Should I stay or should I go?

Stay: no job in London, Japanese will be a great skill for future jobs (If I get round to learning it), I’m having fun, can explore Asia while here, I like the school where I work, teaching can be fun…great highs! I enjoy teaching and think I am doing a good job.

Go: I don’t want to be a teacher in the future am I merely procrastinating? Great highs also equals big lows…damn the rowdy kids who can ruin a great day in an instant! Will I really ever learn Japanese? There are so many other countries I would love to live in, other languages I would much rather learn! It’s really a long way from home and so much is going on, I want to see my cousins’ babies, see my parents and see my sister go on placement and go to Uni. Lots of my friends here wil be leaving, will I be lonely? Will my experience here differ? 

 Too many questions, thoughts and feelings swirling around every time I think about signing the simple form which merely asks: Do you want to re-contract? Yes, No, Yes, No, Maybe, Don’t know, perhaps, what if?

Go with the flow, see what happens, go where the wind takes me or think, analyse, rationalise and conclude?

Where did December go? (A quick New Years overview)

  

 Its seems that only a few days ago I was sitting in the cold staff room writing exams, recording transcripts and relaxing for a day or two before my batch of exams were piled on to my desk to mark. Now it is January and the superficial meaningless Christmas decorations in Japan have been pulled down while the traditional symbolic New Years decorations are slowly dissapearing and the recovery from the festive season is finally complete.

Japanese New Years is more important than Christmas and many traditions and customs are acted out in the space of a few cold days. In Japan the holidays start on the 28th and work continues again on the 4th. The Japanese try to finish any tasks that are left incomplete before the New Year starts and clean their houses thouroughly to welcome in the New Year to a well and ordered house. Soba noodles are eaten as a sign of health and longevity and the first visit to the shrine ‘Hatsumode’ entails hordes of people and women in kimonos bustling along to the local shrine which is lined with food stalls filling the air with sweet smells of toffee apples, savoury smells of meat and local foods as well as mochi (rice cake) which is traditionally eaten around New Years. Children are given money on the 1st of the year and dutiful wives prepare ‘osechi ryori’: a traditional new Years meal which is normally in a box. The food which is eaten for three days is symbolic and has many good omens.

On the 2nd January, Gemma and I were fortunate (or unfortunate depending on your tastes) to try one of these meals. Invited to one of my teacher’s houses for a taste of Japanese culture a black tray was placed infront of us containing soybeans, small fish, fish eggs, chestnut, lotus root and fish cake.

Since the tradition of eating certain foods has become so engrained my teacher was unable to tell us what each food symbolised but what she could recall was that the small fish symbolised good harvest and the fish eggs fertility (one I hope I am not blessed with this year).

Printo o kudasai! (Handout please)

Its 8.30am. I have just sauntered into school on a cold day and ready to grab myself a coffee to warm my hands and to wake me up! I sit down at my desk trying to avoid the English teachers who are running around muttering in Japanese when I hear “Lavinia sensei” shouted through the door. A first year student walks in and is quickly thrown out of the staffroom by an English teacher!

Today was the day of the English test and the transcripts and exam were lying on the table! “buto , printo o irimasu….Lavinia, printo onegaishimasu, pleaseo”!* I look up at the scene, quite suprised, in half an hour my students have an English test and this student has just decided to start revising! Laughing I walk to the door, ask which “printo” my student wants and hand it over!

 Peace, sit down, bring cup to my lips, just about to drink. Bang, door slams open! ”LAVINIA SENSEI, printo please, give you!” I turn around slowly, get up and ask which one? “one, ni, san, four, five, six, nana” “WHAT? ALL OF THEM” “hai!”. I turn around, kick the kid out of the staffroom (exam period is the only time in which you can actually deny the students access into the staffroom) and hand the sheets over. I pretend to be mad and the student bows politely, “very sorry!” and runs away!

 Ok, sit down, drink coffee….”LAVINIA sensei!” door slams open, a student walks in, teachers run to throw him out, “Lavinia, please can I have handout number 1?”, smiling I walk to the desk, pick it up and hand it over. After all, he is the first student to actually make the request in good English! “good luck, Yamashita!” I call as he walks off, knowing he is one of the few who need it!

Ok, this time sit down, bang, door slams open……………..yes, my coffee only touched my lips the moment in which the exam started!

10.40, the exam has finished! I sit down looking all the tests I am about to start marking when all of a sudden: BANG, door slams open and a voice shouts: ”please Lavinia sensei, printo give you me, onegaishimasu!”

Working at a school will always make you smile…..No matter how tired, how stressed, or how homesick you may be, the students will always find a way to make you laugh or bring a smile to your face and the joke lasted until all the students had left the building! 

