Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Seeds and Sweat
I've just returned home from my first deliberate exercise session since being in Japan. I say deliberate because I'd rather forget the times in August when I naively rode my squeaky bike around Kakamigahara in 35-degree heat and 90% humidity in pursuit of a sightseeing experience. This latest physical exertion has resulted in what I predict will be a very sore hamstring muscle by tomorrow, a few scratches and a bedroom floor littered with prickles and seeds. Sound interesting? You too can have such an experience, merely by venturing out for a jog along any creek or rice-paddy in Japan. I decided it was too complicated to ride my bike half an hour to the nearest gym, sign up, and go through a 2-hour induction session in a foreign language simply to get my heart rate above 100 beats per minute. Why do that when there are several perfectly-good gravel paths (albeit a little overgrown with grasses and weeds) just a couple of blocks from my apartment? Anyway, after observing several old ladies walking their tiny dogs and eliminating the possibility that I might be trespassing onto some Japanese farmer's land, I decided to start my first jog. Half an hour and several laps of the same stretch of gravel later, I finally felt like a human being again instead of a lazy lump of gaijin flesh. Nevermind the hundreds of seeds that had attached themselves to my lower limbs, the red welts on my arms from who-knows-what weird and wonderful plant, or the suspicious glances from little old Japanese farmers' wives taking their daily constitution...
Saturday, October 13, 2007
The Return of Jeshika
Ok, something has to change. I need to write in this blog more often... maybe short entries more often are better than long-winded crapping-on sessions twice a month.
Anyway. So how are things? Well, I guess it's safe to say I've settled in to some semblance of a life here. (Although having said that, today one of my friends here told me to 'get a life by Sunday'. She's from New York and thinks that gives her the right to talk tough ;) I am yet to find a form of regular physical exercise, though. I think I'm going to have to take the plunge (literally) and go swimming soon, or maybe use the indoor running track near here. With my new-found language deficit, however, I've been reluctant to attempt signing up for anything that hasn't been absolutely essential to daily life. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and twice-daily 15 minute bike rides (70% of which is coasting) just don't cut it for 'exercise'.
What else? Well I'm quite proud, actually, that I've been managing the ins and outs of daily life completely by myself... for the first time in my life, at the ripe old age of 24. Bills are getting paid, cleaning is being done, and semi-healthy food is being eaten. It's all a lot easier than they lead you to believe growing up, as you may or may not know. And this is all happening in a foreign country where I don't speak the language. Then again, there was that time I attempted to do a money transfer via the ATM - ALONE - and ended up freezing my account. At least it was only temporary. I've come to the conclusion that Japan really is discriminatory towards anyone who isn't Japanese. You can do EVERY other function on an ATM (withdrawals, deposits, balance inquiries etc) in English, but if you want to transfer money (which is essential for things like paying rent, buying plane tickets, etc), forget it. Anyway it worked out in the end, and now I have paid for my 3-day trip to Seoul, Korea, in November. Yay!
'Teaching' is going pretty good, too. Well, at least as far as I can tell. It's hard to know when the JTEs (Japanese teachers of English that are supposed to 'team-teach' with me) don't engage in feedback. Or planning, for that matter (with one or two exceptions). Oh, and when the students, 90% of the time, stare at me with blank faces. I have never come across a catatonic person, but I don't think they can be any less responsive than a class of 16-year-old Japanese students. I seriously doubt I will ever feel socially awkward again after being in (especially after teaching in) Japan. It's like trial by fire. I'm not kidding. Then again, whenever I feel like a freak, I remind myself that 'they think you're weird anyway, as a foreigner, so whatever you do won't change that'. Back home, you KNOW when you're acting against social codes, and can't fall back on the excuse, 'I'm a foreigner!'.
(*I know the word 'foreigner' might sound weird, but officially and unofficially, that's what non-Japanese people are called in Japan; there's no getting around it, so I use it freely now.)
Meeting the students outside class can be a different story, though. Some of them actually like to chat with me and Khaleelah (the other ALT at my school), and they sure like yelling 'Bye bye!' or 'See you!' at the end of the day. The other comforting thing lately has been that for the past 2 weeks, we've had 13 Australian high school students (from a sister school in Queensland) on exchange. It makes me feel a little more 'valid' as a person when they're around: "See, I'm not the only pigment-deprived individual in Kakamigahara!" They've been pretty friendly too, but for some reason insist on calling me 'Miss' which freaks me out and grates on my nerves every time they say it. I just picture this spinster teacher in a black dress with a bun, carrying a whipping cane. Hmph. Brisbane. What more do I need to say?
I would love to provide further witty commentary of my working day but am too tired right now to attempt that. I promise I will soon, though. Instead, an anecdote. Today I had to attend a seminar for Speech Contest judges in Gifu City. (That's right; I am qualified to judge a Speech Contest merely because of the fact that I am from an English-speaking country. I feel a bit guilty every time they bestow me with this kind of power, which I seem to have only by default. It's almost like if the authorities said, "Hey, you're healthy! Prescribe medicine!").) I took the train to the venue with one of the JTEs from my school, but then, once the seminar was over, I realised my stupid bike had been left at school. SOOOO once I got back to Kakamigahara, I had to walk 40 minutes from the train station to school. On my travels, I took a 'shortcut' (really just an alternate route... a random side-street that led to god-knows-where, at dusk).... where I encountered a factory worker, in overalls and all. Who walked alongside me for a few meters, looked me up and down, and said something incomprehensible in Japanese. Expecting the worst, I replied "Wakarimasen" ("I don't understand"), and walked quicker. "Kuni wa?" ("Your country is...?") To which I replied, "Oosutoraria". Upon which he told me, in Japanese, that many of his co-workers came from different countries, like Brazil, Korea, China... "Sou desu ka" ("Is that so?"), I replied, like a native. And that was it. We parted ways. Anyway, it might not seem like a momentous event, but it kind of sums up how things are going here. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, something comes up, I expect the worst, but it works out, and ends up being an interesting memory. And none of that ever would have happened if I hadn't forgotten my bike at school.
