Lost in Translation or View From the Top

Two weeks ago, I was told that the school (7th - 9th grade) would be going on a field trip, and that I was invited to go along. To quote the Japanese teacher the school was going on, "A LITTLE HIKE." I was told to wear hiking shoes and play clothes, to pack a lunch, water and camera, and to get to the school early, so that we could depart to some remote area in the mountains.

I was excited by this plan. A nice hike in the wilderness...the chance to see more bears and monkeys...fresh air...some much needed exercise...and some quality time with my students. It sounded like good fun!

The morning of the planned trip, I heated up some soup I had made the night before, thinking that I would like something warm at our destination, and I put the steamy concoction into my large stainless steel canister. I also packed my good, but old--and therefore large--camera, and a 2 liter bottle of water (don't want to dehydrate!). I wore some jeans, a tank top under a long sleeve shirt under a sweatshirt, and some thick socks with my hiking boots, and I thought I was set!!! Little did I know...

I got to school early, and was a little tired, since it was still predawn, so, I slept the first hour on the bus. The second hour was beautiful. We drove along a scenic route in the mountains where there were waterfalls bursting waith the rain from the previous days' typhoon, and the trees showed signs of autumn progressing to winter. The chatter on the bus was animated, but indecipherable to me, so I continued looking out the window, admiring the view.

When we arrived at our destination--a small parking lot just off the road--I stretched, took in a deep breath of cold mountain air, and I looked around. It was beautiful. The parking lot was on the edge of a cliff overlooking some of the nearby mountains. There were some signs in Japanese, and the kids were all putting on some sort of equipment, which, at the time I thought nothing of. As I looked around, I tried to find our expected path...but there was none. In fact, other than the narrow mountain road we had just departed, I didn't see any real footpaths stemming from the parking lot.

Then I turned around...

OH DEAR GOD, we were not going on a "little hike," we were going to CLIMB A MOUNTAIN. To be exact, we were going to climb Mt. Hakusan, one of the three holiest (and tallest) mountains in Japan. 'Hakusan' means white mountain, and there are no prizes for how it got it's name. Even in mid-October, I was no where near dressed warm enough.

The ascent took a good 3.5 hours, and included much wimpering by me. As we progressed, I began to understand just what an understatement the phrase, "little hike," was...we weren't so much hiking as we were climbing a ladder...straight up to the top.

I firmly believe that you should have to tell someone that they are going to climb Mt. Hakusan, or any mountain for that matter. Most people only go the first 3 hours, then stop overnight at this little hut so they can do the last 30-45 minutes the next morning and catch the sunrise, but there was no rest for this weary team. We did take a 15 minute break in which I broke into my soup and ate with such gusto, that the surrounding students whispered around me. Why they felt the need to whisper is beyond me...I don't speak Japanese.

On reflection, carrying a stainless steel container is not what I would have packed had I known I was going to climb a mountain, nor 2 liters of water...nor my camera. The few pictures I have are alright, but after dropping (and breaking) my camera halfway up, I wish I had one of those disposable, and much lighter ones. I also wish I had a jacket, and long underwear, some lightweight lunch that was wrapped in a baggie, and just enough water to survive.

Truth be told, the only reason I made it to the top was pride. I figured that if these 7th, 8th & 9th graders could do it, so could I. They cheered me on, and constantly asked me if I was okay, "daijobu?" I think had it been just me and friends I would have chickened out (or at least I would have been better prepared) but with the kids I pressed on, and on, and on...

But, when all is said and done, the view from the top is incredible. Standing there, in 2 feet of snow, colder than cold, more tired than I have ever been, I looked out onto Japan. I hated the typhoon the day before (the deadliest in 25 years), but it did make for clear skies, and full waterfalls...and though I didn't have a camera, I will always remember climbing Mt. Hakusan...



I slept the entire way home.

Typhoons 13
Earthquakes 6
Mountains 1

Turning Japanese, I Think I'm Turning Japanese, I Really Think So...

If you are ever presented with the opportunity to do so, I highly discourage riding your bike home in a typhoon. I further strongly discourage you from riding your bike in the rain if you are carrying the most valuable thing you own, your laptop, with you...especially if said laptop weighs a whopping 14 lbs. (okay, it's not really a laptop, so much as it is a mobile desktop).

Moving right along...digga dum digga dum

I was looking back on my previous posts and I realize that I have yet to talk about any of my more fond moments in Japan. Truth be told, much of the reason that I delay between blogs is because I am really happy here in Japan. Some of my biggest fears in moving to Japan have never materialized, and while I did not expect bears here, it makes for great storytelling!

So, here's to the good times!

