Get Used to It!

My time as a teacher in Japan only stretches another fifteen days. I’ve broken protocol and started telling my students that I’ll be leaving. Neither my wife nor our coworker supports this. I guess they’re rip-the-bandage-off-at-once kind of people. Responses vary, and I’m beginning to think I should’ve just pulled a Houdini in two weeks.   

Most of the students only ask about the new teacher. “Boy or girl?” “Is she pretty?” “How old are they?” Most agreed a female teacher would greatly improve their current predicament. One group of seven year old boys, possibly resentful they were going to have to learn how to terrorize a new teacher effectively, spent the class period drawing piles of smiling poop on the board. Neither the promise of candy or threats in a foreign tongue could deter this behavior. Two of my adult classes stole my thunder by actually quitting the class moments before I was going to break the news. “Sorry, Joe. Last class.” I tried to explain that I was leaving too and that they didn’t need to apologize but they just bowed and made their exit while I tried not to feel abandoned.  

Not all responses were bad though. Two thirteen year old boys who refuse to speak English unless I let them play basketball cheered me up. Haruto asked me how many more classes we’d have together and when I told him it was only three.  He repeated “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!” on loop for the next three minutes. That’s the most English I’ve ever heard him say, and it hit me right in the feelz. Takumi, not as prone to bizarre and emotional outbreaks said nothing, only smiled. Haruto called him careless (We’d been studying adjectives but I didn’t have the heart to correct him) but Takumi only dug through a notebook. He found what he was looking for, looked me straight in the eyes and told me, “Good friends live on in the heart.”

I did my best not to blubber like a grandmother in front of two boys only interested in throwing a deflated rubber ball in a dented metal can.

But the reaction that touched me the most was from the first person I told. I let slip that I was leaving because Akira informed me he was going to be opening a Japanese style steak house. As in a place that only seats six people, and he will personally prepare every bite of food for his diners. He wants to open in November, he just needs a location. My mouth watering I confessed that I wouldn’t get to try his steak because I was leaving in a month for America. He frowned at me and reached for his dictionary. After thumbing around he said, “I got used to you.”

What a compliment. But there’s a lot in those words. Maybe it means I’ve adapted to life in Japan that such a simple statement could mean so much. But I guess that’s the truth of life. We only grow accustomed to the little things that make us comfortable. Coffee, how people say hello, all the little stuff you never notice unless you have to go without.

I had got used to life here, and damnit Japan, I mean it.

The Snow Won't Melt my Heart

Ah, a month in, and still the snow fascinates me. 

Bearded Kaiju, seen here fascinated by snow.

 

I am from Austin, and have only fleeting understanding of the cold. Wow! It rained and all the streets are covered with a thin film of ice! Chaos! Wow! It’s so cold you can leave the beer outside! Hyuk hyuk hyuk!

Here the cold is stronger, a bitter god angry at the joys of summer. I know there are fiercer gods of cold out there, “All you who live south of the Wall are Southerners,” but I don’t ever want to meet them.

Here, the cold is an entity, not a number that measures the absence of heat. Pah! I feel myself relating more and more to the ancient philosophers who believe cold was a force and not the base state that modern physicists define it as. To think the sun is the aberration in our universe is counterintuitive to the human experience. When the sun is shining and the ‘natural state’ of the universe is melted away if just for a cloud free afternoon, my world feels right, not alien. And the neighbors agree, albeit in their obsessive hardworking Japanese way. A sunny day means a day of watching sixty year old men scale rickety ladders up onto their roofs and hurl mountains of snow atop their sixty year old wives. A sunny day doesn’t mean less shoveling, it means a joyful day spent scraping away the bottom few centimeters of ice that make the road truly treacherous. Ah, a recent convert to Celsius, I relish the 5 degree days, and positively bask when its 8 degrees outside.

For the cold will return, it has each and every time so far, and I suppose if the physicists are right, it always will, soon as we shift out of the light of our freakishly optimistic sun, the cold returns, as inevitable as the dark.