You can take whatever you want from that.
Anyway. So how are things? Well, I guess it's safe to say I've settled in to some semblance of a life here. (Although having said that, today one of my friends here told me to 'get a life by Sunday'. She's from New York and thinks that gives her the right to talk tough ;) I am yet to find a form of regular physical exercise, though. I think I'm going to have to take the plunge (literally) and go swimming soon, or maybe use the indoor running track near here. With my new-found language deficit, however, I've been reluctant to attempt signing up for anything that hasn't been absolutely essential to daily life. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and twice-daily 15 minute bike rides (70% of which is coasting) just don't cut it for 'exercise'.
What else? Well I'm quite proud, actually, that I've been managing the ins and outs of daily life completely by myself... for the first time in my life, at the ripe old age of 24. Bills are getting paid, cleaning is being done, and semi-healthy food is being eaten. It's all a lot easier than they lead you to believe growing up, as you may or may not know. And this is all happening in a foreign country where I don't speak the language. Then again, there was that time I attempted to do a money transfer via the ATM - ALONE - and ended up freezing my account. At least it was only temporary. I've come to the conclusion that Japan really is discriminatory towards anyone who isn't Japanese. You can do EVERY other function on an ATM (withdrawals, deposits, balance inquiries etc) in English, but if you want to transfer money (which is essential for things like paying rent, buying plane tickets, etc), forget it. Anyway it worked out in the end, and now I have paid for my 3-day trip to Seoul, Korea, in November. Yay!
'Teaching' is going pretty good, too. Well, at least as far as I can tell. It's hard to know when the JTEs (Japanese teachers of English that are supposed to 'team-teach' with me) don't engage in feedback. Or planning, for that matter (with one or two exceptions). Oh, and when the students, 90% of the time, stare at me with blank faces. I have never come across a catatonic person, but I don't think they can be any less responsive than a class of 16-year-old Japanese students. I seriously doubt I will ever feel socially awkward again after being in (especially after teaching in) Japan. It's like trial by fire. I'm not kidding. Then again, whenever I feel like a freak, I remind myself that 'they think you're weird anyway, as a foreigner, so whatever you do won't change that'. Back home, you KNOW when you're acting against social codes, and can't fall back on the excuse, 'I'm a foreigner!'.
(*I know the word 'foreigner' might sound weird, but officially and unofficially, that's what non-Japanese people are called in Japan; there's no getting around it, so I use it freely now.)
Meeting the students outside class can be a different story, though. Some of them actually like to chat with me and Khaleelah (the other ALT at my school), and they sure like yelling 'Bye bye!' or 'See you!' at the end of the day. The other comforting thing lately has been that for the past 2 weeks, we've had 13 Australian high school students (from a sister school in Queensland) on exchange. It makes me feel a little more 'valid' as a person when they're around: "See, I'm not the only pigment-deprived individual in Kakamigahara!" They've been pretty friendly too, but for some reason insist on calling me 'Miss' which freaks me out and grates on my nerves every time they say it. I just picture this spinster teacher in a black dress with a bun, carrying a whipping cane. Hmph. Brisbane. What more do I need to say?
I would love to provide further witty commentary of my working day but am too tired right now to attempt that. I promise I will soon, though. Instead, an anecdote. Today I had to attend a seminar for Speech Contest judges in Gifu City. (That's right; I am qualified to judge a Speech Contest merely because of the fact that I am from an English-speaking country. I feel a bit guilty every time they bestow me with this kind of power, which I seem to have only by default. It's almost like if the authorities said, "Hey, you're healthy! Prescribe medicine!").) I took the train to the venue with one of the JTEs from my school, but then, once the seminar was over, I realised my stupid bike had been left at school. SOOOO once I got back to Kakamigahara, I had to walk 40 minutes from the train station to school. On my travels, I took a 'shortcut' (really just an alternate route... a random side-street that led to god-knows-where, at dusk).... where I encountered a factory worker, in overalls and all. Who walked alongside me for a few meters, looked me up and down, and said something incomprehensible in Japanese. Expecting the worst, I replied "Wakarimasen" ("I don't understand"), and walked quicker. "Kuni wa?" ("Your country is...?") To which I replied, "Oosutoraria". Upon which he told me, in Japanese, that many of his co-workers came from different countries, like Brazil, Korea, China... "Sou desu ka" ("Is that so?"), I replied, like a native. And that was it. We parted ways. Anyway, it might not seem like a momentous event, but it kind of sums up how things are going here. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, something comes up, I expect the worst, but it works out, and ends up being an interesting memory. And none of that ever would have happened if I hadn't forgotten my bike at school.
You can take whatever you want from that.
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