First, I never thought I would enjoy teaching. I left a career that I loved back home, and I was terrified before moving here that I would 1) not be a good teacher, 2) hate my job 3) would be lonely 4) would have regrets

While my job does have it's *moments* I am actually beginning to enjoy the subtle rewards of teaching. My favorite lesson, by far, was teaching the 9th graders from Yoshinodani (the school where I have to go downhill to go to the ski resort) how to make Mexican food. I taught them how to make Spanish rice (which they loved!), refried beans (which they hated) and tortillas from scratch (which they tried to roll out with chopsticks).

I highly recommend taking a glance at the photos of the event. I have two male students who, despite their extremely limited English, shout everything they know in English, as opposed to just saying it. I guess to compensate for their lack of vocabulary. At any rate, the guy with the blue army camo apron would shout at the top of his lungs, "I AM A VEGETARIAN, CALL ME GOD!" His buddy, wearing a green sweater in the photo, would respond with, "VEGETARIAN IS FOR FOOLS, PASS THE PEPPERS!" Their accent and shouting reminds me vividly of the show, Iron Chef.

Last night, I found myself at my enkai. An enkai is an alcohol induced party for you and your coworkers. If you are the guest of honor, you don't have to pay, but generally you pay between $30 - $75 for a night of drinking and eating and drunk Japanese people. It is GREAT. Because I am now at 5 junior high/elementary schools and a high school I have lots of enkais.

There are a couple rules to Japanese drinking.
1. Made famous by Tom Selleck in the movie, Mr. Baseball if you tell your boss off when your drunk, it can't be held against you. Little did I know that you can do more than tell your boss off...you can say absolutely absurd things and get away with it, if you can reasonably claim you are drunk. For example, last night the conversation shifted to bowling. Here is the conversation that took place amongst my Japanese coworkers:

"I play bowling." Principal
"I play bowling and soccer. I am a real playboy! Do you want to be a playboy?" Math Teacher
"You should be a playboy. You like balls." Social Studies teacher.

They had no idea what they were saying, but it was all good fun! I couldn't stop laughing.
2. Japanese can't drink unless they are eating, and they can't eat anything until the guest of honor eats first...from every plate. Therefore, the Japanese REALLY like to eat. Most enkais that I have seen thus far are Bistro style, where a large plate will come out and everyone serves themselves of that dish onto their own plate. So every time a new plate comes out, the guest of honor must serve herself and eat first. Since I have been the guest of honor at every enkai, and the Japanese like to see what Americans will eat, I have tried bear, freeze-dried baby crabs (shell and all), squid ink, bear, raw chicken, and every kind of raw fish known to man.
3. You can never pour for yourself. Therefore, to indicate you want more to drink, you fill your friend's cup, or if you are cool, you feel the guest of honor's cup. A never-ending flow of alcohol...need I say more?
4. The Japanese, after becoming intoxicated, will invariably sing. It can be anything from the Japanese National Anthem to Man in the Mirror (Michael Jackson). What's more, as an American, they will expect you to know the lyrics to every song ever written in English, and will ask you to sing. No amount of alcohol in the world will cause me to sing...
5. Despite their frequency of drinking, Japanese have very low tolerance of alcohol. They are often completely drunk after a beer or two, and show no restraint in action. For example, above mentioned math teacher, in very broken English, completed the night by asking me on a date. Well...I assume he was asking me out. Could've been something else. Add a Japanese accent, and drunken stammering to this:

"You...and...you, I mean, me...yes...you and me, beeru (beer)...uh...eto (uh)...eto...yesterday."

All in all, an enkai is good fun. A little pricey sometimes, and often embarrassing, but fun...

Finally, you should never underestimate the good times that can be held at a festival. Where I am from, festivals are those things where they set up rickety roller coasters and ferris wheels in supermarket parking lots for a weekend...or perhaps where you go to buy someone's homemade craft or treat...here, festivals are incredible. I will speak now about the Tsurugi Town Festival, by far the coolest thing I have done in Japan!

I had never been to a festival before and I was told to, "look for floats parading in the streets." I imagine some sort of tissue paper-clad chicken wire creation on the back of a truck carrying a home-coming queen. NOT THE CASE. First, the "parade" is a bit of a stretch, and by the floats are actually insanely large and heavy statues carried through the town by the village men.

When we arrive (one Californian, an Oregonian, and two Chinese-Canadians), there are a couple of "floats" scattered throughout the town, and what they do is the men (15 - 30 per float) carry the statues from door to door where they set down the statue, sing or perform a ritual dance, and then are invited in to receive beer, money, sake and food, and not just small amounts. I found each float, at each stop made between $50 - $300, chugged at least a can of beer each and/or a shot of sake, and, as my dad would say, received the "finest meats and cheese in all the land," except there is no cheese in Japan, and by meat I mean raw fish. There was sushi, fruits, fried chicken, mochi, and other delicacies of the east.

Needless to say, that as the night progressed; they became richer, and considerably drunk. Floats would crash into telephone wires, buildings, people, and anything else in the way...a very comical sight (it was all in good fun).