I try not to get angry when someone from Austin tells me, “oh, its’ the same temperature in Takayama as it is here right now!” I understand. I’ve made the same righteously unsympathetic statements to a friend living in Boston and my family in Michigan. A moment of equality only drives the abject misery of living in the cold deeper into my frigid bones. For a moment when—gasp—it’s a few degrees above freezing in my home town and my current residence represents a huge difference in experience. For 3 degrees Celsius in Austin is one of the colder nights, here in Takayama, it’s a warm afternoon. That difference may seem pedestrian but it is not. Cold is not something that can be thwarted with a scarf and a cup of hot cocoa. It is a merciless, relentless enemy, who sees no attack upon my sanity too insidious to employ. 

A man must shovel the snow. Even in the face of more snow
This is right, and as it should be.

I’ve woken to find all the windows frozen shut, with a shirt hung carelessly close frozen to the glass, as if it’d reached out to lick the frost and been trapped there. I’ve woken to find the olive oil frozen into a brick (It’s been too cold to put honey in my coffee for months). I’ve discovered my washcloth frozen to the shower tiles, the shampoo beyond unusable. I’ve had entire days ruined because I’ve run down stairs at the crack of dawn to turn on the kerosene heater in the kitchen (no central heat for me) only to seek refuge thirty minutes later and discover the cursed thing was out of fuel and my kitchen still a frozen wasteland. I sleep with a hat, every night. I wear two hats and six layers during the day. I rant passionately about my heated coffee table (my beloved kutatsu). I value soup above all other foods. And, when given the opportunity to spend the night in a repurposed bakery up in the mountains, I leap at the opportunity, not because a bakery sounds warm, but because a night away from home will give us enough time to wash our sheets and let them dry.

So my wife and I found ourselves whisked away, up into the mountains, towards Mastumoto. I told my students of my plan to sleep in an old bakery in the mountains and they warned me of the drive.

“Be careful, the way between here and Matsumoto is very treacherous. Its full of twisting, frozen roads and haunted tunnels.”

I nodded, thankful for the terrifying advise, but explained that in fact I wasn’t going all the way to Matsumoto, I’d be stopping somewhere along the way.

“Oh! We’ll watch the news!” one of my students exclaimed, “If a bear comes down out of the mountains, we’ll know it’s you!”

Everyone laughed at the dire predicament I’d soon find myself in, and I lamented that despite my time here, I have not developed a Japanese sense of humor.

Still, the promise of adventure stirred my frozen bones and I packed my bag with enough calories to survive a hike out of the mountain.

The drive was spent in second gear, climbing six hundred meters along mountain roads that were only ploughed when they straightened out. Between harrowing turns and bone rattling bumps of ice, we found ourselves in old twisty tunnels. I always imagined tunnels to be pushed straight through mountains, but these beasts were like something from inside an ant colony. Dull flashing lights warned us of approaching walls and sharp turns. I mistakenly asked Eric why the tunnels were haunted.

“Because so many people crash and die here,” his wife Nolico said from the steering wheel before popping out of tunnel, running a red light and smiling, “oops!”

When we arrived at the bakery, I had never been so happy to set foot on an iced over road.

It turned out our host was far from a baker. He was a guitar player that—everyone but him likes to remind us—used to tour with Deep Purple. He kept the wood burning stove stoked as he wailed on his guitar, Eric played the harmonica and I did my best to insult Eric through rhyme between sips of sake. More people showed up, including Steve, who assured me that this was as good as it got, and even though we’d only been here a few months, we better damn well recognize that.

And you know, after getting slush in my boots, and snow down my coat, after paying for tank after tank of stinking kerosene, I got it, loud and clear. Nothing is better on this earth than warmth.

Warm people, music so loud it heats your bones, and fire. Be it from the sun, that unnaturally optimistic aberration, or from wood burnt to keep out that most vicious of gods, it doesn’t matter. For warmth, in all of its forms, is as good as it gets.

