.

Needless to say I've been neglecting my blog, so I apologize to anyone that still checks this. I'm going to let the words of one of my students express my current attitude toward posting. This is taken from a recent daily diary assignment:

''Today, I'm sleep about all day. So, I'm out of write. I'm sorry.''

Don't mess with Tekisach

It's test time so that means little classtime but lots of grading for me. And, as usual, the only thing that keeps me going through all 200 test papers is my students' Japanese English. I did dictation for one section of the test meaning that I spoke while the students would write what I said. One of my sentences contained Texas and, among all my students' tests, there ended up being 45 different spellings of the word.

Here they (all) are:

Taxes
Txase
texis
texisas
txas
taixs
Texe
Texis
texs
teaxs
Texcus
Texsous
Texcis
taxas
Tekx
Texisus
Telx
taxis
Tex
Tekisach
texes
tekisasu
texisess
Texss
txsus
Texsace
texses
tekis
txsas
texus
teaxs
Texias
Texce
texsass
Texth
Tekisas
Taxs
Texsos
txisas
Texcs
txisas
Texies
Texse
Taxet
Txes

The most popular spelling by far was texs appearing on 34 tests.

Japan Pics

I don't mean this to be a promotion for myspace, but I have recently made a myspace photo page. So, if you'd like to see my Japan pics go to http://www.myspace.com/mboinjapan , but the catch is that you have to have a profile to see the pics. It doesn't take long to create an account and it'd be a good way to keep in touch. So, just set up an account, visit my page and click on View my: pics under my profile picture, and drop me a line if you'd like.

Join myspace.com

A = lo after A

I apologize for not posting in a while. I'm just not finding the motivation to write much these days. The novelty of being here has slowly worn off, and it feels like when I try to write something Japan oriented I'm just writing about trivial daily life stuff. It just feels like this is my normal life now. Honestly, I'm a little disillusioned with being here, but that doesn't mean I'm not happy. I'm just settled.

Anyway, yesterday I zoned out a little during a class while the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) was explaining grammar and vocab to the students. And, suddenly, he asked me ''Do you know?'' and pointed at the board, upon which he had written:

care for A = look after A

I froze. He and students waited for my answer as I gave a long ''uhhhmmm'' to fill the silence. After admitting defeat and saying ''I'm sorry, I don't understand.'' the answer came to me, redeeming me as the infallible native English speaker.

Now, I ask you, ''Do you know?''


Highlight (click and drag on) the the italicized text to see the answer.

Speeches, ad infinitum, ad naseum

Yesterday was the last day of work for 14 teachers and the principal at my base school, Ishinomaki Nishi high school. The principal is retiring and the teachers are moving to other schools. And in Japan, that means three things: ceremonies, speeches and drinking. The second aspect deserves special attention. The sheer number of speeches was astounding. Here's the breakdown, and keep in mind that I can't understand any of them and each speech was about 5 minutes long, on average:

1.) All 14 teachers gave one each and the principal gave two at a morning ceremony in the teachers' room.

2.) Again, all 14 teachers gave another speech, the principal gave two and the vice principal gave one at another morning ceremony in gym, which the students attended.

3.) And yet again, all 14 teachers, the principal and the vice principal spoke at a formal farewell party after work.

So: (14 x 3) + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 for a grand total of 49 speeches.

Which equates to about 245 minutes, or over 4 hours of monologue that I couldn't understand.

I don't mean to be irreverent or cynical. I know it was an important event for the school and all these teachers; maybe it's because I couldn't hear the content of each individual speech, but I couldn't help but see the absurdity of 49 compulsory speeches in one day from the same 16 people, but, then again, I'm not Japanese.

Outsider

Sometimes I feel out of place here. Maybe it's because I've never been part of an ethnic minority, and, unlike in America, you cannot be a different race and be considered Japanese. In other words, any person from any heritage can potentially be American, but in Japan, if you're white or black you're automatically a gaijin*.

On a related note, I passed a Japanese midget the other day on my way to the train station and he looked at me like I was the strange one.

