This Is The Hour

Ok, everything worked out, had good Christmas classes where we watched The Snowman and the Garfield Christmas Special.  Exchanged gifts with that JHS girl who I'm ridiculously not objective about (love her!) and addresses so we can also send each other New Year's cards at her insistence.  Leaving the island soon, looking forward to the cat cafe!
To end this entry on a somewhat high note, here, have a quiche recipe from Orange Page. It's delicious.



Spinach, Ham, and Cheese Quiche

One piece=286 calories

Ingredients

Frozen Pie Sheet 18cmX18cm or 150g

Spinach    100g

Ham 5 sheets (seriously, it's what the recipe said)

Cheese 70g

Filling

Eggs 3

Cream    1/2 cup

Milk    1/4 cup

Salt    1/4 tsp

A dash of pepper

1. Set the pie sheet out to thaw. Add salt to the spinach, boil briefly until just cooked, and then douse in cold water to keep the bright green color. Cut off the ends of the stems and then cut the rest of the spinach into 5cm long bits. Cut the ham and cheese into 1cm squares. Mix the filling together in a bowl and add the spinach, ham, and cheese. Mix well. Preheat the oven to 200 °C
2. Put the pie sheet in the pie pan and smoosh it around until it fits. If you want to make your own healthy pie crust here is orangepeeleater's recipe; 2-2 1/2 cups flour, 2/3 cup oil, 1/3 cup milk. Also, a little bit of salt so it doesn't taste like flour. Mix and mold together but keep in mind that once you roll it out once, that's it. It isn't like cookie dough that you can moosh together over and over again.
3. Pour the spinach/ham/cheese/egg mixture into the pie sheet and bake for 30-40 minutes or until lightly browned. If your oven is evil like mine and burns the living crap out of exactly half of whatever you put in there, then put tin foil over the quiche until the last 5-10 minutes, then regularly turn the quiche to get it nicely browned. When cooked, remove and let cool, and then slice into 6 portions.

Black or White

Japan is a land of contradictions. On the one hand, it is made up of very subtly shaded gray areas, but on the other hand there is black and white with no gradation whatsoever. Honne versus tatemae, uchi versus soto, Nihon versus gaikoku, etc. This black and white "us vs. everyone else" ideology can lead to some pretty shocking attitudes from the last people you'd expect to hear broadcasting wholesale ignorance or outright racism. Here are three episodes from only the past week.

On Tuesday I was at a certain elementary school. As ALTs who go to elementary schools have probably noticed, it's "let's studying multiplication" time for the ES second grade students all across Japan. Second graders across the country recite their multiplication tables, forwards and backwards, for teachers so that the teachers will sign off on their little progress card. Well, on Tuesday one of the little boys had just recited for the vice principal (he didn't get a signature, though; he was using his fingers to count while reciting) and the fourth grade teacher came up to me and asked in a very loud voice "do you have multiplication in foreign countries??" I was shocked! An educator, a young woman (late 20s, early 30s) who is responsible for education youth, apparently thought that only Japan studied multiplication! After giving her a bit of a look and replying that yes, of course we have multiplication in other countries, she then proclaimed "oh, but only Japan studies with multiplication tables, of course." I have to admit, it was a little enjoyable to sketch the multiplication tables that I learned with which didn't go to 9, like Japanese tables, but all the way up to 12. She then made a huge, theatrical deal about how amazing it is that other countries study just like Japan, and that was the end of that. Or so I thought!

The next day I was at a completely different school halfway across the island from the Tuesday school. It was the lunch break, and I had my iPod out because I was writing a parody of Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Heaven on Their Minds" from Jesus Christ Superstar and I needed to listen to the lyrics to get the meter right. Well, a teacher came up to me, did a double take, and then innocently asked me "oh, you also have iPods in America?" Also? Also? The iPod was invented in America, Apple is an American company, Steve Jobs is American, this is a huge industry, and you think that it originated in Japan? I have to admit, my jaw dropped. This is a woman who has lived abroad. She's in her early 30s. She was a member of my English Conversation class for awhile. I was stunned to hear that from her of all people.

Thursday was the last episode. This didn't happen in a school; it happened in my coworker's adult eikaiwa class. The class had just finished reading a selection about how important time-saving is in the US. Half of the selection talked about how supermarkets began so that people could do all of their shopping in one place without having to go to the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker separately. The second half talked about fast food, where you can order, receive, and eat your meal in 20 minutes or less. After finishing reading, a young woman raised her hand and asked "Can Americans cook?" I nearly threw something. This woman is a pharmacist at the local hospital, she speaks English, she is educated and has been to college, and yet her reaction to an article in a textbook that mentions fast food for one paragraph is to posit that the entire population of the USA can't cook. As if Japanese people can't cook because the instant cup noodle was invented here. Luckily I wasn't the only one flabbergasted as a number of the other class members immediately jumped in to say that yes, of course Americans can cook, and that the article was probably talking about people on their lunch breaks which only last 45 minutes or less at most companies.

All three of these people are young, connected, and educated. Two of them are responsible for educating impressionable young children. Yet from these three people have come some of the most ignorant and even racist statements I have ever heard. I would never even consider asking a Russian, Arabian, or German person if they have multiplication. I might not know every brand, but I know that Volkswagon and Toshiba aren't American. One thing I've thought of is whether or not there's a Japanese equivalent to the well-known English expression "think before you speak." I would really like to think that my coworkers are not as unaware as they sometimes come off. It would be so much more palatable to believe that they weren't taught that basic concept of thinking before you speak because your first thought is probably really dumb. In any case, it makes me miss the US where at least racism is viewed as negative and ignorance is something to attempt to eradicate.

Feel Good Inc.

It's coming up on hibernation time here in Japan. As the days and nights get colder it gets more and more difficult to leave warm covers in the morning. Returning from work means a beeline to the kotatsu, and kotatsu's seem to be specifically designed to entrap you and keep you from leaving their delicious warmth. Basically, being at all active is about ten times more difficult than normal. Add in the seasonal movement to delicious nabe, or Japanese stew, and you'll never leave your house.

Now, I've been taking a bit of a vacation from being healthy. I entered a marathon in June, went home, started treating my anxiety, and decided to just relax. Well, I'm done with that now. Back to the gym, back to cooking, and back to discovering new, healthy, easy to cook Japanese recipes! You see, I make my own lunches instead of eating kyuushoku. Since I work at a mix of elementary schools and junior high schools I spent my first year and a half here being forced to eat much more than I wanted to since I was eating lunch with the kids and most of my schools didn't let anyone leave any leftovers. I've gotten some bento (lunch box) specific cookbooks, but there's one major problem with them; I'm pretty sure they're aimed at the stay-at-home mom that is still so prevalent in Japan. I made a couple of the recipes in there and each took about two hours to make. Now, that's all fine and dandy if you're a stay at home parent, but I have work, I have eikaiwa, I go to the gym, basically I've got other stuff to do. So I've been focusing on a publication called Orange Page. I love Orange Page. For a long time I thought that it was only a cookbook, but it turns out it's actually a monthly magazine! Score! So I will share with all of you lovely people the Soybean Chili Con Carne from the November issue of Orange Page, translated into English. I made it this morning and it only took 30 minutes!

Soybean Chili Con Carne from Orange Page's November Issue

Serves 2    471 Calories

Ingredients

Minced beef 50g　(合いびき肉)
small onion 1/2
soybeans 1/2 cup　（大豆の水煮）
garlic 1 clove
penne pasta 150 g
olive oil 1/2 Tbsp
parsley for garnish

Sauce
tomato ketchup 2 1/2 tbsp
Worcestershire Sauce 1 tbsp　（ウスターソース）
miso 1/2 tsp
spicy dried red pepper 1/3 tsp　（唐辛子）

1) Finely chop the onion and garlic.  Boil the penne according to the directions on the bag it came in.
2) Heat the olive oil and garlic in a frying pan over low heat until the garlic becomes fragrant.  Increase heat and add the minced meat, onion, and soybeans.  Once the meat is cooked through add the sauce and continue cooking, stirring often.
3) Add a little of the water the penne was boiled in, and add the rest of the drained penne to the frying pan.  Stir until the penne is well and evenly coated.  Serve with parsley garnish.

I highly recommend it. It's very filling and easy to make. I'm going to try adding carrots and mushrooms next time to flesh out the flavors, but yes, definitely a quick and easy delicious recipe. I love Orange Page!

