Last fall sometime some friends and I had decided to help out a friend of ours who owns and runs an organic rice farm. The rice was ready to be harvested, so we joined him and some of his other friends to spend the day cutting, hanging, and drying rice.
So cut to several months later and it's time for us to come full circle and help with planting rice! Nicole had mentioned that it would mostly be us squishing mud through our toes and putting rice plants into some water. I had seen some Japanese Grammas and Grandpas doing some rice planting around town for the past several weeks, so I decided it couldn't possibly be that difficult.
Especially if we had the right hat. As far as I'm concerned, you can't rice farm without a rice farming hat, so we ran to the local hardware store to pick one up.
Cut to the rice patty and there we are and... well... did you know there's a lot of wild life that likes to hang out in shallow, still water? Like, a LOT of wild life. A lot of wild life that I don't like to have near me. And it wasn't until we were already there that the ever present threat of leeches made itself apparent.
"Look, Tetsuya," I told our friend, "I've got a really low leech threshold. A one leech tolerance, if you will." He just laughed. Somehow I imagine he wasn't taking me seriously.
There were also tad poles and weird beetle looking things that carry their eggs on their back (gross) and I distinctly remember stepping barefoot into a patch of grass and then having a sudden horde of spiders attack my foot.
Needless to say there was plenty of squealing from the foreigners. I admit it. I squealed. I was terrified I was going to die and painful death and quite frankly that's not how I want to go.
About 20 minutes later I've finally gotten into the swing of things. I'm up to my knees in mud, have essentially become one with the earth, and I even stopped shooing spiders away since I convinced myself that they keep mosquitoes away, and my hate for mosquitoes > my hate for spiders.
I had been doing pretty well and we'd gotten about half of the field done, when suddenly as I'm returning to grab more baby rice to put in the field, a wild leech had appeared and began attacking my foot. Much screaming and complaining later, I made it evident that that was on my one leech limit and I was done for the day.
...sure there was also a 2 year old baby playing naked and fearless in the rice field, and sure she was clearly more courageous than yours truly, but I like to believe I have more sense.
In either case we topped of the day with some lunch and a trip to the mall, having decided that we're not exactly cut out to be farmers.
No thanks, I'll take my semi-quiet office job. :)
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
So now that I've discussed the Insane Asylum in its entirety, I'd like to turn to things a little bit more positive, my little school by the sea.
This school is maybe about fifteen minutes just outside of Murakami, and it's literally right on the ocean. When you walk into the entrance way, there are big, beautiful bay windows that look directly out onto the ocean and out, several kilometers away, is a small island called Awashima. On a sunny and clear day, the ocean is a stunningly awesome shade of blue, which finally made me understand why the the Japanese differentiate between regular Blue and a color they literally call Water (light blue!).
This school has a total student population of 33 kids. 33! And every time I show up, they're pumped to see me, ready to play some games, and all in all have a good time.
Today the kids practiced Yosakoi, a traditional form of Japanese dance, during afternoon break, and then we rode unicycles around the gym -- or at least we tried to.
Having come here after two days of insanity at my middle school, I feel like I can breathe. I can do the activities I want with the kids, they listen, participate, are great, and remind me that not every day is as crazy as others.
This school is maybe about fifteen minutes just outside of Murakami, and it's literally right on the ocean. When you walk into the entrance way, there are big, beautiful bay windows that look directly out onto the ocean and out, several kilometers away, is a small island called Awashima. On a sunny and clear day, the ocean is a stunningly awesome shade of blue, which finally made me understand why the the Japanese differentiate between regular Blue and a color they literally call Water (light blue!).
This school has a total student population of 33 kids. 33! And every time I show up, they're pumped to see me, ready to play some games, and all in all have a good time.
Today the kids practiced Yosakoi, a traditional form of Japanese dance, during afternoon break, and then we rode unicycles around the gym -- or at least we tried to.
Having come here after two days of insanity at my middle school, I feel like I can breathe. I can do the activities I want with the kids, they listen, participate, are great, and remind me that not every day is as crazy as others.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
By now you know that my middle school, the school I spend most of my time at, is a bit of a nut house. Sometimes I call it a zoo, sometimes I call it the Insane Asylum, and sometimes I can only imagine that all the students here are actually monkeys flinging their pooh at each other for hours on end.
Granted, yes, I have had some good classes here. Some of the kids here are amazingly smart and talented and great.
Others are not.
