Unlike in England, where we have stupidly decided to have our fireworks season when it is bloody cold and miserable in November, here in Japan (and pretty much every other sensible country), summer is the season for sitting out with friends, and getting pissed under the fireworks. Yesterday was the big display along the banks of the Edo River, one of the biggest in Japan. To be honest, I was a little bit disappointed by the actual display, the firework hearts were nice, as were the Doraemon faces, but I reckon Ravenscourt Park's Guy Fawkes night display was better. The evening though was very nice. There was a really nice breeze along the river so it was nice and cool, unlike the sweaty evenings recently, and despite there being 1.3 million people there, I managed to get to the Portaloos quickly and easily, which is, afterall, the most important thing. Here are some photos from the night - all the photos I took of the fireworks were crap. Very annoyingly.
Tag Archive for 'Chiba'
Today, I went to my school for the last time, to collect the last of my things from my desk, and to check the progress of the speech contest students as they start trying to learn their speeches. I also wanted to take a photo of the Emotion beauty salon on the main street on the way to my school. It's a pretty average beauty salon, mainly used by local, well-off housewives and students at graduation and other important occasions. Walking past this place on the way to work every day for the past year, I have always wondered about the decision making progress that could have lead to the following being chosen as one of the photos used to illustrate the talents of the artists within. Maybe the area is, unbeknownst to me, big with circus performers...incidentally, the other two photos chosen seem to be of continental European lesbians circa 1990, and it gives me great pleasure to know that somewhere in the hinterlands of suburban Chiba, there is a sect of militant Prussian lesbians, shunning the modern world, whose only contact with the rest of us is when forced to work as clowns to earn money to make ends meet...it must be true. Emotion is the proof.
I can't remember quite what I said to my Vice-Principal when he asked me if I was a fast runner, but whatever it was, it can't have been sufficient to persuade him of my complete sporting ineptitude, because when Sports Day rolled around again, my name was in the roster for the teachers and PTA team in the 100m relay.
I enjoyed our Sports Day for once this year. The sun was out, the kids were well behved and the parents were friendly and in good voice. In short, it was a little like something from the Stepford Wives. I did make a massive mistake with my photos though. My camera has a thing on the viewfinder where you can adjust the focus for people with bad eyesight. The problem is, that if you have good eyesight (which I now do with my new specs on), it throws the focusing off completely. I realised at lunchtime, that the tiny dial for this was not quite centred and at f2.2 and above, it meant that about 100 shots were slightly out of focus. Really, really annoying. Oh well, you live and learn and all that.
There was a new (to me) event this year, which, like with so many of the events at a Japanese school sports day, would never, ever be allowed to be done in England for reasons of health and safety, mores the pity. This event, the name of which I forget, involved two teams, each of which had a giant ear-cleaning-bud thing to protect, which they surrounded, so that one end poked out of the centre of a circle of about 20 students. The other team then had to jump onto/through/above these kids and try to grab the ear-cleaning-bud thing and pull it to the ground, (thus also crushing the students around it). It was brilliant. The kids just leapt at eachother, knees into faces and arses on heads. Hilarious. It really should be a part of every school's violence repertoire.
By the time the teachers vs students race came around, it was about 3 in the afternoon and I was knackered after having been responsible for all photo teams and video teams all day. This did mean that my usual lack of speed would be excused somewhat by exhaustion, which was good, although I had a rather nasty feeling that some of the other teachers were actually entertaining the patently insane idea that we might beat the students team, comprising of the fastest kids aged between 12 and 15. It was never, ever going to happen. I ran after the Principal and Vice-Principal, which was basically perfect, as it meant that by the time I got the baton, we were already far too far behind the kids to have any chance of victory. My run was ok-ish, although I had the very peculiar feeling of my feet not quite connecting with the ground, like I was running a few centimeters above it. I have always rather suspected my ability to walk on air and this was a little like confirmation. I also think that my baton exchange with the teacher after me was really rather fine.
It's also interesting that since sports day, my students have all suddenly exhibited a new-found proficiency with English adverbial sentence construction and have seemed desperate to practice it with me:
Student: Hey Olly, nice racing.
Me: Why thank you, young Master Watanabe.
Student: Olly?
Me: Yes?
Student: You run very slowly.
Click for more pictures or click the link for the whole lot.
It's been a bit of a non-entity blog week this week. Eri's been working down in Yokohama every day recently, and if she commutes from her house, it takes about 2 hours each way, so she's been staying at mine where it's only about an hour. The problem is though that she has been working from 9am until 9.30pm so by the time she gets home it's 11 ish and she hasn't eaten, so we don't get to bed until about 12.30, so when I wake up at 6, I've been a little shattered. Basically, it's contributed to me (and, not to be entirely self obsessed, her too) being really tired all the time.
At work at the moment, I have only been teaching the new first year kids. 7 classes and about 35 kids in every class. It's actually quite fun to teach them, as they still have the enthusiasm and innocence of elementary school kids - the system hasn't completely destroyed them yet and, although that process is always a joy to behold, it means that classes can be enjoyable for me, knowing that the kids will try hard and will enjoy all the stoopid games and activities (and indeed plastic vegetables) I can throw at them. It also means that for the 50 minutes when you are teaching them, you can almost forget the exhaustion and total lack of energy that nearly cripples me the rest of the time.
Sadly, this isn't always the case. One of the two first year English teachers has been a second and third year teacher for six years in a row and has been complaining about not being able to teach the first years - generally thought of as the easiest and most rewarding year to teach. The school have given in to her (actually quite reasonable) demands and have given her three of the seven classes. The problem is that she is not an especially good teacher and is determined to teach the students exactly as is prescribed by our (actually-quite-impressively-awful) text book. It's now time for her to teach the alphabet, and amazingly, the textbook seems to have arbitrarily chosen a method to write the alphabet, and has dictated that any other method is wrong. Wrong and EVIL! Here are some examples of things which are officially not allowed in the English-Language-According-To-Mitsumura-Tosho, when writing English (by hand):
- The horizontal bar of an upper case A cannot be half way between the top of the letter and the bottom of the letter. It must be nearer the bottom than the top
- The middle bar of the upper case E must be less wide than the upper and lower bar.