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

I come from a family of strong women. When I was younger I took it for granted. My mom and grandmother would get me books about being empowered as a woman and I was insulted! "I'm strong as a person, not because of or in spite of the fact that I'm female," I thought. I resented those books that told me about a reality where being a woman set you at a disadvantage. I hated being told that it was a great triumph to be strong as a woman instead of a given, because it sent the implied message that the base state of female is weak. I refused to read the books.

I was able to keep my illusions through high school. I saw my mom continuing to be strong and never settling for second best. There were strong women in my high school, and I took leadership roles in orchestra, marching band, and the drama club. I never thought that my femaleness was a barrier to overcome. My love to read which marked me as a total geek was more of a hurdle than my ovaries. I followed my mom's example and refused to accept second best. Every book I read had the brown-haired girl who liked to read painted as the eternal mouse who never spoke up, never went out, and never did anything big. My immediate, visceral response to that stereotype? Screw that!

Cracks started to show in college. I began to get my first taste of the institutional prejudices that live in society. I saw the effects of rape culture where victim blaming is the norm, and I am ashamed to say that I also, in my ignorance, victim blamed. I remember talking to friends about how women at parties need to be more vigilant, not drink too much, look out for each other, always walk in groups, and so on and so forth. I didn't hear the underlying message that I was sending, that if something happened then it was the victim's fault for not protecting herself well enough instead of the attacker's fault for not taking no for an answer, not attacking somebody walking home with only a couple of friends, or not taking advantage of someone who is impaired. Nothing happened to me, but I saw and heard about it happening to other people, and I regret that I contributed to the hostile atmosphere even if it was only in private conversations with friends.

Being in Japan has given me a lot of time to learn and to re-evaluate my own innate prejudices. The fact of the matter is Japan is a much more misogynistic country than the US. This is a country where women are officially hired into banks to eventually marry the male employees. Women who don't follow the social script and marry soon enough don't get promoted; they get transferred to the butt end of nowhere in an attempt to force them to quit and open up a position for a younger, more marriageable lady. Sexual harassment and double-standards are alive and well. Women in higher level positions are few and far between. For example, at my BOE there are 18 employees; two are women, and one of those women is temporary. This isn't even touching on the inherent racism throughout Japanese society. Yeah, I love my students, I love my island, and I love the ALT community, but there are very good reasons for why I'm not staying for a fourth year.

I'd say that the most important thing I've become aware of is the variety of derailing techniques used when talking about these inflammatory subjects. The tone argument, where people say that they aren't going to listen to the argument you're making because you aren't being nice enough, polite enough, or understanding enough. On the surface it makes sense, but if you look at it more deeply it fails. Why is it another person's responsibility to make you feel better about being racist, sexist, or misogynistic? The forced equalization attack is one that comes up a lot. "You talk about sexism in Japan, but what about in Western countries? We can't have a dialogue about sexism in Japan until there's zero sexism in Western countries, otherwise you're just an anti-Japan bigot!" Well, by that logic, we can't talk about any problem anywhere until the problem is eradicated somewhere else first, and it's nearly impossible to eradicate a problem if you can't even mention that there is a problem. What a catch -22! Finally, the Anecdotal Offensive. "You have made a statement, but that statement does not apply to my exact circumstances!" No matter how many people come forward to offer their own supporting anecdotal evidence this derailing tactic stays strong. It distracts from the focus of whatever issue is being discussed and gives people the excuse to stick their fingers in their ears and go "la la la la I'm not listening."

These things drive me crazy, but thanks to the example my mom gave and continues to give me every day I won't give up. I still believe the same thing I believed in elementary school; I am a person first. Maybe the world doesn't agree with me yet, but that doesn't mean I can't change it.

In Your Eyes

Ok, this is going to be about perspective, and it's probably going to get me a ton of hate comments or something, but I've just got to say it. I hate Red String. I hate it with a passion. I read a lot of webcomics, and I have for years. My first foray into webcomics was Sluggy Freelance which still has a fond place in my heart even if the plot moves slower than molasses on a glacier and I haven't checked it in months. I like webcomics because they're free, they're ubiquitous, and as a rule they can be much more creative than printed comics. Of course, this means that there are a lot of unbalanced comics out there. Comics with great plot and characters but horrible art. Good art but horrible writing. Terrible writing, terrible art, and an incredible fan following for some reason (I'm looking at you, XKCD). Now, if I was just reviewing Red String for its writing and art it would fail right there, of course. Red String dialogue is stilted and unnatural. Multiple panels in any given update are wasted on pointless reaction shots that only serve to take up space. It's like a laugh track for a comic! Look, they're laughing, this means something funny or awkward happened! The timing is awkward where cliffhangers are abrupt scene changes that don't invite curiosity so much as they read like the author ran into a wall and shouted "look over there at that other thing while I figure this out!" There are way too many storylines running in any given chapter meaning hardly any plot movement happens and the focus is weak. The art, well, ugh. Let's just say that apparently everyone in Japan walks around looking sheepish with their hands welded to the back of their necks. Proportions are kind of screwed up (gigantic chins!) and poses are awkward, but most of my issues with the art beyond that are how badly the art connects with the dialogue. Facial expressions very rarely seem to be at all related to whatever the character is supposed to be feeling.

What really drives me nuts about Red String, besides all of the above, is the picture it paints of Japan and how it glorifies Nice Guys™. It's hard to explain. Red String paints a picture where arranged marriages happen like clockwork between high school students and being out as a lesbian is easier than being overweight. While arranged marriages do still happen in Japan, they pretty much exclusively happen between consenting adults going through a matchmaking agency. Gay people may not be as actively persecuted here, but it's not nearly as easy as the Red String universe portrays. In Japan you are pretty much forced into the closet. Don't talk about it, don't show it to us. I am terrified for the students who don't appear to be fitting into the accepted gender norms. Some of them are starting to act out and be violent. Some of them are shutting down and going completely internal. The sunniest one, who is still in elementary school, will be going to one of the most conservative junior high schools on the island soon. The teachers at that school are actively homophobic, call effeminate boys girly-men and berate tomboy girls for not being feminine enough in front of their classmates. The pressure to be "normal" here is insane. A closeted coworker had to leave work indefinitely due to stress from coworkers to follow the accepted script, get married, have children, etc. To have that whitewashed is frustrating to me, and I'm not even gay.

The Nice Guys™ thing almost goes without saying. Glorifying the kind of unhealthy relationship where one person sacrifices all for the other person, where people don't take charge of their own lives and then whine about it, where it's a good thing for a guy to pine after a girl while pretending to be her friend just hoping that eventually she'll date him. Where friendship and "niceness" is a coin that can be exchanged for a relationship upgrade. Yuck yuck yuck.

Contrast this with the relatively new comic, Fried Chicken and Sushi. Dynamic, clean art, that sets the tone for the comic. A look at Japan that doesn't put everything behind rose colored glasses, but still makes positive observations. Even if FC&S wasn't a semi-autobiographical tale from a former ALT it would be obvious which author has actually lived and worked in Japan and which author has read copious amounts of manga. I heartily recommend Fried Chicken and Sushi. Go read it!

PS: Check out today's page in Red String as an example. Hand glued to the back of the neck? Check. Screwy proportions (super long torso in panel 2, head vs. neck size in panel 3, wonky eyes in panel 4)? Check. Really obvious cliffhanger? Check. I called this about a month ago. I am 99.9% sure that Kazuo has committed suicide/is in the process of attempting suicide. .01% is leftover as a possible psychotic break leaving him senseless. Shoujo manga (girly manga) 101.

These Boots Were Made For Walking

Japan's public transportation system is much better than the US public transportation system. It's affordable, it's widespread, it's always on time, and it's easy enough for even non-native speakers to navigate. Many bright-eyed and bushy-tailed foreigners look forward to taking advantage of this wondrous system during their time in Japan. They dream of their first mama-chari bicycle and how easy it will be to take the subway. Oh, how much money there is to be saved when one doesn't have to buy a car, gas, snow tires, and all the other bits and bobs that go along with driving. Then most ALTs get their placements and realize they're up a mountain and their nearest school is a 45 minute drive away. Whoops!

It really surprised me to find out that the image of the Japanese person who walks, bikes, and/or public transports around doesn't really exist outside of the big cities. On my island everyone drives, and they drive everywhere. After two years they've gotten used to me walking everywhere, but for the longest time they would react with shock that I had walked 20 minutes to the supermarket. Not the somewhat polite shock of "eeee, you can use chopsticks?!" Actual "I'm surprised your legs didn't fall of or you didn't get hit by a car" shock. I've been pressed to take rides from the conbini that's a five minute walk away back to my house. When I wanted to walk home from tai chi practice once, a walk that takes all of 15 minutes, my fellow tai chi members honestly seemed to think that I was crazy for not taking a ride with one of them.