Several students in particular are doing everything they possibly can to drive me nuts -- i.e. Stealing the head 1st year teacher's chair and then racing it up and down the hall way in the middle of third period while I'm trying to run an activity. Oddly enough, he is pursued by no one. Teachers walk by him in the halls with nothing more than a "You shouldn't be doing that," and it isn't until yours truly steps in and grabs the chair out from under him that the other teachers stop, take notice, and do something.
Cut to fourth period, two students barge into the class and then climb out the window of the second floor to hang off the edge of the class. By this point my mind is unsure what to do, since the teacher doesn't do anything aside from... ask them to stop. As lunch time rolls around I'm wandering through the halls and find that, upon looking out a window, that about six or seven students have climbed up on the roof of the school shed and are playing sumo.
Walking away from lunch I see several students have made a mess in the hallway by throwing water balloons at each other, and one of the kids is cut up and covered in blood from his ascent up to the shed roof.
I stop some bullying in fifth period, throw a student out of class because I can't handle her screaming any more, confiscate some playing cards and a letter, I come real close to confiscating an iPod but the girl was a bit too quick.
But the pièce de résistance, the thing that finally throws me over the edge, is when I go back to my desk and see one of my little Hellions chatting with the teacher that sits next to me. Now behind me, sitting on the desk with other things we used for the field trip last Friday, is a megaphone.
A megaphone.
This Hellion sees the megaphone and picks it up. My "AW HELL NAH" radar starts to ping wildly, but I sit there as he's talking with the head first year teacher who's trying to convince the kid not to take the megaphone. "Surely," I think to myself, "SURELY this man has the foresight to see what's about to happen. Surely."
"No, no, just let me see it!" the kid says. And for a split second, in a moment of weakness, the teacher lets him have the megaphone.
In the blink of an eye the kid has run out of the staff room with one or two teachers trailing behind him and (while I'm making my way to my last class of the day) he begins marching up and down the hall way between 5th and 6th period announcing to everyone "It's 6th period! Let's hurry to class everyone! Let's get going! We've got one more class today!" with the teachers pleading desperately with him to stop as he evades their capture up and down the hallway.
At this point, I lose it. I can no longer contain my "This is serious and I disapprove" face and I simply burst out laughing, and I continue laughing for the next five minutes as I walk with an English teacher to class. I can't do it anymore. I just can't take anything here seriously anymore.
This is an insane zoo that I work in, and the only thing that's surprising is that every day that I come here I still managed to be surprised. And then when I tell people these stories, I'm surprised at their reaction because this has become my norm. I am accomplishing complete cognitive dissonance in feeling that this must be what working in every school is like. Right?
So my English teacher takes one look at me as if to say "Bryan, you're not supposed to think this is funny!" and as I continue laughing, he asks if I've had a rough day.
I have.
And then I taught him the word "conniption."
As in "I have completely lost it and am having a ____."
Granted, yes, I have had some good classes here. Some of the kids here are amazingly smart and talented and great.
Others are not.
Several students in particular are doing everything they possibly can to drive me nuts -- i.e. Stealing the head 1st year teacher's chair and then racing it up and down the hall way in the middle of third period while I'm trying to run an activity. Oddly enough, he is pursued by no one. Teachers walk by him in the halls with nothing more than a "You shouldn't be doing that," and it isn't until yours truly steps in and grabs the chair out from under him that the other teachers stop, take notice, and do something.
Cut to fourth period, two students barge into the class and then climb out the window of the second floor to hang off the edge of the class. By this point my mind is unsure what to do, since the teacher doesn't do anything aside from... ask them to stop. As lunch time rolls around I'm wandering through the halls and find that, upon looking out a window, that about six or seven students have climbed up on the roof of the school shed and are playing sumo.
Walking away from lunch I see several students have made a mess in the hallway by throwing water balloons at each other, and one of the kids is cut up and covered in blood from his ascent up to the shed roof.
I stop some bullying in fifth period, throw a student out of class because I can't handle her screaming any more, confiscate some playing cards and a letter, I come real close to confiscating an iPod but the girl was a bit too quick.
But the pièce de résistance, the thing that finally throws me over the edge, is when I go back to my desk and see one of my little Hellions chatting with the teacher that sits next to me. Now behind me, sitting on the desk with other things we used for the field trip last Friday, is a megaphone.
A megaphone.
This Hellion sees the megaphone and picks it up. My "AW HELL NAH" radar starts to ping wildly, but I sit there as he's talking with the head first year teacher who's trying to convince the kid not to take the megaphone. "Surely," I think to myself, "SURELY this man has the foresight to see what's about to happen. Surely."
"No, no, just let me see it!" the kid says. And for a split second, in a moment of weakness, the teacher lets him have the megaphone.