=======================================

*Gaijin is short for gaikokujin. But, the former literally means ''outsider'' and can be considered rude as opposed to the latter, which means ''foreigner.'' I have never been called gaikokujin.

Disclaimer: the above picture is not of said midget. This one's a Thai boxer. If ''midget'' isn't the current P.C. term, my apologies.

End of the Year Party, Part I

This blog should probably keep up with my experiences as they happen, but in direct defiance to that idea I'm going to recount something that happened over two and a half months ago. Perhaps these sorts of experiences can better be told with this kind of extended retrospect, or maybe that's just how I justify the journalistic laziness I've had with this blog lately. But, even with two and half months between now and Suisan's end of the year party I think this deserves to be told.

While holding a hastily gift-wrapped bottle of transcontinental barbecue sauce I sat in a car heading for a nearby town called Matsushima. Our final destination: a nice hotel with a view of Japan's self-proclaimed third most beautiful landscape: an inlet bay with hundreds of rock-walled islands; beautiful, no doubt; third most beautiful? doubtful. My secret Santa gift: one of about a dozen BBQ sauce bottles my parents sent me in attempt to show their love and provide me with the ability to recreate my dad's mouth-watering Texas barbecue. They love me, no doubt; me recreate Texas barbecue in Japan? doubtful.

In accordance with ever-important Japanese punctuality, we arrived early and left the car with the valet but, little did I know at the time, I left my crinkly bottle-shaped gift on the car seat. So after touring the lobby and chatting with other early comers I realized I forgot my gift. I told the teacher I came with and we tracked down the valet. It looked to be a busy night for him so he told us to wait in the lobby. So we stood near the front door inadvertently becoming the designated greeters for the party until the last guests arrived and made their way to the private room. So we waited in the lobby until every seat in the party hall was filled. And we waited...We waited until everyone was waiting on us. We could no longer be considered punctual, and in Japan, that's the shame of shames. As the minutes ticked by I could see the growing tension in the teacher's face and sensed frustration in the awkward silence.

I distracted myself by thinking about the journey that that little bottle of barbecue sauce made across the largest ocean in the world just to be wrapped in Pooh Bear themed paper and left on a car seat postponing the merriment of all the staff of Suisan Fisheries high school. That bottle was single-handily keeping over fifty Japanese adults from starting the most important faculty social event of the year. All the teachers would have to patiently wait for the arrival of that bottle before touching the food and drinks set out on the table in front of them. But, then again, that line of thinking was just my attempt to displace blame onto a bottle of hickory smoked goodness, and barbecue sauce can never be blamed for anything except of course for making meat delicious.

To be continued...

Lazy links

I don't think I posted enough about Hong Kong but I, in my laziness, don't see the sense in writing what's already been well-written by my friend Dave, who I went with to HK.

So, here are the links to his HK posts:

made in Hong Kong, chapter one

chapter two

chapter three (with pics!)

Nice Shoot!*

I recently played basketball with my students at the fisheries high school. I've never thought of myself as especially athletic, and when I play team sports like basketball my hand-eye coordination deficiency especially likes to rear its awkward head. But, I was the resident American so I couldn't let a small thing like having no skill or natural ability get in the way of representing the country that gave the world basketball. I couldn't let my students see me play and think, ''Man, Americans are bad at their own sports.''

So, the pressure was certainly on but that didn't keep me from losing 20 to 8 in a tiring, humbling one on one game. My D was definitely not tenacious, at least not enough to handle this bone thin 5' 5'' power-house the coach matched me up against. I had half a foot, half a buck and half a decade on this kid but he ran circles around me. I was a sloth swatting a humming bird. That day, David was Japanese and Goliath a lumbering American.

So, the gig was up: The big American wasn't good at basketball after all. I've always known I wasn't good, but at times like these it feels like I need to rediscover all the things I'm bad and good at relative to Japanese. It's like when you are in a different country there's the potential to be a different person, so every day can be a rediscovery of who you are until you realize that geography doesn't determine identity, but that your identity follows you everywhere. So, after coming to terms with what I already knew the coach told me that there will be a four on four full court game if I'd like to play.

