I Take My Chances

Japanese Word of the Day:
English: First year
Japanese: 初年度 or しょねんど

As of the end of May I have been in Japan for 10 months. Since that’s roughly the time it takes for a human baby to gestate I decided to talk about the things born from my new life in Japan. (I actually wrote this entire entry when I had been here 9 months) So to start with let’s have some statistics.

Since coming to Japan I've….

• Written 55,000 words for my blog
• Taken 5,112 pictures (3336 from my camera, 1776 from my phone)
• Learned to cook: tortillas, pita, tzatziki sauce, pizza crust, macaroni and cheese, chili, udon carbonara, Indian curry, naan, bibimbap, gyoza (potstickers), nikuman (meat dumplings),  gyudon (beef/rice bowl), and yakitori (chicken skewers).
• Done a self-introduction ~36 times
• Improved my Japanese enough to answer self-introduction questions from 1^st graders entirely in Japanese
• Made embarrassing Japanese mistakes around 10,000 times
• Had my weekly number of classes increase from 11 to 14 (on average)
• Been to ~10 enkai (4 of which were in April)
• Heard approximately 10,000 speeches
• Understood 0 speeches
• Been betrayed by my lovable elderly handler 1 time
• Been to Osaka ~7 times
• Been to Kyoto ~10 times
• Been to Nara 4 times
• Been to Tokyo 1 time
• Spent the weekend in my apartment to hide from Japan many times
• Seen 5 maiko (apprentice geisha) and talked with 2
• Read 79 books
• Seen monkies outside my house 5 times
• Consumed unfathomable amounts of tea
• Gotten extremely excited about the opening of a second grocery store in my town
• Gotten even more excited when I found out they had real cheese instead of "melting cheese"
• Been asked if I am married or have a boyfriend ~15 times
• Been asked why I don’t have a boyfriend 1 time
• Made 1 expensive mistake and about 50,000 smaller mistakes
• Gained the trust of various small children
• Become a responsible(?) adult
• Had a fabulous time

In case you missed this picture on facebook

So I’m also going to share some of the more memorable/amusing anecdotes I've been saving up. Because there’s a lot of situations in Japan where it’s like “Ok, I’m at a café and I have 2 bags and a jacket. The waitress brought me a basket. What goes in it? The bags? My jacket? My dignity?” (The answer was my bag, by the way)

Stuff my students have said

• “I am poker face!”
• “[unintelligible Japanese] penis [more Japanese]?”
• “Is that your house?” (in regards to the Biltmore Estate)
• “Do you believe in God?”
• “WHY JAPANESE PEOPLE?!” (see bottom of the entry)
• ”おかしのくに？アメリカはおかしのくにですね？” (translation: "Snack country? America is snack country, right?" Written in hiragana because the speaker was a 1st grader)

Stuff my JTEs (Japanese teacher of English) have said

• “I don’t know how to English this”
• While showing a picture of Santa for a Christmas lesson the Santa picture was black and white with his hat being black. My JTE then proceeded to laughingly tell the students it was “black Santa”. I awkwardly tried to tell him not to phrase it that way so he started saying it in Japanese instead (I still understood it).
• In another Christmas lesson I was teaching the word “quiet” and one of my students volunteered that it was like “shut up”. My JTE began explaining in Japanese that that wasn't quite true and so I heard “[unintelligible Japanese, more unintelligible Japanese] SUDDEN YELLED JAPANESE [more unintelligible Japanese]”. Basically he was saying “shut up” is more like whatever word he yelled but it still startled the class and made me jump since he’s normally quite mild and never raises his voice.
• My usual JTE helper has taken to teaching the lessons entirely in English. Whenever he uses Japanese he makes a show of removing a pen from his pocket to show that he's switching over to Japanese mode. Oneday a student was begging him to switch to Japanese mode and I jokingly told the student "No, no, he only speaks a little Japanese, less than me." The teacher then played right along and said "Ahh yes, Japanese... densha, samurai, sushi!" I had to excuse myself to laugh hysterically given how accurate that was (minus densha which is Japanese for "train" by the way).
• This is my all-time favorite thing a Japanese teacher has said. I was giving a lesson on American holidays and was talking about Thanksgiving and showed a picture of the natives and pilgrims sharing food. The homeroom teacher of the class I was teaching wanted to help explain and asked me “So this is the Americans giving food to the black people?” I did my very best not to laugh and explained that no, that was the Americans giving food to the starving pilgrims. I am reasonably sure some of my teachers have never seen a black person in real life.

