Get That Corn Outta My Face!

This just happened:

Me, in the staff room, having received some candy corn from a friend a few days earlier: Remember how we talked about candy corn the other day? Well, I got some and thought maybe you’d like to try it.

Fellow teacher with whom I had the previous discussion about not being able to help people for fear of discrimination against the poor: Put that away, a student may see it! (walks away from me quickly)

I’m not only baffled, but I’m extremely upset that I even entertained the idea of being nice to a fellow teacher.

...

Now that I’ve cooled a bit and had some good conversation with friendly Japanese people, I’ll back off a little, since I surely do enjoy living here most of the time. But I still disagree with said teacher’s response to me, which is becoming a pattern (she’s also the one who told me it’s bad to say “die” in class). It’s the fifth or sixth time she’s scolded me, and she’s a 24 year-old first-year teacher. None of the other teachers have ever responded to me like she has.

As a side note, the other day, I avoided another embarrassing situation. I was making a sheet to explain the rules for adding ’s’ to the end of third-person singular verbs, one of which was “to box”. I couldn’t remember if “to box” in Japanese required a specific article, so I looked it up on an online dictionary. Box (like a cardboard one) in Japanese is sometimes “bokkusu”, so when I saw the kkusu at the end of the definition, I hastily copied and pasted it to my chart.

I continued to work on my sheet, when I realized, “Hey, wait–they literally say ‘bokushingu o suru’, which means ‘do boxing’.” I checked back at my chart and realized that I had pasted the meaning from some slang translation of “to box”, “sekkusu suru” (“do sex”).

Crisis narrowly averted.

2 Years Later

A Post For My Rich Readers

So, I spent the last few days in a conference about effective team teaching with a few hundred people, including one of my Japanese coworkers and her mother, who moderated for my group and gave me a ride to the conference. My coworker’s seventh graders are struggling to remember the vast majority of the course content, and their grades are about as low as one could imagine.

On the ride home, we had an interesting conversation. Having some experience with programming and web design, I offered to build a web site which the students could use to study outside of class, hopefully helping them to improve their test scores, making life easier for the teacher in the process without any effort on her part.

She wasn’t sure if it would be OK for me to do that. I clarified that I didn’t plan on using any class time for my project, and that it would consist solely of me giving the kids a web address which they could access in their free time, outside of school. Entirely optional. Nobody’s forced to do anything–those who want it would have another resource outside of paper handouts that their teacher gives them based on an outdated textbook.

She said that she was afraid that students would somehow write in rude comments that others could see, to which I replied that it would be read-only, consisting of flash cards, audio and video. There would be no message board or any way for students to input messages.

Dead silence.

The three of us had previously chatted about differences in Japanese and western (specifically American) methods of communication, including how foreigners struggle to understand what Japanese people are really thinking (since what they actually say is often vastly different, and the listener is left to read between the lines). I tried, as best I could, to understand where they were coming from, but it was really tough. I was willing to use my own free time to provide a solution for the struggling children, one which cost the school no time or money, and which was completely optional. I told them that, from my western perspective, it was really hard for me to understand why anybody would ever oppose something that was so apparently harmless yet possibly beneficial.

Her mother chimed in. Students in our town, she said, are not all rich. Many of them do not have a computer. Not all of those who do have computers have internet access at home. By offering a learning resource that is accessed online, she said, we would be giving preferential treatment to those who had money, further widening the gap between them and the students whose families had little money.

I was blown away. First off, anybody can access the internet for free at libraries and local community centers. Furthermore, what is more important–the feelings of a few students or the students’ progress? At worst, nobody learns anything from the web site and everybody’s grades are the same as they were before. Realistically, some of the students would improve at least a little bit due to focused, technology-based learning resources, while those who don’t access it get the same poor grades. Are feelings so important that we can’t even say, “Hey–check out this website in your free time,” after class is over?

Baffled, I did my best to describe my feelings on the matter, wondering how on earth these kids would ever learn if more effective teaching methods were being passed over because they didn’t want to offend the poor kids. I phrased things as tactfully as I could, but received no response for the next few minutes.