One of the things that people in my prefecture (the Japanese equivalent of a state) are told is that even if you don't want to drive you're probably going to have to just to get to and from work. Before I came we were told pretty flatly that people who don't drive tend to turn into world-class mooches where we live. Right now I only know two other people who don't drive; my direct coworker and one guy on the mainland. Everyone else drives. However, when I got to Japan it became clear that in my placement a car was not necessary. Also, I didn't know how long I was going to be in Japan and didn't want to spend the money on a car if I was only going to be here for one year. In hindsight, what with being here for three years, a small part of me wishes that I had gotten a car.

A good friend of mine has had so many adventures driving. You see, Japan has very narrow roads. Driving in Japan is almost like a dance where cars often have to stop, back up, and practically fall into a ricefield to let the other car pass. In fact, one of the most common pitfalls for foreigners new to driving in Japan is falling off of the road into a ricefield or the drainage gulch beside every road. If that happens, you have a few options, of course. One is to get a log and try to lever your car out by yourself. If you're lucky, an entire bus full of your students will see your trapped car and help you push it back onto the road, as happened to orangepeeleater.

All in all, I love walking. It really helps keep stress down and recharge my cultural fatigue bar. Also, this island, while wonderful, is not the most happening place in Japan. The time I spend walking is honestly just time I would be spending under my kotatsu otherwise. At least this way I'm getting some fresh air and exercise. So I will continue walking everywhere and freaking out my fellow islanders. I just hope I can find some waterproof boots before it starts snowing!

Rock Lobster

Japan is very proud of its four seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. I guess the surrounding countries don't have four seasons? I don't really know, but it's a thing here. I remember first getting here and people being disappointed because I didn't react with the appropriate amount of shock and wonder over all four seasons. Some people got defensive when I mentioned that the US also has four seasons and were very clear that Japan's four seasons were better. For example, we have 紅葉(kouyou), or changing leaves, they would say. Why, so do we, I would reply, and their faces would fall.

    Japan is very connected to nature. Every season has festivals and events connected to specific parts of nature at specific points in time. Autumn is the time to see the 紅葉 (momiji) or maple trees change color.

(Psssst. Did you notice something there? The kanji for kouyou and momiji are the same but pronounced completely differently and have different meanings. Japanese is so much fun!)

Momiji turn a beautiful shade of red. A popular place to see them is a small island near Hiroshima named Miyajima. It's a riot of color. Just be careful not to have your map eaten by one of the dozens of tame deer or your camera stolen by one of the less-tame evil monkeys.

    Unfortunately, a trip to Hiroshima was out of the question, but there's plenty of nice scenery closer to home. The ALT Art Club got together after our annual training seminar and headed out to a gorge with a beautiful view. We got there in the late morning and set up at this little ledge. We had various bits of cardboard to sit on, including a boat and a giant turtle, which elicited any number of weird looks as we carried them around. All in all, it was great! It was so relaxing to sit there and sketch or paint for hours. There were plenty of people taking walks, from elderly couples to families with toddlers to other artistic types taking photographs. It was a really friendly atmosphere where everyone was saying hello to each other. I managed to get my next project sketched out and inked in, and I look forward to really diving in to needle painting. This will be my first time really trying to do a realistic "painting" with embroidery.

    After a few hours we realized it was cooling down what with being able to see our breath and not feel our feet and all, and decided to move on to the next phase of our trip. We all piled into the same car, turned on the heater, and ate our conbini or bakery lunches while waiting for our feet to wake up. Then we walked across the road to a lovely little 温泉(onsen), or hot spring, that was the perfect size for the four of us. For only 500 yen, about 6 US dollars, we were able to use the beautiful open air onsen. Since it was only about 1:30 in the afternoon we were the only ones there, and it was glorious. After the cold morning of sitting on a rock with our body heat slowly leaking into the ground a soak in hot water was absolutely lovely. We soaked until we looked like wrinkly red lobsters and then headed back to our respective cars to begin the long ride home feeling completely, absolutely, and gloriously relaxed. We'd woken up at 7:30 AM and finished our artistic outing at slightly before 3:00. It was a Saturday well spent.

Burning Down The House

Welcome to a land without central heating and no insulation, because that's what Japan is! Get used to being able to see your breath in your living room during winter. Don't worry about your refrigerator being tiny because your entire apartment is a refrigerator now!

Now, make no mistake, I like winter a lot. I don't like winter inside my living room, though. Where I live in the US gets pretty cold; even without wind chill we get below freezing easily. Our Halloween costumes are made to fit over snowsuits. We don't have snow days because if we got days off every time it snowed a lot then we wouldn't have school between November and March. Compared to that weather Japan should be easy. It barely gets below freezing here on the island and it rarely snows. Then again, thanks to the complete lack of insulation in the average Japanese building even low temperatures are too much.


Japan has four major types of heating: the kotatsu (heated table), the space heater, the kerosene heater, and air conditioner being a heater. Each has good points and bad points.

The kotatsu is my favorite. It's about the size of a coffee table, and it has a small space heater in it. You put a blanket, or kotatsu futon, over it, turn it on, and roast your legs. It's the most economical in that most of the heat stays under the heavy blanket. The drawback is that it only really heats your lower half and tricks everything from the waist up into thinking it's being warmed. This means that if you fall asleep under your kotatsu you'll get the mother of all colds. Don't fall asleep under your kotatsu!

Next up is the space heater. Expensive to run, but very powerful. They aren't as economical as kotatsu since the heat is all escaping into the open air, but they're indispensable for when you can't type because your fingers have frozen.

The kerosene heater is the standby of every school and many ALTs. They terrify me. If you don't keep a window open then the fumes will kill you. It's like Darwin's heating device!

Last is the air conditioner acting as a heater. This is a good way to heat an entire room instead of just a certain part of the room. Some people say that it's more economically sound to fill a barrel with 1000 yen notes and burn that in the center of your room. Very safe, but expensive.

There are other ways to make the winter bearable. I take a really hot shower before bed to get my body temperature high enough to fall asleep before the cold kicks in. There are heated packs that you can keep in your pockets to warm up your fingers. Most people have lap blankets that they take to work. Gloves with the fingers cut out help you type without your fingers snapping off from frostbite. Basically, it just makes you really grateful for the humid Japanese summer that tries to melt you into goo.

At the end of the day there’s another day dawning

Every year all JETs gather for either a Mid-Year Seminar for Assistant Language Teachers or a Mid-Year Conference for Coordinators of International Relations. Every MYS is different as it is planned independently in every prefecture. I've been to three MYS now, and each has been dramatically different.

    I arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to my first MYS, motivated to get more specific training than I had received from the Tokyo Orientation (be happy!) and the Prefectural Orientation (you don't have to know Japanese to live in Japan). Unfortunately, I was disappointed. There were long speeches covering material that had already been covered in the previous two orientations and the workshops devolved into venting and anecdotes. On the last day, we were given an incredibly condescending scare lecture about drinking and driving where we, grown adults living in a foreign country, were treated like naughty teenagers who had to be scolded preemptively because some JETs in a different prefecture had broken the law. I left determined to do research on my own and learn from my Japanese coworkers since I apparently wasn't going to get professional support from MYS.

    Last year's seminar was a pleasant surprise. The number of workshops had been halved, from 15 to 8, and there were more workshops being led by Japanese Teachers of English. The workshops focused more on specifics, such as how to teach better classes, how to raise certain skill levels, how to communicate with Japanese Teachers of English even if you aren't fluent in Japanese and they aren't fluent in English, and more. When workshops started to go off-track things were quickly brought back on topic. The previous year's never-ending stream of anecdotes was dammed, and concrete discussion of ideas and solutions flourished. The speeches lacked the characteristic tone of condescension that the previous year's speeches had held. I left that seminar with pages and pages of notes, and when I got back to the island I immediately began sharing the new activities and ideas around. I couldn't wait for the next MYS.

    This year's seminar was quite different. First of all, it had a much narrower focus, specifically on lesson planning, with only three workshops. Now, for those reading who are not ALTs (Assistant Language Teacher), let me make this clear; the average Junior High School or Elementary School ALT never plans lessons. An ALT may be able to suggest activities or have some say in a class, but it's not the rule by any means. As one of my JTEs said, "You go to too many schools! If you were here every day then I'd ask you to plan lessons, but you're only here four days a month if we're lucky." The lesson plan focus got tighter and tighter to the point of excluding lesson planning outside of the school. As I was the leader of a workshop I asked the organizer of the MYS if I could do my workshop on lesson planning for eikaiwa classes, the English conversation classes that most ALTs do outside of working hours. I was told that I must stay within the Junior High School textbook, and as the organizer had had to plan an elective English course in JHS once in three years I had to do a workshop based on planning lessons in Junior High School.