In the blink of an eye the kid has run out of the staff room with one or two teachers trailing behind him and (while I'm making my way to my last class of the day) he begins marching up and down the hall way between 5th and 6th period announcing to everyone "It's 6th period! Let's hurry to class everyone! Let's get going! We've got one more class today!" with the teachers pleading desperately with him to stop as he evades their capture up and down the hallway.
At this point, I lose it. I can no longer contain my "This is serious and I disapprove" face and I simply burst out laughing, and I continue laughing for the next five minutes as I walk with an English teacher to class. I can't do it anymore. I just can't take anything here seriously anymore.
This is an insane zoo that I work in, and the only thing that's surprising is that every day that I come here I still managed to be surprised. And then when I tell people these stories, I'm surprised at their reaction because this has become my norm. I am accomplishing complete cognitive dissonance in feeling that this must be what working in every school is like. Right?
So my English teacher takes one look at me as if to say "Bryan, you're not supposed to think this is funny!" and as I continue laughing, he asks if I've had a rough day.
I have.
And then I taught him the word "conniption."
As in "I have completely lost it and am having a ____."
Monday, May 2, 2011
Disclaimer: This is going to be a highly opinionated entry. Feel free to opine in the comments, as I welcome open debate and believe that peaceful discussion is a great way to exchange ideas. But if you get your underwear all knotted up because of something I say, deal with it.
So, Bin Laden is dead.
I can't help but wonder, if we were to go back to 9 years ago and ask the majority of Americans what they'd be willing to give up in exchange for the death of a terrorist, what do you think they would say?
If we had to spend one million bucks to get a hold of Bin Laden, would you be willing to pay it? How about a billion? One hundred billion? How about 3 trillion dollars? How about the invasion of two countries over the course of nearly a decade resulting in the longest war in US history? How about the death of 5885 of our troops and tens of thousands of Afghanis and Iraqis?
What about the eroding of American freedoms with the passage of the Patriot Act (which 78% of the time is used for conducting drugs raids and not counter-terrorism), the searches conducted by the TSA which have never resulted in the capture of a terrorist but instead have led to children getting stripped in public and pregnant women and the elderly being nearly molested.
How about all this while we have a hurricane that destroys the southern states and an oil spill that contaminates its waters. Don't forget the bank bailout that resulted in golden parachute bonuses for CEOs and 10% unemployment for everyone else.
All that to fight a War On Terror -- a war on an idea. Not on a country or a an army or a group of people, we were trying to crush an idea which we already learned we couldn't do sometime between 1955 and 1975.
What if instead, assuming that the average cost of tuition in America is $30,000 for four years, we had sent 100,000,000 Americans to college for free? Or built a train system? Or built levees in New Orleans? Or insured every American in the country? Or given teachers a raise? Or caught up to every other 'first world' country in the world and lawfully required that every American get 4 weeks paid vacation per work year?
So when I look at all the celebrating taking place because we caught some terrorist that after a decade of war probably doesn't really matter any more, when I look at the lives lost on both sides and the alternatives we could have pursued, I can't help but think about what it feels like to me that America actually accomplished without a bitterness towards the futility of the past decade.
Hurray. We got Osama, who I will agree was essentially evil incarnate. But I can't help but feel we've lost way more than we bargained for to get here after all this time.
So, Bin Laden is dead.
I can't help but wonder, if we were to go back to 9 years ago and ask the majority of Americans what they'd be willing to give up in exchange for the death of a terrorist, what do you think they would say?
If we had to spend one million bucks to get a hold of Bin Laden, would you be willing to pay it? How about a billion? One hundred billion? How about 3 trillion dollars? How about the invasion of two countries over the course of nearly a decade resulting in the longest war in US history? How about the death of 5885 of our troops and tens of thousands of Afghanis and Iraqis?
What about the eroding of American freedoms with the passage of the Patriot Act (which 78% of the time is used for conducting drugs raids and not counter-terrorism), the searches conducted by the TSA which have never resulted in the capture of a terrorist but instead have led to children getting stripped in public and pregnant women and the elderly being nearly molested.
How about all this while we have a hurricane that destroys the southern states and an oil spill that contaminates its waters. Don't forget the bank bailout that resulted in golden parachute bonuses for CEOs and 10% unemployment for everyone else.
All that to fight a War On Terror -- a war on an idea. Not on a country or a an army or a group of people, we were trying to crush an idea which we already learned we couldn't do sometime between 1955 and 1975.
