Closing and leaving

Japanese schools have been closed for the past two weeks, since the beginning of March. I still had to go to work and look busy, but the atmosphere was generally much more relaxed than before. I’ve probably made a hundred flashcards at the elementary schools. In general, my life hasn’t been significantly affected. I did come close to running out of tissues, but I got the last box on the shelf just before that happened.

Yesterday was the (winter term) closing ceremony at my junior high school. It was bizarre. Because of the virus infection prevention, we didn’t have it in the gym like normal. Instead, students went to their home classrooms and the speeches were projected over the school intercom. I thought I was going to be able to see some students, but I only saw the handful that came to the teacher’s room. I guess this too is a kind of infection prevention measure. Honestly I wasn’t really that sad. I did see a student that I taught in Active when I first came over two years ago, so that was nice.

In the morning it was sunny and relatively warm, so I rode my bike to school. I had made plans to sell my bike after riding it to the elementary school just a bit farther down the road, but as I left school it was colder and had been snowing since mid-morning. Still I only had to ride about 6 minutes, so I made it to the elementary school and sold my bike. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so attached to an inanimate object—I really did feel a sense of loss as I walked home. I had to console myself by imagining the bike’s future owner, a high-schooler, tearing down the street at high speed and wowing all the girls with his cool red bike.

Today we had the graduation ceremony. The seating was spaced, and every single person was wearing a mask, and only the teachers, third graders, and one parent for each student were in attendance. I stood on the stage with several other teachers as our leaving the school was announced. It was nice to see the faces of the third graders one more time, or at least, the third of their faces that weren’t covered up with masks.

As long as my flight change works out, I will be leaving Japan on Friday. I was worried about whether I would be able to get everything done in time, but yesterday I was very productive and packed almost everything, and prepared a few things to give away. Today I’ll do some heavy-duty cleaning, and if I work efficiently then I’ll just have a little cleaning and a couple of errands to run on Thursday, so I might be able to go to Matsumoto and pick up some souvenirs. I really have way too much stuff, though. It’s painful to see the amount that I’m throwing away—I almost feel sick looking at it.

Sidewalk conversations and wrapping up school

In the end, January wasn’t too cold. It snowed a few times, but it only piled up twice, and it still wasn’t that cold—I think -8C (17F) was the coldest it got. In February though, it has gotten down to -14C (7F), which is really cold when you sleep next to a door that isn’t sealed well in a building without insulation. Things are wrapping up at school. I only have one more class with sixth graders, because they graduate from elementary school soon and apparently need the last two weeks to prepare for that. Classes will become fewer at the junior high school too, so my class load will diminish.

I had two amusing interactions with young elementary students on the way to or from work. One of the schools where I worked last year is in between my house and work, so I usually pass several students on the way. One day, I passed a few first graders. One of them ran to catch up with me and asked me if I had a beard. My hat/shapka is very furry, so I can understand their confusion. I unbuckled it and said “no!” and we all laughed. I walked a little further and they ran to catch up with me again, and we talked:

C: “Can you speak Japanese?”

Me: (in Japanese) “a little.”

C: “Speak!”

Me: “ohayo gozaimasu” (good morning)

C: “Ooh, even though you’re American, you speak Japanese!”

Me: “Can you speak English? Hello?”

C: “Hello!”

Me: (in Japanese) “Oooh! Even though you’re Japanese you speak English!”

C: “Oooh! You spoke Japanese again!”

Then on another day I walked past a couple of second graders. They said hello to me, and I asked if they remembered me (since I taught them last year). When they looked puzzled, I cried and pointed to myself and said “Joshua-sensei!” And then they recognized me, maybe. We exchanged some more pleasantries, and then I walked on. I was actually in a hurry, but they ran to catch up with me, so I acted like they were stalking me, which they enjoyed. I should have written down the whole interaction, but it was a week ago so now I don’t remember the details.