I had nothing to prove so I accepted just for fun, but as I watched the students warm up it became apparent that the student I played one on one was, by far, the best player on the team. It was hard to believe but the other players' skill level seemed comparable to mine except I had a head over all the competition.

My confidence returned and the game began. It felt like I had wings at tip off, which empowered me to no end. Suddenly and unexpectedly I became the big American that's good at basketball. All at once, I felt tall, fast and athletic and my new-found self-assurance didn't allow me to act otherwise. I came back from the depths of accepting defeat to a level of confidence matched only by my towering height. I tirelessly glided across the court, I made my shots, I rallied the team; I, for the first time in my life, was good at basketball...so, on second thought, maybe I can be someone else in Japan?

Note:

*''Nice Shoot!'' is an example of Japanese English. It's what students say when someone makes a shot. I tried to explain that it should be ''Nice shot'', but they just turned their heads like confused puppies. Some English words like these are so widely used that they think they are Japanese, like the phrases ''Don't mind'' and ''Check it out'' for example, which end up sounding more like ''Don mine'' and ''Shekitau.''

3 quick things

Hey everybody,

Just in case anyone didn't know, I've decided to re-contract so I'm committing myself to another year of this crrazy Japafantasy life.

Not to assume too much but if you are trying to post comments but your comment doesn't go through, just try again and it'll let you post. I've realized that when I try to comment on other people's blogs it doesn't work the first time I try to send it but always goes through after the second attempt. For some reason this new version of blogger is really adament about protecting sites from spam bots, so you have to prove that you are not a computer program and enter two codes.

And lastly, this is just another shameless plug for my other blog: http://eternityconsidered.blogspot.com/ , go there for all your eternal perspective discourse needs.

My Directions

The setting of this next post should be familiar by now. From the Suisan chronicles (that brought you stories like My Treasure and Suisansado-masochist) comes yet another result of teenage boy hijinks.

I was teaching a lesson on telling directions and, at the end of the lesson, the mood turned conversational, which always guarantees something...special. The students talked amongst themselves until I heard my name mentioned a few times and suddenly the class looked at me inquisitively.

The teacher then says that the students want me to tell them how to get a girl. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get away from this one without telling them something. They seemed genuinely curious and eager for advice, which might be somewhat attributed to there being only 10 girls at the school. So, I searched my brain for succinct, easily translatable directions on how to get a girl. It not being an art I've mastered, nothing came. Ask me directions on how to pop popcorn, how to wash clothes, how to ride a bike or how to do anything except that and maybe I can break it down into a few steps. But, I dipped into all past relationship experiences in a thin-slice Malcom Gladwell sort of way and turned to the chalkboard; these three simple steps are what came out of me:

1.) Tell her that she is beautiful.
- later amended to ''Tell her that she is 'so' beautiful.''
- The extended explaination: ''Let her know that you like her. And make her feel beautiful.''

2.) At first, do not act like you need her.
- I drew two magnets on the board and explained that, even though the two positives faced eachother, the approaching positive would push the other magnet away. Extended explaination: ''Don't 'come on' too strong and too fast.''

3.) Then, when you know that she likes you, treat her like she is all that matters to you.

The students had never listened so attentively and their English comprehension seemed to improve 10 fold. I walked to the back of the class as the teacher translated and explained. From the back, over the heads of 40 Japanese students, I saw all my directions, notes and drawings on the chalkboard on how the get a girl. First, I felt relief that I pulled it off and that my students wanted to listen to English as a means for getting information that they actually wanted. But then, upon looking again at the students and the chalkboard I became conscious of what I just taught them. I looked out the window and suddenly became very aware of where I was and what I was doing: standing in the back of classroom in Japan after teaching 40 students how to get a girl. I couldn't help but think that I live a very strange life but, right now, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Suisansado-masochist

