Just another week in Japan

How and why, oh why do I get so far behind?? To be fair, it’s been a very busy week. The English competition for my area is on October 31^st, and I’ve been staying after school EVERY day to help the students practice. For example, on Thursday I was at work from 8:30-5:45 then had my night class from 7-8:30. Ugh. It has NOT been a fun week, and I’m extremely ready for this competition to be over!

Not a lot of exciting things happen during the week. Now that I’m settled into the routine, things aren’t as new and exciting. One thing that was different was that on Monday we had an earthquake drill at school. This was a little unlike the earthquake drills in Kentucky. My English teacher told me about it and said that I could come with her and grab a book. The book was used to protect the head from falling objects in the event of a real earthquake. However, most books here are paperback, so I’m not really sure that the paperback book would really help in the event of a real earthquake. We had to go to the nurse’s room and make sure that there were no students in there. After that, we stood by the stairway to direct students out of the building. Everyone had to go out onto the sports field and line up. Since it was practice for a real emergency, no one changed from their indoor to outdoor shoes, which is very weird. It was awkward to be out on the field in my slippers. Since it’s Japan, of course speeches had to be made. First, one teacher made a speech about…..something. Then the principal and another teacher. I’m assuming that it was about earthquake readiness. I thought I heard “Tohoku” in the speeches, which is the area where the big earthquake in Japan was.

On Tuesdays, I always go to my BOE and nursery schools in the morning. While I was at the BOE, my co-worker with the best English approached me and started asking about beer. I wasn’t sure what she was saying, but then she asked about a gift on October 5^th. Immediately, it dawned on me. In a previous blog, I said how one night whenever we came home, there was a bag of goodies on our doorstep. There was beer, Coke, snacks, a newspaper, and a note written in kanji. We had someone translate the letter for us, and he said that it said thank you a lot, and it was from the people at the barbershop near the school. This completely confused me, but whatever. HOWEVER, my co-worker was telling me that it was a mistake. We weren’t supposed to get that. It was for a neighbor. I thought that everyone knew which house was the foreigner’s, but apparently not! Anyway, my co-worker asked for the beer back (in an extremely Japanese way) and I assume gave it back to whoever left it there. I had to go to my nursery schools, stop by my house, briefly tell Ian the funny story, grab the beer, and bring it back to the BOE. When I walked in, the none of the co-workers that were there at the time were currently there, so my supervisor gave me an extremely awkward look when I showed up with a six pack cradled in my arm, lol. I had a really fun time trying to explain that! Oh, Japan and your language that I can’t speak!

Wednesdays are my elementary days. It’s very weird how I used to dread Wednesdays, (because I NEVER know what’s going to happen at the elementary school) but now it’s my favorite day of the week. I love those kids! I had to teach 1^st grade, and I hadn’t taught it yet. I didn’t get a chance to talk to the 1^st grade teacher last week since I had to go to my health check-up, so honestly, I had NO idea what was going on for class. I had packed my scrapbook just in case there was a *surprise!* “introduce yourself” lesson. As it turns out, I did have to give an “introduce yourself” lesson. I showed my scrapbook, and it all worked out. After that, the teacher had all of the students go around the classroom and say “My name is _________.” It was adorable. However, after that, the teacher told me to teach about Halloween. I had absolutely NOTHING about Halloween on me. It was ridiculous. Trying to explain ANYTHING in ENGLISH to 1^st graders is not easy. Finally, I gave up and started drawing pictures of bats, cats, witches, etc on the board. I made up a symbol for each. For example, a bat was flapping your arms like a bird. The kids seemed to have fun for that, so it’s whatever. When life gives you lemons…..

I ate lunch with the 1^st graders on Wednesday, and I felt like a big, fat American. I had to sit at a 1^st grader desk. I couldn’t even get my own legs under the desk, and I was sitting in tiny, little seats, so I had to sit turned to the side. It was ridiculous. I love to see “Engrish” shirts here. “Engrish” is really, really bad English. A lot of things here are printed in “Engrish” and just don’t make sense. One of the 1^st grade boys had on an “Engrish” shirt. It had a picture of a huge excavator on it, and said “EXCAVATOR” in big, manly letters. Below that was very feminine writing that said “chicka-chicka, bam-bam”. During lunch, I taught the rock on horns. They had no idea what they were doing, and it was adorable. At recess, I played tag with some girls. Since I’m constantly either it or being chased to be it, I run at full speed a lot. I learned the other day that there are no “time outs” in Japan. Even whenever I took a potty break, the girls waited for me right outside the bathroom to tag me. They also cheated. I’d tag them, and then they’d claim that I didn’t tag them. Little did they know that I could cheat just as easily as them. I continued to play after we were inside. During cleaning time, I snuck up on them and tagged them and ran out of the room before they could realize what had happened.

Wednesday night, we had singing practice in Hitoyoshi again. The group is mostly older people. They asked us to introduce ourselves again, so we wrote our names on the board and what town each of us lived in. When Ian and I introduced ourselves, I said that I was the Yunomae ALT, and Ian was my husband. Everyone started clapping for us, lol. Overwhelmingly, most ALTs are single. In Japanese culture, if you aren’t married by 25, it’s a no-no. Therefore, they were very excited that we were already married! They also asked about our middle names. The Japanese don’t do middle names, so they were curious how we got them. I told them that my middle name is my mother’s middle name. They also asked me about my maiden name and what American women do about that. I said that I changed my name, and then we explained that some women choose to hyphenate their names. I love internationalizing like that. I love sharing our culture and traditions and hearing about theirs. Really, it’s a win-win for both sides.