend question, which I proudly answer, "No, not yet" which draws quite a laugh when
it is translated. So the MC has all the available women stand up. The fourunnattached women stand up. There are a few lookers in the bunch, I will not lie. At this point, I start to get a sinking feeling, something like I am being set up. The MC turns to me and says, "So, John-sensei, which one will you choose?" My only reaction was, "What!" to which he replies, "Which one will you choose?" All I can say is, "Are you serious?" and he goes on to tell me that
this is a party and that everything is cool. I can only best describe myself at that point as bright red. I could feel all the blood in my body rush to my head.
I did the gentlemanly thing and told everyone that I could not possibly choose from all those fine woman, and they let them sit down after a good minute of everyone laughing at me. They did manage to embarrass the hell out of me. Not a very easy thing to do.

But, all I can do is laugh, and after this the staff has been exceedingly nice to me. All the guys want to give me high fives and stuff, just makes me laugh
histerically. All in all, a highly interesting experience.

View image

By the way, this was garnishment for my meal. Anyone recognize this? Seems oddly familiar. They made a point to tell me not to eat it. I wonder why.

Diastrous Day

Today we have had two natural disasters but true to form, we are still at school. Right before 1st period we had an earthquake. Very slight one but there was a little shaking going on. Its about lunchtime now and the winds have started, yes, its Typhoon #18 bearing down on us. I knew it was coming but I thought I could get home on my bike before the storm. No such luck. Cant you see me pedeling like a maniac through a typhoon trying to get three miles?!? Well, hopefully I will get a ride home today but my bike is in grave danger at the school. I will find it sometime tomorrow in the school pool or up in a tree.

No time to worry about that now, nothing I can do about the weather. Might as well just sit back and enjoy it. If that is possible. I dont even want to think about what would have to happen in order for these people to close school. I can see them sitting in a three wall room, other wall collapsed and ceiling blown away, still working on their English Grammar.

I met this student today, Fukao-san. What a piece! This kid spent my entire lesson talking in this fake voice, annoying the hell out of me. John-sensei! John-sei! Whaaaaaa! I am continually surprised by the sameness of these students and my New Orleans students. I keep saying, "That kids is just like Mark Haymond, or Miya Gibson," or something to that effect. Kind of creepy.

One upside is that I have started to work the U of M propaganda machine on them. I told them that if they are to ever go to the Big House then they must know the cheer, "Go Blue!" I made them practice five times, now it is all I hear in the hallway. I will be getting my check from the university next week. Its will cover all the paper that I used solving all my problem sets when I was in Ann Arbor. Damn! I should have done more homework when I was there. I wonder when this lazy thing will stop biting me in the ass. I figure I should be able to get away with it at this point. I have been working on my lazy style for years now (or as my mom calls it, 'laid back' she has got a way with not trying to make me feel bad about things) so things should be falling into place at any time now.

My first lesson

I wanted to give you guys an idea about my first lesson that I am giving to every single student in the school. It starts with a couple of funny pictures of me. One when I was in Tokyo and the other in Hikone. Then I give them on overview of Detroit, the car companies, sports and, of course, music. I play a few songs for them. First, Superstition by Stevie Wonder (students are unimpressed that Stevie made music when he was 12 and he is blind, tough crowd, I tell you!) then I play Lets Get it On by Marvin Gaye, my impression during the song is histerical. Then I play a couple of white stripes tunes and finally a snippet of My Name is by Eminem. Usually I get almost no response to this unless I add a little drama to it. Then I tell them about Belle Isle and show them some cool pictures I took in Detroit when I was home before I left (shout out to Dan, Julie, Fern and Beer and whoever else put in on the camera). Next is the family, I tell them about all the sibs and about how tall Robert is and let them guess his age and stuff like that.

Anyway the whole things is a blast for me. Its the usual teaching stuff, make an ass of myself for the education of the children. Pride is something that is oft swallowed in the education system. Good to know that is true of both America and Japan maybe for slightly different reason though. I have yet to be cursed out or called a 'white bitch' or anything like that.

The rest of the lesson is pictures of people: Dre, Jeff, JP and Geetha, Rob, Mom, Dan and Julie, Tory, Dana, Doug and the like. A real hoot. I also talk about New Orleans and show them pictures of my students (not the ones where the kids are passed out sleeping though) and I tell them about Mardi Gras, through them a few beads and they are happy.

This has been the only lesson I have done to date. I have done it about 10 times already maybe I will have to do it another six times or so. I will have to come up with about 5 lessons every 3 weeks so it is pretty tight. I guess I will do a better job of planning than I have before. We shall see.

Natural Disasters

Well, my time here in Japan has seen almost triple the number of natural disasters in my life. I have on been here a month. If you include tomorrow typhoon that will put the total number of typhoons since I have been here at five! I think that is alot, maybe its just el nino. Also last week we had a volvano eruption about 250 miles from me in a little town. The volcano is still smoking today. And last night, the piece de resistance. . . we had two earthquakes about 5 hours apart. One might say the second one was an aftershock but usually the aftershock is not larger than the first shock. The first earthquake was a 6.8 on the richer scale and it happened out in the ocean. Where I was it felt like a 4.0, or so I am told, I wouldnt know the difference. The second was 7.3 and happened at about mignight. I wasnt really scared. Jeff and I had just had a conversation a couple of hours before about the earthquke that happened when he was in China. What a co- inki- dink!