    The seminar was, as expected, disappointing. Only one speech was actually geared towards all ALTs as opposed to the Senior High School ALTs and JTEs exclusively. The materials I had requested for my workshop over a month before (an overhead projector and a CD player) were not provided. The organizer interrupted me after my workshop had already started to tell me this and foist the blame onto third parties without offering any solutions or taking responsibility. Throughout the seminar the organizer continued to behave in an unprofessional manner. The most notable example was when he made the L for Loser gesture to his forehead when another JET was making a speech and got slightly muddled.

The thing is, I've always been happy to be placed where I am. This is a prefecture filled to the brim with talented ALTs who strive to be professional, represent their countries in a positive way, and help our students learn and enjoy English. I am disappointed that our one chance a year to take advantage of all the ideas that that community can offer was strangled by this restrictive Lesson Plan focus. Mostly, I feel sorry for the first year ALTs. The only experience they've had with MYS is one of unprofessional behavior, misinformation, and lack of clear communication. Instead of raising the bar it left the bar in the back room by accident. I sincerely hope that next year brings the return of the "good" variety of seminar, where we can take away more than we brought with us.

Don’t Come Around Here No More

My BOE has a fairly unique way of dealing with ALTs; we're taxi-d to school everyday. We've got a lot of theories regarding why they've decided that taxis are the way to go. One theory is that it keeps the various taxi companies afloat. The island needs a larger than usual number of taxis because there's a larger than usual number of elderly, non-driving citizens out here. Unfortunately, 600 yen (US 7$) fares to and from the supermarket probably aren't enough to maintain numbers. The 14,000 yen (US 170$) round-trip fares to get us ALTs to and from schools on the other end of the island really help keep things running smoothly. Another theory is that there's some scandal in the past where an ALT was either chronically late all the time or got in a car accident, thus motivating the BOE to have us taxi-d instead of responsible for our own transportation.

    In a lot of ways it's a really nice system. I've got relationships with an entire group of people that I wouldn't have any connection with otherwise, and there are some pretty interesting characters driving taxis on this little island. One taxi driver is a former magazine editor from Tokyo. He's a major conspiracy theorist who is convinced that he knows who assassinated President Kennedy. The last time I rode with him he ranted to me about how 90% of Japanese crimes go unsolved because Japanese people don't report suspicious behavior because it's "not their business." Another driver is really into photography and always brings his latest photos with him. I love seeing his shots, but I kind of wish he wouldn't show them to me while he's driving. A third driver is absolutely obsessed with what I make for dinner and asks me every time we ride together what I'm going to make that night. Usually it's a really nice, friendly atmosphere.

    Unfortunately, not all of the drivers are as fun to ride with. Sometimes drivers can cross the line. There was one company that we had to stop using because the main driver would give us cakes and candy no matter how many times we refused, and ask us what we were doing that weekend, where were we going, what time, creepy mccreeperson and so on. Lately, some of the drivers have been crossing other lines. A couple of drivers show up ten minutes early and start banging on our doors, honking repeatedly, or standing outside of our apartments yelling "good morning" at the top of their lungs. Just the other day a taxi driver stood on the stairs outside of my apartment yelling "sumimasen" until I came out to find out what the problem was. He then told me to hurry up! He was early, and he was telling me to hurry up. There's a baby living upstairs, I don't want her woken up because the taxi driver has decided that I'm messing up his schedule! I also don't want my neighbors to think that it's my fault and that I need to get up and out earlier when it's the driver who is showing up early and not waiting.

    I asked my coworkers, and this isn't a Japanese custom where taxi drivers are allowed to yell at you because they showed up early. They aren't even supposed to yell at you if you're late! My coworkers were horrified that someone was being so unprofessional and rude.

    It's very frustrating because I don't really know how to fix it. I've tried getting out earlier, but that's damaging relations with the other sane taxi drivers because they think that they've kept me waiting. Also, I don't want to encourage this rude behavior. It feels like if they treat me like a child and bang on my door to make sure I'm awake and I respond by getting out even earlier than their earliness then I'm signing off on their methods. I don't even understand why these two drivers are acting like this, because it's only two out the entire group. I overslept once two years ago when my alarm didn't go off, and it made me 15 minutes late. At the time I owned up to it, apologized, and listened to my teacher's advice about getting a second alarm clock so if the first one doesn't go off the second one will anyway. End of story. Every other day I've been on time, and I've been here for two and a half years.

    The thing is, even if I was late every single day it's still inappropriate to be knocking on my door or yelling at me especially when it's happening before the scheduled time. It would be my BOE's job to scold me and make sure I was getting to school on time, not the taxi driver's. This isn't a carpool or bus situation where other customers or coworkers would be inconvenienced if I were even a little bit late. This is a service that the BOE pays for. After doing some subtle asking around it's pretty clear that these two drivers aren't acting like this towards any of their Japanese customers. There is no excuse for targeting foreigners, treating us rudely for your own mistakes, and trying to rush us so you can get back and watch some more sumo. Sometimes it becomes very clear that this isn't actually the land of politeness.

I was working in the lab late one night Part 4

I am so close to being done with this thing I can taste it. I'm working on the baby vampire's little sidekick, a ghost. I'm using white and light blue for shadow. I'm decided to scrap the idea of the moon in the background because I think the baby vampire is popping well enough on his own. This also means there don't need to be bats on the back, so I'm thinking of doing a little orange pumpkin, just to draw the eye.

The ghost is based off of this drawing and his expression cracks me up every single time, especially since he's peeking out from behind the baby vampire in my design. He's outlined in Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch and will be filled using the outline stitch. The outline stitch sits very close together, so I think it will work well. His eyes and mouth will be done using the padded satin stitch.

In terms of timing, this isn't ideal. There's an artist's trip this Saturday, and I'm going to be sketching up a new project to embroider. I don't want to have more than one project going at a time, but I doubt I'll be able to finish this piece just in time to start the new one. More likely I'll end up with a few projects going at once since going to the mainland involves ferries, and ferry time is ideal sewing time.

The blog will be going on a brief hiatus until next Tuesday, the 23^rd. Before the art trip is the yearly ALT training seminar. Since I'm going to be on the mainland without net access there won't be any updates. Once I'm back expect pictures of the finished vampire bag, details of the new project(s), and tales of mainland exploits. Yay!

Some posts to look forward to: taxis in Japan, walking everywhere, and heating in Japan i.e. they're trying to kill us all with kerosene fumes or how I learned to stop worrying and love my non-insulated apartment. Enjoy!

Anyway you want it

Transitioning to living in Japan can be pretty difficult. Japan is a land of unspoken rules and customs stretching back hundreds of years. If you do something wrong either no one will tell you about it for six months, at which point you'll find out they've been whispering about it behind your back the whole time, or someone will make a huge scene over how horrified they are that you're doing such and such. My coworkers and I once waited in the local gym's entrance for a taxi and I accidentally put my toes, encased in my outdoor shoes, on the carpet in the shoe changing area. The gym employee immediately charged at me from 15 feet away and my coworkers freaked out because about one square inch of outdoor shoe had touched the carpet you stand on for changing your shoes to go to the changing room where you change your shoes again before using any of the machines. Japan is very serious about purity and impurity.

Shoe rules are pretty easy to get a handle on. You get used to bowing when everyone else bows. It starts to feel weird if you don't clap your hands together before a meal. It doesn't strike you as odd that everyone backs into parking spaces here or that there are sixteen different cloths for cleaning, one for the floor, one for desks, one for your hands, one for your hands after you wash the dishes, one for the dishes, one for the glasses, one for the pots, etc. I'm not exaggerating that, by the way, there really are that many cloths at some of my schools. There's one set of rules that almost every foreigner has trouble with:

The Trash System. (dun dun duuuuuun)

You see, in Japan, throwing something away is pretty close to quantum physics. It is so complicated! First of all, the trash is divided into many different sections. Burnable trash, non-burnable trash, various recyclables, large trash, and large electric trash (like TVs) are just a few of the categories. The categories depend on where you live and what kind of trash processing is available. Since I live on an island we don't have as many categories as the places on the mainland, but we still have seven different categories. Some places have over twenty categories. This means that throwing things away is ridiculously complicated. Usually there's a nice color-coded pictographic chart that gives you the basics, but you will inevitably have something you need to throw away that isn't on the chart, and nothing is more fun than having to ask your coworkers how to throw away a dead battery. It took me three tries to get that answer (non-burnable) because the first two people I asked just offered to take my dead batteries and throw them away for me. You have to know what category everything goes into, and where or when to throw it away.

