Japanese Food trivia
Mood:  cheeky
Ok, so i'm not ready to write this.
patience is a virtue!

Teaching in Japan
Mood:  chatty
The more i teach in Japanese junior highs the more i feel like they are more an extended family rather than just a school. A few days ago i watched kids planting watermelon, sweet potato, tomato and cucumber plants with their teachers after school. There are little garden plots all over the outside of the building now. Over and over again i wonder if these teachers don't spend more time with these kids than the kid's own parents. I also wonder if these teachers don't spend more time with these kids than they spend with their own families. I see classes being structured around the "whole child" rather than an individual subject. As much as the tests are stressed for success, i see so much more energy and emphasis placed on sports, and overall experiences than i do the basics. I know that i can't see the whole picture because of my poor Japanese language skills. I have to observe the actions and behaviors of students and teachers and draw my rough conclusions. I try not to analyze too much, but it is amazing to me that a school trip or activity takes precedence over an English class over and over again. Each class has a tradition of going on a longer and longer trip as the kids get older. First graders only a day trip. Third graders take a 4-day 3-night trip with their teachers (no parents attend this excursion!) Teachers place kids on jobs for an entire week in their 2nd year at junior high. No wonder teachers are at school at 7:30 am and stay to 7pm most evenings. Too much for me but i see that this job is more than a job - it's their life!

Post Office Challenge
Mood:  mischievious
So i go to the post office to send a package for an anniversary gift. I decide that it would be nice to have the note that i wrote arrive at the same time; so i taped it to the package. The post office lady was totally befuddled. She called over a manager and they decided after much discussion that it would cost me almost $40 to send. I then asked how much the package would cost if the letter was not attached. Answer: "About $20." So i ripped off the envelope and readdressed the package. The package was $20 and the letter was $1. This is just a small hint of the tiny frustrations that can really build up here in Japan. I keep telling myself, "Think like a duck! Just let it keep rolling off you!" and, of course, just laugh!

Japanese Food trivia
Mood:  silly
I am reading a Dictionary of Japanese Foods in my spare time and will try to add a few tidbits - hah for your reading pleasure.
shamisengai
"Tongue clam, lamp shell Lingula jaspidea. This brachiopod, strictly speaking not a shell fish, belongs to the oldest living genus of animals, almost unchanged for 500,00 years. A greenish color, about 3 cm. long with a peduncle about 5 cm. long, it is harvested in quantity from the Ariake Sea in northwestern Kyushu. It tastes peculiar rather than delicious and some people come out in a rash when they eat it. Eleven species of Lingula, some quite large, live in Japanese waters, but after surviving since the Cambrian period, are now being wiped out by pollution." How sad.

Hikingu
Mood:  cool
Didik and Masa on another hiking adventure to Mayayama.
We begin at Ojikouen Hankyu eki and climb the mountain and back down to Shin Kobe. Wow. We hiked from 10:30am till about 4pm. Rain and mist most of the day. Hiking through clouds, thundering waterfalls. wow.
more later and photos!

Traditional Japanese dinner with the ninensei senseis from Kobu.
Riding my bike through the remnants of a typhoon that bypassed us. What a downpour!

Control, control, control
Mood:  irritated
I've just made it through the two toughest weeks of my stay in Japan so far. It didn't help that i had a terrible cold. Sinus, fever, cough, congested lungs and just run-down-drug-out tired.

Thanks to my wonderful ALT friends here and some wonderful email friends from back home, they pulled me through. I had a carnation on my door one evening, some very uplifting and encouraging emails, and David and Connie invited me for a relaxing bring-your-own-dinner-downstairs-and-have-a-few-beers attitude adjustment.

Here are a few of the "straws" that almost sent me over the edge....
Bike Friday
After spending over $2,000 and waiting anxiously for this custom made bike to arrive, it finally came. I was so excited but took my time watching the video and reading the written directions for unpacking it. After spending a slow, quiet evening putting it together, i discovered to my dismay that the $60 Terry saddle that i'd paid for wasn't in the package. Well, it's hard to ride a new bike without a saddle so my new baby sat in my tatami room for over a week until they sent me one. That cost me one long distance call. Also, i discover that somehow the chain must have gotten packed up against the frame and the links of the chain have dug into the new paint job right over the big Bike Friday label on the side of the frame. It's taken off the paint down to the metal. Good grief. Also the chain has gouged the brake cable so that the rubber coating is cut down to the metal. Then, after I finally put the saddle on the bike and waited for a day without rain, the final maiden voyage was imminent. I toted the oh-so-light bike downstairs and took off down the street. Trying the shifters i went first through the lower gears...a-ok, mid-range gears...a-ok, so here we go into high gear....screech-to-a-halt surprise, surprise. I get off the bike that has come to an abrupt stop and, much to my chagrin, discover that the front derailleur is positioned BETWEEN the two outer gears. THERE IS NO WAY THIS DERAILLEUR COULD HAVE EVER WORKED THIS WAY. Another long distance call to Bike Friday and all he can say is that he'll email me a website that will explain how to set up my derailleur. He apologizes about not answering any of my emails, they are swamped. I guess so if all the bikes are being sent out like mine.

