Heading South for the Winter

I'm off tomorrow for a 2 week trip around Malaysia and Singapore. I probably won't be blogging until I get back. Happy holidays to everyone. I wish you all the best. Look forward to more tales of adventures (and of course misadventures) in the new year.

Bonenkai 2: Drunken Co-worker Boogaloo

Last night was the bonenkai for the Taiwa JHS staff. This was a BIG DEAL, with endless planning, overly fancy handmade cards...

It was held at a large, fancy hotel in Matsushima (3rd prettiest view in Japan). The hotel was hosting tons of bonenkais that night, most of which appeared to be for other elementary and junior high school teachers.

A large number of people were spending the night at the hotel, so when we first arrived we went to the rooms to hang out before dinner. Everyone was very excited to start drinking (except those driving home or pregnant). As each person came into the room where we were hanging out, they were given a glass and we toasted them, saying "o-tsukare-sama desu" (literally "you must be tired") which means thanks for your hard work. There was something odd about sitting around on the floor of a fancy hotel room with my mostly middle-aged coworkers drinking beer--like some weird prom-gone-wrong.

Then is was time for the actual bonenkai. Sadly, I don't have a picture of dinner because I didn't charge my camera batteries. In many ways it was similar to last week's--there was a nabe that was boiled while we were eating. It was oyster nabe because Matsushima is famous for oysters. There was also a large, raw oyster, sashimi, other things....again things I didn't recognize.

The event was nomihodai, meaning all-you-can-drink. The Japanese custom is to pour drinks for each other. This meant that I have no idea how much I drank because my glass was never more than half-empty. Sometimes you'd have to take a few sips just because somebody would want to fill your glass but it was completely full! I was sitting next to the maintenance guy, who was drinking shochu with water. I also gave it a try (which seemed to excite the people around me). It tasted more or less like vodka mixed with water. Not bad, but not good either and I decided to stick with my beer for the rest of the night.

Things got interesting when two male teachers (including one of the English teachers I work with) came in wearing dirty Santa dresses ready to MC silly party games. (Pictures will be posted here after another teacher emails her's to me). The games pitted the teachers of each grade against each other. Highlights included a cup-o-noodles and a container of red pepper being passed around. Each person could give 1,2, or 3 shakes of pepper onto the noodles. When it got to 100 shakes of pepper, the person who it landed on had to eat some. And there was a relay race with 4 stations. The first was to eat a cup-o-noodles. At the second leg, participants had to eat something and chug a beer. The third was chugging a glass of green tea. And the final leg of the relay race was to eat a container of yogurt through a straw. Somehow I got suckered into this straw/yogurt business. My team was in 1st place up to the last leg of the race--but then nothing would come up through my straw!! So my team lost, but it was a lot of fun and everyone was amused.

At the end of dinner, I got a ride home with another teacher's mom. The car ride was amusing. My co-worker was quite drunk. And she spoke the most English I've ever heard her speak. (I always say that drinking is good for foreign language practice/fluency. In fact I said it in the car last night--or attempted to--in Japanese).

It was really fun and interesting to see my conservative, Japanese coworkers let their hair down and get really goofy. Too bad in the New Year it will be back to serious school-teachers.

You want what?

Yesterday, at the start of one of my 3-nen-sei classes, the teacher and I were asking the students random questions to get them warmed up. The class was really full of energy. I asked what present they wanted to get for Christmas. One boy shouts out "I want Horigome!" Horigome is the family name of the kid who sits a couple seats behind him. The class found it rather funny, but probably not as funny as I found it.

An Update from the Mean Streets of Taiwa

It looks like Taiwa's time as a crime-ridden ghetto is over. As you may recall, a neighborhood store was robbed last week. For the rest of that week, all after-school activities were canceled and the students were told they had to walk home in groups. During the entire week, including yesterday I was reminded of the "scary" situation and reminded to lock my door and be careful while walking home. However, today clubs were back in full swing. Apparently our "burglar" has been arrested. We can all sleep better at night now.