Views of Hikone

Old Man and the Sea

I dont want to brag but this is the best picture I have ever taken. I went down to Lake Biwa one after noon to catch the sunset and there were these men fishing on the pier. I got some awesome pics that day.

Nice Sunset

The second day of school

Well, today was the second day of teaching for me. It is highly interesting. The seventh graders that I teach are a little bit like, elementary school students. They are not the awesomely behaved children the US public has come to believe that they are. I have not really run into any rude kids but kids will talk while you are talking, etc.. The teacher does nothing about this. They just stand there. We, ALT's, are not supposed to discipline the kids. That is ludicrious to me. When they step out of line, I will tell them so. I already went through my first year of teaching and, believe me, I aint going through it again. So I use my teacher look and that kind of works. I really cant convey what I want to say to them anyway.

The Eight graders are tough. They are super shy and dont really want to say a word. They just sit there silently. It kind spooks me out. Yesterday was the worst with almost no participation. Today was better, I was a little bit less nervous also, that made a difference. Some of the kids are frieghtened of me. Truly frieghtened. They will be walking down the hall in front of me and turn around and damn near fall down when they see me. It is the exact same expression from the movies when those Japanese people see Godzilla. Its pretty comical.

I have yet to meet the ninth graders.

I stayed late at school yesterday, I had some papers to check and i have students who are in a speech contest and we were practicing the speeches. Anyway, I stayed until about 6. My contract says I am supposed to leave at 4. This freaked out many teachers who kept telling me that I need to go home. I think that they just didnt want to leave before me. Maybe they would lose face of something. I dont know. But anyway when I left there were still 17 of 46 teachers still at school preparing for the next day and whatnot. This is a stark contrast from the 100 meter parking lot dash that happens at 2:45 at Abramson. I sat there counting the teachers as they stared at me, I was looking at them with bug eyes for each person that stayed at school so late. The Bailey's would love these folks. Good and hard working all of them.

Thats all for today. I will be good about updating, even if you guys arent good about reading. I should have done this when I was in New Orleans because it could be a really good book. Peace!

The first days of school by Harry Wong

Today was technically the first day of school. No classes but a ceremony ushering in the new semester. Its not really a new school year, as in Japan the school year ends in April. I guess its just a matter of nomenclature but the students have the same classes and teachers as before summer vacation (which teachers don’t have off. I can see the grimaces in the faces of all the New Orleans Public School teachers that just read that last statement.) Anyway, of course, missing no opportunity to embarrass me, they had me give a speech in Japanese. I had practiced this 8 line speech for the last couple of days so I was fairly certain I would be fine. It went off OK. The students, who sit very quietly thank you, not listening to a word that any of the administrators are saying. I can tell by that look they get when you know they are totally bored. The principal loves to talk, just as many principals I have know in the past. Just get up in front of people and start talking and talking and talking. I guess its part of the job. Anyway, he introduces me and everything stops. I think I might have some idea what it is like to be famous, mildly anyway. When everyone hangs on your every word, which is OK, except when you are not quite sure of the meaning of all these words. The speech went well, much better than the Japanese speech that I gave to the faculty about 10 days ago when I forgot a few lines, we will say.

Anyway, today I saw the strangest thing by far since I have been in Japan. At 8:45 am the bell rang and all the students started running around. They started cleaning! At the beginning of the semester it is customary for the students the clean the whole school. It is only a 15 minute exercise but amazing nonetheless. Also during this cleaning time, the principal blasts frantic classical music as the students clean the halls and grounds. I was more shocked to learn that this cleaning goes on everyday after school. Maybe the teachers in the U.S. could learn a thing or two about building school pride from this. However, I see about a thousand Abramson High School students saying, “Ain’t no way Im sweeping this hall, I ain’t no janitor! Im going to my old school!” Minami Chuugaku (South Junior High, my new school) has 900 students has only 1 custodian and this school is clean, let me tell you.

Well this is all to say that I am doing fine. The teachers in school are cool and most of them want to talk to me even if they cant speak English and my Japanese couldn’t pass for anything. There are those awkward moments when someone will say something about me, you can always tell not matter what language it is in, and everybody has a good laugh. Then when you ask the English teachers what was said, they tell you, “So and so said that you have very good pronunciation.” Well I know good and damn well that old what’s-his-name sensei over there wasn’t talking about my pronunciation. But, Oh well, not a damn thing I can do about that except laugh and show em’ I’m good hearted and able to laugh at myself.

I have been catching up on 24 and a half years of reading (I had that one summer after 10th grade year when I read like 12 books). If you guys have any suggestions for good books then I am all ears. Many of the classics I have never read, or I read the Cliffs notes, Thanks Jeff. It is a little difficult to get books. I have to go to Kyoto to get them. Which costs me about 20 bucks roundtrip, I guess I have to put on the to-do list for one of my explorations, or I have to pay about 30 bucks to have them shipped. I have only tried amazon.com but I am a little disappointed at what they will deliver.

That’s all for today. School starts tomorrow. I have somewhere between two and four classes a day. 50 minute classes. I think I can manage.