- The lower bar of the upper case F must be less wide than the upper bar.
- The only straight line in an upper case G must be the horizontal line in the middle.
- The upper case J cannot have a horizontal line at the top.
- The two diagonal lines of the upper case K cannot meet in the centre (To do so would be marked incorrect in a test - anywhere in the world). The lower diagonal must start about a third of the way along the upper diagonal.
- The upper case M must have vertical lines at the edges. Slightly diagonal lines will be marked as incorrect.
- The diagonal line of the upper case R must start at the bottom right edge of the loop. It cannot start at the point where the loop meets the vertical line.
- The lower curve of an s (upper or lower case) must be wider than the higher curve.
- Lastly, and most amazingly for me: The lower case t is the same height as the lower case.
Having to listen to this nonsense when fully compus menti is bad enough, but having to listen to it for 45 minutes when exhausted and to see confusion of the students (who have all learned the alphabet before at elementary school), without finding the nearest weapon and going postal is almost impossible. Instead one has to tread carefully, not allow anyone to lose face in public (confucianism, confucianism, confucianism), and to find a way to politely tell your colleague that she is an idiot and that she is poisoning the language of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Rowling in the minds of these young whippersnappers.
It's enough to make you give up and just tell the kids that she is right and that there is not enough logic left in the universe to explain why.
The pictures below illustrate examples of things that were marked as wrong (x) in students' tests. Unbelievable but true. No wonder the kids are confused. Click on the picture to see a "perfect" example:
On the third stair down from the platform at the station yesterday morning, there was a squid. The squid was dead. It had two arms reaching onto the second stair from the top, but the majority of it's body was firmly on the third stair. The other passengers walked past it without really noticing it, or at least, without really paying it any attention. I couldn't believe it! This was a mystery indeed. After extensive research, I have come to the following conclusions: I believe that there are three possible likely reasons for the squid to have been found like this:
- The squid was being carried to a fish restaurant in the station arcade area, and managed to flop out of the box it was being carried in onto the top of the stairs before its need for liquid overcame it. In this light the achievement is quite extraordinary and the squid should be praised for its remarkable, valiant effort.
- The squid was sucked into the air, out at sea by a freak water-based tornado and then unceremoniously dumped onto the ground at the station when the tornado suddenly blew itself out. I don't think that this is a particularly likely reason due to the scarcity of tornados in the area in recent weeks, although if indeed it is the real reason, the squid must be comiserated for its sheer bad luck.
- The squid, a prisoner-of-war at a Octopus internment camp, managed to escape with many of his fellow prisoners-of-war in an intended 250 prisoner-break, and having briefly studied Octopusese, had managed to fool the guards on an Octopus train into believing that he was an Octopus, only to fall prey to the oldest-trick-in-the-book and answers in Squidish when the cunning Octopus officer wishes him luck and then flees only to be gunned down when he reaches between the second and third steps of the station, so nearly out of reach of the Octopi guns, where he is discovered the next day by me. This is clearly the most likely explanation, especially with the infamous Octopi/Squid war that has been raging around us for years now. We can only pray that his sacrifice will inspire other Squid in the years to come.
One of my favourite times of the day is the moment when my morning train ascends from the tunnels under Tokyo and, on a good day, is flooded with sunshine as the train climbs above the roofs of the city's hinterland. The gray concrete slabs of housing estates, box & packing factories, and suburban schools are turned peach pink by the low, early winter sun.
The residents of the 6.52 from Mitaka consist of the usual morning's quarry. At the other end of the bench from me, a couple of kids, who probably met for the first time the night before, lean symbiotically on eachother, sleeping with serious faces. The boy's laces have become entwined with some of the straps on the girl's handbag. The train crosses a bridge. The Pacific is almost visible through the mist of diffused exhaust fumes.
A woman at the end of the carriage is awakened by the enka theme of her phone. She commences a conversation that is slightly too loud for the sanctity of the carriage. She seems confused by the person at the other end of the line. She speaks only in aggressive, bewildered questions. Other passengers look at her, worried that they may have to interact with her in some way. To their relief, she gets off at the next stop, finishing her call as she walks, determined towards her exit. The train goes over another river. The world's most unappealing hotel floats past, sharing a small island with a large industrial plant.
At the top of the carriage, a woman stands, apparently unaware of the embarrassment of free seats around her. She is wearing a black suit and looks effortlessly elegant, bordering on cruel. It is as if she has been mistakenly plucked from a street in Ginza, and as yet has not deigned to notice. She uses her phone and nothing can be heard. The train pulls into Myoden station. Terminal.
The doors open. People begin to get off. The man opposite sleeps on. He has a child-like look of contentment, in his dream the soundtrack should be Louis Armstrong. He is wearing a suit and has clearly slept past his stop. He should never have left the tunnels. There is a slight stain of some kind of condiment on his collar. The man from the Metro jumps onto the train to check for stragglers. He shakes the man's shoulder. "Wake up, wake up, sir", he says, much more softly than I had expected. The man's face changes as he gradually comprehends. It is like watching someone go from the hope of early childhood to the worry of middle age in a couple of seconds. Sorrow touches his face for just a moment before it is replaced by the panic of his situation as he jumps and stumbles from the train in a vain attempt to reach the train now stopping at the opposite platform, to make his way back to the office in time.
Another day starts in Tokyo.