* The students have a tendency to still add vowels to the end of everyword and use katakana word ’printo’ for handout! Trans: But I need a handout, Lavinia handout please please!” 

The strangest thing about being in Japan?

The food, the kanji, the complete dependence on those around you for assistance with the simplest tasks? The inability to work out the offers in shops, read your bills, read the paper, understand the news, the weather forecast, the chatter on the bus? The fact that you can’t speak on your phone on the train? The fact that the Japanese are so helpful, friendly and respectful? The fact that the students have to be kicked out of school because they enjoy their extra-curricular activites so much? The fact that the Japanese can’t accept a compliment without feeling that they must give one back? Or perhaps it’s the bowing, the constant need to say sorry or the dislike to be the first to leave the office even if over an hour has passed since your contract says you can go home?

Well, all of these are strange and diffierent from home. But the strangest thing about living in Japan is the fact that I live by myself. I wake up to an empty house where I can hear my next door neighbour shuffling around in the morning. I come home to an empty house and have no one to speak to about my day. I prepare dinner for myself, eat by myself and spend the evening and weekends by myself if at home. I can do whatever I want in my house because there is no one else here to bear witness to my life and after a busy day sometimes it’s nice to come home to silence, peace and tranquility. No small chit chat, no worrying about offending your housemates, not helping your Mum at home or talking to your Dad about your day. But before going to sleep and you turn out the light and everything is dark, quiet and still and then you realise…’hey, I am by myself and when I wake up and start my day again, I will be completely alone!’

Is this what life is? Is this what it is meant to be, to be ’grown up’; to learn who you are and become independent? Surely not. While living by yourself is something that many do at some point in their lives, families and friends are always around and easy to reach. Without any one to witness our lives, to see what we do and ask us how we are, we may as well not be here. Those around us make our lives meaningful and we are always surrounded by those that can give us substance. Even if it’s a stranger as a flatmate or some students on your corridor. A hello from someone in close proximity to where you live makes you realise that you are here, that people know you exisit, that someone would notice if you weren’t around. It’s not being noticed which is the strangest thing about being in Japan

My JLPT test and friends

We walked into Osaka University campus at 9am and saw crowds of people leaning on the walls, sitting on benches, squating on the floor, crouching on the grass. Some were chilled, some where smoking and some where looking at notes. On a Sunday morning a crowd of foreigners had gathered to take the JLPT (Japanese Language Profeciency Test). It was a familiar sight and a comfortable and well known atmosphere in a strange and different country.

I have spent nearly the whole of my life doing exams and perhaps the only thing which I am sure about and which I know like the back of my hand is the pre-exam scenario. Thus, to walk into it again at a time when I am feeling homesick and missing familiairty was an oddly welcoming one. Doing exams for so many years becomes a process which you can predict: there will always be those who are ready, those who are nervously preparing in hope that they will learn or remember some crucial point just 10 minutes before their knowledge is put to the test, those who are stressed and those who just don’t care. While the JLPT turned out, as I had expected it to, to be well beyond my abilites the atmosphere and aura made me feel a little bit more at ease. I was with friends in Japan facing a test, just like I had been just seven months ago at Royal Holloway. I may miss my friends, the comfort of home, the good chats, laughs and tears but I am embarking on an adventure with many more ups and downs and I guess my good real friends, the ones that I miss (just as I strangely do the comfort of the pre-exam process) are always there. My friends and family are in fact, just like exams: they change in their own ways but will always be there, waiting and ready to have their friendship tested with problems, jokes, laughs and fun.

As seasons change

Autumn is fading away and winter is creeping in. The red and orange leaves are falling off the trees and the mikans and kaki (satsumas and sharon fruit) which hang brightly on the trees are slowly being harvest and eaten. At around midnight I popped outside to clear my mind. Carrying plastic bottles and cartoons in a bag as an excuse for a little walk I was un-prepared for the cold which hit me. Windows of cars were matt as the frost was beginning to settle down, the air was ice cold and fresh and my hands cracked around the bags which I used to take my belongings to the recycling bin. Autumn has come and she will slowly make way for winter and as winter dies out I will have to have made up my mind about whether or not I want to stay in Japan. Will I see the route to my school in it’s autumn beauty this time next year or will this be the last time I see the lotus leaves whiter, the trees turn red and over ripe fruit burst on the floor? Is this the last time I will see the sun shine from behind the trees making everything a welcoming, red warm colour, or will I be here next year contemplating my next move?