Having just come from a seminar in which workshops were dedicated to dealing with breakdowns in communication due to culture differences between Japanese and foreign teachers (which I felt was a bit pointless as I got along just fine with my coworkers), I couldn’t help but feel the irony of my situation.

I changed the subject soon after, but not before my coworker told me that there was almost no technology involved in teaching the children at that school. There are no computers, no projectors, no televisions, and no other electronic devices in the classroom, outside of a CD player. Nothing but a dusty old chalkboard and some desks. Each class used to have a TV, but my school opted to remove them after some people in Tokyo got killed by falling TVs in the last big Japanese earthquake. Learning consists of worksheets and workbooks, with no interactive multimedia to speak of. This is not by design, as the Ministry of Education understands the place for technology in the classroom and, as such, sent every school at least one 60-inch smart board TV/computer–which was subsequently locked in a room to collect dust. Strangely, each staff room also received a huge flat screen TV which has only ever been used to watch baseball.

This is my last year teaching in Japan. We’ve decided to move back to the US at the end of July. There are many things that I will miss about Japan–the people, the food, the architecture, the clean and beautiful surroundings, the language–but I will not miss Japanese bureaucracy and the insistence upon sometimes outdated traditions. I won’t miss the lack of clothes dryers because people like hanging their clothes. I won’t miss having to wash dishes by hand. I’ll certainly not miss the awkward silence caused by my inability to read others’ minds because they’re unwilling to communicate what they actually feel.

In other words, I’m excited to be going back to America. I know we Americans are a bit rough around the edges, but I like that about us.

Please Shoot Me if I Ever Use "Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow" as a Blog Post Title

Until I cut my curly hair recently, all the kids would ask me if I had permed it (since it’s unfathomable for a Japanese that such hair could be natural). The question actually bothered me, since I’m not the type of person to get my hair professionally treated. It turns out that the kids not only aren’t able to fathom hair that isn’t straight and black, but also aren’t allowed to have anything else. If your hair is wavy, curly, or not-black (or extremely dark brown) by nature, you have to receive a permission slip from a doctor showing that it’s natural.

I’ve heard stories of a Japanese girl in the area who was so embarrassed of her naturally wavy brown hair that she routinely died it black and got a straight perm so that she wouldn’t have to get a note from the doctor explaining that it was OK for her to be different.

So, now that my hair’s all gone, the kids have decided to ask me “why” my eyes are blue. How the heck do you answer that question?

The Guy's a Frikking Genius

Yesterday, our stalwart laptop stopped booting. No images–nothing. Just a series of beeps when we tried to start it up. Turns out the beeps mean that the graphics card is bad–which, on a laptop, means that the whole freaking motherboard needs to be replaced.

So, after researching motherboards and the cost for parts (I’m confident enough to switch it myself), I decided that I’d rather buy a new computer. I was searching around about my computer model and found that the graphics “card” in it was defective, but that I’m too late to get in on the class action.

In my search, I found videos of people fixing the problem themselves with heat guns, so I went to the local hardware store to look for a heat gun. I asked a store clerk if they had any “hiito gan” and she gave me a blank stare. I explained what it was used for, and she told me that the must not have any, likely assuming that I had no idea what I was talking about. So, as she was presenting me glue guns and soldering irons, I saw a heat gun–with the exact words “hiito gan” in katakana right on the box–but it was 8000 yen. No thank you–a new motherboard wouldn’t cost much more than that.

Up above the heat gun was a little blow torch about twice the size of a cigarette lighter for about ten bucks. I bought it, dismantled my computer, and used a blow torch to “reflow” the GPU, whatever the heck that means.

I cleaned everything up, pieced it all back together, and somehow, I have a working laptop again. Don’t ask me how long this fix will last–it could be a day, 3 months, 5 years. But dern am I proud of myself for fixing a busted laptop with nothing more than a ten dollar torch.

Disneyland!