You see, Japan doesn't have one trash day; it has a million color-coded trash days. Burnable garbage is picked up maybe twice a week, recyclables are twice a month, large trash is once a month, you have to drop Styrofoam off at a specific part of the supermarket, milk cartons are every Monday, and so on. Some people get so intimidated by the entire system that they end up inadvertently hoarding recyclables because they're afraid they're going to put them out on the wrong day or in the wrong place. It can get really frustrating if you happen to be out of town the one day a month that a specific day of trash is picked up. I don't want to plan my life around trash pickup!

There are two upsides, though. Once you master the system you feel like a genius, and when you return to your home country it's actually relaxing to take the trash out because you only have to do it once a week.

What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

The role of ALTs is constantly changing, just as Japan as a country is changing. ALTs are often based at more than one school. Since ALTs must then travel between multiple schools depending on the number of schools it may be impossible for the ALTs to become deeply involved in school life, or make a deep impression on the respective schools. Being a good ALT is almost always dependent on being the kind of ALT your BOE or base school wants. For a long time that meant being deeply involved with your school. However, I believe that the role of the ALT is broadening beyond the school and moving further out into the community itself.

If an ALT works at a base school then the ALT can get involved at that school beyond class activities. Even if there are other school visits, the ALT's primary obligation is to the base school largely due to the majority of his/her time being spent at that specific school. The ALT can have an English board. He/She can start an English club. He/She can join in with club activities and help around the school. Some things can still be accomplished among many schools, such as helping kids practice for speech contests or prepare for the Eiken, a national exam that tests English level. Unfortunately, anything beyond that is often difficult to accomplish.

If an ALT works at many different schools then their in-school options for being a better ALT are more limited. When I first started work as an ALT I worked at six junior high schools and eleven elementary schools. I had to be very careful to balance all of the schools equally. Unless I could start an English club at every school it would look as if I were favoring some schools over others. Requesting and maintaining English boards would have been the same. 17 different boards would have been almost impossible to manage, especially taking into account the different resources of each school. Some schools are bigger than other and have more bulletin boards; others are smaller. Would I be squeezing another teacher or subject out by requesting my own board? School A has a color printer but School B doesn't; why does School A get a fancy English board with color pictures and School B only has pixel-y printed or hand drawn illustrations? ALTs go to School C every week, but they only go to School D once every two months; why is School D's English board always so out-of-date?

Now, I wasn't worried about the teachers or students complaining; I was worried about the parents. Although this is slowly changing, Japan is still a very tracked society. Where someone goes to high school is usually instrumental in tracking where they go to university, or if they go at all. To get into high school and college all children must pass entrance exams. Parents are naturally very invested in their children's futures, so they focus quite strongly on schoolwork. The two subjects that children get the lowest scores in are currently Math and English, so there is a lot of pressure on these departments. Subsequently, there's a lot of pressure on ALTs to be more effective. Giving one school more English instruction than another could very well start a revolt as parents see their sons and daughters being given short shrift.

All in all, we do what we can. Every ALT has a different base school or BOE and a different community. Some are able to start up English clubs or maintain English boards. My coworker and I do adult eikaiwa (English Conversation) classes twice a week. We often stay after hours to help students study or help teachers with fiddly grammar points. I hope it makes a difference.

I was working in the lab late one night part 3

Oh, baby vampire, I love you so. I especially love that I've accidentally sewed you a pimp cloak. You're so cool.

So yes, I've been working on the Long and Short Stitch Shading (L&SSS) for the past few days. It is remarkably relaxing. I was so worried at first, since this is my first time using it and all the examples I've seen of it are much smaller. The baby vampire's cape is about three inches long, but all the examples I've seen have been only an inch long. I think that L&SSS would have been an impossible obstacle for my anxiety if I wasn't treating it, for a couple of reasons. First, the aforementioned length problem. I can feel my brain trying to cripple me. It's screaming that the L&SSS should only be used for small areas and that no matter what I do I'm going to fail because I'm doing it wrong. Since I'm treating it I can use logic to shut that up. The videos I've watched and books I've read are tutorials; there's no reason that a tutorial would involve eight square inches of fabric. Since I'm treating the disorder I can actually use that to ignore the voice. Before, no matter how much logic I used the voice would win.

The second reason my disorder would be crippling me here is because I'm using it in a way the tutorials don't show. Instead of going from dark to light and stopping I'm repeating the pattern over and over again because the cape is so long. I chose to do this, but I can still hear that voice telling me that I'm violating some rule of L&SSS and therefore everyone will point and laugh at my poor baby vampire. I very well might be violating some rule of the stitch, but at this point I can put that to the side. I'm still learning and it's natural to make mistakes. I love that I can tell myself that and actually believe it as opposed to it not sticking at all.

I am happy the way it's turning out. L&SSS is probably the most challenging and time-consuming stitch I've done, if only because I have to switch thread so often. Keeping the stitches straight and the tension uniform is also a challenge. If things aren't consistent it starts to look a bit like a sneeze, which is not the effect I'm going for. I've had to start over a section or two because things were just going wonky, but that's life.

I like how the stitch looks. Compared to the padded Satin Stitch, L&SSS looks almost painted on since it lies flush against the fabric. So far it also looks great with the Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch outline where the outline looks like fur edging or something. I like how relaxing it is to sew this stitch. It's very slow, so it's easy to get into a rhythm and just go with it. I also like how the multiple colors really pop next to the monochromatic baby vampire. I also like how it make the padded Satin Stitch look more luxurious. All in all, I'm glad with the way this is going.


Even if my baby vampire ends up with a pimp cloak.

Don’t Speak

It's really weird looking back and filtering everything through this new lens I've got titled "hey dummy, you have anxiety." I thought that everyone thought the way I did, so it blows my mind to look back and gradually realize how much the anxiety shaped even the most basic parts of my life.

One of the things I've never been able to wrap my head around is anything that damages intangible qualities, like integrity or trust. When I was in junior high school I did something to lose my parents' trust. I don't remember what it was, but I clearly remember how it felt to hear my dad tell me that I'd damaged their trust in me: it felt like a cannonball. At the time I thought that my extreme reaction was due to my "good girl" character, but looking back I see how much anxiety exacerbated my reaction. My anxiety disorder was telling me that there was no way I could ever earn back my parents' trust. I had damaged it irreparably, and anything I did to prove myself as trustworthy wouldn't be enough. Anything I did would be seen as insincere pandering, but more importantly whatever I had done to damage their trust could never be erased or forgotten. I felt like I was stuck in the trash compactor from Star Wars with both walls inexorably closing in, slowly but surely.

This attitude towards trust and integrity led to my being unable, on some fundamental level, to understand why people lie. My brain has always told me two things; if you lie you will always get caught, and once you're caught you will never be able to fix the damage done. Since my brain was giving these two things such insane weight I couldn't fathom why people would lie since they would inevitably get caught and reap the consequences. What could people possibly gain? I thought that everyone suffered the same psychological pain that I did when facing being caught in a lie. My brain was a very black and white place where if I made even one mistake my value as a friend, daughter, coworker, and human being went down to zero. This is what my brain was like:

I'm using the past tense because I'm moving beyond that now. I still don't really understand why people lie, but it's becoming a little clearer to me now that my brain isn't quite so crazy. I no longer live in a stress-filled mindscape where I have to quadruple-check all information and plan for every possible contingency and exception before asking a simple question. I still have trouble with it, but it's manageable now. I'm able to sort out what parts of my attitude towards truth is related to my brain chemistry and what part is related to my character.

Telling the truth is still very important to me. I can't handle friendships with people who lie constantly because even if the lies are harmless the act of lying sends messages. For me, telling the truth is respectful. It tells me that you respect me and whatever relationship we have, whether professional or personal. My supervisor always tells me the truth. One week she forgot to schedule the taxis that take my fellow ALT and me to school. She owned up to it and apologized. Contrast this with some taxi companies who have lied (and gotten caught) about her not having sent them the schedule. My supervisor respects me enough to own up to her mistakes; the taxi company doesn't care about my supervisor, the BOE, or me. If someone lies to me it sends a message that the person thinks one of three things about me: I'm too stupid to figure out I've been lied to, I'm too weak to challenge them on it even if I do figure it out, or I'm so unimportant to them that even if I do figure it out and challenge them it doesn't matter.