At the time, we were not aware that this was customary, but upon watching one team sing, we too were invited in for food and drink. We weren't sure if we would have to pay, or if there was some etiquette for declining, but we proceeded to enter the building anyway. What transpired was a beautiful, ornate, huge, traditional Japanese home. We walked through room after room, decked in intricately carved columns, gold-leaf etchings and the finest wares. Finally we reached a large rectangular room with a long table in the center covered in foods of all type, all of the highest quality. We were invited to sit and soon we were offered sake, sushi, and anything else the heart desires.

Through our broken Japanese, and their broken English it transpired that we were in the Mayor's house, and were dining with the mayor and his chief council. How did we get here? It was great.

We stayed a while then grabbed some sushi on for the road (they wrap them in some kind of leaf that keeps them fresh), and went to see what other good fortunes lay ahead. As it turns out, good fortune wasn't far away. Parked a block away was a van with a female mannequin on the side of it decked in a black fur coat. My cohorts passed this by without interest, but I noticed a button on right about where here belly button would be. So, naturally, I pressed it. Soon water began to pour out her mouth...in a constant stream. My friends started laughing, some nearby Japanese girls started staring, and I, not knowing what to do, walked away from the scene of the crime. After a good couple minutes (and I am sad to say now, around 5-10 gallons) the flow stopped, when a Japanese man pressed the button to make it stop. But not until after he filled his cup with the liquid. Puzzled, we stumbled back to the woman, sniffed around, and found that she offered free sake. That's right; just pull up your cup for as much free sake as you can drink, once you get over the fact that you are drinking sake from the mouth of a mannequin, off the side of a van, in the middle of the street.

My friends declined, but I borrowed the communal cup (hanging off the side of the van...perhaps not my best moment), and partook in the wild tradition. It was some of the best sake I have had yet...and it was free...and out of the mouth of a mannequin...off the side of a van...in the middle of the street...in the middle of the night...in Japan...

See, there is good fun in Japan!


Typhoons: 12
Earthquakes: 4

I love Sundays

I love Sundays. Not for some new religious fascination--as much as my grandmother would hope--but because on Sundays, I am an American. Sundays are my refuge from the world in which I am a deaf mute who is illiterate. Sundays keep me sane in a city where I must sort my trash; burnables, plastics, recyclables, odd objects, flammables. I look forward to Sunday every week, the one day where there is some normalcy.

On Sundays I do not sleep in. On the contrary, I wake up early. Very early. Thanks to a time delay and the international dateline I sometimes wake up as early as 4:00 am in order to enjoy the UCLA game on internet radio live, so that I do not see the score before hearing the game. Why they post the score directly above the link to the audio archive is beyond me. Who would want to hear a game they already know the outcome to?

On Sundays, while listening to the game I make breakfast. Not a Japanese breakfast filled with white rice, miso soup and pickled salads, but big breakfasts that remind me of home. They are meals I had in America, though they are not strictly "American." Some days this is pancakes with maple syrup, sausage and eggs. Other days, it is a taste of my grandmother's house with homemade tortillas, bacon and refried beans. It is true, syrup, bacon and beans cost a pretty penny (or yen, as you will) in Japan, but on Sundays I don't care. I pinch pennie (or yen) and plan all week for Sunday breakfasts and if I could find an oven I would use a ton of electricity to make muffins or coffee cake too.

After the game I listen to "Wait, wait don't tell me!" a news quiz show played on KQED, member station of NPR. I can't listen to this live as it usually conflicts with the game, but as long as I am not trying to call in, this is fine. No one announces the results of the trivia. The reason for listening is two-fold. First, I like the show (I would often schedule my Saturdays around it), and second, it checks how up to date I am on world events, one of my goals being a greater awarness of happenings beyond my borders.

After the show I usually try to call home to America to check in with my family, arrange flights, or get technical support from Palm (ruddy palm pilot hasn't been the same since, "the incident"). If I time it right, I call them on their Saturday evening, the time my family is most likely to be home. Especially with my most recent post about bears, I have to admit to still being alive. Plus I regularly have questions like, "Did you see Maurice Drew have the best game of his career?" or, "How do you care for a pulled quadricep?" or, "How would I know if I had a broken foot?" Ah, yes, all the important questions in life.

In the afternoon (mind you, I got up at 4:00 am to listen to the game), I can be found playing soccer with other foreigners, being a tourist in Kenrokuen gardens (a truly magical place), knitting/crocheting with my fellow stitch-n-bitchers (pardon my language, but that is the official group name), or whiling the afternoon away playing with my kitten.