Sing Karaoke with your Students

These people got drunk and sang karaoke with his students this weekend. This is their story, only names have been changed.

 

Most of the week, I teach at a public school in the morning. I teach thirty minute lessons to about twenty-five kindergarteners. We sing the alphabet, play vocabulary games and their favorite, ‘TPR’ where we all march around the room chanting, “walking,” or “swimming” and the kids act out the verb. This is a great time for them to follow me and bury their heads in my butt (one kid per cheek). No amount of pleading can dissuade them from this task. They march along, chanting “flying, flying” as their skull applies gentle pressure to my gluteus maximus.

Most classes aren’t like that though. Most classes are at the private school I work for, and take place in the afternoon, once the kids are out of school and presumably tired out from all that butt massaging.

Our school divides the students by age and speaking ability, so most of my elementary students are all within a few years of each other in age, but may speak better English than some adults. As teachers everywhere know, it’s impossible to have a class of truly the same level, and that’s true even in my small classes.

One group has an eight year old, Yuki, who can speak English better than most adults. He’s grouped with the soul of a seventy year old man in the body of a nine year old, Rento-2, who is beyond polite and always perfectly clean, and an eleven year old, Rento-1 (the nicknames they gave themselves) who is one the dirtiest children I have ever seen. I have watched life forms evolve from the stains on his shirt. I don’t think Rento-1’s parents don’t care; I think Rento is proud of his stains. Cleanliness is very important in Japan (you have no idea), yet there’s a popular legend of a samurai who wandered the country, never washing his hair or clothes. I think Rento embodies this legend. He’s independent and not interested in social norms. For example Rento-1 always refuses my stamps--once kids get 100 stamps they get a present. I think he doesn’t want anyone to have anything on him. His stains are his way of showing he won’t conform.

All three of them are good kids, but Yuki’s English is far beyond either of the Rentos. Class consists of me teaching around ten new vocabulary words, then practicing speaking, spelling, and simple sentences. This takes the Rentos (and most students) a few weeks. Yuki never needs to hear a word more than once to memorize it. He spends class time giggling uncontrollably while he absorbs English like a sponge. He can copy anything I say flawlessly, like “Yuki be respectful or you’re not getting any stamps.” Even his grammar is impressive.  A popular question for my students is “what’s your favorite food?” To which they respond, “My favorite food is French fry.” Just that formula can be difficult for them, and we practice it endlessly with different topics, but Yuki will respond with varying phrases like, “I like tomatoes,” or “Sushi is delicious.” He should be bumped up, but considering that he already laughs at a struggling eleven year-old’s pronunciation, it’s probably not a good idea.

If I moved him into Kosuke’s class, Kosuke would probably die. Kosuke is eleven, overweight, and likes reading and French fries. He had a pet bacterium but it died. He told me of his loss by miming pouring out a bowl of water. He is THE master of a Japanese thinking technique in which, if you need to remember something, you sharply inhale over closed teeth. This creates a sound something like the last of a milkshake being sucked through a straw. Charming.

Kosuke is in a class with one other student, Ko, whose disinterest in English rivals my own disinterest in learning Japanese. Ko’s favorite day in class was when one of my other level six students missed her own class and had to come to theirs. Asami almost always wears tank tops (fairly uncommon) and short shorts (unbelievably commonplace), which Ko didn’t fail to notice. “How are you doing?” he asked in English, grinning ear to ear. “I’m tired,” she told him, then asked Kosuke how he was doing. “I’M FINE THANK YOU HOW ARE YOU?” he yelled. Ko didn’t mind asking her about her favorite animals and her hobbies, but Kosuke was glad the next week when things went back to normal.

Normally I teach Asami the same day as I teach two of my highest level students, Despair and Delight. They’re about fifteen, and have impressive English vocabularies, but basically refuse to use them. We finished their textbook, and I asked my coworker what to with them next.