A speaker came to my University once and talked about how stupid it is to preach tolerance since tolerance at best is still barely civil. "Hello, I tolerate your existence" isn't a very warm sentiment; it's barely above ice! This speaker instead talked about respect. It may be clichéd, but it really resonated with me. I do my best to respect others and surround myself with people who respect me. That's me talking, not my anxiety, and I really enjoy being able to tell the difference.

Hey now, you’re an All Star

Living in a foreign country means that simple things can be difficult. Traveling, shopping, eating, even washing dishes is suddenly more complicated. The upside of this is that you get really, really excited whenever you complete one of these challenges. The downside is that if you brag about your ability to wash your dishes to people who don't live in that foreign country they aren't really going to get it. Washing your dishes involves many steps when you're operating in a different country. First, you must figure out how to turn on your hot water heater in a different language. Then, you go to the store to buy dish soap. You make a mistake and accidentally buy hand soap. Or floor cleaner. Or tatami cleaner. You must do research, recruit a friend, or take a picture of your school's dish soap and buy the exact same bottle. In any case, by that point being able to wash your dishes without them smelling like windex is a huge accomplishment! It's an exhilarating way to live, and that's how I felt when I ordered a kotatsu and kotatsu futons and chairs from a Japanese website the other day.

You see, I've been inspired by Orangepeeleater. I want to have a kotatsu in the US. It's space efficient, it's comfortable, it's easy to transport, and it's a part of Japanese life that I want to keep with me. So, I've been shopping around for awhile. My dad sent me links to places where I could buy a kotatsu in the US without having to ship it back, but they were either the cheapest kotatsu in existence or a hand-carved 600$ masterpiece. Also, even the cheap ones were more expensive than the ones I was looking at over here most likely due to less demand and import costs, so I decided to buy here and ship home. My supervisor had given me a magazine, Nissen, and it had really nice things, so I checked them out online at Nissen. Oh, my gosh. Never more have I regretted living on a year to year contract in another country. So much lovely, relatively inexpensive furniture! I can't wait to get home and start getting a life together that doesn't have to be packed up and shipped over an entire ocean.

I checked with a coworker to make sure that Nissen was decent quality before getting too attached to any of the kotatsu. I didn't want to get my heart set on something, pay a lot of money for it, pay more money to mail it back to the US, and then have it fall apart after ten minutes out or something. She vouched for it and I spent the next few days perusing the website. Now, the Nissen website is all in Japanese. That meant checking, double-checking, and triple-checking to make sure that what I was looking at was actually what I was ordering and that what I was ordering was in the right size. I had decided ahead of time on getting the rectangular kotatsu instead of the square one, and I didn't want to screw up the sizing on the futon. Some of the futons I really liked weren't in the rectangular size. I had to check the materials of each futon because I didn't want to get fleece covers that would feel nice, be soft, and then get all tatty and yucky after a single washing. All in all it was a lot of work.

And then the actual online ordering. That was an ordeal that made the choosing of the kotatsu look easy. It's all blurred together, but I'm pretty sure it was a 25 step process. It took over an hour to navigate through the entire process. I'm pretty sure it would have been impossible for anyone without a high Japanese level. A few steps I had to fix inputted information because the system only accepted katakana instead of hiragana or kanji, and it told me that through tiny, black, kanji-filled Japanese sprinkled with honorifics and extreme formality. It had special offers every other step in addition to the usual customer profile, address, payment method bits. When I finally made it to the end it was like climbing a mountain. I don't have anything to show for it yet, and it's going to take a few months for everything to get here since a couple of the items aren't currently in stock, but I'm still ridiculously proud of myself for being able to do it myself without having to call in a translator. It's one of the things I really enjoy about living in Japan. Online shopping isn't nearly as exciting back home.

Losing My Religion

Japan is a land of shrines and temples. They're everywhere you look. The corner of an intersection has a small shrine to Jizo for watching over babies who died in the womb. Hidden in the trees is a gate leading to a stone flight of stairs for a mountain shrine. Laws have actually been put into place to limit the number of shrines because in the past an area of 10 square kilometers had over 100 distinct, separate shrines. Japanese temples are known throughout the world; Kiyomizudera, the Clear Water Temple, was in the running to be one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. It's difficult if not impossible to be in Japan without going to shrines or temples. Most festivals happen at or are strongly connected to specific shrines or temples. They're beautiful buildings, architecturally, and they're also an amazing example of ancient Japan. Going to shrines involves following certain rules, and you really don't want to mess any of the rules up because whatever you're entering is sacred.

When entering a shrine do not enter from the center of the gate. That is reserved for the gods. Enter from either side. I didn't know this and have probably offended so many gods. Whoops. I've also been told that you're supposed to bow before you enter the main gate, but I don't recall ever seeing a Japanese person doing this, so I'll keep an eye on it. Bowing too much doesn't hurt, anyway, so from now on I'll be making a habit of this.

The first shrine I encountered was a small shrine near Go-Sho in Kyoto. I was studying abroad at the time, and my Japanese was not so good. Now, when you first enter a shrine/temple there will be a place for washing your hands. Usually you aren't supposed to drink this water. Apparently at this shrine you're not only allowed to but encouraged to because the water is famous for being delicious and pure. Some very nice elderly people were trying to tell us about the amazing water and how drinking it was ok. None of us could believe it, though, and we convinced ourselves that we'd misunderstood their Japanese. The reason you wash your hands is to cleanse yourself of impurity. This is also why you shouldn't go to a shrine when you are ill or in mourning, which are both states of impurity.

After you've washed your hands it's time to proceed to the main part of the shrine/temple. There's a place to pray. First, throw a coin into the offering box, but don't worry because the amount doesn't matter. If there is a bell or gong ring it once to get the attention of the gods. Bow twice, think of your wish or prayer, clap twice loudly, and bow one last time. This is almost universal, but occasionally you'll find different variations. For example, at Izumo Taisha, the oldest shrine in Japan and the original home of the gods, you should clap four times instead of twice.

You can also buy charms at shrines/temples that offer protection for various things, such as health care, family safety, traffic safety, business success, educational success, success in love, and more. You shouldn't ever open the charms. Not only will they not work anymore, but it's very disrespectful to the god associated with that particular charm.

I've made mistakes at almost every step, although I haven't opened a charm at least, and I've never been yelled at or kicked out of a shrine. People are usually very forgiving to foreigners. They know that we aren't Japanese and might not know the proper forms. As long as you are respectful everything should be fine. Personally, I don't usually pray at the shrines or temples I visit. Japanese people I've talked to have said that it doesn't matter what religion you are; the gods won't be offended. I feel uncomfortable because I'm going through the motions without really believing. I feel like I'm disrespecting the gods by asking them for things when I don't really worship or believe in them even though the Japanese say the gods don't care. I wonder what a good balance is?

Video killed the radio star

We live in the age of the internet, and the internet has created a new age of communication. We're deciding the rules as we go, and in a lot of ways it's exciting. This is a whole new medium. I can read a forum post and the punctuation, capitalization, use of smiley faces, use of lolspeak or l33tspeak can all add a peculiar tone. It's hard to explain.

I've mentioned it to some people, about a Facebook message sounding abrupt, or a forum post coming across as snarky, but sometimes they just don't see it, and when I try to explain it things get complicated. "Can't you see how they punctuated this? How sarcastic the army of winking faces are? It's practically screaming attitude." Since the medium is still evolving things aren't black and white, but I love the evolution.

Things started out with smiley faces. Simple but useful emoticons that were able to convey when people were joking, when they were angry, and most importantly when they were being sarcastic. Sarcasm is still almost impossible to detect over a screen, and considering how prevalent it is in English it's pretty important to find a way to make it understandable without facial expressions or voice tone. Writing emails or forum posts was hell for people whose humor relied on sarcasm, but smiley faces made things easier.

Things continued to evolve past smiley faces. Use of punctuation or capitalization began to be used strategically to affect tone. People began to develop "dialects" based on where they frequented online. Avatars became popular, and two separate movements started; keeping the same avatar to be recognizable or using different avatars based on mood or atmosphere. Memes proliferated, and soon the use of a meme could add a new flavor to a conversation based on the meme, almost like internet-wide inside jokes. Lolcats, macros, and gifs started to become popular. Here's a way to put a face to a feeling or thought! Captain Picard is face-palming so this means X, Kanye is clapping so that means Y. Macros also became a way of bonding. Forum threads occasionally degenerate into macro sharefests when people with the same taste in movies or TV meet online. Thus macros can be used as peace offerings or a method of calming down an incensed thread with a subject change. In non-textual conversations it's unnecessary and impossible to hold up a clip of a kitten being tickled to show how happy you are, and yet that's the way we are communicating online. I wonder, sometimes, if we're moving towards an international language that can transcend different mother tongues.