What if instead, assuming that the average cost of tuition in America is $30,000 for four years, we had sent 100,000,000 Americans to college for free? Or built a train system? Or built levees in New Orleans? Or insured every American in the country? Or given teachers a raise? Or caught up to every other 'first world' country in the world and lawfully required that every American get 4 weeks paid vacation per work year?
So when I look at all the celebrating taking place because we caught some terrorist that after a decade of war probably doesn't really matter any more, when I look at the lives lost on both sides and the alternatives we could have pursued, I can't help but think about what it feels like to me that America actually accomplished without a bitterness towards the futility of the past decade.
Hurray. We got Osama, who I will agree was essentially evil incarnate. But I can't help but feel we've lost way more than we bargained for to get here after all this time.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
When you’ve gone your whole life with the school year starting in August and ending in June, it’s insanely difficult to wrap your brain around one that starts in April and ends in March. Where’s the vacation? Where’s spring break? Where’s Christmas break?
The answer to that last one is that it’s non-existent.
Graduation is in March, Reverse-Graduation (the opening ceremony for the new junior high students which is JUST as formal an affair as the graduation ceremony) in is April, and then there’s a lot of coming to school for three hours to play sports without any actually classes going on all day.
But that doesn’t mean that the teachers here aren’t busy. My god, the lot of them are sometimes running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Doing what, of course, is a complete mystery to me, but while I sit here with absolutely nothing to do and not-so-discreetly surfing the web, the teachers are unfortunately nearly falling over themselves with stress.
I’ve been keeping myself amused by annoying the kids during their club activities. Mostly all the students here are involved in some sort of club, whether its Judo or Kendo or Soccer or Basketball. They even have a Cooking club.
After one too many days of mind numbing boredom, I decided that every day I was going to visit and talk to the kids in all the different clubs and what resulted was actually kind of awesome.
I was both inducted into and kicked out of the tennis club within the same week. The kids were, at first, super pumped for me to be there to hit the ball with them, but then they realized how much I sucked and promptly decided that I was not a new member of the tennis team.
The badminton team, I am convinced, only knows the words “Enjoy” and “Yes” because every time they see me, they call me over and say “Yes! Enjoy! Enjoy! …Yes!”, then promptly hand me a racket and have me play. Thankfully they know I suck, and they don’t really care. They just want me to… enjoy.
The basketball team is insane. I don’t even attempt to join in there because when they’re all playing it’s some sort of unstoppable force of terror because they’re so damn good. Most of them are a good foot shorter than I am, and I’m completely terrified of them mostly because when I watch them I imagine it’s what watching the Aztecs playing that game where if you lose you get decapitated is like. So I just stand back and smile, and they smile back and are happy to see me.
The Brass Band is never happy to see me. Every time I walk in they ask me “WHY are you HERE” and cease playing. I understand though, it can be embarrassing to have someone hovering over you while you’re practicing the French Horn, but as soon as I started chatting up the kids about how the HECK you play the trombone and sat down at the drums to show them my mad awesome skills, they started warming up to me.
The soccer club hates me. But this is because they keep asking me to play with them and I keep telling them I suck. “No, I’m not being modest,” I want them to understand. “I SUCK.” After a few times of this though, I decided that the next time they ask, I will play with them after all and then we’ll see if they want me to play again.
I like cheering on the Track and Field as they run laps, mostly because all it requires of me is standing there and they’re too exhausted to have a conversation. I just tell them they’re doing a great job.
The cooking club made me crepes. Filled with bananas, cream, and chocolate. They are also awesome and there’s lots of laughing involved in what they do.
The volleyball girls want nothing to do with me, which is fine, the volleyball boys let me play and thankfully I’m not too “hetakuso” at volleyball.
So that’s how I spent the last few weeks. Wandering around, asking kids how long they’ve been playing sports, what position they play, and attempting to play sports I haven’t played in years.
But it’s fun! There’s a lot of laughter and I get to get the kids to speak English to me, which is fun, and it’s a lovely alternative to spending 8 hours in the staff room trying not to slip into a coma. It turns out there’s only so much internet to surf.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
You see, my friend Nicole has this Sensei that she sits next to in her staff room who, from the stories I hear, is a very generous man. Apparently he has seven boxes of assorted snacks hidden under his desk, and at the most opportune times will bestow snacks upon the nearest and luckiest. After quite some time of receiving snacks from this particular sensei, he was thereby dubbed Snack-Sensei.
We all have different Sensei’s that we work with. Snack-Sensei. Crazy-Sensei. Always Sleeping-Sensei. Suddenly Busts Out Random And Fluent English-Sensei. And this led me to begin thinking… what Sensei do I want to become.
