St. Patrick's Day in Japan

So how do the Japanese celebrate St. Patrick's Day? Karaoke, of course...and watching all the foreigners get intoxicated. I actually think karaoke should become a part of all holidays, both at home and abroad...mutal understanding through song...I like the sound of that...
Have you ever wondered what Snoop Dog's lyrics look like in Japanese? Well wonder no more...

Birthday dinner...

Sayonara

Last month I had to say good-bye to my graduating students at one of my schools. It was actually quite sad...I think I enjoyed teaching this group of students the best out of both my schools and all my other classes. Anyway, as a little keepsake, I had the students write about their dreams for the future, then typed them all and put the compositions together in a little booklet for each student. We also took class pictures for the booklet (see below). Anyway, as a little surprise, all the students wrote me a little "good-bye" letter and at the end of our last class each student presented his/her letter and said a short speech in English. So in honor of my cute soon-to-be high school students, here are their pics and a few of my favorite letters:

This student, Kento, sings in a gospel choir (don't ask me how or why). He said his English has really improved because of it...he certainly has some interesting word choices. His favorite gospel song? "We are the World".

I'm pretty sure telling someone that he/she has a "small face" is a compliment here...

See if you can guess what song this was "borrowed" from...

This student's #1 dream for the future: "My dream is to visit Katie's house."

This is from Miki-san, who came to my desk everyday after lunch to chat and help me with my Japanese homework.

Typical school day…

On several separate occasions, students stare at my face in wonder and make the comment “hana takai! hana takai!” (big nose) to me in the hall and/or class

Students ask me in class if my hair color/eye color is natural (“Katie-san, colored-o contacto?”)

Student repeatedly asks me in class if I know someone named “Maka-san” and also how to say concabu paipu, senso, and hikoki in English (corncob pipe, war, and airplane respectively). I told the student I had no idea who “Maka-san” was…the student then proceed to try and explain who this person was by drawing a series of pictures and showing me portions of his history book. Still confused, I asked one of the Japanese teachers…turns out the student was talking about General Douglas MacArthur. Apparently MacArthur was in charge of the allied occupation of Japan after WWII…did we learn this in history class at Monroe City R-1?

Student asks me if Americans are really as big as they look on TV

Student asks me who my favorite character is (by “character”, student was referring to animated character). Most normal adults back home don’t really have a favorite animated character…however in the past, this response has proved to be unacceptable by my students. My now standard response is “SpongeBob Squarepants”.

Was blown literally off my feet and into a rice paddy while waiting for the bus in front of the school…luckily the rice paddy was empty, so only thing damaged was my pride (it’s very windy in this part of the country…)

General MacArthur with "concabu paipu"

Where the hell have I been??

For the last month or so, I have been dedicating myself to snowboarding every weekend. My location in Japan makes this a prime spot for winter sports due to the fact that it's very close to the best ski resorts in Japan. I live near the "Japanese Alps" (while some may scoff at the idea of "Japanese Alps", I think it's a pretty appropriate description). There are a few ski resorts here in Ishikawa and there are also some great places in Niigata and Nagano, which are about 2 hours north. We just hop on a bus (usually at some ungodly hour...last weekend we had to be on the bus at 6 a.m.!) and go snowboarding for the day, then unwind after a hard day of boarding at a hot spring.

Since my snowboarding career started only very recently, I am still quite the novice. Usually I just try to stay standing and plow down the mountain any way I can. The more times I go, though, the more I notice that my technique isn't quite as pretty as everyone else's on the mountain. So last weekend, with the help from my friend Alice, I started to work on my skills. I spent most of the day on my ass and I am almost certain that I broke my tailbone (or at least severely bruised it). I also was unable to turn my head or bend my neck for several days afterward...I was doing my own abbreviated version of "the robot" all week in class...

I am sure people are highly entertained watching me and my friends snowboard. As with most activities in Japan, whenever a large group of us go out together it enevitably brings looks of confusion, astonishment, and intense curiosity. Last weekend, as I was falling face first into a huge bank of snow, a kid flew past on his snowboard and screamed "I love sex!" as he passed me. His friend flew by and yelled "me too!" And people say all the money Japan invests into English language education isn't paying off....

Of Ray Charles and the factory of sperm

So I find myself at school today with a raging hangover courtesy of three elderly students of mine. A few weeks ago, I began teaching a private lesson to 3 doctors in my town. They decided to throw me a little “welcome” party, so last night, in lieu of our regular class, the doctors (whom, for the sake of privacy, I’ll call Dr. I, Dr. H, and Dr. M) took me to their favorite tempura restaurant (and in case you don’t know, tempura usually consists of fish and little vegetables that are fried in a light batter.) Since it was a school night and also because the all the doctors are in their 70’s, I wasn’t expecting too much insanity.