My visiting school, Suisan, is a non-academic fishery school with only 10 girls. (I actually only have 1 girl student in all five of my classes there.) So, the students there are quite a different breed than my students at my base academic school. The guys at Suisan can get pretty rowdy and downright cheeky and, if encouraged by a teacher, they can come out with some exceedingly bizarre things. Especially one class in particular, which is the same class that was the setting for the My Treasure event (see blog entry with that title). Anyways, on occasion, the planets align and make for a very strange class. Usually the formula for the perfect storm looks like this: No work + Friday + Sex crazed Japanese students (all guys) + Questionable teacher encouragement + Me (the easy and obvious target) =

The students talk and laugh as the teacher turns to me with a smile and says,
''They are wondering if you are sadistic.''
Me: ''Uhh, are you serious?''
Teacher: ''They want to know if you are sadistic. In Japanese we say `Ss.`''
Me: ''Wow, umm, no, I'm not.''
The teacher speaks to them in Japanese and turns back to me.
Teacher: ''Now they want to know if you are masochistic.''
Me: ''What?! These are really strange questions...''
I turn to the class and repeat slowly, ''S-T-R-A-N-G-E Q-U-E-S-T-I-O-N-S.'' But the teacher persists.
Teacher: ''So, are you?''
Me: ''Uhh, I don't think, no, no I'm not masochistic."
Teacher: "Oh, so you're nuetral?"
Me: "Nuetral?? Yeah, sure, I guess I'm nuetral...why are they asking me this.''
Teacher: ''Oh, well, they are just making sure.''

Essays

Here are some things I've had to write for school publications. I tried to keep the vocabulary and sentences simple because they all had to be translated to Japanese by teachers or students.

This first one is an essay I wrote for the school newspaper at Suisan fisheries high school (my visiting school). It was sort of a self-introduction, mission statement thing that all new teachers have to write.

Hello. My name is Matthew O`Hair. I am from the United States of America. After graduating from college last year I got a job at a therapeutic wilderness camp for troubled teenagers. Parents send their kids to this camp for emotional healing and social education. We would often receive teenagers with drug addictions, suicidal tendencies, anger management issues or hyper activity disorders. On average, a student stays for about 45 days. And, for the entire stay, the only contact he can have with anyone outside of camp is with his family through letters. From their first day until their last day the students camp and hike in the woods occasionally meeting with a clinical psychologist and doing therapeutic assignments.
The initial purpose of the camp is to temporarily remove a student from his mismanaged life so that he might see himself and his poor decisions more objectively. The second purpose of the camp is to teach the student to make better decisions for himself so that he might improve his life outside the camp. In other words, first we allow a student to see that there are problems in his life and then we equip him with the knowledge necessary to solve his problems.
I was a field guide at the camp, which meant that I was with the students for 24 hours a day for 16 days out of the month. In other words, I would work for eight days straight and then have six days off and then work another eight days; I repeated this schedule for one year.
Part of my job as a field guide was to point out to the students the natural consequences of the decisions they made while they lived out their day to day lives at camp. Outside of camp these students would often see themselves as victims of circumstance and caught up in a life wherein nothing they did mattered. So, in a sense, my job was to show them that everything they do, say and even think actually affects their lives and determines who they are. In this way, I would infuse their lives with meaning.
In essence, I think that that is what we should do as teachers. Before our students have to go out into the world we must enrich their lives with education. And, during that education process we must show the students that what they do and how hard they try affects their lives and determines who they are. In so doing, we will prepare them for the rest of their lives.

And, this next one is an essay I wrote for the Nishi and Suisan yearbooks. I originally wrote it for Nishi HS but then I just changed the first paragraph and changed ''Nishi'' to ''Suisan.'' It's not cutting corners...it's just efficiency.