Yeah, sometimes it feels like I went back a few decades

Stuff my students have done (Elementary School Edition)

• Tried to steal goldfish from the fountain outside the school
• Every time I asked what the capital of China was and students replied “Peking!” another student would loudly yell “Duck!” (In Japanese it’s Peking not Beijing)
• In the morning we do an exercise where the students ask “how are you” to each other. I approached a student to ask how he was and he began running away so I chased him around the classroom asking “HOW ARE YOU?!”
• Another student decided to be a smartass and whenever I asked “how are you?” he would ask “how are you?” back over and over. It took about 20 times before I got him to answer me. 
• I gave out a Halloween worksheet where the kids could draw a Halloween costume on an androgynous figure. Of course a few of my boys at each school drew genitals on their figures.
•  My students were absolutely shocked and appalled that in France some people eat rabbits. This would have been more sympathetic if Japanese did not eat cow and chicken tongues, tails, hearts, cartilage and all other manner of alarming things.
• Seen me in the teacher room with my phone which they proceeded to take from my hands and start sending stickers to my friend on Facebook.
• Been sitting at lunch time in the 1^st grade classroom enjoying some lunch time music when suddenly the Imperial March from Star Wars comes on. Followed by the Superman theme song. The students were extremely confused why I was having a giggle fit.

Stuff my Students have done (Junior High Edition)

• When given a worksheet of what students wanted to do when they grew up one wrote “I wish to be the president of the US.” Uhh… I have bad news for ya kid.
• Did I mention people really like Obama here? Because they really, really like Obama here. On another sheet of what famous person students would like to meet I had a few Obamas.
• I genuinely suspect that the girls here are going to have their ladybits freeze off. Skirts are part of the school uniform, though in winter the girls are allowed to wear pants (the horror!). However my girls seem to be happy sticking to skirts and even rolling the waistband so that they are super short skirts. In winter. When it’s snowing. I don’t understand Japanese girls.
• I can summarize 95% of my JHS student interaction in one sentence; Students stare at me and laugh awkwardly. During lunch times I sit with my students almost every day and the JHS kids have proven they are quite adept at ignoring me. But when I do try to engage them and ask a question the majority of it is just staring and laughing. It’s a quite humbling experience.

Favorite elderly grandpa handler moments (he’s now retired)

• After I first got here I had a welcome ceremony where I gave a speech and there was an American flag hung alongside a Japanese flag to show our camaraderie. Several pictures were taken during the ceremony and afterwards I was at my desk and noticed Inaho-sensei carefully examining them. He became extremely alarmed and asked me didn't America have 51 stars? I assured him that we only had 50 but it took a while to convince him he didn't have a defective flag.
• This one also happened shortly after arriving. Allen and I were in the board of education office when Allen got a call from a Japanese company about something. He couldn't understand what they were saying so he asked them to please hold and turned to ask Inaho to take the phone and figure out what the caller was saying. Inaho seemed confused as he took the phone and stared at it in his hand. Allen repeated his request for Inaho to talk to the mysterious caller and Inaho began hitting random buttons on the phone. Eventually Allen managed to explain what was going on and Inaho was able to help but it was pretty hilarious to watch him confusedly poke Allen’s phone.
• During my first summer here my coworkers became extremely worried that I wasn't drinking enough liquids and would get dehydrated. To alleviate these concerns I started carrying a canteen with me to show that I did in fact drink plenty of water. After a few days of carrying around my canteen Inaho stopped me to excitedly ask if I was drinking tea. I told him no, that it was water and he got visibly disappointed. Apparently the best way to hydrate oneself is with tea. Oh well.
• Inaho always spoke silently strange English and it took me a while to understand some of his stock phrases. For example, after my welcome ceremony he gave me a copy of a posed picture and told me to “bring it back”. I looked at it and offered it back to him and he again repeated for me to “bring it back”. Eventually I figured out he meant “bring it back to my house” or rather “take it home”. He also had a habit of saying “JUST WAIT” when he meant “please wait here a moment”. It was a little alarming at first.
• And last, a few endearing quotes from him. “Please tell the children about the Halloween” and “Please enjoy your time with the children”.

English Shirts/Bags/Signs I've seen

• FIGHTING ANIMAL TESTING (silhouette of two rabbits fighting)
• Day Salon Santa
• I make an effort used to being more prettier
• United States Gender Spank 1967
• The king of megane (glasses) rock [backside] Slow Loris
• Giddy alter course [back] He is my role model and
• Reality can be beaten with enough imagination
• Off the Hook/Not Cheap/Should be Crazy
• Free Wish/Lala Tasty
• Amuse latte
• You don't need to think the meaning of life
• I (heart) my daddy paly with me [no that error is not mine]
• Only you most loneliness girl
• Liberal Arts College [my favorite!]

And lastly I leave you with a comic about the important of comas. (click to make it bigger)

For context: I was later explained what was going on by a teacher. Apparently there is an American comedian who likes Japan a lot. He was doing a skit about how confusing kanji characters are and said “Why, Japanese people?!” as in “why is this so confusing?!” My students couldn't hear the slight inflection of the coma and thus just shouted “Why Japanese people?!” which was entirely confusing.  Now that I understand the context though I am fully on board with shouting “Why, Japanese people?!” in regards to kanji.

Until next time!