Pretty Scenery

My drive home from Naruko was absolutely beautiful. It had been snowing overnight and the mountains and trees looked like they had been kissed by the snow. I stopped to take this picture.

First Bonenkai: A Very Naked Weekend

The Japanese have an end of the year tradition known as bonenkai, which means 'forgetting the old year'. And how does one forget things? By getting massively drunk, of course! (Don't worry Mom, I didn't actually get drunk enough to forget anything). So a bonenkai is a party with a very nice dinner and lots of booze.

One of my friends organized a bonenkai at an onsen in Naruko. An onsen is a Japanese hot spring. We arrived at our ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) before dinner and changed into the yukata they provided. We all made sure to tuck them left-over-right because only corpses are dressed with their kimono right-over-left.

Before dinner, we went in groups to an outdoor onsen that was a few minutes' drive away. (Interestingly enough, that pool is the first photo here.) First the girls went and then the boys. We wore traditional Japanese sandals on the way there, which are incredibly hard to walk in. We got to the changing area, and it was quite cold to take off our clothing. Then we had to rinse off before getting in, but there were only 4 buckets for this purpose and many more of us. So we all doused ourselves very quickly and passed the bucket to the next person. The water was VERY hot. One ALT's girlfriend had come to visit. She had only arrived in Japan the day before and was already getting naked with strangers. Quite the welcome to Japan.

While the boys were at that onsen, we were hanging out in the lobby when two Japanese guys came out of one of the rooms dressed as Santa Claus. They were also having a bonenkai and were much further into their festivities than we were. We were about to check out the onsen that were inside the ryokan, when Santa-san called us back. It appears they had a bag of gifts. So we all got socks...it was quite random.We had a very fancy, tradtional Japanese dinner. We all sat on our knees in the formal Japanese style while the woman of the ryokan started us off. There were many yummy bits (I ate so much sashimi--it's really growing on me) in our dinners. But there were also many strange things that we didn't recognize. After we finished eating, we sang some karaoke until it was time to quiet down.
Then it was onsen time again! We discovered that there was a large mixed-sex onsen, a small women-only onsen, and several small 'family size' onsen, one of which was outside. Somebody brought a beach ball and we played a little seated volleyball in the large onsen! (I think this violated everything an onsen is supposed to be). Later, I and a few others left that one because it was too loud.

The outdoor onsen was small and beautiful. It was decorated with stones and statuettes as well as plants around it. I and a couple others ended up sitting in there for several hours! We had some interesting conversations about all manner of topics, from Ninja Turtles to complex mathematics (yes, a lot of my friends are nerds).

After becoming completely prune-y and getting out, I joined some people who were hanging out in one of the rooms. After a while of that, it was back for some middle-of-the-night onsen!

In the morning, we had a traditional breakfast--rice, miso soup, fish, some other things. Then I took a shower and another quick soak. After I finished and got dressed in my jeans and shirt, it felt odd to be back in my normal clothes after spending so much time either naked or in a yukata. What a good way to get clean, relax, and 'forget the old year'.

Easily Amused

Yesterday in between classes, I was walking down the hall at school. I saw a group of 3-nen-sei boys gathered around a window, clearly excited over something they saw outside. As I made my way toward the window to see what they were so interested in, they ran off to the gym for class. Before I made it to the window, a huge group of teachers came running around the corner and rushed at the same window.

There was a rainbow! A big fat one, reaching all the way down to the ground!

Everyone oohed and aahed and eventually made their way back to the teachers' room and to class. I was quite entertained to see what kind of a commotion a rainbow can make in a Japanese workplace.

Emergency? A Dialog

This morning one of my English teachers looked at me and said “Last night there was an emergency. Did [my supervisor] call you?”

“No! What emergency?” I replied, thinking I might have slept through one of Japan’s many potential natural disasters. At this point the teacher takes out her bilingual dictionary and comes over to my desk. So earthquake is out because she ought to know that word already.