The doctors are part of the local chapter of the “Japanese/French Culture exchange” (which is basically a bunch of old Japanese men sitting around drinking wine) so they were eager to share their knowledge of the vino...from the moment I sat down until the moment we left 2 hours later I don’t think my glass was ever empty. Now as I mentioned, tempura is usually fish and vegetables that are battered and fried, so immediately you know that everything’s gonna be good (one wonders how can anything fried not be good?) In this particular restaurant, we were seated around a bar where the chef was working, so as the food was fried it was placed directly on our plate. We started with the basic shrimp but as the meal progressed, both the fish and vegetables got increasingly more obscure and strange...

Here I will interject with a word of caution for anyone visiting Japan: if a Japanese person tells you to eat something while laughing, but won’t tell you what it is until after you eat it...it’s safe to assume that: A) you’ll probably be completely disgusted, B) you’ll probably have nightmare flashbacks about eating it, which may cause you to gag at inappropriate times, and C) it’s probably some sort of fish genitalia. In my case last night, I was given the deep fried delicacy called tarako, which literally means “children of cod”. However I prefer the description the doctors gave me last night: “cod sperm factory”...yum! I bet your mouths are watering right now just thinking about it! Here is a better description that I found from Wikipedia: Soft Roe, also called white roe is the male reproductive glands and their contents. Ugh! Even just seeing that description in writing is giving me the chills!

Well, needless to say, I could not drink my wine fast enough to try and get rid to that “unique” flavor and texture. After dinner, the doctors suggested that we go out for more drinks. Even though it was late, I had to accept...I wasn’t about to let some septuagenarians out-party me! We went to Dr. M’s favorite jazz bar, which was pretty rockin’ on a Thursday night (and by “rockin’”, I mean as rockin’ as a place can get where the average age of the patrons is around 65).

Somehow the topic of conversation drifted to Singapore, so from then on the doctors insisted I drink Singapore Slings for the rest of the night. And much to my humiliation, I was also forced into singing a karaoke rendition of “Georgia on My Mind” with Dr. I accompanying on the maracas and the bar owner accompanying on electric guitar. I guess a night out in Japan wouldn’t be complete without a least one embarrassing karaoke experience...

Anyway, there are plenty more amusing antecdotes from the evening...but I lack the energy to describe them at the moment. Also, I'm still feeling a bit queasy from thinking about the sperm factory that I ate. I suspect that I shall be haunted by this unholy, spectral fish gland for weeks to come...out, damn'd tarako! Out I say!

by popular demand...

It has been brought to my attention that "The Fool's Progress" is suffering from a lack of author photos. So...here are a few prime shots from a little sayonara party we had last weekend. My friend Pete is going back to Australia to start med school, so in honor of that we decided to kill a few brain cells (he won't really be needing those in med school anyway, will he?) There seems to be a recurring theme with me in the photos...I think I had decided that in order to avoid making what my dear friend Kitty affectionately calls "duck face" in the photos, I should open my mouth as wide as possible. I can't tell if the experiment was a raging success or huge failure...

This is me, the future Dr. Pete, and my friend Jess. We're bringin' the peace sign back (note: Justin Timberlake reference)

I call this one "Ode to Britney" (gum, gaping mouth)

The sign of a good party? Accordians, of course....

Jingle Bells never sounded so good...

Thanks to Mr. Shone (AKA accordian player number2) for the pics!

declarations of love

The level of my pedagogical prowess has reached an all time high. Today in the hall between classes, one of my students said to me (this is a direct quote): "I was born to love you." Well obviously, after he said it I was in complete shock...I mean, he used the passive tense and everything!! And I refuse to believe that he heard the line in some crappy J-pop song...

Anyway, here's a picture of the aforementioned student (second from the right) I've suspected for a while that he has a crush on me...he always tells me that I have "nice hair" when I see him in the hall.

And here are a few more shots of my students just for fun. I am making my English bulletin board for this month...little do these students know that I have taken advantage of their narcissism in mugging for the camera so that I can secretly plaster their faces up in the hallway for the amusement of the rest of the school. This one is especially funny since I took it in the staff room and just as I was about to take the photo, out of nowhere the music teacher leapt over her desk and several trash cans to get in the shot.

Here are some 1st graders...way too cute! Today in class we wrote Christmas cards to teachers and friends. The kid on the far left wrote a card to his friend (the student standing next to him). This was his Xmas wish: "Dear Bob (friend's nickname), I enjoy your stomach. Merry Christmas!"