I have continued my resolutions more often than not since the beginning of the year, but I have found that I need to find things to do on days off lest I get distracted and fall back into bad patterns. My last holiday until school finishes is this Monday, so I’m hoping to use it to clean and mock-pack, as well as work on schoolwork. I have been looking into getting rid of my stuff, and I’m worried about my bicycle and all of its related items. I put a lot of money into them, but the only sure way to get rid of it is to sell it at a secondhand shop, and apparently they give very little money for used bicycles.

Today I learned that I am (once again) very blessed to be in Shiojiri. Here we have a kitchen in each school where our school lunch is made, so it’s fresh and generally delicious. In Matsumoto, there is a school lunch center which makes food for all the schools in the city, so it’s usually cold by the time it arrives at its destination school.

Some pictures of Japan

There's a fishing pond about 20 minutes by bike from my apartment

I'm responsible for decorating the English bulletin board at school. This was my summer edition. In retrospect, I needed some decorations to liven up the gaps.

This is a lovely Japanese-style garden that I enjoyed when I visited Nagoya in November.

This is a construction site near my apartment. As you can kind of see, workers take tremendous pains to keep the site clean and organized.

Here I am at work on Christmas eve. Yes, that's me and not the real Santa Claus. I managed to fool most of the teachers, but the students were too sharp.

This is the lovely Yokohama skyline which I was able to see on winter break. It's actually nicer at night, but you wouldn't know from the way my phone takes pictures.

Winter Break

Today is my first day back at work after the Christmas break. Before the break nothing of particular interest happened, except that at one of the elementary schools I got to watch some of my students play hanafuda (flower cards) today. This is a game that I found out about through anime, and I've played a flash version for many years on and off. It's a game of luck not unlike poker, but for some reason I find it much more appealing. It might be because the cards are more beautiful. Anyway, it was fun to watch them play.

Oh, and there was Christmas! It snowed on the night of the 22nd, about six inches, and it was supposed to snow on and off the whole week without getting warm. This meant that I might actually have a white Christmas, I thought. I was trying to remember the last time I had a white Christmas—after consulting my parents, I decided that it was probably when I was in elementary school. But the week ended up being warmer than expected and it didn’t snow again, so it wasn’t just a little white. However, from the classrooms at my junior high school I could see lettuce fields still covered with snow, so I got a taste of a white Christmas. It didn’t really feel like Christmas, though. I greeted students and teachers with “Merry Christmas,” but nobody returned the greeting.

The end-of-year party with the junior high school was surprisingly fun. I really really did not want to go, but I didn't have an excuse and everyone except the two staff members signed up to attend, and as it is my main school, I felt obligated. I didn't really enjoy the previous party in September, but more teachers came this time, and some of them were fun. At the main party there were almost constant activities so I didn't get much chance to talk to people there, but on the other hand there also wasn't any awkward silence and loneliness like last time. I participated in one of the events by eating a cream puff to which mustard had been added. The point of the game was to look at the faces of the four people who ate the cream puffs and guess who had eaten the spicy one. Of course I was the one who ate it, so I tried hard to make a face like I had eaten something spicy, but actually I quite enjoyed the mix of flavors. It was kind of like wasabi chocolate, but even better.

The next night was the elementary school's end-of-year party. The food was fantastic, people were attentively pouring drinks, and the mood was very jovial and loud. I sat next to a third grade teacher who I've not talked to much. Honestly I don't think he's a great teacher for the grade level he's with right now, and I feel like he doesn't like my style of teaching either. But I think we bonded that night. I also had some great conversations, some of the best I've ever had in Japanese, with some of the other teachers. Thinking back, I should have worked harder to pour drinks--I really did a pour (hahah) job of it. If I am able to go to another party, I'll try hard to keep it in mind. We had planned to go to a snack bar again and sing karaoke, but we went to an izakaya for the second party and by the end of that, half the group was barely awake. So we called it a night and I got home at 11.