We got up the next morning and got ready, then went upstairs to check out our complimentary breakfast. It was a buffet with yogurt, juice, milk, fruit, hard boiled eggs, freshly baked breads, croissants and danishes. They also had salad, which Japanese people really like to eat in the morning. Having filled up our tanks with a good, hearty breakfast, we stepped outside into the overcast but extremely pleasant weather, and hopped on a bus to Disneyland. Because of the typhoon the day before, the temperature was a good ten-to-fifteen degrees lower for us.

Fifty's was a ten minute bus ride from Disneyland, costing us a paltry 300 yen each. Kelsey, who had been talking about Disneyland every day for the previous two weeks, was excited to see Mickey Mouse, and Minnie Mouse, and Donald Duck, and Chip & Dale, and Cinderella, and ... Yeah, I'll spare you the whole list.

Stef's research showed that this was the best time of the year to go, since kids were back in school. When we got to the park, there were thousands upon thousands of people lined up, waiting to either buy tickets or enter the park. Disney apparently realized that holding a promotion during this dead time would be a boon for ticket sales. At least I hope that was the case, as I'd hate to see what the park looks like during the Summer break.

With Halloween approaching, Disney redecorated the whole park with Halloween decorations. The non-human Disney character statues around the park all had jack-o-lanterns for heads, and they even changed the Haunted Mansion ride by installing millions of dollars worth of Nightmare Before Christmas animatronic robots.

Because of the Halloween theme, thousands of people came dressed in Disney character costumes. Japan is peculiar in that dressing up as cartoon characters is not out of the ordinary for twenty-somethings. It was tough at first to tell who was hired cast and who was visiting the park for Halloween. Eventually, we realized that paid cast is actually white. Even Princess Jasmine was a blonde girl with a fake tan and a black wig.

About 90% of the people there were in their early twenties, and I'd say that the vast majority of the people there were couples. There were very few elementary or junior high school aged children, if any. The Japanese take their schooling very seriously. The ratio of adults to kids was really quite shocking to me.

Because of the disparity between kids and adults, I was surprised to find that there were lines--often hour-long waits--just to take a picture with the characters. Grown adults waited to take pictures when they could have been going on rides. The waiting times for Mickey and Minnie were definitely the worst. I'm pretty sure that people here see the whole "take-a-picture-with-Mickey" thing as an essential tradition, much like viewing the cherry blossoms every year, or eating gooey multi-colored rice balls on a stick while looking in the moon during September (or is it October?). What else would explain lines of twenty to seventy year-old ladies waiting over an hour to take a picture with Mickey Mouse? Characters had to run between locations, aided by bodyguard-like park employees that did their apologizing for them.

Figuring that DisneySea, which we planned to visit the following day, would have characters in costume, we avoided waiting in line for pictures at Disneyland. We were there for the rides and the play areas. Stef spent some time a few days earlier researching which rides each of the girls could go on. She used her notes to mark up a park map and we set out to enjoy the park.

Our first stop was Toontown, where Kelsey and Mia got to run around and look at some of the characters' houses. They also had a few rides, including a Chip & Dale themed roller coaster called Gadget's Go Coaster, which was Kelsey's first ever ride at Disneyland. She was a little apprehensive at first, but after going on the first ride, she didn't want to stop. We worked our way around the park in the morning, going on the rides with short wait times.

The Peter Pan ride had a bit of a line (25 minutes), but I figured it would be worth it for Kelsey. As we approached the front of the line, the line stopped moving. They informed us that the ride was closed for "system adjustments", and to make it up, they gave us four fast passes (one for each of us) good for any ride in the whole park. Our crafty use of these passes made it the smoothest day we possibly could have had.

When you insert your ticket into a fast pass machine, it spits out a fast pass, which lets you use the fast pass line, which basically puts you near the front of the queue with only a few minutes to wait. You can only get one pass every two or three hours, and you have to come back to the ride after a couple hours to be able to use the fast pass line.

Because of the fast passes that I was given, I only had to get two regular fast passes the whole day. Here's how we did it. When you have to watch a kid that's too young (or too scared) to ride something while someone else in your party goes on the ride, you can get a babysitter ticket. This ticket is even better than a fast pass, because you enter through the exit and are escorted to the very front of the line, with no wait at all.