Thanksgiving!

Well, it looks like Thanksgiving 2006 has come and gone, and for the second year in a row I have managed to avoid the eat-a-thon that usually occurs at this time every year. I'm not sure what it is about Thanksgiving, but it always seems to inspire some type of overindulgance regardless of my location on the map. Last year was a "wine-a-thon" and this year was "sushi-a-thon". In lieu of the traditional turkey and stuffing, this year I went for top of the line sushi at a little place here in Nonoichi. One of the teachers that I work with thought it would be fun to take me to an expensive sushi shop (as opposed to the ol' stand-by conveyor belt sushi, or kaiten sushi, favored among those of us with a less discerning palate for quality sushi...and also because it's cheap) so after work a few Japanese teachers and I met up at a unbelievably tiny little sushi shop. We all crammed ourselves into our seats at the counter, which is nice since you get to see the sushi chef in action and you can also see the wide array of strange fish behind the glass on the counter top (some of which was still moving, by the way) The owner/chef is a big soccer fan and likes to travel around the world to see soccer matches, so his english was perfect. He seemed to take great joy in pulling out all the most horrific looking sea creatures to explain what exactly I was about to eat....to be honest, on most occasions I think I would have enjoyed some of the food more had I not known what it looked like in its previous life...

As the sushi stared flowing, so too did the beer. It's always interesting to talk to the teachers outside of the school setting to get their real opinions about things. I got to hear all the juicy gossip about the other teachers and the principal, and during the course of the gossip session we got onto the topic of obscene words, which, in my opinion, are the most valuable words to know when learning a foreign language. By the end of the night, all the teachers and I were calling each other "assholes" and discussing the socio-linguistic differences between the phrases "take a dump" and "bowel movement". At one point, in the heat of discussion, I accidentally screamed out "unko" (the Japanese word for "shit") which gave all the other patrons in the restaurant quite a laugh. Now that's what I call internationalization....

Here are a few pics of the more interesting things on the menu:

sea cucumber (in its natual habitat)...very crunchy...

fermented squid intestines....salty

awabi (in english "abalone"...since I had no idea what this was in neither Japanese nor English, here's a definition: Any of various large edible marine gastropods of the genus Haliotis, having an ear-shaped shell with a row of holes along the outer edge. The colorful pearly interior of the shell is often used for making ornaments. Also called ear shell) I was told that this is one of the most expensive delicacies at high end sushi shops. Because I had never tried it before, the sushi chef gave us a free sample....I'll only say that it tasted about as good as it looks. I'll let you draw your own conclusions...

This is "anko", sweet bean paste found in many desserts here in Japan. We didn't eat this at the sushi restaurant, but if you'll notice the word anko is quite similar to the word unko (mentioned in the post above). It seems they share more than just a morphological similarity...

Are you jonile tonight?

Here's a little something I picked up from the grocery store yesterday. As I was browsing through the tofu aisle (yes, here they have an entire aisle dedicated to tofu of various forms in all its bland glory) and I stumbled upon this little snack. For all those heartbroken and adrift lovers out there, you can now soothe your heartache with "Are you jonile tonight?" tofu in a convenient to-go container. I'll admit that I immediately threw one into my shopping basket for the sole purpose of posting a picture of it on this here blog-thingy....but despite all the clever little jokes and giggling that occurred at the tofu's expense, I have to say that it might just be the best damn tofu I have ever eaten! So smooth! So creamy! How they could create something so delicious out of soy I'll never know....I may be "jonile" tonight, but at least my taste-buds will go to bed satisfied....

ii nioi!

I have a student who likes to smell me. It started a few weeks ago; at first I thought it would just be an isolated incident, but I now see that it has become a regular part of my classes with her. Let me explain...the student is an 1st grader (I guess that would be 6th grade back home) and she's a bit crazy and over-zealous when it comes to English class. Don't get me wrong, it's a refreshing change from the days when I would ask a question like "how are you today?" and the only response would be a few yawns and dead-eyed stares. Anyway, this student looooooves English class. When she sees me walk in to the classroom, she starts squirming and jumping in her seat and waving at me before the class even begins.