In the evening, I make pizza or burritos for dinner. Occasionally I will make quesadillas instead of burritos, but cheese costs more than gold and isn't very good here (only a slight exageration). Whil I eat, I curl up on my bed with lots of blankets and some tea to watch an episode of Sex & City. I have started from series premiere, and I am watching them in order, at only one per week (it is so difficult to limit myself on this front). The show is followed by the English movie played on TV every Sunday night. These rang in quality quite a bit, and often include Steven Segal. So far I have seen, Enemey of the State, Apollo 13, Half Past Dead, Babe in the Big City, Under Siege, Usual Suspects, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, U571, Exit Wounds, and a couple others so bad I couldn't recognize them.

Once the movie ends, at 11 pm, I end my day. My American day. All English, all the time. Good friends, good food. Home.

Yessiree...on Sundays, I am home.

Jingle Bells

As I trudged up the hill to school this morning I was surprised by the number of bells I heard. Jingle Bells to be exact. I wondered if I had missed a memo about a school spirit week, or if this was a strange training ritual for the Track & Field tournament tomorrow.
As I got closer to school I saw that EVERY student had bells tied to their backpacks and their shoes. "Weird," I thought. It wasn't until the morning staff meeting that I began to suspect that more than Japanese custom was at foot. The principal was at the meeting, and he never joins us except on Fridays. Also, there were two burly men, garbed in heavy leather clothes. Wild and frantic discussion took place for about 15 minutes. This would seem a sure sign to most, but the morning meetings are always more animated than I expect.
At the close of the meeting, the JTE leaned over and said, "There was bear." Nothing more, just a fragmented sentence.
"What do you mean there was a bear? What bear? Where? What?"
"Yesterday there was a bear out there (she pointed to the edge of campus, which borders a forest)."
"Um, a bear out there on the school, or a bear out in the forest?"
"He was in the trees on the school grounds."

This is why the kids all wore bells. To ward off the bears. To let the bears know that they were coming.

"WHAT !$&!?#?! Is he still there? When? What?!?!"
"Yesterday around 5:00 there was a bear in the trees. So we called the local hunters and they came and shot him." She said this with so little life in her voice I was sure she was joking. No one can talk about shooting a bear at a school with such nonchalance. Then the larger surprise hit me, and I was overwhelmed.
"You ate the bear?!?!"
Another teacher overheard my very loud exclamation and said, "Oh, bear is very delicious!"
My JTE said, "I didn't eat it, but yes, the hunters cut him up and are storing him for meat. Bear is delicious. We eat a lot of bear in the mountains."

I sat there stunned, mouth-opened and eyes wide for a couple moments while the JTE translated my indignation.

I had intended my last post with a little bit of jest. I didn't think I was truly this close to bears. After a few moments silence the JTE told me that a different bear had attacked and nearly killed a man yesterday as well, but that bear got away.

It is going to be a long walk to the bus stop today. Where am I going to get bells?

On a lighter note, the Nagano soccer tournament that took place this weekend past was great fun. Nothing like 500 English speakers getting together to enjoy sport, drink and company. Saturday was stunning. A glorious sun-filled day, despite our three loses. Sunday, however, was a horrid mess, and I was only to glad to lose. It was so foggy you couldn't see the field and then we were swept up by the cold and rain. I hadn't expected the cold, and did not pack accordingly. But what is soccer without a bit of mud?
For the full story, check out the write up.


And for the record...
Typhoons: 7
Earthquakes: 3 (the last one was more fierce because I was well up in the mountains, but still not enough to scare me!)

Lions, and Tigers, and BEARS...Oh, bloody hell!!!

Okay, so maybe not actual Lions and Tigers, but BEARS & MONKEYS...dear god.

As if the fact that there are spiders the size of tennis balls living right in front of every window at school, bugs the size of my hand crawling accross my bathroom floor, and bats taking to the sky at night in my neighborhood aren't enough (yes, you read that right, BATS!!!), I now get to contend with bears and wild monkeys at my school!

Apparently there are bears ransacking local homes, stores and schools up in the mountains--where I work and stand outside by a lone poll to wait for a bus in all weather each day--looking for food to fill up for hibernation. In addition to these large black bears, there are monkeys. Not cute little monkeys like "Marcel" on Friends; scary, wild monkeys like the ones in Jumanji. Monkeys that break windows and steal. Large monkeys who are tricksters.

I haven't met said creatures yet, but they are coming. I know they are coming. Each day when I get to school another person reports a late night visitor to their home or local market. I feel like I am on that horrid TV show, "When Animals Attack," and that they are just waiting for me to be alone before they make their move. I cannot emphasize enough how isolated my bus stop is, and I am sure that is where it will happen.

How do I get myself into these things? I am a city girl, and while I enjoy the occasional venture out to nature, I don't like working in fear of Bears, Monkeys, large bugs, spiders, mukade (haven't seen one yet, but I know they are out there), bats, or any other creatures!

Sigh...and the kids laugh at me.