Stef used a single fast pass to get on Splash Mountain with Kelsey, and I had an employee write me a babysitter ticket while I was waiting for Stef. When she came back, I jumped straight to the front of the line and went on the ride alone while she watched the kids (Kelsey didn't want to go on Splash Mountain again). Amazed at the awesomeness of this plan, we did it for Space Mountain and the Haunted Mansion. I thought that Stef didn't want to go on the Haunted Mansion, so I didn't request a babysitter ticket. I waited in a normal line for the spinning rocket pods in Tomorrowland while Stef used our last special fast pass to take Mia on the Haunted Mansion ride. It was basically the perfect set up.

The food at the park was great--churros, real pizza, American-size hamburgers; they had pretty much everything we wanted. While we were eating dinner, a Russian family with kids sitting near us drew Kelsey's attention. She ran around with the two young Russian kids while I finished my burger. I went back to find a bathroom, and when I got back, Stef told me that the Russian boy had just dropped his pants and peed against the Tomorrowland cafe wall outside. The mom did nothing to stop him. Hilarious.

At night, Stef decided we should watch the light parade. I'm not a big fan of parades, but I was tired and figured that the girls would probably love it, so I acquiesced. I'm really glad I went. Kelsey loved every float that went by, and kept shouting the names of the characters and waving at them. I'd have a ton of fun if I went to Disneyland by myself, but being able to enjoy it with my kids was really something special.

Kelsey loved the rides, even if some of them were a little dark and scary. While Japanese kids were crying, she was begging for more rides. Mia was either happy or asleep all day. We went home very tired that night, but with the great weather, great food, awesome kids, and short waiting times, it was pretty much a perfect day at Disneyland.

Making our Way to Tokyo

The night before we left for Tokyo, Stef went to play volleyball. When she came back, she could hardly move--she had somehow tweaked her back. Having been through my fair share of back problems, I knew exactly how difficult it must have been, and began to worry that it might ruin her trip. She took some Advil and went to bed, hoping that it'd feel better the next morning.

She woke up stiff and sore. Our plan had been to ride bikes to the train station to save money, toting our kids and as little luggage as possible. That was no longer an option, so we took a taxi to the station and hopped on our train to Matsuyama. The early morning trains get packed with people commuting to work, so there weren't any clusters of seats where we could all sit together. We found two seats, but we like to have two rows of two, since we can flip the front seats around and have four seats all facing each other. A man was kind enough to offer his seat to us, which I gladly accepted. We turned out seats around and rode comfortably to Matsuyama en route to the airport.

We got to the airport about 90 minutes before we had to, so there was some time to burn. Stef took the girls for a walk while I took care of the bags. Kelsey sat in the box that they use to gauge whether or not your carry-on item will fit in the overhead compartment, and Stef took a picture. Mia likes to copy Kelsey, so when we met up and went to the security checkpoint, she climbed into the carry-on-checker box up there.

The Matsuyama airport has a really good bakery/café upstairs, so we stopped and grabbed a bunch of pastries to tide us over until lunch.

The Japan Airlines flight we took had rows of two seats on the outer edges, with rows of three seats down the middle. When choosing seats on the JAL website, I picked the two left-side seats of the middle row, and the far right seat of the adjacent two-seat row. I figured that I could keep the girls with me while Stef sat across the aisle.

That never happened. There were a bunch of empty seats on the plane, so the flight attendants told us to sit together in a row. I initially insisted that our seating arrangement was fine, but they wouldn't take no for an answer. Once we were comfortably in our seats, another lady who worked for JAL came in to confirm that nobody was sitting in the seat that we had just been given. Apparently, the person who was planning to ride in the third seat of the middle row wasn't going to be able to make the flight. We sat and watched as the flight attendants awkwardly battled with the lady in charge of confirming the seating. Some people take their jobs way too seriously. I'm no scientist, but I'm pretty sure that a simple change in seating isn't going to cause an implosion or anything.