I think one of the most interesting parts of internet communication is that social boundary lines are being redrawn. Ten years ago using a smiley face in a work related email would have been unthinkable but now it's not as taboo. Other boundaries are blurrier, and more difficult to define. We live in an age where social sites abound. Some people see no difference in referencing on Facebook what happened on Twitter, or mentioning a forum post on a separate blog. Other people view these things as compartments, like keeping private and work life separate. We're all in a state of flux right now as these new social structures are being created, and it's incredibly exciting. What are your thoughts on internet communication?

Being a stranger in a strange land

I would say that one of the most difficult parts of living in a foreign country is getting sick. Japan's attitude towards things like colds and the flu is fairly different from the attitude most of us foreigners grow up with. I want to be clear; this isn't a bad thing. I'm not saying that Japanese healthcare attitudes are inferior or superior to other systems. I'm just saying that they're different.

If you get sick in Japan, you are expected to wear a mask. This is something that most foreigners, myself included, have trouble with. Masks are uncomfortable! Even the best-fitting mask is restrictive, and if you wear glasses get used to them fogging up every fifteen seconds. Also, the benefit of wearing a mask once the wearer is showing symptoms is pretty much nil. The contagious period of illness is before and after the person is visibly sick, right? So wearing a mask during periods of obvious sickness only serves as a placebo in terms of reducing illness. The only benefit that I can see is that if you see a person wearing a mask you're more aware of them and therefore more likely to wash your hands, drink vitamin C, and eat lots of vegetables. Otherwise, it seems like a lot of hassle for very little return. Some foreigners refuse to wear masks unless they're forced. Some only wear them when they're coughing up a lung. I personally refuse to wear them when I have allergies, because no one can catch my allergies and I'm not wearing masks for two weeks straight every few months. Everyone has to find their own personal mask method.

One of the things I hate most about wearing a mask is being unable to blow my nose. Actually, that shouldn't be a problem in Japan. Unlike the US, where we are encouraged to blow our noses and get it out of our systems instead of sniffing for three hours straight Japan is the polar opposite. Blowing one's nose is considered very, very rude. During cold and flu season every office is a symphony of sniffing, horking, and other noises. This makes my teeth itch, because it sounds so gross! I have to go to the bathroom to blow my nose when I'm at the BOE, and if I'm at a school I don't blow my nose at all because even the bathrooms aren't private enough for my shameful habit. I also end up feeling nauseous due to snorting all the gook back into my body. I've considered taking sick days just so that I can blow my nose to my heart's content in the privacy of my own home. I don't, because I would feel like a lazy bum. It's tempting, though!

Finally, there's one thing that tends to cause cognitive dissonance in almost every foreigner I've met: Japanese people go to the doctor and get specially prescribed medicine for colds and mild cases of the flu. Having grown up in an environment where you are taught at a young age that there are no medicines that can help a cold it's horribly frustrating to be told by your boss to walk down to the doctor and pay 20 bucks for some pills you know won't do anything. It hits buttons in the independent sector of my brain. I am an adult who knows how to care for my own body. If I catch a cold I drink orange juice and rest. I can decide for myself if I need to go to the doctor. Except in Japan, apparently I can't. For the record, this might be ALT specific as opposed to a practice throughout Japanese culture because ALTs are often viewed as commodities. For example, an ALT has come forward on the forums saying that their BOE has forbidden them from buying a car or driving in their free time on the threat of terminating their contract. It appalls me that this isn't being viewed as a violation of human rights. We are adults! Even if there were statistics of how much more often ALTs get into traffic accidents compared to their Japanese counterparts (there aren't) the answer isn't to restrict our non-working lives. Make us pay higher insurance premiums, but don't ever tell us we aren't allowed to do something because we are difficult or expensive to replace, and I'm saying this as an ALT who doesn't even drive.

It makes me nervous that we aren't allowed to have agency in our own lives here in Japan. There is a huge difference between saying "you must go to a doctor because I know better than you simply because I am Japanese and you are foreign" and "I would suggest you go to a doctor, but you're a grown person so if you choose not to that's your choice." It may be a stupid choice, or it may be a smart choice. In any case, it should be our choice as autonomous adults. I don't see it being a valid argument to say "oh, but they just want you to get better faster so that you can go back to class sooner since you're such a valuable commodity." If I have to take sick leave it comes out of my number of sick leave days, thus motivating me to take good care of myself and get better sooner rather than later. I am not a thing that needs to be prepped for optimum performance at the expense of my free will.

I'll expand on this more in later entries, but suffice it to say that choice is a huge part of being human. When higher-ups take that away and treat us like robots or children we start to seriously question the wisdom of what we are being ordered to do. A dubious management move to say the least.

It’s a little bit high school baby goth, but at least it’s better than tablecloth

Progress has been made in the shirt that I've been mentioning for the last million years, and it's taught me a little bit about my creative process.

As I've mentioned before, I live on an island. Usually, this is great. I love my island. I wouldn't have stayed on for more than a year if I hadn't hit the jackpot in terms of placements. But in terms of getting cloth? Well, you're a little bit handicapped. This wouldn't really be a big problem, except I've realized that a good chunk of my creative process is seeing cloth and deciding what to do with it. I decided to make the fish bag because I saw that gorgeous blue cloth and thought it looked like water. I decided to make the vampire because I bought black cloth. But I couldn't find anything good for a shirt. I settled on orange gingham, but I just wasn't feeling it. It reminded me too much of those plastic tablecloths you use for picnics back home. The ones that are pretty much fancy tarps? Yeah.

Well, fatefully there was a sale on fabric at the local supermarket the other day! They often have random sales where people from the mainland bring in a huge selection of some random thing. Two weeks ago it was sharp, pointy tools of all kinds. Last week it was discounted handbags. Apparently this week is sewing accoutrements. Unfortunately, the selection was still pretty dismal unless you wanted to look like your grandmother's couch. I found this one deep red fabric that I liked at first glance, but when I looked at it more closely I realized that it was suede on one side. Whoops. Ok, not going to choose that fabric. I circled the table again and again. Maybe I'd overlooked something? Maybe the third time I looked something would jump out.

Eventually I found something passable. A black fabric with little pink hearts printed all over it that reminded me of the goth Hello Kitty phase that some friends of mine went through in high school. I'm not a huge fan of it, but I can see it being a shirt much more than the orange gingham. I'm happy that I found it, but I'm also a little down. This is going to continue being a stumbling block, and I'm not exactly sure how to get around it.

There are solutions, of course, but all of them have cons. For example, my parents have offered to go to Joanne's Fabric, buy, and send me fabric I chose on their website. That would be great except it would be a pain for my parents. I could always order online here in Japan and have stuff shipped. That's the M.O. for most of the island residents anyway. But websites aren't easy to navigate in Japanese, and the payment options can get pretty funky. For example, doing a bank transfer and then finding out that none of the banks on my island support that kind of transfer, argh. I've looked online at some places abroad, but none of the ones I've found ship internationally without emailing back and forth to decide on rates, which is inconvenient. Finally, none of these options allow me to touch the fabric, and I'm a very tactile person. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them! I've got this feeling that I'm missing something really obvious that everyone else already knows, so please, enlighten me!

The baby vampire is going well. I'm a little over half done with his cape. It's turned into a bit of a pimp cape and I'm not sure how I feel about it. After I finish the cape I'll be moving on to the background, which I've decided to do in Bokhara couching. I'm thinking of adding a jack o' lantern and a creepy tree to the front, sort of Nightmare Before Christmas style. Thoughts?

Don’t give me what I want, give me what I need

I got my new embroidery books last night. I don't know what I'd do in Japan without Amazon.co.jp. I ordered those books what, five days ago and they're already here? Very nice. Anyway, on to the books.

The books are 18^th Century Embroidery Techniques, 19^th Century Embroidery Techniques, and Beginner's Guide to Goldwork, but my first reaction was disappointment. I flipped through the 19^th century embroidery techniques book (and it was full of history! Pictures of canvas embroidery! Pictures of the sewing kits used in the 19^th century! It isn't a technique book at all. Obviously, the 18^th century book is the same. Why, oh why did I buy these books, I lamented. I'm not interested in the historical aspects of embroidery! While the door isn't closed on costuming, I'm not currently interested in it. As nice as it is to look at a picture of an embroidered muslin dress from the 1800s I don't feel the need to try to recreate the dress. What a waste of money. The goldwork book looks more useful, but the first section of it talks about how goldwork is made to be displayed, since the gold tarnishes and flakes if used or washed. Well, that doesn't work for me at all! As I stated before I don't like doing things that are purely for display. None of these books are useful to me at all!