After those work parties, I began my winter break. For the new year I made some resolutions: continuing keeping a journal and try to be more regular, start (back) exercising regularly, and improve my spiritual life. I want to add two things to that--no more fanfiction and no more video games. For me, certain video games (almost all the ones I enjoy) are like drugs and if I get sucked into one, it's like a poison to my time. It robs me of the pleasure of other activities because I can only think about getting back to playing games. Fanfiction is also a drain on my time though I rarely spend more than a couple of days on a single good story. More importantly though, I think it reduces my satisfaction with my life, and it disrupts my sleep if I start reading a good story at the wrong time.

Since these two things take up the majority of my free time, I need to find a replacement. Grad school will take up a good bit of time, and exercise as well, but I need an activity for relaxation. I’m hoping that I can relax by programming, but if that doesn’t work I’ve also gotten interested in Rubik’s cube solving. And if I really want to relax, there’s always Netflix, but I find that I really have to be in the right mood to be interested in watching a movie or TV show. But to further encourage my resistance to video games, every day that I can journal, I'll write something that I did instead of playing video games.

Throughout my winter break I mostly stuck to these resolutions with no serious lapses, making it possibly the best break that I've had in Japan. Since I haven't started on my graduate school classes yet, I spent a lot of my free time programming, and managed to make a functional albeit basic application to assist with the memorization of texts (such as the Bible). I also went to Yokohama, which is a beautiful city. I didn't really do anything interesting there, though, because almost all the museums were closed.

Teacher and student

I’ve been accepted to the Liberty University graduate school to study for a Master of Arts in Teaching with a specialty in middle school English. My plan is to take one course from January until March, and then two courses from March to May. The first week of the two-course load will be my last full week of work in Japan, so the timing is pretty good. I’m still working on getting a few documents sorted before I fully commit to the program. And there’s a lot to think about, moving back to the US.

I’ve complained about my junior high school a lot, but last week one of the teachers came to me and told me that they want me to stay another year at that school. I really appreciated that, and I also told her that I was grateful for the opportunity to observe and participate in class (as calling my duties there “teaching” seems like an arrogant exaggeration). Of course I told her that I was going home next year, but anyway, the exchange did make me feel better.

Usually the socially challenged class is my least favorite to teach, but recently I had kind of a special experience. There is a girl in that class who has ADHD and sometime does no work at all during class. This day I was asked to work with her, which rarely happens. The last time I did so, back in the first term, she quickly got frustrated that I wouldn’t speak Japanese with her. This time though, she was much more willing to make an effort to understand. I think one thing that helped me was that, first thing I asked her how she was, and tried to respond appropriately to her answer with another question or sympathetic nods or whatever. Afterward, she easily made it through her assigned worksheet and then we talked. First we talked about ways to write the number seven, which she obviously enjoyed. Then I asked her about zero, and she didn’t understand but was so interested in my question that she called my co-teacher over to translate. So I was happy that a student would try so hard to understand me

I went to a men’s drinking party with teachers from one of my elementary schools and we had a great evening. The meat was fantastic--it was high-grade beef which we dipped in raw egg. The seafood was good too, especially the squid sashimi, although some of the sashimi was a bit too fishy for my taste. After the restaurant, we went to a "snack bar". Its closest American equivalent would probably be a karaoke bar, but I've never been to one so I'm not sure about that. Snack bars have a seedy reputation, but the one we went to was pretty classy. I sang some songs, two in Japanese and two in English, but I didn’t do a good job. Regardless, it was one of the best, most comfortable parties I have ever attended.

Yesterday I took the big Japanese test that I failed last year. Overall I feel that I did better, which was my goal. I managed to read and try to understand all but a few questions from the reading section compared to about half last year. I’ll get the results online in late January. And with this test finished, I have a presentation for my co-workers on Wednesday and a Christmas party for students on Sunday. After that there won’t be any particularly stressful events until the end of my time in Japan, possibly excepting graduate school assignments.

Internet Morality, Halloween and Nagoya

There was a lecture about internet morality at the junior high school. The speaker said some really thought-provoking (刺激的な?) things. Some of them would not be well received by an American audience. For example, he said that “if you do something bad in Japan, you’ll definitely be caught.” This was mainly within the context of internet crime, but even there I think it’s a stretch to tell a bunch of junior high students something that is so unlikely to be true. Another one of his points was that we ought to think about how others feel when we show them how much fun we’re having. When we brag about traveling or having a nice smartphone or computer, think about the feelings of people who can’t have those things. I appreciate this thought, but I’m sure it would encounter a lot of resistance in America.