 Seasons mark a vivid change in the progression of the year and Japan really is the country of four seasons. I arrived in the sweltering heat and adjusted with the cooler days now I happily pass my time in Japan wondering what new food, festivals, adventures and sights my third season here will bring.

Hiroshima

Hiroshima, surviving domeI’ve been trying to start this blog for a while now but just don’t know how to begin writing about a subject which is so disturbing and distressing. Terrifying and horrific, Hiroshima is the symbol of human cruelty, a planned mass killing, long term effects, cover up and the desire for power.

When an atomic bomb hit men, women, children, workers, families, commuters, teachers, soldiers and students on 8.15am on August 6th 1945 no one knew what had happened. A light flashed in the sky and the survivors believed that they had been hit by some form of  disease. Walking around the Peace museum I shuddered at what I saw and could not even begin to imagine how the melting, burnt, walking corpses must have felt. The museum showed us letters about the decision to release ‘little boy’ on Hiroshima. We saw clothes which had been found after the explosion, toys, photos of survivors and parts of buildings with shadows etched into them as men suddenly evaporated. It is such a scary feeling to see that a city and nearly all its inhabitants were wiped out in a single second but it’s even scarier to acknowledge that it could happen again. 

On Saturday morning, the horrific effects of the atomic bomb were rendered more real. Text book language, facts and figures were turned into an eye witness account when we were given the chance to speak to one of these survivors. 8 years old at the time of the blast she recounted how she has seen people so badly burnt that you were unable to tell if they were male or female. She had seen a burnt black figure standing upright with its eyes popped out of its socket and how her brother, badly burnt lay in a bush as maggots grew in his wounds for lack of medicine and treatment. Her mother conducted a daily vigil walking to town to look for her other daughter who was missing but was never found. She also told us how they were able to look as far out to the sea across a land which was once covered with life, house, buildings and movement.

While this story was gruesome enough what struck me the most were the after effects! I had thought a lot about the bomb, the shock, the scariness of it all but never wondered what the survivors did afterwards: they had not known it was a bomb and had no way of knowing. They were unaware that Nagasaki had also been bombed and thought that they had some form if disease. They were suffering in the height of summer, were thirsty and lacked food, medicine and help and when it did come it was too late. The Americans came and occupied the land. A press stop meant that they were not allowed or able to talk about what had happened and so not only did they not understand but the outside world never knew the real effects either. They were not informed about the radiation poisoning until years later and were shunned from Japanese society because they were believed to be contagious, de-formed ill beings. Orphaned children who came back to Hiroshima came back to nothing and no one and were taken in by local gangs who forced them to steal, kill and commit crimes in order to survive. The bomb was never to be talked about and shanty towns were built with pieces of material in the place which is now the Peace memorial Park.

Hiroshima is a shockingly sad story but an eye opening one which must be read about and heard by all. If you can I would say do it soon before the remaining survivors fade away; a real life account far out weighs what you will ever read in books, online or in museums. To speak to someone who has seen so much destruction but has the strength to talk about it, forgive the perpetrators and protest for an anti-nuclear world is truly awe inspiring. The sense and desire for peace reigns heavily in Hiroshima but the number of nuclear warheads, parades and irrationally placed spending on nuclear armoury much outweighs the efforts to prevent such another catastrophe. Nuclear weapons are still being made, still being tested and still being funded. The effects of another nuclear bomb need to be seen and understood and another one will cause much greater damage than the terrible monstrosities which the two have already caused in Japan.  

The desire for military, economical and political power all render our world a volatile and fragile one and thus I have felt the need to recount what I have seen and wish to spread some of this sad story. Hiroshima is a city built on terrible memories that can never be hidden and never should be hidden under concrete and paint and I write this blog this evening, hoping to help in some small way. Please go to Hiroshima and see what destruction man can inflict or please, look online at the horrors which can occur, think about the world and take some time to maybe write a letter or an email of protest and show the leaders that we think that something really should be done to save mankind from another bright light, smoke and bang which would kill and ruin thousands and thousands of lives.

So desu, so nan desu!

Today was judgement day, after all our dancing practises we were finally on stage at the EXPO park showing off our wonderful dancing skills to a very cheesy pop Japanese song!It was an early start for a Saturday and wasn’t welcomed by those who had been heavily drinking at Hard Rock the night before. Mid year seminar had finally come around and we ended it in the usual JET style with a few drinks in a very un-Japanese post. Luckily I got the chance to escape from a round of heavy drinking (although the effects of Happy Hour prices had already taken some effect) as I disappeared to Juso in the North of Osaka to attend a friend’s nabe party.