Our plane was delayed by about ten minutes due to a possible typhoon in Tokyo. When we landed, the horizontal rain was battering everything, and the strong, shifting winds rippled the surface of the steadily accumulating puddles outside.

Our train trip from the airport to Maihama was supposed to only take about an hour, but we ended up spending about two. At the train station in front of the airport, I bought a ticket that supposedly led directly to Kasairinkaikouen station, the station nearest our hotel. The Google Maps directions that I had printed and brought with me said that we had to transfer twice, but the train tickets I bought were a couple hundred yen less expensive than the ones on my directions and seemed more direct, so I thought I might have printed out a less-than-optimal route.

When we were approaching the station where I thought we had to transfer, I asked some people around me if that was the correct station. There's often not a lot of time to transfer on trains in Japan. The doors open for about 30 seconds while people file out and hurry in, then the whistle blows, the doors slam shut, and the train speeds off toward its next stop. The first girl I asked shrugged her shoulders and didn't utter a single word in response, while the men across the aisle were much more willing to help.

One of them told me that I had to wait until our train reached its final destination, then transfer to a line that supposedly would take me right to our stop. Just as the doors closed and the train pulled away from what I thought was the correct station, the man corrected himself, having consulted the internet on his phone. We were supposed to get off where I thought we did.

We got off at the next stop and switched to a train going back the other way, and got off at the correct stop. Luckily, up to this point, all the stations had roofs above us to keep us mostly dry in the typhoon. We went to switch to the Rinkai line, which led to Maihama, but we couldn't figure out how to go through without giving up our tickets, which would have forced us to buy new tickets. Unfortunately for us, there was nobody to help us at the turnstile--no workers were on duty.

Seeing us fumbling and bumbling around, a kind man walked over to an intercom and paged a station attendant, who instead of coming, paged me on a closer intercom. I explained that I had purchased a ticket all the way to my destination, but wasn't expecting to have to relinquish my ticket at a turnstile. He told me that in order to hit the Rinkai line, we had to leave the station, go outside, and cross the street. Keeping our ticket was not an option. He sent someone to help us, who gave us a refund for the difference between our ticket and the one that would've taken us to that station.

You see, there was a way to make it all the way on one single ticket, but it would've involved using a different line owned by Japan Railroads. We had taken the monorail. Trains are confusing in Japan--there are JR trains, non-JR trains, the monorail, city trains, local trains, special express trains, the metro, and the subway. And all seem to go through similar stations and connect to each other. I've lived in Japan for two years, and I still have no idea how the train system works. Just when I think I've got the hang of it, I'm being paged by faceless attendants and getting refunds for buying the wrong tickets.

We walked through the wicket and towards the exit, only to realize that there was no elevator--only a ludicrously long flight of stairs going down to the ground level--and that there was no roof to cover us once we got outside. Stef's back was hurting, so she couldn't carry much down. I carried Mia (in her stroller) halfway down the stairs, resting her and my 2000 pound backpack on a big step. Stef had Kelsey walk down the stairs while I made multiple trips up and down the stairs for all our luggage. Stef took down as much as her back would let her.

Finally at the bottom of the stairs, our next challenge awaited: repack the bags so that the kids, the laptop, and the clothes will stay dry with just three umbrellas and two strollers. Kelsey walked alongside us, holding her own umbrella, while I carried the heavy backpack on my back, another backpack (with the laptop and other stuff) backwards on my chest, and a stroller full of luggage (or Mia--I can't really remember which of us took the stroller of stuff and which took the stroller full of Mia). Stef pushed another stroller. She and I each had an umbrella to try to cover all the stuff as we had to cross two streets with strollers, walking kids, and luggage, all in a typhoon.

While our clothes were pretty wet, we managed to keep the luggage mostly dry. We lugged all our stuff to the platform and caught a train for Kasairinkaikouen station. It's entirely possible that we got on the wrong train there, too. It happened a few times over the course of the trip, but never really cost us more than 15-20 minutes. We eventually got to our station, and we toted our stuff out the exit into a raging typhoon.