I like the idea of Snack-Sensei, but Snack-Sensei is already taken. Plus it involves investing in assorted snacks and figuring out the most opportune time to hand them out. Then I thought I’d be Party Hat-Sensei, wearing Party Hats and blowing noise makers for my birthday which conveniently comes once a month (I turned 30 today!). Nicole had the idea of becoming Answering The School Phone-Sensei which we all thought would be particularly hilarious given our general inability to understand Japanese whatsoever. I thought I’d become Question-Sensei, and just start asking random questions to every other Sensei who is unlucky enough to be within speaking distance. But finally I came up with the type of Sensei I want to be.
Stands Around With Tea In Mug While Asking Random Questions-Sensei.
I want to stand around the staff room, sipping my tea between classes. And just when things get quiet BOOM there I am with a sudden, “Honbo-Sensei. Do you like cats?” No, I’ve never said a word to Honbo-Sensei, and no I don’t know anything about her aside from the fact that her last name is Honbo, but I don’t really care if you’re married or have kids. Everyone gets married and has kids. But do you like cats? You can tell a lot from a person if they like cats.
“When you were in school did you prefer math or science?”
“Do you feel there’s a population crisis in Japan?”
“Would you never eat fish again if you could receive one million dollars?”
“Do you feel there’s a population crisis in Japan?”
“Would you never eat fish again if you could receive one million dollars?”
And I would always follow it up with “Ah sou desu ka?” (Oh is that so?), a nod, a swirl and sip of my tea, and then I’d return to my desk to sit.
This is the Sensei I want to become. Random Question-Sensei, because frankly what’s better than a random foreigner coming up to you and asking how you feel about cats?
Monday, January 3, 2011
Having now successfully navigated over 24 years of living on this earth, and having just returned from a week long extravaganza in which most of Southern California was the star, it's time to buckle down and dedicate myself to my own general improvement. Hence, I offer you my New Year's resolutions.
First, obviously, I will better my own physique in order to maintain a general state of attractiveness to my own sex. Snowboarding should manage to accomplish this just fine although myself wonderfully impeded by the fact that my car battery managed to commit seppuku while I was away in America. After spending a hearty half hour gathering my things into my car so I could head off to the mountains, Gladys (my car) decided she wanted some more vacation time. After calling the dealership they said my options were call the Japanese AAA and pay $130 to get them to help me out, or they'll help me at some point in time tomorrow.
Okay, fine then. Tomorrow. I will continue to better my own physique starting tomorrow.
Resolution number two: Maintain a healthy aura of peace at all times. Most of you know working at my middle school normally leads to me wanting, much like my car, to commit seppuku by the end of the work week. Having decided that this is, perhaps, not the most healthy mindset, this year I will work on keeping my soul still while in the midst of of chaos-- much like the eye of a hurricane. Or a beekeeper in one of those suits. Maybe if I invest in some insecticide I'll get my kids to mellow out.
In the mean time I am currently trapped in my apartment due to the lack of car, so most of today will be spent watching Bridget Jones, sending Bridget Jones quotes to my twitter, quoting Bridget Jones to myself while cleaning the apartment, and making an amazing meal of eggs and sausage a la frying pan.
Of course. Of course the snow has come and the universe does not want me to enjoy it.
First, obviously, I will better my own physique in order to maintain a general state of attractiveness to my own sex. Snowboarding should manage to accomplish this just fine although myself wonderfully impeded by the fact that my car battery managed to commit seppuku while I was away in America. After spending a hearty half hour gathering my things into my car so I could head off to the mountains, Gladys (my car) decided she wanted some more vacation time. After calling the dealership they said my options were call the Japanese AAA and pay $130 to get them to help me out, or they'll help me at some point in time tomorrow.
Okay, fine then. Tomorrow. I will continue to better my own physique starting tomorrow.
Resolution number two: Maintain a healthy aura of peace at all times. Most of you know working at my middle school normally leads to me wanting, much like my car, to commit seppuku by the end of the work week. Having decided that this is, perhaps, not the most healthy mindset, this year I will work on keeping my soul still while in the midst of of chaos-- much like the eye of a hurricane. Or a beekeeper in one of those suits. Maybe if I invest in some insecticide I'll get my kids to mellow out.
In the mean time I am currently trapped in my apartment due to the lack of car, so most of today will be spent watching Bridget Jones, sending Bridget Jones quotes to my twitter, quoting Bridget Jones to myself while cleaning the apartment, and making an amazing meal of eggs and sausage a la frying pan.
Of course. Of course the snow has come and the universe does not want me to enjoy it.
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