The speaker had some good ideas too, though. His keyword was 置換的思考力--the ability to exchange ways of thinking. Normally I would think that the internet would facilitate the exchange of different ideas, and I still think that it can. But the speaker made a good point that people with similar ways of thinking tend to gather together, and the internet certainly does make that easier as well. Then, he said, if these people continue to associate with each other, one begins to think that everyone has the same thoughts, and therefore one can become dismissive when encountering a different perspective because most of one’s interactions are with that group of people with the same perspective.

I think this is true outside the internet as well, in a school. It’s quite common for students to only interact with other similarly-aged students (in similar situations) as peers. Teachers and parents are authority figures, and because of that there might be inherent resistance to their ideas. It would be nice if students could exchange ideas on an even level with a greater variety of people. In America this probably tends to happen at university, or maybe even as late as the job field. I think it would be beneficial for middle and high school students to be exposed to this sooner, first so that they might not be so strongly influenced, and secondly so that they can appreciate their present life more.

Saturday I went to the Halloween festival in Shiojiri. It was fun to see so many of my students, although I didn’t know what to say to them most of the time, and somehow I kept forgetting that it would probably be okay to speak Japanese (especially if they weren’t trying to speak English). Oh well. I wore my pirate costume to school on Halloween day. The kids were astounded that I would wear something so strange *during class*. I don’t remember well enough for sure, but I don’t think it would be too strange for students to wear modest, non-inhibiting costumes in America. Although that does sound like a bit of a dress code nightmare, so it’s probably not usually allowed. Regardless, I can imagine the level of surprise in America being anything like how it was in Japan, both from the teachers and the students.

I went to Nagoya this past weekend. I saw my favorite museum, the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology. I was overwhelmed by it, even though it was my second time. I also met a friend there, and ate the most famous Nagoya dish--eel rice bowl. It was fantastic, even better than I expected.

Thoughts about biking

I had a long weekend, and while it wasn’t as productive or adventurous as I had hoped, it could have been worse too. There was a huge typhoon, apparently the strongest in sixty years, so it rained all day on Saturday. I had planned to do a bike trip, but people kept giving the warning not to go outside in the typhoon, so I stayed home all day. Then it also rained on Monday too, and since that was forecast, I changed my plan to a one-day bike trip. I went to Kiso-Fukushima, which I had been to before, about 43 km away, so about 90 km round trip with a few detours. It took me 2 hours 45 minutes to come back, which I did with minimal resting. I stopped in Naraijuku to buy some souvenirs, and in Kiso-Fukushima I went to the supermarket to browse, so altogether the trip was about 7.5 hours.

Kiso-Fukushima is a really beautiful town. It is closely hemmed in by mountains and is very hilly, but also has several bridges going over streams. Overall, it was a great trip, with the worst part being a 2 km tunnel just after Naraijuku with a narrow footpath. Aside from that, there was very little difficulty or danger. My only dissatisfaction was that I had to come back the same way I went.

I thought as I was biking that perhaps the main deterrent from my making these trips was because of difficulty sleeping in my hammock. I have tried four times and have not succeeded once in sleeping more than four hours. The prospect of physically exhausting myself only to set up camp and have a nearly sleepless night is hardly appealing, so maybe traveling without the intent to camp will motivate me more. Granted, then I’ll have to pay for accommodation, but biking will save nearly half the cost of travel in addition to providing a reason for the travel.

However, this revelation may have come too late. There’s only one more long weekend left this year, and I really want to use it to go to Nagoya. Biking to Nagoya would probably take two full days, and I’d like to have more time than that. January and February are really cold, but if I get a nice weekend without snow then maybe I can bike somewhere. Most likely though, if I want to take a decent trip, I’m going to have to wait until the end of my contract.