Nabe is a great way to eat food  it not only warms you on the inside but also on the outside: a perfect combination for a winter’s evening in cold Japan. Nabe is prefect winter food because it is cooked on the table in a pot as a result those around the table can feel the warmth which radiates out from under the fire where the soup like meal is cooking. Nabe can be best described as a stock and once bubbling you add ingredients such as vegetables, meat, seafood, tofu, noddles and boil them together. Once the ingredients are cooked you serve the food into a bowl and can eat away until your stomach desires…..or until the food has run out!

Anyways, back to the dancing. We were scheduled to meet at 8.45am at the station and made our way to the room where we could change, practise, talk and eat. To be honest, our dance was very elementary and our frequency of practising had been very low therefore we were just in it for the laugh but what strikes me the most was how accommodating the Japanese were. They had provided us with beautiful kubatas to wear (a Japanese style gown), drinks, chocolate and lunch boxes. They looked after us and made us feel more than welcome. We were provided with a guide who could speak English and were cheered by many spectators. Lots of people were taking pictures of us at this traditional dancing event and needless to say, we were too! I can only imagine that we must have been the equivalent of seeing a group of Japanese competing at a Morris dancing competition, we didn’t expect to be any good but we had lots of fun! 

After rounds of practising in the morning we finally got to practise live on the small stage. Everything went well and we were all happy, the next task was to speedily walk over to the big stage and do it again. Pepped up, genki and ready we went onto the stage, did our dance and then all got confused half way! The music was different from the one we had been practising to so the middle finished earlier than expected and so did the end! We waddled through the routine and took our bow at the end and ran off the stage to drink the water which the previous team was holding in their hands for us!

Once again, the beauty of the Japanese culture was really seen today. Before the competition the competing teams offered each other presents as a gesture of good will and then let balloons fly into the sky. At the end of the day they Japanese didn’t just run home but everyone immediately turned around and started putting away benches and picking up any rubbish on the floor. Never in a million years could I imagine a crowd of English people staying behind after a concert to help clear up. It’s such a amazing sight and so heart warming! 

My Tokyo weekend

Tokyo: raw chicken, Tokyo Tower, shrines, children in Kimonos, Harajuku girls and shopping parade, Roppongi! Thats a lot for a day and a half and one evening. Tokyo was a lot of fun last weekend. I saw my first drunken Japanese fight too. It was quite funny. Standing on the packed train after dinner on Friday evening, the salraymen were finding it very difficult to keep upright. People were leaning on each other and falling at every small jolt. However, for two drunken strangers this became a bit of a problem. As one drunkenly lent on the other one guy started yelling at him and as the doors opend they both drunkenly jolted out of the carraiage and began hitting each other on the head. To be honest, I have seen more impressive fights between two babies yet the reason for which a great feeling of security prevails throughout Japan was  also shown that night as not more than 3sconds later a policeman came running down the platform and pulled the two suited and booted men apart.

After the sardine train journed Yasuko, her bosses and I took some evening photos or Tokyo before retiring; Yasuko’s bosses to their hotel and us to her friends house, tamoko. A lady who was so swet and spoke such good Italian. She looked after me well and was always smiling. The next day, Saturday morning we went to Tokyo tower which supplied a beautiful view of Tokyo to be followed with a typical Japanese meal of eel and rice. It was really nice and has a sweet and sour taste to it and the waitressed who served us in kimonos were more than nice as we undecisly spoke about what to order in a mix of Italian, Japanese and English. The restaurant was typical Japanese with small curtain to walk under, low  ceiling, sliding doors and wooden benches and tables. The meal was served in a beautiful decorated box and the chopstick holders were beautiful wooden eels.

Our day ended as we parted at Roppngi only to be harased by two men, one witrh a videa and one with a microphone who wanted to recored us for a publicity to be put online. Up for the laugh I said yes and wait to see what will happpen….when I know, I will keep you updated!

A good start to the month

“Lavinia. You are beautiful in the school” haha, not sure exactly what one of the second year students meant but I am happy for the compliment…or maybe he was saying that I am like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: beautiful in school but ugly outside! Hmmm.

I don’t know what the students were on today but nearly everyone of them passed me with a friendly “BYEBYE” (only in Japan can you really appreciate the odd way which they make the common salutation into a high pitched jumping sentence!) and I received my first English letter in my hand made post box. A task which happily kept me occupied for a whole morning.

I also found a lovely package on my desk from my favourite singer Juliet, was invited to “play in the PE room” with the PE teachers whenever I want and then I met two good friends this evening for a warm bowl of ramen. OISHIKATTA DESU!

Things couldnt be better and tomorrow I am returning to Tokyo in order to meet an old friend from Italy and to appreciate this country’s capital without the August heat and jet lag which welcomed me to Japan.