“Ugh, those two, just get them to talk.”

About what?

“About anything.”

I tried for about a month (4 classes) and had to give up. I tried everything. I’d tell stories, offer candy in exchange for words, play games, bring music, I even let them make the curriculum. The curriculum thing worked for one class. They wanted to talk about Life. Great. There’s a lot of material there.

So, what’s important in life?

“Health,” Delight said. Health, and she smiled and nodded like she’d just solved the problem. Delight loves everything. She is oppressively positive. When her friend’s house was damaged from the flood in August, Delight was happy her friend had been able to stay the night with her. Delight wants to work in an airport so she can meet people and practice her English by giving one word directions. She likes Harry Potter, fruit, and playing the piano. She baffles me.

I turned to Despair and asked the same question.

“Purpose,” she said and slumped down in her chair.

Wow! Great answer.

I didn’t know her well yet, and asked the next question without thinking.

What’s your purpose?

She shook her head. “No purpose. Mother has purpose for me.”

Oh dear this wasn’t going well, private lessons are supposed to be fun, not existential probing of the familial structure.

You play guitar right? Maybe art can be your purpose. The two of you can start a band. Ha ha ha…

She shook her head, “I can never be good enough. I am not talented. Music is not my purpose.”

A bold statement for a girl who idolizes One Direction. I’m sure she’s already surpassed their music ability, but that didn’t seem like the right thing to say. I tried to comfort her.

You know, even I don’t know my purpose, many people don’t figure out their purpose until a lot later in life.

Despair shook her head, consumed by the future her mother has planned for her. In the States, that ‘thirty-is-the-new-twenty’ thing works, but not in Japan. As soon as students are in middle school, they’re expected to work incredibly hard to get into a good high school (all of which all require entrance exams) and then either start a career, go to college, or get married. I don’t know which possibility was in Despair’s future, but I know it’s not waiting tables, sleeping until eleven and figuring it all out later.

By the time Japanese students have made it through school and into my adults Intro-B class, they seem to be hard working but happy. They always tell me they’re tired, but that seems to be a respectable way to feel. They are all keep very busy schedules. They all have careers (some more than one, Kirito is a hair stylist and owns a curry and French toast restaurant) and hobbies they’re proud of. The word hobby has always seemed dirty to me, like something you do to waste time, but here, whether your hobby is cycling, boxing or videogames, its talked about with a head held high (it doesn’t hurt that all of those are one person’s hobbies). Some dote on their children, some garden or play volleyball, but all of my students love to drink.

Which brings us back to the restaurant. Ken and Kirito came out and sat across from my boss and me. They poured my beer whenever my glass neared empty, one of the most charming of all Japanese customs. They were drinking shochu, basically Japanese moon shine, and trying to convince me to have some because it wouldn’t give me hangover. Ken was going to cycle up a mountain at four AM, and he was drinking plenty. We stuffed ourselves on sashimi and fried vegetables, then left for karaoke. The karaoke spot our boss liked was full, so he called it a night and the rest of us followed Ken to a snack bar.  

They greeted us warmly, and put a half full bottle of whiskey at our table. I think Ken had previously purchased it, and we just paid for the hostess’s conversation skills and drinking pouring ability. She kept the whiskey coming, and applauded excitedly when us Americans sang “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Rocky Raccoon.”

Our students say songs in Japanese, and a hit by the Carpenters, but eventually we stumbled out, too drunk to sing. We hailed a cab and explained that, no, we weren’t tourists, and to please take us home. I woke hours later, happy I wasn’t climbing a mountain with the monstrous hangover had. Maybe I should’ve tried the shochu.

Joe Darris Mitchell lives in Takayama Japan and teaches English. If you want to read more about him teaching, click here. If you want to read more drinking stories, click here forAustralians, or here for Israelis.

Of you enjoyed this post, please +1 and share with those who’d appreciate it!