“Ah, there was a burglar.” She underlined the English word in her dictionary.

“A burglar? That was the emergency?”

“He went into a small store with a small knife. And he was not caught. We brought all the students inside. We took them home by our cars.”

“Um…a burglar?”

“The police were patrolling Taiwa. If there is danger we will not have class today.”

“Um…did anyone get hurt?” I was extremely confused as why somebody robbing a store would lead to classes getting canceled.

“No. Not yet” Well that seems a bit morbid and pessimistic.

The conversation continued a bit, all the while I was thinking “Emergency? I do not think that word means what you think it means.” I guess coming from the mean streets of America (where everyone must own a sawed-off shotgun or something) I was a bit confused. Crime is bad. But a robbery where nobody got hurt is not my definition of an emergency. But I guess in Japan, where there is virtually no crime, people’s reaction is slightly different (and alarmist).

After I typed this, all after school activities were canceled, students were told to walk home in groups and another teacher told me that I had better stay in my apartment tonight.

Happy Chanukkah

Living in a Shinto/Buddhist country as I do, sometimes I have to get creative in order to observe my own cultural and religious events. So after realizing that Chanukkah was approaching I set out to figure out a way to light some candles. I bought some Buddhist Dharma candles at the 100-yen shop. Then I came home and constructed a menorah out of aluminum foil and toothpicks. It's pretty bootleg.

Hope everyone is having a good winter holiday season!

Japanese Family Dinner

This week I spent two days at one of my elementary schools. After I was done teaching the first day, the school nurse confirmed that I would be back the next day and invited me to her house for dinner. At first I thought she was inviting me for the following day, but after some confusion I figured out that she meant to take me home with her after she was done with her work.

To tell the truth, I was too tired to really want to go to her house for dinner, but these opportunities don’t come up very often. Anyway, we went to her house, and I was still feeling disinclined to wait so long for dinner and socialize when all I wanted was a nap. However, her house was big and warm and very Japanese. I tucked my feet under the kotatsu (low table with a heating element underneath and a blanket on top) and admired all the Japanese knick-knacks on display.

At one point, her husband turned on the TV and we watched the ‘international news’. Here’s what I managed to get out of it: there’s something going on in Korea, something about China…possibly it was about China sending the US poisonous food?, something about Iran. It was very informative. Then they had a segment about 1 US news story that was shown 5 times to help teach people English. It was showing in Japanese, then in English with Japanese subtitles, in English with English subtitles, in English without subtitles, and again with English subtitles. I didn’t particularly care about Mike Huckabee before, and I certainly didn’t need to hear this random bit 5 times. The rest of the TV programming was equally odd. There was bio of Peyton Manning. Later, an American football game was broadcast (Baltimore vs. New England in case anyone care). But by this time, dinner was ready.

The school nurse, her husband, and I sat down to a huge spread…two different nabes (one oysters, one pork), clams, rice, a salad of sorts….later she got up and cut up some sashimi. Soon, their son came home from work and joined us at dinner. Just as I decided I was too full to eat anymore, their daughter came home from school. I had been told that their daughter was very good at English, but I was quite surprised to find out she actually was REALLY good at English (Apparently she used to attend NOVA before they went under). So I continued to sit at the table and chat while she ate dinner. And then their other son came home and sat down to dinner. All this time, the school nurse kept giving me more and more food…apples, persimmon, yogurt, jasmine tea…

I had a great time sitting around the kitchen table and chatting with this lively bunch. But it turned out that there was some confusion. The school nurse intended for me to stay the night and to go to school together in the morning. However, I had no desire to go to school the next day in the same clothes and without having gone home (plus I still wasn’t 100% prepared for my lessons). So eventually they ended up taking me home (about a 30 minute drive).

I didn’t get home till after 10pm. At that point I was too full to fall asleep. But I was in such high spirits after the evening of being social and lots of laughter (and of course food).