Of course, if i was in the states and wasn't planning to bring this bike to Africa in a few short months, i'd pack the whole thing up and send it back. Frustration was at the max and so I decided to roll this thing down to my favorite Japanese bike shop. They know very little English but understood my frustration when i showed them the problems. In 20 minutes they adjusted the derailleurs till they worked perfectly, adjusted the brakes that were a bit sloppy and did a whole safety inspection. THEY REFUSED TO CHARGE ME ANYTHING. Can you believe that? Only in Japan! The bike is riding well now but then i received a bill in the mail from FedEx for $145. I wasn't expecting that because i'd already paid over $200 for the shipping. I found out later that this is import tax. Ah, well. I guess every government deserves a chunk of my money.

Frustration #2
Control
I seem to be having problems with management's level of control over our lives here in Japan. Maybe i'm just not flexible enough but i don't really think that's the problem. I think the problem is that the management is more into filling out boxes and dotting i's and crossing t's than being effective. We are required to teach everyday from 8:20-4:30pm no matter what. Even if there are NO classes all day long we are required to sit at our desks and vegitate. It is so very weird. Even if we come to school early and stay late and teach extra night classes for them, it makes no difference. If we want to take off an hour early to do some banking, it's forbidden. We all cheat because there is no way to get things done any other way. I hate cheating and lying but i don't know how else to get around it. For example, to purchase a money order to send to the states you have to go to the post office. They only do money orders from 8:30 am till 3pm Monday thru Friday. We all need to send money home once in awhile to pay our bills back home. There have been a few other minor issues of control...i don't want to get too whiny so i'll skip these here.

The next big issue of control surfaced a few weeks ago. Our agreement says that if we stay a second year that we will receive the price of a round trip ticket back home. I was really counting on this money (about $2,000) There's a catch - if you don't go home during the August break - you don't get the money. We have to apply for "Study Leave" time during August when there are no scheduled classes and we have nothing to do. Our study leave has to be "approved" based on our using it for educational purposes. We can't just go home to see our family. I am going to Africa and travelling by bike around the country, learning the language, studying the culture and attempting a climb of Kilimanjaro. But in order to take advantage of the trip home, I have to cut my Africa trip short and spend an inordinately large amount of money and time going to the states in August because they won't let me use that money to go home at Christmas when my family would really like to see me. WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE TO THEM WHEN I GO HOME? WHO KNOWS. I am so mad I could spit bullets.

Also, management told us two weeks ago that they trust us so much that they don't see any reason to give us a contract this coming year so we are working without a contract. That gives me such fuzzy feelings that they trust us that much!

So enough whining. I'm feeling much better physically. I've decided to just take my summer vacation and enjoy the adventure of it all and STAY POSITIVE!
thanks for listening to me whine. luckily i don't do it often :-)

Kobu Gardening 101
Mood:  a-ok
Satsumaimo, sweet potato and tomato and watermelon planting time. more later.

Fireflies in Japan
Mood:  amorous
How romantic to feast our eyes on flickering fireflies flitting in the night with friends. hee, hee.

One of my former English students, Yoshie, and her family have invited me on another outing. This time to view fireflies. I have invited a few other girlfriends and we take off on foot from Yoshie's apartment. Yoshie's husband and Miki, their daughter, my friends Miwa and Tomoko also are here and my new Kobu friend, Yamada-sensei join us. We first stop at a garden plot that is tenderly cared for by a man who is 16 years old (60 years ago!). Now that's a great attitude! He has bags waiting for us and we get to dig potatoes to carry home as well as sweet red onions and some herbs from his garden. He shows us some logs(i think that they are oak but not sure) where he has introduced shitake mushroom spores. If i get a chance i will go back in the fall to see how they grow on this wood.

Our hike takes us through twilight lit city streets up and up to a private University. We take a shortcut through the campus and as the sun is setting and the shadows are falling we see our first glimmering fireflies. They perch gently on leaves and branches and it's easy to reach out and catch them. They are more like beetles than flies and are black with dark orange heads. As we walk along a gurgling little stream we begin to see a few more. They are not numerous. Yoshie's friend says that he remembers reading a book under a tree by the light of these bugs before the big earthquake. Up farther along the trail we come to a cement wall. There is a waste water treatment pond behind this wall. During the earthquake this wall broke and water roared down on the houses below killing eight people. On our way down he shows us a plot where cosmos and marigolds and other colorful flowers are planted in memory of those lost in the earthquake. If you'd like to read more about the great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake please scroll back to my January journal.

The only way to describe the sight of fireflies, which are rather foreign to me, is to say that I kept thinking of Disneyland and Tinker Bell - just magical!

Maiden Voyage
Mood:  celebratory
My new Bike Friday took me for a 20 mile spin today. It was a rough and rocky road getting this thing going but we're sailing now.
Please jump ahead to June 11th for the full Bike Friday fiasco.

Japanese Trivia
Mood:  surprised
I've heard that it is a Japanese tradition to put a small bowl of salt outside of a drinking establishment. This tradition originated in China when customers left their oxen-drawn carriages outside the bar and the oxen waited contentedly while licking on salt licks placed in front of the bar.