Anyway, so a few weeks ago during class, as I was passing out papers for an activity, I handed her a paper and as I was turning to walk away, she grabbed my arm and very forcefully pulled me back. She then pulled me down towards her and screamed excitedly to her friend "ii nioi!!" (nice smell!) I was able to pry her hands away and moved on to the other side of the room. I am not quite sure what exactly she was smelling...was it my Secret deodorant with the new, refreshing "lavender splash" scent? Or maybe my fabric softner? My hypothesis is that she thinks I have a particular "foreigner" scent which she really enjoys. Well, whatever the reason, she thinks I smell good and now makes a point of smelling me every time we have class. Sometimes she doesn't remember to do it right away, and just when I think "good, she's finally grown out of that phase!" I see the lightbulb go on in her head as she thinks to herself "I need to smell the English teacher today!"...when that happens, there's nothing I can do but walk over to her desk and let her nose have its way with me...

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the student who smells me, but I've included some from our school's annual sports festival. These things are amazing! Every September, every school in Japan has an all day festival in which the students are divided into teams and made to participate in a number of ridiculous, arbitrary, and slightly dangerous games. Inevitably the sports festival is held on an extremely hot day (so hot that by 9:00 a.m. my shirt and my pants were completely soaked through with sweat) The day wouldn't be complete without at least 2 or 3 students passing out from the heat and exhaustion. Hooray for sports day!

Leg-tie game: Tie four students together at the feet. Make them run across the field. Let the fun begin!

Stipper pole race: (OK, so it's not really a stripper pole) Four students hold the pole. Race down the field and around a cone. Race back to starting position.

3rd grade boys on the blue team. I made myself an honorary member of the blue team, altough I was told to remain impartial as to avoid upsetting members of the opposing teams...but what can I say, the blue team was closer to the shade...

All the students wanted to try on my cool sunglasses...

Crazy girls from the badminton club:

Team cheer

What's for lunch today at school?

Fried whale meat.

España Part 2: El Camino

So now that you know a little history about el camino, I’ll explain a bit more about our journey. We started out from a little town called Sarria, which is about 120 km from Santiago. After a 12 hour bus trip from San Sebastian we arrived in Sarria. One of the coolest things about the pilgrim's route is that it is marked with yellow arrows leading the way. So immediately after walking out of the bus station we saw our first yellow arrow leading us to the trail. At this point both Jill and I started getting excited (both of us daydreaming, perhaps, of our sun burnt and road-weary selves and our heroic yet humble pilgrimage, dramatically arriving in Santiago to the cheers and encouragement of the simple townsfolk…completely full of shit, of course...) So as the sun was setting we headed to our first refuge, almost getting lost within our first 15 minutes of the pilgrimage (even with the arrows…typical), only to find that it was full. We proceeded to ask at every refuge and pensión in town only to find that they, too, were full. Finally, at the last place in town, we convinced a sweet (and possibly senile) old lady to let us stay on the floor in her living room. She made us swear not to tell anyone in town where we were staying and told us to come back after dark so nobody would see us enter the pensión. Apparently, many of the places that house pilgrims get subsidies from the government, so that they can offer cheap accommodation to pilgrims. In turn, the people who run the pensiones must declare all the rooms/number of pilgrims. As we found out, many places have “secret” or undeclared rooms so that they can make a little extra money on the side. Anyway, we got to stay in one of the secret rooms, but once inside we weren’t allowed to turn on the lights or open the window…as I said before, the little old lady was a little crazy (she also made us hide our backpacks inside the pantry in the kitchen…in case of a middle-of-the-night raid, perhaps?)

The next morning we officially started our pilgrimage. I, being the procrastinator that I am, had done a last minute packing job before I left Japan, so any supplies and equipment that I had were all bought at the 100 yen store the day before I left. Using only the small, detachable travel backpack part of my larger backpack and wearing my worn out old running shoes, I was taking the minimalist approach. Jill, on the other hand, had spent weeks (if not months) making multiple trips to REI and doing research on the internet about packing lists, etc. So of course Jill had prepared everything down to the last, minute detail, and was carrying a large, brand new, state of the art backpack filled with the latest “moisture wicking” clothing technology and wearing top of the line hiking shoes; quite the contrast to my approach! While I openly mocked Jill for being fooled by the marketing ploys and hi-tech descriptions, I was secretly envious of much of the gear and kicking myself for my lack of preparation. Anyway, I was determined to prove that I could fare just as well with no gear…minimalist vs. western excess, the ultimate challenge!

So how does the challenge end, you may be asking yourselves? Well, in the end, the pilgrimage kicked both of our asses, gear or no gear. After day 1 of the journey, having walked about 22 or 23 km, we arrived in Portomarín with swollen and blistered feet, aching backs, and sufficiently humbled. Touché, el camino, touché…

Jill, draining the blood from her feet...Pilgrim climbing the stairs to Portomarín