I remember my first day at Suisan high school. I was nervous at first but the teachers were welcoming and helpful and the students were friendly. I don’t know if it is because Suisan is almost an all boys school, but I remember being comforted by a sense of brotherhood among the students. Also, the students seemed genuinely curious about me, so I felt like they would be interested in what I have to offer them. I could notice a certain vitality and energy in the students as well and I knew that they could accomplish anything that they focused that energy on. But those qualities will only be the potential for success until each student chooses to use them in a positive way.
Now, I would like to tell you about some differences between my high school in America and Suisan. First, my high school had four school dances every year. My school would rent a party hall or convention center somewhere in the city and sell tickets to all the students. A few weeks before the dance boys would ask girls to be their dates. Then, a few hours before the dance, the students would dress in their nicest clothes and gather at a friend’s house with their dates. Next, they would go out to eat at a nice restaurant, and then go to the dance, often in a limousine. At the dance a DJ would play CDs of American pop music like hip hop, Rock and Country. After dancing and taking group photos, some students would usually go to an after party at a friend’s house.
Another big difference is that at Suisan high school the students stay in one classroom most of the day and the teachers move around to different classrooms. But, in America, each teacher has his own classroom where he teaches all his classes. His desk is in that room, so there is no teachers' room like there is at Suisan high school. So, American students move to different classes throughout the day. They have a different classroom and different classmates for every subject.
And another interesting difference is that when an American student misbehaves the teacher sends him to the principal's office. The principal would then call the student’s parents. Of course, I was never sent to the principal's office. OK, maybe I was sent a few times.
And lastly, in autumn every Friday or Saturday night there was an American football game. My school was called Richard King high school and our mascot was a mustang, so the football team was called the King mustangs. The mustangs would always play against another high school football team. In all, there were about ten high schools in our district. About 1500 students attended my high school and almost everyone would go to the games. So, including families, friends and everyone from the other school, there would sometimes be nearly 4000 people at a football game! The games were played at night in huge stadiums. Cheerleaders would be dancing, the school band would be playing and the games would always be exciting.
Thanks for reading. I hope to teach you more about life in America as you all have taught me about life in Japan.

And, for this last one, I had to write something to the graduating class of Suisan. I could only write three sentences.

Dear graduates,

Stay healthy, because you only have one body. Learn, because you only have one mind. Love, because you only have one life.

Sincerely,

Matthew O’Hair

Eternity Considered

After some deliberation, I decided that a further compartmentalization of my life was in order, so I'm going to post any existential, religious, spiritual, ect... subject matter on a different blog. So, this blog, Turnin Japanese, will from now on only contain the usual Japan related shenanigans.

The new blog is: http://eternityconsidered.blogspot.com

Go there for any and all ''deeper'' discussions you'd like to have. I hope this new blog will be a more conversational forum where all, uhh, weighty topics are welcome: your beliefs, my beliefs, worldviews, politics, philosophy, science, literature, art, anything with eternal implications or significance, and well, anything outside of the realm of banality. Maybe the topics are too sprawling now; I guess the blog will find its focus when it's up and running.

Hong Kong and what matters

Well, I know I should write about HK but what can I say? It's description as ''Asia's world city'' is accurate. HK is a bustling, eclectic collection of people and cultures. You don't know what language you'll hear, what someone will try to sell you or what skinned animal you'll see in a restaurant window. The food was as excellent as it was diverse: Indian, Vietnamese, Singaporian, Cantonese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai--but stay away from the western food. Some areas are an amazing consolidation of wealth: ultramodern skyscrapers with interconnecting shopping malls so that you can walk miles and see a thousand stores without ever having to touch the ground and some areas are exactly what you'd expect from China: an amazing consolidation of crowded produce and gift markets with ceilings of overlapping billboards.

Needless to say, the view of the city from the peak was unprecedented, everything was dirt cheap, the 100 ft buddha was impressive and the Chinese temple grounds were immaculate.

Seeing the world is great and all but I get the sense that it's just another one of those things that leaves you wanting. So, I don't know if the rest of this post is an abuse of readership--this being a Japanese travel blog-- but I'd like to post some exerpts from my personal journal that have nothing to do with traveling or Japan. Maybe I'm able to post it because I'm three months removed from the content but I consider it something I'm still going through. Its a bit of a personal testimony and religious in nature. I know it's a practice in pontificating, it might be a little hard to trudge through and will leave me a bit more vulnerable than any other post but I'm prepared to take those risks because in my weakness God might be glorified.