We readied the umbrellas and made a mad dash for the covered bus stop, which was halfway between the station exit and the taxi line, which is where we were headed. The wind jerked Kelsey's umbrella out of her hand and blew it across the parking lot. After briefly comforting Kelsey, I dropped all my stuff on the bus stop bench and made a run for the umbrella. The twenty-or-so seconds that it took to retrieve the umbrella were enough to soak most of my clothes.

By this time, I was getting pretty irritable, so while Stef was trying to plan the best way for us to stay dry while we darted for the taxi, I said, "Screw it," grabbed my stuff, and ran willy-nilly into the typhoon. A shouted for the taxi driver to open his trunk, threw my wet baggage in, then went back to help get everything else to the taxi. Perhaps we could have done it a bit smarter, but the "covers" of those bus stops are pretty useless when the rain is coming at you sideways.

The taxi driver took us to our hotel without any shenanigans, and it winded up costing no more than the minimum 710 yen fare. We entered the hotel, drenched and drained from the travel, and ready to relax a bit. Check-in time at the hotel started at 3PM, which just so happened to be when we arrived. We checked in, pulled Kelsey and Mia away from the kids' books that the hotel puts out in the fifties diner-style lobby, rejoiced at the sight of Dr. Pepper in the hotel vending machine, and checked out our room. We had a big bed for the two of us, and a twin bed that we pushed perpendicularly up against our own for the girls to share.

Stef and the girls changed clothes, but I took mine and blew them damp with a blow dryer. I figured I wasn't done getting wet for the day.

We hadn't planned on going to Disneyland that day, so the typhoon, the missing of train stops, and the aimless wandering were more annoying than demoralizing. With the rain being so strong, however, we worried that Thursday and Friday, the days we were planning on visiting the Disney parks, would be ruined as well.

The rain started to let up just before 5PM, so we grabbed two umbrellas and headed across the street to Royal Host, a chain restaurant which I had never seen before. I set my umbrella in the umbrella bin by the front door (which many stores and restaurants require, so as to not drip all over the floor inside). I told Stef, who had entered with her umbrella in hand, to put it in the umbrella bin, since "that's how they do things in Japan." For a brief moment, I felt proud that I was adapting to the Japanese way without really having to think about it.

We sat down and ate a surprisingly tasty meal. As we ate, I noticed that the rain had picked up again outside. We paid for meal and went to the exit to grab our umbrellas. Mine was gone--someone had stolen it. Honestly--what kind of person steals somebody else's umbrella in the middle of a typhoon? I understand that you don't want to get wet, but if there's one time that you should feel the most regret for stealing someone's umbrella, it's during a typhoon. Oh well, he can keep it. He'll need it in HELL!!! Wait.. that doesn't.. uh..

People often say that Japan is basically a crime-free country. While I agree that I usually feel safe at night, and don't worry about getting murdered, the Japanese are not perfect. People will steal a bike if they need to get somewhere. They'll steal an umbrella if they don't want to get wet. And, they'll do plenty of other faceless crimes that don't necessarily cause bodily injury, but are sufficiently irritating for the victim. I've known people to have their bikes stolen, only to find them returned to the same parking lot later.

Anyway, I went to report the theft to the restaurant managed, who first shrugged her shoulders, but eventually offered me her own umbrella. In no way did I want to force someone else to go without one, and I didn't actually expect them to do anything about it. I just wanted them to know where we were staying in case the culprit decided to return it. At the end of what was a very awkward conversation, I shrugged my shoulders and apologized as Stef decided to take the girls with the remaining one umbrella (which, incidentally, would have been two remaining umbrellas if I just followed Stef and didn't do things the way everybody else does them in Japan).

So, I had to brave the rain without an umbrella. All the way across the street. I'm pretty sure I didn't get any wetter walking through the rain (which had let up a lot) than I did sitting next to spill-prone Kelsey at the restaurant. It ended up being mostly a non-issue, except that I now have to buy another umbrella. That night, we didn't really go out (other than Stef making a quick conbini run for ice cream). We stayed inside the hotel, sipping Dr. Pepper and watching TV shows on the laptop--a nice, relaxing end to a turbulent day.