I continued to flip through the books dispiritedly. Maybe there isn't any point, I thought. Maybe if you're interested in embroidery you have to get into the historical and religious stuff. Maybe there isn't a way to do embroidery without going through preordained paths. Suddenly something caught my eye in the 19^th Century book; a detailed description and definition of couching, something I'd been wondering about for a while now. It also went into detail about something even more useful to me, when and why you should use couching. I hadn't yet figured out exactly what the point of couching was, and here's this book telling me straight out! It got me thinking about what the principal of Southside said about the value of knowing where things come from. If you don't know where something came from then you can't really wrap your head around it sufficiently. You'll either spend time reinventing the wheel or you'll have gaping holes in your knowledge. If you look at the fish and the vampire I've used Bokhara and Roumanian couching, but I had no idea what made them couching as opposed to something else. I was like a kid mindlessly repeating something from a song in a foreign language with no understanding of what the words meant.

I chose those books because they were highly recommended by Mary Colbert and I thought they were technique books. If I had known what the books were about ahead of time I would have bought technique books instead, because that's what I wanted. I wanted new techniques so that I could sew new things. That's not what I need, though. I need to understand the fundamentals of this craft. I need to understand why you do a certain stitch here instead of there, and why such and such is used instead of this other thing. It's doesn't give immediate gratification like a technique book would, but it's more useful in the long run. Contrary to yesterday I'm quite happy to have these books now.

It's actually pretty lucky. If they had been technique books I would be all inspired to start a new project despite being in the middle of the baby vampire. It would have taken all of the enjoyment out of the current project and made me rush. So this whole thing has been a blessing in disguise! Baby Vampire says "blehhhh, thanks for not rushing me and screwing something up in the 11^th hour, blehhhhhh. All things happen for a reason.

Why should I waste my time doing this?

This is what I hear most of my students saying. Why should I waste my time learning English? I'll never use it! How many times did we lament the same way in our classes? Why do I have to dissect a frog, we would cry, when we're never going to become scientists? We would moan about the iambic pentameter, the algebra, and the mandatory vocabulary tests. Why do we have to do this? We're never going to use it! It's the rule of school. Unfortunately there's a lot more out working against learning English in Japan than just academic ennui.

There's pressure on a lot of kids not to do well at English. If you do well at English you'll leave. You'll go to a university far away. You'll get a job in a big city. You won't stay in this little town, on this little island, in this little prefecture. There's also a belief that many of my kids subscribe to that getting better at English will take away part of their Japanese-ness, and this is something that I have real difficulty with. I don't want to make any kid have to choose between his culture and his grade point average. I don't want any kid to feel like if I encourage them to study or use English it's because I want to take away part of their personal self. In the West we don't have a parallel. We don't lose anything by learning another language. We've got the opposite image where we add to ourselves by learning another language.

I saw a poster advertising a kendo tournament at the conbini the other day. It said in Japanese 剣道をすると、日本の心も育てて, or "nourish your Japanese spirit by doing kendo." Studying English takes away from the Japanese spirit, and kendo nourishes it. I have a student in the second grade of Westside. He's in the kendo club, but he always greeted me in English. He wasn't the best student, but he was enthusiastic and generally put in a fair amount of effort. In the last few months, though, he's changed. He refuses to greet properly during English class or answer any questions in English. He understands the questions and will answer them perfectly… in Japanese. I was confused. What would cause such a change? He isn't hostile or fishing for attention. He just refuses to speak any word in English. His class is a chorus of "hellos" and one loud "Ohayou!"

Then I saw a picture in the back of their classroom. A huge sports tournament had been held a couple of weeks ago, and Westside had taken many first place ribbons. The kendo team in particular had done very well, because there was a picture of little Mr. No English Even In English Class in his kendo uniform holding a plaque covered with ribbons and smiling so hard it looked like the top of his head was going to fall off. I doubt his kendo coach told him not to speak any English or anything like that, but I wonder if the boy himself decided that in order to take his kendo training to the next level he had to remove all non-Japanese influences. He's a bright kid, so in any case it makes me a little sad. Not that he's deciding to focus on kendo instead of English or anything, but that this is a culture where you have to choose at all.

I wonder if making foreign language study more of an open choice rather than just English would help. Maybe if kids could choose between English, Chinese, Korean, and French (since so many girls get obsessed about learning French so they can open their own patisserie) there would be more openness. Maybe if the kids had more agency in what non-Japanese thing was entering into their minds they'd be less armored against it.

In the end, it's a problem with deep, deep roots. In the West we're encouraged to learn new languages to get better jobs, to widen our minds, and to make it possible to travel to foreign countries and really communicate with people. Even though English is widely spoken we're encouraged to learn other languages because we might someday meet someone who doesn't speak English or live somewhere where people don't speak English. As most ALTs know, it's possible to live in Japan with almost no command of the language, but it's sure a lot easier if you speak Japanese. I don't know what reason the kids are being given for learning English, or if they're even being given a reason. I only teach in elementary and junior high school, so it may very well be addressed in high school. Kids aren't stupid, and if they're given a good reason for doing something as opposed to "because I said so" then they're more likely to apply themselves. Unfortunately, that still doesn't address the problem where applying themselves to a foreign language hurts their cultural identity. It's a vicious circle.

Happy Shiny People Holding Hands

Man, that title makes me think of listening to that song in the car with my parents and sisters. I loved R.E.M. so much when I was little, and I thought that "Shiny Happy People" was the happiest song in the world. R.E.M., the Grateful Dead, Talking Heads, that is some good music right there. I encourage everyone to listen to that song to get in the mood for this entry, because this entry is all about the good! And then listen to Fire On The Mountain , because that's a great song, too.

Something that orangepeeleater and I talk about a lot is how easy it is to get into a downward spiral of complaining about living in Japan or being an ALT. It's so easy to point to all of the obnoxious things about living in a culture foreign to your own and working with people who tend to treat you like an overgrown child most of the time. It's easy for foreigners in Japan, not just ALTs but any foreigners, to get into venting loops. It's cathartic because it really can be difficult living here and it can be almost therapeutic to let out the stress of being laughed at because you're wearing a short sleeved shirt instead of a long sleeved shirt or whatever. It's not as easy to point out the good things, or be forgiving, or think of solutions. Orangepeeleater and I both feel very lucky for living in a place where people tend to focus more on the positive. This is a group of people who listen to the negative, sympathize, and then move on to talking through solutions instead of just falling back on more complaining. It's a very good place to be, and it's important to acknowledge that.

There are pros and cons to everything, of course, but the pros definitely outweigh the cons! As I've mentioned before, I live on an island in the middle of the sea. This means that I'm separated from the mainland ALTs and the mainland ALT events. That's a bummer. What isn't a bummer is the incredibly close community that the island fosters. My coworkers can't drive home every weekend to hang out with their old friends; they pretty much have to make friends with people on the island. This means that I've got a very close relationship with almost all of my coworkers. It also means that I see my students outside of class pretty much all the time, and that means that my relationship with them is a lot stronger than just faces I see in school.

The kids are also generally very well-behaved here. If they act out everyone and their grandmother immediately knows about it. There also isn't as much peer pressure to act out and rebel. The kids still do, of course, but it's much more low-key than some of the stuff I've heard happens on the mainland. The con to this is that the kids aren't as motivated to study or work hard in school. This is a phenomenon that happens a lot on islands and in rural areas. Life has a different, slower rhythm here, and the kids don't have the same fire under them as the kids in a bigger city. But hey, at least they aren't pulling knives on each other.

All in all, it's a good life. I wouldn't be staying for a third year if everything was terrible, and I don't want to give that impression with entries like one on sexual harassment. There are problems, yes, but the problems don't overshadow everything else. I wrote the sexual harassment piece because the reasoning someone was giving on another forum for not believing people's stories of harassment was that he hadn't hear any accounts personally, so if someone does say something it's a lie. I didn't write it because every day here is like walking through a sea of harassment.

Today is a great day. I got a hug from my favorite JHS student, a girl I may have mentioned before who has been bullied for years. She loves English and listens to English music in her free time. She, and the other kids like her, are the reason this job is amazing. They are the reason I'm staying a third year, and they are why I feel like Shiny Happy People almost all the time.