Personal Journal Part I:

9/4/06

How long can I live so compartmentalized? I seem to have belief without true practice. My life and convictions are a gross passivity and not an active living thing; mine is not a life of unceasing faith but a continuous contradiction between creed and action. In a sense, my life should be a verb rather than an inert, stagnant, superficial noun. As a noun I am prone to being altered, my state is compromised with time, a thing breaks and rusts. A noun is an object, it waits and rots while things happen to it, whereas, as a verb, I would be acting on the world around me without a schism between thought and action, there would be fruition for all my intentions or at least a sincere striving for fruition. A verb is complete and indestructible in the instant of its occurrence and continues to ripple throughout eternity without compromise to its original essence. A verb is an explosion, an outward expression of its own exuberance and a celebration of the reason for the action. Whereas a thing is like a slow implosion; an inwardly focused object concerned with and affecting only itself and its own eventual atrophy, a thing waiting to fall apart that passively witnesses its own demise. I am a dying object but with stirring convictions; my spirit desires to do one thing but something immobilizes me. I seek liberation from this prison of inactivity and false activity. That is to say, I am stuck in the prison of believing in God without acting like God exists.

In my life, without fail, after troughs and peaks of conviction I always end up existing nominally. Right now, I am this or I am that. Right now, I do this or I do that. Can I rise above the rut of this confused state of form and appearance without true, consistent substance? Can I truly and uniformly be and do what I know I should? Can I have a constant, definitive nature other than the nature of contradiction, the nature of saying and believing one thing and doing and being another? I yearn for a nature that is a solid and not an ethereal, capricious gas; a life that is solidly built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. I look at the span of human history and the history of my own life and I see the Gospel of Christ as the only historical hope for eternal life and a loving God. Christ rose from the dead and, as the only begotten Son of God, He conquered the death that I deserve. And to have faith in God and to love Him because that happened liberates me from Sin and death and, along with Christ and His church, I am an inheritor of eternal life. This is the foundation on which I seek to build my faith, my life and indeed, my every action; this is my struggle.

I pray for power to overcome my sin and then, when that fails, I ask God to take control and rip the sin from my life and then, when that fails, I ask for a mixture of the two. As if God and I can sail my ship in tandem. So I am thrust around from passivity to activity, submission to sovereignty over my life but both routes, and all routes in between, seem to lead back to existential compromise and a resurfacing of my habits: lasciviousness, pride, vanity, greed, laziness, fear, intolerance, brooding malevolence and indifference towards others (ect...). I can hold out or hold on for a short while with a will buttressed by prayer but time and circumstance and boredom and desire and temptation are unceasing. The enemy strikes with these prongs on all possible fronts at any possible moment. It is an unwavering adversary that apparently wants to divide me against myself and God. It tears my very essence apart into two opposing entities and pits them against each other until all that remains is despair and confusion and an aversion toward my Creator. In other words, I become that which wants to do God’s will and that which wants to rebel. In this way, the enemy, that which causes me to do what I know is actually harmful and terrible in the eyes of God, creates an unnecessary struggle for morality in me. I know that all has been forgiven by God and all that remains to do is grow closer to Him but the sin injects a harsh legalism into something as simple and pure as a relationship. This legalism brings guilt and shame spoiling my relationship with God transforming it into something mechanical and cold; thusly God and His love are pushed away by my sin. God becomes an antithesis to part of my nature; in other words, as I rebel and sin that rebellious part of me grows and wants to see God, the adversary of my sinful self, disappear from my life.

But oh how my spirit desires to be free from this abominable contradiction of knowing there is a God and an eternity but continuing to live like there is not. I do not know if a person can lose his salvation but I know that sanctification can be lost. The world, with all its mechanisms of contentment, is one big neon distraction beckoning me to come closer and forget God. Indeed, this fallen world is a well orchestrated system for the de-sanctification of human beings.

Thanks for reading, to be continued...

M X V = GRR

One thing a blog is for is to vent, which is just a euphemism for whining. And that is exactly what I plan to do on this post, you`ve been warned.

While riding my bike to the station this morning I hit some ice. The next thing I know my hip and elbow hit pavement with the force of my mass times my acceleration, or some equation that equals the square root of a very bad morning. It was about 7:42, I had rolled out of bed at about 7:20 and was trying to catch a 7:47 train. And I'm from south Texas so I guess I wasn't in the right state of mind to look for ice on the road. So there I was, Monday morning, I had only been up for about 20 minutes and I was lying on a sheet of ice on a road in Ishinomaki, Japan looking at my toppled bike five yards in front of me with the wheel still spinning. I got up quick because a car was coming and started walking my bike to the station with a limp and no time to lose. That's when the self-pity starting coming on in waves.

...It wouldn`t have been so bad if I didn`t gash my arm and bruise my hip, which wouldn`t have been so bad if I didn`t have to walk over a mile to work from the station, which wouldn`t have been so bad if I didn`t miss breakfast because of the fall, which wouldn`t have been so bad if, during the walk, I didn`t have to brood over the fact that I ripped my brand new REI poly pro tops, which wouldn`t have been so bad if I didn`t rip my brand new button-up shirt, which wouldn`t have been so bad if I didn`t rip my brand new Aigle fleece-lined gloves, which wouldn`t have been so bad if I didn`t rip my brand new North Face jacket.

A man doesn't truly fall until he does so in his nicest clothes.

OK, thanks for listening, I feel better now. Thank God for blogs, but ice on pavement can go melt in hell.

Mr. and Mrs. Claus

Santa is real and living in Houston, Texas under the alias Mr. and Mrs. O`Hair.

I awoke Sunday morning to the sound of a Japanese postman (one of Santa`s little helpers) knocking on my door. He was resting a rather large box against the wall outside my door, panting heavily. I signed for it and went at it with a knife while the door was still closing. Under bundled newspaper were all my individually wrapped Christmas presents. Green bows with red and white wrapping paper; they were the brightest, most colorful things in the room and seemed to glow in the curtained light of morning. I was immediately presented with a dilemma. Should I wait until Christmas or submit to my growing anticipation? I had built up momentum by feverishly ripping into the box because, as everyone knows, opening presents is like falling down stairs, you just keep going until there are none left.

How often are you rewarded after destroying something? Such is the highly satisfactory act of demolishing a package and finding a gift in the aftermath. And so I longed to claw into them one by one until all the pretty paper was in one crumpled pile and all the gifts in another.

But I resisted. I carefully stacked all the gifts in the corner under a beautifully adorned but invisible tree. After setting them in the most aesthetic arrangement, big ones on bottom and the smaller ones leaning or stacked on top without disturbing any bows, I backed up and sat on my bed without taking my eyes off the pile of shimmering temptation in the corner of my apartment. I made breakfast, I cleaned a little and I tried to read but all the while the gifts shinned and beckoned me like the ring did Frodo.

But the day is long and my will weak. Human nature set in and I justified that the wrapping paper concealed some very warm clothes that I would surely require before December 25th. Needless to say, Christmas came early this year. Thank you mom and dad, I love y`all! MERRY CHRISTMAS AND GOD BLESS!!!

Correction please!

I`ve recently discovered the simple pleasure of reading bizzare English sentences while grading papers. I teach five writing classes and in each I`ve set up a pretend pen pal exchange where I type up a letter from a made-up American high school student named Peter, pass them out and then the students write a letter to Peter covering the same content that Peter wrote about. We`ve covered topics like family, friends, home town, likes and dislikes ect... and, needless to say, things have been....lost in translation. Here are a few examples of my students` fine work. Imagine yourself with red pen in hand:

1. My best friend`s name is Ichiro. He is a great baseball player in the world.

Hmm, technically, that is true.

2. My classroom teacher is Mr. Kimura. We call him ``Kimura`` he have pasion. We love him. But, he love running than us. hollow.

Umm, should I report this?

3. I have many family and a little friend. I`m happy. Do you?

4. I`m so sorry. I have no friends, and family too. Because I love alone. I`m so sorry. ALL things is lie.

Well no wonder you love alone.

5. I love my town because it has a old chapel. Please tell me about your lover and your date plan.

An old chapel? How lewd.

6. And CRAZY friend Syuei is a baseball player. He like girl. He heir bouzu. He is alone. I think he is pity.

I once had a friend. He heir bouzu too. It was so sad.

7. My father works for a build house company. And my mom is a baby shitter.

Ooo, how much does she charge?

8. My father, Kei, works for a secret.

Shh...

Open Ended

I can't say how many times I've been asked about why I came to Japan. But it's been enough times to develop a well rehearsed response that covers everything from wanting to teach abroad to having an interest in Japanese culture. But, as often as I can I try to boil things down to definitive moments, and just recently I was able to pinpoint a specific experience that might have landed me across the Pacific in Ishinomaki, Japan.

I was at a sushi bar at the back of the Texas Union building on the UT campus. While choosing my lunch I watched the chef clean. He folded a damp rag and, with the utmost care and both hands, slid the rag across the preparation counter. When the rag reached the other end he moved it foward the length of the rag and slid it back across. He repeated this motion with a slow, precise rhythm. When his rag found debris he wiped it into a catching dish on one end of the counter with a surgeon's mastery. He seemed unconcerned with the passing of time and fully concerned with the perfection of his duty. He seemed to stretch the moment and fill it only with what mattered to him, however menial the task. It had been a stressful week and I could feel my blood pressure drop as I watched.

I don't know if this experience gave me any tangible goal or ethereal feeling to chase by coming to Japan, I don't even know if the chef was Japanese (most Japanese restuarant staff in Austin are Korean). As with most moments like these it came and went before I could fully understand why or how it affected me. So, I'm still a little hesitant to answer the question, "Why did you come to Japan?" with "Because I'm interested in the culture and, oh yeah, I saw a sushi chef stop time with a damp rag."

The only way I can make sense of this experience is to contrast it with another. I went to an island called Kinkasan with other ALTs a few weeks ago. With immaculate landscapes where tame deer and monkeys roam free this place is, quite simply, a fantasy land. Temples, waterfalls, emerald lawns and old growth pines fill the island. It is nature condensed and magnified, Asia's Eden. A person can easily find himself at peace with nature in a place like this. Or, a person can easily scare nature away and get attacked by it in a place like this.

The Japanese visitors to the island seemed to experience Kinkasan without disturbing it, whereas we were a pack of boisterous gaijin tramping around the island. When the Japanese fed the deer it appeared as natural as if the deer were feeding from bushes. When we fed the deer we were mauled by the deer. When the Japanese approached a temple they did it in silent reverence. We lounged on the temple steps and took group photos. When the Japanese walked the trails monkeys crossed their paths. When we saw the monkeys we ran toward them yelling "Monkeys!", needless to say, no monkeys crossed our paths.

...I've tried to end this post a few different ways and each seemed increasingly trite or sentimental, so nothing says it best like nothing at all. Or, maybe I'll end it with a lesson in Japanese, the word "baka" means "stupid." And "uso" means "lie"...these are the words you learn when you date a Japanese woman...oh yeah, I'm dating a Japanese woman. Her name is Keiko...pics coming soon.

Karaoke killed the video star

Some ALTs and I went to a karaoke bar a few weeks ago, and yes, there's footage. The link is on the right, turn your volume way up and enjoy.
Warning: watch the videos only if you are prepared to have the songs "Rolling Stone", "Hit me baby one more time" and "Bulls on Parade" completely and irrevocably ruined for you.

Disclaimer: "Hit me baby one more time" was chosen for me, and....well nevermind, there's no excuse.

There's also a link to another video my neighbor made of my apartment and around Ishinomaki (my town). That link's called: Annie's Ish Documentary.

Also, there are pics galore at www.miyagijet.com under "photos site." There's a link for that too. (The link might not work for some reason)